40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 35:5-36:12 (Episode 476)

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

One is coming who will open the eyes of the blind and walk on a highway of holiness. The king of Assyria sends messengers to Hezekiah with a dreadful message. And only God can redeem you. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Sinner Saint by Luke Kjolhaug The Impossible Prize: A Theology of Addiction by Donavan Riley Ditching the Checklist by Mark Mattes Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing articles events academies all the stuff uh you want to check all that out and of course while you're over there hit that donate link so you can support all that stuff keep it all free that would be great if you already do that thank you very much you do in fact make it all possible we are in isaiah chapter 35 uh we have been hearing about some ransom people uh there is a

there is a promise being made that god is going to strengthen some weak hands he's going to make some feeble knees firm he's going to get all that stuff up he's going to take your anxious heart and say hey don't worry about it i got it uh literally behold your god which is the same as saying watch this and uh what are you going to watch you're going to watch him come save you that's that's what we ended with and this is this is what yeah i don't know uh by the time this releases of course This would be not true, but the lectionary text, if you're a church that follows the lectionary, this week you had one of the statements by Jesus that I think people sometimes struggle with. And he just says, hey, don't be anxious about anything, which of course is like the least helpful thing. I don't know if you've ever had someone worrying about something, and then you tell them, hey, you tried not worrying about it?

And that's not, like, helpful at all. And so, you know, when Jesus says, hey, here, I've got a recommendation for you. Don't worry about anything at any time, any day. You're like, gee, thanks a lot. The reason, though, that it is comforting is because of who is saying it. And so what Jesus is saying is what is happening here, which is, hey, you have an anxious heart? Watch this. It makes all the difference as to who says it.

You know, if you're a little child and you're scared and your dad that you look up to says, it's fine, don't worry. i've got this yeah well that that can calm your your worries and that's exactly what god is doing here for for us so 35 is a uh is the perfect follow-up to 34 34 was about basically uncreation 35 is about recreation and so we have in these first four verses this overturning of the uncreation to a new creation, where a wilderness and a dry land is going to turn into a flower garden, more or less. And people with weak hands and feeble knees, well, they're not going to be weak and feeble anymore. And the reason is, of course, because God has shown up. In fact, hasn't just shown up, but he is coming and will save you. And that's the way that verse four ends.

So that is a perfect segue into verse 5 So God's shown up, alright And he's going to save you, okay Well, you can't hear those words God shows up, going to save you Well, of course, instantly the New Testament clicks into place Like, well, this is clearly in reference to Jesus And the fact that it's clearly in reference to Jesus

Is underscored by the very next words So I'll read 5 and Let's see, 5, 6, and 7 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened And the ears of the deaf unstopped Then shall the lame man leap like a deer And the tongue of the mute sing for joy For waters break forth in the wilderness

And streams in the desert The burning land shall become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water And the haunt of jackals where they lie down the grass shall become reeds and rushes of course the end of that is echoing what was said at the beginning of the chapter where you have this transformation of creation from deserts and dry land and the haunts of jackals into basically a paradise so if you want to you can think of these kinds of images where a dead dead creation we might say like a desert becomes a living

creation, or sand becomes a rose garden. All of that is basically saying that God is going to take Genesis 1 and 2, especially Genesis 2, where you have Eden, a paradise, where creation is just the way that God wants it to be, and he's going to bring that back, but in an even better sort of way so that's the the creation images but it starts out by pointing to the way that not just kind of creation as we usually think about it but our created bodies have gone wrong because one of the effects of the fall was not just that now we have guilt and shame and that the wages of sin is death so it's not just those kinds of which might think of as maladies that we suffer even though Death, of course, is a physical thing.

But it's also all the things that go wrong with our bodies. I mean, why do people get cancer today? Why do people have heart attacks? Why do all the things happen to our bodies that go wrong, including all of these things that people are sometimes born with, half of them later on, like they're blind or they're deaf or they get hurt and now they're lame or they can't talk. I mean, all of these are the effects of the fall.

And what Jesus is going to do when this God who comes to save us, One of the things he's going to do, of course, is to begin this process in his ministry of overcoming these, of healing these, that not only points to the fact that he is God, the Creator, who's come to save us, but also that he is the restorer of creation. He's the one who comes to make right what's gone wrong. Well, that's a look backwards to Genesis. At the same time, every healing that Jesus does is also a foretaste of the resurrection, which is the final healing, when our bodies will be not just kind of repaired,

but glorified to be just the way God wants them to be, even better than the body that Adam and Eve had prior to the fall. Yeah, whenever I think about God telling Adam, hey, the fruit of that tree, you shall surely die, and you hear Paul say the wages of sin is death, the way I usually think about that is that it's not as though the wages of sin is

execution or that God said the day you eat the fruit of that tree you will be executed but more that the wages of sin is dying and everything that that entails

so it's not just that if you're a sinner at some point everything will be you know you'll be just all good and then the bill will come due and then you know you'll be executed no it's the death is everywhere like it it's uh it's it's permeated everything and so like the effects of death and is is what you're surrounded by so uh the wages of sin is just the dying of of things and uh and then this is yeah this is what jesus when jesus comes what you see is that um there's this you get this glimpse of what he's really about because there's

just like this these this wake of like healing and restoration he's like all this reversal all the time with him and uh and yeah you you know you you you get to see that like jesus doesn't ever like have someone like say hey i'm blind i would like to see it and be like no doesn't happen sorry too busy doesn't happen you know there's no one like no one dies that you know they that's then they you know around jesus and then uh they're like hey could you do something about that he's like no i can't um because that's it's it's who he is like he is there to do that work and uh and that's that's what you see in the in when he shows up you get like this really vivid picture of like what things are going to be like yeah so it was uh you know

his miracles this is kind of the sunday school version of his miracles why did jesus work miracles to show us how powerful he was well okay yeah agreed i mean certainly he certainly shows his power in doing this but it's much deeper and much broader than that it's everything we've been we've been talking about and at the same time and this isn't like this is more like a deeper level of what we've been describing at the same time it is also him demonstrating by his actions that he is in fact the messiah so and this is this is the this section of isaiah is one that i turn to on a pretty regular basis when i like to talk about how jesus fulfilled the prop the promises and the prophecies about the Messiah. And to do that, I'll take people to Matthew 11.

Now, this is when this, it's a well-known scene. John the Baptist has been arrested. He's in prison and he sends two of his disciples. Keep in mind, he's in prison. You know, things have not gone well for John. Now he's incarcerated and he's going to lose his head very soon. He sends two of his disciples and they are to ask Jesus, are you the coming one, the expected one, or should we, you know, should we look for somebody else? And I've always appreciated Jesus' response here because, you know, you would expect him to say something like, yes, I'm the coming one. Go back and tell John, don't worry. I am the coming one. You don't need to be looking for someone else. Jesus doesn't give him that response at all. Here's what he says. This is Matthew 11.

Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. That's a typical Jesus answer. It's not a yes or no, but it's the answer that they actually need. What is he saying?

Well, go back and tell John everything that you're seeing happening around you. You know, all of these healings and the fact that the poor have the gospel preaching them. In other words, this is the way I take Jesus' words. Go back and tell John to remember what Isaiah described the ministry of the God who comes to save us would look like. And that's exactly what we have happening in Isaiah 35. So go back and tell John, basically, remember Isaiah, look at what I'm doing, there's your answer. Of course I'm the coming one. Look at what I'm doing. I'm doing exactly what Isaiah, all these centuries beforehand, said the Messiah would do, the God who comes to save us. So, you know, this is one of the ways that you know Jesus is who he claims to be. He, in fact, fulfills exactly what the prophets had described.

So these healings, yeah, they're proof of his power. They're proof of the fact that he's the Messiah. This is a re-eatening of the world, and it's also a foretaste of the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. All that's happening in the healing ministry of Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, well, I always think about when John asked that, too,

if he was also kind of wondering, like, are you going to get me out of here? Yes. oh i'm sure he was wondering that yeah yeah are you gonna is part of your ministry also going to be uh somehow you know opening the doors and letting me free yeah i mean i know and i think john's like hey i'd love to follow you uh but uh that was not part of jesus response no yeah well he uh yeah he witnessed in his own way of course by his preaching but then also by his martyrdom, which means he's a witness, a witness of the God who comes to save us

and who will resurrect the body of John when that day comes. All right, so we've got three more verses in this chapter, and we're going to switch here to an Exodus image. So that's one of the things I really enjoy about Isaiah 35 is it puts together two themes that the scriptures are constantly weaving together and that's creation or recreation and then redemption or and that redemption is often pictured in in terms of a of a exodus or a coming home a homecoming so here we have a lot of creation imagery in those opening seven verses whether it's kind of nature or whether it's the the physical body and now we're going to switch

to these exiles coming home so creation exodus or we might say even genesis themes and exodus themes so i'm going to read eight through the very end eight through ten a highway shall be there and it shall be called the way of holiness the unclean shall not pass over it it shall belong to those who walk on the way even if they are fools they shall not go astray no lion shall be there nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it they shall not be found there but the redeemed shall walk there and the ransomed of the lord shall return and come to zion with singing everlasting joy shall be upon their heads and they shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away and this sounds like it could have been you know i could finish that and say and that's the

way that revelation 21 reads because it's very much kind of this revelation especially that that closing part very much revelation language so we have here a highway highways uh that's a good that's a good translation of the hebrew highways were a thing in the ancient world of course a literally a highway is a way which is a little bit higher it's a raised platform of sorts and of course that's the same way that our highways are constructed today and that's similar to the way that roads were constructed in the ancient world. So it wasn't just the Romans who built roads. You had roads, you had highways long before that, some of which ran along the Sea of Galilee from Egypt all the way up towards Syria. And you had the King's Highway, which ran from Egypt

kind of around the southern edge of the Dead Sea and then up in the Transjordan area. So roads, highways were nothing new in the ancient world. So this imagery would have been familiar to Isaiah's hearers. This way, though, is not your regular, you know, I-40 or whatever it might be, but it's the way of holiness, and no unclean shall pass over it. So this is the way for those who are sanctified by the sanctifying work of God. The people that he has made holy are on this holy way, and they're journeying. And the way is so clear that even if you're kind of a silly person, you can't get lost it's just one of the you don't need a gps even if they're fools they should not go astray so you know there are people who get lost pretty pretty easily you're not going

to get lost in this highway i mean it's like right there it's obvious no gps needed no you know great bastion of wisdom uh and know-how needed even if you're a silly person you can't you can't get lost it's it's right there it's obvious and you're going to be safe no lions no ravenous beast are going to be around there so god has removed these threats from all the the people who are traveling in it they're called the redeemed they're called the ransomed meaning that they haven't redeemed themselves or ransomed themselves of course but they have been redeemed and ransomed by god he has done the saving redeeming ransoming work and they're on a they're on a journey they're coming home they're coming to zion and they're coming to zion not mute and morose but joyful

singing with joy on their heads because sorrow and sighing has has fled away so this is this is drawing i mean there are some kind of genesis images with no lions or ravenous beast but mainly this is exodus language uh the the people of god have been dispersed they've been spread everywhere but now they're coming home god is bringing them home because he's redeemed them he's ransomed them And their destination is assured, and their destination is Zion, which Revelation will call the New Jerusalem. So this is basically depicting the work of the Messiah in ransoming, in redeeming, and bringing people to the road, the way of holiness. And they, we, are on this journey, walking toward the New Jerusalem, where finally sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Yeah, I mean, you kind of know that these people have been made holy because obviously some of them are not like the, you know, exceptional.

