Isaiah 33:1-12

3. SUBJUGATION

TEXT: Isaiah 33:1-12

1

Woe to thee that destroyest, and thou wast not destroyed; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! When thou hast ceased to destroy, thou shalt be destroyed; and when thou hast made an end of dealing treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee.

2

O Jehovah, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee: be thou our arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble.

3

At the noise of the tumult the peoples are fled; at the lifting up of thyself the nations are scattered.

4

And your spoil shall be gathered as the caterpillar gathereth: as locusts leap shall men leap upon it.

5

Jehovah is exalted; for he dwelleth on high: he hath filled Zion with justice and righteousness.

6

And there shall be stability in thy times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge: the fear of Jehovah is thy treasure.

7

Behold, their valiant ones cry without; the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly.

8

The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth: the enemy hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth not man.

9

The land mourneth and languisheth; Lebanon is confounded and withereth away; Sharon is like a desert; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.

10

Now will I arise, saith Jehovah; now will I lift up myself; now will I be exalted.

11

Ye shall conceive chaff, ye shall bring forth stubble: your breath is a fire that shall devour you.

12

And the peoples shall be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.

QUERIES

a.

Who is the destroyer of Isaiah 33:1?

b.

Why the prayer Isaiah 33:2-9?

c.

What is the answer to the prayer?

PARAPHRASE

Woe is coming to you, you who destroy and never feel destruction. Judgment is coming to you, you who deal deceitfully and never seem to suffer being deceived. Your days are numberedyour time to destroy and deceive will soon be over, and you are going to be destroyed and deceived. O Lord, I pray, have mercy upon us. We have been hoping in You. We want You to be our source of strength for every-day life as well as saving us from the great crises of troublous times. We know that at the sound of Your thunder the enemy nations flee and when You stand up to take action your enemies disappear as if scattered. And, Lord, Your people will gather spoil or booty from Your vanquished enemy like the caterpillars and locusts leap upon vegetation and devour it quickly. Jehovah exalts Himself by His omnipotent power to deliver and by His power to fill His covenant people, Zion, with justice and righteousness. And He shall be the source of our constancy in these changing, chaotic times. In fact, He is a treasure for us filled with salvation, wisdom and knowledge. The reverent fear of the Lord is the door to that treasure house. Behold our present circumstances, O Lord; sturdy soldiers, in the anguish of heart, cry out with a loud shriek of pain. Our ambassadors are not ashamed to be seen out on the streets shedding bitter tears. They know how desperate our situation is now. Our highways lie untraveled like deserted wastelands; covenants made with Assyria which so many had hoped in are treacherously broken, and Assyria has shown itself to be an enemy instead of an ally. Our enemy has plundered our cities and human life is cheap to him. The whole land of God's people is suffering; Lebanon is in a state of confusion and is about to pass out of existence; the territory of Sharon is like a deserted no-man's land; Bashan and Carmel are as barren as trees with all their leaves shaken off. But, says the Lord, I am going to stand up to take action, and when I do My power and might will be demonstrated against My enemies. Assyria, you are pregnant with grandiose plans, but all that shall come of them will be uselessness, and your plans will be blown away like chaff and stubble. The hot breath of war and aggression with which you pant after My people will be the very means of your own destruction. Your nation will be completely destroyed like a body burned down to lime or thorns burned into ashes.

COMMENTS

Isaiah 33:1-6 PROSPECTS FOR GOD'S PEOPLE: This context (ch. 33) is closely connected to Assyria's almost total domination of Judah in Hezekiah's day. Almost all the cities and villages of Judah had been overrun and plundered except Jerusalem. But, in spite of appearances, God's people had a glorious future. To this Isaiah speaks. He begins by warning Assyria that her time for world conquest will someday come and then she shall be destroyed. One is reminded of Isaiah's earlier prediction of this (Isaiah 10:5-34). Assyria was renowned for its destructive cruelty. F. W. Farrar gives a vivid description of Assyria's general character:

Judged from the vaunting inscriptions of her kings, no power more useless, more savage, more terrible, ever cast its gigantic shadow on the page of history as it passed on the way to ruin. The kings of Assyria tormented the miserable world. They exult to record how space failed for corpses; how unsparing a destroyer is their goddess Ishtar; how they flung away the bodies of soldiers like so much clay; how they made pyramids of human heads; how they burned cities; how they filled populous lands with death and devastation; how they reddened broad deserts with carnage of warriors; how they scattered whole countries with the corpses of their defenders as with chaff; how they impaled heaps of men on stakes, and strewed the mountains and choked rivers with dead bones; how they cut off the hands of kings and nailed them on the walls, and left their bodies to rot with bears and dogs on the entrance gates of cities; how they employed nations of captives in making brick in fetters; how they cut down warriors like weeds, or smote them like wild beasts in the forests, and covered pillars with the flayed skins of rival monarchs.

This terrible destroyer, Assyria, was herself destroyed (see Isaiah, Vol. I, pgs. 188-190). Isaiah predicts it here again to encourage a faithful remnant of believers in his own day.

In Isaiah 33:2-6 Isaiah seems to be voicing the prayer of the remnant. The prayer is interesting because it is more a prayer of praise for what they believe God can and will do than it is a request. The prayer does begin with a request for God's mercy. Judah's present circumstance is beyond human solution, so the prophet prays for God to act. Judah has no merit to claim God's action so Isaiah prays for God's mercy. His prayer is also that God might act to exalt His own name. This prayer is an abbreviated parallel to Daniel's great prayer for the exiles (Daniel 9:3-19). The remnant, being represented by Isaiah, waited upon the Lord. This is a word to describe patient, enduring trust. The remnant did not try to take matters into its own hands and seek help from Egypt as did the majority of the people. They patiently waited upon the Lord to accomplish His purposes in His own good time. The remnant occupied themselves with being the kind of people God wanted them to be and left the matter of Assyria to God.

