2Ki 19:14-34 | ESV | STEP | Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord .

14 Hezekiah received ^athe letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. 15 And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said: “O Lord, the God of Israel, ^benthroned above the cherubim, ^cyou are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. 16 ^dIncline your ear, O Lord, and hear; ^eopen your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent ^fto mock the living God. 17 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands 18 and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, ^gbut the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. 19 So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, ^hthat all the kingdoms of the earth may know that ⁱyou, O Lord, are God alone.”

Isaiah Prophesies Sennacherib’s Fall

20 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria ^jI have heard. 21 This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

“She despises you, she scorns you—
^kthe virgin daughter of Zion;
she ^lwags her head behind you—
the daughter of Jerusalem.
22 “Whom have you ^mmocked and ⁿreviled?
Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes to the heights?
Against ^othe Holy One of Israel!
23 ^pBy your messengers you have mocked the Lord,
and you have said, ^q‘With my many chariots
I have gone up the heights of the mountains,
to the far recesses of ^rLebanon;
I felled its tallest cedars,
its choicest cypresses;
I entered its farthest lodging place,
its most ^sfruitful forest.
24 I dug wells
and drank foreign waters,
and I dried up with the sole of my foot
all the streams ^tof Egypt.’
25 “Have you not heard
that ^uI determined it long ago?
I planned from days of old
what ^vnow I bring to pass,
that you should turn fortified cities
into heaps of ruins,
26 while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,
are dismayed and confounded,
and have become ^wlike plants of the field
and like tender grass,
like grass on the housetops,
blighted before it is grown.
27 “But I know your sitting down
^xand your going out and coming in,
and your raging against me.
28 Because you have raged against me
and your complacency has come into my ears,
I will ^yput my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth,
and ^zI will turn you back on the way
by which you came.
29 “And this shall be ^aathe sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. 30 ^abAnd the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. 31 For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion ^aca band of survivors. ^adThe zeal of the Lord will do this.

32 “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or ^aecast up a siege mound against it. 33 ^afBy the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. 34 ^agFor I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake ^ahand for the sake of my servant David.”