²⁵ Was it apart from the Lord I have now come up to destroy this place? The Lord said to me, ‘Go up to attack this land and destroy it.’ ”

²⁶ Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Please do not speak to us in Hebrew when the people who are upon the wall can hear it.”^[a]

²⁷ But the commander said to them, “My master has not sent me just to you and your master to say these things, but to the men sitting on the wall who may have to eat their own dung and drink their own urine like you.”