CHAPTER XXXI.
WOE TO EGYPT AND ASSYRIA.
CONTINUING his denunciation by the Spirit, Isaiah resumes his revelation to apostate Israel concerning the fates respectively of their Egyptian allies and their Assyrian enemies; and exhorts those who have ears to hear, to turn to God and trust in His salvation. Chapter xxxi. belongs to the argument of chapter xxx., as may be at once seen upon a careful reading. The divisions of the Authorised Version, though in many ways convenient, must always be held to be subordinate to the theme in question. In many places in the Bible, the division into chapters breaks the sense and hampers the reader. This is an example. The Revised Version has done a good deal towards remedying this defect, though not in this instance. The truth alone enables us to " rightly divide the word." There was great point in Isaiah's rebuke of Israel's trust in the horses and chariots of Egypt. The history of previous generations in Israel was before the people. What were chariots and horses when opposed to the purpose of God ? What happened to Jabin's 900 chariots of iron when God raised up Barak against Sisera, and sold Israel's foe into the hand of a woman, who slew him with a tent-peg ? Was it without reason or without recollection of this that David afterwards sang, " Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God" ? And now, what was the house of David doing ? Forgetting the name of God, and trusting in the power of Egypt against Assyria. There is much combined irony and pathos in God's expostulation by the prophet concerning this : " They look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord. Yet He also is wise, and will bring evil." It was as though God had to remind them that He was not less wise and powerful than Egypt! In the argument that follows, the contrasts between man and God, flesh and spirit, are most marked, and have a strong bearing not only on Isaiah's and Hezekiah's times, but upon our own and the future, as we shall be able to discern. Man, whether Assyrian, Israelitish, Egyptian, ancient or modern, is God's creature, originally the creation of His Spirit from the dust, whence also come all the other land animals of this creation. Assyria and Egypt were in the dark concerning this truth, which, however, was plainly revealed in Israel. " He maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flame of fire." The law of Moses was ordained by angels in his hands as a Mediator. God had manifested Himself many times in Israel in a way that was sufficient basis for their everlasting trust in Him. Horses and chariot of fire had taken Elijah from the earth in the presence of Elisha, who saw it. Elisha, besieged in Dothan, had comforted his young man with the assurance that " they that be with us are more than they that be with them." He had prayed " Lord, open his eyes, that he may see." "And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man ; and he saw ; and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." What were the Egyptian forces in comparison with these ? Ah, but the men's eyes were not open to heaven's armies. Egypt was a visible and powerful ally. God was invisible, and angels' visits of increasing rarity with the increasing apostacy of Israel. Yet a great deliverance was pending, when the angel of the Lord would destroy Sennacherib's army, and convince the house of David that safety was from the Lord and not Egypt. But even then there was more calamity before them, for God said : " When the Lord shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall fall together." As a matter of history, so it came to pass. Both Egypt and Judah fell before Nebuchadnezzar. At various times God has fought both for and against Zion. He fought for Zion when He destroyed Sennacherib's army, and against her when He overthrew the city by Nebuchadnezzar. He fought with fury against Jerusalem by the hands of the Roman, who were the King's avenging armies against the murderers of His Son (Matt. xxii. 7). And He will yet fight with equal fury for Jerusalem when the time comes, of which this chapter in Isaiah speaks, to wrest Christ's city from the grasp of the Gentiles and establish therein the Kingdom of God. All this is very plainly revealed in the prophets, whose words, when admitted into men's minds and affections, shine as a light in a dark and squalid place (2 Pet. i. 19). But where the Gospel of the Kingdom does not penetrate, and it is supposed that it has to do not with Jerusalem, but with a city of bliss " beyond the skies," the words of the prophets are unintelligible. Some would make out that God says here that He will fight against Jerusalem (R.V. marg.). But this would be reversing the whole sentiment of the prophecy, which is the divine purpose