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the fourteenth year of the reign of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
2 Then the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh, along with a large army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. The Assyrian stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the Fuller’s Field. 3 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the record keeper went out to him.
4 The Rabshakeh said to them, “Tell Hezekiah:
‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says:
“What do you base your confidence on? 5 You say you have strategy and military strength, but I say they are only empty words. Now on whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me? 6 Look! You are trusting on the broken reed of a staff, on Egypt, which will pierce the hand of a man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him.
7 “But if you say to me: ‘We trust in the Lord our God’—isn’t He the One whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, then said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You must worship before this altar’?” ’
8 “Come now, make a deal with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you able on your part to set riders on them. 9 How then would you be able to repulse only one officer of the weakest of my master’s servants, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 10 Have I now come up against this land to attack and destroy it without the Lord’s approval? The Lord said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it’.”
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. But don’t speak to us in the Hebrew language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
12 But the Rabshakeh replied, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men who sit on the wall also, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine along with you?”
13 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew:
“Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! 14 This is what the king says:
‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. 15 Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, “The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not given into the hand of the king of Assyria” ’.
16 “Do not listen to Hezekiah; for this is what the king of Assyria says: ‘Make peace with me and surrender to me; then everyone will eat from his own vine, and everyone from his own fig tree, and everyone will drink water from 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 “Do not allow Hezekiah to mislead you when he says, ‘The Lord will surely deliver us’. Has any of the gods of the other nations deliver his land from the king of Assyria? 19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? 20 Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land from my hand, that the Lord can deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”
21 But they remained silent and did not answer him at all, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.” 22 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the record keeper, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and they reported to him the words of the Rabshakeh.