Judah Delivered from Sennacherib

191 And on hearing it, King Hezekiah took off his robe, and put on haircloth, and went into the house of the Lord. 2 And he sent Eliakim, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and the chief priests, dressed in haircloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz. 3 And they said to him, Hezekiah says, This day is a day of trouble and punishment and shame; for the children are ready to come to birth, but there is no strength to give birth to them. 4 It may be that the Lord your God will give ear to the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria, his master, sent to say evil things against the living God, and will make his words come to nothing: so then make your prayer for the rest of the people. 5 So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. 6 And Isaiah said to them, This is what you are to say to your master: The Lord says, Be not troubled by the words which the servants of the king of Assyria have said against me in your hearing. 7 See, I will put a spirit into him, and bad news will come to his ears, and he will go back to his land; and there I will have him put to death by the sword.

8 So the Rab-shakeh went back, and when he got there the king of Assyria was making war against Libnah, for it had come to his ears that he had gone away from Lachish. 9 And when news came to him that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had made an attack on him, he sent representatives to Hezekiah again, saying, 10 This is what you are to say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: Let not your God, in whom is your faith, give you a false hope, saying, Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria. 11 No doubt the story has come to your ears of what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, putting them to the curse; and will you be kept safe? 12 Did the gods of the nations keep safe those on whom my fathers sent destruction, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the town of Sepharvaim, of Hena and of Ivvah? 14 And Hezekiah took the letter from the hands of those who had come with it; and after reading it, Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, opening the letter there before the Lord. 15 And Hezekiah made his prayer to the Lord, saying, O Lord, the God of Israel, seated between the winged ones, you only are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. 16 Let your ear be turned to us, O Lord, and let your eyes be open, O Lord, and see; take note of all the words of Sennacherib who has sent men to say evil against the living God. 17 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have made waste the nations and their lands, 18 And have given their gods to the fire; for they were no gods, but wood and stone, the work of men's hands; so they have given them to destruction. 19 But now, O Lord our God, give us salvation from his hands, so that it may be clear to all the kingdoms of the earth that you and only you, O Lord, are God.

20 Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz, sent to Hezekiah, saying, The Lord, the God of Israel, says, The prayer which you have made to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has come to my ears. 21 This is the word which the Lord has said about him: In the eyes of the virgin daughter of Zion you are shamed and laughed at; the daughter of Jerusalem has made sport of you. 22 Against whom have you said evil and bitter things? against whom has your voice been loud and your eyes lifted up? even against the Holy One of Israel. 23 You have sent your servants with evil words against the Lord, and have said, With all my war-carriages I have come up to the top of the mountains, to the inmost parts of Lebanon; its tall cedars will be cut down, and the best trees of its woods; I will come up into his highest places, into his thick woods. 24 I have made water-holes and taken their waters, and with my foot I have made all the rivers of Egypt dry. 25 Has it not come to your ears how I did it long before, purposing it in times long past? Now I have given effect to my design, so that by you strong towns might be turned into masses of broken walls. 26 This is why their townsmen had no power, they were broken and put to shame; they were like the grass of the field and the green plant, like grass on the house-tops. 27 But I have knowledge of your getting up and your resting, of your going out and your coming in. 28 Because your wrath against me and your words of pride have come up to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my cord in your lips, and I will make you go back by the way you came. 29 And this will be the sign to you: you will get your food this year from what comes up of itself; and in the second year from the produce of the same; and in the third year you will put in your seed and get in the grain and make vine-gardens and take of their fruit. 30 And those of Judah who are still living will again take root in the earth and give fruit. 31 For from Jerusalem those who have been kept safe will go out, and those who are still living will go out of Mount Zion: by the fixed purpose of the Lord of armies this will be done. 32 For this cause the Lord says about the king of Assyria, He will not come into this town, or send an arrow against it; he will not come before it with arms, or put up an earthwork against it; 33 By the way he came he will go back, and he will not get into this town, says the Lord. 34 For I will keep this town safe, for my honour, and for the honour of my servant David.

35 And that night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death in the army of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand men; and when the people got up early in the morning, there was nothing to be seen but dead bodies. 36 So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went back to his place at Nineveh. 37 And it came about, when he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him to death with the sword; and they went in flight into the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon his son became king in his place.

The Reign of Jehoram of Israel

31 And Jehoram, the son of Ahab, became king over Israel in Samaria in the eighteenth year of the rule of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and he was king for twelve years. 2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord; but not like his father and his mother, for he put away the stone pillar of Baal which his father had made. 3 But still he did the same sins which Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, did and made Israel do; he went on in them.

Elisha Predicts Victory over Moab

4 Now Mesha, king of Moab, was a sheep-farmer; and he gave regularly to the king of Israel the wool from a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand sheep. 5 But when Ahab was dead, the king of Moab got free from the authority of the king of Israel.

6 At that time, King Jehoram went out from Samaria and got all Israel together in fighting order. 7 And he sent to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, saying, The king of Moab has got free from my authority: will you go with me to make war on Moab? And he said, I will go with you: I am as you are, my people as your people, and my horses as your horses. 8 And he said, Which way are we to go? And he said in answer, By the waste land of Edom. 9 So the king of Israel went with the king of Judah and the king of Edom by a roundabout way for seven days: and there was no water for the army or for the beasts they had with them. 10 And the king of Israel said, Here is trouble: for the Lord has got these three kings together to give them into the hands of Moab. 11 But Jehoshaphat said, Is there no prophet of the Lord here, through whom we may get directions from the Lord? And one of the king of Israel's men said in answer, Elisha, the son of Shaphat, is here, who was servant to Elijah. 12 And Jehoshaphat said, The word of the Lord is with him. So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him. 13 But Elisha said to the king of Israel, What have I to do with you? go to the prophets of your father and your mother. And the king of Israel said, No; for the Lord has got these three kings together to give them up into the hands of Moab. 14 Then Elisha said, By the life of the Lord of armies whose servant I am, if it was not for the respect I have for Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not give a look at you, or see you. 15 But now, get me a player of music, and it will come about that while the man is playing, the hand of the Lord will come on me and I will give you the word of the Lord: and they got a player of music, and while the man was playing, the hand of the Lord was on him. 16 And he said, The Lord says, I will make this valley full of water-holes. 17 For the Lord says, Though you see no wind or rain, the valley will be full of water, and you and your armies and your beasts will have drink. 18 And this will be only a small thing to the Lord: in addition he will give the Moabites into your hands. 19 And you are to put every walled town to destruction, cutting down every good tree, and stopping up every water-spring, and making all the good land rough with stones.

20 Now in the morning, about the time when the offering was made, they saw water flowing from the direction of Edom till the country was full of water. 21 Now all Moab, hearing that the kings had come to make war against them, got together all who were able to take up arms and went forward to the edge of the country. 22 And early in the morning they got up, when the sun was shining on the water, and they saw the water facing them as red as blood. 23 Then they said, This is blood: it is clear that destruction has come on the kings; they have been fighting one another: now come, Moab, let us take their goods. 24 But when they came to the tents of Israel, the Israelites came out and made a violent attack on the Moabites, so that they went in flight before them; and they went forward still attacking them; 25 Pulling down the towns, covering every good field with stones, stopping up all the water-springs, and cutting down all the good trees; they went on driving Moab before them till only in Kir-hareseth were there any Moabites; and the fighting-men went round the town raining stones on it. 26 And when the king of Moab saw that the fight was going against him, he took with him seven hundred men armed with swords, with the idea of forcing a way through to the king of Aram, but they were not able to do so. 27 Then he took his oldest son, who would have been king after him, offering him as a burned offering on the wall. So there was great wrath against Israel; and they went away from him, back to their country.