to deliver Jerusalem from the Assyrian over the head of the Egyptian ally of the house of Judah, both in the days of Hezekiah and in the days of Messiah for which we wait. God's purpose to defend Jerusalem, both in Hezekiah's days and in the far distant future, was further expressed in the following beautiful simile: " As birds flying, so will the Lord of Hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it, and passing over he will preserve it." "As birds flying"—or, as Rotherham quaintly but literally expresses it, " As little mother-birds hovering, so will Yahweh of Hosts throw a covering over Jerusalem." The poor of the people who trusted in Yahweh would be able to appreciate this figure, for they would be familiar with it in the law. " Yahweh found Jacob in a waste and howling wilderness. .. . As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings. So Yahweh alone did lead him " (Deut. xxxii. 11). Ages later, a company of " the poor in spirit," brethren of the prophets who slept in dust, heard a greater than Isaiah reproving the leaders of Israel, his contemporaries, and lamenting over the city in these words: " Ο Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." In this saying of Christ's, the figure of Isaiah is illustrated, and beyond the desolation comes into view the final deliverance of which all the prophets have spoken. He will yet gather to Himself all Zion's children and defend Jerusalem. This is a prominent element of the gospel in the prophets and the New Testament Scriptures, and the ultimate solution of the Zionist question as affecting Jew and Gentile alike. It is in view of this glorious consummation that the Spirit of God says to those of Hezekiah's day, who had ears to hear (and to all afterwards to whom Isaiah's words might appeal), " Turn ye to him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted. For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold which your own hands have made unto you for a sin." Whatever response was made to this appeal, and whatever escapes from impending national calamities may have been made in the days of Hezekiah and afterwards, it is certain that the full realisation of the matter lies in the future. It relates to that time of " the last days," of which the prophet speaks in chap, ii., when " Yahweh shall arise in the glory of his majesty to shake terribly the earth." Now is the time for believing Jew and Gentile to turn unto Yahweh in hope of redemption in Jerusalem. At present the response to the divine invitation is confined almost exclusively, so far as we can tell, to Gentiles. These are " the times of the Gentiles" in more ways than one—times of their dominion, and times of their participation in Israel's good things, almost to Israel's entire exclusion. But a change is near. " Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword not of man; and the sword not of men shall devour him; and he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall become tributary. And his rock shall pass away by reason of terror, and his princes shall be dismayed at the ensign, saith the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem " (verses 8-9, R.V.).
This is an improvement upon the rendering of the A.V., •which inserts the terms " mighty " and " mean " before " man " in v. 8, with the effect of obscuring the fact that it is a divine and not human visitation that is threatened upon the Assyrian. In a certain sense, this was so in Hezekiah's days, when the word of an angel was more powerful than the swords of 185,000 Assyrians. But this cannot be the full extent of the divine purpose, for, great as was that overthrow, the Assyrian did not fall then, but afterwards, and that by the sword of man, even the Babylonians. What, then, remains ? Manifestly that the latter-day Assyrian shall fall by the sword of the Lord upon the mountains of Israel, as Ezekiel testifies (xxxviii., xxxix.). This great judgment of "the latter days" is explicitly declared to be of a superhuman character due to the " presence" of God, that is of the Lord Jesus and the saints. " I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God: every man's sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood ; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands and upon the many peoples that are with him an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord." This is the divine specification of the character of the last great premillennial crisis in which " the Assyrian" finally falls before Israel. " Behold, it is come and it is done, saith the Lord God ; THIS IS THE DAY WHEREOF I HAVE SPOKEN " (Ezek . XXXIX. 