Isaiah 10:5

O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(5) O Assyrian.—The words open, as has been said above, a perfectly distinct section. Assyria had been named in connection with the Syro-Ephraim alliance against Judah (Isaiah 7:17-20; Isaiah 8:7-8); but this is the first prophetic utterance of which it is the direct subject. Anticipating the phraseology of Isaiah 13:1, we might call it the “burden of Assyria.” In the judgment of the best Assyrian scholars, some years had passed since the date of the alliance and invasion. Tiglath – pileser had taken Damascus and reduced Samaria to submission. Pekah and Ahaz had met at Damascus to do homage to their common suzerain. In B.C. 727 Salmaneser succeeded to the throne of Assyria, and began the conquest of Samaria and the deportation of the Ten Tribes in B.C. 722 (2Kings 17:3-6). On his death, in B.C. 721, the throne was seized by Sargon, who had been his Tartan, or commander-in-chief (Isaiah 20:1). The achievements of this king are recorded at length in an inscription discovered by M. Botta at Khorsabad (Records of the Past, vii. 28. Lenormant’s Manual, 1 p. 392). In it he says:—“I besieged, took, and occupied the city of Samaria, and carried into captivity 27,280 of its inhabitants. I changed the form of government of the country, and placed over it lieutenants of my own.” In another inscription discovered at Kouyunyik, but unfortunately incomplete, Sargon speaks of himself as “the conqueror of the far-off land of Judah” (Layard, Inscriptions, 33:8). It was probably to this king, exulting in his triumphs and threatening an attack on Judah, and not (as was commonly thought prior to the discovery of the inscription) to his son Sennacherib, who succeeded him B.C. 704, that the prophet now addressed himself. The first words proclaim that the great king was but an instrument working out the Divine intent, the “rod,” and the “staff,” the “axe” and the “saw” (Isaiah 10:15). So in Isaiah 7:20, the earlier king of Assyria is as “the razor that is hired.” So Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah 51:20 is the “battle-axe” or “hammer” of Jehovah. (Comp. Isaiah 37:26.)

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 10:5. O Assyrian, &c. — We have here the fourth section of the fifth sermon, which reaches to the end of this chapter, and which is two-fold; containing, 1st, A proposition in this verse; and, 2d, The unfolding of it in the following verses. It is a new and distinct prophecy, and, as the former part of it foretels the invasion of Sennacherib and the destruction of his army, it must have been delivered before the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign. “In the former chapters the prophet had foretold the fate of the Ephraimites and Syrians, who had determined to attack, and, if possible, subvert the Jewish Church and state. He therefore now turns his discourse to the Assyrians, the executors of this judgment, who also in their time should make the same attempt against Judea, and denounces their punishment, teaching, at the same time, in what light they were held by God, and consequently were to be considered by the careful observers of the ways of God. The proposition in this verse is elegant, but very difficult to be turned into another language, according to its original force. Its immediate meaning is, ‘Wo to the Assyrian, who is the rod of mine anger, and the staff, which is in his hands, is my severity;’ that is, ‘whatever strength or power they have, which they have used in afflicting my people, would have been none at all, if my people had not provoked my wrath and severity; so that, not the Assyrians themselves, but my wrath and severity, and the decrees of my justice, ought to be esteemed the rod and staff beating my people; since, without that severity, the Assyrians themselves could have done nothing.’ Vitringa remarks, that all the characters of this prophecy belong to Sennacherib; though possibly it may have a more extensive scope, and refer to the destruction of all the enemies of God, and the following great empires, which God made use of as rods and scourges, to chastise and amend his people, till the manifestation of the kingdom of his Son in the world: see Jeremiah 51:20.” — Dodd. Be this as it will, the prophet here instructs us in a great and important truth: “That God often prospers wicked and tyrannical governments to be his scourge and the instruments of his vengeance upon others; and when they have done the work which God allots them, he then punishes them for those very oppressions which they have exercised toward their neighbours, and to which they were carried on purely by their own ambition and covetousness, although Providence made them serviceable to better ends and purposes.” — Lowth.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:5-19 See what a change sin made. The king of Assyria, in his pride, thought to act by his own will. The tyrants of the world are tools of Providence. God designs to correct his people for their hypocrisy, and bring them nearer to him; but is that Sennacherib's design? No; he designs to gratify his own covetousness and ambition. The Assyrian boasts what great things he has done to other nations, by his own policy and power. He knows not that it is God who makes him what he is, and puts the staff into his hand. He had done all this with ease; none moved the wing, or cried as birds do when their nests are rifled. Because he conquered Samaria, he thinks Jerusalem would fall of course. It was lamentable that Jerusalem should have set up graven images, and we cannot wonder that she was excelled in them by the heathen. But is it not equally foolish for Christians to emulate the people of the world in vanities, instead of keeping to things which are their special honour? For a tool to boast, or to strive against him that formed it, would not be more out of the way, than for Sennacherib to vaunt himself against Jehovah. When God brings his people into trouble, it is to bring sin to their remembrance, and humble them, and to awaken them to a sense of their duty; this must be the fruit, even the taking away of sin. When these points are gained by the affliction, it shall be removed in mercy. This attempt upon Zion and Jerusalem should come to nothing. God will be as a fire to consume the workers of iniquity, both soul and body. The desolation should be as when a standard-bearer fainteth, and those who follow are put to confusion. Who is able to stand before this great and holy Lord God?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

