Jehovah Takes Up "the Rod"

Do the Israelites, to whom Jonah also preached, respond?  (2 Kings 14:25) No.  They turn their backs on pure worship.  Indeed, they go so far as "to bow down to all the army of the heavens and to serve Baal."  What is more, "they continued to make their sons and daughters  pass through the fire and to practice divination and to look for omens, and they kept selling themselves to do what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah, to offend him."  (2 Kings 17:16, 17)  Unlike the Ninevites, Israel does not  respond when Jehovah sends prophets to warn them.  So Jehovah determines to take stronger measures. 

For some time after Jonah's visit to Nineveh, there is  a decline in Assyrian aggression.  However, at the beginning of the eighth century B.C.E., Assyria reasserts itself as a  military power, and Jehovah uses it in a astonishing way. The prophet Isaiah conveys a warning from Jehovah to the northern kingdom of Israel:  "Aha, the Assyrian, the rod for my anger, and the stick that is in their hand for my denunciation!  Against an apostate nation I shall send him, and against the people of my fury I shall issue a command to him, to take much spoil and to take much plunder and to make it a trampling place like the clay of the streets." -Isaiah 10:5, 6.

What a humiliation for the Israelites!  God uses a pagan nation-"the Assyrian"-as a "rod" to punish them.  In 742  B.C.E., Assyrian King Shalmaneser V lays siege to Samaria, capital of the apostate nation of Israel.  From its strategic location on a hill some 300 feet high, Samaria wards of the enemy for almost three years.  But no human strategy can block God's purpose.   In 740 B.C.E., Samaria falls, trampled under Assyrian feet. -2 Kings 18:10.

Although used by Jehovah to teach his people a lesson, the Assyrians themselves do not recognize Jehovah.  That is why he goes on to say:  "Though [the Assyrian] nay not be that way, he will feel inclined; though his heart may not be that way, he will scheme, because to annihilate is in his heart, and to cut off nations not a few."  (Isaiah 10:7)   Jehovah means the Assyrian to be an instrument in the divine hand.  But the Assyrian feels inclined to be something else . His heart urges him to scheme for something grander.-conquest of the then-known world!

Next time: Conclusion of Jehovah Takes Up "the Rod"

From the Book Isaiah's Prophecy Light for all Mankind, 2000