Isaiah 36

1In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.

2Then the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a heavy force. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the launderer’s field.

3Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, came out to him, along with Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder.

4Then the Rabshakeh said to them, “Please say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is this confidence that you have trusted in?’”

5You say—but they are only words of the lips—‘There is counsel and strength for war.’ Now in whom have you trusted, that you have rebelled against me?

6Look, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which, if a man leans on it, goes into his hand and pierces it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

7But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall bow down before this altar’?”

8Now then, please make a wager with my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to provide riders for them.

9How then can you repulse a single captain of the least of my master's servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?

10And now, was it apart from Yahweh that I came up against this land to destroy it? Yahweh said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’

11Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. And do not speak to us in Judean in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”

12But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to your master and to you to speak these words? Has he not sent me to the men sitting on the wall, to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”

13Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Judean, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.”

14Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.

15And do not let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying, ‘Yahweh will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’

16Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me, and let each man eat from his own vine and each from his own fig tree, and let each man drink the water of his own cistern,

17until I come and take you away to a land like your own land—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

18Do not let Hezekiah mislead you, saying, ‘Yahweh will deliver us.’ Have any of the gods of the nations, each one, delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they delivered Samaria from my hand?

20Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered their land from my hand, that Yahweh should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?

21But they kept silent and did not answer him a word, for the king’s command was, saying, “Do not answer him.”

22Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and 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.