A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 34: The Assyrian Captivity of Judah

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 34: The Assyrian Captivity of Judah 

As we hope to have illustrated in our last two presentations of Isaiah, discussing chapters 34 and 35, the wrath of Yahweh shall come upon Edom on account of the controversy of Zion, and the consequences of that controversy today are reflected in the fact that for the last 2,000 years and longer, the children of Edom have been masquerading as the children of God, pretending to be Judah, or even Israel, when they certainly are not of Judah or Israel. So now, for the most part, the prophecies against Judah and Israel which had warned them of the coming Assyrian captivities are completed, and Isaiah becomes more historical in nature, in chapters 36 through 39. These chapters contain Isaiah’s record of the Assyrian captivity of Judah and the siege of Jerusalem, which failed because Yahweh had promised to defend Jerusalem “as birds flying” in an earlier prophecy found in Isaiah chapter 31. These chapters also record some of the prophet Isaiah’s personal interactions with Hezekiah the king, and in the course of those interactions Isaiah makes a prophecy of the future captivity of the remnant of Judah in Babylon, something which happened about a hundred and fifteen years later. So there were two captivities of Judah, or actually three, because the later captivity is also divided, and this is only the first of them, but it is often overlooked, that a significant portion of Judah had been taken by the Assyrians, and therefore never went to Babylon.

So Isaiah had lived to record the fulfillment of some of his own prophecies, just as Jeremiah and Ezekiel had later spent many years warning the people of Judah concerning the Babylonians, and both prophets had lived to record the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet Isaiah, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had also prophesied many things which he did not live to see, such as the destruction of Tyre in Isaiah chapters 23 and 24, and the destruction of Assyria in Isaiah chapter 10, or the rise of the empire of the Babylonians, in Isaiah chapter 14, and their taking of Judah into captivity in Isaiah chapter 39. However the subsequent history of the region had also proven the credibility of those prophecies, and his Messianic prophecies had mostly been fulfilled in the first ministry of Christ. While we still await the fulfillment of those which have not yet been fulfilled, they are prophesied again by Christ Himself in the Revelation. Therefore we may rest assured that everything which Isaiah had prophesied which has not yet come to pass, either in history or in our own time, such as the destruction of Edom for the controversy of Zion, certainly shall come to pass at some point in the future. 

But for the moment, as this chapter opens, we learn that Hezekiah king of Judah is in the 14th year of his rule. If we accept all of the numbers found in Scripture for the duration of the reigns of David and Solomon down through this 14th year of Hezekiah, and count them in the most simple manner, then at this point the Kingdom of Judah, attached to Israel or not, is in about its 348th year, although many of those years were likely to have been only parts of years so the actual figure is a little lower. It seems also that some rounding may have occurred in ancient records, but we cannot honestly be confident enough to state that as an assertion of fact – although it does seem unlikely that Saul, David and Solomon had all ruled for even periods of forty years. Our 348 year reckoning here does not include the rule of Saul, as we had explained at length in part 60 of our Genesis commentary, A Post-Genesis Chronology, why we believe that it must be reckoned inclusively with the 450-year period of the Judges. So perhaps we should state here that the Davidic Kingdom is in its 348th year.

On several occasions, we have already described some of the apparent problems with the generally accepted chronologies of Israel, Judah and Assyria. Those chronologies usually place the Assyrian destruction of Samaria, which occurred in the first year of Sargon II, in 721 BC, and the failed Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, which had apparently occurred in the third or fourth year of Sennacherib, in 701 BC. That puts as many as twenty years between the two events, whereas in Scripture the first was said to have occurred in the sixth year of Hezekiah, as it is in 2 Kings 18:10, but the second in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, as it is here in Isaiah chapter 36, and there were only eight years between the two events.

