²And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, clothed with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz. ³They said to him, “Thus says Hezekiah, ‘This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace; children have come to the birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth. ⁴It may be that the Lord your God heard the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to mock the living God, and will rebuke the words which the Lord your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.’ ”

⁵When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, ⁶Isaiah said to them, “Say to your master, ‘Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. ⁷Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor, and return to his own land; and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.’ ”

⁸The Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah; for he had heard that the king had left Lachish. ⁹Now the king heard concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, “He has set out to fight against you.” And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, ¹⁰“Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. ¹¹Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. And shall you be delivered? ¹²Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations which my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? ¹³Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’ ”

¹⁴Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. ¹⁵And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: ¹⁶“O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, who art enthroned above the cherubim, thou art the God, thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth. ¹⁷Incline thy ear, O Lord, and hear; open thy eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. ¹⁸Of a truth, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands, ¹⁹and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone; therefore they were destroyed. ²⁰So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou alone art the Lord.”

²¹Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, ²²this is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

‘She despises you, she scorns you—

the virgin daughter of Zion;

she wags her head behind you—

the daughter of Jerusalem.

²³‘Whom have you mocked and reviled?

Against whom have you raised your voice

and haughtily lifted your eyes?

Against the Holy One of Israel!

²⁴By your servants 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 came to its remotest height,

its densest forest.

²⁵I dug wells

and drank waters,

and I dried up with the sole of my foot

all the streams of Egypt.

²⁶‘Have 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,

²⁷while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,

are dismayed and confounded,

and have become like plants of the field

and like tender grass,

like grass on the housetops,

blighted before it is grown.

²⁸‘I know your sitting down

and your going out and coming in,

and your raging against me.

²⁹Because 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,

and I will turn you back on the way

by which you came.’

³⁰“And this shall be the 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. ³¹And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward; ³²for out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.

³³“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 cast up a siege mound against it. ³⁴By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, says the Lord. ³⁵For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

³⁶And the angel of the Lord went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. ³⁷Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went home and dwelt at Nineveh. ³⁸And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, slew him with the sword, and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon his son reigned in his stead.

Chapter 38

¹In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order; for you shall die, you shall not recover.” ²Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Lord, ³and said, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in thy sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. ⁴Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: ⁵“Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. ⁶I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and defend this city.

⁷“This is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he has promised: ⁸Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.” So the sun turned back on the dial the ten steps by which it had declined.

⁹A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:

¹⁰I said, In the noontide of my days

I must depart;

I am consigned to the gates of Sheol

for the rest of my years.

¹¹I said, I shall not see the Lord

in the land of the living;

I shall look upon man no more

among the inhabitants of the world.

¹²My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me

like a shepherd’s tent;

like a weaver I have rolled up my life;

he cuts me off from the loom;

from day to night thou dost bring me to an end;

¹³I cry for help until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones;

from day to night thou dost bring me to an end.

¹⁴Like a swallow or a crane I clamor,

I moan like a dove.

My eyes are weary with looking upward.

O Lord, I am oppressed; be thou my security!

¹⁵But what can I say? For he has spoken to me,

and he himself has done it.

All my sleep has fled

because of the bitterness of my soul.

¹⁶O Lord, by these things men live,

and in all these is the life of my spirit.

Oh, restore me to health and make me live!

¹⁷Lo, it was for my welfare

that I had great bitterness;

but thou hast held back my life

from the pit of destruction,

for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

¹⁸For Sheol cannot thank thee,

death cannot praise thee;

those who go down to the pit cannot hope

for thy faithfulness.

¹⁹The living, the living, he thanks thee,

as I do this day;

the father makes known to the children

thy faithfulness.

²⁰The Lord will save me,

and we will sing to stringed instruments

all the days of our life,

at the house of the Lord.

²¹Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs, and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.” ²²Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?”

Chapter 39

¹At that time Merodach-baladan the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and had recovered. ²And Hezekiah welcomed them; and he showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. ³Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah, and said to him, “What did these men say? And whence did they come to you?” Hezekiah said, “They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.” ⁴He said, “What have they seen in your house?” Hezekiah answered, “They have seen all that is in my house; there is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them.”

⁵Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: ⁶Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord. ⁷And some of your own sons, who are born to you, shall be taken away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” ⁸Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my days.”

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