8). We have in the history of Joshua the typical example of the unequalled day when the Lord fought for Israel (Josh x. 14). The tempest of hailstones slew more than Israel did with the sword, and Israel himself was the Lord's sword upon the Amorite kings whose iniquity was now " full" (Gen. xv., with Josh x.). This is the example of the judgment of the day of Christ, who, as the second Joshua, shall bring in " glorious rest" and "eternal inheritance." In Joshua's days, the Amorite king of Jerusalem was one of those destroyed by him, and it is shown by the prophet (Zech. xiv.) that, in the crisis to come, a foreign king shall have taken Jerusalem and be destroyed by Christ. Senna- cherib, in Hezekiah's days, was not suffered of God to come into the city; but the latter-day Assyrian will walk into the fire there (Isa. xxxi. 9), and be consumed in the furnace of God's wrath. Translators seem loth to believe that u the sword not of man" was to subdue the Assyrian. The A.Y. we have seen adds the qualifying words " mighty" and " mean," as though some human power, neither mighty nor mean, might destroy him. The Revised Version is faithful to the original. Young's literal translation is in this case not literal at all, but a mere paraphrase, thus:— And fallen hath Asshur by the sword, not of the high, Yea a sword—not of the low, doth consume him. But there are no words for " high" or " low" in the text. It is ish and adam rightly enough translated " man " in harmony with the contrast between God and man, Spirit and flesh, that runs through the whole chapter. Rotherham follows the A.V., only substituting " great" for " mighty" in the first part of verse 8. The truth tells us at once that the Revised Version is right in sticking close to the very words of the Spirit; for it gives us many examples of " the sword, not of man" in which God overcame the power of the enemy, sometimes by an angel's whisper without the shaking of a blade ; and at others by heaven's artillery of irresistible hail supplementing the feeble efforts of His people. And this latter the truth defines to be the form of " the sword, not of man " that is to come upon the Assyrian in the future. The Revised Version also is to be preferred in the concluding verse (9) as above quoted. The Hebrew says " His rock shall pass away for fear," or "by reason of terror," as the R.V. puts it. The A.V., referring it to Sennacherib's ignominious retreat (ch. xxxvii. 37-8), says, " He shall pass over to his stronghold for fear." But while that is historically a true statement, it is not the form of the divine expression, and distracts attention from the future climax by suggesting that the prophecy is completely fulfilled already. "His rock" is an ironical expression for the Assyrian god in whose name the king boasted against " the God of Jerusalem." A contrast is involved between " his rock" and the Rock of Israel — Tzoor Olammim — the Rock of Ages — rendered " everlasting strength" in Isa. xxvi. 4. " He is the Rock. His work is perfect. . . . How should one (of you Ο Israel) chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their rock had sold them, and Yahweh had shut them up ? For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges" (Deut. xxxii. 4, 30-31). Sennacherib's rock sold him, and Yahweh shut him up. Isaiah's faithful brethren would remember how Moses had spoken of the triumph of Israel in the " Rock of their salvation" over the false gods of the heathen. But in Sennacherib's day, where was " the ENSIGN " spoken of by the prophet? The Assyrian was to be afraid of the ENSIGN. It has already been shown in Chapter xi., when dealing with Isa. xi. 10-12, that Christ is the Ensign, prefigured in the Yahweh Nissi memorial altar of Ex. xvii. 15, and in the serpent in the wilderness, which is divinely styled an ensign " lifted up " in prefiguration of the sacrifice that Jesus should make. It has been shown that when he returns and is "lifted u p " in glory (Is. vi. 1) his people with him are "lifted up as an ensign upon his land" (Zech. ix. 16). He is the Rock of Israel, the manifestation of the Father in Israel in the Spirit as once he was in the flesh—the antitype of that smitten rock whose living waters kept Israel alive in the wilderness. " That Rock was Christ," says Paul. Before his face " his rock" (the latter-day Assyrian's phantom-god) shall pass away for fear. The armed hosts of Anti-Christendom contending in the name of "the Holy and Blessed Trinity," will be dumbfounded by the appearance in the Land of Jesus and the children of the resurrection. And after the judgment-storm by which they shall be devoured, he, with his associate princes, will be manifested as " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land" for the shelter and protection of the survivors of that oppressed and toilworn generation.
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