Isaiah 10

This passage contains two important points of emphasis.  First, that God will rightly judge Assyria, His tool for judging His idolatrous and disobedient people.  Second, that God will bring salvation to Israel someday through a holy remnant.

·        10:1-19:  God continues His promise of judgment on Israel, using the Assyrians (10:1-4).  What a powerful question to consider even today: in the time of judgment to whom will you flee for help?  But then the text says, woe to Assyria (v5).  God, acknowledging that He had sent Assyria against ungodly Israel, now recognizes that Assyria became arrogant.  This arrogance will be very obvious when we get to Isaiah 36-37 when the Assyrian leaders publicly denounce Israel’s God as capable of stopping them, as we read here (v8-11).  God wants to punish His people; Assyria wants to completely destroy (v7).  Thus we see, as is the major emphasis of Isa. 40-66, that God will keep His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob of a people and a land.  But how will He do this?

·        10:20-34: In that day, after severe destruction, there will still be a remnant.  This term is just as it sounds: it is a small piece of material left when a garment is destroyed.  Remember in 6:13 it was described as the stump of a tree left when the tree is cut down.  From that stump grows something new.  God is saying His judgment on Israel will be extensive but not total.  Notice how God says it: the destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness.

o   In that day Israel will no longer depend on the one that defeated them (v20) which was what Ahaz did when he decided to worship the gods of Syria (2 Chr. 28:23). 

o   God will do this in a little while.  The timeframe involves the reign of Ahaz’s son Hezekiah.  The Assyrians worked their way from the north, destroying cities on their way as predicted in v28-32.  But then the Assyrian king came to Jerusalem, shaking his fist at Zion (v32) and, in response to Hezekiah’s prayer, God miraculously delivered Jerusalem.

The story goes beyond that, as the next chapter in the Immanuel Prophecy says.  For now let us again reflect on God’s sovereignty in the affairs of men and in His faithfulness to keep His word.  The promise of a remnant is being kept today with people of Israel who are part of the Church, the Body of Christ (Rom. 11:5).  And the day will still come when that holy remnant is the seed for the saved nation (Rom. 11:26-27).  The destruction and desolation will come to an end when the Lord of hosts will make a determined of Israel’s affliction.