And Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD.

And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up unto the house of Jehovah, and spread it before Jehovah.

And when Ezechias had received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and had read it, he went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord,

And Hezekiah taketh the letters out of the hand of the messengers, and readeth them, and goeth up to the house of Jehovah, and Hezekiah spreadeth it before Jehovah.

And Hezekiah took the letter from the hands of those who had come with it; and after reading it, Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, opening the letter there before the Lord.

And so, when Hezekiah had received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and had read it, he ascended to the house of the Lord, and he spread it out before the Lord.

Hezekiah received the letter - The inscriptions show that scribes accompanied the Assyrian armies, with the materials of their craft, so that such a dispatch might be easily drawn up. As Hezekiah himself "read" it, we may presume that it was in the Hebrew tongue.

Spread it before the Lord - The temple was considered to be God's dwelling-place; and that whatever was there was peculiarly under his eye. Hezekiah spread the letter before the Lord, as he wished him to read the blasphemies spoken against himself.

And Hezekiah received the letter of the hand of the messengers, and read it: and Hezekiah went up into the house of the LORD, and spread it before the (h) LORD.
(h) Before the Ark of the covenant.

HEZEKIAH'S PRAYER. (2Ki. 19:14-34)
Hezekiah received the letter . . . and went up into the house of the Lord--Hezekiah, after reading it, hastened into the temple, spread it in the childlike confidence of faith before the Lord, as containing taunts deeply affecting the divine honor, and implored deliverance from this proud defier of God and man. The devout spirit of this prayer, the recognition of the Divine Being in the plenitude of His majesty--so strikingly contrasted with the fancy of the Assyrians as to His merely local power; his acknowledgment of the conquests obtained over other lands; and of the destruction of their wooden idols which, according to the Assyrian practice, were committed to the flames--because their tutelary deities were no gods; and the object for which he supplicated the divine interposition--that all the kingdoms of the earth might know that the Lord was the only God--this was an attitude worthy to be assumed by a pious theocratic king of the chosen people.

Hezekiah's prayer. - 2-Kings 19:14. Hezekiah took the letter, read it, went into the temple and spread it out before Jehovah, to lay open its contents before God. The contents of the letter are given in 2-Kings 19:10-13 in the form of the message which the ambassadors delivered to Hezekiah from their king, because the ambassadors communicated to Hezekiah by word of mouth the essential contents of the writing which they conveyed, and simply handed him the letter as a confirmation of their words. ספרים, like litterae, means a letter; hence the singular suffix attached to ויּפרשׂהוּ, whereas in the case of ויּקראם, which stands nearer, the suffix follows the number of the noun to which it refers. The spreading out of the letter before God was an embodiment of the wish, which sprang from a child-like and believing trust, that the Lord would notice and punish that defiance of the living God which it contained. What Hezekiah meant by this action he expressed in the following prayer.