ISAIAH – CHAPTER 10

ASSYRIA, THE INSTRUMENT OF GOD’S WRATH

1. Judgment is declared against those who, by rulings that are iniquitous if not illegal, deprive widows, orphans, and the needy of their rights and actually prey upon their helplessness, (Verse 1-2; Isa 5:23; Isa 29:20-21; Isa 59:4; Isa 59:13; Isa 1:23; Isa 3:14-15).

2. The wealth accumulated through oppression and injustice will be of no value in the storm which is about to break upon them, (Isa 2:12; Isa 5:25-29; Isa 20:6; Isa 29:6-7).

3. Since the Lord has delivered them over to judgment, there will be no one to help; thus, they will be humiliated and led captive, (Verse 4; Jer 9:9; Hos 9:7; Isa 24:21-22).

4. Even then the Lord’s anger “is not turned away”; since divine discipline has failed, they must face divine judgment!

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

1. Woe to them that decree. He now attacks the people more closely, as he did in the first and second chapters, to make them feel that they are justly afflicted; for men never acknowledge that they are justly punished till they have been manifestly convicted and constrained. Though they were sufficiently convicted by former proofs, still he found it necessary to come to particulars, that by means of them their hypocrisy might be exposed; for men are so brazen-faced as to think that any excuse shields them, and openly to accuse God. When they had become so shameless, it was impossible for him to rebuke them too sharply, or to carry his accusations beyond proper limits, so as to shut their mouths, whether they would or not.

עמל ( gnamal) and און ( aven) are often joined together in Scripture, as in Psa 7:14 און signifies vanity and iniquity, but the latter meaning agrees better with this passage. עמל, ( gnamal,) on the other hand, denotes vexation, and often the very cause of the vexation, that is, the oppression inflicted by the stronger on the weaker, when they abuse their authority and power. Having formerly shown that the wickedness originated from the governors themselves, (Isa 1:10,) he places them in the first rank, that they may undergo the punishment of the crimes which they had occasioned. This ought to be carefully observed, for they who are elevated to the highest rank imagine that they are exempted from the ordinary lot of other men, and that they are not bound to give account to God; and therefore he threatens that they will have this privilege, that they will be the first that are punished.

Some think that two classes are here described, and draw a distinction between חקקים, ( chokekim,) those who decree, and מכתבים, ( mechattebim,) those who write (155) But I do not approve of this, for he attacks generally, and without distinction, princes and magistrates, who oppressed the people by unjust and tyrannical decrees, in such a manner that they approached to absolute robbery; and therefore he includes every class of magistrates and governors.

(155) The prescribers. — Stock. “Not the scribes, who write vexatious decrees, but the judges, who cause them to be written.” — Rosenmuller.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

LEGALISED INJUSTICE

Isa. 10:1-4. Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, &c.

I. An indictment against wicked magistrates. II. A challenge. III. A sentence.
I. Magistrates and rulers are answerable to God. II. Their decisions will be revised. III. Will in many instances be reversed. IV. The consequences of their injustice will return back upon themselves [967]J. Lyth, D.D.: Homiletic Treasury, Part I. p. 16.

[967] See Outlines: OPPRESSION OF THE POOR, pp. 94, 95; and THE PLEADER AND THE JUDGE, pp. 9597.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

CHAPTER TEN
D. PRESERVATION IN IMMANUEL
1.

SOCIAL INJUSTICE

TEXT: Isa. 10:1-4

1

Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that write perverseness;

2

to turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!

3

And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?

4

They shall only bow down under the prisoners, and shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

QUERIES

a.

How were the writers writing perverseness?

b.

What is meant by leaving your glory?

PARAPHRASE

Woe to the rulers that decree unjust decrees and woe to those who administrate them unjustly. These have taken away justice from the poor man. They have so perverted the law they are even robbing the fatherless and the widows. Now, what will you do in the day that the Lord of Justice visits you and sends desolation upon you from a distant land? To whom will you turn then for your help? Where will you hide for safekeeping all the things you glory in then? This people will be brought down. The haughty ones will fall among the slain. Even for all this Jehovahs anger is not turned away, but his hand is still stretched forth in judgment.

COMMENTS

Isa. 10:1-2 ROBBERY: Through false and illegal decrees made orally by wicked judges and rulers, and through false and illegal documents written by perverse scribes, the poor and powerless people were being robbed. Those who most needed their human rights protected were the very ones being exploited. Those without political power and influence and without wealth were being skinned alive. The rich and the influential able to pay bribes were receiving all the civil judgments in their favor. Widows and orphans were at the mercy of the merciless. When a nations courts and political officials become corrupt, the nation is in its death throes. A righteous and just God cannot allow such social and moral chaos to go uncorrected for long or constant civil upheaval would be the result.

Isa. 10:3-4 RETRIBUTION: When the day of Divine retribution comes, where will they go for help? When the Holy God visits them in judgment who will protect them? Can they depend upon their idol-gods? Will their foreign allies be able to deliver them? Can they buy their way out of Gods judgment with their wealth? All these things Israel has gloried in, but what will become of their glory when Gods wrath falls upon them? The answer is, it shall fail them. Israel will be taken prisoner and the unjust rulers and judges will fall along with all the other dead and captured.

QUIZ

1.

How were the needy turned aside from justice?

2.

What two classes were especially being exploited?

3.

Why can God not allow social injustice to exist for any length of time?

4.

Where would Israel likely turn to for help when Divine judgment fell?

5.

What will happen to the rulers and judges when judgment comes upon Israel?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

X.

(1) Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees . . .The division of the chapters is again misleading. Isa. 10:1-4 continue the discourse of Isaiah 9, and end with the final knell, For all this . . . With Isa. 10:5 a new section begins, and is carried on to Isa. 12:6, which deals, for the first time in the collection of Isaiahs writings, exclusively with Assyria, and is followed in its turn by utterances that deal with Babylon and other nations. The formula with which the section opens reminds us of that of Isa. 5:8; Isa. 5:11; Isa. 5:18; Isa. 5:22, and suggests the thought that the prophet is speaking not only or chiefly of the northern kingdom, as in Isa. 9:21, but of Israel as including Judah. The evils the prophet denounces are, it will be noted, identical with those in Isa. 1:23; Isa. 5:23. For the second clause of the verse, read, and the scribes who register oppression. All the formalities of justice were observed punctiliously. The decision of the unjust judge was duly given and recorded, but the outcome of it all was that the poor, the widow, and the fatherless got no redress. The words for prey and rob are those used in the mysterious name of Isa. 8:1. They occur again in Isa. 10:6. It would seem as if the prophet sought in this way to impress the thought of the great law of divine retribution. Men were reaping as they had sown.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

1-4. Is not this last strophe the moral of the previous three? It is directed against unjust authorities and judges. The prophet had stood, as it were, at the end of the calamities he had described as befalling the nation of Israel for sins such as he here inveighs against. A woe is uttered against framers of decrees to defraud the needy, the widows, and the fatherless, and the question is asked in the third verse, What will be the result to these wicked authorities in the visitations already described? The answer is plain, as given in Isa 10:4.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1. Decree unrighteous decrees Unjust lawmakers. “Making of Eastern decrees differs from ours. They are first written, then the magistrate authenticates or annuls them.” So is the Arab manner. “When an Arab wanted a favour of the Emir he applied to the secretary, who drew up a decree according to the request of the party. If the Emir granted the favour he printed his seal upon it; if not, he returned it torn to the petitioner.” Sir John Chardin, in Harmer. The above may help to explain the remainder of the verse.

That write grievousness prescribed Iniquitous decisions prescribing oppression, injustice, and the like.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Chapter Isa 10:1-4 The Fourth Chastisement. Bad Leadership, Rank Injustice, and Captivity ( Isa 10:1-4 ).

Analysis.

Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers who write trouble (Isa 10:1).

To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right of the poor of my people (Isa 10:2 a).

That widows may be their spoil, and that they might make the fatherless their prey (Isa 10:2 b).

‘And what will you do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which will come from far? (Isa 10:3 a).

To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your glory? (Isa 10:3 b).

‘Nothing remains but that each has bowed down (cringed) under the prisoners, and they will fall under the slain. For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still (Isa 10:4).

In ‘a’ the leaders make unrighteous decrees and their underlings write them in such a way as to cause trouble, and in the parallel they are humbled even below the prisoners, and fall as the slain. In ‘b’ they had betrayed the needy, but in the parallel they themselves will become needy with none to help. In ‘c’ they spoiled the widows and preyed on the fatherless, and in the parallel they themselves will become a prey and be spoiled’

Note that Isa 10:1-4 continues the theme of Isa 9:8-21, and of chapter 5.

Isa 10:1-2

‘Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees,

And to the writers who write trouble.

To turn aside the needy from judgment,

And to take away the right of the poor of my people,

That widows may be their spoil,

and that they might make the fatherless their prey.’

God’s woe is now threatened against the new leadership that has taken over and are worse than the old. They have no regard for justice or for the weak. They issue unfair decrees, and their administrators write them down in terms that will only cause trouble. And the purpose is so as to prevent the needy from obtaining justice, and to take away people’s rights, especially those of the defenceless. Thus the widows and fatherless, those with no strong arm to defend them, will be despoiled and become victims. Having been given power these leaders are determined to use it to wring as much out of people as possible, especially out of those who cannot defend themselves. The needy are here in deliberate contrast with those who make decrees, and the poor in deliberate contrast with those who articulate the decrees. It is a clear case of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Isa 10:3

‘And what will you do in the day of visitation,

And in the desolation which will come from far?

To whom will you flee for help?

And where will you leave your glory?’

But these very leaders need to consider the fact that God sees what they do and will pay them a visit. He will exact the justice that they have failed to deliver. And He will do it by bringing from afar one who will wreak desolation among them. This is clearly a reference to the king of Assyria and his forces.

‘Where then will you flee for help?’ They have made it impossible for the poor to find help, but now it will turn on their own heads. They too will find themselves with no one to go to, nowhere to go for help. They will be left to face their troubles alone.

‘Where will you leave your glory?’ Their ‘glory’ is what they have built up for themselves including wealth and status. All that they have will be lost, position, prestige, wealth, all their glory will be lost, they will have nowhere for it to be preserved and kept safely.

Isa 10:4

‘Nothing remains but that each has bowed down (cringed) under the prisoners,

And they will fall under the slain.’

The end result is that they, who fleeced others and paraded themselves over them, will be left with nowhere to go. They who paraded themselves will each bow down and cringe as the least of the prisoners, and many of them will fall among the slain. ‘Under’ seems to indicate humiliation and loss of status. There will be prisoners and there will be slain, and they will be the least among them.

Note the use of the two tenses. Each speaks of the future, but the perfect specifies the certainty and completeness of the humiliation of each one in the future, while the imperfect expresses the normal more general indefiniteness of what will happen and when. Not all will be slain.

Isa 10:4

‘For all this his anger is not turned away,

But his hand is stretched out still.’

Even yet God’s anger is still not assuaged. There remains the final judgment, the total cessation of Israel as a nation.

(Note. It is of interest that the ‘Woe’ here would fit with the ‘woes’ of chapter 5 to make a seventh woe, and that part of chapter 5 fits into the pattern here, with the repetition, ‘For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.’ If the transpositions did take place, and it is by no means certain, we have no reason to doubt that they were deliberate, and therefore the final message of the book is as we find it here. The Davidic promises have been set as a gleam of light within the woes. End of note).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Sovereign Lord’s Effective Word Against Israel Who Have Failed To Respond To His Warnings ( Isa 9:8 to Isa 10:4 ).

It is a huge and deliberate anticlimax to move from the coming of the Davidic king and his great triumph back to the sinful state of Israel, the northern kingdom. (But as we have already seen these contrasts are a feature of Isaiah). For whereas the future was moving forward to triumph, the present was heading for disaster. As well as being concerned for Judah, Isaiah was desperately concerned for Israel in its present state, and we now have depicted a series of events in which God will reveal His anger against Israel because of their disobedience to the covenant, and will seek by chastisement to bring them back to Himself.

Isa 9:8 to Isa 10:4

The Four Chastisements ( Isa 9:8 to Isa 10:4 ).

The four chastisements are distinguished by their all ending with the words, ‘For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.’

Analysis.

a The first chastisement is the invasion by Syria and Philistia, seeking to make them join an alliance with them against Assyria (Isa 9:8-12).

b The second is the removal of their leadership (Isa 9:13-17).

b The third is the disintegration of their society (Isa 9:18-21).

a The fourth is bad leadership, rank injustice, and captivity (Isa 10:1-4).

In ‘a’ there is the threat of captivity and in the parallel it is to become a reality. In ‘b’ their leadership is to be removed, and in the parallel it results in their society becoming disjointed.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Isa 10:3 And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?

Isa 10:3 “And what will ye do in the day of visitation” Comments – A day of visitation is a time when God interrupts the natural flow of worldly events and moves supernaturally to effect His divine purpose and plan of redemption upon earth. It is a day when the physical laws of nature yield to the supernatural, divines laws of grace and mercy. In Isaiah it appears to refer to a day of judgment and destruction upon the people of Israel.

The phrase “day of visitation” is found in 1Pe 2:12 . With this epistle’s frequent references to the Second Coming of Christ, the phrase “in the day of visitation” most likely refers to the this event within this epistle, rather than a divine encounter for one individual. In Luk 19:44 if clearly refers to Jesus’ First Coming.

1Pe 2:12 , “Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.”

Luk 19:44 ,”And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

Isa 10:9  Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?

Isa 10:9 Comments – Damascus was taken by Assyria (2Ki 16:9).

2Ki 16:9, “And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him: for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.”

Isa 10:27 And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

Isa 10:27 Word Study on “shall be destroyed” Strong tells us that the Hebrew word “shall be destroyed” “chabal” ( ) (H2254) means, “to wind tightly (as a rope), i.e. to bind,” or “a pledge,” and figuratively, “to pervert, to destroy.” The Enhanced Strong says this word is found 29 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “destroy 7, take a pledge 5, pledge 5, bands 2, brought forth 2, at all 1, corrupt 1, corruptly 1, offend 1, spoil 1, travaileth 1, very 1, withholden 1.”

Isa 10:27 Word Study on “the anointing” Strong tells us that the Hebrew word “the anointing” “shemen” ( ) (H8081) literally means, “grease,” and figurative, “anointing.” The Enhanced Strong says this word is used 193 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “oil 165, ointment 14, olive 4, oiled 2, fat 2, things 2, misc 4.”

Isa 10:27 Comments – Isa 10:27 reminds us of Mat 11:28-30 where Jesus says that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

Mat 11:28-30, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Isa 10:28 He is come to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his carriages:

Isa 10:28 Word Study on “Aiath” The ISBE says the name of the city “Aiath” is the feminine construction for Ai, “a town of central Palestine, in the tribe of Benjamin, near and just east of Bethel and beside Bethaven near Jericho.” [29]

[29] Edward Mack, “Aiath,” and “Ai,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., c1915, 1939), in The Sword Project, v. 1.5.11 [CD-ROM] (Temple, AZ: CrossWire Bible Society, 1990-2008).

Comments – It was the second city taken on the invasion of Canaan.

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Prophecies Against Israel Isa 1:2 to Isa 12:6 contains a collection of prophecies against the nation of Israel. The phrase, “for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still,” is repeated five times within this passage of Scripture (Isa 5:25; Isa 9:12; Isa 9:17; Isa 9:21; Isa 10:4).

Also found within this first major section of Isaiah are three prophecies of the Messiah’s birth. These prophecies reflect three characteristics of the Messiah. He will be born of a virgin as the Son of God dwelling with mankind (Isa 7:14-15). He will rule over Israel in the Davidic lineage (Isa 9:6-7). He will come from the seed of David and be anointed as was David (Isa 11:1-5).

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Woe Upon Tyrants

v. 1. Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, in tyrannical legislation, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed, making and enforcing laws which bring unbearable oppressions to the poorer people of the land,

v. 2. to turn aside the needy from judgment, that is, to deprive them of their rights, of the justice due them, and to take away the right from the poor of My people, willfully and maliciously taking it from them, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless, the tyrants making themselves possessors of the property of the defenseless. They have reached the very heights of oppression and injustice.

v. 8. And what will ye do in the day of visitation, when God will visit their injustice upon them, and in the desolation, the sudden storm, crash, and collapse, which shall come from far? It is here hinted that God would send the enemy, who should avenge the poor by destroying their oppressors, from a far country. To whom will ye flee for help? this being a reference to Israel’s custom of seeking help from foreign nations. And where will ye leave your glory? that is, the treasures, valuables which they had piled up in practicing injustice and in treading down the poor.

v. 4. Without Me, rather, Nothing remains but that they shall bow down under the prisoners, their lot being even worse than that of other captives, and they shall fall under the slain, trodden under foot by others, hewn down in cold blood by their captors. Such is the lot of those who were formerly honorable and powerful, but abused their authority by tyrannical measures. For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still, for it is impossible to escape the punishment of the Lord when once He sets out to avenge the wrongs committed against the poor and defenseless.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Isa 10:1-4

The prophecy begun in Isa 9:8 terminates with this stanza, which contains a warning against injustice and oppression, addressed to Israel and Judah equally, and accompanied by the threat of a “day of desolation,” when those who have refused to make God their Refuge will have no resource, but to go into captivity with the “prisoners,” or to perish with the “slain.” A foreign conquest, accompanied by slaughter, and the deportation of captives, is not obscurely intimated.

Isa 10:1

Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees (comp. Isa 1:17, Isa 1:20, Isa 1:26; Isa 5:23, etc.). The perversion of judgment from the judgment-seat is the sin rebuked. It was certainly prevalent in Judah, it may also have been practiced in Israel. And that write grievousness, etc. Translate, and unto the writers that enregister oppression. The decrees of courts were, it is clear, carefully engrossed by the officials, probably upon parchment, every outward formality being observed, while justice itself was set at naught.

Isa 10:2

The poor the widow the fatherless. These were the classes who were the chief sufferers by the perversion of justice (comp. Isa 1:17, Isa 1:23). They were exactly the classes for whom God had most compassion, and whom he had commended in the Law to the tender care of his people (see note on Isa 9:17).

Isa 10:3

What will ye do in the day of visitation? “The day of visitation” is the day when God reckons with his servants, and demands an account from each of the work done in his vineyard, being prepared to recompense the good and punish the bad (comp. Hos 9:7). It is oftenest used in a bad sense because, unhappily, so many more are found to deserve punishment than reward. The desolation which shall come from far; rather, the crashing ruin (Cheyne). It is sudden, and complete destruction, rather than mere desolateness, that is threatened. Previous prophecies, especially Isa 7:17-20, had informed the Jews that it was to “come from far,” “by them that were beyond the river.” To whom will ye flee? The prophet speaks in bitter irony. Is there any one to whom ye can flee? any one who can protect you from the wrath of God? Ye well know there is no one. Where will ye leave your glory? With whom will ye deposit your riches, your magnificence, your jewels, your grand apparel? You cannot save them. They will all make to themselves wings, and “fly away like a bird” (Hos 9:11).

Isa 10:4

Without me. That this is a possible rendering of the word used seems proved by Hos 13:4. But here it scarcely suits the context. God does not speak directly, in the first person, elsewhere in the entire prophecy (Isa 9:8-10:4), but is spoken of in the third person throughout, as even in the present verse, where we have “his anger,” “his hand.” It is better, therefore, to give the word its ordinary meaning”unless,” “except.” Have they anywhere to flee to, unless they shall crouch amid the captives that are being carried off, or fall amid the slain? In other words, there is no escape for them; they must either submit to captivity or death. For all this, etc. Even when the two kingdoms were destroyed, and the captivity of both was complete, God’s wrath was not fully appeased, his anger was not wholly turned away. Both peoples suffered grievous things in their captivity, as appears from the Book of Daniel (Isa 3:1-26; Isa 6:1-13.) and other places. It took seventy years for God’s anger to be appeased in the case of Judah (2Ch 36:21), while in the case of Israel it was never appeased. Crushed beneath the iron heel of their conquerors, Israel ceased to exist as a nation.

Isa 10:5-19

SECTION V. PROPHECIES OF WOE UPON FOREIGN NATIONS (Isa 10:5-23)

ASSYRIA, AFTER BEING GOD‘S INSTRUMENT TO PUNISH ISRAEL, SHALL HERSELF BE PUNISHED IN HER TURN. The wicked are a sword in the hand of God (Psa 17:13), wherewith he executes his judgments; but this fact is hid from them, and they imagine that they are successful through their own strength and might. So it was with Assyria (Isa 10:5-14), which its long career of victory had made proud and arrogant above measure. God now, by the mouth of Isaiah, makes known his intention of bringing down the pride of Assyria, and laying her glory in the dust, by a sudden and great destruction (verses 15:19), after she has served his purposes.

Isa 10:5

O Assyrian; literally, Ho! Asshur. “Asshur” is the nation personified, and is here addressed as an individual. The transition from Isa 10:1-4 is abrupt, and may be taken to indicate an accidental juxtaposition of two entirely distinct prophecies. Or Assyria may be supposed to have been in the prophet’s thought, though not in his words, when he spoke of “prisoners” and “slain” in the first clause of Isa 10:4. The rod of mine anger (comp. Jer 51:20, where it is said of Babylon, “Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war; for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy the kingdoms”). So Assyria was now the “rod” wherewith God chastised his enemies. The true “staff” in the hand of Assyria, wherewith she smote the peoples, was “God’s indignation.”

Isa 10:6

I will send him against an hypocritical nation; or, against a corrupt nation. Israel in the wider sense, inclusive of Judah, seems to be intended. The people of my wrath; i.e. “the people who are the object of my wrath.” Will I give him a charge. In 2Ki 18:25 Sennacherib nays, “Am I come up without the Lord (Jehovah) against thin, lace, to destroy it? The Lord (Jehovah) said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it” (compare below, Isa 36:10). It has been usual to consider Sennacherib’s words a vain boast; but if God instructed Nebuchadnezzar through dreams, may he not also by the same means have “given charges” to Assyrian monarchs? To take the spoil, and to take the prey; rather, to gather spoil, and seize prey. The terms used carry the thoughts back to Isa 8:1-4, and to the symbolic name, Maher-shalal-hash-baz. And to tread them down; literally, to make it a trampling. “It” refers to “nation” in the first clause.

Isa 10:7

Howbeit he meaneth not so. “Assyria,” i.e; “does not view the matter in this lightis not aware that she is merely God’s instrument in working out his will. On the contrary, it is in her heart to destroy the nations for her own advantage, and she imagines that she is doing it by her own strength.”

Isa 10:8

Are not my princes altogether kings? One mark of the superiority of Assyria to other countries was to be seen in the fact that her king had not mere officers, but vassal kings under him. Hence the title “king of kings” assumed by so many Assyrian monarchs. While conquered territories were by degrees and to a certain extent absorbed into the empire and placed under prefects (see the ‘Eponym Canon’), an outer zone of more loosely organized dependencies was always maintained by the Assyrians; and these dependencies continued ordinarily to be administered by their native monarchs. These are the “princes” who were “altogether kings.”

Isa 10:9

Is not Calno as Carehemish? A further proof of superiority, and ground of confidence, lay in the further fact, that the strongest cities had, one and all, succumbed to the Assyrian arms, and been laid in ruins to punish them for offering resistance. Six such cities are mentionedCalneh, probably Niffer, in Lower Mesopotamia; Carchemish, on the right bank of the Euphrates in Lat. 36 30′ nearly; Hamath, the “great Hamath” of Amos (Amo 6:2), in Coelesyria on the routes; Arpad, perhaps Tel-Erfad, near Aleppo; Damascus, and Samaria. Calneh was one of the cities of Nimrod (Gen 10:10), and, according to the LXX; was “the place where the tower was built.” It may have been taken by Tiglath-Pileser in one of his expeditious into Babylonia. Amos (Amo 6:2) speaks of it as desolate in his day. Carchemish (Assyrian Gargamis) was a chief city of the Hittites, and has been called “their northern capital.” Long confounded by geographers with Circesium at the junction of the Khabour with the Euphrates, it has recently been proved to have occupied a far more northern position, and is now generally identified with the ruins discovered by Mr. George Smith at Jerabis or Jerabhs. It was conquered by Sargon in B.C. 717, when “its people were led captive, and scattered over the Assyrian empire, while Assyrian colonists were brought to people the city in their place; Carchemish being formally annexed to Assyria, and placed under an Assyrian governor”. Hamath was originally a Canaanite city (Gen 10:18). By the time of David it had become the scat of an independent monarchy (2Sa 8:9, 2Sa 8:10), and so continued until its reduction by the Assyrians. We find it leagued with the Hittites, the Syrians of Damascus, and the Israelites against Assyria about B.C. 850. About B.C. 720 it was taken by Sargon, who beheaded its king, and probably reduced it to ruins. The name remains in the modern Hamah, where many curious inscriptions have been recently dug up. Arpad was attacked by Tiglath-Pileser in the early part of his reign, and reduced to subjection. It revolted in conjunction with Hamath from Sargon, and was severely punished (‘Ancient Monarchies,’ l.s.c.). Is not Samaria as Damascus? This mention of Samaria among the subjugated and ruined cities may undoubtedly be prophetic; but the connection with Carchemish, Hamath, and Arpad all of them towns reduced by Sargon within the years B.C. 720-717points rather to the verse being historical, and would seem to indicate that the date of the entire prophecyverses 5-19is subsequent to the capture of the cities, and so not earlier than B.C. 716.

Isa 10:10

As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols. “Found” here means “reached,” “punished subjugated.” It is quite in accordance with Assyrian ideas that the conquered countries should be called “kingdoms of the idols” (literally, “no gods”). The Assyrian monarchs regarded their own gods as alone really deserving of the name, and made war very much with the object of proving the superiority of their deities over those of their neighbors. Hence their practice of carrying off the idols from the various cities which they conquered, or else of inscribing on them “the praises of Asshur.” And whose graven images; rather, and their graven images. Did excel. In preciousness of material or in workmanship, or both. The Assyrians went near to identifying the idols with the gods themselves. Those of Jerusalem and of Samaria. The chief Samaritan idols were the golden calves at Dan and Bethel; but, in addition to these, “images and groves were set up in every high hill and under every green tree” (2Ki 17:10), images of Baal, and Ashtoreth, and perhaps Beltis, and Chemosh, and Moloch. Even in Judah and in Jerusalem itself there were idols. Ahaz “made molten images for Baalim” (2Ch 28:2). The brazen serpent was worshipped as an idol at Jerusalem until Hezekiah destroyed it; and probably, even after the reformation of Hezekiah (2Ki 18:4), many Jews retained privately the images, which he required them to destroy (2Ch 31:1). Isaiah had already declared, speaking of Judah rather than of Israel, “Their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made” (Isa 2:8).

Isa 10:11

Shall I not so do to Jerusalem and her idols? The speaker ignores the fact of any difference in kind between the religion of Judaea and that of the neighboring countries. He speaks as if he knew nothing of any religion without idols. No doubt Assyrian ideas on the subject of the religion of the Jews were at this time, as they were even later (2Ki 18:22), exceedingly vague and incorrect.

Isa 10:12

Wherefore; rather, but. The final result shall be such as “the Assyrian” little expected. When the Lord hath performed his whole work. The “work” assigned to Assyria was the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, and a share in the trial, punishment, and discipline of Judah. The last task seems to have been the humiliation of Manasseh, which brought about his repentance (2Ch 33:11-13). Soon after this the troubles began which led to her destruction. I will punish. The sudden change from the third to the first person is harsh and abnormal, but not without parallels in other passages of Isaiah (see Isa 3:1-4; Isa 5:3, Isa 5:4, etc.). The fruit of the stout heart; i.e. the actions, language, etc; which flowed from the stoutness of heartsuch language, e.g; as that of verses 8-11 and 13, 14. Of the King of Assyria. The menace is not leveled against any one particular king, as Sargon, or Sennacherib; but against the monarchy itself, which from first to last was actuated by the same spirit, and breathed the same tone, of pride, selfishness, and cruelty. (See the royal inscriptions, passim, which become more revolting as time goes on.)

Isa 10:13

For he saith. Neither this speech nor that in Isa 10:8-11, nor again that given in Isa 37:24, Isa 37:25, is to be regarded as historical in the sense of being the actual utterance of any Assyrian monarch. All are imaginary, speeches, composed by the prophet, whereby he expresses in his own language the thoughts which Assyrian kings entertained in their hearts. I have removed the bounds of the people; rather, of peoples. Assyrian monarchs take as one of their titles “the remover of boundaries and landmarks”. And have robbed their treasures. The plunder of conquered countries is constantly recorded by the Assyrian monarchs as one of the most important results of each successful expedition. It is not infrequently represented in the sculptures. I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. The passage is obscure; and many different renderings have been given. Perhaps the best is that of Mr. Cheyne, “I have brought down, like a mighty one, those that sat on thrones.” Abbir, however, the word translated “a mighty one,” as often means “a bull” (see Psa 22:12; Psa 50:13; Psa 68:30; Isa 34:7; Jer 1:11).

