Isaiah31chapter 31

Isaiah 31:1-3

go down to Egypt for help: The second Egypt woe repeats chapter 30's charge with its cause named plainly: horses, chariots and horsemen trusted for their number and strength while the Holy One of Israel is not looked to and the Lord is not sought. Isaiah answers that the Lord too is wise, and will bring the evil he has spoken, standing against the house of the evildoers rather than joining Egypt's side. The contrast at the center of the oracle is drawn in one line, the Egyptians are men, and not God, and their horses flesh, and not spirit, so that helper and helped fall down together when the Lord stretches out his hand.

Isaiah 31:4-5

Two figures carry the promise of protection in one breath. The Lord of hosts coming down to fight for mount Zion is first a lion holding its prey, unafraid of the shepherds called out against it, and then birds flying, defending, delivering and passing over to preserve Jerusalem. Delitzsch reads the pairing as deliberate, ferocity toward any threat and gentleness toward the city held together in the same two verses.

Isaiah 31:6-7

The oracle turns from Egypt to Israel's own heart with a direct call, turn ye unto him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted, naming the alliance itself as an act of revolt rather than only bad policy. The response promised is concrete, every man casting away the idols of silver and gold his own hands made for a sin. Henry reads the two verses as the hinge of the chapter, deliverance from Assyria following repentance rather than replacing it.

Isaiah 31:8-9

The Assyrian falls by a sword that is neither a mighty man's nor a mean man's, the same not-by-human-hand deliverance the histories record when Sennacherib's army is struck in one night. His young men are discomfited and his princes afraid at the ensign, fleeing to a strong hold for fear. Barnes reads the closing line, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem, as the chapter's answer to verse 1, the very city Judah tried to save through Egypt turning out to be where the Lord's own power was stationed all along.