Bible Verses About War: Enemy harangued by general of opposing side

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?

You claim to have a strategy and strength for war, but these are empty words. In whom are you now trusting, that you have rebelled against me?

Look now, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.

But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is He not the One whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem: ‘You must worship before this altar in Jerusalem’?

Now, therefore, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!

For how can you repel a single officer among the least of my master’s servants when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?

So now, was it apart from the LORD that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The LORD Himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’”

Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, along with Shebnah and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak with us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”

But the Rabshakeh replied, “Has my master sent me to speak these words only to you and your master, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”

Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out loudly in Hebrew: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!

This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you; he cannot deliver you from my hand.

Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’

Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree, and drink water from his own cistern,

until I come and take you away to a land like your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey—so that you may live and not die. But do not listen to Hezekiah, for he misleads you when he says, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’

Has the god of any nation ever 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, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand?

Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his land from my hand? How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”

But the people remained silent and did not answer a word, for Hezekiah had commanded, “Do not answer him.”

Then Abijah stood on Mount Zemaraim in the hill country of Ephraim and said, “Hear me, O Jeroboam and all Israel!

Do you not know that the LORD, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?

Yet Jeroboam son of Nebat, a servant of Solomon son of David, rose up and rebelled against his master.

Then worthless and wicked men gathered around him to resist Rehoboam son of Solomon when he was young, inexperienced, and unable to resist them.

And now you think you can resist the kingdom of the LORD, which is in the hands of David’s descendants. You are indeed a vast army, and you have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made for you as gods.

But did you not drive out the priests of the LORD, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites? And did you not make priests for yourselves as do the peoples of other lands? Now whoever comes to consecrate himself with a young bull and seven rams can become a priest of things that are not gods.

But as for us, the LORD is our God. We have not forsaken Him; the priests who minister to the LORD are sons of Aaron, and the Levites attend to their duties.