2 Kings 19:1-13

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

19 When King Hezekiah heard it, he rent his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord.^(A)

² And he sent Eliakim, who was over his household, Shebna the scribe, and the older priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.

³ They said to him, Hezekiah says: This is a day of [extreme danger and] distress, of rebuke and chastisement, and blasphemous and insolent insult; for children have come to the birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth.

⁴ It may be that the Lord your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria has sent to mock, reproach, insult, and defy the living God, and will rebuke the words which the Lord your God has heard. So raise your prayer for the remnant [of His people] that is left.

⁵ So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

⁶ Isaiah said to them, Say to your master, Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled and blasphemed Me.

⁷ Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own country.

⁸ So the Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah [a fortified city of Judah]; for he had heard that the king had left Lachish.

⁹ And Sennacherib king of Assyria heard concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, He has come to make war against you. And when he heard it, he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying,

¹⁰ Say this to Hezekiah king of Judah: Let not your God on Whom you rely deceive you by saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

¹¹ Behold, you have heard what the Assyrian kings have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. And shall you be delivered?

¹² Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my ancestors have destroyed, as Gozan, Haran [of Mesopotamia], Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar?

¹³ Where are the kings of Hamath, of Arpad [of northern Syria], of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivvah?