2 Kings 19-21

Darby Translation

19 And it came to pass when king Hezekiah heard [it], that he rent his garments, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of Jehovah.

² And 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 the son of Amoz.

³ And they said to him, Thus says Hezekiah: This day is a day of trouble and of rebuke and of reviling; for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.

⁴ It may be Jehovah thy God will hear all the words of Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master has sent to reproach the living God; and will rebuke the words which Jehovah thy God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant that is left.

⁵ And the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

⁶ And Isaiah said to them, Thus shall ye say to your master: Thus saith Jehovah: Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

⁷ Behold, I will put a spirit into him, and he shall hear tidings, and shall return to his own land; and I will make him to fall by the sword in his own land.

⁸ And Rab-shakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah; for he had heard that he had departed from Lachish.

⁹ And he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, Behold, he has come forth to make war with thee. And he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying,

¹⁰ Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah saying: Let not thy God, upon whom thou reliest, deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

¹¹ Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all countries, destroying them utterly; and shalt thou be delivered?

¹² Have the gods of the nations which my fathers have destroyed delivered them: Gozan, and Haran, and Rezeph, and the children of Eden that were in Thelassar?

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

¹⁴ And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up into the house of Jehovah, and spread it before Jehovah.

¹⁵ And Hezekiah prayed before Jehovah and said, Jehovah, God of Israel, who sittest [between] the cherubim, thou, the Same, thou alone art the God of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made the heavens and the earth.

¹⁶ Incline thine ear, Jehovah, and hear; open, Jehovah, thine eyes, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, who hath sent him to reproach the living God.

¹⁷ Of a truth, Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands,

¹⁸ and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone; therefore have they destroyed them.

¹⁹ And now, Jehovah our God, I beseech thee, save us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou, Jehovah, art God, thou only.

²⁰ And Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel: That which thou hast prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.

²¹ This is the word that Jehovah has spoken against him: The virgin-daughter of Zion despiseth thee, laugheth thee to scorn; The daughter of Jerusalem shaketh her head at thee.

²² Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted the voice? Against the Holy one of Israel hast thou lifted up thine eyes on high.

²³ By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord, and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots have I come up To the height of the mountain, to the recesses of Lebanon, And I will cut down its tall cedars, the choice of its cypresses; And I will enter into its furthest lodging-place, [into] the forest of its fruitful field.

²⁴ I have digged, and have drunk strange waters, And with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the streams of Matsor.

²⁵ Hast thou not heard long ago that I have done it? And that from ancient days I formed it? Now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest lay waste fortified cities [into] ruinous heaps.

²⁶ And their inhabitants were powerless, They were dismayed and put to shame; They were [as] the growing grass, and [as] the green herb, [As] the grass on the housetops, and grain blighted before it be grown up.

²⁷ But I know thine abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, And thy raging against me.

²⁸ Because thy raging against me and thine arrogance is come up into mine ears, I will put my ring in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, And I will make thee go back by the way by which thou camest.

²⁹ And this [shall be] the sign unto thee: They shall eat this year such as groweth of itself, And in the second year that which springeth of the same; But in the third year sow ye and reap, And plant vineyards and eat the fruit thereof.

³⁰ And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah Shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward;

³¹ For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, And out of mount Zion they that escape: The zeal of Jehovah [of hosts] shall do this.

³² Therefore thus saith Jehovah concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, Nor shoot an arrow there, Nor come before it with shield, Nor cast a bank against it.

³³ By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, And shall not come into this city, saith Jehovah.

³⁴ And I will defend this city, to save it, For mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.

³⁵ And it came to pass that night, that an angel of Jehovah went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead bodies.

³⁶ And Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and abode at Nineveh.

³⁷ And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer [his sons] smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.

20 In those days Hezekiah was sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, Thus saith Jehovah: Set thy house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.

² And he turned his face to the wall, and prayed to Jehovah saying,

³ Ah! Jehovah, remember, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done what is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept much.

⁴ And it came to pass before Isaiah had gone out into the middle city that the word of Jehovah came to him saying,

⁵ Return, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up to the house of Jehovah;

⁶ and I will add to thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.

⁷ And Isaiah said, Take a cake of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.

⁸ And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What [shall be] the sign that Jehovah will heal me, and that I shall go up into the house of Jehovah the third day?

⁹ And Isaiah said, This [shall be] the sign to thee from Jehovah, that Jehovah will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?

¹⁰ And Hezekiah said, It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees: no, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees.

¹¹ And Isaiah the prophet cried to Jehovah, and he brought the shadow back on the degrees by which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward.

¹² At that time Berodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent a letter and a present to Hezekiah, for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.

¹³ And Hezekiah hearkened to them, and shewed them all his treasure-house, the silver and the gold, and the spices and the fine oil, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found among his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah did not shew them.

¹⁴ Then came the prophet Isaiah to king Hezekiah and said to him, What said these men? and from whence came they to thee? And Hezekiah said, They came from a far country, from Babylon.

¹⁵ And he said, What have they seen in thy house? And Hezekiah said, All that is in my house have they seen: there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewn them.

¹⁶ And Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of Jehovah:

¹⁷ Behold, days come that all that is in thy house, and what thy fathers have laid up until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith Jehovah.

¹⁸ And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, whom thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be chamberlains in the palace of the king of Babylon.

¹⁹ And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, Good is the word of Jehovah which thou hast spoken. And he said, Is it not so? if only there shall be peace and truth in my days!

²⁰ And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool and the aqueduct, and brought the water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²¹ And Hezekiah slept with his fathers; and Manasseh his son reigned in his stead.

21 Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign; and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hephzibah.

² And he did evil in the sight of Jehovah, like the abominations of the nations that Jehovah had dispossessed from before the children of Israel.

³ And he built again the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars to Baal and made an Asherah, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them.

⁴ And he built altars in the house of Jehovah, of which Jehovah had said, In Jerusalem will I put my name.

⁵ And he built altars to all the host of heaven in both courts of the house of Jehovah.

⁶ And he caused his son to pass through the fire, and used magic and divination, and appointed necromancers and soothsayers: he wrought evil beyond measure in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke him to anger.

⁷ And he set the graven image of the Asherah that he had made, in the house of which Jehovah had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever;

⁸ neither will I any more cause the foot of Israel to wander away from the land that I gave their fathers; if they will only take heed to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded them.

⁹ But they would not hearken, and Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations that Jehovah had destroyed from before the children of Israel.

¹⁰ And Jehovah spoke by his servants the prophets saying,

¹¹ Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols;

¹² therefore thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.

¹³ And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipeth a pan, wiping it and turning it upside down.

¹⁴ And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies;

¹⁵ because they have done evil in my sight, and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt even to this day.

¹⁶ And Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem [with it] from one end to another; beside his sin with which he made Judah to sin, in doing evil in the sight of Jehovah.

¹⁷ And the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and all that he did, and his sin which he sinned, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

¹⁸ And Manasseh slept with his fathers, and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza; and Amon his son reigned in his stead.

¹⁹ Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to reign; and he reigned two years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Meshullemeth, daughter of Haruz of Jotbah.

²⁰ And he did evil in the sight of Jehovah, as Manasseh his father had done;

²¹ and he walked in all the way that his father had walked in, and served the idols that his father had served, and worshipped them;

²² and he forsook Jehovah the God of his fathers, and walked not in the way of Jehovah.

²³ And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and slew the king in his own house.

²⁴ But the people of the land smote all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.

²⁵ And the rest of the acts of Amon, what he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

²⁶ And he was buried in his sepulchre in the garden of Uzza; and Josiah his son reigned in his stead.