The Assyrians Threaten Jerusalem^(A)

36 In the fourteenth year that Hezekiah was king of Judah, Sennacherib, the emperor of Assyria, attacked the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. ² Then he ordered his chief official to go from Lachish to Jerusalem with a large military force to demand that King Hezekiah surrender. The official occupied the road where the cloth makers work, by the ditch that brings water from the upper pool. ³ Three Judeans came out to meet him: the official in charge of the palace, Eliakim son of Hilkiah; the court secretary, Shebna; and the official in charge of the records, Joah son of Asaph. ⁴ The Assyrian official told them that the emperor wanted to know what made King Hezekiah so confident. ⁵ He demanded, “Do you think that words can take the place of military skill and might? Who do you think will help you rebel against Assyria? ^6 (B)You are expecting Egypt to help you, but that would be like using a reed as a walking stick—it would break and would jab your hand. That is what the king of Egypt is like when anyone relies on him.”

⁷ The Assyrian official went on, “Or will you tell me that you are relying on the Lord your God? It was the Lord's shrines and altars that Hezekiah destroyed when he told the people of Judah and Jerusalem to worship at one altar only. ⁸ I will make a bargain with you in the name of the emperor. I will give you two thousand horses if you can find that many riders. ⁹ You are no match for even the lowest ranking Assyrian official, and yet you expect the Egyptians to send you chariots and horsemen. ¹⁰ Do you think I have attacked your country and destroyed it without the Lord's help? The Lord himself told me to attack it and destroy it.”

¹¹ Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah told the official, “Speak Aramaic to us. We understand it. Don't speak Hebrew; all the people on the wall are listening.”

¹² He replied, “Do you think you and the king are the only ones the emperor sent me to say all these things to? No, I am also talking to the people who are sitting on the wall, who will have to eat their excrement and drink their urine, just as you will.”

¹³ Then the official stood up and shouted in Hebrew, “Listen to what the emperor of Assyria is telling you. ¹⁴ He warns you not to let Hezekiah deceive you. Hezekiah can't save you. ¹⁵ And don't let him persuade you to rely on the Lord. Don't think that the Lord will save you and that he will stop our Assyrian army from capturing your city. ¹⁶ Don't listen to Hezekiah! The emperor of Assyria commands you to come out of the city and surrender. You will all be allowed to eat grapes from your own vines and figs from your own trees, and to drink water from your own wells— ¹⁷ until the emperor resettles you in a country much like your own, where there are vineyards to give wine and there is grain for making bread. ¹⁸ Don't let Hezekiah fool you into thinking that the Lord will rescue you. Did the gods of any other nations save their countries from the emperor of Assyria? ¹⁹ Where are they now, the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Did anyone save Samaria? ²⁰ When did any of the gods of all these countries ever save their country from our emperor? Then what makes you think the Lord can save Jerusalem?”

²¹ The people kept quiet, just as King Hezekiah had told them to; they did not say a word. ²² Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah tore their clothes in grief and went and reported to the king what the Assyrian official had said.

The King Asks Isaiah's Advice^(A)

37 As soon as King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes in grief, put on sackcloth, and went to the Temple of the Lord. ² He sent Eliakim, the official in charge of the palace, Shebna, the court secretary, and the senior priests to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. They also were wearing sackcloth. ³ This is the message which he told them to give to Isaiah: “Today is a day of suffering; we are being punished and are in disgrace. We are like a woman who is ready to give birth, but is too weak to do it. ⁴ The Assyrian emperor has sent his chief official to insult the living God. May the Lord your God hear these insults and punish those who spoke them. So pray to God for those of our people who survive.”

⁵ When Isaiah received King Hezekiah's message, ⁶ he sent back this answer: “The Lord tells you not to let the Assyrians frighten you by their claims that he cannot save you. ⁷ The Lord will cause the emperor to hear a rumor that will make him go back to his own country, and the Lord will have him killed there.”

The Assyrians Send Another Threat^(B)

⁸ The Assyrian official learned that the emperor had left Lachish and was fighting against the nearby city of Libnah; so he went there to consult him. ⁹ Word reached the Assyrians that the Egyptian army, led by King Tirhakah of Ethiopia,^[a] was coming to attack them. When the emperor heard this, he sent a letter to King Hezekiah ¹⁰ of Judah to tell him: “The god you are trusting in has told you that you will not fall into my hands, but don't let that deceive you. ¹¹ You have heard what an Assyrian emperor does to any country he decides to destroy. Do you think that you can escape? ¹² My ancestors destroyed the cities of Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph, and killed the people of Betheden who lived in Telassar, and none of their gods could save them. ¹³ Where are the kings of the cities of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”

¹⁴ King Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went to the Temple, placed the letter there in the presence of the Lord, ¹⁵ and prayed, ^16 (C)“Almighty Lord, God of Israel, seated above the winged creatures, you alone are God, ruling all the kingdoms of the world. You created the earth and the sky. ¹⁷ Now, Lord, hear us and look at what is happening to us. Listen to all the things that Sennacherib is saying to insult you, the living God. ¹⁸ We all know, Lord, that the emperors of Assyria have destroyed many nations, made their lands desolate, ¹⁹ and burned up their gods—which were no gods at all, only images of wood and stone made by human hands. ²⁰ Now, Lord our God, rescue us from the Assyrians, so that all the nations of the world will know that you alone are God.”

Isaiah's Message to the King^(D)

²¹ Then Isaiah sent a message telling King Hezekiah that in answer to the king's prayer ²² the Lord had said, “The city of Jerusalem laughs at you, Sennacherib, and makes fun of you. ²³ Whom do you think you have been insulting and ridiculing? You have been disrespectful to me, the holy God of Israel. ²⁴ You sent your servants to boast to me that with all your chariots you had conquered the highest mountains of Lebanon. You boasted that there you cut down the tallest cedars and the finest cypress trees, and that you reached the deepest parts of the forests. ²⁵ You boasted that you dug wells and drank water in foreign lands, and that the feet of your soldiers tramped the Nile River dry.

²⁶ “Have you never heard that I planned all this long ago? And now I have carried it out. I gave you the power to turn fortified cities into piles of rubble. ²⁷ The people who lived there were powerless; they were frightened and stunned. They were like grass in a field or weeds growing on a roof when the hot east wind blasts them.^[b]

²⁸ “But I know everything about you, what you do and where you go. I know how you rage against me. ²⁹ I have received the report of that rage and that pride of yours, and now I will put a hook through your nose and a bit in your mouth and will take you back by the same road you came.”

³⁰ Then Isaiah said to King Hezekiah, “Here is a sign of what will happen. This year and next you will have only wild grain to eat, but the following year you will be able to plant grain and harvest it, and plant vines and eat grapes. ³¹ Those in Judah who survive will flourish like plants that send roots deep into the ground and produce fruit. ³² There will be people in Jerusalem and on Mount Zion who will survive, because the Lord Almighty is determined to make this happen.

³³ “And this is what the Lord has said about the Assyrian emperor: ‘He will not enter this city or shoot a single arrow against it. No soldiers with shields will come near the city, and no siege mounds will be built around it. ³⁴ He will go back by the same road he came, without entering this city. I, the Lord, have spoken. ³⁵ I will defend this city and protect it, for the sake of my own honor and because of the promise I made to my servant David.’”

³⁶ An angel of the Lord went to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 soldiers. At dawn the next day there they lay, all dead! ³⁷ Then the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib withdrew and returned to Nineveh. ³⁸ One day when he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, two of his sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, killed him with their swords and then escaped to the land of Ararat. Another of his sons, Esarhaddon, succeeded him as emperor.