So, you know, this is not like the way of exceptional people on this highway. Some of them are pretty foolish, but it's going to be okay because this holiness isn't theirs anyway. And yet this phrase, I think, is important. You know, you have like the redeemed shall walk there, the ransomed. But he doesn't leave you any room to miss what's going on here. I mean, the phrase, the ransomed of the Lord, I mean, that means that, I mean, the ransomed of the Lord are those ransomed by the Lord. That's how that works, right? Yeah, that's how that works.

They haven't, you know, somehow come up with the ransom money, and they've paid the price to free themselves. Yeah, they're only ransomed because God stepped up and he did what needed to be done. Just like he did with the people of Israel in Egypt. I mean, they were there for a long time. They didn't leave. They couldn't leave. They were slaves. They were trapped.

They were bound. They were unable to, even if they could, they were unable to pay any kind of ransom by which to get rid of their chains and be set free. So the only way that they got out of Egypt was by God doing all the work of getting them out of Egypt. He did the redeeming. He did the ransoming. He sent Moses, who didn't even want to go, of course. So God alone did the work of making this happen, which, of course, you know, when you translate this into what's happening with us, it's nothing different. It wasn't like, you know, Jesus did that 99%, Dan, but we got to always, we got to contribute our 1%.

We've got to do our part to make sure that we're fully ransomed and fully redeemed. That's nothing we could do. God did it all. Yeah, and I think in the context of Isaiah, too, I mean, think about what we've been talking about for a while now is the sort of propensity to want to be delivered by some other peoples, right? So, I mean, we've heard over and over again, hey, I'd really rather you not go down to Egypt. I'm really serious about this. I don't go to Egypt and have that they're not going to save you. Yeah, so this isn't those ransomed by Egypt or redeemed by Egypt.

Like, that's not it either. So it's not—you can't do it. Not only can you not do it, neither can anyone else. There is—only God can do it. There is no other person or peoples or army or nation. No one's going to ransom you or deliver you. Like, this has to be—this has to be God. Yeah, which is such assurance.

I mean, it says comfort, because that means that, well, if he's done it, it's got to be perfect. God doesn't do things halfway. He doesn't, you know, almost, almost save me. No, it's all done. It's complete. That means that I can rest in it without wondering if I have done enough or if I've been sincere enough in my contribution or all those other things that just bedevil people who think that they have to somehow make a little bit of contribution to their salvation. Well, if God's done it, it's complete.

Or you also, I mean, if somebody else does it, now you're indebted. I mean, now this is the sort of thing. So the nice thing about God's salvation is he doesn't ask you to pay him back, or he doesn't tell you that, like, well, you have this tremendous debt now. so i mean which work of course this is the way it works if a nation does that like they're not going to do it for nothing yeah yeah i don't in in politics if if i scratch your back well i expect something else and that's going to be you scratching mine yeah jesus doesn't come along and say all right i've redeemed you i've ransomed you man you owe me big time and pay up otherwise

i'll put you right back where i had you before no it doesn't work that way it wouldn't be grace if it were if it were otherwise it'd be something totally different okay i i guess we're we're ready for a little uh historical parentheses right i mean we've been we've been in poetry for quite a while we've been covering over these last few chapters a lot of woes you know i heard a lot about assyria heard a lot about some about babylon but a whole lot about assyria and egypt and israel uh so this has been sort of actually a way of preparing us for what we're about to hear next because in chapter 36 of isaiah we're going to switch into a historical narrative that's going to take us through isaiah 36 37 38 39 so it's quite a uh quite a lengthy portion there's some

poetry that's woven in there and some of this is going to be familiar to you especially if you've been listening to 40 minutes for a while because what happens in Isaiah 36 and following is paralleled, sometimes verbatim, not always. And there are some details Isaiah has that you don't have elsewhere, but a lot of this is going to match up with 2 Kings 18 and 19. So there are some verbatim parallels or some things which are close, not quite. And there's some new material that Isaiah adds as well. We'll leave the debate aside as to who barred from whom or whether they're in fact actually using a common source. We really don't know, so that's just a scholarly debate that can be dealt with at another time. But either way, we're going to cover some material

that we've covered before. So we'll start out here with 36 and kind of get our historical bearings by reading these first three verses so this is the 14th year of king hezekiah in that 14th year sennacherib king of assyria came up against all the fortified cities of judah and took them and the king of assyria sent the rabshakeh rabshakeh however you want to pronounce that it's a title it's not a personal name that's not the name his mama gave him it means uh it It means chief cup bearer. This was some sort of military commander. So maybe that was the traditional title, but he had other roles at this point because he doesn't have a cup in his hand.

