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 it came to pass, when King Hezekiah heard, that he rent his clothes, —and covered himself with sackcloth, and entered the house of Yahweh;
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 sent Eliakim who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, —unto Isaiah the prophet, 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 unto him—Thus, saith Hezekiah, A day of trouble, and rebuke, and reviling, is this day, —for children are come to the birth, and, strength, is there none to bring forth!
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 Yahweh thy God will hear all the words of Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria his lord hath sent, to reproach a Living God, and will rebuke the words, which Yahweh thy God hath heard, —Wherefore lift thou up a prayer, for the remnant that remaineth.
5 When the messengers from Hezekiah came to Isaiah,
So the servants of King Hezekiah came unto 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 unto them, Thus, shall ye, say, unto your lord, —Thus, saith Yahweh—Be not thou afraid, because of the words which thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled, me:
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.’”
Behold me! about to let go against him, a blast, and, when he heareth the report, then will he return to his own country, —and I will cause him to fall by the sword, in his own land.
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 Rab-shakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah, —for he had heard that he had broken up 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 he heard say of Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, saying, Lo! he hath come forth to fight with thee, —then he again sent messengers unto Hezekiah, 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].
Thus, shall ye, speak, unto Hezekiah king of Judah, saying—Let not thy God in whom thou art trusting beguile thee, saying, —Jerusalem shall not be given over, into the hand 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]
Lo! thou thyself, hast heard, what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, in devoting them to destruction, —and shalt, thou, be delivered?
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, deliver them, whom my fathers destroyed, Gozan, and Haran, —and Rezeph, and the sons 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 are the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, —of Hena, and 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, when Hezekiah had received the letter at the hand of the messengers, and had read it, then went he up to the house of Yahweh, and Hezekiah spread it out before Yahweh.
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 prayed before Yahweh, and said, O Yahweh, God of Israel, inhabiting the cherubim, thou thyself, art GOD, alone, for all the kingdoms of the earth, —thou, didst make the heavens and the 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.
Bow down, O Yahweh, thine ear, and hear, Open, O Yahweh, thine eyes, and see, —yea hear thou the words of Sennacherib, who hath sent—To reproach a Living God!
17 “Yahweh, it is true that [the armies of] the kings of Assyria have completely destroyed many nations, and ruined their land.
Of a truth, O Yahweh, —the kings of Assyria have devoted to destruction 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 put their gods in the fire, —for, no-gods, were, they, but the work of the hands of men—wood and stone, and so they destroyed them.
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.”
Now, therefore, O Yahweh our God, save us we pray thee, out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know, that, thou, Yahweh, art God, alone!
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 son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, —Thus, saith Yahweh, God of Israel, What thou hast prayed unto me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard.
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 that Yahweh hath spoken concerning him, —The virgin daughter of Zion, laugheth thee to scorn, mocketh thee, The daughter of Jerusalem, after thee, doth wag her head.
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.
Whom, hast thou reproached, and insulted? and, against whom, hast thou lifted high thy voice? yea thou hast proudly raised thine eyes, 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.
Through thy messengers, thou hast reproached My Lord, and hast said—With my multitude of chariots, have I ascended the height of the mountains, the recesses of Lebanon, —and have cut down its tallest cedars, its choicest firs, and have entered the shelter of its summit, its thick garden forests.
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 digged, and have drunk foreign waters, —and have dried up, with the soles of my feet, all the streams of besieged places.
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.
Hast thou not heard—that, long ago, that, is what I appointed, and, from days of old, devised it? Now, have I brought it to pass, that thou mightest serve to lay waste, in desolate ruins, fortified cities;
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.
And, their inhabitants, being powerless, were overthrown and put to shame, —they became grass of the field, and young herbage, grass on housetops, and seed withered before it came up.
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.
Howbeit, thine abode, and thy coming out and thy going in, I know, —and thy raging against me.
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, thy raging against me, and thy contempt, have come up into mine ears, therefore will I put my ring in thy nose, and my bit in thy lips, and will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.
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 unto thee, is the sign—Eating, this year, the growth of scattered seeds, and, in the second year, that which groweth after, —then, in the third year, sow ye and reap, plant ye vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof;
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].
Then shall the escaped of the house of Judah that remain, again—take root downward, and bear fruit upward;
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, out of Jerusalem, shall go forth a remnant, and that which hath escaped—out of Mount Zion, —the jealousy of Yahweh of hosts, will perform this.
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].
Therefore—Thus, saith Yahweh, concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not enter this city, nor shoot there, an arrow, —nor attack it with shield, nor cast up against it, a mound;
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 that he cometh in, by the same, shall he return, —and, into this city, shall he not enter, declareth Yahweh!
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.'”
Thus will I throw a covering over this city, to save it, —for mine own sake, and for the sake of David my servant.
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 it came to pass, during that night, that the messenger of Yahweh went forth, and smote, in the camp of the Assyrians, a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And, when men arose early in the morning, lo! they were all, dead bodies!
36 Then King Sennacherib left and went home to Nineveh, [the capital of Assyria].
So Sennacherib king of Assyria brake up, and went his way, and returned, —and remained in 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 to pass, as he was bowing down in the house of Nisroch his god, that, Adrammelech and Sharezer [his sons], smote him with the sword, howbeit, they, escaped into the land of Ararat, —and Esarhaddon his son, reigned, in his stead.
