Though the cities of Judah were lost, and Sennacherib lay in the south of Judah with a mighty army, though hundreds of thousands had been carried away, and Jerusalem itself was now shut up, Isaiah was nevertheless more zealous and earnest in urging the people and the king to resistance than he had previously been in advising them to desist from the undertaking. The line of destruction would soon reach the Assyrians, they would not march into Jerusalem; Jehovah would rescue the remnant of Judah. "Lo! the Assyrian," thus Isaiah represents Jehovah as saying, "the rod of mine anger and the staff of mine indignation is in his hand. Against the people of my wrath I will send him to take the spoil, and to tread them down like the mire of the street.[303] But it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he saith: I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the princes like a valiant man. My hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped. By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent. Shall I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? Shall the axe boast against him that heweth therewith; or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? As if the rod led him that bears it, or the staff raised the man. Therefore the Lord of hosts will send a blight upon his fatness, and a firebrand will destroy his splendour, and diminish the glory of his forest and his fruitful field, and the remnant of the trees will be so few, that a child may write them.[304] When thou shalt cease to desolate, thou shalt be desolated: when thou shalt make an end to plunder, they shall plunder thee.[305] Jehovah hath determined it from the days of old, and from distant times he hath established it. I have suffered it to take place that the Assyrian destroyed the cities and made them heaps of ruins, and that their inhabitants were put to shame, of small power, as grass of the field. But I know the insolence of the mighty, and his going out and coming in, saith Jehovah. For the sake of his insolence, and because his tumult has come up into my ears, I will put my ring in his nose, and my bit in his mouth, and carry him back on the way that he came. O my people that dwelleth in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian. He smote thee with the rod, and lifted up his staff against thee. Yet a little while and my indignation shall cease, and mine anger shall turn to their destruction, and in that day his burden shall be taken from thy shoulder, and his yoke from thy back.[306] The king of Assyria shall not come into this city, nor shoot