¹And it happened, when King Hezekiah heard, that he tore his garments, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of Yahweh.

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

³And they said to him, "This is what Hezekiah says: This day is a day of distress, rebuke, and contempt, for children have come to the opening of the womb, and there is no strength to give birth.

⁴Perhaps Yahweh your God will hear all the words of Rabshakeh, whom his lord the king of Assyria sent to taunt the living God, and will reprove him for the words that Yahweh your God has heard. So lift up a prayer on behalf of the remnant that is found."

⁵So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

⁶And Isaiah said to them, "This is what you shall say to your lord: This is what Yahweh says: Do not be afraid in the face of the words that you have heard, with which the lads of the king of Assyria have reviled me.

⁷Behold, I am about to set a breath in him, and he will hear a report and return to his own land, and I will fell him by the sword in his own land."

⁸So Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that he had set out from Lachish.

⁹And he heard concerning Tirhakah, king of Cush, saying, "Behold, he has come out to fight against you." So he returned and sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,

¹⁰This is what you shall say to Hezekiah king of Judah: "Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by saying, 'Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.'"

¹¹Behold, you yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, devoting them to destruction; and will you be delivered?

¹²Did the gods of the nations deliver those whom my fathers ruined: Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar?

¹³Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and of Ivvah?

¹⁴And Hezekiah took the letters from the hand of the messengers and read them, and went up to the house of Yahweh, and Hezekiah spread it out before the face of Yahweh.

¹⁵And Hezekiah prayed before the face of Yahweh and said, "O Yahweh, God of Israel, who dwells on the cherubim, you yourself are God, you alone of all the kingdoms of the land; you made the skies and the land.

¹⁶Incline your ear, Yahweh, and hear; open your eyes, Yahweh, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to taunt the living God.

¹⁷Indeed, Yahweh, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands,

¹⁸and have put their gods into the fire; for they were not gods, but the work of human hands, wood and stone, and so they did away with them.

¹⁹And now, Yahweh our God, save us, please, from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the land may know that you, Yahweh, are God, you alone."

²⁰And Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, "This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: What you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria, I have heard.

²¹This is the word that Yahweh has spoken concerning him: the virgin daughter of Zion has despised you and mocked you; behind you the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head.

²²Whom have you taunted and reviled? And against whom have you raised your voice and lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel!

²³By the hand of your messengers you reproached the Lord, and you said, with the multitude of my chariots I myself went up the height of the mountains, the far flanks of Lebanon; I cut down the height of its cedars, the choicest of its cypresses, and I came to its farthest lodging place, its forest of garden-land.

²⁴I myself dug and drank foreign waters, and with the sole of my feet I dried up all the channels of Egypt.

²⁵Have you not heard? From afar I made it, from the days of old I formed it; now I have brought it about, and you are to crash fortified cities into ruined heaps.

²⁶And their dwellers, short of hand, were dismayed and ashamed; they were the plants of the field and the greenery of the new grass, the grass of the rooftops, and blight before the face of standing grain.

²⁷Your dwelling, your going out, and your coming in I know, and your raging against me.

²⁸Because your raging against me and your arrogance have come up into my ears, and I will put my hook in your nostril and my bridle on your lips, and I will bring you back by the way that you came.

²⁹And this is the sign for you: this year eat what grows from the spilled kernels, and in the second year what springs up of itself; and in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

³⁰And the escaped remnant of the house of Judah that remains will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.

³¹For from Jerusalem a remnant will go out, and an escaped remnant from the mountain of Zion; the jealousy of Yahweh of armies will accomplish this.

³²Therefore Yahweh has said this concerning the king of Assyria: He will not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor will a shield meet it, nor will a mound be poured up against it.

³³By the way that he came, by it he will return; and into this city he will not come, the utterance of Yahweh.

³⁴And I will defend this city, to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of David my slave.

³⁵And it came about in that night that the messenger of Yahweh went out and struck down in the camp of Assyria one hundred eighty-five thousand; and when they rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead corpses.

³⁶So Sennacherib the king of Assyria set out and went, and returned, and dwelled in Nineveh.

³⁷And it happened, as he was bowing down in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him down with the sword; and they escaped to the land of Ararat; and Esarhaddon his son became king in his place.