2 Kings 19; 2 Kings 20; 2 Kings 21; John 4:1-30

2 Kings 19

1 When King Hezekiah heard this, he ripped his clothes, covered himself with mourning clothes, and went to the LORD's temple.

2 He sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests to the prophet Isaiah, Amoz's son. They were all wearing mourning clothes.

3 They said to him, "This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of distress, punishment, and humiliation. It's as if children are ready to be born, but there's no strength to see it through.

4 Perhaps the LORD your God has heard all the words of the field commander who was sent by his master, Assyria's king—how he insulted the living God—perhaps God will punish him for the words the LORD your God heard. Send up a prayer for those few people who still survive."

5 When King Hezekiah's servants got to Isaiah,

6 Isaiah said to them, "Say this to your master: ‘This is what the LORD says: Don't be afraid at the words you heard, which the officers of Assyria's king have used to insult me.

7 I'm about to put a spirit in him, so when he hears a rumor, he'll go back to his own country. Then I'll have him cut down by the sword in his own land.'"

8 The field commander heard that the Assyrian king had left Lachish. So he went back to the king and found him attacking Libnah.

9 Then the Assyrian king learned that Cush's King Tirhakah was on his way to fight against him. So he sent messengers to Hezekiah again, saying,

10 "Say this to Judah's King Hezekiah: Don't let the God you trust in persuade you by saying, ‘Jerusalem won't be handed over to the Assyrian king.'

11 You yourself have heard what Assyrian kings do to other countries, wiping them out. Is it likely that you will be saved?

12 Did the gods of the nations destroyed by my fathers—Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, or the people of Eden in Telassar—save them?

13 Where now is Hamath's king, Arpad's king, or the kings of Lair, Sepharvaim, Hena, or Ivvah?"

14 Hezekiah took the letters from the messengers and read them. Then he went to the temple and spread them out before the LORD.

15 Hezekiah prayed to the LORD, saying, "LORD God of Israel, you sit enthroned on the winged creatures. You alone are God over all the earth's kingdoms. You made both heaven and earth.

16 LORD, turn your ear this way and hear! LORD, open your eyes and see! Listen to Sennacherib's words. He sent them to insult the living God!

17 It's true, LORD, that the Assyrian kings have destroyed many nations and their lands.

18 The Assyrians burned the gods of those nations with fire because they aren't real gods. They are only man-made creations of wood and stone. That's how the Assyrians could destroy them.

19 So now, LORD our God, please save us from Sennacherib's power! Then all the earth's kingdoms will know that you, LORD, are the only true God."

20 Then Isaiah, Amoz's son, sent a message to Hezekiah: “This is what the LORD, Israel's God, says: I have heard your prayer about Assyria's King Sennacherib.

21 This is the message that the LORD has spoken against him: The young woman, Daughter Zion, despises you and mocks you; Daughter Jerusalem shakes her head behind your back.

22 Whom did you insult and ridicule? Against whom did you raise your voice and pridefully lift your eyes? It was against the holy one of Israel!

23 You've insulted the Lord with your messengers; you said, ‘I, with my many chariots, have gone up to the highest mountains, to the farthest reaches of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the best of its pine trees. I have reached its most remote lodging place, its best forest.

24 I have dug wells, have drunk waters in foreign lands. With my own feet, I dried up all of Egypt's streams.'

25 Haven't you heard? I set this up long ago; I planned it in the distant past! Now I have made it happen, making fortified cities collapse into piles of rubble.

26 Their citizens have lost their power. They are frightened and ashamed. They've become like plants in a field, tender green shoots, the grass on rooftops, burned up before it matures.

27 I know where you live, how you go out and come in, and how you rage against me.

28 And because you rage against me and because your pride has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose, and my bit in your mouth. I will make you go back the same way you came.

29 “Now this will be the sign for you, Hezekiah: This year you will eat what grows by itself. Next year you will eat what grows from that. But in the third year, sow seed and harvest it; plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

30 The survivors of the house of Judah who have escaped will take root below and bear fruit above.

31 Those who remain will go out from Jerusalem, and those who survive will go out from Mount Zion. The zeal of the LORD of heavenly forces will do this.

