Isaiah’s Message of Deliverance
And it was, when King Hezekiah heard, that he tore his garments and covered himself with sackcloth, and came into the house of the LORD.
And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
And they said to him: “Thus says Hezekiah: A day of distress, and of rebuke, and of contempt is this day — for children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to give birth.
Perhaps the LORD your God will hear all the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria his lord sent to taunt the living God, and will rebuke the words that the LORD your God has heard. So lift up a prayer for the remnant that is found.”
And the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
And Isaiah said to them: “Thus you shall say to your lord: Thus says the LORD: Do not fear because of the words that you have heard, with which the boys of the king of Assyria have reviled me.
Look — I am putting a spirit in him, and he will hear a report and return to his own land; and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.”
Sennacherib’s Blasphemous Letter
And the Rab-shakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria making war against Libnah — for he had heard that he had pulled out from Lachish.
And he heard concerning Tirhakah, king of Cush, saying, “Look — he has come out to fight against you.” And he again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying:
“Thus you shall say to Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying: Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, ‘Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
Look — you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, devoting them to destruction. And will you be delivered?
Did the gods of the nations that my fathers destroyed deliver them — Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?
Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?”
Hezekiah’s Prayer
And Hezekiah took the letters from the hand of the messengers and read them; and he went up to the house of the LORD, and Hezekiah spread it out before the LORD.
And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said: “LORD, God of Israel, who sits enthroned on the cherubim — you are God, you alone, over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth.
Bend your ear, LORD, and hear. Open your eyes, LORD, and see. And hear the words of Sennacherib, who has sent to taunt the living God.
Truly, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their land,
and have put their gods into the fire — for they were no gods, but the work of human hands, wood and stone — and they destroyed them.
And now, LORD our God, save us, please, from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, LORD, are God — you alone.”
Sennacherib’s Fall Prophesied
And Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying: “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: What you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria, I have heard.
This is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: She despises you, she mocks you — the virgin daughter of Zion; behind you she shakes her head — the daughter of Jerusalem.
Whom have you taunted and reviled? And against whom have you raised a voice and lifted your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel!
By the hand of your messengers you have taunted the Lord, and said: ‘With the multitude of my chariots I have come up to the height of the mountains, the far reaches of Lebanon; and I will cut down its tall cedars, the choicest of its cypresses; and I will come to its farthest lodging, its garden forest.
I have dug and drunk foreign waters; and I will dry up with the sole of my feet all the streams of Egypt.’
Have you not heard? From far off I made it; from days of old I formed it. Now I have brought it about — that you should turn fortified cities into desolate heaps.
And their inhabitants, short of hand, were shattered and put to shame. They were grass of the field and green sprouts, grass of the rooftops — blighted before it is grown.
And your sitting down, and your going out, and your coming in, I know — and your raging against me.
Because your raging against me and your complacency have come up into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle in your lips; and I will turn you back by the way you came.
And this shall be the sign for you: eat this year what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that; and in the third year, sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.
And the survivors of the house of Judah who remain shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.
For from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
Therefore, thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, and he shall not shoot an arrow there; and he shall not come before it with a shield, and he shall not pour out a siege ramp against it.
By the way that he came, by it he shall return; and into this city he shall not come — an utterance of the LORD.
And I will defend this city, to save it — for my own sake, and for the sake of David my servant.”
Jerusalem Delivered from the Assyrians
And it was that night that the angel of the LORD went out and struck down in the camp of Assyria a hundred and eighty-five thousand; and they rose early in the morning — and look, all of them were dead corpses.
And Sennacherib, king of Assyria, pulled out and went, and returned; and he stayed in Nineveh.
And it was, as he was bowing down in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him down with the sword; and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son became king in his place.