Assyria Turns Relief into Invasion

The LORD brings days worse than the split of the kingdom

The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria. The LORD shall hiss for the fly in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee in the land of Assyria, and they shall come and rest in the desolate valleys, in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns and bushes.

Relief from Rezin and Pekah is not safety. Assyria, and Egyptian force with it, becomes the larger razor. The unit does not map those empires onto living peoples, and it does not make every later invasion this one.

Shaving, leftover livestock, and briars reverse cultivated Judah

In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard. A man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep; from the abundance of milk he shall eat butter. On all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen and for the treading of lesser cattle.

Hired shaving is imperial humiliation. Curds and honey, which sounded like a child's diet, become the diet of a depopulated countryside. Vineyards worth silver become brier patches for hunting. The promised sign's food is also the landscape of judgment. That severity still does not authorize cruelty or disaster-blame as a human program.