Isaiah’s take on Assyrian imperialism

The prophet Isaiah is often remembered for his fiery pleas for social justice, urging his people to “learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, and plead the case of the widow.” Yet he was no hermit crying out from the wilderness. He belonged to the very establishment he condemned. Educated, well connected, and likely linked to the royal court, Isaiah moved among Judah’s intellectual elite, but his prophetic calling was to confront that same elite with their own corruption. Speaking from within the corridors of power, he became the voice of those who had none, denouncing judges, lawmakers, and priests who exploited the poor and twisted justice into oppression.

He warned that Yahweh’s wrath would soon fall upon Judah, yet he never lost faith that Jerusalem and the House of David would endure. Isaiah’s theology held these two truths together: divine judgment is real, but it exists within a covenant that cannot be broken. He was, in short, both a prophet of doom and a guardian of hope, a moral realist in a collapsing world.

A mind wrestling with empire

Isaiah 10 gives us a rare glimpse into how an educated Levantine observer tried to make sense of the Assyrian expansion under Sargon II.

By the late eighth century BCE, Sargon had established himself as the ultimate conqueror. He subdued Babylon, crushed rebellions in Syria and Israel, and reorganized his empire from a brand-new capital, Dūr-Šarrukīn (“Fort Sargon”). To the ancient world, his campaigns looked unstoppable. In his propaganda he claimed divine mandate: the gods themselves had entrusted him with global order.

Isaiah saw in this not merely a military threat, but a theological problem. How could an empire rise with such apparent divine blessing? Was Assyria an agent of chaos? Or an instrument of God? Much of what Isaiah says here can be misunderstood without this background. His words are not just religious poetry. They are political commentary, written in the idiom of divine justice.

“Woe to those who make unjust laws…” (vv. 1–4)

Isaiah begins at home:

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed…

For Isaiah, morality is the true foundation of national security. Yahweh’s covenant demands justice, especially toward the widow, the orphan, and the poor. Exploitation is not only unethical, it is self-destructive, inviting divine reckoning.

So when “disaster comes from afar,” the guilty will find no refuge. The implication is clear: Assyria’s advance is not random misfortune, but the moral consequence of Judah’s corruption. Yahweh’s anger “is still upraised,” because the system itself remains unjust.

“Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger…” (vv. 5–6)

Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger,
in whose hand is the club of my wrath!

Isaiah identifies Assyria — specifically Sargon II — as the very instrument of divine punishment. His “woe”, however, is not for cruelty but for the role Assyria plays in Yahweh’s plan. God sends him “to seize loot and snatch plunder,” to trample nations “like mud in the streets.”

This sounds harsh, but it fits the theological logic of the ancient Near East. When a nation fell, it was because its god had abandoned it and empowered the victor. Assyrian kings embraced this logic: Sargon portrayed himself as chosen by the god Aššur to punish rebellious lands. Isaiah adopts the same worldview but subverts it, declaring that the god who empowers Assyria is not Aššur, but Yahweh Himself.

“This is not what he intends…” (vv. 7–11)

But this is not what he intends…
His purpose is to destroy,
to put an end to many nations.
“Are not my commanders all kings?” he says.

Now Isaiah exposes the king’s inner ambition. The Assyrian ruler, though wielded by God, follows his own agenda: to destroy nations wholesale and replace their rulers with his own vassals.

Here the prophet reacts to a new imperial policy, perfected by Sargon II: the systematic uprooting of local dynasties and mass deportations. Entire populations were displaced and resettled, local kings were deposed and replaced with Assyrian governors. This was more than conquest, it was re-creation.

According to the traditional Levantine worldview, the gods (elohim) had divided the world among themselves. Each nation had its own deity, its allotted land, and its sacred kingship. By erasing borders and transplanting peoples, Sargon was overturning the divine order. He was not only subduing nations, he was challenging their gods.

From a constructivist perspective, Sargon’s empire represented a new social reality, built through ideology as much as force. The Assyrian king portrayed himself as the center of the world, transcending the old patchwork of divine territories. Isaiah’s response is theological but also political: the king who behaves like a god threatens the balance on which the world rests.

“By the strength of my hand I have done this…” (vv. 12–15)

“By the strength of my hand I have done this,
and by my wisdom, because I have understanding…”

Isaiah quotes the Assyrian boast: “I removed the boundaries of nations, I plundered their treasures.” This echoes real royal inscriptions, in which Sargon exalts his intellect and might while thanking the gods for support.

Isaiah’s critique is not that Sargon denies divine involvement, but that he appropriates divine agency. He behaves as though history belongs to him. The prophet ridicules this arrogance: does the ax boast over the one who swings it? The saw over the carpenter?

Assyria, in Isaiah’s eyes, is an instrument that has mistaken itself for the wielder: an empire drunk on its own ideology.

“Under his pomp a fire will be kindled…” (vv. 16–19)

The Lord Almighty will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors;
under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame.

The conclusion follows the logic of Isaiah’s universe: arrogance invites reversal. When Yahweh has finished using Assyria as His tool, He will break it. The “Light of Israel” will become a fire that consumes the empire’s glory.

Sargon’s death in battle (705 BCE) is not mentioned, suggesting that Isaiah wrote this oracle earlier. In the prophet’s worldview, that death was not coincidence but the moral physics of empire: the proud perish by the very forces they unleash.

A clash of world orders

Isaiah 10:1–19 offers a glimpse of imperial ideology at a turning point in Near Eastern history.

For Isaiah, Assyria appears as a new and unsettling kind of power, a universal empire that claims the right to erase nations and redraw the map of the gods. Opposing it stands the older Levantine order: a mosaic of kingdoms, each with its own god, land, and royal lineage.

His prophecy captures a battle between political worlds. On one side, Neo-Assyrian imperialism, centralizing, homogenizing, and asserting divine universality. On the other, the traditional multipolar system of divine territories, where authority is distributed among many gods and their peoples.

Isaiah’s words do more than warn Judah, they defend a cosmic equilibrium. To him, Sargon’s empire embodies injustice that violates the natural order, a human ambition trespassing into the realm of the divine.

And the question he leaves hanging still resonates: can any empire remake the world in its own image without awakening the fire that consumes it?