Old/New Testament
32 Some time later after this good work of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah and laid siege to the fortified cities, planning to place them under tribute. 2 When it was clear that Sennacherib was intending to attack Jerusalem, 3 Hezekiah summoned his princes and officers for a council of war, and it was decided to plug the springs outside the city. 4 They organized a huge work crew to block them and to cut off the brook running through the fields.
“Why should the king of Assyria come and find water?” they asked.
5 Then Hezekiah further strengthened his defenses by repairing the wall wherever it was broken down, and by adding to the fortifications, and constructing a second wall outside it. He also reinforced Fort Millo in the City of David and manufactured large numbers of weapons and shields. 6 He recruited an army and appointed officers, and summoned them to the plains before the city, and encouraged them with this address:
7 “Be strong, be brave, and do not be afraid of the king of Assyria or his mighty army, for there is someone with us who is far greater than he is! 8 He has a great army, but they are all mere men, while we have the Lord our God to fight our battles for us!” This greatly encouraged them.
9 Then King Sennacherib of Assyria, while still besieging the city of Lachish, sent ambassadors with this message to King Hezekiah and the citizens of Jerusalem:
10 “King Sennacherib of Assyria asks, ‘Do you think you can survive my siege of Jerusalem? 11 King Hezekiah is trying to persuade you to commit suicide by staying there—to die by famine and thirst—while he promises that “the Lord our God will deliver us from the king of Assyria”! 12 Don’t you realize that Hezekiah is the very person who destroyed all the idols, and commanded Judah and Jerusalem to use only the one altar at the Temple, and to burn incense upon it alone? 13 Don’t you realize that I and the other kings of Assyria before me have never yet failed to conquer a nation we attacked? The gods of those nations weren’t able to do a thing to save their lands! 14 Name just one time when anyone, anywhere, was able to resist us successfully. What makes you think your God can do any better? 15 Don’t let Hezekiah fool you! Don’t believe him. I say it again—no god of any nation has ever yet been able to rescue his people from me or my ancestors; how much less your God!’” 16 Thus the ambassador mocked the Lord God and God’s servant Hezekiah, heaping up insults.
17 King Sennacherib also sent letters scorning the Lord God of Israel.
“The gods of all the other nations failed to save their people from my hand, and the God of Hezekiah will fail too,” he wrote.
18 The messengers who brought the letters shouted threats in the Jewish language to the people gathered on the walls of the city, trying to frighten and dishearten them. 19 These messengers talked about the God of Jerusalem just as though he were one of the heathen gods—a handmade idol!
20 Then King Hezekiah and Isaiah the prophet (son of Amoz) cried out in prayer to God in heaven, 21 and the Lord sent an angel who destroyed the Assyrian army with all its officers and generals! So Sennacherib returned home in deep shame to his own land. And when he arrived at the temple of his god, some of his own sons killed him there. 22 That is how the Lord saved Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem. And now there was peace at last throughout his realm.
23 From then on King Hezekiah became immensely respected among the surrounding nations, and many gifts for the Lord arrived at Jerusalem, with valuable presents for King Hezekiah too.
24 But about that time Hezekiah became deathly sick, and he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord replied with a miracle. 25 However, Hezekiah didn’t respond with true thanksgiving and praise for he had become proud, and so the anger of God was upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem. 26 But finally Hezekiah and the residents of Jerusalem humbled themselves, so the wrath of the Lord did not fall upon them during Hezekiah’s lifetime.
27 So Hezekiah became very wealthy and was highly honored. He had to construct special treasury buildings for his silver, gold, precious stones, and spices, and for his shields and gold bowls. 28-29 He also built many storehouses for his grain, new wine, and olive oil, with many stalls for his animals and folds for the great flocks of sheep and goats he purchased; and he acquired many towns, for God had given him great wealth. 30 He dammed up Gihon’s Upper Spring and brought the water down through an aqueduct to the west side of the City of David sector in Jerusalem. He prospered in everything he did.
31 However, when ambassadors arrived from Babylon to find out about the miracle of his being healed, God left him to himself in order to test him and to see what he was really like.
32 The rest of the story of Hezekiah and all of the good things he did are written in The Book of Isaiah (the prophet, the son of Amoz), and in The Annals of the Kings of Judah and Israel. 33 When Hezekiah died, he was buried in the royal hillside cemetery among the other kings, and all Judah and Jerusalem honored him at his death. Then his son Manasseh became the new king.
33 Manasseh was only twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. 2 But it was an evil reign, for he encouraged his people to worship the idols of the heathen nations destroyed by the Lord when the people of Israel entered the land. 3 He rebuilt the heathen altars his father Hezekiah had destroyed—the altars of Baal, and of the shameful images, and of the sun, moon, and stars. 4-5 He even constructed heathen altars in both courts of the Temple of the Lord for worshiping the sun, moon, and stars—in the very place where the Lord had said that he would be honored forever. 6 And Manasseh sacrificed his own children as burnt offerings in the valley of Hinnom. He consulted spirit-mediums, too, and fortune-tellers and sorcerers, and encouraged every sort of evil, making the Lord very angry.
