2 Kings 19
1 When King Hezekiah heard what they reported, he tore his clothes and put on clothes made of rough cloth [because he was very distressed]. Then he went to the temple [to ask God what to do].
And on hearing it, King Hezekiah took off his robe, and put on haircloth, and went into the house of the Lord.
2 He summoned Eliakim and Shebna and the (older/most important) priests, who were also wearing clothes made of rough sackcloth, and told them to talk to me.
And he sent Eliakim, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and the chief priests, dressed in haircloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
3 He said to them, “Tell this to Isaiah: ‘King Hezekiah says that we are having great distress/trouble now. [Other nations are causing] us to be insulted and disgraced. We are like [MET] a woman who is about to give birth to a child, but she does not have the strength that she needs to do it.
And they said to him, Hezekiah says, This day is a day of trouble and punishment and shame; for the children are ready to come to birth, but there is no strength to give birth to them.
4 Perhaps Yahweh your God has heard everything that the official from Assyria said. Perhaps he knows that his boss/master, the king of Assyria, sent him to insult the all-powerful God, and that Yahweh will rebuke/punish him for what he said.’ And he requests that you pray for the few of us who are still alive [here in Jerusalem].”
It may be that the Lord your God will give ear to the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria, his master, sent to say evil things against the living God, and will make his words come to nothing: so then make your prayer for the rest of the people.
5 When the messengers from Hezekiah came to Isaiah,
So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
6 Isaiah said to them, “[Go back to] your boss/master [and] tell him, ‘This is what Yahweh says: Those messengers from the king of Assyria have said evil things about me. But you should not be disturbed because of what they said.
And Isaiah said to them, This is what you are to say to your master: The Lord says, Be not troubled by the words which the servants of the king of Assyria have said against me in your hearing.
7 Listen to this: I will cause Sennacherib to hear a rumor that will worry him, [that a foreign army is about to attack his country]. So he will return to his own country, and there I will cause him to be assassinated by [men using] swords.’”
See, I will put a spirit into him, and bad news will come to his ears, and he will go back to his land; and there I will have him put to death by the sword.
8 The official from Assyria found out that the King of Assyria [and his army] had left Lachish [city], and that they were attacking Libnah, [which is a nearby city]. So the official went there [to report to him what had happened in Jerusalem].
So the Rab-shakeh went back, and when he got there the king of Assyria was making war against Libnah, for it had come to his ears that he had gone away from Lachish.
9 Soon after that, King Sennacherib received a report that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was leading his army, and was coming to attack them. So before King Sennacherib left Libnah [to fight against the army from Ethiopia], he sent other messengers to King Hezekiah with a letter.
And when news came to him that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had made an attack on him, he sent representatives to Hezekiah again, saying,
10 [In the letter] he wrote this to Hezekiah: “Do not allow your god on whom you are relying to deceive you by promising that [the city of] Jerusalem will not be captured by my army [MTY].
This is what you are to say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: Let not your God, in whom is your faith, give you a false hope, saying, Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.
11 You have certainly heard what the armies of the kings of Assyria have done to all the other countries. Our armies have completely destroyed them. So, (do you think that you will escape?/do not think that your god will save you!) [RHQ]
No doubt the story has come to your ears of what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, putting them to the curse; and will you be kept safe?
12 Did the gods of the nations that were about to be destroyed by the armies of the previous kings of Assyria rescue them? Did those gods rescue the people in the Gozan region and in Haran and Rezeph [cities in northern Syria] and the people of Eden who had been (deported/forced to go) to Tel-Assar [city]? None of the gods of those cities were able to rescue them.
Did the gods of the nations keep safe those on whom my fathers sent destruction, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar?
13 What happened to the kings of Hamath and Arpad and Sepharvaim and Ivvah [cities] [RHQ]? [Most of them are dead, and the other people were deported]!”
Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the town of Sepharvaim, of Hena and of Ivvah?
14 Hezekiah took the letter that the messengers gave him, and he read it. Then he went up to the temple and spread out the letter in front of Yahweh.
And Hezekiah took the letter from the hands of those who had come with it; and after reading it, Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, opening the letter there before the Lord.
15 Then Hezekiah prayed, “Yahweh, the God whom to whom we Israelis belong, you are seated on your throne above the [statues of] creatures with wings, [above the Sacred Chest]. Only you are truly God. You rule all the kingdoms on this earth. You are the one who created [everything on] the earth and [in] the sky.
And Hezekiah made his prayer to the Lord, saying, O Lord, the God of Israel, seated between the winged ones, you only are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.
16 So, Yahweh, please listen to what I am saying, and look [at what is happening]. And listen to what King Sennacherib has said to insult you, the all-powerful God.
Let your ear be turned to us, O Lord, and let your eyes be open, O Lord, and see; take note of all the words of Sennacherib who has sent men to say evil against the living God.
17 “Yahweh, it is true that [the armies of] the kings of Assyria have completely destroyed many nations, and ruined their land.
Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have made waste the nations and their lands,
18 And they have thrown the idols of those nations into fires and burned them. But [that was not difficult to do, because] they were not gods. They were only statues made of wood and stone, idols that were shaped by humans, [and that is why they were destroyed easily].
And have given their gods to the fire; for they were no gods, but wood and stone, the work of men's hands; so they have given them to destruction.
19 So now, Yahweh our God, please rescue us from the power [MTY] [of the king of Assyria], in order that the people in all the kingdoms of the world will know that you, Yahweh, are the only one who is truly God.”
