20. Your claim to have a strategy and military strength is just empty talk. In whom are you trusting that you would dare to rebel against me?
21. Now look, you must be trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed staff. If a man leans for support on it, it punctures his hand and wounds him. That is what Pharaoh king of Egypt does to all who trust in him.
22. Perhaps you will tell me, ‘We are trusting in the Lord our God.’ But Hezekiah is the one who eliminated his high places and altars and then told the people of Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You must worship at this altar in Jerusalem.’
23. Now make a deal with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, provided you can find enough riders for them.
24. Certainly you will not refuse one of my master’s minor officials and trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen.
25. Furthermore it was by the command of the Lord that I marched up against this place to destroy it. The Lord told me, ‘March up against this land and destroy it.’”’”
26. Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the chief adviser, “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Judahite dialect in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
27. But the chief adviser said to them, “My master did not send me to speak these words only to your master and to you. His message is also for the men who sit on the wall, for they will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you.”
28. The chief adviser then stood there and called out loudly in the Judahite dialect, “Listen to the message of the great king, the king of Assyria.
29. This is what the king says: ‘Don’t let Hezekiah mislead you, for he is not able to rescue you from my hand!