Sennacherib was encamped at Lachish; but the Tartan and his two lieutenants received the overtures of peace, and proposed a parley near the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller’s field.  Hezekiah did not venture to go in person to the meeting-place; he sent Eliakirn, the new prefect of the palace, Shebna, and the chancellor Joah, the chief cupbearer, and tradition relates that the Assyrian addressed them in severe terms in his master’s name:  “Now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me?  Behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, even upon Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it:  so is Pharaoh, King of Egypt, to all that trust on him.”  Then, as he continued to declaim in a loud voice, so that the crowds gathered on the wall could hear him, the delegates besought him to speak in Aramaic, which they understood, but “speak not to us in the Jews’ language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall!” Instead, however, of granting their request, the Assyrian general advanced towards the spectators and addressed them in Hebrew:  “Hear ye the words of the great king, the King of Assyria.  Let not Hezekiah deceive you; for he shall not be able to deliver you:  neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us:  this city shall not be given into the hand of the King of Assyria.  Hearken not to Hezekiah:  for thus saith the King of Assyria, Make your peace with me, and come out to me; and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.  Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us!” The specified conditions were less hard than might have been feared.*

* The Hebrew version of these events is recorded in 2 Kings xviii. 13-37; xix., and in Isa. xxxvi., xxxvii., with only one important divergence, namely, the absence from Isaiah of verses 14-16 of 2 Kings xviii.  This particular passage, in which the name of the king has a peculiar form, is a detached fragment of an older document, perhaps the official annals of the kingdom, whose contents agreed with the facts recorded in the Assyrian text.  The rest is borrowed from the cycle of prophetic narratives, and contains two different versions of the same events.  The first comprises 2 Kings xviii. 13, 17-37; xix. l-9a, 36&-37, where Sennacherib is represented as despatching a verbal message to Hezekiah by the Tartan and his captains.  The second consists merely of 2 Kings xix. 96-36a, and in this has been inserted a long prophecy of Isaiah’s (xix. 21-31) which has but a vague connection with the rest of the narrative.  In this Sennacherib defied Hezekiah in a letter, which the Jewish king spread before the Lord, and shortly afterwards received a reply through the prophet.  The two versions