ISV(i)
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah replied to him, “Please speak with your servants—with us—in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew where the people sitting on the wall can hear.”
12 But the field commander asked, “Was it only to all of you and to your master that my master sent me to speak these things? Wasn’t it also to the men sitting on the wall—who, like you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?”
13 Then the commander stood up and shouted out loud in Hebrew: “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14 This is what the king of Assyria says: ‘Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you—for he cannot save you!
15 Don’t let Hezekiah persuade you to rely on the LORD when he says, “The LORD will really deliver us!” and “This city will never be handed over to the king of Assyria!”
16 Don’t listen to Hezekiah, because this is what the king of Assyria says: ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then everyone will eat from his own vine and from his own fig tree, and everyone will drink water from his own cistern,
17 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land—to a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.’
18 Be careful not to let Hezekiah mislead you when he says, “The LORD will save us.” Has any god of any nation ever delivered his country from the king of Assyria?
19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sephar-vaim? Have they saved Samaria from me?
20 Who among all the gods of these countries has delivered their land from me? How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from me?’”
21 But the people remained silent and didn’t respond to him with so much as a single word, because the king had commanded, “Don’t answer him.”
22 Then Hilkiah’s son Eliakim, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the secretary, and Asaph’s son Joah, the recorder, approached Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and let him know what the field commander had said.
12 But the field commander asked, “Was it only to all of you and to your master that my master sent me to speak these things? Wasn’t it also to the men sitting on the wall—who, like you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?”
13 Then the commander stood up and shouted out loud in Hebrew:
21 But the people remained silent and didn’t respond to him with so much as a single word, because the king had commanded, “Don’t answer him.”
22 Then Hilkiah’s son Eliakim, who was in charge of the palace, Shebna the secretary, and Asaph’s son Joah, the recorder, approached Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and let him know what the field commander had said.