The Book of the Prophet Isaiah 36 Sennacherib Besieges Jerusalem. Hezekiah's Prayer. The Assyrian Army Is Destroyed.

 The Book of the Prophet Isaiah 36

Sennacherib Besieges Jerusalem. Hezekiah's Prayer. The Assyrian Army Is Destroyed.

1 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.

2 Then the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a large army. He stood at the mouth of the upper pool, by the road to the fuller's field.

3 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, went out to him.

4 Rabshakeh said to them, "Now tell Hezekiah, 'This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: What confidence is this that you show?

5 I might well say, 'Your counsel and might for war are but empty words. In whom then do you trust, that you rebel against me?'

6 Behold, you trust in that staff of broken reed, even in Egypt, which, if anyone leans on, will go through his hand and pierce it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

7 But if you say to me, 'We trust in the Lord our God,' is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, 'You shall bow down before this altar?'

8 Now therefore, give hostages to my lord the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to give them riders.

9 How is it that, since you cannot turn your face to one of the least of my lord's servants, do you trust in Egypt because of chariots and horsemen? 

10 Have I now gone up against this land without the Lord to destroy it? The Lord himself said to me, 'Go up against this land and destroy it.'

11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to Rabshakeh, 'Please speak to your servants in Syriac, for we understand it, and do not speak to us in Judah in the hearing of the people on the wall.'

12 But Rabshakeh said, 'Did my master send me only to your master and to you to speak these words? Or not rather to the men who sit on the wall, so that they may eat their dung and drink their urine with you?'

13 So Rabshakeh stood up and cried out with a loud voice in Judah, and said, 'Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!'

14 Thus says the king: 'Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.

15 Nor should Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, 'The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.'

16 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: 'Make a covenant with me, and come out to me, and let each of you eat from his own vine and fig tree, and drink water from his own cistern;

17 until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.'

18 Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, saying, 'The Lord will deliver us.' Have the gods of the nations each delivered his own land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? 

20 Who are they among all the gods of these countries who have delivered their land out of my hand, so that the Lord would deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?

21 But they remained silent and did not answer him a word, for the king had commanded, "You shall not answer him."

22 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.