Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 10

Woe to them that decree unrighteous decrees ... (Isaiah 10:1) — The division of the chapters is again misleading. Isaiah 10:1–4 continue the discourse of Isaiah 9, and end with the final knell, “For all this ...” With Isaiah 10:5 a new section begins and is carried on to Isaiah 12:6. This section deals, for the first time in the collection of Isaiah’s writings, exclusively with Assyria, and is followed in turn by utterances that deal with Babylon and other nations. The formula with which the section opens reminds us of that of Isaiah 5:8, Isaiah 5:11, Isaiah 5:18, and Isaiah 5:22, and suggests the thought that the prophet is speaking not only or chiefly of the northern kingdom, as in Isaiah 9:21, but of Israel as including Judah.

The evils the prophet denounces are, it will be noted, identical with those in Isaiah 1:23 and Isaiah 5:23. For the second clause of the verse, read, “and the scribes who register oppression.” All the formalities of justice were observed punctiliously. The decision of the unjust judge was duly given and recorded, but the outcome of it all was that the poor, the widow, and the fatherless received no redress. The words for “prey” and “rob” are those used in the mysterious name of Isaiah 8:1. They occur again in Isaiah 10:6. It would seem as if the prophet sought in this way to impress the thought of the great law of divine retribution. Men were reaping as they had sown.

And what will you do in the day of visitation ... ?—The question was not without a certain touch of irony. Had those corrupt judges asked themselves what they would do when the Supreme Judge should call them to account? Had they an ally who could protect them against Jehovah? Or had they found a hiding-place for the treasures which they had made their “glory”? Had they made a covenant with Hades and with death? (Isaiah 28:18).

Without me they shall bow down ... —The Hebrew text is obscure, but these words were probably intended as the answer to the taunting question that had preceded them. Dropping the direct address, and passing to the third person, the prophet seems to say as with a kind of ominous “aside,” “No, there is no ally, no hiding-place but this, except they bow down among the captives or fall among the slain.” Exile or death, that was their only alternative.

When that sentence has been uttered, the doom-bell, as we have called it, “For all this ...” tolls once more. If we adopt the Authorized Version, we have the same fact asserted, with the suggested thought that there was a refuge to be found in God.

O Assyrian. —These 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 (2 Kings 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, Vol. 7, p. 28; Lenormant’s Manual, Volume 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 Kouyunjik, 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 in 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. .

I will send him against an hypocritical nation. —Better, impious. The verb can be rendered in various ways: “I will send,” “I did send,” and “I usually send.” The last seems to provide the best meaning—not merely a fact in history, nor an isolated prediction, but a law of the Divine government.

To take the spoil. —The series of words, though general in meaning, probably contains a special reference to the recent destruction of Samaria: walls pulled down, houses and palaces turned into heaps of rubbish, soldiers trampling on flower and fruit gardens—this was what the Assyrian army left behind. Judah had probably suffered in the same way in the hands of Sargon.