¹And it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria went up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.

²The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a heavy army; and he stood at the watercourse of the upper pool, on the highway of the washer's field.

³Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, went out to him, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder.

⁴Rabshakeh said to them: Say now to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is this trust in which you have trusted?

⁵I say, only a word of the lips is counsel and strength for war. Now, in whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me?

⁶Look, you trust on the staff of this crushed reed, on Egypt, which, if a man leans on it, will go into his palm and pierce it. So is Pharaoh, king of Egypt to all who trust on him.

⁷And if you say to me, We trust in Yahweh our God—is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Before this altar you shall bow down?

⁸And now, please, strike a bargain with my lord the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to set riders on them for yourself.

⁹How can you turn back the face of a single governor among the least of the servants of my lord, and rely for yourself on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

¹⁰And now, did I come up against this land to ruin it without Yahweh? Yahweh said to me, Go up to this land and ruin it.

¹¹Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to Rabshakeh: Speak, please, to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand; and do not speak to us in Judean in the ears of the people who are on the wall.

¹²Rabshakeh said, Was it to your master and to you that my master sent me to speak these words? Is it not for the men who sit on the wall, to eat their filth and to drink their urine with you?

¹³Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in Judean, and said: Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.

¹⁴Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.

¹⁵And do not let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying, Yahweh will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.

¹⁶Do not listen to Hezekiah; for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make a pact of blessing with me and come out to me, and eat, each man from his own vine and each man from his own fig tree, and drink, each man the water of his cistern;

¹⁷until I come and take you to a land like your land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of food and vineyards.

¹⁸Beware lest Hezekiah incite you, saying, Yahweh will deliver us. Have the gods of the nations delivered, each one, his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

¹⁹Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they delivered Samaria from my hand?

²⁰Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered their land from my hand, that Yahweh should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?

²¹They kept silent and did not answer him a word, for the king's command was this: You are not to answer him.

²²Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their garments torn, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.