Your rulers have all fled together; they were captured without the use of a bow. All of you who were found were captured, though they had fled far away.

Therefore I said: Look away from me, let me weep bitter tears; do not try to comfort me for the destruction of my beloved people.

For the Lord God of hosts has a day of tumult and trampling and confusion in the valley of vision, a battering down of walls and a cry for help to the mountains.

Elam bore the quiver with chariots and cavalry, and Kir uncovered the shield.

Your choicest valleys were full of chariots, and the cavalry took their stand at the gates.

He has taken away the covering of Judah. On that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest,

and you saw that there were many breaches in the city of David, and you collected the waters of the lower pool.

You counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall.

You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or have regard for him who planned it long ago.

In that day the Lord God of hosts called to weeping and mourning, to baldness and putting on sackcloth;

but instead there was joy and festivity, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating meat and drinking wine. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears: Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you until you die, says the Lord God of hosts.
Denunciation of Self-Seeking Officials

Thus says the Lord God of hosts: Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is master of the household, and say to him:

What right do you have here? Who are your relatives here, that you have cut out a tomb here for yourself, cutting a tomb on the height, and carving a habitation for yourself in the rock?

The Lord is about to hurl you away violently, my fellow. He will seize firm hold on you,

whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball into a wide land; there you shall die, and there your splendid chariots shall lie, O you disgrace to your master's house!

I will thrust you from your office, and you will be pulled down from your post.

On that day I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah,

and will clothe him with your robe and bind your sash on him. I will commit your authority to his hand, and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.

I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open.

I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his ancestral house.

And they will hang on him the whole weight of his ancestral house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons.

On that day, says the Lord of hosts, the peg that was fastened in a secure place will give way; it will be cut down and fall, and the load that was on it will perish, for the Lord has spoken.

A Prophecy of Deliverance from Foes

Ah, you destroyer, who yourself have not been destroyed; you treacherous one, with whom no one has dealt treacherously! When you have ceased to destroy, you will be destroyed; and when you have stopped dealing treacherously, you will be dealt with treacherously.

O Lord , be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble.

At the sound of tumult, peoples fled; before your majesty, nations scattered.

Spoil was gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, they leaped upon it.

The Lord is exalted, he dwells on high; he filled Zion with justice and righteousness;

he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure.

Listen! the valiant cry in the streets; the envoys of peace weep bitterly.

The highways are deserted, travelers have quit the road. The treaty is broken, its oaths are despised, its obligation is disregarded.

The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.

“Now I will arise,” says the Lord , “now I will lift myself up; now I will be exalted.

You conceive chaff, you bring forth stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you.

And the peoples will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.”

Hear, you who are far away, what I have done; and you who are near, acknowledge my might.

The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among us can live with everlasting flames?”

Those who walk righteously and speak uprightly, who despise the gain of oppression, who wave away a bribe instead of accepting it, who stop their ears from hearing of bloodshed and shut their eyes from looking on evil,

they will live on the heights; their refuge will be the fortresses of rocks; their food will be supplied, their water assured.
The Land of the Majestic King

Your eyes will see the king in his beauty; they will behold a land that stretches far away.

Your mind will muse on the terror: “Where is the one who counted? Where is the one who weighed the tribute? Where is the one who counted the towers?”

No longer will you see the insolent people, the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend, stammering in a language that you cannot understand.

Look on Zion, the city of our appointed festivals! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, an immovable tent, whose stakes will never be pulled up, and none of whose ropes will be broken.

But there the Lord in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams, where no galley with oars can go, nor stately ship can pass.

For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our ruler, the Lord is our king; he will save us.

Your rigging hangs loose; it cannot hold the mast firm in its place, or keep the sail spread out. Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided; even the lame will fall to plundering.

And no inhabitant will say, “I am sick”; the people who live there will be forgiven their iniquity.

Hezekiah Consults Isaiah

When King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord.

And 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.

They 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.

It may be that the Lord 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 Lord your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.”

When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah,

Isaiah said to them, “Say to your master, ‘Thus says the Lord : Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me.

I 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.’ ”

The Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah; for he had heard that the king had left Lachish.

Now 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,

“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.

See, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. Shall you be delivered?

Have 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?

Where 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

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; then Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord.

And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord , saying:

“O Lord 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.

Incline your ear, O Lord , and hear; open your eyes, O Lord , and see; hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God.

Truly, O Lord , the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands,

and 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.

So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.”

Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying: “Thus says the Lord , the God of Israel: Because you have prayed to me concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria,

this is the word that the Lord 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.

“ ‘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.

The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward;

for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

“ ‘Therefore thus says the Lord 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.

By the way that he came, by the same he shall return; he shall not come into this city, says the Lord.

For 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

Then the angel of the Lord set out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; when morning dawned, they were all dead bodies.

Then King Sennacherib of Assyria left, went home, and lived at Nineveh.

As 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.