Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my one hundred and first episode. In this episode I want to study Isaiah chapter 36. This chapter is the first in a series of chapters that function as a narrative bridge between chapters 1-35 and chapters 40-66. So it’s like an historical transition from the first half of the book of Isaiah to the second half. Chapters 36 and 37 use Hezekiah to prove that faith in God is met by His blessing. But then chapters 38 and 39 alert us to the dangers of human inconstancy by showing us how Hezekiah’s folly led to Babylonian exile. So these next four chapters are going to take us on a deep dive into the mind of Hezekiah and into the events that surrounded him. They really are an excellent commentary on how God’s grace can overcome human ineptitude. In Hezekiah’s life alone we saw God deliver the nation out of the jaws of the Assyrian army. We saw God deliver Hezekiah himself out of a near fatal illness. And these miracles of salvation were given to Hezekiah and Jerusalem after they had been so faithless by their efforts to trust in anything or anyone but God.
Chapter 36 is fascinating because we find Hezekiah in an impossible situation. The vast Assyrian army was camped outside his walls. Jerusalem had been under siege for some time and things were beginning to look desperate. One of Assyria’s high-ranking military officers – called the Rabshakeh – decided to come forward and try siege-psychology on Hezekiah and the people of Judah. He gave two speeches from outside the walls of Jerusalem and these two speeches are the subject of this chapter.
In your own life you may have found yourself in an impossible situation. You may be in one right now. It seems like when we encounter hard times we all have our own personal Rabshakeh inside of us whispering words to make us doubt ourselves and doubt the goodness of God. To Hezekiah and his people, the words of the Rabshakeh made perfect rational sense. In the same way, when you hit a wall or when tragedy strikes in your own life, giving up or losing faith can make perfect rational sense. I spend a lot of time studying the work of atheist philosophers. It doesn’t take long to figure out that many (although not all of them) have their atheism grounded not in reason or evidence – but in the fact that they have been deeply hurt or have watched someone they love be deeply hurt. When it comes to walking away from God, pride and pain make far more forceful arguments than reason and evidence. Fortunately for us Hezekiah gives us a stellar example of how to keep the faith despite previous failures and in spite of extreme duress in this chapter. Let’s see what we can learn. Isaiah 36:1-3:
Isa 36:1 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
Isa 36:2 And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem, with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer’s Field.
Isa 36:3 And there came out to him Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.
So the year was 701 B.C. Hezekiah had recently made a tribute payment to the Assyrian king Sennacherib in the hopes of maintaining Judah’s autonomy from the empire. Sennacherib accepted the payment and then invaded Judah anyway. This was typical of the Assyrian warlord – he had become so arrogant at this point that he saw no shame in dishonoring his deals with weaker nations. Assyria swiftly and decidedly conquered 46 of Judah’s fortified cities – and countless villages. They had just finished their conquest at Lachish when Sennacherib sent a large envoy to the walls of Jerusalem. This was common practice for imperial powers like Assyria. They would conquer a city and horrendously torture its inhabitants, then send someone on to the next city with news of what they did. It was a psychological effort to break the morale of the cities so that they would surrender without a fight.
Included in the envoy sent to Jerusalem was the Rabshakeh. He was the field commander, a high officer in the Assyrian military. He was probably a cup bearer for the emperor – someone who Sennacherib could trust. Rabshakeh and his men positioned themselves by an aqueduct connected to the Upper Pool on the road that went by the Washerman’s Field outside the walls of the city. So this would be on the flat northern side of the city where an army could easily defend itself. This location was ironic because it’s the same spot where Isaiah met with Judah’s king Ahaz many years earlier in an effort to convince him to trust God during the Syro-Ephraimite War. Now the Rabshakeh stood there and his desire was to convince Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, not to trust God.
While the people looked on, Hezekiah sent three of his official representatives out to hear what the Rabshakeh had to say. It’s likely that they just went out to the part of the wall which was closest to the Assyrians – it would have been too dangerous for them to actually open the gates and exit the city. The officials Hezekiah sent were not military men but more like politicians. Eliakim the son of Hilkiah was the palace administrator. Shebna was the secretary who had previously been demoted for his incompetence. The third person was Joah son of Asaph who was the city’s recorder. Let’s read what the Rabshakeh said to them beginning in verses 4-6:
Isa 36:4 And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours?
