Isaiah
Chapter 36
1 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s rule, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
2 The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a big army. He stood near the water channel of the upper pool on the road by the laundry workers’ field.
3 Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the palace manager, Shebna the secretary, and Joah, son of Asaph the record keeper, went to meet him.
4 Rabshakeh said to them, Tell Hezekiah, The great king, the king of Assyria, asks, ‘What is this trust you have?’
5 I say, you claim (but those are just empty words) that I have advice and power for war. Now, who do you rely on when you rebel against me?
6 Look, you rely on the support of this weak reed, which is Egypt. If someone leans on it, it will break and stab their hand. That’s how Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is to all who trust in him.
7 But if you say to me, “We trust in God our God,” isn’t it the same one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, telling Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship at this altar”?
8 So now, please promise my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you have enough riders for them.
9 How can you then scare off even a single one of my master’s lowest officers and rely on Egypt for chariots and cavalry?
10 Have I come to attack this land without God’s guidance? God told me to go and destroy it.
11 Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please talk to your servants in the Syrian language, because we understand it. Don’t talk to us in the Jewish language where the people on the wall can hear.”
12 But the official said, “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 have to eat their waste and drink their urine with you?”
13 Then Rabshakeh stood up and shouted in the Jewish language, “Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.”
14 The king says, don’t let Hezekiah trick you; he won’t be able to save you.
15 Do not let Hezekiah convince you to trust in God, saying, “God will surely save us: this city will not be given to the king of Assyria.”
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah. The king of Assyria says, “Make a deal with me by giving me a present, and come out to me. Then each of you can eat from your own grapevines and fig trees, and drink water from your own wells.”
17 Until I come and bring you to a place like your own, a land with grain and wine, a land with bread and vineyards.
18 Be careful that Hezekiah doesn’t convince you by saying, ‘God will save us.’ Has any nation’s god rescued its land from the king of Assyria?
19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Could they save Samaria from my power?
20 Which gods of these lands have saved their lands from me, that God should save Jerusalem from me?
21 They stayed quiet and did not speak a word to him because the king had ordered, “Do not answer him.”
22 Eliakim, Hilkiah’s son who managed the household, Shebna the secretary, and Joah, Asaph’s son and the historian, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him what Rabshakeh had said.