A translation and sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 24June 2007
1. And it happened in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah,
Senacharib, king of Assyria went up over all the cities of Judah – the forts – and seized them.
2. Then the king of Assyria sent Rabshaqah from Lakish toward Jerusalem to the king Hezekiah with a heavy force. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool there in the highway of Washing Field.
3. And Eliakim, son of Chilqiah who was over the house went out to him, also Shebna the stenographer and Joach son of Asaph, the historian.
4. And he said to them, “Please say to Hezekiah, Thus said the great king, the king of Assyria,
‘What is this faith which you believed?
5. You said, “Surely a word of the lips is counsel and strength for the war.”
Now upon whom did you trust that you rebelled against me?
6. Look, you trusted upon the support of this crushed reed, upon Egypt,
which a man leans upon it and it goes into his palm and punctures it.
Thus is Pharaoh, king of Egypt to all the ones who trust upon him.
7. And if you should say to me, ‘To Jehovah our God we trusted.’
Isn’t he the one who Hezekiah removed - His high-places and His altars –
and he said to Judah and to Jerusalem to the face of THIS altar you shall bow’?
8. So now, how about be nice to my lord the king of Assyria,
and let me give to you a thousand horses – if you are able to give yourself riders upon them!
9. And how will you turn the face of a single captain of my lord’s servants – even the small ones?
You trusted upon Egypt for chariot and for horsemen for yourself!
10. And now, it is apart from Jehovah I come up against this land to destroy it?
Jehovah has said to me, ‘Go up to this land to destroy it!’”
11. Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joach said to Rabshaqah,
“Be pleased to speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we are listening,
but do not speak to us in Judean in the ears of the people which are upon the wall.”
12. But Rabshaqah said,
“Is it to your master and to you,
my master has sent me to speak these words?
Is it not against the men who are sitting upon the wall
to eat their excrement and to drink their urine with you?”
13. Then Rabshaqah stood and called in a great voice in Judean and said, “Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14. Thus said the king, ‘Do not let Hezekiah cause deception for you,
for he is not able to deliver you.
15. And do not let Hezekiah cause you to trust in Jehovah by saying,
“Jehovah will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’
16. Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus said the king of Assyria,
‘Make a blessing with me and come out to me,
and eat each of you of his vine and each of his fig-tree
and drink each of you water of his cistern,
17. until I come and take you to a land like your land,
a land of wheat and juice, a land of bread and vineyards.
18. Otherwise Hezekiah will entice you by saying, “Jehovah, He will deliver us.”
Have any of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
19. Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim?
Or did they thus deliver Samaria from my hand?
20. Which are they among all the gods of these lands that delivered their land from my hand,
that Jehovah will deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’”
21. But they kept quiet and did not answer him a word,
for it was a command of the king to say, “Do not answer him.”
22. Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah who was over the house came, along with Shebnah the recorder and Joach son of Asaph the secretary, to Hezekiah, clothes torn, and related to him the words of Rabshaqah.
It is June 16, 1967 and you are an American soldier fighting in Vietnam. It is evening and everybody’s playing cards and resting after dinner when the radio crackles to life: “How are you, GI Joe? It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war, to say nothing about a correct explanation of your presence over here. Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or to be maimed for life without the faintest idea of what’s going on.”Then the voice of American singer and war protester Eric Burden starts crooning, “We gotta get out of this place, if its the last thing we ever do. We gotta get out of this place, surely there’s a better life for me and you.”It’s about the only English-speaking radio station you can get in South Vietnam, but it is the Vietnamese propaganda station DJ’ed by Hanoi Hannah, specifically programmed to demoralize the U.S. troops so that they would lose the Vietnam War.
Back in the 8th Century B.C. they didn’t have radios, but they had Rabshaqah:
1. And it happened in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah,
Senacharib, king of Assyria went up over all the cities of Judah – the forts – and seized them.
2. Then the king of Assyria sent Rabshaqah from Lakish toward Jerusalem to the king Hezekiah with a heavy force. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool there in the highway of Washing Field.
3. And Eliakim, son of Chilqiah who was over the house went out to him, also Shebna the stenographer and Joach son of Asaph, the historian.