Isa 36:5 Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me?
Isa 36:6 Behold, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.
The Rabshakeh would not even address Hezekiah as a king. Instead, he introduced himself as a messenger for the great king Sennacherib. The great king was a common imperial title that meant king of kings. It’s what happened when emperors started to look at themselves as gods. Since Sennacherib had begun to deify himself, Rabshakeh was probably thought of as a prophet who made royal decrees. Obviously he was a false prophet, but he did agree with God on one thing: Judah should not rebel against Assyria by their own strength or with earthly alliances. Both God and Rabshakeh were interested in breaking down Jerusalem’s false sense of security but their end goals were divergent. God wanted Judah to trust in Him. Rabshakeh wanted Judah to surrender to the empire. Sennacherib was a little confused as to why the Hebrews continued to stand firm in their rebellion. They were facing a far superior force in the Assyrians and he didn’t believe in the God of Israel – so to him it looked like they had nothing. This is roughly analogous to how the Gospel sounds foolish to people who are outside of the faith and who depend solely on temporal powers. You’ve often heard people say that Christians are in denial or incapable of accepting nihilistic reality. People outside the faith don’t know God and so when they see you trusting in Him the sight is puzzling and the question becomes: on what do you rest this trust of yours?
For Rabshakeh this was a rhetorical question because his mind was limited to human strategy and the earthly power to make war. Assyria had just conquered all of the territory outside of Jerusalem. So whatever military strategy Hezekiah claimed to have – it must not have worked. From the Assyrian perspective, Judah’s talk of being able to withstand them looked like empty words. But that’s because the Assyrians didn’t respect God enough to even consider His strategy. Sennacherib was so far removed from thinking in terms of God that he was blind to the fact that he himself was being used as a tool to carry out God’s purpose.
The Assyrians thought that if they had just steam rolled Judah’s defenses then Hezekiah must be trusting in Egypt to save them. Who else could it be? So Rabshakeh went to work explaining to the officials of Jerusalem why trusting Egypt was a mistake. The Assyrians knew about Egypt’s reputation for failing to come through when their allies needed them. This was the second point upon which Rabshakeh and God agreed. Isaiah had already done what he could to explain to Hezekiah that depending on Egypt instead of depending on God was a bad idea. Of course, Rabshakeh didn’t care about Isaiah and was only interested in undermining the Egyptian alliance because he wanted to break the morale of Jerusalem so they would surrender without a fight. The Assyrians were famous for their cunning psychological tactics and ability to demoralize armies before they even arrived to conquer them. Let’s read what the Rabshakeh said next in verses 7-10:
Isa 36:7 But if you say to me, “We trust in the LORD our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar”?
Isa 36:8 Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them.
Isa 36:9 How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
Isa 36:10 Moreover, is it without the LORD that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, “Go up against this land and destroy it.”’”
Rabshakeh chose to speak past Hezekiah’s officials and directly to the people inside the walls of Jerusalem. He knew that many of them were refugees from the Judean villages Sennacherib had conquered. He also knew that Hezekiah had previously sent outfits to these villages to destroy their centers of worship. Of course, the centers of worship Hezekiah destroyed were dedicated to pagan gods – but Rabshakeh tried to use Hezekiah’s reformation anyway to say the God of Israel was angry with Hezekiah and would not save the people because of it. The Assyrians wanted to separate Jerusalem’s loyalty to God from their loyalty to Hezekiah. If they could do this, perhaps they could convince the people to rise up within the walls and deliver Hezekiah in defeat. Have you ever heard someone say that they can’t walk into a church because if they did it would burn down around them? These are people who have given in to this deception that God is angry with them because of their sin. God hates sin and it does grieve Him, but as long as there is still breath in your lungs you are still covered by God’s grace and He will welcome you back with open arms.
