Isaiah – The fifth Hebrew gospel – Chapter 10

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Today’s parallel portion to Ch.10 is 2. Ki 18 and 19.

יהוהs hand  is stretched out in wrath over His people. An oracle against the Ten Tribes of Israel.

The chapter opens with a “Woe” on the dishonorable judges, which was always on Isaiah’s mind the chief symptom of a rotten republic. This is followed by an allusion to a day of slaughter.

Isa 10:1 Woe to those who enact unjust laws, and to the scribes who write toil; 2 to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to steal the right from the poor of My people, that widows may be their prey, and they rob the orphans! 3 And what will you do in the day of judgment and in destruction, of ruin when it comes from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your glory? 4 Surely they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. In all this His hand is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.

The magistrates are addressed not as judges but as legislators; their offense is that they embody injustice in arbitrary written enactments, which enable them to perpetrate the most grievous wrongs under legal forms or what we call today color of law. 

Isa 10:5 Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger! And the staff in their hand is My fury. 6 I will send him against an un holy nation, and against the people of My wrath. I will command him to take the plunder, and to strip off the spoil, and to trample them like the mud of the streets. 7 Yet he does not plan this, nor does his heart think so. For it is in his heart to destroy and cut off not a few nations. 8 For he says, Are not my commanders all like kings? 9 Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?

יהוה sends the king of Assyria against the ‘godless nation’ of his own people in their unrepentant state and against the nations of the world. The king of Assyria points to the end time “Assyrian” who descends from the North against the nations.

The king of Assyria also fulfills Isaiah’s prediction inherent in the name Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (“Hasten the Plunder, Hurry the Spoil”). He reduces the wicked to “mud,” a chaos motif, signifying their return to an elemental state – to non entities. 

An Elemental State – To Non-entities. 

Those that draw up mischievous ordinances and are continually writing oppression to compel humankind to agree to lower to an elemental state. 

A person making a general appearance or being re-represented by a corporate fiction, one who attorns for the dead is nothing more than a legal fiction that reduces the man of the dust to a plundered spoil of primordial mud. 

Be watchmen on the wall of your daily, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical state.

Isa 10:10 As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols, and their graven images more than Jerusalem’s and Samaria’s; 11 shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols as I have done to Samaria and her idols? 12 And it will be, when the Master has broken off all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the proud heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his high looks. 

Word links show that יהוהs “work” is twofold: 

1. the destruction of the wicked; and
2. the deliverance of the righteous 

As Isaiah progresses with his prophecy we view the utter destruction upon the whole earth to prepare the way for יהוהs coming. 

13 because he has said, I have done it by my own ability ad shrewdness, for I am ingenious. I have done away with the borders  of nations, I have ravaged their reserves, I have vastly reduced the inhabitants. I have impounded the wealth of the peoples like a nest, and I have gathered up the whole world as one gathers abandoned eggs, not one flapped its wings, or opened its mouth to utter a peep.

Believing he has all power, the Assyrian boasts of his exploits – the pronoun “I” appears seven times, portraying him as a bloke with a massive ego!

15 Shall the axe boast itself against him who chops with it? Shall the saw magnify itself against him who moves it? As if the rod could wave those who lift itself up! As if a staff could raise what is not wood!

It’s יהוה who empowers the Assyrian to hew down the wicked and rule over those who reject יהוה as their ruler. You either have יהוה or Pharaoh, you choose it’s always been that way – good or evil, if you eschew good you get the evil, you’ll be so brainwashed by your sin at this point that you will call good evil and evil good,

He is יהוהs axe and saw, his rod and staff, the Assyrian has no capability of his own, he isn’t the creative force in the world but merely the destructive one, reducing its wicked inhabitants and their financial institutions into chaos! 

Isa 10:16 Therefore the Master, יהוה Zevoth, shall send leanness among his fat ones; and under his glory He shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. 17 And the light of Israel shall be as a fire, and His Holy One as a flame; and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day. 18 And it shall burn up the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field, both soul and body; and they shall be as when a sick one faints. 19 And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, so that a boy might write them.

But because the Assyrian exhorts himself above the Creator, he ends up abased –  he was a fire that burnt up the wicked, so what he does to others is done to him, יהוה empowers another fire, his end time servant to subdue him!

“briars and thorns”- his evil alliance- “in a single day,” יהוהs day of judgment. 

Isa 10:20 And it shall be in that day, the remnant of Israel, and those who have escaped from the house of Jacob, shall never again lean on him who struck them; but truly lean on יהוה, the Holy One of Israel. 21 The remnant shall return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty El. 

22 For though Your people Israel are like the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return; the full end which is decreed shall overflow with righteousness. 

In the Hebrew, righteousness sweeps away a decree of destruction. Meaning total annihilation is averted by our repentance – that repentance ushers in the Ruach of Moshiach that averts the Greater Catastrophe and instead begins the Greater Exodus in that final remnant generation that witnesses the manifestation of the end time Assyrian. Evil personified, a character from the North that brings military and economic collapse and oppression to the world at large. 

23  For the Master יהוה Zevoth shall make a full end, as ordained, in the midst of all the land. 24 Therefore so says the Master יהוה Zevoth, O my people who dwell in Zion, do not fear Assyria. He shall strike you with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against you, in the way of Egypt. 25 But yet a little while, and the fury shall cease, and My anger shall be in their ruin/degeneration. 

The chapter concludes with the days leading up to the downfall of Sancheiriv, how he descends from the NE racing from town to town has he approaches his objective – Jerusalem. The city of Nov was on a hill overlooking the city, today’s Mt. Scopus.  

Isa 10:26 And יהוה Zevoth shall stir up a whip on him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb; and as His rod was on the sea, so shall He lift it up in the way of Egypt. 27 And it shall be, in that day his burden shall be taken away from off your shoulder, and his yoke from off your neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing. 28 He has come to Aiath, he has passed to Migron; at Michmash he has stored his baggage; 29 they have gone over the passage; they have bedded down at Geba; Ramah is afraid, Gibeah of Saul has fled. 30 Lift up your voice, daughter of heaps; shriek with your voice; bow Laish, afflicted of Anathoth. 31 Madmenah wanders; the people of Gebim take refuge. 32 Yet he shall remain in Nob today; he shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. 33 Behold, the Master, יהוה Zevoth, shall lop the bough with terror; and the lofty ones shall be cut down, and the proud shall be humbled. 34 And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one.

History tells us that Sancheriev got as far as Nob, where if any of you have been upon Mt. Scopus  you know you have a panoramic view of Jerusalem. It appeared to him as a small, weakly defended city. “Is this the place for which I brought an overwhelming force, and quickly overran so many cities to reach? Why, it is smaller and weaker than any of the cities that I conquered.” Vs. 26-32 .

He therefore disregarded his astrologers’ warning to invade at once, and ‘shook his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion – the hill of Jerusalem’ V.32 saying, “This can wait until tomorrow. I will give my soldiers a good rest for the night, and tomorrow morning, fully refreshed, they will easily breach the wall and conquer the city.”

2. Kings 19:35 And it happened that night, the Angel of יהוה went out and struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. And they arose early in the morning, and behold, they were all dead bodies. 36. And Sennacherib king of Assyria departed. And he went and returned and lived at Nineveh. And it happened as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him with the sword.