1. The year was 701 B.C.
2. This was fourteen years after the end of Ahaz’s reign in Judah, and Hezekiah was king.
3. Sennacherib was king of Assyria, and he embarked on a military campaign, capturing the coastal cities of Phoenicia and defeating the Egyptian army on its northern border. He then turned east. Moab and Edom submitted and sent tribute. Judah was now surrounded.
4. The six-sided Taylor Prism discovered among
the ruins of ancient Nineveh in 1830 is Sennacherib’s own account of this
campaign ten years after the fact. Listen to what he wrote:
“As for Hezekiah the Jew, who did not
submit to my yoke, forty-six of his strong-walled cities, as well as the small
cities in their neighborhood, which were without number — by constructing
ramparts out of trampled earth and by bringing up battering rams, by the attack
of infantry, by tunnels, breaches and axes — I besieged and conquered.
Two hundred thousand one hundred and
fifty men, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen
and sheep without number I brought out from them, I counted as spoil. Hezekiah
I shut up like a caged bird in Jerusalem, his royal city; the walls I fortified
against him. Whoever came out of the gates of the city I turned back.
His cities which I had plundered I
divided from his land and gave them to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, to Padi, king
of Ekron, and to Sillibel, king of Gaza, and thus diminished his territory.
To the former tribute, paid yearly, I
added the tribute of alliance of my lordship and laid that upon him. Hezekiah himself was overwhelmed by the
fear of the awful splendor of my lordship. The Arabians and his other faithful
warriors whom, as a defense for Jerusalem his royal city he had brought in,
fell into fear… http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/BAssyriaVsGod.htm
5. Jerusalem was in a hopeless situation. The people must have been demoralized knowing that every town in the area had been defeated and they would soon be the last to go.
6. Rabshaqah (Lit. “great waterer” Perhaps chief butler or cup-bearer. Probably highest-in-command of the army.) shows up in front of Jerusalem with heavy forces.
7. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool there in the highway of Washing Field. The location is significant. This was the very spot where Ahaz chose the help of Assyria to that of God in 7:3! That decision was coming back to haunt the people of Jerusalem. (Delitzsch)
8. Hezekiah’s officials went out to parley with the Assyrians. They included:
a. the palace administrator Eliakim (a.k.a. Azariah) whose father, Hilkiah, was the High priest that restored the temple and was the great-grandfather of Ezra (2 Ki. 22-23; 2 Chron 34-35; Ez. 7:1; Neh. 11:11),
b. also present was Shebna the scribe whose power-grabbing was reproved in chapter 22 – notice he is no longer “over the house,” but Eliakim is, just as Isaiah has prophecied.
c. The third man is Joach who had helped Chilkiah restore the temple and who had the position of “causing people to remember” – he was a secretary, a historian. In 2 Chron 34:8, his father’s name is Joahaz, but here he is called “a son of Asaph.” Because of the way the phrase “son of Asaph” is used throughout the literature of this time period (2Ki. 18:18, 37; 1Ch. 6:39; 9:15; 15:17; 25:1-2; 26:1; 2Ch. 5:12; 20:14; 29:13; 35:15; Ezra 2:41; 3:10; Neh. 7:44; 11:17-22; 12:35), I suspect that “son of Asaph” had come to mean “worship-leader” because of the great Psalm-writer, Asaph, whose descendents were called upon from the time of King David through the time of Ezra and Nehemiah to lead God’s people in worship.
When the enemy comes, he doesn’t ask for faith like God does; he starts by showing us the goods. Rabshaqah brought in the “heavy force” of a great army. His power was clearly visible and needed no faith.
God, on the other hand shows up with a “still small voice,”
appearing as one who “has no stately form or
majesty that we should look at Him.” (Isa 53)
“And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto Him; for he that
cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that
seek after Him.” Heb 11:6
Isaiah has talked a lot about faith in the previous chapters, and you know that this is God’s way, to set up circumstances such that He gets tremendous glory by acting on behalf of a few people who trust in Him. But most of this chapter is a transcription of a speech, and it is this speech that I wish to analyze and deconstruct, because we hear parts of this speech every day coming at us from the world, our own flesh, and from the Devil.
