The Axe and the Hand That Swings It — Isaiah 10
The greatest empire on earth is a stick in God’s hand, and does not know it. Isaiah 10 is about who is really holding the axe — in Assyria’s day, at the Second Coming, and in yours.
“O Assyrian, the Rod of Mine Anger”
“O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger… I will send him against an hypocritical nation” (Isaiah 10:5–6). Assyria was the superpower of Isaiah’s day, the empire that had already swallowed Damascus and Samaria and was reaching for Jerusalem, and God calls it a stick. The empire thought it was conquering, when in fact it was being sent.
Does the tool know it is a tool? No: “he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy” (10:7). The verb “think” is chashav, to plan or reckon, and most readers have met it without knowing it. When Joseph told his brothers, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20), “thought” and “meant” are that same chashav, twice over. Two plans run through one event. Man plans evil, and God plans through it.
Nephi’s copy adds a twist. Where the King James reads “the staff in their hand is mine indignation,” 2 Nephi 20:5 reads “their indignation.” The rod is God’s, but the rage is Assyria’s own. God did not put cruelty into the Assyrian’s heart; it was already “in his heart to destroy,” and God only decides where it lands and when it stops.
Eight Times “I” and Not Once “God”
“By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people… have I gathered all the earth”
Count them. In two verses he says “I” or “my” eight times. How often does he name God? Not ONCE. Lucifer climbed with five “I will”s in Isaiah 14, and this king looks back on what “I have done.” One brags of what he will take, the other of what he took.
Now go back to verse 12. “When the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion,” THEN He will punish “the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria.” Assyria is allowed to finish the job it was sent for, and is judged for the heart that did it. Hold on to those two nouns, strength and wisdom. They come back.
An Axe That Forgot It Was Wood
God answers eight brags with four tools, and this verse is the heart of the chapter.
Isaiah 10:15 — four tools, four hands
Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith?
or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it?
as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up,
or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.
Our arrangement. Each tool is paired with the hand that moves it — until the last, which has no hand and forgets it is wood.
An axe admiring its own edge, a rod swinging the man who lifts it — the images are absurd on purpose. The last words in Hebrew are lo’ ets, “not-wood.” The staff has come to believe it is something other than a stick. Why does that matter? Because wood is exactly what Assyria turns out to be. In verses 17–19 the Light of Israel burns “the glory of his forest” until the trees left are so few “that a child may write them,” and in verses 33–34 the Lord lops the bough, the high ones are “hewn down,” and He cuts the thickets “with iron.” The axe that thought it was the woodsman ends the chapter as the forest.
Ammon’s Answer to the King of Assyria
Set a missionary beside the king. The Lord had promised the sons of Mosiah, “I will make an instrument of thee in my hands” (Alma 17:11), and after years among the Lamanites, with thousands converted, Ammon could not stop rejoicing. His brother Aaron checked him: “I fear that thy joy doth carry thee away unto boasting.”
“I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom… Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things”
Strength and wisdom — the very two nouns the Assyrian bragged in, and Ammon names them in order to refuse them. Was he thinking of Isaiah 10? The text does not say, and it does not need to.
So what separates the two men? Not that one was an instrument and the other was not, because BOTH were in God’s hand, one a rod of judgment and the other an instrument of salvation. The difference is that Ammon knew it. An axe that knows it is an axe can be used for anything the woodsman wants. An axe that thinks it is the woodsman has to be put down.
After the lost manuscript in 1828, the Lord warned Joseph Smith that a man who “boasts in his own strength, and sets at naught the counsels of God” must fall (D&C 3:4). Even a prophet can start to think he is the hand. Joseph repented and was “again called to the work” (v. 10). Assyria never did.
The Light of Israel Becomes a Fire
Who burns the forest? Not another empire, but the Light of Israel HIMSELF: “the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day” (10:17). When Sennacherib’s army came against Jerusalem, the angel of the Lord “smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand” in a single night (Isaiah 37:36).
Is that the whole fulfillment? The chapter heading says no: “The destruction of Assyria is a type of the destruction of the wicked at the Second Coming—Few people will be left after the Lord comes again.” The Lord uses the same fire for the last days, when “all the proud and they that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and I will burn them up” (D&C 64:24). Assyria was the first draft.
