And when King Hezekiah heard, he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of Jehovah.

And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe and the elders of the priests, who had covered themselves with sackcloth, to  ¹Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.

And they said to him, Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of affliction and rebuke and contempt, for children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth.

It may be that Jehovah your God will hear all the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which Jehovah your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant which is left.

So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

And Isaiah said to them, Thus shall you say to your master, Thus says Jehovah, Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.

Indeed, I will put a spirit in him, so that he will hear a report and return to his land. And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.

And the Rab-shakeh returned and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, because he had heard that the king had departed from Lachish.

And he heard a report about Tirhakah the king of Ethiopia, which said, He has now come forth to make war with you. And he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying,

Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah the king of Judah, saying, Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.

Indeed, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. And will you be delivered?

Have the gods of the nations whom my fathers have destroyed delivered them: Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden, who were in Telassar?

Where are the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena and Ivvah?

And Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and Hezekiah went up to the house of Jehovah and spread it before Jehovah.

And Hezekiah prayed before Jehovah and said, O Jehovah, God of Israel, You who are enthroned between the cherubim, You alone are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth; You made the heavens and the earth.

Incline Your ear, O Jehovah, and hear; open Your eyes, O Jehovah, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, who has sent him to reproach the living God.

Truly, O Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands,

And have cast their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone; so they destroyed them.

And now, O Jehovah our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Jehovah, are God.

Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah, saying, Thus says Jehovah the God of Israel, Because you have prayed to Me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard.

This is the word which Jehovah has spoken concerning him:
The virgin daughter of Zion
Has despised you and laughed at you;
The daughter of Jerusalem
Has shaken her head behind you.

Whom have you reproached and reviled?
Against whom have you lifted up your voice
And lifted up your eyes haughtily?
Against the Holy One of Israel.

By your messengers you have reproached the Lord,
And you have said, In the multitude of my chariots
I have come up to the height of the mountains,
To the sides of Lebanon;
And I have cut down its tall cedars,
And the choicest of its cypresses;
And I have entered into its farthest lodging place,
And its luxuriant forest.

I have dug
And have drunk foreign waters,
And with the sole of my feet I have dried up
All the rivers of  ¹Egypt.

Have you not heard
That long ago I did it
And that from the days of old I had formed it?
Now I have brought it to pass,
That you should destroy fortified cities
And make them into ruinous heaps.

Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength;
They were dismayed and felt ashamed;
They were like vegetation of the field
And green shoots of tender grass,
Like grass which grows on the housetops
And is scorched before it has grown up.

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

Because your raging against Me
And your arrogance have come up into My ears,
I will put My hook in your nose,
And My bridle in your lips;
And I will turn you back on the way by which you came.

And this shall be the sign to you: This year you shall eat that which grows up of itself, and in the second year that which shoots up from the same, and in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

And the remnant of those who have escaped of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.

For a remnant will go forth out of Jerusalem, and from Mount Zion those who have escaped. The zeal of Jehovah  ¹of hosts will perform this.

Therefore thus says Jehovah concerning the king of Assyria,
He shall not come to this city,
Nor shoot an arrow there;
Neither shall he come against it with a shield
And build up a mound against it.

By the way on which he came,
By the same shall he return,
And into this city he shall not come,
Declares Jehovah.

And around this city I will put an enclosure,
To save it,
For My own sake,
And for the sake of David, My servant.

And that night an angel of Jehovah went out and struck the Assyrians' camp, a hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when they rose up early in the morning, all of them were corpses, dead.

Then Sennacherib the king of Assyria departed and went back to dwell in Nineveh.

And as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer  ¹his sons struck him down with the sword; and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.

In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill; and Isaiah the son of Amoz, the prophet, came to him and said to him, Thus says Jehovah, Put your house in order, for you are about to die and will not live.

And he turned his face to the wall and prayed to Jehovah, saying,

Now, O Jehovah, please remember how I have walked before You in truth and with a perfect heart and have done what is good in Your sight. And Hezekiah wept many tears.

