John Gill Commentary Isaiah 31:8

"And the Assyrian shall fall by the sword, not of man; and the sword, not of men, shall devour him; and he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall become subject to taskwork." — Isaiah 31:8 (ASV)

Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a
mighty man
That is, the Assyrian army under Sennacherib their king, which besieged Jerusalem in Hezekiah's time; which, as soon as the people were brought to a sense of their sin, and repentance for it, and cast away their idols as a proof of it, were utterly destroyed; but not in battle, not by the sword of Hezekiah, or any of his valiant generals:

and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him ;
neither the sword of a general, nor of a private soldier, nor indeed of any man, but of an angel; see (2 Kings 19:35) :

but he shall flee from the sword ;
from the drawn sword of the angel, who very probably appeared in such a form as in (1 Chronicles 21:16) which Sennacherib king of Assyria seeing, as well as the slaughter made in his army by him, fled from it; in the Hebrew text it is added, "for himself" ^F25 ; he fled for his life, for his own personal security; see (2 Kings 19:36) :

and his young men shall be discomfited ;
his choice ones, the flower of his army: or "melt away" ^F26 , through fear; or die by the stroke of the angel upon them: the sense of becoming "tributary" seems to have no foundation.

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FOOTNOTES:

• F25: (wl) "fugiet sibi", Pagninus, Montanus, Cocceius; "fuga consulet sibi", Junius & Tremellius.
• F26: (wyhy oml) "in liquefactionem, erunt", Vatablus; "colliquescent", Piscator.