Isaiah 10
SIBIsaiah 10:1-4
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
Isaiah 10:20-23
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
Isaiah 10:24-27
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 covenant 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
Isaiah 10:28-31
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
REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. X.—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