This is a continuation of a prophecy against the Northern Kingdom that began back in Isaiah 9:8. With each judgment promised, we saw the phrase, "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still". The idea is that the people would be seeing God’s judgment against their sin, but rather than repenting and turning from their sin, they kept choosing to walk away from the Lord. God has aimed at their pride and at their unrepentant hearts. Now He zeroes in a little closer on the leaders.

The unjust judges who make unfair decisions.

These judges would take advantage of the poor.

the day of visitation – The day that God visits you. It’s a time when God will judge you, (NIV) the "day of reckoning". In the New Testament, the Greek word that is translated similarly means, "that act by which God looks into and searches out the ways of men in order to judge them, whether for the good or bad".

The rulers will be crushed by those being taken into captivity and by the bodies of those being slain.

As before, the people would not turn from their sins, so God’s judgment continued.

The nation of Assyria is now addressed. We begin a new section of prophecy. Verses 10-11 indicate that the Northern Kingdom has already been destroyed by Assyria. This prophecy would have been given somewhere between 722 and 715 BC, the first of Isaiah’s prophecies under King Hezekiah.

O Assyrian – better, "Woe to Assyria"

rod … staff – Tools of a shepherd to guide and discipline the flock. It reminds me of:

Yet here, God calls the pagan, idol-worshipping nation of Assyria, His rod and staff.

The Assyrians would be sent against the nation of Judah.

hypocritical – chaneph – hypocritical, godless, profane, irreligious. Though Hezekiah had brought great reforms to Judah, this was still the characteristic of the majority of the nation.

The king of Assyria won’t know what he’s really doing. He’ll just think he’s out to conquer the world when he’s really being used by God to bring judgment against wickedness.

Assyria was a huge empire. It ruled over many areas, all which were ruled by kings. The emperor of the entire empire was referred to as the "king of kings". The truth is, the little nation of Judah was no bigger than just one of Assyria’s states.

These are all names of cities that have already been conquered by the Assyrians. This was one of the tactics of the Assyrians as they came against a city. They would threaten it by telling the city of all the other cities that they had conquered.

To the king of Assyria, the conquest of a land was a matter of which god was the bigger god. Every city had it’s own idols, and it was simply a matter of having the best gods. The Assyrians were becoming quite knowledgeable in the religions of the world. They were finding that they were all basically the same. After all, they had conquered all these various cities and kingdoms, and they all had their own different gods. As far as he could tell, to the king of Assyria, the other gods of these other cities were far superior to the gods of Israel.

When the Assyrians would finally come against Jerusalem, this was the mistake they made, thinking that the "god" in Jerusalem was another "see-nothing, hear-nothing, do-nothing" kind of god. This was how they taunted those in Jerusalem:

When God has given Judah the appropriate punishment for their sin, it will stop. God knows just how much is enough. He knows when to stop.

Can you imagine an ax looking at a tree that’s been cut down and puffing itself up and saying, "Look what I’ve done!"? Yet that’s kind of what we do at times when we get so proud of our accomplishments and want to take credit for something that God has done.