Context No. 3790 of 4322 · 2 Kings

2 Kings 18:17-25: in context

17The king of Assyria sent Tartan, Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a great army to Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they had come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller’s field. 18When they had called to the king, Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder came out to them. 19Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘The great king, the king of Assyria, says, “What confidence is this in which you trust? 20You say (but they are but vain words), ‘There is counsel and strength for war.’ Now on whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me? 21Now, behold, you trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even in Egypt. 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 on him. 22But 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 in Jerusalem’? 23Now therefore, please give pledges 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. 24How then can you turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master’s servants, and put your trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 25Have I now come up without the LORD against this place to destroy it? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’”’”

The Assyrian commander Rabshakeh presses Jerusalem with a mocking question that goes to the heart of the matter: on what do you rest this trust of yours? He is right about one thing, that trust is the real issue, but wrong about where security is found.

He ridicules any reliance on Egypt as leaning on a broken reed, a splintered staff that pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it, and in that image he speaks more truth than he knows. Trusting in worldly powers like Egypt is indeed leaning on a broken reed. But Rabshakeh goes further and mocks trust in the LORD as well, lumping the living God together with the failed defenses of other nations. Here is a searching question for every believer, asked even by an enemy: on what do you rest your trust? So much of what people lean on, wealth, alliances, human strength, is a broken reed that fails just when the weight comes on it. The one trust that does not splinter is trust in the living God.

On what do I rest my trust when pressure comes, and am I leaning on broken reeds that will fail me, or on the living God who alone does not splinter under the weight?

Sources

2 Kings 18:19: "The great king, the king of Assyria, says, What confidence is this in which you trust?"
2 Kings 18:21: "You trust in the staff of this bruised reed, even in Egypt. If a man leans on it, it will go into his hand and pierce it."
2 Kings 18:22: "But if you tell me, We trust in the LORD our God..."