A Propagandist at the Wall
Introduction: The Siege of the Mind
We come now to one of the great confrontations in all of Scripture. The scene is tense, the stakes are ultimate. The armies of Sennacherib, the "great king" of Assyria, the undisputed superpower of the ancient world, have surrounded Jerusalem. They have steamrolled every other nation in their path. And now, at the walls of the holy city, the final holdout, the Assyrians do not simply begin with catapults and siege ramps. They begin with words. They begin with propaganda. They lay siege not first to the walls of stone, but to the minds of the men on the wall.
The man sent to do this is Rabshakeh. He is a master of psychological warfare. He is articulate, intelligent, multilingual, and utterly godless. He is the archetypal secularist, the polished mouthpiece of the materialistic state. His task is to demoralize the people of God, to sever their trust from their king, and most importantly, to sever their trust from their God. He does this by presenting an argument that is, on its own terms, entirely logical, entirely empirical, and entirely blasphemous.
We must pay close attention here, because the spirit of Rabshakeh is not dead. He is alive and well, and he stands outside the walls of the church today, shouting in our language. He has a microphone from the media, a lectern from the university, and a bullhorn from the state. And his message is exactly the same: your faith is a delusion, your God is impotent, and your only hope is to surrender to the realities of the modern world. Make your peace with us, and we will let you eat from your vine and fig tree, for a time. This passage is a divine case study in the anatomy of unbelief. It shows us the tactics, the temptations, and the ultimate, fatal flaw in the logic of the godless.
The Text
Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in Judean and said, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus says the king, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you; and do not let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying, “Yahweh will surely deliver us, this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” Do not listen to Hezekiah,’ for thus says the king of Assyria, ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat each of his vine and each of his fig tree, and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you, saying, “Yahweh will deliver us.” Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And when have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land from my hand, that Yahweh would deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’”
(Isaiah 36:13-20 LSB)
The Voice of Secular Intimidation (v. 13-15)
Rabshakeh begins his assault with a calculated strategy.
"Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in Judean and said, 'Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus says the king, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you; and do not let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying, “Yahweh will surely deliver us, this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”'" (Isaiah 36:13-15)
First, notice that he speaks in Judean, the language of the common people. He is deliberately bypassing the leadership. This is a classic tactic of subversion: divide and conquer. Drive a wedge between the shepherds and the sheep. He wants the average man on the wall to think that his own leaders are the problem, that his king is deceiving him.
And what is the great deception? What is the lie that Hezekiah is supposedly telling? It is the central promise of their covenant faith: "Yahweh will surely deliver us." Rabshakeh frames faith as a political trick. He presents trust in God as a form of dangerous naivete being peddled by a desperate regime. This is precisely the accusation of the new atheists and the secular state today. They tell us that faith is a delusion, a "sky-fairy" story that your pastors and elders are using to control you. "Be reasonable," Rabshakeh says. "Look at the army. Look at the facts on the ground. Your faith is a fantasy. Your king is lying to you." The first objective of the enemy is always to redefine faith as deception.
He sets up a direct conflict: the words of the "great king" of Assyria versus the words of Yahweh. The choice is between the visible, tangible power of the Assyrian war machine and the invisible, intangible promises of God. This is the choice every believer faces every single day. Will you believe the report of the world, or the report of the Lord?
The Devil's Counter-Offer (v. 16-17)
Having sown seeds of doubt, Rabshakeh now presents a tempting alternative. This is the satanic offer of a counterfeit peace.
"Do not listen to Hezekiah,’ for thus says the king of Assyria, ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat each of his vine and each of his fig tree, and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land...'" (Isaiah 36:16-17)
The Hebrew for "make your peace with me" is literally "make a blessing with me." It is an invitation to a covenant, a rival gospel. And what does this gospel offer? Immediate, sensual gratification. It is an appeal to the belly. Forget all this talk of covenant faithfulness and future deliverance. Surrender now, and you can have comfort, security, and prosperity. You can have your vine and your fig tree. This is the constant temptation of pragmatism. It is the offer to trade your birthright for a bowl of stew.
