2 Kings 18:25

⁶Isaiah said to them, “Tell your master this: ‘The LORD says, “Don’t be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

²²Whom have you defied and blasphemed? Against whom have you exalted your voice and lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel! ²³By your messengers, you have defied the Lord, and have said, “With the multitude of my chariots, I have come up to the height of the mountains, to the innermost parts of Lebanon, and I will cut down its tall cedars and its choice cypress trees; and I will enter into his farthest lodging place, the forest of his fruitful field. ²⁴I have dug and drunk strange waters, and I will dry up all the rivers of Egypt with the sole of my feet.” ²⁵Haven’t you heard how I have done it long ago, and formed it of ancient times? Now I have brought it to pass, that it should be yours to lay waste fortified cities into ruinous heaps. ²⁶Therefore their inhabitants had little power. They were dismayed and confounded. They were like the grass of the field and like the green herb, like the grass on the housetops and like grain blasted before it has grown up. ²⁷But I know your sitting down, your going out, your coming in, and your raging against me. ²⁸Because of your raging against me, and because your arrogance has come up into 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 by which you came.’

²⁹“This will be the sign to you: This year, you will eat that which grows of itself, and in the second year that which springs from that; and in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. ³⁰The remnant that has escaped of the house of Judah will again take root downward, and bear fruit upward. ³¹For out of Jerusalem a remnant will go out, and out of Mount Zion those who shall escape. The LORD’s zeal will perform this.

³²“Therefore the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria, ‘He will not come to this city, nor shoot an arrow there. He will not come before it with shield, nor cast up a mound against it. ³³He will return the same way that he came, and he will not come to this city,’ says the LORD. ³⁴‘For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.’”

³⁵That night, the LORD’s angel went out and struck one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. ³⁶So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, went home, and lived at Nineveh. ³⁷As he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. Esar Haddon his son reigned in his place.

⁶Does the trumpet alarm sound in a city, without the people being afraid? Does evil happen to a city, and the LORD hasn’t done it?

¹⁸He said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are; and an angel spoke to me by the LORD’s word, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’” He lied to him.

²¹But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, “What have I to do with you, you king of Judah? I come not against you today, but against the house with which I have war. God has commanded me to make haste. Beware that it is God who is with me, that he not destroy you.”

¹⁰Pilate therefore said to him, “Aren’t you speaking to me? Don’t you know that I have power to release you and have power to crucify you?”

¹¹Jesus answered, “You would have no power at all against me, unless it were given to you from above. Therefore he who delivered me to you has greater sin.”

⁵Alas Assyrian, the rod of my anger, the staff in whose hand is my indignation! ⁶I will send him against a profane nation, and against the people who anger me I will give him a command to take the plunder and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.