Isaiah 36: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria captures the fortified cities of Judah and sends a senior officer, the Rabshakeh, with a large army from Lachish to Jerusalem. Standing outside the city wall, the officer challenges three of Hezekiah's officials, arguing that Judah's trust in Egypt is worthless, that Hezekiah has offended the LORD by removing the high places and altars, and that the LORD himself sent Assyria against the land. He then shouts in Hebrew to the people on the wall, offering them terms and listing the gods of other nations that failed to save them. The people stay silent as Hezekiah ordered, and the three officials return to the king with their clothes torn and report what was said.

Claim by Claim

1. 36:1
   • In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah.
   • Sennacherib captured all the fortified cities of Judah.
2. 36:2
   • The king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem, to king Hezekiah.
   • The Rabshakeh came with a large army.
   • The Rabshakeh took his stand at the channel of the upper pool.
   • The channel of the upper pool is on the road of the launderer's field.
3. 36:3
   • Eliakim son of Hilkiah went out to the Rabshakeh.
   • Eliakim was in charge of the household.
   • Shebna the scribe went out to the Rabshakeh.
   • Joah son of Asaph went out to the Rabshakeh.
   • Joah was the recorder.
4. 36:4
   • The Rabshakeh spoke to Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah.
   • The Rabshakeh told them to say to Hezekiah what follows.
   • The Rabshakeh attributed the message to the great king, the king of Assyria.
   • The message asked Hezekiah what this confidence is that he trusts in.
5. 36:5
   • The Rabshakeh said that Hezekiah's claim to have counsel and strength for war is nothing but words of the lips.
   • The Rabshakeh asked Hezekiah on whom he now trusts.
   • The Rabshakeh said that Hezekiah had rebelled against him.
6. 36:6
   • The Rabshakeh said Hezekiah trusts in the support of a crushed reed, which is Egypt.
   • If a man leans on that reed, it goes into his hand and pierces it.
   • Pharaoh king of Egypt is like that to all who trust in him.
7. 36:7
   • The Rabshakeh anticipated Hezekiah saying, We trust in the LORD our God.
   • The Rabshakeh said that this is the God whose high places and altars Hezekiah had removed.
   • The Rabshakeh said Hezekiah told Judah and Jerusalem that they must worship before this one altar.
8. 36:8
   • The Rabshakeh urged Hezekiah to make a wager with his master the king of Assyria.
   • The Rabshakeh offered to give Hezekiah two thousand horses.
   • The offer was conditional on Hezekiah being able to supply riders for the horses.
9. 36:9
   • The Rabshakeh asked how Hezekiah could turn back even one governor among the least of his master's servants.
   • The Rabshakeh said Hezekiah relies on Egypt for chariots and horsemen.
10. 36:10
    • The Rabshakeh asked whether he had come up against this land to destroy it apart from the LORD.
    • The Rabshakeh said the LORD told him to go up against this land and destroy it.
11. 36:11
    • Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah spoke to the Rabshakeh.
    • They asked him to speak to his servants in Aramaic.
    • They said they understood Aramaic.
    • They asked him not to speak to them in the language of Judah.
    • They gave as the reason that the people on the wall were listening.
12. 36:12
    • The Rabshakeh replied to them.
    • The Rabshakeh asked whether his master had sent him to speak these words only to their master and to them.
    • The Rabshakeh said he was sent to the men sitting on the wall.
    • The Rabshakeh said those men would eat their own dung and drink their own urine along with the officials.
13. 36:13
    • The Rabshakeh stood.
    • The Rabshakeh called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah.
    • The Rabshakeh told the people to hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.
14. 36:14
    • The Rabshakeh reported the king's words.
    • The king said not to let Hezekiah deceive them.
    • The king said Hezekiah would not be able to deliver them.
15. 36:15
    • The king said not to let Hezekiah make them trust in the LORD.
    • Hezekiah was quoted as saying the LORD would surely deliver them.
    • Hezekiah was quoted as saying this city would not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.
16. 36:16
    • The Rabshakeh told the people not to listen to Hezekiah.
    • The Rabshakeh reported the words of the king of Assyria.
    • The king of Assyria told them to make terms of peace with him.
    • The king of Assyria told them to come out to him.
    • The king said each of them would then eat from his own vine and his own fig tree.
    • The king said each of them would drink the water of his own cistern.
17. 36:17
    • The king said this would last until he came and took them away to a land like their own land.
    • That land is a land of grain and new wine.
    • That land is a land of bread and vineyards.
18. 36:18
    • The Rabshakeh warned them not to let Hezekiah mislead them.
    • Hezekiah was quoted as saying the LORD will deliver us.
    • The Rabshakeh asked whether any of the gods of the nations had delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria.
19. 36:19
    • The Rabshakeh asked where the gods of Hamath and Arpad are.
    • The Rabshakeh asked where the gods of Sepharvaim are.
    • The Rabshakeh asked whether they had delivered Samaria from his hand.
20. 36:20
    • The Rabshakeh asked which among all the gods of these lands had delivered their land from his hand.
    • The Rabshakeh implied that the LORD would therefore not deliver Jerusalem from his hand.
21. 36:21
    • The people kept silent.
    • They answered him not a word.
    • The reason was that the king had commanded them not to answer him.
22. 36:22
    • Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, came to Hezekiah.
    • Shebna the scribe came to Hezekiah.
    • Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah.
    • Their clothes were torn.
    • They reported to Hezekiah the words of the Rabshakeh.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

36:1

The fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign was around 701 BC. Assyria, centered on the Tigris in what is now northern Iraq, was the dominant empire of the day, and Judah, the small southern kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital, had been a tribute-paying subject of it. "Defenced cities" in the King James simply means fortified ones, towns ringed with walls.

