His expectations, however, were disappointed; the people made no response to his appeal, but listened in profound silence; and the ambassadors, finding that they could obtain nothing from the fears of either king or people, and regarding the force that they had brought with them as insufficient for a siege, returned to their master with the intelligence of their ill-success.

The Assyrian monarch had either taken Lachish or raised its siege, and was gone on to Libnah, where the envoys found him.

On receiving their report, he determined to make still another effort to overcome Hezckiah's obstinacy and accordingly he despatched fresh messengers with a letter to the Jewish king, in which he was reminded of the fate of various other kingdoms and peoples which had resisted the Assyrians, and once more urged to submit himself.

It was this letter perhaps a royal autograph--which Hezekiah took into the temple and there "spread it before the Lord," praying God to "bow down his ear and hear; to open his eyes and see, and hear the words of Sennacherib, which had sent to reproach the living God." Upon this Isaiah was commissioned to declare to his afflicted sovereign that the kings of Assyria were mere instruments in God's hands to destroy such, nations as He pleased, and that none of Sennacherib's threats against Jerusalem should be accomplished.

God, Isaiah told him would "put his hook in Sennacherib's nose, and his bridle in his lips, and turn him back by the way by which he came." The Lord had said, concerning the king of Assyria, "He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it.