Isaiah 36
For thirty-five chapters Isaiah has spoken in oracles - visions of judgment and comfort, of Babylon and Egypt, of the highway in the wilderness and the desert in bloom. Now the book drops into plain narrative, and the threat that has loomed over the whole first half arrives in person. In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah… Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them (v. 1). The most powerful empire on earth has crushed Judah's defenses one by one, and only Jerusalem is left. The king of Assyria sends his field commander, the Rabshakeh, from the siege of Lachish to the capital with a great army - and he takes his stand at the same conduit of the upper pool where, long before, Isaiah had met another frightened king of Judah and told him to trust (Isa. 7:3). The ground itself remembers the lesson now being tested.3
What follows is not a battle but a speech - a calculated assault on faith itself. The Rabshakeh opens on the exact word he means to break: What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? (v. 4). He works through every support Jerusalem might lean on and knocks each away. Egypt? The staff of this broken reed that pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it (v. 6). The LORD? He twists Hezekiah's own reforms into evidence against him and claims, astonishingly, to march by God's own command (v. 10). When the officials beg him to speak the diplomatic Aramaic so the common people on the wall will not understand, he refuses on purpose and lifts his voice in Hebrew, addressing the soldiers over their leaders' heads (vv. 11-13). His aim is not to win a debate. It is to dissolve a people's trust from underneath their king.
Then the taunt overreaches. The Rabshakeh runs down the roll of conquered nations - Hamath, Arphad, Sepharvaim, Samaria - and asks where their gods are now, and lands on the line he cannot take back: Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? (v. 18); that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? (v. 20). He has set the living God on a shelf beside the dead idols of the nations. And the people give the only answer that blasphemy of that size deserves: they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment was… Answer him not (v. 21). The chapter ends mid-crisis - the officials returning to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, the question still hanging in the air. It will be answered in chapter 37, and not by them.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 36:1-3The Enemy at the Wall
1Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them. 2And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field. 3Then came forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, Asaph's son, the recorder.
The scene is set with a few hard facts. It is the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, and Sennacherib - the most powerful man on earth - has already taken all the defenced cities of Judah. Every fortified town has fallen; Jerusalem alone is left, an island in a conquered land. The king of Assyria himself stays at the siege of Lachish and sends his Rabshakeh, his chief field officer, with a great army to finish the work at the capital. The detail of where he stands is not decoration: the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field is the very spot where, decades earlier, Isaiah had met Hezekiah's father Ahaz in another Assyrian crisis and told him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not (Isa. 7:3-4). The same ground, the same threat, the same test of trust - now it has come round to the son.3
Three men come out from the city to meet the enemy: Eliakim… which was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah… the recorder. They are Hezekiah's highest officials - the palace administrator, the royal secretary, and the keeper of records - the men who stand between the king and the kingdom. Eliakim is a man Isaiah had already singled out as faithful, one on whom God would lay the key of the house of David (Isa. 22:20-22); Shebna, by the same passage, had been a man of pride brought low. That these particular men go out to bear the brunt of the taunt is fitting: the crisis will fall first on those who carry responsibility for others. They go out not to negotiate from strength - they have none - but simply to hear what the enemy has come to say. What they hear will send them back with their clothes torn.
Isaiah 36:4-10What Confidence Is This?
4And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? 5I say, sayest thou, (but they are but vain words) I have counsel and strength for war: now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? 6Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. 7But if thou say to me, We trust in the LORD our God: is it not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar? 8Now therefore give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them. 9How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 10And am I now come up without the LORD against this land to destroy it? the LORD said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.
The Rabshakeh opens on the one nerve he means to cut, and he names it outright: What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? (v. 4). Everything that follows is a variation on that single question. He does not begin by boasting of Assyrian troops or siege engines; he begins by asking Jerusalem to examine the ground it is standing on. On whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? (v. 5). It is, in its way, a shrewd question - the right question asked by the wrong mouth for the wrong end. Faith always does rest on something, and a trust that has never been pressed has never been proved. But the Rabshakeh asks it not to deepen Jerusalem's trust but to dissolve it. He wants Hezekiah and his people to look down at what holds them, lose their nerve, and let go. The question itself is the weapon - and it is the question every believer eventually hears, in one accent or another: on whom, exactly, are you leaning, and are you sure it will hold?
