Isaiah 37:24-38 ▼

24 You have mocked the Lord through your servants. You have said, “With my many chariots I have gone up to the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon. I cut down its tallest cedars, its choice cypress trees. I came to its distant heights, its densest forest.

25 I dug wells and drank water in foreign lands. I dried up all the streams of Egypt with the soles of my feet.”

26 Have you not heard? I designed it long ago; I planned it in days gone by. I have now brought it to pass, and you have crushed fortified cities into piles of rubble.

27 Their inhabitants have become powerless, dismayed, and ashamed. They are plants of the field, tender grass, grass on the rooftops, blasted by the east wind.

28 But I know your sitting down, your going out and your coming in, and your raging against me.

29 Because your raging against me and your arrogance have reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth; I will make you go back the way you came.

30 “ ‘This will be the sign for you: This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what grows from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

31 The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.

32 For a remnant will go out from Jerusalem, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of Armies will accomplish this.’

33 “Therefore, this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: He will not enter this city, shoot an arrow here, come before it with a shield, or build up a siege ramp against it.

34 He will go back the way he came, and he will not enter this city. This is the LORD’s declaration.

35 I will defend this city and rescue it for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

36 Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!

37 So King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and left. He returned home and lived in Nineveh.

38 One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. Then his son Esar-haddon became king in his place.