KJ3 Literal Translation
Isaiah 37
Hezekiah, mourning, asks Isaiah to pray for them. Sennacherib sends a blasphemous letter to Hezekiah. Isaiah's prophecy of the pride and destruction of Sennacherib, and the good of Zion. The Angel of Jehovah slays 185,000.
1And it happened when King Hezekiah heard, he tore his garments and was covered with sackcloth. And he went into the house of Jehovah.
2And he sent Eliakim, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
3And they said to him, So says Hezekiah, This day is a day of distress, and reproach, and contempt. For sons have come to the breach and there is no strength to give birth.
4It may be Jehovah your God will hear the words of the chief cupbearer whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God, and rebuke against the words which Jehovah your God has heard. And you shall lift up prayer for the remnant that is found.
5So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
6And Isaiah said to them, You shall say this to your master, So says Jehovah: Do not fear the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.
7Behold, I am giving into him a spirit, and he shall hear a rumor, and return to his own land. And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.
8So the chief cupbearer returned and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah; for he had heard that he had pulled up stakes from Lachish.
9And he heard about Tirhakah the king of Ethiopia, saying, He has come out to fight with you. And he heard and sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,
10So you shall say to Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying, Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the king of Assyria's hand.
11Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, to completely destroy them. And shall you be delivered?
12Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers have destroyed, Gozan and Haran, and Rezeph, and the sons of Eden who were in Telassar?
13Where is Hamath's king, and Arpad's king, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?
14And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the couriers, and read it. And Hezekiah went up to the house of Jehovah and spread it before Jehovah.
15And Hezekiah prayed to Jehovah, saying,
16O Jehovah of Hosts, God of Israel, who dwells between the cherubs, You are He, God, You alone to all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth.
17Stretch out Your ear, O Jehovah, and hear. Open Your eye, O Jehovah, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib which he has sent to reproach the living God.
18Truly, O Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the lands, and their land,
19and have given their gods into the fire (for they were not gods, only the work of men's hands, wood and stone; and they have destroyed them.
20And now, O Jehovah our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are Jehovah, You alone.
21And Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, So says Jehovah, God of Israel, Because you have prayed to Me against Sennacherib the king of Assyria,
22this is the word Jehovah has spoken about him: The virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, mocking you; the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken the head behind you.
23Whom have you reproached and reviled? And against whom have you lifted up your voice, and lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel!
24By the hand of your servants you have reproached the Lord, and said, By my many chariots I have come up to the tops of mountains, the sides of Lebanon, and I cut down its tall cedars, its choice firs; and I will go to heights of its end, the forest of its Carmel.
25I have dug and drunk water; and I have dried up the streams of Egypt with the sole of my feet.
26Have you not heard from afar? I have made it from days of old, even I formed it. Now I have caused it to come, and you are to cause fortified cities to crash into heaps, ruins.
27And those living in them were short of hand, dismayed and ashamed. They were as the field grass and the green herbs; like the grass of the housetops, even blasted before it has risen.
28But I know your sitting down, and your going out, and your coming in, and your raging against Me.
29Because of your raging against Me, and your arrogance has come up to My ears, even I will put My hook in your nose, and My bridle in your lips; and I will turn you back by the way you came in.
30And this shall be the sign to you: You shall eat self-sown grain this year; and the second year, that which springs up; and in the third year you shall sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.
31The escaped of the house of Judah that remains to be a root downward, and it produces fruit upward.
32For a remnant shall go out of Jerusalem, and the escaped out of Mount Zion; the zeal of Jehovah of Hosts shall do this.
33So Jehovah says this to the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, and not come before it with a shield, and not pour out a siege mound on it.
34He shall return by the same way that he came in, and he shall not come into this city, a statement of Jehovah.
35For I will defend over this city to save it, for My own sake, and for My servant David's sake.
36And the Angel of Jehovah went out and struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of Assyria. And they rose early in the morning; and, behold! They were all corpses who died.
37And Sennacherib, king of Assyria, pulled up and went and returned; and he lived in Nineveh.
38And it happened as he was worshiping in the house of his god Nisroch, even his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him with the sword. And they escaped into the land of Ararat. And his son Esar-haddon reigned in his place.
Read Isaiah 37 in the interactive reader with the Hebrew and Greek side by side, audio narration, and the TWOT dictionary.
Open in the reader