Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah replied, “Please speak to us, your servants, in Aramaic, for we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew, for the people on the wall are listening to us, and they will overhear our conversation.”
So the three officials of Hezekiah—Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator; Shebna, the scribe; and Joah, son of Asaph the secretary—came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn as a sign of despair and reported what the Assyrian commander had said.
And coming out to meet him were three officials of the king: Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator; Shebna, the scribe; and Joah, son of Asaph, the secretary.
And he sent Eliakim, the palace administrator; Shebna, the royal scribe; and the leading priests—all clothed in sackcloth—to the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz.
He left immediately on his assignment. Along the way he encountered an Ethiopian who believed in the God of the Jews, who was the minister of finance for Candace, queen of Ethiopia. He was on his way home from worshiping God in Jerusalem.