16
Incline, O LORD, thy ear and hear; open, O LORD, thine eyes and see and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.
17
Of a truth, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the Gentiles and their lands
18
and have cast their gods into the fire, for they
were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood or stone; therefore, they have destroyed them.
19
Now, therefore, O LORD our God, I beseech thee, save us now out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou alone
art the LORD God.
20
Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz, sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus hath the LORD God of Israel said,
That which thou hast prayed to me regarding Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.
21
This
is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: Has he despised thee? Has he laughed thee to scorn, O virgin daughter of Zion? He has moved his head behind thy back, O daughter of Jerusalem.
22
Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted
thy voice and lifted up thine eyes on high? Against the Holy
One of Israel.
23
By the hand of thy messengers, thou hast reproached the Lord and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots I have come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof
and the choice fir trees thereof; and I will enter into the habitation of his borders
and into the forest of his Carmel.
24
I have dug and drunk the waters of others, and with the sole of my feet I have dried up all the rivers of defended places.
25
Hast thou never heard that from a long time
ago I made her,
and from ancient times I have formed her? Now I have made her come, and it shall be to lay waste fenced cities
into ruinous heaps.
26
Therefore their inhabitants’ hands were too short; dismayed and confounded, they shall be
as the grass of the field and
as the green herb,
as the hay on the housetops, that is dried up before it comes to maturity.