While Sargon II is said to have ruled for 16 years, in the inscriptions which are available to us at the time of this writing, we find explicit mentions only up to his fifteenth year. But in the annals of Sennacherib, there are only records of his campaigns, and the siege of Jerusalem took place during his third campaign, while it can only be guessed that it had been conducted during his third or perhaps, his fourth year. His first campaign, against Babylon, was described as having occurred at the beginning of his kingship, and from that time none of his campaigns had been associated with particular years. But from the description of his first two campaigns, estimating the minimum amount of time they must have taken, it is evident that the third campaign could not have begun at least until his third year. So even if Sargon II had ruled only fifteen years, according to a reasonable interpretation of Assyrian chronology there must have been at least eighteen years between the fall of Samaria and the siege of Jerusalem, and that same ten-year discrepancy in the chronologies which we had evidenced on several occasions earlier in this commentary, and at the end of our Genesis commentary, continues to nag at us. There is a possibility that the record of 2 Kings chapter 18, which was written retrospectively, has some inaccuracies.

So with this, we shall commence with Isaiah chapter 36:

1 Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them. 

Hezekiah’s father Ahaz had ruled Judah for only 16 years, and according to 2 Kings chapter 18 and 2 Chronicles chapter 29, Hezekiah had been 25 years old when he began to reign. In part 7 of this commentary, titled A Virgin Shall Conceive, we discussed the meeting with Ahaz to which Isaiah had brought his own sons, and explained how it must have occurred around the third year of the rule of Ahaz, as it is recorded in Isaiah chapter 7. So it is plausible that a young Hezekiah, being about twelve years old at that time, had seen Isaiah and his own sons in the court of Ahaz his father. However those earlier chapters of Isaiah also reveal that the prophet had some influence in Jerusalem, and Hezekiah must have been quite familiar with him since Isaiah was no stranger to his father when he was king. Yet for some reason, even after Isaiah recorded the death of Ahaz in Isaiah chapter 14, and Hezekiah has now been king for over thirteen years, this is the first time that the prophet makes any mention of him, except for his introduction in the opening verses of chapter 1 where he had explained the time during which he had prophesied.

With this event, Hezekiah had anticipated an attack on Jerusalem, and his actions during this period, as evidenced in Assyrian inscriptions, indicate that he remained hostile to the Assyrians. He had, after all, the prophecy which Isaiah had uttered earlier, in chapter 31, where the Word of Yahweh had spoken through the prophet and said: “4 For thus hath the LORD spoken unto me, Like as the lion and the young lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the LORD of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof. 5 As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it. 6 Turn ye unto him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted. 7 For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a sin. 8 Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited. 9 And he shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith the LORD, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem.” So these words may have emboldened Hezekiah, and encouraged him to withstand a siege.

Therefore Hezekiah must have also been prepared for the coming siege, and some of what can be described of those preparations are detailed in an article titled The Siloam Inscription by one Paul Carus, which was published in The Open Court, a historical journal which was published periodically from 1887 to 1936, in November, 1903. There, we read of a water conduit which had been accidentally discovered in Jerusalem in 1880, and an inscription in the tunnel which formed the conduit, and which described aspects of its building. Then we read, in part:

The water conduit has been assigned to the reign of Hezekiah, because in 2 Kings xx. 30 it is stated that this king made a pool and a conduit and brought water into the city, and in 2 Chronicles xxxii. 30 we read that he "stopped the upper water course of Gihon and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David," but the conduit of our inscription seems to be of older date. The work was made by engineers whose knowledge was very incomplete, and a passage in Isaiah viii. 6 speaks of the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, implying that an aqueduct must have been in existence at his time. Thus all we know about the tunnel is the statement of the inscription and further that it is older than Isaiah; but Isaiah uttered his prophecy while Ahaz the father of Hezekiah was still reigning over Israel.

There is another ancient aqueduct which is straight and we may assume that this latter one was built by Hezekiah, while the tunnel, referred to in our inscription, may date back to the reign of Solomon.

