Rabbi Abhu once said, "Were it not for this Scripture text, it would be impossible to repeat what is written." He meant the verse in Isaiah: "On that day the Lord shall shave with a hired razor, with them beyond the River, with the king of Assyria — the head and the hair of the feet, and it shall also consume the beard" (Isaiah 7:20). A strange, almost scandalous image. And the Talmud tells a story to unpack it.
Sennacherib, the Assyrian tyrant who marched against Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah, was assembling his army from the sons of every king east and west. He was beginning to panic. How could he convince the kings of the earth to surrender their heirs to his conscription?
The Holy One, blessed be He, disguised Himself as an elderly man and came to Sennacherib on the road. "When you reach the kings of the East and the West and demand their sons for your army, what will you say to them?"
"This is exactly what I fear," said Sennacherib. "What shall I do?"
"Go and disguise yourself," the old man said.
"How?"
"Go and fetch me a pair of shears…"
The Talmud's story breaks off there, but the Isaiah verse completes it: the Holy One will shave the proud tyrant with his own borrowed razor. The tyrant who conscripts other people's sons will one day find his own dignity shorn away. God does not always fight His enemies openly. Sometimes He disguises Himself as an old man on the road, and hands them the blade they will use on themselves.