7 Think of it! He placed an idol in the very Temple of God, where God had told David and his son Solomon, “I will be honored here in this Temple and in Jerusalem—the city I have chosen to be honored forever above all the other cities of Israel. 8 And if you will only obey my commands—all the laws and instructions given to you by Moses—I won’t ever again exile Israel from this land which I gave your ancestors.”
9 But Manasseh encouraged the people of Judah and Jerusalem to do even more evil than the nations the Lord destroyed when Israel entered the land. 10 Warnings from the Lord were ignored by both Manasseh and his people. 11 So God sent the Assyrian armies, and they seized him with hooks and bound him with bronze chains and carted him away to Babylon. 12 Then at last he came to his senses and cried out humbly to God for help. 13 And the Lord listened and answered his plea by returning him to Jerusalem and to his kingdom! At that point Manasseh finally realized that the Lord was really God!
14 It was after this that he rebuilt the outer wall of the City of David and the wall from west of the spring of Gihon in the Kidron Valley, and then to the Fish Gate, and around Citadel Hill, where it was built very high. And he stationed his army generals in all of the fortified cities of Judah. 15 He also removed the foreign gods from the hills and took his idol from the Temple, and tore down the altars he had built on the mountain, where the Temple stood, and the altars that were in Jerusalem, and dumped them outside the city. 16 Then he rebuilt the altar of the Lord and offered sacrifices upon it—peace offerings and thanksgiving offerings—and demanded that the people of Judah worship the Lord God of Israel. 17 However, the people still sacrificed upon the altars on the hills, but only to the Lord their God.
18 The rest of Manasseh’s deeds, and his prayer to God, and God’s reply through the prophets—this is all written in The Annals of the Kings of Israel. 19 His prayer, and the way God answered, and a frank account of his sins and errors, including a list of the locations where he built idols on the hills and set up shameful and graven images (this of course was before the great change in his attitude), are recorded in The Annals of the Prophets.
20-21 When Manasseh died, he was buried beneath his own palace, and his son Amon became the new king. Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to reign in Jerusalem, but he lasted for only two years. 22 It was an evil reign like the early years of his father Manasseh; for Amon sacrificed to all the idols just as his father had. 23 But he didn’t change as his father did; instead he sinned more and more. 24 At last his own officers assassinated him in his palace. 25 But some public-spirited citizens killed all of those who assassinated him and declared his son Josiah to be the new king.
19 Inside, the High Priest began asking Jesus about his followers and what he had been teaching them.
20 Jesus replied, “What I teach is widely known, for I have preached regularly in the synagogue and Temple; I have been heard by all the Jewish leaders and teach nothing in private that I have not said in public. 21 Why are you asking me this question? Ask those who heard me. You have some of them here. They know what I said.”
22 One of the soldiers standing there struck Jesus with his fist. “Is that the way to answer the High Priest?” he demanded.
23 “If I lied, prove it,” Jesus replied. “Should you hit a man for telling the truth?”
24 Then Annas sent Jesus, bound, to Caiaphas the High Priest.
25 Meanwhile, as Simon Peter was standing by the fire, he was asked again, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?”
“Of course not,” he replied.
26 But one of the household slaves of the High Priest—a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off—asked, “Didn’t I see you out there in the olive grove with Jesus?”
27 Again Peter denied it. And immediately a rooster crowed.
28 Jesus’ trial before Caiaphas ended in the early hours of the morning. Next he was taken to the palace of the Roman governor. His accusers wouldn’t go in themselves for that would “defile” them,[a] they said, and they wouldn’t be allowed to eat the Passover lamb. 29 So Pilate, the governor, went out to them and asked, “What is your charge against this man? What are you accusing him of doing?”
30 “We wouldn’t have arrested him if he weren’t a criminal!” they retorted.
31 “Then take him away and judge him yourselves by your own laws,” Pilate told them.
“But we want him crucified,” they demanded, “and your approval is required.”[b] 32 This fulfilled Jesus’ prediction concerning the method of his execution.[c]
33 Then Pilate went back into the palace and called for Jesus to be brought to him. “Are you the King of the Jews?” he asked him.
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35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate retorted. “Your own people and their chief priests brought you here. Why? What have you done?”
36 Then Jesus answered, “I am not an earthly king. If I were, my followers would have fought when I was arrested by the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of the world.”
37 Pilate replied, “But you are a king then?”
“Yes,” Jesus said. “I was born for that purpose. And I came to bring truth to the world. All who love the truth are my followers.”
38 “What is truth?” Pilate exclaimed. Then he went out again to the people and told them, “He is not guilty of any crime. 39 But you have a custom of asking me to release someone from prison each year at Passover. So if you want me to, I’ll release the ‘King of the Jews.’”
40 But they screamed back. “No! Not this man, but Barabbas!” Barabbas was a robber.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.