But the Rabshakeh, he came from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washer's field. And there came out to meet him some officials. These are officials sent by King Hezekiah and their names are Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah. who was over the household, and Shevna, the secretary, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder. So that's a whole lot of details that are set there. So first of all, just to kind of get your historical bearings, this is 701 BC. So 700 years approximately before the birth of Jesus. so that's the 14th year of king hezekiah so he's the king who's in jerusalem uh hezekiah is a

is a good king uh that's important thing to bear in mind i mean we got we got a whole lot we got a whole lot of bad kings and we got some that are truly horrific kings i mean just terrible terrible wicked kings who did some just atrocious things and then we had a handful of guys who were you know they weren't perfect but they were pretty good kings and one of those pretty good kings is hezekiah his dad is ahaz now we heard about ahaz earlier in isaiah he was the he was the king back in isaiah 7 when you had a very similar situation happening in fact the i was just noticing today that when these assyrian officials came they stood we're told by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washer's field that's the exact same place

that we heard about back in Isaiah 7 when Ahaz was confronted and basically told, if you believe in God, everything's going to be okay. If you trust in him, everything's going to be okay. If you don't,

everything's going to come undone. And the father of Hezekiah, Ahaz, would not believe. In fact, he put his trust in the Assyrians. So anyway, this is King Hezekiah, son of a bad king, but King Hezekiah, he's a good guy, like Josiah, another later king.

And then you have Sennacherib, king uh king of assyria so he he's a few years into his reign uh his dad basarga on the second who was killed on the battlefield his body never recovered sennacherib took over and he's basically been doing a mop mopping up operation dealing with some rebellious babylonians and now he's going to deal with king hezekiah he's come up and we're told that he's already taken out a bunch of fortified cities and we know this not only from the biblical record but we also know from a very very famous wall relief you can see it today in the uh the british museum in london of the siege of lakersh where you have all the details there i mean you got people who are uh impaled you got

guys were being killed uh the lichish was under siege it was taken by the assyrians and the devastation they brought there was just terrible i mean they found a mass grave but i think like 1500 skulls in it just a lot of a lot of terrible uh violence that took place there well it was that was one of the 46 cities that the assyrians took and now they're coming up to hezekiah at Jerusalem, and his officials are going out to meet them. And then one more detail before I stop. Now keep in mind that at this point, Hezekiah has already paid off Sennacherib. So we know this from 2 Kings. He's already paid him off. So it's like he's a traitor. He's gone back on his word. King Hezekiah pays him off, and then he still attacks. He's going to still surround Jerusalem and demand

that the city surrender to them. So not only is he a Syrian who's out to take out all these other fortifications, all these other cities, but he's been paid off, and he ignores that as if he didn't even receive payment in Hezekiah, and now he's going to demand the city surrender. Whenever I think about Hezekiah and Josiah, I always think about them as these two kings that were really good, they were just too late.

Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Right? you're like oh man for you guys have only been around like a little earlier uh but it's and that's kind of the impression you get in kings and stuff too it's like yeah these guys are really good but it's just it's just too late yeah yeah it's like uh if you think of israel as kind of a body you know they've had this cancer for a long time and they've been weakening and weakening and weakening and then along come you know a couple of possible cures named josiah and hezekiah but it's too late the body's too far gone i mean they maybe they can give a few months or a few more