How could the remnant be so patient with God? Because they knew from God's past deeds, demonstrated in history, when He thundered His enemies were scattered (Isaiah 33:3). They knew from their own history when they depended on God to give them victory, eventually they conquered their enemies and gathered the spoils of their conquest to His glory (Isaiah 33:4). They knew that when God's people filled God's land with justice and righteousnesswhen Jehovah was exalted above allthere was stability. They knew it from past history, and so they prayed that it might come again. They knew the real treasure of Judah, the real and valuable currency of the Chosen was the fear of Jehovah. This brought true salvation, wisdom and knowledge. Perhaps there is a pointed exhortation to Hezekiah here who succumbed to the temptation to boast and show off the worldly treasures of Judah to the Assyrians (cf. Isaiah 39:1-8), and even to pay tribute from it to them (2 Kings 18:15-16) as if that kind of treasure would deliver them. When will men ever learn that aggressors and those who would destroy society or enslave people can never be appeased with things, but that trust in God, moral uprightness, justice and self-sacrifice is the only deliverance from evil. In times of political and moral chaos such as those in which Isaiah lived the only stable, constant, secure position is trusting the Lord to exercise His sovereign purposes and actions in His own time, because we have evidence that He has always done so to the glory and victory of His people in the past.

Isaiah 33:7-12 PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE PEOPLE: Is Isaiah still praying? Isaiah 33:7-9 seem to be the conclusion to his prayer. He is pouring out his heart and the heart of the remnant for their beloved land just as Daniel did (Daniel 9:12; Daniel 9:16; Daniel 9:18) for the pitiful state of the exiles. And their prayers are not so much for the people as for the vindication and exaltation of the name of God!

Apparently the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib had already begun. Judah's valiant ones (probably soldiers) cried out in fear. Her ambassadors, having experienced the total frustration of being deceived by the Assyrians and unable to negotiate a withdrawal of Assyrian troops, weep openly. Every bit of news seeping into the besieged city of Jerusalem tells of death, destruction and desertion in the cities and villages of Judah. The highways of the land are no longer traveled. The Assyrians, after taking Hezekiah's tribute (2 Kings 18:15-16), reneged on their treaty and attacked Judah, plundering its cities and killing its people without regard to human life at all. Thousands are killed, other thousands are taken captive and still other thousands flee. There is nationwide mourning; large sections of the land is in paralyzing fear and confusion; other large sections are so completely deserted they are like vast wastelands; the land is stripped bare of its inhabitants like a tree is completely barren of its leaves in wintertime. Isaiah 33:10-12 are God's prediction that He will stand against Assyria to dissolve and annul its plans against Jerusalem. Assyria apparently made great plans to do away with Judah and Jerusalem, but God says its plans will amount to no more than refusechaff and stubble. Very rarely did a project so auspicious ever turn out as adversely for the planners as did Sennacherib's plans against Jerusalem.

Isaiah predicted, 2 Kings 19:32-34, ... thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come to this city nor shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast a mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and he shall not come into this city, says the Lord, for I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.

The Biblical and the Assyrian accounts of Sennacherib's campaign in Palestine are in general agreement. The fact that the Assyrian texts as well as the Bible make it clear that Sennacherib did not occupy Jerusalem is particularly significant. This is the Assyrian account of the Judean campaign:

As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and to the countless small villages in their vicinity, and conquered (them) by means of well-stamped (earth) ramps, and battering-rams brought (thus) near (to the walls) (combined with) the attack by foot soldiers, (using) mines, breeches as well as sapper work. I drove out (of them) 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle, beyond counting, and considered (them) booty. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving his city's gate. Hezekiah himself,. did send me later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver. his (own) daughters, concubines, male and female musicians. In order to deliver the tribute and to do obeisance as a slave he sent his (personal) messenger.
from Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1955, pg. 288

Biblical history records that 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp perished as a result of God's intervention on behalf of His people (2 Kings 19:35). Secular history and biblical history both record that Sennacherib returned to Nineveh and was assassinated by two of his sons in 681 B.C. (2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 37:38) and that Esarhaddon, his son, ruled in his place. The last quarter of the seventh century B.C. (625 B.C. 612 B.C.) saw the decline and fall of the Assyrian empire and its subjugation by the Chaldean conquerors of Babylonia, with the Medes. Nineveh was conquered 612 B.C. and in 605 B.C. at Carchemish the Assyrian government-in-exile was finally wiped out forever. So Assyria disappeared from the face of the earth as thorns cut down and burned in the fire. Nineveh, Assyria's capital city, was forgotten so completely that Alexander the Great on his way to conquer the world, walked upon the very earth that covered it without knowing it. It was not unearthed until about 1845, nearly 2400 years after its demise.

QUIZ

1.

Characterize the Assyrians in their methods of conquest.

2.

How does Isaiah's prayer compare to that of Daniel's (Daniel 9:19)?

3.

Why could believers in Isaiah's day wait for the Lord?

4.

What is the overriding purpose or end of Isaiah's prayer?

5.

How extensive was the Assyrian occupation of Judah?

6.

How do the Biblical accounts compare with secular accounts of Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem?