TEXT [Commentary]

3. Sennacherib threatens Jerusalem (18:19-37)

19 Then the Assyrian king’s chief of staff told them to give this message to Hezekiah:

“This is what the great king of Assyria says: What are you trusting in that makes you so confident? 20 Do you think that mere words can substitute for military skill and strength? Who are you counting on, that you have rebelled against me? 21 On Egypt? If you lean on Egypt, it will be like a reed that splinters beneath your weight and pierces your hand. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is completely unreliable!

22 “But perhaps you will say to me, ‘We are trusting in the LORD our God!’ But isn’t he the one who was insulted by Hezekiah? Didn’t Hezekiah tear down his shrines and altars and make everyone in Judah and Jerusalem worship only at the altar here in Jerusalem?

23 “I’ll tell you what! Strike a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you 2,000 horses if you can find that many men to ride on them! 24 With your tiny army, how can you think of challenging even the weakest contingent of my master’s troops, even with the help of Egypt’s chariots and charioteers? 25 What’s more, do you think we have invaded your land without the LORD’s direction? The LORD himself told us, ‘Attack this land and destroy it!’”

26 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the Assyrian chief of staff, “Please speak to us in Aramaic, for we understand it well. Don’t speak in Hebrew,[*] for the people on the wall will hear.”

27 But Sennacherib’s chief of staff replied, “Do you think my master sent this message only to you and your master? He wants all the people to hear it, for when we put this city under siege, they will suffer along with you. They will be so hungry and thirsty that they will eat their own dung and drink their own urine.”

28 Then the chief of staff stood and shouted in Hebrew to the people on the wall, “Listen to this message from the great king of Assyria! 29 This is what the king says: Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you. He will never be able to rescue you from my power. 30 Don’t let him fool you into trusting in the LORD by saying, ‘The LORD will surely rescue us. This city will never fall into the hands of the Assyrian king!’

31 “Don’t listen to Hezekiah! These are the terms the king of Assyria is offering: Make peace with me—open the gates and come out. Then each of you can continue eating from your own grapevine and fig tree and drinking from your own well. 32 Then I will arrange to take you to another land like this one—a land of grain and new wine, bread and vineyards, olive groves and honey. Choose life instead of death!

“Don’t listen to Hezekiah when he tries to mislead you by saying, ‘The LORD will rescue us!’ 33 Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the king of Assyria? 34 What happened to the gods of Hamath and Arpad? And what about the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did any god rescue Samaria from my power? 35 What god of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power? So what makes you think that the LORD can rescue Jerusalem from me?”

36 But the people were silent and did not utter a word because Hezekiah had commanded them, “Do not answer him.”

37 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator; Shebna the court secretary; and Joah son of Asaph, the royal historian, went back to Hezekiah. They tore their clothes in despair, and they went in to see the king and told him what the Assyrian chief of staff had said.

NOTES

18:19 chief of staff. Heb., rab-shaqeh [TH7262, ZH8072]; cf. the second note on 18:17 for details.

great king. The Hebrew equivalent of the Assyrian term sˇarru rabû, the “foremost title of every Assyrian king from the days of Shamshi-Adad [c. 1750 BC] on” (Cogan and Tadmor 1988:231). Cogan and Tadmor also note that in contrast, the “chief of staff” or Rabshakeh in his speech always refers to Hezekiah by his personal name, never using a royal title.

18:21 On Egypt? Whether or not we accept Childs’s B1 and B2 analysis (see the previous commentary section for details), we certainly are meant to note the parallelism between trusting in Egypt and trusting in Yahweh, parallelism insufficiently noted in the commentaries (but see Barnes 1991:109-111, 119-124; cf. the commentary on 19:1-19). The characterization of Egypt as a “reed that splinters beneath your weight and pierces your hand” resonates with Yahweh’s similar comments about Egypt in Ezek 29:6-7. The reed imagery evokes the canes which grew profusely in Egypt’s marshy waters. Isaiah had also repeatedly denounced seeking help from Egypt (see Isa 30:1-5; 31:1-3; cf. Isa 20:1-6 [from the days of Sargon II]), in addition to delivering Yahweh’s condemnations of Egypt and Cush (NLT, “Ethiopia”) found in Isa 18:1-7; 19:1-17.

18:22 trusting in the LORD our God! The logic here is most ironic, inasmuch as it includes an oblique reference (surely historical in origin—cf. Childs 1967:82) to Hezekiah following the Deuteronomic tradition (cf. Deut 12:8-14) in its insistence that in the future (from Moses’s point of view) Yahweh will place “his name” on only one site in Israel, and it is to that spot that all are to travel to worship him (see “One Place of Worship” under “Major Themes” in the Introduction). Aharoni, in his excavations at Beersheba in 1973, discovered the remains of a large four-horned stone altar calculated to be some 63 in. (157 cm) in height (= 3 royal cubits?), but with its stones reused as part of a repaired wall of a storehouse complex around the end of the eighth century BC (see Aharoni 1974:2-6). Here is conclusive proof that the demolition of the altar and the reuse of its stones took place during the reign of King Hezekiah, probably as part of his religious reform so sarcastically noted here by the Rabshakeh—no more altars to Yahweh (or any other god) permitted anywhere except Jerusalem.

18:23 2,000 horses. These horses were probably meant to pull chariots rather than to be ridden as cavalry (see the note on 1 Kgs 4:26). Still, this “offer” was meant to be thoroughly demoralizing in any case (the sarcastic echo of the “law of the king” in Deut 17:14-20—the king is not to multiply horses, and especially not to go back to Egypt to get them!—is surely also meant to be noticed [cf. the commentary on 1 Kgs 10:14-29 for details]).

18:26 speak to us in Aramaic. That is, the international diplomatic language of the western half of the Assyrian Empire (Machinist 1983:733). Obviously, the Judahite leaders wanted the people not to understand what the Assyrian “chief of staff” was saying! (Cf. the second note on 18:17 concerning the probable fluency of the Rabshakeh in the local Judahite dialect.)

18:27 eat their own dung and drink their own urine. This is a literal translation. The Kethiv of the MT reads kharehem [TH2716, ZH2989], “their excrement,” and shenehem [TH7890, ZH8875], “their urine.” The Qere, however, reads tso’atham [TH6675, ZH7363], “their filth,” and meme-raglehem [TH4325/7272, ZH4784/8079], “water of their legs/feet”—more euphemistic expressions for the harsh words found in the Kethiv. (Concerning Kethiv and Qere, see the note on 3:24.) The ugly realities of a protracted siege are effectively portrayed here!

18:31 eating . . . drinking. See the second note on 1 Kgs 4:25 for this stereotypical description of “ideal” life in the land of Israel (or Judah).

18:32 another land like this one. Concerning the Assyrian policy of deporting large portions of subject peoples, see the third note on 15:29. Here the Rabshakeh puts the best face possible on this terrifying prospect facing the Judahites, although as Cogan and Tadmor (1988:233) point out, “[This] was not mere rhetoric. It was in Assyria’s interest to care for the deportees both during the journey to the lands of resettlement, as well as in their new homes, an interest motivated by a desire to make maximum use of the manpower and resources these exiles represented. . . . Deportees from the West were resettled within Assyria proper, and in Sennacherib’s days many were brought to Nineveh to populate the newly rebuilt capital.”

18:33 Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the king of Assyria? This is an effective rhetorical question, even if the places mentioned in the next verse had been defeated by previous Assyrian kings (Cogan and Tadmor 1988:34) and not by Sennacherib himself, who had only come to the throne four years previously. (A similar listing of references to defeated peoples is also found in 19:11-13, where the previous Assyrian kings are clearly cited as gaining the victories.)

18:34 Did any god rescue Samaria . . . ? Of course, the God who would have been expected to rescue Samaria was none other than Yahweh himself; for reasons that he did not rescue them, see 17:7-12, 18a. Samaria had fallen to the Assyrians in 722 BC, with credit given to both Shalmaneser V and his successor Sargon II (see note on 17:5). Whether the Assyrians were aware of the fact that Yahweh was the national God of both Israel and Judah is uncertain, but presumably the Rabshakeh (if he was indeed from northern Israel) would have been quite clear on the subject—hence, the devastating reference to Samaria’s recent demise being left to the end.

18:37 Eliakim . . . Shebna . . . Joah. See the note on 18:18 for details.

COMMENTARY [Text]

Hezekiah and his people are in the middle of a crisis that will extend to the end of the next chapter (cf. the textual and form-critical analysis discussed in the previous commentary section for details). The crisis is acute, and it is overwhelming. The Rabshakeh (NLT, “chief of staff”; see the second note on 18:17) has given his speeches (in the native dialect of Judah; see note on 18:26), and their conclusions seem to be unanswerable for Hezekiah: (1) You can’t trust in Egypt, your erstwhile ally, to be of any assistance; (2) you can’t trust in Yahweh, your national God, to help you out; and (3) it is in fact Yahweh himself who has ordered us to attack you! As is evident, the underlying issue here is that of “trust” (batakh [TH982, ZH1053]; cf. Seow 1999:265). Whom should one trust?

With regard to these questions of trust, Egypt will prove to be of some assistance and not be “a reed that splinters” (18:21; cf. the note there and the note on 19:9), in spite of past indicators to the contrary (cf. 17:4). The major concern, however, was trust in Yahweh: Maybe Yahweh himself is acting against his people Judah (he certainly acted quite recently against his people Israel [see the note on 18:34], an observation the Deuteronomistic editor has just made at some length in the previous chapter of 2 Kings). This too will prove false, to the relief of Hezekiah.

Two subpoints in the Rabshakeh’s diatribes should also be cited here: (a) Yahweh might well be angry over the recent removal of the Yahwistic high places by Hezekiah (cf. the note on 18:22); and in any case, (b) it is most difficult to argue against the impressive track record of previous Assyrian successes. Which other nation or kingdom has been able to withstand its military might (cf. 18:32b-35)? Both are reasonable and persuasive, but both err. Subpoint (a) asserts that because Hezekiah has uniquely (and surely for some, paradoxically) shut down many of Yahweh’s own sanctuaries, Yahweh has sent the Assyrians to punish Judah. Ironically enough, the prophet Isaiah stated something similar to this in Isaiah 10:5-19 (Assyria, “the rod of my anger” [Isa 10:5a] was sent by Yahweh against Jerusalem [Isa 10:12], but for different reasons than those given by the Rabshakeh [Isa 10:1-2]). Subpoint (b) asserts that Assyria’s power cannot be resisted by any god and history will repeat itself. But Assyria misunderstood the reason for its successes, foolishly claiming, “By my own powerful arm I have done this” (Isa 10:13a), and would soon suffer much due to that misunderstanding (“[Yahweh] will send a plague among Assyria’s proud troops. . . . [as a fire] burning up the enemy in a single night” [Isa 10:16-17]). At this point in the story, the end is not yet, but the end is certain. It is, however, incumbent upon Hezekiah to act in faith, and in faith he will act. As we soon shall see, he will change nothing less than the course of world history by his prayers!