II Kings 16-20

II Kings 16

¹In the seventeenth year of Pekah, the son of Remaliah, Ahaz, the son of Jotham, became king of Judah.

²Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king; he was ruling for sixteen years in Jerusalem. He did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as David his father did.

³But he went in the ways of the kings of Israel, and even made his son go through the fire, copying the disgusting ways of the nations whom the Lord had sent out of the land before the children of Israel.

⁴And he made offerings, burning them in the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

⁵Then Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to make war; and they made an attack on Ahaz, shutting him in, but were not able to overcome him.

⁶At that time the king of Edom got Elath back for Edom, and sent the Jews out of Elath; and the Edomites came back to Elath where they are living to this day.

⁷So Ahaz sent representatives to Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son; come to my help against the kings of Aram and Israel who have taken up arms against me.

⁸And Ahaz took the silver and gold which were in the house of the Lord and in the king's store-house, and sent them as an offering to the king of Assyria.

⁹And the king of Assyria, in answer to his request, went up against Damascus and took it, and took its people away as prisoners to Kir, and put Rezin to death.

¹⁰Then King Ahaz went to Damascus for a meeting with Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria; and there he saw the altar which was at Damascus; and King Ahaz sent to Urijah the priest a copy of the altar, giving the design of it and all the details of its structure.

¹¹And from the copy King Ahaz sent from Damascus, Urijah made an altar and had it ready by the time King Ahaz came back from Damascus.

¹²And when the king came from Damascus, he saw the altar; and he went up on it and made an offering on it.

¹³He made his burned offering and his meal offering and his drink offering there, draining out the blood of his peace-offerings on the altar.

¹⁴And the brass altar, which was before the Lord, he took from the front of the house, from between his altar and the house of the Lord, and put it on the north side of his altar.

¹⁵And King Ahaz gave orders to Urijah the priest, saying, Make the morning burned offering and the evening meal offering and the king's burned offering and meal offering, with the burned offerings of all the people and their meal offerings and drink offerings, on the great altar, and put on it all the blood of the burned offerings and of the beasts which are offered; but the brass altar will be for my use to get directions from the Lord.

¹⁶So Urijah the priest did everything as the king said

¹⁷And King Ahaz took off the sides of the wheeled bases, and took down the great water-vessel from off the brass oxen which were under it and put it on a floor of stone.

¹⁸…the house of the Lord, because of the king of Assyria.

¹⁹Now the rest of the things which Ahaz did, are they not recorded in the book of the history of the kings of Judah?

²⁰And Ahaz went to rest with his fathers, and was put into the earth with his fathers in the town of David; and Hezekiah his son became king in his place.

II Kings 17

¹In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, Hoshea, the son of Elah, became king over Israel in Samaria, ruling for nine years.

²He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, though not like the kings of Israel before him.

³Against him came up Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, and Hoshea became his servant and sent him offerings.

⁴But Hoshea's broken faith became clear to the king of Assyria because he had sent representatives to So, king of Egypt, and did not send his offering to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year: so the king of Assyria had him shut up in prison and put in chains.

⁵Then the king of Assyria went through all the land and came up to Samaria, shutting it in with his forces for three years.

⁶In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and took Israel away to Assyria, placing them in Halah and in Habor on the river Gozan, and in the towns of the Medes.

⁷And the wrath of the Lord came on Israel because they had done evil against the Lord their God, who took them out of the land of Egypt from under the yoke of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had become worshippers of other gods,

⁸Living by the rules of the nations whom the Lord had sent out from before the children of Israel.

⁹And the children of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things which were not right, building high places for themselves in all their towns, from the tower of the watchmen to the walled town.

¹⁰They put up pillars of stone and wood on every high hill and under every green tree:

¹¹Burning their offerings in all the high places, as those nations did whom the Lord sent away from before them; they did evil things, moving the Lord to wrath;

¹²And they made themselves servants of disgusting things, though the Lord had said, You are not to do this.

¹³And he gave witness to Israel and Judah, by every prophet and seer, saying, Come back from your evil ways, and do my orders and keep my rules, and be guided by the law which I gave to your fathers and sent to you by my servants the prophets.

¹⁴And they did not give ear, but became stiff-necked, like their fathers who had no faith in the Lord their God.

¹⁵And they went against his rules, and the agreement which he made with their fathers, and his laws which he gave them; they gave themselves up to things without sense or value, and became foolish like the nations round them, of whom the Lord had said, Do not as they do.

¹⁶And turning their backs on all the orders which the Lord had given them, they made for themselves images of metal, and the image of Asherah, worshipping all the stars of heaven and becoming servants to Baal.

¹⁷And they made their sons and their daughters go through the fire, and they made use of secret arts and unnatural powers, and gave themselves up to doing evil in the eyes of the Lord, till he was moved to wrath.

