1. Woe, who go down to Egypt for help. The prophet continues the vehement argument against seeking an alliance with Egypt that was put forth in the previous chapter. While ʿezrah is a general term for “help,” it often occurs in military contexts, and that connotation is obviously relevant here. The prophet will play sardonically on this word in the next two verses.

who rely on horses / and trust in chariots. Egypt was renowned for its horses and active in exporting them. There is probably also a reminiscence of the Exodus story, in which all of Pharaoh’s horsemen with their chariots are engulfed in the Sea of Reeds.

2. But He, too, is wise. There is an implied opposition between God’s wisdom and power and the purported sages and soothsayers of Egypt.

4. As the lion growls. The lion is a stock image for martial fierceness in ancient Near Eastern poetry. Here it is applied to God, as the end of this verse makes clear.

to marshal forces on Mount Zion. This whole line is ambiguous because the preposition ʿal could mean either “on” or “against” (for the latter construction, see the New Jewish Publication Society rendering, “to make war against the mount and hill of Zion”). But the idea of God’s assaulting Mount Zion is hard to sustain because in the very next verse He is represented hovering protectively over Jerusalem. The marshaling of divine forces, then, would be God’s driving off the enemies besieging Jerusalem. This might be a reference to the sudden departure of the besieging army in 701 B.C.E., though that is not certain.

5. As birds fly above. The switch of similes is pointed: if God is a fearless lion confronting Israel’s enemies, He is also a gentle bird hovering protectively over His people.

8. And Assyria shall fall by a sword not of man’s. The formulation, evoking the idea of a miraculous defeat of the Assyrian army, appears to accord with the account of the sudden flight of the Arameans (not the Assyrians) offered in 2 Kings 7.

9. And his rock from terror shall crumble. There are difficulties in the wording of this verset and the next one. The metaphor of rock or crag is often attached to God in Psalms, but it is not elsewhere linked with a human leader, as many interpreters of this verse claim. Perhaps here it is meant to designate the military power in which the Assyrians place their trust. The verb that is translated here as “crumble” because of the context actually means “to pass on,” which does not sound appropriate for “rock.”

his commanders panic-stricken by the banner. The wording is cryptic and many scholars have proposed emending the text. The text as we have it could be correct: the Assyrian commanders, seeing the banners of the army attacking them, are terrified.

a fire in Zion / and a furnace in Jerusalem. Given the defeat of the Assyrians that has just been evoked, this is a destructive fire: the Assyrians assaulting Jerusalem imagined they had surrounded a city that they would overwhelm, but God tends a blazing furnace within the city that consumes its enemies