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SEPTEMBER 22
In the habitation of jackals, where whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said
each lay, to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship
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There shall be grass with reeds and before this altar’?” ’ Now therefore, I urge you,
rushes. give a pledge to my master the king of Assyria,
and I will give you two thousand horses—if
8 A highway shall be there, and a road, you are able on your part to put riders on
And it shall be called the Highway of them! How then will you repel one captain of
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Holiness.
the least of my master’s servants, and put your

35:8 Highway of Holiness. This refers to the 36:10 The LORD said. Rabshakeh’s boastful
way leading the redeemed back to Jerusalem, claim of the authority from Judah’s God for his
the throne of the Messiah, literally and spiritu- mission may have been a ploy on his part to get
ally. Christ Himself is to be the leader on that a surrender,but it aligned with Isaiah’s prophecy
way, called in 40:3, the “way of the LORD.” that the Assyrians would be His instrument to
punish His people (8:7,8; 10:5,6).The Assyrians
may have heard this from partisans or may not
The unclean shall not pass over it, have known this, but Judah did.
But it shall be for others.
Whoever walks the road, although
a fool, trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
Shall not go astray. 10
Have I now come up without the LORD against
9 No lion shall be there, this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me,
Nor shall any ravenous beast go up on it; ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’ ”
It shall not be found there. 11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the
But the redeemed shall walk there,
10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in
Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not
return, speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the
And come to Zion with singing, people who are on the wall.”
With everlasting joy on their heads. 12 But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master
They shall obtain joy and gladness, sent me to your master and to you to speak these
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, who
Now it came to pass in the fourteenth will eat and drink their own waste with you?”
36 year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib 13 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out
king of Assyria came up against all the forti- with a loud voice in Hebrew, and said, “Hear
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fied cities of Judah and took them. Then the the words of the great king, the king of As-
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king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh with a syria! Thus says the king: ‘Do not let
great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able
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Jerusalem. And he stood by the aqueduct to deliver you; nor let Hezekiah make you
from the upper pool, on the highway to the trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will sure-
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Fuller’s Field. And Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, ly deliver us; this city will not be given into the
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who was over the household, Shebna the hand of the king of Assyria.” ’ Do not listen to
scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria:
recorder, came out to him. ‘Make peace with me by a present and come
Then the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say
4 out to me; and every one of you eat from his
now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, own vine and every one from his own fig tree,
the king of Assyria: “What confidence is this in and every one of you drink the waters of his
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which you trust? I say you speak of having own cistern; until I come and take you away
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plans and power for war; but they are mere to a land like your own land, a land of grain
words. Now in whom do you trust, that you and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
rebel against me? Look! You are trusting in 18 Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying,
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the staff of this broken reed, Egypt, on which “The LORD will deliver us.” Has any one of the
if a man leans, it will go into his hand and gods of the nations delivered its land from the
pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods
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who trust in him. of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of
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“But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD Sepharvaim? Indeed, have they delivered Sa-
our God,’ is it not He whose high places and maria from my hand? Who among all the
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