Isaiah

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24:14-16a "They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the Lord, they shall cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires, even the name of the Lord God of Israel in the isles of the sea. From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, even glory to the righteous."

 

In the Cambridge Bible, Skinner, a competent scholar, says frankly he does not know what this prophecy is about: "Events must have occurred which excited the premature expectation of an immediate deliverance. It is difficult to conceive the historical situation which is pre-supposed."

 

This is a remarkable statement to make, for Isaiah supplies the history (ch. 36-39) that goes with this prophecy, and (as will be seen by and by, and as has been seen already in other chapters) they match perfectly.

 

The rejoicing of v. 14,16a seems out of place after the sustained picture of woe in the first half of the chapter. But the destruction of Sennacherib's army is more than adequate explanation. However, men like Skinner do not believe in the reality of the cataclysm, and thus they blindfold themselves to the graphic primary reference of the words.

 

LXX ascribes these songs of thanksgiving to "those that are left in the Land," Here, by implication, there is a hint of a mighty destruction of many of God's people and a mighty captivity of others.

 

The song extols "the majesty of the Lord" which has destroyed the invincible enemy. It is the very phrase that is used in Moses' song about the sweeping away of Pharaoh's hosts at the Red Sea — a comparable deliverance. This Exodus allusion is reinforced by many other similar "Exodus" references in the later parts of Isaiah (e.g. 49:8-12).

 

But why should there be a cry of alarm "from the sea"? In more than one place the prophet supplies beforehand details of how the Assyrian destruction is to be wrought: e.g. "The Lord shall make his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones. For through the voice of the Lord (Ps. 29) shall the Assyrian be beaten down" (30:30,31). Sometimes the emphasis is on whirlwind (as also in 17:13; 66:15; 40:24; 41:16; Am. 1:14; Nah. 1:3) and sometimes on the Glory of the Lord (2:10,19,21; 63:1; 42:12; 10:16; 4:5; Ps. 29:2,3; 102:16).

 

The effects of the whirlwind would be specifically impressive by the sea. LXX has: "the waters of the sea shall be troubled." "Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind" (Ps. 48:7, a psalm which is clearly about the Assyrian destruction).

 

And because of this mighty phenomenon ("wherefore") "glorify ye the name of the Lord in the fires, the name of the Lord God of Israel in the coastlands." The word "fires" is difficult to make sense of. It is actually 'orim, a word very commonly used of the light of dawn. By the common figure of synecdoche it is put for "the regions of sunrise", i.e. countries east of Israel, whereas the coastlands or isles are put for the west. In the history, international reaction to the great deliverance is stated explicitly: "Many brought gifts unto the Lord to Jerusalem, and presents to Hezekiah king of Judah: so that he was magnified in the sight of all nations from thenceforth" (2 Chr. 32:23). "Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee" (Is. 25:3).

 

Just as God's deliverance at the Red Sea moved the people to almost delirious joy celebrating the triumph in the song of Moses, so also now: "from the uttermost parts of the Land have we heard songs (26:1; 25:1,5,9; LXX: wonders), even glory to the righteous one." Almighty God is never called the Righteous One, so the best alternative is reference to Hezekiah, especially since the word here for "glory" describes personal well-being, physical beauty. This is precisely how the king was personally blessed in his recovery from leprosy (38:21). LXX translators must have had this approach, for they read: "hope (that is, as often: hope of children; 38:19) for the Righteous One."

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24:16b-20 "But I said, My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously. Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again."

 

Whereas through most of the first half of Isaiah, interpretation with reference to contemporary events is relatively easy, but regarding the last days much more difficult, here all at once the "Little Apocalypse" (Is. 24-27) seems to demand application to the end of the age, and only with difficulty to Isaiah's own times. However, just now consideration of the apocalyptic meaning must be deferred in order to treat the passage consistently with what has already been said about verses 1-16a.

 

There is a dramatic intensification of style, made yet more pointed by a switch from the plural pronoun "we" to "And I said..."

 

The impressive repetition can read, as AV: "My leanness, my leanness," or as AVm.: "My secret mystery, my secret mystery." The former is an appropriate beginning to a picture of the kingdom of Judah ravaged and smashed. The latter suggests the idea: Whatever this prophecy may mean now, there is a much more complete and unexpected fulfilment to follow in due time. As will be seen, New Testament usage confirms such a reading.

 

"The treacherous dealers," as in 21:2 and 33:1, the latter especially, is splendidly appropriate to the way in which the Assyrian king accepted tribute as part of the peace treaty with Judah, but then proceeded with his campaign of conquest and destruction as though the men of Judah were utterly recalcitrant (2 Kgs 18:14-17). This imprecation was also specially appropriate to the Arab mercenaries who deserted Jerusalem and joined the enemy and hence the maledictions against Moab (25:10) and Edom (34:5).

 

The anguish and torment about to harrow the soul of the people of God is summed up in a dreadful and portentous triad: the fear, the pit, and the snare — in Hebrew pachad, pachath, pach. Nowhere else is Isaiah's paronomasia more effective.

 

The first of these has its root in the curse of Deuteronomy 28: "the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear." The Hebrew phrase is, literally: "the voice of the fear." These Assyrians were masters in the art of psychological warfare. Not only was their propaganda superbly presented so as to convince the faint-hearted in Jerusalem, but it was also said in Hebrew and in loud confident fashion to reach every one of the population on the walls of the city (36:4-22). Thus "the sinners in Zion were afraid; fearfulness surprised the hypocrites" (33:14).

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The precise form of 'fear, pit, and snare' goes undefined, but the associated phrases suggest the frightening violence of earthquake. "Fear" is the very word that is used three times about Uzziah's earthquake (2:10,19,21); and "the foundations of the Land do shake" seems clear enough, especially since lXX uses this very word for earthquake. "The noise of the fear" also chimes in very well.

 

But in this context the word "snare" is difficult, for its normal meaning is a trap by which animals are caught. But Psalm 11 suggests another idea: "Upon the wicked will the Lord rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest" (v.6). It is a picture of scarifying storm, with thunder and lightning, such as Isaiah himself describes (30:30,31). So perhaps the "snare" could be a violent storm not only frightening friend and destroying foe but also bringing flash floods down the wadis with such a startling and horrifying suddenness that their violence is powerful to sweep away those who would sweep away the holy people. But Psalm 18 is emphatic that this kind of display of the powers of nature is to be seen as a theophany, nothing less (18:7-15).

 

The build-up of awe-inspiring phrases seems to be framed so as to emphasize to God's people and to the enemy alike that there is to be no escaping the might of the wrath of God. It is "as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand upon the wall, and a serpent bit him" (Am. 5:19). "He that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered. Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down..." (Am. 9:1-4).

 

God's "opening of the windows of heaven" can be either in blessing (Ps. 78:23; Mal. 3:10) or in judgment (Gen. 7:11; 8:2). There can be little doubt which is meant here.

 

The figures of speech to describe irresistible destruction are very powerful. An ordered society which hitherto has felt pleased with itself now staggers aimlessly and helplessly like a bemused drunk; and what had seemed stable and permanent is now no better than a watchman's booth in a vineyard (s.w. 1:8) that has been battered flat by the intense gusts of a hurricane.

 

"Fall and not rise again" has an element of finality which did not prove true either of Jerusalem or of the Assyrian attacker. Both of them rose to fresh assertions of prosperity or power. But the Hebrew phrase is, literally: "and shall not add to rise," i.e. without any power of immediate recovery.

 

The reason for this judgment is spelled out in very explicit fashion: "the trans­gression thereof shall be heavy upon it." The holy Land and its many unholy people needed a good shaking, and got it. And the pride of Assyria was too nauseating to be tolerated. On that proud tyrant the stroke came with shattering thoroughness.

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24:21,22 "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited."

 

Reference of this passage, and of v.23, to the Last Days is comparatively straightforward. It is not so easy to see just what the contemporary meaning might be "In that day" continues allusion to the great theophany in Hezekiah's time.

 

Centuries later the highest point near Jerusalem was still known as "the camp of the Assyrians" — "the host of the high (proud) ones that are on high." And "the kings of the Land" would be the various rulers in near-by territories (they are listed in Psalm 83) who, whether gladly or under compulsion, joined in the Assyrian invasion.

 

Those were "shut up in the pit" in the sense that after the great manifestation of divine power and indignation they were no more trouble to God's people, but kept themselves to themselves.

 

That, however, was not to be the end of the story. "After many days" there would come a further visitation of punishment, a final end. This came, more than a century later, with the sensational uprise of Babylonian power which reduced mighty Nineveh to uninhabitable ruins and swept into Nebuchadnezzar's grand empire all the lesser powers of the Levant as well.

