Isaiahchapter 36
22 verses · Isaiah · 8th century BC · The Prophets
In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked and captured all the fortified cities of Judah.
Introduction
Isaiah, The Prophets, Isaiah Overview.
This chapter turns from oracle to history, and it is told in prose. The same account stands in 2 Kings 18, and Assyria's own records describe the campaign from the other side. It opens four chapters about King Hezekiah that close the first half of the book. Its first hearers knew that nearly every walled town in Judah had fallen and that the capital was next. Listen for the question the Assyrian envoy keeps asking, which the whole book has been asking, and for how the men on the wall answer.
Context
- Who
- Judeans whose forty-six walled towns had already fallen
- What
- Sennacherib's invasion of Judah and the speech of his envoy, the Rabshakeh, to the men on Jerusalem's wall.
- Where
- The wall of Jerusalem, at the aqueduct of the upper pool on the road to the Launderer's Field.
- When
- 701 BC, the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah's reign.
- Why
- To set the claims of Assyria beside the trust the book has been calling for, and to show the threat that Hezekiah's faith had to meet.
Historical context
This is the best-documented event in the Old Testament, because the other side wrote it down too. Sennacherib's account survives on baked clay prisms, the finest copy is in the British Museum, and it says he took forty-six of Hezekiah's fortified cities, carried off the people, and shut Hezekiah up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. The siege of Lachish, Judah's second city, was carved in enormous detail on the walls of his palace at Nineveh, showing the ramp, the rams, the archers, and the captives.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
The Rabshakeh is not a name. It is an Assyrian office, roughly the chief cupbearer, a very senior officer who served as the king's mouthpiece. He arrives with a large force and stops at the aqueduct of the upper pool on the road to the launderers' field. That is the exact spot where Isaiah confronted Ahaz nearly thirty-five years earlier, in chapter 7. Judah's crisis had come full circle to the same patch of ground.
The speech is professional psychological warfare, and it is well made. He points out that Egypt is a splintered reed that goes through the hand of anyone who leans on it. He offers a mocking bet: I will give you two thousand horses if you can put riders on them. He claims Hezekiah's religious reforms, pulling down the local shrines, offended Judah's own God. And he claims the LORD himself sent him, which was standard Assyrian language; their kings always said their god handed the land over.
The most deliberate move is the language. Judah's officials ask him to speak Aramaic, the diplomatic language educated men used, so the men on the wall would not understand. He refuses and keeps shouting in Hebrew, because the whole point is to reach the soldiers over their officers' heads. He tells them what a long siege means in plain words, that they will be reduced to eating their own dung and drinking their own urine, and then offers every man his own vine, his own fig tree, and his own well, if they will just surrender and be deported to a land like their own.
The delegation that comes out is named: Eliakim over the household, Shebna the scribe, and Joah the recorder. Those are the same two men from chapter 22, now in their new posts. They come back with their clothes torn, the standard sign of grief and of hearing blasphemy.
Significance
The people on the wall were given a direct order by Hezekiah and they kept it: they held their peace and answered him not a word. Sometimes the faithful response is silence.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
And the question the Assyrian asked is the question the whole book has been circling: on what do you trust? He asks it three times. Isaiah has been asking it since chapter 7.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
No part of this chapter is read aloud in the synagogue. The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot 0 and haftarah uses 0 for Isaiah 36, and no festival reading for the book. The table records Isaiah only as a source of Haftarot, and none of the Haftarot it records reaches this chapter.
The chapter is met instead in the study of the weekly portions, and the corpus names the doors. Under the twentieth verse it carries Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Tazria 10:3 and Midrash Tanchuma, Tazria 8:1. Each of those locators is named for the Torah portion whose study it belongs to.
How it is read
Rashi is quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY, and Ibn Ezra from the Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah translated by M. Friedlander in 1873, which Sefaria reports as public domain. Ibn Ezra opens the four chapters of Hezekiah and Sennacherib by comparing them, as his translator's note explains, with 2 Kings 18:13 to 20:19. The two accounts, he says, are the same in meaning though one carries words the other lacks, and he likens the words to instruments and the meanings to the workmen who use them. He then sets out to explain six passages (Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 36:1:1).
Rashi glosses the Rabshakeh's speech phrase by phrase. The broken reed of Egypt pierces the palm of the man who leans on it, "so is Pharaoh to those who trust him" (Rashi on Isaiah 36:6:1). The charge that Hezekiah removed the high places Rashi states as the reform itself: Hezekiah abolished the pagan temples and brought all Judah to worship before one altar (Rashi on Isaiah 36:7:1). The envoy refuses to speak in the language the officials asked for (Rashi on Isaiah 36:11:1). His master sent him to all the people, so that they would hear and see and Hezekiah could not persuade them to rebel (Rashi on Isaiah 36:12:1).
