1When King Hezekiah heard this he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth and went to the house of Yahweh. 2He sent Eliakim, the overseer of the palace, Shebna, the secretary, and the elders among the priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz.
3And they said to Isaiah, “This is what Hezekiah says: ‘Today is a day of distress, rebuke and disgrace, as when children are at the point of birth and there is no strength to deliver them. 4Would that your God might hear the words of the field commander, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent. May Yahweh your God rebuke him for the words he said, insulting the living God. Therefore offer a prayer for the few of us that are left.”
5When King Hezekiah’s officials came to Isaiah, 6he said to them: “Tell your master this word of Yahweh: Do not fear because of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have insulted me. 7Listen! I will let him be frightened. Then he will return to his country, and there I will have him slain by the sword.”
8The field commander returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish. 9This was because King Sennacherib had heard that Tirhakah, the Cushite king of Egypt, was going out to fight him. Again Sennacherib sent messengers to Hezekiah with these words,
Sennacherib’s letter to Hezekiah
10“Say to Hezekiah, king of Judah that his God in whom he trusts may be deceiving him in saying that Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria. 11Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands they have destroyed! And will you be spared? 12Have their gods saved the nations that my fathers destroyed? Gozan and Haran, Rezeph and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar? 13Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the kings of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?”
14Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers, and when he had read it he went to the house of Yahweh where he unrolled the letter 15and prayed saying, “O Yahweh, God of hosts and God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim! You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made the heavens and the earth. 16Give ear, Yahweh, and hear! Open your eyes and see! Listen to all the words of Sennacherib who has sent men to insult the living God! 17It is true, Yahweh, that the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries of the earth. 18They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not true gods but gods made of wood and stone by human hands. 19Now, O Yahweh our God, save us from his hand and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that you alone, Yahweh, are God.”
Isaiah intervenes
20Then Isaiah, son of Amoz, sent word to Hezekiah: “You have called upon Yahweh and he has heard your prayer regarding Sennacherib, king of Assyria. 21This is what Yahweh has spoken against him:
The Virgin Daughter of Zion
despises and scorns you;
the Daughter of Jerusalem
shakes her head behind you.
22Whom have you insulted and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted up your eyes in arrogance?
Against the Holy One of Israel!
23Through your servants
you have insulted Yahweh.
For you have said:
With the enormous number of my chariots
I have ascended the heights of the mountains,
the topmost recesses of Lebanon.
I have cut down its tallest cedars
and its choicest fir trees.
I have climbed its remotest heights to the densest of its forests.
24I have dug wells and drunk waters;
I have dried up with the soles of my feet all the streams of Egypt.
25Have you not heard
how I decreed it long ago,
how I planned from days of old
what now I have brought to pass?
Your ordained role was
to lay waste fortified cities,
to turn them into ruinous heaps.
26Shorn of power, their inhabitants
have been dismayed and confounded;
they have been as the grass
and green plants in the field, as the grass on the housetops,
scorched before it has grown.
27I know whenever you rise or sit, whenever you go out or come in; and I know your rage against me.
28Because of your rage against me
and your arrogance that I have heard of,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bridle in your mouth,
and I will turn you back
on the way by which you came.
29This will be a sign for you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat the after-growth grain, and next year what grows from that, but in the third year, sow and reap, plant vines and eat the fruit.
30A remnant of the house of Judah shall take root below and produce fruit above. 31For a remnant will come from Jerusalem and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of Yahweh of hosts will accomplish this. 32That is why Yahweh has said this concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not enter this city nor shoot his arrows. He shall not raise a shield to oppose it nor build a siege ramp against it. 33He shall leave by the way he came and he shall not enter the city, word of Yahweh. 34I will protect this city and so save it for my own sake and for the sake of David, my servant. 35It happened that the angel of Yahweh went out that night and struck one hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people rose early next morning there were all the corpses.
36So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed, returned home and lived in Nineveh. 37While he was worshiping in the temple of his god, Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer slew him with the sword and then escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon, his son, succeeded him as king.