There the article refers to Isaiah chapter 8 where we read: “6 Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son”, where Shiloah is an allegory for the water which comes from Yahweh which Israel had refused, and these words were spoken in reference to the apostasy of the people of Samaria and Damascus, shortly after Isaiah prophesied the demise of their kings in the presence of Ahaz, in chapter 7. While we do not find a direct correlation to Hezekiah’s preparations for the siege in that statement, it is perhaps suggestive of his redirection of the Gihon Spring, since that became the source for the pool of Siloam within the city, which is later mentioned in John chapter 9. It is by the waters of Siloam that Yahweh had delivered the people of Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah.

Even earlier than the 1887 discovery of this more ancient conduit, what is esteemed to have been Hezekiah’s tunnel was discovered from another direction, which we shall describe in part as it is found in a Wikipedia article describing Warren’s Shaft:

Warren's Shaft is a vertical shaft next to the Gihon Spring, the main source of water of Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem, discovered in 1867 by British engineer, archaeologist and military officer Charles Warren.

In 2005, archaeologists discovered a massively fortified passage connected to a tower above the Gihon Spring. These fortifications appear to have provided secure surface access to the spring from inside the Middle Bronze Age city wall.

We would take issue with the article written by Paul Carus, who only guessed that the first, older tunnel “may date back to the reign of Solomon.” If we read 2 Samuel chapter 5, where David had first taken Jebus from the Canaanites, the city which became known as Jerusalem, we read that when David first became king:

5 In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months: and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years over all Israel and Judah. 6 And the king and his men went to Jerusalem unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land: which spake unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither: thinking, David cannot come in hither. 7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David. 8 And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. 9 So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Millo and inward. 10 And David went on, and grew great, and the LORD God of hosts was with him.

There it is clear, that the earlier, existing tunnel must have been from the Canaanite period, even earlier than the time of Solomon, and that David’s troops had been able to gain entry to the citadel of the city of the Jebusites, as Jerusalem was known at that time. So evidently, Warren’s Shaft had also existed in the Jebusite period, and Hezekiah only took advantage of it, rather than having constructed it himself. So we read, in 2 Chronicles chapter 32:

1 After these things, and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the fenced cities, and thought to win them for himself. 2 And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem, 3 He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city: and they did help him. 4 So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?

Evidently, the Gihon Spring had been situated outside of the walls of Jerusalem, and Hezekiah had stopped it up, and redirected its flow through a tunnel under the walls of the city, where it ran into Warren’s Shaft, from which the people of Jerusalem could take water. This same act prevented the Assyrians from discovering the spring as a source of water for themselves. As 2 Chronicles chapter 32 continues we read of Hezekiah’s other preparations for the anticipated siege: “30 This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.” On account of his having done that, Jerusalem was better able to withstand the Assyrians, because the people had water, and that would have remained unknown to the Assyrians themselves. [See the brief video posted under the title Warren's Shaft and Hezekiah's Tunnel]

However in spite of his preparations, in 2 Kings chapter 18 Hezekiah is portrayed as having capitulated somewhat to the Assyrians once they had taken Lachish, which they had evidently used as a base of operations, and also had taken the other fenced cities of Judah, where we read in part:

14 And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house. 16 At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

But the Biblical accounts do not fully inform us as to how Hezekiah had offended the Assyrians, which is evidently why the fenced cities of Judah had been taken. Although there are references to Egypt here in this chapter, the full story becomes more apparent from the Assyrian perspective. As 2 Kings chapter 18 continues, it gives an account very much like the one which we read here in the balance of this chapter, except that it is about ten percent longer than this one. So presenting the balance of this chapter, we will only mention the few significant differences between the texts of these two chapters.

In the Assyrian account of the siege of Jerusalem which is found in the inscriptions of the annals of Sennacherib, it begins where he first embarked on his third military campaign. While in the past we have referred to the translations of Donald David Luckenbill for this information, here we are going to instead refer to updated translations from a project of the museum at the University of Pennsylvania known as the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, or ORACC, a resource to which we have only recently been introduced by a good friend.

