Isaiah 37:21-38

English Standard Version

Sennacherib's Fall

²¹Then Isaiah the 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 scorns you—
^(A)the virgin daughter of Zion;
she wags her head behind you—
the daughter of Jerusalem.

²³“‘Whom have you mocked and reviled?
    Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes to the heights?
    Against ^(B)the Holy One of Israel!
²⁴By your servants you have mocked the Lord,
    and you have said, ^(C)With my many chariots
I have gone up the heights of the mountains,
    to the far recesses of Lebanon,
^(D)to cut down its tallest cedars,
    its choicest cypresses,
to come to its remotest height,
    its most fruitful forest.
²⁵I dug wells
    and drank waters,
to dry up with the sole of my foot
    all ^(E)the streams ^(F)of Egypt.

²⁶^(G)“‘Have you not heard
    that I determined it long ago?
I planned from days of old
    what now I bring to pass,
that you should make fortified cities
    crash into heaps of ruins,
²⁷while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,
    are dismayed and confounded,
and have become like plants of the field
    and like tender grass,
like grass on the housetops,
    blighted^[a] before it is grown.

²⁸“‘I know your sitting down
    and your going out and coming in,
    and your raging against me.
²⁹^(H)Because you have raged against me
    and your complacency has come to my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
    and my bit in your mouth,
and ^(I)I will turn you back on the way
    by which you came.’

³⁰“And this shall be the sign for you: this year you shall eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that. Then in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. ³¹And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah ^(J)shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. ³²^(K)For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. ^(L)The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

³³“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there or come before it with a shield or ^(M)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. ³⁵^(N)For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for ^(O)the sake of my servant David.”

³⁶^(P)And the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. ³⁷Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived at ^(Q)Nineveh. ³⁸And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword. And after they escaped into the land of ^(R)Ararat, ^(S)Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.