The commander speaks in Hebrew to Eliakim while Shebna scribbles notes, Joach silently prays, and the people on the wall of Jerusalem strain to hear. Note the disdain Rebshakeh shows toward Hezekiah by never calling him a king throughout his entire speech. Notice how he repeats the word “trust/ confidence” 7 times in this first speech and “deliver” 8 times in his second speech, sneering at their faith.
4. And he said to them, “Please say to Hezekiah, Thus said the great king, the king of Assyria,
‘What is this faith which you believed?
5. You said, “Surely a word of the lips is counsel and strength for the war.”
Now upon whom did you trust that you rebelled against me?
6. Look, you trusted upon the support of this crushed reed, upon Egypt,
which a man leans upon it and it goes into his palm and punctures it.
Thus is Pharaoh, king of Egypt to all the ones who trust upon him.
7. And if you should say to me, ‘To Jehovah our God we trusted.’
Isn’t he the one who Hezekiah removed - His high-places and His altars –
and he said to Judah and to Jerusalem to the face of THIS altar you shall bow’?
8. So now, how about be nice to my lord the king of Assyria,
and let me give to you a thousand horses – if you are able to give yourself riders upon them!
9. And how will you turn the face of a single captain of my lord’s servants – even the small ones?
You trusted upon Egypt for chariot and for horsemen for yourself!
10. And now, it is apart from Jehovah I come up against this land to destroy it?
Jehovah has said to me, ‘Go up to this land to destroy it!’”
Notice 3 things about this speech:
A) v.5. Rabshaqah questions the validity of the source from which God’s people were getting council. Lit. “word of the lips” –LXX,Yng, translated figuratively mere-ESV / vain-KJV / empty-NAS words.
1. The “counsel and strength” that Hezekiah was paying attention to was God’s! The prophet Isaiah reminds us that God’s “counsel” is “wonderful” (11:2; 25:1; 28:29) 11:2 “the Spirit of the LORD… is the spirit of … counsel and might” 28:6 “a spirit of … strength to them that turn the battle to the gate.” 30:15 “in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” and he calls the world in 33:13 to “acknowledge [God’s] might.” Rabshaqah has it backwards! It is Assyria’s plans made apart from God which are vain! (8:10; 19:3-17; 29:15; 30:1)
2. Just like the serpent in the garden, the enemy begins to sow seeds of doubt concerning God and His word. “You shall not surely die.” He said to her in direct contradiction to God’s word. This transformed Eve’s epistemology. From this point, she began evaluating the tree not based upon the council of God’s word but rather based on her own sensory perception of the tree “she saw that it was good for eating and that it was a delight to the eyes…”
3. The world today, like Rabshaqah, speaks as though it has a
right to give us advice and a claim to our allegiance. This is subtle. We must
resist every claim that the world, the flesh and the devil make upon our
allegiance and recognize that they have no right to give us advice.
World, you have no right to tell me that if it feels good, do it.
Flesh, you have no right to advise me that I need that drink or that candy bar.
Devil, you have no right to counsel me to consider what other people will think
of me.
“God is my salvation; I will trust, and
will not be afraid; for Jehovah, even Jehovah, is my strength and song; and he
is become my salvation.” (12:2)
B) In v.6-9, the
Assyrian warlord points God’s people towards the wrong source of help.
He reasons thus: You are weak; nobody else can help you; Assyria has the power,
so trust Assyria.
1. In
v. 8-9, Rabshaqah rightly points out that Judah needs help; their own strength
is too weak - “I’ve got a thousand horses but
you don’t even have enough riders… And how will you turn the face of a single
captain of my lord’s servants?
i.e. “you are too weak to move my weakest man”
or “you are to insignificant for my lowest man to notice,” or “I’ve got you
over a barrel – you cannot refuse the command of even my lowest-ranking
officer.”
2. He
was also right that Egypt was the wrong direction to look for help. (Isaiah is up
on the wall saying, “Yeah, give it to ‘em! I’ve been trying to tell them this
for years!”)
The Ethiopians & Assyrians (under Sargon) had
recently defeated the royal family of Egypt.
v.6 If you lean on Egypt, it will be like leaning on a
thin, sharp stick – it won’t support you, instead it will pierce through your
hand and hurt you.
3. But the enemy is pointing in the wrong direction for help. He presents a false dilemma – it’s not either Egypt or Assyria; it’s Man or God, which will you trust?
