Through My Bible Yr 01 – December 30

WELS - Through My Bible on Streams

Through My Bible Yr 01 – December 30

Isaiah 36 – 37

LISTEN HERE

Through My Bible – December 30

Isaiah 36 – 37 (EHV)
https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/tmb-ehv/01-1230db.mp3
See series: Through My Bible

Assyria Threatens Jerusalem

Isaiah 36

¹ Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all of the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. ² The king of Assyria sent his herald ^[1] from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah. A large army was with him. He stood by the water channel from the upper pool on the road to the launderer’s ^[2] field. ³ Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was the palace administrator, Shebna, who was the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, who was the recorder, came out to meet him.

⁴ The herald told them this.

Tell Hezekiah this is what the Great King, the king of Assyria, says.

What makes you so confident? ⁵ Your wisdom and military strength are based on empty promises. Who do you trust, so that you now have rebelled against me? ⁶ Tell me! Are you really trusting in Egypt to be your staff, that splintered reed that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it? That is what happens to anyone who relies on Pharaoh king of Egypt.

⁷ If you say to me that you trust in the Lord your God, isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed? Didn’t Hezekiah tell Judah and Jerusalem to worship at this altar?

⁸ Now then, make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses, if you can find enough riders for them. ⁹ How can you resist even one officer from among the least of my lord’s servants? How can you put your trust in Egypt for chariots and charioteers?

¹⁰ What’s more, have I attacked this land to destroy it without the Lord’s orders? The Lord is the one who said to me, “Go up against this land and destroy it.”

¹¹ Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the herald, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, because we understand it. Do not speak to us in Hebrew, because there are people on the city wall who are listening.”

¹² But the herald replied, “Has my lord sent me only to you and to your lord to speak these words, and not to the men who are sitting on the wall, who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine with you?” ^[3]

¹³ Then the herald stood up and called out in a loud voice in Hebrew. He said:

Listen to the words of the Great King, the king of Assyria! ¹⁴ This is what the king says.

Do not let Hezekiah deceive you! He will not be able to deliver you. ¹⁵ Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord, when he says that the Lord will save you, and that this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.

¹⁶ Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says. Make a peace treaty with me and surrender to me. Each one of you will eat from his own vine, from his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink water from his own cistern, ¹⁷ until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land with grain and sweet wine, a land with bread and vineyards. ¹⁸ Do not let Hezekiah make you think that the Lord will deliver you!

Have any of the gods of the nations kept them from being handed over to the king of Assyria? ¹⁹ Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? ²⁰ Which of the gods of these countries have delivered their country from my hand? Will the Lord really deliver Jerusalem from my hand?

²¹ But the officials remained silent, saying nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, “Do not answer him.”

²² Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was the palace administrator, Shebna, who was the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, who was the recorder, went to Hezekiah with their clothing torn and told him everything the herald had said.

Hezekiah Seeks Isaiah’s Advice

Isaiah 37

¹ When King Hezekiah heard the report, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went into the House of the Lord. ² He sent Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, who were wearing sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.

³ They told him what Hezekiah said: “This is a day of distress, rebuke, and humiliation, because children are about to be born, but there is no strength left to give birth. ⁴ Perhaps the Lord your God will take note of the words of this herald, who was sent by his lord, the king of Assyria, in defiance of the living God, and perhaps the Lord your God will rebuke him for what he has heard. So please, pray for the small group that is left here.”

⁵ When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, ⁶ he said to them, “Tell your master that this is what the Lord says. Do not be afraid of what you have heard. The lackeys ^[4] of the king of Assyria have blasphemed against me. ⁷ Watch! I will put a spirit in him, so that when he hears certain news, he will return to his own land. There I will cause him to be killed.”

⁸ Then the herald went back. He heard that the king of Assyria had already left Lachish and was fighting against Libnah.

⁹ When Sennacherib heard that Tirhakah king of Cush ^[5] had set out to fight against him, he sent messengers to Hezekiah ¹⁰ to say this to Hezekiah king of Judah:

Do not let the God you trust deceive you, saying that Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria. ¹¹ Listen, you yourself have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the other lands, destroying them completely. And you expect to be saved? ¹² Did the gods of the nations whom my fathers destroyed save them—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden, who were in Tel Assar? ¹³ Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the kings of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?

