2 Kings 18:17 - Meaning and Application

Here we see, first, Jerusalem besieged by Sennacherib’s army (2 Kings 18:17). He sent three of his chief generals with a large force against Jerusalem. He is called “the great king, the king of Assyria,” but he does not deserve that honor. He was false and faithless, and his name should be remembered with shame, because he took Hezekiah’s money on the promise that he would withdraw, then broke that promise and marched against the capital anyway.

Men like that are truly wicked. No matter how powerful they are, we must judge them by this rule, they keep their promises only as long as it suits them. Hezekiah had good reason to regret making peace with Sennacherib. It left him poorer, but it did not make him safer.

Second, Hezekiah, along with his princes and people, was insulted by Rabshakeh, the chief spokesman for the three generals. Rabshakeh had the sharpest tongue of the group, and he was clearly speaking for Sennacherib, who wanted a new quarrel with Hezekiah. Since Sennacherib had already promised to withdraw after receiving Hezekiah’s money, he did not want to attack Jerusalem openly right away. So he sent Rabshakeh to pressure Hezekiah into surrendering, and if Hezekiah refused, that refusal would give him a weak excuse to besiege the city.

Rabshakeh was bold enough to ask for an audience with the king himself at the conduit of the upper pool, outside the walls. But Hezekiah wisely refused a personal meeting and sent three royal commissioners, his chief ministers, to hear him. He also told them not to answer him foolishly (2 Kings 18:36), because they could not persuade him and would only stir him up more. Hezekiah had learned from David to trust God to hear him even when he stayed silent before his enemy (Psalm 38:13-15).

The commissioners did interrupt him once. They asked him to speak in Aramaic, called here the Syrian language, so they could understand and report his words to the king. If they could not give him a reply, then he could speak in the Jews’ language to the people (2 Kings 18:26). That was a fair request and matched the usual practice in negotiations, where the representatives settle matters before anything is made public.

But Rabshakeh was not a reasonable man, and the request only made him more rude and loud (2 Kings 18:27). Instead of dealing respectfully with the commissioners, he threatened the soldiers, tried to tempt them to rebel or desert, and warned that if they held out, starvation would bring them to the worst extremes. His whole speech was meant to push Hezekiah, his princes, and his people into surrendering the city.

To do that, he first praised his master, the king of Assyria, again and again calling him “that great king” (2 Kings 18:19, 2 Kings 18:28). What an idol he made of the prince he served. God alone is the true great King, but Rabshakeh treated Sennacherib like a little god and wanted everyone else to fear him the same way. Yet to faith, which sees the King of kings in his power and glory, the king of Assyria looks small and weak. What are the greatest human rulers when they are compared with God, or when God rises up against them? (Psalm 82:6-7).

Rabshakeh also tried to convince them that surrender would help them. If they held out, he said, they would suffer hunger and end up eating their own waste because the siege would cut off all food. But if they gave in, asked for favor, and brought a gift, he claimed they would be treated well (2 Kings 18:31). It is hard to see how he could speak of making terms with a gift, when his own master had so recently broken the agreement made with Hezekiah and taken that very gift (2 Kings 18:14). Can people who have already acted so treacherously expect to be trusted?

He also tried to make captivity sound pleasant. He promised that if they surrendered, each man would eat from his own vine and fig tree, and each would drink from his own cistern, though the Assyrians would really control everything. He also said they would be taken to a land like their own (2 Kings 18:31). But what good would that do them if nothing in that land truly belonged to them?

What Rabshakeh especially wanted was to convince them that resistance was useless. He mocked Hezekiah, asking, “What confidence is this in which you trust?” (2 Kings 18:19). To the people he said, “Do not let Hezekiah trick you into destruction, for he will not be able to save you” (2 Kings 18:29). In this, he was really preaching a truth sinners should learn before God: it is wise to yield to Him, because it is useless to fight against Him. What confidence can people have who resist Him? Are we stronger than He is? Or what do we gain by setting briars and thorns before a consuming fire?

But Hezekiah was not as helpless as Rabshakeh claimed. Rabshakeh assumed Hezekiah might trust in three things, and he tried to show that all three were worthless. First, Hezekiah’s military preparation. Hezekiah had said, “I have counsel and strength for war,” and that was true (2 Chronicles 32:3). Rabshakeh brushed it aside as empty talk, saying Hezekiah was no match for Assyria (2 Kings 18:20). With great arrogance, he even challenged Hezekiah to find 2,000 horsemen, and promised to give him 2,000 horses if he could. He also falsely suggested that Hezekiah had no men, or none fit to fight (2 Kings 18:23). In this way he tried to overwhelm him with mockery and confidence, as if even one of Assyria’s lowest officers could defeat all of Judah’s forces.