 

24:23 "Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously."

 

LXX has an exceptionally meaningless reading here: "And the brick shall decay, and the wall shall fall..." Yet it is possible to see how this sprang from unpointed Hebrew with only one letter different. Sun, moon, and stars are so often put figuratively for Israel (T.E. ch. 11) that one marvels that any other meaning was ever considered; yet even the great Sir Isaac Newton went sadly astray on this.

 

The meaning here must be either a national humiliation of Israel by their enemies or Israel's self-humiliation in repentance before God. Of these the latter seems the more likely, for the reason that the nation's reformation, already much encouraged by Hezekiah, would be furthered much more by the divine deliverance which came soon after.

 

The title "Lord of hosts" is especially appropriate to this deliverance brought by an angel of the Lord.

 

It is remarkable that at the first Passover, after the angel of the Lord had brought the people safely out of Egypt, the Song of Moses celebrated that "the Lord reigns for ever and ever" (Ex. 15:18). So, appropriately, after a Passover in Hezekiah's reign, a like deliverance was celebrated in similar words: "the Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Zion and in Jerusalem." These two geographical allusions are fitting, the first referring to the temple cleansed and re-glorified, and the second to the renewed allegiance of the common people.

 

The reference to elders or ancients of the nation is also appropriate, for whereas before Hezekiah's reformation gained momentum the leaders were a worthless lot (3:14), now (thanks to the support which came from Isaiah's school of faithful prophets) God has "restored thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, the city of righteousness, the faithful city Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness" (1:26,27).

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But when all is said that can be said, from this angle of contemporary fulfilment about this remarkable and impressive chapter, the fact has to be faced that its real significance concerns the last days and the coming of Messiah's kingdom. In this respect there is much similarity with the familiar and powerful utterances of Isaiah in ch. 2:1-5; 8:13-15; 9:3-7; 11:1-16, and others. In all these places a contemporary reference is readily traceable, but it needs a Messianic meaning to fill out the details and to provide a really satisfying picture.

 

The last day reference of ch. 24 will now be sketched briefly.

 

The repeated reference to eretz, the Land of Israel, insists that for fulfilment one must keep eyes focussed on the Holy Land, not on the super-powers.

 

The early verses describe an impending state of social and religious chaos. And "turned upside down" is surely to be linked with the third of the three overturnings foretold in Ezekiel 21:27. All the high hopes centred in the modern state of Israel — "the world's fourth super-power" — are here brought to ruin. There is nothing, nothing to inspire optimism.

 

The worst thing of all is that all this has to come to pass because "they have broken the everlasting covenant" (v.5). There is nothing left to the age-long bond with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The prospects of this heart-breaking situation about to bring Israel to ruin are already bleak. Most of the nation is starkly ir­religious. The ultra-orthodox wing is violently aggressive and at least as far removed from the spirit of the Law of Moses as were the Pharisees and Sadducees (the Separatists and the Righteous) in the time of Christ. The faithful remnant is so small and obscure as scarcely to be found.

 

Yet verse 13 makes clear that there will be a handful of the righteous in the last days, as in the days of Noah and the days of Lot, "seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal" (1 Kgs. 19:18; Mal. 4:5,6). It is only the existence of this valuable minority that will save Israel from utter extinction (T.E. ch.2). And it may well be that the emphasis here on ingathering and harvest songs is intended to suggest that Israel's political disaster comes at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles (but this also needs reconciling with the Passover hints associated in Isaiah with the second coming of the Lord).

 

"The majesty of the Lord," inciting His people to "lift up their voice" in gladness, is of course the appearance of the Shekinah Glory (Mt. 24:30). In chapter 2, which the New Testament specifically applies to the Second Coming, the same expression is used three times over (v.10,19,21). And with this open manifestation there will come a call not only to the Jews but also to countries east and west of Israel to "glorify the name of the Lord."

 

The Land itself will be filled with songs of gladness: "our hope is in the Righteous One." It never has been hitherto, but now at least there will come, through sheer force of circumstances, the change of heart for which the God of Israel has looked ever since Sinai. That reading: "hope" (LXX), if it can be sustained, is particularly eloquent; for it is a word that is often associated with the hope of children (e.g. Hos. 2:15; Ruth 1:12; Jer. 31:17; Ez. 37:11; Rom. 4:18; 15:13; Josh. 2:18), an emphasis which is never far away in the Promises to the Fathers (Gen. 15:5; 28:3,14; 48:16,19).

 

The dramatic change in the middle of verse 16 switches to the catalogue of horrors to be experienced immediately before the Second Coming.

 

Here the "treacherous dealers" are unquestionably Israel's implacable enemies, the Arabs. Jeremiah (48:42,43) quotes this passage from Isaiah with specific reference to Moab. Isaiah himself excoriates Moab (25:10). And in Psalm 83 all the Arab neighbours of Israel are listed as enemies of their "brethren".

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The triple terror — "fear and the pit and the snare" — together make a marvellously accurate and frightening anticipation of nuclear war. "The noise of the fear" is appropriate to a mighty explosion, a destruction coming down out of the sky when "the windows from on high are open." In this context "the foundations of the earth do shake" hardly needs explaining (cp. Ps. 46:2, a Hezekiah psalm).

 

"The pit" to which men flee could well be the underground shelter which every major government of the world has made preparation to use at the first threat of nuclear war.

 

And "the snare" is surely the insidious unperceived radiation which is the inevitable aftermath of every detonation of a nuclear device.

 

"The windows of heaven" were opened to bring destruction on an evil world in the days of Noah (Gen. 7:11; 8:2), and in the days of Lot (Gen. 19:24). And "as it was in the days of Noah" and of Lot, so it will be again, but with safety for the righteous (54:9-11; Lk. 1 7:26-30).

 

The force of all this language of terror is much intensified in the Hebrew text by the duplication of the verb forms: "broken, broken down...dissolved, clean dissolved...moved, moved exceedingly," and also by the assonance of the key words: "pachad, pachath, pach — scare, lair, snare."

 

But there is a strange "inconsistency" between the explicit declaration that "the Lord shall punish" and the Hebrew verbs which insist that "the earth has utterly broken itself down, the earth has clean dissolved itself, the earth has moved itself exceedingly."

 

The paradox is only apparent, for in other places where the judgments of the Almighty are detailed it is likewise emphasized that the modus operandi will be by allowing men to use their own diabolical cleverness against their fellows (Zech. 14:13; Ez. 38:21; Hag. 2:22; Jer. 25:32; Is. 50:11; 49:26; 19:2; 9:4).

 

The two kinds of warring hosts — "the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth" — seem to be a perfect anticipation of modern warfare, the latter phrase describing what has come to be called conventional warfare, and "the high ones on high" might, a generation ago, have aptly described the thousand bomber raids of World War II, but today have much more appropriate reference to the thousand pieces of sophisticated "hardware" now flying round this planet at varying distances up to five hundred miles, most of these being most certainly not for "scientific research" purposes but to be pin-pointed by electronic signal on an enemy target when occasion arises. "Star Wars" is now a familiar phrase in the world's vocabulary.

 

Commentators are fond of identifying these "high ones on high" as wicked angels filling the world with evil. But why invent such when men are capable of filling that role even better? There are no wicked angels. But the Bible has much to say about angels of evil, those whose dispensation from Almighty God is to exercise control in this domain of nature and human affairs (B.S. p.372f). Compare Paul's allusion to "the prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2:2). So it is not impossible that there is here an anticipation of the final winding up of this side of angelic activity. Regarding the last days did not Jesus foretell that "the powers of heaven shall be shaken" (Lk. 21:26)? Between the Olivet prophecy and this part of Isaiah 24 there is a remarkable series of verbal contacts (these are listed in "The Time of the End", ch. 20, where a number of other interpretative ideas are also suggested).

 

The gathering of these warring forces into a prison seems to be alluded to and expanded in the apocalyptic picture of the restraint put on "that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan" when Messiah's reign begins (Rev. 20:1-3). In "Revelation" H.A.W., ch.38, it is suggested that a proper reading of the Gog-Magog rebellion requires reference to the beginning, and not to the end, of the millennium — the equivalent, in fact, of Psalm 2 and Ezekiel 38. The traditional view involves a considerable series of discordant interpretations.

 

The reign of the Lord of hosts in mount Zion is clearly the climax of this last-day crisis. Christ and his redeemed extend their authority not only over the Holy Land but over the entire world.

