The Rabshakeh's Speech: Psychological Warfare at the Wall

In 701 BC, Sennacherib's forces systematically reduced Judah's fortified cities. The Assyrian annals themselves record the destruction of forty-six walled cities and the deportation of over two hundred thousand people. When his army reaches Jerusalem, Sennacherib sends a high official — the Rabshakeh — to the walls of the city with a message designed not merely to demand surrender but to dismantle faith itself.

The Rabshakeh speaks in Hebrew — deliberately, so the soldiers on the wall can hear — and his speech is a masterpiece of propaganda. He addresses three layers of trust and systematically dismantles each one:

"Say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours? Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me?'" — Isaiah 36:4–5 (ESV)

First, he attacks the Egyptian alliance: "You are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it" — Isaiah 36:6 (ESV). Egypt cannot help. Second, he attacks Hezekiah's religious reform: if Hezekiah has removed the high places and altars throughout Judah, perhaps he has offended his own God. The Rabshakeh twists Hezekiah's faithfulness into a liability, suggesting that centralized worship was actually an insult to the LORD. Third — and most audaciously — he claims divine authorization: "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'" — Isaiah 36:10 (ESV).

John Oswalt observes that the Rabshakeh's strategy is theologically sophisticated. He is not merely threatening military force; he is attacking the very basis of trust in God. If God Himself has sent Assyria, then resistance is not courage but rebellion against God's will. The speech is designed to make faith impossible — not by denying that God exists, but by claiming that He is on the other side.

Hezekiah's officials beg the Rabshakeh to speak in Aramaic — the diplomatic language — rather than Hebrew, so the common soldiers will not understand. The Rabshakeh refuses. He raises his voice and addresses the people directly:

"Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD by saying, 'The LORD will surely deliver us.' ... Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?" — Isaiah 36:14–15, 18 (ESV)

The argument is empirical: every god of every nation Assyria has conquered has failed. Why would the LORD be different? The Rabshakeh lists the conquered capitals — Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Samaria — each one a city whose god proved powerless. The logic is devastating on its own terms. And the people on the wall say nothing. Hezekiah has commanded their silence: "Do not answer him" — Isaiah 36:21 (ESV).

Brevard Childs notes that the silence of the people is itself an act of faith. In the face of a speech designed to provoke panic, the refusal to engage is a form of trust — waiting for God to speak rather than answering on human terms. There is no clever rebuttal that can win this argument. The only response that means anything is the one Hezekiah makes next.

Hezekiah's Prayer: The King Before His God

When Hezekiah hears the report, he tears his clothes, covers himself with sackcloth, and goes into the house of the LORD. He sends messengers to Isaiah, who responds with a word from God: "Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me" — Isaiah 37:6 (ESV). A rumor will come to Sennacherib, he will return to his own land, and there he will fall by the sword.

Sennacherib sends a letter — escalating from spoken threats to written ultimatum. The letter repeats the same argument: no god has delivered any nation from Assyria. Where are the gods of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?

Hezekiah takes the letter and spreads it before the LORD in the temple. His prayer is one of the finest in the Old Testament:

"O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God." — Isaiah 37:16–17 (ESV)

The prayer begins with theology, not panic. Hezekiah acknowledges who God is before he asks for anything. The God of Israel is the creator of heaven and earth — and that is precisely the ground on which Hezekiah stands. The gods of the conquered nations were "the work of men's hands, wood and stone" — Isaiah 37:19 (ESV). They were not gods at all. The Rabshakeh's argument collapses when the category distinction is drawn correctly: the LORD is not one deity among many competing for territory. He is the only God.

"So now, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the LORD." — Isaiah 37:20 (ESV)

The purpose of deliverance is not merely Judah's survival. It is the revelation of God's identity to all nations. John Oswalt writes that Hezekiah's prayer represents the exact opposite of Ahaz's refusal in chapter 7. Where Ahaz would not trust, Hezekiah lays everything before God. Where Ahaz sought Assyria's help, Hezekiah asks God to deal with Assyria directly. The contrast between these two kings is one of the most instructive in Isaiah: same threat, same God, two entirely different responses, two entirely different outcomes.

