1. In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, went up against all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
2. From Lachish the king of Assyria sent his commander with a great army to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. When he stopped at the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway of the fuller’s field,
3. there came out to him the master of the palace, Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and Shebna the scribe, and the chancellor, Joah, son of Asaph.
4. The commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you base this trust of yours?
5. Do you think mere words substitute for strategy and might in war? In whom, then, do you place your trust, that you rebel against me?
6. 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.
7. Or do you 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’?