however, I feared the wrath of the enemy, that their adversaries would misunderstand and say, “Our hand is victorious, and the Lord has not done all this.”
A man of God came and spoke to the king of Israel and said, “Thus says the Lord: Because the Arameans have said, ‘The Lord is God of the hills, but He is not God of the valleys,’ I will deliver all this great multitude into your hand, and you will know that I am the Lord.”
Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, ‘With evil intent He brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath and relent of this harm against Your people.
“Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, ‘Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
Because they have forsaken Me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocent,
Her uncleanness is in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore her fall is astounding; she has no comforter. “O Lord, look upon my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!”
Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you, and break off your sins by righteousness and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, in case there may be a lengthening of your prosperity.”
But the person who acts by a high hand, the natural-born citizen or the foreigner, the same reviles the Lord, and that person will be cut off from among his people.
Otherwise, the land from which You brought us may say, ‘Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He promised them and because He hated them, He has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness.’