^8-9 My master, the king of Assyria, wants to make a little bet with you!—that you don’t have 2,000 men left in your entire army! If you do, he will give you 2,000 horses for them to ride on! With that tiny army, how can you think of proceeding against even the smallest and worst contingent of my master’s troops? For you’ll get no help from Egypt. ¹⁰ What’s more, do you think I have come here without the Lord’s telling me to take this land? The Lord said to me, ‘Go and destroy it!’”

¹¹ Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to him, “Please talk to us in Aramaic,^[a] for we understand it quite well. Don’t speak in Hebrew, for the people on the wall will hear.”