Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please, speak to your servants in Aramaic, because we understand it; and do not speak to us in Judean (Hebrew) in the hearing of the people who are [stationed] on the wall.” But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to speak these words only to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”
Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in Judean (Hebrew): “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. This is what the king says, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to rescue you; nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will most certainly rescue us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” Do not listen to Hezekiah,’ for this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Make peace with me and come out to me, and each one of you will eat from his own vine and each from his own fig tree and each [one of you] drink from the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware that Hezekiah does not mislead you by saying, “The LORD will rescue us.” Has any one of the gods of the nations [ever] rescued his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad [in Aram]? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And when have they rescued Samaria from my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land from my hand, that [you should think that] the LORD would rescue Jerusalem from my hand?’ ”
But they kept silent and did not say a word to him in reply, for King Hezekiah’s command was, “Do not answer him.” Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was in charge of the household, and Shebna the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph, the recording historian, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn [in grief], and told him the words of the Rabshakeh [the Assyrian commander].