4. In
v.8&9, Rabshaqah notes the fact that the Judeans had been looking to horses
from Egypt for escape and salvation. “You trusted upon
Egypt for chariot and for horsemen for yourself!” so he says, don’t
trust in Egypt, how about be nice to my lord the king
of Assyria [make a wager-Own,ESV / exchange pledges-KJV, Young / bargain with-NAS],
and let me give you 1,000 horses!
No!, says Isaiah 31:1, it’s not Egypt or
Assyria’s horses, it’s Man or God – which will you trust? “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, and rely
on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many,
and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they look not unto the
Holy One of Israel, neither seek Jehovah!”
5. Satan will do this too: He will make you realize the failure of something you relied upon and encourage you to panic and turn to yourself or some other human source of “help” rather than to God. 26:3 God will keep in perfect peace him whose mind leans on Him; because he trusts in Him.
6. The one to whom you turn in order to deal with shame and
failure and weakness is the one who is your god. The evil one hopes to turn us
to human strength to deal with these feelings of shame, but God calls us to
come to Him to be forgiven of our sins and experience His power in our weakness.
When you are tempted to think that you are a failure, stop and realize that the
problem came from misplacing your trust, from buying into the enemy’s false
dilemma of trusting one human or another human. Instead of getting depressed,
wait instead on the Lord!
C) In. vs. 7 & 10, Rabshaqah presents twisted information about God.
1. “God hates you; He’s finished with you. He’s looking for a way to punish you.” Ever thought that? It’s the voice of the enemy!
2. Notice what Rabshaqah says in v. 7. [When] Hezekiah removed - those high-places and altars, wasn’t that [offensive to your God]? and then v.10 Jehovah told me, ‘Go up to this land to destroy it!’
3. The high places
a. were hilltops in Moab where pagans worshipped (15:2; 16:12).
b. They were destroyed by Hezekiah 2 Kings 18:3-4 “And [Hezekiah] did what was right in the eyes of Jehovah, like… David… had done. He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah...” and this pleased God!
c. Whether as a pagan Rabshaqah simply could not understand the one true God or whether as a propaganda voice he was purposefully twisting the truth to demoralize God’s people, his message was dead wrong.
d. God loves His people (Deut 7:7). He will never leave or forsake us (Heb. 13:5).
4. Just like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the enemy begins
re-writing history to shake the faith of God’s people. “Has God said you cannot eat from any tree in the
garden?” (Gen. 3) What a mean God you have! He knows that if you eat the
fruit you’ll be like Him; He is depriving you of the privilege of eating that
fruit because He doesn’t want the competition!
No! You’re dead wrong, Satan! God put me in this place
and gave me this command not to eat from the tree because He loves me
and wants me to enjoy a life of trust in Him that is free from all the pain and
sickness of the knowledge of evil!
5. In his second speech (v.12-20) Rabshaqah does the same thing again, twisting the truth about God. He asks in v.19 “Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Or did they thus deliver Samaria from my hand?” i.e. What makes you think your God will deliver you when no other nation was delivered by their gods when I marched through? The other gods weren’t around to defend their people, and that includes Jehovah when I captured Samaria. He won’t stick around to defend you either!
a. HAMATH: Capitol city in upper Syria in the fertile Orontes valley at the foot of Lebanon, occupied by Sargon in 720 BC.
b. ARPHAD: Town near Hamath. Beseiged & captured by Tiglath-Pileser 740 BC
c. SEPHARVAIM: Probably a town close to Hamath (there were over 80 of them) conquered just before SAMARIA (Capitol of northern kingdom of Israel) whose inhabitants were swapped with those from Samaria.
6. As a pagan, the Assyrian assumes that Jehovah is no different from all the other gods of the nations. He could not be more mistaken! God is holy, “above all Gods” (1Ch. 16:25; Ps. 95:3; 96:4; 97:9; 135:5). He allowed the downfall and the siege of Jerusalem because He loved His people so much that He disciplined them. He was not absent, He was there the whole time, but he was holding Assyria like a rod in His hand and disciplining His people with that rod in order to bring them back to Him.
7. Rabshaqah
misconstrued God’s merciful plan. Satan will do the same thing.
