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 Pharaoh 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 Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar?’”
8. Now therefore, please make a pledge to my master the king of Assyria, 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 Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “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 Rabshakeh 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 Rabshakeh stood, and called out with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14. Thus says the king, ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you; for he will not be able to deliver you.
15. Don’t let Hezekiah 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 Assyria.”’