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IsaiahChapter 37

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When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD.
He sent Eliakim, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, all covered in sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz.
They said to him: "This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace; children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to deliver them.
Perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of the field commander, whom his master the king of Assyria sent to mock the living God, and will rebuke him for the words the LORD your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant that still survives."
So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah,
and Isaiah said to them, "Tell your master this: 'This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
I am going to put a spirit in him, so that when he hears a report he will return to his own land, and there in his own land I will make him fall by the sword.'"
When the field commander returned, he found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish.
Now the king of Assyria received a report about Tirhakah, king of Cush: "He has marched out to fight against you." So he sent messengers again to Hezekiah with this word:
"Say this to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by saying, 'Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.'
You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, devoting them to destruction. And will you be delivered?
Did the gods of the nations my fathers destroyed rescue them—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar?
Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?"
Hezekiah took the letters from the hand of the messengers and read them. Then he went up to the house of the LORD and spread them out before the LORD.
And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD:
"LORD of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.
Incline your ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see. Listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to mock the living God.
It is true, LORD, that the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the lands, and every land of theirs,
and have thrown their gods into the fire. But they were no gods at all, only the work of human hands, wood and stone—so they destroyed them.
Now, LORD our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the LORD."
Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria,
this is the word the LORD has spoken against him: The Virgin Daughter Zion despises you and mocks you; the Daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head as you flee.
Whom have you mocked and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!
By your servants you have mocked the Lord, and you have said: 'With my many chariots I have climbed the mountain heights, the far recesses of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses. I have reached its remotest heights, its densest forest.
I have dug wells and drunk water; with the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.'
Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it; in days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of rubble.
Their people, drained of power, were dismayed and put to shame. They were like plants in the field, like tender green shoots, like grass sprouting on the roof, scorched before it grows up.
But I know where you dwell, when you come and when you go, and how you rage against me.
Because you rage against me, and because your arrogance has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came.
And this will be the sign for you: This year you will eat what grows by itself, and the second year what springs from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
Once more the surviving remnant of the house of Judah will take root below and bear fruit above.
For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.
Therefore this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before it with a shield or build a siege ramp against it.
By the way he came he will return; he will not enter this city, declares the LORD.
I will defend this city and save it, for my own sake and for the sake of David my servant.
Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people rose early the next morning — there they all lay, dead bodies.
So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.
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