A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 11: The Promise in the Flames

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 11: The Promise in the Flames

As we have already discussed at length, in Isaiah chapter 7 Ahaz king of Judah was given a sign, that a virgin would conceive a child, and that before the child could eat solid food, or before he could call out to his mother or father, that the kings of both Israel and Syria would be cut off. This judgment upon those kings was described in several different ways, even in chapter 9 where the birth of the child was announced. But there is something much greater being prophesied here, because in spite of the fact that the sign which had been promised to Ahaz was fulfilled, in chapter 9 we read that this child would be a ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and have no end to the increase of his government and peace, that he would forever establish his kingdom with judgment and with justice, and that his name would be called Wonderful Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.

But at the very same time, the children of Israel had also been warned that their kingdoms would be destroyed, and that for their sins they would either perish or be taken into captivity. So the child described in chapter 9 is not the same child who fulfilled the promise of a sign to Ahaz made in chapter 7. In fact, the child, Mahershalalhashbaz, was a son of Isaiah himself, and he was not in line to succeed to the throne of David. Since from this point forward both the Bible and history are silent concerning Mahershalalhashbaz, he could not have been the child which the prophecy in chapter 9 had described.

Rather, the child of chapter 9 is a future Messiah, a promise of Yahweh God come in the flesh to rule His people forever, at some point in the distant future because in the meantime, Israel and Judah were destined to suffer greatly, and also to remain in a period of blindness, or darkness. For example, in Isaiah chapter 8 Yahweh had attested that He “17 …hideth his face from the house of Jacob… 22 And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.” While Ahaz had a temporary comfort in Mahershalalhashbaz, the true Light would be far in the future, and Israel would suffer in the meantime. But as we shall see, there is hope and a promise in the flames of their trials.

So when this child is born in chapter 9, there is also an announcement that “2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” This same phenomenon is described in several different ways in the later chapters of Isaiah, and its fulfillment is not evident until the coming of Christ. For now, meaning here in the time of Ahaz king of Judah, the period of darkness is just beginning, but the end of that darkness is being announced at the same time that it begins, even if that end would not come for many centuries. This is why Christ Himself had professed, as it is recorded in John chapter 8, that “12 … I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Furthermore, to this very day Christ is called all of these things which had been prophesied of this child in Isaiah chapter 9, and no other man has justly been called any of these things.

But for the reason that the darkness was just beginning, even as the coming light was announced the children of Israel were warned that the Assyrians would destroy Samaria, something which happened just a few years after Ahaz had died, and they were scorned for thinking that they could rebuild. Among other things, they were also told that they would be against one another, Ephraim and Manasseh and Judah, and that at the time of their coming judgment they would have no place of refuge. Throughout the description of this punishment, there was a continually repeated offer of hope in the clause “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” But of course, Yahweh had known that they would not turn to Him as their punishment was executed, that they would not seek His Hand, because just as He had already described in Isaiah chapter 6, the people were destined to be blind until the land was made desolate and without an inhabitant.

Finally, in the opening portion of Isaiah chapter 10, we read an exclamation: “5 O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.” In the days of Ahaz, the Assyrians must have already long been considered a threat to Israel and Judah. For well over a hundred years already, Israel had been trying to defend against the encroaching Assyrians in the north. Nearly a hundred years before the time that Jeroboam II had temporarily recovered Hamath for Israel, Ahab had contributed ten thousand troops to a confederacy of allies to fight off the Assyrians in Syria and Hamath, and they were defeated. Some years after that event, Jehu, a successor of Ahab as king of Israel, is mentioned in an inscription left by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III which says in part “Tribute of Iaua (Jehu), son of Omri (mâr Humrî). Silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden beaker, golden goblets, pitchers of gold, lead, staves for the hand of the king, javelins, I received from him.” In the inscription, this was said to have been in the thirty-first year of his thirty-five year reign, so it was probably also in the later part of the twenty-eight year reign of Jehu although there is no direct mention of this in Scripture. [1] While Jehu was not a literal son of Omri, we cannot expect the Assyrians to have known all of the internal details of the history of Israel. It was Jehu who had cut off the seed of Ahab by destroying all of his sons, a deed which ended the rule of the house of Omri.

Twenty years after Jehu had died, Jeroboam II became king of Israel, and as it is described in 2 Kings chapter 14, he had recovered Damascus, Hamath and the coasts of Phoenicia for Israel. But later, after Jeroboam II had passed, the Assyrians had quickly regained Hamath, and began to march on Damascus and Samaria. So threats of Assyrian conquest must have loomed over Israel and Judah for over a hundred years, and it is early in that period, before the recovery under Jeroboam II, that the prophet Jonah was so uncomfortable at the thought of going to Nineveh, that he preferred having been cast overboard into the Mediterranean Sea after sailing from Joppa in a lame attempt to escape the presence of Yahweh his God. Yet during that hundred years time, it is evident that the children of Israel had never thought to repent and return to their God, for which reason He portrays Himself here as having always kept His Hand stretched out for them.