And the survivors “shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the Lord” (10:20). “Stay upon” means lean on. Whom had Judah leaned on? Ahaz had written to Tiglath-pileser, “I am thy servant and thy son: come up, and save me” (2 Kings 16:7), so Judah leaned on Assyria, and Assyria is the one “that smote them.” Verse 21 then finishes the name of Isaiah’s son Shear-jashub, “a remnant shall return,” and says to whom: “unto the mighty God,” the el gibbor of 9:6, worked out in Immanuel and the Child. Paul quotes the next verses: “a remnant shall be saved” (Romans 9:27–28). God’s fire always has a remnant on the other side of it.
The Rod Changes Hands — “Because of the Anointing”
“O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian” (10:24). Why not? Watch the rod, which has been in Assyria’s hand since verse 5.
Isaiah 10:24–26 — the repeated words show it
A he shall smite thee with a rod, and shall lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt.
B For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease
A′ as his rod was upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt.
The same words in two hands: Assyria lifts its rod like Pharaoh, the Lord lifts His like Moses over the sea.
Verse 26 adds “the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb,” Gideon’s night (Judges 7:25). Egypt and Midian: both times God won with almost nothing in Israel’s hand.
“His burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.”
Here we have to be honest about the Hebrew. The words are mippenei shamen, “from the face of oil” or “because of fat” (interlinear), and shemen means oil, anointing oil included, and also fatness. The NASB reads “because of fatness”: an ox grown too fat for the yoke. But the King James reading is no Christian invention: Barnes and Gill both report that the Targum, the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase, reads, “the people shall be broken before the Messiah” (Bible Hub). And mashiach, “anointed one,” is the word the New Testament renders Christos.
Which is right? The Hebrew allows both, and they say the same thing from two sides. The yoke breaks because of what God poured on His people, and the Latter-day Saint reader, with the Targum, sees the Anointed One behind it. One yoke is destroyed so that another can be taken up, and His “yoke is easy” (Matthew 11:30).
From Aiath to Nob
Then a march, town by town, in the present tense, as if Isaiah stood on the wall watching the dust come closer.
Isaiah 10:28–32 — the march on Jerusalem
He is come to Aiath… Migron… at Michmash he hath laid up his carriages
they have taken up their lodging at Geba;
Ramah is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled.
Gallim… Laish… O poor Anathoth. Madmenah… Gebim…
As yet shall he remain at Nob that day: he shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion.
Our arrangement. Each line is a step closer; the poem walks you to the edge of Jerusalem, and stops.
Listen to the names. Michmash is where Jonathan climbed to the Philistines, Ramah was Samuel’s home, Gibeah was Saul’s city, and Nob was “the city of the priests” that Saul put to the sword (1 Samuel 22:19). The Assyrian marches through Israel’s own memory, a page of First Samuel at a time. Nob, says the Cambridge Bible, “must be sought in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem” (Bible Hub).
Which invasion is it? Honestly, nobody knows. In 701 BC Sennacherib’s men came up from Lachish in the southwest (2 Kings 18:17), not down this road, and the Pulpit Commentary calls the march “probably not historic, but prophetic” (Bible Hub). It is the road every enemy of Zion walks.
He gets as far as Nob and shakes his hand. And then: “Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall lop the bough with terror… and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one” (10:33–34). The poem never lets the siege begin, because the hand shaken at Zion is answered by the Hand that holds the axe. And out of the stumps, in the very next line, comes “a rod out of the stem of Jesse,” the first line of The Root of Jesse. Assyria’s forest does not grow back. David’s does.
Key References — Isaiah 10
- 2 Nephi 20 — Nephi’s text; compare verses 5, 13, and 23.
- Alma 26:10–16 — Ammon glories in the Lord, not in his own strength, and answers his brother’s worry.
- Isaiah 37:33–37 — The forest falls in one night.
Whose Hand Is on the Axe?
Every one of us is a tool in somebody’s hand. The question is whose, and whether we know it.
Assyria thought its strength was its own; Ammon knew his was borrowed. Same kind of instrument, opposite ends. Which am I when things go well? When the calling succeeds and the family prospers, do I hear myself say “by the strength of my hand,” or “in his strength I can do all things”?
And when I am the one under the rod? Isaiah’s word to Zion was “be not afraid,” because the rod is on a leash and the indignation lasts “a very little while.” The Assyrian can reach Nob, but he cannot take one step past where the Hand allows.
An axe does not choose whether it is used. It DOES choose whether it brags. Let Him swing it.
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