A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 34: The Assyrian Captivity of Judah 

As we hope to have illustrated in our last two presentations of Isaiah, discussing chapters 34 and 35, the wrath of Yahweh shall come upon Edom on account of the controversy of Zion, and the consequences of that controversy today are reflected in the fact that for the last 2,000 years and longer, the children of Edom have been masquerading as the children of God, pretending to be Judah, or even Israel, when they certainly are not of Judah or Israel. So now, for the most part, the prophecies against Judah and Israel which had warned them of the coming Assyrian captivities are completed, and Isaiah becomes more historical in nature, in chapters 36 through 39. These chapters contain Isaiah’s record of the Assyrian captivity of Judah and the siege of Jerusalem, which failed because Yahweh had promised to defend Jerusalem “as birds flying” in an earlier prophecy found in Isaiah chapter 31. These chapters also record some of the prophet Isaiah’s personal interactions with Hezekiah the king, and in the course of those interactions Isaiah makes a prophecy of the future captivity of the remnant of Judah in Babylon, something which happened about a hundred and fifteen years later. So there were two captivities of Judah, or actually three, because the later captivity is also divided, and this is only the first of them, but it is often overlooked, that a significant portion of Judah had been taken by the Assyrians, and therefore never went to Babylon.

So Isaiah had lived to record the fulfillment of some of his own prophecies, just as Jeremiah and Ezekiel had later spent many years warning the people of Judah concerning the Babylonians, and both prophets had lived to record the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet Isaiah, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had also prophesied many things which he did not live to see, such as the destruction of Tyre in Isaiah chapters 23 and 24, and the destruction of Assyria in Isaiah chapter 10, or the rise of the empire of the Babylonians, in Isaiah chapter 14, and their taking of Judah into captivity in Isaiah chapter 39. However the subsequent history of the region had also proven the credibility of those prophecies, and his Messianic prophecies had mostly been fulfilled in the first ministry of Christ. While we still await the fulfillment of those which have not yet been fulfilled, they are prophesied again by Christ Himself in the Revelation. Therefore we may rest assured that everything which Isaiah had prophesied which has not yet come to pass, either in history or in our own time, such as the destruction of Edom for the controversy of Zion, certainly shall come to pass at some point in the future. 

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 33: Consequences of the Controversy of Zion 

Commencing with our Commentary on Isaiah, this evening we are going to do something different. Just last week, May 28th, a prerecorded podcast I had done for Jerm Warfare earlier in the month was published at UKColumn.org, and until now I had not mentioned that here. Yet the interview is very pertinent to this subject which we are discussing at this point in Isaiah because it considers the very consequences of the Controversy of Zion which is first mentioned in prophecy here in Isaiah chapter 34, and while the controversy persists through the time of Christ and down to this very day, in Scripture it is only described by that term here in Isaiah. Therefore we will present our commentary for Isaiah chapter 35, which is still discussing the consequences of the Controversy, and then we shall present the interview, which discusses its historical consequences in our modern world. 

In Isaiah chapter 34, Yahweh is portrayed as having called all nations to Himself, and then announced that on account of His indignation, they are all utterly destroyed. With all certainty, this is a far-vision prophecy, as Israel, or at least much of what remains in Judah, is about to be taken into captivity, and in the later words of Jeremiah the prophet we read, in Jeremiah chapter 30: “11 For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.” In the context of that chapter, the Word of Yahweh speaks of the “time of Jacob’s trouble”, and in the opening verses of Jeremiah chapter 31 it is followed by the promise that “1 At the same time, saith the LORD, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. 2 Thus saith the LORD, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest.” That is a reference to the Assyrian captivities of Israel, because when Jeremiah wrote those words, the Babylonian captivity of the remnant of Judah in Jerusalem had only been about to happen, it had not yet happened.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 32: The Controversy of Zion

In our last presentation we discussed The Treachery of the Spoilers, in relation to the reasons for which Jerusalem and Judah had been judged and ultimately destroyed by Yahweh their God through the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians. In Isaiah chapter 33, it is evident that there were men within Jerusalem who were spoilers, who had oppressed the people, and especially the poor and vulnerable. That is evident where the people had prayed for grace, as they had been portrayed in the words of the prophet in the first half of the chapter, and then Yahweh had responded to their prayer. As they had prayed, they had been characterized as not having made any admission of sin nor any expression of repentance, and all they wanted were the spoils of their enemies. Then when they were answered, Yahweh had rejected them as hypocrites who would conceive chaff, and bring forth stubble. So they were warned once again, and their character is revealed where the Word of Yahweh had explained to them the nature of those among them who would survive the impending trials, where the Word had described: “15 He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; 16 He shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure.”

Where Yahweh had told the people that the survivors would be those who walk righteously and speak uprightly, He is describing men of just judgment as opposed to men of corrupt judgment. Therefore the men whom He called hypocrites must have had corrupt judgment, and they must have also loved the gain of oppressions, they must have taken bribes, they must have conspired in murder, and they must have relished, or at least accepted, evil. However in the time of Isaiah, the advent of such spoilers in government or among the rulers of Judah was not a recent phenomenon in Jerusalem. By then it had existed already for at least two hundred years, and had begun around the same time that the kingdom was divided. This is found in 1 Kings chapter 12, at the time of the death of Solomon:

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 31: The Treachery of the Spoilers

In Isaiah chapter 32, accompanying a promise of a Righteous Ruler, one who would protect the people and open their eyes to truth and knowledge, there were also messages foreboding punishment for the wicked in Jerusalem, and suffering for the careless women who had lived at ease, but who would be stripped bare and girt with sackcloth. Briers and thorns would overtake the land which had been emptied of its people, and the city would be left desolate “until the spirit be poured upon us from on high … and my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation”, all of which compliments the Messianic promise of a Righteous Ruler in the opening verses of the chapter. So we would assert that this chapter follows the same pattern of prophecy which has been observed throughout Isaiah, where there are found repeated ominous warnings of destruction for Israel and Judah, woven together with Messianic promises of a future redemption, salvation and reconciliation for the people. So while the prophecy of Isaiah had contained many messages of tragedy and hope for the people of Israel of his own time, it is much more relevant to Israel over the course of the national punishment which was only just beginning in the time of Isaiah.

As we had come to the end of Isaiah chapter 32, in nearly the same breath in which it is said that “my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation”, it is said in the very next verse that “19 When it shall hail, coming down on the forest; and the city shall be low in a low place.” This must be a reference to Jerusalem, the future of which had been the subject of this prophecy, and as we had presented it we had discussed a problem with the original reading of the verse, where one manuscript of the surviving portions of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls has a very similarly spelled Hebrew word which means wood rather than city, and the translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible had asserted that it was more likely to have been the original reading. (Making that discussion, I had hurriedly checked the passage in Origen’s Hexapla but erred in my interpretation of the Latin, so I struck it and repaired it in the notes.) There is no corroboration for the reading of wood in any of the manuscripts employed by Origen. However I may have also discussed the quite different reading found in the Septuagint version of the verse.