2 Kings 19:6-7
“And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say unto 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.”
King James Version
Isaiah's first answer to the Assyrian ultimatum is a three-part prediction: Sennacherib will hear a rumor, return to his own land, and fall by the sword there. All three happened — the army withdrew, and twenty years later his own sons cut him down in his god's temple (19:37).
Fulfillment References
2 Kings 19:35-37 Isaiah 37:36-38
Archaeological & Historical Evidence
Esarhaddon's inscriptions and the Babylonian Chronicle confirm Sennacherib's assassination by his sons in 681 BC — in a temple, exactly as 19:37 records; the murderers' flight to Ararat (Urartu) matches Assyrian records of the succession crisis.
How Traditions Read This Prophecy
Apostolic (Oneness) PentecostalThe blasphemer who taunted the living God got twenty more years of rope — then the sentence executed itself in his own idol's house. God's timing is not God's forgetting.
JewishThe deliverance of 701 BC stands beside the Exodus in the liturgy of divine rescue.
CatholicProphecy engaged statecraft in real time — Isaiah counsels a king mid-siege and history follows the oracle.
ProtestantA prediction with a twenty-year fuse whose fulfillment is confirmed by the enemy's own royal inscriptions.
AcademicSennacherib's murder (681 BC) is multiply attested (Esarhaddon's Nineveh A inscription; Babylonian Chronicle); the biblical temple-setting detail aligns with the Assyrian evidence.
Scholarship & Sources
Esarhaddon's succession account (Nin. A) and ABC 1 iv record the assassination; see Cogan & Tadmor (II Kings, AB) ad loc.
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Bible Prophecy Explorer · based on J. Barton Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy catalogue · an openly Apostolic (Oneness) Pentecostal study resource — all traditions presented fairly. Pastor: C. Myles Young, PhD · Bishop: Nathaniel J. Wilson, Ed.D.