Isaiah 10:13
For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man: For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man:
Isaiah belongs to the first part of the book, chapters 1 to 39, which contains prophecies and historical accounts from active public work as God's messenger to the rulers and people of the nation. It is one of the single, distinct prophecies published at different times and on different occasions and afterward gathered into one collection. Chapters 40 to 66, by contrast, were written in later years apart from active public exertion and deal wholly with the future, with deliverance from the predicted Babylonian captivity under the monarch sent by Jehovah and with deliverance from sin and error through the Messiah.
The verse belongs to a section describing an invasion of Judah and the deeds of an Assyrian king, but the king's identity is not made clear by the section itself. Critics therefore treated the invasion as an idealized event by an ideal Assyrian king. The wider setting is chapters 10 to 12, which reprove the great sins of Judah in Isaiah's day, and those reproofs look forward to similar conditions in the last days, with the great deliverance at the coming of Christ.
Chapter 10 presents strife and war and wickedness, which stands in contrast to the rest and peace and righteousness of Christ's kingdom portrayed in chapter 11. The verse records the boast of the Assyrian ruler and conqueror that his conquests were won by the strength of his own hand and by his own wisdom and prudence. He removed the bounds of peoples, robbed their treasures, and put down the inhabitants as easily as a valiant warrior overcomes others. It illustrates the error of claiming power that comes only from God. Nebuchadnezzar's dominion was given by God, and he was an instrument in God's hands rather than an independent source of authority.
Success must be credited to God rather than to human weapons and glory. Israel could have made the same boast after driving out the inhabitants of Canaan, but God withheld the victory from their own weapons so they could not claim the glory for themselves. The verse belongs to a prophecy of a consuming process synchronized with worms consuming Babylon's fallen king. That consumption is applied to the papal king of Mystery Babylon, whose captivity in 1798 marks the end of the treading down of God's people.
The verse exposes pride in claiming human power and skill as the source of conquest. The church cannot claim a similar triumph through its own efforts, even in a supposedly nobler form.