Isaiah 30:27

These verses close a chapter that began with a rebuke. In the late eighth century BC Assyria was the great power of the day. It had already taken Samaria and the northern kingdom in 722 BC (2 Kings 17:5–6), and under Sennacherib its armies captured the fortified cities of Judah and came up against Jerusalem (2 Kings 18:13–37). Judah’s leaders answered the danger by seeking an alliance with Egypt, and Isaiah pronounced a woe on them for it (Isaiah 30:1–7). Treaties of that kind were ordinary politics among the nations, but for the LORD’s own people they meant looking away from the God who had bound himself to them. They refused to listen (Isaiah 30:8–17), although he had told them that their salvation lay in returning and rest, and their strength in quietness and trust (Isaiah 30:15).

Then the chapter turns to mercy, with promises of grace, teaching and plenty for those who come back to him (Isaiah 30:18–26). Our passage completes that turn by telling Judah what will become of the oppressor they feared. The help they hoped to buy from Egypt, God will give them himself, and the next chapter presses the same lesson on those who go down to Egypt for help (Isaiah 31). The LORD who would judge Babylon (Isaiah 13) deals here with Assyria.

“Behold” calls for attention, because someone is arriving. “The name of the LORD”, the name Yᵉhôvâh, stands for God himself as he has made himself known, with all his character, authority and active presence. When his name comes, he comes. He comes “from far” because he is above the reach and the limits of the nations, as when he came down on Mount Sinai in fire (Exodus 19:18). The distance also tells us that this judgment is deliberate. It has been on its way, and it will surely arrive.

His anger is described as fire. The verb for “burning”, bâʻar, means to burn, kindle or consume. “The burden thereof is heavy” uses the word kôbed, weight, so that the judgment comes with the gravity that sin against a holy God deserves. The “indignation” that fills his lips is zaʻam, a word Strong’s traces to frothing at the mouth and which is used for fury, especially God’s fury at sin. His tongue is “as a devouring fire”, and “devouring” is ʼâkal, the ordinary word for eating, used here of a fire that consumes what it touches.

Lips and tongue are the organs of speech, so the picture is of judgment spoken. God’s word carries out what it declares, and when he pronounces sentence the sentence takes effect. Moses had taught Israel the same truth about him, that the LORD is a consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24), and the New Testament repeats it to Christians (Hebrews 12:29). Nahum, who also prophesied against Assyria, describes the LORD’s vengeance and wrath in the same terms and asks who can stand before his indignation (Nahum 1:2–6).

Verse 28 gives three pictures of how God deals with the nations. The first is a flood. His “breath” is rûwach, a word that means wind, breath or spirit, and it comes “as an overflowing stream”, like a winter torrent or a flash flood that sweeps a valley. It reaches “to the midst of the neck”, the point at which a person is about to go under. God judges by breathing, with the ease of a word.

The second picture is a sieve, nâphâh, the farmer’s tool for separating grain from chaff. God will “sift the nations”, the gôwy, “with the sieve of vanity”. “Vanity” is shâvᵉʼ, emptiness, falsehood and worthlessness, the word used in the commandment against taking the LORD’s name in vain. The sifting exposes how hollow the strength, pride and idols of the nations are, and they are thrown out like chaff. Ecclesiastes passes the same verdict on everything pursued apart from God, “vanity of vanities” (Ecclesiastes 1:2), and Isaiah has already announced a day of the LORD against everything proud and lifted up (Isaiah 2:12–22). The psalmist prays for exactly this, that God would judge the nations and let them know they are only men (Psalm 9:19–20).

The third picture is a bridle, reçen, the halter by which a rider turns an animal. It is placed “in the jaws of the people”, the ʻam, meaning the peoples who march against God’s purpose. Sifting and bridling were familiar sights to farmers and herdsmen, and both say that the nations are in God’s hand. Nebuchadnezzar was shown the same truth, that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will (Daniel 4:17), and through Jeremiah the LORD says he builds up or pulls down a nation as it answers to his word (Jeremiah 18:7–10).

In the middle of the fire and flood, God turns to his own people: “Ye shall have a song.” The judgment that terrifies Assyria is their deliverance, so their part in it is to sing. Isaiah compares their song to “the night when a holy solemnity is kept”. The word is chag, a festival, the word used for the pilgrim feasts of Israel’s law (Passover, Weeks and Booths), when the people went up to Jerusalem with sacrifice, singing and great joy. A feast began on the evening before its day, and pilgrims sang on their way, so the picture is of gladness that fills even the dark hours.

