23. You have mocked the Lord through your messengers. You have said:With my many chariots I have gone up to the heights of the mountains,to the far recesses of Lebanon.I cut down its tallest cedars,its choice cypress trees.I came to its farthest outpost,its densest forest.
24. I dug wells,and I drank foreign waters.I dried up all the streams of Egypt with the soles of my feet.
25. Have you not heard? I designed it long ago;I planned it in days gone by.I have now brought it to pass, and you have crushed fortified citiesinto piles of rubble.
26. Their inhabitants have become powerless,dismayed, and ashamed.They are plants of the field,tender grass,grass on the rooftops, blasted by the east wind.
27. But I know your sitting down, your going out and your coming in,and your raging against Me.
28. Because your raging against Meand your arrogance have reached My ears,I will put My hook in your nose and My bit in your mouth;I will make you go backthe way you came.
29. “This will be the sign for you: This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what grows from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
30. The surviving remnant of the house of Israel will again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
31. For a remnant will go out from Jerusalem and survivors, from Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.
32. Therefore, this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:He will not enter this cityor shoot an arrow thereor come before it with a shieldor build up an assault ramp against it.
33. He will go backon the road that he cameand he will not enter this city.This is the Lord’s declaration.
34. I will defend this city and rescue itfor My sake and for the sake of My servant David.”
35. That night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!