On my third campaign, I marched to the land Ḫatti. Fear of my lordly brilliance overwhelmed Lulî, the king of the city Sidon, and he fled afar into the midst of the sea. The awesome terror of the weapon of the god Aššur, my lord, overwhelmed the cities Great Sidon, Lesser Sidon, Bīt-Zitti, Ṣarepta, Maḫalliba, Ušû, Akzibu, (and) Acco, his fortified cities (and) fortresses, an area of pasture(s) and water-place(s), resources upon which he relied, and they bowed down at my feet. I placed Tu-Baʾlu [Ethba’al] on his royal throne over them and imposed upon him tribute (and) payment (in recognition) of my overlordship (to be delivered) yearly (and) without interruption.

As for Minuḫimmu [Menahem] of the city Samsimuruna, Tu-Baʾlu of the city Sidon, Abdi-Liʾti of the city Arwad, Ūru-Milki of the city Byblos, Mitinti of the city Ashdod, Būdi-il of the city Bīt-Ammon, Kammūsu-nadbi of the land Moab, Aya-rāmu of the land Edom, all of the kings of the land Amurru, they brought extensive gifts, four times (the normal amount), as their substantial audience gift before me and kissed my feet. [1]

The term Amurru was the archaic Assyrian name for Palestine, Lebanon and portions of Syria, since much of that region had at one time been dominated by the Amorites, and the Assyrians continued to use the name long after the Amorites had been driven out. However not all of the cities of the coast capitulated, and Sennacherib turned south, where we read:

Moreover, (as for) Ṣidqâ, the king of the city Ashkelon who had not bowed down to my yoke, I forcibly removed the gods of his father’s house, himself, his wife, his sons, his daughters, his brothers, (and other) offspring of his father’s house and took him to Assyria. I set Šarru-lū-dāri, son of Rūkibtu, their former king, over the people of the city Ashkelon and imposed upon him the payment of tribute (and) gifts (in recognition) of my overlordship so that he (now) pulls my yoke. In the course of my campaign, I surrounded, conquered, (and) plundered the cities Bīt-Daganna, Joppa, Banayabarqa, (and) Azuru, the cities of Ṣidqâ that had not submitted to me quickly. [2]

Then where the inscription continues, the reasons for Hezekiah’s admission of having offended the king of Assyria is elucidated, and it further becomes apparent that by his actions, Hezekiah had offended Yahweh his God in addition to the king of Assyria:

(As for) the governors, the nobles, and the people of the city Ekron who had thrown Padî, their king who was bound by treaty and oaths to Assyria, into iron fetters and who had handed him over to Hezekiah of the land Judah in a hostile manner, they became frightened on account of the villainous acts they had committed. They formed a confederation with the kings of Egypt (and) the archers, chariots, (and) horses of the king of the land Meluḫḫa, forces without number, and they came to their aid. In the plain of the city Eltekeh, they sharpened their weapons while drawing up in battleline before me. [3]

So Hezekiah, who had been under tribute to the Assyrians, was caught in a conspiracy against the Assyrians, and involved in the affairs of other cities in the Levant which also revolted against their rule, to the point where he was complicit with the Philistines of Ekron who had overthrown their own king on account of his continued loyalty to Assyria.

But even worse, it must have been Hezekiah himself who had beckoned the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was actually a Kushite king who had been occupying Egypt, to come and help him against the Assyrians. This the Assyrians must have discovered either through spies, or, more likely, through the Egyptians after they had been defeated, as we read in this inscription that they “formed a confederation with the kings of Egypt”. So this was also an offense against Yahweh, whom throughout this prophecy of Isaiah had been warning the people of Judah all along, not to seek help from the Egyptians. The most recent of these warnings is found in Isaiah chapter 31: “1 Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!” That is the same chapter where Yahweh had promised to defend Jerusalem “as birds flying”, and with that and all of the earlier warnings, Hezekiah must have been aware, but he appealed to Egypt in spite of the warnings.