His first move is to knock away the obvious crutch: Egypt. Judah had been tempted, against Isaiah's repeated warnings, to buy security with an Egyptian alliance, and the Rabshakeh pounces on it with a brilliant, cruel image. Egypt is the staff of this broken reed… whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it (v. 6). A reed looks like a walking-stick; lean your weight on it and it does not merely fail - it splinters and drives into the very hand that trusted it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. And here the strange thing is that the Rabshakeh is right. Isaiah himself had said almost exactly this: Egypt's help is vain, and to no purpose (Isa. 30:7); trusting it would bring shame (Isa. 30:3). The enemy has stumbled onto a true word. But he means to use the bankruptcy of Egypt to argue the bankruptcy of all trust - to leave Jerusalem with nothing to lean on at all. That a lie is wrapped around a fact is exactly what makes it dangerous.
Then he turns to the trust that really matters and tries to poison it: But if thou say to me, We trust in the LORD our God: is it not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away? (v. 7). The argument is sly. Hezekiah had torn down the scattered altars and high places precisely to purify the worship of the LORD and gather it to the one altar in Jerusalem - an act of devotion. The Rabshakeh reframes it as an offense: your own king dismantled your god's shrines, so why would that god fight for you? He counts on the people not understanding the difference between idolatry torn down and true worship restored. Then he insults their strength: he will give thee two thousand horses if Judah can even find riders to mount them (v. 8) - a sneer at how few trained men Jerusalem can put in the field, unable to repel one captain of the least of my master's servants (v. 9). Strip away Egypt, strip away the LORD, strip away their own arms, and what is left? That is the bottom the Rabshakeh is driving them toward.
His boldest stroke is the last: And am I now come up without the LORD against this land to destroy it? the LORD said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it (v. 10). Now he claims the LORD Himself as his ally - that Israel's own God has commissioned Assyria to do this. It is psychological warfare of the highest order: if even your God is on my side, your trust is not only weak, it is doomed. And once more there is a fragment of truth buried in it, for Isaiah had indeed called Assyria the rod of mine anger (Isa. 10:5), an instrument God would use to discipline His people. But the prophet had said in the same breath that Assyria did not know it was an instrument - howbeit he meaneth not so (Isa. 10:7) - and that the rod itself would be broken for its pride (Isa. 10:12-15). The Rabshakeh quotes the half he likes. He claims the LORD's commission while despising the LORD's name - and that contradiction is the crack through which his whole speech will fall.
Isaiah 36:11-20Hear the Words of the Great King
11Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and speak not to us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall. 12But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you? 13Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. 14Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you. 15Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us: this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. 16Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; 17Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. 18Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The LORD will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? 19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? 20Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?
The officials make a desperate, telling request: Speak… in the Syrian language - that is, Aramaic, the language of diplomacy - and speak not to us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall (v. 11). They are trying to contain the damage. Let this be a conversation between officials; do not let the ordinary soldiers and citizens overhear and lose heart. It is a reasonable plea, and the Rabshakeh's answer rips off the mask: Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee…? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall? (v. 12). He says it plainly - he did not come to negotiate with the leadership; he came to break the people. He even names, in deliberately revolting terms, the horror of a prolonged siege, when the starving defenders will be reduced to eating and drinking their own filth (v. 12). The crudeness is a weapon. He wants the people on the wall so sickened with fear of what is coming that they will force their king to surrender. This is not a message; it is a siege engine aimed at morale.
So he turns from the officials and shouts past them, straight to the wall: Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language (v. 13). What follows is a calculated attempt to pry the people away from their king and their God in three moves. First, distrust your king: Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you (v. 14). Second - and this is the most pointed line in the whole speech - distrust your God: Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, The LORD will surely deliver us (v. 15). He names the exact promise faith would cling to and brands it a deception. He knows that Hezekiah's strength is not in walls or troops but in this one conviction, the LORD will surely deliver us, and he aims to cut it out of the people's hearts before the king can plant it there. The enemy of faith is rarely content to oppose God from outside; his real work is to get inside and persuade you that trusting God is the very thing that will destroy you.