At such time "the moon confounded and the sun ashamed" describes either the preceding phase of Israel's downtreading by triumphant enemies, or — more likely — the long-overdue repentance of the nation, its self-humiliation before the Man whom, formerly, they would not have to reign over them. At that time not only those who are the Lord's true temple, his mount Zion, but also the entire city of Jerusalem will gladly receive Jesus as "the Lord our Righteousness." And with them there will be the "ancients" of the race, the Fathers: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David — men of faith who received promises, believed them with heart and soul, but who have slept through long centuries till the day of fulfilment. Here, and not here only (25:8; 26:19), is Isaiah's confident doctrine of the resurrection.

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Chapter 25

 

25:1-5 "O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth. For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built. Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee. For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry place; even the heat with the shadow of a cloud: the branch of the terrible ones shall be brought low."

 

"They shall sing for the majesty of the Lord...songs, even glory to the Righteous One."

 

This was almost the only touch of happiness in chapter 24. Now the promised songs (25:1ff,9ff; 26:1ff) lighten the gloom. The second and third of these have a formal introduction, but not so this first one — unless 24:23b has somehow got misplaced.

 

The repetitious character of this chapter is very emphatic. Kay (in Speaker's Comm.) lists no less than 22 phrases which occur twice, and 3 which are found three times over. Also, in a remarkable way, the phraseology of this song inter­twines impressively with the wording of the Song of Moses (Ex. 15) and with Psalm 118 (a Hezekiah psalm). The first of these celebrates a deliverance of the nation by the Glory of the Lord, and the other deliverance of God's royal Servant, also by the Glory of the Lord. The appropriate Messianic fulfilment, quite inescapable, is also to be worked out here in due course.

 

The "wonderful things" wrought by God are the saving of His holy city from capture and devastation by the Assyrians, and the saving of His godly king from what seemed to be an inevitable and miserable death from an incurable disease. The siege and the sickness were two simultaneous trials, in both of which there was no hope of human salvation but only by dramatic act of God (38:5,6). These marvels are said to be "counsels from afar" because both had already been foretold some years before (14:25; 17:13; 4:2; 1:26; 8:14; 16:5; 22:20,21).

 

"Faithfulness and truth" was a well-established idiom for the promises of God (B.S. ch.17.15), especially those made to the ancient fathers and to David (Mic. 7:20; Ps. 89:1,2,24,22,29; Gen. 24:27).

 

The city whose humiliation is described is, of course, Sennacherib's Nineveh, which then vaunted itself as the queen-city of the world. Yet commentators have been known to make such observations as this one: "It is useless to try to determine which city, or who the 'strangers' are". Others, with studied vagueness, identify with the world-city which sets itself in opposition to Almighty God. Yet if there is one lesson the student of Holy Scripture needs to learn it is that always the specific interpretation is to be preferred to that which is vague or general. The Bible does not talk generalities.

 

Remarkably, the Targum seems to look in a different direction: "The idolatrous house of the nations (Gentiles) in the city of Jerusalem shall never be built again." This is actually a remarkably good interpretation, for in the days of Ahaz an important part of the temple had been handed over to an Assyrian garrison (2 Kgs. 16:18), and the rest of the temple had been handed over to an Assyrian god (16:10ff). The tremendous rivalry between the worship of Jehovah and of Ashur completely dominated Sennacherib's campaign. (On this, see H.Gt., pp.61 f). The contrast between the two holy cities is very marked in ch.26:5,1: "the lofty city, he (the Lord) layeth it low...even to the ground... We have a strong city: salvation will He appoint for walls and bulwarks."

 

But the city of Nineveh, the "palace of strangers (invaders; 1:7; 29:5)", stood proud and prosperous for another century. Then why does Isaiah speak here of its destruction as already accomplished? This is characteristic prophetic language (Rom. 4:17), asserting inevitable overthrow in these terms because Isaiah himself (ch. 13,14) and also Micah (5:6) and Nahum (ch.2,3) had already foretold this judgment. And once it was destroyed, then, unlike many another Near-eastern city, Nineveh never was re-built.

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In Isaiah's own time that 'city of the terrible nations" came to fear Jehovah through the havoc and slaughter wrought in the Assyrian camp outside Jerusalem. There "the noise of strangers" was brought to nought as though by the fire of the altar-sacrifice in Zion (=dry place). Indeed, it was "the shadow of the cloud" of the glory of the Lord which "brought low the Branch of these terrible ones." Sennacherib, aware that prophecies had been spoken about the Branch of Jehovah (4:2; 11:1) who would reign in righteousness and with divine power, was resolved on making himself into an even greater Messiah of his own people, under the aegis of "mighty Ashur." Instead, he became "a branch brought low" (25:5), a humbled tyrant fear­ing Jehovah and glad to send back to their homes the many thousands of Judaean captives he had rounded up. The "blast of his terrible ones" was truly devastating "as a storm against the wall" of the city of Lachish at the very time when he began the siege of Jerusalem. The archaeological reconstruction of the capture of that mighty fortress makes grisly reading. But Jerusalem remained inviolate because the Lord Himself was "a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat." For the sake of faithful Hezekiah and the remnant who were justified by their faith in him and his God, Jerusalem was inviolate, unmarked by the horrors of war, for it had "a Man as...a covert from the tempest...as the shadow of a great Rock (Jehovah) in a weary land" (32:2).

 

The "poor and needy" saved out of distress (note the singular pronoun) is none other than Hezekiah delivered simultaneously from the threat to his own life and the threat to his city. In the Psalms especially these terms "poor" and "needy" always have a strong flavour of godliness, not just the abject poverty of homeless refugees or of the helpless and starving.

 

Isaiah's language prophesying their salvation is almost a quote of his own earlier expectation:

 

"And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from the storm and from rain." (4:5,6).

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25:6-8 "And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth; for the LORD hath spoken it."

 

It is a phenomenon readily recognizable in Isaiah's prophecies (and most others) that of the two-fold fulfilments to be sought — contemporary and Messianic — sometimes one and sometimes the other dominates the phrasing and imagery. This has already been readily observable in many examples in the present exposition.

 

In this paragraph now under consideration the Messianic kingdom clearly dominates, in a quite thrilling fashion, as will be seen by and by. Even so there is marvellous appropriateness to Hezekiah's times, and this must receive attention first.

 

There is clear evidence in chapters 58,59 of an outstanding Day of Atonement (after the Assyrian overthrow). With this there would undoubtedly be an almost deliriously happy Feast of Tabernacles, only four days later.

 

The language of verse 6 — "a feast of fat things, wines on the lees, marrow" — is markedly Feast of Tabernacles in character. What a contrast with the black threat of starvation throughout the Land as the invaders devastated or burned crops and destroyed fruit trees! "In this mountain" is, of course, the temple. And Isaiah says "this" as implying that he himself lived close by.

 

"The covering cast over all the peoples" (amim nearly always=Israel) refers to death (cp. v.8) rampant in the Land. But also there was a like veil over "ail (Gentile) nations" wherever brutal Assyrian power had struck. This "covering" also recalls that, worn by the leper when, crying 'unclean, unclean!' he declared his own living death. How appropriate considering that Hezekiah was himself struck down by a galloping leprosy then miraculously healed.

 

And suffering Gentile nations shared in the gladness (14:1; 16:4; 19:18-25; 23:18; 2 Chr. 32:23; 2 Kgs. 20:12).

 

Hezekiah's sickness was swallowed up in victory (38:19-21), his tears were wiped away (38:5; 30:19; Ps. 116:8), and the reproach of his people — the Assyrian menace — was taken away from off all the Land (Ps. 44:13-16; 79:10,11; 89:50,51; Mic. 6:16).

 

But Isaiah must surely have known, as on other occasions, that whatever fitness his words had as commentary on the stirring, indeed unbelievably exciting, events of his own day, their real force must yet be looked for in the majestic days which even today still lie in the future.

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25:9-12 "And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand of the LORD rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill. And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim: and he shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of their hands. And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust."

 

"The reproach of God's people rolled away" (v.8) reads like a direct quotation of Joshua 5:9. There, at a special Passover, the people said farewell to the reproach of Egypt and began with confidence to enter into their inheritance. The mass circumcision before that feast signified the renewal of their Abrahamic covenant.

 

The deliverance from Sennacherib took place at the time of a Passover celebration (31:5; 30:29; 26:20,21). Then, indeed, was the reproach of Assyrian propaganda (36:4ff) rolled away when divine power shattered all the might of the enemy. There was no offensive action by the men of Jerusalem. This was entirely the act of "our God." They had "waited for Him" (26:8; 33:2). And now they re­joiced in His salvation (Ps. 118:24). "In this mountain (Zion) the hand of the Lord rested" in protection. But for the enemy, Zion, originally a threshingfloor, became a place of downtreading of the Lord's enemies.

