Isaiah 37:1-38
37 And when King Hezekiah heard them he tore his clothes and put a sackcloth about him and went into Jehovah’s house,
2 and sent Eljakim the steward of the palace and Shebna the secretary for documents and the elders of the priests, with sackcloths about them, to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amos;
3 and they said to him “Says Hezekiah, This is a day of distress and castigation and contempt, because children have come to the mouth of the womb and we have not strength to complete a birth.
4 Perhaps your God Jehovah will listen to the Rabshakeh’s words with which his sovereign the king of Assyria has sent him to taunt a living God, and will chastise the words that your God Jehovah hears; and you shall put up a prayer for the remnant that still exists.”
5 And King Hezekiah’s officers came to Isaiah;
6 and Isaiah said to them “You shall say to your sovereign, ‘Says Jehovah, Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, in which the king of Assyria’s servants have blasphemed me;
7 I am going to put a spirit in him, and he shall hear a report and go back to his own country, and I will have him fall by the sword in his own country.’”
8 And the Rabshakeh went back, and found the king of Assyria attacking Libnah; for he had heard that he had moved away from Lakish.
9 * And he heard say about King Tirhakah of Nubia “He has come out to fight you”; and, hearing it, he again sent envoys to Hezekiah with the message
10 “You shall say to King Hezekiah of Judah ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust delude you with the thought “Jerusalem shall not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.”
11 You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them without quarter; and are you to be delivered?
12 Did the gods of the nations my fathers ravaged deliver them, Gozan and Haran and Reseph and the Bene-ʽEden at Telassar?
13 where is the king of Hamath, where the king of Arpad and the king of Sepharvaim city, of Henaʽ and ʽIvvah?’”
14 And Hezekiah received the letter from the envoys’ hands and read it; and he went up to Jehovah’s house.And Hezekiah spread it out before Jehovah;
15 * and Hezekiah prayed before Jehovah,
16 “Jehovah, God of Israel, sitter upon the cherubs, you are God alone for all the kingdoms of the earth: it was you who made the heavens and the earth.
17 Bend down your ear, Jehovah, and listen; open your eyes, Jehovah, and see; and hear Sennacherib’s words which he has sent, taunting a living God.
18 The kings of Assyria have indeed, Jehovah, laid waste the nations and their countries,
19 and put their gods in the fire, because they are not gods but work of human hands, wood and stone, and destroyed them;
20 but now, Jehovah our God, save us out of his hands and let all the kingdoms on earth know that you, Jehovah, alone are God.”
21 And Isaiah the son of Amos sent word to Hezekiah “Says Israel’s God Jehovah, Whereas you have prayed to me as to King Sennacherib of Assyria,
22 this is the word Jehovah has spoken against him: Sion’s maiden daughter despises and derides you; Jerusalem’s daughter shakes her head after you.
23 Whom have you taunted and blasphemed, and against whom have you clamored at the top of your voice and lifted your eyes high? against the Holy One of Israel.
24 By your servants you have taunted the Lord, and have said ‘With chariots, my chariots, I have gone up to the tops of the mountains, the recesses of Lebanon, and have cut down the tallest of its cedars, the choicest of its cypresses, and have come to its final lodgment, its wildwood of garden-land.
25 I have dug and drunk unknown waters, have dried off with my marching feet all the streams of Egypt’s Nile.’
26 * Do you not hear? far back I acted, shaped it from days of old, have now brought it in, and you have been for crashing down fortified cities into ruined heaps;
27 and their puny-handed inhabitants were dismayed and abashed, became field herbage and greensward, roof-grass blighted before the east wind.
28 Your standing up and sitting down, your going out and coming in I know, and your raging against me.
29 * Since your raging against me and your hubbub have come up to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle between your lips, and take you back the way you came.
30 “And this is the token you are to have, eating the self-sown crop this year and the crop run wild next year; and in the third year sow and reap, and set out vineyards and eat their fruit.
31 And the remaining survivors of the house of Judah shall more and more take root downward and bear fruit upward;
32 for out of Jerusalem shall a remnant come forth, and survivors out of Mount Sion; the championship of Jehovah of Armies will do this.
33 “So Jehovah says of the king of Assyria, He shall never come to this city nor shoot an arrow there nor push a shield up to it nor throw up a ramp against it:
34 by the road he came on he shall go back, and not come to this city, quoth Jehovah.
35 And I will shield this city, saving it on my own account and on my servant David’s.”
36 And Jehovah’s angel went out and killed a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp: the first thing in the morning they were all found dead corpses.
37 And King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and went back and stayed at Nineveh;
38 ** and as he was doing reverence in the house of his god Nisroc his sons Adrammelec and Sareser stabbed him; and they made their escape to Armenia, and his son Esar-Haddon succeeded him.
Footnotes
^ 37:9 Conj. Taharkah
^ 37:15 Var. Jehovah of Armies, God of Israel
^ 37:26 Codd.* that you be for
^ 37:29 (hubbub) Codd. tranquillity
^ 37:38 Conj. his god Merodac or his god Nusku
^ 37:38 Conj. his son Adadmelec and Nebosareser
