¹¹ Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah^(A) said to the field commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic,^(B) since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”

¹² But the commander replied, “Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the people sitting on the wall—who, like you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?^(C)”

¹³ Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew,^(D) “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!^(E)