Where the same Assyrian inscription continues, we read:

With the support of (the god) Aššur, my lord, I fought with them and defeated them. (45) In the thick of battle, I captured alive the Egyptian charioteers (and) princes (lit. “the sons of the kings”), together with the charioteers of the king of the land Meluḫḫa.

I surrounded, conquered, (and) plundered the cities Eltekeh (and) Tamnâ. I approached the city Ekron and I killed the governors (and) nobles who had committed crime(s) and hung their corpses on towers around the city; I counted the citizens who had committed the criminal acts as booty; (and) I commanded that the rest of them, (those) who were not guilty of crimes or wrongdoing, (to) whom no penalty was due, be allowed to go free.

I brought out Padî, their king, from the city Jerusalem and placed (him) on the lordly throne over them, then I imposed upon him payment (in recognition) of my overlordship. [4]

It is at this point in history and Scripture that Sennacherib must have had his officers retrieve Padi from Jerusalem and turn him over to the Assyrians, but it is not mentioned here in the texts. This is evident where, according to the Assyrian inscriptions, Padi was retrieved from Jerusalem shortly before the siege of Jerusalem had begun, but after the defeat of the Egyptians, and that is where we are at here in the annals of Sennacherib, and in Isaiah chapter 36. It is quite likely that while Sennacherib was in Lachish, there were several exchanges of correspondence between him and Hezekiah, although the Scripture records only one. After this exchange here in Isaiah chapter 36, the next time there is interaction between the Assyrians and Judah, the siege of Jerusalem begins, but the event which is next described in the annals of Sennacherib is the taking of the fenced cities of Judah:

(As for) Hezekiah of the land Judah, I surrounded (and) conquered forty-six of his fortified walled cities and small(er) settlements in their environs, which were without number, (50) by having ramps trodden down and battering rams brought up, the assault of foot soldiers, sapping, breaching, and siege engines. I brought out of them 200,150 people, young (and) old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, oxen, and sheep and goats, which were without number, and I counted (them) as booty. [5]

The accounts of this event in Scripture, as they are found in 2 Kings chapter 18 and 2 Chronicles chapter 32, do not mention the actual number of “fenced cities”. Neither are the surrounding villages and other smaller towns mentioned. Evidently, many of the people of Judah may have fled to the south, and others must have resisted and died, but here over 200,000 people of Judah were brought off into captivity and resettled elsewhere in Assyria.

This may have been all that Sennacherib had taken from Judah on this campaign, although that is not entirely certain. Having used Lachish as his base of operations, since that town had ultimately submitted to him, as suggested here in verses 1 and 2, where Sennacherib had taken all the fenced cities, and in verse 2 Sennacherib had sent a great army to Jerusalem from Lachish. So in 2 Kings chapter 18 we read: “14 And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish…” and a little further on: “17 And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem.…” In a later Assyrian inscription which is an epigraph from a relief depicting the conquest of Lachish, we read the following: “Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, sat upon a nimedu-throne and passed in review the booty (taken) from Lachish”. [8] The 200,150 people of Judah seem likely to have been a part of the booty taken from Lachish, as Lachish was the base of operations for the first deportation of Judah by the Assyrians.

So now, we shall continue with the account in Isaiah:

2 And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field. 

In 2 Kings 18:17 this Rabshakeh is accompanied by two other officers, called Tartan and Rabsaris. These are titles for various Assyrian officers, and not personal names. In certain Assyrian inscriptions the title Rabshakeh or rab-šāqê is evidently translated as “chief cupbearer” [6]. This was the same position which the prophet Nehemiah later had in the court of the king of Persia (Nehemiah 1:11). Rabsaris is said to have meant “chief officer” and Tartan is said to have been an Assyrian title for a high-ranking military officer. Speaking of the levy which he had imposed upon certain cities, in an inscription of Tiglath-pileser III we read:

