Isaiah 36 - Hebrew Names version (HNV) Hebrew Names version (HNV)
Isaiah 36

¹ Now it happened in the fourteenth year of king Chizkiyahu, that Sancheriv king of Ashur attacked all of the fortified cities of Yehudah, and captured them.

² The king of Ashur sent Ravshakeh from Lakhish to Yerushalayim to king Chizkiyahu with a large army. He stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool in the fuller's field highway.

³ Then Elyakim the son of Chilkiyah, who was over the household, and Shevna the scribe, and Yo'ach, the son of Asaf, the recorder came out to him.

⁴ Ravshakeh said to them, *Now tell Chizkiyahu, 'Thus says the great king, the king of Ashur, *What confidence is this in which you trust?

⁵ I say that your counsel and strength for the war are only vain words. Now in whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me?

⁶ Behold, you trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even in Egypt, which if a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Par`oh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

⁷ But if you tell me, 'We trust in the LORD our God,' isn't that he whose high places and whose altars Chizkiyahu has taken away, and has said to Yehudah and to Yerushalayim, 'You shall worship before this altar?'*

⁸ Now therefore, please make a pledge to my master the king of Ashur, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them.

⁹ How then can you turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put your trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

¹⁰ Have I come up now without the LORD against this land to destroy it? the LORD said to me, *Go up against this land, and destroy it.*'*

¹¹ Then Elyakim, Shevna and Yo'ach said to Ravshakeh, *Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and don't speak to us in the Jews' language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.*

¹² But Ravshakeh said, *Has my master sent me only to your master and to you, to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?*

¹³ Then Ravshakeh stood, and called out with a loud voice in the Jews' language, and said, *Hear the words of the great king, the king of Ashur!

¹⁴ Thus says the king, 'Don't let Chizkiyahu deceive you; for he will not be able to deliver you.

¹⁵ Don't let Chizkiyahu make you trust in the LORD, saying, *The LORD will surely deliver us. This city won't be given into the hand of the king of Ashur.*'

¹⁶ Don't listen to Chizkiyahu, for thus says the king of Ashur, 'Make your shalom with me, and come out to me; and each of you eat from his vine, and each one from his fig tree, and each 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.

¹⁸ Beware lest Chizkiyahu persuade you, saying, *The LORD will deliver us.* Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their lands from the hand of the king of Ashur?

¹⁹ Where are the gods of Chamat and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sefarvayim? Have they delivered Shomron from my hand?

²⁰ Who are they among all the gods of these countries that have delivered their country out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Yerushalayim out of my hand?'*

²¹ But they remained silent, and said nothing in reply, for the king's mitzvah was, *Don't answer him.*

²² Then Elyakim the son of Chilkiyah, who was over the household, and Shevna the scribe, and Yo'ach, the son of Asaf, the recorder, came to Chizkiyahu with their clothes torn, and told him the words of Ravshakeh.