1 Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
2 The king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field.
3 Then Eliakim came to him, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder.
4 The Rabshakeh said to them:“Say now to Hezekiah: Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What confidence is this that you have?
5 I say, Your counsel and strength for war are only empty words. Now on whom do you rely that you rebel against me?
6 You rely on the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him.
7 But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the Lord our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?