 

But why should Moab be singled out for special judgment? The double reason would appear to be that Moab, exhorted to put confidence in the God of Zion at the time of Assyrian invasion, had cravenly gone over to the enemy, seeking to curry favour with the invader as the men of Esau had also done (20:13-17)

 

Accordingly, Isaiah's language makes a characteristic play on the names of Madmenah (dunghill) and Misgab (fortress) two of the main Moabite cities (Jer. 48:2).

 

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At first the Messianic reference of this chapter seems to be vague and imprecise. Here, in the opening verses, is the destruction of a hostile city and the saving of another, as in Hezekiah's day. But which cities? The mention of Moab in verse 10 suggests the Muslim hostility to Israel in the last days. It may be taken as fairly certain that as a "palace of strangers" the Dome of the Rock is due for divine demolition, "it shall never be re-built." But so also the rest of the Old City. After all, if the Mount of Olives is to be riven by an earthquake (Zech. 14:4), this may be taken to guarantee utter ruin for the city which is half a mile away.

 

But the New Jerusalem, already in existence, will survive "when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall." When God brings judgment on the ungodly, He takes care not to involve His faithful remnant (Noah, Lot, Rahab, Hezekiah, and such). The "wonderful counsels" promised from "of old" will come to fruition through him who is also foretold as God's "Wonderful Counsellor" (9:6), whose name in the day of his might and majesty is "Faithful and True" (Rev. 19:11). And, by contrast, the branch of the oppressors — Mohammed, no less — will be brought low. "With the sword of Zion" (so the Hebrew text may be read) thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers."

 

There is a remarkable parallel to these opening verses in Rev. 11:13: "And in the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted and gave glory to the God of heaven."

 

In the next paragraph (v.6-8) every detail seems to be explicitly about Messiah's kingdom. Its blessings begin "in this mountain", that is, in mount Zion. The evidence that the Judgment will take place in Jerusalem is considerable: Mt. 25:31 (24-26)-3:12; 13:41; Lk. 19:15; Is. 66:23,24; 51:16; 40:9; Ps. 50:1-5; 122:4,5; Mt. 27:53. And the evidence that saints will receive their immortality at Jerusalem is even more specific: 25:6 by itself could hardly be more explicit; but also: 4:3; Ps. 133:3; 87:6; 102:18-22; Joel 2:28 (Acts 2:17,28; Gal. 4:26).

 

In several places here Isaiah intensifies his description of this Feast-of Tabernacles celebration (Zech. 14:16) by repetition and play upon words in the manner that he is so fond of. Of these the most striking is "fat things" (sh'manim), "wines on the lees" (sh'marirn), this latter word meaning "wines that have been long kept" {shamar); cp. Ps. 36:7-9. The first of these terms refers to the meal offering, which was never offered without oil (Lev. 2:1,2,6; s.w.), the oil being God's portion. Thus the idea, more clear in the Hebrew than in the English, is an emphatic repetition: Bread, Wine, Bread, Wine; precisely as Jesus promised at the Last Supper: "I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God" (Lk. 22:16); "I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom" (Mt. 26:29). So it is wine long kept (two thousand years, nearly) and yet in its forward-looking meaning it is the new wine of the new life of the kingdom. This emphasis on Bread, Wine, Bread, Wine, is repeated in 55:1,2 (see the exposition there).

 

A further implication behind this promise of a heavenly meal emerges from its designed echo of the meal of fellowship which was provided for the representatives of Israel when the Mosaic Covenant was ratified at Sinai (Ex. 24:11). That covenant was set aside by Jesus with "a New Covenant in my blood for the remission of sins" (Mt. 26:28). Now Isaiah describes the full achievement of all that the New Covenant stands for — and not only for "all the peoples" (amim, that is, the tribes of Israel), but also for "all nations" (goyim, the Gentiles); were there not seventy elders who participated in that first covenant? Yet the promise of that symbolic experience was never realised by Israel's dutiful evangelisation of the Gentiles. Now Isaiah tells how it will be realised: "Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down (to the Messianic feast) with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob (the 'ancients' of 24:23), in the kingdom of God" (Mt. 8:11).

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The "covering" which is the "vail spread over all nations" is helpfully identified by the next verse as "death swallowed up." The allusion is to the linen wrapping round a corpse, especially "the face bound about with a napkin" (Jn. 11:44), "the linen cloths with spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury" (Jn. 19:40). "The napkin that was about the head" (Jn. 20:7) repeats with reference to Jesus what was true concerning Lazarus. Accordingly Isaiah's Hebrew has the word for veil (Iōt) twice over. Furthermore this word lot is a double-meaning word, describing also the myrrh which came twice in the experience of Jesus (Mt. 2:11; Jn. 19:39). Hence the unusual word "swallow", used twice (v.7,8) with reference to the myrrh of suffering. This, with its symbolism of suffering, is now to be removed for all time. It stands true specially for Isaiah himself, for his mysterious phrase "the face of the covering can also be read (with one different vowel) "before me, in my presence"; thus here the prophet declares his personal faith in his own resurrection to share in the fulfilment of his own prophecy, as he does also in the next chapter: "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise" (26:19).

 

Paul, combining Isaiah with the story of the unperceived glory in the face of Moses, writes of his own people as smothered in a spiritual death: "Even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart (their mind). Nevertheless when it (their heart) shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away" (2 Cor. 3:15,16). This is a truth proclaimed in many places in Scripture, that the Second Coming of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead can only take place when there is repentance in Israel (Rom. 11:15 especially).

 

"He will swallow up death in victory" can be read quite dogmatically as an announcement of the resurrection of the dead, for it is in an unambiguous context about the resurrection that Paul quotes these words (1 Cor. 15:54). And he is so thrilled with the power of the passage that he repeats the word "victory" twice more, thus steering his readers not only to Isaiah 25:8 but also Rev. 15:2 and 1 Chr. 29:11.

 

The word is specially appropriate as being yet another of the double-meaning words that Isaiah loves to play with. Not only "victory" but also "eternity, for ever." And this meaning Paul also insists on with his emphatic "immortality" and "in­corruption."

 

The last figure of speech here is surely the best. "The Lord God shall wipe away all tears from off all faces." It is a picture of the angel of the Lord personally wiping away for ever the tears of sadness which have been inevitable in the experience of all saints in Christ. This incomparable comfort will be one of the greatest of the blessings of the kingdom of God. For the assurance of the sore-tested believer it is so picked out in two apocalyptic visions of the age to come (Rev. 7:1 7; 21:4).

 

Behind these words is yet a further comfort. More than once it has been said: "How shall I be able to enjoy the blessedness of the kingdom if one whom I have so long and so dearly loved does not share it with me?" To this Isaiah's answer is that even such tears will be wiped away. The implication is that all memories involving sadness will be blotted out by the imparting of a superb faculty for forgetting: "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded" (Jer. 31:16).

 

Christ wept at the graveside of Lazarus, and his prayer was heard (Jn. 11:35). In Gethsemane there was "strong crying and tears" (Heb. 5:7). Yet he sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. He wept over Jerusalem, and still weeps; but Isaiah gives assurance that "in this mountain" these tears also will be wiped away. In misery indescribable a stricken father, figure of faithful Abraham, beseeches Christ for help: "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief", that is, the faithlessness of my son, this nation of Israel. This is said in the day of Transfiguration, and with tears; and these tears also are wiped away, for the son is beloved for the father's sake. By the space of three years Paul ceased not to warn the brethren at Ephesus night and day with tears (Acts 20:31). And, taking no heed, they left their first love (Rev. 2:4). Will these tears also be wiped away?

 

"To them that look for him shall the Lord appear without sin unto salvation" (Heb. 9:28). Here, in Isaiah, there is not only a waiting for him (repeated) but also rejoicing in his salvation: "Lo, this is our God," the "mighty God" who is to sit on the throne of David (9:6,7).

 

But for those who, out of kinship with the people of God, should have been loyal friends and allies, but instead of that turned to be bitter foes (e.g. the Arabs of the West Bank and other Arabs of the land of Moab) — for such there will be punitive measures to teach the salutary lesson which should have been learned long ago This is only one of the many neglected prophecies about the hostile role of Arab peoples, and about their correction, which are associated with the pictures of Messiah's coming (J.A.B.P. ch.4-6).

