I ended my last blog post with a reference to the speech of the Assyrian king’s ambassador in Isaiah 36. The ambassador challenges Israel’s claim that Yahweh is their God and will act on their behalf; instead, he claims that Yahweh has ordained the Assyrian military in their march on Jerusalem. These sorts of claims are part and parcel of the political rhetoric used by the Assyrian Empire, and they served to cast doubt on an opposing city, its king, and its army. In fact, a great deal has been said about Assyrian propaganda — the use of ideological symbols, religious subversion, and intense fear tactics to undermine a city’s hope and encourage submission (of course, when all else failed, they surrounded the city and leveled it to the ground). Isaiah 10:5-15 appears to contain elements of exactly this kind of rhetoric. Only here, the language used by the Assyrian king is creatively adapted (a bit of reading like a prophet!) in order to pit Assyrian ambition against the will of Yahweh — and the former is found woefully lacking.
The specific strokes of chapter 10 point to a single broad point: The Assyrian king has acted arrogantly by asserting himself over Yahweh. But let’s look at 4 ways that he does this:
The first is blatant: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding…” (v. 13). Notice the rapid repetition of the first-person pronouns! And more importantly, notice the king’s claim to wisdom and insight — kingly qualities valued by Israel, but only as gifts given by God for ruling justly among the people. The Assyrian kings were not known for their just rule, in spite of their explicit claims to the contrary.
A second characteristic of Assyria’s arrogance is evident in the king’s next claim: “I have removed the boundaries of peoples…” But, as Deuteronomy puts it, it is “Elyon [the Most High]” who “established the boundaries of the peoples.” Now Isaiah’s claims against the king of Assyria are getting quite serious. Not only has he ruled unjustly (the very opposite of wisdom that comes from Yahweh), but he has usurped the authority to apportion the nations — an authority that belongs to God alone! Interestingly, Yahweh had granted a certain amount of authority to Assyria: “Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him to take spoil and seize plunder” (v. 6). But Assyria took far more than they were given. Rather than assume the role of punisher granted by Yahweh, “it was in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few.” By removing the boundaries of the nations, the king of Assyria overstepped his bounds.
The third part of the king’s boast is rendered by the NRSV: “[I] have plundered their treasures.” But this is an inadequate translation, for “treasures” is really a more generic word for storehouses. Of course the king looted the treasures of nations — that’s what kings do, and it even appears to be within the bounds granted by Yahweh in v. 6. A more accurate translation might read: “I have stolen their stores,” with the implication that the king went above and beyond the expectations for warfare. He destroyed the very means for livelihood, literally the “prepared things” that people of these nations had set aside for food and shelter. Once again, Assyria overstepped, this time resulting in excessive cruelty and oppression.
A fourth characteristic of the Assyrian king’s arrogance concerns the title he attributes to himself. Once again, I think the NRSV translation misses the point. The Hebrew word rendered “like a bull” (all one word in Hebrew) is actually the same word used in Isaiah 1:24 to describe Yahweh as “the Mighty One.” Now he’s not just doing things that are only properly the behavior of Yahweh, but the king of Assyria has actually adopted for himself the very title of God! (It may be that both translations are correct. Assyrian kings occasionally depicted themselves or their troops as bulls trampling on their victims. So Isaiah is playing on the word to show how ridiculous are these claims of the king. Clever, and unfortunately, impossible to capture in our translations.)
Just to drive home the absurdity of the king of Assyria claiming priority over Yahweh, Isaiah employs some metaphors: “Shall the ax vaunt itself over the one who wields its, or the saw magnify itself against the one who wields it?” (v. 15). As if a tool could master its master!
So let the “reading like a prophet” begin. How do the empires of today overstep their bounds? And what are those bounds? As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the Old Testament Prophets do not automatically associate empire(s) with evil. Empires, rather, are tools in the hands of God as is any other human institution. The ethical question facing an empire is: Have we been a good empire? Have we been merciful (see my older post on Avatar and Empire)? Have we been just? Have we overstepped our (God-given) bounds? And then I think we have to ask ourselves, as the people of God: Are we faced with propaganda today that claims too much or oversteps? What is it? How can we name this propaganda and, as Isaiah does, expose it for the utter absurdity that it is?