But now, O Lord our God, give us salvation from his hands, so that it may be clear to all the kingdoms of the earth that you and only you, O Lord, are God.
20 Then Isaiah sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what Yahweh, the God to whom we Israelis belong, says: 'I have heard what you prayed to me about Sennacherib, the king of Assyria.
Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz, sent to Hezekiah, saying, The Lord, the God of Israel, says, The prayer which you have made to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has come to my ears.
21 This is what I say to him: “The people of Jerusalem [MTY] despise you and make fun of you. They wag/shake their heads to mock you while you flee from here.
This is the word which the Lord has said about him: In the eyes of the virgin daughter of Zion you are shamed and laughed at; the daughter of Jerusalem has made sport of you.
22 Who do you think that you are despising and ridiculing? Who do you think you were shouting at? Who do you think you were looking at very proudly/arrogantly? It was I, the holy God whom the Israelis worship.
Against whom have you said evil and bitter things? against whom has your voice been loud and your eyes lifted up? even against the Holy One of Israel.
23 The messengers that you sent made fun of me. You said, 'With my many chariots I have gone to the highest mountains, even to the highest mountains in Lebanon. We have cut down its tallest cedar trees and its nicest pine/cyprus trees. We have been to the most distant/remote peaks and to its dense forests.
You have sent your servants with evil words against the Lord, and have said, With all my war-carriages I have come up to the top of the mountains, to the inmost parts of Lebanon; its tall cedars will be cut down, and the best trees of its woods; I will come up into his highest places, into his thick woods.
24 We have dug wells in other countries and drank water from them. And by marching through [MTY] the streams of Egypt, we dried them all up [HYP]!”’
I have made water-holes and taken their waters, and with my foot I have made all the rivers of Egypt dry.
25 [‘But I reply], “Have you never heard that long ago I determined [that those things would happen]? I planned it long ago, and now I have been causing it to happen. I planned that your army would have [the power to] capture many cities that were surrounded by high walls, and cause them to become piles of rubble.
Has it not come to your ears how I did it long before, purposing it in times long past? Now I have given effect to my design, so that by you strong towns might be turned into masses of broken walls.
26 The people who lived in those cities have no power, and as a result they became dismayed and discouraged. They are as frail as plants and grass in the fields, as frail as grass that grows on the roofs of houses and is scorched by the hot east wind.
This is why their townsmen had no power, they were broken and put to shame; they were like the grass of the field and the green plant, like grass on the house-tops.
27 “But I know [everything about you]. I know when you are in your house and when you go outside; I also know that you are (raging/speaking very angrily) against me.
But I have knowledge of your getting up and your resting, of your going out and your coming in.
28 So, because you have raged against me, and because I have heard [MTY] you speak very proudly/arrogantly, [it will be as though] I will put a hook in your nose and an iron (bit/piece of metal) in your mouth [in order that I can lead you where I want you to go], and I will force you to return [to your own country] on the same road on which you came here, [without conquering Jerusalem].” '
Because your wrath against me and your words of pride have come up to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my cord in your lips, and I will make you go back by the way you came.
29 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “This is what will happen to prove [that I am telling the truth]: This year and next year you [and your people] will be able to harvest only (wild grain/grain that grows without having been planted). But the following year, you [Israelis] will be able to plant grain and harvest it, and to plant vineyards and eat the grapes that you harvest.
And this will be the sign to you: you will get your food this year from what comes up of itself; and in the second year from the produce of the same; and in the third year you will put in your seed and get in the grain and make vine-gardens and take of their fruit.
30 The people [MTY] in Judah who remain alive will prosper and have many children; they will be like plants whose roots go deep down into the ground and which produce much [MET].
And those of Judah who are still living will again take root in the earth and give fruit.
31 There will be many people in Jerusalem [DOU] who will survive, because Yahweh, the commander of the armies of angels in heaven, wants [PRS] it to happen.
For from Jerusalem those who have been kept safe will go out, and those who are still living will go out of Mount Zion: by the fixed purpose of the Lord of armies this will be done.
32 So this is what Yahweh, says about the king of Assyria: ‘His armies will not enter this city; they will not even shoot any arrows into it! His soldiers will not march outside the city gates carrying shields, and they will not even build high mounds of dirt against [the city walls] [to enable them to attack the city].
For this cause the Lord says about the king of Assyria, He will not come into this town, or send an arrow against it; he will not come before it with arms, or put up an earthwork against it;
33 Their king will return to his own country on the same road on which he came here. He will not enter this city! [That will happen because] I, Yahweh have said it!
By the way he came he will go back, and he will not get into this town, says the Lord.
34 I will defend this city and prevent it from being destroyed. I will do this for the sake of my own reputation and because of what I promised to King David, who served me well.'”
For I will keep this town safe, for my honour, and for the honour of my servant David.
35 That night, an angel from Yahweh went out to where the army of Assyria had put up their tents, and killed 185,000 of their soldiers! When the rest of their soldiers woke up the next morning, they saw that there were corpses everywhere!
And that night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death in the army of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand men; and when the people got up early in the morning, there was nothing to be seen but dead bodies.
36 Then King Sennacherib left and went home to Nineveh, [the capital of Assyria].
So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went back to his place at Nineveh.
37 One day, when he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, two of his sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, killed him with their swords. Then they escaped and went to [the] Ararat [region, northwest of Nineveh]. And another of Sennacherib's sons, Esarhaddon, became the king of Assyria.
And it came about, when he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him to death with the sword; and they went in flight into the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon his son became king in his place.
