Isaiah 10:5–6

The Lord Turns on Arrogant Assyria

10:5 Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, is as good as dead,8

a cudgel with which I angrily punish.9

10:6 I sent him10 against a godless11 nation,

I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry,12

to take plunder and to carry away loot,

to trample them down13 like dirt in the streets.

8	tn Heb “Woe [to] Assyria, the club of my anger.” On הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) see the note on the first phrase of 1:4.
9	tn Heb “a cudgel is he, in their hand is my anger.” It seems likely that the final mem (ם) on בְיָדָם (béyadam) is not a pronominal suffix (“in their hand”), but an enclitic mem. If so, one can translate literally, “a cudgel is he in the hand of my anger.”
10	sn Throughout this section singular forms are used to refer to Assyria; perhaps the king of Assyria is in view (see v. 12).
11	tn Or “defiled”; cf. ASV “profane”; NAB “impious”; NCV “separated from God.”
12	tn Heb “and against the people of my anger I ordered him.”
13	tn Heb “to make it [i.e., the people] a trampled place.”