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New International Version |   | |
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| | 2Ki 19:1 | When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the LORD.
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| | 2Ki 19:2 | He sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz.
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| | 2Ki 19:3 | They told him, "This is what Hezekiah says: This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to the point of birth and there is no strength to deliver them.
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| | 2Ki 19:4 | It may be that the LORD your God will hear all the words of the field commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to ridicule the living God, and that he will rebuke him for the words the LORD your God has heard. Therefore pray for the remnant that still survives."
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| | 2Ki 19:5 | When King Hezekiah's officials came to Isaiah,
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| | 2Ki 19:6 | Isaiah said to them, "Tell your master, `This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard--those words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
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| | 2Ki 19:7 | Listen! I am going to put such a spirit in him that when he hears a certain report, he will return to his own country, and there I will have him cut down with the sword.'"
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| | 2Ki 19:8 | When the field commander heard that the king of Assyria had left Lachish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against Libnah.
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| | 2Ki 19:9 | Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the Cushite king [of Egypt], was marching out to fight against him. So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah with this word:
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| | 2Ki 19:10 | "Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, `Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.'
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| | 2Ki 19:11 | Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered?
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| | 2Ki 19:12 | Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my forefathers deliver them: the gods of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph and the people of Eden who were in Tel Assar?
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| | 2Ki 19:13 | Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, or of Hena or Ivvah?"
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| | 2Ki 19:14 | Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD.
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| | 2Ki 19:15 | And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: "O LORD, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.
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| | 2Ki 19:16 | Give ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God.
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| | 2Ki 19:17 | "It is true, O LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands.
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| | 2Ki 19:18 | They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by men's hands.
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| | 2Ki 19:19 | Now, O LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God."
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| | 2Ki 19:20 | Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.
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| | 2Ki 19:21 | This is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: "`The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you. The Daughter of Jerusalem tosses her head as you flee.
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| | 2Ki 19:22 | Who is it you have insulted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!
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| | 2Ki 19:23 | By your messengers you have heaped insults on the Lord. And you have said, "With my many chariots I have ascended the heights of the mountains, the utmost heights of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the choicest of its pines. I have reached its remotest parts, the finest of its forests.
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| | 2Ki 19:24 | I have dug wells in foreign lands and drunk the water there. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt."
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| | 2Ki 19:25 | "`Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass, that you have turned fortified cities into piles of stone.
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| | 2Ki 19:26 | Their people, drained of power, are dismayed and put to shame. They are like plants in the field, like tender green shoots, like grass sprouting on the roof, scorched before it grows up.
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| | 2Ki 19:27 | "`But I know where you stay and when you come and go and how you rage against me.
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| | 2Ki 19:28 | Because you rage against me and your insolence has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came.'
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| | 2Ki 19:29 | "This will be the sign for you, O Hezekiah: "This year you will eat what grows by itself, and the second year what springs from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
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| | 2Ki 19:30 | Once more a remnant of the house of Judah will take root below and bear fruit above.
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| | 2Ki 19:31 | For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.
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| | 2Ki 19:32 | "Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria: "He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before it with shield or build a siege ramp against it.
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| | 2Ki 19:33 | By the way that he came he will return; he will not enter this city, declares the LORD.
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| | 2Ki 19:34 | I will defend this city and save it, for my sake and for the sake of David my servant."
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| | 2Ki 19:35 | That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning--there were all the dead bodies!
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| | 2Ki 19:36 | So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
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| | 2Ki 19:37 | One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.
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