23. So then, please make a wager with my lord, with the king of Assyria, and I will give to you a thousand horses if you are able on your part to put riders on them.
24. How can you repulse a single captain among the least of the servants of my master? Yet you rely for yourself on Egypt for chariots and horsemen!
25. Have I now come up against this place without Yahweh to destroy it? Yahweh has said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it!’ ” ’ ”
26. Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah and Shebna and Joah said to the chief commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we are understanding, but you must not speak Judean with us in the ears of the people who are on the wall.”
27. The chief commander said to them, “Is it solely to your master and to you my master has sent me to speak these words? Is it not for the men who sit on the wall to eat their feces and to drink their urine with you?”
28. Then the chief commander stood and called with a great voice in Judean, and he spoke and said, “Hear the word of the king, the great king of Assyria!
29. Thus says the king, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to rescue you from my hand.
30. Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying, “Certainly Yahweh will rescue us, and this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria!” ’
31. Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria, ‘Make with me a treaty of peace and come out to me that each may eat from his vine and each from his fig tree, and each may drink water from his cistern!
32. Until I come and take you to a land like your land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees, olive oil, and honey, that you may live and not die! You must not listen to Hezekiah, for he has misled you by saying, “Yahweh will deliver us!”
33. Did the gods of each of the nations ever rescue the land from the hand of the king of Assyria?