36:11 Eliakim, 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.”
36:13 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 Assyrian empire.
2 tn Or “in Hebrew” (NIV, NCV, NLT); NAB, NASB “in Judean.”
3 tn The Hebrew text includes “and he said.”