Isa 10:14

My hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people; rather, of the peoples. The Assyrians are fond of comparing their enemies to birds; but the exact metaphor here used does not, I believe, occur in the inscriptions. The nations’ treasures are like eggs found in deserted nests, which the hunter gathers without any, even the slightest, risk. All the earth. Oriental hyperbole. Assyrian monarchs often say that they “have subdued all the races of men,” or “carried the glory of their name to the ends of the earth,” or “overthrown the armies of the whole world in battle.” Peeped; rather, chirped (see note on Isa 8:19). None of the inhabitants offered even such feeble resistance as a bird makes when its nest is robbed.

Isa 10:15

Shall the axe boast itself? Here the prophet takes the word, and rebukes Assyria for her folly in forgetting, or not perceiving, that she is a mere instrument, like an axe, a saw, a rod, or a stuff. The saw him that shaketh it; rather, him that moveth it to and fro. The action of sawing is alluded to. As if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up; rather, as if a rod were to move them to and fro that lift it up. For Assyria to assert herself as if she were independent of God is like a rod attempting to sway the hand that holds it. It is a complete inversion of the natural order of things. Or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood. Translate, or as if d staff should lift up that which is not wood; i.e. “as if a staff should take action and lift up its holder, who is not wood, but flesh and blood.”

Isa 10:16

Therefore shall the Lord send among his fat ones leanness. A continuation of Isa 10:12, showing what the nature of Assyria’s punishment shall be. The prophet expresses it by two imagesfirst, that of a wasting sickness; and secondly, that of a fire. The first image expresses that gradual decay of national spirit which saps the vital strength of a nation; the second is more suited to denote some external attack under which the weakened nation should succumb. There are traces, in the later history of Assyria, both of increasing internal weakness through luxury and effeminacy, and of violent external attacks culminating in the combined Median and Babylonian invasion, before which her power collapsed.

Isa 10:17

The light of Israel. A new name of God. The idea on which it is based may be found in the Psalms (Psa 27:1; Psa 84:11), and again in Isaiah (Isa 60:19). God enlightens his people, cheers them, comforts them spiritually, as the light of the sun enlightens, cheers, and comforts men physically. Christ, as true God, is “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (Joh 1:9). Shall be for a fire. As the same material fire which gives light, warmth, and comfort may burn and destroy, so the spiritual light, finding fit material, scorches and consumes. The fire which devours Assyria is to be kindled by God. His Holy One; i.e. “the Holy One of Israel” (see Isa 1:4). It shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers. The destruction of Assyria shall resemble that of Israel, in which Assyria was the instrument (Isa 9:18). It shall be as complete, as terrible, and as final. In one day. Scarcely “in one battle” (Cheyne); for the destruction of Assyria was effected by many battles, many sieges, and much exhausting ravage. “In one day” rather means “at one and the same time,” “within a brief space.” It is not to he taken literally.

Isa 10:18

Forest fruitful field. “Forest” and “fruitful field” (carmel) are sometimes united together, sometimes contrasted. Literally, they denote wild and cultivated woodland. Used symbolically, as here, they are not so much intended to designate different parts of Assyria’s glory, as to convey the idea that the destruction will be universal. Both soul and body. Here metaphor is suddenly dropped, and Isaiah shows that he is speaking of the Assyrian people, not of the land or its products. Their destruction, wicked as they were, would be one both of body and soul. As when a standard-bearer fainteth; rather, as when one that is faint fainteth. Utter prostration and exhaustion is indicated, whichever way the passage is translated.

Isa 10:19

The rest of the trees; i.e. these that escape the burningshall be few; literally, a number; i.e. so few that their number shall be apparent.

Isa 10:20-34

CONSOLATION FOR THE FAITHFUL IN ISRAEL. The destruction of Assyria shall be followedhow soon, is not saidby the return of a “remnant of Israel,” not so much to their own land, as to God (Isa 10:20, Isa 10:21). The remnant, however, shall be but a remnantjudgment shall have overtaken the balk of the people (Isa 10:22, Isa 10:23). Still, there is reason for the faithful to take courage and be of good heart; Assyria will shortly receive a check (Isa 10:24-27)when her armies swoop upon Jerusalem, God will swoop down on her (Isa 10:28-34).

Isa 10:20

In that day; i.e. “at that time”the time of the destruction of Assyria. The remnant of Israel (see Isa 1:9). Isaiah had indicated his firm belief in the existence of this faithful remnant and its return, in the name which he had given to his son, Shear-Jashub (see note on Isa 7:3). The escaped. Those who escape from the destruction to be caused by the Assyrian invasion. Shall no more again stay upon him that smote them. We are told in the Second Book of Chronicles (Isa 28:23) that Abaz “sacrificed to the gods of Damascus which smote him“and we know that he also trusted to Tiglath-Pileser, who “distressed him and strengthened him not” (2Ch 28:21). Among the “remnant” there shall be no such mistaken confidences. But shall stay upon the Lord; i.e. “shall put their trust in God; and him only”.

Isa 10:21

The mighty God (comp. Isa 9:6). The name is not, however, Messianic in this place.

Isa 10:22, Isa 10:23

These verses are exegetical of the term “remnant,” and bring out its full force. The promise had been made to Abraham that his seed should be “like the sand of the sea for multitude” (Gen 22:17). This promise had been fulfilled (1Ki 4:20); but now the sins of the people would produce a reversal of it. It would be a remnant, and only a remnant, of the nation that would escape. Judah would have to make a fresh start as from a new beginning (see Ezr 2:64).

Isa 10:22

The consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness; rather, the consummation (Dan 9:27) determined on is one that overflows with righteousness (comp. Isa 28:22). The prophet means that God is about to visit the land in such a spirit of severe justice that it cannot be expected that more than a remnant will survive the awful visitation.

Isa 10:23

The Lord shall make a consumption; rather, a consummationa final and decisive end of things. Even determined; i.e. “determined on beforehand.” In the midst of all the land. “Throughout the entire land,” not merely in some portions of it.

Isa 10:24

O my people be not afraid. God now addresses those who are faithful to him among the people; they have no need to fearhe will bring them safely through all the coming troubles. He shall smite thee; rather, if he smite thee; or, though he smite thee. After the manner of Egypt; i.e. as the Egyptians did in the oppression that preceded the Exodus. The yoke of Assyria was heavy even upon the nations that submitted to her. She claimed to march her armies through their territories at her pleasure, and probably pressed men and cattle into her service. She exacted a heavy tribute, and otherwise “distressed” her many vassals.

Isa 10:25

The indignation shall cease; rather, there shall be an end of wrath; i.e. “my wrath against Israel shall come to an end”Israel having been sufficiently punished. And mine auger in their destruction; rather, and my anger shall be to their destruction; i.e. to the destruction of the Assyrians.

Isa 10:26

The Lord shall stir up a scourge for him; or, lift up a scourge over him. Isaiah uses the metaphor of the “scourge” again in Isa 28:16, Isa 28:18. It is rare in Scripture, though common among the Greek and Latin writers. According to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb (comp. Isa 9:4). The “slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb” was that great destruction of the Midianites which was begun by the three hundred under Gideon, and completed by the men of Ephraim, whereof we have an account in Jdg 7:19-25. Its counterpart in Assyrian history would seem to be the destruction of Sennacherib’s army, as related in 2Ki 19:35. As his rod was upon the sea. An allusion to the drowning of Pharaoh’s host in the Red Sea. This was a nearer parallel to the destruction of Sennacherib’s army than the slaughter of the Midianites, since it was wholly miraculous. By “his rod” we may understand the rod of Moses, endued by God with miraculous powers (Exo 4:3, Exo 4:4; Exo 14:16, Exo 14:27). After the manner of Egypt; i.e. “after the manner of his action in Egypt.”

Isa 10:27

The yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing; literally, before the oil; i.e. “the Anointed One”primarily Hezekiah, “the anointed of the Lord” (2Sa 19:21; 2Ki 11:12; Lam 4:20) for the time being, but with a further refer-once to the Messiah, who breaks all the bands of the wicked asunder, and casts away their cords from him (Psa 2:2, Psa 2:3); and who is represented by each prince of the house of David, as he was by David himself.

Isa 10:28-32

This graphic portraiture of the march of an Assyrian army on Jerusalem is probably not historic, but prophetic. Isaiah sees it in vision (Isa 1:1), and describes it like an eye-witness. There are at present no sufficient means of deciding to what particular attack it refers, or indeed whether the march is one conducted by Sennacherib or Sargon. Sargon calls himself in one inscription “conqueror of the land of Judah” (Layard, ‘Inscriptions,’ Isa 33:8), and the details of the present prophecy, especially verse 9, suit the reign of Sargon rather than that of his son, so that on the whole it is perhaps most probable that some expedition of Sargon’s is portrayed.

Isa 10:28

He is come to Aiath. “Aiath” is probably Ai (Jos 8:1-28), with a feminine termination. It lay about three miles south of Bethel, which had become Assyrian with the conquest of Samaria. If an Assyrian army mustered at Bethel, it would naturally enter Judaean territory at Ai. He is passed to Migron; rather, he has passed through Migron. “Migron” is mentioned as a village in the territory of Gibeah of Benjamin (1Sa 14:2); but the Migron of this passage must have been further to the north. He hath laid up his carriages; i.e. “has left his baggage-train.” Michmash was about seven miles nearly due north of Jerusalem. The heavy baggage might conveniently be left there, especially as it was difficult of attack (1Sa 14:4-13), while a lightly equipped body of troops made a dash at Jerusalem.

Isa 10:29

They are gone over the passage. The “passage of Michmash” (1Sa 13:23)the deeply sunken valley, called now the Wady Sutveinit, between Michmash (Mukkmas) and Geba (Jeba). They have taken up their lodging at Geba; or, at Geba they rest for the night. Having crossed the wady, they bivouac on the crest of the hills enclosing it on the south. Ramah Gibeah of Saul. Ramah is, no doubt, Er-Ram, a village on an eminence, as the name implies, about six miles north of Jerusalem, and on the direct road from Beitin. Gibeah of Saul is thought to have occupied the site of the modern Tuleil-el-Ful, two miles nearer Jerusalem. It is certainly a distinct place from Geba. The inhabitants evacuate these two places during the night.

Isa 10:30

Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim. Gallim and Laish must have been villages between Geba and Jerusalem; but it is impossible to fix their site. Anathoth (now Aaata) obtains mention in Joshua as a city of refuge in the territory of Benjamin (Jos 21:18). It was Jeremiah’s birthplace (Jer 1:1). Gallim was the birthplace of the man who became the second husband of Michal, Saul’s daughter. Laish is not elsewhere mentioned. Cause it to be heard unto Laish; rather, hearken, O Laisha.

Isa 10:31

Madmenah Gebim. These are, like Gallim and Laisha, villages otherwise unknown. They must have been within a mile or two of Jerusalem, towards the north. Their inhabitants fly as the Assyrians approach.

Isa 10:32

As yet shall he remain at Nob that day; literally, yet that day (is he) at Nob to halt. The Assyrians pitch their camp at Nob, the priestly city destroyed by Saul (1Sa 22:19), 1 which was evidently within sight of Jerusalem. Major Wilson’s conjecture, that it occupied the site of the later Scopus, is probable.

Isa 10:33

The Lord shall lop the bough with terror. A check to the Assyrian arms is intended, but of what nature is not clear. The “lopping of the bough with terror“ might indicate a panic, such as that which seized the Syrians and made Benhadad II. raise the siege of Samaria (2Ki 7:6, 2Ki 7:7). But the expressions used later on,” hewn down,” “cut down,” “shall fall,” rather imply a defeat.

Isa 10:34

He shall cut down; or, one shall eat down; Jehovah being, no doubt, intended. Lebanon (comp. Eze 31:3, “Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon”). Here the comparison is enlarged, and Assyria appears as Lebanon itself with all its cedar woods. By a mighty one; rather, a glorious one (comp. Isa 33:21, where the word here usedadiris an epithet of Jehovah).

HOMILETICS

Isa 10:3

God is man’s only sure Refuge in the day of calamity.

“God is our Refuge and Strength, a very present Help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof” (Psa 46:1-3). So sang the psalmist, and so Israel and Judah felt, so long as they clung to the worship of Jehovah, and served him, and strove to keep his laws. As their fidelity wavered, and they grew cold in his service, and allowed themselves to be attracted by the sensuous religions of the nations around them, their trust in Jehovah departed, and they could no longer look to him as a Refuge. Whither, then, should they look? Should it be to the gods of the nations? or to foreign alliances? or to their own strong arms and dauntless hearts?

I. FALSE GODS NO SURE REFUGE. Ahaz at one time “sacrificed to the gods Of Damascus which smote him” (2Ch 28:23), thinking to obtain help from them; but “they were the ruin of him, and of all Israel.” Other kings of Judah and Israel trusted in Baal, or Chemosh, or Moloch, or Beltis, or Ashtoreth. But none found any of them a” sure refuge.” Indeed, how should false gods help, when they are either fictions of the imagination, mere nonentities, or else evil spirits, rebels against the Almighty, cast down by him from heaven? If the former, they can have no power at all, for how should something come out of nothing? If the latter, they are powerless, at any rate against God, who has proved their inability to resist him, and could at any time annihilate them by a word.

II. THE KINGS OF THE EARTH NO SURE REFUGE. “Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them” (Psa 146:3). Hoshea trusted in Shebek of Egypt (So), Hezekiah in Tirhakah, Zedekiah in Pharaoh-Hophra; but all were equally disappointed. Even Ahaz obtained no real advantage from his appeal to Tiglath-Pileser, who “distressed him, but strengthened him not” (2Ch 28:20). Foreign aid is always a poor thing to trust to; for the foreigner necessarily consults mainly his own interest, which he may find to conflict with ours at any moment. Let all go well, and an obligation is incurred, which it may cost us more than we bargained for to repay. Let things go ill, and we experience perhaps the fate of the horse when he called in man’s aid against the stag. In the best case, foreign powers can help us only against man, not against God. They can never be a “sure refuge.” “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (Isa 2:22).

III. MEN‘S OWN STRONG ARMS AND STOUT HEARTS NO SURE REFUGE. Better certainly to trust to these than to false gods or fickle princes. In many a strait, these will help us a long way. But let there come a time of serious trouble, of overpowering hostile force pressing upon a nation, or deep grief or dangerous sickness upon an individual, and their weakness and insufficiency is at once shown. In the one case, the strong man has met with a stronger, and all his struggles do but add to his sufferings. In the other, the heart and hands fail when the call is made on them. The stalwart frame is bowed down with grief or illness; the heart is “withered like grass” (Psa 102:4), or become “like wax that is melted” (Psa 22:14). Man discovers under these circumstances that he has no strength an ‘himself,’ and, unless he can find an external, refuge, is lost absolutely. Happy they who at such times can feel with David, The Lord is my Rock, and nay Fortress, and my Deliverer; nay God, nay Strength, in whom I will trust; my Buckler, and the Horn of nay salvation, and nay high Tower” (Psa 18:2). “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his Name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psa 23:1-4).

Isa 10:5-19

Assyria, a notable example of pride and its punishment.

History furnishes no better example of pride and its punishment than that of Assyria. The pride of the Assyrians is equally apparent in Scripture and on the native monuments.

I. ASSYRIA‘S PRIDE AS SHOWN FORTH IN SCRIPTURE.

1. In Rabshakeh’s embassy 2Ki 18:19-35) Rabshakeh not only scoffs at the military power of Judaea and Egypt, but ridicules the idea that Jehovah can deliver Jerusalem if the Assyrians attack it. “Hearken not unto Hezekiah,” he says, “when he persuadeth you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the King of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath, and of Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? have they delivered Samaria out of mine hand? Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand?”

2. In the words by which Isaiah expresses what was in the heart of Assyrian kings, in Isa 10:8-11, Isa 10:13, Isa 10:14, and Isa 37:24, Isa 37:25.

II. ASSYRIA‘S PRIDE AS INDICATED BY THE MONUMENTS. Here we may note:

1. The titles assumed by the kings, which are such as the following: “the great king “, “the powerful king,” “the king of kings,” “the lord of lords,” “the supreme monarch of monarchs,” “the favorite of the great gods,” “the illustrious chief who is armed with the scepter and girt with the girdle of power over mankind,” and the like.

2. The contempt poured upon adversaries, who are “wicked people,” “impious heretics,” “enemies of Asshur,” “traitors,” and “rebels.”

3. The claim to a series of uninterrupted successes, without notification of a single defeat, or even check, as ever suffered by the Assyrian arms. Their pride forbids the monarchs to allow that they ever experience a reverse.

III. ASSYRIA‘S PUNISHMENT. The downfall of Assyria is sudden, strange, abnormal. She seems at the zenith of her power, stretching out her arm on the one side to Ethiopia, on the other to Lydia and the coasts of the AEgean, when, almost without warning, her glory suffers eclipse. A wild nation from the north, previously almost unknown, invades her land, devastates her fields, threatens her towns, destroys her material prosperity. Scarcely has this visitation passed by, when she is attacked from the east. An old enemy, long contended with and long despised, has in some wonderful way increased in strength, and assumes a menacing attitude. She trembles, but she puts on a bold face and confronts the danger. Summoning to her aid the forces of her subject allies, she retires within the strong walls of her capital city, and there awaits attack. But the chief of the subject allies deserts her standard, leagues itself with her main enemy, and joins in the siege of Nineveh. After a stubborn defense the city falls, and with it the empire, which has lasted nearly seven centuries. The downfall is strange, sudden, tragic, astonishing. Scripture alone reveals its cause. Scripture puts it before us as God’s doinghis judgment on Assyria’s pride, his predetermined and distinctly predicted punishment. Because “the axe boasted itself against him that hewed therewith, and the saw magnified itself against him that moved it” (Isa 37:15), “therefore the Lord, the Lord of hosts, sent among Assyria’s fat ones leanness, and under her glory kindled a burning like the burning of a fire,” and she was consumed, “soul and body,” and ceased to be a nation.

The warning may well be taken to heart by modern countries, which set themselves against God; by modern scientists, who in the pride of their intellect deny God; and by the irreligious generally, who practically deny and defy him.

Isa 10:27

Blessings through the anointing.

Blessings come to men “through the anointing” in a twofold way:

(1) indirectly, through the anointing of Jesus;

(2) directly, through their own anointing.

I. THROUGH THE ANOINTING OF JESUS. The anointing of Jesus was that complete sanctification of his human nature by the Holy Spirit, which resulted from his most close and perfect union with the other Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, whereby his human nature was never left an instant without the Spirit’s gracious influence, but was ever, as it developed itself, sanctified in every part to the highest degree possible.

1. Hence comes to us the blessing of having a perfect Pattern, and that a personal one. Abstract standards of virtue are all more or less imperfect, and are weak to move us; they create no enthusiasm; they draw forth no love. We need a personal standardan example whom we may imitate, a master whom we may admire, a friend whom we may cherish in our heart of hearts. Ancient philosophers told men who were striving to be good, to look out for the most virtuous man whom they could find, and then imitate him. But every merely human model was imperfect; each led his followers more or less astray. It is our happiness to have a perfect Modela real Person; One whose character is so clearly depicted that we cannot mistake it; One whom we may feel to be indeed a Friend; One whom we may at once revere and love.

2. We have, further, through the anointing of Jesus, the blessing of a full and complete satisfaction and atonement for all our sins. No atonement for the sins of others could be made but by a spotless sacrifice. Jesus was spotless, “through the anointing.” It is thus “through the anointing” only that we have our perfect confidence in reconciliation having been made for us, our sins blotted out, and our pardon obtained from an offended God, who will receive us in his Son and for his Son‘s merits.

II. THROUGH MEN‘S OWN ANOINTING. “We have an unction from the Holy One” (1Jn 2:20), if we are Christians at all, and through that unction obtain more blessings than we can enumerate; as

(1) comfort and encouragement from him who is “the Comforter” (Joh 14:26), who encourages humble souls, and cheers up those who are depressed, and infuses hope into those who are ready to despair of their salvation;

(2) strength from One who is stronger than man, who can enter into our hearts, and give us the power both to will and to do of his good pleasure;

(3) release from the bondage of sin through the “free Spirit,” who is able to overcome Satan, and release us from slavery to evil habits, and make us free and willing servants of God;

(4) light and knowledge of the truth from him who is “the Spirit of truth,” among whose gifts are wisdom, and knowledge, and faith, and discerning of spirits, and prophecy (1Co 12:8-10);

(5) holiness from “the Sanctifier,” the Holy Spiritthe “Spirit of holiness” (Rom 1:4). The anointing of the Holy Spirit once received through the mercy of God, naturally and almost necessarily, unless we grieve and vex the Spirit by our perversity, abides in us (1Jn 2:27), and teaches us, and guides us, and strengthens and sustains us, and purifies our hearts and lives, and enables us to grow in grace, and press on ever towards the mark of our high calling in Christ, and become more and more conformed to the image of him to whom God gave not his Spirit “by measure” (Joh 3:1-36 :84).

HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON

Isa 10:5-15

Assyria the rod of Jehovah.

I. A WARLIKE POWER MAY BE THE PENAL INSTRUMENT OF PROVIDENCE. Assyria is here described as the “staff of Jehovah’s anger,” the “rod of his wrath,” appointed to march against a people who have excited the Divine indignation. As he plunders and spoils, and proceeds on his devastating way, he may be in effect like Attila, the “scourge of God,” destined like a wholesome tempest to purify the moral air of a corrupt age, and to prepare for a better sanitary state.

II. YET HE WHO IS BUT AN INSTRUMENT OF ANOTHER WILL MAY IGNORE HIS OFFICE AND WORK. The Assyrian’s thoughts are bent on destruction. His motive is personal ambition. In haughty pride he not only overvalues his power, but mistakes its nature. His courtiers, he vaunts, are equal to kings. All foreign lands without distinction are to meet the same doom from him. As the heathen kingdoms of the north have been subdued by him, powerful and many as the gods had been, so the little kingdom of Judah, with its few gods or idols, will not be able to withstand him. As a heathen, the Assyrian recognizes, though in a mistaken way, the power of religion as the mainstay of a state. The idols or fetishes are to him the signs of a real supernatural power residing in the nation.

III. DIVINE DENUNCIATION OF VAIN–GLORY. When Jehovah executes his judgments at the right time, this insolent pride will be punished.

1. Its folly exposed. The prophet reads the heart of the vain-glorious conqueror. He is saying to himself, “It was the strength of my hand, it was the clearness of my own intelligence, that accomplished these victories, that cast down my powerful foes. I was like a boy pillaging a deserted nest.”

2. Its fallacy rebuked. It is as it’ the axe should boast that it does the work of the hewer, or as if the saw were to brag against the sawyer, or the staff were to boast that it swings the hand of him who holds itthat the lifeless instrument raises the living hand. How deeply do these thoughts run through the lore of Israel down to Paul, who uses the image of the potter and the clay in a similar manner! Says Lord Bacon, “It was prettily devised of AEsop; the fly sat upon the axletree of the chariot-wheel, and said,’ What a dust do I raise!’ So there are. stone vain persons, that whatsoever goeth alone or moveth upon greater means, if they have ever so little hand in it, they think it is they that carry it.” But

“All service ranks the same with God
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.”
J.

Isa 10:16-23

Judgment and conversion.

I. FIGURES OF JUDGMENT. The Assyrian is viewed under the image of a stout, well-fed body, into which a wasting disease comes by. Divine judgment. Again, that judgment is depicted as a flaming fire, kindling and devouring thorns and making a swift end to the towering beauty of the forest trees, the smiling pleasantness of the fruitful field. The remnant of the host will soon be counted “on one’s fingers,” as a boy might count the still standing stems in a wood devastated by the fiery element. The decline of a sick man, lastly, may represent the falling away of a nation’s power. At best, what is humanity but a flower fading in its pride? As we read in the ‘Prometheus’ of AEschylus, “Its strength, is it strong; its beauty, is it fair? What hope have they, these dying briers, living one day long? How like a dream they go, this poor blind manhood, drifted from its end!” And in the light of moral disapproval, of Divine judgment, a declining nation seems to be under a blight, whose ravages cannot be checked. Where are the ancient civilizations, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome? Their root was long ago cankered, and their blossom went up as dust. The explorer, digging out a statue here, or there deciphering an inscription, helps us to construct the picture of cities that were magnificent poems in stone, of a life to which no secret of pleasure or of power was denied. Were such heights in vain reached for mankind? Were yonder works of mighty kings the efforts of giants who fought against God? Rather let us say that it is he who both raises up and sets downraises up to illustrate the greatness of the spirit of man, his breath; casts down to show the bitterness of human pride and the vanity of human ambitions. As we survey the remains of the “cloud-capp’d towers and gorgeous palaces” of Nineveh and Persepolis, we are reminded that all earth’s splendor is but a dream, from which we must again and again awake anew, to find in the spiritual the only eternal; in the right the only enduring throne of potentates; in the sweet happiness of millions, not in the multitude of armed men, the mirror of God’s will on earth.

II. CONVERSION THROUGH JUDGMENT. It was false reliances that corrupted Judah and Israel As faith in the true objects of faith is nothing but strength, so the illusion which tempts us to trust where there is nothing in reality to lean on, must betray us. Men under such illusions will confide in their deadly enemy as a bosom friend; will invite the point of the weapon aimed at the heart; will “stay themselves upon them that smite them.” We are limp, drooping creatures. Rare is he who walks with head quite erect, with eye undauntedly fixed on the unseen, with heart bound up in principle alone. If we crave countenance in our foibles, much more in our serious projects. And never was there craze, weakness, silliness, or sin, for which abettors may not be found. Never have we so sought confirmation in views that should never have been entertained, but the hour of disenchantment has come, soon or late. The reed breaks, the cistern leaks; the soft foundation gives, and the ominous crack appears in our dwelling. And then we return to “stay ourselves on the Holy One of Israel with faithfulness.” Or so the prophet forecasts the effect of his people’s disenchantment. “The remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob to the Hero-God.” He the only Head, the only Battle-leader, as the only Prince of Peace, will be found again in the day of adversity, at least by a few. As in the olden time but a few were saved in the ark from the great flood, so from these overflowing judgments which are to descend, a few, though only a few, will be able to escape. A public end and decision of these controversies between Jehovah and his people is to be made, and it cannot be delayed nor averted.

1. To the prophetic consciousness it seems, at any epoch, that “the whole world lies in wickedness,” and that the righteous are but a very small remnant.

2. Historically, such a view seems to hold good. At critical epochs, England has probably been saved by the virtuous, the Christian, the self-denying few.

3. But history is too profound for any mortal reading or rendering. If nations have passed away notwithstanding that they had a core of true hearts among them; if Israel still remains, though her lamp has been removed from its stand, there is, doubtless, a deeper meaning in the prophet’s words. It is the “remnant” which has given us our Hebrew Scriptures. From the caldron of suffering, exile, external sorrow, came forth the fine gold of the great prophet of the Captivity, and of many of the psalmists. Every nation that leaves noble and Divine thoughts for the possession of mankind forever; every individual who, out of the wreck of life’s mistakes, bequeaths some legacy of truth to posterity, fulfils in a way the prophecies of the recovery of the remnant.J.

Isa 10:24-34

The mighty laid low.

I. ENCOURAGEMENT AGAINST FEAR. Let not Judah fear the Assyrian, who, like the Egyptian in the days of yore, wields over her the rod of the slave-driver. In a short time, the hot tide of Divine wrath will pass from Israel, and the Assyrians will in turn feel it. The scourge that was laid in the ancient time on the back of the Egyptian oppressor will be brandished over the heads of the Assyrians. Their burden will fall from Judah’s shoulder, from Judah’s neck the yoke. The proverb says, “A youth is ruined by fat,” and so will the swollen bulk of the Assyrian body melt away. There is a play in the Hebrew on the words “yoke” and “youth.” The prophet in a word-picture paints the onward march of the great host. Swiftly he comes on, spreading trembling and causing flight before him. Panic-struck clamors sound through the vales, and from hill to hill the alarum is given. Fugitives pour in through the gates of the city. Already the invader is at Nob, near Jerusalem, and has his hand lifted on high, as it were, to smite the sacred hill with a fatal blow. Then suddenly his own crown is cleft by the hand of Jehovah; the lofty crested warriors fall as the trees in the forest before the woodman’s axe. This Lebanon of warlike spears, this moles lelli, is prostrate before the “majestical One” whose seat is on Zion.

II. GENERAL LESSONS. There was an anointed king in Zion, the representation of Jehovah’s majesty, then; there are spiritual forces, representative of Divine might and will, ruling in the world now. There were moments of prophetic insight in which the hollowness of worldly might, the doom of kingdoms that were not kingdoms of righteousness, were clearly seen. Them are such moments now. What is force without justice, numbers without principle? One breath from the lips of eternal Truth shall suffice to drive them away. All that has fixed the eye of the people in fascinated terror, filled their ears with tumult, their hearts with commotion, dismayed, not the prophet. He seems to look above, his feet securely planted upon a cliff, on the boiling surge below. There is a hand that can stay these waves, a voice that can command, “Thus far and no further; here shall thy proud billows be stayed.” Then shall these hosts become such “stuff as dreams are made of,” these onward-rolling columns melt into wreaths of cloud, become thin air, and “leave not a wrack behind.”

“The might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!”

Our cares and troubles may be to us personally as the invasion of an Assyrian host. If we would know the prophetic confidence, we must live the prophetic life; the ear attent, the heart obedient”fixed, trusting in the Lord.” Nothing can bring us peace, lift us out of the degradation of fears that unman, but faith in our principles. They must triumph in the end; in them alone is strength, freedom, victory.J.

HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON

Isa 10:1-4

The helplessness of man under the wrath of God.

The anger of the Lord is here expressly declared against the oppressor. We are again reminded:

1. That God judges those who are in authority over men; that however these may be placed above the reach of human justice, they will not escape Divine retribution.

2. That God especially requires an account of our treatment of the suffering and the dependent. Whoso wrongs the widow or the orphan must expect a fearful reckoning with the pitiful and righteous One (Mat 18:6). But the special truth which is provided for us in this passage is the utter impotence of man, and the certainty and severity of his doom when God “arises to judgment.” We learn

I. THAT SIN IS MOVING ON TO A DAY OF DIVINE JUDGMENT. “The day of visitation” (Isa 10:3) is sure to come. The desolation that is in store may have to “come from far;” it may be out of sight now; it may come “as one that travelleth,” may be hidden by intervening days and weeks; but it is on its way. Not more surely does the sun move to the western sky, does the spring move toward the summer, does youth move toward manhood and manhood toward age and death, than does sin move on to a day of wrath, of Divine visitation. All sin takes this sad course; not only such daring and presumptuous sin as that of the textcruel wrong at the hand of those appointed to administer justicebut all departure from the revealed will of God, and also the deliberate and persistent refusal to enter his service.

II. THAT IN THAT DAY SIN WILL LEAN IN VAIN ON ITS OLD SUPPORTS. Not only will national alliances fail the nation which God is visiting with his displeasure, but all the supports and consolations with which individual souls have surrounded themselves will prove to be of no avail then. “To whom will ye flee for help?” (Isa 10:3). What human arm will arrest the uplifted hand of God? Of what avail then human friendships, abundant “resources,” magnificent estates, royal or princely patronage, the devices of the cunning counselor? How will these be brushed away by the tempest of his holy indignation!

III. THAT SIN WILL THEN BE EXPOSED TO A THREEFOLD PENALTY.

1. Irreparable loss. “Where will ye leave your glory?” (Isa 10:3). Our earthly treasures, our bodily powers, our worldly honors and positions,these are things which God’s punitive providence will take away from us; and where is the custodian to whose hands we can confide them? Who will receive them from us and restore them to us?

2. Spiritual bondage. “They shall bow down under the prisoners,” or “bow down among the captives” (Isa 10:4). Sin leads down to a cruel bondage. Evil dispositions, bad habits, shameful lusts, “have dominion over us” (Rom 6:16).

3. Spiritual death. “They shall fall under the slain.” We add the welcome truth, not stated or even hinted here, but elsewhere revealed

IV. THAT THERE IS AN UNFAILING REFUGE NOW FOR THE PENITENT AND BELIEVING SPIRIT.C.

Isa 10:5-19

Man in his folly and God in his righteousness.

We have a graphic picture here of

I. MAN IN HIS FOLLY. Under the dominion of the folly which is born of sin, man.

1. Indulges in designs which are beyond his strength. (Isa 10:7.) It is “in his heart” to do much greater things, often to work much greater wickedness, than he has power to execute. Under sin, men indulge in great-and even gross self-exaggeration; guilt is an infatuating thing.

2. Looks with dangerous complacency on his little triumphs. (Isa 10:8, Isa 10:9.) He has the “stout heart” and the “high looks” (Isa 10:12) which come from a consciousness of success, and which are the sure precursors of further folly. Few men can stand even the smaller triumphs, and still fewer the greater ones. When a man finds himself indulging the spirit of complacency he had better question himself severely, for he is walking on a “slippery place.”

3. Attributes to himself what is his only in a very slight degree. (Isa 10:13; vide 1Co 4:7.) Man can only work with the materials which he has received from God, under the conditions which God determines, within the limits which God imposes. “All our springs are in him.” The attitude of arrogant authorship is as preposterous as it is offensive.

4. Comes to hasty and ignorant conclusions. (Isa 10:10, Isa 10:11, Isa 10:14.) The blind Assyrian ignorantly associated the idols of other lands with “the idols of Jerusalem.” He was either ignorant of Jehovah’s Name, or he placed him on a level with other gods. He was going forth in a blind confidence that should be rudely shaken, that should be completely shattered. Man in his guilty folly assumes many things to be true which are absolutely false; he fails to make inquiry, and his ignorance utterly and fatally misleads him. And there is nothing in regard to which this is so true as the nature, the character, and the will of God.

5. Is blind to the end and issue of his doings. “He meaneth not so,” etc. (Isa 10:7). Under the sway of sin man moves along a path which he thinks will lead to honor, enjoyment, success, triumph; but “the end of that way is death.” Selfishness has its own purpose in view, and confidently reckons on achieving its end; but behind or above it is a Power which it is unable to resist, and which turns it to another anti very different end.

II. GOD IN HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Everywhere present, sleeplessly watching, mightily interposing, is the righteous Ruler of all.

1. He punishes his own people when they go astray. “I will send him against a hypocritical nation,” etc. (Isa 10:6); “When the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion” (Isa 10:12). Judgment often “begins at the house of God,” with the people of God. Whom the Lord loves he chastens. God has a gracious purpose in his visitations; he desires and designs repentance and restoration, but he does not spare. He speaks of his own people as “the people of his wrath” (Isa 10:6). Let no “Christian nation, “or” Christian Church,” or Christian man wrap itself (himself) up in imaginary security. God may have a rod in his hand even for Judah as well as for Assyria.

2. He will overwhelm with humiliation those who impiously oppose themselves to his holy will. (Isa 10:15-19.)

3. He will use the ungodly as instruments in his hand of righteousness and power. (Isa 10:5-7.) Sennacherib should be the rod with which the hand of God would smite. God can make and will make the wrath and the ambition of men to serve the high purpose which he has in his mind. Thus he used Pharaoh, Cyrus, Pilate, and many others, who thought that their own aims were the ultimate issue that was being wrought out.

(1) How unspeakably humiliating is the involuntary tribute God may compel us to render!

(2) How immeasurably preferable is the willing service he invites us to offer!C.

Isa 10:20-23

Departure and return.

The passage suggests

I. THAT THOSE WHO KNOW GOD WELL MAY BE INDUCED TO FORSAKE HIM. Israel had been well taught of God; had been carefully and constantly instructed in Divine truth; had received some lessons which might well have been deeply planted in the mind. Yet Israel forsook Jehovah; ceased to trust in his delivering arm, and sought alliance with Assyria. So we, who should know much better, forsake the Lord, of whose power, faithfulness, and love we have learned so much. Instead of finding our joy and our heritage in his service and friendship, we resort to the fascinations of a seductive world; instead of relying on his promised succor, we have recourse to human help or to material securities.

II. THAT EVERY EARTHLY REFUGE PROVES TO BE PRECARIOUS. Resting on Assyria, Israel was only “staying upon him that smote them.” The staff on which they leaned proved to be a rod that bruised them. So has it been, again and again, with national and political alliances. So is it with our individual confidences in earth rather than in heaven. The material securities fail us; the ship sinks, the bank breaks, the mine is exhausted, the company is defrauded and has to be wound up, trade declines, and our earthly prop is gone. The human help we built upon disappears; our friend sickens, or he is killed in the fatal accident, or he is himself stripped and helpless, or he is estranged from us and discards us. Our hope becomes our disappointment, our pride becomes our shame; we have been staying on that which smites us (see Jer 17:5; Psa 118:6-9; Isa 31:1).

III. THAT GOD AWAITS THE RETURN OF HIS PEOPLE TO HIMSELF. “They shall stay upon the Lord;” “The remnant shall return unto the mighty God” (Isa 10:20, Isa 10:21). Not only was God not unwilling that his people should return unto him, but he sent them their adversity in order that they might see their folly and incline their hearts unto himself.

1. God is grieved at our departure from himself, but he is willing to welcome us back.

2. He sends the adversity which is suggestive of our return. When the dark hour comes, when the soul sits desolate, when our heart is wounded by the very hand which we hoped would help and heal us, in that day may we hear the voice of the Father we have forsaken, calling to us and saying, “Return unto me;” “I will heal your backslidings, I will love you freely.”C.

Isa 10:24-34

Rout and re-establishment: Divine interposition.

I. THE APPEARANCE OF OVERWHELMING POWER ON THE SIDE OF SIN. The prophet gives a vivid description in Isa 10:28 -38 of the triumphant march of the Assyrian. Everybody and everything yields at his approach; opposition melts before him; his adversary is in his power; already his hand is on the prize he seeks. Sin often seems to be on a march that is irresistible, and to be secure of victory. Numbers, wealth, learning, rank, riches, custom, habit,the most powerful forces make up its conquering host. Must not truth, virtue, piety, capitulate at its summons and leave their treasures to its impious hands? So was it with sin generally when the Savior appeared, to lift up the standard of the cross against its power. So has it been, again and again, with the forces of superstition, skepticism, vice, ungodliness, as these have assailed some Church of Christ or some servant of God.

II. ITS ARREST AND OVERTHROW BY DIVING POWER. Irresistible as the invading army seemed, its victorious course should be arrested and its confident anticipations dashed (verses 26, 33, 34). The hand of the boastful warrior, outstretched in scornful threatening (verse 32), should be smitten down and hang helpless. The smiter should himself be scourged, the proud palm disbranched, the great forest felled. Arrogant impiety should be humiliated, and “by the way that he came he should return.” So has it been and thus shall it be, on still more serious and critical occasions, God will say to the spiritual adversaries, “Thus far and no further.” He will raise up the prophetthe Samuel, the Elijah, the John, the Paul, the Luther, the Wesleyor he will introduce the spiritual awakening and moral power which will encounter and defeat the worst efforts of sin and wrong, and impending defeat shall be changed into glorious victory.

III. THE RE–ESTABLISHMENT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. (Verse 27.) The burden shall be removed from the shoulder, the yoke taken from the neck; there shall be comfort and freedom for the people of God, that they may walk again in the paths of righteousness, that they may serve again in the vineyard of the Lord. We learn three lessons:

1. That successful sin may well hesitate on its way and tremble for the issue. However appearances may favor it, and though the spoils may seem already in its hand, there is a Power to be reckoned with which will arrest its march and consume its hopes.

2. That threatened uprightness may be reassured. It need not be afraid of any Assyrian (verse 24), if it continue in or return to its spiritual integrity. God’s love for the faithful will remain; his indignation toward the erring who are the penitent will cease (verse 25).

3. That the removal of sinful servitude must be contemporary with the acceptance of holy and happy service. (Mat 11:28-30).C.

HOMILIES BY R. TUCK

Isa 10:2

The Divine avenger of the poor.

The idea of a goel, or avenger, belongs to the primitive conditions of society. When there was no settled government, no police, and no magistracy, each individual had to guard his life, liberty, and property as best he could. The first and simplest form that mutual protection took was “the family,” and the principle was established that the nearest of kin to an injured or murdered person should avenge the injury or death. As this led to feuds among families and tribes lasting for generations, and as it was a kind of rough justice which often became injustice, Moses set the old custom under limitations, appointing proper courts for the settlement of disputes, and protecting the manslayer from the avenger until due examination could be made into the circumstances of his crime. In fully civilized society a regular system of law and magistracy is organized; the individual commits his right of personal avengement to the recognized authorities It is, therefore, of supreme importance to the welfare of any nation that justice should be free to all, should be perfectly fair, and should be a practical avenger of the poor, the distressed, and the wronged. The nature which Isaiah sets before us in this passage reveals a most perilous condition of society. “All the formalities of justice were observed punctiliously. The decision of the unjust Judge was duly given and recorded, but the outcome of it all was that the poor, the Widow, and the fatherless got no redress.” “No people had statutes and judgments so righteous as they had, and yet corrupt judges found ways ‘to turn aside the needy from judgment,’ to hinder them from coming at their right and recovering what was their due, because they were needy and poor, and such as they could get nothing by nor expect any bribes from.” “There is no surer sign of the misery of a people than is found in the corrupt administration of justice.” And it may be added that a country is on the borders of revolution, or of calamity, when righteousness has forsaken its judgment-seats, and there are no avengers of social wrongs.

I. THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN WHICH THE POOR FIND NO HELP IN MAN. Two cases are suggested.

1. Failure to obtain just judgment.

2. The painful condition of widows.

Where there is wealth and luxury there is sure to be poverty in marked and terrible features close beside it, as may be illustrated from the great and rich European cities of our day. Wealth has a tendency to go in the direction of classes; it drains away from some classes, and so alienates and embitters them, especially as the result of self indulgence is to harden a man’s heart against his neighbor. The condition of widows in the East is an extremely painful one, because they have no rights in their husband’s property, no social status, and are the prey of designing and wicked men. The retired life they lead unfits them for contending on behalf of their own rights, or those of their children. The picture of a national life in which the wronged have no judge, the poor no helpers, and the widows no friends, is an exceedingly painful one. Self-seeking, luxury, and class prejudice must have catch the heart out of such a kingdom.

II. IN SUCH A STATE OF SOCIETY THE POOR HAVE HELP IN GOD. This may be illustrated along the following lines. God will help them by:

1. The working of his judgment-laws. In Greece despised helots multiply, and become at last a destructive force, for a time breaking up society. Slaves learn at last to combine, and take their own avengements on their persecutors. Down-trodden races heave awhile, like slumbering earthquakes, and presently burst forth in revolutions that are, in reality, Divine judgments.

2. By the orderings of Divine providence, which bring the nation into such a condition that reformation of its wrongs becomes immediately necessary to secure its continued existence.

3. By the raising up of human helpers. Men who plead the cause of the poor, and make their voice and their condition to be heard even in the high places of a land. At once thought turns to such men as Wilberforce, the friend of the slave, and Howard, the friend of the prisoner.

4. By special Divine consolations. The poor have their ameliorations, and even their superior advantages; and not the least of them is thisthey have little prejudice hindering the reception of Divine truth. To “the poor the gospel is preached,” and in every age it is found true that “the common people heard Christ,” and hear of Christ, “gladly.”R.T.

Isa 10:5-7

The Divine overrulings.

The figure of Assyria as an aggrandizing power is here set before us. “About B.C. 1100, the rule of Assyria, under Tiglath-Pileser I; had stretched from Kurdistan to the Grecian Archipelago, including the whole of Lebanon and Phoenicia. But a strong league of the Hittite kings of Syria had effectually humbled it, and torn away from the successors of the great king all his dominions on this side the Euphrates. After a hundred and fifty years of obscurity, Assyria once more, in the middle of the ninth century B.C; under its warlike king, Assur-Nazirhabal, entered on a career of conquest, and cleared its home territories of their Babylonish garrisons. He was succeeded by his son, Shalmaueser II; who proved the Napoleon of his day. After conquering Babylonia, he marched in triumph to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and exacted tribute from the petty kings of Chaldaea. But these triumphs only kindled his military ardor. He now determined to extend his empire to the ancient grandeur it had obtained under Tiglath-Pileser I. The kingdom of Damascus and the states of Palestine were thus in imminent danger. A new era of mortal struggle had come to thema struggle only to end, after an agony of more than a hundred years, in the destruction of Damascus and Samaria, and the degrading vassalage of all the nations from the Euphrates to the Levant. Henceforth all Western Asia trembled at the name of Assyria. The heavens were black with tempests, driving, with only momentary lulls, across the whole sweep of Syria and Palestine” (Dr. Geikie). Fixing attention on Assyria, we observe

I. SELF–WILLED ASSYRIA, CARRYING OUT ITS OWN PLANS. Describe the historical facts. The poet seems to be watching this aggrandizing king determined to push his conquests to the Mediterranean, and become master of the world. The career and spirit of the first Napoleon are full of effective comparisons. The lust of conquest ever grows with success, and the Assyrian king had no more thought of God than Napoleon had. He simply meant to serve his own ends. These great world-conquerors are prominent examples of “taking life into our own ordering, and resolutely fashioning it to our own ends;” and they are examples, too, of the curse to all around, and the ruin to the man himself, of every self-willed life.

II. OVERRULED ASSYRIA CARRYING OUT GOD‘S PLANS. What a supreme humiliation for conquering Assyria was this prophetic declaration! Assyria was, in actual fact, only carrying out the purpose of Jehovah, who was known to the Assyrians but as the God of one of the little states which they would be obliged to overrun. Assyria and its proud king were only Jehovah’s rod and staff, executing for him the fierceness of his indignation. Assyria was now as much the servant of God judging and punishing Syria and Israel, as the Hebrews had been the servants of God in exterminating the Canaanites, whose cup of iniquity had become full, and was running over. God makes “the wrath of man praise him, and the remainder of wrath he restrains.”

III. THERE IS EVER CONSOLATION FOR GOD‘S PEOPLE IN GOD‘S OVERRULINGS. We should always try to look beyond man’s little plan, and see how things fit into God’s great plan. We may never be satisfied with what things look like, we should ask God to teach us what they are. There are no forces working in the moral or intellectual world of today which are out of God’s range. We need never be despondent. The purposes of grace are overmastering purposes. It is always true that “man proposes, and God disposes.” As practical appeal, show how important for us it is that we should be kin with God, fit into his purposes, and do his will, not just by his overruling and mastery, but by our own spirit of surrender, submission, and joyous service; never saying, “What shall I do?” but ever looking up to God and saying, “Lord what wilt thou have me to do?”R.T.

Isa 10:12-14

God’s judgments on pride.

“These are the sentiments and boastings of Sennacherib, a proud Assyrian monarch, who viewed and treated cities just as we in Africa viewed and treated ostrich-nests, when they fell in our way; we seized the eggs as if they had been our own, because we had found them, and because there was no power that could prevent us. So did Sennacherib seize and plunder cities with as little compunction as we seized the eggs of the absent ostrich; never thinking of the misery for life which he thereby brought on many peaceable families, who had done nothing to injure or offend him” (Campbell). Assyria did more than other conquering kingdoms in merging independent nationalities into one great empire. To be a “remover of boundaries and landmarks” was the title in which an Assyrian king most exulted.

I. THE PERIL OF SUCCESS IN LIFE IS PRIDE. Illustrated in Nebuchadnezzar, Solomon, etc. See the boastings in this passage.

II. PRIDE, KEPT WITHIN LIMITS, MAY BE CORRECTED BY ORDINARY AGENCIES. Such as failure, disappointment, falls into temptation, seasons of affliction. There is some measure of pride in us all, bringing us under God’s chastening hand.

III. WHEN PRIDE COMES TO TAKE THE HONOR THAT IS DUE TO GOD ALONE, IT MUST BE OPENLY HUMBLED. As in the cases of Nebuchadnezzar, Herod at Tyre, etc. And if God seems to delay in his humblings, we may be sure it is only that the proud man may get finished the work which, all unknown to himself, God is making him do. Then we may well learn to be always thankful for grace received, talents entrusted, opportunities given, and achievements won; but never boast, never either think or say, “I have done it;” “My arm hath gotten me this victory.” Boast, if you must boast, like Paul, of what God has wrought in you and by you; but never boast of what you have wrought, for it is an ever-working and necessary law that “pride must have a fall” and the “Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.”R.T.

Isa 10:15

Man, the instrument of God.

This passage is most humbling to that pride of man which leads him to say, “I am my own; I can do as I please with my own powers and life.” That pride it breaks down by saying,” Not so; you are not your own; you are God’s; he made you; he gives you all; he uses you for his own high purposes.” The proudest, wealthiest, mightiest man on earth may seem to be something. In reality, what is he? An axe, a saw, a staff in the hands of God, to work out his will. How foolish for the axe to boast against the workman, or the staff to resist the living man who uses it! The truth which we propose to illustrate is, that man can never be other than the instrument of God, used by him for the accomplishment of his Divine purposes. We can find nothing else that God has created which is without a purpose and end for its being. Winds and waters, metals and rocks, flowers and trees, sunshine and showers, summer and winter, day and night, disease and death, all are God’s tools. Not one insect hums in the summer evening but has received its commission from the Lord of heaven and earth. Not a flower opens its tinted bosom in the hedgerow but is obeying the voice of God. Not a bird fans the air with its waving wing but hastens to do the Lord’s bidding. The world is full of tools in the hands of God. As we ascend in the scale of creation we only find that higher beings have higher work to do; they are more subtle tools, set to do more skilful work, but they never cease to be tools. Man may be the crown of creation, but he is only a creature, and set to do God’s most delicate and particular work. So far as we can understand the history of our world, we can see that great nations have been raised up to do certain things for God, and they have done them, either with their wills or against them. Egypt was raised up to educate the childhood of God’s chosen people. Assyria was raised up, as we see in this chapter, to be the rod of God wherewith he might punish his people for their sin. Babylon was commissioned to guard the years of Jewish captivity. Greece was exalted to show the world that “the beautiful” is not, of necessity,” the good.” Rome proved to the world that “restraint of law” can never take the place of the” liberty of righteousness.” The Gothic nations were commissioned to overthrow a debased and worn-out civilization. France shows how the passion for “glory” can lead men astray. America illustrates the principles of self-government. England tells what can be achieved under the inspiration of duty. Every prominent man, who stands conspicuously out from his fellows, is a tool of God. Of Pharaoh it is said, “For this cause have I raised thee up, to make known my power in thee.” Of Cyrus, who was appointed to arrange the return from captivity, it is said, “I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.” Every man’s individuality is precisely arranged for God’s purpose in him. It becomes a most oppressive thought that each one of us is not only a tool, but a tool of a specific kind, and shape, and weight, and force, and keenness, adapted and attempered for that precise work which God wants to do by us. What, then, shall we do with this fact, that man is the instrument of God? In what relation shall we stand to it?

I. WE MAY DENY THE FACT, AND MAKE THIS SUPPORT OUR REBELLION. Perhaps no one ever did, soberly and thoughtfully, say, “There is no God.” Men say it in the bragging of their pride, as excuse for their wrong-doing; and by the self-pleasing of their lives; but Scripture reveals their secret when it says, “They do not like to retain God in their thoughts.” The difficulty is moral, not intellectual. Even a bad man would hardly dare to say, “Even if there be a God, he has no rights in me; I am my own; I rule myself; I shall take care of myself forever.” And yet many a man’s life does, in effect, say, “I am no axe, no saw, no staff, of God’s; I will not be.” “The axe boasteth itself against him that heweth therewith, and the saw magnifies itself against him that shaketh it.” Scripture refers to such men. Nebuchadnezzar; Jonah; Assyria; Herod at Tyre. And what must always follow when the “potsherd strives against its Maker?”

II. WE MAY ACCEPT THE FACT, BUT PERVERT IT, AND SO MAKE OURSELVES INDIFFERENT TO MORAL DISTINCTIONS. A man may say, “Yes, I am a tool of God’s; my life is all planned out for me; it is all fore-ordained where I shall be, what I shall do; therefore there can be no real difference between right and wrong; whatever I do I cannot help doing, I was intended to do; I am only the axe or the saw; the virtue lies only in him who uses me, and whose power I cannot resist.” We are all exposed to the temptation of treating this sublime fact of God’s relation to us in this most mournful and mistaken way. Losing the distinction between right and wrong out of our lives, we are in peril of losing God altogether as a moral Being, and transforming him into the “cloud-compelling Jove” of whom the pagans dreamed. Cannot we see that when God speaks of men as his axe or his saw, it is as using a symbol, which answers only in part? Man is not according to the nature of the axe or the saw; but his intelligence, his powers, his will, come into a relation of dependence on God and service to him, just as the saw does to man. God’s higher will takes into account man’s will, and would even work out its gracious plans through that human will.

III. WE MAY RECEIVE THIS FACT, AND MAKE IT NOURISH A DAILY OBEDIENCE. Was the life of the Apostle Paul a free, noble, blessed life? He was but a tool in the hands of God. “Go thy way; thou art a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my Name before the Gentiles.” He did not resist; he did not let the fact that he was God’s tool lead him to indifference. He cheerfully accepted God’s will for him; he fitted his will to God’s will, and said, “Yes, the very best thing for me is just the thing that God requires of me, that I should go and preach to the Gentiles.” Is there moral glory in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ on the earth? It comes out of the fact that even he, in his earthly manifestation, was a tool in the hands of God, and liked to be a tool. He fitted his mind into the mind of God so as to say, “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God;” “My meat and my drink is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.” The truth before us, in this our text, staggers and crushes us if we attempt to resist it. It is one rich indeed in comfort and help if we will accept it, fit our will and pleasure into God’s will and pleasure for us, and say, “God‘s plan for me is my plan for myself. God’s place, God’s work, God’s difficulties, God’s sorrows, God’s helps for me, are the very things that I would have chosen for myself, if I had wisdom enough to choose.” The truth of the text will be a stumbling-block to us until we truly know God. Then it becomes to us a glory and a boasting. Why should the infant of a day be set to steer the vessel when the Lord of winds and seas is on board? Why should a stranger lead himself through the trackless forests of life when the all-seeing, all-knowing Father-God offers the guiding hand? What can be better for us than to be axe, saw, staff, in the hands of him who is good, wise, loving, strong, our Almighty Father?R.T.

Isa 10:20

Staying upon the Holy One.

“The remnant of Israel, and the escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no longer rely upon smiter, but shall rely upon Jehovah, Israel’s Holy One, in faithfulness” (Cheyne’s translation). The point of the verse is that the remnant of Israel is thoroughly weaned from its false confidences, and returns to the true God. The only hope for preserving the liberties of Judah, Israel, and Syria was for them to combine against the growing power of Assyria. But, instead of that, Israel and Syria combined against Judah, and so both weakened their own hands, and drove Judah to seek the help of Assyria, which inevitably hastened the overthrow of all the three kingdoms. However politic the appeal of Judah to Assyria might seem to be, it was utterly unworthy of the people of Jehovah, who had so often proved his faithfulness and power; so they had, by bitter experience, to learn that they should “cease from man,” and trust wholly in the living God (Jer 17:5-8). “Their experience of the failure of that false policy should lead them to see that faith in God was, after all, the truest wisdom.” From this we learn for ourselves that the sanctified experiences of our life will bring about the same results; self-trusts, and trusts in man, will be wholly broken down, and trust in God will be fully established. We may dwell on the following stages in the experience of life.

I. I CAN. This expresses the spirit of confidence, conscious strength, and hopefulness which characterizes youth. Nothing seems to be impossible. Life must yield its best to energy.

II. I WILL This is man’s first effort to meet the sense of failure. Things will not go just as he wishes. He cannot attain all he can desire. But at first he will not admit this. So he calls on will to buttress ability, and make united effort to master disability. The very energy of man’s will is a half-confession of man’s weakness.

III. I CANNOT. This is the issue of the strife, sooner or later, for every man. Strength and will try hard to shape life otherwise than God appoints; and however cheering temporary successes may prove, every year brings its disappointments and its distresses, and at last the cry rises, more or less bitterly, “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”

IV. I CAN, THROUGH HIM WHO STRENGTHENETH ME. This is the right issue of human experience. The great life-lesson. The teaching of God’s Spirit. The meetness for the heavenly service. Untried trust is only profession. Experience brings us to “staying upon the Holy One.”R.T.

Isa 10:27

The power of the anointing.

This verse is an exceedingly difficult one, because containing a poetical figure which modern associations do not readily explain. Literally, it seems to read, “The yoke shall be destroyed from before the oil,” or “the fat.” For various explanations see the Expository portion of the Commentary. What is clear is, that the yoke referred to is the bondage of Assyria laid on the house of David. This yoke shall be presently removed. The deep reason for the removal is that on the house of David lies the oil, the anointing oil which consecrated it to Jehovah. Jehovah will surely deliver those who are in covenant relations with him (comp. Isa 37:35). The reference may be

(1) for Hezekiah’s sake;

(2) for David’s sake;

(3) for his people’s sake;

(4) for Messiah’s sake.

The passage which best explains the figure of the text is 1Jn 2:27 : “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.” Taking the above as the view of the passage, the subject set before us is this: A man’s consecration to God is a constant consideration shaping the Divine dealings. Israel was an anointed race, the house of David was an anointed family, therefore for them no calamity could be overwhelming; all must be subject to gracious Divine mitigations, and all must be made remedial in their influence.

I. TO THE “ANOINTED” BURDENS AND YOKES MUST COME.

1. Because they are not perfect.

2. Because they are being perfected.

3. Because such burdens and yokes are precise and efficient moral agencies in the work of perfecting. (For the Christian setting of this truth, see Heb 12:4-11.)

II. ON THE “ANOINTED” BURDENS AND YOKES CANNOT STAY, Because, having a definite object, they have also a limited time. They would become unmitigated and useless evils if they remained after their moral purpose had been wrought. This may be applied to all the calamities and afflictions of life. The degree, the time, the form, are all in strict Divine control. In fact, all affliction is “but for a moment.”

III. FOR THE “ANOINTED” THERE IS HELP IN BEARING BURDENS AND YOKES WHILE THEY MUST STAY. God is with all loyal Hebrew youths when they are in the fires. “When thou passest through the water, I will be with thee.” When thorns pierce, “my grace is sufficient for thee.” “Therefore we may boldly say, The Lord is my Helper; I will not fear what man can do unto me.”R.T.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Isa 10:1-4. Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, &c. We have in the two first verses the fourth fault, and in the third and fourth the punishment. The fault complained of is, the injustice and the iniquity of the judges; and the punishment assigned is, that they should be absolutely deserted and deprived of all help and defence from God, whose laws they have so shamefully perverted; and shall miserably perish before their enemies, who shall come from far. Lowth renders the second clause of the first verse, Unto the scribes that prescribe oppression: and, Isa 10:3 instead of leave your glory, he reads, deposit your wealth. See Hos 9:11-12. The meaning is, “To whom will you commit, as a trust or deposit, your most precious things, your riches, honour, liberty, religion, when God is become your enemy? Who shall be your protection and defence?” To which he answers in the next verse, Without me, every one shall bow down among them that are bound; [i.e. shall commence prisoners;] and they shall fall among the slain. The meaning is, “Without my aid, and when I desert you, you shall all bow under the yoke, and either become slaves or fall by the sword of the Assyrians.” See chap. Isa 65:12 and Vitringa.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

4. INJUSTICE AND VIOLENCE FILL UP THE MEASURE AND PRECIPITATE ISRAEL INTO THE HORRORS OF EXILE

Isa 10:1-4

1Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees,

1And 2that write grievousness which they have prescribed;

2To turn aside the needy from judgment,

And to take away the right from the poor of my people,
That widows may be their prey,
And that they may rob the fatherless!

3And what will ye do in the day of visitation,

And in the desolation which shall come from far?

To whom will ye flee for help?
And where will ye leave your glory?

4Without3 me they shall bow down 4under the prisoners,

And they shall fall cunder the slain.

For all this his anger is not turned away,
But his hand is stretched out still.

TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL

On Isa 10:1. comp. on Isa 1:4. Because of this , which seems to correspond to that in Isa 10:5, this last section has been incorporated in the chap. 10 is to hoe, hoe into, hew into, dig into (Isa 30:8; Isa 49:16), then (mediately, through the notion of digging or graving in decrees into the tables of the laws) to establish, decree (Isa 33:22). The participle occurs again Isa 22:16 and Jdg 5:9 (again only Jdg 5:15) means the same as . As to the form, see Ewald, 186 sq. frequent in Isa 1:13; Isa 29:20; Isa 31:2; Isa 58:9; Isa 59:6-7, etc.The second clause of Isa 10:1 can be variously construed: Either, And writing harm they write, or: And (woe to) the writers that write harm. I prefer the former [which Aben Ezra and J. A. Alexander adopt because the accents require to be governed by ]. 1) Because the quick return to the temp. finitum is a peculiarity of Hebrew (comp. the second clause of Isa 10:2 b); 2) because, otherwise, one might expect . Moreover, according to this explanation, relates equally to the second clause of the verse: only it is to be subordinated to the first. Piel, which is found only here, is evidently intensive, meaning an occupation of writing significant for quality as well as quantity. We might conjecture that we have here a trace of mischievous, bureaucratic clerical administration.

On Isa 10:2. only here; it is commoner to say Exo 23:6; Deu 16:19, etc., Pro 17:23 Pro 18:5, or simply Amo 5:12; comp. Isa 29:21 only here in Isaiah. again Isa 14:32.

On Isa 10:3. The before has evidently an adversative sense: ye are shrewd and busy in violence and robbery (comp. Piel above) but what will ye do, etc. before has more than a temporal sense. The inquiry is evidently what sort of action will they develop to ward off the day of visitation and impending ruin. found again Isa 15:7; Isa 60:17. is procella, tempestas, and is found again Isa 47:11. The word is usually joined with , Pro 1:26; Pro 3:25; Eze 38:9 for , a usage very frequent in Jeremiah (comp. Isa 10:1) and not unusual in Isa. (comp. Isa 10:25; Isa 11:8; Isa 22:15; Isa 24:22; Isa 29:11-12; Isa 36:12).

On Isa 10:4 (found again Isa 14:6; Isa 48:9) after a foregoing negation, which must be supplied here as a negative reply to Isa 10:3, is equivalent to praeter, nisi, except (Gen 21:26; Gen 47:18 Exo 22:19, etc., Ewald, 356. impersonal, one bows himself (comp. Isa 6:10).The phrase cannot mean either: lie among the fallen, nor, fall under one slain, for the latter is hardly conceivable. It must mean fall among the slain. One knocked dead may precipitate himself on one still living, and, when this happens wholesale, the situation of those alive under the slain is frightful. In this trait, too, there seems to me presented a contrast with the former glory (Isa 10:3) and power (Isa 10:1-2) of those addressed.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. Woe unto themthe fatherless.

Isa 10:1-2. We might suppose that we have here a trace of mischievous, bureaucratic clerical administration. See above in Text. and Gramm.

Isa 10:2 names the object that bureaucratic administration pursues. It is a negative and a positive. First they aim at excluding the lowly from justice as much as possible, or to rob them of the benefits of justice that are their rights. This negative proceeding has the further aim of making themselves possessors of the property of widows and orphans. For substance comp. Isa 1:21 sq.; Isa 3:13 sq.

2. And what will ye dostretched out still.

Isa 10:3-4. The storm is described as coming from a distance, because the Prophet, as Isa 10:4 shows, means by this figure the exile, whose agent will be a people that comes from far (Isa 5:26; Isa 6:11 sq.; Jer 5:15, etc.). To whom will ye flee, is an allusion to the disposition so often reproved by the Prophet to seek aid from foreign nations. , according to the context, can only mean what those addressed, i.e., the powerful among the people, regard as their glory, i.e., the ornament and adornment of their life, viz., their treasures, valuables, etc. The description is drastic: the hostile storm bursts, the panic-stricken flee, their valuables they seek to leave behind in a secure place. The reply to the question what will ye do? etc. is given ironically in Isa 10:4. Ye can do nothing, says the Prophet, except, etc. The lot of those addressed here will be worse than that of the other captives and slain. Whether in prison or in the train of those led away, the other captives will tread them under foot. Once they were honorable and powerful. Then they were dreaded (Isa 10:1-2). Now the first that comes, in whose way they stand, treads them under foot. Others of them fall in war, and the slain fall on them and cover them with their bodies. Though in some sense the exile is the greatest theocratic punishment, still that catastrophe is in itself not the extreme. For the question arises: how long will the exile last? To Judah restoration is promised after 70 years (Jer 25:11). In the case of Israel there is no certain mention of the sort.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. On Isa 7:1. Hierosolyma oppugnatur, etc. Jerusalem is assaulted but not conquered. The church is pressed but not oppressed.Foerster.

2. On Isa 7:2. Quando ecclesia, etc. When the Church is assaulted and Christ crucified over again in His elect, Rezin and Pekah, Herod and Pilate are wont to form alliance and enter into friendly relations. There are, so to speak, the foxes of Samson, joined indeed by the tails, but their heads are disconnected.Foerster.He that believes flees not (Isa 28:16). The righteous is bold as a lion (Pro 28:1). Hypocrites and those that trust in works (work-saints) have neither reason nor faith. Therefore they cannot by any means quiet their heart. In prosperity they are, indeed, overweening, but in adversity they fall away (Jer 17:9). Cramer.

3. On Isa 7:9. (If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.) Insignis sententia, etc. A striking sentiment that may be adapted generally to all temptation, because all earnest endeavor after anything, as you know, beguiles us in temptation. But only faith in the word of promise makes us abide and makes sure whatever we would execute. He warns Ahaz, therefore, as if he said: I now promise you by the word, it shall be that those two kings shall not hurt you. Believe this word! For if you do not, whatever you afterwards devise will deceive you: because all confidence is vain which is not supported by the word of God.Luther.

4. On Isa 7:10-12. Wicked Ahaz pretends to great sanctity in abstaining from asking a sign through fear of God. Thus hypocrites are most conscientious where there is no need for it: on the other hand, when they ought to be humble, they are the most insolent. But where God commands to be bold, one must be bold. For to be obedient to the word is not tempting God. That is rather tempting God when one proposes something without having the word for it. It is, indeed, the greatest virtue to rest only in the word, and desire nothing more. But where God would add something more than the word, then it must not be thought a virtue to reject it as superfluous. We must therefore exercise such a faith in the word of God that we will not despise the helps that are given in addition to it as aids to faith. For example the Lord offers us in the gospel all that is necessary to salvation. Why then Baptism and the Lords Supper? Are they to be treated as superfluous? By no means. For if one believes the word he will at the same time exhibit an entire obedience toward God. We ought therefore to learn to join the sign with the word, for no man has the power to sever the two.

But do you ask: is it permitted to ask God for a sign? We have an example of this in Gideon. Answer: Although Gideon was not told of God to ask a sign, yet he did it by the impulse of the Holy Spirit, and not according to his own fancy. We must not therefore abuse his example, and must be content with the sign that is offered by the Lord. But there are extraordinary signs or miracles, like that of the text, and ordinary ones like Baptism and the Lords Supper. Yet both have the same object and use. For as Gideon was strengthened by that miraculous event, so, too, are we strengthened by Baptism and the Lords Supper, although no miracle appears before our eyes. Heim and Hoffmann after Luther. Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, also asked the Lord to show him the right wife for Isaac by means of a sign of His own choosing, (Gen 24:14).

It ought to be said that this asking a sign (opening the Bible at a venture, or any other book) does not suit Christian perfection (Heb 6:1). A Christian ought to be inwardly sensible of the divine will. He ought to content himself with the guarantees that God Himself offers. Only one must have open eyes and ears for them. This thing of demanding a sign, if it is not directly an effect of superstition (Mat 12:39; Mat 16:4; 1Co 1:22), is certainly childish, and, because it easily leads to superstitious abuses, it is dangerous.

5. On Isa 7:13. Non caret, etc. That the Prophet calls God his God is not without a peculiar emphasis. In Zec 2:12 it is said, that whoever touches the servants of God touches the pupil of Gods eye. Whoever opposes teacher and preacher will have to deal with God in heaven or with the Lord who has put them into office.Foerster.

6. On Isa 7:14. The name Immanuel is one of the most beautiful and richest in contents of all the Holy Scripture. God with us comprises Gods entire plan of salvation with sinful humanity. In a narrower sense it means God-man (Mat 1:23), and points to the personal union of divinity and humanity, in the double nature of the Son of God become man. Jesus Christ was a God-with-us, however, in this, that for about 33 years He dwelt among us sinners (Joh 1:11; Joh 1:14). In a deeper and wider sense still He was such by the Immanuels work of the atonement (2Co 5:19; 1Ti 2:3). He will also be such to every one that believes on Him by the work of regeneration and sanctification and the daily renewal of His holy and divine communion of the Spirit (Joh 17:23; Joh 17:26; Joh 14:19-21; Joh 14:23). He is such now by His high-priestly and royal administration and government for His whole Church (Mat 28:20; Heb 7:25). He will be snch in the present time of the Church in a still more glorious fashion (Joh 10:16). The entire and complete meaning of the name Immanuel, however, will only come to light in the new earth, and in the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:3; Rev 21:23; Rev 22:5).Wilh. Fried. Roos.

Isa 8:7. On Isa 8:5 sqq. Like boastful swimmers despise small and quiet waters, and on the other hand, for the better display of their skill, boast of the great sea and master it, but often are lost in it,thus, too, did the hypocrites that despised the small kingdom of Judah, and bragged much and great things of the power and splendor of the kingdom of Israel and of the Syrians; such hypocrites are still to be found now-a-dayssuch that bear in their eye the admiranda Romae, the splendor, riches, power, ceremonies and pomp of the Romish church, and thereupon set their bushel by the bigger-heap. It is but the devils temptation over again: I will give all this to thee.Cramer.Fons Siloa, etc. The fountain of Siloam, near the temple, daily reminded the Jews that Christ was coming.Calvin on Joh 9:7.

8. On Isa 8:10. When the great Superlatives sit in their council chambers and have determined everything, how it ought to be, and especially how they will extinguish the gospel, then God sends the angel Gabriel to them, who must look through the window and say: nothing will come of it.Luther.Christ, who is our Immanuel, is with us by His becoming man, for us by His office of Mediator, in us by the work of His sanctification, by us by His personal, gracious presence.Cramer.

9. On Isa 8:14-15. Christ alone is set by God to be a stone by which we are raised up. That He is, however, an occasion of offence to many is because of their purpose, petulance and contempt (1Pe 2:8). Therefore we ought to fear lest we take offence at Him. For whoever falls on this stone will shatter to pieces (Mat 21:44). Cramer.

10. On Isa 8:16 sqq. He warns His disciples against heathenish superstition, and exhorts them to show respect themselves always to law and testimony. They must not think that God must answer them by visions and signs, therefore He refers them to the written word, that they may not become altogether too spiritual, like those now-a-days who cry: spirit! spirit! Christ says, Luke 16 : They have Moses and the prophets, and again Joh 5:39 : Search the Scriptures. So Paul says, 2Ti 3:16 : The Scripture is profitable for doctrine. So says Peter, 2Pe 1:9 : We have a sure word of prophecy. It is the word that changes hearts and moves them. But revelations puff people up and make them insolent. Heim and Hoffmann after Luther.

Chap. 911. On Isa 9:1 sqq. (2). Postrema pars, etc. The latter part of chap. 8 was (legal and threatening) so, on the other hand, the first and best part of chap. 9 is , (evangelical and comforting). Thus must ever law and gospel, preaching wrath and grace, words of reproof and words of comfort, a voice of alarm and a voice of peace follow one another in the church. Foerster.

12. On Isa 9:1 (2). Both in the Old Testament and New Testament Christ is often called light. Thus Isaiah calls Him a light to the gentiles, Isa 42:6; Isa 49:6. The same Prophet says: Arise, shine (make thyself light), for thy light is come, Isa 60:1. And again Isa 9:19 : The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light. In the New Testament it is principally John that makes use of this expression: The life was the light of men, Joh 1:4, and the light shined in the darkness, Joh 9:5. John was not that light, but bore testimony to the light, Joh 9:8. That was the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, Joh 9:9. And further: And this is the condemnation that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, Joh 3:19. I am the light of the world, (Joh 8:12; Joh 9:5; comp. Joh 12:35).

13. On Isa 9:1 (2). The people that sit in darkness may be understood to comprise three grades. First, the inhabitants of Zebulon and Naphtali are called so (Isaiah 8:23), for the Prophets gaze is fixed first on that region lying in the extreme end of Palestine, which was neighbor to the heathen and mixed with them, and on this account was held in low esteem by the dwellers in Judah. The night that spreads over Israel in general is darkest there. But all Israel partakes of this night, therefore all Israel, too, may be understood, as among the people sitting in darkness. Finally, no one can deny that this night extends over the borders of Israel to the whole human race. For far as men dwell extends the night which Christ, as light of the world, came to dispel, Luk 1:76 sqq.

14. On Isa 9:5 (6). Many lay stress on the notion child, inasmuch as they see in that the reason for the reign of peace spoken of afterwards. It is not said a man, a king, a giant is given to us. But this is erroneous. For the child does not remain a child. He becomes a man: and the six names that are ascribed to Him and also the things predicted of His kingdom apply to Him, not as a child, but as a man. That His birth as a child is made prominent, has its reason in this, that thereby His relation to human kind should be designated as an organic one. He does not enter into humanity as a man, i.e. as one whose origin was outside of it, but He was born from it, and especially from the race of David. He is Son of man and Son of David. He is a natural offshoot, but also the crowning bloom of both. Precisely because He was to be conceived, carried and born of a human mother, and indeed of a virgin, this prophecy belongs here as the completion and definition of the two prophetic pictures Isa 7:10 sqq.; Isa 8:1 sqq.He came down from heaven for the sake of us men, and for our bliss (1Ti 1:15; Luk 2:7). For our advantage: for He undertook not for the seed of angels, but for the seed of Abraham (Heb 2:16). Not sold to us by God out of great love, but given (Rom 5:15; Joh 3:16). Therefore every one ought to make an application of the word to us to himself, and to learn to say: this child was given to me, conceived for me, born to me.Cramer.Cur oportuit, etc. Why did it become the Redeemer of human kind to be not merely man nor merely God, but God and man conjoined or ? Anselm replies briefly, indeed, but pithily: Deum qui posset, hominem, qui deberet. Foerster.

15. On Isa 9:5 (6). You must not suppose here that He is to be named and called according to His person, as one usually calls another by his name; but these are names that one must preach, praise and celebrate on account of His act, works and office. Luther.

16. On Isa 9:6. Verba pauca, etc. A few words, but to be esteemed great, not for their number but for their weight. Augustine. Admirabilis in, etc. Wonderful in birth, counsellor in what He preaches, God in working, strong in suffering, father of the world to come in resurrection, Prince of peace in bliss perpetual. Bernard of Clairvaux. In reference to a child is born, and a son is given, Joh. Cocceius remarks in his Heb. Lex. s. v. : respectu, etc., in respect to His human nature He is said to be born, and in respect to His divine nature and eternal generation not indeed born, but given, as, Joh 3:16, it reads God gave His only begotten Son.

In the application of this language all depends on the words is born to us, is given to us. The angels are, in this matter, far from being as blessed as we are. They do not say: To us a Saviour is born this day, but; to you. As long as we do not regard Christ as ours, so long we shall have little joy in Him. But when we know Him as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, as a gift that our heavenly Father designed for us, we will appropriate Him to ourselves in humble faith, and take possession of all His redeeming effects that He has acquired. For giving and taking go together. The Son is given to us; we must in faith receive Him. J. J. Rambach, Betracht. ber das Ev. Esaj., Halle, 1724.

On Isa 9:6 (7). The government is on His shoulders. It is further shown how Christ differs in this respect from worldly kings. They remove from themselves the burden of government and lay it on the shoulders of the privy counsellors. But He does not lay His dominion as a burden on any other; He needs no prime minister and vicegerent to help Him bear the burden of administration, but He bears all by the word of His power as He to whom all things are given of the Father. Therefore He says to the house of Jacob (Isa 46:3 sq.): Hearken unto me ye who were laid on my shoulders from your mothers womb. I will carry you to old age. I will do it, I will lift, and carry and deliver,on the contrary the heathen must bear and lift up their idols, (Isa 46:1; Isa 46:7).Rambach. In the first place we must keep in mind His first name: He is called Wonderful. This name affects all the following. All is wonderful that belongs to this king: wonderfully does He counsel and comfort; wonderfully He helps to acquire and conquer, and all this in suffering and want of strength. (Luther, Jen. germ. Tom. III. Fol. 184 b.). He uses weakness as a means of subduing all things to Himself. A wretched reed, a crown of thorns and an infamous cross, are the weapons of this almighty God, by means of which He achieves such great things. In the second place, He was a hero and conqueror in that just by death, He robbed him of his might who had the power of death, i.e., the devil (Heb 2:14); in that He, like Samson, buried His enemies with Himself, yea, became poison to death itself, and a plague to hell (Hos 13:14) and more gloriously resumed His life so freely laid down, which none of the greatest heroes can emulate.Rambach.

17. On Isa 9:18 (19) sqq. True friendship can never exist among the wicked. For every one loves only himself. Therefore they are enemies one of another; and they are in any case friends to each other, only as long as it concerns making war on a third party.

Isaiah 10-18. On Isa 10:4. (Comp. the same expression in chap. 10). Gods quiver is well filled. If one arrow does not attain His object, He takes another, and so on, until the rights of God, and justice have conquered.

19. On Isa 10:5-7. God works through men in a threefold way. First, we all live, move and have our being in Him, in that all activity is an outflow of His power. Then, He uses the services of the wicked so that they mutually destroy each other, or He chastises His people by their hand. Of this sort the Prophet speaks here. In the third place, by governing His people by the Spirit of sanctification: and this takes place only in the elect.Heim and Hoffmann.

20. On Isa 10:5 sqq. Ad hunc, etc. Such places are to be turned to uses of comfort. Although the objects of temptation vary and enemies differ, yet the effects are the same, and the same spirit works in the pious. We are therefore to learn not to regard the power of the enemy nor our own weakness, but to look steadily and simply into the word, that will assuredly establish our minds that they despair not, but expect help of God. For God will not subdue our enemies, either spiritual or corporal, by might and power, but by weakness, as says the text: my strength is made perfect in weakness. (2Co 12:9).Luther.

21. On Isa 10:15. Efficacia agendi penes Deum est, homines ministerium tantum praebent. Quare nunc sibilo suo se illos evocaturum minabatur (cap. Isa 5:26; Isa 7:18); nunc instar sagenae sibi fore ad irretiendos, nunc mallei instar ad feriendos Israelitas. Sed praecipue tum declaravit, quod non sit otiosus in illis, dum Sennacherib securim vocat, quae ad secandum manu sua et destinata fuit et impacta. Non male alicubi Augustinus ita definit, quod ipsi peccant, eorum esse; quod peccando hoc vel illud agant, ex virtute Dei esse, tenebras prout visum est dividentis (De praedest Sanctt.).Calvin Inst. II. 4, 4.

22. On Isa 10:20-27. In time of need one ought to look back to the earlier great deliverances of the children of God, as to the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, or later, from the hand of the Midianites. Israel shall again grow out of the yoke.Diedrich.

Isaiah 11-23. On Isa 11:4. The staff of His mouth. Evidence that the kingdom of Christ will not be like an earthly kingdom, but consist in the power of the word and of the sacraments; not in leathern, golden or silver girdles, but in girdles of righteousness and faith.Cramer.

24. On Isa 11:10 sqq. If the Prophet honors the heathen in saying that they will come to Christ before Israel, he may be the more readily believed, when Isa 11:11 sqq., he gives the assurance that the return out of the first, the Egyptian exile, shall be succeeded by a return out of the second, the Assyrian exile, (taking this word in the wider sense of Isaiah). It is manifest that the return that took place under Zerubbabel and Ezra was only an imperfect beginning of that promised return. For according to our passage this second return can only take place after the Messiah has appeared. Farthermore, all Israelites that belong to the remnant of Israel, in whatever land they may dwell, shall take part in it. It will be, therefore, a universal, not a partial return. If now the Prophet paints this return too with the colors of the present (Isa 11:13 sqq.), still that is no reason for questioning the reality of the matter. Israel will certainly not disappear, but arise to view in the church of the new covenant. But if the nation is to be known among the nations as a whole, though no more as a hostile contrast, but in fraternal harmony, why then shall not the land, too, assume a like position among the lands? But the nation can neither assume its place among nations, nor the land its place among lands, if they are not both united: the people Israel in the land of their fathers.

25. On Isaiah 11 We may here recall briefly the older, so-called spiritual interpretation. Isa 11:1-5 were understood of Christs prophetic office that He exercised in the days of His flesh, then of the overthrow of the Roman Empire and of Antichrist, who was taken to be the Pope. But the most thorough-going of those old expositors must acknowledge, at Isa 11:4, that the Antichrist is not yet enough overthrown, and must be yet more overthrown. If such is the state of the case, then this interpretation is certainly false, for Isa 11:4 describes not a gradual judgment, but one accomplished at once. There have been many Antichrists, and among the Popes too, but the genuine Antichrist described 2 Thessalonians 2, is yet to be expected, and also the fulfillment of Isa 11:4 of our chapter. Thereby is proved at the same time that the peaceful state of things in the brute world and the return of the Jews to their native land are still things of the future, for they must happen in that period when the Antichristian world, and its head shall be judged by Christ. But then, too, the dwelling together of tame and wild beasts is not the entrance of the heathen into the church, to which they were heretofore hostile, and the return of the Jews is not the conversion of a small part of Israel that took place at Pentecost and after. The miracles and signs too, contained in Isa 11:15-16 did not take place then. We see just here how one must do violence to the word if he will not take it as it stands. But if we take it as we have done, then the whole chapter belongs to the doctrine of hope (Hoffnungslehre) of the Scripture, and constitutes an important member of it. The Lord procures right and room for His church. He overthrows the world-kingdom, together with Antichrist. He makes of the remnant of Israel a congregation of believers filled with the Spirit, to whom He is near in an unusual way, and from it causes His knowledge to go out into all the world. He creates peace in the restless creatures, and shows us here in advance what more glorious things we may look for in the new earth. He presents to the world a church which, united in itself, unmolested by neighbors, stands under Gods mighty protection. All these facts are parts of a chain of hope that must be valuable and dear to our hearts. The light of this future illumines the obscurity of the present; the comfort of that day makes the heart fresh. Weber, der Prophet Jesaja, 1875.

Chap. 1226. On Isa 12:4 sq. These will not be the works of the New Testament: sacrificing and slaying, and make pilgrimage to Jerusalem and to the Holy Sepulchre, but praising God and giving thanks, preaching and hearing, believing with the heart and confessing with the mouth. For to praise our God is good; such praise is pleasant and lovely (Psa 147:1). Cramer.

27. On Chap. 12 With these words conclude the prophetic discourses on Immanuel. Through what obscurity of history have we not had to go, until we came to the bright light of the kingdom of Christ! How Israel and the nations had to pass through the fire of judgment before the sun arises in Israel and the entire gentile world is illumined! It is the, same way that every Christian has to travel. In and through the fire we become blessed. Much must be burnt up in us, before we press to the full knowledge of God and of His Son, before we become entirely one with Him, entirely glad and joyful in Him. Israel was brought up and is still brought up for glory, and we too. O that our end too were such a psalm of praise as this psalm! Weber, Der Pr. Jes. 1875.

Footnotes:

[1]And writing evil they write.

[2]Or, to the writers that write grievousness.

[3](Nothing) except to bow among.

[4]among.

[5]Or, Woe to the Assyrian.

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

The Prophet is here denouncing punishment in the Lord’s name, to the proud oppressors of his people. In the midst of which there are several sweet breakings-out of that great salvation by Jesus, from whence alone the people of God can find deliverance or comfort.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Amidst general sins, with which both the people of God, and the oppressors of the Lord’s people, are said to abound, the Prophet is pointing to some special instances of the kind, which marked the higher order, magistrates and rulers. Against which, the Lord particularly sets his face, assures them that there will be a day of account, and therefore puts the question home to their own consciences. Reader, do not fail to remark how the Holy Ghost, in all ages, is carrying on his preparatory work in the heart, by pleading with the sinner on account of his sin, to plead with him of his want of Jesus.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

The Boasting Axe

Isa 10:15

What would be the result if we had amongst us through and through a most hearty and loyal and loving reception of the great doctrine of Divine sovereignty, the great doctrine that all things are settled and decreed and arranged.

I. If we could really believe these elementary truths we should have a great unit in society. Man did not make society, and man cannot destroy it; man did not make mystery, and man cannot solve it, unless by God’s enlightenment and special permission.

Out of this acceptance of the Divine sovereignty comes a grand religious brotherhood, as well as a deep satisfaction and noble peace. God did it all.

II. We must have a sceptre, a throne, a king. We as Christian students and believers have accepted the idea that God reigns, and by God we mean the loving, personal, redeeming God, the God incarnate in Christ Jesus, the God of Bethlehem, of Calvary, and of Olivet; the priest God, who loved us, who gave His Son to save us. That is what we believe; and, believing that, out of it comes a whole philosophy of daily life, of social responsibility, and of all manner of well-regulated and harmonic action. Now which is the greater for we must have great and small; these distinctions are not of our own making which is the greater, I will ask you, the man who wrote the book being Paradise Lost or Homer’s Iliad the man who wrote the book or the man who bound it? I wonder if you could constitute yourselves into a committee and appoint a sub-committee in order to return an answer to that inquiry? Which had the greater mind, judging both men from the evidence that is accessible? The one man wrote the book, the other man bound it; the book has achieved universal and imperishable fame, and the bookbinder has been paid. Which is the greater? oh, tell me! the picture or the frame-maker? If I could invite you to a grand exhibition of all the paintings of the year, and if I could also ask you to attend a complete exhibition of all the frames that have been made during the year, to which exhibition would you go? But is not one man as good as another? Why not go and see the frames? they are all gilt, and they are all shapely, and they are all made by very expert and efficient workmen; now will you go to see the pictures or the frames? I need not wait more than one moment; you have answered before the question was put. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. You want the pictures, the genius, the flame pentecostal, the mystery of harmony, perspective, colour, the silent oratorio.

Let us beware of second causes in providence, let us beware of second causes in religion, and let us beware of second causes in destiny; and let us accept the old, old doctrine of the sovereignty of God, and when we are in darkness let us seek the altar, the Cross, and pray.

