31 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help
And rely on horses,
And trust in chariots because they are many
And in horsemen because they are very strong,
But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord!
2 Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster
And does not retract His words,
But will arise against the house of evildoers
And against the help of the workers of iniquity.
3 Now the Egyptians are men and not God,
And their horses are flesh and not spirit;
So the Lord will stretch out His hand,
And he who helps will stumble
And he who is helped will fall,
And all of them will come to an end together.4 For thus says the Lord to me,
“As the lion or the young lion growls over his prey,
Against which a band of shepherds is called out,
And he will not be terrified at their voice nor disturbed at their noise,
So will the Lord of hosts come down to wage war on Mount Zion and on its hill.”
5 Like [a]flying birds so the Lord of hosts will protect Jerusalem.
He will protect and deliver it;
He will pass over and rescue it.6 Return to Him from whom [b]you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel. 7 For in that day every man will cast away his silver idols and his gold idols, which your sinful hands have made for you as a sin.
8 And the Assyrian will fall by a sword not of man,
And a sword not of man will devour him.
So he will [c]not escape the sword,
And his young men will become forced laborers.
9 “His rock will pass away because of panic,
And his princes will be terrified at the standard,”
Declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.
Yet again, the sons of Israel are chastised for seeking help in Egypt when God is ready and waiting to help them. As we read, God even tells them flat out what they must do to receive His help. He tells them in vv. 4-5 how He will protect them, and in vv. 6-7 we see the conditions required. Simply, they must return to God and put away their idols.
Whatever they do, God tells them that the Assyrians will be destroyed, and not by man, but by God. As we saw earlier in Isaiah, God had already foretold the destruction of Assyria, and told them not to bother with Egypt. But they went anyway, and refused to repent and put away their less-than-helpful idols.
It wasn’t as if they hadn’t hear stories of God vanquishing armies. Even in the days of Ahab, who was not exactly a righteous king, God rescued Israel miraculously. For Ahab was swayed heavily by his wife Jezebel, and did all sorts of evil at her request. Still, God came through for Ahab on multiple occassions, even though he would later murder Naboth for his vineyard.
How much more so would God rescue those who repented and relied on Him? Jehoram, Ahab’s son, was no better at serving God, and he witnessed an Aramean camp emptied overnight, with plenty of spoil left behind. After all this, the sons of Israel still went to Egypt…
Yet in our own lives, do we go to God first? When we are making plans, or have a problem, do we ask Him what we should do? In our work, it may seem silly, after all, we think we know exactly what to do. Not that we shouldn’t ever ask for someone else’s help, but God may have a better plan. If we never ask, we’ll never know.
Rather, we should be always inviting God into our lives, and listening for His voice, and asking for His guidance. For His way is surest, and He cares about more than we might think, and wants what is best for us. That is, God wants to give us His best, but like the Israelites, we have to be willing to follow Him, and put aside our worldly idols, the things that distract us and draw us away from God.
Once more, seek Him first, that should be our highest priority. Just as Jesus told His disciples the top commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Everything else follows that, and is not before, or we’ll end up with a cart-drawn horse going nowhere, and wondering why…