Women Rule Over Them

The second vision of Isaiah continues as God exposes the sins of Judah and Jerusalem.  The Word of the LORD foretells of the calamities He has sent and will send. YHWH was about to remove from them everything they placed their strength in. Bread and water would be gone. Mighty men and warriors would cease. There would be no more righteous counsel because God was going to remove judge, prophets, diviners, and the elders. Their military would be decimated because there would be no more commanders, honorable men, advisors, artisans to make their weapons. God was going to remove them all because they did not keep the Law, but went after other gods.

To make it even worse, God would replace those leaders with another calamity. He would make children their leaders. Mere lads with no experience would lead them. Capricious children would rule over them, acting on whims rather than relying on logic or reason. They would oppress each other and be oppressed by their enemies. The youth would storm against the elders, the inferior against the honorable. Ahaz became king at 20, Manasseh at 12, Amon at 22, Josiah at 8, Jehoahaz at 23, Jehoiakim at 25, Jehioachin at 18, and the last king, Zedekiah at 18. God did in fact give them children and lads as their kings from that point on.

Isaiah prophesied that a day would come in Jerusalem that it would be so desolate that those who remained would lay hold of his brother who has a cloak and make him ruler over the ruins. That brother would refuse, because his house would not have bread and he did not want to rule. All of this would come because Jerusalem and Judah had fallen because their speech and actions were against the LORD. They had rebelled against His glorious presence, their sins were not hidden but displayed as Sodom had done. For that reason these woes were coming on them. The righteous ones would eat the fruit of their actions. God promised blessings for obedience, so they would be fine. But the wicked would get what they deserved. It would go badly for them.

God would arise in judgment over His people, contending against them for their rejection of His Word. He would judge their rulers and princes for their injustice against the poor, widows, and orphans. They had plundered the house of the poor and devoured their vineyard, crushing them into the ground and took advantage of the poor. So God was bringing the promised calamities on them.

It was not just against the men that this would come. For God was judging the women too. He had given them children for princes and women ruled over them. In the days of Josiah's reign, when they found the book of the Law that had been lost, no godly men could be found. The only one left these men could inquire of the LORD through was a woman - Huldah the wife of the grandson of the keeper of the Temple Wardrobe. No godly men could be found to seek the LORD, all of them were gone. How the High Priest could have misplaced the Book of the Law is another story altogether, but this as well was God's judgment against them.

These women were rebuked by the LORD here also for their own sins. Their pride went before them also, heads held high with seductive eyes, mincing steps, bangles on their feet. God was going to afflict their scalps with scabs so their hair would fall out and make their foreheads bare. All the jewelry they covered themselves with would be gone, their fine clothes replaced with sackcloth. These proud women would be humbled. They would watch their men die by the sword and they themselves would no longer be surrounded by wealth and beauty, but ruins, lament, and mourning.

God blesses His people with godly men to lead them in His ways. When His people reject Him, He judges them by giving the women leaders who raise up children to lead them. God purposely removes godly men to give people what they think they want, but what they end up with is a horrible experience that destroys everything good. There is a right order of godly men who leader, and then there is disorder were women and children lead. All of these things came about in Judah and Jerusalem as the promised calamities were poured out on them for their rejection of God.