The second comparison moves from the song to the heart: “gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the LORD”. The verb hâlak is the common word for walking or going, here the walk of a pilgrim climbing to Mount Zion, where the Temple stood, with a flute playing as he goes. A psalm asks who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD (Psalm 24:3), and another gives the pilgrim’s feeling: “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD” (Psalm 122:1).

The journey ends at a person. The pilgrim comes “to the mighty One of Israel”, and the Hebrew word is tsûwr, a rock or cliff, used as a title for God as the Rock of his people. Their joy rests on his steadfast strength, which is why it holds when armies surround the city. Isaiah returns to this picture when he sees the ransomed of the LORD coming to Zion with songs and everlasting joy, while sorrow and sighing flee away (Isaiah 35:10). Zephaniah adds that the singing goes both ways: “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

Verse 30 returns to the LORD’s coming and piles up its signs. First there is his “glorious voice”. The word is hôwd, grandeur, majesty and splendour, so this is a voice that carries the majesty of the one who speaks. Then he will “shew the lighting down of his arm”. The arm, zᵉrôwaʻ, is Scripture’s picture of strength in action, as in the song at the Red Sea, where the greatness of God’s arm made the nations still as a stone (Exodus 15:16). “Lighting down” is Nachath, a descent, the arm seen as it comes down to strike.

He comes “with the indignation of his anger”. The KJV has “indignation” here as in verse 27, but the Hebrew word is a different one, zaʻaph, rage, joined to ʼaph, anger. The “flame”, lahab, of a “devouring fire”, ʼêsh, follows, with the same word for devouring, ʼâkal, that described his tongue in verse 27. Then come three words for a storm: “scattering”, nephets, a breaking and dispersing blast, “tempest”, zerem, a gushing downpour or flood, and “hailstones”, in Hebrew stones (ʼeben) of hail (bârâd). Hail was one of God’s weapons in the plagues of Egypt, and it falls again in the last judgments of Revelation (Revelation 16:21). Judah knew storms, and Isaiah uses the most violent things in their world to tell them that all of it is in the LORD’s hand and is turned against their enemy.

Fire in Scripture speaks of God’s holiness, which consumes what is unholy, and of his judgment, as when he rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24). It can also speak of his refining work on his own people, the refiner’s fire of Malachi 3:2–3. In this verse the fire is judgment on the adversary.

Verse 31 names the enemy at last: “through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian be beaten down.” The word for voice, qôwl, covers a call, a sound or thunder, and Israel knew the LORD’s voice as power at work. By it God made light (Genesis 1:3), it sounded from Sinai in thunder (Exodus 19:16), and Psalm 29 hears it over the waters, breaking cedars and shaking the wilderness (Psalm 29:3–9). Judah had gone looking for chariots, and Isaiah tells them that God’s voice is weapon enough. “Beaten down” is châthath, to be broken down, whether by violence or by confusion and fear, and it is often the word for being dismayed and afraid. The army that spread terror will itself be terrified.

Assyria is described by what it did: it “smote with a rod”. The shêbeṭ is a stick, staff or club, and also a ruler’s sceptre, and here it stands for Assyria’s harsh rule over the nations it conquered. The LORD himself had called Assyria the rod of his anger and sent it against his own unfaithful people (Isaiah 10:5–6). Assyria went far past that errand. It meant only to destroy, and it boasted that its own hand and wisdom had won its victories (Isaiah 10:7–15). So God holds his own instrument to account for its pride, cruelty and blasphemy, and the rod that struck is struck. He brings princes to nothing (Isaiah 40:23), and he who sits in the heavens laughs at rulers who set themselves against him and speaks to them in his wrath (Psalm 2:4–5). Zechariah later foretells a plague on all the peoples that fight against Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:12).

Verse 32 follows the blows as they fall. The “staff” (maṭṭeh) is called “grounded”, mûwçâdâh, a word that means a foundation and so an appointment. This is a staff of decree, a punishment settled beforehand by God. Assyria had been his rod against others, and now a rod is laid on Assyria, “which the LORD shall lay upon him”. The name Yᵉhôvâh marks who is acting: the covenant God of Israel, by his own decision. “In every place where the grounded staff shall pass” means the judgment reaches everywhere the enemy is found.

Then comes the surprise of the verse: “it shall be with tabrets and harps”. The tôph is a tambourine and the kinnôwr a lyre or harp, the instruments of feasts and victory. Miriam took a timbrel and led the women in song after the Red Sea (Exodus 15:20–21), and David and all Israel played before the LORD on harps and timbrels when the ark came up (2 Samuel 6:5). The music answers a question people ask about this verse, how instruments of joy can sound in a battle of judgment. The one act of God has two sides. It is terror for the oppressor and freedom for the oppressed, so each stroke on Assyria is a beat in Judah’s song of thanks.

“In battles of shaking will he fight with it.” The verb lâcham means to do battle, and the LORD is the one fighting, as Moses promised at the sea: the LORD shall fight for you (Exodus 14:14). “Battles” is milchâmâh, and “shaking” is tᵉnûwphâh, a word usually used for the waving of an offering and here, as in Isaiah 19:16, for a hand brandished in threat. They are battles in which God swings his arm. The God who fights like this is the God who makes wars cease to the end of the earth (Psalm 46:9).

The last verse shows where the judgment ends: in a burning place made ready long ago.

The Father has given all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), so the coming of the LORD in this passage leads us to Jesus Christ, at his first coming and at his return.

At his first coming the wrath fell on him. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), set forth as a propitiation through his blood (Romans 3:25), and all who are justified by his blood are saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:9). The heavy burden of verse 27 was carried by him on the cross, so that those who believe in him are kept from the devouring fire. He is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1) and who became flesh (John 1:14), so the glorious voice of verse 30 was heard on earth in him. At his word the storm fell quiet (Mark 4:39) and unclean spirits obeyed (Mark 1:27). The arm of the LORD was shown in him when he cast out demons by the finger of God (Luke 11:20), healed all who were sick (Matthew 8:16), and was declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection (Romans 1:4). At the cross he disarmed principalities and powers and triumphed over them openly (Colossians 2:15), which is the breaking of a far worse rod than Assyria’s: the rule of sin, death and the devil.

The song of verse 29 is ours through him as well. All the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ (Colossians 2:9), and by his blood we have boldness to enter the holiest (Hebrews 10:19–22). Believers have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22–24). So going up to the mountain of the LORD now means drawing near to God through Jesus, wherever we are, worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24) with the joy the Holy Spirit gives (Romans 14:17).

At his return the fire of this passage will be seen in full. John saw him with eyes like a flame of fire (Revelation 1:14), and saw him ride out with a sharp sword going from his mouth to smite the nations and to rule them with a rod of iron (Revelation 19:11–16), which is the tongue like a devouring fire of verse 27 and a righteous rod in place of Assyria’s cruel one. The dead will hear his voice and come out of their graves (John 5:28–29), and the word he has spoken will judge on the last day (John 12:48). He will come with power and great glory (Matthew 24:30) and sift all nations, separating them as a shepherd divides sheep from goats (Matthew 25:31–33). All power in heaven and in earth is already his (Matthew 28:18), he must reign until every enemy is under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25), and every knee will bow to him (Philippians 2:9–11).

Tophet points ahead too. The Valley of Hinnom gave its name to Gehenna, the word Jesus used for hell, the place of fire that is never quenched (Mark 9:43), and he taught us to fear the one who can destroy both soul and body there (Matthew 10:28). Revelation shows the beast and the false prophet cast into a lake of fire burning with brimstone (Revelation 19:20), the devil after them (Revelation 20:10), and everyone whose name is missing from the book of life (Revelation 20:15). The tabrets and harps sound again in heaven, where a great multitude praises God because he reigns (Revelation 19:6–7) and the redeemed sing a new song to the Lamb (Revelation 5:9–10). Beyond the judgment lies a new heaven and a new earth, where God dwells with his people and wipes away every tear (Revelation 21:1–4).

This passage gives us a God who sees cruelty and acts against it. Assyria was the strongest thing in Judah’s world, and one word from the LORD ended its threat in a night. Whatever power frightens us now is sifted by the same hand and held by the same bridle, so the treaties, schemes and strength we are tempted to lean on are the things verse 28 calls vanity. The Rock of Israel is where safety is found.

It also gives us a true fear of God. His anger at sin is as real as his love, and the fire he prepared for a proud king warns everyone who goes on defying him. The gospel tells us where that fire has already fallen. Whoever takes refuge in Christ finds that the arm which strikes the oppressor is the arm that saves, and the judgment has been borne in his place.

And it gives us a song. God told his people they would sing while the night was still dark and the battle still on, because the outcome rested with him. That is why Paul can say “Rejoice in the Lord alway” (Philippians 4:4). When Christians gather to praise God in a troubled world, we are doing what verse 29 promised, going up with glad hearts to the mighty One of Israel and waiting for the day when his victory is complete.