What strikes us in Hezekiah's prayer is how he literally spreads the threatening letter out before God. He doesn't paraphrase the problem or describe it in general terms. He takes the actual letter — the physical evidence of the threat — and lays it in the temple. It is such a concrete, honest act. Here it is, God. Look at this. Not a polished petition, just: here is what we are facing, and you are the only one who can do anything about it.

God's Answer: Deliverance in the Night

God's response through Isaiah is sweeping. He addresses Sennacherib directly, through the prophet, in a taunt song that mirrors the taunt against the king of Babylon in chapter 14. The "virgin daughter of Zion" despises Assyria and shakes her head at it. Sennacherib has raged against God Himself, and God will turn him back:

"Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came." — Isaiah 37:29 (ESV)

The language of hook and bit reduces the great Assyrian emperor to a domesticated animal. The power that terrified the entire ancient world is led like a beast by the God it dared to mock.

The deliverance itself is recounted with stark brevity:

"And the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies." — Isaiah 37:36 (ESV)

The narrator does not explain the mechanism. No battle is described. No human army is credited. Sennacherib awakes to find his army destroyed. He returns to Nineveh, and there, while worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his own sons strike him down with the sword. The king who mocked the living God dies in the house of a god who could not protect him. Brevard Childs observes that the narrative structure is deliberately ironic: the man who challenged the LORD to save Jerusalem cannot even be saved by his own deity.

Hezekiah's Illness and the Babylonian Shadow

Chapter 38 records Hezekiah's near-fatal illness and recovery. Isaiah delivers a blunt message: "Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover" — Isaiah 38:1 (ESV). Hezekiah turns his face to the wall and prays, weeping bitterly, reminding God of his faithfulness. Before Isaiah leaves the middle court, God reverses the sentence: fifteen more years will be added to Hezekiah's life.

The sign that accompanies the promise is extraordinary: the shadow on the sundial of Ahaz goes backward ten steps. Time itself bends to confirm God's word. Hezekiah responds with a psalm of thanksgiving that moves from despair — "I said, In the middle of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years" — Isaiah 38:10 (ESV) — to gratitude: "The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to the children your faithfulness" — Isaiah 38:19 (ESV).

But chapter 39 introduces a shadow that will darken everything that follows. Merodach-baladan, king of Babylon, sends envoys to Hezekiah — ostensibly to congratulate him on his recovery. Hezekiah welcomes them and shows them everything: the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, the armory, everything in his storehouses. "There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them" — Isaiah 39:2 (ESV).

Isaiah comes to the king with a question that carries the weight of prophetic knowledge: "What did they see in your house?" Hezekiah's answer is unwittingly complete: "They have seen all that is in my house; there is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them" — Isaiah 39:4 (ESV).

The word of the LORD through Isaiah is devastating:

"Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." — Isaiah 39:6–7 (ESV)

John Oswalt notes that this oracle is the bridge between the two halves of Isaiah. The Assyrian crisis is over, but a new and greater crisis is announced. Everything Hezekiah showed the Babylonians will be taken by the Babylonians. The deliverance that just occurred does not prevent the exile that is coming. Hezekiah's response is troubling: "The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good," he says, reasoning that "there will be peace and security in my days" — Isaiah 39:8 (ESV). The king who prayed so nobly in chapter 37 now accepts future catastrophe with something that looks disturbingly like relief that it will not happen to him.

We find that response hard to sit with. Not because we don't understand it — we do, maybe too well. The thought that disaster is coming but not yet, that the consequences will fall on someone else's generation, is a recognizable form of self-protection. But Isaiah places it here, at the end of Hezekiah's story, as though to say: even a man of genuine faith can slide into this. Even the one who spread the letter before God can, when the pressure is off, stop taking seriously what God has said.

The section closes on this unsettling note. The Assyrian threat has been resolved, but Babylon looms. The immediate crisis is over, but the deeper crisis — the one that will require not military deliverance but spiritual renewal — is just beginning. When chapter 40 opens with "Comfort, comfort my people," the reader now knows why comfort is needed.

Last updated: March 3, 2026.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.