Isaiah encourages Hezekiah to resist Sennacheirb’s summons to surrender Jerusalem

First narrative

36 In the fourteenth year of the reign of Hezekiah, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, after having assaulted and captured all the fortified cities of Judah, 2 despatched his Chief Officer from Lachish with a large force against King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. Near the conduit of the upper pool, where he had taken up his position on the Fuller’s Field Road, 3 he was visited by a deputation consisting of Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, Governor of the Palace, Shebna the Secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the Recorder.

4 The Chief Officer began: ‘This is the message from the Great King, the King of Assyria: I desire 5 you to deliver it to Hezekiah. ’What sort of confidence is this that you cherish? Do you imagine that in war a mere word of the lips is the equivalent of wisdom and strength? Now who is it you are 6 trusting in, that you presume to rebel against me? Of course you are trusting to Egypt, that staff of broken reed, which will enter and piece the hand of the man who leans upon it: that is all that Pharaoh King of Egypt will prove to those who 7 trust to him. If, however, you tell me you are trusting to your God the Lord, why, that is the very god whose sanctuaries and altars Hezekiah has abolished, commanding the people of Judah and Jerusalem to confine their worship to the altar at this 8 place? Now, make a wager, if you like, with my lord the King of Assyria: I am prepared to furnish you with two thousand horses, if you on your part 9 can supply them with riders. (But if you cannot), how do you propose to repel the onset of one of the least of my lord’s officers? Yet you trust to Egypt 10 for chariots and horsemen. And now do you imagine that I have not the Lord’s sanction for invading this land with a view to its destruction? Why, it is the Lord himself who commissioned me to invade this land and destroy it.’’

11 Thereupon Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah asked the Chief Officer to be good enough not to speak to them in Hebrew, in the hearing of the people on the wall, but in Aramaic, which they assured him 12 they understood. ‘No,’ replied the Officer, ‘it is not to your lord and yourself that my lord has sent me with this message, but precisely to the men on the wall, whom your policy is likely to reduce to eating their own filth and drinking their own water. ’

13 Then the Chief Officer came forward and cried aloud in Hebrew, ‘Listen to the words of the 14 Great King, the King of Assyria. Thus says the King: do not let yourselves be imposed upon by 15 Hezekiah, for he is powerless to deliver you; and do not let yourselves be induced to trust to the Lord by Hezekiah’s assurances that the Lord will unquestionably save you, and that this city will not be delivered into the hands of the King of Assyria. 16 Give no heed to Hezekiah; for thus says the King of Assyria to you, Make your peace with me and surrender, and then everyone will eat of his own vine and fig tree, and drink water from his own 17 cistern, till I come and take you to a land like your own – a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and 18 vineyards. Do not let Hezekiah delude you with assurances that the Lord will save you. Has the god of any nation ever rescued his land from the grasp 19 of the King of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods Sepharvain? And where are the gods of the land of Samaria? Have they rescued Samaria from 20 his grasp? Which of all these national gods has succeeded in rescuing his land from my grasp, that the Lord should now rescue Jerusalem from my 21 grasp?’ To this they answered not a word, they remained silent; for the King had expressly told 22 them not to answer him. Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, Governor of the Palace, and Shebna the Secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the Recorder, tore their garments, and returned to Hezekiah, telling him what the Chief Officer had said.

37 When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his garments, covered himself with sackcloth, and went 2 into the Temple; and he despatched Eliakim, Governor of the Palace, and Shebna the Secretary, and the elders of the priests, all covered with sackcloth, 3 to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz, to whom they spoke as follows: ‘A message from Hezekiah! This is a day of trouble, chastisement, and disgrace: for children are come to the birth, 4 and there is not strength to bear them. But it may be that the Lord your God will hear the words of the Chief Officer, whom the King of Assyria, his master, has sent to insult the living God, and will punish the word which the Lord your God has heard: so lift up 5,6 your prayer for those that remain.’ And this was the answer that Isaiah returned to the deputation of King Hezekiah’s ministers: ‘Tell your master,’ he said, ‘that the Lord’s message to him is this: he is not to be afraid of the blasphemous words he has heard from the minions of the King of Assyria. 7 ’Behold,’ says he, ’I will inspire him with such a spirit (of panic) that on the strength of a rumour he will return to this own land, and there, in his own land, I will cause him to fall a victim to the sword.’’

