Isaiah 10

Notes

Ver. 1-4. Dreadful shall be the punishment of you Hebrews, who make unjust laws, and pass unjust sentences, and who obstruct the course of justice, that such as are poor cannot have right done them. What will ye do when the Lord shall punish your nation by the desolating ravages of the Assyrians? Who will then assist you, or secure your power and wealth for you? Revolted from me, and deprived of my help, ye shall be rendered more miserable than others who are taken captives or murdered.—5-11, 13-15. And dreadful shall be the ruin of the Assyrians, whom I have now appointed to punish you Jews for your hypocrisy and profaneness, by pillaging your country, and murdering and enslaving many of you. The Assyrian monarch, ignorant of my providence, merely intends to gratify his own lust of dominion; and boasts that as he, by his own wisdom and bravery, has conquered many powerful nations already, and seized on their wealth, he will do the same to Jerusalem, let her God do what he can to resist him; since therefore he, who is merely an instrument in my hand, thus insults me, 12, 16-19. Whenever I have sufficiently chastised my own people of Judah, I will punish his pride, and by a fearful plague cut off most of his huge army in one night, commander and commanded together. 20-33. Then, as well as at the deliverance from Babylon, and in the gospel periods, shall the Jews be weaned from their carnal dependencies on Assyrians, Egyptians, or others; and shall, by faith and repentance, return to their Almighty God and Saviour. And notwithstanding the vast numbers of Hebrews, a mere remnant shall survive the repeated desolations of their country, wherewith I have determined to punish them. 24-27. Fear not, therefore, ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, when the Assyrians shall ravage your land, and, like Pharaoh at the Red Sea, threaten to swallow up your whole nation. Quickly will I remove the tokens of my anger from you, in destroying the Assyrian army by a fearful stroke, similar to that by which the Egyptians were destroyed in the Red Sea, or the Midianites destroyed by Gideon. And in that day, from regard to my promise of royalty with David, from regard to king Hezekiah, and chiefly from regard to the Messiah, will I completely deliver you from all subjection to them. 28-34. The Assyrians shall indeed, to the great terror of the nation, march up almost to the very walls of Jerusalem: but there will I, the almighty Conductor of armies, cut off by death most of Sennacherib's captains and valiant troops, and reduce his forest-like multitude to a despicable remnant.

Ver. 5. 'Woe to the Assyrian' (Boothroyd) appointed to execute judgment—God overruling his blind ambition, ver. 7, to effect his correctional purposes upon ungrateful and idolatrous Israel. C.

Ver. 11. Several ancient eastern monarchs, as Cambyses, king of Persia, have been most zealously opposed to idol-worship. And it seems most probable that this zeal, if not the principle, was at least the pretext, for undertaking the invasion of Israel. C.

Ver. 14. My hand hath found... the riches of the people. Wars have often been waged for mere purposes of spoliation and robbery. Even in modern times, when civilization is supposed to have effected a wonderful march of improvement, nations have been stripped of their noblest monuments of art to adorn the capital and minister to the vanity of a conqueror. But let nations beware of indulging the spirit of vainglory, boasting, or covetousness: the God that chastised Israel, that humbled Assyria, and annihilated Babylon, still sits in heaven, and rules amongst the children of men.—As one gathereth eggs that are left. Not forsaken, but left for a time by a bird flushed from her nest.—Peeped. But though the timid bird, moved by instinctive love, will flutter the wing, open her mouth (beak), and peep (chirp) in anxiety for her eggs or callow young; no man, no nation, was found bold enough to offer the shadow of resistance to my victorious progress! Such is the soliloquy of victorious pride—blind to the fall it must soon experience from a Providence disregarded or denied. C.

Ver. 19. The glory of the forest is already consumed, ver. 18; and the rest, instead of being as rising copse-woods that supply by multitude of shoots the absence of full-grown trees, shall be so thinly scattered that a very child could number them. C.

Ver. 20. That day. That is, upon the day 'when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and upon Jerusalem,' ver. 12; a day of which the believer anticipates the dawn, when 'the Sun of Righteousness will truly arise with healing in his wings.' C.

Ver. 22, 23. Though Israel, because of idolatry, have been exposed to consumption as a spring exhausted by the heats of summer; yet in God's day of merciful visitation, they shall be as a spring that is replenished from a higher source, and overflows in pure and cooling streams. C.

Ver. 27. Because of the anointing of Jesus, the Messiah, to the office of Prophet, Priest, and King of Israel and the Gentiles, and the anointing of his people by the Holy Spirit, whereby they are regenerated and sealed till the day of salvation. C.

Ver. 28. The prophet here describes in language of great beauty and graphic power the approach of the Assyrian conqueror to Jerusalem, spreading terror all around; until at length, having reached the Holy City, the Lord in his might strikes the proud conqueror to the earth. It is probable that the description is ideal rather than historical; but it is not on this account the less accurate in its topographical details. Every stage is marked. The army is represented as leaving the great northern road near Bethel, and turning eastward to Ai. Advancing to Michmash, the baggage is left behind, and the troops thus disencumbered cross the wild ravine to Geba. Ramah, situated half a mile westward, 'is afraid.' Gibeah of Saul, which lies on the top of a hill in front, 'is fled,' for the terrible foe is in sight. The army continues its march. The little villages of Gallim and Laish are overwhelmed. Anathoth, standing in open ground on the mountain side, is captured. Neighbouring towns take to flight. Nob is at length reached; Mount Zion is visible, and the conqueror proudly shakes his hand against it. I have traced on the spot every step on the line of march. P.

Ver. 32. From ver. 28 the march of Sennacherib upon Jerusalem is vividly described, preparing the mind for that signal judgment which the invisible hand of God inflicted upon his pride and power—the first specimen of that judgment which the Father will continue to inflict upon nations till he has made all his enemies the footstool of Messiah. C.

Ver. 34. Lebanon. The king of Syria is here called Lebanon, one of the most remarkable districts of his country—a mode of speech still common in all countries, as characterizing kings, nobles, and proprietors of lands. C.

Reflections.—Dreadful punishments, both in time and eternity, may those rulers expect who make unrighteous laws, and who enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, the fatherless, and widows, whom God has taken into his peculiar protection! And fearful misery and desperate anguish await those who live without or revolt from God; or who hypocritically profess to know him, and yet in works deny him. In a marvellous manner God makes the most insolent and atheistical tyrants the tools of his providence; and even overrules their lusts and mischievous purposes and conduct, in subservience to the glory of his perfections and the welfare of his church! Alas! of what base robbery and bloody murder do conquerors of this world make their boast! Their success makes them stupid, proud, and atheistical. But when God has finished his work by them, easily he brings them down, and makes their vanity and boasting issue in shame and disappointment. Let us then greatly fear that God with whom is so terrible majesty; who, after he has killed the body, can cast both soul and body into hell-fire; and who in a moment can hurl the mightiest criminals into endless ruin! Alas! what multitudes are hurried into damnation by every national disaster! But God limits and regulates all the devastations which he makes in the earth, and causes the very providences which ruin multitudes to be the means of conversion and reformation to others.—And O how short-lived are his frowns against his people! How certain and sweet, and often sudden, their deliverances, through Jesus Christ and his anointing Spirit! Why then should they ever slavishly fear the fury of the oppressor? When their nights of distress are at the darkest, they may cheerfully expect their deliverance to be near.