References. X. 15. S. Martin, Sermons, p. 85. X. 17. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Isaiah, p. 55. X. 20-23. V. S. S. Coles, Advent Meditations on Isaiah, p. 84.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

The Knell of Doom

Isa 9:1 to Isa 10:4

There is a very striking expression in the Isa 9:11 : “The Lord shall set up the adversaries.” “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” Does God employ evil spirits, evil men? Is it true that he maketh the wrath of man to praise him, and that he restrains the remainder thereof, and keeps it back for use upon occasion? Does he use up the very hell which sin has made, turning its heat into uses intended for judgment and penalty, and through this process intended also for repentance and reclamation? It is a wonderful universe. “The Lord shall set up the adversaries.” This accounts for many oppositions which otherwise would be without explanation. We wonder why such and such people should be opposed to us; on the face of the occasion there is nothing to account for the hostility; in fact, there may be possibly something which ought to operate in another direction, making them rather friends and comrades than enemies; yet there they are, in battle array, looking upon us jealously, speaking of us falsely, endeavouring to ensnare our steps, to frustrate our purposes, and to make our life a misery. Attempt to conciliate them, and all your approaches do but add to the malignity of their detestation. We are not to look upon these things as merely human, coming and going by an uncalculated law, an operation of chance or fortuity; we are to ask for discerning eyes that look beneath surfaces, and find the spring of causes. The people themselves, too, are at a loss to explain their hostility: they cannot give reasons in regular numeration, gathering themselves up into a final and representative reason; yet they know that their hearts are simply set against us in a deadly attitude. Ask them questions about this opposition, and they will confess themselves bewildered; they daily look round for causes, and find none; yet they say they cannot restrain the dislike, and they must force it into forms of opposition about whose urgency and determinateness there can be no mistake. How is all this? Is it not the Lord reigning even here? God means to chasten us, to make us feel that there are other people in the world beside ourselves, and that we have no right to all the room, and no claim that can be maintained to all the property. Thus we teach one another by sometimes opposing one another. We are brought to chastening and sobriety and refinement by attritions and oppositions that are, from a human point of view, utterly unaccountable. The Bible never hesitates to trace the whole set and meaning of providence to the Lord himself: he sends the plague, the pestilence, the darkness, all the flies and frogs that desolated old Egypt; he still is the Author of gale, and flood, and famine, and pestilence. We have amused ourselves by deceiving ourselves, by discovering a thousand secondary causes, and seeking, piously or impiously, to relieve providence of the responsibility of the great epidemic. Within given limits all we say may be perfectly true; we are great in phenomena, we have a genius in the arrangement of detail; but, after all, above all, and beneath all, is the mysterious life, the omnipotence of God, the judgment between right and wrong that plays upon the universe as upon an obedient instrument, now evoking from it black frowning thunder, and now making it tremble with music that children love, and that sweetest mothers want all their babes to hear. Who can be so gentle, so condescending, so tender as the everlasting Father?

In this section we come upon a word which may be regarded as a refrain “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still” ( Isa 9:12 ). In the seventeenth verse the refrain is repeated; in the twenty-first verse we find it again; and once more ( Isa 10:4 ) the solemn words roll in upon our attention: “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” There must be some cause for this. Is the cause concealed? On the contrary, it is written in boldest capitals, so that the dimmest eyes may see it all, in every palpitating, burning syllable. Let us make ourselves acquainted with the cause, lest we judge God harshly by wondering that his hand should be stretched out in judgment rather than stretched out that he may touch the nations with a sceptre of mercy.

“The people turneth not unto him that smiteth them” ( Isa 9:13 ). That is one element of the cause of this judgment. They do not kiss the rod: they see it to be a rod only; they do not understand that judgment is the severe aspect of mercy, and that without mercy there could be no real judgment. There might be condemnation, destruction, annihilation, but “judgment” is a combined or compound term, involving in all its rich music every possible utterance of law and grace and song and hope. Why do we not turn to him who smites us, and kiss the rod; yea, kiss the hand that wields it? Why do we not say, Thy judgments are true and righteous altogether, thou Lord most High: health gone, chairs vacated, fireside emptied; all is right, and all is hard to bear: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord? Yea, the submissive heart may go further, and say, I have no right to any tittle that has been taken from me; it was really not mine; the mistake was that I thought it belonged to me, and that I could establish a claim to its proprietorship and retention: whereas I see now that I have nothing that I have not received, that I never had anything that was not given to me or lent to me, or of which I was not put in trust and stewardship. Thou hast taken it all away; I know it is not because I have prayed too much, but because I have sinned beyond measure. When a man thus kisses the hand that wields the rod, the rod blossoms, and God’s judgment becomes God’s grace.

“The leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed” ( Isa 9:16 ).

That is another explanation of the cause. The displeasure is not superficial or incidental, involving only a few of the weaker sort of people; the displeasure has attacked the very centres of social dignity, social thought, and social influence. The leaders have fallen: what can the followers do? Howl, fir tree, for the cedar has fallen. In ancient times the people were accustomed to put the statues of their princes and leaders close to fountains and springing waters; they thought the association good, the alliance seemed to be natural and suggestive: for these men were fountains of pure water, springs of wisdom, and judgment, and righteousness; all their thought was clear as crystal, and the uprising of their life was as water that came from a rocky bed, untainted, refreshing. The idea was excellent. People who had such conceptions regarding their princes, leaders, and legislators were likely to yield themselves to whatever influence such mighty men exerted. When, therefore, the leader went astray, the whole procession followed him, because they had confidence in him. “I command, therefore,” said one who spoke with authority, “that prayer be made for all men” for princes, governors, rulers, magistrates, judges, ministers of state, conductors of the journals of the time; for all men who have the eloquent tongue, the facile pen, moral, intellectual, social, that leadership may be purified, and that under a sanctified directorate the whole nation may move on in the direction of righteousness, equity, love of truth, moral frankness, and abounding, yea boundless, charity.

“Every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly”( Isa 9:17 ).

This is a continuation of the explanation of the cause of the divine judgment. Mark the completeness of the statement: it is “every one.” We have read elsewhere, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” We are familiar with the expression that the Lord looked down from heaven to see if there were any that were righteous and that did good, and whose thoughts were towards himself in all the simplicity of trust and in all the ardour of prayer, and he himself, reporting upon the moral state of the world, said, They have all turned aside. In our high confessions, sometimes perhaps thoughtlessly, yet after a moment’s reflection most thoughtfully, we have said, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way.” “Every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly.” Does not the word “folly” seem to be too weak a word with which to conclude that indictment? “Hypocrite,” “evildoer,” “folly” does not the series run in the wrong direction? So it may appear in the translation, but the word for “folly” should be “blasphemy.” “Every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh blasphemy:” the world has become brazen-faced in iniquity, shameless in sin; an oath shall now be uttered where once it would only have been whispered, and men shall speak openly of forbidden things as if they were talking the conventional language of the day. The devil drives his scholars fast; he does not keep school for nothing; he means to turn out experts; he listens to our profane rhetoric, and in proportion as we become eloquent in the utterance of his language does he give us prize, and certificate, and honour, and write down our names in the list of those who have taken high positions in the examinations of hell. “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” That is right. If his anger had been turned away, he would not have been God; if his hand had not been stretched out, even farther and farther still in presence of such wickedness, then he would have forfeited his right to sit upon the throne of the universe. God cannot yield; righteousness can never compound; there is no compromise in truth: the whole controversy must be settled upon principles that are fundamental, all-involving, and eternal, and then it will be for ever settled.

The Lord will show how the judgment will take effect “Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day” ( Isa 9:14 ). The explanation is given partly in Isa 9:15 , “The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.” “Branch and rush” the allusion is to the beauteous palm-tree: it shall be cut down notwithstanding its beauty; and the “rush” the common growths round about it, entangled roots, poor miserable shrubs that crowd and cumber the earth branch and rush cannot stand before God’s sword and fire: everything that is wrong goes down in a common destruction. Judgment obliterates our classifications. When judgment begins at the house of God, the meanest man and the loftiest go for nothing before the fire of that holy wrath. It is well that now and again all our classifications should be destroyed. We have made too much of them; we have designated this and that as reputable and respectable and good, whereas it was only relatively such, and not really. When God arises to shake terribly the earth, tower, and temple, and town, and meanest hut, all reel under the tremendous shock. “God is no respecter of persons.” He will not spare the corrupt judge and punish the meaner criminals; rather will he say, The greater the criminal’s advantages the meaner is the criminal himself: he ought to have known better; he had every opportunity of knowing better; he sinned away his advantages, and therefore his downfall could be none to mitigate or deplore.

“The Lord shall have no joy in their young men” ( Isa 9:17 ).

The meaning is full of suggestion. God delights in the young. God has made the young a ministry of instruction and comfort to old age. God keeps the world young by keeping children in it, and helpless ones. But God shall cease to see in young men any hope for the future. Once he would have done so, saying, The young men will keep the world right: they are strong, they are pure-minded, they are enthusiastic; their youthful, sometimes exuberant, zeal and influence will keep things as they ought to be kept. But henceforth God withdraws from the young, and they become old; he takes from them his all-vitalising and all-blessing smile, and they wither as flowers die when the sun turns away.

Sin was to be left to be its own punishment. Here we come upon a paragraph full of mournful interest. The whole work shall be left to sin itself. “No man shall spare his brother” ( Isa 9:19 ). How often have we seen when men have fallen into wrong relations to God they have fallen also into wrong relations to one another; all pledges are broken up, all covenants are destroyed, all understandings as to concession and compromise and give-and-take, all these things disappear, and man flies at the throat of man like wild beast at wild beast. How man can sink! Why can he sink so far? Because he has risen so high: the inverted tree we see in the calm lake indicates the height of that tree as it lifts itself up towards the welcoming and blessing sun. “He shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied” ( Isa 9:20 ). This is the mockery of God. This is how God taunts men. “They shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm.” A man shall play the cannibal upon himself. Literally, every man shall fly at every other man’s arm, and every man shall be eating human flesh, for there is nothing else to eat.

Then, too, there is to be internecine war: Manasseh shall fly at Ephraim, and Ephraim at Manasseh, and they who could agree upon nothing between themselves always agree in flying together against Judah. This is what wickedness will bring the world to to murder, to mutual hatred and distrust, to perdition. We do not understand the power of wickedness, because at present, owing to religious thinking and action and moral civilisation, there are so many mitigating circumstances, so many relieving lights; but wickedness in itself let loose upon the earth, and the earth is no longer the abode of green thing, of fair flower, or singing bird, of mutual trust and love: it becomes a pandemonium. If we could consider this deeply, it would make us solemn. We do not consider it; we are prepared to allow it as a theory or a conjecture, but the realisation of it is kept far from us. The wicked man kills himself; puts his teeth into the flesh of his own arm, and gnaws it with the hunger of a wild beast. That is what wickedness comes to! It is not an intellectual error, not a slight and passing mistake, not a lapse of judgment, or a momentarily lamentable act of misconduct which can easily be repaired: the essence of wickedness is destruction. Wickedness would no sooner hesitate to kill a little child than to snap a flower. The thing that keeps the world from suicide is the providence of God. Were God to take away the restraining influences which are keeping society together, society would fall into mutual enmity, and the controversy could only end in mutual death. “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still” ( Isa 9:21 ). Do not blame the judgment, blame the sin; do not say, How harsh is God, say, How corrupt, how blasphemous is man!

“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed” ( Isa 10:1 ).

The Lord’s voice is always for righteousness. What is it that is denounced? It is the very thing that is to be denounced evermore. There is nothing local or temporary in this cause of divine offence. The Lord is against all unrighteous decrees, unnatural alliances, and evil compacts. This is the very glory of the majesty of omnipotence, that it is enlisted against every form of evil and wrong. Then “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed” scribes or registrars who preserve all the forms of the court, and keep their pens busy upon the court register, writing down every case, and appearing to do the business correctly and thoughtfully; and yet all the while these very registrars were themselves plotting “to take away the right from the poor, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless.” The court of law was turned into a means of robbery, as it is in nearly every country under the sun. The scribes who wrote down the law were men who secretly or overtly broke it; the judge used his ermine as a cloak, that under its concealment he might thrust his hand further into the property of those who had no helper. “For all this his anger is not turned away.” Blessed be his name! Oh, burn thou against us all; mighty, awful, holy God, burn more and more, until we learn by fire what we can never learn by pity. The Lord speaks evermore for the poor, for the widow, for the fatherless, for the helpless. Here we pause, as we have often done before in these readings, to say, How grand is the moral tone of the Bible; how sweetly does God speak for truth and righteousness; how condescendingly does he enlist omnipotence on the side of innocent helplessness.

Now we come upon an awful irony:

“What will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?” ( Isa 10:3 ).

This is more difficult to bear than was the fire of judgment this spectral tone, this irony from behind the clouds, this mockery that makes our marrow cold. “What will ye do?” What is your last resource? When it becomes your turn to play in this great game, what move will you take? That hour comes in all life. For a long time men can be moving to and fro, and changing their position, and trying their policy, and deceiving even the very elect by the agility of their movements; but there comes a time when the last step must be taken, the last hand must be shown, the last declaration must be made. You have sinned away so the impeachment would seem to say the day of judgment; you have mocked righteousness; you have turned the sanctuary into a school of blasphemy; you have robbed the poor, the widow, the fatherless; you have trodden down every thing of beauty that God planted upon the earth, and you would have blackened the stars with night if your evil hands could have reached them! Now there has come the critical moment of agony, and the question is, “What will ye do?” Now for genius, now for the fine intellectual stroke, now for the stroke that will settle everything your own way what is it? Open your right hand, and it contains emptiness; your left, and it is rich with nothingness. “What will ye do?” You have sworn every oath, and the very familiarity of your irreverence has turned your blasphemy stale. “What will ye do?” Bribe? You have nothing in the treasure-house, and your money is not current coin with this reckoning. “What will ye do?” Confess? Too late: that would be a coward’s trick. “What will ye do?” That same question occurs in the Christian books “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” That question is HOW?

Note

“The whole passage, from the fifth verse of chap. x. to the end of chap, xii., should be read together, beginning with the solemn denunciation, as the title to the whole, of ‘Woe to Asshur!’ Assyria, in all its pride, was but a rod in the hands of Jehovah, and when the appointed work of judgment was done, the instrument of that judgment, worthless in itself, would be cast away and destroyed…. Then follows a description of the Assyrian’s march upon Jerusalem, which, says Delitzsch, ‘aesthetically considered, is one of the most magnificent that human poetry has ever produced.’ It is also very interesting to the reader of modern days, inasmuch as it clears up a difficulty which most earlier expositors had felt, and enables us by means of the Assyrian monuments to add another to the ‘undesigned’ confirmations of Scripture. It has been usual to refer the account of this march to the history of Sennacherib, in Hezekiah’s later days, after the capture of Lachish [2Ki 18:13-17 ; Isa 36:1-2 ]. But then, it has been remarked, Sennacherib advanced from the south-west, i.e. from the road leading to Egypt; while the route so vividly described by the prophet is from the north-east. Expositors therefore have generally contented themselves with calling the description ‘ideal.’ It depicts such an approach as the Assyrian king might have made, had he come from that quarter! But now we know that there was another invasion before that of Sennacherib.” Rev. S. G. Green, D.P.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XXVII

THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST IN ISAIAH

The relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy is that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. To him give all the prophets witness. All the scriptures, the law, the prophets, and the psalms, testify of him. And we are fools, and slow of heart to credit adequate testimony when we distrust any part of the inspired evidence.

Of the ancient prophets Isaiah was perhaps the most notable witness of the coming Messiah. An orderly combination of his many messianic utterances amounts to more than a mere sketch, indeed, rather to a series of almost life-sized portraits. As a striking background for these successive portraits the prophet discloses the world’s need of a Saviour, and across this horrible background of gloom the prophet sketches in startling strokes of light the image of a coming Redeemer.

In Isa 2:2-4 we have the first picture of him in Isaiah, that of the effect of his work, rather than of the Messiah himself. This is the establishment of the mountain of the Lord’s house on the top of the mountains, the coming of the nations to it and the resultant millennial glory.

In Isa 4:2-6 is another gleam from the messianic age in which the person of the Messiah comes more into view in the figure of a branch of Jehovah, beautiful and glorious. In sketching the effects of his work here the prophet adds a few strokes of millennial glory as a consummation of his ministry.

In Isa 7:14 he delineates him as a little child born of a virgin, whose coming is the light of the world. He is outlined on the canvas in lowest humanity and highest divinity, “God with us.” In this incarnation he is the seed of the woman and not of the man.

The prophet sees him as a child upon whom the government shall rest and whose name is “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6 ). This passage shows the divinity of Christ and the universal peace he is to bring to the world. In these names we have the divine wisdom, the divine power, the divine fatherhood, and the divine peace.

In Isa 11:1-9 the prophet sees the Messiah as a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, i.e., of lowly origin, but possessing the Holy Spirit without measure who equips him for his work, and his administration wrought with skill and justice, the result of which is the introduction of universal and perfect peace. Here the child is presented as a teacher. And such a teacher! On him rests the seven spirits of God. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. He judges not according to appearances and reproves not according to rumors. With righteousness he judges the poor and reproves with equality in behalf of the meek. His words smite a guilty world like thunderbolts and his very breath slays iniquity. Righteousness and faithfulness are his girdle. He uplifts an infallible standard of morals.

In Isa 40:3-8 appears John the Baptist, whom Isaiah saw as a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the coming King.

In Isa 11:2 ; Isa 42:1 ; Isa 61:1-3 the prophet saw the Messiah as a worker in the power of the Spirit, in whom he was anointed at his baptism. This was the beginning of his ministry which was wrought through the power of the Holy Spirit. At no time in his ministry did our Lord claim that he wrought except in the power of the Holy Spirit who was given to him without measure.

In Isa 35:1-10 the Messiah is described as a miracle worker. In his presence the desert blossoms as a rose and springs burst out of dry ground. The banks of the Jordan rejoice. The lame man leaps like a hart, the dumb sing and the blind behold visions. The New Testament abounds in illustrations of fulfilment. These signs Christ presented to John the Baptist as his messianic credentials (Mat 11:1-4 ).

The passage (Isa 42:1-4 ) gives us a flashlight on the character of the Messiah. In the New Testament it is expressly applied to Christ whom the prophet sees as the meek and lowly Saviour, dealing gently with the blacksliding child of his grace. In Isa 22:22 we have him presented as bearing the key of the house of David, with full power to open and shut. This refers to his authority over all things in heaven and upon earth. By this authority he gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter one for the Jews and the other for the Gentiles who used one on the day of Pentecost and the other at the house of Cornelius, declaring in each case the terms of entrance into the kingdom of God. This authority of the Messiah is referred to again in Revelation:

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying. Fear not: I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Rev 7:17

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphis write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and none shall shut, and shutteth and none openeth. Rev 3:7

In Isa 32:1-8 we have a great messianic passage portraying the work of Christ as a king ruling in righteousness, in whom men find a hiding place from the wind and the tempest. He is a stream in a dry place and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

In Isa 28:14-18 the Messiah is presented to w as a foundation stone in a threefold idea:

1. A tried foundation stone. This is the work of the master mason and indicates the preparation of the atone for its particular function.

2. An elect or precious foundation stone. This indicates that the stone was selected and appointed. It was not self-appointed but divinely appointed and is therefore safe.

3. A cornerstone, or sure foundation stone. Here it is a foundation of salvation, as presented in Mat 16:18 . It is Christ the Rock, and not Peter. See Paul’s foundation in 1 Corinthians:

According to the grace of God which was given unto me; as a wise masterbuilder I laid a foundation; and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1Co 3:10-11 .

In Isa 49:1-6 he is presented as a polished shaft, kept close in the quiver. The idea is that he is a mighty sword. In Revelation, Christ is presented to John as having a sharp, twoedged sword proceeding out of his mouth.

In Isa 50:2 ; Isa 52:9 f.; Isa 59:16-21 ; Isa 62:11 we have the idea of the salvation of Jehovah. The idea is that salvation originated with God and that man in his impotency could neither devise the plan of salvation nor aid in securing it. These passages are expressions of the pity with which God looks down on a lost world. The redemption, or salvation, here means both temporal and spiritual salvation salvation from enemies and salvation from sin.

In Isa 9:1 f. we have him presented as a great light to the people of Zebulun and Naphtali. In Isa 49:6 we have him presented as a light to the Gentiles and salvation to the end of the earth: “Yea, he saith, It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”

In Isa 8:14-15 Isaiah presents him as a stone of stumbling: “And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble thereon, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.”

The prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection are found in Isa 50:4-9 ; Isa 52:13-53:12 . In this we have the vision of him giving his “back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.” We see a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His visage is so marred it startled all nations. He is a vicarious sacrifice. The chastisement of the peace of others is on him. The iniquity of others is put on him. It pleases the Father to bruise him until he has poured out his soul unto death as an offering for sin.

The teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews is his teaching concerning the “holy remnant,” a favorite expression of the prophet. See Isa 1:9 ; Isa 10:20-22 ; Isa 11:11 ; Isa 11:16 ; Isa 37:4 ; Isa 37:31-32 ; Isa 46:3 . This coincides with Paul’s teaching in Romans 9-11.

In Isa 32:15 we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit: “Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest,” and in Isa 44:3 : “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”

In Isa 11:10 he is said to be the ensign of the nations: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting place shall be glorious.”

Isa 19:18-25 ; Isa 54:1-3 ; Isa 60:1-22 teach the enlargement of the church. The great invitation and promise are found in Isa 55 .

The Messiah in judgments is found in Isa 63:1-6 . Here we behold an avenger. He comes up out of Edom with dyed garments from Bozra. All his raiment is stained with the blood of his enemies whom he has trampled in his vengeance as grapes are crushed in the winevat and the restoration of the Jews is set forth in Isa 11:11-12 ; Isa 60:9-15 ; Isa 66:20 . Under the prophet’s graphic pencil or glowing brush we behold the establishment and growth of his kingdom unlike all other kingdoms, a kingdom within men, a kingdom whose principles are justice, righteousness, and equity and whose graces are faith, hope, love, and joy, an undying and ever-growing kingdom. Its prevalence is like the rising waters of Noah’s flood; “And the waters prevailed and increased mightily upon the earth. And the water prevailed mightily, mightily upon the earth; and all the high mountains, that are under the whole heavens, were covered.”

So this kingdom grows under the brush of the prophetic limner until its shores are illimitable. War ceases. Gannenta rolled in the blood of battle become fuel for fire. Conflagration is quenched. Famine outlawed. Pestilence banished. None are left to molest or make afraid. Peace flows like a river. The wolf dwells with the lamb. The leopard lies down with the kid. The calf and the young lion walk forth together and a little child is leading them. The cow and the bear feed in one pasture and their young ones are bedfellows. The sucking child safely plays over the hole of the asp, and weaned children put their hands in the adder’s den. In all the holy realms none hurt nor destroy, because the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the fathomless ocean is full of water. Rapturous vision! Sublime and ineffable consummation! Was it only a dream?

In many passages the prophet turns in the gleams from the millennial age, but one of the clearest and best on the millennium, which is in line with the preceding paragraph, Isa 11:6-9 : “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together: and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.”

The prophet’s vision of the destruction of death is given in Isa 25:8 : “He hath swallowed up death for ever; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people will he take away from all the earth: for Jehovah hath spoken it,” and in Isa 26:19 : “Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.”

The clearest outlines of the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained” are to be found in Isa 25:8 , and in two passages in chapter Isa 66 : Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn over her; that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream: and ye shall suck thereof; ye shall be borne upon the side, and shall be dandled upon the knees, as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And ye shall see it, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like the tender grass: and the hands of Jehovah shall be known toward his servants ; and he will have indignation against his enemies. Isa 66:10-14

For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make shall remain before me, saith Jehovah, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. Isa 66:22-23

QUESTIONS

1. What is the relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy?

2. What can you say of Isaiah as a witness of the Messiah?

3. What can you say of Isaiah’s pictures of the Messiah and their background?

4. Following in the order of Christ’s manifestation, what is the first picture of him in Isaiah?

5. What is the second messianic glimpse in Isaiah?

6. What is Isaiah’s picture of the incarnation?

7. What is Isaiah’s picture of the divine child?

8. What is Isaiah’s vision of his descent, his relation to the Holy Spirit, his administration of justice, and the results of his reign?

9. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah’s herald?

10. What is the prophet’s vision of his anointing?

11. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a miracle worker?

12. What is the prophet’s vision of the character of the Messiah?

13. What is the prophet’s vision of him as the key bearer?

14. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a king and a hiding place?

15. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah as a foundation stone?

16. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a polished shaft?

17. In what passages do we find the idea of the salvation of Jehovah, and what the significance of the idea?

18. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah as a light?

19. Where does Isaiah present him as a stone of stumbling?

20. What is the prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection?

21. What is the teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews?

22. Where do we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit?

23. Where is he said to be the ensign of the nations?

24. What passages teach the enlargement of the church?

25. Where is the great invitation and promise?

26. Where is the Messiah in judgment?

27. What passages show the restoration of the Jews?

28. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah’s kingdom?

29. What is the prophet’s vision of the millennium?

30. What is the prophet’s vision of the destruction of death?

31. What is the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained?”

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

XII

THE BOOK OF ISAIAH PART 4

Isa 7:1-10:14

In the outline the section, Isaiah 7-13, is called the book of Immanuel, because the name, “Immanuel,” occurs in it twice and it is largely messianic. There are four main divisions of this section preceded by a historical introduction, as follows: Historical introduction (Isa 7:1-2 )

I. Two interviews with Ahaz and their messages (Isa 7:3-25 )

II. Desolating judgments followed by salvation (Isa 8:1-9:7 )

III. Jehovah’s hand of judgments (Isa 9:8-10:4 )

IV. The debasement of the Assyrians and the salvation of true Israel (Isa 10:5-12:6 )

There are certain items of information in the historical introduction, as follows:

1. That the date of this section is the “days of Ahaz,” king of Judah.

2. That, during this reign, Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, king of Israel, attempted to take Jerusalem but failed.

3. That the confederacy between Syria and Ephraim caused great fear in Judah on the part of both the king and the people. By the command of Jehovah Isaiah, with his son, Shearjashub, went forth to meet Ahaz, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fuller’s field to quiet his fear respecting the confederacy of Rezin and Pekah, assuring him that their proposed capture of Jerusalem and enthronement of Tabeel, an Assyrian, should not come to pass because Damascus and Samaria had only human heads, while Jerusalem had a divine head who was able to and would destroy their confederacy within sixty-five years, which included the work of Tiglath-pileser III, Shalmaneser IV, Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. The last named completed the destruction of the power of the ten tribes by placing heathen colonists in the cities of Samaria (2Ki 17:24 ; Eze 4:2 ). Then the prophet rested Ahaz’s case on his faith in Jehovah’s word and promise. This challenge of faith to Ahaz is beautifully expressed by the poet, thus: Happiest they of human race To whom our God has granted grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray; To lift the latch and force the way.

It seems that Ahaz silently rejected Jehovah’s proposition of faith. So Jehovah, to give him another chance and to leave him without excuse, offers, through his prophet, to strengthen Ahaz’s faith by means of a sign, allowing him to name the sign to be given. But Ahaz made “a pious dodge” because of his contemplated alliance with Assyria, saying that he would not tempt Jehovah. Then the prophet upbraids the house of David for trying the patience of Jehovah and announces that Jehovah will give a sign anyway, which was the child to be born of a virgin, after which he goes on to show that the whole land shall be made desolate. Jehovah will summons the nations to devastate the land. Then he gives four pictures of its desolation as follows: (1) Flies and bees; (2) the hired razor; (3) one cow and two sheep; (4) briers and thorns.

Signs were of various kinds. They might be actual miracles performed to attest a divine commission (Exo 4:3-9 ), or judgments of God, significant of his power of justice (Exo 10:2 ), or memorials of something in the past (Exo 13:9 ; Exo 13:16 ), or pledges of something still future, such as are found in Jdg 6:36-40 ; 2Ki 20:8-11 et al. The sign here was a pledge of God’s promise to Ahaz of the destruction of Damascus, and Samaria and comes under the last named class. But as to its fulfilment there is much discussion, the most of which we may brush aside as altogether unprofitable. The radical critics contend that Isaiah expected a remarkable deliverer to arise in connection with the Assyrian war and deny that this refers at all to our Lord Jesus Christ. There seems to be no certain or common ground for mediating and conservative critics themselves. There are two main views held: (1) That a child was to be born in the days of Isaiah who was to be a type of the great Immanuel. They say that verses 15-16 favor this view. Now if the birth was to be natural, it seems to have a double sense, or else a very poor type. If there were a miraculous conception of a type of Christ in those days all records have been lost. At least, it is impossible to locate definitely the wonderful person who was to prefigure the real Immanuel. (2) That the reference is solely to the birth of Jesus Christ. But how could this be a sign unto Ahaz? Here we note the fact that this language respecting the sign is addressed to the “house of David” and therefore becomes a sign to the nation rather than to Ahaz alone. The time element of the prophecy hinges on the word, “before.” It is literally true that before this child grew to discern good and evil, the land of Damascus and the land of Israel had been laid waste. The text does not say how long before but the word, “before,” is used to express the order of events, rather than time immediately before. A good paraphrase of the prophecy would be, “O house of David, I will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, but before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, Syria and Israel shall be forsaken and Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, days unlike any that have come since Ephraim rebelled in the days of Jeroboam.” All this took place before the child was born who was to be the sign unto all people, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the idea of Gen 3:15 : “The seed of the woman [not of the man] shall bruise the serpent’s head,” and forecasts the doctrine of the incarnation, a doctrine essential to the redemption of the world. Of one thing we may be assured, viz: Never was this prophecy fulfilled until Jesus Christ was born of the virgin Mary. Of him old Simeon said, “He shall be set for a sign which is spoken against.” So we can plant ourselves squarely on Mat 1:23 and say, “Here is the fulfilment of Isa 7:14 .”

The significance of “the fly,” “the bee,” “the razor,” “the cow and two sheep,” and “briers and thorns” is important. The fly is here used to designate the Egyptian army which was loosely organized, something like the looseness with which flies swarm. The bee refers to Assyria whose armies were much better and more compactly organized than the Egyptian army, something like the order with which bees work. The hired razor refers to the king of Assyria, who had been hired, as it were, by Samaria to help them, meaning that this was to be the power by which Jehovah was going to accomplish his work of destruction upon Samaria and Damascus. The “cow and two sheep” signifies the scanty supply of animals left in the land after this desolation which was so clearly foretold. The “briers and thorns” represent the deserted condition of the country, in which the lands that were once tilled and valuable, would then become overgrown with briers and thorns.

There are three subdivisions of the section, Isa 8:1-9:7 , as follows:

1. The twofold sign of the punishment about to fall upon Damascus and Samaria.

2. The invasion of Judah.

3. Jehovah’s light dispels the darkness.

The twofold sign was the sign of the great tablet and the child’s name, which was intended especially for the doubters and unbelievers in the nation, as the sign, in the preceding chapter, of Immanuel, “God with us,” was sufficient for the reassurance of the faithful. This was a sign that would be verified in two or three years and at once placed the king and people on probation, forcing them to raise the question, “Shall we continue to look to Assyria for help, or shall we trust the prophet’s word about Assyria, Rezin, and Pekah?” The writing on the tablet and the child’s name were identical, meaning “Plunder speedeth, spoil hasteth,” from which sign and the obligations involved in its verification there was no escape. It was fulfilled in three or four years when Pekah was assassinated and Rezin slain by the king of Assyria.

The prophet describes this invasion as the waters of the Euphrates coming first against Damascus and Samaria because they looked to Rezin and Pekah rather than to Jehovah’s resources for relief, and bursting through them, who had been the breakwater for Judah against this flood, it would sweep on into Judah and overflow it.

Then the prophet (Isa 8:9-10 ) invites the people of the East to make an uproar and to devise all means possible for the destruction of Judah, but it would all come to nought, for God was with his people. Immanuel was their hope and is our hope. As Paul says in Rom 8:31 , “If God is for us, who is against us?”

As shown in Isa 8:11-15 , their real danger was not in invading armies, but in unbelief. Jehovah was to be their dread. He would be their sanctuary, their refuge, if they only believed on him. If not, he became a stone of stumbling or a snare unto them. This thought is amplified in the New Testament in many places (see Luk 2:34 ; Rom 9:33 ; 1Pe 2:8 , et al). The meaning of Isa 8:16-18 , “Bind thou up the testimony, etc.,” is Jehovah’s order to Israel to write the prophecy and to tie it up in the roll for the generations of his people to follow. Isaiah then expresses his abiding confidence in his and his children’s mission in being signs in Israel, looking to him for his favor.

The warning and exhortation (Isa 8:19-22 ) were given them in view of their coming troublous times when they would be tempted to turn to other sources of information rather than God’s revelations, which would lead them into greater darkness and confusion. A case of its violation is that of King Saul. When God refused to hear him because of his sin, he sought the witch of Endor, which in the light of this passage illustrates the operations of modern spiritualists.

Across the horrible background of Isa 8 the prophet sketches, in startling strokes of light, the image of a coming Redeemer, who brought light, liberty, peace, and joy to his subjects. The New Testament in Mat 4:15-16 , tells us that the light, liberty, peace, and joy of the prophecy were fulfilled in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali when Jesus and his disciples came among the people dwelling around the Sea of Galilee and preached his gospel and healed their sick and delivered their demoniacs. That his gospel was light, a great light. All knowledge is light. Whatsoever maketh manifest is light. And this gospel brought the knowledge of salvation in the remission of their sins. It revealed their relations toward God. It revealed God himself in the face of Jesus Christ. It discovered their sins and brought contrition and repentance. It revealed a sin-cleansing and sin-pardoning Saviour. Its reception brought peace by justification and brought liberty by dispossession of Satan. And with light, liberty, and peace came joy unspeakable.

The central text of this passage is, “For unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given.” The “for” refers to the preceding context, which tells us that she who was under gloom shall have no more anguish. That the people who walk in darkness behold a great light. That the land of Zebulun and Naphtali on which divine contempt had been poured is now overflowed with blessings. That with light has come liberty, and with liberty peace, and with peace joy and the joy of harvest and of victory, for this child is born. The coming of this child is assigned as the reason or cause for all this light, this liberty, this peace, this joy. Marvelous child to be the author of such blessings. Humanity is unquestionably here. It is a child, born of an earthly mother. But mere humanity cannot account for such glorious and eternal results. A mere child could not bear up under the government of the world and establish a kingdom of whose increase there should be no end.

The names ascribed to our Lord in Isa 9:6 cannot be Alexander, Caesar, or Bonaparte. Their kingdoms were not of peace, light, joy, and liberty. Their kingdoms perished with themselves. But what is this child’s name? It staggers us to call it: His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace! If this be not divinity, words cannot express it. And if it be divinity as certainly as a “child born” expresses humanity, then well may his name be “Wonderful,” for he is God-man. Earth, indeed, furnished his mother, but heaven furnished the sire. And if doubt inquire, how can these things be, it must be literally true as revealed and fulfilled later: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore, also the Holy One who shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

In particular these names give us the following ideas of him:

1. “Wonderful, Counsellor” indicates the matchless wisdom with which he taught and lived among men. In all that concerns the glory of Jehovah and the welfare of his people, we may rely implicitly on the purposes and plans of this Deliverer.

2. “Mighty God” means the living and true God and refers to his omnipotence in carrying out his plans and purposes. He is not only God, but he is Almighty God, at whose command were the powers of the universe, “head over all things unto the church,” making “all things work together for good to them that love God.”

3. “Everlasting Father” means “Father of eternity” and refers to his divinity, whose “goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.”

4. “Prince of Peace” refers to his mission in the nature of his kingdom. He is not only a mighty hero but his kingdom is a kingdom of peace.

The promise here concerning his kingdom is that it is to be an everlasting kingdom, administered in peace and righteousness (Isa 9:6 ).

The title of section Isa 9:8-10:4 is “Jehovah’s hand of judgment,” and is suggested from the fact that this section is divided into four paragraphs, or strophes, each one ending with the sad refrain, “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still,” i.e., for further chastisement. The special themes of these four paragraphs, respectively, are as follows:

1.Isa 9:8-12 , The loss of wealth, followed by repeated invasion.

2.Isa 9:13-17 , The loss of rulers.

3.Isa 9:18-21 , The devouring fire of their own sinfulness.

4.Isa 10:1-4 , A woe unto perverters and their utter helplessness.

The loss of wealth is described in Isa 9:8-12 . The prophet introduces this section by saying that the Lord had sent word to Jacob and it had lighted up Israel, i.e., this message of destruction was mainly for Israel, who were standing stoutly in the face of God’s chastisements, by substituting one thing for another destroyed by Jehovah. The prophet assures them that God has not exhausted all his means and that he will use Syria and Philistia to complete the work of desolation.

Then the loss of their rulers is described in Isa 9:13-17 . The prophet introduces this strophe with a complaint that Jehovah’s chastisements had been ineffective in turning Samaria to himself. Then he goes on to show that Jehovah would cut off from Israel the head, i.e., the elder, and the tail, i.e., the lying prophet; that he would destroy all without mercy because they were all profane.

The devouring fire of their own sinfulness follows in Isa 9:18-21 . The prophet here likens wickedness unto a devouring fire, which devours briers and thorns, then breaks out in the forests and rolls up its column of smoke. A very impressive picture of the course and penalty of wickedness, as it goes on to full fruitage in its destruction of those who practice it, until without discrimination it devours alike the neighbor and the kinsman.

In Isa 10:1-4 the prophet brings a heavy charge against this class, that they rob the poor and needy, and devour widows’ houses, making them their prey. What a picture of perverted justice! Because of this awful corruption there will be no hope for them before the enemy in the day of Jehovah’s visitation and desolation. They shall bow down under the prisoners and fall under the slain. A graphic description of their humiliation is this, yet, “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” A sad wail and a gloomy picture from which we joyfully turn to another section of the book, in which we have the enemies of Jehovah’s people brought low and the true Israel of God exalted. But this will follow in the next chapter.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the title of Isaiah 7-12 in the outline and why is it so called?

2. What is the outline of this division?

3. What is the items of information in the historical introduction?

4. Give an account of the first meeting with Ahaz and the message of the prophet in connection with it.

5. Give an account of the second meeting with Ahaz and the message of the prophet in connection with it.

6. What is the meaning of Jehovah’s sign to Ahaz and when was the prophecy of this sign fulfilled?

7. What is the significance of “the fly,” “the bee,” “the razor,” “the cow and two sheep,” and “briers and thorns”?

8. What are the three subdivisions of Isa 8:1-9:7 ?

9. What is the twofold sign of the punishment about to fall upon Damascus and Samaria and what the significance of it?

10. Describe the picture of the Assyrian invasion as given here by the prophet in Isa 8:5-8 .

11. What hope of defense against this invading power does the prophet hold out to Judah in Isa 8:9-10 ?

12. In what was their real danger as shown in Isa 8:11-15 ?

13. What was the meaning of Isa 8:16-18 , “Bind thou up the testimony, etc.”?

14. What is the special pertinency of the exhortation of’ Isaiah respecting familiar spirits in Isa 8:19-22 and what Old Testament example of the violation of its teaching?

15. What is the fulfilment and interpretation of the great messianic prophecy in Isa 9:1-7 ?

16. What are the names ascribed to our Lord in Isa 9:6 and what the significance of them in general and in particular?

17. What promise here concerning his kingdom?

18. What is the title of section Isa 9:8-10:4 and what suggests it?

19. What are the special themes of each of these four paragraphs?

20. How is the loss of wealth in Isa 9:8-12 described?

21. How is the loss of their rulers in Isa 9:13-17 described?

22. How is the devouring fire of their own sinfulness in Isa 9:18-21 described?

23. How is the woe against perverters of righteousness in Isa 10:1-4 here described?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Isa 10:1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness [which] they have prescribed;

Ver. 1. Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees. ] Having denounced woe to wicked of all sorts, the prophet here threateneth wicked princes in particular, as the chief causes of God’s judgments by their misgovernment. Periculosissimum prophetae factum, et cui seditionis dica scribi poterat! a This was boldly done of the prophet, and there wanted not those doubtless that would say it was sedition. Luther, for like cause, was called the trumpet of rebellion; sc., for declaring against the Pope’s decrees and decretals, though never so unrighteous and vexatious; not much short of that made by Nero, Whosoever confesseth himself a Christian – so a Protestant – let him, without further defence of himself, be put to death as a convicted enemy of mankind!

And that write grievousness. ] Or, And to the writers that write grievous things – viz., the public notaries, registrars, and other under officers; such as were those Persian scribes and posts, Est 3:12-13 who should, in such a case, have obeyed God rather than men.

a Scultet.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Isaiah Chapter 10

The last of these disciplinary inflictions is given in Isa 10 . Here (vv. 1-4) it is the unrighteousness of the judges, who stood in the place of God Himself, and were called Elohim or gods (Psa 82:6 ), but who most grievously misrepresented His character and wronged His people, specially the defenceless. “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and unto the writers that prescribe oppression; to turn aside the needy from judgement, and to take away the right from the afflicted of my people, that widows may be their prey, and [that] they may rob the fatherless! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation [which] shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help! and where will ye leave your glory? “And this is His sentence on them: “Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain.” The most exalted shall be most abased; and those shall fare worst whom it least became to turn their high estate and large power to God-dishonouring greed, and to oppression of the weak and wretched. “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand [is] stretched out still.”

But now, from verse 5, we enter on a most weighty change. The Assyrian desolator comes up once more. It is his final working which is chiefly in the mind of the Holy Ghost; as indeed this is the grand catastrophe and last trouble of Jacob, and in contrast with the oft-repeated formula of still continuing unexhausted wrath. Now, on the contrary, in this proud enemy of Israel we have the end of Jehovah’s anger. “The day of visitation” is there, the “desolation from far” is come. The indignation ceases and Jehovah’s anger in their destruction. His anger now is turned away and His arm stretched out no more. The rod should be broken, the scourge destroyed, as the chastening work is done.

Again, it is of great moment to apprehend clearly that the Antichrist, or man of sin, is a totally distinct personage. The commentators from Eusebius to Horsley, to pass by a crowd of others who confound the two, are herein inexcusably careless of the Scriptures. For it is very clear that there will be a wilful king in the city and land who will set himself up as Messiah and Jehovah in His temple, received as such by the apostate Jews; and that, altogether opposed to this Antichrist in Jerusalem who is in league with the western power, will arise another chief, an external antagonist of the Jews, who is the Assyrian, or Daniel’s king of the north, so often occurring in the prophecies. Of him Sennacherib, to a certain extent, was a type.

The Assyrian then was first used as a rod to chastise Israel. “Ho, Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation. I will send him against a hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to seize the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. But he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but [it is] in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.” But he owned not God, “For he saith, [Are] not my princes all kings? [Is] not Calno as Carchemish? [is] not Hamath as Arpad? [is] not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols (and their graven images exceeded those of Jerusalem and of Samaria), shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her images?” (vv. 5-11). His own doom is therefore sealed.

“And it shall come to pass [that], when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and upon Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done [it], and by my wisdom, for I am prudent; and I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and like a valiant man I have put down them that sit [on thrones]; and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the peoples; and as one gathereth forsaken eggs, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or chirped.

“Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? Shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake them that lift it up; as if the staff should lift up [him that is] not wood. Therefore shall the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briars in one day; and it shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body; and they shall be as when a standard-bearer [or, a sick man] fainteth. And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, yea, a child may write them” (vv. 12-19). It is the closing scene. The Lord has not even yet performed His whole work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem. Nay, He will not have done it as long as the Antichrist will be in the land. He having been disposed of by His epiphany from heaven, the Assyrian still remains to be punished. The former is the enemy of the heavenly rights and divine glory of Christ (denying the Father and the Son), but will be destroyed by His sudden shining forth from heaven; the latter dares to oppose His earthly rights, and will be dealt with accordingly when He is come to reign over the earth.

“And it shall come to pass in that day [that] the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again rely upon him that smote them; but they shall rely upon Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant shall return, the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, [only] a remnant of them shall return: the consumption determined shall overflow in righteousness. For the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, will make a consumption even determined in the midst of all the land” (vv. 20-23). Then indeed Israel’s unbelief shall for ever pass away: Israel will trust no more in an arm of flesh, be it Egyptian, Assyrian, or what not. The slaughter of Midian and the manner of Egypt give the characteristic patterns of the future deliverance.* “Therefore thus saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: though he smite thee with the rod, and lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger, in their destruction. And Jehovah of hosts will stir up against him a scourge, as in the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and his rod [shall be] over the sea, and he will lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall depart from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing” (vv. 24-27). The sign of Shear-jashub is thus made good. The apostle in Rom 9:27 , Rom 9:28 , quotes this prophecy to justify from the Old Testament the fact which is assumed throughout the New Testament that only a remnant of the people had saving relations with God. So it is now under the gospel, as it was after Babylon; and so it will be when the last crisis comes, and the struggles of the Antichrist and the Assyrian, till the Messiah decides all and displays His kingdom in power here below. (Compare Dan 8:19-25 ; Dan 9:26 , Dan 9:27 ; Dan 11:36-45 ; Dan 12:11 )

*Dr. R. P Smith, the late Dean of Canterbury says well (in his Authenticity and Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah, 63): “Thus the Prophet at once marks the difference between the two kingdoms. The one has a definite place in the Divine economy; the other is used but for a temporary object. For the moment, therefore, it may triumph; but it has no mission of its own, no settled final purpose in the world, and therefore no special providence hems it around. But Jerusalem, however unworthy, was the actual centre of the world’s history; and in spite of her feebleness in spite of her comparative insignificance she must outlive the far mightier kingdoms of Nineveh and Babylon, of Persia and Macedon and Antioch; for on her existence depended the accomplishment of God’s unchanging counsels.” It would have added immensely to the convictions of the author and to the value of his book had he seen that the purposes of God as to the earth which roll round Israel as their centre, are only suspended for a season because of their rejection of Messiah and the gospel to be renewed by grace at the end of this age in order to bring in the new age, when God has completed His present gathering out from the universe under His sway (and we with Him risen and glorified), and the nations then on earth will enjoy the blessing under His reign. The present age has quite another aim and character from that age to come, which again is distinct from the eternity that succeeds the great white throne or judgement of the dead.

The chapter closes with a most animated description of the Assyrian’s march down from the north into the utmost nearness to Jerusalem. “He is come to Aiath, he is passed through Migron; at Michmash he layeth up his baggage. They are gone over the pass; they make their lodging at Geba: Ramah trembleth, Gibeah of Saul is fled. Lift up thy voice, daughter of Gallim. Hearken, Laishah. Poor Anathoth! Madmenah is a fugitive the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. Yet today [is he] to halt at Nob: he shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem” (vv. 28-32). In vain, however: he shall come to his end, and none shall help him. “Behold the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, shall lop the boughs with terror; and the high ones of stature [shall be] hewn down, and the haughty [shall be] humbled. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one” (vv. 33, 34). The image here employed most appropriately prepares the way for the introduction (in the next and connected chapter) of Messiah, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, and the fruitful sprout to grow from his roots.

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 10:1-4

1Woe to those who enact evil statutes

And to those who constantly record unjust decisions,

2So as to deprive the needy of justice

And rob the poor of My people of their rights,

So that widows may be their spoil

And that they may plunder the orphans.

3Now what will you do in the day of punishment,

And in the devastation which will come from afar?

To whom will you flee for help?

And where will you leave your wealth?

4Nothing remains but to crouch among the captives

Or fall among the slain.

In spite of all this, His anger does not turn away

And His hand is still stretched out.

Isa 10:1 Woe This INTERJECTION (BDB 222) is used often in Isaiah (and Jeremiah). It is translated (NASB 1995 Update)

1. alas, Isa 1:4; Isa 17:12

2. ah, Isa 1:24

3. woe, Isa 5:8; Isa 5:11; Isa 5:18; Isa 5:20-22; Isa 10:1; Isa 10:5; Isa 18:1; Isa 28:1; Isa 29:1; Isa 29:5; Isa 30:1; Isa 31:1; Isa 33:1; Isa 45:9-10; Isa 55:1 (i.e., woe oracles)

4. ho, Isa 55:1; also possibly Isa 10:5

It denotes anguish and pain or a summons (i.e., #4 above). There is another INTERJECTION (BDB 17), which is usually translated woe, which expresses grief and despair (cf. Isa 3:9; Isa 3:11; Isa 6:5; Isa 24:16; Isa 24:8 times in Jeremiah).

The parallelism of Isa 10:1 a and b links the civil leaders (i.e., those who enact evil statutes) and judges (who constantly record unjust decisions, cf. Isa 5:23). Israel’s leadership has knowingly violated the Mosaic covenant emphasis on care for the poor, socially ostracized, and socially powerless people (cf. Isa 10:2; Isa 1:17; Isa 1:23; Isa 3:14-15; Isa 11:4; Deu 16:19; Deu 24:17; Deu 27:19; Pro 17:23; Pro 18:5; Amo 4:1; Amo 5:12).

Isa 10:2 Things are so upside down that the very ones YHWH seeks to protect (i.e., widows and orphans) have become the spoil and plunder!

Isa 10:3 A series of questions spells out the fate of these exploiters! One day, whether temporally or eschatologically, the Creator will call His creatures, made in His image and likeness, to give an account of the stewardship of the gift of life (cf. Isa 10:4). YHWH is a moral, ethical, compassionate Deity and He demands these characteristics in His covenant people so that the nations may know and come to Him!! Israel was giving a false message!

Isa 10:4 His hand is still stretched out This is a recurrent phrase in this literary unit (cf. Isa 9:12; Isa 9:17; Isa 9:21). It is an anthropomorphic (see Special Topic: God Described As Human [anthropomorphism] ) way of expressing God’s unrelenting judgment.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

write = ordain, or register; legalize iniquities.

grievousness = oppression.

prescribed = written.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 10

Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! ( Isa 10:1-2 )

And this is the thing that upsets me most. I think about these computerized letters and all. If they go out to these poor little widows on Social Security and these little, you know, these people are sending in their money to these guys that are driving Cadillacs and living high. That just galls me. They’re making a prey of the widows; they’re robbing the fatherless. These people that can’t afford it, and yet they don’t have enough sense to read between the lines and they send in their pension money to these fellows. Oh, that is upsetting to me. They live in fancy mansions and… God’s going to deal with them. Woe unto them! You bet your woe!

In II Peter, chapter 2, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you.” How are you going to know them? “Who privately will bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through [this is how you recognize them, through] covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you” ( 2Pe 2:1-3 ).

Any time a person by flattery or feigned words seeks to make merchandise of you, you know he’s a false prophet. A true shepherd is interested in feeding the flock rather than fleecing the flock. Pray for me. God help me. I could… The Bible says suffer not thy mouth to cause thee to sin. And I have to be careful that I don’t let my mouth get me into deeper trouble.

And what will you do in the day of visitation ( Isa 10:3 ),

That is the day when God visits in His judgment.

in desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still ( Isa 10:3-4 ).

Going deeper and deeper, and yet they continue in their ways and God’s hand is still stretched out. So God is going to use Assyria now as a rod to punish the Northern Kingdom.

O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against a hypocritical 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. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither does his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? ( Isa 10:5-9 )

In other words, I’ve destroyed these other capital cities. I’ve destroyed these other nations, and aren’t one just like another? I’ll just go through and wipe them all out.

Now here’s an interesting thing. God says, “I’m going to use Assyria as the rod of my judgment to come down and to wipe out Samaria.” And yet, though Assyria is used as God’s rod of judgment, because Assyria destroys God’s people, then God’s going to wipe out Assyria. They didn’t realize that they were being used of God in this and they began being lifted up in pride.

Now the interesting thing when you go back into Chronicles and you read of Hezekiah, when Sennacherib came against Jerusalem and he began to challenge the men who were sitting there on the wall, he said, “Don’t let Hezekiah the king tell you that God is going to take care of things. That God will defend you. For where are the gods of the Syrians?” And he began to name all of these nations that they have conquered. “Their gods weren’t able to help them and neither is your God able to help you. Don’t listen to Hezekiah. He’s telling you just, you know, ‘Don’t worry, God can take care.’ Listen, the other gods weren’t able to handle them and your God isn’t able to handle you.” And the very thing that Isaiah predicted is actually the very taunt that the Assyrian ambassador spoke against the people.

And so because God said, “Because they said I’m not able to defend, watch what I’m going to do.” And in one night the angel of the Lord went through the camp of the Assyrians and wiped out 185,000 of the first line troops. Just broke the back of the Assyrian invasion. They woke up in the morning, the Israelis did, and looked out, and their enemy was just nothing but a bunch of corpses out there. A hundred and eighty-five thousand in one night. An angel of the Lord.

That is always interesting to me to realize what one angel can do in one night, because I remember the statement of Jesus when Peter drew his sword to defend the Lord. You know, so many times we’re seeking to defend the Lord. “I’ll defend You, Lord.” The day the Lord needs my defense He’s in big trouble. The day He…just like the day He needs my support to keep His program going. If He’s not able to keep His own program going, I’ll never keep it up. Jesus said to Peter, “Hey, put away your sword. Don’t you realize, Peter, I could call ten thousand angels that would come to my defense right now? In fact, they’re chomping at the bit. Don’t you realize I could call 10,000 angels? Put your sword away, Peter. The cup that the Father has given Me to drink, shall I not drink it? I’m in control, Peter. Don’t worry about. I’m on the throne; I’m in control, Peter. Put your sword away now. I’m in control. I could call 10,000. I could get out of this if I wanted,” is what He is saying. “But the cup that the Father has given Me to drink, shall I not drink it?”

If one angel could wipe out 185,000 Assyrians in one night, surely the 10,000 angels could have delivered Him easily out of the hand of those Roman soldiers and the high priest and anybody else. But He drank the cup for you and for me. He submitted Himself unto the will of the Father and He paid the price that you might have redemption. That you might have the forgiveness of your sins. That you might be able to dwell with Him eternally in His kingdom.

Now, inasmuch as He has purchased that for you, isn’t it rather ridiculous that a person not accept now the offer that He gives? Since He’s paid the price for it. And all you have to do is accept it. It is rather foolish not to accept it.

So the Assyrians are going to be lifted up with pride because God is delivering Samaria into their hands. They’re going to think that they’ve done it themselves.

As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria ( Isa 10:10 );

In other words, they’re going to think that their gods are superior and that’s why they are conquering these other lands, because their gods are superior. And that’s exactly what Sennacherib said. Rabshakeh who was the spokesman for Sennacherib.

Wherefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and upon Jerusalem, I will punish [the Assyrians,] those with a stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks ( Isa 10:12 ).

“I’ll put him down,” and God did. Wiped them out, 185,000. And Rabshakeh went back and was assassinated in his temple, even as the prophet declared he would be.

For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, I have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped ( Isa 10:13-14 ).

So the Assyrian began to exalt himself. “I, I, I, I have done all of this,” not realizing that he was just a tool that God had used. He was just an instrument that God had used. And inasmuch as he was just an instrument in the hand of God, God said,

Shall the axe boast itself against him that chops with it? ( Isa 10:15 )

The axe is only the instrument. The axe without a man’s hand, without the man’s arm is just lying there dormant. It can’t do a thing. It’s only when the axe is being used by a man that it can have any value in chopping.

shall the saw boast against the guy who is shaking it? ( Isa 10:15 )

In other words, the instrument should never seek to take glory in itself. The glory should go to the one who uses the instrument, for the instrument by itself can do nothing.

Now what a lesson that is for us tonight who seek to be instruments in the hand of God. “Shall the axe boast against him that hews with it or the saw against him who is shaking it?” All I can be is an instrument in the hand of God. Anything that comes forth of any value out of my life I cannot take credit for it. I am only an instrument, and if God’s hand isn’t upon me, if God isn’t using me, then whatever I do is absolutely worthless and useless. Without God’s hand I’m just lying dormant. I can’t do a thing. Of and in myself I can do nothing. And therefore it would be totally wrong and foolish for me to try to take credit for anything that God has wrought, because at best I am only an instrument in the hand of God. And the glory and the credit to whatever has been accomplished should always go to God, never to the instrument. The instrument is never to boast or glory itself or in itself. It is only an instrument and nothing more.

Your life is just an instrument in the hand of God. And if God uses you, praise the Lord, that’s great. But don’t take glory for it. Don’t think, “Oh, look at me, God used me. Well, the reason why He used me is because I was so sharp.” You know, some way we want to get credit in there for ourselves. Not so. Just be an instrument. Let God use you. And then give glory to God for whatever comes of it, because to God be the glory, great things He has done.

as if the rod could shake itself ( Isa 10:15 )

Can’t. Assyria’s My rod but it can’t shake itself.

against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood. Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day; and shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth. And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them ( Isa 10:15-19 ).

In other words, He’s going to wipe them out and a child will be able to count the remnant that remains. And a child could count the soldiers that came back from the Assyrian invasion of Judah after God fulfilled His word and wiped them out. Because of their pride, because they began to glory in themselves, rather than the fact that God was using them.

Now Isaiah looks forward to a yet future day, very soon to be fulfilled. When God preserves His remnant in the Great Tribulation, as God takes the remnant and preserves them down at the rock city of Petra during the time of the Great Tribulation. We will get more of this when we get to chapter 16 and chapter 26. But now Isaiah looks forward to the Great Tribulation.

And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth ( Isa 10:20 ).

You see, they have been deceived by the antichrist, who when he comes into power, he makes a covenant with the nation Israel whereby he helps them to rebuild their temple. And because he helps them to build their temple, they’re going to acclaim him as their Messiah. An interesting thing today, if you go to Israel and you ask them about the Messiah, of course, they disclaim Jesus Christ as being the Messiah. You talk to the Orthodox Jew, they’ll tell you they’re expecting the Messiah any time. In fact, there’s a little prophet going up and down the streets of Jerusalem telling them that their Messiah is coming in 1981, ’82. And the people are generally looking for the Messiah because the nation is in very serious shape. In fact, forty percent of the people in Israel in a recent poll said that they would prefer a dictator to their present form of government. Because the government has been inept in handling the crisis of the inflation and so forth, and people are really discouraged with their present form of government. Forty percent said they would like to see a dictatorship.

Now to these people, you talk to the Orthodox Jew and you say, “How are you going to recognize your Messiah when He comes?” And they will tell you, “He will help us build our temple.” That’s what the Orthodox Jew is looking for. A man to come and help them build their temple. Now that is what the antichrist is going to do. Jesus said, “I came to you in my Father’s name, you did not receive Me. Another is going to come in his own name and him you’re going to receive” ( Joh 5:43 ). And they’re going to hail this man. They’re going to acclaim him, “This is the Messiah.” They said, “We’re not looking for a divine Son of God. We’re looking for a man like Moses. He’s going to be just a man like Moses is a man, but he’ll help us build our temple.” I’ve had them tell me that over and over again.

Now the Bible tells us that’s exactly what’s going to happen. The prince of the people shall come, will make a covenant with the nation Israel, but in the midst of the seven-year period, after three-and-a-half years he’ll break the covenant as he comes to the rebuilt temple, stands it and declares that he himself is God. So here we read about that.

The remnant that escaped. Jesus said when that happens, when you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, as was spoken by Daniel the prophet, then flee to the wilderness. Don’t even stop in your house to get your coat. Get out of here. So the remnant that flees from Jerusalem will no more again trust in the antichrist, but here will be the national conversion and they will turn to the Lord and begin to trust in Him. They will stay upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel in truth. And they’re going to turn, tremendous revival.

The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet only a remnant of them shall return: and the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness ( Isa 10:21-22 ).