Then, upon the proclamation of Yahweh God that Assyria was the rod of His anger, here in chapter 10 we read “11 Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?” Here it is likely that Ahaz is still king, and according to 2 Kings chapter 18, Samaria was destroyed in the fourth year of Hezekiah, his son and successor. So while it was not quite the time that Samaria had been destroyed, Yahweh is nevertheless telling His people that Jerusalem would suffer the same fate which Samaria was about to suffer, and once the judgment befell Samaria, perhaps about ten or twelve years from this time, they should have known with all certainty that Jerusalem was also doomed to suffer likewise.

At that point we had left off with Isaiah chapter 10, and now as our discussion of the chapter resumes we shall see further promises of hope, but the hope being offered would also take many years to be fulfilled:

12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.

The stout heart: The word for stout is the same word translated as stoutness in Isaiah 9:9 where the Israelites had been portrayed as wanting to “build back better” and would do so “in the pride and stoutness of heart”. In that earlier passage the word for pride is גאוה or gavah (# 1346), which is arrogance or majesty, from a verb which means to mount up or to rise, while the word for stoutness, or merely stout here, is גדל or godel (# 1433) is “magnitude (literally or figuratively)”, according to Strong’s, from a verb with the same spelling (# 1431) which means to be or to make large.

13 For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: 14 And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.

The king of Assyria is portrayed as having a humanist attitude, professing that his success was of his own power and ability, while in reality, all the successes that a man may have are from Yahweh God. It was Yahweh who gave the Assyrians success in building their empire, because He wanted to use it as a rod by which He would chastise Israel. Today’s tyrants should read this and shudder, but even if they read it, there hearts would be enlarged so that they could not imagine that it would also apply to them.

Perhaps twenty years after this time, in Isaiah chapter 37 during the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, we read in part: “21 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria: 22 This is the word which the LORD hath spoken concerning him; The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. 23 Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel.” However here it is only around 730 BC, and Assyria would not be destroyed until the capital city Nineveh was sacked and destroyed, some time around 612 BC.

Now the Word of Yahweh addresses the attitude which the king of Assyria is portrayed as having had:

15 Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood. 16 Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire.

Now it is prophesied that the children of Israel themselves would have a significant role in Yahweh’s retribution upon the Assyrians, because they would be the flames which would bring down Assyria:

17 And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day; 18 And shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth.

The downfall of Assyria actually began around 652 BC, when the brother of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who was also the governor of Babylon, had launched a revolt against him, with Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine. Evidently Elam and Lydia had also joined in the rebellion. Although the king of Assyria was able to prevail, Egypt was lost to the empire and Babylon had begun to exert its independence, remaining hostile to Assyria. From 19th century historian A. H. Sayce we read:

Assur-bani-pal's son, Assur-etil-ilani, rebuilt with diminished splendour the palace of Calah, which seems to have been burnt by some victorious enemy; and when the last Assyrian king, Esar-haddon II, called Sarakos by the Greeks, mounted the throne, he found himself surrounded on all sides by threatening foes. Kaztarit or Kyaxares [a Median king], Mamitarsu the Median, the Kimmerians, the Minni, and the people of Sepharad leagued themselves together against the devoted city of Nineveh. The frontier towns fell first, and though Esar-haddon in his despair proclaimed public fasts and prayers to the gods, nothing could ward off the doom pronounced by God's prophets against Nineveh so long before [referring to Isaiah and others]. Nineveh was besieged, captured, and utterly destroyed; and the second Assyrian Empire perished more hopelessly and completely than the first. All that survived was the old capital of the country, Assur, whose former inhabitants were allowed to return to it by Cyrus at the time when the Jewish [sic. Judaean] exiles also were released from their captivity in Babylon. [2]

For quite some time I have said that when Cyrus had allowed the transplanted Judaeans to return to Jerusalem, that he also allowed others who had been removed from their ancient homes to return to them, but I had never spoken of this at length or documented it with citations. So here this is corroborated by Sayce. Perhaps a more complete discussion belongs in a commentary on Nehemiah, if I may ever produce one in the future.

