The Living Bible (228 page)
Authors: Inc. Tyndale House Publishers
Tags: #BIBLES / Other Translations / Text
Even the wilderness and desert will rejoice in those days; the desert will blossom with flowers.
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Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! The deserts will become as green as the Lebanon mountains, as lovely as Mount Carmel’s pastures and Sharon’s meadows; for the Lord will display his glory there, the excellency of our God.
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With this news bring cheer to all discouraged ones.
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Encourage those who are afraid. Tell them, “Be strong, fear not, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you.”
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And when he comes, he will open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf.
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The lame man will leap up like a deer, and those who could not speak will shout and sing! Springs will burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.
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The parched ground will become a pool, with springs of water in the thirsty land. Where desert jackals lived, there will be reeds and rushes!
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And a main road will go through that once-deserted land; it will be named “The Holy Highway.” No evil-hearted men may walk upon it. God will walk there with you; even the most stupid cannot miss the way.
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No lion will lurk along its course, nor will there be any other dangers; only the redeemed will travel there.
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These, the ransomed of the Lord, will go home along that road to Zion, singing the songs of everlasting joy. For them all sorrow and all sighing will be gone forever; only joy and gladness will be there.
So in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came to fight against the walled cities of Judah and conquered them.
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Then he sent his personal representative with a great army from Lachish to confer with King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. He camped near the outlet of the upper pool, along the road going past the field where cloth is bleached.
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Then Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son, who was the prime minister of Israel, and Shebna, the king’s scribe, and Joah, Asaph’s son, the royal secretary, formed a truce team and went out of the city to meet with him.
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The Assyrian ambassador told them to go and say to Hezekiah, “The mighty king of Assyria says you are a fool to think that the king of Egypt will help you.
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What are the Pharaoh’s promises worth? Mere words won’t substitute for strength, yet you rely on him for help and have rebelled against me!
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Egypt is a dangerous ally. She is a sharpened stick that will pierce your hand if you lean on it. That is the experience of everyone who has ever looked to her for help.
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But perhaps you say, ‘We are trusting in the Lord our God!’ Oh? Isn’t he the one your king insulted, tearing down his temples and altars in the hills and making everyone in Judah worship only at the altars here in Jerusalem?
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My master, the king of Assyria, wants to make a little bet with you!—that you don’t have 2,000 men left in your entire army! If you do, he will give you 2,000 horses for them to ride on! With that tiny army, how can you think of proceeding against even the smallest and worst contingent of my master’s troops? For you’ll get no help from Egypt.
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What’s more, do you think I have come here without the Lord’s telling me to take this land? The Lord said to me, ‘Go and destroy it!’”
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Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to him, “Please talk to us in Aramaic,
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for we understand it quite well. Don’t speak in Hebrew, for the people on the wall will hear.”
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But he replied, “My master wants everyone in Jerusalem to hear this, not just you. He wants them to know that if you don’t surrender, this city will be put under siege until everyone is so hungry and thirsty that he will eat his own dung and drink his own urine.”
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Then he shouted in Hebrew to the Jews listening on the wall, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria:
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“Don’t let Hezekiah fool you—nothing he can do will save you.
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Don’t let him talk you into trusting in the Lord by telling you the Lord won’t let you be conquered by the king of Assyria.
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Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for here is the king of Assyria’s offer to you: Give me a present as a token of surrender; open the gates and come out, and I will let you each have your own farm and garden and water,
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until I can arrange to take you to a country very similar to this one—a country where there are bountiful harvests of grain and grapes, a land of plenty.
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Don’t let Hezekiah deprive you of all this by saying the Lord will deliver you from my armies. Have any other nation’s gods ever gained victory over the armies of the king of Assyria?
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Don’t you remember what I did to Hamath and Arpad? Did their gods save them? And what about Sepharvaim and Samaria? Where are their gods now?
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Of all the gods of these lands, which one has ever delivered their people from my power? Name just one! And do you think this God of yours can deliver Jerusalem from me? Don’t be ridiculous!”
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But the people were silent and answered not a word, for Hezekiah had told them to say nothing in reply.
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Then Eliakim (son of Hilkiah), the prime minister, and Shebna, the royal scribe, and Joah (son of Asaph), the royal secretary, went back to Hezekiah with clothes ripped to shreds as a sign of their despair and told him all that had happened.
When King Hezekiah heard the results of the meeting, he tore his robes and wound himself in coarse cloth used for making sacks, as a sign of humility and mourning, and went over to the Temple to pray.
