Wednesday 14 July 2010

Background

The story has now moved on. In the readings for the last coupleof days Judah was being threatened by an alliance of Israel andSyria, but another, stronger power, and an even greater threat totheir safety was in the background... Assyria.

When Tiglath-Pileser III ascended to the throne in 745 BC, Assyriastarted to become a great power in the region and threatened tooverwhelm both Israel and Judah. We have already seen that thefirst chapter of Isaiah comes from a time when Ahaz, king of Judah,became a vassal of Assyria. This was just one in a series ofmanoeuvres in which both the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom ofJudah attempted to protect themselves from this new menace. 2Kings 17 tells the story of Israel's failed attempt torebel against Assyria, which resulted in the invasion of Israelwith many of its people being taken off into exile.

With the kingdom of Israel already invaded and the kingdom of Judahfeeling increasingly threatened by Assyria, the obvious questionswere: Has God deserted us? Has God forgotten God's people andabandoned them to this great (earthly) power?

Isaiah gives an extraordinary answer. The rise of Assyria is not asign that God has abandoned God's people, but rather that God isgreater than the people of Judah could possibly have imagined; forAssyria is actually an instrument of God's justice. In a completereversal of what might be expected, Isaiah says that Assyria hasbeen sent by God to defeat "a godless nation" (Isaiah 10:6) - andthat godless nation is Israel.

In other words, it is not that God has abandoned God's people, butrather that they have abandoned God. They have not pursued justiceand have worshipped idols rather than the one true god.

To Ponder

The people of Israel assumed that God was alwayson their side. In what ways do people make a similar assumptiontoday?

This passage assumes that God uses one nation tohumble another. How do you feel about this image of God's justice?To what extent would we understand things differently today?