Isaiah 10:24–27

Isaiah 10:24 — "Don't be afraid of the Assyrian" The oracle opens with a direct divine address: "My people who dwell in Zion." This intimacy is deliberate and theologically loaded. In the face of Sennacherib's terrifying campaign (c. 701 BC), in which Assyria had already swallowed the Northern Kingdom and was battering Judah's fortified cities (cf. Isa 36–37), God does not minimize the threat — he acknowledges the rod and the staff. The comparison to Egypt is striking: just as Israel was once subjected to the brutal labor-masters of the Nile, so now she endures the rod of a new imperial tyrant. But the Exodus comparison is not made to deepen despair — it is made to awaken memory and hope. The God who heard the cry of slaves in Egypt is the same Yahweh Sabaoth ("of Armies") who now speaks. The title "Yahweh of Armies" (צְבָאוֹת, tseva'ot) anchors the passage: the supreme Commander of heaven's hosts is sovereign over every earthly empire.

Isaiah 10:25 — "Yet a very little while" This is the hinge of the oracle. God acknowledges that there is genuine "indignation" (za'am) — a word used elsewhere in Isaiah for divine wrath (Isa 26:20) — that has been directed against his own people. Assyria is not acting independently; she is, as Isaiah 10:5 earlier declared, "the rod of my anger." But the divine anger against Israel is bounded: it has an appointed terminus. The phrase "yet a very little while" — me'at me'at in the Hebrew — emphasizes the brevity of the coming trial relative to God's ultimate purpose. Once that chastisement is spent, the same consuming energy will be redirected toward Assyria's destruction. This is the dialectic of divine justice: the instrument of punishment does not escape judgment simply because God used it.

Isaiah 10:26 — The Memory of Midian and the Sea God now reaches back into two peak moments of Israel's sacred history to frame his promise. The "slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb" refers to Gideon's rout of the Midianite army (Judges 7–8), in which a vastly outnumbered Israel, empowered by God alone, shattered a superpower. Oreb was one of the Midianite princes slain in the aftermath (Judg 7:25). Isaiah will return to this image in 9:4, linking Gideon's victory explicitly to the coming Messianic deliverer. The second image — "his rod… over the sea… like he did against Egypt" — is an unmistakable allusion to the parting of the Red Sea (Exod 14:16). Moses' upraised rod, the instrument of divine power, here becomes a type of God's future intervention. Both images underscore the same truth: when God moves to deliver, no military calculation can contain him.

Isaiah 10:27 — The Yoke Destroyed by the Anointing Oil The climactic verse builds to a startling phrase. The removal of the "burden" (sovl) and the "yoke" (ol) from the neck is classic liberation language (cf. Lev 26:13; Ezek 34:27). But the final clause — "the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing oil" (mip'nei shamen) — exceeds anything the Assyrian crisis alone could explain. The Hebrew is dense and contested: some read it as the fatness/flourishing of the land (i.e., prosperity will burst the yoke); others, with the ancient Targum and many patristic commentators, read shamen as pointing toward the "Anointed One," the Mashiach. The Septuagint renders this clause "because of the arm of the Lord," but the Targum explicitly introduces the Messiah. On the typological level — the level the Catholic tradition has consistently privileged — the yoke broken "because of the anointing" points to the One on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests (Isa 11:2; 61:1), the One whose coming Isaiah has already announced in chapters 7 and 9. The ultimate liberation from bondage is not Sennacherib's retreat but the redemptive work of Christ, the Anointed One par excellence.

Catholic tradition reads this passage on multiple interlocking levels, all of which are explicitly affirmed in the Church's interpretive tradition (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church §115–119 on the four senses of Scripture).

The Literal-Historical Sense records a genuine and remarkable fulfillment: the angel of the Lord struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a single night (Isa 37:36), and Sennacherib retreated and was later assassinated — a deliverance so dramatic it became a cornerstone of Israel's theology of divine protection of Zion.

The Typological Sense is where Catholic tradition shines most distinctively. St. Jerome, commenting on this passage in his Commentary on Isaiah, identifies the "anointing oil" with the Christus — noting that the very name "Christ" derives from the Greek chrisma (anointing). The yoke of sin and death that no human power could break is shattered by the Incarnate Son. Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth, reflects that Isaiah's liberation oracles form the "substructure" beneath Jesus' own proclamation in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18–19), where Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1 — "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim liberty to the captives." The broken yoke of verse 27 is thus a figura of the Paschal Mystery.

St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Isaiah) draws on the Midian and Egypt typologies to assert that God's deliverance always operates "not by human strength but by divine condescension," a principle actualized perfectly in the Cross — the apparent weakness of which becomes the power that destroys the yoke of death (cf. 1 Cor 1:18). The Catechism §520 speaks of Christ taking on humanity's "yoke," and his own invitation in Matthew 11:29–30 ("Take my yoke upon you… for my yoke is easy") is illuminated by this Isaiah passage: Christ does not simply lighten the oppressive yoke — he destroys it entirely and replaces it with one born out of love and anointing.

Contemporary Catholics frequently experience forms of spiritual and cultural "Assyria" — powers that seem overwhelming, whether personal addiction, ideological pressure, chronic illness, family breakdown, or systemic injustice. This oracle speaks with surgical precision to that experience: God does not pretend the rod is not real. He says, "though he strike you with the rod." The acknowledgment is pastoral before it is prophetic.

But the oracle refuses to let fear have the final word. The practical invitation is threefold: Remember — the God who parted the Sea and routed Midian is the same God addressing you now; bring your particular crisis before that saving history. Wait — "yet a very little while" requires active trust, not passive resignation; the trial is bounded. Receive the anointing — the Sacrament of Confirmation seals us with the very chrisma that shatters yokes; Catholics are, in a real sacramental sense, "anointed ones" who share in Christ's kingship, priesthood, and liberation. The broken yoke is not merely a future hope — it is already accomplished in baptism and renewed in every Eucharist. Living from that freedom, rather than from fear of the next Assyria, is what this oracle demands.