When he raised his head, Allah revealed to Isaiah: “Tell the king, your friend, ⦗205b⦘ to order one of his servants to bring him fig-water and apply it to his ulcer; he will be healed and will awaken cured.” He did so, and he was healed.
The king said to Isaiah, “Ask your Lord to let us know what He will do to this enemy of ours.”
Allah said to Isaiah, “Tell him: I have spared you from your enemy and delivered you from them. By morning, they will all be dead, except Sennacherib and five of his scribes.”
When morning came, a caller arrived and cried out at the gate of the city: “O king of the Children of Israel, Allah has spared you from your enemy. Come out, for Sennacherib and those with him have perished.” When the king came out, he searched for Sennacherib, but did not find him among the dead. So the king sent men in search of him, and the search party found him in a cave, along with five of his scribes, one of whom was Nebuchadnezzar. They put iron collars around their necks and brought them before the king of the Children of Israel. When he saw them, he fell prostrate from sunrise until the afternoon prayer. Then he said to Sennacherib, “How do you regard what our Lord has done to you? Did He not slay you by His might and power while we and you were unaware?”
Sennacherib replied, “News of your Lord, of His granting you victory, and of the mercy by which He shows you mercy, had reached me before I left my land. Yet I did not obey any adviser, and nothing brought me to wretchedness except humiliation in this world and punishment in the Hereafter. Had I listened or understood, I would not have marched against you.”
Zedekiah said, “All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, who has spared us from you as He willed. Our Lord did not leave you and those with you alive because of any honor you possess before Him; rather, He left you and those with you alive only so that you might increase in wretchedness in this world and punishment in the Hereafter, and so that you might tell those who come after you what you have seen of our Lord’s treatment of you, thereby warning those after you. Had it not been for this, He would have killed you; indeed, your blood and the blood of those with you would have been less significant to Allah than the blood of a tick, had you been killed.”
Then the king of the Children of Israel ordered the commander of his guard to place iron collars around their necks. He paraded them for seventy days around Jerusalem and Aelia, giving each man among them two loaves of barley bread every day. Sennacherib said to the king of the Children of Israel, “Death would be better than what you are doing to us.” So the king ordered that they be taken to the prison of execution.
Allah then revealed to Isaiah, peace be upon him: “Tell the king of the Children of Israel to release Sennacherib and those with him, so that they may warn those who come after them. Let him honor them and provide them with mounts until they reach their land.” Isaiah conveyed this to the king, and King Zedekiah did what he had been commanded. Sennacherib and those with him departed until they arrived in Babylon. When they arrived, he gathered the people and informed them of what Allah had done to his troops. His priests and magicians said to him, “O king of Babylon, we had been telling you about their Lord, their prophet, and Allah’s revelation to their prophet, but you did not obey us. They are a people whom no one can overcome when their Lord is with them. The affair of Sennacherib was meant to frighten them, but then Allah spared them, as a reminder and a lesson.”
Sennacherib remained thereafter for seven years, then died. Nebuchadnezzar, his grandson’s son, succeeded him, following the course of action his grandfather had followed. He remained for seventeen years. Then Allah took the king of the Children of Israel, Zedekiah, and their affairs fell into disorder.