2 Kings 19:1-20:21 And on hearing it, King Hezekiah took off his robe, and put on haircloth, and went into the house of the Lord.

BBE⁽ⁱ⁾ ¹ And on hearing it, King Hezekiah took off his robe, and put on haircloth, and went into the house of the Lord. ² 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 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 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 So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. ⁶ 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 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 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 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 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 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 keep safe those on whom my fathers sent destruction, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar? ¹³ 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 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 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 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 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have made waste the nations and their lands, ¹⁸ 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 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, 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 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 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 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 I have made water-holes and taken their waters, and with my foot I have made all the rivers of Egypt dry. ²⁵ 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 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 have knowledge of your getting up and your resting, of your going out and your coming in. ²⁸ 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 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 And those of Judah who are still living will again take root in the earth and give fruit. ³¹ 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 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 By the way he came he will go back, and he will not get into this town, says the Lord. ³⁴ For I will keep this town safe, for my honour, and for the honour of my servant David. ³⁵ 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 So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went back to his place at Nineveh. ³⁷ 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. ²⁰ ¹ In those days Hezekiah was ill and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said to him, The Lord says, Put your house in order, for your death is near. ² Then, turning his face to the wall, he made his prayer to the Lord, saying, ³ O Lord, keep in mind how I have been true to you with all my heart, and have done what is good in your eyes. And Hezekiah gave way to bitter weeping. ⁴ Now before Isaiah had gone out of the middle of the town, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ⁵ Go back and say to Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, The Lord, the God of David your father, says, Your prayer has come to my ears, and I have seen your weeping; see, I will make you well: on the third day you will go up to the house of the Lord. ⁶ I will give you fifteen more years of life; and I will keep you and this town safe from the hands of the king of Assyria; I will keep this town safe, for my honour, and for the honour of my servant David. ⁷ Then Isaiah said, Take a cake of figs. So they took it and put it on his wound, and he got better. ⁸ And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What is to be the sign that the Lord will make me well, and that I will go up to the house of the Lord on the third day? ⁹ And Isaiah said, This is the sign the Lord will give you, that he will do what he has said; will the shade go forward ten degrees or back? ¹⁰ And Hezekiah said in answer, It is a simple thing for the shade to go forward; but let it go back ten degrees. ¹¹ Then Isaiah the prophet made prayer to the Lord, and he made the shade go back ten degrees from its position on the steps of Ahaz. ¹² At that time, Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters with an offering to Hezekiah, because he had news that Hezekiah had been ill. ¹³ And Hezekiah was glad at their coming and let them see all his store of wealth, the silver and the gold and the spices and the oil of great price, and the house of his arms, and everything there was in his stores; there was nothing in all his house or his kingdom which Hezekiah did not let them see. ¹⁴ Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say and where did they come from? And Hezekiah said, They came from a far country, even from Babylon. ¹⁵ And he said, What have they seen in your house? And Hezekiah said in answer, They saw everything in my house: there is nothing among my stores which I did not let them see. ¹⁶ And Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Give ear to the word of the Lord. ¹⁷ Truly, days are coming when everything in your house, and whatever your fathers have put in store till this day, will be taken away to Babylon: all will be gone, says the Lord. ¹⁸ And your sons, the offspring of your body, they will take away to be unsexed servants in the house of the king of Babylon. ¹⁹ Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, Good is the word of the Lord which you have said. Then he said, (UNTRANSLATED TEXT) if in my time there is peace and righteousness? ²⁰ Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his power, and how he made the pool and the stream, to take water into the town, are they not recorded in the book of the history of the kings of Judah? ²¹ And Hezekiah went to rest with his fathers; and Manasseh his son became king in his place.