Judgment on Arrogant Assyria

5 Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger;
the staff in their hands is my fury!
6 Against a godless nation I send him,
and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
7 But he does not so intend,
and his heart does not so think;
but it is in his heart to destroy,
and to cut off nations not a few;
8 for he says:
“Are not my commanders all kings?
9 Is not Calno like Carchemish?
Is not Hamath like Arpad?
Is not Samaria like Damascus?
10 As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols,
whose carved images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
11 shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols
as I have done to Samaria and her images?” (Isaiah 10:5-11)

10:5 - "The rod of My anger" - God used Assyria as His instrument of judgment against Israel and Judah. He did the same with Babylon against Judah later on (Hab. 1:6).

"For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,
that bitter and hasty nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth,
to seize dwellings not their own." (Habakkuk 1:6)

It is by the sovereign decree and action of God the Assyrian was to serve as His rod of anger and discipline against His people. Like an offended father dealing with a disobedient son, God indicates that He is using the nation of Assyria to give His people Israel that well-deserved discipline.

Note the use of the the two inanimate objects, rod and club. They teach that the Assyrian - the then superpower - had no ability except what the Lord gives (John 19:11).

"Jesus answered him, 'You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.' ”

He was an instrument in the Lord’s hands.

"Anger … wrath" are respectively felt anger and expressed anger and these are the driving forces behind the Assyrian. Woe: better (here) ‘Ho!’, a word of summons (cf. 7:18) rather than condemnation.

10:6 - "An 'godless' (or ungodly) nation." “My people” (v. 2), - refers to the people of Israel and Judah. God alone could send. He could send plagues and He could send prophets. Now He sends Assyria against an irreligious nation, even Israel and Judah. Once He had called them “my people”; now He speaks of them simply as “a people.” It is a people that provokes and deserves His wrath. The tempest will come, and wrath will be poured out upon Israel and Judah with the result that there will be a great despoliation. The enemy will trample the land just as the mire in the streets is trampled. It would be difficult to discover a figure more adapted to express the utter lack of concern of Assyria for the inhabitants of Israel and Judah. Note the strength of the parallelism in 6a, a parallelism which even advances to rhyme.

This verse speaks more to the Lord's motive in this action. "Send … dispatch" continue the note of divine initiative and authority behind the Assyrian incursion and contribute to the insistence on the executive, directive sovereignty of God in world affairs, which is central to the whole passage.

The first verb is intensive in form and denotes the directive of a superior to an underling; the second (lit.) ‘give him a command’, i.e. ‘brief him for the task’. Behind the mission is a divine moral purpose: godless (ḥānēp), see 9:17; who anger me, justly meriting my (overflowing) anger. Seize … plunder: these words contain the components of Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, 8:1–4, and indicate the fulfilment of the word that was ‘made flesh’ in Isaiah’s second son (cf. 55:11).

Verses 7–11 (C1) describe Assyria’s motive.
The Lord intends a morally punitive expedition, but the Assyrian intends an extension of his own imperialism and the end of the national sovereignty of others.

10:7 "But he does not so intend..." - The 'He' here is Assyria and not God. The Assyrians did not intend to cooperate with God, but they had no choice in the matter! Their intention was simply to destroy and cut off nations. They did not realize that they were the Lord’s instrument, but thought their conquests were the result of her own power.

The Assyrian was an unconscious and unwitting instrument. At the same time Assyria was without excuse. Assyria should have realized, and all nations should realize, that in all that they do they are instruments in God’s hands. For Assyria this was a special providence, which, inasmuch as it was directed against the nation and the city where Yahweh dwelt, should have caused heart-searching. Assyria, the great power, has here become personified, and Isaiah speaks of this power as purposing and thinking in its heart.

Here we are given a graphic picture of the heart of a dictator. Assyria does not think that he is in the hands of God. His purpose, rather, is to destroy and to conquer many nations. To this pattern of thought the courses of tyrants and dictators have been true from the days of Assyria down to our own times, to Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Khrushchev. God’s purpose was to have Assyria cut off Judah; Assyria would purpose to cut off many nations.

10:8–9. Assyria speaks and gives expression to his philosophy of war. He too has a word. I have princes, he says, princes who are subject to me and over whom I am lord, but these are kings as far as the rest of the world is concerned. I am the great king. Thus Assyria arrogates to himself a position that belongs alone to the true King of kings and Lord of lords. His war philosophy came to outward expression in his incursions and expeditions and in the words of Rabshakeh which were later addressed to Judah. “Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?” (2 Kings 18:33–35). These are the words of defiance, not of a conconsciousness that one is an instrument of the Lord. They are the words of rebellion.

The Assyrian has confidence based on his resources (8) and accomplishments (9). Already nations have become his vassals and their kings his commanders. In the paired towns, the first in each pair is further south than the second. Thus, from Carchemish on the Euphrates in the far north of Palestine to Calno, and from Arpad fifty miles to the south to Hamath a hundred miles north of Damascus, and on to Damascus itself and then to Samaria, his armies have proved invincible. Isaiah is a master of this sort of impressionistic picture of events (cf. 28–32), making us feel the surge and sweep of the advancing march: cf. the ‘tide’ picture in 8:6–8.

Interestingly, rhe enemy speaks as though Samaria had already fallen, so that Jerusalem would have to give earnest heed to this boast. Would Jerusalem be the next to fall? Could Jerusalem be any exception? The Assyrian thought not, but what would Judah herself think? Judah did NOT fall...at least not to Assyria!

10:10–11. - "What price Jerusalem then?" - With heavy irony, Isaiah ‘overhears’ the king of Assyria envisioning Samaria and then Jerusalem as even more helpless before him because, after all, they are not quite so proficient in their idolatry! But the reality is there in the balanced words "idols … images … images … idols": it was not armaments that rendered them helpless before Assyria but spiritual falsity!

Here is Assyria at the height of her boasting, directing words of conviction to Israel so that Israel would feel the necessity for surrendering. It is Assyria vaunting herself, but she uses Israelitish forms of speech. “Why,” she addresses Israel, “do you think that Yahweh your god can protect you? The nations round about, whose gods you have called idols, have each had gods, but they have all been deceived in their gods. With you too it will be the same. Just as my hand, my powerful hand, has found the idol kingdoms, kingdoms whose images exceeded those of Jerusalem and Samaria, much more will it find Jerusalem and Samaria themselves.” In boasting blasphemy Assyria designates the holy Yahweh of hosts an idol.

Interestingly, this was a part of God's charge against Israel...they had treated Him as if He was an idol...and they had brought idols into His holy place. The unredeemed have little perception of what God truly cares about...and thus cannot evaluate accurately what He will get angry about. They, of course, think that they do...just as Assyria "understood" world events in their day. Israel perceived themselves themselves themselves wrongly because they did not perceive themselves Biblically - a mistake that men must seek desperately to avoid; and that God has sent you and I to to help them to avoid by giving them information in the form of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.