2 Kings 19

• 1. When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the Temple of the LORD to pray.
• 2. And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the court secretary, and the leading priests, all dressed in sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz.
• 3. They told him, "This is what King Hezekiah says: This is a day of trouble, insult, and disgrace. It is like when a child is ready to be born, but the mother has no strength to deliver it.
• 4. But perhaps the LORD your God has heard the Assyrian representative defying the living God and will punish him for his words. Oh, pray for those of us who are left!"
• 5. After King Hezekiah's officials delivered the king's message to Isaiah,
• 6. the prophet replied, "Say to your master, `This is what the LORD says: Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king's messengers.
• 7. Listen! I myself will move against him, and the king will receive a report from Assyria telling him that he is needed at home. Then I will make him want to return to his land, where I will have him killed with a sword.'"
• 8. Meanwhile, the Assyrian representative left Jerusalem and went to consult his king, who had left Lachish and was attacking Libnah.
• 9. Soon afterward King Sennacherib received word that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was leading an army to fight against him. Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent this message back to Hezekiah in Jerusalem:
• 10. "This message is for King Hezekiah of Judah. Don't let this God you trust deceive you with promises that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria.
• 11. You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone. They have crushed everyone who stood in their way! Why should you be any different?
• 12. Have the gods of other nations rescued them--such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? The former kings of Assyria destroyed them all!
• 13. What happened to the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?"
• 14. After Hezekiah received the letter and read it, he went up to the LORD's Temple and spread it out before the LORD.
• 15. And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the LORD: "O LORD, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth.
• 16. Listen to me, O LORD, and hear! Open your eyes, O LORD, and see! Listen to Sennacherib's words of defiance against the living God.
• 17. "It is true, LORD, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations, just as the message says.
• 18. And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all--only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands.
• 19. Now, O LORD our God, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O LORD, are God."
• 20. Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer about King Sennacherib of Assyria.
• 21. This is the message that the LORD has spoken against him: `The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and laughs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem scoffs and shakes her head as you flee.
• 22. `Whom do you think you have been insulting and ridiculing? Against whom did you raise your voice? At whom did you look in such proud condescension? It was the Holy One of Israel!
• 23. By your messengers you have mocked the Lord. You have said, "With my many chariots I have conquered the highest mountains--yes, the remotest peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars and its choicest cypress trees. I have reached its farthest corners and explored its deepest forests.
• 24. I have dug wells in many a foreign land and refreshed myself with their water. I even stopped up the rivers of Egypt so that my armies could go across!"
• 25. `But have you not heard? It was I, the LORD, who decided this long ago. Long ago I planned what I am now causing to happen, that you should crush fortified cities into heaps of rubble.
• 26. That is why their people have so little power and are such easy prey for you. They are as helpless as the grass, as easily trampled as tender green shoots. They are like grass sprouting on a housetop, easily scorched by the sun.
• 27. `But I know you well--your comings and goings and all you do. I know the way you have raged against me.
• 28. And because of your arrogance against me, which I have heard for myself, I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle in your mouth. I will make you return by the road on which you came.'"
• 29. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Here is the proof that the LORD will protect this city from Assyria's king. This year you will eat only what grows up by itself, and next year you will eat what springs up from that. But in the third year you will plant crops and harvest them; you will tend vineyards and eat their fruit.
• 30. And you who are left in Judah, who have escaped the ravages of the siege, will take root again in your own soil, and you will flourish and multiply.
• 31. For a remnant of my people will spread out from Jerusalem, a group of survivors from Mount Zion. The passion of the LORD Almighty will make this happen!
• 32. "And this is what the LORD says about the king of Assyria: His armies will not enter Jerusalem to shoot their arrows. They will not march outside its gates with their shields and build banks of earth against its walls.
• 33. The king will return to his own country by the road on which he came. He will not enter this city, says the LORD.
• 34. For my own honor and for the sake of my servant David, I will defend it."
• 35. That night the angel of the LORD went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian troops. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere.
• 36. Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there.
• 37. One day while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords. They then escaped to the land of Ararat, and another son, Esarhaddon, became the next king of Assyria.