[Resource Manager]

Chapter 26

 

26:1-4 "In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:"

 

Here is yet another song of rejoicing, following on those of chapter 25.

 

This paragraph is a classic example of how vague and pointless commentators can be when they fail to recognize or make use of the historical background of the prophecy. In the Cambridge Bible, Skinner, a very competent scholar, can only achieve this: "These verses might have been written for a dedication of the fortifica­tions of Jerusalem" — but at least he is right in focussing on Jerusalem! And Birks describes them as "a devotional meditation rather than a prophecy."

 

The evident Messianic reference of these words will be detailed at the end of this chapter. But first it must be shown how every phrase belongs, in the first instance, to the great deliverance in Hezekiah's time, and for his sake.

 

The resemblances of these verses to Psalm 118 are quite unmistakable, and that is without doubt a psalm about Hezekiah's deliverance:

 

"The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation...Open to me the gates of righteousness...This gate of the Lord, into which the righteous shall enter...The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner" (v.14,19,20).

 

There is emphasis on "the land of Judah" not only because Judah means praise but also because the entire land, overrun and devastated by the Assyrians, was being promised deliverance. What a contrast also with the down-treading of Moab (25:10), and the judgment threatened against "the city of the terrible nations" (Nineveh; 25:3,12; 26:5).

 

"Salvation will God appoint instead of walls and bulwarks." Here is a sharp contrast with the frantic efforts made (22:9,10; 2 Chr. 32:3-5) to restore the decrepit neglected defences of the city. Instead — complete safety ("peace, peace") because the Covenant God of Israel encircles it with His protection. This sentence has no specified subject, thus allowing a lovely ambiguity of reference either to Hezekiah, the strength of his people, or to Hezekiah's God who now gives this assurance. "The wisdom and knowledge (of Jehovah) shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the Lord is his treasure...thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down" (33:6,20).

 

Two sections of the nation are described: Those already in the city, protected by the might of Jehovah (25:4); and the "righteous nation" which holds on to the Promise of God ("the Truth") and which now comes in solemn procession to join in the honouring of the God of (their) battles. But why is the word "nation" (goi), used here since it normally describes Gentiles? Because here is one of the earliest anticipations of the deliverance from Assyrian bondage of the 200,000 captives who had been marched off to Babylon (Taylor Prism). Turned into Gentiles in a foreign land, they are to be as speedily and unexpectedly restored by the might of their God.

 

It is uncertain whether these are being described as "the righteous nation" or "the nation of the Just One (Hezekiah)". But in any case the gates are opened to them with gladness and praise to enter only after the Just One himself, the King of Glory, has entered in (Ps. 24:8,10).

 

In Jerusalem "the people rested themselves upon the words of Hezekiah: With us is the Lord our God" (2 Chr. 32:8). Their imagination (faith making real what was not visible) was stayed on Him, and there was therefore "peace, peace, to him that is far off (the multitude of captives), and to him that is near (the reassured citizens of Jerusalem)" (57:19).

 

The Hebrew of verse 4 could hardly be more emphatic than it is: "...because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord for an eternity of eternities, for in Jah Jehovah is a Rock of Ages." The figure of the Rock (17:10; 44:8m) finds its meaning with special reference to the altar stone where Abraham was ready to offer his son and which became the foundation of the altar of burnt offering (Ps. 118:22): "Come into the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel" (30:29m).

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26:5-9a "For he bringeth down them that dwell on high; the lofty city, he layeth it low; he layeth it low, even to the ground; he bringeth it even to the dust. The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy. The way of the just is uprightness: thou, most upright, dost weigh the path of the just. Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early:"

 

The repetitions here are remarkably effective:

 

them that dwell on high — the lofty city;

even to the ground — even to the dust;

the foot shall tread it down — the feet of the poor — the steps of the needy;

the way of the just — the path of the just;

uprightness — thou, most upright

O Lord — thy name — thy memorial; (R.V.)

my soul — my spirit;

I have desired thee — I will seek thee early.

 

"Them that dwell on high" may be the Assyrians looking down on Jerusalem from Mount Scopus. And "the lofty city" to be "laid low" can hardly be other than Nineveh whose pride was crushed with the destruction of its army. One modern commentary suggests here 'the fortress of Moab" or Susa (Shushan) or Tyre!

 

"Poor and needy" are terms to be read always in psalms and prophets with a religious sense — those whose faith leaves them apparently helpless (as the worldly man would think) in the face of hard circumstance.

 

"We have waited for thee" echoes 25:9. After God had given assurance (37:22-29) of deliverance from the Assyrian siege, it needed a special kind of tenacity to hold on in confidence that the help of heaven would not fail them. This confidence built on the certainty of God's Promises: "Thy Name, Thy remembrance or memorial." Careful use of a concordance on these two words will reveal that they occur always in a context of the Covenant Name.

 

So Hezekiah and his faithful remnant gave themselves to watching and prayer in the night (the night of Assyrian destruction), and seeking God early in the morning, they beheld their enemies "all dead, corpses!"

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26:9b-11 "for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the LORD. LORD, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies shall devour them."

 

When God's judgments, already foretold several times by Isaiah, are in the Land — manifested in the destruction of Sennacherib's army, then "the inhabitants of the world", that is, the surrounding nations, will learn to appreciate His righteousness, and that which happened was a salvation that He had brought.

 

This duly took place: "Many brought gifts unto the Lord to Jerusalem, and presents to Hezekiah king of Judah" (2 Chr. 32:23).

 

But before all this came about, "favour was shewn to the wicked (Assyrian)" in the lavish payment of tribute at the time when he was poised to invade the Land.

 

"And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.

And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasures of the king's house.

 

At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria." (2 Kgs. 18:14-16).

 

That Hezekiah himself would do such a thing is in sharp contrast with his godliness and the faith he showed in Jehovah (see 2 Chr. 32:6-8). The only possible explanation is that this craven submission took place during Hezekiah's sickness when the administration of national policy was in the hands of Shebna and the princes, men whose faith in the Lord was so flimsy as to be politically worthless.

 

But Sennacherib was a "treacherous dealer." There was no uprightness in him. His invading army came on just the same, "dealing unjustly" in "the land of uprightness," in Hezekiah's Judah with its recent reformation. There was no regard, no respect for the majesty of Hezekiah's God: "Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest, deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria" (37:10). By these words Sennacherib showed that he knew the prophetic counsel with which Hezekiah was being reassured. He had his informers inside the city. Shebna may have been his chief spy.

 

But the prayer of verse 11 is an expression of the king's intense faith. The almost unnecessary repetition of God's Covenant Name builds up a most impressive emphasis: "Lord, when thy hand is lifted up (as it was in the land of Egypt long ago), although they do not want to see (and acknowledge) thy might, this they shall most certainly see," to their discomfiture: "they shall be ashamed." Micah 7, a prophecy of the same events, has the same language: "The nations shall see, and be con­founded at all their might" (7:16).

 

The bitterness and malevolence behind Sennacherib's campaign is clearly ex­posed. It sprang from "their envy at the people" (amim, Israel). This invasion was a backlash from the austere campaign by Jonah in Nineveh, bringing complete humiliation to all that people and kingdom. In these later days Sennacherib, zealous for the honour of Ashur, now came intending to rectify the balance: "Yet forty days and Jerusalem shall be overthrown." Everyone knew that this war was a contest between Jehovah and Ashur. In it "the fire of the Lord's enemies" would destroy them — the ferocity of their hostility would make the judgment of heaven inevitable.

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26:12 "LORD, thou will ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us."

 

Here, the name of Jehovah, already repeated so many times, is specially intense. The dependence on Him expressed here is very strong.

 

The spirit of this verse is precisely that of verse 17 and the desperate appeal of the nation's leaders to Isaiah: "The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth" (37:3) — that is, we have no recourse by which we may save ourselves. So "it may be that the Lord thy God" will yet come to the rescue. With little confidence in Jehovah themselves, they feebly and pathetically sought comfort in Isaiah's and Hezekiah's faith in Him.

 

But God can "work" best of all in the midst of men's desperation. Therefore, "fear not ye: stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord" (Ex. 14:13).

 

26:13,14 "O LORD our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us: but by thee only will we make mention of thy name. They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish."

 

Who are these "other lords"? who have "baaled it over us"? Are they foreign kings who have dominated Judah? Or are they the pagan gods which the chosen people were fond of importing?

 

The answer is: both. There is a double usage here, highly appropriate especially to the reign of Ahaz who weakly brought in an Assyrian altar to be the centre of worship in the temple court (2 Kgs. 16:12-14) and who also handed over part of the temple area to an Assyrian garrison (16:18).