From their sheep levy, [which] I take [annually], I apportion[ed] 240 sheep as a gift to (the god) Aššur, my lord. [From] those [Ara]means whom I deported, (10) [I distribut]ed (and) settled [... thousand to the province of] the turtānu, 10,000 (to) the province of the palace herald, [...] thousand (to) the province of the chief cupbearer, [... thousand (to) the province of the land] Barḫalzu, (and) 5,000 (to) the province of the land Mazamua (Zamua). [7]

Some of the locations to which these Aramaeans had been deported are recognizable names in and around Assyria itself. But whatever specific office was described by the word turtanu, or Tartan, scholars of ancient Assyrian cuneiform have still not concluded, although it is evident here that the Tartan did also have his own province within the empire. Now Hezekiah did not meet these men himself, but had sent his own officers:

3 Then came forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, Asaph's son, the recorder. 

Earlier in Isaiah, in chapter 22, there was a “burden of the valley of vision” which was actually a prophecy against Judah and Jerusalem, and more specifically against “this treasurer, even unto Shebna, which is over the house”, referring to the house of the king, and we read in part: “20 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah: 21 And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah.” So here, as the prophecy of that chapter continues, the key of David is placed upon Eliakim’s shoulder, although it is difficult to determine with absolute certainty whether the Shebna mentioned here is the same Shebna as that earlier chapter in Isaiah. This Shebna very well may be the same, and perhaps his position over the house of Hezekiah had been eclipsed by Eliakim, who is mentioned first in order here. As we had explained, after the death of Ahaz is recorded in Isaiah chapter 14, it is difficult to determine when it was within this fourteen-year period that the prophecies in these intervening chapters of Isaiah had been written. For the prophecies from Isaiah chapters 14 through 19, we only know that they were uttered by Isaiah after the death of Ahaz but before Isaiah had walked naked for three years proclaiming the burdens of Egypt and Cush, and therefore chapters 20 through 35 were all uttered by him subsequent to those three years.

Now the Assyrian officers address the officers of Hezekiah, and Rabshekah seems to be the chief among them since it is he who does the speaking:

4 And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? 5 I say, sayest thou, (but they are but vain words) I have counsel and strength for war: now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? 6 Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. 

The mention of the king of Egypt in this context betrays the fact that Hezekiah had a part in the appeal to Egypt, confederate with the Philistines, for which reason the Egyptian armies described in the Assyrian inscription of Sennacherib had come to Palestine to face the Assyrians at Eltekeh, but were defeated. So while it is not otherwise recorded in Scripture, Hezekiah certainly did appeal to Egypt, and that was directly contrary to the many warnings he had received in the words of the prophet Isaiah, where Yahweh had warned him not to appeal to Egypt. Here in the words of Rabshakeh, Egypt is a “broken reed”, because the Assyrians had already recently defeated the Egyptians at Eltekeh, possibly as recently as a few weeks before the Assyrians appear here at Jerusalem. Plausibly, the Assyrians learned from the Egyptians themselves, or perhaps from the people of Ekron, that Hezekiah had been their confederate with the Egyptians.

Now Rabshakeh reproaches Yahweh, the God of Judah:

7 But if thou say to me, We trust in the LORD our God: is it not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar? 

In times of war, it is quite instrumental that opponents have a knowledge of the internal affairs of their enemies, and exploit what they can in order to cause internal divisions among them, thereby weakening them. That is the tactic employed here, although it was not employed accurately. Hezekiah did break down many of the altars of Judah, and also those of a reduced Israel, but they were not the altars of Yahweh.

