Isaiah 30:1-14

B. FRIENDS THAT FETTER, Chapter S 30-31
1. SHAME

TEXT: Isaiah 30:1-14

1

Woe to the rebellious children, saith Jehovah, that take counsel, but not of me; and that make a league, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin;

2

that set out to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to take refuge in the shadow of Egypt!

3

Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, the refuge in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.

4

For their princes are at Zoan, and their ambassadors are come to Hanes.

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They shall all be ashamed because of a people that cannot profit them, that are not a help nor profit, but a shame and also a reproach.

6

The burden of the beasts of the South. Through the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the lioness and the lion, the viper and the fiery flying serpent, they carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and their treasures upon the humps of camels, to a people that shall not profit them.

7

For Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I called her Rahab that sitteth still.

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Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.

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For it is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of Jehovah;

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that say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits,

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get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.

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Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness, and rely thereon;

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therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly in an instant.

14

And he shall break it as a potter's vessel is broken, breaking it in pieces without sparing; so that there shall not be found among the pieces thereof a sherd wherewith to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern.

QUERIES

a.

What was wrong with going down to Egypt for help?

b.

Why would the people not want right things prophesied to them?

PARAPHRASE

I hereby threaten you, you rebellious and stubborn children of mine, says the Lord. You make all your plans without once seeking counsel from Me. You conduct all your business affairs and make political alliances without taking My will into account at all. All you are doing is multiplying your sins against Me. Without seeking the counsel of My prophet you have gone down to Egypt to get aid and security. You think Pharaoh is your friend and is able to help you, but he is neither. In fact, in trusting Egypt and the Pharaoh, you will be disappointed, humiliated and disgraced. Even though Pharaoh's princes and ambassadors are making political overtures and promises to you from Zoan and Hanes, you are involving yourself in useless and unprofitable agreements with them which will only bring shame and reproach upon you. This is My omniscient revelation concerning the Beast of the South: You take big risks going through a dangerous and troubled wilderness, populated by wild and fierce animals and poisonous serpents, carrying your nation's riches by caravan loads in tribute to a government that has not the power to help you! Egypt's promises of help are empty promises because, as much as she pledges to help, she is quite unable to do so. I tell you she is A Big-Mouth that is a Do-nothing. Now, you Isaiah, go write My revelation concerning Egypt for this people in permanent tablet and book form so that future generations may know of Israel's unbelief and that My word is absolutely true. The people of this generation are rebels, liars and they refuse to listen to the proclamation of My word. They say to the prophets, Don-'t get any more revelations for us; don-'t preach your truths to us. If you want us to listen to you, give us what we want to hearpleasant words, illusions, intrigues. Get out of the way of our dealing with Egyptleave our path clear. We-'ve heard enough about the Holy One of Israel. Leave us alone!
This is what the Holy One of Israel replies to that! Because you hold My word in contempt and put your faith in force and intrigue and you are relying on this for your safety, you are going to reap the fruits of such perverseness. Calamity will come upon you explosively and suddenly like a damaged wall falls that has a top-heavy bulge from being breached. The Holy One of Israel is going to smash this nation to pieces like a fragile earthenware pot is shattered when it is broken. God's shattering will be very thorough. Nothing usable will be left when he finishes with this nation.

COMMENTS

Isaiah 30:1-7 FOLLY OF JUDAH: Hoy in Hebrew is sometimes translated woe but can also mean alas, ho!, and generally presages grief and threatening. In this case the idea of threat is prevalent. Jehovah is threatening Judah with grief as a result of her perverse folly. Judah's primary foolishness was in making plans and instituting programs without considering God's advice. God advised His people through His written law and through revelations given through prophets and other messengers. But the people paid only lip-service attention to these. Judah conducted her commercial, social, national and international relations all without knowing or caring what God's will was in any of these areas. She was just like her sister, Israel, a few years before (cf. Hosea 4:1-6; Hosea 5:4; Hosea 5:13; Hosea 8:1-5; Hosea 8:9-10; Hosea 10:3, etc.). Israel was like a silly dove, without sense, calling to Egypt and Assyria (Hosea 7:10-11). Now Judah plays the stupid fool calling to Egypt.

