23 By your messengers you have defied the Lord.You have said, ‘With my many chariotsI have conquered the highest mountains—yes, the remotest peaks of Lebanon.I have cut down its tallest cedarsand its finest cypress trees.I have reached its farthest cornersand explored its deepest forests.
24 I have dug wells in many foreign landsand refreshed myself with their water.With the sole of my footI stopped up all the rivers of Egypt!’
25 “But have you not heard?I decided this long ago.Long ago I planned it,and now I am making it happen.I planned for you to crush fortified citiesinto heaps of rubble.
26 That is why their people have so little powerand are so frightened and confused.They are as weak as grass,as easily trampled as tender green shoots.They are like grass sprouting on a housetop,scorched before it can grow lush and tall.
27 “But I know you well—where you stayand when you come and go.I know the way you have raged against me.
28 And because of your raging against meand your arrogance, which I have heard for myself,I will put my hook in your noseand my bit in your mouth.I will make you returnby the same road on which you came.”
29 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Here is the proof that what I say is true:“This year you will eat only what grows up by itself,and next year you will eat what springs up from that.But in the third year you will plant crops and harvest them;you will tend vineyards and eat their fruit.