⁴ Then the field commander said to them, “Say to Hezekiah: Assyria’s Great King says this: Why do you feel so confident? ⁵ Do you think that empty words are the same as good strategy and the strength to fight? Who are you trusting that you now rebel against me? ⁶ It appears that you are trusting in a staff—Egypt—that’s nothing but a broken reed! It will stab the hand of anyone who leans on it! That’s all that Pharaoh, Egypt’s king, is to anyone who trusts in him. ⁷ Now suppose you say to me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God.’ Isn’t he the one whose shrines and altars Hezekiah removed, telling Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship only at this altar’?

⁸ “So now, make a wager with my master, Assyria’s king. I’ll give you two thousand horses if you can supply the riders! ⁹ How will you drive back even the least important official among my master’s servants when you are relying on Egypt for chariots and riders? ¹⁰ What’s more, do you think I’ve marched against this place to destroy it without the Lord’s support? It was the Lord who told me, ‘March against this land and destroy it!’”

¹¹ Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the field commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, because we understand it. Don’t speak with us in Hebrew,^[a] because the people on the wall will hear it.”

¹² The field commander said to them, “Did my master send me to speak these words just to you and your master and not also to the men on the wall? They are the ones who will have to eat their dung and drink their urine along with you.”