UST 2 KI Chapter 18

◄ 2 KI 18 ► ║ ═ ©

18 After Hoshea had been ruling Israel for almost three years, Hezekiah son of Ahaz began to rule Judah. 2 Hezekiah was 25 years old when he became the king of Judah. He ruled from Jerusalem for 29 years. His mother was Abijah daughter of Zechariah. 3 Hezekiah did things that pleased Yahweh, just as his ancestor King David had done. 4 He had his servants destroy the shrines that were on the tops of hills. He also had them smash the stone pillars that represented Baal. He had them cut down and burn the poles that people had set up for worshiping the goddess Asherah. He also broke into pieces the bronze replica of a snake that Moses had made. Hezekiah did that because at that time, the people were burning incense in front of it to honor it. (They had named it Nehushtan.) 5 Hezekiah trusted in Yahweh, the God whom the Israelites worshiped. No king who ruled Judah before him or after him was as devoted to Yahweh as he was. 6 Hezekiah remained loyal to Yahweh and did not disobey him. He carefully obeyed the commandments that Yahweh had given to Moses. 7 Yahweh helped Hezekiah. As a result, he won victories wherever he led his troops to fight their enemies. Hezekiah refused to be a subject of the king of Assyria and obey him. 8 Hezekiah led his army against the Philistines, and they defeated them in battles throughout their territory as far south as the city of Gaza and the area around it.

9 After Hezekiah had been ruling Judah for almost four years and Hoshea had been ruling Israel for almost seven years, the army of King Shalmaneser of Assyria invaded Israel and surrounded the city of Samaria. 10 After three years, they captured the city. That was when Hezekiah had been ruling Judah for almost six years and Hoshea had been ruling Israel for almost nine years. 11 The king of Assyria commanded his soldiers to take the Israelites as captives to Assyria. They made them live in the city of Halah, near the Habor River in the region of Gozan, and in cities in the kingdom of Media, which the Assyrians had conquered. 12 That happened because the Israelites did not obey the commandments that Yahweh their God had given them. They disobeyed the solemn agreement that Yahweh had made with their ancestors. That agreement included the laws that Moses had told them to obey. They were not careful to obey those laws.

13 After Hezekiah had been ruling Judah for almost 14 years, King Sennacherib of Assyria led his army to attack all of the cities in Judah that had walls around them. They started capturing these cities one by one. 14 King Hezekiah sent a message to Sennacherib at the city of Lachish, which he and his army were trying to capture. He told him, “What I did was wrong. Please tell your soldiers to stop attacking us. If you do that, I will pay you whatever you tell me to pay.” The king of Assyria told Hezekiah that he had to pay him 10, 000 kilograms of silver and 1, 000 kilograms of gold. 15 So Hezekiah sent him all the silver that was in Yahweh’s temple and that he was keeping in the royal palace. 16 To get the gold he needed, Hezekiah had his workers strip off the gold that he had earlier put on the doors and doorposts of the temple. He sent all that gold to the king of Assyria. 17 But the king of Assyria sent three of his most important officials, the Tartan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh, with a large army from the city of Lachish to persuade King Hezekiah to surrender. When the army reached Jerusalem, they stopped alongside the aqueduct through which water flowed from the Upper Pool into Jerusalem. They stopped at the place where it went under the road that led to the Field of the Fuller. 18 Those officials sent a message to King Hezekiah saying that they had a message for him from the king of Assyria. Hezekiah sent three of his officials to speak with them. He sent Eliakim son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the palace. He also sent Shebna, his official secretary, and Joah son of Asaph, the official who reported to the people everything that Hezekiah decided they should do.

19 The Rabshakeh told them to tell Hezekiah, “The great king, the king of Assyria, says that you have no reason to expect that anyone will help you fight against him. 20 You claim that you have a strong enough army and good enough plans to resist him. But that is only talk. You can not resist him alone, and you can not depend on anyone else to help you. So you should not have rebelled against him. 21 You are relying on the army of Egypt to help you. But you must realize that that is like using a broken reed as a staff for support. The pointed end of such a staff would make a hole in the hand of anyone who tried to use it! That is what the king of Egypt is like. He hurts anyone who relies on him for help.” 22 The Rabshakeh then said to Hezekiah’s officials, “Perhaps you will tell me that you are relying on Yahweh your God to help you. But he will not help you, because Hezekiah has insulted him by destroying his hilltop shrines and the altars on which the Judeans were offering sacrifices to him. Hezekiah has required everyone who lives in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Judah to worship only at the altar in Jerusalem. 23 So tell Hezekiah for me that I am offering him a deal on behalf of my master, the king of Assyria. I will give him 2,000 horses if he still has enough healthy soldiers to ride on them! 24 But also tell him that I know that even if I gave him those horses, he would not be able to defeat even one of the weakest soldiers in our army. Tell him I know that is why he is hoping that the king of Egypt will send chariots and soldiers on horseback to help him. 25 Furthermore, do not think that we have come to destroy Jerusalem without Yahweh’s help. It is Yahweh himself who told us to come here and destroy this land!”

26 Then Eliakim told the Rabshakeh on behalf of himself and Shebna and Joah, “Sir, please speak to us in your own Aramaic language. We understand it. Do not keep speaking to us in our Judean language. The people who are standing on the wall can hear and understand you, and you are frightening them.” 27 But the Rabshakeh told Eliakim, “You should not think that my master sent me to say these things only to your king and to you and not also to the people on the wall who are listening! If you do not surrender, we will besiege the city, and soon they will have nothing to eat but their own dung and nothing to drink but their own urine. The three of you will also have nothing else to eat or drink.” 28 Then the Rabshakeh directly faced the people on the wall. He shouted to them in Judean, “Listen to this message from the great king, the king of Assyria. 29 He says that you must not allow Hezekiah to deceive you. Hezekiah will not be able to rescue you from his army. 30 He says that you must not allow Hezekiah to persuade you to rely on Yahweh by telling you that Yahweh will certainly rescue you and that the army of Assyria will never capture this city! 31 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you! The king of Assyria says that you should come out of the city and surrender to him. He says that if you do that, instead of being very hungry as you are now, you will be able to eat the grapes and figs you have grown and drink water from your own wells. 32 He promises that you will be able to do that until his soldiers come and take you to a land that is like your land. It will be a land where you can grow grain to make bread and grow grapes to make wine. It will be a land that has groves of olive trees that produce oil and whose bees produce honey. The king encourages you to survive by surrendering rather than die by continuing to resist. He says that Hezekiah is deceiving you when he says that Yahweh will rescue you and so you must not believe him. 33 The king reminds you that none of the gods that the people of other nations worship have been able to prevent him from conquering those nations! 34 The gods of Hamath and Arpad did not come and rescue the people who lived there! The gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah did not come and rescue the people who lived there! And even the gods of Samaria did not prevent me from conquering it! 35 The king reminds you that none of these gods prevented him from conquering the people who worshiped them. So do not think that Yahweh will prevent him from conquering Jerusalem.”

36 King Hezekiah had told the people, “When the Rabshakeh speaks to you, do not answer him.” So the people who were listening did not say anything in reply to him. 37 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah tore their clothes because they were extremely distressed. They went back to Hezekiah and told him what the Rabshakeh had said.

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UST 2 KI Chapter 18

UST 2 KI Chapter 18