Hezekiah Destroys Idolatry in Judah
And it was in the third year of Hoshea the son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, became king.
He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah.
And he did the upright in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that David his father had done.
He removed the high places, and shattered the standing stones, and cut down the Asherah pole; and he crushed the bronze serpent that Moses had made — for until those days the sons of Israel had been burning incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan.
In the LORD, the God of Israel, he trusted; and after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him.
And he clung to the LORD; he did not turn aside from following him, and he kept his commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses.
And the LORD was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and did not serve him.
He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.
And it was in the fourth year of King Hezekiah — that is, the seventh year of Hoshea the son of Elah, king of Israel — that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria and besieged it.
And they captured it at the end of three years; in the sixth year of Hezekiah — that is, the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel — Samaria was captured.
And the king of Assyria exiled Israel to Assyria, and led them to Halah, and to Habor by the river of Gozan, and the cities of the Medes —
because they did not listen to the voice of the LORD their God, but crossed his covenant — all that Moses, the servant of the LORD, had commanded; they did not listen, and they did not do it.
Sennacherib Invades Judah
And in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.
And Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have sinned. Turn back from me; whatever you lay on me I will bear.” And the king of Assyria laid on Hezekiah, king of Judah, three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.
And Hezekiah gave all the silver found in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the house of the king.
At that time Hezekiah cut off the doors of the temple of the LORD, and the doorposts that Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid — and gave them to the king of Assyria.
Sennacherib Threatens Jerusalem
And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, and the Rab-saris, and the Rab-shakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a heavy force, to Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem; and they went up and came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway of the Fuller’s Field.
And they called to the king; and there went out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.
And the Rab-shakeh said to them: “Say, please, to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is this trust in which you have trusted?
You have said — but it is only a word of lips — ‘Counsel and might for the war.’ Now, in whom have you trusted, that you have rebelled against me?
Now look — you have trusted for yourself on the staff of this crushed reed, on Egypt, which, if a man leans on it, goes into his palm and pierces it. Such is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who trust in him.
And if you say to me, ‘In the LORD our God we have trusted’ — is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘Before this altar you shall bow down, in Jerusalem’?
Now then, make a wager, please, with my lord, with the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses — if you are able to set riders for yourself on them.
How then could you turn back the face of a single governor among the least of my lord’s servants — and you have trusted for yourself in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
Now, is it apart from the LORD that I have come up against this place, to destroy it? The LORD said to me: Go up against this land — and destroy it.”
And Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah, and Joah said to the Rab-shakeh, “Speak, please, to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not speak with us in Judean, in the ears of the people who are on the wall.”
And the Rab-shakeh said to them: “Is it to your lord and to you that my lord has sent me to speak these words? Is it not to the men sitting on the wall — to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”
And the Rab-shakeh stood and called out with a great voice in Judean; and he spoke and said: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!
Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he cannot deliver you from his hand.
And do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
Do not listen to Hezekiah! For thus says the king of Assyria: Make a blessing with me and come out to me; and eat, each man of his own vine and each man of his own fig tree, and drink, each man the waters of his own cistern —
until I come and take you to a land like your own land: a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey — and live, and do not die. And do not listen to Hezekiah when he incites you, saying, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’
Have the gods of the nations delivered at all, each his own land, from the hand of the king of Assyria?
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did they deliver Samaria from my hand?
Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their land from my hand — that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”
And the people kept silent and did not answer him a word — for it was the commandment of the king, saying, “Do not answer him.”
And Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with garments torn; and they told him the words of the Rab-shakeh.