12. (a) How did Jehovah use “the Assyrian” as an “ax” with respect to ancient Israel? (b) At that time, what was Assyria’s relationship with Jehovah’s organization?

¹² In the days of the prophet Isaiah, Jehovah wielded the Assyrian World Power just like a “rod” in dealing the final blow to the apostate ten-tribe Kingdom of Israel. The fatal year was 740 B.C.E. Then Jehovah used the Assyrian World Power as his “ax” to chop down the idol-worshiping nation of Israel. This He did by letting the Assyrian armies climax their three-year-long siege of the capital of Samaria by capturing and making it like a miry trampling place. (2 Ki. 17:7-23; 18:9-12)

10. How is the identification of the “apostate nation” and “the people of my fury,” as spoken of by Jehovah in Isaiah 10:6, made sure?

¹⁰ What ancient nation was it against whom Jehovah of armies used the Assyrian as a “rod” and an “ax”? The reason why such a question concerns all of us today is that the ancient nation foreshadowed modern Christendom! Jehovah called the ancient nation “an apostate nation” and “the people of my fury.” (Isa. 10:6) By those words Jehovah meant the nation and people that made up the ten-tribe Kingdom of Israel, with its capital at Samaria. It had broken away from the kingdom of David, which had its capital in Jerusalem. The breakaway had taken place after the death of King Solomon the son of David. Testifying to the religious apostasy of the ten-tribe Kingdom of Israel, “the Assyrian” himself speaks contemptuously of the capital city Samaria and “her valueless gods.” (Isa. 10:11) Since, in the year 997 B.C.E., that kingdom of Israel apostatized from the worship of Jehovah as God, how could the gods introduced by the apostate kings of the nation be anything else but “valueless gods”? After Israel persisted for more than two hundred and fifty years in rejecting Jehovah as God, He was fully justified in speaking of them as “the people of my fury,” upon whom to use the “rod for my anger.”​—1 Ki. 12:25 through 13:6; 16:8-33; Isa. 10:5, 6.

18. “The Assyrian’s” ability to conquer Samaria was owing to what vital things?

¹⁸ At that time the ten-tribe Kingdom of Israel had become an apostate nation, a religious renegade! It had gone over to the worship of golden calves, yes, even of the pagan Baals. Samaria did not have Jehovah as its God. Instead, it had valueless gods and man-made idol images. Little wonder, then, that “the Assyrian” crowned his three-year-long siege of Samaria with the capture of it in 740 B.C.E.!