﻿Isaiah.
Chapter 37.
When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD. 
He sent Eliakim, who was over the palace, Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 
They said to him, “This is what Hezekiah says: ‘This day is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace, for the children have come to the point of birth, but there is no strength to deliver them. 
Perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to insult the living God, and will rebuke the words the LORD your God has heard. So lift up a prayer for the remnant that remains.’” 
When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, 
Isaiah said to them, “Tell your master: ‘This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. 
Look, I will put a spirit in him, and he will hear a report and return to his own land. I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.’” 
The Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that he had left Lachish. 
He heard concerning Tirhakah king of Cush, “He has come out to fight against you.” When he heard this, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 
“Tell Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by 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. Will you be delivered? 
Did the gods of the nations my fathers destroyed deliver them—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the children of Eden who were in Telassar? 
Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?’” 
Hezekiah took the letters from the messengers’ hands and read them. Then he went up to the house of the LORD and spread them before the LORD. 
Hezekiah prayed to the LORD, saying, 
“LORD of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made heaven and earth. 
Incline your ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see. Hear all the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God. 
Truly, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the lands and their territories 
and cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of human hands, wood and stone. So they destroyed them. 
Now, LORD our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the LORD.” 
Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, 
this is the word the LORD has spoken against him: The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you; the daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you. 
Whom have you insulted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel! 
Through your servants you have insulted the Lord and said, “With my many chariots I have climbed the heights of the mountains, the remotest parts of Lebanon. I will cut down its tallest cedars and its choice cypresses. I will reach its highest extremity, its lush forest. 
I have dug and drunk water, and with the sole of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.” 
Have you not heard? Long ago I made it; from ancient days I formed it. Now I have brought it about, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins. 
Their inhabitants, short of strength, were dismayed and ashamed. They were like the grass of the field and green shoots, like grass on the rooftops and a field before its grain has grown. 
I know your sitting down, your going out and coming in, and your raging against me. 
Because your raging against me and your arrogance have reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your lips, and turn you back by the way you came. 
This will be the sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that. In the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 
The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root below and bear fruit above. 
For a remnant will go out from Jerusalem, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.’” 
Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria: “He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow there. He will not approach it with a shield or build a siege ramp against it. 
By the way he came he will return; he will not enter this city,” declares the LORD. 
“I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” 
The angel of the LORD went out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When they rose early in the morning, look, they were all dead bodies. 
Then Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp, departed, and returned; he lived in Nineveh. 
While he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. They escaped to the land of Ararat, and his son Esarhaddon reigned in his place. 
