A sorry sight you'll be then, huddled with the prisoners, or just some corpses stacked in the street. Even after all this, God is still angry, his fist still raised, ready to hit them again.
I send him against a godless nation, against the people I'm angry with. I command him to strip them clean, rob them blind, and then push their faces in the mud and leave them.
When the Master has finished dealing with Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he'll say, "Now it's Assyria's turn. I'll punish the bragging arrogance of the king of Assyria, his high and mighty posturing,
the way he goes around saying, "'I've done all this by myself. I know more than anyone. I've wiped out the boundaries of whole countries. I've walked in and taken anything I wanted. I charged in like a bull and toppled their kings from their thrones.
I reached out my hand and took all that they treasured as easily as a boy taking a bird's eggs from a nest. Like a farmer gathering eggs from the henhouse, I gathered the world in my basket, And no one so much as fluttered a wing or squawked or even chirped.'"
Does an ax take over from the one who swings it? Does a saw act more important than the sawyer? As if a shovel did its shoveling by using a ditch digger! As if a hammer used the carpenter to pound nails!
Therefore the Master, GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, will send a debilitating disease on his robust Assyrian fighters. Under the canopy of God's bright glory a fierce fire will break out.
And on that Day also, what's left of Israel, the ragtag survivors of Jacob, will no longer be fascinated by abusive, battering Assyria. They'll lean on GOD, The Holy--yes, truly.
Your people Israel were once like the sand on the seashore, but only a scattered few will return. Destruction is ordered, brimming over with righteousness.
Therefore the Master, GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, says: "My dear, dear people who live in Zion, don't be terrorized by the Assyrians when they beat you with clubs and threaten you with rods like the Egyptians once did.
I, GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, will go after them with a cat-o'-nine-tails and finish them off decisively--as Gideon downed Midian at the rock Oreb, as Moses turned the tables on Egypt.
But now watch this: The Master, GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, swings his ax and lops the branches, Chops down the giant trees, lays flat the towering forest-on-the-march.