15 And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said: “O Lord, the God of Israel, oenthroned above the cherubim, pyou are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. 16 qIncline your ear, O Lord, and hear; ropen your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent sto mock the living God. 17 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands 18 and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, tbut the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. 19 So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, uthat all the kingdoms of the earth may know that pyou, O Lord, are God alone.”

Isaiah Prophesies Sennacherib’s Fall

20 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria vI have heard. 21 This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

“She despises you, she scorns you—

wthe virgin daughter of Zion;

she xwags her head behind you—

the daughter of Jerusalem.

22  “Whom have you ymocked and zreviled?

Against whom have you raised your voice

and lifted your eyes to the heights?

Against athe Holy One of Israel!

23  bBy your messengers 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 dLebanon;

I felled its tallest cedars,

its choicest cypresses;

I entered its farthest lodging place,

its most efruitful forest.

24  I dug wells

and drank foreign waters,

and I dried up with the sole of my foot

all the streams fof Egypt.’

25  “Have you not heard

that gI determined it long ago?

I planned from days of old

what hnow I bring to pass,

that you should turn fortified cities

into heaps of ruins,

26  while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,

are dismayed and confounded,

and have become ilike plants of the field

and like tender grass,

like grass on the housetops,

blighted before it is grown.

27  “But I know your sitting down

jand your going out and coming in,

and your raging against me.

28  Because you have raged against me

and your complacency has come into my ears,

I will kput my hook in your nose

and my bit in your mouth,

and lI will turn you back on the way

by which you came.

29 “And this shall be mthe sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. 30 nAnd the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. 31 For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion oa band of survivors. pThe zeal of the Lord will do this.

32 “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 qcast up a siege mound against it. 33 rBy the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. 34 sFor I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake tand for the sake of my servant David.”