The Siege of Jerusalem

Hezekiah king of Judah sent a message to Lachish, where the king of Assyria was: “I have offended you. Pull back from me, and I will pay whatever you ask.” The king of Assyria made Hezekiah pay three hundred talents of silver, about ten tons, and thirty talents of gold, about a ton.

Hezekiah gave him all the silver that could be found in the Lord’s house and in the palace treasuries. At that time he also cut the gold off the doors of the Lord’s temple and off the pillars he had covered with it, and he gave it to the king of Assyria.

When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and meant to fight against Jerusalem, he made a plan with his officials and his mighty men to stop up the water of the springs outside the city, and they helped him do it. A great crowd gathered, and they stopped up all the springs and the brook that flowed through the middle of the land. “Why should the kings of Assyria come,” they said, “and find all the water they want?”

Hezekiah took courage. He rebuilt every broken part of the wall and raised it up to the towers, along with the other wall outside. He strengthened the Millo in David’s city, and he made weapons and shields in great numbers.

He put army commanders over the people and gathered them to him in the wide space at the city gate. Then he spoke to give them courage. “Be strong and brave. Don’t be afraid or lose heart because of the king of Assyria and the huge crowd with him, because there is someone greater with us than with him. He has human strength on his side, but the Lord our God is with us, to help us and to fight our battles.” The people relied on the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.

They called for the king, and out came Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace manager, with Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder.

Rabshakeh said to them, “Give Hezekiah this message from the great king, the king of Assyria: What gives you this confidence? You say you have a plan and the strength for war, but those are empty words. Who are you trusting in, to rebel against me? Look, you are trusting in Egypt. Egypt is a bruised reed, and if a man leans on it like a walking stick, it will go into his hand and pierce it. That is what Pharaoh king of Egypt is to everyone who trusts in him.

“But if you tell me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God,’ isn’t that the God whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away? Hasn’t Hezekiah told Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship in front of this altar in Jerusalem’?

“Go on, make a deal with the king of Assyria, my master, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you have the men to ride them! How then can you drive back even one officer, the least of my master’s servants, when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? And have I come to attack this place and destroy it without the Lord? The Lord himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’”

Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah asked Rabshakeh, “Please speak to us in Aramaic, because we understand it. Don’t speak to us in the Jews’ language where the people on the wall can hear.”

But Rabshakeh answered, “Did my master send me to say these things only to your master and to you? Didn’t he send me to the men sitting on the wall, who will end up eating their own dung and drinking their own urine along with you?”

“Don’t listen to Hezekiah. The king of Assyria says this: Make your peace with me and come out to me, and all of you can eat from your own vines and fig trees and drink water from your own cisterns, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land. It is a land of grain and new wine, of bread and vineyards, of olive trees and honey. Then you will live and not die. Don’t listen when Hezekiah tries to win you over by saying, ‘The Lord will save us.’

“Has the god of any nation ever saved its land from the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah? Did they save Samaria from my hand? Which of all the gods of these countries has saved its country from my hand? So how could the Lord save Jerusalem from my hand?”

2 Chronicles gives Sennacherib’s message more briefly. In it he asks, “Who are you trusting in, to stay shut up in Jerusalem under siege? Isn’t Hezekiah talking you into dying of hunger and thirst by saying, ‘The Lord our God will save us from the king of Assyria’?” It says that Sennacherib’s servants spoke against the Lord God and his servant Hezekiah even more. They shouted in the Jews’ language to the people of Jerusalem on the wall. They wanted to frighten and alarm the people and so take the city. They talked about the God of Jerusalem as if he were no different from the gods of the world’s peoples, gods that human hands had made.

But the people kept quiet. They didn’t say a word back to him, because the king’s order was, “Don’t answer him.”

Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him Rabshakeh’s words.

They told him, “Hezekiah says: Today is a day of trouble, of rebuke and of rejection. The children are ready to be born, but there is no strength to give birth to them. Perhaps the Lord your God will hear everything Rabshakeh has said. His master, the king of Assyria, sent him to defy the living God. Perhaps the Lord your God will rebuke the words he has heard. So pray for the people who are still left.”

So King Hezekiah’s officials came to Isaiah, and Isaiah told them, “Say this to your master: The Lord says, ‘Don’t be afraid of the words you have heard, the words the king of Assyria’s servants have used to insult me. Listen: I will put a spirit in him, and he will hear news and go back to his own land. And in his own land I will have him killed with the sword.’”

Rabshakeh had heard that the king had left Lachish, so he went back and found the king of Assyria at war with Libnah. Then the king of Assyria heard that Tirhakah king of Ethiopia had come out to fight against him, and he sent messengers to Hezekiah once more:

“Say this to Hezekiah king of Judah: Don’t let the God you trust deceive you when he says that Jerusalem won’t fall to the king of Assyria. You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands: they have destroyed them completely. So will you be saved? My ancestors destroyed Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden in Telassar. Did the gods of those nations save them? Where are the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and of Ivvah?”

2 Chronicles says Sennacherib also wrote letters insulting the Lord, the God of Israel, and speaking against him: “The gods of the nations of other lands didn’t save their people from my hand, and the God of Hezekiah won’t save his people from my hand either.”

Then Hezekiah prayed. “Lord, God of Israel, you sit enthroned above the cherubim. You alone are God over every kingdom on earth. You made heaven and earth. Turn your ear, Lord, and listen. Open your eyes, Lord, and look. Hear the words Sennacherib has sent to defy the living God.