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Meanwhile he sent Eliakim his prime minister, and Shebna his royal scribe, and the older priests—all dressed in sackcloth—to Isaiah the prophet, son of Amoz.
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They brought him this message from Hezekiah:
“This is a day of trouble and frustration and blasphemy; it is a serious time, as when a woman is in heavy labor trying to give birth and the child does not come.
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But perhaps the Lord your God heard the blasphemy of the king of Assyria’s representative as he scoffed at the living God. Surely God won’t let him get away with this. Surely God will rebuke him for those words. Oh, Isaiah, pray for us who are left!”
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So they took the king’s message to Isaiah.
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Then Isaiah replied, “Tell King Hezekiah that the Lord says: Don’t be disturbed by this speech from the servant of the king of Assyria and his blasphemy.
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For a report from Assyria will reach the king that he is needed at home at once, and he will return to his own land, where I will have him killed.”
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Now the Assyrian envoy left Jerusalem and went to consult his king, who had left Lachish and was besieging Libnah. But at this point the Assyrian king received word that Tirhakah, crown prince of Ethiopia, was leading an army against him from the south.
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Upon hearing this, he sent messengers back to Jerusalem to Hezekiah with this message:
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“Don’t let this God you trust in fool you by promising that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria!
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Just remember what has happened wherever the kings of Assyria have gone, for they have crushed everyone who has opposed them. Do you think you will be any different?
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Did their gods save the cities of Gozan, Haran, or Rezeph, or the people of Eden in Telassar? No, the Assyrian kings completely destroyed them!
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And don’t forget what happened to the king of Hamath, to the king of Arpad, and to the kings of the cities of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah.”
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As soon as King Hezekiah had read this letter, he went over to the Temple and spread it out before the Lord
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and prayed, saying,
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“O Lord, Almighty God of Israel enthroned between the Guardian Angels,
you alone
are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone made heaven and earth. Listen as I plead; see me as I pray. Look at this letter from King Sennacherib, for he has mocked the living God.
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It is true, O Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all those nations, just as the letter says,
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and thrown their gods into the fire; for they weren’t gods at all but merely idols, carved by men from wood and stone. Of course the Assyrians could destroy them.
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O Lord our God, save us so that all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you are God, and you alone.”
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Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz, sent this message to King Hezekiah: “The Lord God of Israel says: This is my answer to your prayer against Sennacherib, Assyria’s king.
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“The Lord says to him: My people—the helpless virgin daughter of Zion—laughs at you and scoffs and shakes her head at you in scorn.
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Who is it you scoffed against and mocked? Whom did you revile? At whom did you direct your violence and pride? It was against the Holy One of Israel!
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You have sent your messengers to mock the Lord. You boast, ‘I came with my mighty army against the nations of the west. I cut down the tallest cedars and choicest cypress trees. I conquered their highest mountains and destroyed their thickest forests.’
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“You boast of wells you’ve dug in many a conquered land, and Egypt with all its armies is no obstacle to you!
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But do you not yet know that it was I who decided all this long ago? That it was I who gave you all this power from ancient times? I have caused all this to happen as I planned—that you should crush walled cities into ruined heaps.
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That’s why their people had so little power and were such easy prey for you. They were as helpless as the grass, as tender plants you trample down beneath your feet, as grass upon the housetops, burnt yellow by the sun.
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But I know you well—your comings and goings and all you do—and the way you have raged against me.
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Because of your anger against the Lord—and I heard it all!—I have put a hook in your nose and a bit in your mouth and led you back to your own land by the same road you came.”
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Then God said to Hezekiah, “Here is the proof that I am the one who is delivering this city from the king of Assyria: This year
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he will abandon his siege. Although it is too late now to plant your crops, and you will have only volunteer grain this fall, still it will give you enough seed for a small harvest next year, and two years from now you will be living in luxury again.
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And you who are left in Judah will take root again in your own soil and flourish and multiply.
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For a remnant shall go out from Jerusalem to repopulate the land; the power of the Lord Almighty will cause all this to come to pass.
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“As for the king of Assyria, his armies shall not enter Jerusalem, nor shoot their arrows there, nor march outside its gates, nor build up an earthen bank against its walls.
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He will return to his own country by the road he came on and will not enter this city, says the Lord.
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For my own honor I will defend it and in memory of my servant David.”
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That night the Angel of the Lord went out to the camp of the Assyrians and killed 185,000 soldiers; when the living wakened the next morning, all these lay dead before them.
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Then Sennacherib, king of Assyria, returned to his own country, to Nineveh.
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And one day while he was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch his god, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords; then they escaped into the land of Ararat, and Esar-haddon his son became king.