Silence Is The Best Answer

Verse 10 – Hashem told me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it!'”

45:7 states that G-d created evil.

This exposed those smooth talkers that only talk about love, peace and prosperity.

For G-d is the creator of all things.

“Assyria Threatens…”

It happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah, and captured them.
36:1
And if you will tell me, ‘We trust in Hashem our God’ — is He not the One Whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed; and he said to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘[Only] before this Altar you may prostrate yourselves’?
:7
And now, it is without [the consent of] Hashem that I have come up to this land to destroy it? Hashem told me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it!’”
:10
Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus said the king of Assyria: Make peace with me and come out to me, and each man will be able to eat [the fruits of] his grapevine and each man [the fruits of] his fig tree, and each man will drink the water of his well,
:16
lest Hezekiah tries to entice you, saying, ‘Hashem will save us!’ Did the gods of the nations save any person in his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
:18
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Did they save Samaria from my hand?
:19
The people remained silent and did not answer him a word, for there was a command from the king, saying, “Do not answer him.”
:21

1 And it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib the king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.
2 And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with an army of a great [multitude], and he stood near the conduit of the upper pool, on the road of the washer’s field.
3 And Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was appointed over the Temple and Shebna the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to him.
4 And Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘So has the great king, the king of Assyria, said, ‘What is this confidence that you have trusted?’
5 I said, ‘It is but words of the lips; counsel and might are needed for war. Now, on whom do you depend that you have rebelled against me?
6 Behold you have depended upon the support of this splintered reed, upon Egypt, upon which a man will lean, and it will go into his palm and puncture it; so is Pharaoh the king of Egypt to all who trust in him.
7 And if you say to me, ‘We trust the Lord our God,’ is He not the one Whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed? He has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘Before this altar shall you prostrate yourselves.’
8 And now, wager now with my lord the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses if you are able to supply riders upon them of your men.
9 And how can you repulse a captain, one of the smallest of my master’s servants, and you rely on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
10 And now, is it [with] other than the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, ‘Go up to this land and destroy it.’ “
11 And Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic for we understand it; do not speak with us in Judean within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
12 And Rabshakeh said, “Did my master send me to speak these words to your master and to you? Is it not to the men who sit on the wall to eat their dung and drink their urine with you?”
13 And Rabshakeh stood and called in a loud voice in Judean, and he said, “Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria!
14 So has the king said, ‘Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.
15 And let not Hezekiah make you rely on the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord will save us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
16 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for so has the king of Assyria said, ‘Make peace with me, and come out to me, and each man will eat of his vine and each man of his fig tree, and each man will drink the water of his cistern.
17 Until I come and take you to a land like your land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.’
18 Lest Hezekiah mislead you, saying, ‘The Lord will save us.’ Have the gods of the nations saved each one his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?
19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad, where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Now did they save Samaria from my hand?
20 Who are they among all the gods of the lands who saved their land from my hand, that the Lord should save Jerusalem from my hand?”
21 And they remained silent and did not answer him even one word, for it was the king’s order, saying, “Do not answer him.”
22 And Eliakim the son of Hilkiah who was appointed over the Temple and Shebna the scribe and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, came to Hezekiah, with torn garments, and they related to him the words of Rabshakeh.