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The Lord Turns on Arrogant Assyria

“Beware, Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger,[a]
a cudgel with which I angrily punish.[b]
I sent him[c] against a godless[d] nation,
I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry,[e]
to take plunder and to carry away loot,
to trample them down[f] like dirt in the streets.
But he does not agree with this;
his mind does not reason this way,[g]
for his goal is to destroy,
and to eliminate many nations.[h]

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Footnotes

  1. Isaiah 10:5 tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.”
  2. Isaiah 10:5 tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (beyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”
  3. Isaiah 10:6 sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).
  4. Isaiah 10:6 tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”
  5. Isaiah 10:6 tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”
  6. Isaiah 10:6 tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”
  7. Isaiah 10:7 tn Heb “but he, not so does he intend, and his heart, not so does it think.”
  8. Isaiah 10:7 tn Heb “for to destroy [is] in his heart, and to cut off nations, not a few.”