The lowest category on the ladder is Isaiah’s equivalent of Perdition—people who pass a spiritual point of no return. Isaiah identifies them as candidates for dissolution (shachat) as they and the very memory of them are ultimately erased. Guilty of treachery, tyranny, depravity, satanism, murder, and genocide, they are the orchestrators of evil in the world.
Isaiah 59:6–8Their works consist of wrongdoing; they manipulate injurious dealings. Their feet rush after evil; they hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are preoccupied with mischief; havoc and disaster follow in their wake. They are unacquainted with the way of perfection; integrity is not within their bounds. They have made crooked their paths; none who treads them knows peace.
Isaiah 29:15Woe to those who contrive to hide their schemes from Jehovah! They work in the dark, thinking, Who will see us? Who will know?
Isaiah 57:3–5As for you, come here, you children of the sorceress, offspring of adulterer and harlot! At whose expense do you amuse yourselves? At whom do you open wide the mouth and stick out the tongue? Surely you are born of sin, a spurious brood, who burn with lust among the oaks, under every burgeoning tree, slayers of children in the gullies under the crags of rocks.
Among Perdition types who descend the ladder and pass a spiritual point of no return is the end-time “king of Assyria,” also called the “king of Babylon” after Assyrian conquerors of Babylon. As a world conqueror on the model of the kings of Assyria in Isaiah’s day, this tyrannical figure exalts himself above God and above all that is of God and his people.
The equivalent of the “Beast” or “Antichrist” in the revelation of John, and of the “king of the North” in the Book of Daniel, the king of Assyria/Babylon exemplifies all tyrants and evildoers in the world. God uses him and his evil alliance of nations as his instruments for punishing his end-time people and the nations of the world for their consummate wickedness.
Isaiah 10:5–7Hail the Assyrian, the rod of my anger! He is a staff—my wrath in their hand. I will commission him against a godless nation, appoint him over the people [deserving] of my vengeance, to pillage for plunder, to spoliate for spoil, to tread underfoot like mud in the streets. Nevertheless, it shall not seem so to him; this shall not be what he has in mind. His purpose shall be to annihilate and to exterminate nations not a few.
Isaiah 37:23Whom have you mocked and ridiculed? Against whom have you raised your voice, lifting your eyes to high heaven? Against the Holy One of Israel!
Isaiah 14:13–15You said in your heart, I will rise in the heavens and set up my throne above the stars of God; I will seat myself in the mount of assembly [of the gods], in the utmost heights or Zaphon. I will ascend above the altitude of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High [God]! But you have been brought down to Sheol, to the utmost depths of the Pit.
When the king of Assyria/Babylon and his alliance have served God’s purpose of destroying the wicked of the world in God’s Day of Judgment, they themselves are destroyed. Their exalting themselves over God and his people ends in utter humiliation and burning by fire. God makes an end of them in that day and of all who emulate the archtyrant’s evil attributes.
Isaiah 33:1Woe to you, despoiler, who yourself was not despoiled; O treacherous one, with whom none have been treacherous: when you have done with devastating, you shall be devastated; when you are through betraying, they shall betray you!
Isaiah 30:33Tophet has been prepared of old, [a hearth] indeed, made ready for rulers; broad and deep is its fire pit and ample its pyre; Jehovah’s breath burns within it like a river of lava.
Isaiah 26:14They are dead, to live no more, spirits who will not resurrect; you appoint them to destruction, wiping out all recollection of them.