Canter Bridge

In the Isaianic vision, YHWH’s inventory of weapons bulges in its closet.

This deity of what remains of little Jacob can anoint Cyrus the Persian emperor in order to restore YHWH’s people in a cross between chess played out on the stage of international affairs and puppetry guided by an expert master.

If this is so in blessing, it is also true in judgement. In this part of the Isaianic vision, mighty Assyria and Egypt are wielded—though for different purposes—as effortless as Cyrus will in future perform YHWH’s bidding ‘though he not know him’.

On that day the LORD will whistle for the fly that is at the sources of the streams of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they will all come and settle in the steep ravines, and in the clefts of the rocks, and on all the thornbushes, and on all the pastures.

On that day the Lord will shave with a razor hired beyond the River—with the king of Assyria—the head and the hair of the feet, and it will take off the beard as well.

Isaiah 7:18-20 (NRSV)

We have perhaps grown too accustomed to reading this sort of thing to feel the shocking confidence required of the Jerusalemite prophet who would say it or write it. The nerve of such a little man amidst his tiny people, speaking of these two éminences grises of the Great Game! Who does he think he is?

Both of the these twin oracles are placed firmly in the sphere of YHWH’s sovereignty over the nations. ‘On that day the Lord…’ locates the envisaged events out of reach both of the prophet’s calendar and his capacity. These nearly identical introductions cement the prophet’s role as YHWH’s spokesman but emphatically not as his military attaché.

Then one must reckon with the denigration of the two empires’ identity. In the first oracle, YHWH’s whistle for the Egyptian fly and the Assyrian bee clearly communicates a vertical power structure. YHWH commands, his empires-cum-insects respond.

In the second oracle, Assyria is a razor, an inert implement with no functionality of its own, entirely dependent on the hand that wields it.

In this Isaianic vision of international events, YHWH brings the difficult matter of Israel’s disciplining to an unpleasant head. Yet he gives nothing away to those supposed powers that he will use in order to accomplish this dark phase of his purpose.

A Judahite prophet has the nerve to say so.