2 Chronicles 32:9-19

Common English Bible

⁹After this Assyria’s King Sennacherib, who was attacking Lachish with all his forces, sent his servants to Jerusalem with the following message for Judah’s King Hezekiah and all the people of Judah who were in Jerusalem:

¹⁰This is what Assyria’s King Sennacherib says: What makes you so confident that you stay put in Jerusalem while it is being attacked? ¹¹Obviously, Hezekiah has fooled you into surrendering yourselves to death by hunger and thirst when he says, “The Lord our God will rescue us from Assyria’s king.” ¹²Isn’t this the same Hezekiah who got rid of his shrines and altars, and then demanded of Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship and burn incense before only one altar”? ¹³Don’t you know what I and my predecessors have done to the people of other nations? Were any of the gods of these other nations able to rescue their lands from my power? ¹⁴Which one of any of the gods of these nations that my predecessors destroyed was able to rescue them from my power? So why should your god be able to rescue you from my power? ¹⁵Don’t let Hezekiah seduce you like fools. Don’t believe him! No god of any other nation or kingdom has been able to rescue their people from me or from my predecessors. No, your gods won’t rescue you from my power.

¹⁶The Assyrian king’s servants continued to make fun of the Lord God and his servant Hezekiah. ¹⁷He wrote other letters insulting the Lord God of Israel, defying him by saying, “Just as the gods of the nations in other countries couldn’t rescue their people from my power, Hezekiah’s god won’t be able to rescue his people from my power.” ¹⁸Then they shouted loudly in Hebrew^[a] at the people of Jerusalem gathered on the wall, in an attempt to frighten and demoralize them, in order to capture the city. ¹⁹They spoke about the God of Jerusalem as though he were the work of human hands, like the gods of the other peoples of the earth.