Religion is now as easy as a wave of the hand, a salutation across a thoroughfare; it is something that can be taken up, laid down, forgotten and resumed.
What wonder if the Rab-shakehs of the age come and taunt us, mock our piety and blow back our prayers before they get to the skies?
We want more trust, more cleaving piety, more keeping of the commandments, living in them and having no other life that is not consonant with them.
Now came, as we have often seen, the inevitable temptation. We pass instantly to the visit of Rab-shakeh. This Rab-shakeh was an eloquent man. He had the gift of mockery; he could gibe well. He was not without a certain logical qualification.
He made a long and offensive speech to the people under Hezekiah’s rule, and he thought he had them at both ends of the argument.
Having mocked their piety, laughed it down, challenged it, spat upon it, he said:
“Perhaps you will say: ‘We trust in the Lord, our God,’ but you forget that this very man, Hezekiah, has thrown down His altars, has taken away His groves, has rooted up the house of your God by the foundations.”
Rab-shakeh did not understand the destructive reformation wrought out by Hezekiah. He heard of the groves being cut down and the holy places being removed, and he said:
“This is so much to our advantage. The king of Assyria shall hear of this, and we shall make good commerce of it.”