The Jews were a specially called society. Their social, political and cultural structure was uniquely structured. They were called to commit their total existence (political, social, cultural international) to the guidance and glorification of Jehovah. When they did not do so, they forfeited their reason for being. Actually, all human governments are ordained by God in order to serve and minister to His divine purposes in the earth (cf. Romans 13:1-7). When they refuse to know and be guided by God's will in their national and international relationships they also forfeit their reason for approval by God. So, we have here a revelation through Isaiah of divine principles for all, both citizens and leaders, concerned with human governments. Governments wishing to have God's approval today must conduct their national affairs and international agreements according to peace with liberty, justice, compassion, truth, righteousness for all men for these are principles for which God ordains human government.

The second violation Judah made of her divine destiny was, having refused the guidance of God, turning to Egypt for help against her enemies. Judah was to find her help in Jehovah. Jehovah had given her plenty of evidence not only of His ability to help, but of His eagerness to help. Egypt would only volunteer to help Judah in order to later exploit Judah for Egypt's profit. However, as willing as Egypt might be to help, she was powerless to do so! Egypt was a paper tiger.
Egypt's greatness was millenniums old. The Great Pyramid (the greatest and most accurate structure the world has ever known) was built about 4750 B.C. (Abram was not even called by God to begin the Hebrew race until 2700 years later). Probably the most magnificent era of Egyptian culture and power was the 18th Dynasty (1587-1328 B.C.) when Moses and the Hebrew people were there as slaves. Having experienced first hand the imperial power and greatness of Egypt for so many years of her own history (Abraham, Joseph, Moses) Judah would think of Egypt as invincible.

But around 1100 B.C. (near the time of Saul and David), under a succession of Ramessides rulers, Egypt began a cultural and political decline. The self-indulgence and ineptitude of its rulers was mainly responsible for the decline. Ethiopians gained control of all Egypt. For several decades (715-663 B.C.) Egypt was dominated by Ethiopian rule. These new rulers followed ancient political custom of agitating border-states (like Palestine) to revolt against their Mesopotamian overlords. Assyria, which controlled Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and all the territory to the Egyptian borders had her hands full squelching one revolt after another. In 720 B.C. the Assyrians appointed Akhimiti governor of Ashdod. In 711 Ashdod revolted against Assyria and deposed Akhimiti and made a Greek mercenary its ruler. Sargon, king of Assyria, dispatched an army to besiege Ashdod and overrun the city. Hezekiah was on the throne of Judaha good man but not the strongest ruler Judah ever had. He was inclined to listen to those who favored the Egyptian philosophy of revolting against Assyria. Isaiah warned Hezekiah and the nation then (Isaiah 20:1 ff) that following Egyptian policies would be disastrous. Sargon's annals indicate Judah was a party to the revolt of Ashdod. Sargon writes that the Greek ruler of Ashdod tried to persuade the rulers of Judah, Edom and Moab to join his revolt and also invoked the aid of Pharaoh king of Egypt, a prince who could not save them. The Assyrians were as accurate in their evaluation of Egyptian powerlessness as Isaiah was! The Greek ruler of Ashdod fled to Egypt when Sargon overran the citybut the Egyptians thought it politically expedient to deliver him up to the Assyrians. Judeans were fools to think they could trust the Egyptians to save them from the Assyrians!

Sargon died in 705 B.C. and was succeeded by his son Sennacherib. As usual, the death of one emperor and the coming to the throne of a new one touched off widespread political revolt among tributary nations. Merodach-baladan returned to Babylon from exile and reclaimed rights to the rule of that area. He also began a program of inciting other tribute-paying nations to revolt against Assyria. He sent an embassy to Hezekiah to prod him into joining the revolt. At the same time Egypt was also busy with her usual promises to help Judah throw off the Assyrian yoke. So our present chapter is a warning from the prophet of God that Judah is not to listen either to Merodach-baladan or the Egyptian king Shabaka, but to God.
But the princes of Judah had already made contacts. They had gone to Zoan, in the northeastern part of the Nile delta and to Hanes (which may have been the Heracleopolis Magna, fifty miles upstream from Cairo), to meet with Egyptian ambassadors and plot against Assyria. But they are simply tightening the Assyrian noose around their own necks as they discover in a few short years (Isaiah, Chapter s 36-39). They are going to suffer humiliation and embarrassment when Egypt proves impotent to help them!

They will not heed the prophet's warning. They are obsessed with dependence upon Egypt. They send ambassadors, messengers and caravans laden with Judah's treasures (Isaiah 30:6) through wild, dangerous, beast-infested country to work out alliances with a decadent, pagan, powerless people. Their troubles and treasures will all be for nothing!