Here we see Kimmerians and Medes in an alliance against the Assyrians. The location of the Sepharad mentioned here is debated, and Jews always spoil the context of history with their own contentions. However Sepharad is almost certainly the Saparda, or Shaparda, of the Assyrian inscriptions of Sargon II, who had conquered the place among other districts in Armenia, or Urartu, in the sixth year of his reign, or about 716 BC according to the popular chronologies. [3] In the tenth year of his rule, Saparda and the other cities in Urartu had revolted. While the inscription is fragmented, it seems that Sargon had deported at least a portion of the population, but several years later, in the fourteenth year of his reign, Shaparda had been inhabited and under tribute. [4] Much later, after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, we read in Obadiah verse 20, in part: “… and the captivity of Jerusalem, which is in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the south.” It is certain that Scythians were on the Araxes Rive and the shore of the adjoining Caspian Sea in eastern Armenia.

The Cimmerians, or in Greek, οἱ Κιμμέριοι, had appeared in eastern and central Anatolia in the mid to late 8th century BC, and had a history there which is evident in inscriptions until the late 7th century. From a lengthy paper published in French titled The Cimmerians in the Near East written by a Russian scholar named Askold lvantchik in the French language we read the following, as it is translated by Google:

The Cimmerians first appeared in known sources towards the end of the 8th century BC, during the reign of Sargon II. This period of Cimmerian history is known from six letters in the archives of this king. Four of them probably relate the same event, namely the defeat of the Urartian army during its attempt to invade the territory occupied by the Cimmerians. The Assyrians themselves had no direct contact with the Cimmerians at the time. All the letters in question are reports from the Assyrian "Second Bureau" concerning distant events in Urartu. Four out of six of the tablets in question are in the Kuyunjik collection of the British Museum (Rm 554, K 181, K 1080, K 485, part II, Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5). These tablets, like almost all the other tablets in the collection, are devoid of precise indications of provenance. One cannot even be sure that all the tablets in this collection were really found at Nineveh. One is, however, obliged to treat the Kuyunjik collection as having a certain unity. The documents in this collection, which date from the time of Sargon, originally belonged, as was recently supposed, to the archives of the northern palace of Kuyunjik. This palace was the residence of the crown prince (bit reduti), who was at the time Sennacherib. The letters from Sennacherib to Sargon that were in this palace must therefore be copies of the originals sent to the recipient. [5]

The name Kuyunjik is a modern name for Nineveh. Here I had cited this French-language resource because it describes the earliest known mention of the Cimmerians in either history or archaeology. But I found no mention of these particular inscriptions in English, where in the Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia translated and edited by Daniel D. Luckenbill for the University of Chicago Press in 1927 the earliest mentions of Cimmerians are found in the inscriptions of Esarhaddon, who ruled Assyria from about 681 to 669 BC. Urartu was a kingdom which had formed in the South Caucasus region, in parts of what are now mostly Turkey and Armenia. The name certainly seems to be cognate with the Hebrew term Ararat, which had described the mountainous lands of that same region.

Therefore all of the popular accounts which claim that the Cimmerians had originated in Central Asia or elsewhere are pure conjecture, because they are baseless. Archaeology does not prove that the Kimmerians had originated outside of the territory of the Assyrian empire. From a Russian archaeologist and philologist named Sergei Tokhtas’ev we read the following (inline citations removed, comments in brackets added):

As the Cimmerians cannot be differentiated archaeologically from the Scythians, it is possible to speculate about their Iranian origins. [In ancient times, that would be Persian or Median origins.] In the Neo-Babylonian texts (according to D’yakonov, including at least some of the Assyrian texts in Babylonian dialect) Gamirra and similar forms designate the Scythians and Central Asian Saka, reflecting the perception among inhabitants of Mesopotamia that Cimmerians and Scythians represented a single cultural and economic group. Unfortunately, the proposed etymologies of the names of Cimmerian kings — Teušpa, Tug/k/Dúg/k-dam-mì-i, and Sa-an-dak-KUR-ru (read Sandakšatru?) — are not completely reliable, though they could be Iranian. The ingenious etymology proposed for the ethnonym itself, from Iranian *gāmīra-/*gmīra- “mobile unit”, cannot be verified, but no other satisfactory suggestion has been put forward. The widely held opinion that the Cimmerians were of Thracian origin depends in fact only on the confused information of Strabo: “The Cimmerians, who are also called Treres, or some people of them”; [and] “. . . Treres, a Cimmerian people”. In all other references, however, Strabo and other authors treated Treres and Cimmerians as separate peoples. Some scholars have considered the word árgillai “underground dwellings,” which Ephorus applied to the habitations of the Avernian Cimmerians, as of Thracian origin, but those Cimmerians were not directly related to the historical people; the same word, attested this time as a Greek word, has a convincing Greek etymology.