The only way to catch these lies about God is to study
the Bible and fill our minds with the truth.
12. But Rabshaqah said,
“Is it to your master and to you,
my master has sent me to speak these words?
Is it not against the men who are sitting upon the wall
to eat their excrement and to drink their urine with you?”
13. Then Rabshaqah stood and called in a great voice in Judean and said, “Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14. Thus said the king, ‘Do not let Hezekiah cause deception for you,
for he is not able to deliver you.
15. And do not let Hezekiah cause you to trust in Jehovah by saying,
“Jehovah will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’
16. Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus said the king of Assyria,
‘Make a blessing with me and come out to me,
and eat each of you of his vine and each of his fig-tree
and drink each of you water of his cistern,
17. until I come and take you to a land like your land,
a land of wheat and juice, a land of bread and vineyards.
18. Otherwise Hezekiah will entice you by saying, “Jehovah, He will deliver us.”
Have any of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
19. Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim?
Or did they thus deliver Samaria from my hand?
D) Another
tactic of the enemy is to accuse you of wrongdoing and attack you with fear.
In I Sam. 17, David’s older brothers accused David
of false motives in bringing supplies to the their battle with the Philistines
and criticized him for neglecting his duty to tend the sheep.
Here, Rabshaqah accuses Eliakim of being
inconsiderate of his people. He reminds the Jews of the horrors of living under
a siege when you run out of food and water. He misconstrued Eliakim’s desire to
protect the faith of his people as a propaganda maneuver, just as today in our
country, people who do not believe in God misconstrue our efforts to ensure
that intelligent design is considered in classroom teaching on origins as
turning to fairy tales to subvert the scientific development of our children.
E) The heart of Rabshaqah’s message in vs. 13-18, however was an appeal to the people to stop listening to King Hezekiah.
1. Rabshaqah quotes Hezekiah as saying, “Jehovah will surely deliver!” 2 Chron. 32:6-8 says that Hezekiah “gathered them together… saying, ‘Be strong & courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him, for there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God, to help us and to fight our battles.’ And the people took confidence from the words.”
2. Because of the similarity of these phrases to other Old Testament histories of great men of faith, I suspect that Hezekiah also reminded his people about great things God had done in the past when people trusted Him:
a. The history of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan speaks of God delivering (Deut 31:5) and of being strong and coursgeous, not afraid or dismayed (Josh 1:9)
b. The story of David and Goliath also recounts God’s deliverance: 1Sa 17:46 “This day Jehovah will deliver you into my hand… that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel”
c. And Hezekiah even quotes from the more recent history of Elisha and his servant (2 Kings 6). When the Syrian army had surrounded their city the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” Elisha said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them… Then the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
d. Whether Hezekiah told these stories or the mere quotation of these phrases was enough to remind the people in Jerusalem of their history, He was reminding them and encouraging them to trust God.
3. Rabshaqah identifies this leader who was speaking God’s truth to the people and tells the people several times not to listen to him. Why?
a. He says it’s because “Hezekiah cannot deliver.”
b.
But his reasoning is faulty on two counts:
FIRST, Hezekiah never said he could deliver, he said God could
deliver.
SECOND, the Assyrian is assuming with his humanistic mindset that the outcome
of this conflict is a foregone conclusion, that Jerusalem cannot be delivered.
Rabshaqah assumed that the siege would be successful because he assumed that
the powers visible to the eye were all that counted in this conflict. Thus he
urged God’s people to put their trust in what they can see, namely the
Assyrian army spread around their city He was dead wrong. “Faith is the
conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). The unseen God would deliver
the city.
4. Ultimately, the evil one behind Rabshaqah was afraid of the
one thing Hezekiah could do – to inspire people to trust God, so he
concentrated on that problem by insisting that the people not listen to
Hezekiah.
Satan desperately does not want you to listen to godly leaders and will
do all he can to insist that you pay attention to his distractions. We must
realize that this is the basic principle behind much of the world’s
entertainment and media; it is to get people to listen to and read anything
besides God’s word.
F) Finally, Rabshaqah offers favors to the people in vs. 16-17
1. Like Goliath in I Sam. 17, Rabshaqah calls upon God’s people to take the easy way out. Don’t go through the trouble of a war, just surrender to me and make it easy for all of us. Make peace-ESV,NAS / a present-KJV / lit. “blessing”-LXX, Targ.
