Now things are getting interesting again. The king of Assyria has conquered Israel and he’s got his eye on Judah. His officers come down to Jerusalem and run a big, loud propaganda campeign about how Assyia has conquered a whole bunch of kingdoms already and their gods never helped any of them. They say that Judah’s only allies are Egypt and God and Egypt is useless and God won’t do anything. They say the king of Judah, Hezekiah, is lying to them and misleading them and will get them all killed, but if they surrender, thy ‘ll all get nice new lands in Assyria.
Hezekiah goes to the temple and prays about what’s happening and eventually God tells him that He won’t let anything happen to Jerusalem, that he’ll take care of the Assyrian situation. He sends a long reply through the prophet Issaiah that basically asserts how ridiculous and insulting He finds the claims of the Assyrians and He’s going to show them a thing or two about how He differs from the gods of the people they are accustomed to fighting.
God sends and angel to kill hundreds of thousands of Assyrian soldiers in their camp that night and the king chooses to withdraw from the field before ever even starting the battle. He runs all the way back to Ninivah actually, the capital of Assyria, but there his sons murder him, and that’s the end of his story.
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