years of life but the cancer is going to take the body and that that that death will be the babylonian destruction of jerusalem the babylonian exile but yeah that's that's right i mean if they to come if hezekiah had been the son of david and maybe josiah the grandson of hezekiah or something like that yeah then maybe maybe we'd have a lot shorter old testament we wouldn't have all these prophetic oracles against israel uh but yeah it was it was really too late at this point to to save the nation i mean this is also uh you know is there any surprise that they tried to pay him off and then he was like hey thanks uh i think i'm gonna go take all the rest of it too yeah yeah it was uh as as as terrible traitors in action as it was at the same time it was uh

politically smart because now his guys paid him off he's given him all this money now he can't use that same money that he might have used to buy an ally yeah hire some mercenaries yeah hire some mercenaries or maybe get whoever on his side well he doesn't have the money anymore he's already paid it to the assyrians all right so uh we got we got this little uh political meeting that's going to take place out in the open between these three representatives of the city of jerusalem three representatives of the king and then the the ravshaka along with these other guys that are with him so he's got a little speech he's going to deliver this speech is intended for Hezekiah, but as we'll hear, it's also intended for everyone who is sitting on the walls of

Jerusalem, looking at this and evidently able at least to hear some of the conversation that's going on. So the Assyrian representative, the Rav Shekha, said to them, say to Hezekiah, thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, the Assyrian kings, very humbly like to refer themselves as the great king or the king of kings, right? A lot of humility in those Assyrian monarchs. And here's what they say. Here's what he says, rather. On what do you, I guess we could literally translate this, trust this trust of yours. So rest this trust of yours is actually the verb for trust. So you've got a verb and a noun that's used. Your Hebrew loves to do that. so what do you trust this trust you rest this trust of yours do you think that mere words are

strategy and power for war and whom do you now trust that you have rebelled against me behold you are trusting in egypt that broken reed of a staff which will pierce the hand if any man of any man who leans on it such as pharaoh king of egypt to all who trust in him but if you say to me we trust in the lord our god is it not he whose high places and altars hezekiah has removed saying to judah and jerusalem you shall worship before this altar meaning the the altar at the temple come now make a wager with my master the king of assyria i will give you two thousand horses if you are able on your part to set riders on them how can you then repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants when you trust in Egypt for chariots

and for horsemen. Moreover, you can see he's just building this argument. Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, oh wow, the Lord said to me, says this Assyrian messenger, go up against this land and destroy it. well there's no uh no humility in the messenger of this great king either right this is quite the what quite the political political speech so i mean there's parts of it that are uh that are accurate right he when he starts out talking about hey uh you made the wrong political decision when you put your trust in the egyptians because you know what they're like they're like leaning on a sharp broken piece of wood guess what that's going to do it's going to pierce right

into your hand that's what it's going to do you you lean on that you trust in that well you're going to you're going to suffer the consequences of that that's his first argument trusting in egypt bad move hezekiah god agrees with with this uh you're right this argument so far so far so are good yeah but then uh then he then he messes up and he just keeps getting worse and worse you know he he says are you going to say that you trust in yahweh your god well look at what hezekiah has done this is this is the bad assyrian theology because he says oh look at hezekiah he got rid of all those country altars all those high places made everybody worship at this one altar well yeah hezekiah did that you know why he did that because that's what god wanted

to be done that's precisely what god had commanded but then when he really gets to uh way way way too far and uh commits nothing short of blasphemy i suppose we'd call it is when he claims that the lord spoke to the king of assyria sennacherib and said go up and destroy this land so uh that's a speech to the representatives of Hezekiah as well as to people who were listening. Maybe this king got word that

God had told Isaiah, behold, I am sending the Assyrians. He's like, all right. Well. Yeah. Here we go. I'm here as the representative of Yahweh to destroy you. Your own prophet said the Lord was sending

me. So here i am yeah you could definitely see that happening i mean spies of course are nothing new in our in our modern world so i can definitely see spies from assyria you know twisting isaiah's words around saying hey you know what god really wants you to do he really wants you to take out jerusalem yeah because you gotta think i mean these people all believe in gods and stuff and um yeah if that if isaiah's proclaiming this sort of thing um yeah it wouldn't be that hard to believe that someone might go back and be like, hey, they got a prophet

that says their own God is sending you to punish them. What about that? Yeah, hey, I've got divine permission to do all these things. Yeah. I'm looking at the biblical text, too, and I highlighted

all the words here that have to do with trust. So you got one, two, three, four, five, six. Just in those verses I read, this initial speech seven times you get the word for trust that that occurs which of course is a big word not just biblically speaking but it's a big word in isaiah and that's really what this it's really it's what this whole section boils down to it's more or less where you're going to put your trust on whom are you going to lean are you going to lean on egypt which of course hezekiah and the

people of jerusalem had made the mistake of doing by this time the assyrians have already actually at least once defeated the Egyptians. So bad choice. Are you going to lean upon, I don't know, some other allies that maybe you can find? Are you going to lean upon some political decisions or whatever it might be? Or are you going to trust in the Lord? Now, according to this Assyrian envoy, he's saying, well, that's a big mistake. Don't trust in, you can't trust in the Lord. But that's what this all boils down to. That's really at the core of everything happening here. This is not about politics. It's not about military threats.

It's all about where your trust is going to be. Just for Hezekiah, just like it was for his dad. I mean, it was the same with Ahaz. Are you going to trust in the Lord, or are you going to trust in the Assyrians? And now for Hezekiah, it's going to be, are you going to trust in Egypt? Are you going to trust in the Lord? Who are you going to put your trust in? You know, it's a pretty big burn in this speech, too, is when this is just intimidation.

But when he says, all right, how about this? I'll give you 2,000 horses because I don't believe you have 2,000 riders. Yeah, it doesn't burn. You're like, man, that is – that is you calling a bluff here. Like, hey, those are some nice walls. Tell you what, I'll make the fight more fair. I'll donate 2,000 horses to your cause. Uh-oh.

But you don't have anyone to ride them. that's that's rough that is rough yeah that's some that's some powerful rhetoric because when he says things like that the people inside the city are like oh my gosh he knows doesn't he this is this is not good uh yeah so uh that's that's the first part i think we got time to finish one little one little section uh that's next 11 and 12 so eliakim shevna and joah these three Judean Jerusalem representatives they say to the Rabshakeh basically hey quit speaking in the language that everyone understands so please speak to us your servants in Aramaic because we understand it so we we know Aramaic by this time was getting like the the political language it

was spoken would have spoken by the Assyrians would have been spoken by these at least these the Rabshakeh would have known Aramaic as do these officials it was kind of the the language of the educated we might say for sure so don't speak to us in the language of judah so get it these assyrians are speaking hebrew this guy knows hebrew and he is speaking hebrew on purpose because he wants the people on the wall to hear yeah he wants the people on the wall to hear those him slinging that kind of uh you know those kind of insults at them and strike a bunch of fear in their hearts yeah so he goes on to say uh has my master talking about sennacherib has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you and not to the men sitting on the wall i can

i picture him kind of looking up when he says those words you know he's turning his head he's looking this way and that to the men on the wall and here's how he describes their fate he says who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine. So the rhetoric just keeps getting harsher and harsher. This, of course, is nothing more than an opportunity for the Assyrians to try and use, it's more or less rhetorical psychological warfare. We're going to try and make these guys scared to death of what we're going to reduce them to by the time that all is said and done.

And he's not finished yet. He's got more to say. You're basically saying at this point, listen, man, I wasn't sent here just to talk to you. I was sent here to tell all those people that if you make poor decisions, they're all in big trouble. There's no negotiation happening here. I'm just here to inform. Yeah, right. Yeah.

We're not making a deal here. This is just what's going to happen. You can surrender, you know, just surrender everything, or you can, you know, eat your own dung and drink your own urine. That's the option. That's the end of it. Yeah, not much of an option there, right? No. No, it's not.

Yeah. Well, that's kind of a bathroom-ish way to end. It is. But we're out of time, so I guess we'll pick up from there. All right. We'll see you next episode. See you then. Bye.

Bye. Bye. We'll see you next week.