At the seventeenth verse Rashi reports Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai from the Sifre on Ekev. The king promised a land like their own land, since he could not bring himself to disparage the land of Israel (Rashi on Isaiah 36:17:1). The officials came to Hezekiah with torn garments "Because they heard blasphemies of the Name of God, and that is tantamount to cursing the Name" (Rashi on Isaiah 36:22:1).
The corpus carries seven further notes on this chapter without an English text, each marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. They stand cited and unquoted at Radak on Isaiah 36:1:1 and 36:18:1, at Metzudat David on Isaiah 36:4:1 and 36:20:1, and at Malbim on Isaiah 36:13:1, 36:15:1 and 36:21:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries twenty-six rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited by ref here and none is quoted or paraphrased. On the first verse it holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 19:1, Otzar Midrashim, Midrash on the Ten Kings 1:9, Tractate Soferim 8:2, Vayikra Rabbah 10:5 and Vayikra Rabbah 5:3. The same verse also carries Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 512:1. On the third verse it holds Seder Olam Rabbah 23:1. On the ninth verse it holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 243:1. On the tenth verse it holds Ein Yaakov, Sanhedrin 11:26 and Sanhedrin 94b:4. On the seventeenth verse it holds Jerusalem Talmud Sheviit 6:1:13, Midrash Lekach Tov on Lamentations 2:15:1, Midrash Lekach Tov, Deuteronomy 11:10:1 and Vayikra Rabbah 17:6.
On the twentieth verse it holds Kohelet Rabbah 5:2:1, Megillah 11b:3, Midrash Aggadah, Deuteronomy 7:7:3, Midrash Lekach Tov, Exodus 5:2:2, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 15:21:28 and Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 5:2:1. The same verse also carries Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Tazria 10:3, Midrash Tanchuma, Tazria 8:1, Vayikra Rabbah 18:2, Vayikra Rabbah 7:6 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 250:3.
The corpus files one further locator under a verse number this chapter does not reach. The site's table in src/data/bible/chapter-verse-counts.json counts the chapter at 22 verses in the Berean Standard Bible. The corpus files Midrash Tanchuma, Eikev 11:1 at the number 26. It is cited as the corpus files it, and the anchor is left for a check against the source. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and it is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Isaiah 36:2:1 to 36:22:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 36:1:1 to 36:1:1, Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah, translated by M. Friedlander, 1873, reported public domain; Radak, Radak on Isaiah 36:1:1 and 36:18:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on Isaiah 36:4:1 and 36:20:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Malbim, Malbim on Isaiah 36:13:1, 36:15:1 and 36:21:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/isaiah/36.json, the 26 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, printing no portion, no Haftarah and no festival reading for this chapter, and src/data/bible/chapter-verse-counts.json for the verse count.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Rabshakeh at the Conduit: On Whom Dost Thou Trust?
Isaiah 36:1-3
In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign: Chapters 36 to 39 share their text nearly word for word with 2 Kings 18 to 20. Sennacherib king of Assyria captured all the fortified cities of Judah, then sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish. He stopped by the aqueduct of the upper pool, the same spot 2 Kings 18:17 names.
Connections2 Kings 18:13
sent the Rabshakeh, with a great army: Second Kings 18:17 names three Assyrian officers, and Isaiah keeps only the Rabshakeh, the one who does the speaking, as Barnes notes. He halts at the aqueduct of the upper pool. Isaiah had stood at that same spot to urge Ahaz to trust the LORD at Isaiah 7:3.
Isaiah 36:2
“The history related here, and in the three following chapters, is, almost in the same words contained 2 Kings 18, 19, 20. It is inserted here, to explain and confirm some of the foregoing predictions.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah: Eliakim holds the office Isaiah 22:20 had promised him when Shebna was put out of it, and Jerome takes him for the same man. The scribe here is also named Shebna. The recorder's title means one who reminds, the officer who kept the king informed and wrote the court's history.
Isaiah 36:3
“Eliakim--successor to Shebna, who had been "over the household," that is, chief minister of the king; in Isa 22:15-20, this was foretold. scribe--secretary, recorder--literally, "one who reminds"; a remembrancer to keep the king informed on important facts, and to act as historiographer.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Isaiah 36:4-6
the great king, the king of Assyria: Rabshakeh asks: What is the basis of this confidence of yours? He strikes down Egypt first as that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Gill and Clarke record the image as a proverb already current for Egypt's unreliability.
