By Matt Harber
Synopsis: In Isaiah, the word “remnant” highlights both God’s faithful rescue of His people and God’s decisive defeat of His opponents.
Sennacherib’s invasion and humiliation of Judah in 701 BC is one of the best-attested events in the Old Testament. Three scriptural accounts (2 Kings 18-20; Isa. 36-37; 2 Chron. 32), plus numerous Assyrian records, and an impressive archaeological destruction layer all highlight the momentous importance of this crisis within Israel/Judah’s history. This article focuses on Isaiah’s invasion account, specifically how the word “remnant” in the Assyrian invasion story (Isa. 36-37) draws upon “remnant” language found throughout this prophetic book to highlight both God’s faithful rescue of His people and God’s decisive defeat of His opponents.
“Remnant” is a prophetic term for God’s covenantal preservation of His people through judgment. The most essential (and most surprising) feature of Isaiah’s “remnant” language is its ambivalence: the meaning of “remnant” can be positive or negative (or both). God’s remnant can be the object either of His judgment or His salvation (or both).
“Remnant” language in Isaiah derives from four Hebrew roots:
[יתר] [y-t-r] (1:8-9; 4:3; 7:22; 30:17)
[פלט] [p-l-ṭ] (4:2; 10:20; 15:9; 37:31-32; 45:20)
[שׂרד] [ś-r-d] (1:9)
[שׁאר] [š-ʾ-r] (4:3; 7:3; 10:19-22; 11:11, 16; 14:22; 16:14; 17:3, 6; 21:17; 24:6, 12; 28:5; 37:31; 49:21)
Four “remnant” passages in Isaiah feature a combination of two or more of these roots (1:8-9; 4:2-3; 10:19-22; 37:31-32). The last of these, 37:31-32, is the focus of our study:
And the surviving [š-ʾ-r] remnant [p-l-ṭ] of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant [š-ʾ-r], and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors [p-l-ṭ]. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (ESV, here and throughout)
The prophet Isaiah sends King Hezekiah these words in reply to his prayer for deliverance from Assyria (37:21-35). Isaiah’s oracle is followed by Jerusalem’s miraculous angelic deliverance. The question before us is how the term “remnant” (vv. 31-32) connects to God’s rescue (vv. 36-37).
The answer is not as obvious as it might appear, i.e., that “remnant” refers simply to the small Jerusalemite contingent whom God spares from the invasion. Surprisingly, the “remnant” in this context is both the delivered Judeans (v. 31) and the defeated Assyrians (v. 32). In other words, “remnant” refers both to God’s people and to God’s enemies! This double meaning can be demonstrated both by the immediate context (vv. 33-35) and by previous “remnant” language in chapters 7-12. Let us consider each of these lines of evidence.
First, we may use 10:19-22 as a convenient entry point into the Syro-Ephraimite War narrative (ch. 7-12). Like Isaiah 37:31-32, this is a passage full of “remnant” language:
The remnant [š-ʾ-r] of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down. In that day the remnant [š-ʾ-r] of Israel and the survivors [p-l-ṭ] of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant [š-ʾ-r] will return, the remnant [š-ʾ-r] of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant [š-ʾ-r] of them will return.
Isaiah is warning King Ahaz (to no avail) against allying himself with Assyria to solve his besetting military troubles with Aram and (northern) Israel. Assyria may seem like a powerful ally, but its strength is illusory and its downfall is decreed. A treaty with Assyria is a cure worse than the disease! In this passage, “remnant” refers negatively to (a) the pitiful remains of Assyrian glory following God’s judgment (10:19), and (b) the pitiful tally of Israel’s returnees from exile (10:22).
Sandwiched between these negative uses, however, are three positive uses of the word “remnant” emphasizing God’s rescue of a faithful “Israel/Jacob” (10:20-21). The phrase that opens 10:21, “a remnant [š-ʾ-r] shall return,” is an allusion to the name of Isaiah’s son, Shear-jashub [šeʾār-yāšû[b]], mentioned previously in 7:3. The boy’s name signifies to Ahaz a negative message: though Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel appear to be a formidable alliance, they are but “smoldering stumps” (7:4) who will soon be “shattered” (7:8). In other words, only a remnant of the enemy will “return” (yāšû[b]) home from its assault on Judah. We see then that the phrase “[only] a remnant shall return” can signify either a positive or a negative outcome, depending on the context.
Next, returning to chapter 37, we see a parallel between the “remnant” of the doomed Syro-Ephraimite assault on Jerusalem (ca. 734 BC), and the “remnant” of the doomed Assyrian siege of Jerusalem (701 BC) in the final verses of Isaiah’s oracle (vv. 33-34):
Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, [by the same he shall return] [yāšû[b]], and he shall not come into this city, declares the LORD.
This prophetic word is fulfilled in Isaiah 37:37, following the angel’s massacre: “Then Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh.” The “returning remnant” in 37:32-37, like the one in 7:3-9, is thus not Judah returning home from foreign dominance, but rather Judah’s enemy returning home in defeat. However—and this is the key point—the disgraced Assyrian “remnant” of 37:32 is juxtaposed with the saved Judean “remnant” in 37:31 just so that Judah and Hezekiah will humbly acknowledge that they too can be objects of God’s judgment, if they do not stand “firm in faith” (7:9), resisting the false security of convenient alliances (2 Kings 16:7-18; Isa. 30:1-17; 36:6-10). Whereas Ahaz utterly fails in this kind of faithfulness, his son Hezekiah partially (but not totally) succeeds (38:2; cf. 30:1-5; 39:1-8).
The last clue we should understand concerning “remnant” in Isaiah 37:31-32, in a double sense, is the declaration, “The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this,” which occurs only in Isaiah 37:32b (and its parallel in 2 Kings 19:31) and 9:7b. This distinctive phrase creates a link between the crises faced by Ahaz and Hezekiah, reminding us, along with other biblical father-son parallels, that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Isaiah charges Hezekiah to heed the prophetic message that Ahaz resisted, viz., that Judah is a remnant subject to both God’s mercy and God’s punishment. The mention of the LORD’s “zeal” reminds us that God can act fiercely both for and against His people, i.e., for their peace (Isa. 26:11-12) and against their apostasy (Exod. 20:5; 34:14).
For out of Jerusalem will go forth a remnant and out of Mount Zion survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this (Isa. 37:32)
For out of Jerusalem will go forth a remnant, and out of Mount Zion survivors. The zeal of the LORD will perform this (2 Kings 19:31).
Present-day American Christians, like Ahaz and Hezekiah, are susceptible to the allure of convenient alliances that promise short-term security but betray a deficient faith in the zealous God who saves us. In particular, the pseudo-religious bluster of recent electoral cycles and the polarizing algorithms of social media have led astray many of the Lord’s people, tempting us to exchange our integrity and witness for the illusory hope of cultural and political dominance. May God “make a remnant” of those who would oppose Him thus! “In returning and rest, you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15). It is God whose zeal creates and rescues His faithful remnant, then and now. To the extent that we, His church, rightly claim to be grafted into the faithful remnant of Israel through the work of Jesus, we share with Israel all that being the “remnant” entails: both God’s deliverance and God’s chastening, both His kindness and His severity. May we not become proud, but rather humble ourselves with awe!
