Woe to Tyrants
“Woe to those who enact unjust statutes and issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of fair treatment and withhold justice from the oppressed of My people, to make widows their prey and orphans their plunder. What will you do on the day of reckoning when devastation comes from afar? To whom will you flee for help? Where will you leave your wealth? Nothing will remain but to crouch among the captives or fall among the slain. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.
Judgment on Assyria
Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger; the staff in their hands is My wrath. I will send him against a godless nation; I will dispatch him against a people destined for My rage, to take spoils and seize plunder, and to trample them down like clay in the streets. But this is not his intention; this is not his plan. For it is in his heart to destroy and cut off many nations. “Are not all my commanders kings?” he says. “Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? As my hand seized the idolatrous kingdoms whose images surpassed those of Jerusalem and Samaria, and as I have done to Samaria and its idols, will I not also do to Jerusalem and her idols?”
So when the Lord has completed all His work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the king of Assyria for the fruit of his arrogant heart and the proud look in his eyes. For he says: ‘By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, for I am clever. I have removed the boundaries of nations and plundered their treasures; like a mighty one I subdued their rulers. My hand reached as into a nest to seize the wealth of the nations. Like one gathering abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth. No wing fluttered, no beak opened or chirped.’”
Does an ax raise itself above the one who swings it? Does a saw boast over him who saws with it? It would be like a staff waving the one who lifts it! It would be like a staff lifting him who is not wood! Therefore the Lord GOD of Hosts will send a wasting disease among Assyria’s stout warriors, and under his pomp will be kindled a fire like a burning flame. And the Light of Israel will become a fire, and its Holy One a flame. In a single day it will burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and thistles. The splendor of its forests and orchards, both soul and body, it will completely destroy, as a sickness consumes a man. The remaining trees of its forests will be so few that a child could count them.
A Remnant Shall Return
On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no longer depend on him who struck them, but they will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel. A remnant will return —a remnant of Jacob—to the Mighty God. Though your people, O Israel, be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant will return. Destruction has been decreed, overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord GOD of Hosts will carry out the destruction decreed upon the whole land. (He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work in all the world; cited in Romans 9:28)
Therefore this is what the Lord GOD of Hosts says: “O My people who dwell in Zion, do not fear Assyria, who strikes you with a rod and lifts his staff against you as the Egyptians did. For in just a little while My fury against you will subside, and My anger will turn to their destruction.” And the LORD of Hosts will brandish a whip against them, as when He struck Midian at the rock of Oreb. He will raise His staff over the sea, as He did in Egypt. On that day the burden will be lifted from your shoulders, and the yoke from your neck. The yoke will be broken because your neck will be too large.
Assyria has entered Aiath and passed through Migron, storing their supplies at Michmash. They have crossed at the ford: “We will spend the night at Geba.” Ramah trembles; Gibeah of Saul flees. Cry aloud, O Daughter of Gallim! Listen, O Laishah! O wretched Anathoth! Madmenah flees; the people of Gebim take refuge. Yet today they will halt at Nob, shaking a fist at the mount of Daughter Zion, at the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the Lord GOD of Hosts will lop off the branches with terrifying power. The tall trees will be cut down, the lofty ones will be felled. He will clear the forest thickets with an ax, and Lebanon will fall before the Mighty One.”
Isaiah is continuing his warnings to the wealthy politicians of Judah who have been feeding on the poor, enacting unjust laws and using any pretense to victimize widows and orphans. God is giving these people one last change to repent, but if they do not, God will unleash the Assyrian army on them.
The Assyrians were one of the most brutal nations imaginable. Assyrian boys were raised to become warriors who would behead captives, burn them, skin them alive, and carry out all sorts of other tortures. Captives who survived until the end of battles were generally beheaded while scribes stood by keeping the tally. It gave new meaning to the term “head count.” Compared to the Assyrians, the Babylonians were nothing but a bunch of pussy cats! Not only were the Assyrians unbelievably cruel, but they had also perfected many of the engines of war. “Infantry, chariots, cavalry (introduced by Ashurnasirpal to aid the infantry and chariots), sappers, armor made from iron, siege machines, and battering rams were all developed or perfected by the Assyrians. Strategy and tactics were also well understood by the Assyrian officers. (See Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, 1:270–71.)”