8 Then the Chief Officer returned and found the King of Assyria engaged in the siege of Libnah, for he had heard that he had moved his camp from Lachish. 9 When the news reached him that Tirhakah King of Ethiopia was advancing to give him battle, he sent messengers to Hezekiah with the following instructions.

Second narrative

10 ‘This,’ said he, ‘is what you are to say to Hezekiah King of Judah, 11 Do not let the god you trust in delude you with his assurance that Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hands of the King of Assyria. you are well aware of the ruin the King of Assyria has brought upon all lands, and are you to escape? 12 Were the nations which my father destroyed saved by their gods – Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the 13 Edenites in Telassar? Where is the King of Hamath and the King of Arpad and the King of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?’

14 Hezekiah received the letter at the hands of the messengers and read it; then he went up to the 15 Temple and spread it before the Lord, and to 16 the Lord thus he prayed: ‘O Lord of Hosts, God of Israel, enthroned upon the cherubim, you are God alone over all the kingdoms of the earth: you are the creator of heaven and earth. 17 Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the message of Sennacherib which he has sent to insult 18 the living God. True it is, O Lord, that the Kings of Assyria have devoted all nations and 19 their lands to destruction, and thrust their gods in the fire, for no gods were they at all, but wood and stone, fashioned by human hands and so they were 20 destroyed. But now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God.’ 21 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent this answer back to Hezekiah: ‘Thus says the Lord the God of Israel: I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib, King of Assyria. 22 This is the word of the Lord concerning him:

the virgin, the daughter of Zion,

contemns you and mocks you;

behind you Jerusalem’s daughter

is shaking her head.

23 Against whom have you lifted your voice

in reviling and blasphemy?

Yea, your eyes you have lifted to heaven

against Israel’s Holy One.

24 You have reviled, by your minions,

the Lord, and have said,

‘With my chariots I climb the high hills,

the recesses of Lebanon;

her towering cedars I fell,

and her cypresses choice;

and I pierce to her furthest retreat,

where the forest is thickest.

25 Wells, too, (in the desert) I dig,

and I drink of strange waters;

with the sole of my foot I dry up

all the Nile-streams of Egypt.’

26 Have you not heard that all this

I prepared long ago?

From the old I had planned it, and now

I have brought it to pass:

so ’tis yours to lay fortified cities

in desolate heaps.

27 Their inhabitants, impotent all,

are dismayed and confounded,

become like the grass of the field,

like the green tender grass;

they are like unto grass on the roofs

that the east wind has blasted.

28 Your sitting and rising I know,

and your going and coming;

29 your raging and uproar against me

are come to my ears.

So my ring I will put through your nose

and my bit in your lips,

and (thus led) I will make you return

by the way that you came.

30 And the sign unto you will be this:

this year you will eat that which grows of itself,

and the next that which springs therefrom;

but the third you will sow and reap,

plant vineyards and eat of their fruit.

31 And those who escape of the household of Judah

will again take root downward, and upward bear fruit;

32 for out of Jerusalem will go forth a remnant,

and forth from Mount Zion all such as escape.

The zeal of the Lord of Hosts

will bring this thing to pass.

33 Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the King of Assyria,

he will not come into this city,

nor shoot an arrow there;

he will not come before it with shield,

nor cast up a mound against it.

34 But back he will go by the way that he came,

and into this city he will not enter;

35 for I will protect and deliver this city,

for my own sake and David my servant’s sake.

36 Then the angel of the Lord went forth and slew in the camp of Assyria one hundred and eighty-five thousand men: when they rose in the morning, behold! Every man was a lifeless corpse. 37 So Sennacherib, King of Assyria, broke up camp and returned to Nineveh, where he settled. 38 Subsequently, as he was worshipping in the temple of Nisroch his god, he was assassinated by his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer. They, however, made good their escape to Armenia, and he was succeeded by Esar-haddon his son.