O Assyrian - The word הוי hôy, is commonly used to denounce wrath, or to indicate approaching calamity; as an interjection of threatening; Isaiah 1:4. 'Wo sinful nation;' Isaiah 10:8, Isaiah 10:11, Isaiah 10:18, Isaiah 10:20-21; Jeremiah 48:1; Ezekiel 13:2. The Vulgate so understands it here: Vae Assur; and the Septuagint, Οὐαι Ἀσσυρίοις Ouai Assuriois - 'Woe to the Assyrians.' So the Chaldee and the Syriac. It is not then a simple address to the Assyrian; but a form denouncing wrath on the invader. Yet it was not so much designed to intimidate and appal the Assyrian himself as to comfort the Jews with the assurance that calamity should overtake him. The 'Assyrian' referred to here was the king of Assyria - Sennacherib, who was leading an army to invade the land of Judea.

The rod of mine anger - That is, the rod, or instrument, by which I will inflict punishment on a guilty nation. The Hebrew would bear the interpretation that the Assyrian was, an object against which God was angry; but the former is evidently the sense of the passage, as denoting that the Assyrian was the agent by which he would express his anger against a guilty people. Woe might be denounced against him for his wicked intention, at the same time that God might design to make use of his plans to punish the sins of his own people. The word "anger" here, refers to the indignation of God against the sins of the Jewish people.

And the staff - The word "staff" here, is synonymous with rod, as an instrument of chastisement or punishment; Isaiah 9:4; compare Isaiah 10:24; Nahum 1:13; Ezekiel 7:10.

In their hand - There has been considerable variety in the interpretation of this passage. Lowth and Noyes read it, 'The staff in whose hand is the instrument of my indignation.' This interpretation Lowth adopts, by omitting the word הוא hû' on the authority of the Alexandrine copy of the Septuagint, and five manuscripts, two of them ancient. Jerome reads it, 'Wo to the Assyrian! He is the staff and the rod of my fury; in their hand is my indignation.' So Forerius, Ludovicus, de Dieu, Cocceius, and others. Vitringa reads it, 'And in the hands of those who are my rod is my indignation.' Schmidius and Rosenmuller, 'And the rod which is in their hands, is the rod of mine indignation.' There is no necessity for any change in the text. The Hebrew, literally, is, 'Wo to the Assyrian! Rod of my anger! And he is the staff. In their hands is my indignation.' The sense is sufficiently clear, that the Assyrian was appointed to inflict punishmerit on a rebellious people, as the instrument of God. The Chaldee renders it, 'Wo to the Assyrian! The dominion (power, ruler) of my fury, and the angel sent from my face, against them, for a malediction. Septuagint, 'And wrath in their hands.'

In their hand - In the hand of the Assyrians, where the word 'Assyrian' is taken as referring to the king of Assyria, as the representative of the nation.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Isa 10:5-34 and Isa 11:12. Destruction of the Assyrians; Coming of Messiah; Hymn of Praise.

Isa 10:9, 11 show that Samaria was destroyed before this prophecy. It was written when Assyria proposed (a design which it soon after tried to carry out under Sennacherib) to destroy Judah and Jerusalem, as it had destroyed Samaria. This is the first part of Isaiah's prophecies under Hezekiah. Probably between 722 and 715 B.C. (see Isa 10:27).

