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Isaiah 36:1-37:38 — Sennacherib Threatens Jerusalem

Isa.36.1-37.38

¹And it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. ²And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a large army. And he stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer's Field. ³Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, went out to him. ⁴And the Rabshakeh said to them, 'Say now to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is this confidence in which you trust? ⁵I say that your counsel and strength for war are only empty words. Now in whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me? ⁶Behold, you trust in the staff of this crushed reed, in Egypt, which if a man leans on it, will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. ⁷But if you say to me, “We trust in the LORD our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar”?' ⁸Now therefore, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. ⁹How then can you turn away the face of one commander among the least of my master's servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen? ¹⁰And now, have I come up against this land to destroy it without the LORD? The LORD said to me, 'Go up against this land and destroy it.' ¹¹Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, 'Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not speak to us in Judean in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.' ¹²But the Rabshakeh said, 'Has my master sent me to speak these words only to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine ?' ¹³Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in Judean, and said, 'Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! ¹⁴Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. ¹⁵And do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” ¹⁶Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make peace with me and come out to me; then every one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree, and every one will drink the water of his own cistern, ¹⁷until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. ¹⁸Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you, saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? ¹⁹Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they delivered Samaria from my hand? ²⁰Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?' ²¹But they remained silent and did not answer him a word, for the king's command was, 'Do not answer him.' ²²Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.

Chapter 37

¹And it happened, when King Hezekiah heard it, that he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD. ²And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. ³And they said to him, 'Thus says Hezekiah: This day is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace; for children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to deliver them. ⁴Perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to defy the living God, and will rebuke the words which the LORD your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant that is left.' ⁵So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. ⁶And Isaiah said to them, 'Thus you shall say to your master: Thus says the LORD: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. ⁷Behold, I will put a spirit in him, and he will hear a rumor and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.' ⁸Then the Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that he had departed from Lachish. ⁹And he heard about Tirhakah king of Cush , saying, 'He has come out to fight against you.' And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, ¹⁰'Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, “Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” ¹¹Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And will you be delivered? ¹²Did the gods of the nations deliver them, which my fathers destroyed—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? ¹³Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, 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 he went up to the house of the LORD, and Hezekiah spread them out before the LORD. ¹⁵And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD, saying, ¹⁶'O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. ¹⁷Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to defy the living God. ¹⁸Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their lands, ¹⁹and have cast their gods into the fire. For they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them. ²⁰And now, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the LORD.' ²¹Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, 'Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, ²²this is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: "She despises you, she mocks you—the virgin daughter of Zion; she shakes her head behind you—the daughter of Jerusalem. ²³Whom have you defied and blasphemed? And against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel! ²⁴By the hand of your servants you have defied the Lord, and you have said, 'With my many chariots I have gone up to the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon; and I will cut down its tall cedars and its choice cypresses; and I will enter its farthest height, its thickest forest. ²⁵I have dug wells and drunk water, and with the sole of my feet I will dry up all the streams of Egypt.' ²⁶Have you not heard? Long ago I did it; from days of old I formed it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into ruinous heaps. ²⁷Therefore their inhabitants were short of power, they were dismayed and put to shame; they were like the plants of the field and the green herb, like grass on the rooftops, and like a blighted field before it is grown. ²⁸But I know your sitting down, and your going out and your coming in, and your raging against me. ²⁹Because of your raging against me, and because your arrogance has come up to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth , and I will turn you back on the way by which you came. ³⁰And this shall be the sign for you: This year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from the same; then in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. ³¹And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. ³²For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this. ³³Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with a shield, nor cast up a siege mound against it. ³⁴By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the LORD. ³⁵For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David. ³⁶Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. ³⁷So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went away, and returned, and lived at Nineveh. ³⁸And it happened, as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons struck him down with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon his son reigned in his place.

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4/11/2026

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