14. Then Hezekiah took the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and he went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord.
15. Hezekiah prayed to the Lord saying,
16. "O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.
17. Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to all the words of Sennacherib, who sent them to reproach the living God.
18. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated all the countries and their lands,
19. and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them.
20. Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, Lord, are God."
21. Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent word to Hezekiah, saying, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria,
22. this is the word that the Lord has spoken against him: "She has despised you and mocked you, The virgin daughter of Zion; She has shaken her head behind you, The daughter of Jerusalem!
23. "Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? And against whom have you raised your voice And haughtily lifted up your eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel!
24. "Through your servants you have reproached the Lord, And you have said, 'With my many chariots I came up to the heights of the mountains, To the remotest parts of Lebanon; And I cut down its tall cedars and its choice cypresses. And I will go to its highest peak, its thickest forest.
25. 'I dug wells and drank waters, And with the sole of my feet I dried up All the rivers of Egypt.'
26. "Have you not heard? Long ago I did it, From ancient times I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, That you should turn fortified cities into ruinous heaps.
27. "Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength, They were dismayed and put to shame; They were as the vegetation of the field and as the green herb, As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up.
28. "But I know your sitting down And your going out and your coming in And your raging against Me.
29. "Because of your raging against Me And because your arrogance has come up to My ears, Therefore I will put My hook in your nose And My bridle in your lips, And I will turn you back by the way which you came.
30. "Then this shall be the sign for you: you will eat this year what grows of itself, in the second year what springs from the same, and in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
31. The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.