For my part, I had never interpreted Strabo’s comments to indicate that the Kimmerians had a Thracian origin, but rather, that the Treres in what was once Thrace had a Kimmerian origin. Continuing with our citation from Tokhtas’ev:

Cimmerians in Transcaucasia and the Near East. According to intelligence reports sent to the Assyrian king Sargon II between 720 and 714 b.c.e., King Rusā I of Urarṭu marched his troops to KUR Gamir(ra) “land of the Cimmerians” but was defeated; a modern attempt at more precise dating of these events to August-September 714 is hardly convincing. KUR Gamir(ra) was reliably localized by D’yakonov on the territory of modern Georgia, most probably in its central part; the opposing view of Mirjo Salvini and his arguments for a location south or southeast of lake Urmia do not seem well founded. It is in central Georgia that archaeologists have found the greatest concentration of materials of the Scythian type, the earliest dating from about 700 b.c.e. The Homeric evidence for the Cimmerians was apparently drawn from a more ancient Greek epic, Argonautica, which may have recorded the actual presence of Cimmerians in the general region immediately to the east of Colchis in the 8th century b.c.e. [There is no evidence for this.]

According to another Assyrian intelligence report, Cimmerians did invade Urarṭu from the territory of Mannea (the country south of Lake Urmia); the document is datable to the same years (720-14 b.c.e.), but, as the context differs from that of Rusā’s campaign against the “country of Cimmerians,” it is probable that it deals with a different phase of the conflict.

Transcaucasia was in fact the base from which Cimmerian troops marched, probably until the beginning of the reign of Aššurbanipal (668-ca. 625 b.c.e.). In 679 the Cimmerian king Teušpa was defeated by the Assyrians near the city Ḫubušsnu (perhaps in Cappadocia); in the same year Cimmerian detachments of individual soldiers (probably captives) were serving in the Assyrian army. In 675 they were present on the border of Mannea and in about 667 on Mannean territory. Šubria (the country west of Lake Van) was perhaps subject to invasion by the Cimmerians in about 672-69. In the period of the Median revolt against Assyria even Parsuā (west of Media) and probably Ellipi (between Media and Elam) were open to attack by the Cimmerians, who were allies of the Medes. Cimmerians were serving as contingents in the Assyrian army in 671-70. [6]

Here I would make several assertions. The Kimmerians certainly did make war with the kingdom of Urartu from the south. In the context of this article, Transcaucasia is a reference to the area across the Caucasus mountains from Europe, which is the southern side of the mountains. This is why the author mentioned the Kimmerian presence in eastern Anatolia in this same context, and Mannaea was also a kingdom south of Urartu, just southeast of Lake Urmia and about 180 or so miles north-northeast of the site of ancient Nineveh. Mannaea was subject to Assyria from as early as the time of Shalmaneser III, or the middle of the 9th century BC, over a hundred years before Sargon II.

As we have seen in the above citation from Askold lvantchik, Kimmerians were mentioned six times in the letters of Sargon II, and four of them were related to an invasion by Urartu into the territory of the Kimmerians. If that territory were north of the Caucasus Mountains, it would not have mattered to Sargon. But Sargon himself had conquered Urartu by the tenth year of his reign, as we have already described earlier here. Yet through all of this, in all other respects the Kimmerians were not even noticed in the inscriptions of Sargon. If they had come from Central Asia, through Urartu and into Anatolia in the west or Mannaea to the east, the Assyrians certainly would have taken notice.

In yet another source, a professor of history in a university in Poland whose name is Marek J. Olbrycht, we read the following, noting that he also drew on the work of Askold lvantchik, whom we had cited above:

The Cimmerians may have appeared south of the Caucasus already in the 720s B.C. This may be supposed on the basis of the fact that the attacks conducted by Urartian kings against Colchis and the adjacent regions in the north were defeated at that time. The first direct references to the Cimmerians in Western Asia are on Assyrian cuneiform records coming from the reign of Sargon (722-705 B.C.). This testimony mentions a Cimmerian attack against Urartu conducted probably from the Manna region shortly before 714 B.C. In 714 B.C., the Assyrian records describe an Urartian expedition against the country of Gamir inhabited by the Cimmerians. The most probable location of this region is the area to the north and northwest of Sevan Lake in southern Georgia. Other locations are more debatable. The incident’s setting in southern Georgia seems to be supported by some archaeological materials testifying to a nomadic presence in the region in the second half of the 8th century B.C. [7]

The confusion concerning the location of Gamir, which, as we shall see, is an adaptation of the word Khumri for Omri, is only founded on archaeological findings that are similar to those left by other Scythians, who did inhabit that region after the fall of Assyria, where it became known to the Greeks as Iberia, from a Hebrew term which means “the other side”, since it was on the other side of the Caucasus Mountains from Armenia. Herodotus and others had recorded the Scythian presence along the Araxes River, which is a borderland between the territory of Urartu and that of the Mannaea Medes, and as we have also seen, the Scythians and Kimmerians are archaeologically indistinguishable. If they had started in Georgia, and then launched their attack on Urartu from the territory of Mannaea to the southeast, then the Kimmerians would have had to pass through Urartu from Georgia in order to get to Mannaea, so that they could attack Urartu, and that is truly nonsense.