God will destroy through the judgment the world, but just a remnant will make it through.

For the Lord GOD of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all the land ( Isa 10:23 ).

The Great Tribulation period.

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. For yet a little while, and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction. And the LORD of hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and as his rod was upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing ( Isa 10:24-27 ).

That yoke that the antichrist puts upon them and all will be destroyed.

Now we are approaching the battle of Armageddon.

He is come to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his [tanks, chariots or] carriages ( Isa 10:28 ):

Up into the area of Megiddo.

They are gone over the passage: they have taken up their lodging at Geba; Ramah is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor Anathoth. Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. As yet shall he remain at Nob that day: he shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one ( Isa 10:29-34 ).

So the prediction of this coming, gathering together of the nations for the battle of Armageddon as they are gathering their tanks and all together in the area for the huge battle.

Now it is interesting that following in order, the eleventh chapter where we begin next week deals with the return of Jesus Christ in glory. “And there shall come forth the rod out of the stem of Jesse” ( Isa 11:1 ). And chapter 11 gets into the glorious Kingdom Age which we are seeing now. Of course, this chapter 10 as its beginning to frame around us the great day of the wrath of God. But to be followed by the glorious Kingdom Age.

So as you get into chapter 11, we get into a whole new dimension now as we move beyond this great slaughter and desolation to the glorious day of the Lord and the establishment of His kingdom. What a day that shall be! So next week we will continue chapters 11-15 in the prophecy of Isaiah.

Shall we stand.

May the Lord be with you and may your life be an instrument in God’s hand this week. May you have that unusual joy of realizing God’s hand is upon my life. He has used me. May God help you to share His love with those that are still sitting in darkness. And may you experience the anointing of God’s Spirit upon your life in a new and a very special way as He empowers you to do His work. In Jesus’ name. “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Isa 10:1-4

Isa 10:1-4

Actually, the first four verses of this chapter could have been logically included with the previous chapter, since they form the fourth stanza, following the first three in Isaiah 9, each stanza followed by the refrain: “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is outstretched still.”

Of course, it should be remembered that both chapter and verse divisions in the Bible are in many instances arbitrary and illogical; but long usage has made it a practical impossibility to change or correct them. “The present division into chapters was made by Cardinal Hugo in 1250 A.D.; and into verses, by Robert Stephens the famous printer of Paris, in 1551 A.D.

The stubbornness of Ephraim is almost unbelievable; for no matter what disasters overcame the nation they persisted in following their idolatrous, shameful rebellion against the Lord. The great difference between Ephraim and Judah was in the existence of a righteous remnant in the Southern Israel; whereas, in Northern Israel, the Lord said, “Everyone is profane and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh folly” (Isa 9:17). Their apostasy was thus complete, and there was nothing further that even God could have done for Ephraim except what he did, namely, destroy them, just as God had done long previously to practically the whole race of Adam on the occasion of the Great Deluge.

Isa 10:1-4

THE FOURTH AND FINAL STROPHE

“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that write perverseness; to turn aside the needy from justice, and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey. And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? They shall only bow down under the prisoners, and fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.”

A quick overview of these four stanzas, or strophes, will reveal the totality and dreadful finality of the prophecy:

THE DOOM OF EPHRAIM (Isa 9:8 to Isa 10:4)

Strophe One, Isa 9:8-12

This is a judgment against Ephraim for laughing off the facts, for mocking reality, and for their egotistical bragging about how they would overcome God’s punishments. If bricks and sycamores are destroyed, Ephraim will replace them with hewn stones and cedars!

Strophe Two, Isa 9:13-17

Here is a judgment against permissiveness, error, and false leadership. The eloquent comparison of crooked priests to the tail of a dog shows that it was the departure from God’s truth that caused their apostasy.

Strophe Three, Isa 9:18-21

Here is a judgment against disunity, internal discord and strife. With even their former allies at last turning against Ephraim, and with the Ten Tribes fighting against each other, their final ruin would follow in the deportation of the heart of the nation to Assyria. This took place in 722 B.C.

Strophe Four, Isa 10:1-4

This judgment is against the central government and the judiciary, against those who made and administered the laws. It has often been observed that when these arms of human society fail, there can remain little hope for that society. Although these prophecies against Ephraim were principally focused upon the Northern Israel, they also spilled over in their application to Judah also. God’s anger at all of Israel’s pride and wickedness was approaching the flash point.

Before leaving these first four verses, we wish to notice somewhat further the question:

WHERE WILL YE LEAVE YOUR GLORY?

This is the third in a series of questions regarding ultimate values as contrasted with that which is earthly, temporary, and ephemeral. Every mortal who gives his life to the amassing of treasures, the pursuit of power, or in chasing the butterflies of happiness supposed to lie at the foot of some fantasy rainbow – every such mortal should ask himself, “What are you going to do with it?” What will it be worth to you in the Day of Judgment? and, how is it going to help you when calamity comes upon you?” our Lord raised the same soul-searching question when he addressed the rich fool of Luk 12:20 : “Whose shall those things be?” (KJV) “You cannot save them. With whom will ye deposit your riches, your magnificence, your treasures, your grand apparel? Is there anyone to whom you can flee? anyone who can protect you from the wrath of God?”

Isa 10:1-2 ROBBERY: Through false and illegal decrees made orally by wicked judges and rulers, and through false and illegal documents written by perverse scribes, the poor and powerless people were being robbed. Those who most needed their human rights protected were the very ones being exploited. Those without political power and influence and without wealth were being skinned alive. The rich and the influential able to pay bribes were receiving all the civil judgments in their favor. Widows and orphans were at the mercy of the merciless. When a nations courts and political officials become corrupt, the nation is in its death throes. A righteous and just God cannot allow such social and moral chaos to go uncorrected for long or constant civil upheaval would be the result.

Isa 10:3-4 RETRIBUTION: When the day of Divine retribution comes, where will they go for help? When the Holy God visits them in judgment who will protect them? Can they depend upon their idol-gods? Will their foreign allies be able to deliver them? Can they buy their way out of Gods judgment with their wealth? All these things Israel has gloried in, but what will become of their glory when Gods wrath falls upon them? The answer is, it shall fail them. Israel will be taken prisoner and the unjust rulers and judges will fall along with all the other dead and captured.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Social Injustice Condemned

Isa 9:18-21; Isa 10:1-4

The terrible indictment of the preceding paragraphs is continued here. Notice the awful monotony of the refrain, Isa 9:12; Isa 9:17; Isa 9:21; Isa 10:4. Internal anarchy spread with the rapidity of a prairie fire. Jealousy and distrust awoke murderous hatred. Even the ties of brotherhood would not avail to arrest the knife of the assassin. In the horrors of starvation men would consume their own flesh, Isa 9:20. Civil strife would exhaust the forces, which, combined with Gods blessing, might have arrested the invader. The weak would become the spoil of the strong; and there would be no appeal. What pathetic questions are suggested in Isa 10:3! What will ye do? To whom will ye flee? See Heb 9:26-28. What hope is there for the soul that has known and refused the offer of forgiveness in Jesus! Dear soul, make haste to the cleft of the Rock!

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

EXPOSITORY NOTES ON

THE PROPHET ISAIAH

By

Harry A. Ironside, Litt.D.

Copyright @ 1952

edited for 3BSB by Baptist Bible Believer in the spirit of the Colportage ministry of a century ago

ISAIAH CHAPTER TEN

THE ASSYRIAN AND HIS DOOM

IT IS a well-known principle of Scripture interpretation to recognize a double application or fulfillment of many prophecies. Conditions through which Israel and the nations have passed already often depict circumstances that will yet have to be faced in the future, in the days of the great tribulation, the time of Jacob’s trouble, when divine wrath will be poured out upon guilty and apostate Christendom and Judaism alike. We see this set forth in the present chapter which deals primarily with Judah and Assyria in the days of King Hezekiah, but which also looks forward to the time when the last great Assyrian, the haughty enemy of the Jews in the time of the end, will be destroyed in Immanuel’s land ere he can wreak his vengeance upon the remnant nation who will be gathered back to GOD and to their land at that time. Only as we keep these two applications of the prophetic word before us can we understand aright what is here set forth.

In the opening verses we see Judah’s sad internal condition calling for judgment on the part of the GOD they professed to serve but whom they had so grievously dishonored.

“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; To turn aside the needy from Judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? To whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still”” (verses 1-4).

Another solemn woe is pronounced upon those who in their pride and selfishness issued unrighteous decrees in order to legalize their oppression of the poor and then enriched themselves at the expense of the fatherless. Monopolies are not a recent expression of the selfishness of the human heart. In Judah, as in our civilized lands today, there were those who counted it a good business to take advantage of others in adverse circumstances and to profit by the ruin of their less fortunate fellows. All this is hateful to Him who is a GOD of judgment and by whom actions are weighed.

Any economic system that is built up on the disregard of the rights of the poor will inevitably be destroyed at last. Then what of the men who have ignored the Word of the Lord and gloried in their success while trampling on their competitors and forcing them to yield to their demands or go down in ruin? “What,” asks the prophet, “will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? To whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?” GOD has decreed that them that honor Him, He will honor, and they who despise Him shall be lightly esteemed. He permits men and nations to go just so far in their own willful way; then He deals with them in His indignation, sweeping away their ill-gotten wealth and causing them to bewail the luxuries which they can no longer retain. What can men say to this? Where can they turn to save themselves from even greater disaster?

In Judah’s case the overrunning of the land by the armies of Sennacherib was the cause of much of their suffering, but was permitted by GOD as chastening for their sins. Without His deliverance they were helpless to defend themselves, and so would be taken as prisoners or slain by the cruel foe.

GOD addressed the Assyrians directly in the next section and that in a way that shows He had far more than the invasion of Sennacherib in view. The passage looks on to the final enemy in the last days.

“O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical 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. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. For he saith, Are not my princes altogether kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, and whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks” (verses 5-12).

Notice that it is when the Lord has performed His whole work on Mount Zion and Jerusalem that the Assyrian is to be punished. This needs to be kept in mind as the passage is read and studied.

When King Ahaz was threatened with utter ruin by the kings of Israel and Syria, he sent to the king of Assyria for help – only to find later that this covetous ruler aspired to complete ascendancy over all the lands to the west, including Judah. Later Sennacherib descended on the land like a mighty torrent, his army driving all before it until it was destroyed by pestilence in one night as it besieged Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah. This terrible ruthless enemy became the type of the godless foe which, in the last days, will attempt to bring Palestine under its control, only to be destroyed by omnipotent power on the mountains of Israel.

As the rod of the Lord’s anger, Assyria was used, as other nations had been used, before and since, to chasten the people of GOD because of their turning away from Himself; but in the day of their repentance He would destroy the enemy that had brought disaster upon Judah.

On the part of the haughty destroyer there was no realization of the fact that he was just a rod in the hand of the Lord, the GOD whose name he despised, but he was to learn at last by bitter experience that after he had been used to punish “an hypocritical nation” he, himself, was doomed to utter destruction. To him Jerusalem was but another city to be overthrown as he had destroyed so many others, but he was to learn that the GOD whose temple was in that city was supreme above all that men called gods and which had been powerless to deliver these pagan cities out of his hands.

The Lord’s whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem will mean the return of His people to Himself. Then in the days that He takes them up again as a nation He will deal with the Assyrian and with all who have afflicted them.

“For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped. Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood. Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day; and shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth. And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them” (verses 13-19).

Not understanding the use that GOD was making of him, the Assyrian vaunted himself as though he accomplished everything and won all his victories because of his own wisdom and prudence. So he had robbed and oppressed the nations, including Israel and Judah, ruthlessly and heartlessly. To him all other people were but as the eggs in the nests of birds that were open to be despoiled and their armies were as helpless as the mother birds when their nests were rifled.

Knowing not that he was but as an axe in the hand of him who hewed down the trees of the forest, he boasted as though the power and might were all his own, and so he magnified himself against the One who designed to use him to chasten the nations because of their wickedness and corruption.

Therefore in the reckoning day that was coming, GOD would deal as sternly with him as he had dealt with others, and as he had sown hatred and cruelty so he should reap indignation and wretchedness. In that day of the Lord’s triumph He will vindicate the remnant in Israel who have put their trust in Him, and they will be as a flame to devour the nations that have sought their destruction. As in the days of Ahasuerus and Mordecai the Jews will execute judgment on those who had plotted to destroy them and root them out of the earth. The Word of GOD will be fulfilled concerning His promise that while He would punish His people in measure for their sins

He would never break His covenant with them – a covenant made first to Abraham and confirmed to David. Although a full end will be made of many of the nations that have afflicted Israel He will not make a full end of them, as we see in the verses that follow.

“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all the land” (verses 20-23).

When the judgments of GOD are being poured out upon the earth in the dark days of the great tribulation, a remnant of the Jews will turn to the Lord in deep repentance and in living faith. These will prove the greatness of His mercy and the unfailing character of His promises. No longer relying for their help on the powers that persecuted and failed them in the hour of their need, as when Ahaz turned first to Assyria and then to Egypt in his desperate plight, they will find their resource and protection in GOD Himself.

The prophetic Word is clear and free of all obscurity.

Only unbelief can deny its definite application to a literal remnant of the sons of Jacob when they turn to the Lord in the time of their greatest trouble. Then He will awake and will come to their help, and He will save the nation in the remnant.

We need to remember that they are not all Israel which are of Israel. The great majority “as the sand of the sea” will go into utter apostasy and be destroyed in their sins, but a remnant shall return and be acknowledged by GOD as His people. And so, as we learn in Romans 11, “All Israel shall be saved,” for this remnant will be the true Israel in that day of the Lord’s power.

In view of this declaration of the divine purpose, GOD calls upon His people to trust His Word and not to fear the Assyrian, proud and powerful though he may be.

“Therefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction. And the Lord of hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and as his rod was upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing” (verses 24-27).

In clear and definite terms, the prophet predicts the overthrow of the enemy who was hammering, as it were, at the gate of Jerusalem. GOD would prevent the carrying out of his purpose even though it might seem for a time that Judah’s case was hopeless. Literally, all was fulfilled in due time so far as the prophecy had to do with the Assyrian of the past. When in the

last days another mighty power comes against Palestine from the same region as that occupied by the Assyrians of old, his doom will be just as certain as was that of the enemy in the past.

The progress of the Assyrian army marching down through the land is depicted graphically in the verses that close this chapter.

“He is come to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his carriages: they are gone over the passage: they have taken up their lodging at Geba; Ramah is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish. O poor Anathoth! Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. As yet shall he remain at Nob that day: he shall shake his hand against the mount or the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one” (verses 28-34).

Prophecy is history written beforehand, and here Isaiah foretold the path that the Assyrian would take as he marched through Palestine, wreaking his vengeance upon city after city; but the closing verses tell or his defeat at last when the Lord of hosts intervened. In His mighty power for the deliverance of those who cried to Him in the hour of their distress. No military strategy, no weapons of war would avail to save the haughty invader when the hand of GOD was stretched out against him.

What a lesson for faith we have here! These things, while applying directly to Judah and her foes, have precious lessons for us today. It is not true that GOD is on the side of the greatest armies, as some have said. He stands ready to uphold all who put their confidence in Him and who rely, not upon an arm of flesh but upon His omnipotence and unchanging love for His own.

~ end of chapter 10 ~

Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets

Isa 10:3

What the world’s glory consists of is readily apprehended. That a man be conspicuous among and above his fellow-mortals;-be a more important object, as if a larger measure of being, than a number of them estimated collectively;-be much observed, admired, even envied, as being that which they cannot be;-be often in people’s thoughts and in their discourse. The man of glory is to be such a one, that it shall seem as if it were chiefly on his account that many other men and things exist.

I. “Where will ye leave your glory?” What! then, it is to be left, the object of all this ardour and idolatry-all this anxiety and exertion-all this elation and pride,-is to be left. Men must leave their glory. (1) Where will they leave it, that it can in any sense continue to be theirs? (2) Where will they leave it, that it shall be anything to them? What becomes of it next? (3) Where will they leave their glory, to be kept that they may obtain it again?

II. Apply these remarks to several of the kinds, the forms, of this world’s glory. (1) The material splendour of life-; (2) riches; (3) elevated rank in society; (4) the possession of power; (5) martial glory; (6) intellectual glory. “Where will ye leave your glory?” Contrast with all these forms of folly the predominant aim of a Christian, which is “glory” still; but a glory which he will not have to leave, a glory accumulated for him in the world to which he is going.

J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 40.

References: Isa 10:5.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 209. Isa 10:20-23.-H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 43. Isa 11:1-9.-Ibid., vol. xxiii., p. 281.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

CHAPTER 10

The Assyrian, His invasion of Immanuels land, and His end

1. The first four verses belong to the preceding chapter. A description of the Assyrian enemy (Isa 10:5-11) 2. The overthrow of his army announced (Isa 10:12-15) 3. The punishment (Isa 10:16-19) 4. The return of the remnant (Isa 10:20-23) 5. The faithful remnant comforted (Isa 10:24-27) 6. The Assyrians march against Jerusalem (Isa 10:28-32) 7. Jehovahs intervention (Isa 10:33-34)This is an interesting and important chapter. The Assyrian enemy was used by God to punish his people. In chapters 7 and 8 his coming was announced. In this chapter we read a fuller description of this great troubler and how he invaded the land of Israel. God addresses him as the rod He uses in anger against His people. While all this had a past fulfillment a similar invasion of the land of Palestine will be enacted before the times of the Gentiles close and the King of Kings appears. The Assyrian of the end time comes from the North; therefore he is called in Daniels prophecy the King of the North. Antiochus Epiphanes is a type of this final outward foe of Israel. Study carefully with this chapter Isa 14:24-25; Isa 30:31-33; Mic 5:1-15; Dan 8:23-27; Dan 11:40-45; Psa 74:1-23; Psa 89:1-52. Jehovah shall suddenly make an end of him. Isa 10:33-34 compare with Dan 11:45.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

am 3291, bc 713

Woe: Isa 3:11, Isa 5:8, Isa 5:11, Isa 5:18, Isa 5:20-22, Jer 22:13, Hab 2:6, Hab 2:9, Hab 2:12, Hab 2:15, Hab 2:19, Mat 11:21, Mat 23:13-16, Mat 23:23, Mat 23:27, Mat 23:29, Mat 26:24, Luk 11:42-44, Luk 11:46, Luk 11:47, Luk 11:52, Jud 1:11

them: 1Ki 21:13, Est 3:10-13, Psa 58:2, Psa 94:20, Psa 94:21, Dan 6:8, Dan 6:9, Mic 3:1-4, Mic 3:9-11, Mic 6:16, Joh 9:22, Joh 19:6

that write grievousness: or, to the writers that write grievousness

Reciprocal: Exo 23:6 – General Psa 10:5 – His Isa 1:23 – they judge Isa 59:14 – General Jer 8:8 – in vain Dan 2:13 – the decree Dan 3:10 – hast made Amo 5:7 – turn Zep 3:6 – cut Act 26:12 – with 1Co 6:9 – unrighteous

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

JUDGMENT ON ASSYRIA

The verses intervening since the last lesson apply to Israel, and are comparatively unimportant; but at Isa 10:5 a discourse begins concerning Assyria, running continuously to the close of chapter twelve. Assyria, an ally of Judah, is to become her enemy, but the chastisement she is to inflict on Judah is in the divine purpose, up to a certain point (Isa 10:5-6).

Assyrias motive is not the divine glory, however, but her own aggrandizement, which leads her to go further in afflicting Judah than God intends. She cares nothing for Jehovah, and esteems the God of Jerusalem no greater than the idols of the surrounding nations which she has overcome (Isa 10:7-11). Therefore, her day of retribution is coming (Isa 10:12-19).

But the day of her retribution is that of Israels deliverance and triumph (Isa 10:20-34). Israel is used interchangeably with Judah when the history of that people at the end of the age is in mind. And that such is the case here is evident because Israel is found trusting no longer in any Gentile nation, but in Jehovah himself (Isa 10:20). Also the saved remnant is spoken of (Isa 10:20-21). Comforting language is used (Isa 10:24-25). Israels enemy shall be miraculously overcome, as were the Midianites under the Gideon (Isa 10:26-27). Thus we have another illustration of the law of double reference, and two events wide apart in time are spoken of as though continuous.

As strengthening the thought that the end of the age is referred to, we find the second coming of Christ indicated and blended with His first coming (Isa 11:1-5; compare v. Isa 11:4 with 2Th 2:8). A description of millennial conditions follows (Isa 11:6-9). The Gentiles are seen fellowshipping Israel (Isa 11:10), while the latter are being gathered from the four corners of the earth, the ten tribes and the two once more united in a single kingdom (Isa 11:11-13). The section closes with a song of rejoicing which will be heard in Jerusalem in that day, as recorded in chapter twelve.

QUESTIONS

1. To which kingdom does the last part of chapter 9 seem to refer?

2. When is the name Israel used interchangeably with Judah?

3. Give four reasons for believing verses 20-24 refer to the end of the age.

4. Quote 2Th 2:8.

5. To what period did verses 6-9 refer?

6. When will the song of rejoicing (chap. 12) be sung in Judah?

Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary

Isa 10:1-2. Wo, &c. The first four verses of this chapter are closely connected with the foregoing, and ought to have been joined thereto, being a continuation of the subject treated of in it. We have here the fourth evil charged on the people, and the punishment of it. The sin complained of is the injustice of the magistrates and judges, who decreed unrighteous decrees That is, made unjust laws, and gave forth unjust sentences, which is termed in the next clause, writing grievousness, or grievous things, edicts which caused grief and vexation to their subjects. To turn aside the needy from judgment From obtaining a just sentence, because these rulers and judges either denied or delayed to hear their causes, or when they heard them decided unjustly; to take away the right from the poor Whom I have, in a special manner, committed to your care; of my people Whom I had taken into covenant with myself; and therefore this is an injury, not only to them, but also to me. The punishment assigned to this iniquity is, that they should be absolutely deserted and deprived of all help and protection from God, whose laws they had so shamefully perverted; and should perish miserably before their enemies, who should come from far.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The first four verses, are properly a part of the preseding chapter, and contain a severe reproof of the magistrates who wrested the judgment of the poor and needy.

Isa 10:5. Oh Assyrian. Hebrews hoi or eheu, ho. Though the LXX read here and verse first, woe; yet it is also an interjection of calling, or of reproach, as in Isa 1:4. Ah, sinful nation. Isa 55:1. Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. Jer 47:6. Oh thou sword of the Lord. Thus God calls some nations to invade, while to others, ambitious of conquest, he says, I will put a hook in thy jaws. Little do those princes know that they are, as Tamerlane the great once said, the scourge of God to a guilty people.

Isa 10:9. Calno, a city on the Euphrates, called Calneh. Gen 10:10. It is latterly called Ctesiphon. Charchemish was also situated on the Euphrates. 2Ch 35:20. Jer 46:2. The LXX render this and the following verse to much advantage. Have I not taken the country beyond Babylon, and Calno where the tower was built; and taken Arabia, and Damascus, and Samaria? As I took these, so will I take all kingdoms. Howl, ye idols of Jerusalem, and of Samaria. So Sennacherib spake in his pride.

Isa 10:17. The light of Israel. The Lord, the Holy One, as in the next words.

Isa 10:22. A remnant shall return: the consumption shall overflow with righteousness. Only a few of them came back from Babylon, and were afterwards converted to Christ. The consumption overflowed, because as the LXX read, the Lord would finish the account, and cut it short in righteousness.

Isa 10:24. Be not afraid of the Assyrian, that he should smite thee with a rod. BP. HALL.

Isa 10:34. Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. After Solomon had built his summer palace in the forest of Lebanon, it became a word, it would seem, to designate the Jewish power in church and state. Rabshakeh says, By the multitude of my chariots, I am come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon: Isa 37:24. But this prophecy glances beyond the Assyrian invasion to that of the Romans, of which we have many instances in the prophets. Zechariah exclaims, Open thy doors, oh Lebanon: words understood to designate the fall of the Hebrew power by that of the Romans.

REFLECTIONS.

Isaiah having now prophesied a considerable time, and with little effect; the Lord also having supported the ministry of his servants, and with stretched forth arm, it was time for heaven to come to a full issue with the guilty nation. Hence this apostrophe, Ho to the Assyrian, come and avenge the quarrel of my covenant; come and glorify my prophets, as, if I may so speak, the sublime of justice, and the finishing stroke to an impenitent and infidel age. Hence if the church once begin to pray in the spirit against either men or nations, they stand on the brink, the very brink of destruction.

Great conquerors are the rod of Gods anger to punish the incorrigible: and how mysterious is providence, that a multitude of persons comparatively innocent should suffer for awhile with the wicked. Many cases of this kind we see cleared up in this life; but others remain in impervious darkness. Yet what can providence do? Must God give health and prosperity to the wicked for ever? Must he always aid them with affluence and long life till they become learned in wickedness, and refined in crimes? Shall heaven then become an accomplice in riot and criminal pleasures? Shall God give the lie to his prophets to realize the drunkards maxim, To-morrow shall be as to-day, and much more abundant?

As in a thunder-storm, there is generally an upper and a lower current of wind which roll an immense collection of clouds on heaps, so in the devastations of the earth, God and men act with different views. God chastised Israel for a breach of covenant, and for rejecting his prophets. But the Assyrian, having conquered as far as he pleased in the east and the north, wantonly resolved to sally forth from Nineveh, with about a million of men, to overrun all the nations of Syria, Judah not excepted, and proudly carry his banners to the banks of the Nile. He said, I will cut off nations not a few. Acting therefore from pride, avarice, and vain glory, he knew not that he was Gods scourge. Wicked men act to please themselves, but their designs are overruled for the glory of God. The pride and insolence of the Assyrian were most intolerable: it was as the axe boasting against the hewer, and as the saw against him that handleth it. Though Ahaz bought off much of the calamity by presents; yet many of the men, and the children of Judah, were carried away into captivity. 2Ch 29:9. The Lord therefore hasted to inflict Isaiahs predictions on the Assyrian. In Hezekiahs time his army was destroyed before Jerusalem; and not long after Nineveh fell, when celebrating its victory over the revolted Medes. Thus God in one day punished the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria. We should receive the comfort which Isaiah gives to Judah. We should learn that great conquerors have a limited commission which they cannot pass. God by some little incident in battle, by a rainy season, or a slight tempest at sea, turns the proud conqueror as he turns the tides of the ocean. Hence we should cease from man, and stay our souls on God alone, who makes the enemy to serve his cause and instruct his people. Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one: they would cut down the timber in the siege of their numerous cities. And what then should become of the church? It is replied in the very next words. There shall be a rod out of Jesse. The Messiah should then be born, and the people gathered to him. So in Dan 9:27.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Isa 9:8 to Isa 10:4. Yahweh Smites Ephraim with Stroke after Stroke.It is generally agreed that Isa 5:26-29 formed the closing strophe of this poem (p. 440). The date is probably before the coalition of Syria and Ephraim (Isa 9:11 f.), i.e. between 740 and 735. It is one of Isaiahs earliest prophecies. It is very uncertain whether the whole is a prediction of the future, or whether, with the exception of the conclusion, it describes calamities that have already overtaken the people. On the whole the former view is preferable. It is that adopted in RV, the tenses being taken as prophetic perfects, the alternative view being given in the margin.

Isa 9:8-12. Yahweh has sent crashing into Israel His word with its power of self-fulfilment, which will soon teach the boastful Ephraimites another lesson. For they believe that the state of things temporarily overthrown by disaster was mean and fragile in comparison with the splendour and stability they will soon attain. So Yahweh will incite the Syrians and Philistines against them. Yet His anger is not turned away, His hand is still stretched out to smite.

Isa 9:10. To the present day houses in Palestine are generally built of sun-dried bricks and beams of sycomore, since they are the cheapest material. Hewn stone and cedar would be reserved for the rich (p. 109).

Isa 9:11. adversaries of Rezin: since the Syrians are Israels enemies, and Rezin was king of Syria, we must correct the text, reading probably his adversaries.

Isa 9:13-17. Since this will have no salutary effect, Yahweh will in one day destroy both small and great. He will not spare the sturdiest or the most helpless; the whole nation is evil. Nor yet does this exhaust His wrath.

Isa 9:14. palm-branch and rush: the lofty and the low.

Isa 9:15 f. An insertion. Isa 9:15 contains an incorrect explanation of Isa 9:14; for Isa 9:16 cf. Isa 3:12.

Isa 9:17. rejoice over: spare (yiphsah for yismah) would give a better parallel.

Isa 9:18-21. Wickedness is like a fire, which first lays hold on the briers, and, gaining strength, sets alight the whole dense forest. The land will be visited by Yahwehs wrath, the people will be like cannibals, the land rent by a ruthless civil war. Yet His hand is still stretched out.

Isa 9:19. burnt up: of quite uncertain meaning.as the fuel of fire: we should probably read like cannibals.

Isa 9:20. his own arm: read, his neighbour (r for zer); cf. Jer 19:9.

Isa 10:1-4. This section differs in several ways from the rest of the poem, and may be derived from another context. It is probably Isaianic. It attacks unjust judges, who deprive the poor and defenceless of justice, that they may defraud them. What will they do when the storm of vengeance sweeps on them from afar? To whom can they turn?

Isa 10:3. glory: wealth.

