The Messenger

This week, we learned about the emotional warfare waged by Assyria on Yehuda by Ravshake, the messenger of the king of Assyria.  In perek 36 of Malachim 2, we hear that Ashur has attacked several cities in Yehuda and has exiled their inhabitants.  Ravshake then goes to meet with the representatives of King Chizkiyahu.  He sends them a frightening message.

Ravshake starts out his speech by attacking the confidence of the people of Yisrael.  He questions their alliance with Egypt because Egypt is "a broken reed and cannot protect Yehuda from the oncoming war.  He describes his king as "the great king of Assyria"; the implied comparison is to the weak king of Egypt.  Ravshake also describes the removal of the Bamot as the wrong thing to do in G-d's eyes.  His final statement was that G-d himself had sent the armies of Assyria forward to destroy Yehuda.  The purpose of this message was to get Yehuda to create an alliance with Ashur that would please Hashem. No such alliance was made as all of these statements by Ravshake were false and were purely made to get the people to surrender to Ashur.

Upon hearing this, Chizkiyahu's representatives ask Ravshake to speak in Aramaic instead of Hebrew.  (Hold on a minute: he knows Hebrew?  How?) Ravshake refuses because his purpose in giving these messages to Yehuda is that the people will understand.

Ravshake's second message was given directly to the people.  Once again, he spoke of the "great king of Assyria" and how Assyria can save Yehuda.  Ravshake told the people that Chizkiyahu was weak and tricking them.  He described a destruction in which Chizkiyahu would not be able to provide the people with their basic needs.  Ashur would be able to keep the remaining people of Yehuda safe and alive with food and water.  The final religious attack rang louder than the others (because of the recent religious revival): Hashem let Assyria destroy Shomron.  Why now would be save Yehuda?  The people didn't answer Ravshake and instead conveyed the messages to Chizkiyahu.  Chizkiyahu mourned.

Ravshake seems like quite the character.  He would seem like any other messenger from any other nation that was trying to mess with Bnei Yisrael except for two things.  One, he knew exactly how to attack the people's weaknesses.  It was as if he was one of them and had lived through a similar or the same situation.  The second thing is that he chose to speak to the people in Hebrew.  Not Aramaic, Hebrew!  How could he know Hebrew?  It's not like they had Rosetta Stone in those days.  One opinion on his true identity was that he was a Jew who switched alliances and was now working for Assyria.  This kind of betrayal must have been heartbreaking for the people in Yehuda to witness.  If any of them had known him, they were probably very shaken by the blasphemous things he said.  However, the one consolation we can have is that G-d never lets sins go unpunished, whether the punishment comes in this world or the next.  Also, this betrayal highlights the skewed values of the people at the time.  Their morals were so backwards that someone could completely turn their back on their people and work for the enemy.  If this sort of immorality was what was really happening, I think the people deserved to be (eventually) exiled.  The full and real religious revival will happen when the people return to the land and to all of G-d's ways, not just half of them.