2 Kings 18:13-19:37
New Catholic Bible
13 Invasion of Sennacherib. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, came up against all of the fortified cities of Judah, and he captured them during the fourteenth year of the reign of King Hezekiah. 14 Hezekiah, the king of Judah, sent a message to the king of Assyria at Lachish saying, “I am guilty; withdraw from me and I will pay any penalty you decide.” The king of Assyria required Hezekiah, the king of Judah, to pay three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 Hezekiah gave him all of the silver that was to be found in the temple of the Lord and the treasury of the royal palace.
16 It was at this time that Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors to the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah, the king of Judah, had overlaid. He gave it to the king of Assyria.
17 The king of Assyria sent the general, the lord chamberlain, and the commander along with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they stood by the conduit of the upper pool that is on the highway in the Fuller’s Field. 18 They called out for the king, and Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, the major-domo, Shebna, the scribe, Joah, the son of Asaph, who kept the archives, came out to them.
19 The commander said to them, “Say this to Hezekiah: ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is the source of your hope in which you trust? 20 You say (but they are only empty words), “I have counsel and strength for war!” Now, on whom do you rely that makes you willing to rebel against me? 21 Behold, you have placed your confidence upon the staff of this bruised reed, you trust in Egypt, which, if someone were to lean on it, it would pierce his hand, going through it. That is what Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is to all who trust in him. 22 But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord, our God,” is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has eliminated, for he said to Judah and Jerusalem, “You will worship before this altar in Jerusalem.” ’
23 “Therefore, give your pledge to my lord, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to put riders on them. 24 How could you repulse the least important of my master’s servants even though you are trusting Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 25 Was it apart from the Lord I have now come up to destroy this place? The Lord said to me, ‘Go up to attack this land and destroy it.’ ”
26 Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Please do not speak to us in Hebrew when the people who are upon the wall can hear it.”[a]
27 But the commander said to them, “My master has not sent me just to you and your master to say these things, but to the men sitting on the wall who may have to eat their own dung and drink their own urine like you.”
28 The commander then stood and cried out in a loud voice in Hebrew, “Hear the word of the great king of Assyria! 29 Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you out of my hands. 30 Do not let Hezekiah convince you to trust in the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be delivered over into the hands of the king of Assyria.’ 31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make peace with me by paying tribute. Then, come out and eat from your own vines and from your own fig trees and drink water from your own cistern 32 until I take you away to a land which is like your own, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey. Live, do not die.
“Do not listen to Hezekiah when he tries to convince you saying, ‘The Lord will deliver us.’ 33 Have the gods of any of the nations delivered their land out of the hands of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Shepharvaim, Henah, and Ivvah? Did they rescue Samaria from out of my hands?
35 “Which of the gods from any of the nations has delivered their land from out of my hands? How could the Lord deliver Jerusalem out of my hands?”
36 But the people remained silent and they did not say a word to him, for the king had commanded them, “You are not to answer him.”
37 Then Eliakim, the major-domo, Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, who kept the archives, went to Hezekiah with their torn clothes, and they told him what the commander had said.
Chapter 19
Hezekiah and Isaiah. 1 When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the temple of the Lord.
2 He sent Eliakim, the major-domo, Shebna, the scribe, and all of the elders of the priests, all wearing sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz. 3 They said to him, “This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of trouble and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to term but there is not enough strength to deliver them. 4 Perhaps the Lord, your God, will hear the words of the commander whom the king of Assyria, his master, has sent to taunt the living God. Perhaps he will rebuke him for the words which the Lord, your God, has heard. Therefore, raise up a prayer for the survivors who still remain.”
5 When King Hezekiah’s servants came to Isaiah, 6 Isaiah said to them, “This is what you are to tell your master: Thus says the Lord: Do not let the words you have heard, the words by which the king of Assyria blasphemed me, do not let them frighten you. 7 Behold, I will send a spirit into him so that when he hears a certain rumor, he will return to his own land. I will have him cut down by the sword in his own land.”
