Your Own Vine and Fig Tree

In Isaiah 36, the king of Assyria sends one of his highest-ranking military officials, called the Rabshekah, to deliver a message to Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Judah. It’s a remarkable little story.

He correctly warns the people that Egypt cannot be trusted and refuses to speak in Aramaic. Instead, the Rabshekah speaks Hebrew so that all the people living in Jerusalem will understand his message.

In the process of warning the people what will happen, he makes this statement: “For thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern’” (Isa 36:16).

This image of peace is not foreign to the people of Jerusalem. After King Solomon consolidated his power, “Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all of them under their vines and fig trees” (1 Kgs 4:25).

The prophets Micah and Zechariah both use the image of people sitting under their own fig trees and vines to emphasize the peace they will experience under the Lord’s rule.

The Rabshakeh presented the people of Jerusalem with a direct challenge to their God. Do not trust the Lord. Trust the man. Trust Sennacherib. He will provide the peace and security your God cannot provide.

Every person faces this temptation.

We long for peace and security.

But where will we place our trust for it?

Will we submit our lives to God?

Or will we put our fate in the hands of people like Sennacherib?