2 Kings 19 :: Amplified Bible (AMP)

When king Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes and he covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house (temple) of the LORD.

So the Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah [a fortified city of Judah]; for he had heard that the king had left Lachish.

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the house (temple) of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD.

Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: ‘I have heard your prayer to Me regarding Sennacherib king of Assyria.’

‘The virgin daughter of Zion

Has despised you and mocked you;

The daughter of Jerusalem

Has shaken her head behind you!

‘Whom have you taunted and blasphemed?

Against whom have you raised your voice,

And haughtily lifted up your eyes?

Against the Holy One of Israel!

‘Through your messengers you have taunted and defied the Lord,

And have said [boastfully], “With my many chariots

I came up to the heights of the mountains,

To the remotest parts of Lebanon;

I cut down its tall cedar trees and its choicest cypress trees.

I entered its most distant lodging, its densest forest.

“I dug wells and drank foreign waters,

And with the sole of my feet I dried up

All the rivers of [the Lower Nile of] Egypt.”

‘Have you not heard [asks the God of Israel]?

Long ago I did it;

From ancient times I planned it.

Now I have brought it to pass,

That you [king of Assyria] should [be My instrument to] turn fortified cities into ruinous heaps.

‘Therefore their inhabitants were powerless,

They were shattered [in spirit] and put to shame;

They were like plants of the field, the green herb,

As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up.

‘But I [the LORD] know your sitting down [O Sennacherib],

Your going out, your coming in,

And your raging against Me.

‘Because of your raging against Me,

And because your arrogance and complacency have come up to My ears,

I will put My hook in your nose,

And My bridle in your lips,

And I will turn you back [to Assyria] by the way that you came.

‘Then this shall be the sign [of these things] to you [Hezekiah]: this year you will eat what grows of itself, in the second year what springs up voluntarily, and in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.

‘Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: “He will not come to this city [Jerusalem] nor shoot an arrow there; nor will he come before it with a shield nor throw up a siege ramp against it.

Then it came to pass that night, that the [fn]angel of the LORD went forth and struck down 185,000 [men] in the camp of the Assyrians; when the survivors got up early in the morning, behold, all [185,000] of them were dead.