2 Kings 18:19-37 ▼

19 And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is this confidence in which you trust?

20 You say: But a word of the lips, counsel and strength for war. And on whom do you trust, that you rebel against me?

21 Now behold, You are trusting for yourself on the staff of this broken reed—on Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. Thus is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

22 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 taken away, and he said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You? shall bow low before this altar in Jerusalem’?

23 And now give a pledge, please, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give to you two thousand horses, if you are able to put for yourself riders on them.

24 And how will you turn back the face of a captain of one of the least of the servants of my master, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

25 Now is it without YHWH that I have come up against this place to destroy it? YHWH said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’”

26 And Eliakim son of Hilkiah, and Shebna, and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, “Speak, please, to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it, and do not speak with us in Judean in the ears of the people who are on the wall.”

27 And the Rabshakeh said to them, “And is it for your master, to you only, that my master has sent me to speak these words? Is it not for the men sitting on the wall, who are to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you??”

28 And the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in Judean, and spoke, saying, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria.

29 Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you?, for he shall not be able to deliver you? from his hand.

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

31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make with me a blessing, and come out to me, and eat, each man from his own vine, and each man from his own fig tree, and drink each man the waters of his own cistern,

32 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, a land of olive oil and honey—that you? may live and not die. Do not listen to Hezekiah, lest he persuade you?, saying, ‘YHWH will deliver us.’

33 Have any gods of the nations ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim and Hena and Ivah? Indeed, have they delivered Samaria from my hand?

35 Who among all the gods of the countries have delivered their lands from my hand, that YHWH should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”

36 And the people kept silent and did not answer him a word, for it was the command from the king, saying, “Do not answer him.”

37 And Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, came—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.