Therefore thus saith the Lord, Jehovah 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
God gives this comfort just as He announces an invasion. He names the power He is about to use against His people, then tells them not to fear it: the blow is real, but fear is ruled out.
Earlier in the chapter God calls Assyria the instrument of His own anger.
Isaiah 10 speaks of this mighty power in relation to Israel: "Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!" (v. 5). God used this power, as His rod, to chasten His people... God, so to speak, says to this mighty power: I am using you to chastise My erring people. But if you lift yourself up against Me, I must bring you down.
The command not to fear is not a promise that nothing will happen. The next verse ties it to a time: "in a very little while." The chapter then traces the invader's advance town by town, right up to the edge of the city. Older translations speak of "the Assyrian," one figure, where the ESV has "the Assyrians."
The Lord would comfort the godly by telling them beforehand what would take place... Every step of the Assyrian's southward march through the land is traced. It runs from the moment "he has come to Aiath" until "he will shake his fist at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem" (Isaiah 10:28-32). His triumph over the ten tribes led to their captivity. But as we have seen, God set a limit to his power against Judah and Jerusalem.
The address is to "my people, who dwell in Zion." In Hezekiah's day God called the same threatened city "the virgin daughter of Zion." How could He speak that way about a city under siege?
How blessed and yet what an extraordinary word it was for these trembling Jews to hear. "The virgin, the daughter of Zion." Was there not fear? Was there not anguish of heart? How could that be true? Because God speaks according to His own thoughts. God looks at Zion as something the Assyrian's foot had never defiled... He had allowed him to ravage elsewhere. But Zion, however unfaithful Zion might be, was not reserved for the hand of the Assyrian.
That safety says nothing about the city's worth. It rests on the place God gave Jerusalem in His plan.
The one has a definite place in the divine plan; the other is used only for a temporary purpose. For the moment, then, it may triumph. But it has no mission of its own, no settled final purpose in the world, and so no special providence surrounds it. Jerusalem, however unworthy, was the actual centre of the world's history. Despite her weakness, despite how small she was by comparison, she must outlive the far mightier kingdoms of Nineveh and Babylon, of Persia and Macedon and Antioch. The carrying out of God's unchanging purposes depended on her survival.
The comparison to Egypt names how the enemy will strike — and how God will strike back.
The people who lived in Zion were "not to be afraid of the Assyrian," though he lifted up his rod as Egypt did (at the Red Sea, I take it). But the indignation ceases, and the Lord's anger in their destruction. God's rod will be upon him too, as it was on Egypt.
Commentators read this promise on two levels: kept in Hezekiah's day, and pointing beyond it.
Because he credited his victories to himself, God would "punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria." That would come after he had done God's work in government "on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem" (verse 12). A remnant of Israel would escape the judgment and return to God (verses 20-22). To them God says, "be not afraid of the Assyrian"... This happened in the days of Hezekiah, yet it was only the foreshadowing of what will take place in the time of the end.
- The rod — Assyria strikes, but the blow is God's chastening of His own people. The instrument never acts on its own authority.
- The limit — God holds the rod, so He measures its reach. The invader comes within sight of Jerusalem and no further.
- The name — God still says "my people" to those He is disciplining. He speaks of Zion by His own purposes, not by her condition.
- The pattern — Egypt comes up twice: the enemy raises his staff as Egypt did, and God will answer as He answered Egypt at the sea.
- The horizon — Hezekiah's deliverance was real. Commentators read it as a foreshadowing of a later crisis and a later rescue.
for yet a very little while, and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger, in their destruction.
God speaks to people cowering under an invading empire, and His word to them measures time: the anger has a limit, and it runs out. Older translations call it "the indignation," and that is the word the commentators use for what the ESV calls "my fury."
The phrase is not a passing mood. Writers trace it as a fixed term running through Isaiah. Wave after wave of chastening fails to turn the people back. This verse sets a stop to it.
There I find this very expression, "the indignation." In the end of Isaiah 5, and then in Isaiah 9 and 10, this word, "indignation," comes back over and over again. The prophet shows why. Israel turned to idols, and their kings led the way, so God's indignation rose against His people. He sends a chastening upon them. Whatever the first effects of the chastening might be, the evil broke out again with fresh fury. Evil always does, unless someone puts it away. So that terrible word sounds out: "For all this His anger has not turned away, and His hand is stretched out still." His wrath burns again and again. Then, in Isaiah 10:25, we find the Lord saying His indignation shall cease.
The verse says the anger turns "to their destruction." Who are they? Commentators point to the Assyrian invader. His fall closes the whole discipline.
After giving the various instruments which God has used to chasten Israel, he comes to the last and terrible invader. That was God's indignation against the rebellious people. The word "indignation" describes God's last terrible judgment... Verse 25 makes the force of it clear. The whole judgment of God on Israel — His indignation — closes in the destruction of the Assyrian.