8 When the commander returned, he heard that the king of Assyria had withdrawn from Lachish and he found him in Libnah. 9 He had heard a report concerning Tirhakah, the king of Ethiopia, saying, “Behold, he has come to fight against you.”
So he once again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 10 “Say this to Hezekiah, the king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you when he tells you that Jerusalem will be delivered out of the hands of the king of Assyria. 11 You have heard what the king of Assyria has done to every land, totally destroying them. Will you then be delivered? 12 Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my ancestors deliver them, the gods of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the Edomites who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath? The king of Arpad? The king of the city of Shepharvaim? Of Hena? Of Ivvah?’ ”
14 Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messenger and he read it. He then went to the temple of the Lord and he spread it out before the Lord.
15 Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, saying, “O Lord, God of Israel, who dwells between the cherubim, you alone are the God of all of the nations on the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. 16 Bend your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. Hear the words that Sennacherib has sent to taunt the living God. 17 It is true, O Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands. 18 They have cast their gods into the flames, for they were not really gods. They were only the work of human hands, made from wood and stone. 19 Now, O Lord, our God, deliver us from out of his hands so that all of the kingdoms upon the earth might know that you, O Lord, are the only God.”
20 Punishment of Sennacherib. Isaiah, the son of Amoz, then sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘I have heard your prayer to me concerning Sennacherib, the king of Assyria.’
21 [b]“This is the word that the Lord has spoken about him:
“The virgin daughter of Zion
despises you and laughs at you.
The daughter of Jerusalem
tosses her head at you.
22 Whom have you taunted and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes in pride?
Against the Holy One of Israel.
23 You have taunted the Lord through your messengers by saying,
‘I have come up to the heights of the mountains
with many chariots, to the peaks of Lebanon.
I have cut down tall cedars,
choice fir trees.
I have entered its most remote stand,
its finest forests.
24 I have dug wells in foreign lands and drunk the water.
I have dried up the streams of Egypt
with the soles of my feet.’
25 “Have you not heard?
Long ago I established it,
in ancient times I planned it.
Now I have ordained that you break down
fortified cities into piles of ruins.
26 Their inhabitants, having lost their power,
have become dismayed and confounded.
They are like the grass in the field,
like a green plant,
like grass growing on the roof
that is scorched before it can grow.
27 But I know where you live,
your going out, your coming in,
and how you rage against me.
28 The face that you rage against
and your arrogance have reached my ears.
I will put a ring in your nose
and a bridle in your mouth.
I will force you to return the way by which you came.
29 “This will be a sign for you:
This year you will eat what grows by itself,
and the next year you will eat what springs from that.
But in the third year you will sow and reap,
you will plant vineyards and eat its fruit.
30 Once more a remnant of Judah that has escaped
will take root below
and bear fruit above.
31 Out of Jerusalem a remnant will come,
out of Mount Zion survivors.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
32 “Therefore, thus says the Lord
concerning the king of Assyria:
He will not enter this city,
nor will he shoot an arrow there.
He will not come before it with a shield,
nor will he cast up a siege-work against it.
33 He will return by the way he came,
but he will not enter the city, says the Lord,
34 I will defend this city and save it, for my own sake
and that of David, my servant.”
35 That night an angel of the Lord went out and killed one hundred eighty-five thousand of the Assyrians. 36 Sennacherib, the king of Assyria withdrew, departed, and returned to Nineveh.
37 Once, when he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down by the sword. They escaped into the land of Armenia, and Esarhaddon reigned in his stead.
Footnotes
- 2 Kings 18:26 Aramaic was beginning to be the language of international relations in the Middle East. The people understood only the Jewish language, that is, the Hebrew spoken in Jerusalem.
- 2 Kings 19:21 This psalm, repeated in Isa 37:22-35, expresses pride and speaks the language of hope.