Isa 10:4. Very difficult; the text must be corrupt. A re-division of the consonants gives Beltis crouches, Osiris is broken (Lagarde). This may be correct, but we have no evidence for the worship of these deities in Palestine at this time. The meaning would be, You can flee to no one, for your false gods will be buried under heaps of slain. Gray reads, To avoid crouching under the prisoners.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

10:1 Woe to them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that {a} write grievousness [which] they have prescribed;

(a) Who write and pronounce a wicked sentence to oppress the people: meaning, that the wicked magistrate, who were the chief cause of mischief, would be first punished.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The oppression of the helpless 10:1-4

Isaiah directed this last strophe against the unjust authorities and judges.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

The Ephraimite leaders were using their positions to deprive the needy of their rights and to obtain what the poor had for themselves. They were evidently favoring legislation that resulted in these ends, as well as perverting the justice that was in place in the Mosaic system. The situation was so bad in Israel that the Lord chose to abandon His customary defense of the defenseless.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

CHAPTER III

THE VINEYARD OF THE LORD,

OR TRUE PATRIOTISM THE CONSCIENCE OF OUR COUNTRYS SINS

735 B.C.

Isa 5:1-30; Isa 9:8 – Isa 10:4

THE prophecy contained in these chapters belongs, as we have seen, to the same early period of Isaiahs career as chapters 2-4, about the time when Ahaz ascended the throne after the long and successful reigns of his father and grandfather, when the kingdom of Judah seemed girt with strength and filled with wealth, but the men were corrupt and the women careless, and the earnest of approaching judgment was already given in the incapacity of the weak and woman-ridden king. Yet although this new prophecy issues from the same circumstances as its predecessors, it implies these circumstances a little more developed. The same social evils are treated, but by a hand with a firmer grasp of them. The same principles are emphasised-the righteousness of Jehovah and His activity in judgment – but the form of judgment of which Isaiah had spoken before in general terms looms nearer, and before the end of the prophecy we get a view at close quarters of the Assyrian ranks.

Besides, opposition has arisen to the prophets teaching. We saw that the obscurities and inconsistencies of chapters 2-4 are due to the fact that that prophecy represents several stages of experience through which Isaiah passed before he gained his final convictions. But his countrymen, it appears, have now had time to turn on these convictions and call them in question: it is necessary for Isaiah to vindicate them. The difference, then, between these two sets of prophecies, dealing with the same things, is that in the former (chapters 2-4), we have the obscure and tortuous path of a conviction struggling to light in the prophets own experience; here, in chapter 5, we have its careful array in the light and before the people.

The point of Isaiahs teaching against which opposition was directed was of course its main point, that God was about to abandon Judah. This must have appeared to the popular religion of the day as the rankest heresy. To the Jews the honour of Jehovah was bound up with the inviolability of Jerusalem and the prosperity of Judah. But Isaiah knew Jehovah to be infinitely more concerned for the purity of His people than for their prosperity. He had seen the Lord “exalted in righteousness” above those national and earthly interests, with which vulgar men exclusively identified His will. Did the people appeal to the long time Jehovah had graciously led them for proof that He would not abandon them now? To Isaiah that gracious leading was but for righteousness sake, and that God might make His own a holy people. Their history, so full of the favours of the Almighty, did not teach Isaiah, as it did the common prophets of his time, the lesson of Israels political security, but the far different one of their religious responsibility. To him it only meant what Amos had already put in those startling words, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities.” Now Isaiah delivered this doctrine at a time when it brought him the hostility of mens passions as well as of their opinions. Judah was arming for war. Syria and Ephraim were marching upon her. To threaten his country with ruin in such an hour was to run the risk of suffering from popular fury as a traitor as well as from priestly prejudice as a heretic. The strain of the moment is felt in the strenuousness of the prophecy. Chapter 5, with its appendix, exhibits more grasp and method than its predecessors. Its literary form is finished, its feeling clear. There is a tenderness in the beginning of it, an inexorableness in the end, and an eagerness all through which stamp the chapter as Isaiahs final appeal to his countrymen at this period of his career.

The chapter is a noble piece of patriotism-one of the noblest of a race who, although for the greater part of their history without a fatherland, have contributed more brilliantly than perhaps any other to the literature of patriotism, and that simply because, as Isaiah here illustrates, patriotism was to their prophets identical with religious privilege and responsibility. Isaiah carries this to its bitter end. Other patriots have wept to sing their countrys woes; Isaiahs burden is his peoples guilt. To others an invasion of their fatherland by its enemies has been the motive to rouse by song or speech their countrymen to repel it. Isaiah also hears the tramp of the invader; but to him is permitted no ardour of defence, and his message to his countrymen is that they must succumb, for the invasion is irresistible and of the very judgment of God. How much it cost the prophet to deliver such a message we may see from those few verses of it in which his heart is not altogether silenced by his conscience. The sweet description of Judah as a vineyard, and the touching accents that break through the roll of denunciation with such phrases as “My people are gone away into captivity unawares,” tell us how the prophets love of country is struggling with his duty to a righteous God. The course of feeling throughout the prophecy is very striking. The tenderness of the opening lyric seems ready to flow into gentle pleading with the whole people. But as the prophet turns to particular classes and their sins his mood changes to indignation, the voice settles down to judgment; till when it issues upon that clear statement of the coming of the Northern hosts every trace of emotion has left it, and the sentences ring out as unfaltering as the tramp of the armies they describe.

I. THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD

{Isa 5:1-7}

Isaiah adopts the resource of every misunderstood and unpopular teacher, and seeks to turn the flank of his peoples prejudices by an attack in parable on their sympathies. Did they stubbornly believe it impossible for God to abandon a State He had so long and so carefully fostered? Let them judge from an analogous case in which they were all experts. In a picture of great beauty Isaiah describes a vineyard upon one of the sunny promontories visible from Jerusalem. Every care had been given it of which an experienced vinedresser could think, but it brought forth only wild grapes. The vinedresser himself is introduced, and appeals to the men of Judah and Jerusalem to judge between him and his vineyard. He gets their assent that all had been done which could be done, and fortified with that resolves to abandon the vineyard. “I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor digged, but there shall come up briers and thorns.” Then the stratagem comes out, the speaker drops the tones of a human cultivator, and in the omnipotence of the Lord of heaven he is heard to say, “I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” This diversion upon their sympathies having succeeded, the prophet scarcely needs to charge the peoples prejudices in face. His point has been evidently carried. “For the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah His pleasant plant; and He looked for judgment, but behold oppression, for righteousness, but behold a cry.”

The lesson enforced by Isaiah is just this, that in a peoples civilisation there lie the deepest responsibilities, for that is neither more nor less than their cultivation by God; and the question for a people is not how secure does this render them, nor what does it count for glory, but how far is it rising towards the intentions of its Author? Does it produce those fruits of righteousness for which alone God cares to set apart and cultivate the peoples? On this depends the question whether the civilisation is secure, as well as the right of the people to enjoy and feel proud of it. There cannot be true patriotism without sensitiveness to this, for however rich be the elements that compose the patriots temper, as piety towards the past, ardour of service for the present, love of liberty, delight in natural beauty, and gratitude for Divine favour, so rich a temper will grow rancid without the salt of conscience; and the richer the temper is, the greater must be the proportion of that salt. All prophets and poets of patriotism have been moralists and satirists as well. From Demosthenes to Tourgenieff. from Dante to Mazzini, from Milton to Russell Lowell, from Burns to Heine, one cannot recall any great patriot who has not known how to use the scourge as well as the trumpet. Many opportunities will present themselves to us of illustrating Isaiahs orations by the letters and speeches of Cromwell, who of moderns most resembles the statesman-prophet of Judah; but nowhere does the resemblance become so close as when we lay a prophecy like this of Jehovahs vineyard by the side of the speeches in which the Lord Protector exhorted the Commons of England, although it was the hour of his and. their triumph, to address themselves to their sins.

So, then, the patriotism of all great men has carried a conscience for their countrys sins. But while this is always more or less a burden to the true patriot, there are certain periods in which his care for his country ought to be this predominantly, and need be little else. In a period like our own, for instance, of political security and fashionable religion, what need is there in patriotic displays of any other kind? but how much for patriotism of this kind-of men who will uncover the secret sins, however loathsome, and declare the hypocrisies, however powerful, of the social life of the people! These are the patriots we need in times of peace; and as it is more difficult to rouse a torpid people to their sins than to lead a roused one against their enemies, and harder to face a whole people with the support only of conscience than to defy many nations if you but have your own at your back, so these patriots of peace are more to be honoured than those of war. But there is one kind of patriotism more arduous and honourable still. It is that which Isaiah displays here, who cannot add to his conscience hope or even pity, who must hail his countrys enemies for his countrys good, and recite the long roll of Gods favours to his nation only to emphasise the justice of His abandonment of them.

II. THE WILD GRAPES OF JUDAH

{Isa 5:8-24}

The wild grapes which Isaiah saw in the vineyard of the Lord he catalogues in a series of Woes (Isa 5:8-24), fruits all of them of love of money and love of wine. They are abuse of the soil (Isa 5:8-10, Isa 5:17), a giddy luxury which has taken to drink (Isa 5:11-16), a moral blindness and headlong audacity of sin which habitual avarice and drunkenness soon develop (Isa 5:18-21), and, again, a greed of drink and money-mens perversion of their strength to wine, and of their opportunities of justice to the taking of bribes (Isa 5:22-24). These are the features of corrupt civilisation not only in Judah, and the voice that deplores them cannot speak without rousing others very clamant to the modern conscience. It is with remarkable persistence that in every civilisation the two main passions of the human heart, love of wealth and love of pleasure, the instinct to gather and the instinct to squander, have sought precisely these two forms denounced by Isaiah in which to work their social havoc-appropriation of the soil and indulgence in strong drink. Every civilised community develops sooner or later its land-question and its liquor-question. “Questions” they are called by the superficial opinion that all difficulties may be overcome by the cleverness of men; yet problems through which there cries for remedy so vast a proportion of our poverty, crime, and madness, are something worse than “questions.” They are huge sins, and require not merely the statesmans wit, but all the patience and zeal of which a nations conscience is capable. It is in this that the force of Isaiahs treatment lies. We feel he is not facing questions of State, but sins of men. He has nothing to tell us of what he considers the best system of land tenure, but he enforces the principle that in the ease with which land may be absorbed by one person the natural covetousness of the human heart has a terrible opportunity for working ruin upon society. “Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land.” We know from Micah that the actual process which Isaiah condemns was carried out with the most cruel evictions and disinheritances. Isaiah does not touch on its methods, but exposes its effects on the country-depopulation and barrenness, -and emphasises its religious significance. “Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without an inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah Then shall lambs. feed as in their pasture, and strangers shall devour the ruins of the fat ones”-i.e., of the luxurious landowners (Isa 5:9, Isa 5:10, Isa 5:17). And in one of those elliptic statements by which he often startles us with the sudden sense that God Himself is acquainted with all our affairs, and takes His own interest in them, Isaiah adds, “All this was whispered to me by Jehovah: In mine ears-the Lord of hosts” (Isa 5:9).

During recent agitations in our own country one has often seen the “land laws of the Bible” held forth by some thoughtless demagogue as models for land tenure among ourselves; as if a system which worked well with a small tribe in a land they had all entered on equal footing, and where there was no opportunity for the industry of the people except in pasture and in tillage, could possibly be applicable to a vastly larger and more complex population, with different traditions and very different social circumstances. Isaiah says nothing about the peculiar land laws of his people. He lays down principles, and these are principles valid in every civilisation. God has made the land, not to feed the pride of the few, but the natural hunger of the many, and it is His will that the most be got out of a countrys soil for the people of the country. Whatever be the system of land-tenure-and while all are more or less liable to abuse, it is the duty of a people to agitate for that which will be least liable-if it is taken advantage of by individuals to satisfy their own cupidity, then God will take account of them. There is a responsibility which the State cannot enforce, and the neglect of which cannot be punished by any earthly law, but all the more will God see to it. A nations treatment of their land is not always prominent as a question which demands the attention of public reformers; but it ceaselessly has interest for God, who ever holds individuals to answer for it. The land-question is ultimately a religious question. For the management of their land the whole nation is responsible to God, but especially those who own or manage estates. This is a sacred office. When one not only remembers the nature of land-how it is an element of life, so that if a man abuse the soil it is as if he poisoned the air or darkened the heavens-but appreciates also the multitude of personal relations which the landowner or factor holds in his hand-the peace of homes, the continuity of local traditions, the physical health, the social fearlessness and frankness, and the thousand delicate associations which their habitations entwine about the hearts of men-one feels that to all who possess or manage land is granted an opportunity of patriotism and piety open to few, a ministry less honourable and sacred than none other committed by God to man for his fellow-men.

After the land-sin Isaiah hurls his second Woe upon the drink-sin, and it is a heavier woe than the first. With fatal persistence the luxury of every civilisation has taken to drink; and of all the indictments brought by moralists against nations, that which they reserve for drunkenness is, as here, the most heavily weighted. The crusade against drink is not the novel thing that many imagine who observe only its late revival among ourselves. In ancient times there was scarcely a State in which prohibitive legislation of the most stringent kind was not attempted, and generally carried out with a thoroughness more possible under despots than where, as with us, the slow consent of public opinion is necessary. A horror of strong drink has in every age possessed those who from their position as magistrates or prophets have been able to follow for any distance the drifts of social life. Isaiah exposes as powerfully as ever any of them did in what the peculiar fatality of drinking lies. Wine is a mocker by nothing more than by the moral incredulity which it produces, enabling men to hide from themselves the spiritual and material effects of over-indulgence in it. No one who has had to do with persons slowly falling from moderate to immoderate drinking can mistake Isaiahs meaning when he says, “They regard not the work of the Lord; neither have they considered the operation of His hands.” Nothing kills the conscience like steady drinking to a little excess; and religion, even while the conscience is alive, acts on it only as an opiate. It is not, however, with the symptoms of drink in individuals so much as with its aggregate effects on the nation that Isaiah is concerned. So prevalent is excessive drinking, so entwined with the social customs of the country and many powerful interests, that it is extremely difficult to rouse public opinion to its effects. And “so they go into captivity for lack of knowledge.” Temperance reformers are often blamed for the strength of their language, but they may shelter themselves behind Isaiah. As he pictures it, the national destruction caused by drink is complete. It is nothing less than the peoples captivity, and we know what that meant to an Israelite. It affects all classes: “Their honourable men are famished, and their multitude parched with thirst. The mean man is bowed down, and the great man is humbled.” But the want and ruin of this earth are not enough to describe it. The appetite of hell itself has to be enlarged to suffice for the consumption of the spoils of strong drink. “Therefore hell hath enlarged her desire and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth among them, descend into it.” The very appetite of hell has to be enlarged! Does it not truly seem as if the wild and wanton waste of drink were preventable, as if it were not, as many are ready to sneer, the inevitable evil of mens hearts choosing this form of issue, but a superfluous audacity of sin, which the devil himself did not desire or tempt men to? It is this feeling of the infernal gratuitousness of most of the drink-evil-the conviction that here hell would be quiet if only she were not stirred up by the extraordinarily wanton provocatives that society and the State offer to excessive drinking- which compels temperance reformers at the present day to isolate drunkenness and make it the object of a special crusade. Isaiahs strong figure has lost none of its strength today. When our judges tell us from the bench that nine-tenths of pauperism and crime are caused by drink, and our physicians that if only irregular tippling were abolished half the current sickness of the land would cease, and our statesmen that the ravages of strong drink are equal to those of the historical scourges of war, famine, and pestilence combined, surely to swallow such a glut of spoil the appetite of hell must have been still more enlarged, and the mouth of hell made yet wider.

The next three Woes are upon different aggravations of that moral perversity which the prophet has already traced to strong drink. In the first of these it is better to read, draw punishment near with cords of vanity, than draw iniquity. Then we have a striking antithesis-the drunkards mocking Isaiah over their cups with the challenge, as if it would not be taken up, “Let Jehovah make speed, and hasten His work of judgment, that we may see it,” while all the time they themselves were dragging that judgment near, as with cart-ropes, by their persistent diligence in evil. This figure of sinners jeering at the approach of a calamity while they actually wear the harness of its carriage is very striking. But the Jews are not only unconscious of judgment, they are confused as to the very principles of morality: “Who call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

In his fifth Woe the prophet attacks a disposition to which his scorn gives no peace throughout his ministry. If these sensualists had only confined themselves to their sensuality they might have been left alone; but with that intellectual bravado which is equally born with “Dutch courage” of drink, they interferred in the conduct of the State, and prepared arrogant policies of alliance and war that were the distress of the sober-minded prophet all his days. “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.”

In his last Woe Isaiah returns to the drinking habits of the upper classes, from which it would appear that among the judges even of Judah there were “six-bottle men.” They sustained theft extravagance by subsidies, which we trust were unknown to the mighty men of wine who once filled the seats of justice in our own country. “They justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him.” All these sinners, dead through their rejection of the law of Jehovah of hosts and the word of the Holy One of Israel, shall be like to the stubble, fit only for burning, and their blossom as the dust of the rotten tree.

III. THE ANGER OF THE LORD

{Isa 5:25; Isa 9:8 – Isa 10:4; Isa 5:26-30}

This indictment of the various sins of the people occupies the whole of the second part of the oration. But a third part is now added, in which the prophet catalogues the judgments of the Lord upon them, each of these closing with the weird refrain, “For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” The complete catalogue is usually obtained by inserting between the 25th and 26th verses of chapter 5 {Isa 5:25-26}. the long passage from chapter 9, verse 8, to chapter 10, verse 4. It is quite true that as far as chapter 5 itself is concerned it does not need this insertion; Isa 9:8-21; Isa 10:1-4 is decidedly out of place where it now lies. Its paragraphs end with the same refrain as closes Isa 5:25, which forms, besides, a natural introduction to them, while Isa 5:26-30 form as natural a conclusion. The latter verses describe an Assyrian invasion, and it was always in an Assyrian invasion that Isaiah foresaw the final calamity of Judah. We may, then, subject to further light on the exceedingly obscure subject of the arrangement of Isaiahs prophecies, follow some of the leading critics, and place Isa 9:8-21; Isa 10:1-4 between verses 25-26 of chapter 5; and the more we examine them the more we shall be satisfied with our arrangement, for strung together in this order they form one of the most impressive series of scenes which even an Isaiah has given us.

From these scenes Isaiah has spared nothing that is terrible in history or nature, and it is not one of the least of the arguments for putting them together that their intensity increases to a climax. Earthquakes, armed raids, a great battle, and the slaughter of a people; prairie and forest fires, civil strife and the famine fever, that feeds upon itself; another battle-field, with its cringing groups of captives and heaps of slain; the resistless tide of a great invasion; and then, for final prospect, a desolate land by the sound of a hungry sea, and the light is darkened in the clouds thereof. The elements of nature and the elemental passions of man have been let loose together; and we follow the violent floods, remembering that it is sin that has burst the gates of the universe, and given the tides of hell full course through it. Over the storm and battle there comes booming like the storm-bell the awful refrain, “For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” It is poetry of the highest order, but in him who reads it with a conscience mere literary sensations are sobered by the awe of some of the most profound moral phenomena of life. The persistence of Divine wrath, the long-lingering effects of sin in a nations history, mans abuse of sorrow and his defiance of an angry Providence, are the elements of this great drama. Those who are familiar with “King Lear” will recognise these elements, and observe how similarly the ways of Providence and the conduct of men are represented there and here.

What Isaiah unfolds, then. is a series of calamities that have overtaken the people of Israel. It is impossible for us to identify every one of them with a particular event in Israels history otherwise known to us. Some it is not difficult to recognise; but the prophet passes in a perplexing way from Judah to Ephraim and Ephraim to Judah, and in one case, where he represents Samaria as attacked by Syria and the Philistines, he goes back to a period at some distance from his own. There are also passages, as for instance Isa 10:1-4, in which we are unable to decide whether he describes a present punishment or threatens a future one. But his moral purpose, at least, is plain. He will show how often Jehovah has already spoken to His people by calamity, and because they have remained hardened under these warnings, how there now remains possible only the last, worst blow of an Assyrian invasion. Isaiah is justifying his threat of so unprecedented and extreme a punishment for Gods people as overthrow by this Northern people, who had just appeared upon Judahs political horizon. God, he tells Israel, has tried everything short of this, and it has failed; now only this remains, and this shall not fail. The prophets purpose, therefore, being not an accurate historical recital, but moral impressiveness, he gives us a more or less ideal description of former calamities, mentioning only so much as to allow us to recognise here and there that it is actual facts which he uses for his purpose of condemning Israel to captivity, and vindicating Israels God in bringing that captivity near. The passage thus forms a parallel to that in Amos, with its similar refrain: “Yet ye have not returned unto Me, saith the Lord,” {Amo 4:6-12} and only goes farther than that earlier prophecy in indicating that the instruments of the Lords final judgment are to be the Assyrians.

Five great calamities, says Isaiah, have fallen on Israel and left them hardened:

1st, earthquake; {Isa 5:25}

2d, loss of territory; {Isa 9:8-12}

3d, war and a decisive defeat; {Isa 9:13-17}

4th, internal anarchy; {Isa 9:18-21}

5th, the near prospect of captivity. {Isa 10:1-4}

1. THE EARTHQUAKE.-Amos {Isa 5:25} closes his series withan earthquake; Isaiah begins with one. It may be the same convulsion they describe, or may not. Although the skirts of Palestine both to the east and west frequently tremble to these disturbances, an earthquake in Palestine itself, up on the high central ridge of the land, is very rare. Isaiah vividly describes its awful simplicity and suddenness. “The Lord stretched forth His hand and smote, and the hills shook, and their carcases were like offal in the midst of the streets.” More words are not needed, because there was nothing more to describe. The Lord lifted His hand; the hills seemed for a moment to topple over, and when the living recovered from the shock there lay the dead, flung like refuse about the streets.

2. THE LOSS OF TERRITORY.-So {Isa 9:8-21} awful a calamity, in which the dying did not die out of sight nor-fall huddled together on some far off battle-field, but the whole land was strewn with her slain, ought to have left indelible impression on the people. But it did not. The Lords own word had been in it for Jacob and Israel, {Isa 9:8} “that the people might know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria.” But unhumbled they turned in the stoutness of their hearts, saying, when the earthquake had passed: “The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stones”; the “sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.” Calamity did not make this people thoughtful; they felt God only to endeavour to forget Him. Therefore He visited them the second time. They did not feel the Lord shaking their land, so He sent their enemies to steal it from them: “the Syrians before and the Philistines behind; and they devour Israel with open mouth.” What that had been for appalling suddenness this was for lingering and harassing-guerilla warfare, armed raids, the land eaten away bit by bit. “Yet the people do not return unto Him that smote them, neither seek they the Lord of hosts.”

3. WAR AND DEFEAT.-The {Isa 9:13-17} next consequent calamity passed from the land to the people themselves. A great battle is described, in which the nation is dismembered in one day. War and its horrors are told, and the apparent want of Divine pity and discrimination which they imply is explained. Israel has been led into these disasters by the folly of their leaders, whom Isaiah therefore singles out for blame. “For they that lead these people cause them to err, and they that are led of them are destroyed.” But the real horror of war is that it falls not upon its authors, that its victims are not statesmen, but the beauty of a countrys youth, the helplessness of the widow and orphan. Some question seems to have been stirred by this in Isaiahs heart. He asks, Why does the Lord not rejoice in the young men of His people? Why has He no pity for widow and orphan, that He thus sacrifices them to the sin of the rulers? It is because the whole nation shares the rulers guilt; “every one is a hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly.” As ruler so people, is a truth Isaiah frequently asserts, but never with such grimness as here. War brings out, as nothing else does, the solidarity of a people in guilt.

4. INTERNAL ANARCHY.-Even {Isa 9:18-21} yet the people did not repent; their calamities only drove them to further wickedness. The prophets eyes are opened to the awful fact that Gods wrath is but the blast that fans mens hot sins to flame. This is one of those two or three awful scenes in history, in the conflagration of which we cannot tell what is human sin and what Divine judgment. There is a panic wickedness, sin spreading like mania, as if men were possessed by supernatural powers. The physical metaphors of the prophet are evident: a forest or prairie fire, and the consequent famine, whose fevered victims feed upon themselves. And no less evident are the political facts which the prophet employs these metaphors to describe. It is the anarchy which has beset more than one corrupt and unfortunate people, when their mis-leaders have been overthrown: the anarchy in which each faction seeks to slaughter out the rest. Jealousy and distrust awake the lust for blood, rage seizes the people as fire the forest, “and no man spareth his brother.” We have had modern instances of all this; these scenes form a true description of some days of the French Revolution, and are even a truer description of the civil war that broke out in Paris after her late siege.

“If that the heavens do not their visible spirits

Send quickly down to tame these vile offences, I will come,

Humanity must perforce prey on itself

Like monsters of the deep.”

5. THE THREAT OF CAPTIVITY.-Turning {Isa 10:1-4} now from the past, and from the fate of Samaria, with which it would appear he has been more particularly engaged, the prophet addresses his own countrymen in Judah, and paints the future for them. It is not a future in which there is any hope. The day of their visitation also will surely come, and the prophet sees it close in the darkest night of which a Jewish heart could think-the night of captivity. Where, he asks his unjust countrymen-where “will ye then flee for help? and where will you leave your glory?” Cringing among the captives, lying dead beneath heaps of dead-that is to be your fate, who will have turned so, often and then so finally from God. When exactly the prophet thus warned his countrymen of captivity we do not know, but the warning, though so real, produced neither penitence in men nor pity in God. “For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.”

6. THE ASSYRIAN INVASION.-The {Isa 5:26-30} prophet is, therefore, free to explain that cloud which has appeared far away on the northern horizon. Gods hand of judgment is still uplifted over Judah, and it is that hand which summons the cloud. The Assyrians are coming in answer to Gods signal, and they are coming as a flood, to leave nothing but ruin and distress behind them. No description by Isaiah is more majestic than this one, in which Jehovah, who has exhausted every nearer means of converting His people, lifts His undrooping arm with a “flag to the nations that are far off, and hisses” or whistles “for them from the end of the earth. And, behold, they come with speed, swiftly: there is no weary one nor straggler among them; none slumbers nor sleeps; nor loosed is the girdle of his loins, nor broken the latchet of his shoes; whose arrows are sharpened, and all their bows bent; their horses hoofs are like the dint, and their wheels like the whirlwind: a roar have they like the lions, and they roar like young lions; yea, they growl and grasp the prey, and carry it off, and there is none to deliver. And they growl upon him that day like the growling of the sea; and if one looks to the land, behold dark and distress, and the light is darkened in the cloudy heaven.”

Thus Isaiah leaves Judah to await her doom. But the tones of his weird refrain awaken in our hearts some thoughts which will not let his message go from us just yet.

It will ever be a question, whether men abuse more their sorrows or their joys; but no earnest soul can doubt, which of these abuses is the more fatal. To sin in the one case is to yield to a temptation; to sin in the other is to resist a Divine grace. Sorrow is Gods last message to man; it is God speaking in emphasis. He who abuses it shows that he can shut his ears when God speaks loudest. Therefore heartlessness or impenitence after sorrow is more dangerous than intemperance in joy; its results are always more tragic. Now Isaiah points out that mens abuse of sorrow is twofold. Men abuse sorrow by mistaking it, and they abuse sorrow by defying it.

Men abuse sorrow by mistaking it, when they see in it nothing but a penal or expiatory force. To many men sorrow is what his devotions were to Louis XI, which having religiously performed, he felt the more brave to sin. So with the Samaritans, who said in the stoutness of their hearts, “The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.” To speak in this way is happy, but heathenish. It is to call sorrow “bad luck”; it is to hear no voice of God in it, saying, “Be pure; be humble; lean upon Me.” This disposition springs from a vulgar conception of God, as of a Being of no permanence in character, easily irritated but relieved by a burst of passion, smartly punishing His people and then leaving them to themselves. It is a temper which says, “God is angry, let us wait a little; God is appeased, let us go ahead again.” Over against such vulgar views of a Deity with a temper Isaiah unveils the awful majesty of God in holy wrath: “For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” How grim and savage does it appear to our eyes till we understand the thoughts of the sinners to whom it was revealed! God cannot dispel the cowardly thought, that He is anxious only to punish, except by letting His heavy hand abide till it purify also. The permanence of Gods wrath is thus an ennobling, not a stupefying doctrine.

Men also abuse sorrow by defying it, but the end of this is madness. “It forms the greater part of the tragedy of King Lear, that the aged monarch, though he has given his throne away, retains his imperiousness of heart, and continues to exhibit a senseless, if sometimes picturesque, pride and selfishness in face of misfortune. Even when he is overthrown he must still command; he fights against the very elements; he is determined to be at least the master of his own sufferings and destiny. But for this the necessary powers fail him; his life thus disordered terminates in madness. It was only by such an affliction that a character like his could be brought to repentance; to humility, which is the parent of true love, and that love in him could be purified. Hence the melancholy close of that tragedy.” As Shakespeare has dealt with the king, so Isaiah with the people; he also shows us sorrow when it is defied bringing forth madness. On so impious a height mans brain grows dizzy, and he falls into that terrible abyss which is not, as some imagine, hell, but Gods last purgatory. Shakespeare brings shattered Lear out of it, and Isaiah has a remnant of the people to save.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary