The Rabshakeh said to them, “Tell Hezekiah that this is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: What is the basis of this confidence of yours?
4. Say now to Hezekiah. He relates that the three ambassadors, though they were attended by all the magnificence that yet remained in the kingdom, were not only repulsed, but disdainfully treated by the tyrant’s delegate, and loaded with disgraceful reproaches; for, as if Hezekiah had been convicted of wicked revolt, Rabshakeh asks how he had dared to rebel.
We shall here only observe some practical lessons. 1. A people may be in the way of their duty and yet meet with trouble and distress. Hezekiah was reforming, and his people were in some measure reformed; and yet their country is at that time invaded and a great part of it laid waste.
Commenting on Isaiah 36:1-10
And Rabshakeh said unto them,.... The three ministers above mentioned: say ye now to Hezekiah; tell him what follows; he does not call him king, as he does his own master: thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria; this he said boastingly of his master, and in order to terrify Hezekiah and his subjects; whom he would represent as little in comparison of...