1 KINGS 9


9 And they shall answer, Because they forsook Yahweh their Elohim, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt [avot out of Eretz Mitzrayim], and have taken hold upon other gods [elohim acherim], and have worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath Yahweh brought upon them all this evil [ra'ah].

The history of the matter shows us the employment of a perfectly natural agency, in which there was nothing apparently divine at all. First one, and then another Gentile neighbour invaded and devastated the land with the objects common to all invaders. Take Sennacherib for example. He came "up against all the defenced cities of Judah and took them" (Isaiah 36: 1). He then set his face towards Jerusalem in which Hezekiah fortified himself in sorrow and apprehension. He heard that Hezekiah trusted to God to deliver him out of the hands of Sennacherib. He then sent this defiant message:

"Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee . . . Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by DESTROYING THEM UTTERLY, and shalt thou be delivered?" (Isaiah 37: 10).

It was true, the Assyrians had prevailed by military prowess in a wonderful manner, as the Romans did after them: but what is the fact that transpires concerning this? That they were divinely used and strengthened as the instrument of divine purposes. So Yahweh himself declares:

"I BROUGHT IT TO PASS that thou shouldest be to lay waste defenced cities into ruinous heaps. Therefore their inhabitants were of small power: they were dismayed and confounded" (verses 26-27).

Ways of Providence Ch 18.