2 Kings 19:4

¹²It may be that the LORD will look on the wrong done to me, and that the LORD will repay me good for the cursing of me today.”

¹⁶Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. ¹⁷Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn’t rain on the earth for three years and six months.

²⁷Isaiah cries concerning Israel, “If the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant who will be saved;

³⁷“‘The Lord GOD says: “For this, moreover, I will be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them: I will increase them with men like a flock.

¹²Now therefore give me this hill country, of which the LORD spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the Anakim were there, and great and fortified cities. It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall drive them out, as the LORD said.”

¹⁷The king of Assyria sent Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a great army to Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they had come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller’s field. ¹⁸When they had called to the king, Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder came out to them. ¹⁹Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘The great king, the king of Assyria, says, “What confidence is this in which you trust? ²⁰You say (but they are but vain words), ‘There is counsel and strength for war.’ Now on whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me? ²¹Now, behold, you trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even in Egypt. If a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust on him. ²²But if you tell me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ isn’t that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’? ²³Now therefore, please give pledges to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses if you are able on your part to set riders on them. ²⁴How then can you turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put your trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? ²⁵Have I now come up without the LORD against this place to destroy it? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’”’”

²⁶Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, Shebnah, and Joah, said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in the Syrian language, for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Jews’ language, in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”

²⁷But Rabshakeh said to them, “Has my master sent me to your master and to you, to speak these words? Hasn’t he sent me to the men who sit on the wall, to eat their own dung, and to drink their own urine with you?”

²⁸Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and spoke, saying, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. ²⁹The king says, ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of his hand. ³⁰Don’t let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” ³¹Don’t listen to Hezekiah.’ For the king of Assyria says, ‘Make your peace with me, and come out to me; and everyone of you eat from his own vine, and everyone from his own fig tree, and everyone drink water from his own cistern; ³²until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and of honey, that you may live and not die. Don’t listen to Hezekiah when he persuades you, saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” ³³Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? ³⁴Where are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? ³⁵Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’”

¹⁸Remember this, that the enemy has mocked you, LORD. Foolish people have blasphemed your name.

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!

⁵Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. ⁶In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

³⁶For the LORD will judge his people, and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone, that there is no one remaining, shut up or left at large.