18:26 Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the chief adviser, “Speak to your servants in Aramaic, 1 for we understand it. Don’t speak with us in the Judahite dialect 2 in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
18:28 The chief adviser then stood there and called out loudly in the Judahite dialect, 3 “Listen to the message of the great king, the king of Assyria.
1 sn Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the empire.
2 tn Or “Hebrew.”
3 tn The Hebrew text also has, “and he spoke and said.”