They could not have invaded Mesopotamia or its surrounding states from Central Asia in numbers large enough to attack these kingdoms, as well as their other interactions with other surrounding peoples, and then settle in eastern Anatolia without attracting the attention of the Assyrians, who had their own border watch organized throughout the extent of their empire. Moreover they would have had to pass through the territory of other kingdoms, such as the Mannaea and the Medes, which were subject states of Assyria. As we have said, the territory of the Mannaea is only about 180 miles from the site of ancient Nineveh! Both Mannaea and Media had been tributaries of the Assyrians from before the time of Sargon, as were the Hittites in whose territory the Kimmerians were settled. [8]

Large armies invading from outside were not going to settle themselves and prepare for an attack in a place only 180 miles away from the capital city of the Assyrians and which was under Assyrian rule, without attracting an Assyrian response. [The borders of the Assyrian subject states were not as porous as those of the American Southwest.] This was in the time of Sargon II, when Assyria was approaching the height of its power. So for the Kimmerians not to have raised the suspicion of the Assyrians, they must have come from within the empire, and they did, as the Bit Khumri or House of Omri of the earlier inscriptions and records of the interactions between Assyria and Israel. Unknown to history before the time of Sargon II, they are in an appropriate place at the same time that the children of Israel had already been settled in those same places in Transcaucasia and northern Mesopotamia and in Medea for over a generation, since the time of Tiglath Pileser III. This is not a coincidence.

By the middle of the 7th century BC, the Kimmerians had waxed strong in Eastern Anatolia and had already begun migrating west, where some of them had fought a battle with the Lydian king Gyges, and were defeated, some time around 665 BC. This is recorded on the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, where it is explained that Gyges had defeated the Cimmerians who attacked him, and had sent two of the defeated chieftains along with tribute to the Assyrian king. [9] Evidently, the Kimmerians were able to occupy eastern Anatolia over this long period and never faced Assyrian opposition in lands which were subject to Assyria, over the decades when Assyria was at the height of its power, because they must have originated from within the empire itself. The Kimmerians, as well as the Scythians, were the Israelites who had been taken captive by Assyria and planted throughout northern Mesopotamia and in the cities of the Medes.

It may be protested that Gamirra, the later Assyrian and Babylonian name for the Kimmerians, is a different word than Khumri, or the Greek form Κιμμέριοι, but that argument is easily refuted. As one of our sources here had said, “In the Neo-Babylonian texts (according to D’yakonov, including at least some of the Assyrian texts in Babylonian dialect) Gamirra and similar forms designate the Scythians and Central Asian Saka”, as well as the Kimmerians. That is true. But in transliterations of the Assyrian Ḫ sound, which is represented by an English letter H with a caron below the letter, it was apparently represented with a K at times, and with a G at times, especially in later times.

So examining some Assyrian inscriptions from Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, the word Gaza in Assyrian inscriptions is Ḫa-za-at-a-a while Omri, the Israelites having been called after the name of their king Omri by the Assyrians, was spelled Ḫu-um-ri-i. The name Hazael was spelled in Assyrian with the same beginning character, Ḫa-za-’-ìl, where the first letter there represents the Hebrew letter heth or cheth. [10] The word for Cilicia, which the Greeks also spelled with a beginning K, began with this same letter, Ḫilakku [11] Other examples of this letter being transliterated to either a k or an h are found in the book Assyrian Personal Names by Knut Tallquist, published in 1914. So before the 7th century BC, by which time the Greeks had first learned of the Κιμμέριοι or Kimmerians, the Assyrian Ḫ was transliterated as a K, and the same holds true with κιλικία or Kilikia. But later, when Aramaic was dominant, Ḫa-za-at-a-a was pronounced as Gaza, as it also was in Hebrew even if it was spelled עזה or azah throughout Scripture, with a leading ע or ayin, rather than with a ג or gimel. There are many other examples of this phenomenon in the glossaries of the ancient world.

But there is more. As we have just shown, Gaza is spelled throughout the Hebrew Bible with a leading ע or ayin, as עזה or azah, yet in Greek it is transliterated as Γάζα or Gaza. Likewise, in Hebrew the name Omri also begins with an ע or ayin, and is spelled as עמרי or Omriy, but if it were transliterated as Gaza had been, it would be Gamiri rather than Kimmerian, and that is how the Aramaic speakers of the time must have understood it. So the origination of both Kimmerians and Gamirra are in the same name, Omri.