Isaiah 36:4
“What confidence - What is the ground of your confidence? on what do you trust? The appellation ‘great king’ was the customary title of the kings of the Persians and Assyrians.”
these are empty words: The Hebrew behind empty words is a word of lips, talk with nothing behind it, as Barnes explains. The rebellion is Hezekiah's refusal to serve the king of Assyria, told at 2 Kings 18:7. The Rabshakeh asks what he is trusting.
Isaiah 36:5
“I say, sayest thou - In 2Ki 18:20, this is ‘thou sayest;’ and thus many manuscripts read it here, and Lowth and Noyes have adopted that reading. So the Syriac reads it. But the sense is not affected whichever reading is adopted. It is designed to show to Hezekiah that his reliance, either on his own resources or on Egypt, was vain. But they are but vain words - Margin, as Hebrew, ‘A word of lips;’ that is, mere words; vain and empty boasting.”
that splintered reed of a staff: Samaria had leaned on Egypt through King Hoshea's alliance with So, and Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom for it, as 2 Kings 17:4 records. Clarke reads the pierced hand as an ally that takes payment after payment and gives nothing back. Isaiah had given Judah the same warning at 30:1-7.
Isaiah 36:6
“The staff of this broken reed - A weakened, faithless ally. On Egypt - The Bodl. MS. adds מלך melech, the king of Egypt; and so perhaps the Chaldee might read. It will go into his hand, and pierce it - Will take subsidy after subsidy, and do nothing for it.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 36:6
“It was a similar alliance with So (that is, Sabacho, or else Sevechus), the Ethiopian king of Egypt, which provoked the Assyrian to invade and destroy Israel, the northern kingdom, under Hoshea.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Isaiah 36:7-10
Rabshakeh turns the king's own reform against him: is He not the One whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed? Then he claims the LORD sent him with the words, Go up against this land and destroy it, a claim the narrative exposes only later.
Isaiah 36:7
“Some of the high places may have been dedicated to Jehovah, but worshipped under the form of an image in violation of the second commandment: the "brazen serpent," also (broken in pieces by Hezekiah, and called Nehushtan, "a piece of brass," because it was worshipped by Israel) was originally set up by God's command.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 36:7
“But if thou say to me - If you shall make this plea, that you believe Yahweh will protect you in your revolt. The word ‘thou’ here refers to Hezekiah, or to the ambassadors speaking in his name. In 2Ki 18:22, it is, ‘but if ye say unto me;’ that is, you ambassadors. The sense is substantially the same. Is it not he ... - This is given as a reason why they should not put their confidence in Yahweh.”
make a bargain with my master: The verb behind make a bargain means to exchange or stand surety, and older versions rendered it give pledges or give hostages, as Barnes notes. The offer of two thousand horses mocks Judah's lack of trained riders. The gift is an insult dressed as a wager.
Isaiah 36:8
“Now, therefore, give pledges - Margin, ‘Hostages.’ The Hebrew verb (ערב ‛ârab) means properly to mix or mingle; then, to exchange commodities by barter or traffic; then, to become surety for anyone, to exchange with him, to stand in his place; then, to pledge, to pledge one’s life, or to give security of any kind.”
a single officer among the least: The word for officer is pechah, a governor of a province under a greater lord, the same title later used of Nehemiah. Barnes notes that the least such officer in Assyria's army commanded more horsemen than Judah could mount. Judah's hope in Egyptian chariots is his proof of her weakness.
Isaiah 36:9
“How then wilt thou turn away the face - The most unimportant captain in the army of Assyria commands more horsemen than this, and how can you expect to oppose even him, much more how can you be able to resist all the mighty army of the Assyrians? One captain of the least - The word ‘captain’ here (פחת pachat, construct state from פחה pechâh) denotes a prefect or governor of a province less than a satrap, an officer who was under the satrap, and subject to him.”
The LORD Himself said to me: The Rabshakeh's claim that the LORD sent him against this land holds a half-truth, for Isaiah 10:5 calls Assyria the rod of the LORD's anger. Clarke thinks an apostate priest may have fed the king of Assyria this idea. By verse 20 he ranks the LORD with helpless gods.
