Isaiah 10:5-11

SCOURGE OF GOD

TEXT: Isaiah 10:5-11

5

Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation!

6

I will send him against a profane nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.

7

Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few.

8

For he saith, Are not my princes all of them kings?

9

Is not Calno as Carchemish: is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?

10

As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria;

11

shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?

QUERIES

a.

Who is the Assyrian of Isaiah 10:5? How was he to become a rod?

b.

Why is the Assyrian's attitude portrayed as one of resistance?

PARAPHRASE

Assyria is the whip of My anger; his military strength is My weapon to bring My punishment upon this godless nation, says the Lord. He will enslave them and plunder their treasures and trample them like dirt beneath his feet. But the King of Assyria will not have My Divine will as his purpose when he comes against Israel. His purpose will be to attack My people as part of his plan to conquer the world. He is persuaded that all his princes will soon be ruling as kings over the various nations he plans to conquer. He says, I shall destroy Calno just as I did Carchemish and Hamath will go down before us as Arpad did; and we will destroy Israel just as we did Damascus. Indeed, we have finished off many a kingdom whose idols were far greater and more glorious than those in Jerusalem and Samaria. So when we have defeated Samaria and her idols we will destroy Jerusalem with hers.

COMMENTS

Isaiah 10:5-6 GOD'S INTENTIONS: This is one of those unique passages of the Old Testament which reveals the majestic, omnipotent, cosmic, sovereign purposes of God being carried out in conjunction with and in spite of the evil machinations of human power inspired and supported by the forces of hell. It is grand and glorious good news that Jehovah God controls and uses men and nations and events to carry out His purposes of redemption and salvation. God is going to take the evil purposes and intentions of the king of Assyria and use them to serve His long-range plan of preparing the Hebrew people to deliver the Messiah to the world! How breathtaking, how it staggers the mind and exhilarates the emotions to contemplate it! The terrible, bloodthirsty, cruel, inhuman Assyrians are, of their own choice, bent on conquering and plundering the whole world. God says, Go ahead, have your way for a seasonI-'ll use it to chasten My holy people and then I-'ll requite your wickedness upon your own heads. God plans to chasten and discipline His people so that those who believe Him and remain faithful to Him in the midst of this chastening may form the remnant through which the Messiah and the messianic kingdom (the church) may come to the world. The evil scheme of the Assyrian empire will serve that Divine purpose. Both Old and New Testaments teach such a philosophy or theology of history (Cf. Jeremiah 27:1-11; Daniel 2:20-22; Isaiah 45:1-7; John 19:11, etc.). For a fuller discussion of this see Minor Prophets, by Paul T. Butler, pub. College Press, 1968, pgs. 39-111, art. entitled, Theo-Ramic Philosophy of History. God's ways are above us all. Should we ask, Why would God permit such a wicked and ruthless pagan people to plunder His chosen peopleand then how can God claim such a perverse nation to be His instrument or servant? God does not forbid our asking. Habakkuk is a prime example of a believer with such a problem. Habakkuk could not understand how and why God would permit the evil and wickedness of the Hebrew people to continue unpunished (Habakkuk 1:1-4). God told the prophet He was going to punish the wickedness of Judah by sending the Chaldeans (Babylon) upon them (Habakkuk 1:5-11). This created the more perplexing problem in Habakkuk's mind of why God would use a pagan nation to punish the Chosen people (Habakkuk 1:12-17). Habakkuk was confused but he did not despair. He couldn-'t understand but he had faith and waited for God to answer (Habakkuk 2:1). God's answer to Habakkuk is still valid today. That answer is, God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes (Cf. Romans 8:28). God works all things out in His own good time. We are told simply to wait upon the Lord with faith and endurance (Habakkuk 2:2-4). Paul quotes Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17 to indicate that we cannot understand the working of God's redemptive scheme but we can accept it by faith and thus be justified. God always gives enough experiential, concrete, factual, historical evidence to convince the honest-minded person of His existence and nature. The Hebrew people at this stage of their national experience (Isaiah) had more than abundant evidence of God's active, providential, redemptive control of history so they could easily believe His use of the Assyrian empire, if they wanted to.

Isaiah 10:7-11 ASSYRIA'S INTENTIONS: The king of Assyria certainly does not admit that he is an instrument of the Hebrew God. It is not his intention to serve any purpose but his own purpose of world-conquest. This is a graphic description of the thinking processes of a carnal-minded dictator. He reasons, Calno was taken by me (738 B.C.), Carchemish on the Euphrates was subdued by my people (717 B.C.), Hamath on the Orontes fell to us in 720 B.C. and Arpad in 740. Samaria was conquered in 721 B.C. and Damascus in 732 B.C. Where were the gods of these great peoples when I overcame them? Surely Judah's God is no greater than the gods of these. They did not stop me and neither will the God of Judah. The attitude of the Assyrian emperor is manifested in the words of Rabshakeh in later years when the armies of Assyria had made invasion of Judah and had Jerusalem surrounded, Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? (2 Kings 18:33-35). There was a long line of Assyrian kings with intentions of world-conquest: Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser IV, Sargon II and Sennacherib. Sennacherib was probably the king of Assyria predicted by Isaiah here. He is mentioned in Isaiah Chapter s 36-38. He was planning to overrun Jerusalem and plunder her treasury and temple just as he had already done to most of the ancient world. He would take the people captive into slavery to build his palaces and city walls, etc. But, although the Assyrians captured most of the land of Palestine, they would never conquer Jerusalem.

QUIZ

1.

What does Isaiah say is God's purpose for the king of Assyria?

2.

What does the rest of the Bible have to say about this grand philosophy of history?

3.

What if we cannot understand how God does His work through pagan empires?

4.

What is the king of Assyria's intention in history?

5.

What is the Assyrian king's attitude toward the God of Judah?

6.

Who was probably the king predicted by Isaiah here?