 

But now, even in the face of the challenge and frightening threats of the king of Assyria, Hezekiah was putting his trust in "Jehovah our God."

 

Here Isaiah's scorn is caustic. These gods are dead, and will never have any life in them. And the bullying Assyrian who worshipped them will assuredly share their fate (pp. 14:9-12). LXX reads: "Thou hast made every male to perish" (the word for "memory" is the same in Hebrew, except in its pointing). But the reading "memory" must not be let go (one of Isaiah's characteristic double meanings!) This allusion (see v.8,13b) contrasts the futile "memorial" of the Assyrian god with the utterly dependable Covenant Name of Jehovah. Here then, is explicit prophecy of the visitation which would leave the hills and valleys round Jerusalem carpeted with Assyrian corpses (Heb: rephaim). What a contrast with the confidence in verse 19!

[Resource Manager]

26:15-18 "Thou hast increased the nation, O LORD, thou hast increased the nation: thou art glorified: thou hadst removed it far unto all the ends of the earth. LORD, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them. Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O LORD. We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen."

 

The Hebrew text hereabouts is difficult, as indeed it is nearly all through Isaiah, but here especially so. By their variations the LXX translators seem to concur with this sentiment.

 

If AV, then the repetition of "increased the nation" may be intended to cover first the renewed adherence to the temple of the people out of the northern tribes (9:3,4; 2 Chr. 30:10-12), and also the return of the multitude of captives from Sennacherib's Babylon (49:19,20 etc).

 

But LXX adds the words "evils", thus making this verse a comment on all the tribulation through which the nation was passing (Lev. 26:18).

 

But yet another possible reading makes the words a prayer for God to show His hand against the oppressor: "Add unto them evils, O Lord, add evils to all the glorious ones on the earth." However, the context seems to favour reference to a stricken Israel struggling to survive as the waters of the great River overflowed through the Land (8:7).

 

Similarly, the second half of this verse is susceptible of two opposite readings, as meaning either: "Thou hast removed it (the nation) far unto the ends of the earth" (cp. 6:12; 43:6; Am. 9:9; Dt. 28:64), or as RV: "Thou hast enlarged all the borders of the Land" (Ps. 48:10), as much of the northern kingdom was now joined again in loyalty to Jerusalem. Again, the context (v. 16,17) encourages the former reading.

 

And in all this dire trouble king Hezekiah visited the Lord his God in the sanctuary, there to pour out a prayer (2 Kgs. 19:14-19; cp. Is. 37:4) to the only source of succour for his people. The word for "prayer" strictly describes a secret incantation bringing magical results. In spite of its normal heathen associations, the word is marvellously appropriate, for this prayer of Hezekiah, uttered quietly in the sanctuary, achieved what nothing else could, and in almost magical fashion.

 

The nation in its trouble is likened to a pregnant woman suffering all the pain of delivery, yet unable to give birth to her child. Micah (4:9,10) has the same figure in the same sort of context. When the official deputation — Eliakim the high priest, and Shebna — returned from the fruitless and discouraging encounter with Rabshakeh, the king promptly sent them to seek the aid of God through the mediation of Isaiah; and here again the same harrowing figure of speech was employed: "The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth" (37:3), the implied meaning being: the nation has made its effort to achieve a new birth (the reformation Hezekiah himself had led), and yet has found itself suffering more than ever. "So have we been in thy sight, O Lord." The Hebrew text here suggests: "from before thy Beloved," with reference to the messengers sent by the son of David. Isaiah, characteristically, probably meant both ideas.

 

"We have as it were brought forth wind" should be more probably read: "Like him (Hezekiah) we have brought forth wind," i.e. no real achievement. "We have not wrought deliverance in the Land" (or, possibly, "we do not make the Land salvations") alludes to the apparent failure of their Passover observance to be followed by the sort of deliverance which the first Passover brought. There are not a few other Passover allusions to follow (e.g. v.20,21).

 

It is surely likely that the figure of a woman suffering all the pangs of child-birth, and yet to no purpose, is also an allusion to the familiar promise of a redeemer who will be the long looked-for Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15,16). Hezekiah was one of the finest foreshadowings of the promised Saviour, but only a prototype.

 

The final phrase: "neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen" seems to be pointless. Nor is there any Biblical evidence for the desperate RVm reading: "been born" (for "fallen"). Perhaps LXX comes to the rescue here: "We shall not fall (in military disaster), but all that dwell in the Land shall fall." Jerusalem was saved, but the whole Land was ravaged, and then its ravagers were themselves swept away in the wrath of the Lord.

[Resource Manager]

26:19 "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead."

 

The real fulness of meaning of this verse, or indeed of the entire chapter, belongs to the days of Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. But there is another sense of the words appropriate to the prophet's own day that is not to be ignored. But from both angles there are real difficulties here in the Hebrew. The LXX reading is much more straightforward and perhaps therefore to be preferred:

 

"The dead shall rise; and those in the tombs shall rise up; and those in the Land shall rejoice, for the dew from thee is healing for them; but the land of the ungodly shall fall."

 

Is this a simplification (and distortion) of a difficult Hebrew original, or is it a trans­lation of an older more dependable text?

 

In several places, beside the familiar Valley of Dry Bones prophecy, the raising of the dead is an evident figure of the restoration of a stricken Israel:

 

"The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him (this is Is. 26:17,18)...I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction" (Hos. 13:13,14) — a passage which clearly applies initially to Israel, but which is strongly quoted by Paul with reference to the resurrection of the dead. (1 Cor. 15:54); see B.S.p.347.

 

So there is no difficulty about taking the present passage to foretell the nation's revival in Hezekiah's day, with perhaps specific reference to the multitude of captives who were to return home after the overthrow of the Assyrian army.

 

The singular: "my dead body" is taken by most commentators to be a collective plural (a parallel to "thy dead men"). But why should not this personal pronoun refer to the king himself, stricken with the killer sin-disease and yet miraculously restored to another fifteen years of life?

 

However it is taken, the figure of the dew is not easy. RV "dew of light" may be safely discarded as meaningless. "Dew of herbs" is strongly reinforced by Mic. 5:7 (in an 'Assyria' passage immediately after the figure of Israel as a woman in travail: 4:9,10): "The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people (the invaders?) as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass." And Isaiah has the same figure to describe the wondrous blessing of God coming in the night, "like a clear heat upon herbs, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest" (18:4). "The wrath of the King (the Almighty) is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass" (Pr. 19:12).

 

The final clause in this verse 19 can be read in more than one way. The AV is not very literal, for "cast out" should certainly be "fall" or "cause to fall." Instead, then: "the land of the dead (meaning: oppressing Assyria) thou shalt cause to fall" (cp. LXX reading). Or, with reference to God's Land: "On the earth, on the dead, thou wilt cause it (the blessing of the dew) to fall." But of course there is much more meaning, as will be seen by and by.

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26:20,21 "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

 

For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain."

 

The "people" appealed to here are not the nation as a whole, for the big majority merited retribution (24:5), and the Assyrians were God's instrument in this (10:5,6); but they are the faithful remnant who in spirit gathered round God's king and prophet. This remnant has been symbolized as a woman in travail (v. 17), and accordingly this command to "hide thyself" is feminine in Hebrew.

 

The instruction to these is precisely that given by Moses to Israel at their first Passover: "None of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning...the Lord will pass over (i.e. hover over) the door, and will not suffer the destroyer (the angel) to come in unto your houses to smite you" (Ex. 12:22,23).

 

This instruction to "shut thy doors about thee" is the first of four Passover phrases here: "until the indignation be overpast...to punish the inhabitants of the earth (cp. the Egyptians)...and shall no more cover her slain."

 

The "little while" which would see both retribution on the brutal invader and salvation for the faithful had already been anticipated by Isaiah: "For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction" (10:25). It is expressions like these which make it palpably clear that Isaiah was not writing after the event. These were genuine prophecies of what would soon come to pass when "the Lord cometh out of his place" i.e. from His dwelling in the temple. There was no human saviour in sight.

 

It is remarkable that in this place Isaiah quotes from Micah (1:3; contrast Is. 2:1 -4) when he prophesies punishment on Israel and Judah for their ungodliness, an anger which expressed itself in the Assyrian invasion; and now the same words are the prelude to the punishment meted out against the invader (cp. 10:5,6,12,13).