Rabshakeh patronized king Hezekiah by suggesting that Sennacherib would make a deal with him. Sennacherib had already rescinded one of Hezekiah’s deals so offering him 2,000 horses was only meant to highlight the fact that Hezekiah couldn’t field that many soldiers even if he accepted the offer. Rabshakeh pointed out that Jerusalem didn’t even have the military strength to fend off the weakest of the Assyrian captains – even if the unreliable help of Egypt actually did come through. It was all true, the situation seemed impossible. And hearing it come from the mouth of the Rabshakeh really demoralized the people inside the walls.
Sometimes you see people who are committed to a life of sin and they attempt to rationalize this sin by claiming that it’s what God wants or it’s the way God made them. I’m not for a second going to suggest that we don’t struggle with sin – I do, we all do. But the fact that we struggle is what matters. It means we have a humble, repentant heart and we are waiting on the Spirit of God to sanctify us. This is light-years different from someone who just claims that a sin is not a sin. To make that claim is to put your own words into the mouth of God which places you in the same mindset as the Rabshakeh. We also have to be careful about chasing our own desires while thinking that we are doing God’s will. It’s true that when we are doing God’s will we will feel a tremendous sense of meaning and purpose – but sometimes it can be pretty exhilarating to achieve our own will as well. Before we ever suggest that we are doing something on behalf of God, it’s critically important that we check it against Scripture and make sure it holds true. Otherwise we run the risk of being able to justify anything the way the Rabshakeh did.
Once he had the people in Jerusalem feeling hopeless, Rabshakeh twisted the knife and suggested that he was there at the request of God Himself. It’s true that God used the Assyrian Empire as a rod to bring judgment against His people, but it was never true that God planned on allowing them to destroy Jerusalem. This meant that Rabshakeh had violated the third commandment and took the Lord’s name in vain by putting his own words into the mouth of God. It’s likely that Rabshakeh knew to say these things because Assyrian intelligence had received portions of Isaiah’s preaching. It was common for the Assyrians to learn what they could about their enemy’s worldview so they could speak understandable threats and manipulations. This meant the Rabshakeh knew just enough about God to sound convincing in his claims. During his speeches he even spoke the same language as the Judeans so that all the people could hear his threats. Let’s read verses 11-12:
Isa 36:11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
Isa 36:12 But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”
It’s possible that Hezekiah’s officials made this request to test the Rabshakeh’s flexibility in negotiations. If he would move on this small and relatively insignificant matter then perhaps he would move on bigger deals. It’s more likely that they just didn’t want any of the Judean soldiers to hear what the Rabshakeh was saying. They asked him to speak Aramaic because they didn’t want fear and division to spread among the ranks of the soldiers. Aramaic was the language of international protocol which meant it was the language you would use to negotiate with foreigners. Rabshakeh steadfastly declined this request. Seeing that Rabshakeh wouldn’t budge made the stress levels inside Jerusalem increase exponentially. He went on to suggest that king Hezekiah was no better than the common soldiers who were sitting on the walls. He wanted everyone to hear about the enormous suffering they were about to endure if they failed to surrender immediately. Let’s read verses 13-17:
Isa 36:13 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
Isa 36:14 Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.
Isa 36:15 Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD by saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us. This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”
Isa 36:16 Do not listen to Hezekiah. For thus says the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern,
Isa 36:17 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
Again, the Rabshakeh heaped honor on the Assyrian king Sennacherib and refused to even acknowledge Hezekiah’s kingship. The theme of Rabshakeh’s first speech was to undermine the trust Jerusalem had in their own military, in the alliance with Egypt, and in God. His second speech shifted the focus onto deliverance. He was speaking directly to the people now, hoping to bait them into exiting the city walls in surrender. It was an appealing offer. The people were hungry, thirsty, and suffered overcrowding inside the walls of Jerusalem. Rabshakeh offered them immediate return to their homelands with exile to be determined at a later date. It was standard policy for the Assyrian empire to take their conquered people into exile. They would homogenize them – or mix them up – with foreign people of different languages and religions. This helped to reduce the risk of nations uniting in rebellion against the empire. So Sennacherib viewed himself as a god and he offered the people a version of the Promised Land if only Jerusalem would submit to him and turn away from God. This is parallel to how Satan offered Jesus the whole world with all its kingdoms if only Christ would bow down and worship him.