Then comes the third move, the sweetest and most dangerous: a bribe dressed as mercy. Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine… and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern (v. 16). Surrender, he says, and you will go home to your own vineyards and figs and wells and live in peace - for now. The picture is deliberately homely and warm: your vine, your fig tree, your own cistern. Only in the next breath does the real cost slip out: Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land (v. 17). Exile. Deportation. The Assyrian policy of uprooting whole peoples and scattering them. He gilds it - a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards - but it is captivity all the same. This is how surrender always advertises itself: as the reasonable, comfortable, survivable choice, the path that spares you suffering. The fine print, that you lose your home and your identity and your covenant, is read quickly and quietly. The enemy never names the full price of giving up.
And here the Rabshakeh overreaches into the one thing that will undo him. To clinch the argument he runs down the list of Assyria's conquests: Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? (vv. 18-19). His logic is airtight on its own terms: every nation trusted its gods, every nation fell, therefore trust is useless. But the logic conceals a fatal error, and he states it openly in the final line: that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? (v. 20). He has set the living God on the same shelf as the carved idols of Hamath and Sepharvaim - assumed He is one more local deity, no different in kind, just as helpless before Assyrian power. That is the blasphemy. It is not merely that he insults Israel; it is that he does not know whom he is insulting. He has reproached the Holy One of Israel as if He were wood and stone - and that single category error is the hinge on which the entire siege will turn in the chapter to come.
Isaiah 36:21-22They Answered Him Not a Word
21But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not. 22Then came Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, that was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words of Rabshakeh.
After the whole torrent of mockery, the people's answer is no answer at all: But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment was… Answer him not (v. 21). This silence is the quiet center of the chapter, and it is anything but weakness. It is disciplined, commanded, deliberate. Hezekiah had foreseen what the enemy wanted - a back-and-forth, a debate on Assyrian terms, a crack in the wall of unity through which fear could pour - and he forbade it. There are voices that gain their power only when they are answered, taunts whose whole strength is the response they provoke. To engage them is to lose; to refuse them is to deny them the foothold they came for. The people on the wall did not have a rebuttal ready, and they did not need one. Their silence said what no argument could: we will not fight this battle here, with these weapons. We will wait for our God. Sometimes the most faithful thing a believer can do with the accuser's voice is to give it nothing - not agreement, not anxious debate, not even acknowledgment - and carry it instead to the only One whose verdict matters.
The chapter ends without resolution, on a deliberately unfinished note: Then came Eliakim… and Shebna… and Joah… to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words of Rabshakeh (v. 22). The torn clothes are the ancient sign of grief and dread; the officials are shaken to their depths. They held their peace at the wall, but they are not unmoved - faith that refuses to argue is not faith that feels nothing. They carry the whole blasphemous speech back to their king, and there the chapter stops, mid-crisis, the taunt still hanging in the air: where is the God you trust, and can He deliver you? Everything is unanswered. The enemy seems to hold every card. And that is precisely the point at which the narrative leaves us, because the answer the chapter withholds is not one Hezekiah or his officials can give. It belongs to the next chapter, and to God. The reader is meant to feel the weight of the unanswered question - to sit, for a moment, where Jerusalem sits, with the mockery ringing and no deliverance yet in sight - and to learn that this is exactly where trust is forged.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 36 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and the medieval commentators alongside - useful for the keyword bittachon (vv. 4-9, the “confidence” and “trust” the Rabshakeh keeps probing) and for the title Rabshakeh, the Assyrian office rather than a personal name. The chapter runs nearly word for word with 2 Kings 18:13-37, and the parallels are easy to lay side by side here.
