2 Kings 19:21–28

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

She despises you; she scorns you—

virgin daughter Zion;

she tosses her head—behind your back,

daughter Jerusalem.^*

²²Whom have you mocked and reviled?

Against whom have you raised your voice

and haughtily lifted your eyes?

Against the Holy One of Israel!^*

²³By your messengers you have mocked the Lord,

and you have said, ‘With my many chariots

I have gone up the heights of the mountains,

to the far recesses of Lebanon;

I felled its tallest cedars,

its choicest cypresses;

I entered its farthest retreat,

its densest forest.^*

²⁴I dug wells

and drank foreign waters,

I dried up with the sole of my foot

all the streams of Egypt.’^*

²⁵Have you not heard

that I determined it long ago?

I planned from days of old

what now I bring to pass,

that you should make fortified cities

crash into heaps of ruins,^*

²⁶while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,

are dismayed and confounded;

they have become like plants of the field

and like tender grass,

like grass on the housetops

that is scorched before the east wind.^u*

²⁷But I know your sitting

and your going out and your coming in

and your raging against me.

²⁸Because you have raged against me

and your arrogance has come to my ears,

I will put my hook in your nose

and my bit in your mouth;

I will turn you back on the way

by which you came.^*