2. This is typical of our enemy’s tactics. Satan is scared to death of getting into a fight with God’s people because he always looses, so he makes a show of force and appeals to our lazy nature to avoid the hassle of a spiritual battle and give in to the demands of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He promises us the world if we will. “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matt. 4:9)
3. If you make peace with us Assyrians, instead of starving to death in a siege and eating your own dung and drinking your own urine, just think, you’ll be eating fresh grapes and figs and fresh water. I promise you prosperity!
4. “Turn these stones to bread” Satan said, but Jesus reminded Satan, “man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” in other words, life is a spiritual battle to extend the kingdom of God and not just about eating to survive.
5. Two parties want us to listen to them; two feasts are laid out, one from the world and one by faith in Christ:
a. The world’s feast is promising but it has a price:
i.
v.16 “and eat each of you of his vine and
each of his fig-tree and drink each of you water of his cistern… a land of grain
and wine, bread and vineyards.”
THE PRICE: Expatriation to another land (v.17). After conquering a country, the
Assyrians would move all the people into another location and resettle their
conquered land with other foreigners they had conquered.
ii. Prov. 7 describes the worldly woman who invites the young
man lacking sense “She seizes him and kisses him, and with bold face she says
to him, “I offered sacrifices today [so there are steaks on the grill right
now!], my house is beautiful with soft couches, I have perfumed my bed with
myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon… Come!”
THE PRICE: But the writer says “he is like an ox going to the slaughter… he
does not know that it will cost him his life… Her house is the path to Sheol,
going down to the chambers of death.” There is a price to the world’s
feast!
b. God’s feasts, on the other hand, come by faith
i. Water and manna in the wilderness which came by faith (John 6:48ff),
ii. Prov. 9:1-6 “Wisdom has built her house… She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, ‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here! … Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live!’”
iii. In Isaiah too, God promised bread (30:23; 33:16) and vineyards to those who trusted Him (37:30; 65:21)!
iv. The Lord’s Supper in I Cor. 11/John 6:53, representing Christ, the bread of life (John 6:35) and the living water (John 4), and fulfilled in the eschatological feast Luke 22:29-30/Rev. 19:9.
v. Who will we listen to? Which feast will we pursue?
A) Eliakim first tried to turn the propaganda source off:
1. (v.11) Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joach said to Rabshaqah, “Be pleased to speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we are listening, but do not speak to us in Judean in the ears of the people which are upon the wall.”
2. Aramaic was the court language of Chaldea (Dan. 2:4) & Persia: (Ezra 4:7), and was in use throughout Asia in the 8th Century BC as a language of diplomacy for educated people, but it would not have been understood by common people or soldiers. (Young)
3. The first thought of the Judean officials is to keep their people from hearing and being demoralized by Rabshaqah’s speech, so they ask very politely to continue the parley in Aramaic.
4. This is a very practical first line of defense against the propaganda of the devil – protect vulnerable people from hearing it! Are there sources of the enemy’s speech that you or your children are vulnerable to? Certain kinds of music, games, books, video, internet, or social interaction that will influence you or your children toward evil? The first line of defense is to shut down those channels if you can. Turn off the radio and quit listening to Hanoi Hannah. You won’t be able to shut them all down, but you can address strategic ones.
5. EXAMPLE of Josh Howell who got us to move our Apologetics study from next to the K-State radio station to a quieter place because the music was so evil it was distracting.
B) Silence
1. v 21. “they kept quiet and did not answer him a word”
2. Does this mean we should never argue with the enemy? Not always.
a. David answered Goliath;
b. Jesus answered Satan,
c. 14:32 “What shall one answer the messengers of the nation? That Jehovah has founded Zion...”
d. However, there are times when it is best for us to skip it:
i. reproof would have fallen flat with Rabshaqah (Young),
ii. Eve was in no position to argue with the serpent.
It is vitally important that we recognize the enemy when he speaks to us:
recognize that this is the enemy of your soul. Silence it or be silent. For if we “resist the devil he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
Nate Wilson’s website – Isaiah Sermon Expositions
Christ the Redeemer Church website - Sermons