Rabshakeh also attacked Hezekiah’s supposed alliance with Egypt. He assumed that Hezekiah trusted Egypt for chariots and horsemen (2 Kings 18:24), because the king of Israel had done the same. About that trust, he rightly said, “It is a broken reed” (2 Kings 18:21). A broken reed does not just fail a person who leans on it, it can pierce the hand and tear the shoulder, as Ezekiel later says about Egypt (Ezekiel 29:6, 7). So it was with the king of Egypt, Rabshakeh claimed, and that had also been true of the king of Assyria toward Ahaz, the former king of Judah, who trusted him but found only harm and no help (2 Chronicles 28:20). Anyone who leans on human power will find it as weak as a broken reed, but God is the rock of ages.

Rabshakeh also attacked Hezekiah’s trust in God and his relationship to God. In truth, this was the real confidence that supported Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:22). He rested on God’s power and promise, and he used that trust to strengthen himself and his people, saying, “The Lord will surely deliver us” (2 Kings 18:30), and again (2 Kings 18:32). Rabshakeh knew this was their chief support, so he worked hard to shake it. David’s enemies had done the same, trying to drive him away from trusting God (Psalm 3:2, 11:1), and Christ’s enemies did the same when they mocked him (Matthew 27:43).

Rabshakeh used three false claims to weaken their trust in God. First, he said Hezekiah had lost God’s protection by tearing down the high places and altars (2 Kings 18:22). He measured the God of Israel by the false gods of the nations, who were thought to want many altars and temples. So he treated one of Hezekiah’s best deeds as if it were an offense against God, because he did not know, or would not accept, the law of Israel’s God. If ignorant and malicious people call something evil that is really good in God’s sight, we should not be surprised. If this was sacrilege, then Hezekiah would always be guilty of it.

Second, Rabshakeh claimed that God himself had ordered Jerusalem’s destruction at that time (2 Kings 18:25). His words, “Have I now come up without the Lord?” were just taunting and boasting. He did not truly believe he had a command from God, for where would he have gotten it? He only used that claim to fool and frighten the people on the wall. If there was any weak basis for what he said, it may have come from what he knew through the prophets about God’s judgment on the ten tribes. He may have thought he had as good a right to take Jerusalem as he had to take Samaria. Many who fight against God pretend they have been sent by him.

Third, he blasphemously claimed that even if the Lord, the God of Israel, tried to protect Jerusalem from the king of Assyria, he would not be able to do it (2 Kings 18:33-35). In this way he compared the God of Israel with the gods of the nations he had already conquered, treating the Lord as if he were no better than they were. From this we see his pride. When he captured a city, he acted as if he had defeated its gods too, and he was very proud of that. His high view of idols fed his high view of himself, as though he were stronger than they were.

We also see his irreverence. The God of Israel was not a god tied to one place. He was the God of the whole earth, the only living and true God, the Ancient of Days, and he had often shown that he was above all gods. Yet Rabshakeh spoke of him as if he were no different from the made-up gods of Hamath and Arpad. In effect, he argued carelessly that the gods of all religions are the same, and that he stood above them all. Jewish tradition says Rabshakeh was a former Jew, which would explain why he could speak the Jews’ language so well. If that was true, then his ignorance of Israel’s God was even less excusable, and his hatred less surprising, because people who turn away often become the fiercest enemies, as Julian did. There was skill and planning in Rabshakeh’s speech, but there was also pride, hatred, lies, and blasphemy. One honest word would have been better than all his clever speech.

Finally, we are told what Hezekiah’s representatives did. They kept silent, not because they had nothing to say for God or for the king. They could have answered with his master’s treachery and broken promises, and they could have asked him what religion made him think such conduct would succeed. At the least, they might have spoken as Ahab once did to Benhadad in the face of arrogance, “Let not him who puts on his armor boast like one who takes it off.” But the king had told them not to answer, and they obeyed him. There is a time to be silent as well as a time to speak, and some people are not fit to receive anything wise or holy. To such people, even good words are wasted, like pearls thrown to pigs. What can be said to a madman? Their silence likely made Rabshakeh even more proud and bold, so that his heart was hardened for his own ruin.

Then they tore their clothes in sorrow over his blasphemy and in grief for Jerusalem’s shame and suffering. Its disgrace was a heavy burden to them. They also faithfully reported everything to their king, Hezekiah, so that he could decide what should be done, what course they should take, and what answer should be sent back to Rabshakeh’s demand.