Isaiah 35–36; 2 Chronicles 28

1The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a rose.

2It will bloom profusely and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.

3Strengthen the limp hands and steady the feeble knees!

4Say to those with anxious hearts: “Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance. With divine retribution He will come to save you.”

5Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

6Then the lame will leap like a deer and the mute tongue will shout for joy. For waters will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.

7The parched ground will become a pool, the thirsty land springs of water. In the haunt where jackals once lay, there will be grass and reeds and papyrus.

8And there will be a highway called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not travel it— only those who walk in the Way— and fools will not stray onto it.

9No lion will be there, and no vicious beast will go up on it. Such will not be found there, but the redeemed will walk upon it.

10So the redeemed of the LORD will return and enter Zion with singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee.

1In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked and captured all the fortified cities of Judah.

2And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh, with a great army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And he stopped by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field.

3Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder, went out to him.

4The Rabshakeh said to them, “Tell Hezekiah that this is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: What is the basis of this confidence of yours?

5You claim to have a strategy and strength for war, but these are empty words. In whom are you now trusting, that you have rebelled against me?

6Look now, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

7But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is He not the One whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship before this altar’?

8Now, therefore, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!

9For how can you repel a single officer among the least of my master’s servants when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?

10So now, was it apart from the LORD that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The LORD Himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’”

11Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”

12But the Rabshakeh replied, “Has my master sent me to speak these words only to you and your master, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”

13Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew: “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!

14This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he cannot deliver you.

15Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’

16Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree, and drink water from his own cistern,

17until I come and take you away to a land like your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

18Do not let Hezekiah mislead you when he says, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’ Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand?

20Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his land from my hand? How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”

21But the people remained silent and did not answer a word, for Hezekiah had commanded, “Do not answer him.”

22Then Hilkiah’s son Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and Asaph’s son Joah the recorder came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and they relayed to him the words of the Rabshakeh.

1Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. And unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD.

2Instead, he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even made cast images of the Baals.

3Moreover, Ahaz burned incense in the Valley of Ben-hinnom and sacrificed his sons in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations that the LORD had driven out before the Israelites.

4And he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.

5So the LORD his God delivered Ahaz into the hand of the king of Aram, who attacked him and took many captives to Damascus. Ahaz was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with great force.

6For in one day Pekah son of Remaliah killed 120,000 valiant men in Judah. This happened because they had forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers.

7Zichri, a mighty man of Ephraim, killed Maaseiah the son of the king, Azrikam the governor of the palace, and Elkanah the second to the king.

8Then the Israelites took 200,000 captives from their kinsmen—women, sons, and daughters. They also carried off a great deal of plunder and brought it to Samaria.

9But a prophet of the LORD named Oded was there, and he went out to meet the army that returned to Samaria. “Look,” he said to them, “because of His wrath against Judah, the LORD, the God of your fathers, has delivered them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches up to heaven.

10And now you intend to reduce to slavery the men and women of Judah and Jerusalem. But are you not also guilty before the LORD your God?

11Now therefore, listen to me and return the captives you took from your kinsmen, for the fierce anger of the LORD is upon you.”

12Then some of the leaders of the Ephraimites —Azariah son of Jehohanan, Berechiah son of Meshillemoth, Jehizkiah son of Shallum, and Amasa son of Hadlai—stood in opposition to those arriving from the war.

13“You must not bring the captives here,” they said, “for you are proposing to bring guilt upon us from the LORD and to add to our sins and our guilt. For our guilt is great, and fierce anger is upon Israel.”

14So the armed men left the captives and the plunder before the leaders and all the assembly.

15Then the men who were designated by name arose, took charge of the captives, and provided from the plunder clothing for the naked. They clothed them, gave them sandals and food and drink, anointed their wounds, and put all the feeble on donkeys. So they brought them to Jericho, the City of Palms, to their brothers. Then they returned to Samaria.

16At that time King Ahaz sent for help from the king of Assyria.

17The Edomites had again come and attacked Judah and carried away captives.

18The Philistines had also raided the cities of the foothills and the Negev of Judah, capturing and occupying Beth-shemesh, Aijalon, and Gederoth, as well as Soco, Timnah, and Gimzo with their villages.

19For the LORD humbled Judah because Ahaz king of Israel had thrown off restraint in Judah and had been most unfaithful to the LORD.

20Then Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came to Ahaz but afflicted him rather than strengthening him.

21Although Ahaz had taken a portion from the house of the LORD, from the royal palace, and from the princes and had presented it to the king of Assyria, it did not help him.

22In the time of his distress, King Ahaz became even more unfaithful to the LORD.

23He sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him, and he said, “Because the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But these gods were the downfall of Ahaz and of all Israel.

24Then Ahaz gathered up the articles of the house of God, cut them into pieces, shut the doors of the house of the LORD, and set up altars of his own on every street corner in Jerusalem.

25In every city of Judah he built high places to offer incense to other gods, and so he provoked the LORD, the God of his fathers.

26As for the rest of the acts of Ahaz and all his ways, from beginning to end, they are indeed written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel.

27And Ahaz rested with his fathers and was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel. And his son Hezekiah reigned in his place.