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¹The wilderness and the desert will rejoice, And the desert will shout for joy and blossom; Like the crocus

²It will blossom profusely And rejoice with joy and jubilation. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, The majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the LORD, The majesty of our God.

³Strengthen the exhausted, and make the feeble strong.

⁴Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The retribution of God will come, But He will save you.”

⁵Then the eyes of those who are blind will be opened, And the ears of those who are deaf will be unstopped.

⁶Then those who limp will leap like a deer, And the tongue of those who cannot speak will shout for joy. For waters will burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert.

⁷The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes.

⁸A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for the one who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it.

⁹No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious animal go up on it; They will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there,

¹⁰And the redeemed of the LORD will return And come to Zion with joyful shouting, And everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away.

¹Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria marched against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.

²And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a large army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the road to the fuller’s field.

³Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the secretary, went out to him.

⁴And Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria says: “What is this confidence that you have?

⁵I say, ‘Your plan and strength for the war are only empty words.’ Now on whom have you relied, that you have revolted against me?

⁶Behold, you have relied on the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him.

⁷But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?

⁸Now then, come make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to put riders on them!

⁹How then can you drive back even one official of the least of my master’s servants and rely on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?

¹⁰And have I now come up without the LORD’S approval against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’ ” ’ ”

¹¹Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not speak to us in Judean so that the people who are on the wall hear you.”

¹²But Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”

¹³Then Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in Judean and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!

¹⁴This is what the king says: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to save you;

¹⁵and do not let Hezekiah lead you to rely on the LORD, saying, “The LORD will certainly save us. This city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria!”

¹⁶Do not listen to Hezekiah,’ for this is what the king of Assyria says: ‘Surrender to me and come out to me, and eat, each one, of his vine and each of his fig tree, and each drink of the waters of his own cistern,

¹⁷until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

¹⁸Beware that Hezekiah does not mislead you, saying, “The LORD will save us.” Has any one of the gods of the nations saved his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

¹⁹Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And when have they saved Samaria from my hand?

²⁰Who among all the gods of these lands have saved their land from my hand, that the LORD would save Jerusalem from my hand?’ ”

²¹But they were silent and did not answer him so much as a word; for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.”

²²Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the secretary, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and reported to him the words of Rabshakeh.

¹Now when King Hezekiah heard the report, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and entered the house of the LORD.

²Then he sent Eliakim, who was in charge of the household, with Shebna the scribe and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.

³And they said to him, “This is what Hezekiah says: ‘This day is a day of distress, rebuke, and humiliation; for children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to deliver them.

⁴Perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to taunt the living God, and will avenge the words which the LORD your God has heard. Therefore, offer a prayer for the remnant that is left.’ ”

⁵So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

⁶And Isaiah said to them, “This is what you shall say to your master: ‘This is what the LORD says: “Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.

⁷Behold, I am going to put a spirit in him so that he will hear news and return to his own land. And I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.” ’ ”

⁸Then Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish.

⁹Now he heard them say regarding Tirhakah king of Cush, “He has come out to fight against you,” and when he heard it he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,

¹⁰“This is what you shall say to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by saying, “Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.”

¹¹Behold, you yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, destroying them completely. So will you be saved?

¹²Did the gods of the nations which my fathers destroyed save them: Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?

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

¹⁴Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD.

¹⁵Hezekiah prayed to the LORD, saying,

¹⁶“LORD of armies, God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made heaven and earth.

¹⁷Incline Your ear, LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, LORD, and see; and listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who sent them to taunt the living God.

¹⁸Truly, LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their lands,

¹⁹and have thrown their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but only the work of human hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them.

²⁰But now LORD, our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, LORD, are God.”

²¹Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah, saying, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel says: ‘Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria,

²²this is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: “She has shown contempt for you and derided you, The virgin daughter of Zion; The daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head behind you!

²³Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? And against whom have you raised your voice And haughtily raised your eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel!

²⁴Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, And you have said, ‘With my many chariots I came up to the heights of the mountains, To the remotest parts of Lebanon; And I cut down its tall cedars and its choice junipers. And I will come to its highest peak, its thickest forest.

²⁵I dug wells and drank waters, And with the sole of my feet I dried up All the canals of Egypt.’

²⁶Have you not heard? Long ago I did it, From ancient times I planned it. Now I have brought it about That you would turn fortified cities into ruined heaps.

²⁷Therefore their inhabitants were powerless, They were shattered and put to shame; They were like the vegetation of the field and the green grass, Like grass on the housetops that is scorched before it has grown.

²⁸But I know your sitting down, Your going out, your coming in, And your raging against Me.

²⁹Because of your raging against Me And because your complacency has come up to My ears, I will put My hook in your nose And My bridle in your lips, And I will turn you back by the way that you came.

³⁰“Then this shall be the sign for you: you will eat this year what grows of itself, in the second year what grows from the same, and in the third year sow, harvest, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.

³¹The survivors that are left of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.

³²For out of Jerusalem a remnant will go, and out of Mount Zion survivors. The zeal of the LORD of armies will perform this.” ’

³³“Therefore, this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: ‘He will not come to this city nor shoot an arrow there; and he will not come before it with a shield, nor heap up an assault ramp against it.

³⁴By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he will not come to this city,’ declares the LORD.

³⁵‘For I will protect this city to save it for My own sake, and for My servant David’s sake.’ ”

³⁶Then the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when the rest got up early in the morning, behold, all of the 185,000 were dead.

³⁷So Sennacherib the king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived in Nineveh.

³⁸Then it came about, as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword; and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And his son Esarhaddon became king in his place.