Historical Interlude: Sennacherib Invades Judah
Isaiah 36Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all of the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a large army. He stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool in the fuller’s field highway. Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph the recorder came out to him.
Rabshakeh said to them, “Now y’all tell Hezekiah, ‘The great king, the king of Assyria, says, “What is this confidence that you trust in? I say that your counsel and strength for the war are only vain words. Who are you trusting, that you have rebelled against me? Look, you trust in Egypt, the staff of this splintered reed. If a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if you tell me, ‘We trust in YHWH our God,’ isn’t that ʜᴇ whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has remove, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘Y’all must worship before this altar?’” Now, please make a bargain with 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. 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? Have I come up now without YHWH against this land to destroy it? YHWH said to me, “Go up against this land, and destroy it.”’”
Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Don’t speak to us in the Jews’ language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
But Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the people who sit on the wall, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with y’all?” Then Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, “Y’all hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! The king says, ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive y’all; for he will not be able to deliver y’all. Don’t let Hezekiah persuade y’all to trust in YHWH, saying, “YHWH will deliver-deliver us. This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’ Y’all shouldn’t listen to Hezekiah, for the king of Assyria says, ‘Y’all must make your peace with me, and come out to me. Each of y’all will eat from their own vine, and their own fig tree, and drink the waters of their own cistern; until I come and take y’all away to a land like y’all’s own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah persuade y’all, saying, “YHWH will deliver us.” Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their lands from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these countries that have delivered their country out of my hand, that YHWH should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’”
But they remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king’s commandment was, “Y’all must not answer him.”
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.