SECOND KINGS

 

2 Kings Chapter 19

1 ¶ When king Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD.

2 And he sent Eliakim, who was over his household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, dressed in sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.

3 And they said to him, Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and reproach, and dishonor: like a woman who should give birth, but does not have the strength to do it.

4 It may be the LORD your God will hear all the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master has sent to reproach the living God; and will rebuke the words which the LORD your God has heard: therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant who are left.

5 So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

6 And Isaiah said to them, This is what you shall tell your master, Thus says the LORD, Do not be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

7 Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he will hear a rumor, and will return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.

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

9 Then he heard it said of Tirhakah the king of Ethiopia, He has come to fight against you: and he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying,

10 Say this to Hezekiah the king of Judah, Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

11 Behold, you have heard what the Assyrian kings have done to all lands, destroying them utterly: and shall you be delivered?

12 Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers destroyed; Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the children of Eden which were in Thelasar?

13 Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivah?

14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD.

15 And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said, O LORD God of Israel, who dwells between the cherubim, you are the God, even you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.

16 LORD, bow down your ear, and hear: open, LORD, your eyes, and see: and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.

17 Of a truth, LORD, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands,

18 And have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them.

19 Now therefore, O LORD our God, I beseech you, save us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are the LORD God, even you alone.

20 ¶ Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, I have heard your prayer which you prayed to me concerning Sennacherib the king of Assyria.

21 This is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him; The virgin daughter of Zion has despised you, and laughed you to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head at you.

22 Whom have you mocked and blasphemed? and against whom have you exalted your voice, and lifted up your eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel.

23 By your messengers you have reproached the Lord, and have said, With my many chariots I have come up to the height of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon, and will cut down its tall cedar trees, and its choice fir trees: I entered its most distant retreat, and its densest forest.

24 I dug wells and drank foreign waters, and I have dried up all the rivers of besieged places with the soles of my feet.

25 But God says, Have you not heard long ago how I have done it, and from ancient times that I have formed it? now I have brought it to pass, that you should be my instrument to turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins.

26 That is why their inhabitants had little power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn withered before it is grown.

27 But I know how you live, your going out, and your coming in, and your rage against me.

28 Because your raging against me and your arrogance has come up into my ears, therefore I will put my hook in your nose, and my bridle in your lips, and I will send you back by the way that you came.

29 And Hezekiah this will be a sign to you, This year you will eat what grows of itself, and in the second year that which springs from the same; then in the third year sow, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits of it.

30 And the remnant that has survived of the house of Judah will again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.

31 For out of Jerusalem a remnant will go forth, and a band of survivors from mount Zion: the zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

32 Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He will not come into this city, or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield, nor raise a bank against it.

33 He will return by the same way that he came, and will not enter this city, says the LORD.

34 For I will defend this city, and save it, for my own sake, and for my servant David’s sake.

35 ¶ And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and slew one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians: and when the living got up early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.

36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria left, and returned, and lived in Nineveh.

37 And as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons killed him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.