21. Do you trust in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it? That is what Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is to all who trust in him.
22. Or do you people say to me, “It is in the Lord our God we trust!”? Is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, commanding Judah and Jerusalem, “Worship before this altar in Jerusalem”?’
23. “Now, make a wager with my lord, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses if you are able to put riders on them.
24. How then can you turn back even a captain, one of the least servants of my lord, trusting, as you do, in Egypt for chariots and horses?
25. Did I come up to destroy this place without the Lord? The Lord himself said to me: Go up and destroy that land!”
26. Then Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah and Joah said to the commander: “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic; we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within earshot of the people who are on the wall.”
27. But the commander replied: “Was it to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Was it not rather to those sitting on the wall, who, with you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their urine?”
28. Then the commander stepped forward and cried out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, “Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.
29. Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he cannot rescue you from my hand.
30. And do not let Hezekiah induce you to trust in the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord will surely rescue us, and this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.’
31. Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make peace with me, and surrender to me! Eat, each of you, from your vine, each from your own fig tree. Drink water, each from your own well,
32. until I arrive and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of rich olives and honey. Live, and do not die! And do not listen to Hezekiah when he would incite you by saying, ‘The Lord will rescue us.’
33. Has any of the gods of the nations ever rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria?
34. Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did they indeed rescue Samaria from my power?
35. Which of the gods for all these lands ever rescued his land from my power? Will the Lord then rescue Jerusalem from my power?”
36. But the people remained silent and did not answer at all, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.”
37. Then the master of the palace, Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, Shebnah the scribe, and the chancellor Joah, son of Asaph, came to Hezekiah with their garments torn, and reported to him the words of the commander.