2 Kings 19:21–34

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.^*

²⁹“And this shall be the sign for you: This year you shall eat what grows of itself and in the second year what springs from that; then in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.^{* 30}The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward,^{* 31}for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.^*

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