But if ye say unto me, We trust in the LORD our God: is not that he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?
But if ye say unto me, We trust in the Lord our God. In the former the address was directed to Hezekiah, through his deputies. Here they or the people generally are spoken to. [But the Septuagint has the singular, hoti eipas pros eme.]
Is not that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away ... The meaning of the Assyrian diplomatist was, that in carrying out his meditated scheme of rebellion against his liege lord, Hezekiah could not expect any aid or protection from Yahweh, the national Guardian or tutelary Deity of the Hebrews, having forfeited all claims to His favour by the sacrilegious demolition of His sanctuaries. Rabshakeh alluded, in this part of his speech, to the measures of religious reform which Hezekiah had prosecuted, erroneously supposing, however, that these had been designed to exterminate, rather than to promote, the worship of Yahweh (2 Kings 18:4; 2 Chronicles 29:16).