And shall blossom like a rose.a
2It shall blossom abundantly,
It shall also exult and shout.
It shall receive the glory of Lebanon,
The splendor of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall behold the glory of the LORD,
The splendor of our God.
3Strengthen the hands that are slack;
Make firm the tottering knees!
4Say to the anxious of heart,
“Be strong, fear not;
Behold your God!
Requital is coming,
The recompense of God—
He Himself is coming to give you triumph.”
5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
6Then the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the dumb shall shout aloud;
For waters shall burst forth in the desert,
Streams in the wilderness.
7Torrid earth shall become a pool;
Parched land, fountains of water;
The home of jackals, a pasture;b
The abode [of ostriches],c reeds and rushes.
8And a highway shall appear there,
Which shall be called the Sacred Way.
No one unclean shall pass along it,
But it shall be for them.d
e-No traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.-e
9No lion shall be there,
No ferocious beast shall set foot on it—
These shall not be found there.
But the redeemed shall walk it;
10And the ransomed of the LORD shall return,
And come with shouting to Zion,
Crowned with joy everlasting.
They shall attain joy and gladness,
While sorrow and sighing flee.
36 aIn the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, King Sennacherib of Assyria marched against all the fortified towns of Judah and seized them. 2From Lachish, the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh,b with a large force, to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. [The Rabshakeh] took up a position near the conduit of the Upper Pool, by the road of the Fuller’s Field; 3and Eliakim son of Hilkiah who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went out to him.
4The Rabshakeh said to them, “You tell Hezekiah: Thus said the Great King, the king of Assyria: What makes you so confident? 5I supposec mere talk makes counsel and valor for war! Look, on whom are you relying, that you have rebelled against me? 6You are relying on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which enters and punctures the palm of anyone who leans on it. That’s what Pharaoh king of Egypt is like to all who rely on him. 7And if you tell me that you are relying on the LORD your God, He is the very one whose shrines and altars Hezekiah did away with, telling Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship only at this altar!’ 8Come now, make this wager with my master, the king of Assyria: I’ll give you two thousand horses, if you can produce riders to mount them. 9So how could you refuse anything, even to the deputy of one of my master’s lesser servants, relying on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 10And do you think I have marched against this land to destroy it without the LORD? The LORD Himself told me: Go up against that land and destroy it.”
11Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah replied to the Rabshakeh, “Please, speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it; do not speak to us in Judean in the hearing of the people on the wall.” 12But the Rabshakeh replied, “Was it to your master and to you that my master sent me to speak those words? It was precisely to the men who are sitting on the wall—who will have to eat their dung and drink their urine with you.” 13And the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in Judean: 14“Hear the words of the Great King, the king of Assyria! Thus said the king: Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to save you. 15Don’t let Hezekiah make you rely on the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD will surely save us; this city will not fall into the hands of Assyria!’ 16Don’t listen to Hezekiah. For thus said the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me and come out to me,d so that you may all eat from your vines and your fig trees and drink water from your cisterns, 17until I come and take you away to a land like your own, a land of bread and wine, of grain [fields] and vineyards. 18Beware of letting Hezekiah mislead you by say-ing, ‘The LORD will save us.’ Did any of the gods of the other nations save his land from the king of Assyria? 19Where were the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where were the gods of Sepharvaim? And did theye save Samaria from me? 20Which among all the gods of those countries saved their countries from me, that the LORD should save Jerusalem from me?” 21But they were silent and did not answer him with a single word; for the king’s order was: “Do not answer him.”
22And so Eliakim son of Hilkiah who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder came to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and they reported to him what the Rabshakeh had said.
37 When King Hezekiah heard this, he rent his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the House of the LORD. 2He also sent Eliakim, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna, the scribe, and the senior priests, covered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 3They said to him, “Thus said Hezekiah: This day is a day of distress, of chastisement, and of disgrace. a-The babes have reached the birthstool, but the strength to give birth is lacking.-a 4Perhaps the LORD your God will take note of the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to blaspheme the living God, and will mete out judgment for the words that the LORD your God has heard—if you will offer up prayer for the surviving remnant.”
5When King Hezekiah’s ministers came to Isaiah, 6Isaiah said to them, “Tell your master as follows: Thus said the LORD: Do not be frightened by the words of blasphemy against Me that you have heard from the minions of the king of Assyria. 7I will deludeb him: He will hear a rumor and return to his land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his land.”
8The Rabshakeh, meanwhile, heard that [the King] had left Lachish; he turned back and found the king of Assyria attacking Libnah. 9But [the king of Assyria] learned that King Tirhakah of Nubia had come out to fight him; and when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 10“Tell this to King Hezekiah of Judah: Do not let your God, on whom you are relying, mislead you into thinking that Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hands of the king of Assyria. 11You yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, how they have annihilated them; and can you escape? 12Were the nations that my predecessorsc destroyed—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the Bethedenites in Telassar—saved by their gods? 13Where is the king of Hamath? and the king of Arpad? and the kings of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”
14Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Hezekiah then went up to the House of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. 15And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: 16“O LORD of Hosts, enthroned on the Cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. 17O LORD, incline Your ear and hear, open Your eye and see. Hear all the words that Sennacherib has sent to blaspheme the living God! 18True, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have annihilated all the nationsd and their lands 19and have committed their gods to the flames and have destroyed them; for they are not gods, but man’s handwork of wood and stone. 20But now, O LORD our God, deliver us from his hands, and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that You, O LORD, alone [are God].”e
21Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: “Thus said the LORD, the God of Israel, to whom you have prayed, concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria—22this is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him:
Fair Maiden Zion despises you,
She mocks at you;
Fair Jerusalem shakes
Her head at you.
23Whom have you blasphemed and reviled?
Against whom made loud your voice
And haughtily raised your eyes?
Against the Holy One of Israel!
24Through your servants you have blasphemed my Lord.
Because you thought.
‘Thanks to my vast chariotry,
It is I who have climbed the highest mountains,
To the remotest parts of the Lebanon,
And have cut down its loftiest cedars,
Its choicest cypresses,
And have reached its highest peak,
f-Its densest forest.-f
25It is I who have drawng
And drunk water.
I have dried up with the soles of my feet
All the streams of Egypt.’
26Have you not heard? Of old
I planned that very thing,
I designed it long ago,
And now have fulfilled it.
And it has come to pass,
Laying fortified towns waste in desolate heaps.
27Their inhabitants are helpless,
Dismayed and shamed.
They were but grass of the field
And green herbage,
Grass of the roofs h-that is blasted
Before the east wind.-h
28I know your stayings
And your goings and comings,
And how you have raged against Me,
29Because you have raged against Me,
And your tumult has reached My ears,
I will place My hook in your nose
And My bit between your jaws;
And I will make you go back by the road
By which you came.
30“And this is the sign for you:i This year you eat what grows of itself, and the next year what springs from that, and in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 31And the survivors of the House of Judah that
