2 Chronicles 32:1-33
32 * After these events and this loyalty, King Sennacherib of Assyria came and invaded Judah, and beset all the fortified cities and proposed to lay them open to his troops.
2 And Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come in and was heading toward an attack on Jerusalem;
3 and he consulted with his generals and champions about choking down the water of the springs outside the city, and they backed him.
4 * And they gathered a large number of people and choked all the sources of water and buried the bed of the arroyo that streams through the middle of the country, saying “Why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?”
5 And he consolidated his position and rebuilt all the dilapidated wall, and raised towers on it, and outside it another wall, and strengthened the Millo, David’s City, and provided missiles in large quantity, and shields.
6 And he put war-captains over the people, and gathered them before him in the square at the city gate and spoke encouragingly to them,
7 saying “Courage, and do your best; do not be afraid nor dismayed at the king of Assyria and at all the host he has with him, for there is more with us than with him.
8 He has with him an arm of flesh, but we have with us our God Jehovah to help us and to fight our battles.” And the people were steadied by the words of King Hezekiah of Judah.
9 After this, King Sennacherib of Assyria sent his officers to Jerusalem (he being at Lakish and all his power with him) to King Hezekiah of Judah and to all of Judah who were in Jerusalem, with the message
10 “Says King Sennacherib of Assyria, What are you putting confidence in, standing a siege in Jerusalem?
11 * Do you not see that Hezekiah is so influencing you as to give you up to die by hunger and thirst, saying ‘Our God Jehovah will deliver us out of the hands of the king of Assyria’?
12 * was it not his heights and altars that Hezekiah made away with and told Judah and Jerusalem ‘You are to worship before one altar and burn your incense on that’?
13 * Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to the peoples of all countries? have the gods of the nations of the countries been able to deliver their country out of my hands?
14 Who is there, among all the gods of these nations which my fathers destroyed without quarter, that was able to deliver his country out of my hands, that your god should be able to deliver you out of my hands?
15 Now do not let Hezekiah delude you and influence you like this, and do not trust him; for not any god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people out of my hands and out of the hands of my fathers; much less will your god deliver you out of my hands.”
16 And his officers spoke still more against Jehovah, the God, and against his servant Hezekiah;
17 and he wrote letters to insult Jehovah the God of Israel and to say of him “As with the gods of the nations of the different countries, which did not deliver their people out of my hands, so Hezekiah’s god will not deliver his people out of my hands.”
18 And they called out in a loud voice in Judaic to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to throw them into fear and consternation so that they might capture the city;
19 and they spoke of the God of Jerusalem as of the gods of the peoples of the earth, the work of human hands.
20 And Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah the son of Amos prayed about this, and cried out to heaven.
21 And Jehovah sent an angel who killed off every champion fighter and staff officer and captain in the Assyrian king’s camp; and he went back crestfallen to his own country, and went into the house of his god, and some who had come out of his own body struck him down with swords.
22 And Jehovah saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem out of the hands of King Sennacherib of Assyria and out of everybody’s hands, and gave them rest on all sides.
23 And many brought presents to Jehovah at Jerusalem, and rich objects to King Hezekiah of Judah; and he stood high in the eyes of all nations thenceforth.
24 In those days Hezekiah fell sick and was at the point of death; and he prayed to Jehovah, and he granted the prayer and gave him a token.
25 But Hezekiah did not requite him as the favor deserved; for his heart went high. And there was wrath against him and against Judah and Jerusalem;
26 but Hezekiah humbled himself in his loftiness of heart, he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and Jehovah’s wrath did not come upon them in Hezekiah’s time.
27 And Hezekiah had very great wealth and grandeur; and he made himself treasuries for silver and for gold and for precious stones and for spices and for shields and for miscellaneous choice articles,
28 * and storehouses for produce of grain and grape-juice and oil, and stables for each and every kind of cattle, and flocks for the stables;
29 and he made himself cities, and accumulated stock in sheep and goats and horned cattle in great numbers, for God gave him chattels in great quantity.
30 And he, Hezekiah, blocked the outlet of the water of Upper Gihon and directed it down westward to David’s City.
31 * And Hezekiah was successful in all his doings; as to the emissaries of the generals of Babylon, though, sent to him to inquire about the prodigy that there had been in the country, God left him, to test him, to know what he had in his heart.
32 And as to the rest of the history of Hezekiah and his devout acts, they are recorded in the vision of the prophet Isaiah the son of Amos and in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.
33 And Hezekiah went to rest with his fathers, and they buried him on the slope up to the graves of David’s sons; and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem paid him honor at his death; and his son Manasseh succeeded him.
Footnotes
^ 32:1 Lit. open to him
^ 32:4 Lit. sources of water and the arroyo
^ 32:11 Lit. Is not Hezekiah
^ 32:12 Or has not he, Hezekiah, made away with his heights and altars
^ 32:13 Lit. to all the peoples of the countries
^ 32:28-29 (and flocks . . . cities) Susp.
^ 32:31 Lit. in the interpreters of the generals
