Isaiah 33

Isaiah asked a lot of his people. Their country was being devastated by the Assyrian army, the Nazis of their day. And they weren’t even supposed to get help from their bigger and more powerful neighbors, who were gearing up for their own war against Assyria. 

He wasn’t quite saying to turn the other cheek. The Assyrians still had to be punished for their crimes: 

Woe to you who plunder, though you have not been plundered; And you who deal treacherously, though they have not dealt treacherously with you! 

When you cease plundering, you will be plundered; When you make an end of dealing treacherously, they will deal treacherously with you. 

-- Isaiah 33:1-2 

The people of Judah, along with their other victims, would be avenged. But they would not be the ones to do it. That task fell to God:

“Now will I arise,” says the Lord. “Now will I be exalted; now will I be lifted up. You conceive chaff, you give birth to straw; your breath is a fire that consumes you. The people will be burned to ashes; like cut thornbushes they will be set ablaze.” 

-- Isaiah 33:10-12 

Isaiah’s message went hand in hand with his calls for people to put their faith in God to get them through the crisis. They were not supposed to do anything. Their salvation was not in their own hands.

The bigger issue was their own lack of faith. The Jewish people had gone their own way over the previous century, creating an unjust society that oppressed the poor and ignored every commandment that God had given them. That was the real source of their problems. 

It would have been a difficult message to hear. No one wants to believe they are ultimately responsible for their own misfortune. The more natural reaction would have been to focus on what had been done to them and vow revenge. 

There was an obvious boogeyman. The Assyrians were led by a ruthless king named Sennacherib. He ran the imperial bureaucracy for his father Sargon II until his death on the battlefield in 705 BC. The problem for Sennacherib was that he had not campaigned himself, and military service was how Assyrian kings gained legitimacy. So he had a hard time controlling their massive empire when he took over. Babylon, their most important territory, instantly revolted. 

Sennacherib’s response was doubling down even further on violence and cruelty, which is saying something given Assyria’s history. Sargon II had conquered Israel, the northern of the two Jewish kingdoms in the ancient Middle East, in 722 BC, and ethnically cleansed the region. Sennacherib showed even less mercy when he fought his way to the gates of Babylon. His army sacked the city and killed tens of thousands of people. They did the same thing in their march towards Jerusalem in 701 BC. Judah, like Israel before it, looked doomed. 

It all worked out in the end, exactly as Isaiah promised. The Assyrians put Jerusalem under siege, but never conquered it. Their army mysteriously withdrew rather than attack. The city was saved. So was the nation of Judah, as well as the Jewish people. 

But the Assyrian Empire had not been destroyed. They had plenty more armies, and still controlled most of the known world. Sennacherib sat on the throne in their capital city of Nineveh like nothing had happened. One of the reasons why we know the story told in the Book of Isaiah is true are the monuments that he built, which listed Jerusalem among the huge number of cities that he besieged, but not on the list of ones that he captured. The failed campaign was a footnote in the history of the Assyrian Empire. Justice had not really been served. 

The main characters in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove had to deal with the same issue. It tells the story of a late 19th century cattle drive from Texas to Montana led by two aging sheriffs. A woman (Lorena) is abducted from their party by a group of bandits. One of the sheriffs (Gus) rescues her in a dramatic firefight, but the leader of the bandits (Blue Duck) escapes. Gus decides to let him go rather than chasing him through the countryside: 

“Son, this is a sad thing,” said Gus. “Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don’t you go attempting vengeance. You’ve got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck I’ll kill him. But if I don’t, somebody else will. He’s big and mean, but sooner or later he’ll meet somebody bigger and meaner. Or a snake will bite him or a horse will fall on him, or he’ll get hung, or one of his renegades will shoot him in the back. Or he’ll just get old and die. Don’t be trying to give back pain for pain. You can’t get even measures in business like this.” 

His decision fits the broader themes of the book. The plot twists and turns and goes in unexpected directions. It doesn’t end when the cattle drive does. Not every crisis is resolved. Bad guys get away. The good guys don’t always “win”. 

The more important question in that situation was what “winning” would even mean. Lorena was in no shape for a manhunt, while Gus was needed by his friends back on the cattle drive. There was no guarantee that he would find Blue Duck, or that he would capture him if he did. The odds were that he would be throwing away the lives of a lot of people for nothing. 

What Gus says perfectly sums up the Christian perspective on revenge. We know that we live in a fallen world that will not be made whole until Jesus returns. There is no such thing as perfect justice on this side of eternity. But the good news is there is another side. God has promised us that every wrong will be addressed. We don’t have to live our lives consumed by vengeance. We can let things slide. After all, that’s what God did for us. 

Life is hard, and it comes in unexpected ways. Blue Duck is captured in Lonesome Dove, years after the cattle drive is over. Gus and his friends had nothing to do with it. There was just only so long that he could get away with his life of banditry before it caught up with him. 

Sennacherib didn’t escape justice, either. He fought numerous wars in the years after his failed siege of Jerusalem, extending the reach of the Assyrian Empire even further and destroying many civilizations in its path. The promise of vengeance that Isaiah had given him was probably the furthest thing from his mind when it finally happened in 681 BC: 

One day, while [Sennacherib] was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.

-- Isaiah 37:38

There aren't many worse ways to go than being murdered by your own children. But death is death even in the most pleasant circumstances. There's only so much time we are given in this world, and we all have to stand before God when we die. How we get there doesn't really matter all that much. 

There's no need for revenge. Life is hard enough as it is.