Israel · Sennacherib — the three-part sentence
2 Kings 19:6-7
Isaiah · 701 BC · Status: Fulfilled · Confidence: 65%
“And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.”
King James Version · the opening — all 2 verses are below
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).
Read the whole passage — all 2 verses (KJV)
19:6And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
19:7Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.
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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