Isaiah 36:1-12

Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and conquered them. [2 Kin 18:13, 17-37; 2 Chr 32:9-19] And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh [his military commander] from Lachish [the Judean fortress commanding the road from Egypt] to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem with a large army. And he stood by the canal of the Upper Pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field. Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the [royal] household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recording historian, came out to [meet] him. Then the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria says, “What is [the reason for] this confidence that you have? I say, ‘Your plan and strength for the war are only empty words.’ Now in whom do you trust and on whom do you rely, that you have rebelled against me? [2 Kin 18:7] Listen carefully, you rely on the staff of this broken reed, Egypt, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him. But if you say to me, ‘We trust in and rely on the LORD our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’? [2 Kin 18:4, 5] So now, exchange pledges with my master the king of Assyria and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to put riders on them. How then can you repulse [the attack of] a single commander of the least of my master’s servants, and rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? Moreover, is it without the LORD that I have now come up against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’ ” ’ ” Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please, speak to your servants in Aramaic, because we understand it; and do not speak to us in Judean (Hebrew) in the hearing of the people who are [stationed] on the wall.” But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to speak these words only to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”