Isaiah 36

All 22 verses in the Clear Bible Translation. Tap a verse to compare the KJV and read what it means.

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1. 1In the 14th year of King Hezekiah's reign, King Sennacherib of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
2. 2The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem with a great army to King Hezekiah. He stood by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the washerman's field.
3. 3Then Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, who was over the house, Shebna the scribe, and Joah, son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to him.
4. 4Rabshakeh told them, "Say to Hezekiah: 'This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: What is this confidence you are trusting in?'
5. 5You say, "I have a plan and strength for war," but these are only empty words. Now, whom do you trust that you rebel against me?
6. 6Look — you're leaning on Egypt, and Egypt is nothing but a splintered walking stick. If you lean on it, it stabs right through your hand. That's exactly what Pharaoh king of Egypt does to everyone who trusts in him.
7. 7And if you say to me, 'We trust in the LORD our God,' isn't he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, telling Judah and Jerusalem, 'You shall worship before this altar'?
8. 8Now therefore, I ask you to make a pledge to my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able to provide riders for them.
9. 9You can't even stand up to the lowest-ranking officer among my master's servants, and yet you're counting on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
10. 10And do you think I came up against this land without the LORD? The LORD himself told me, 'Go up against this land and destroy it.'
11. 11Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to Rabshakeh, "Please speak to us in Aramaic — we understand it. Don't speak to us in Hebrew where the people on the wall can hear you."
12. 12But Rabshakeh said, "Did my master send me only to your master and you to speak these words? Did he not also send me to the men sitting on the wall, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?"
13. 13Then Rabshakeh stood up and shouted in Hebrew so everyone could hear: "Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14. 14The king says: 'Don't let Hezekiah fool you. He cannot save you.
15. 15Don't let Hezekiah convince you to trust in the LORD by saying, "The LORD will certainly rescue us — this city will never fall to the king of Assyria."
16. 16Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: 'Make an agreement with me by giving a gift, and come out to me. Then each of you will eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern.'
17. 17until I come and take you away to a land like your own, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
18. 18"Don't let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, 'The LORD will rescue us.' Has any god of any nation ever saved his land from the king of Assyria?
19. 19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Did any of them rescue Samaria from my hand?
20. 20Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered their land from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?
21. 21The people stayed silent and didn't say a word in response, because the king had commanded, 'Do not answer him.'
22. 22Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the household manager, Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of Rabshakeh.