2 Kings 19:21–34

²¹This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

“She despises you, she scorns you—

^wthe virgin daughter of Zion;

she ^xwags her head behind you—

the daughter of Jerusalem.

²²“Whom have you ^ymocked and ^zreviled?

Against whom have you raised your voice

and lifted your eyes to the heights?

Against ^athe Holy One of Israel!

^23bBy your messengers you have mocked the Lord,

and you have said, ^c‘With my many chariots

I have gone up the heights of the mountains,

to the far recesses of ^dLebanon;

I felled its tallest cedars,

its choicest cypresses;

I entered its farthest lodging place,

its most ^efruitful forest.

²⁴I dug wells

and drank foreign waters,

and I dried up with the sole of my foot

all the streams ^fof Egypt.’

²⁵“Have you not heard

that ^gI determined it long ago?

I planned from days of old

what ^hnow I bring to pass,

that you should turn fortified cities

into heaps of ruins,

²⁶while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,

are dismayed and confounded,

and have become ⁱlike plants of the field

and like tender grass,

like grass on the housetops,

blighted before it is grown.

²⁷“But I know your sitting down

^jand your going out and coming in,

and your raging against me.

²⁸Because you have raged against me

and your complacency has come into my ears,

I will ^kput my hook in your nose

and my bit in your mouth,

and ^lI will turn you back on the way

by which you came.

²⁹“And this shall be ^mthe sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. ³⁰ⁿAnd the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. ³¹For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion ^oa band of survivors. ^pThe zeal of the Lord will do this.

³²“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or ^qcast up a siege mound against it. ^33rBy the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. ^34sFor I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake ^tand for the sake of my servant David.”