2 Kings 19–21

The King Asks Isaiah’s Advice

19As soon as King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes in grief, put on sackcloth, and went to the Temple of the Lord. ²He 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. ³This is the message which he told them to give 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. ⁴The 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.”

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

The Assyrians Send Another Threat

⁸The Assyrian official learnt that the emperor had left Lachish and was fighting against the nearby city of Libnah; so he went there to consult him. ⁹Word reached the Assyrians that the Egyptian army, led by King Tirhakah of Ethiopia,^r was coming to attack them. When the emperor heard this, he sent letter to King Hezekiah of Judah ¹⁰to say to 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. ¹¹You have heard what an Assyrian emperor does to any country he decides to destroy. Do you think that you can escape? ¹²My 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. ¹³Where are the kings of the cities of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”

¹⁴King 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, “O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the winged creatures, you alone are God, ruling all the kingdoms of the world. You created the earth and the sky. ¹⁶Now, Lord, look at what is happening to us. Listen to all the things that Sennacherib is saying to insult you, the living God. ¹⁷We all know, Lord, that the emperors of Assyria have destroyed many nations, made their lands desolate, ¹⁸and burnt up their gods—which were no gods at all, only images of wood and stone made by human hands. ¹⁹Now, Lord our God, rescue us from the Assyrians, so that all the nations of the world will know that only you, O Lord, are God.”

Isaiah’s Message to the King

²⁰Then Isaiah sent a message telling King Hezekiah that in answer to the king’s prayer ²¹the Lord had said, “The city of Jerusalem laughs at you, Sennacherib, and despises you. ²²Whom do you think you have been insulting and ridiculing? You have been disrespectful to me, the holy God of Israel. ²³You sent your messengers 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. ²⁴You boasted that you dug wells and drank water in foreign lands and that the feet of your soldiers tramped the River Nile dry.

²⁵“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. ²⁶The 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.^s

²⁷“But I know everything about you, what you do and where you go. I know how you rage against me. ²⁸I 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 take you back by the same road you came.”

²⁹Then Isaiah said to King Hezekiah, “This 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 sow your corn and harvest it, and plant vines and eat grapes. ³⁰Those in Judah who survive will flourish like plants that send roots deep into the ground and produce fruit. ³¹There will be people in Jerusalem and on Mount Zion who will survive, because the Lord is determined to make this happen.

³²“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 round it. ³³He will go back by the same road he came, without entering this city. I, the Lord, have spoken. ³⁴I will defend this city and protect it, for the sake of my own honour and because of the promise I made to my servant David.’ ” ³⁵That night 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! ³⁶Then the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib withdrew and returned to Nineveh. ³⁷One day, when he was worshipping 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.

King Hezekiah’s Illness and Recovery

20About this time King Hezekiah fell ill and almost died. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to see him and said to him, “The Lord tells you that you are to put everything in order, because you will not recover. Get ready to die.”

²Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed: ³“Remember, Lord, that I have served you faithfully and loyally, and that I have always tried to do what you wanted me to.” And he began to cry bitterly.

⁴Isaiah left the king, but before he had passed through the central courtyard of the palace the Lord told him ⁵to go back to Hezekiah, ruler of the Lord’s people, and say to him, “I, the Lord, the God of your ancestor David, have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you, and in three days you will go to the Temple. ⁶I will let you live fifteen years longer. I will rescue you and this city of Jerusalem from the emperor of Assyria. I will defend this city, for the sake of my own honour and because of the promise I made to my servant David.”

⁷Then Isaiah told the king’s attendants to put on his boil a paste made of figs, and he would get well.^{t 8}King Hezekiah asked, “What is the sign to prove that the Lord will heal me and that three days later I will be able to go to the Temple?”

⁹Isaiah replied, “The Lord will give you a sign to prove that he will keep his promise. Now, would you prefer the shadow on the stairway to go forward ten steps or go back ten steps?”^u

¹⁰Hezekiah answered, “It’s easy to make the shadow go forward ten steps!^v Make it go back ten steps.”^w

¹¹Isaiah prayed to the Lord, and the Lord made the shadow go back ten steps^x on the stairway^y set up by King Ahaz.

Messengers from Babylonia

¹²About that same time the king of Babylonia, Merodach Baladan, the son of Baladan, heard that King Hezekiah had been ill, so he sent him a letter and a present.

¹³Hezekiah welcomed the messengers and showed them his wealth—his silver and gold, his spices and perfumes, and all his military equipment. There was nothing in his storerooms or anywhere in his kingdom that he did not show them. ¹⁴Then the prophet Isaiah went to King Hezekiah and asked, “Where did these men come from and what did they say to you?”

Hezekiah answered, “They came from a very distant country, from Babylonia.”

¹⁵“What did they see in the palace?”

“They saw everything. There is nothing in the storerooms that I didn’t show them.”

¹⁶Isaiah then said to the king, “The Lord Almighty says that ^17*a time is coming when everything in your palace, everything that your ancestors have stored up to this day, will be carried off to Babylonia. Nothing will be left. ^18*Some of your own direct descendants will be taken away and made eunuchs to serve in the palace of the king of Babylonia.”

¹⁹King Hezekiah understood this to mean that there would be peace and security during his lifetime, so he replied, “The message you have given me from the Lord is good.”

The End of Hezekiah’s Reign

²⁰Everything else that King Hezekiah did, his brave deeds, and an account of how he built a reservoir and dug a tunnel to bring water into the city, are all recorded in The History of the Kings of Judah. ²¹Hezekiah died, and his son Manasseh succeeded him as king.

King Manasseh of Judah

21Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king of Judah, and he ruled in Jerusalem for 55 years. His mother was Hephzibah. ^2*Following the disgusting practices of the nations whom the Lord had driven out of the land as his people advanced, Manasseh sinned against the Lord. ³He rebuilt the pagan places of worship that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he built altars for the worship of Baal and made an image of the goddess Asherah, as King Ahab of Israel had done. Manasseh also worshipped the stars. ^4*He built pagan altars in the Temple, the place that the Lord had said was where he should be worshipped. ⁵In the two courtyards of the Temple he built altars for the worship of the stars. ⁶He sacrificed his son as a burnt offering. He practiced divination and magic and consulted^z fortune tellers and mediums. He sinned greatly against the Lord and stirred up his anger. ^7*He placed the symbol of the goddess Asherah in the Temple, the place about which the Lord had said to David and his son Solomon: “Here in Jerusalem, in this Temple, is the place that I have chosen out of all the territory of the twelve tribes of Israel as the place where I am to be worshipped. ^8*And if the people of Israel will obey all my commands and keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them, then I will not allow them to be…