5. O Assyrian, &c.—rather, "What, ho (but Maurer, Woe to the) Assyrian! He is the rod and staff of Mine anger (My instrument in punishing, Jer 51:20; Ps 17:13). In their hands is Mine indignation" [Horsley, after Jerome]. I have put into the Assyrians' hands the execution of Mine indignation against My people.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

O Assyrian: so it is God’s call or invitation to him to take the charge, and set upon the work. Or, Woe to the Assyrian! because though he do my work, yet he doth it in a wicked manner, and for wicked ends, as we shall see.

The rod of mine anger; the instrument of mine anger. wherewith I shall chastise my people.

The staff in their hand is mine indignation; mine anger against my people puts the weapons of war into their hand, and gives them strength and success in this expedition.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger,..... Either as calling him to come against the land of Israel to spoil it, so Kimchi; or as grieving that he was obliged to make use of him in such a manner against his people; or as threatening him with ruin. So the Targum, Septuagint, and all the Oriental versions render it, "woe to the Assyrian"; wherefore this, and what follows, serve to comfort the people of God; that though they should be carried captive by the Assyrians, yet they should be utterly destroyed, and a remnant of the Jews should be saved. The Assyrian monarch is called the "rod of God's anger", because he was made use of by him as an instrument to chastise and correct Israel for their sins:

and the staff in their hand is mine indignation; that is, the staff which was in the hand of the king of Assyria, and his army, with which they smote the people of Israel, was no other than the wrath and indignation of God against that people, and the execution of it, which he committed to them as instruments. Kimchi interprets "their hand" of the land of Israel, into which this staff was sent, the Assyrian, to smite and chastise them. The Targum is,

"woe to the Assyrian, the government of my fury; and an angel sent from before me against them for a curse.''

Geneva Study Bible

O {e} Assyrian, the rod of my anger, and the staff in their hand is my indignation.

(e) God calls for the Assyrians to be the executioners of his vengeance.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. O Assyrian] Ho Asshur, the name both of the people and its national god. The god being little more than the personified genius of the nation, we might almost venture to suppose that he is here directly addressed and is the speaker in Isaiah 10:8 ff. But the word is never used of the god in the O.T.

the rod of mine anger] the instrument with which Jehovah chastises the nations, cf. Jeremiah 51:20.

and the staff … indignation] lit. “and a staff, it is in their hand, my indignation,”—an absolutely refractory clause. Driver (Tenses § 201, 1, Obs.) translates “and a staff is it in their hand, [viz.] mine indignation.” But to say in one line that Assyria is the rod of Jehovah’s anger and in the next that His indignation is a staff in their hand is awkward in the extreme. Better a “flat tautology” than that, although the objection is meaningless as applied to a synonymous parallelism. It is best to omit the words “it is in their hand” as a gloss and render and the staff of mine indignation.

5–7. Jehovah’s plan contrasted with Assyria’s purpose.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 5-19. - ASSYRIA, AFTER BEING GOD'S INSTRUMENT TO PUNISH ISRAEL, SHALL HERSELF BE PUNISHED IN HER TURN. The wicked are a sword in the hand of God (Psalm 17:13), wherewith he executes his judgments; but this fact is hid from them, and they imagine that they are successful through their own strength and might. So it was with Assyria (vers. 5-14), which its long career of victory had made proud and arrogant above measure. God now, by the mouth of Isaiah, makes known his intention of bringing down the pride of Assyria, and laying her glory in the dust, by a sudden and great destruction (vers. 15:19), after she has served his purposes. Verse 5. - O Assyrian; literally, Ho! Asshur. "Asshur" is the nation personified, and is here addressed as an individual. The transition from vers. 1-4 is abrupt, and may be taken to indicate an accidental juxtaposition of two entirely distinct prophecies. Or Assyria may be supposed to have been in the prophet's thought, though not in his words, when he spoke of "prisoners" and "slain" in the first clause of ver. 4. The rod of mine anger (comp. Jeremiah 51:20, where it is said of Babylon, "Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war; for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy the kingdoms"). So Assyria was now the "rod" wherewith God chastised his enemies. The true "staff" in the hand of Assyria, wherewith she smote the peoples, was "God's indignation." Isaiah 10:5

