Now, without Jehovah have I come up against this place to destroy it? Jehovah said unto me, Go up against this land, and thou hast destroyed it.'

And have I now come up to send destruction on this place without the Lord's authority? It was the Lord himself who said to me, Go up against this land and make it waste.

Is it not by the will of the Lord that I have chosen to ascend to this place, so that I may destroy it? The Lord said to me: 'Ascend to this land, and destroy it.' "

The Rab-shakeh probably tries the effect of a bold assertion, which had no basis of fact to rest upon.

Am I now come up without the Lord - As Rab-shakeh saw that the Jews placed the utmost confidence in God, he wished to persuade them that by Hezekiah's conduct Jehovah had departed from them, and was become ally to the king of Assyria, and therefore they could not expect any help from that quarter.

Am I now come up without the (k) LORD against this place to destroy it? The LORD said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.
(k) The wicked always flatter themselves in their prosperity, that God favours them. Thus he speaks to scare Hezekiah into thinking that by resisting him he would be resisting God.

After Rabshakeh had thus, as he imagined, taken away every ground of confidence from Hezekiah, he added still further, that the Assyrian king himself had also not come without Jehovah, but had been summoned by Him to effect the destruction of Judah. It is possible that some report may have reached his ears of the predictions of the prophets, who had represented the Assyrian invasion as a judgment from the Lord, and these he used for his own purposes. Instead of הזּה המּקום על, against this place, i.e., Jerusalem, we have הזּאת הארץ על in Isaiah, - a reading which owes its origin simply to the endeavour to bring the two clauses into exact conformity to one another.

Am I, &c. - He neither owned God's word, nor regarded his providence; but he forged this, to strike a terror into Hezekiah and the people.