"You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.' Therefore you will flee! You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.' Therefore your pursuers will be swift." (Isaiah 30:16) The references to horses may be a reference to the people's intention to call upon Egypt for help. Egypt was primarily where they procured their horses in those days, even though the Lord strictly charged the people not to trade with the Egyptians for horses and not to enter into an alliance with them.
Their intention to flee their enemies is an intention to flee from God, whether they realize it or not. They are rejecting His help because they don't want to submit to His authority over them. I'm reminded of when I was a child and would frequently reject the outstretched hand of my father or mother. I was a fiercely independent child who always wanted to do everything myself, even when it wasn't in my best interests. I painfully recall an occasion when, on an ice-encrusted sidewalk outside the post office, my mother cautioned me that I must hold her hand on the way back to the car. Stubbornly I refused, trotting off to the car on my own and falling embarrassingly on my bottom in front of everyone. A fall is what's going to happen to the people of Judah when they refuse the outstretched hand of the Lord.
Before the Lord brought the descendants of Jacob into the promised land He cautioned them that if they forsook Him they would flee from their enemies. By contrast, the reward of obedience was that their enemies would flee from them in all directions; He promised that no nation would ever be able to stand against them if they would remain faithful to Him. Because the spiritual health of the citizens of Judah will continue to dwindle over the coming decades, their nation will fall approximately 130 years after the northern kingdom of Israel falls. They will reap the consequences of forsaking the Lord, as we see in this next passage.
"A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee away, till you are left like a flagstaff on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill." (Isaiah 30:17) As we learned in our study of the kings, many thousands of the citizens of Jerusalem and Judah were deported by the Babylonians after the kingdom fell to the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Only the poorest and least skilled would be left in the land to labor for the enemy.
But this is not what the Lord wants for them! He does not want to have to bring this to pass. "Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!" (Isaiah 30:18) The Lord promised never to make an end of the tribes of Israel and He is going to keep that promise. On foreign soil they will remember Him and begin to call upon Him again. He will respond by restoring them to the land.
In the example of the fall I took outside the post office, my mother longed to be gracious to me. She wanted to prevent me from taking a fall. When I rejected her help, she didn't rejoice when I fell. She didn't say, "I told you so!" She didn't say, in response to my need for help in getting up off the slick sidewalk, "You'll just have to lie there. I'm not going to help you get up." The Lord doesn't do this to the people either. When they reject His offer of help they will fall, but He doesn't rejoice over their fall. He doesn't refuse to help them back up when they call out to Him. He will judge the heathen Babylonians who have oppressed them and He will do this by bringing an enemy against Babylon, an enemy whose leader will set the captives free, and the people will be allowed to return and rebuild.
No matter what mistakes you or I may have made, the Lord is not going to refuse to help us get back on our feet when we repent and cry out to Him for help. He longs to be gracious to us!
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