Isaiah 37

¹As soon as King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord.

²And he sent Eliakim , who was over the household , and Shebna the secretary , and the senior priests , covered with sackcloth , to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz .

³They said to him, Thus says Hezekiah , This day is a day of distress , of rebuke , and of disgrace ; children have come to the point of birth , and there is no strength to bring them forth .

⁴It may be that the Lord your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh , whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to mock the living God , and will rebuke the words that the Lord your God has heard ; therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left .

⁵When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah ,

⁶Isaiah said to them, Say to your master , Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard , with which the young men of the king of Assyria have reviled me.

⁷Behold , I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land , and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land .

⁸The Rabshakeh returned , and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah , for he had heard that the king had left Lachish .

⁹Now the king heard concerning Tirhakah king of Cush , He has set out to fight against you. And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah , saying ,

¹⁰Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah : Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria .

¹¹Behold , you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands , devoting them to destruction . And shall you be delivered ?

¹²Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed , Gozan , Haran , Rezeph , and the people of Eden who were in Telassar ?

¹³Where is the king of Hamath , the king of Arpad , the king of the city of Sepharvaim , the king of Hena , or the king of Ivvah ?

¹⁴Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers , and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.

¹⁵And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord:

¹⁶O Lord of hosts , God of Israel , enthroned above the cherubim , you are the God , you alone , of all the kingdoms of the earth ; you have made heaven and earth .

¹⁷Incline your ear , O Lord, and hear ; open your eyes , O Lord, and see ; and hear all the words of Sennacherib , which he has sent to mock the living God .

¹⁸Truly , O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands ,

¹⁹and have cast their gods into the fire . For they were no gods , but the work of men’s hands , wood and stone . Therefore they were destroyed .

²⁰So now , O Lord our God , save us from his hand , that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.

²¹Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah , saying , Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel : Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria ,

²²this is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him: She despises you, she scorns you— the virgin daughter of Zion ; she wags her head behind you— the daughter of Jerusalem .

²³Whom have you mocked and reviled ? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights ? Against the Holy One of Israel !

²⁴By your servants you have mocked the Lord , and you have said , With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains , to the far recesses of Lebanon , to cut down its tallest cedars , its choicest cypresses , to come to its remotest height , its most fruitful forest .

²⁵I dug wells and drank waters , to dry up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt .

²⁶Have you not heard that I determined it long ago ? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass , that you should make fortified cities crash into heaps of ruins ,

²⁷while their inhabitants , shorn of strength , are dismayed and confounded , and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass , like grass on the housetops , blighted before it is grown .

²⁸I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in , and your raging against me.

²⁹Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come to my ears , I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth , and I will turn you back on the way by which you came .

³⁰And this shall be the sign for you: this year you shall eat what grows of itself , and in the second year what springs from that. Then in the third year sow and reap , and plant vineyards , and eat their fruit .

³¹And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward .

³²For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant , and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors . The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

³³Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria : He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it .

³⁴By the way that he came , by the same he shall return , and he shall not come into this city , declares the Lord.

³⁵For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David .

³⁶And the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians . And when people arose early in the morning , behold , these were all dead bodies .

³⁷Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh .

³⁸And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god , Adrammelech and Sharezer , his sons , struck him down with the sword . And after they escaped into the land of Ararat , Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place .