36:2

"Rabshakeh" is not a personal name but an Assyrian court title, roughly "chief cupbearer," borne by a very senior official; the King James treats it as a name. Lachish was the second city of Judah, about thirty miles south-west of Jerusalem, and Assyrian palace carvings still survive showing Sennacherib's siege of it. The upper pool and its channel were part of Jerusalem's water supply, and the fuller's field was where cloth-workers washed and bleached newly woven cloth, laying it out to dry, an open space just outside the wall, close enough for those on the wall to hear everything said.

36:3

These are the three highest officials of the kingdom. The man "over the house" ran the palace and the royal estates and effectively acted as prime minister; the scribe was the royal secretary who handled correspondence and records; the recorder was a herald or chronicler who kept the state annals and announced royal decisions. Sending all three signals that this is a formal negotiation.

36:4

"The great king" was an official Assyrian royal title, not a boast invented for the occasion. It asserted that Sennacherib was overlord and every other ruler, Hezekiah included, was a subordinate king holding his throne at Assyria's pleasure.

36:5

To "rebel" here has a precise legal sense. Judah was bound to Assyria by treaty and owed annual tribute; withholding that payment and making an alliance with Egypt instead was formal rebellion, and the standard penalty was invasion.

36:6

The image is of a walking stick cut from a river reed, the tall reeds of the Nile marshes, an unmistakable pointer at Egypt. A cracked reed does not merely fail to hold weight; the split ends drive into the palm of the hand leaning on it. Egypt at this date was ruled by a Kushite (Nubian) dynasty and had been encouraging small states like Judah to break with Assyria, without ever delivering much military help.

36:7

"High places" were local open-air worship sites, usually on hilltops or raised platforms, with an altar and often a standing stone or sacred pole; ordinary people had used them for generations. Hezekiah had shut them down and required that all sacrifice be brought to the one altar at the temple in Jerusalem. The Rabshakeh is arguing that this reform must have offended the very God Judah is relying on. In the King James, LORD printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four consonants and left unpronounced.

36:8

"Give pledges" translates a Hebrew phrase for laying down a stake, the officer is proposing a wager. The taunt is that Judah could not field two thousand trained horsemen even if the horses were handed over free, cavalry and chariotry being the arm in which Assyria was overwhelmingly superior.

36:9

"Turn away the face of" means drive back or repel. "Captain" here is a provincial governor or district officer, well down the Assyrian chain of command, the point being that Judah could not stop even a minor Assyrian commander.

36:10

Assyrian commanders regularly claimed that the gods of a besieged city had themselves handed it over, and the Rabshakeh here uses the name of Judah's own God to say it. Whether he is reporting something he has heard from Judean sources or simply borrowing their language for effect, the wording is deliberately calculated to unsettle the people listening on the wall.

36:11

The King James "Syrian language" means Aramaic, the international language of diplomacy and trade across the Near East, which senior officials learned but ordinary Judeans did not speak. The "Jews' language" is Hebrew, the everyday speech of the people on the wall. The officials are asking him to keep the negotiation private; his refusal is the whole point of the scene.

36:12

This is a description of siege starvation: a walled city cut off from food and water long enough that the defenders are reduced to consuming their own waste. Jewish scribal tradition found the two words so coarse that readers in synagogue were directed to substitute politer terms, though the blunt originals were kept in the written text, the King James renders the blunt ones.

36:16

"Make an agreement with me by a present" translates a Hebrew phrase literally meaning "make a blessing with me": accept terms of surrender, come out of the gates, and pay. To sit under one's own vine and fig tree and drink from one's own cistern was a stock proverbial picture of peace and security, every household living undisturbed on its own land. A cistern was a plastered underground tank cut into rock to store rainwater.

36:17

This is the standing Assyrian policy of mass deportation: conquered populations were uprooted and resettled hundreds of miles away, which broke local loyalties and made revolt far harder. The offer is exile presented as a favor. "Corn" in the English of 1611 meant grain of any kind, wheat or barley here, not maize.

36:19

Hamath and Arpad were major cities in Syria, both crushed by Assyria within living memory. Sepharvaim's location is uncertain, but it too had fallen. Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, Judah's sister state, captured by Assyria in 722 BC, barely twenty years earlier, with its population deported. The list runs from distant to painfully close.

36:21

"Held their peace" is King James English for kept silent. Refusing to answer a herald's challenge was itself a deliberate move in this kind of confrontation, denying him any exchange to work with.

36:22

Tearing one's clothing was a public, recognized gesture of grief, horror or dismay, done openly so that others could see it. Here it registers both the disaster the officials have heard described and the outrage of hearing their God spoken of as one more defeated local deity.