And Isaiah had not gone out of the middle  ¹court when the word of Jehovah came to him, saying,

Return and speak to Hezekiah the leader of My people, Thus says Jehovah, the God of David your father, I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. I will now heal you: On the third day you will go up to the house of Jehovah;

And I will add to your life fifteen years; and I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will put an enclosure around this city for My own sake and for the sake of David My servant.

And Isaiah said, Bring a cake of figs. And they brought it and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.

And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What will be the sign that Jehovah will heal me and that I will go up to the house of Jehovah on the third day?

And Isaiah said, This will be the sign from Jehovah to you, that Jehovah will do this thing which He has spoken. Shall the shadow go forward ten steps or go back ten steps?

And Hezekiah said, It is an easy matter for the shadow to go down ten steps. No; rather let the shadow go backward ten steps.

And Isaiah the prophet cried to Jehovah; and He brought the shadow on the steps, which had descended on the steps of Ahaz, ten steps backward.

At that time  ¹Berodach-baladan the son of Baladan, the king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, because he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.

And Hezekiah listened to them and showed them all his treasury, the silver and the gold, and the spices and the fine oil, and his armory and everything which was found among his treasures; there was nothing in his house or in all his dominion that Hezekiah did not show them.

Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say? And from where have they come to you? And Hezekiah said, They have come from a distant land, from Babylon.

And he said, What have they seen in your house? And Hezekiah said, They have seen everything that is in my house; there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shown them.

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of Jehovah:

The days are now coming when everything that is in your house and that your fathers have laid up as a treasure unto this day will be carried away to Babylon; nothing will be left, says Jehovah.

And they will take away some of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, The word of Jehovah which you have spoken is good. He said moreover, Indeed there will be peace and truth in my days.

And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might, and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought the water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

And Hezekiah slept with his fathers.

And Manasseh his son reigned in his place.

Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hephzibah.

And he did what was evil in the sight of Jehovah, like the abominations of the nations whom Jehovah had dispossessed from before the children of Israel.

And he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he raised up altars to Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab the king of Israel had done; and he worshipped all the host of heaven and served them.

And he built altars in the house of Jehovah, concerning which Jehovah had said, In Jerusalem will I put My name.

And he built altars to all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of Jehovah.

And he caused his son to pass through fire and practiced soothsaying and enchantments, and appointed mediums and spiritists; he did what was evil in the sight of Jehovah beyond measure, provoking Him to anger.

And he put the engraved image of the Asherah that he had made in that house concerning which Jehovah had said to David and to Solomon his son, In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My name forever;

And I will no longer cause the foot of Israel to wander away from the land that I gave their fathers, if only they will be certain to act according to all that I have commanded them and according to all the law that My servant Moses commanded them.

But they would not listen, and Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations which Jehovah had destroyed from before the children of Israel.

And Jehovah spoke through His servants the prophets, saying,

Because  ¹Manasseh the king of Judah has done these abominations and has done more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has caused Judah also to sin with his idols;

Therefore thus says Jehovah the God of Israel, I am now bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah that both ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.

And over Jerusalem I will stretch the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a pan, wiping it and turning it upside down.

And I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies, and they will become plunder and spoil to all their enemies;

Because they have done what is evil in My sight and have provoked Me to anger since the day their fathers came forth out of Egypt even to this day.

And Manasseh also shed very much innocent blood, until he filled Jerusalem with it from one end to another, besides his sin by which he caused Judah to sin, doing what was evil in the sight of Jehovah.

And the rest of the acts of Manasseh and all that he did and his sin which he committed, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

And Manasseh slept with his fathers and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the garden of Uzza.

And Amon his son reigned in his place.

Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Meshullemeth, the daughter of Haruz of Jotbah.

And he did what was evil in the sight of Jehovah, as Manasseh his father had done.

And he walked in all the way that his father had walked, and he served the idols that his father had served and worshipped them;

And he forsook Jehovah, the God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of Jehovah.

And the servants of Amon conspired against him, and they killed the king in his own house.

But the people of the land struck down all those who had conspired against King Amon. And the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his place.

And the rest of the acts of Amon that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?