Day 447 of 939
2KI 18:23-37
2KI 18:23-37 · PSA 16
Not written yet
The reading for this day is below. The commentary has not been written and reviewed yet — it is added a book at a time, and every day is read by a person before it appears here.
2KI 18:23-37
23Now, therefore, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them! 24For how can you repel a single officer among the least of my master’s servants when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 25So now, was it apart from the LORD that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The LORD Himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’” 26Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, along with Shebnah and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak with us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.” 27But the Rabshakeh replied, “Has my master sent me to speak these words only to you and your master, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?” 28Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! 29This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you; he cannot deliver you from my hand. 30Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ 31Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, 32until I come and take you away to a land like your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey—so that you may live and not die. But do not listen to Hezekiah, for he misleads you when he says, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’ 33Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? 34Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? 35Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his land from my hand? How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand?” 36But the people remained silent and did not answer a word, for Hezekiah had commanded, “Do not answer him.” 37Then Hilkiah’s son Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and Asaph’s son Joah the recorder came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and they relayed to him the words of the Rabshakeh.
Secondary reading — PSA 16
1Preserve me, O God, for in You I take refuge. 2I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.” 3As for the saints in the land, they are the excellence in whom all my delight resides. 4Sorrows will multiply to those who chase other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood, or speak their names with my lips. 5The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; You have made my lot secure. 6The lines of my boundary have fallen in pleasant places; surely my inheritance is delightful. 7I will bless the LORD who counsels me; even at night my conscience instructs me. 8I have set the LORD always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. 9Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will dwell securely. 10For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay. 11You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.