²⁰ Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.^(A)

²¹ This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him: The Virgin Daughter of Zion has despised you and laughed you to scorn; the Daughter of Jerusalem has wagged her head behind you.

²² Whom have you mocked and reviled and insulted and blasphemed? Against Whom have you raised your voice and haughtily lifted your eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel!

²³ By your messengers you have mocked, reproached, insulted, and defied the Lord, and have said, With my many chariots I have gone up to the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon. I cut down its tall cedar trees and its choicest cypress trees. I entered its most distant retreat, its densest forest.

⁵ Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of My anger, the staff in whose hand is My indignation and fury [against Israel’s disobedience]!

⁶ I send [the Assyrian] against a hypocritical and godless nation and against the people of My wrath; I command him to take the spoil and to seize the prey and to tread them down like the mire in the streets.

⁷ However, this is not his intention [nor is the Assyrian aware that he is doing this at My bidding], neither does his mind so think and plan; but it is in his mind to destroy and cut off many nations.

¹⁵ Nor let Hezekiah make you trust in and rely on the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

¹⁶ Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me and come out to me; and eat every one from his own vine and every one from his own fig tree and drink every one the water of his own cistern,

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

¹⁸ Beware lest Hezekiah persuade and mislead you by saying, The Lord will deliver us. Has any one of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

¹⁹ Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad [in Syria]? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim [a place from which the Assyrians brought colonists to inhabit evacuated Samaria]? And have [the gods] delivered Samaria [capital of the ten northern tribes of Israel] out of my hand?

²⁰ Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his land out of my hand, that [you should think that] the Lord can deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?