¹⁸So the Lord was very angry with Israel, and his face was turned away from them: only the tribe of Judah kept its place.

¹⁹(But even Judah did not keep the orders of the Lord their God, but were guided by the rules which Israel had made.

²⁰So the Lord would have nothing to do with all the offspring of Israel, and sent trouble on them, and gave them up into the hands of their attackers, till he had sent them away from before his face.)

²¹For Israel was broken off from the family of David, and they made Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, king, who, driving them away from the laws of the Lord, made them do a great sin.

²²And the children of Israel went on with all the sins which Jeroboam did; they did not keep themselves from them;

²³Till the Lord put Israel away from before his face, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was taken away from their land to Assyria, to this day.

²⁴Then the king of Assyria took men from Babylon and from Cuthah and Avva and Hamath and Sepharvaim, and put them in the towns of Samaria in place of the children of Israel; so they got Samaria for their heritage, living in its towns.

²⁵Now when first they were living there they did not give worship to the Lord. So the Lord sent lions among them, causing the death of some of them.

²⁶So they said to the king of Assyria, The nations whom you have taken as prisoners and put in the towns of Samaria, have no knowledge of the way of the god of the land: so he has sent lions among them, causing their death, because they have no knowledge of his way.

²⁷Then the king of Assyria gave orders, saying, Send there one of the priests whom you took away, and let him be living there and teaching the people the way of the god of the land.

²⁸So one of the priests whom they had taken away as a prisoner from Samaria came back, and, living in Beth-el, became their teacher in the worship of the Lord.

²⁹And every nation made gods for themselves, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in the towns where they were living.

³⁰The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima,

³¹The Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites gave their children to be burned in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

³²So they went on worshipping the Lord, and made for themselves, from among all the people, priests for the high places, to make offerings for them in the houses of the high places.

³³They gave worship to the Lord, but they gave honour to their gods like the nations did from whom they had been taken as prisoners.

³⁴So to this day they go on in their old ways, not worshipping the Lord or keeping his orders or his ways or the law and the rule which the Lord gave to the children of Jacob, to whom he gave the name Israel;

³⁵And the Lord made an agreement with them and gave them orders, saying, You are to have no other gods; you are not to give worship to them or be their servants or make them offerings:

³⁶But the Lord, who took you out of the land of Egypt with his great power and his outstretched arm, he is your God, to whom you are to give worship and make offerings:

³⁷And the rules and the orders and the law which he put in writing for you, you are to keep and do for ever; you are to have no other gods.

³⁸And you are to keep in memory the agreement which I have made with you; and you are to have no other gods.

³⁹And you are to give worship to the Lord your God; for it is he who will give you salvation from the hands of all who are against you.

⁴⁰But they gave no attention, but went on in their old way.

⁴¹So these nations, worshipping the Lord, still were servants to the images they had made; their children and their children's children did the same; as their fathers did, so do they, to this day.

II Kings 18

¹Now in the third year of Hoshea, son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, became king of Judah.

²He was twenty-five years old when he became king, ruling in Jerusalem for twenty-nine years; his mother's name was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah.

³He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord as David his father had done.

⁴He had the high places taken away, and the stone pillars broken to bits, and the Asherah cut down; and the brass snake which Moses had made was crushed to powder at his order, because in those days the children of Israel had offerings burned before it, and he gave it the name Nehushtan.

⁵He had faith in the Lord, the God of Israel; so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah who were before him.

⁶For his heart was fixed on the Lord, not turning from his ways, and he did his orders which the Lord gave to Moses.

⁷And the Lord was with him; he did well in all his undertakings: and he took up arms against the king of Assyria and was his servant no longer.

⁸He overcame the Philistines as far as Gaza and its limits, from the tower of the watchman to the walled town.

⁹Now in the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea, son of Elah, king of Israel, Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria, shutting it in with his armies.

¹⁰And at the end of three years they took it; in the sixth year of Hezekiah's rule, which was the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel, Samaria was taken.

¹¹And the king of Assyria took Israel away as prisoners into Assyria, placing them in Halah and in Habor on the river Gozan, and in the towns of the Medes;

¹²Because they did not give ear to the voice of the Lord their God, but went against his agreement, even against everything ordered by Moses, the servant of the Lord, and they did not give ear to it or do it.

¹³Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the walled towns of Judah and took them.

¹⁴And Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to Lachish, to the king of Assyria, saying, I have done wrong; give up attacking me, and whatever you put on me I will undergo. And the payment he was to make was fixed by the king of Assyria at three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.

¹⁵So Hezekiah gave him all the silver in the house of the Lord, and in the king's store-house.

¹⁶And at that time Hezekiah had the gold from the doors of the Lord's house, and from the door-pillars plated by him, cut off and gave it to the king of Assyria.

¹⁷Then the king of Assyria sent the Tartan and the Rab-saris and the Rab-shakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a strong force. And they went up and came to Jerusalem, and took up their position by the stream of the higher pool, by the highway of the washerman's field.

¹⁸And they sent for the king, and Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to them.

¹⁹And the Rab-shakeh said to them, Say now to Hezekiah, These are the words of the great king, the king of Assyria: In what are you placing your hope?

²⁰You say you have a design, and strength for war, but these are only words. Now to whom are you looking for support, that you have gone against my authority?

²¹See, now, you are basing your hope on that broken rod of Egypt, which will go through a man's hand if he makes use of it for a support; for so is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who put their faith in him.

²²And if you say to me, Our hope is in the Lord our God: is it not he, whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away, saying to Judah and Jerusalem that worship may only be given before this altar in Jerusalem?

²³And now, take a chance with my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to put horsemen on them.

²⁴How then may you put to shame the least of my master's servants? and you have put your hope in Egypt for war-carriages and horsemen:

²⁵And have I now come up to send destruction on this place without the Lord's authority? It was the Lord himself who said to me, Go up against this land and make it waste.

²⁶Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and Shebna and Joah said to the Rab-shakeh, Will you kindly make use of the Aramaean language in talking to your servants, for we are used to it, and do not make use of the Jews' language in the hearing of the people on the wall.

²⁷But the Rab-shakeh said to them, Is it to your master or to you that my master has sent me to say these words? has he not sent me to the men seated on the wall? for they are the people who will be short of food with you when the town is shut in.

²⁸Then the Rab-shakeh got up and said with a loud voice in the Jews' language, Give ear to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria;

²⁹This is what the king says: Do not be tricked by Hezekiah, for there is no salvation for you in him.

³⁰And do not let Hezekiah make you put your faith in the Lord, saying, The Lord will certainly keep us safe, and this town will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.

³¹Do not give ear to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me; and everyone will be free to take the fruit of his vine and of his fig-tree, and the water of his spring;

³²Till I come and take you away to a land like yours, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vine-gardens, a land of oil-giving olives and of honey, so that life and not death may be your fate. Give no attention to Hezekiah when he says to you, The Lord will keep us safe.

³³Has any one of the gods of the nations kept his land from falling into the hands 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 kept Samaria out of my hands?

³⁵Who among all the gods of these countries have kept their country from falling into my hands, to give cause for the thought that the Lord will keep Jerusalem from falling into my hands?

³⁶But the people kept quiet and gave him no answer: for the king's order was, Give him no answer.

³⁷Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah, with their clothing parted as a sign of grief, and gave him an account of what the Rab-shakeh had said.

II Kings 19

¹And on hearing it, King Hezekiah took off his robe, and put on haircloth, and went into the house of the Lord.

²And he sent Eliakim, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and the chief priests, dressed in haircloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.

³And they said to him, Hezekiah says, This day is a day of trouble and punishment and shame; for the children are ready to come to birth, but there is no strength to give birth to them.

⁴It may be that the Lord your God will give ear to the words of the Rab-shakeh, whom the king of Assyria, his master, sent to say evil things against the living God, and will make his words come to nothing: so then make your prayer for the rest of the people.

⁵So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.

⁶And Isaiah said to them, This is what you are to say to your master: The Lord says, Be not troubled by the words which the servants of the king of Assyria have said against me in your hearing.

⁷See, I will put a spirit into him, and bad news will come to his ears, and he will go back to his land; and there I will have him put to death by the sword.

⁸So the Rab-shakeh went back, and when he got there the king of Assyria was making war against Libnah, for it had come to his ears that he had gone away from Lachish.

⁹And when news came to him that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, had made an attack on him, he sent representatives to Hezekiah again, saying,

¹⁰This is what you are to say to Hezekiah, king of Judah: Let not your God, in whom is your faith, give you a false hope, saying, Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.

¹¹No doubt the story has come to your ears of what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, putting them to the curse; and will you be kept safe?

¹²Did the gods of the nations keep safe those on whom my fathers sent destruction, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph and the children of Eden who were in Telassar?

¹³Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the town of Sepharvaim, of Hena and of Ivvah?

¹⁴And Hezekiah took the letter from the hands of those who had come with it; and after reading it, Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, opening the letter there before the Lord.

¹⁵And Hezekiah made his prayer to the Lord, saying, O Lord, the God of Israel, seated between the winged ones, you only are the God of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.

¹⁶Let your ear be turned to us, O Lord, and let your eyes be open, O Lord, and see; take note of all the words of Sennacherib who has sent men to say evil against the living God.

¹⁷Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have made waste the nations and their lands,

¹⁸And have given their gods to the fire; for they were no gods, but wood and stone, the work of men's hands; so they have given them to destruction.

¹⁹But now, O Lord our God, give us salvation from his hands, so that it may be clear to all the kingdoms of the earth that you and only you, O Lord, are God.

