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1 When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD. 2 He sent Eliakim, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, covered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 3 They said to him, “This is what Hezekiah says: This day is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace. Children have reached the moment of birth, but there is no strength to deliver them. 4 Perhaps the LORD your God will hear all the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to insult the living God, and will rebuke him for the words the LORD your God has heard. So lift up a prayer for the remnant that is left.” 5 When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, 6 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. 7 Look, I will put a spirit within 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.” 8 The Rab-shakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish. 9 The king heard this about Tirhakah king of Cush: “He has come out to fight against you.” So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 10 “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.’ 11 You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, devoting them to destruction. And will you be delivered? 12 Did the gods of the nations my ancestors destroyed deliver them—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where are the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?” 14 Hezekiah received the letters from the messengers and read them. Then Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and spread them out before the LORD.
15 Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said, “LORD, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. 16 Incline your ear, LORD, and hear. Open your eyes, LORD, and see. Hear the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God. 17 It is true, LORD, that the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands 18 and thrown their gods into the fire. For they were not gods, but the work of human hands, wood and stone. So they destroyed them. 19 Now, LORD our God, please save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, LORD, are God.”
20 Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.
21 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.
22 Whom have you insulted and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride?
Against the Holy One of Israel!
23 Through your messengers you have insulted the Lord and said, ‘With my many chariots I have climbed the heights of the mountains, the farthest reaches of Lebanon.
I will cut down its tallest cedars and its choicest cypresses.
I will enter its farthest retreat, its lush forest.
24 I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters.
With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.’
25 Have you not heard?
Long ago I did it;
in days of old I planned it.
Now I have brought it about, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins.
26 Their inhabitants were powerless, dismayed and ashamed.
They were like grass in the field, like tender green plants, like grass on rooftops, like grain scorched before it grows up.
27 But I know your sitting down, your going out and your coming in, and your raging against me.
28 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 I will turn you back by the way you came.
29 This will be the sign for you: This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from that. In the third year, sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 30 The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root below and bear fruit above. 31 For a remnant will go out from Jerusalem, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
32 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 up a siege ramp against it. 33 He will return by the way he came, and he will not enter this city, declares the LORD. 34 I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” 35 That night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. When people rose early in the morning, there they were—all dead bodies. 36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp, departed, and returned to Nineveh, where he stayed. 37 While he was bowing down in the temple of his god Nisroch, 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.