Isaiah calls into play both humor and sarcasm. His oracle (burden) concerns the behemoth (great beast) of the South (Egypt). But in Isaiah 30:7, he calls Egypt Rahab that sitteth still. Rahav in Hebrew means, big mouth, or puffed uparrogant. The Hebrew word that is translated sitteth still is shavvath, or sabbath which means, of course, rest, inactivity, etc. So the pretended behemoth is really a big mouthed, do-nothing. Egypt is a paper tiger. Judah will seek her help in vain.

Isaiah 30:8-14 FURY OF JEHOVAH: In this section the Lord expresses through the prophet His righteous wrath against a nation deliberately refusing to accept His guidance and deliverance. First, the Lord directs the prophet to make a permanent record of His revelation concerning Egypt's helplessness and Judah's folly. Isaiah is to write this revelation on lukha, a tablet of stone or wood (probably wood), and then he is to write it in a sepher, a ledger, a book, in epistolary form. This emphasizes two things: the seriousness of the message and the need for its permanency. If Judah will not listen now, as Isaiah is giving the message orally, perhaps future generations will read of Jehovah's guidance, Judah's folly and Egypt's failure, in written form, after the fact of its fulfillment, and repent of their attitude toward Jehovah. Written testimony of supernatural revelation, tested through centuries of attack and investigation are much more conducive to creating faith than experiencing the supernatural events as eyewitnesses (e.g., the difficulty of many of the Jews in believing in Jesus while He was alive, but turning to Him many years after the events of His life were recorded in the Gospels).

Second, Jehovah delivers through Isaiah the indictment He has against Judah. Judah is rebellious, deceitful, and unheeding. A grateful son is expected to be obedient to the Father's guidance, but Judah is an ingrate and a stubborn rebel. She not only refuses to hear the word of God, she presumes to instruct God's messengers what to say to her. They blatantly announce their refusal to want to hear right things and their desire to hear khalaq (smooth, flattering, slippery) things, and mehathaloth (lofty, illusory, deluding) things. It is almost incredible that a people who had vowed so emphatically under Moses, Samuel, David and other leaders, to adhere to the law of God, chose to set themselves so emphatically against His law. It is difficult to believe that a majority of the Hebrew people would instruct their prophets to flatter and delude them. Isaiah is not the only prophet to record such a perverse attitude (cf. Micah 2:6-11; Jeremiah 6:10-19; Ezekiel 2:3-7; Ezekiel 3:4-11, etc.). But the prophet of God was not held responsible for their hearingonly for his preaching (cf. Ezekiel 2:5). In Isaiah 30:11 the people are represented as commanding the prophets to give up walking in the way of Jehovah (the ancient paths, cf. Jeremiah 6:10-19). And the prophets are commanded to cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from their presence. The word translated cease is hasheveethu and is another form of the word shavvath used in Isaiah 30:7. They want Isaiah to put the Holy One of Israel to rest. They want a do-nothing God. They are especially agitated at the repeated emphasis on the holiness of God. It is a constant stabbing at their consciences to hear of the Holy One of Israel.

But the Holy One of Israel is going to act. And He is going to act according to His holiness! Because they have held His word in contempt and trusted in -asheq (fraud, violence, injustice, oppression) and in perverseness (ability to deceive, manipulate, despoil) He is going to bring them down. They had gone so far as to rely on these machinations. These evil ways became the base and structure of their whole existence! God is going to allow them to reap the fruit of their evil thinking and doing. A society of moral, conscionable beings cannot hold together on a base of such moral perversity. Human social structures, whether small (as a home) or large (as a nation) must be conducted on a modicum of trust, honesty, purity, truth, respect for authority, compassion. If such values are held in contempt and perverted that social structure will disintegrate of itself. It will become a raging jungle where all inhabitants prey on one another. When the rulers and political leaders of a nation despise and pervert these principles it becomes a breach in the wall and soon the whole wall is weakened and falls. The breach is unnoticed by many, at first, but it gradually does its weakening work until the wall falls suddenly and everyone wonders why, all of a sudden, the wall falls. Jehovah will also exercise direct judgment upon Judah and smash her into fragments like a broken potter's vessel (cf. Jeremiah 19:1 ff). What a picture of the future of Judah!smashed and scattered into pieces, good for nothing!

QUIZ

1.

How did Judah copy her sister, Israel, in conducting her business?

2.

How did the Jews forfeit their reason for being a special nation?

3.

Why couldn-'t Egypt help Judah against Assyria?

4.

How intense was Judah's appeal to Egypt for help?

5.

How is Egypt characterized by God?

6.

What are the instructions of the people to Isaiah and other prophets of God about their messages?

7.

Upon what base were the people building their society?