Wrath on the Spiritual Assyrian

“…you have destroyed My land and killed My people; you will not remain for ever, evil seed. Prepare your children to be slaughtered for the sins of your father, so that they may not rise up and inherit the land and fill the land with war. And I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and I will destroy their name and remnant and seed” (Isaiah 14:20-22).

So the name of the Lord, he says, will come after a long time (Isaiah 30:27). If someone chooses to understand this historically, God took pity on Israel after seventy years. But if he follows the inner and hidden path of the meanings, he will grasp that the inventor of sin went on for a very long time laying the yoke of his own perversity on all who are on the earth, so as to make them his own worshippers and to bind them fast in the snares of sin. But after a long time the only-begotten Word of God appeared to us, and then came “wrath burning with glory,” and “the oracle of His lips, an oracle full of wrath” (Isaiah 30:27).

For Cyrus son of Cambyses, with God urging him on and rousing him to battle, marched against the land of the Chaldeans and took the land of the Babylonians by force. He became to them like wrath and fire, for he all but devoured them all; and since his assault could not be withstood, he appeared to those there like water rushing in a ravine, and filled all the nations of the Chaldeans with uproar and confusion, for they were justly condemned for vain error. For they supposed, as I said, that they had overpowered Judea even against God's will. So vain error seized them. For the effects of unmixed wrath were brought upon them by God, and they perished through their own impieties.

One may see the dragon, the author of evil, suffering this very thing. For the oracle of the Lord became for him an oracle full of wrath. He and the wicked powers with him were commanded to depart into the abyss (Luke 8:31). They were consumed as by fire, and, as though swept away by much water, they were carried by the power of the Spirit into the lowest depths. For these too were thrown into confusion for vain error.

For he said: “I will seize the whole inhabited earth in my hand like a nest, and I will take it up like eggs that have been left, and there is no one who will escape me or speak against me” (Isaiah 10:14). He supposed that he was truly God; and transferring to himself the glory that befits the Creator of all alone, he thought he could rule for ever over those on the earth. So they were thrown into confusion, condemned for vain error, and they were seized by it. For judgment, wrath and punishment were brought upon them, and for this reason.

“Must you always rejoice, and always enter My holy places as though keeping festival…” (Isaiah 30:29).