Week 9: The Ax and the Hand Who Swings It

God's word has already come against the northern kingdom, and Israel's answer is to rebuild bigger: the bricks have fallen, but we will rebuild with cut stones. Nobody asks who struck the blow. In four stanzas Isaiah follows the slide. First comes national disaster, then leaders who mislead, then a civil war where Manasseh and Ephraim turn on each other, and finally courts that rob the widow and the fatherless. Each stanza ends on the same line: his hand is still raised to strike. Then Isaiah turns to Assyria, the empire God sent as the rod of my anger. Assyria's king boasts that he conquered the nations by his own strength and wisdom, and God answers with a question: Does an ax exalt itself above the one who chops with it?

God uses Assyria, and then He judges it. A remnant of Jacob will come back to the Mighty God, which is the hope behind the name of Isaiah's son Shear-jashub. The Assyrian army marches to within sight of Jerusalem, and then the Lord cuts that proud forest down. Paul saw this remnant again in his own day (Romans 9:27–28), and the lesson asks us whose hand we believe is holding the things we fear.