1Now it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.
2And 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 of the Launderer’s Field.
3Then there came out to him Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder.
4And 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?
5I say — but they are mere words of the lips — that there is counsel and strength for war. Now on whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me?
6Look, you trust in the staff of this crushed reed, in Egypt, on which, if a man leans, it goes into his palm and pierces it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.
7But if you say to me, ‘We trust in Yahweh our God’ — is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall bow down before this altar’?
8Now then, make a wager with my lord the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them.
9How then could you turn back the face of a single one of my lord’s least governors, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
10And now, is it apart from Yahweh that I have come up against this land to destroy it? Yahweh said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’
11Then Eliakim and 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 Judahite in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
12But the Rabshakeh said, “Is it to your lord and to you that my lord has sent me to speak these words? Is it not to the men sitting on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”
13Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in Judahite 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 thus says the king of Assyria: Make peace with me and come out to me, and each of you will eat from his own vine and each from his own fig tree, and each of you will drink the water of his own cistern,
17until 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.
18Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you, saying, ‘Yahweh will deliver us.’ Has any of the gods of the nations 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? Have they even delivered Samaria from my hand?
20Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his 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, “You shall 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 they reported to him the words of the Rabshakeh.
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