²⁰Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz, sent to Hezekiah, saying, The Lord, the God of Israel, says, The prayer which you have made to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has come to my ears.

²¹This is the word which the Lord has said about him: In the eyes of the virgin daughter of Zion you are shamed and laughed at; the daughter of Jerusalem has made sport of you.

²²Against whom have you said evil and bitter things? against whom has your voice been loud and your eyes lifted up? even against the Holy One of Israel.

²³You have sent your servants with evil words against the Lord, and have said, With all my war-carriages I have come up to the top of the mountains, to the inmost parts of Lebanon; its tall cedars will be cut down, and the best trees of its woods; I will come up into his highest places, into his thick woods.

²⁴I have made water-holes and taken their waters, and with my foot I have made all the rivers of Egypt dry.

²⁵Has it not come to your ears how I did it long before, purposing it in times long past? Now I have given effect to my design, so that by you strong towns might be turned into masses of broken walls.

²⁶This is why their townsmen had no power, they were broken and put to shame; they were like the grass of the field and the green plant, like grass on the house-tops.

²⁷But I have knowledge of your getting up and your resting, of your going out and your coming in.

²⁸Because your wrath against me and your words of pride have come up to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my cord in your lips, and I will make you go back by the way you came.

²⁹And this will be the sign to you: you will get your food this year from what comes up of itself; and in the second year from the produce of the same; and in the third year you will put in your seed and get in the grain and make vine-gardens and take of their fruit.

³⁰And those of Judah who are still living will again take root in the earth and give fruit.

³¹For from Jerusalem those who have been kept safe will go out, and those who are still living will go out of Mount Zion: by the fixed purpose of the Lord of armies this will be done.

³²For this cause the Lord says about the king of Assyria, He will not come into this town, or send an arrow against it; he will not come before it with arms, or put up an earthwork against it;

³³By the way he came he will go back, and he will not get into this town, says the Lord.

³⁴For I will keep this town safe, for my honour, and for the honour of my servant David.

³⁵And that night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death in the army of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand men; and when the people got up early in the morning, there was nothing to be seen but dead bodies.

³⁶So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went back to his place at Nineveh.

³⁷And it came about, when he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer put him to death with the sword; and they went in flight into the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon his son became king in his place.

II Kings 20

¹In those days Hezekiah was ill and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said to him, The Lord says, Put your house in order, for your death is near.

²Then, turning his face to the wall, he made his prayer to the Lord, saying,

³O Lord, keep in mind how I have been true to you with all my heart, and have done what is good in your eyes. And Hezekiah gave way to bitter weeping.

⁴Now before Isaiah had gone out of the middle of the town, the word of the Lord came to him, saying,

⁵Go back and say to Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, The Lord, the God of David your father, says, Your prayer has come to my ears, and I have seen your weeping; see, I will make you well: on the third day you will go up to the house of the Lord.

⁶I will give you fifteen more years of life; and I will keep you and this town safe from the hands of the king of Assyria; I will keep this town safe, for my honour, and for the honour of my servant David.

⁷Then Isaiah said, Take a cake of figs. So they took it and put it on his wound, and he got better.

⁸And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What is to be the sign that the Lord will make me well, and that I will go up to the house of the Lord on the third day?

⁹And Isaiah said, This is the sign the Lord will give you, that he will do what he has said; will the shade go forward ten degrees or back?

¹⁰And Hezekiah said in answer, It is a simple thing for the shade to go forward; but let it go back ten degrees.

¹¹Then Isaiah the prophet made prayer to the Lord, and he made the shade go back ten degrees from its position on the steps of Ahaz.

¹²At that time, Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters with an offering to Hezekiah, because he had news that Hezekiah had been ill.

¹³And Hezekiah was glad at their coming and let them see all his store of wealth, the silver and the gold and the spices and the oil of great price, and the house of his arms, and everything there was in his stores; there was nothing in all his house or his kingdom which Hezekiah did not let them see.

¹⁴Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say and where did they come from? And Hezekiah said, They came from a far country, even from Babylon.

¹⁵And he said, What have they seen in your house? And Hezekiah said in answer, They saw everything in my house: there is nothing among my stores which I did not let them see.

¹⁶And Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Give ear to the word of the Lord.

¹⁷Truly, days are coming when everything in your house, and whatever your fathers have put in store till this day, will be taken away to Babylon: all will be gone, says the Lord.

¹⁸And your sons, the offspring of your body, they will take away to be unsexed servants in the house of the king of Babylon.

¹⁹Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, Good is the word of the Lord which you have said. Then he said, ... if in my time there is peace and righteousness?

²⁰Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his power, and how he made the pool and the stream, to take water into the town, are they not recorded in the book of the history of the kings of Judah?

²¹And Hezekiah went to rest with his fathers; and Manasseh his son became king in his place.