It’s probably not a name, but a “title.” (Much like “Pharaoh” is.) “Rabshakeh” I mean. Literally its definition is “great (or chief) cupbearer!” (Nehemiah, if you recall, was also a cupbearer for the King of Persia.)

This man, a godless heathen, pretty much does the talking in Isaiah chapter 26. But he is merely a representative, a “hired mouth,” for the King of Assyria. And we even know which King of Assyria, “Sennacherib.” Not a Hebrew name, and polytheistic to the core!

Verse 1 is bad news for the little Nation of Judah. “Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them.”

Judah, under attack!

Notice a “great army,” exactly 185,000 soldiers we later learn. “And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller’s field.”

The very same place Isaiah had met King Ahaz of Judah years earlier. By that conduit, at the highway, where they cleaned their clothes. (A “fuller” was a professional “spot remover,” the counterpart to our modern-day “laundry services.”)

Then the verbal assault begins.

The Assyrians at first want “money,” to “back off” from Judah.

“Now therefore give pledges ($$$), I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.” Verse 9 of Isaiah 36.

Truly … “The love of money is the root of all evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10

More tomorrow, of course.

But Hezekiah is facing one of the greatest crises of his entire Administration.

Yet, in the end, God rescues His people.

I can hardly wait to show you!

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

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