Rabshakeh’s warning to the people of Jerusalem was twofold. First was do not allow Hezekiah to deceive you into thinking he can deliver you from us. Sennacherib thought Hezekiah might try to use logic, an emotional appeal, theological promises, or other persuasive speech to deceive the people into thinking he could save them. Sennacherib was partially right and partially wrong (as is typical of most political propaganda – a kernel of truth wrapped up in lies). He was right that Hezekiah would persuade the people to stay inside the walls. He was wrong to think that Hezekiah would claim to have the power himself to deliver his people from the Assyrians.
Sennacherib’s second warning through the Rabshakeh was for the people to ignore Hezekiah when if he says God will deliver Jerusalem. Sennacherib and the Rabshakeh must have suspected that if all else failed Hezekiah might call on God to convince his people to stay. They probably found this out by interviewing captives from the other cities of Judah. In truth, it was always Isaiah’s message – not Hezekiah’s – that God would surely deliver them. God’s promise was that not only would He deliver the people from the hands of the Assyrians, but that Assyria would never even conquer Jerusalem. For Sennacherib to suggest that God was not trustworthy in His promises was for him to call God a liar. And it’s at this point in the Rabshakeh’s speech that we see how badly sideways Sennacherib had gone. His bold harangue against God amounted to blasphemy because he asserted that God is not really God – He was not really in control of the political affairs of Jerusalem. Let’s read verses 18-20:
Isa 36:18 Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you by saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
Isa 36:19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
Isa 36:20 Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’”
And this was Sennacherib’s fatal step that would eventually lead to the collapse of the entire Assyrian empire. The Rabshakeh rattled off the names of four different city-states that Assyria had conquered. Hamath was a powerful city in northern Syria that the Assyrian king Sargon II conquered in 720 B.C. Arpad was about seventy-five miles north of Hamath and the Assyrians defeated it in 740 and 720 B.C. The location and the date of the conquest of Sepharvaim are unknown. Sargon II also took Samaria, the capital of the northern nation of Israel, in 722/721 B.C. Sennacherib asked the haunting question: where were the gods of these people? We can infer that Sennacherib didn’t know the God of Samaria is the same God of Judah – because the Rabshakeh would not have missed the opportunity to point out how God didn’t save Samaria from collapse.
Sennacherib’s major blasphemy was to equate the true, all-powerful God with the pagan idols made of wood and stone. Furthermore, Sennacherib didn’t give his own idols credit for his military victories – he took the credit himself. He had reached dizzying levels of arrogance and now he challenged God directly by saying: Who are you? You can’t save them from me. How did Hezekiah’s officials react to this crazed blasphemy? Let’s finish with verses 21-22:
Isa 36:21 But they were silent and answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.”
Isa 36:22 Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.
Wisely, Hezekiah forbade his officials from being drawn into negotiations. They had fulfilled their mission to hear the Rabshakeh’s terms. It was Hebrew custom to tear your clothes as a sign of mourning and loss when a loved one died. The torn clothes of grief indicated their estimate of the impossible situation. Sennacherib’s blasphemy of God would eventually lead to the Angel of the Lord descending on them in the overnight massacre of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers outside the walls of Jerusalem. Sennacherib himself returned to Nineveh where he was murdered by his own sons. The Assyrian Empire would never recover from the night God humbled them. There are two major lessons to be learned from this chapter. The first lesson is that God may be using you to glorify His name. The worst mistake you can make is allowing pride to fester in your heart until you ascend the throne yourself to glorify your own name. This is what Sennacherib did when he was at the helm of the most powerful empire in the world – and God cut him down so fast that that night remains a mystery to secular historians even today. The second lesson is that you must always keep the faith, even when your circumstances look dire – He will deliver you because there is no impossible situation for God.
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