 

Thus "the earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain." Too many dead to allow of burial! "The blood of thy saints (holy people) have they shed like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them" (Ps. 79:3, another Hezekiah psalm). But also the angel of the Lord went forth (from his 'place'), and smote in the camp of the Assyrians...and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead — corpses!" (37:36).

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The Last Days

 

The good student now begins afresh on such an impressive chapter as this, in order to ponder it as a revelation of the great climax of the divine purpose.

 

It begins with a song of praise sung by the redeemed in the land of praise. They celebrate a salvation and a Saviour Jesus in a city with a wall of jasper (salvation; 60:18; Rev. 21:11), and with foundations (of praise) in the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Humanly speaking "they dwell without walls and have neither bars nor gates" (Ez. 38:11).

 

Its gatekeepers lift up their heads at the honour done to them as the King of Glory enters with his "nation", which is reckoned righteous because by faith it has cherished the Promises of God as immutable "truth". They are the nation of the Just One, whose hearts and minds have been kept in the perfect peace of God (Phil. 4:7) through Christ Jesus. Because they trusted always in the Lord, they are now kept in Him — Jah Jehovah — for an always of always (v.4). He is their Rock of Ages against whom the gatekeepers of hell (the angels of death) cannot prevail. The Lord is "a wall of fire round about, and the glory in their midst" (Zech. 2:5).

 

Now, when the meek inherit the earth (v.6) the oppressor is brought down to the dust (v.5). It is a day of judgment for the upright as well as for the godless nations of the world (v.9). The swashbuckling power-drunk dictators of the world now meet their due fate: "They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise...thou (Jehovah) hast made all their memory to perish" (v.14).

 

There has been a final time of anguish for the stricken nation of God, like the pangs of a woman in travail giving birth to a new creature. All the self-reliance of the world's cleverest nation, ever intent on achieving salvation by reliance on its own powers, is now gone, sunk in the utter hopelessness of its final crisis (v.17). Now, at long last, there is a willingness to recognize that only in the Lord is there righteousness and strength.

 

At this point in the prophecy comes the powerful passage telling how salvation will be provided in the last days for the dead and the living alike. "Thy dead (God's men) shall live again, together with Messiah's dead body shall they arise." In token of this, when the Messiah rose from the dead, sleeping saints came forth out of their graves because of him and appeared in the holy city (Mt. 27:53). It was probably from this Isaiah passage that Paul inferred his doctrine that "them which sleep will God (because of Jesus) bring with him (from the grave)" (1 Th. 4:14) — "together with my dead body"! "The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live" (Jn. 5:25,28,29). Then they that "dwell in the dust" shall "awake and sing" (cp. Dan. 12:2). So also Hosea. Immediately after his description of the sorrows of a travailing woman, he has this: "I will ransom them from the power of the grave: I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction" (13:13,14) — which powerful message is interpreted by Paul as a prophecy of the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:54).

 

"From the womb of the morning" the dead are as so many young people in the bright vigour of their best powers: "the dew of thy youth" (Ps. 110:3) — called "dew" because of its mysterious appearance and its sparkling freshness seen in the early rays of the Sun of righteousness. Yet the same psalm, like Isaiah, has a picture of dead bodies "in the day of his wrath."

 

For the living, in this day of divine action, there is a different kind of assurance: "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers." Jesus interprets this place of safety as the place of prayer: "Thou when thou prayest, enter into thy chamber, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father..." (Mt. 6:6). The place of prayer can be anywhere. And this is as far as Scripture goes in telling how and where the faithful will be kept safe in the last day. Remarkably, Elisha (=God saves) brought salvation from the stroke of death when he entered into the chamber, and shut the door, and prayed; then stretching himself on the dead, he brought resurrection (2 Kgs. 4:33,34).

 

"Hide thyself as it were for a little moment." Perhaps by implication Jesus also bids his disciples hide themselves from danger in the time of his coming in judgment, but only for "a little while", and then will come (as in Isaiah) the joy of the woman when her travail is over and she rejoices in the miracle of a birth (Jn. 16:16-19,21).

 

But of course this is Passover language. In Egypt the Lord's destroying angel went forth in judgment, but those who had learned to hide themselves under the blood of a Passover Lamb were safe.

 

This is by no means the only place in Isaiah which suggests that the coming of the Lord will take place at Passover. The full evidence is given in a separate study "Passover", H.A.W. ch.14.

 

At that time "the Lord cometh out of his temple to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity," for refusing to honour him and for the despite done to his people. In fact, this will be the retribution due to the men of Arabian Edom "because of a perpetual hatred" and "shedding the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword" (Ez. 35:5). It is a grim conclusion to a most graphic prophecy.

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Chapter 27

 

27:1 "In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."

 

There is here an amazing diversity of possible interpretations. It is commonly agreed that three (or two) of the great Gentile powers dominating Israel are symbolized.

 

Certainly the evidence for identifying "the dragon in the midst of the sea" (cp. Nah. 3:8) with Egypt is fairly strong: "art not thou he that hath cut Rahab (a familiar nickname for Egypt), and wounded the dragon? art not thou he which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep?" — this last phrase an allusion to Israel's crossing of the Red Sea. (Ez. 29:3; 32:2 mg. are strong supporting passages).

 

"The swift serpent" and "the crooked serpent" are commonly identified with the fast-flowing Tigris (=arrow) and the tortuous slow-moving Euphrates, as symbols of the powers of Assyria and Babylon. Yet already (8:7) Isaiah has used the River (i.e. Euphrates) as a symbol of Assyria. And it needs to be stressed that, apart from the spasmodic rebellion of Merodach-baladan, throughout this period Babylon was entirely subject to Assyria, a province of its empire.

 

For these reasons it is more likely that both serpents represent the Assyrian conqueror whose heartland stretched across both the great rivers. Note the omission of Babylon in v.12,13. Quite a case can be made for reading Job's leviathan as a highly poetic picture of the power of Assyria entirely in the hand of God — proud of his own power, yet utterly under the control of heaven (cp. Is. 10:5-7). And as Nimrod was believed to be represented in the heavens by the con­stellation of Orion (Job 9:9), so also the power of Assyria was seen in Draco, the dragon, the long chain of jewels near the Pole-star: "By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens: his hand hath formed the crooked serpent" (Job 26:13 — the previous verse refers to the crossing of the Red Sea, and the vanquishing of the power of Egypt).

 

In Psalm 74, a psalm contemporary with Isaiah, if not by him, the same collection of ideas comes together: "Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces (more than one head!), and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness (the plundering of Sennacherib's shattered army as they trailed disconsolately back to Nineveh?)" (Ps. 74:13,14).

 

Very remarkably, identical language to Isaiah's has been found in one of the Ugarit religious tablets: "Didst thou not smite Leviathan the swift serpent, even the crooked serpent? Didst thou not break in pieces his seven heads?" This inscription dates back to 1,400 B.C; so there is the remarkable phenomenon of an inspired prophet of Jehovah quoting from what was evidently familiar literature of an earlier pagan religion. Presumably in the first instance some Ugaritic priest wrote the words to celebrate an earlier period of Assyrian expansion (under Ashur-Uballit I?) which somehow suffered a serious reverse. Now Isaiah picks up the familiar words, rightly attributing this latest mighty Assyrian disaster to the angel of the Lord (37:36). "His sore and great and strong sword" probably makes a play on the word Cherub.

 

One is sorely tempted to read these serpent allusions as a side-long reference to the brazen serpent, made by Bezaleel and smashed up in the fervour of Hezekiah's reformation (2 Kgs. 18:4). If Ahaz had encouraged his people to associate that image with the power of the Assyrian overlord, its destruction would be an open flouting by Hezekiah of the authority of the bully of Nineveh, and then it is under­standable why Sennacherib made such a vicious onslaught on the tiny state of Judah. To cock a snook publicly at a dictator usually asks for trouble. Sennacherib was not amused!

 

The further reference to Nehushtan (a compressed form of 'Serpent-Leviathan'?) is encouraged by the further allusion (v.9) to: "making all the stones of the altar (Ahaz's pagan altar: 2 Kgs. 16:12-16) as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up."

 

It is doubtless right to look, as Dr. Thomas did, for a further fulfilment in the end of the age. With his eye on Daniel 7, he saw here a parallel to the Fourth Beast — "this Egypto-Romanic-Babylonian crocodile", an identification which is not very meaning­ful, especially since the prototype requires some brutal power which tramples flat God's Israel, but not Jerusalem.

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27:2-5 "In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine. I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together. Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me."