2 Kings 20

• 1. About that time Hezekiah became deathly ill, and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to visit him. He gave the king this message: "This is what the LORD says: Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die. You will not recover from this illness."
• 2. When Hezekiah heard this, he turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD,
• 3. "Remember, O LORD, how I have always tried to be faithful to you and do what is pleasing in your sight." Then he broke down and wept bitterly.
• 4. But before Isaiah had left the middle courtyard, this message came to him from the LORD:
• 5. "Go back to Hezekiah, the leader of my people. Tell him, `This is what the LORD, the God of your ancestor David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you, and three days from now you will get out of bed and go to the Temple of the LORD.
• 6. I will add fifteen years to your life, and I will rescue you and this city from the king of Assyria. I will do this to defend my honor and for the sake of my servant David.'"
• 7. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah's servants, "Make an ointment from figs and spread it over the boil." They did this, and Hezekiah recovered!
• 8. Meanwhile, Hezekiah had said to Isaiah, "What sign will the LORD give to prove that he will heal me and that I will go to the Temple of the LORD three days from now?"
• 9. Isaiah replied, "This is the sign that the LORD will give you to prove he will do as he promised. Would you like the shadow on the sundial to go forward ten steps or backward ten steps?"
• 10. "The shadow always moves forward," Hezekiah replied. "Make it go backward instead."
• 11. So Isaiah asked the LORD to do this, and he caused the shadow to move ten steps backward on the sundial of Ahaz!
• 12. Soon after this, Merodach-baladan son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent Hezekiah his best wishes and a gift, for he had heard that Hezekiah had been very sick.
• 13. Hezekiah welcomed the Babylonian envoys and showed them everything in his treasure-houses--the silver, the gold, the spices, and the aromatic oils. He also took them to see his armory and showed them all his other treasures--everything! There was nothing in his palace or kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.
• 14. Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked him, "What did those men want? Where were they from?" Hezekiah replied, "They came from the distant land of Babylon."
• 15. "What did they see in your palace?" Isaiah asked. "They saw everything," Hezekiah replied. "I showed them everything I own--all my treasures."
• 16. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Listen to this message from the LORD:
• 17. The time is coming when everything you have--all the treasures stored up by your ancestors--will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD.
• 18. Some of your own descendants will be taken away into exile. They will become eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon's king."
• 19. Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "This message you have given me from the LORD is good." But the king was thinking, "At least there will be peace and security during my lifetime."
• 20. The rest of the events in Hezekiah's reign, including the extent of his power and how he built a pool and dug a tunnel to bring water into the city, are recorded in The Book of the History of the Kings of Judah.
• 21. When Hezekiah died, his son Manasseh became the next king.

2 Kings 21

• 1. Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother was Hephzibah.
• 2. He did what was evil in the LORD's sight, imitating the detestable practices of the pagan nations whom the LORD had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites.
• 3. He rebuilt the pagan shrines his father, Hezekiah, had destroyed. He constructed altars for Baal and set up an Asherah pole, just as King Ahab of Israel had done. He also bowed before all the forces of heaven and worshiped them.
• 4. He even built pagan altars in the Temple of the LORD, the place where the LORD had said his name should be honored.
• 5. He built these altars for all the forces of heaven in both courtyards of the LORD's Temple.
• 6. Manasseh even sacrificed his own son in the fire. He practiced sorcery and divination, and he consulted with mediums and psychics. He did much that was evil in the LORD's sight, arousing his anger.
• 7. Manasseh even took an Asherah pole he had made and set it up in the Temple, the very place where the LORD had told David and his son Solomon: "My name will be honored here forever in this Temple and in Jerusalem--the city I have chosen from among all the other tribes of Israel.
• 8. If the Israelites will obey my commands--the whole law that was given through my servant Moses--I will not send them into exile from this land that I gave their ancestors."
• 9. But the people refused to listen, and Manasseh led them to do even more evil than the pagan nations whom the LORD had destroyed when the Israelites entered the land.
• 10. Then the LORD said through his servants the prophets:
• 11. "King Manasseh of Judah has done many detestable things. He is even more wicked than the Amorites, who lived in this land before Israel. He has led the people of Judah into idolatry.
• 12. So this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I will bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of those who hear about it will tingle with horror.
• 13. I will judge Jerusalem by the same standard I used for Samaria and by the same measure I used for the family of Ahab. I will wipe away the people of Jerusalem as one wipes a dish and turns it upside down.
• 14. Then I will reject even those few of my people who are left, and I will hand them over as plunder for their enemies.
• 15. For they have done great evil in my sight and have angered me ever since their ancestors came out of Egypt."
• 16. Manasseh also murdered many innocent people until Jerusalem was filled from one end to the other with innocent blood. This was in addition to the sin that he caused the people of Judah to commit, leading them to do evil in the LORD's sight.
• 17. The rest of the events in Manasseh's reign and all his deeds, including the sins he committed, are recorded in The Book of the History of the Kings of Judah.
• 18. When Manasseh died, he was buried in the palace garden, the garden of Uzza. Then his son Amon became the next king.
• 19. Amon was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem two years. His mother was Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz from Jotbah.
• 20. He did what was evil in the LORD's sight, just as his father, Manasseh, had done.
• 21. He followed the example of his father, worshiping the same idols that his father had worshiped.
• 22. He abandoned the LORD, the God of his ancestors, and he refused to follow the LORD's ways.
• 23. Then Amon's own servants plotted against him and assassinated him in his palace.
• 24. But the people of the land killed all those who had conspired against King Amon, and they made his son Josiah the next king.
• 25. The rest of the events in Amon's reign and all his deeds are recorded in The Book of the History of the Kings of Judah.
• 26. He was buried in his tomb in the garden of Uzza. Then his son Josiah became the next king.

New Living Translation: 115 of 324 days.