Assyria was the tool in God's hand. That gave it no safety. Its own pride brought it under the judgment it had carried out.
God used Assyria as His rod to punish His guilty people Israel. Then, as in other cases, the rod itself had to bear God's judgement for its own pride and wickedness.
Before this, the repeated note is wrath that never runs out. Here that reverses.
His final working is what the Holy Spirit mainly has in mind... It stands in contrast with the often-repeated formula of wrath that still continues and never runs out. Now, on the contrary, in this proud enemy of Israel we have the end of Jehovah's anger... His anger is now turned away, and His arm no longer stretched out. The rod should be broken and the scourge destroyed, because the chastening work is done.
Some will say Assyria is a dead empire, so nothing is left to fulfil. The answer given is a test anyone can apply.
Many people will tell me the Assyrians are all gone; no such nation exists today. But I ask: has the Lord finished His whole work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem? No! Then the Assyrian is not all gone... When God's power gathers the Jews back to their own land, that same providence will bring out the Assyrian's representative in the last days. And as the Assyrian was the first great enemy of Israel, so he is the chief one at the last.
Commentators differ here. Many have merged the Assyrian with the Antichrist. The writers quoted keep them apart.
Commentators from Eusebius to Horsley, and a crowd of others who confuse the two, are careless of the Scriptures without excuse. It is very clear that there will be a wilful king in the city and land. He will set himself up as Messiah and as Jehovah in His temple, and the apostate Jews will receive him as such. Altogether opposed to this Antichrist in Jerusalem, who is in league with the western power, another chief will arise. He is an enemy of the Jews from outside, and he is the Assyrian.
The end of the indignation is not the same as Israel's restoration.
There is an indignation with a fixed limit... It is a time when God does not step in to deliver Israel. He lets the trial run on, and lets Israel feel its effects... The passage does not say that when the indignation is over, Israel will be restored to the enjoyment of their promises. But Christ can then act for Israel, instead of leaving them under the indignation.
- Measured — "The indignation" is a set period of God's anger against His people. He fixed its length in advance.
- Turned — Here God turns the anger off Israel and onto the invader.
- Broken — God judges the rod He used, because of its pride. Serving Him never excused it.
- Future — God has not yet finished His work on Zion, so commentators hold that the Assyrian's fall is still ahead.
- Opened — The end of the indignation is not the blessing itself. It clears the way for Christ to act for Israel.
And Jehovah of hosts will stir up a scourge against him, according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb; and his rod [shall be] upon the sea, and he will lift it up after the manner of Egypt.
God's word to Zion here is a promise of rescue. He points His people back to two things He has already done: the night Gideon broke Midian at the rock of Oreb, and the day He stretched His rod over the sea in Egypt. The question the verse answers is not whether the Assyrian will strike, but who holds the whip in the end.
God Himself sends this invader against His own people. Then the invader boasts, and God turns on him.
The Assyrian is "the rod of His anger" — the staff in their hand is God's indignation. God sends him against a nation of hypocrites, but he boasts against the One who uses him to cut, and the Lord judges him. Israel leans no more on the one who struck him... The people who lived in Zion were "not to be afraid of the Assyrian," though he lifted up his rod the way Egypt did (that is, at the Red Sea, I believe). But the indignation ends, and the Lord's anger too, in their destruction. God's rod will be on him as well, just as it was on Egypt.
The place name in the verse comes from a man.
Prince of Midian: he invaded Israel, but Gideon defeated him and killed him at the rock of Oreb — and it seems this event gave the rock its name. Judges 7:25; Judges 8:3; Ps. 83:11; Isa. 10:26.
Why does God point back to Midian? Because that night showed what victory by His hand looks like.
God would then break the oppressor's yoke — the yoke of their burden, the staff on his shoulder, and the rod of the Assyrian. He is the very One it had boasted against. It would be like the day when Gideon took his 300, with empty jars and lamps inside them. The sword of the Lord had scattered the great armies of Midian. This would be more than a soldier's battle, with its confused noise and clothes rolled in blood. It would come with burning and fuel of fire — the fire of God's judgment would be there. (Compare Isaiah 10:12-27.)
The second half of the verse reaches back further, to the rod stretched over the Red Sea. God saves along a pattern: He does again what He has already done.
God now worked in the same way as those ancient deliverances, according to His mercies and His great loving-kindness. His rod had once been stretched over the sea. Now He lifted it up again, just as in Egypt, on the day He is exalted in judgment.
These two memories are not decoration. God gives them to a people who have stopped leaning on human allies.
Israel will trust no more in human strength, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, or anything else. The slaughter of Midian and the way God dealt with Egypt give the characteristic patterns of the deliverance to come.
Writers here take the prophecy as looking past its first fulfilment.
