“I will get you through this difficulty. I know a lie that would deceive a king. I can instruct you in a policy that would blind a judge. I could get the money for you; you need have no difficulty about that. Why, I say, in confidence, I can let you have it now!”
What can the preacher do in the presence of such a Rab-shakeh?
Or, he may not offer temptation in that direction, but in another. He may say:
“All these arguments I could answer, if I cared to do so. Who wrote the Bible? Who has seen the original manuscripts? Who has ever seen God? It is utterly impossible to know the infinite. Come, and I will make you rich at once in real, solid, practical things. I can give you work instantly, and wages immediately the work is begun. I can give you something in advance. Leave the preacher, the altar, the Bible and the church. Come and work in the open streets, and be doing something that you can handle and about which there is no manner of doubt.”
People begin then to wonder.
They should adopt the policy which was imposed on the children of Hezekiah:
“But the people held their peace, and answered him not a word, for the king’s commandment was: ‘Answer him not.’”
Nothing is to be got out of wordy controversy. Live the Christian life; grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. While the controversialist is contemning you, taunting you and smiting you, show to him that you are growing broader, more massive in character, more tender in disposition, more benevolent in every aspiration and desire and purpose, and thus by well-doing “Put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”
Defend your Christianity by the eloquence of your life.
The servants of Hezekiah said to him: “What Rab-shakeh has said may come to pass. Let us go to Isaiah and tell him all.”
Hezekiah himself thought that perhaps there might be something in it, after all. There he and his servants fell into a state of incertitude.
“So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.” They came to the right man. Standing up like a king, he said:
“Thus shall ye say to your master: Thus saith the Lord: ‘Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumor, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.’”
He would make no violent attack on the men. He would summon no legion of angels to overwhelm this great Oriental potentate. He would simply “send a blast.” He would change the wind; he would scatter something upon it and bid it blow across the brain of the king of Assyria, and the king would not know his right hand from his left, nor the morning from the night; he would be calling everybody by the wrong name, and be asking for things that he did not wish to possess, and be, generally, thrown into a state of unbalanced and wandering mind.
“I will send a whisperer to him. He shall simply go to the ear of the king of Assyria and say something, and the king will take fright and fly away in a panic. O Hezekiah, continue thy prayer, repeat thy morning sacrifice and thine evening oblation; and, as for the king of Assyria, I will send a blast and a rumor. I will answer Rab-shakeh.”
Let the contempt of the enemy be answered by the contempt of Heaven.
Rab-shakeh, having found that the king of Assyria was warring against Libnah, returned; and when he heard that Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, was come up to war, he once more addressed Hezekiah in terms of exultation and contempt.
Rab-shakeh was pretendedly anxious that Hezekiah should not be deceived by the Lord, his God, and then he taunts him with many a history in which Assyria had been conqueror over opposing nations. He completes his taunt by asking:
“Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, of Hena, and Ivah?”
This message came to Hezekiah in the form of a letter, or letters, and he instantly “went up into the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.”
There is no need to regard this as in any sense involving a heathenish custom. The meaning simply is that Hezekiah consulted the Lord on the whole matter, and declined to take any thing into his own counsel or power. He acknowledges the dignity of God by the expression: “O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims.”