The Axe and the Hand That Wields It

…? But you, who lift your brows in vain over nothing, “have you not heard long ago these things which I have done?” (Isaiah 37:26). For if only you were willing, He says, to look closely into the words of My prophets, I said beforehand that these things would come to pass. For “I arranged them from ancient days” (Isaiah 37:26), that is, I decreed them and gave My assent; and now, when the time called for it, I have brought what was foretold to its end, so as “to lay waste nations in strong cities” (Isaiah 37:26), that is, cities that were not weak or easily taken.

“I let go My hands, and they were dried up” (Isaiah 37:27). For I, who long held them together through My forbearance so that they might exist and stand, withdrew the hand that defended them; and they withered like grass, faded like hay, and, like dry couch grass, were given as food to the fire.

This is what He says to him in another place too. For when the ungodly man had carried out what God had decreed should happen and thought great things of himself, he heard God saying again: “Shall the axe be glorified without the one who cuts with it? Or shall the saw be exalted without the one who draws it?” (Isaiah 10:15). For just as such tools do not, of course, move themselves to their work, but rather wait for the hand that moves them, so you too, He says, have become an instrument of the divine wrath. You did not do these things by your own powers; rather, you were like an axe and a saw, appointed to serve the will of the one who moves you.

“But now I know your rest and your going out; and your wrath with which you raged, and your bitterness, has come up to Me” (Isaiah 37:28-29).

So you boast, He says, though you were only the servant of the divine judgments, and perhaps you think that by yourself and alone you prevailed over so many nations and lands, so as to burn them and take them. But I know your rest, your going out and your coming in. By rest, as I think, He means death; and by going out and coming in, the path into anything whatever that is to be done. For nothing at all escapes the Mind that knows all things.

And when He adds, “Your wrath with which you raged, and your bitterness, has come up to Me,” He all but says: You will not have blasphemed without punishment. For I will by no means overlook the malice and bitterness of your unholy thoughts; but, as one provoked to grief, I will lay on your rages the penalty that befits them.

“And I will put a muzzle in your nose and a bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way by which you were coming” (Isaiah 37:29).

Since the Assyrian, in a senselessness most like a beast's, mocked God, and, as though he had bolted into unbridled wildness, let loose words of blasphemy against the glory of God, for this reason He says, and very fittingly, as of a beast: “I will put a muzzle in your nose and a bridle in your lips,” all but saying that by the blows He would bring upon him …