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2 KINGS 19
page 347
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24
25
26
27
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At whom did you look with such haughty
eyes?
It was the Holy One of Israel!
By your messengers you have defied
the Lord.
You have said, ‘With my many chariots
I have conquered the highest mountains—
yes, the remotest peaks of Lebanon.
I have cut down its tallest cedars
and its finest cypress trees.
I have reached its farthest corners
and explored its deepest forests.
I have dug wells in many foreign lands
and refreshed myself with their water.
With the sole of my foot
I stopped up all the rivers of Egypt!’
“But have you not heard?
I decided this long ago.
Long ago I planned it,
and now I am making it happen.
I planned for you to crush fortified cities
into heaps of rubble.
That is why their people have so little power
and are so frightened and confused.
They are as weak as grass,
as easily trampled as tender green shoots.
They are like grass sprouting on a housetop,
scorched before it can grow lush and tall.
“But I know you well—
where you stay
and when you come and go.
I know the way you have raged against me.
And because of your raging against me
and your arrogance, which I have heard
for myself,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth.
I will make you return
by the same road on which you came.”
29 Then
Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Here is the
proof that what I say is true:
30
“This year you will eat only what grows up
by itself,
and next year you will eat what springs
up from that.
But in the third year you will plant crops
and harvest them;
you will tend vineyards and eat their
fruit.
And you who are left in Judah,
who have escaped the ravages of the
siege,
will put roots down in your own soil
and will grow up and flourish.
19:31 As in Greek and Syriac versions, Latin Vulgate, and an
alternate reading of the Masoretic Text (see also Isa 37:32); the
other alternate reads the Lord. 19:35 Hebrew When they.
19:37 As in Greek version and an alternate reading of the
Masoretic Text (see also Isa 37:38); the other alternate reading
lacks his sons.
31
For a remnant of my people will spread out
from Jerusalem,
a group of survivors from Mount Zion.
The passionate commitment of the Lord of
Heaven’s Armies*
will make this happen!
32 “And this is what the Lord says about the king
of Assyria:
33
34
“His armies will not enter Jerusalem.
They will not even shoot an arrow at it.
They will not march outside its gates with
their shields
nor build banks of earth against its walls.
The king will return to his own country
by the same road on which he came.
He will not enter this city,
says the Lord.
For my own honor and for the sake of my
servant David,
I will defend this city and protect it.”
35 That night the angel of the Lord went out
to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians*
woke up the next morning, they found corpses
everywhere. 36 Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land.
He went home to his capital of Nineveh and
stayed there.
37 One day while he was worshiping in the
temple of his god Nisroch, his sons* Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords.
They then escaped to the land of Ararat, and
another son, Esarhaddon, became the next king
of Assyria.
• Prayer
2 K I N G S 19:14-19
Do you want to improve your prayer
life? You can make your praying
deeper and more effective by being
open and candid with God about what
is happening in your life—especially
the unpleasant stuff. Hezekiah took
Sennacherib’s letter into the Temple,
spread it out, and said, in effect,
“Here, God. Read this!” As we lay out
our problems before God fully and
passionately, we invite God to come
into the situation with his infinite power.
Don’t hide or sugarcoat your pain, fear,
and frustration. God is able to handle
the truth. When we follow Hezekiah’s
pattern of “bad news bared,” we
are real with God and God really
intervenes.