Hezekiah took the letter from the envoy and read it. He went to The Temple of GOD and spread it out before GOD. And Hezekiah prayed—oh, how he prayed!
GOD, God of Israel, seated
in majesty on the cherubim-throne.
You are the one and only God,
sovereign over all kingdoms on earth,
Maker of heaven,
maker of earth.
Open your ears, GOD, and listen,
open your eyes and look.
Look at this letter Sennacherib has sent,
a brazen insult to the living God!
The facts are true, O GOD: The kings of Assyria
have laid waste countries and kingdoms.
Huge bonfires they made of their gods, their
no-gods hand-made from wood and stone.
But now O GOD, our God,
save us from raw Assyrian power;
Make all the kingdoms on earth know
that you are GOD, the one and only God.
It wasn’t long before Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah:
GOD’s word: You’ve prayed to me regarding Sennacherib king of Assyria; I’ve heard your prayer. This is my response to him:
The Virgin Daughter of Zion
holds you in utter contempt;
Daughter Jerusalem
thinks you’re nothing but scum.
Who do you think it is you’ve insulted?
Who do you think you’ve been bad-mouthing?
Before whom do you suppose you’ve been strutting?
The Holy One of Israel, that’s who!
You dispatched your errand boys
to humiliate the Master.
You bragged, “With my army of chariots
I’ve climbed the highest mountains,
snow-peaked alpine Lebanon mountains!
I’ve cut down its giant cedars,
chopped down its prize pine trees.
I’ve traveled the world,
visited the finest forest retreats.
I’ve dug wells in faraway places
and drunk their exotic waters;
I’ve waded and splashed barefoot
in the rivers of Egypt.”
Did it never occur to you
that I’m behind all this?
Long, long ago I drew up the plans,
and now I’ve gone into action,
Using you as a doomsday weapon,
reducing proud cities to piles of rubble,
Leaving their people dispirited,
slumped shoulders, limp souls.
Useless as weeds, fragile as grass,
insubstantial as wind-blown chaff.
I know when you sit down, when you come
and when you go;
And, yes, I’ve marked every one
of your temper tantrums against me.
It’s because of your temper,
your blasphemous foul temper,
That I’m putting my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth
And turning you back
to where you came from.
And this, Hezekiah, will be for you the confirming sign:
This year you’ll eat the gleanings, next year
whatever you can beg, borrow, or steal;
But the third year you’ll sow and harvest,
plant vineyards and eat grapes.
A remnant of the family of Judah yet again
will sink down roots and raise up fruit.
The remnant will come from Jerusalem,
the survivors from Mount Zion.
The Zeal of GOD
will make it happen.
To sum up, this is what GOD says regarding the king of Assyria:
He won’t enter this city,
nor shoot so much as a single arrow there;
Won’t brandish a shield,
won’t even begin to set siege;
He’ll go home by the same road he came;
he won’t enter this city. GOD’s word!
I’ll shield this city, I’ll save this city,
for my sake and for David’s sake.
And it so happened that that very night an angel of GOD came and massacred 185,000 Assyrians. When the people of Jerusalem got up next morning, there it was—a whole camp of corpses!
Sennacherib king of Assyria got out of there fast, headed straight home for Nineveh, and stayed put. One day when he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer murdered him and then escaped to the land of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon became the next king.
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