The world always makes this offer to the church. "Just compromise a little. Just bake the cake. Just fly the flag. Just soften your stance on this or that biblical absolute. Make a blessing with us, and we will let you keep your non-profit status. We will let you have your creature comforts." But notice the fine print in Rabshakeh's offer. This prosperity is temporary: "...until I come and take you away." The devil's bargains always end in slavery. The counterfeit peace is a prelude to a comfortable, well-fed exile. He offers you a gilded cage. The land he promises is "like your own land," but it is not the land of promise. It is a land of bondage, under the thumb of a pagan king.
The Blasphemer's Empirical Case (v. 18-20)
Now we come to the intellectual core of Rabshakeh's argument. He presents his evidence, his proof that faith in Yahweh is irrational.
"Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you, saying, “Yahweh will deliver us.” Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? ...Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land from my hand, that Yahweh would deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’" (Isaiah 36:18-20)
This is the argument from brute fact, the logic of the materialist. Rabshakeh lays out his resume of conquest. He has a flawless track record. He has defeated every nation and, by extension, every one of their gods. His argument is entirely empirical. He says, "Look at history. Look at the data. Might makes right. I have won every battle, therefore my god, which is the Assyrian state and its king, is supreme."
His fatal mistake, the central error of all unbelief, is a category error. He puts Yahweh on the same level as the "gods" of Hamath and Arpad. He thinks Yahweh is just one more tribal deity, a local god whose jurisdiction ends at the borders of Judah. He cannot conceive of the Creator/creature distinction. He does not understand that the "gods" of the nations are nothing, vanities, demons, created things. Yahweh is the uncreated, transcendent Creator of all things, including the "great king" of Assyria. Rabshakeh is like an ant on the railroad track, threatening the oncoming locomotive. He is using a yardstick to measure the heavens.
This is the folly of all godless reasoning. It attempts to judge God from the creature's standpoint. It looks at the world, sees suffering, war, and the success of wicked men, and concludes that God must be either non-existent or impotent. It is an argument from a graveyard of idols. Because the idols are dead, they assume Yahweh must be dead also. But they have mistaken the Creator for one of the creatures. This is the ultimate blasphemy, and it is the foundation of the modern secular worldview.
Conclusion: Whose Report Will You Believe?
The words of Rabshakeh hang in the air over a silent Jerusalem. He has made his case. It is a case for fear, for pragmatism, for surrender to the inevitable. It is the case for walking by sight.
And it is the same case presented to us today. The spirit of Rabshakeh shouts from the wall of our culture, telling us that faith is for the simple-minded. He points to the "track record" of secularism, its technological power, its cultural dominance, and he asks, "Who among the gods has delivered their people from the advance of modernity? That your God should deliver you?" He offers us a comfortable exile if we will just "make a blessing" with him and abandon our foolish trust in the Word of God.
The men on the wall were commanded by Hezekiah to remain silent, to not answer him a word. There is a time when you do not debate the devil, you rebuke him. You do not argue with a blasphemer on his own terms. Instead, as we see in the next chapter, Hezekiah takes Rabshakeh's blasphemous words, goes into the temple, and spreads them out before Yahweh. He does not appeal to his army, or his walls, or his own wisdom. He appeals to God, based on the fact that God's own name and honor have been blasphemed.
This must be our response. We are not called to win the argument on the world's terms. We are called to trust God. We must see the logic of unbelief for what it is: a colossal, blasphemous category error. And we must know how the story ends. The angel of Yahweh comes down and puts to death 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night. The "great king" Sennacherib flees home in disgrace and is murdered by his own sons while worshipping in the house of his god. The God who is not like the other gods vindicates His name in spectacular fashion.
The question for us is the same one that faced the men on that wall. Whose report will you believe? The loud, intimidating, seemingly logical voice of the world? Or the sure, quiet, covenantal promise of the living God? Do not let the Rabshakehs of our age deceive you. Yahweh will surely deliver us.