Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah: Sennacherib speaks these words to his messengers to introduce his message to Hezekiah. We may say “This is what you should tell Hezekiah king of Judah.” The Hebrew text states that the messengers are to speak directly to Hezekiah. This presents a slight difficulty since the message was in the form of a letter (verse 14). However, it is probable that the messengers read Sennacherib’s letter to the king. Good News Translation avoids this problem by closely linking this verse with the previous one and avoiding the verb speak as follows: “9 … he sent a letter to King Hezekiah 10 to tell him:….”

Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you: There is a significant difference here with the Assyrian ambassador’s speech in 36.13-20. In that speech the people of Jerusalem were warned four times not to let Hezekiah deceive them. Now the warning is not to let God deceive them. Many translations capitalize God because it refers to Judah’s God. However, the Assyrian king would be unlikely to consider Judah’s God to be the only true God, so he would use the basic word for “god” here. In this context it would be quite acceptable to say “god” (Good News Translation, New International Version). Translators have a choice.

On whom you rely describes the relationship between Judah and Yahweh. The verb rely was a keyword in 36.4-10 (see the comments on 36.4).

By promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria is literally “saying, ‘Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’” There is a direct quote of Yahweh here in Hebrew. Revised Standard Version makes it indirect, which may be helpful for other languages. For this quote see the comments on 36.15. Since Revised Standard Version has the Assyrian king speaking these words, it may be better to render the hand of the king of Assyria simply as “my hands” (Good News Translation).

Several translation examples for this verse are:

“This is what you shall tell King Hezekiah of Judah: ‘You are relying on your god, but don’t let him trick you into believing that Jerusalem will not fall into my hands.

“Tell King Hezekiah of Judah, ‘Don’t let your god trick you! You may be relying on him because he said that Jerusalem would not be given over to me, the king of Assyria.

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Sterk, Jan. A Handbook on Isaiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .