Isaiah 30:27 - Meaning and Application

This terrible warning about the ruin of the Assyrian army was more than a threat to them. It was also part of God’s promise to his people, Israel. God would not only punish the Assyrians for the harm they had done, but he would also stop them from doing the same again. This near event would also confirm the earlier promises that would be fulfilled in later days.

First, the Lord himself is pictured as angry and coming out against the Assyrians in power and terror. The Assyrians looked down on the name of the Lord and acted as if he were far away and harmless. But the Lord’s name comes from far, as though a messenger from heaven itself has arrived with a message of wrath. God’s lips are full of righteous anger at the blasphemy of Rabshakeh, the Assyrian officer who compared Israel’s God with the gods of other nations.

His tongue is like a devouring fire, because he can speak proud enemies into ruin. His breath comes with force like a flooding stream, and by it he slays the wicked (Isaiah 11:4). He does not hide his anger the way people often do when they are powerless or wrong. Instead, he makes his glorious voice heard when he declares war against an enemy who defies him (Isaiah 30:30). His anger is like a blazing fire, with lightning, storm, and hail, all of which show the terror of the Almighty God who rules nature.

Second, this anger is not empty words. People often threaten when they can do nothing else, but when God speaks, he acts. The operations of his providence, his wise rule over all things, carry out the warnings of his word. Those who would not see the lifting up of his arm (Isaiah 26:11) will feel it when it comes down. They will find that the burden is too heavy to bear (Isaiah 30:27), and they will sink under it. Who can measure the power of God’s anger, or imagine what an offended God can do?

Five pictures show how this judgment will fall. First, there is an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck and covers the whole army. Only Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, stays above water and escapes this blow, though he is still reserved for another judgment in the house of Nisroch his god. The Assyrian army had once been like a flood against Judah, reaching even to the neck (Isaiah 8:7, Isaiah 8:8), and now God’s breath of wrath will be like that against them.

Second, God has a sieve of emptiness for the nations that made up the Assyrian force (Isaiah 30:28). The great God can sift nations, because before him they are like fine dust on a scale. He will not use this sieve to save some and keep them, but to shake them together in fear and confusion and then cast them all away. It is called a sieve of vanity because it keeps nothing, and they are found to be all chaff.

Third, God has a bridle in their jaws. He will restrain them from doing the harm they want to do, and even force them to serve his purposes against their will (Isaiah 10:7). God says especially of Sennacherib that he will put a hook in his nose and a bridle in his lips (Isaiah 37:29). This bridle causes them to go wrong, pushing them into paths that will ruin them and their own interests. God guides his people into the right way with his word (Isaiah 30:21), but he turns his enemies toward their own destruction with a bridle.

Fourth, there is a rod and staff, which is the voice of the Lord directing judgment against them (Isaiah 30:31). The Assyrian had once been a rod in God’s hand to punish his people, and he had struck them with it (Isaiah 10:5). But now a settled, grounded staff goes out against the Assyrian. It gives a firm blow, stays close, and strikes home. This staff is fixed in God’s determined purpose and in the guilt of his enemies. It is a destruction already decided (Isaiah 10:23), so there is no escape. Wherever an Assyrian is found, the Lord will lay it on him and make it stay there (Isaiah 30:32). This is the miserable condition of all who stay at war with God, the wrath of God remains on them.

Fifth, Tophet is ready for them (Isaiah 30:33). Tophet was the valley of the son of Hinnom next to Jerusalem. It is thought that many Assyrian troops lay camped there and were killed by the destroying angel, or that their bodies were burned there afterward. Hezekiah, the king of Judah, had recently prepared it by clearing out the idols that had stood there, where children had once been burned in sacrifice. So it was made ready as a place for the dead bodies of Israel’s enemies. For the king of Assyria, meaning his army, it is prepared, with enough fuel to burn them all. They will be consumed as suddenly and completely as if a fire were fed by a steady stream of brimstone, because the breath of the Lord, his word and his wrath, will be like that fire.

As the prophet moves from the earlier promises into the promise of gospel grace and comfort, so here he rises from the fall of Sennacherib’s army to the final destruction of all who refuse to repent. Jesus calls the future misery of the lost Gehenna, after the valley of Hinnom, which gives weight to this image. The book of Revelation also speaks of the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. This place was prepared long ago for the devil and his angels, and for the greatest sinners, the proudest ones who think they answer to no one for what they say and do, even kings. It is deep and wide enough to receive the whole world of the wicked. Its fuel is fire and much wood, God’s wrath is the fire, sinners make themselves fuel, and the breath of the Lord, the power of his anger, keeps it burning. See Isaiah 66:24. Therefore, stand in awe and do not sin.

Third, this judgment should fill God’s people with great joy.

The fall of Assyria would be Jerusalem’s triumph (Isaiah 30:29). God’s people would have a song, like the song sung at night in the house of the Lord, a song of praise to the one who gives songs in the night. This would not be empty celebration. It would be a holy song, the kind sung at a sacred feast, with reverence and seriousness.

Our joy when the church’s enemies fall should also be holy joy. It should be gladness of heart, like someone going with a pipe, such as the sons of the prophets used when they prophesied (1 Samuel 10:5), up to the mountain of the Lord to praise the Mighty One of Israel. In every place where God’s judgment pursued the Assyrians, they would not only die without anyone mourning them, but their neighbors would also join in with tambourines and harps.

They would be glad to see how God fights in battles that shake nations and cast them out of the world (Isaiah 30:32). When the wicked perish, there is shouting. Wise and good people feel special satisfaction when they see the ruin of those who, like the Assyrians, openly defied God and trampled on everyone else.