We move back one verse to pick up where we left off on Friday. "Return, you Israelites, to the One you have so greatly revolted against. For in that day every one of you will reject the idols of silver and gold your sinful hands have made." (Isaiah 31:6-7)
We studied this event in 2 Kings 19 when the Lord promised King Hezekiah through the prophet Isaiah: "This is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria: 'He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before it with shield or build a siege ramp against it. By the way that he came he will return; he will not enter this city, declares the Lord. I will defend this city and save it, for My sake and for the sake of My servant David.' That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning---there were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there." (2 Kings 19:32-36)
The Lord fought this battle alone on behalf of the citizens of Jerusalem and Judah. None of Isaiah's people had to even lift a finger; they simply lifted prayers to the Lord and the Lord came through for them. No idol fought for them. No idol ever answered them. In the day when the Lord supernaturally struck dead 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, the people gave Him the praise, so Isaiah says in verse 7 above, "In that day every one of you will reject the idols of silver and gold your sinful hands have made."
Before this miraculous defeat of the enemy comes to pass, the Lord foretells it, saying, "Assyria will fall by no human sword; a sword, not of mortals, will devour them. They will flee before the sword and their young men will be put to forced labor. Their stronghold will fall because of terror; at the sight of the battle standard their commanders will panic,' declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, whose furnace is in Jerusalem." (Isaiah 31:8-9) The reference to the Lord's fire may be a reference to the altar at the temple where burnt offerings were made. I believe He is saying something like, "I will defend the place of My name. I will defend My house. I will defend My people. Then the Assyrians will know that there is a God in Jerusalem and that He fights for the city."
When we studied the supernatural death of those soldiers we also learned that sometime after returning to Nineveh the king of Assyria was assassinated. "One day, while he 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." (2 Kings 19:37) Before breaking camp and returning to Nineveh, King Sennacherib had threatened the king of Judah that he would be back. But he did not go back. His successor Esarhaddon was plagued with intense paranoia and mental illness for the entirety of his rather short reign, although he did manage to subjugate Egypt, which is another reason we find the Lord in the book of Isaiah warning the people of Judah not to place their trust in Egypt. Egypt will be of no help to Judah and will be unable to prevent its own self from being conquered.
Eventually, as we learned from our study of the kings, the Assyrian Empire will be conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and will cease to be a threat. However, by that time a large portion of the people of Judah will have slipped into idolatry and, as a result, the Lord will allow the nation to fall to Babylon. But if they had stood firm in faith in the Lord, this could never have happened. You and I can learn a lot from what happened to ancient Judah and ancient Israel, for our trust is primarily to be in the Lord. That doesn't mean we aren't to use common sense and take reasonable precautions as we go through our daily lives but it means understanding that ultimately our lives are in His hands and that, as the Apostle Paul so confidently stated, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)
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