 

Back in the corrupt days of Ahaz, God's people had been described as a vineyard much cared for, and yet hopelessly unfruitful. Now, after Hezekiah's reformation it is "a vineyard of red wine" or, as the Hebrew should more probably read, "a vineyard of delight." So now, by contrast with the divine outburst of reprobation and threatening (5:3-6), "fury is not in me." Instead of: "I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it," there is now a promise that I will keep (guard) it night and day." Briars and thorns there will be, as in the earlier vineyard parable (5:6), but now they will be as a badge of defence and protection "in the battle" (here, and in several places symbolic parable suddenly becomes literal fact). Those briars and thorns in the vineyard itself will be burned together with the enemy who seeks to desolate it (33:14).

 

The one who would survive through difficult times, "let him take hold of my strength (here is one of Isaiah's frequent jugglings with the name of Hezekiah), let him make peace with me, let him make (this kind of) peace," not the utterly futile Political bargain with a crafty deceitful adversary who means to break his word (2 Kgs. 18:13-17). It is puzzling to know how the LXX translators managed to get this other slant (was their text quite different here?): "They that dwell in her (in Jerusalem) shall say: Let us make peace with him (the enemy), let us make peace " But: "Thou wilt keep him in peace, peace (the same repetition), whose mind is stayed on thee" (26:3). "O Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us" (26:12; cp. 57:19)

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27:6-9 "He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him? In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind. By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up."

 

The language of the vineyard parable is still employed, but only spasmodically: "take root...his rough wind...this is all his fruit..." But both translation and inter­pretation are beset with difficulties.

 

"They that come of Jacob" who are caused to "take root" could well be repentant worshippers coming out of the northern tribes to keep Passover at Jerusalem and thus to re-root themselves in the vineyard of the Lord, But RV reads very differently: "In days to come shall Jacob take root" — thus with reference to the entire nation which is being devastated and reduced to wilderness by the invader.

 

The prospect that "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit" is an anticipation of the startling and utterly unexpected blessedness of an abundantly fruitful Year of Jubilee (2 Kgs. 19:29,30), which God promised beforehand, and then gave (Is. 61) — in contrast to the empty blandishments of the Assyrian emissary, promising these very blessings, but not at all intending to fulfil (2 Kgs. 18:31,32). Here Isaiah says: "fill the world with fruit", not just "the land", because this latter word might be taken to mean Judah only, whereas here is a promise for both Israel and Judah. What a contrast, too, with the invader whose ambition it was to "fill his own land with cities" supported by the plunder and tribute drawn from an empire built by ruthless militarism.

 

To emphasize how thoroughly God is to bring retribution on the brutal enemy, there is (as in English: 'the biter bit') a powerful repetition: "smitten... smote...smote...slain...slaying...slain." The stroke of the Lord came on the Assyrian in full measure — or does 'in measure' mean 'with a carefully administered discipline'? And thus, in the day of the north-east wind (from far away Assyria), "God will stay His rough wind" which He Himself has brought against His own people. Compare Hos. 13:15: "an east wind shall come, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness."

 

The deliverance will come only because "the iniquity of Jacob is purged." And how is "his sin taken away"? By "beating in sunder as chalk stones the stones of the (pagan) altar, and the groves and images" which decadent Ahaz had earlier encouraged (e.g. 2 Kgs. 16:3,4,10-16). The tornado of destruction which Hezekiah and his zealots let loose (2 Kgs. 18:4; 2 Chr. 31:1) was a much-needed catharsis.

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27:10-11 "Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down. and consume the branches thereof. When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour."

 

Still the prophecy oscillates between the literal and the parable of the vineyard: "consume the branches thereof...bough withered...broken off...the women come and set them on fire." So even though this is "a vineyard of desire" (v.2), its older character (5:1-7) is not yet done with. Hence the drastic action indicated in these figurative phrases and yet more pointedly in the literal description of a punitive in­vasion: "the defenced city shall be desolate" — Sennacherib's commemorative in­scription, ignoring as inconvenient the ultimate decimation of his army, boasts of "forty-six fenced cities" of Judah captured and destroyed (see also 2 Kgs. 18:13). And of course his men, ravaging the countryside "left it like a wilderness."

 

Psalm 80, a Hezekiah psalm, describes the vineyard of the Lord (v.8-11) now with its hedges broken down so that it is ravaged by the boar (Assyria) and other wild beasts (Sennacherib's allied and tributary nations), and ultimately burned with fire (v. 12-16). Only faithful Hezekiah, "the man of thy right hand," can save it.

 

So also here, national helplessness is portrayed as like a vineyard with boughs withered, broken off, and burned — by women! Here is a figure of feeble nations near to Judah, who would normally not raise a finger against God's people, but who are now glad to join in the unrestrained plundering of a defenceless countryside.

 

Isaiah's picture of the calf feeding and lying down and consuming the branches might be a different figure of the bull-calf of Assyria (lots of figures of these in Nineveh) working its unhindered will on the countryside of the Holy Land; or, very differently, it could be a picture of what literally happened — farm stock left to wander loose because "the habitation is forsaken," a sad figure of the derelict condition of the faithful remnant of the Lord apparently (but not actually) left without care or sense of direction.

 

All these sad and grievous developments come about because the low spiritual state of the decayed nation (the mass of it) calls for a divine surgical operation: "it is a people of no understanding." Here the prophet quotes with perfect appropriateness from Deuteronomy 32:28, a chapter which is one of the most eloquent and complete prophecies of Israel's chequered history. Contemporary Hosea has the same sort of comment: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (of their God): because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will reject thee" (4:6). "Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider" (Is. 1:3). It is a wilful lack of knowledge.

 

Isaiah goes on to echo Hosea more specifically: "Therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them" — Lo-Ruhamah! — "He will shew them no favour," because if "favour be shewed to the wicked, yet he will not learn righteousness" (26.10; cp. 42:18-22).

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27:12,13 "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem."

 

After denunciation, there is comfort (as in 2:2; 10:20; 29:18,19). The opening phrase here does not speak of judgment but rather of God's solicitous care of every single one of those who are truly His people. "Beat off" might refer to the knocking down from the olive tree of every single berry on the remote branches (as in 17:6,9), or the picture can be that of the threshing of the harvest corn. Even "gathered one by one" does not exclude this idea, for in a similar passage Amos (9:9) says: "Yet shall not the least grain fall to the ground." The word mistranslated "channel" normally refers to an overflowing flood or, very differently, to ears of corn

 

The River is, of course, the great Euphrates. And "the stream of Egypt", often mistakenly taken to be the Nile, is actually the Wadi el Arish. This passage denotes the most northern and southern borders of the Land, as it was promised to Abraham (Gen. 15:18). The reference is, in the first instance, to Hezekiah's idealistic effort to gather into the renewed worship of Jehovah all God's bewildered people, especially those of the northern tribes so long bereft of wholesome spiritual guidance and help. His "posts passed from city to city through all the country" (2 Chr. 30:10). It was also a plain declaration by this son of David of his right to rule all the people and all the Land which had once given allegiance to David.

 

But the language of verse 13 is more far-reaching than that. Those carried captive and "ready to perish in the land of Assyria" were also to be gathered in; and also those who had fled the Assyrian terror, seeking refuge in Egypt.

 

This duly came to pass in Hezekiah's reign. The sign given to the king (2 Kgs. 19:29,30) of full divine protection and blessing was that, willy-nilly, a unique Year of Jubilee would be kept: "The great trumpet (shofar) shall be blown" by which, on the Day of Atonement, the great Year is to be inaugurated (Lev. 25:9). There are plenty of indications in Isaiah's later prophecies of the extraordinary fruitfulness of this promised Jubilee year (Lev. 25:9). But also Jubilee meant the freeing of all bond­slaves and the return of every man to his family inheritance (25:10).

 

All this duly came about after the dramatic holocaust in the Assyrian camp. Then, of course, those multitudes of captives who had been dragged away to bondage, hard labour, and early death were now summarily bidden "be gone", as happened at the first of all Passovers in Egypt. And, again of course, those who had sought safety in Egypt and were tolerated there only as despised fugitives, were also both free and eager to return to their homesteads in the Holy Land.

 

More than this, Jehovah's mighty act of judgment would leave such an impression in all the lands round about that Gentiles, even from Assyria and Egypt, would be glad to come and proclaim with awe their respect for the God of Abraham and Hezekiah, "worshipping the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem." It is yet another picture of the glories of the later years of the good king's God-given extension to his reign (cp. 24:23; 25:6,7,10; 2:2,3; 19:23-25), and yet another witness that all these fantastic and unexpected happenings were nothing but eloquent fore­shadowings of the even greater glories of the deliverance Messiah will one day bring to Zion.