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Context No. 3766 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 36:11-22: in context

11Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Don’t speak to us in the Jews’ language in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.” 12But Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you, to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who will eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?” 13Then Rabshakeh stood, and called out with a loud voice in the Jews’ language, and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! 14The king says, ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you; for he will not be able to deliver you. 15Don’t let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us. This city won’t be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’ 16Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for the king of Assyria says, ‘Make your peace with me, and come out to me; and each of you eat from his vine, and each one from his fig tree, and each one of you drink the waters of his own cistern; 17until 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. 18Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” Have any of the gods of the nations delivered their lands from the hand of the king of Assyria? 19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? 20Who are they among all the gods of these countries that have delivered their country out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’” 21But they remained silent, and said nothing in reply, for the king’s commandment was, “Don’t answer him.” 22Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.

The Assyrian field commander Rabshakeh stands before the walls of Jerusalem and, in a loud and calculated taunt, tries to break the people's trust in God. His strategy is spiritual as much as military: do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, he says, for no god of any nation has delivered its land from Assyria, so how could the LORD deliver you?

He lumps the living God together with the helpless idols of the nations he has already conquered, as if the God of Israel were no different. This is the enemy's oldest tactic, to undermine our confidence in God, to whisper that trusting him is naive, that he is no more able to help than anything else people trust. Notice too that Hezekiah's officials, on the king's command, answer him not a word; they refuse to trade taunts, and carry the matter instead to Hezekiah, and, as the next chapter shows, to God in prayer. When our trust in God is mocked and we are pressed to believe he cannot help, the wise course is not to argue with the taunt but to take it to God.

When my trust in God is mocked and I am pressed to believe he cannot help, do I refuse to argue with the taunt and take it instead to God in prayer, as Hezekiah did?

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