1 In King Hezekiah's fourteenth year, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified towns of Judah and seized them.
2 From Lachish the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh with a large army to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. He took up a position by the channel of the upper pool, on the road to the Launderer's Field.
3 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, went out to him.
4 The Rabshakeh told them, "Tell Hezekiah: 'This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: What is this confidence you are trusting in?
5 I say that your plan and strength for war are only empty talk. Whom are you trusting in, that you have rebelled against me?
6 Look, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it and goes right through it. That is what Pharaoh king of Egypt is to all who trust in him.
7 And if you tell me, "We trust in the LORD our God," is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, telling Judah and Jerusalem, "You must worship before this altar"?
8 Come now, make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you can put riders on them!
9 How then could you drive back a single officer, even the least of my master's servants, while you trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
10 Besides, have I come up to attack and destroy this land without the LORD? The LORD himself told me, "March up against this land and destroy it."'"
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah told the Rabshakeh, "Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak to us in Judean where the people on the wall can hear."
12 But the Rabshakeh replied, "Was it only to your master and to you that my master sent me to say these things? Was it not to the men sitting on the wall, who, like you, will have to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?"
13 Then the Rabshakeh stood and shouted in Judean, "Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14 This is what the king says: 'Do not let Hezekiah fool you. He cannot rescue you.
15 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD by saying, "The LORD will certainly rescue us; this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria."'
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah! This is what the king of Assyria says: 'Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree and drink water from his own cistern,
17 until I come and take you to a land like yours, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
18 Do not let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, "The LORD will rescue us." Has the god of any nation rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria?
19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Did they rescue Samaria from my hand?
20 Which of all the gods of these lands has rescued his land from my hand? How then could the LORD rescue Jerusalem from my hand?'"
21 But they kept quiet and said not a word in reply, because the king had ordered, "Do not answer him."
22 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and reported to him what the Rabshakeh had said.