1Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. 2And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to King Hezekiah, with a great army. And he stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the highway to the Fuller's Field. 3Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, came out to him. 4And Rabshakeh said to them, Say now to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this in which you trust? 5You say (but they are only words of the lips), I have counsel and strength for war. Now, in whom do you trust, that you rebel against me? 6Lo, you trust in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; on which, if a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. 7But if you say to me, We trust in Jehovah our God; is it not He whose high places and altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, You shall bow down before this altar? 8Now then, please exchange pledges with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are even able on your part to put riders on them. 9How then will you repel the face of one commander of the least of my master's servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 10Have I now come up without Jehovah against this land to destroy it? Jehovah said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it. 11Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. But do not speak to us in the Jewish language in the ears of the people who are on the wall. 12But 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, that they may eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you? 13Then Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in the Jewish language 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 shall not be able to deliver you! 15Nor let Hezekiah make you trust in Jehovah, saying, Jehovah will deliver, to rescue us; this city shall not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria! 16Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria, Make a peace treaty with me, and come out to me; and let everyone eat of his vine, and everyone of his fig tree, and everyone drink the waters of his own cistern, 17until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and fresh wine, a land of bread and vineyards! 18Let not Hezekiah persuade you, saying, Jehovah will deliver us. Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? 19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Indeed, have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? 20Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land out of my hand, that Jehovah should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? 21But they kept silent and did not answer him a word, for the king's command said, Do not answer him. 22Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and reported to him the words of Rabshakeh.
Matthew Henry - Complete Commentary 1 We shall here only observe some practical lessons. 1. A people may be in the way of their duty and yet meet with trouble and distress. Hezekiah was reforming, and his people were in some measure reformed; and yet their country is at that time invaded and a great part of it laid waste. Perhaps they began to grow remiss and cool in the work of reformation, were doing it by halves, and ready to sit down short of a thorough reformation; and then God visited them with this judgment, to put life into them and that good cause. We must not wonder if, when we are doing well, God sends afflictions to quicken us to do better, to do our best, and to press forward towards perfection. 2. That we must never be secure of the continuance of our peace in this world, nor think our mountain stands so strong that it cannot be moved. Hezekiah was not only a pious king, but prudent, both in his administration at home and in his treaties abroad. His affairs were in a good posture, and he seemed particularly to be upon good terms with the king of Assyria, for he had lately made his peace with him by a rich present (
2Kgs 18:14), and yet that perfidious prince pours an army into his country all of a sudden and lays it waste. It is good for us therefore always to keep up an expectation of trouble, that, when it comes, it may be no surprise to us, and then it will be the less a terror. 3. God sometimes permits the enemies of his people, even those that are most impious and treacherous, to prevail far against them. The king of Assyria took all, or most, of the defenced cities of Judah, and then the country would of course be an easy prey to him. Wickedness may prosper awhile, but cannot prosper always. 4. Proud men love to talk big, to boast of what they are, and have, and have done, nay and of what they will do, to insult over others, and set all mankind at defiance, though thereby they render themselves ridiculous to all wise men and obnoxious to the wrath of that God who resists the proud. But thus they think to make themselves feared, though they make themselves hated, and to carry their point by
great swelling words of vanity,
Jude 1:16. 5. The enemies of God's people endeavour to conquer them by frightening them, especially by frightening them from their confidence in God. Thus Rabshakeh here, with noise and banter, runs down Hezekiah as utterly unable to cope with his master, or in the least to make head against him. It concerns us therefore, that we may keep our ground against the enemies of our souls, to keep up our spirits by keeping up our hope in God. 6. It is acknowledged, on all hands, that those who forsake God's service forfeit his protection. If that had been true which Rabshakeh alleged, that Hezekiah had thrown down God's altars, he might justly infer that he could not with any assurance trust in him for succour and relief,
Isa 36:7, We may say thus to presuming sinners, who say that they trust in the Lord and in his mercy. Is not this he whose commandments they have lived in the contempt of, whose name they have dishonoured, and whose ordinances they have slighted? How then can they expect to find favour with him? 7. It is an easy thing, and very common, for those that persecute the church and people of God to pretend a commission from him for so doing. Rabshakeh could say,
Have I now come up without the Lord? when really he had come up
against the Lord,
Isa 37:28. Those that kill the servants of the Lord think they do him service and say,
Let the Lord be glorified. But, sooner or later, they will be made to know their error to their cost, to their confusion.
11 We may hence learn these lessons: - 1. That, while princes and counsellors have public matters under debate, it is not fair to appeal to the people. It was a reasonable motion which Hezekiah's plenipotentiaries made, that this parley should be held in a language which the people did not understand (
Isa 36:11), because reasons of state are secret things and ought to be kept secret, the vulgar being incompetent judges of them. It is therefore an unfair practice, and not doing as men would be done by, to incense subjects against their rulers by base insinuations. 2. Proud and haughty scorners, the fairer they are spoken to, commonly speak the fouler. Nothing could be said more mildly and respectfully than that which Hezekiah's agents said to Rabshakeh. Besides that the thing itself was just which they desired, they called themselves his
servants, they petitioned for it:
Speak, we pray thee; but this made him the more spiteful and imperious. To give rough answers to those who give us soft answers is one way of rendering evil for good; and those are wicked indeed, and it is to be feared incurable, with whom that which usually turns away wrath does but make bad worse. 3. When Satan would tempt men from trusting in God, and cleaving to him, he does so by insinuating that in yielding to him they may better their condition; but it is a false suggestion, and grossly absurd, and therefore to be rejected with the utmost abhorrence. When the world and the flesh say to us,
Make an agreement with us
and come out to us, submit to our dominion and come into our interests, and
you shall eat every one of his own vine, they do but deceive us, promising liberty when they would lead us into the basest captivity and slavery. One might as well take Rabshakeh's word as theirs for kind usage and fair quarter; therefore,
when they speak fair, believe them not. Let them say what they will, there is no land like the land of promise, the holy land. 4. Nothing can be more absurd in itself, nor a greater affront to the true and living God, than to compare him with the gods of the heathen; as if he could do no more for the protection of his worshippers than they can for the protection of theirs, and as if the God of Israel could as easily be mastered as the gods of Hamath and Arphad, whereas they are vanity and a lie. They are nothing; he is the great
I AM: they are the creatures of men's fancy and the works of men's hands; he is the Creator of all things. 5. Presumptuous sinners are ready to think that, because they have been too hard for their fellow-creatures, they are therefore a match for their Creator. This and the other nation they have subdued, and therefore the Lord himself shall not deliver Jerusalem out of their hand. But, though the potsherds may strive with the potsherds of the earth, let them not strive with the potter. 6. It is sometimes prudent not to
answer a fool according to his folly. Hezekiah's command was,
Answer him not; it will but provoke him to rail and blaspheme yet more and more; leave it to God to stop his mouth, for you cannot. They had reason enough on their side, but it would be hard to speak it to such an unreasonable adversary without a mixture of passion; and, if they should fall a railing like him, Rabshakeh would be much too hard for them at that weapon. 7. It becomes the people of God to lay to heart the dishonour done to God by the blasphemies of wicked men, though they do not think it prudent to reply to those blasphemies. Though they
answered him not a word, yet they rent their clothes, in a holy zeal for the glory of God's name and a holy indignation at the contempt put upon it. They tore their garments when they heard blasphemy, as taking no pleasure in their own ornaments when God's honour suffered.