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.
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.'
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.
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.
27 ' 'But I know where you stay and when you come and go and how you rage against me.
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.'
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.
30 Once more a remnant of the house of Judah will take root below and bear fruit above.
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.
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.
33 By the way that he came he will return; he will not enter this city, declares the Lord .
34 I will defend this city and save it, for my sake and for the sake of David my servant.'
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!
36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
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.
20 In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, 'This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.'
2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord ,
3 'Remember, O Lord , how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.' And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him:
5 'Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, 'This is what the Lord , the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord .
6 I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.' '
7 Then Isaiah said, 'Prepare a poultice of figs.' They did so and applied it to the boil, and he recovered.
8 Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, 'What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me and that I will go up to the temple of the Lord on the third day from now?'
9 Isaiah answered, 'This is the Lord 's sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?'
10 'It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps,' said Hezekiah. 'Rather, have it go back ten steps.'
11 Then the prophet Isaiah called upon the Lord , and the Lord made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.
12 At that time Merodach-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah's illness.
13 Hezekiah received the messengers and showed them all that was in his storehouses-the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine oil-his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.
14 Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked, 'What did those men say, and where did they come from?' 'From a distant land,' Hezekiah replied. 'They came from Babylon.'
15 The prophet asked, 'What did they see in your palace?' 'They saw everything in my palace,' Hezekiah said. 'There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.'
16 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, 'Hear the word of the Lord :
17 The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your
