Finally! All this time Isaiah has been saying there’s trouble brewing for blowing off God’s warnings as though a parking ticket. Now he says where that trouble will be coming from: “Aha! the Assyrian, The rod to express my anger And the staff in their hand for my denunciation!” (10:5) Aha, indeed. These are not guys you mess with. “My anger is still and does not relent” scattered throughout and repeated four times is not reassuring, either.
How can God grant humans free will yet know the future in such detail? If they really have free will, might not they choose a course that will mess up his predictions? In this case, it is ‘bad boys gonna be bad boys.’ You know that you’re going to have to do what my Dad did, what everyone my age Dad’s did, on those endless car trips with us kids whining in the back seat, “Aren’t we there yet?” Patience exhausted, he would at last holler, “If you kids don’t stop crying back there, I’m going to pull this car over and give you something to cry about!” At the time, I thought he was just being mean. I did not then realize he was uttering the wisdom of the prophets, for sometimes that is exactly what needs to be done.
My siblings and I were not bad kids. We were good kids, even if we might kick up a fuss from time to time. So, more often than not, Pop’s warning sufficed. But Isaiah’s countrymen are bad kids. Going to have to pull that car over and give them what for. So there’s no harm in telling up front he’s going to subcontract the job to the Assyrians. It doesn’t conflict with free will. Sometimes, actions are so predictable that the lawyers will later say you “knew or should have known.”
Nasty cookies, those Assyrians were, ruffians whose “every boot … shakes the earth as it marches.” (9:5) Boastful louts, too, given to saying: “Are not my princes all kings? Is not Calno just like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?” (10:8-9) They would extend their taunts into the divine: “My hand has seized the kingdoms of the worthless gods, Whose graven images were more than those of Jerusalem and Samaria!” (10:10)
They would do the same 33 years later at the walls of Jerusalem, Senacherrub taunting: “Have any of the gods of the nations rescued their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they rescued Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?”’” (36:18-20)
This time, however, he would find he overplayed his hand. This time it would be “the ax [trying] to exalt itself over the chopper.” (10:15) Axes aren’t supposed to do that. This next time he would find a king who did trust in Jehovah, not one who fobbed off Isaiah with a falsely-pious rejection of putting God to the test. Hezekiah put him too the ultimate test. This, even though he, like Ahaz, first sent the Assyrian king s tribute. There are no points awarded for being impractical. But when such failed, and faith would need be put to the test, it was.
****** The bookstore
Leave a Reply