9 How then will you repel one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
10 Have I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’ ”
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not speak to us in1 Hebrew in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
12 But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who will eat and drink their own waste with you?”
13 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in Hebrew, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14 Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you;
15 nor 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.” ’
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make peace with me bya present and come out to me; aand every one of you eat from his own vine and every one from his own fig tree, and every one of you drink the waters of his own cistern;
17 until 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 lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, “The Lord will deliver us.” Has any one of the agods of the nations delivered its land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Indeed, have they delivered aSamaria from my hand?
20 Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their countries from my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’ ”
21 But they1 held their peace and answered him not a word; for the king’s commandment was, “Do not answer him.”
22 Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.
Syrian—rather, "Aramean": the language spoken north and east of Palestine, and understood by the Assyrians as belonging to the same family of languages as their own: nearly akin to Hebrew also, though not intelligible to the multitude (compare II Kings 5:5-7). "Aram" means a "high land," and includes parts of Assyria as well as Syria.
Jews' language—The men of Judah since the disruption of Israel, claimed the Hebrew as their own peculiarly, as if they were now the only true representatives of the whole Hebrew twelve tribes.
ears of . . . people on . . . wall—The interview is within hearing distance of the city. The people crowd on the wall, curious to hear the Assyrian message. The Jewish rulers fear that it will terrify the people and therefore beg Rab-shakeh to speak Aramean.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Isaiah 36:11:
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