23. “So now make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria. I’ll give you 2,000 horses if you’re able to supply riders for them!
24. How then can you drive back a single officer among the least of my master’s servants and trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
25. Have I attacked this place to destroy it without the Lord’s approval? The Lord said to me, ‘Attack this land and destroy it.’ ”
26. Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebnah, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak with us in Hebrew within earshot of the people on the wall.”
27. But the Rabshakeh said to them, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words? Hasn’t he also sent me to the men who sit on the wall, destined with you to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine? ”
28. The Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew. Then he spoke: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria.
29. This is what the king says: ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you; he can’t deliver you from my hand.
30. Don’t let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord by saying: Certainly the Lord will deliver us! This city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.’
31. “Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: ‘Make peace with me and surrender to me. Then every one of you may eat from his own vine and his own fig tree, and every one may drink water from his own cistern
32. 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, a land of olive trees and honey — so that you may live and not die. But don’t listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you, saying: The Lord will deliver us.
33. Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land from the power of the king of Assyria?