The Myth of the Determined Assyrian Attack

Calvinists often cite Isaiah 10 as evidence that God deterministically caused the Assyrian invasion of Israel. They claim that because God sent Assyria as a tool of judgment, and later punished them, this supports the idea that God ordains all events—including human sin—while remaining just in holding people accountable for actions they could not have avoided.

Isaiah 10:5-6 Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.

This language affirms that God used Assyria to execute judgment on Israel. However, the following verses clarify that Assyria’s internal motives were not aligned with God’s:

Isaiah 10:7 But this is not what he intends, this is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations.

The text explicitly states that Assyria’s intent was not to serve God’s judgment but to pursue its own destructive ambitions. This distinction between divine purpose and human intention is central to the passage. God used Assyria’s aggression, but did not implant the motives that drove it. Later, verse 12 reads:

When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, “I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes.”

The Assyrian king is punished not for executing a divine decree, but for arrogance and self-serving violence. If God had causally determined these motives, punishing them would be morally indefensible. The justice of the punishment presupposes that the king acted from his own volition and that his heart’s intent was not constrained by necessity. This passage supports the idea that God governs history through his providence without overriding the moral choices of human agents. The fact that God used the Assyrians to judge Israel does not mean he caused their evil choices. It means he allowed their choices to unfold within the scope of his sovereign plan and held them accountable for their own moral turpitude. The biblical text, then, does not affirm exhaustive determinism. It affirms divine sovereignty operating through human libertarian freedom.