Isaiah 37 :: Amplified Bible (AMP)

And when King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the LORD.

So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

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.

Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD.

Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah, saying, “For the LORD, the God of Israel says this, ‘Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria,

“She has shown contempt for you and mocked you,

The Virgin Daughter of Zion (Jerusalem);

She has shaken her head behind you,

The Daughter of Jerusalem!

“Whom have you taunted and blasphemed?

And against whom have you raised your voice

And haughtily lifted up your eyes?

Against the Holy One of Israel!

“Through your servants you have taunted and defied the Lord,

And you have said, ‘With my many chariots I have gone up to the heights of the mountains,

To the remotest parts of Lebanon.

I cut down its tallest cedars and its choicest cypress trees;

And I will go to its remotest height, its most luxuriant and thickest forest.

‘I dug wells and drank [foreign] waters,

And with the sole of my feet I dried up

All the canals [of the Nile] of Egypt.’

“Have you not heard [says the God of Israel]

That I did it long ago,

That I planned it in ancient times?

Now I have brought it to pass,

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

“Therefore their inhabitants had little power,

They were terrorized and shamed;

They were like the grass of the field and the green vegetation,

Like grass on the housetops and like a field [of grain] scorched before it is grown.

“But I know your sitting down

And your going out and your coming in [every detail of your life],

And your raging against Me.

“Because your raging against Me

And your arrogance has come up to My ears,

I will put My hook in your nose

And My bridle in your [fn]mouth,

And I will turn you back by the way you came.

“This shall be the sign [of these things] to you [Hezekiah]: you are to eat this year [fn]what grows of itself, and in the second year that which springs from the same, and in the third year you are to sow and harvest, and plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

“Therefore, the LORD says this concerning the king of Assyria, ‘He will not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with shield, or raise an assault ramp against it.

And the [fn]angel of the LORD went out and [fn]struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when the [surviving] men got up early the next morning, they saw all the dead.