We would also assert that ancient Aramaic speakers understood the identity of the Israelites who were moved to the north in captivity, for which reason they had called both the Kimmerians and Scythians by the same name, Gamirra. As Flavius Josephus had written, concerning the same region of Transcaucasia which the Kimmerians had once occupied, and which was later described as Sacasene by Strabo, who described its inhabitants as Sakae: “therefore there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers.” [12] By “two tribes” Josephus had referred to the remnant of Judah and Benjamin, although much of ancient Judah had also gone into captivity with Israel, in the days of Sennacherib.

That both Scythians and Kimmerians were called Gamirra makes it difficult to distinguish them at all, and they should not be distinguished. According to the Annals of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, there were Scythians dwelling in Mannaea who were confederate with them. [13] But it is from Mannaea that at least some archaeologists esteem the Kimmerian attack on Urartu to have originated. We agree with both of these circumstances, because whether a tribe of the Khumri, who were resettled in diverse places in the empire, should be called Kimmerian or Scythian is merely circumstantial. The article on the Battle of Nineveh at Britannica places Scythians as allies of the Babylonians and others who destroyed Assyria, as do many other sources. [14]

The archaeologists simply do not understand how the Kimmerians could have originated from within the Assyrian empire, so they insist upon insisting that they must have come from outside, but that insistence is not supported by any of the Assyrian inscriptions. Looking for the captivity of Israel, typically they look no further than a few scant Hellenistic period synagogues, because they mistakenly believe that they must have been Jews. But the Scythians and Kimmerians were of the captivity of Israel, they had joined in alliance with other subject nations to destroy the Assyrian empire, and doing so they fulfilled this prophecy in Isaiah chapter 10. None of them were Jews. As Josephus wrote that in his time they were an innumerable multitude of them beyond the Euphrates, there was certainly no innumerable multitude of Jews in that region, or in any other region at that time.

But where the Scythians and Kimmerians, whom were all descended from the captivities of Israel, had also often fought with one another, we see the fulfillment of the words of Isaiah where at the end of chapter 9, it spoke of a time when Israel would be in captivity, and said: “21 Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.”

Then once the retribution of Yahweh is fulfilled in Israel, only a small remnant of the Assyrians would survive:

19 And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them.

Typically, young children may not be able to count into the tens of thousands, or even thousands. In modern schools, first and second grade school children are only expected to be able to count to a hundred. [15] So evidently, the surviving population of the Assyrians would be quite small, and after the fall of Nineveh, Assyria had for the most part lost its identity as a nation.

But there is one other aspect of this prophecy which we should discuss, so we shall repeat from verse 17:

“And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day. 18 And shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and they shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth.”

In place of the phrase “and his Holy One for a flame”, Brenton’s Septuagint has “and he shall sanctify him with burning fire”, where in Greek the noun קדושׁ or qadosh was treated as a verb. But the word is suffixed with the letter ו or vav, which means “of him”. The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible agrees with the translation found in the King James Version. Israel is the Holy One of Yahweh in this context, so the phrase is a parallelism.

In place of the final clause of verse 18, “and they shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth”, the Septuagint as Brenton has it reads: “and he that flees shall be as one fleeing from burning flame.” But the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible has “and it will be like a sick person wasting away”, which agrees with the translation found in the New American Standard Bible. Reading the Hebrew, we must agree with this last reading.

This is the promise in the flames, that once Yahweh chooses to see His people Israel released from their captivity, they themselves will destroy those who had held them captive.

Later in Isaiah, there are further prophecies, that they would even take their captors captive. This is found in Isaiah chapter 14: “1 For the LORD will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land [land they themselves possess, to which nobody else has a claim, but not necessarily in Palestine]: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. 2 And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the LORD for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.”

Now there is another two-fold prophecy:

20 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.

The children of Israel had become the fire and the flame which ultimately destroyed Assyria, and in the fulfillment of this promise, we have a further assurance of the fulfillment of another, similar promise which is not yet fulfilled. That promise is found in Obadiah where we read: “15 For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head. 16 For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the heathen drink continually, yea, they shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been. 17 But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions. 18 And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken it.”

In the days of the Assyrian captivity, the children of Israel were held captive, and when the time had come they destroyed their captors. Doing so, they no more again stayed upon him that smote them, the Assyrians, and eventually they would stay upon Yahweh their God. Some of the earliest Christians outside of Palestine and the places traveled by Paul of Tarsus were the Alans and the Goths of the steppes north of the Caucasus Mountains. While after the destruction of Assyria most of the tribes of Israel were led to migrate away from Mesopotamia and into Central Asia, and ultimately Europe, they were represented in the Revelation as the woman taken to the wilderness who waited to be fed the Gospel by the angels of Yahweh (Revelation chapter 12). Having done that, they stayed “upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.”

Now the children of Israel are held captive once again, by what is known as Mystery Babylon in the Revelation, and when the time comes that it falls, they are told to “6 Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double”, as we read in Revelation chapter 18. That is when the words of Obadiah shall be fulfilled, “And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them”, just as it was with Assyria here in Isaiah chapter 10. The fulfillment of this prophecy in Assyria is a token that the words of Obadiah shall also be fulfilled, and that is also our promise in the flames which shall end the trials of our own current captivity. While the children of Israel awaited Christ after the fall of Assyria, even if they themselves were blinded to that circumstance, today they await the Kingdom of Heaven in the return of Christ after the fall of Mystery Babylon, at which time the serpent is destroyed in the Lake of Fire.

For now, returning to the time of Isaiah and after the prophesied fall of Assyria:

21 The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.

This does not mean that the children of Israel shall return to Palestine, but rather, that they would return to Yahweh their God. That they did, when they heard the gospel of Christ and accepted Christianity, as Christ was the Mighty God and the Eternal Father who had been prophesied here in chapter 9. Now Isaiah continues to describe that remnant:

22 For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness.

The text of the Septuagint wants the clause which says “the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness”, and it has shall be saved rather than shall return. The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible agrees with the Masoretic Text in both places.

This passage was cited by Paul of Tarsus in Romans chapter 9 (9:27). There, after he had described the descendants of Esau in Judaea as vessels of destruction, Paul spoke concerning Jacob and said, as it is in our own translation: “23 and so that He will make known the wealth of His honor upon vessels of mercy, which He previously prepared for honor; 24 whom also He has called, us not only from among the Judaeans, but also from out of the Nations? 25 And as He says in Hosea, ‘I will call that which is not My people, My people; and that which is not beloved, beloved.’ 26 ‘And it shall be, in the place where it was said to them, you are not My people, there they shall be called sons of Yahweh who is living.’ 27 Moreover Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘If the number of the sons of Israel were as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be preserved.’” In his citation from this passage in Isaiah, Paul has preserved, or saved, following the Septuagint.

Citing that passage, Paul was not making a claim that anyone could be included in Christianity, or with this remnant, simply because they believed. Rather, he was counting the descendants of Jacob in a manner which was historically accurate, as they were found both in Judaea, and among all of the nations to which the apostles had brought the Gospel, in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Central Asia and Europe. That is where the children of Israel had been scattered, although by then they were known by many other names, some of the first of which were Kimmerian, Scythian, Gamirra and Sakae.

Paul had already explained, in Romans chapter 4, that the promise to Abraham, that his seed would become many nations, that the promise was fulfilled “as it is written”, and that those were the nations in and around the Roman world. Where Paul had cited Hosea, the words are only applicable to the children of Israel, who were put off by Yahweh, while at the same time they had been promised reconciliation. Where he had cited Isaiah here, these words are also only applicable to the children of Israel, and on account of the very same circumstances. Yet once again, they were not expected to return to Palestine, but rather, they were expected to return to God.

Therefore, the consumption of which the Word of God now warns is not a consumption of Israel:

23 For the Lord GOD of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all the land.

So now, as the consumption is explained, there is further encouragement for Israel:

24 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt.

From this time, the name of Assyria is often used as an allegory for captivity in words of the prophets, just as the name of Egypt had often also been used.

25 For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction.

The indignation which would cease is Yahweh’s indignation towards Israel, for which reason he had punished them with the rod of Assyria. Once the indignation would cease, Israel would destroy those who punished her.

So while we have already seen a comparison to the captivity in Egypt, now we shall see a comparison to an event from the time of the early Judges period, and another comparison to Egypt:

26 And the LORD of hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and as his rod was upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt.

In Judges chapter 7 under the leadership of Gideon, three hundred men armed with only trumpets and empty pitchers, which they had smashed in unison, had put the Midianites and their allies the Amalekites to flight, after which all of the northern tribes of Israel in pursuit had executed a great slaughter, “ 25 And they took two princes of the Midianites, Oreb and Zeeb; and they slew Oreb upon the rock Oreb, and Zeeb they slew at the winepress of Zeeb, and pursued Midian, and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon on the other side Jordan.” It is interesting, that after that slaughter, Ephraim was offended with Gideon because they were not called to join them.

Returning to the oracle concerning the Assyrians:

27 And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

Because of the anointing: because the children of Israel are the anointed people of Yahweh, and on account of that election, Yahweh Himself shall defend Israel, permitting only that Israel be punished for their sins so long as He wills. Both the New American Standard Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible have the last phrase to read “because of fatness”, however while the Hebrew word שׁמן or shemen is literally fat or oil (# 8081), the context of the passage is satisfied with an allegorical translation which interprets the oil as being an oil of anointing. The children of Israel would not be released from the yoke of the Assyrians simply because they were fat. In fact, they were going to be placed under that yoke because they were fat. The apostle John, in chapter 2 of his first epistle, has a Greek word with a similar meaning in this same context, which is χρῖσμα. Liddell & Scott define χρῖσμα to mean anointing because it is also an unction, a plaster, an oil or an ointment, something which is smeared on for a particular purpose. For that reason the King James Version had translated χρῖσμα as unction, and contrary to what the New American Standard Bible has here in Isaiah, they translated χρῖσμα as anointing in that passage in 1 John chapter 2 (2:20)! If χρῖσμα is anointing there, then shemen is anointing here.

