Isaiah 36 Holman Christian Standard Bible

Sennacherib’s Invasion

36 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah,^(A) Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. ²Then the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh, along with a massive army, from Lachish^(B) to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. The Assyrian stood near the conduit of the upper pool, by the road to the Fuller’s Field.^(C) ³Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the court secretary,^(D) and Joah son of Asaph, the court historian, came out to him.

⁴The Rabshakeh said to them, “Tell Hezekiah:

The great king, the king of Assyria, says this: What are you relying on?^[a] ⁵I^[b] say that your strategy and military preparedness are mere words. What are you now relying on that you have rebelled against me?^(E) ⁶Look, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff^(F) that will enter and pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. This is how Pharaoh king of Egypt is to all who trust in him.^(G) ⁷Suppose you say to me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God.’ Isn’t He the One whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You are to worship at this altar’?^(H)

⁸Now make a deal with my master, the king of Assyria. I’ll give you 2,000 horses if you’re able to supply riders for them! ⁹How then can you drive back a single officer among the weakest of my master’s officers and trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?^(I) ¹⁰Have I attacked this land to destroy it without the Lord’s approval? The Lord said to me, ‘Attack this land and destroy it.’”

¹¹Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic,^(J) since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew^[c] within earshot of the people who are on the wall.”

¹²But the Rabshakeh replied, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men who are sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?”

¹³Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew:^[d]

Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! ¹⁴This is what the king says: “Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you,^(K) for he cannot deliver you. ¹⁵Don’t let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord will certainly deliver us! This city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.’”

¹⁶Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: “Make peace^[e] with me and surrender to me. Then every one of you may eat from his own vine and his own fig tree^(L) and drink water from his own cistern ¹⁷until I come and take you away to a land like your own land—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. ¹⁸Beware that Hezekiah does not mislead you by saying, ‘The Lord will deliver us.’^(M) Has any one of the gods of the nations^(N) delivered his land from the power of the king of Assyria? ¹⁹Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad?^(O) Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my power?^(P) ²⁰Who among all the gods of these lands ever delivered his land from my power? So will the Lord deliver Jerusalem.”

²¹But they kept silent; they didn’t say anything, for the king’s command was, “Don’t answer him.”^(Q) ²²Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the court secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the court historian, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and reported to him the words of the Rabshakeh.