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Hezekiah Consults Isaiah

When King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the L ord. ²And he sent Eliakim, who was in charge of the palace, and Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, covered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah 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 L ord 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 that the L ord your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.”

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

⁸ The 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 King Tirhakah of Ethiopia, “He has set out to fight against you.” When he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, ¹⁰“Thus shall you speak to King Hezekiah 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. ¹¹See, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. Shall you be delivered? ¹²Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my predecessors destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 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?”

Hezekiah’s Prayer

¹⁴ Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; then Hezekiah went up to the house of the L ord and spread it before the L ord. ¹⁵And Hezekiah prayed to the L ord, saying: ¹⁶“O L ord of hosts, God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. ¹⁷Incline your ear, O L ord, and hear; open your eyes, O L ord, and see; hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. ¹⁸Truly, O L ord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands, ¹⁹and have hurled their gods into the fire, though they were no gods, but the work of human hands—wood and stone—and so they were destroyed. ²⁰So now, O L ord our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the L ord.”

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

She despises you, she scorns you—

virgin daughter Zion;

she tosses her head—behind your back,

daughter Jerusalem.

“Whom have you mocked and reviled?

Against whom have you raised your voice

and haughtily lifted your eyes?

Against the Holy One of Israel!

By 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.

I dug wells

and drank waters,

I dried up with the sole of my foot

all the streams of Egypt.’

“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,

while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,

are dismayed and confounded;

they have become like plants of the field

and like tender grass,

like grass on the housetops,

blighted before it is grown.

“I know your rising up and your sitting down,

your going out and coming in,

and your raging against me.

Because 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;

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 from that; then in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. ³¹The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward; ³²for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the L ord of hosts will do this.

³³ “Therefore thus says the L ord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, shoot an arrow there, come before it with a shield, or cast up a siege ramp against it. ³⁴By the way that he came, by the same he shall return; he shall not come into this city, says the L ord. ³⁵For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

Sennacherib’s Defeat and Death

³⁶ Then the angel of the L ord set out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; when morning dawned, they were all dead bodies. ³⁷Then King Sennacherib of Assyria left, went home, and lived at Nineveh. ³⁸As he was worshiping in the house of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped into the land of Ararat. His son Esar-haddon succeeded him.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

38. While he was worshipping. Here the Jews allow themselves that liberty of conjecture in which they are always accustomed to indulge. They contrive a stow, that Sennacherib consulted an oracle, and asked why he could not conquer the Jews; that the answer was, that Abraham wished to sacrifice his son to God; that the tyrant, following that example, then determined to slay his son, in order to appease his god; and that his sons, enraged at the cruel design of their father, slew him in the temple of his idol. But it is unnecessary to spend time in such conjectures, in which the Jews display excessive impudence.

Here it is highly important to behold, as in a picture, the unhappy death of tyrants, whom the Lord destroys without the agency of men, when everything appears about to be overthrown by their violence, and whom he exposes with all their power to universal scorn. Sennacherib, who had come into Judea with a vast army, returns home with few soldiers, and is led in triumph, as it were, by God as a conqueror. But the matter does not end here; for in the very heart of his empire, in the metropolis, in the temple itself, the reverence for which defended the meanest persons from the mob, he is slain, not by a foreign enemy, not by a people in a state of sedition, not by traitors, and in a word, not by servants, but by his own sons, that the murder may be more disgraceful. It ought to be observed, that those insatiable gluttons, who freely wallow in the blood of others, are slain by their own followers, and are punished by those from whom above all others they ought to have been safe. This is more shocking than if they had been put to death by strangers; but God thus punishes the cruelty of those who, in their eagerness to enjoy power, did not even spare the innocent. Even in profane historians we find various examples of this kind, in which we may easily behold the judgments of the Lord.

Besides, the insatiable ambition of Sennacherib receives its just reward, because, while he is intent on the wide extension of his territories, he cannot secure the peace of his own family, by leading his children to live at peace; for out of his neglect of some, and undue attachment to others, the conspiracy arose. And not only was this tyrant slain, but his kingdom also was soon afterwards overthrown, as we have already said; and, in the meantime, that his successor might not dare to make any attempt against the Jews, God kept him also within the country by internal broils.