¹⁴ Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. He went up to the House of the Lord and placed it there before the Lord. ¹⁵ Then he prayed to the Lord.

¹⁶ O Lord of Armies, God of Israel, seated above the cherubim, you alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. ¹⁷ Turn your ear toward me, Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, Lord, and see. Listen to all of the words of Sennacherib, who has defied the living God. ¹⁸ It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these lands and their territory. ¹⁹ They have thrown their gods into the fire, for they were not gods at all, but the work of human hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. ²⁰ Now, Lord our God, save us from his power, and let all the kingdoms of the earth know that you are the Lord, and you alone.

The Lord Replies to Hezekiah Through Isaiah

²¹ Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah.

The Lord, the God of Israel, says that because you have prayed to him about Sennacherib king of Assyria, ²² the Lord sends you this reply about him.

The virgin daughter of Zion ^[6] despises you and jeers at you.
The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you in scorn.
²³ Who is it whom you have mocked and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted up your proud eyes?
It is against the Holy One of Israel.
²⁴ You have used your servants to mock the Lord.
You have boasted, “I have driven my many chariots
up the high mountains, to the most remote parts of Lebanon.
I cut down its tallest cedars and its best fir trees.
I have reached its highest peak, its most lush forest.
²⁵ I dug wells and drank their water,
and I dried up all the rivers of Egypt with the soles of my feet.”

²⁶ Have you not heard?
I did all this long ago.
I formed all this in ancient times.
Now I caused it all to take place.
I enabled you to destroy fortified cities,
reducing them to heaps of ruins.
²⁷ Their inhabitants were powerless.
Overwhelmed and ashamed,
they were like plants in the field,
like fresh green grass, like grass on a housetop,
and like a field before it has grown. ^[7]
28 But I know when you stand and when you sit, ^[8]
when you go out and when you come in,
and how you rage wildly against me.
²⁹ Because you rage against me,
and because your arrogance has reached my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth,
and I will make you go back by the same way that you came.

³⁰ This will be a sign for you:

This year you will eat what grows by itself.
Next year you will eat what springs up from that.
But in the third year, you will sow crops and harvest them.
You will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
³¹ The surviving remnant of the house of Judah
will again put down roots below and bear fruit above.
³² For from Jerusalem a remnant will go out,
and survivors from Mount Zion.
The zeal of the Lord of Armies will accomplish this.

³³ This is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:

He will not enter this city.
He will not shoot an arrow there.
He will not advance against it with a shield,
and he will not build a siege ramp against it.
³⁴ He will go back by the same route that he came,
and he will not enter this city, declares the Lord.
³⁵ For I will defend this city to save it,
for my own sake,
and for the sake of my servant David.

The Destruction of Sennacherib

³⁶ Then an angel of the Lord went and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. Early in the morning, there they were—all the dead bodies. ³⁷ Then Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and left. He returned to Nineveh and remained there. ³⁸ One day when Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. They fled to the land of Ararat, ^[9] and his son Esarhaddon became king in his place.

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 36:2 Or chief spokesman. The Hebrew/Assyrian term rab shakeh refers to a high-ranking military officer.
2. Isaiah 36:2 Or washerman’s or wool-cleaner’s
3. Isaiah 36:12 The Hebrew terms for excrement and urine are apparently coarse, because the scribal notes substitute euphemisms for them.
4. Isaiah 37:6 Or junior officers, an insulting term to use for such high-ranking officers
5. Isaiah 37:9 Cush is the ancient name for the territory south of the First Cataract of the Nile River. Called Ethiopia in Roman times, it included most of present-day Sudan and some of present-day Ethiopia. The Cushite or Nubian kings were the pharaohs of Egypt at this time.
6. Isaiah 37:22 Daughter of Zion is a personification of Jerusalem and the people of Judah.
7. Isaiah 37:27 The translation follows the main Hebrew reading of this verse. The parallel text in 2 Kings 19:26 reads scorched before it becomes a full-grown stalk. The Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah reads scorched by the east wind.
8. Isaiah 37:28 The translation follows the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah. The Hebrew does not have when you stand and.
9. Isaiah 37:38 The region of present-day Armenia

The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved.

Share this entry

• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share by Mail
• Link to Flickr
• Link to Instagram
• Link to Vimeo