doms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth, 16. O Eternal, incline thine ear, and hear; open, O Eternal, thine eyes, and see; attend to Senacherib's words, he sent to blaspheme the living God. 17, Truly, O Eternal, the kings of Assyria have wasted these nations and their lands, 18. And cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of mens' hands, wood and stone, therefore they were destroyed. 19. Now, therefore, O Eter nal our God, I beseech thee, save us from him; that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou the Eternal, art the only God.

20.Then Isaiah, son of Amoz, sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the Eternal God of Israel, Thy prayer to me against Senacherib king of Assyria I have heard, 21. This doom the Eternal hath pronounced concerning him: The Virgin daughter Zion, despises and laughs at thee; the virgin daughter Jerusalem shakes her head at thee. 22. Whom hast thou reviled and blasphemed? against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine hands on high with haughty looks, even against the holy One of Israel. 23. By thy messengers thou hast reviled the Eternal, and said, With my many cha riots I have ascended the highest mountains, the ridges of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar-trees, and its choice pines; and I will enter its utmost borders, and its most fruitful forest. 24. I have digged and drunk foreign waters, and in my progress have I exhausted all the rivers of fenced places. 25. Understandest thou not that I long ago predisposed all this, and that I determined it, of ancient times? now I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest lay the strongest cities in ruinous heaps. 26. Their inhabitants being of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and on the house-tops as the green herb, and as corn blasted before it be grown up. 27. But I have observed thy designs and enterprises;

28. Thy rage and arrogance against me, have reached mine ears, therefore I will put a hook in thy nose, and a bridle in thy jaws, and I will turn thee back by the way thou camest.

29. Now this shall be a sign to you, Ye shall eat this year what grows of itself, and in the second year what springeth again of itself, but in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruits. 30. For the remnant that escaped of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit upward. 31. From Jerusalem shall shoot forth a remnant, and a residue from mount Zion; the zeal of the Eternal God of hosts shall do this. 32. Therefore thus saith the Eternal concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not enter this city, nor shoot an arrow at it, nor approach it with shield, nor raise a mount against it. 33. By the way that he came, shall he return, saith the Eternal. 34. For I will defend and save this city, for mine own sake, and for my servant David sake.

35. On that night the angel of the Eternal smote in the Assyrians camp an hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when they arose in the morning, lo, these were all dead corpses. 36. So Sennacherib departed, and returned to dwell at Nineveh.

37. Where, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons, smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia; and Esar-haddon his son reigned in his stead.

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CHAP. XX.

THE SUN DIAL OF AHAZ.

In those days Hezeziah was sick of a deadly disease; and the prophet Isaiah, Amoz's son, came to him, saying, Thus saith the Eternal, put thine house in order; for thou hast a deadly disease. 2. Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed to the Eternal, saying, 3. I beseech thee, O Eternal, re-`

member, now how I walked before thee in sinceri ty, with an upright heart, doing good before thee. And Hezekiah wept sore.

4. But before Isaiah was gone out of the middle court, the word of the Eternal came to him, saying, 5. Return, and say to Hezekiah, the captain of my people, Thus saith the Eternal, the God of David thy father, I have hearkened to thy prayer, and seen thy tears; lo, I will heal thee; on the third day thou shalt go up to the Eternal's temple. 6. And I will add to thy days fifteen years; and will deliver thee and this city from the king of Assyria, and will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake.

7. Then Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs, and lay it on the ulcer, and he shall recover.

8. Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What shall be the sign that the Eternal will heal me, and that I shall go up to the temple the third day? 9. Then Isaiah said, Thou shalt have this sign, that the Eternal will do what he hath spoken. Shall the shadow go ten degrees forward or backward? 10. Hezekiah said, It is an easy matter for the shadow to go forward ten degrees; but let it go backward ten degrees. 11. Then Isaiah the prophet invoked the Eternal; aud he brought the shadow backward ten degrees (or hours) which had gone forward on the dial of Ahaz, (which the Pagans remarked).

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12. About that time Berodach-Baladan, Baladan's son, king of Babylon, sent letters and presents to Hezekiah, for he heard he had been sick. Then Hezekiah hearkened to them, and shewed them all the repositary of his precious things, the silver, the gold, the spices, the best ointment, with his armoury, and all that was laid up in his trea sures; and every thing in his house, and in all his domains.

14. Then Isaiah the prophet came to king He zekiah, and said to him, What proposed these men?

and from whence came they? Hezekiah said, They came from a far country, even from Babylon. 15. Then he said, What have they seen in thy house? Hezekiah answered, All that is in mine house have they seen; their is nothing among my treasures that I have not showed them. 16. Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Eternal. 17. Lo, the days are coming, that all in thine house, and what thy fathers laid up in store to this day, shall be carried to Babylon, saith the Eternal. 18. And thy posterity shall be taken away, and be chamberlains in the king of Babylon's palace. 19. Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the Eternal's purpose: For he said, Shall their not be peace and security in my days?

20. Now the rest of Hezekiah's acts, and all his valour, and how he made a reservoir, and conduit, that brought water into the city, are written in the Chronicles of the kings of Judah.

21. Now Hezekiah slept with his fathers; and (16) Manasseh his son reigned in his stead.

CHAP. XXI.

MANÁSSEH'S AND AMON'S WICKED REIGNS. MANASSEH was twelve years old when he began to reign; and reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hephzi-bah. 2. He did evil before the Eternal, after the abominations of the nations, whom the Eternal cast out before the Israelites. 3. For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had demolished; and reared altars, and made a grove for Baal, as Ahab, king of Israel,had done; and worshipped all the starry host of heaven. 4. Nay, he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the Eternal's house in Jerusalem; of which the Eternal said, In Jerusa lem I will put my name. 5. 6. He made also his sons a holocaust; he used divination, and observed.

times, and used fortune-telling, and dealt with speakers from the bowels and necromancers; he wrought every kind of wickedness before the Eternal, to provoke his anger.

7. For he set a grove image that he had made, in the house of which the Eternal said to David, and Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name perpetually. 8. Nor will I remove Israel any more out of the land which I gave their fathers, if they observe all the law I commanded them by my servant Moses. 9. But they heark ened not; and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than the nations whom the Eternal destroyed before them.

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10. So the Eternal spake by his servants the prophets, saying, 11.Because Manasseh, king of Judah hath done these abominations, doing more wickedly than the Amorites, who were before him, and hath also made Judah to sin with his idols; 12. There fore thus saith the Eternal God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that both his ears shall tingle who heareth it. 13. For I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of Ahab's house; and will wipe Jerusalem as a man doth a dish, wipping and turning it upside down. 14. And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them to all their enemies, to be for a prey and a spoil; 15.Because they have done evil before me, provoking me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.

16. Moreover, Manasseh sled innocent blood very much, till he filled Jerusalem from the one end to the other, besides his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, by doing evil before the Eternal.

17. Now the rest of Manasseh's acts, all that he did, and his sins he committed, are written in the Chronicles of the kings of Judah. 18, Now