In Isaiah 10:26, Gideon's victory over Midian at the rock of Oreb foreshadows the final victory over the Assyrian. In the same way, Barak's victory over Sisera at Megiddo pictures the final slaughter of the armies that will gather in the last days at Armageddon.
So what about the Assyrian army that really did fall in Israel's history?
There was indeed the downfall of Sennacherib, and the slaughter of his army in the land of Israel, in the days of king Hezekiah, but this was only the partial fulfilment of God's judgment on the Assyrian, and on the great alliance from the north that will be lured to its judgment, described in some detail in Ezekiel 38 and 39.
- Rod — the invader strikes as the rod in God's hand; when the rod boasts against the One who wields it, God judges it.
- Oreb — a rock named after a fallen Midianite prince marks the spot where God ended an invasion.
- Three hundred — the pattern God recalls is Gideon's men with empty jars and lamps; the victory comes by God's fire, not Israel's strength.
- Sea — the second memory is the rod over the Red Sea; God saves by repeating what He has already proved He can do.
- Fear not — God tells those who lean on no human ally not to fear the invader, because His anger ends in the invader's destruction.
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. ...
Most of Isaiah 10 describes Assyria as the tool God picked up to strike His own people. This verse is the moment He puts the tool down for good. Two questions press: when does "that day" arrive, and what breaks the yoke?
The burden did not arrive by accident. Isaiah explains why God let this nation loose on His own people.
Verse 5 of this chapter tells us why God allowed this powerful, destroying nation to attack His people. They were proud of their great victories. Yet they were only the rod of God's anger. The power they used was only the instrument to show God's indignation. God sent the Assyrian to chasten His people because of their sins, but the Assyrian had no idea what God was doing.
The Assyrian who marched in Isaiah's day is not the whole story.
As so often in Old Testament prophecy, there is a final fulfilment as well as a nearer one, and that is the case here… In the same way, "the Assyrian" we are now to consider has a double application. He is the great power of that time, centred in the city of Nineveh. He is also that "king of the North," which was Assyria, whom we read of in the last days.
History already supplied one round of this rescue.
A remnant of Israel would escape the judgment and return to God (verses 20-22). To them God says, "Be not afraid of the Assyrians… For in a very little while my fury will come to an end" (verses 24-25). This happened in the days of Hezekiah. Yet it was only the foreshadowing of what will take place at the time of the end.
The burden lifts as part of something bigger than Israel's comfort. It marks the end of God's long anger, an anger the earlier chapters kept calling "not turned away."
When God has finished all He had determined concerning Zion, He will break the rod He has used. Then the remnant will seek Jehovah and will "lean upon" Him… But when at last the Assyrian lifts up his hand, Jehovah steps in and strikes him. Until now, the indignation of Jehovah and His anger against Israel had never been turned away. Both will come to an end in the destruction of this rod that magnified itself against the Lord who used it.
The same day that lifts the weight off Israel's shoulder also changes where Israel puts its trust.
Then Israel's unbelief will pass away for ever. Israel will trust no more in human strength, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, or anything else.
The last clause tells us why the yoke breaks, and it is the hardest part of the verse. The ESV ends it "because of the fat," while older translations read "because of the anointing." Commentators do not settle the question. One reference work marks the wording itself as unclear:
Isaiah 10:27, "the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing" (text obscure).
The chapter's own answer to the rod is clearer. Against Assyria's fall Isaiah sets an Anointed One — that is what "Messiah" means — who takes the place the rod once held.
The high and haughty Assyrian falls under Jehovah's stroke. In contrast, we have here a remarkable and full description of the Messiah: first from a moral point of view, and then in His kingdom, its character and all that comes with it. The one in view is no longer "the rod of His anger," the staff that carried God's fury. He is a Branch from Jesse's roots, and also the Root of Jesse.
This rescue comes last, at the close of God's discipline of His people. One writer ties it to a matching promise in Isaiah 14.
With the fall of the Assyrian… the Lord's chastening of His people will cease. The last foe God judges is the one who attacked them first — the Assyrian. Isaiah 14 predicts this in full: "I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains trample him underfoot; and his yoke shall depart from them, and his burden from their shoulder" (verse 25).
- Rod raised — Assyria's power over Israel was on loan. God raised the rod against His people's sins, and the oppressor never grasped whose hand held him.
- Rod broken — the burden lifts only when God breaks the instrument He used. That same stroke ends an anger that had never yet turned away.
- Rod twice — Hezekiah saw this rescue in his own day. Writers read it as a small sample of a larger rescue from the "king of the North" at the end.
- Rod's riddle — the ESV ends the verse "because of the fat," older versions "because of the anointing." Commentators call the wording unclear.
- Rod replaced — God judges the first oppressor last, and the chapter answers the rod with a Branch from Jesse's roots. When the yoke goes, Israel's trust in human strength goes with it.