Isaiah 36

1 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went on an expedition against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
2 From Lachish the king of Assyria sent his commander with a great army to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. When he stopped at the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway of the fuller's field,
3 there came out to him the master of the palace, Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and Shebna the scribe, and the herald Joah, son of Asaph.
4 The commander said to them, Tell King Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, 'On what do you base this confidence of yours?
5 Do you think mere words substitute for strategy and might in war? On whom, then, do you rely, that you rebel against me?
6 This Egypt, the staff on which you rely, is in fact a broken reed which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it. That is what Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is to all who rely on him.
7 But if you say to me: We rely on the LORD, our God, is not he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, commanding Judah and Jerusalem to worship before this altar?'
8 Now, make a wager with my lord the king of Assyria: 'I will give you two thousand horses, if you can put riders on them.'
9 How then can you repulse even one of the least servants of my lord? And yet you rely on Egypt for chariots and horsemen!
10 'Was it without the LORD'S will that I have come up to destroy this land? The LORD said to me, Go up and destroy that land!'
11 Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to the commander, Please speak to your servants in Aramaic; we understand it. Do not speak to us in Judean within earshot of the people who are on the wall.
12 But the commander replied, Was it to you and your master that my lord sent me to speak these words? Was it not rather to the men sitting on the wall, who, with you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?
13 Then the commander stepped forward and cried out in a loud voice in Judean, Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.
14 Thus says the king: 'Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, since he cannot deliver you.
15 Let not Hezekiah induce you to rely on the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely save us; this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.'
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for the king of Assyria says: 'Make peace with me and surrender! Then each of you will eat of his own vine and of his own fig tree, and drink the water of his own cistern,
17 until I come to take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and wine, of bread and vineyards.
18 Do not let Hezekiah seduce you by saying, The LORD will save us. Has any of the gods of the nations ever rescued his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Where are the gods of Samaria? Have they saved Samaria from my hand?
20 Which of all the gods of these lands ever rescued his land from my hand? Will the LORD then save Jerusalem from my hand?'
21 But they remained silent and did not answer him one word, for the king had ordered them not to answer him.
22 Then the master of the palace, Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, Shebna the scribe, and the herald Joah, son of Asaph, came to Hezekiah with their garments torn, and reported to him what the commander had said.

Isaiah 37

1 When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his garments, wrapped himself in sackcloth, and went into the temple of the LORD.
2 He sent Eliakim, the master of the palace, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, wrapped in sackcloth, to tell the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz:
3 Thus says Hezekiah: 'This is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace. Children are at the point of birth, but there is no strength to bring them forth.
4 Perhaps the LORD, your God, will hear the words of the commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, sent to taunt the living God, and will rebuke him for the words which the LORD, your God, has heard. Send up a prayer for the remnant that is here.'
5 When the servants of King Hezekiah had come to Isaiah,
6 he said to them: Tell this to your master: 'Thus says the LORD: Do not be frightened by the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
7 I am about to put in him such a spirit that, when he hears a certain report, he will return to his own land, and there I will cause him to fall by the sword.'
8 When the commander returned to Lachish and heard that the king of Assyria had left there, he found him besieging Libnah.
9 The king of Assyria heard a report that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had come out to fight against him. Again he sent envoys to Hezekiah with this message: Thus shall you say to Hezekiah, king of Judah:
10 'Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.
11 You yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries: They doomed them! Will you, then, be saved?
12 Did the gods of the nations whom my fathers destroyed save them? Gozen, Haran, Rezeph, and the Edenites in Telassar?
13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, or a king of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena or Ivvah?'
14 Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; then he went up to the temple of the LORD, and spreading it out before him,
15 he prayed to the LORD:
16 O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim! You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth.
17 Incline your ear, O LORD, and listen! Open your eyes, O LORD and see! Hear all the words of the letter that Sennacherib sent to taunt the living God.
18 Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands,
19 and cast their gods into the fire; they destroyed them because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone.
20 Therefore, O LORD, our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, alone are God.
21 Then Isaiah, son of Amoz, sent this message to Hezekiah: Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: In answer to your prayer for help against Sennacherib, king of Assyria,
22 this is the word the LORD has spoken concerning him: She despises you, laughs you to scorn, the virgin daughter Zion; Behind you she wags her head, daughter Jerusalem.
23 Whom have you insulted and blasphemed, against whom have you raised your voice And lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel!
24 Through your servants you have insulted the Lord: You said, With my many chariots I climbed the mountain heights, the recesses of Lebanon; I cut down its lofty cedars, its choice cypresses; I reached the remotest heights, its forest park.
25 I dug wells and drank water in foreign lands; I dried up with the soles of my feet all the rivers of Egypt.
26 Have you not heard? Long ago I prepared it, From days of old I planned it, now I have brought it to pass: That you should reduce fortified cities into heaps of ruins,
27 While their inhabitants, shorn of power, are dismayed and ashamed, Becoming like the plants of the field, like the green growth, like the scorched grass on the housetops.
28 I am aware whether you stand or sit; I know whether you come or go, and also your rage against me.
29 Because of your rage against me and your fury which has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and make you return the way you came.
30 This shall be a sign for you: this year you shall eat the aftergrowth, next year, what grows of itself; But in the third year, sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit!
31 The remaining survivors of the house of Judah shall again strike root below and bear fruit above.
32 For out of Jerusalem shall come a remnant, and from Mount Zion, survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts shall do this.
33 Therefore, thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not reach this city, nor shoot an arrow at it, nor come before it with a shield, nor cast up siegeworks against it.
34 He shall return by the same way he came, without entering the city, says the LORD.
35 I will shield and save this city for my own sake, and for the sake of my servant David.
36 The angel of the LORD went forth and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. Early the next morning, there they were, all the corpses of the dead.
37 So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, broke camp and went back home to Nineveh.
38 When he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer slew him with the sword and fled into the land of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon reigned in his stead.

Isaiah 38

1 In those days, when Hezekiah was mortally ill, the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, came and said to him: Thus says the LORD: Put your house in order, for you are about to die; you shall not recover.
2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD:
3 O LORD, remember how faithfully and wholeheartedly I conducted myself in your presence, doing what was pleasing to you! And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah:
5 Go, tell Hezekiah: Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you: in three days you shall go up to the LORD'S temple; I will add fifteen years to your life.
6 I will rescue you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; I will be a shield to this city.
7 (Isaiah answered:) This will be the sign for you from the LORD that he will do what he has promised:
8 See, I will make the shadow cast by the sun on the stairway to the terrace of Ahaz go back the ten steps it has advanced. So the sun came back the ten steps it had advanced.
9 The song of Hezekiah, king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his illness:
10 Once I said, In the noontime of life I must depart! To the gates of the nether world I shall be consigned for the rest of my years.
11 I said, I shall see the LORD no more in the land of the living. No longer shall I behold my fellow men among those who dwell in the world.
12 My dwelling, like a shepherd's tent, is struck down and borne away from me; You have folded up my life, like a weaver who severs the last thread. Day and night you give me over to torment;
13 I cry out until the dawn. Like a lion he breaks all my bones; (day and night you give me over to torment).
14 Like a swallow I utter shrill cries; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak, gazing heavenward: O Lord, I am in straits; be my surety!
15 What am I to say or tell him? He has done it! I shall go on through all my years despite the bitterness of my soul.
16 Those live whom the LORD protects; yours... the life of my spirit. You have given me health and life;
17 thus is my bitterness transformed into peace. You have preserved my life from the pit of destruction, When you cast behind your back all my sins.
18 For it is not the nether world that gives you thanks, nor death that praises you; Neither do those who go down into the pit await your kindness.
19 The living, the living give you thanks, as I do today. Fathers declare to their sons, O God, your faithfulness.
20 The LORD is our savior; we shall sing to stringed instruments In the house of the LORD all the days of our life.
21 Isaiah then ordered a poultice of figs to be taken and applied to the boil, that he might recover.
22 Then Hezekiah asked, What is the sign that I shall go up to the temple of the LORD?