Isaiah 36

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. The king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a large army. He stood by the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the Washer’s Field. Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the palace, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to him. The Rabshakeh said to them, “Please tell Hezekiah: ‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: What is this confidence on which you rely? I say, your counsel and strength for war are mere words. Now in whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me? Look, you are trusting in this broken reed of a staff, Egypt. If a man leans on it, it will enter his palm and pierce it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if you tell me, “We trust in the LORD our God,” is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, telling Judah and Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar”? Now, please, make a wager with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses, if you can provide riders for them. How then can you turn back a single governor among the least of my master’s servants, while you trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen? Have I now come up against this land to destroy it without the LORD? The LORD said to me, “Go up against this land and destroy it.”’” Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within hearing of the people on the wall.” But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you? Has he not sent me to the men sitting on the wall, to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine with you?” The Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! This is what the king says: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he cannot deliver you. Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’ Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: ‘Make peace with me and come out to me. Each of you may eat from his own vine and his own fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Do not let Hezekiah persuade you by saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his land from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’” But they remained silent and did not answer him a word, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.” Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the palace, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.

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