When Assyrians conquered a city, they completely destroyed not only the city but also all of its trees, carrying out scorched earth tactics. Much of the deforestation and subsequent climate change in Isaiah’s time resulted from Assyrian conquests.
(Information from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/old-testament-student-manual-kings-malachi/enrichment-d?lang=eng)
Amazingly, God is saying that He is going to use the Assyrians just as a carpenter would use an axe or a saw. But the Assyrians are clueless that they are being used. God promises that after He has used Assyria, Assyria itself will be devastated. “Therefore the Lord GOD of Hosts will send a wasting disease among Assyria’s stout warriors, and under his pomp will be kindled a fire like a burning flame. And the Light of Israel will become a fire, and its Holy One a flame. In a single day it will burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and thistles. The splendor of its forests and orchards, both soul and body, it will completely destroy, as a sickness consumes a man. The remaining trees of its forests will be so few that a child could count them.”
God also promises that once He has dealt with Assyria and the Israelite captives have had the chance to repent, a remnant will return to Israel. These promises came true repeatedly, culminating with the return of the Jews to Israel after World War II.
APPLICATION: Today climate change is one of the hottest topics in the news. All kinds of videos of melting ice caps and shrinking glaciers are circulating on TV and social media. But those aware of history realize that climate change has been occurring for millenia. 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was NOT a desert at all but was green. But a combination of factors served to bring the Sahara to the tipping point. Natural changes in the earth’s orbit, a weakening of the African monsoon, a proliferation of hunter – gatherer humans who then had to raise grazing animals – a whole host of factors were involved.
An article in the Smithsonian Magazine quotes experts who say this: “It’s important to note that the green Sahara always would’ve turned back into a desert even without humans doing anything—that’s just how Earth’s orbit works, says geologist Jessica Tierney, an associate professor of geoscience at the University of Arizona. Moreover, according to Tierney, we don’t necessarily need humans to explain the abruptness of the transition from green to desert.
Instead, the culprits might be regular old vegetation feedbacks and changes in the amount of dust. “At first you have this slow change in the Earth’s orbit,” Tierney explains. “As that’s happening, the West African monsoon is going to get a little bit weaker. Slowly you’ll degrade the landscape, switching from desert to vegetation. And then at some point you pass the tipping point where change accelerates.”
Tierney adds that it’s hard to know what triggered the cascade in the system, because everything is so closely intertwined. During the last humid period, the Sahara was filled with hunter-gatherers. As the orbit slowly changed and less rain fell, humans would have needed to domesticate animals, like cattle and goats, for sustenance. “It could be the climate was pushing people to herd cattle, or the overgrazing practices accelerated denudation [of foliage],” Tierney says.
Today, much of the Middle East is not green at all; however, if you read Biblical accounts closely, you realize that God promised that farms and vineyards would be destroyed. It was common practice for invading armies to destroy all trees, to pour salt on the land, and even to carry stones, dotting a conquered land with stones so that nobody would be able to farm there again easily. “Once Egypt was captured, Esarhaddon and his successor, Assurbanipal (680-626 B.C.E.), ruled an empire that stretched over 1,000 miles from the Nile River to the Caucasus Mountains. In its time, the Assyrian Empire was the greatest the world had ever seen.” (ushistory.org/civ/4d.Assyrians: Cavalry and Conquests – USHistory.org)
When we refuse to see God’s hand moving in history and in every event in our world, we are forced to fall back on all kinds of explanations. But 2 Chronicles 7:14 tells us, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” God always keeps His promises. The One who hung the stars poke the universe into existence with the single word “BE!” – the God of Israel, Eloheinu Melekh Ha’olam – the Lord God of the universe – the Most High God can still heal any land where people will humble themselves and pray and seek His face and turn from their wicked ways! Oh come, let us adore Him!
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, we confess that we have abused our lands and have not subjected ourselves to You, turning to all sorts of other remedies to forestall the deterioration of our world. But You alone are the One who can heal our world and heal us. The governments are on Your shoulders. Lord, we confess that our sins have created a barrier to healing. We repudiate those sins and we beg you to forgive us and to cleanse our hearts, our homes, and our lands. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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