Isaiah 36:10
“Am I now come up without the Lord - Probably some apostate Israelitish priest might have encouraged the king of Assyria by telling him that Jehovah had given him a commission against Jerusalem.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Shouting in the Jews' Language, but the People Held Their Peace
Isaiah 36:11-12
Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh: Hezekiah's officers ask Rabshakeh to use Aramaic, and to stop speaking Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall. He refuses in the crudest terms, saying his words are for the men sitting on the wall. His aim is the population over the heads of its leaders.
Isaiah 36:11
"Aram" means a "high land," and includes parts of Assyria as well as Syria. Jews' language--The men of Judah since the disruption of Israel, claimed the Hebrew as their own peculiarly, as if they were now the only true representatives of the whole Hebrew twelve tribes. ears of . . . people on . . . wall--The interview is within hearing distance of the city.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 36:11
“Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language - Hebrew, ארמית 'ărâmı̂yt - ‘Aramean.’ Aram, or Aramea, properly meaning a high region, or the highlands, was of wider extent than Syria Proper, and comprehended not only Syria, but Mesopotamia. It usually denotes however, Syria Proper, of which the capital was Damascus. The language of all this country was probably the same - the Syrian or Aramean, a language of the same family as the Hebrew, and having a strong resemblance to that and to the Chaldee.”
to eat their own dung: The Rabshakeh foretells the last stage of a siege, when the starving eat and drink what the body casts off. Aquinas sets the words beside Lamentations 4:5, where those raised in crimson end among ash heaps. Hezekiah's Jerusalem was spared this.
Isaiah 36:12
“That they may eat their own dung “Destined to eat their own dung” - לאכל leechol, that they may eat, as our translation literally renders it. But the Syriac reads מאכל meechol, that they may not eat, perhaps rightly, and afterward ומשתות umishshethoth, or ושתות ushethoth, to the same purpose. Seventeen of Dr. Kennicott’s MSS., ten of De Rossi’s and two of my own, read מימי meymey, the water; mine have מימי שניהם meymey sheneyhem, and write in the margin מימי רגליהם meymey regaleyhem, the water of their feet, a modest way of expressing urine.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 36:12
“Third, Rabsaces's mockery of their response is set out: and Rabsaces said to them; urine of their feet, which flowed at their feet: they that were brought up in scarlet have embraced the dung (Lam 4:5).”
Thomas Aquinas · written before 1274 · Commentary on Isaiahpatristic
Isaiah 36:13-17
stood and called out loudly in Hebrew: Rabshakeh does the very thing he was asked to avoid and calls out in Hebrew so the whole wall can hear. His appeal is material, Make peace with me and come out to me. The offer ends in exile dressed as prosperity, a land of grain and new wine.
Do not let Hezekiah deceive you: The Rabshakeh now speaks past the officers to the people on the wall and calls their king a deceiver. Barnes notes that he aimed to loosen their hold on Hezekiah before he struck at their trust in God. Deliver is the word his whole speech turns on.
Isaiah 36:14
“Let not Hezekiah deceive you - By inducing you to put your trust in Yahweh or in himself; or with promises that you will be delivered. Not be able to deliver you - In 2Ki 18:29, it is added, ‘out of his hand;’ but the sense is substantially the same.”
persuade you to trust in the LORD: Hezekiah's assurance echoes Isaiah 31:5, where the LORD of Hosts promises to protect Jerusalem like birds hovering overhead. Barnes observes that the Rabshakeh knew such trust made the city hard to take. He sets out to break it first.
Isaiah 36:15
“Make you trust in the Lord - Rabshakeh knew that Hezekiah was professedly devoted to Yahweh, and that he would endeavor to induce the people to trust in him. The Jews had now no other refuge but God, and as long as they put their confidence there, even Rabshakeh knew that it was hazardous to attempt to take and destroy their city. It was his policy, therefore, first to endeavor to undermine their reliance on God, before he could have any hope of success.”
Make peace with me and come: Make peace translates the Hebrew for make a blessing, as Clarke notes. The offer that every one of you will eat from his own vine is Israel's picture of peace at 1 Kings 4:25. Assyria offers it on loan.
Isaiah 36:16
“Make an agreement - ברכה berachah, make a blessing with me; i.e., Give me a ransom for the city, and I will not destroy it; give me the yearly tribute thou hast promised.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The land of grain and new wine means deportation, a common practice of conquerors in that age. Jerome notes the offer names no country, only a likeness. Israel's exiles from Samaria had already been taken to the cities of the Medes at 2 Kings 17:6.
Isaiah 36:17
“Until I come - These are the words of the king of Assyria delivered by Rabshakeh. It was proposed that they should remain safely in Jerusalem until Sennacherib should himself come and remove them to his own land. He was now engaged in the siege of Lachish Isa 36:2, and it is probable that he purposed to take some other of the unsubdued towns in that part of Palestine. And take you away - It was common for conquerors in ancient times to remove a vanquished people from their own country.”
Isaiah 36:18-20
Do not let Hezekiah mislead you: Rabshakeh lists the gods of Hamath, Arpad, and Sepharvaim and asks, Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? He then places the LORD in the same list, How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand? The argument treats the God of Israel as one more defeated idol.
Isaiah 36:18
“Hath any of the gods of the nations ... - This is said to show them the impossibility, as he supposed, of being delivered from the arm of the king of Assyria. He had conquered all before him, and not even the gods of the nations had been able to rescue the lands where they were worshipped from the hands of the victorious invader. He inferred, therefore, that Yahweh, the God of Palestine, could not save their land.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 36:18
“They are nothing; he is the great I AM: they are the creatures of men's fancy and the works of men's hands; he is the Creator of all things. Presumptuous sinners are ready to think that, because they have been too hard for their fellow-creatures, they are therefore a match for their Creator.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Where are the gods of Hamath: The same boast stands in the Assyrian king's mouth at Isaiah 10:9-11, where Hamath, Arpad and Samaria are listed as conquered. Samaria had fallen about twenty years before. Its people claimed the LORD, and so the Rabshakeh counts him among the gods who failed.
Isaiah 36:19
“Where are the gods of Hamath ... - In regard to these places, see the notes at Isa 10:9-11. Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? - Sepharvaim was probably in Mesopotamia. Ptolemy mentions a city there of the name of Sipphara, as the most southern city of Mesopotamia, which is probably the same. It is evident that it was in the vicinity of Hamath and Arphad, and these are known to have been in Mesopotamia.”
How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem: The Rabshakeh had claimed at verse 10 that the LORD sent him, and now he says the LORD cannot save. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown observe that liars need good memories. Hezekiah carries this taunt to the LORD in the next chapter.
Isaiah 36:20
“Who are they amongst all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand?.... Not one of them, it is suggested; wherefore then should it be thought practicable, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? thus blasphemously setting the Lord God of Israel upon a level with the fictitious gods of the Gentiles; though these could not, the Lord could, being the Lord God Almighty. If Rabshakeh was an apostate Jew, he must have known better; but the malice of such is usually the greatest.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 36:20
“Here he contradicts his own assertion (Isa 36:10), that he had "come up against the land with the Lord." Liars need good memories. He classes Jehovah with the idols of the other lands; nay, thinks Him inferior in proportion as Judah, under His tutelage, was less than the lands under the tutelage of the idols.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Isaiah 36:21-22
But the people remained silent: The scene closes in silence, the people remained silent and did not answer a word, for Hezekiah had commanded, Do not answer him. Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah come to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, the customary sign of grief and alarm. The chapter ends with the blasphemy before the king.
Isaiah 36:21
“But they held their peace - Hezekiah had commanded them not to answer. They were simply to hear what Rabshakeh had to propose, and to report to him, that he might decide on what course to pursue. It was a case also in which it was every way proper that they should be silent. There was so much insolence, self-confidence, blasphemy, the proposals were so degrading, and the claims were so arrogant, that it was not proper that they should enter into conference, or listen a moment to the terms proposed.”
2 more voices on this verse
Isaiah 36:21
“7 But if thou say to me, We trust in the L ORD our God: is it not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar?”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Isaiah 36:21
“But they held their peace “But the people held their peace” - The word העם haam, the people, is supplied from the other copy, and is authorized by a MS. which inserts it after אתו otho.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn: Barnes counts the causes of this grief: the Rabshakeh's insolence to Hezekiah, the demand to give up the city, and the blasphemy against the LORD. Eliakim, Shebna and Joah tear their clothes as mourners do. They relay every word to the king unchanged.
Isaiah 36:22
“With their clothes rent - This was a common mark of grief among the Jews (see 2Sa 3:21; 1Ki 21:27; Ezr 9:3; Job 1:20; Job 2:12; Jer 36:24; and the notes at Mat 26:65; notes at Act 14:14). The causes of their griefs were the insolence and arrogance of Rabshakeh; the proposal to surrender the city; the threatening of the siege on the one hand, and of the removal on the other, and the blasphemy of the name of their God, and the reproach of the king.”
Keep studying
Studies2
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah; John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah.