And it was, in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.
And the king of Assyria sent the Rab-shakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a heavy force. And he stood at the channel of the upper pool, at the highway of the launderer’s field.
And Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, went out to him, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder.
And the Rab-shakeh said to them: Say now to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is this confidence in which you have trusted?
I said — but it is only a word of the lips — counsel and might for war. Now, in whom have you trusted, that you have rebelled against me?
See, you have trusted in the staff of this crushed reed, in Egypt, which, when a man leans on it, goes into his palm and pierces it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.
And if you say to me, “In the LORD our God we have trusted” — is he not the one whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah removed, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, “Before this altar you shall bow down”?
And now, make a wager with my lord the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to put riders on them.
How then could you turn back the face of a single governor among the least of my lord’s servants — and you have trusted for yourself in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
And now, is it apart from the LORD that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, “Go up against this land and destroy it.”
And Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to the Rab-shakeh: Speak, please, to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not speak to us in Judean in the ears of the people who are on the wall.
And the Rab-shakeh said: Is it to your master and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not to the men sitting on the wall, to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?
And the Rab-shakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in Judean, and said: Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.
And do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”
Do not listen to Hezekiah — for thus says the king of Assyria: Make a blessing with me and come out to me, and eat each one of his vine and each one of his fig tree, and drink each one the waters of his own cistern,
until I come and take you to a land like your land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
Beware lest Hezekiah incite you, saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” Have the gods of the nations delivered, each one his land, from the hand of the king of Assyria?
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And did they deliver Samaria from my hand?
Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?
And they kept silent and did not answer him a word, for it was the command of the king, saying, “Do not answer him.”
And Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder came to Hezekiah with garments torn, and told him the words of the Rab-shakeh.
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