⁵ Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time.

²⁹ This is what the king says: Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you. He will never be able to rescue you from my power. ³⁰ Don’t let him fool you into trusting in the Lord by saying, ‘The Lord will surely rescue us. This city will never fall into the hands of the Assyrian king!’

¹⁴ After Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it, he went up to the Lord’s Temple and spread it out before the Lord.

¹⁶ And Sennacherib’s officers further mocked the Lord God and his servant Hezekiah, heaping insult upon insult. ¹⁷ The king also sent letters scorning the Lord, the God of Israel. He wrote, “Just as the gods of all the other nations failed to rescue their people from my power, so the God of Hezekiah will also fail.” ¹⁸ The Assyrian officials who brought the letters shouted this in Hebrew^[a] to the people gathered on the walls of the city, trying to terrify them so it would be easier to capture the city. ¹⁹ These officers talked about the God of Jerusalem as though he were one of the pagan gods, made by human hands.