Isaiah 36:1-12

11Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, 2Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. 2And the 3king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a large army. And he stood by the 4conduit of the upper pool on the highway of the 5fuller’s field. 3Then 6Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and 7Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to him.

4Then 8Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, “What is this confidence that you 9have? 5I say, ‘Your counsel and strength for the war are only 10empty words.’ Now on whom do you rely, that 11you have rebelled against me? 6Behold, you rely on the 12staff of this crushed reed, even on Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his 13hand and pierce it. 14So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him. 7But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God,’ is it not He 15whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’? 8Now therefore, 16come make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. 9How then can you 17repulse one 18official of the least of my master’s servants and 1920rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 10Have I now come up 21without the Lord’s approval against this land to destroy it? 22The Lord said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’”’”

11Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Speak now to your servants in 23Aramaic, for we 24understand it; and do not speak with us in 2526Judean in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” 12But Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”