The position of Hezekiah can well be imagined. The strength and might of Egypt had been brushed aside by the armed power of Assyria, and tiny Judah was put in the position of defying the greatest military power of that era. While Sennacherib was busy in a mopping-up campaign at Libnah, he sent three trusted generals to lay siege to Jerusalem and to demand the surrender of Hezekiah. The blasphemous oration of one of these generals, Rab-shakeh, is given voluminously in the eighteenth chapter of II Kings. There was a good deal of truth in some of Rab-shakeh’s arguments. He described Pharaoh as “a bruised reed upon which if a man leaned, it would pierce his hand and wound him to the death.” He rightly said that no other countries had been delivered from Sennacherib by the power of their gods. His error was in assuming that therefore the God of Israel would also be defeated by the power of Sennacherib. He gave the king some short while to think over the policy of surrender, and sat down to invest the city. Hezekiah, in his bitter dilemma, sought out Isaiah, whose advice he had followed with such disastrous results. The thirty-seventh chapter of Isaiah contains the answer that Isaiah made, and the exact words of his prophecy are also found in the nineteenth chapter of II Kings, verses six and seven. To comfort Hezekiah, Isaiah said to the king’s messenger: “Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the Lord, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.” It is well to keep this prophecy of Isaiah’s in mind until we see how perfectly it was fulfilled in complete detail. In the thirty-fifth verse of II Kings, the nineteenth chapter, the “blast” occurred. The statement is made that the angel of the Lord went out and slew 185,000 of the flower of the Assyrian army. The next verse says in graphic words, “So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed.” The literal translation in English of that graphic word would be, “So Sennacherib king of Assyria ‘beat it’.” We cannot blame him for the haste of his departure. Arising after a night of slumber to find 185,000 of his best warriors mysteriously slain, terror must have smitten his heart. At that exact moment word reached him of a rebellion in his own land. This was the “rumour” of which Isaiah had prophesied. He returned to put down this rebellion and never again invaded Judah. Twenty years later he was murdered. Between verses thirty-six and thirty-seven of the nineteenth chapter of II Kings, a full score of years passed by. After his murder, his son, Esar-haddon, came to the throne and continued the story of conquest and intrigue.