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Context No. 1816 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 36:1-10: in context

1Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all of the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. 2The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a large army. He stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool in the fuller’s field highway. 3Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph the recorder came out to him. 4Rabshakeh said to them, “Now tell Hezekiah, ‘The great king, the king of Assyria, says, “What confidence is this in which you trust? 5I say that your counsel and strength for the war are only vain words. Now in whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me? 6Behold, you trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even in Egypt, which if a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. 7But if you tell me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ isn’t that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?” 8Now therefore, please make a pledge to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. 9How then can you turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put your trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 10Have I come up now without the LORD against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, “Go up against this land, and destroy it.”’”

Sennacherib's army has taken the fortified cities of Judah, and now his officer, the Rabshakeh, stands before Jerusalem's walls to break the people's will with words. In whom do you trust, he taunts, that you rebel against me? Egypt is a broken reed that will pierce the hand that leans on it. And if you say you trust in the LORD, he sneers, twisting the truth, is that not the God whose altars Hezekiah tore down? He offers mockery, lies, and even the claim that the LORD himself sent him to destroy the city.

The Rabshakeh's assault is not only military but psychological; his aim is to destroy the people's confidence in God. He does it with a mixture of taunts, half-truths, and outright lies, all designed to undermine their trust. He mocks their faith: in whom do you trust? He twists the truth about Hezekiah's reforms to suggest that God is offended with them, not for them. He even claims, falsely, that God has sent him to destroy them, so that trusting God would be pointless. It is a calculated attack on faith itself, meant to make the people believe that their trust in God is misplaced, foolish, even that God is against them. There is a familiar pattern here, for we face such voices too. When we set our trust in God, there often comes a voice, from within or without, that works to undermine it, mocking our faith as foolish, twisting the truth to make us doubt, whispering that God is not really for us or that our trust is misplaced. Like the Rabshakeh's, these assaults mix plausible-sounding claims with lies, and their aim is the same: to shake our confidence in God and get us to give up. The lesson of the passage, and of what follows, is to recognize such voices for what they are and not be moved by them. The Rabshakeh's confident taunts proved empty; God defended the city, and the mocker's threats came to nothing. When we hear the voice that mocks our trust in God, twists the truth to make us doubt, or whispers that God is against us, we do well to recognize the assault for what it is, an attack on our faith, and to resist it, standing firm in trust rather than letting the taunts and half-truths shake us. The enemy's confident mockery is not the same as truth; and the God whose people the Rabshakeh mocked proved faithful when his taunts had fallen silent.

When I set my trust in God, do I let the voices that mock my faith, twist the truth to make me doubt, or whisper that God is against me, shake my confidence, or can I recognize such assaults for what they are, an attack on my trust, and stand firm, as Jerusalem was to stand against the Rabshakeh's empty taunts?

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