March 28, 2025, 2 Kings 19:20-37
March 28, 2025, 2 Kings 19:20-37
20 Then
Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to
me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. 21 This
is the word that the Lord has
spoken concerning him:
“She
despises you, she scorns you—
the
virgin daughter of Zion;
she wags her head behind you—
the
daughter of Jerusalem.
22 “Whom
have you mocked and reviled?
Against
whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes to the heights?
Against the
Holy One of Israel!
23 By your messengers you have mocked the Lord,
and you
have said, ‘With my many chariots
I have gone up the heights of the mountains,
to the
far recesses of Lebanon;
I felled its tallest cedars,
its
choicest cypresses;
I entered its farthest lodging place,
its
most fruitful forest.
24 I dug wells
and
drank foreign waters,
and I dried up with the sole of my foot
all the
streams of Egypt.’
25 “Have
you not heard
that I
determined it long ago?
I planned from days of old
what now
I bring to pass,
that you should turn fortified cities
into
heaps of ruins,
26 while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,
are
dismayed and confounded,
and have become like plants of the field
and like
tender grass,
like grass on the housetops,
blighted
before it is grown.
27 “But I
know your sitting down
and your
going out and coming in,
and your
raging against me.
28 Because you have raged against me
and your
complacency has come into my ears,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my
bit in your mouth,
and I will turn you back on the way
by which
you came.
29 “And
this shall be the sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in
the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap
and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. 30 And
the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and
bear fruit upward. 31 For out of Jerusalem shall go
a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of
the Lord will do this.
32 “Therefore
thus says the Lord concerning
the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there,
or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. 33 By
the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into
this city, declares the Lord. 34 For
I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my
servant David.”
35 And that
night the angel of the Lord went
out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose
early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 36 Then
Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived
at Nineveh. 37 And as he was worshiping in the
house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him
down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son
reigned in his place.
The beautiful passage which
fills the rest of the chapter came because Hezekiah prayed. What if he had not
prayed? Would God not have protected His people and Jerusalem would have been
conquered? Hezekiah’s prayer really mattered.
This passage really helps
me see the importance of prayer. God waits expectantly on our prayers,
regardless of whether we believe God will find our prayers silly or
unnecessary. Pray, pray and pray some more. God wants to hear from us. How many
blessings, how many victories have we missed because we did not pray?
Debbie Walker
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