In Jeremiah chapter 30 there is another prophecy of a removal of a yoke from the neck of the children of Israel, which we also perceive as having not yet been fulfilled. There we read: “7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. 8 For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him: 9 But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them. 10 Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. 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.” This, we may believe, shall be fulfilled when the promise in the flames as it is described in the words of Obadiah is fulfilled.

But in the meantime, Israel must suffer the coming punishment, so until the time of his destruction, the Assyrian remains a rod in the hand of Yahweh:

28 He is come to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his carriages: 29 They are gone over the passage: they have taken up their lodging at Geba; Ramah is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled. 30 Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor Anathoth. 31 Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee.

These are warnings to diverse places in Israel which had not yet been molested by the Assyrians. So Aiath seems to have been the Ai of Joshua chapter 7, in the land of Ephraim, Migron was a place near Gibeah in Benjamin, and Michmash and Geba were also in Benjamin. Gallim seems to have been close to Saul, and perhaps also in Benjamin. Ramah belonged to Naphtali, Laish was the city taken by Dan north of Galilee, and Anathoth and Nob were cities of Benjamin. So most of these places were in Benjamin. While their locations are more obscure, some sources claim that Medmenah and Gebim were minor villages of Benjamin. In an attempt to gain insight into why these places may have been named here, reading this passage according to the meanings of the names rather than the actual places they represent, as Strong’s defined their meanings, we are led to nonsense. So we can only see the passage as a general warning to all of the remaining children of Israel, that the Assyrian was coming for them all.

32 Exhort ye them to-day to remain in the way: exhort ye beckoning with the hand the mountain, the daughter of Sion, even ye hills that are in Jerusalem. 33 Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be humbled. 34 And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one.

So while Assyria shall ultimately be destroyed by Israel, for the time being, Israel must suffer the punishment which Yahweh had assigned to her on account of her sins. Israel would be taken into captivity, suffering the fiery trials of this world, but there was nevertheless a promise in the flames. In this we certainly should have encouragement today, and this today is just as appropriate as it had been in the time of Isaiah.

This concludes our commentary for Isaiah chapter 10.

By GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Above: Israelite king Jehu bringing tribute to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. note the pointed cap, which the Scythians and Kimmerians were famous for wearing later in history.

Footnotes

1 Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon, Daniel D. Luckenbill, Ph.D., Volume I, Historical Records of Assyria from the Earliest Times to Sargon, University of Chicago Press, 1926, p. 243.

2 Assyria: its Princes, Priests, and People, A. H. Sayce, M.A., The Religious Tract Society, London, 1885, p. 53.

3 Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon, Volume 2, p. 6.

4 ibid., pp. 7, 76.

5 Les Cimmeriens au Proche-Orient, Askold lvantchik, Les Cimmériens au Proche-Orient. Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen, Germany: Éditions Universitaires / Vandenhoeck Ruprech, 1993, p. 19. https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/ 151019/1/Ivantchik_1993_Les_Cimmerians_au_Proche-Orient.pdf, accessed October 24th, 2024.

6 Sergei R. Tokhtas’ev, “CIMMERIANS,” Encyclopædia Iranica, V/6, pp. 563-567, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cimmerians-nomads, accessed October 24th, 2024.

7 The Cimmerian problem re-examined: the evidence of the Classical sources, Marek J. Olbrycht, published in: Jadwiga Pstrusińska / Andrew T. Fear (eds.), Collectanea Celto-Asiatica Cracoviensia, Kraków 2000, 71-99, p. 91. https://www. academia.edu/1509846, accessed October 25th, 2024

8 Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon, Volume 2, pp. 11, 22, 26.

9 Historical Prism Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, Volume 1, Arthur Carl Piepkorn, The University of Chicago Press, 1938, pp. 47-49.

10 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, pp. 280.

ibid., p. 284.

12 Antiquities of the Judaeans, Flavius Josephus, Book 11 paragraph 133.

13 Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon, Volume 2, pp. 207, 213.

14 Battle of Nineveh, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Nineveh, accessed October 25th, 2024.

15 Math skills at different ages, Understood.org, https://www.understood.org/en/articles/math-skills-what-to-expect-at-different-ages, accessed October 25th, 2024.