Isaiah 36

¹ Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah, and took them.

² The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to king Hezekiah with a great army. He stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field.

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

⁴ Rabshakeh said to them, “Now tell Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What confidence is this in which you trust?

⁵ I say, ‘Isn’t it but vain words?’ There is counsel and strength for the war. Now on whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me?

⁶ Behold, you trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even in Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

⁷ But if you tell me, ‘We trust in Yahweh our God,’ isn’t that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?

⁸ Now therefore, please give pledges to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them.

⁹ How then can you turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

¹⁰ Have I now come up without Yahweh against this land to destroy it? Yahweh said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’”

¹¹ Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in the Syrian language, for we understand it. Don’t speak to us in the Jews’ language, in the ears of the people who are on the wall.”

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

¹³ Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!

¹⁴ Thus says the king, ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you; for he won’t be able to deliver you.

¹⁵ Don’t let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying, “Yahweh will surely deliver us. This city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”

¹⁶ Don’t listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria, “Make your peace with me, and come out to me. Then everyone of you will eat from his own vine, and everyone from his own fig tree, and everyone of you will drink water from his own cistern;

¹⁷ until 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.

¹⁸ Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, ‘Yahweh will deliver us.’ Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

¹⁹ Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?

²⁰ Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that Yahweh should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?”

²¹ But they remained silent, and answered him not a word; for the king’s commandment was, “Don’t answer him.”

²² Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.