2 Kings
Chapter 18
1 In the third year of Hoshea, son of Elah the king of Israel, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz king of Judah, started to rule.
2 He was 25 years old when he started to rule; he ruled for 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi, and she was the daughter of Zachariah.
3 He did what was right before God, just like his father David had done.
4 He got rid of the worship sites, smashed the idols, chopped down the sacred trees, and broke up the bronze snake Moses had made, because up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. He named it Nehushtan.
5 He trusted in God of Israel, so there was no king like him in Judah, neither before nor after him.
6 He stuck close to God, didn’t stop following Him, and obeyed the commands God gave Moses.
7 God was with him; wherever he went he was successful. He opposed the king of Assyria and did not serve him.
8 He struck the Philistines all the way to Gaza and its surrounding area, from the watchtower to the protected city.
9 In the fourth year of King Hezekiah’s rule, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah’s rule over Israel, King Shalmaneser of Assyria attacked Samaria and surrounded it.
10 After three years, they captured it: during Hezekiah’s sixth year, which was Hoshea king of Israel’s ninth year, Samaria was conquered.
11 The king of Assyria took the people of Israel to Assyria and settled them in Halah, Habor by the Gozan river, and in the towns of the Medes.
12 They did not listen to God’s voice, broke his agreement, and ignored everything God’s servant Moses told them. They neither obeyed nor followed his instructions.
13 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, attacked all the protected cities of Judah and captured them.
14 Hezekiah, the king of Judah, sent a message to the king of Assyria in Lachish: “I have done wrong; please leave me alone. I will pay whatever you ask.” The king of Assyria told Hezekiah to pay him 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold.
15 Hezekiah gave him all the silver from God’s house and the king’s treasure.
16 Hezekiah removed the gold from the temple doors and pillars he had covered and gave it to the king of Assyria.
17 The king of Assyria sent Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a large army to attack Jerusalem. They went and arrived in Jerusalem. When they got there, they stood next to the water channel of the upper pool, on the road that goes by the washer’s field.
18 When they called for the king, Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son who was in charge of the house, Shebna the secretary, and Joah, Asaph’s son the record-keeper, came out to them.
19 Rabshakeh said to them, “Tell Hezekiah that the great king of Assyria asks, ‘What are you relying on with such confidence?’”
20 You say, (but they are just empty words,) I have advice and power for war. Now who do you trust when you rebel against me?
21 Now, see, you rely on the broken staff of Egypt. If someone leans on it, it will stab their hand. That’s how Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is to all who trust in him.
22 But if you tell me, ‘We trust in God,’ isn’t that the same God whose shrines and altars Hezekiah removed, telling Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship at this altar in Jerusalem’?
23 Please now, I ask you, make a promise to the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you can find enough riders for them.
24 How can you then scare off even one of my master’s lowest officers and rely on Egypt for chariots and soldiers?
25 Did I come to attack this place without God telling me to? God told me to come and destroy this land.
26 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, with Shebna and Joah, said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to us in the Syrian language; we understand it. Do not speak in the Jewish language where the people on the wall can hear.”
27 But Rabshakeh said to them, “Did my master send me to your master and to you to say these things? Didn’t he send me to the people sitting on the wall, so that they will eat their own waste and drink their own urine with you?”
28 Then Rabshakeh stood up and shouted in the language of the Jews, “Listen to the message from the great king, the king of Assyria:”
29 The king says, “Don’t let Hezekiah trick you: he can’t save you from his power.”
30 Don’t let Hezekiah convince you to trust in God, telling you, “God will definitely save us, and this city won’t be given to the king of Assyria.”
31 Do not listen to Hezekiah: for the king of Assyria says, Make peace with me by giving a gift, and then come out to me. After that, each of you can eat from your own grapevine, and each can eat from his own fig tree, and drink water from your own well.
32 Until I come and take you to a land like yours, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land where olive oil and honey flow, so you may live and not die. Do not listen to Hezekiah who tells you that God will save us.
33 Did any nation’s god rescue its land from the king of Assyria?
34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? Did they save Samaria from my power?
35 Which gods of the nations have saved their lands from me, that God should rescue Jerusalem from my power?
36 The people stayed quiet and did not respond to him because the king had ordered, “Do not answer him.”
37 Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son who was in charge of the household, together with Shebna the secretary and Joah, Asaph’s son the historian, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and reported to him what Rabshakeh had said.