32 "Therefore, this is what the LORD says about Assyria's king: He won't enter this city. He won't shoot a single arrow there. He won't come near the city with a shield. He won't build a ramp to besiege it.

33 He will go back by the same way he came. He won't enter this city, declares the LORD.

34 I will defend this city and save it for my sake and for the sake of my servant David."

35 That night the LORD's messenger went out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand soldiers in the Assyrian camp. When people got up the next morning, there were dead bodies everywhere.

36 So Assyria's King Sennacherib departed, returning to Nineveh, where he stayed.

37 Later, while he was worshipping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with a sword. They then escaped to the land of Ararat. His son Esarhaddon succeeded him as king.

2 Kings 20

1 Around that same time, Hezekiah became deathly ill. The prophet Isaiah, Amoz's son, came to him and said, "This is what the LORD says: Put your affairs in order because you are about to die. You won't survive this."

2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying,

3 "Please, LORD, remember how I have walked before you in truth and sincerity. I have done what is right in your eyes." Then Hezekiah cried and cried.

4 Isaiah hadn't even left the middle courtyard of the palace when the LORD's word came to him:

5 Turn around. Say to Hezekiah, my people's leader: This is what the LORD, the God of your ancestor David, says: I have heard your prayer and have seen your tears. So now I'm going to heal you. Three days from now you will be able to go up to the LORD's temple.

6 I will add fifteen years to your life. I will rescue you and this city from the power of the Assyian king. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.

7 Then Isaiah said, "Prepare a bandage made of figs." They did so and put it on the swelling, at which point Hezekiah started getting better.

8 Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "What is the sign that the LORD will heal me and that I'll be able to go up to the LORD's temple in three days?"

9 Isaiah said, "This will be your sign from the LORD that he will make his promise come true: Should the shadow go forward ten steps or back ten steps?"

10 "It's easy for the shadow to go forward ten steps," Hezekiah said, "but not for the shadow to go back ten steps."

11 So the prophet Isaiah called on the LORD, who made the shadow go back ten steps, down the flight of stairs built by Ahaz.

12 At that time Merodach-baladan, son of Babylon's King Baladan, sent messengers to Hezekiah with letters and a gift. This was because he had heard that Hezekiah was sick.

13 Hezekiah granted them an audience and showed them everything in his treasury—the silver, the gold, the spices, and the fine oil. He also showed them his stock of weaponry and everything in his storehouses. There wasn't a single thing in his palace or his whole kingdom that Hezekiah didn't show them.

14 Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah and said to him, "What did these men say? Where have they come from?" Hezekiah said, "They came from a distant country: Babylon."

15 "What have they seen in your palace?" Isaiah asked. "They have seen everything in my palace," Hezekiah answered. "There's not a single thing in my storehouses that I haven't shown them."

16 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Listen to the LORD's word:

17 The days are nearly here when everything in your palace and all that your ancestors collected up to now will be carried off to Babylon. Not a single thing will be left, says the LORD.

18 Some of your children, your very own offspring, will be taken away. They will become eunuchs in the palace of Babylon's king."

19 Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "The LORD's word that you've spoken is good," because he thought: There will be peace and security in my lifetime.

20 The rest of Hezekiah's deeds and all his powerful acts—how he made the pool and the channel and brought water inside the city—aren't they written in the official records of Judah's kings?

21 Hezekiah lay down with his ancestors. His son Manasseh succeeded him as king.

2 Kings 21

1 Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king, and he ruled for fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hephzibah.

2 He did what was evil in the LORD's eyes, imitating the detestable practices of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites.

3 He rebuilt the shrines that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars for Baal, and made a sacred pole, just as Israel's King Ahab had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshipped them.

4 He even built altars in the two courtyards of the LORD's temple—the very place the LORD was speaking of when he said: "I will put my name in Jerusalem."