- Isaiah 36 ↔ 2 Kings 18 · Isaiah 37 · Matthew 27Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Isaiah 36 to the rest of Scripture - the near-identical account in 2 Kings 18:13-37, the LORD's answer to the blasphemy in Isaiah 37 (against whom hast thou… exalted thy voice… even against the Holy One of Israel), and the taunt of verse 20 reappearing almost verbatim at the cross: He trusted in God; let him deliver him now (Matt. 27:43).
- Isaiah 36 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 36 - the historical setting in Hezekiah's fourteenth year (v. 1), the meaning of the title Rabshakeh and the post at the conduit of the upper pool (v. 2), the “broken reed” image for Egypt (v. 6), and the rhetorical shape of the speech that addresses the people over their leaders' heads (vv. 11-13).
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Enemy at the Wall
- 2 Kings 18:13-18Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.The same events told in 2 Kings - Isaiah 36 runs almost word for word with the Kings account.
- Isaiah 7:3-4go forth now to meet Ahaz... at the end of the conduit of the upper pool... Take heed, and be quiet; fear not.The very spot of verse 2 - where Hezekiah’s father once faced an Assyrian threat and was told to trust.
- Isaiah 22:20-22I will call my servant Eliakim... and the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder.Isaiah had already named Eliakim (v. 3) the faithful steward who would carry the household’s trust.
- 2 Chronicles 32:1After these things... Sennacherib king of Assyria came, and entered into Judah, and encamped against the fenced cities.The Chronicler’s account of the same invasion - the third witness to Hezekiah’s great test.
What Confidence Is This?
- Isaiah 30:1-3that walk to go down into Egypt... to trust in the shadow of Egypt!... shall the shadow of Egypt be your confusion.Isaiah had already named Egypt the false hope the Rabshakeh mocks in verse 6 - the prophet and the enemy agree on the reed.
- Isaiah 10:5-7O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger... howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so.The half-truth behind verse 10 - Assyria is God’s rod, but does not know it, and will be broken for its pride.
- Psalm 20:7Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.The answer to the Rabshakeh’s sneer about horses (vv. 8-9) - the contest is over the object of trust, not its size.
- Matthew 27:43He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him.The taunt of verses 5 and 20 flung at the cross almost verbatim - and answered, like Jerusalem, by God’s act, not the sufferer’s defense.
- Proverbs 3:5Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.The very word (batach) the chapter turns on - the trust the enemy tries to break, commanded as the whole of wisdom.
Hear the Words of the Great King
- Isaiah 37:14-20Hezekiah received the letter... and spread it before the LORD... O LORD our God, save us from his hand.The right answer to verses 14-20 - not arguing with the blasphemer but laying his words before God.
- Isaiah 37:23Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed?... even against the Holy One of Israel.God’s own verdict on the taunt of verses 18-20 - the Rabshakeh raised his voice against the living God.
- 1 Samuel 17:43-47the Philistine cursed David by his gods... the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hands.The same blasphemy and the same answer - a defiant voice that mistakes the God of Israel for a beatable foe.
- Daniel 3:15who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?Nebuchadnezzar echoes verse 20 almost exactly - the empire’s recurring boast that no god can deliver from its hand.
- Matthew 27:39-43If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross... let him deliver him now, if he will have him.The mockery of verses 18-20 sounded again at the cross - certain the living God could not save.
They Answered Him Not a Word
- Isaiah 53:7he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth... as a sheep before her shearers is dumb.The held peace of verse 21 perfected - the Servant silent before His accusers, trusting and not arguing.
- Matthew 27:12-14when he was accused... he answered nothing... he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.Christ doing before Pilate what Jerusalem did at the wall (v. 21) - refusing the accuser’s battle on the accuser’s ground.
- Exodus 14:14The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.The principle of verse 21 stated outright - the silence of those who wait for God to do the fighting.
- 1 Peter 2:23who, when he was reviled, reviled not again... but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.The inner shape of the held peace (v. 21) - trust that hands the verdict to God rather than seizing it back.
- Psalm 46:10Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.The stillness verses 21-22 leave us in - waiting, mockery still ringing, for the God who answers in His own hour.