In 2 Chronicles chapter 29 we read, in part and where it speaks of Hezekiah: “3 He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them.” From there, the priests and Levites were gathered and sanctified, as if they had laid idle, as it is admitted that Judah had abandoned Yahweh. So in the course of their cleansing and the cleansing of the Temple we read, in part: “16 And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron.” The priests had removed all of the idols from the Temple, and prepared it, so Hezekiah had the priests commence with the sacrifices and offerings to Yahweh which had been prescribed by the law. Then, in 2 Chronicles chapter 30, the feasts were reinstated, where we read in part: “1 And Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, to keep the passover unto the LORD God of Israel.” Then finally, we read in chapter 31: “1 Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Then all the children of Israel returned, every man to his possession, into their own cities.” With this, we may also see that a significant number of the children of Israel were able to remain in the land in the aftermath of the Assyrian invasions and deportations which had taken away most of Israel, or at least, most of those who survived the destruction. Many of their descendants were among the later Samaritans converted to Christ, in Acts chapter 8.

So Hezekiah did not take away the high places of Yahweh, but rather, he tore down all the high places of the pagan idols which the children of Israel, and Judah, had worshipped in their apostasy. But Judah would nevertheless be punished for its sins, as Yahweh had already decreed in earlier chapters of this book of Isaiah. So the point which Rabshakeh had made is partially valid, because Judah had abandoned their God, but it was inaccurate because he did not distinguish the God of Judah from the idols, which Hezekiah had removed, so he was evidently ignorant of Hezekiah’s earlier reforms.

Therefore as Rabshakeh continues, he has charged Judah with having abandoned their God and appeals to them on that basis:

8 Now therefore give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them. 9 How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 

There is no indication here that an army from Egypt had already been defeated by the Assyrians at Eltekeh, but as it is presented in the annals of Sennacherib, that event must had already transpired, before the Assyrians had moved on to Lachish. The offer of two thousand horses is a slight, as Rabshakeh is suggesting that Hezekiah did not have a suitable number of men sufficient to form a small cavalry. Having taken all of the fenced cities and villages of Judah, Hezekiah would already be deprived of much of his prospective army and cavalry.

Now Rabshakeh claims to have Yahweh, the God of Judah, on his own side, and he is asserting that Yahweh has abandoned Judah in favor of Assyria, which is a blasphemy that reflects the confidence he has in the mission of his king to control the whole world. Then, at the same time, this is a threat, that if Hezekiah did not submit, he and his city would be destroyed by the Assyrians:

10 And am I now come up without the LORD against this land to destroy it? the LORD said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it. 

Making this threat, Rabshakeh even claimed that Yahweh had spoken to him. But the warning which accompanied the claim must have troubled the officers of Hezekiah, so they sought to prevent it from reaching the ears of the people. There must have been curious onlookers in Jerusalem who were close enough to the wall of the city to hear this exchange between these men. So they respond to Rabshakeh:

11 Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and speak not to us in the [language of Judah], in the ears of the people that are on the wall. 

It is possible that this question was asked in Aramaic, so that the people within hearing distance would not know precisely what had been requested. But the mere making of such a plea is an outward display of humiliation and fear. Now, as we have said, it would have been advantageous for the Assyrians to sow division among the people within Jerusalem at this time, and that is how the men are answered:

12 But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? 

These words were purposely meant to shock and strike fear into the hearts of anyone who had heard them. So Rabshakeh reproaches the officers of Hezekiah, by informing them that he was sent to speak to the people of Judah in general, and not merely to the king. This is a reproach, even if it was not necessarily how or why the embassy was planned, and it was intended to sow discord and division amongst the people in Jerusalem. So now it is magnified, and the weak plea by Eliakim and his companions backfires:

13 Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the [language of Judah], and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. 14 Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you. 

Expressing to Rabshakeh their fears that the people would hear him, Rabshakeh made certain that the people would hear him, so that if Hezekiah refused to yield, perhaps the people themselves would rebel against him from within. But now doing so, Rabshakeh once again reproaches Yahweh their God, evidently esteeming Him to have been nothing but an idol, a useless idol, like the gods of the other nations: 

15 Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us: this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. 