“It’s true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have ruined the nations and their lands. They have flung their gods into the fire, because those were no gods at all, only wood and stone, the work of human hands. That is how they could destroy them. So now, Lord our God, save us from his hand, I beg you, so that every kingdom on earth may know that you, Lord, are God alone.”

2 Chronicles says that Hezekiah the king and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, both prayed because of this and cried out to heaven.

“Through your messengers you have defied the Lord. You said, ‘With all my chariots I have climbed the heights of the mountains, to the farthest parts of Lebanon. I will cut down its tall cedars and its finest cypress trees. I will go into its farthest resting place, its fruitful forest. I have dug for water in foreign lands and drunk it, and I will dry up all the rivers of Egypt with the soles of my feet.’

“Haven’t you heard how I did this long ago, how I shaped it in ancient times? Now I have made it happen, so that you could turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins. So their people had little strength. They were frightened and ashamed. They were like grass in the field and green plants, like grass on the rooftops, like grain withered before it has grown. But I know when you sit down, when you go out and when you come in, and how you rage against me.

“This will be your sign. This year you will eat what comes up by itself, and the next year what springs from that. In the third year, sow and reap, and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. The people of Judah who have escaped and are left will again put down roots below and bear fruit above. People who are left will come out of Jerusalem, and survivors out of Mount Zion. The Lord’s zeal will do this.

“So the Lord says this about the king of Assyria: ‘He won’t come to this city or shoot an arrow here. He won’t come before it with a shield or pile up a mound against it. He will return the way he came, and he won’t come to this city,’ says the Lord. ‘I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.’”

2 Chronicles says the Lord sent an angel who destroyed all the brave fighting men, the leaders and the captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. The king went back to his own land in shame.

So Sennacherib king of Assyria left. He went home and stayed at Nineveh. As he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, two of his sons, killed him with the sword and fled into the land of Ararat. His son Esar Haddon became king in his place.

In this way the Lord saved Hezekiah and everyone living in Jerusalem from Sennacherib king of Assyria and from everyone else, and he guided them on every side. Many people brought gifts to Jerusalem for the Lord, and precious things for Hezekiah king of Judah. From then on, all the nations held him in high honor.

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. “Lord, please remember how I have lived in your presence faithfully and with all my heart, and how I have done what is good in your sight.” Then Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Isaiah had not yet gone out into the middle part of the city when the Lord’s word came to him. “Turn back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestor David, says this: I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Look, I will heal you. On the third day you will go up to the Lord’s house. I will add fifteen years to your life. I will save you and this city from the power of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.’”

Then Isaiah said, “Bring a cake of figs.” They brought one and laid it on the boil, and Hezekiah recovered.

Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I will go up to the Lord’s house on the third day?”

Isaiah answered, “This is your sign from the Lord that the Lord will do what he has said: Should the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?”

“It’s easy for the shadow to go forward ten steps,” Hezekiah answered. “No, let the shadow go back ten steps.”

Then the prophet Isaiah cried out to the Lord, and the Lord brought the shadow back ten steps on the sundial of Ahaz, the same steps it had already gone down.

He wrote of waiting patiently until morning, and of saying, “He breaks all my bones like a lion. From day to night you will put an end to me.” He chattered like a swallow or a crane and moaned like a dove, and his eyes grew weak from looking upward. “Lord, I am weighed down,” he prayed. “Keep me safe.” Then: “What will I say? He has both spoken to me and done it himself. I will walk carefully all my years because of the pain in my soul. Lord, people live by these things, and my spirit finds life in all of them. You restore me and make me live.”

He ended: “The Lord will save me. So we will sing my songs with stringed instruments all the days of our life in the Lord’s house.”

Hezekiah had great riches and honor. He built treasuries for silver, for gold, for precious stones, for spices, for shields and for all kinds of valuable things. He built storehouses for grain, new wine and oil, stalls for every kind of animal, and pens for his flocks. He gained cities for himself, and many flocks and herds, because God had given him a great many possessions.

At that time Berodach Baladan, the son of Baladan and king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah, because he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick and had recovered.

Hezekiah was pleased with the messengers and listened to them. He showed them the storehouse of all his precious things: the silver, the gold, the spices and the precious oil, his armory, where his weapons were kept, and everything in his treasuries. In all his palace and all his kingdom there was nothing Hezekiah didn’t show them.

2 Chronicles says that the princes of Babylon sent messengers to ask about the wonder that had been done in the land. When they came, God left Hezekiah, to test him, so that he might know all that was in his heart.

Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah. “What did these men say?” he asked. “Where did they come from?”

“They came from a far country,” said Hezekiah, “from Babylon.”

“What have they seen in your palace?” Isaiah asked.

“They have seen everything in my palace,” Hezekiah answered. “There is nothing among my treasures that I haven’t shown them.”

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord: ‘A time is coming when everything in your palace will be carried off to Babylon, along with everything your ancestors have stored up until today. Nothing will be left,’ says the Lord. ‘They will take away some of your own sons, the sons you will father, and they will be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’”

“The Lord’s word that you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah said to Isaiah. Then he added, “Isn’t it so, if there will be peace and truth while I live?”

2 Chronicles says that Hezekiah also stopped up the upper spring of the waters of Gihon and brought the water straight down to the west side of David’s city. Hezekiah succeeded in all his work.

The rest of what Hezekiah did is written in the records of the kings of Judah: his good deeds and all his strength, and how he made the pool and the channel and brought water into the city. 2 Chronicles adds that it is also written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.

Hezekiah died and joined his ancestors. 2 Chronicles says they buried him on the way up to the tombs of David’s descendants, and all Judah and everyone living in Jerusalem honored him at his death. Manasseh his son became king in his place.