Isaiah 36

1 And it came to pass in the fourteenth … year of king Hezekiah [that] Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah, and he captured them.

2 And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to king Hezekiah, with a great army; and he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Field of Fuller.

3 And went out to him Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder.

4 And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say, please, to Hezekiah, thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: ‘What [is] this confidence [with] which you are confident?

5 You speak a mere word of the lips [is] counsel and strength for the battle? Now, in whom are you trusting, that you have rebelled against me?

6 Behold, are you trusting in the staff of this broken reed in Egypt, which a man who leans on it, it will go into his palm and pierce it! So [is] Pharaoh king of Egypt to all those trusting in him.

7 But if you say to me, ‘In YHWH our God we trust,’ [is it] not He for whom His high places and His altars, Hezekiah has turned aside, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘Before this altar you⁺ shall worship?

8 And now, make a wager, please, with my lord the king of Assyria, and I will give to you two thousand horses—if you are able to set for you riders on them.

9 And how can you turn back the faces of one among a governor of the least servants of my lord, and place your trust in Egypt for chariot and horsemen?

10 And now, was [it] without YHWH [that] I came up against this land to destroy it? YHWH has said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it!’”

11 And Eliakim said and Shebna and Joah to the Rabshakeh, “Speak, please, to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand [it]; and do not speak to us in Hebrew in the ears of the people who [are] on the wall.”

12 And the Rabshakeh said “Was [it] to your lord and to you [that] my master sent me to speak these words? Was [it] not to the men sitting on the wall who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you⁺?”

13 And the Rabshakeh stood and called out with a great voice in Hebrew, and he said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!

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

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

16 Do not listen to Hezekiah! For thus says the king of Assyria: Make peace with me and come out to me, and each man will eat from his own vine and each man from his fig tree, and each man will drink the waters of his own cistern,

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

18 Lest Hezekiah should incite you⁺ saying, ‘YHWH will surely deliver us.’ Have the gods of the nations delivered every man of his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

19 Where [are] the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where [are] the gods of Sepharvaim? Indeed, have they delivered Samaria from my hand?

20 Who among all the gods of these lands [are] they who have delivered their lands from my hand, that YHWH might deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”

21 And they were quiet, and they did not answer him a word; for it was the command of the king saying, “Do not answer him.”

22 And came Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who [was] over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder, to Hezekiah with torn clothes, and they declared to him the words of the Rabshakeh.