As we have already mentioned here, in Isaiah chapter 31 Yahweh had already promised to defend Jerusalem from the Assyrians. While it is unlikely that Rabshakeh could have known that, even if he had, he would not have respected it. So his plea to the people continues:

16 Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; 

This is a promise of peace if the people of Jerusalem submitted themselves to Assyria, even in spite of their king. But what follows is odd, although Yahweh had often spoke through the mouth of His enemies, or even the mouth of an ass, in the case of Balaam the son of Beor.

17 Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. 

The counterpart of this verse in 2 Kings chapter 18 is much longer, where in verse 32 it continues the sentence and adds: “a land of oil olive and of honey, that ye may live, and not die:” But at that point, it has text which is similar to the first clause of verse 18 here, where it continues and reads: “and hearken not unto Hezekiah, when he persuadeth you, saying, The LORD will deliver us. ”

However, here this Rabshakeh is informing the people of Judah that even if they complied and submitted to the Assyrians, they would nevertheless be deported and relocated to another part of the empire at some later time. This the Assyrians had been fond of doing so that they could exert demographic control over their subjects, sever them from their roots and their cultural ties, and also, in the extent to which they had believed in gods as pagans, they believed that relocation would also separate the subject peoples from their gods.

This is evident in Ezra chapter 4, where certain alien people who were resettled in Israel by the Assyrians had thought that they should abandon their native gods, and worship the God of Israel, simply because they were in the land which had formerly belonged to Israel. Where Zerubbabel was about to initiate the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and we read: “1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel; 2 Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither.” In the ancient pagan world, there is much evidence that the people believed that certain gods were associated with certain geographical areas, even with towns or cities.

Continuing with Rabshakeh’s plea to the people of Jerusalem:

18 Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The LORD will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? 19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? 

After Sepharvaim, in 2 Kings chapter 18 the counterpart of this verse inserts the words “Hena, and Ivah” These places seem to be otherwise unknown, or only tentatively identified. But it is certain, that the Ivah of 2 Kings 18:34 is the Ava of 2 Kings 17:24 (both words are Strong’s # 5755).

Since the Assyrians had conquered Hamath and Arphad, Sepharvaim and Samaria, then the gods of those places must have deserted them, in the Assyrian mind, and he makes the same assumption here, that in like manner, Yahweh had deserted Judah and Jerusalem. Now Rabshakeh reproaches Yahweh once again:

20 Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? 

Here he presumes that the God of Judah would not even be able to deliver His people, because all of the gods of the other nations had failed their own people. This would be the rational Assyrian perspective, if indeed all gods were merely idols. We may only imagine how Rabshakeh may have thought when Jerusalem was delivered.

So the officers of Hezekiah stood by helplessly as Rabshakeh did his best to strike fear in the hearts of the people of Jerusalem, and when he was finished, they did not even respect him with a reply:

21 But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not. 

At this point the siege of Jerusalem was assured, since the men would not even answer Rabshakeh. But as they went back to make an account to Hezekiah, they must have been disturbed:

22 Then came Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, that was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words of Rabshakeh. 

The words of Rabshakeh instilled both fear and grief in the officers of Hezekiah, for which reason they rent their clothes, and certainly in the people of Jerusalem who would hear the report from bystanders. There must have been bystanders present, as Rabshakeh had referred to the men on the wall, or Eliakim would not have requested Rabshakeh to speak in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew. Now the next move belonged to Hezekiah, and as we see in Isaiah chapter 37, on this occasion he chose to act wisely. 

This concludes our commentary on Isaiah through chapter 36. 

Footnotes:

1 Sennacherib 004, Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap3/Q003478, accessed June 13th, 2025. 

2 ibid. 

3 ibid.

4 ibid.

5 ibid.

6 1 Sennacherib 004, Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap1/ Q003423, accessed June 13th, 2025. 

7 Tiglath-pileser III 05, Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap1/ Q003418, accessed June 13th, 2025. 

8 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 288.