5 Manasseh built altars for all the stars in the sky in both courtyards of the LORD's temple.

6 He burned his own son alive, consulted sign readers and fortune-tellers, and used mediums and diviners. He did much evil in the LORD's eyes and made him angry.

7 Manasseh set up the carved Asherah image he had made in the temple—the very temple the LORD had spoken about to David and his son Solomon, saying, In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all Israel's tribes, I will put my name forever.

8 I will never again remove Israel from the land I gave to their ancestors, provided they carefully do everything I have commanded them—keeping all the Instruction my servant Moses commanded them.

9 But they wouldn't listen. Manasseh led them into doing even more evil than the nations the LORD had wiped out before the Israelites.

10 The LORD spoke through his servants the prophets:

11 Judah's King Manasseh has done detestable things, things more evil than the Amorites had done before his time. He has caused Judah to sin with his images.

12 Because of this, the LORD, Israel's God, has said: I'm about to bring on Jerusalem and Judah such a great disaster that the ears of anyone who hears about it will ring.

13 I will stretch out over Jerusalem the same line that I used to measured Samaria and the same mason's level that I used on Ahab's family. I will wipe Jerusalem clean the same way someone wipes a plate clean, wiping it clean then turning it facedown.

14 Whatever survives of my inheritance, I'll leave behind, handing them over to their enemies. They will be nothing but plunder and loot for every one of their enemies.

15 This will happen because they have done what is evil in my eyes, making me angry from the day their ancestors left Egypt until this very moment.

16 Manasseh spilled so much innocent blood that he filled up every corner of Jerusalem with it. And this doesn't include the sins he caused Judah to commit so that they did what was evil in the LORD's eyes.

17 The rest of Manasseh's deeds, all that he accomplished, and the sin he committed, aren't they written in the official records of Judah's kings?

18 Manasseh lay down with his ancestors. He was buried in his palace garden, the Uzza Garden. His son Amon succeeded him as king.

19 Amon was 22 years old when he became king, and he ruled for two years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Meshullemeth; she was Haruz's daughter and was from Jotbah.

20 He did what was evil in the LORD's eyes, just as his father Manasseh had done.

21 He walked in all the ways his father had walked. He worshipped the same worthless idols his father had worshipped, bowing down to them.

22 He deserted his ancestors' God, the LORD—he didn't walk in the LORD's way.

23 Amon's officials plotted against him and assassinated the king in his palace.

24 The people of the land then executed all those who had plotted against King Amon and made his son Josiah the next king.

25 The rest of Amon's deeds, aren't they written in the official records of Judah's kings?

26 He was buried in his tomb in the Uzza Garden. His son Josiah succeeded him as king.

John 4:1-30

1 Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was making more disciples and baptizing more than John (

2 although Jesus' disciples were baptizing, not Jesus himself).

3 Therefore, he left Judea and went back to Galilee.

4 Jesus had to go through Samaria.

5 He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, which was near the land Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

6 Jacob's well was there. Jesus was tired from his journey, so he sat down at the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me some water to drink."

8 His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food.

9 The Samaritan woman asked, "Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" (Jews and Samaritans didn't associate with each other.)

10 Jesus responded, "If you recognized God's gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,' you would be asking him and he would give you living water."

11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you don't have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water?

12 You aren't greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock."

13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,

14 but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life."

15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!"

16 Jesus said to her, "Go, get your husband, and come back here."

17 The woman replied, "I don't have a husband." "You are right to say, ‘I don't have a husband,'" Jesus answered.

18 "You've had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn't your husband. You've spoken the truth."

19 The woman said, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet.

20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you and your people say that it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem."

21 Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you and your people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

22 You and your people worship what you don't know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews.

23 But the time is coming—and is here!—when true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth. The Father looks for those who worship him this way.

24 God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth."

25 The woman said, "I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us."

26 Jesus said to her, "I Am—the one who speaks with you."

27 Just then, Jesus' disciples arrived and were shocked that he was talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

28 The woman put down her water jar and went into the city. She said to the people,

29 "Come and see a man who has told me everything I've done! Could this man be the Christ?"

30 They left the city and were on their way to see Jesus.