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The law of contrast prevails in prophecy, as it does also in the history of salvation. When distress is at its height, it is suddenly brought to an end, and changed into relief; and when prophecy has become as black with darkness as in the previous section, it suddenly becomes as bright and cloudless as in that which is opening now. The hoi (woe) pronounced upon Israel becomes a hoi upon Asshur. Proud Asshur, with its confidence in its own strength, after having served for a time as the goad of Jehovah's wrath, now falls a victim to that wrath itself. Its attack upon Jerusalem leads to its own overthrow; and on the ruins of the kingdom of the world there rises up the kingdom of the great and righteous Son of David, who rules in peace over His redeemed people, and the nations that rejoice in Him: - the counterpart of the redemption from Egypt, and one as rich in materials for songs of praise as the passage through the Red Sea. The Messianic prophecy, which turns its darker side towards unbelief in chapter 7, and whose promising aspect burst like a great light through the darkness in Isaiah 8:5-9:6, is standing now upon its third and highest stage. In chapter 7 it is like a star in the night; in Isaiah 8:5-9:6, like the morning dawn; and now the sky is perfectly cloudless, and it appears like the noonday sun. The prophet has now penetrated to the light fringe of Isaiah 6:1-13. The name Shear-yashub, having emptied itself of all the curse that it contained, is now transformed into a pure promise. And it becomes perfectly clear what the name Immanuel and the name given to Immanuel, El gibbor (mighty God), declared. The remnant of Israel turns to God the mighty One; and God the mighty is henceforth with His people in the Sprout of Jesse, who has the seven Spirits of God dwelling within Himself. So far as the date of composition is concerned, the majority of the more recent commentators agree in assigning it to the time of Hezekiah, because Isaiah 10:9-11 presupposes the destruction of Samaria by Shalmanassar, which took place in the sixth year of Hezekiah. But it was only from the prophet's point of view that this event was already past; it had not actually taken place. The prophet had already predicted that Samaria, and with Samaria the kingdom of Israel, would succumb to the Assyrians, and had even fixed the years (Isaiah 7:8 and Isaiah 8:4, Isaiah 8:7). Why, then, should he not be able to presuppose it here as an event already past? The stamp on this section does not tally at all with that of Isaiah's prophecy in the times of Hezekiah; whereas, on the other hand, it forms so integral a link in the prophetic cycle in chapters 7-12, and is interwoven in so many ways with that which precedes, and of which it forms both the continuation and crown, that we have no hesitation in assigning it, with Vitringa, Caspari, and Drechsler, to the first three years of the reign of Ahaz, though without deciding whether it preceded or followed the destruction of the two allies by Tiglath-pileser. It is by no means impossible that it may have preceded it.

The prophet commences with hoi (woe!), which is always used as an expression of wrathful indignation to introduce the proclamation of judgment upon the person named; although, as in the present instance, this may not always follow immediately (cf., Isaiah 1:4, Isaiah 1:5-9), but may be preceded by the announcement of the sin by which the judgment had been provoked. In the first place, Asshur is more particularly indicated as the chosen instrument of divine judgment upon all Israel. "Woe to Asshur, the rod of mine anger, and it is a staff in their hand, mine indignation. Against a wicked nation will I send them, and against the people of my wrath give them a charge, to spoil spoil, and to prey prey, to make it trodden down like street-mire." "Mine indignation:" za‛mi is either a permutation of the predicative הוּא, which is placed emphatically in the foreground (compare the אתּה־הּוּא in Jeremiah 14:22, which is also written with makkeph), as we have translated it, though without taking הוּא as a copula ( equals est), as Ewald does; or else בידם הוּא is written elliptically for בידם הוּא אשׁר, "the staff which they hold is mine indignation" (Ges., Rosenmller, and others), in which case, however, we should rather expect הוא זעמי בידם ומטה. It is quite inadmissible, however, to take za‛mi as a separate genitive to matteh, and to point the latter with zere, as Knobel has done; a thing altogether unparalleled in the Hebrew language.

(Note: In the Arabic, such a separation does occur as a poetical licence (see De Sacy, Gramm. t. ii.270).)

The futures in Isaiah 10:6 are to be taken literally; for what Asshur did to Israel in the sixty year of Hezekiah's reign, and to Judah in his fourteenth year, was still in the future at the time when Isaiah prophesied. Instead of וּלשׂימו the keri has וּלשׂוּמו, the form in which the infinitive is written in other passages when connected with suffixes (see, on the other hand, 2 Samuel 14:7). "Trodden down:" mirmas with short a is the older form, which was retained along with the other form with the a lengthened by the tone (Ewald 160, c).