Isaia 27:10 Commento

In this chapter the prophet goes on to show, I. What great things God would do for his church and people, which should now shortly be accomplished in the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib and the destruction of the Assyrian army; but it is expressed generally, for the encouragement of the church in after ages, with reference to the power and prevalency of her enemies. 1. That proud oppressors should be reckoned with (Isa 27:1). 2. That care should be taken of the church, as of God's vineyard (Isa 27:2, Isa 27:3). 3. That God would let fall his controversy with the people, upon their return to him (Isa 27:4, Isa 27:5). 4. That he would greatly multiply and increase them (Isa 27:6). 5. That, as to their afflictions, the property of them should be altered (Isa 27:7), they should be mitigated and moderated (Isa 27:8), and sanctified (Isa 27:9). 6. That though the church might be laid waste, and made desolate, for a time (Isa 27:10, Isa 27:11), yet it should be restored, and the scattered members should be gathered together again (Isa 27:12, Isa 27:13). All this is applicable to the grace of the gospel, and God's promises to, and providences concerning, the Christian church, and such as belong to it.

INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH 27 This chapter refers to the same times as the two foregoing ones Isa 25:1; and is a continuation of the same song, or rather a new one on the same occasion; it is prophetical of the last times, and of what shall be done in them, as the destruction of the antichristian powers, and Satan at the head of them, Isa 27:1 the happy state of the church, and its fruitfulness under the care and protection of the Lord, and his affection for it, Isa 27:2 its peace, prosperity, and flourishing condition, Isa 27:5 the nature, use, and end of all its afflictions and chastisements, Isa 27:7 the ruin and destruction of the city of Rome, and its inhabitants, and of its whole jurisdiction, Isa 27:10 a great gathering and conversion of the Lord's people, both Jews and Gentiles, by the ministry of the Gospel, Isa 27:12.

Yet the defenced city shall be desolate,.... Or "but", or "notwithstanding" (b); though the Lord deals mercifully with his own people, and mixes mercy with their afflictions, and causes them to issue well, and for their good; yet he does not deal so with others, his and their enemies: for by the "defenced city" is not meant Jerusalem, as many interpret it, so Kimchi; nor Samaria, as Aben Ezra; nor literal Babylon, as others; but mystical Babylon, the city of Rome, and the whole Roman or antichristian jurisdiction, called the "great" and "mighty" city, Rev 18:10 which will be destroyed, become desolate, or "alone" (c), without inhabitants: and the habitation forsaken and left like a wilderness; or "habitations"; the singular for the plural; even beautiful ones, as the word (d) signifies, the stately palaces of the pope and cardinals, and other princes and great men, which, upon the destruction of Rome, will be deserted, and become as a wilderness, uninhabited by men: there shall the calf feed: not Ephraim, as Jarchi, from Jer 31:18 nor the king of Egypt, as Kimchi, from Jer 46:20 nor the righteous that shall attack the city, and spoil its substance, as the Targum; see Psa 68:30 but literally, and which is put for all other cattle, or beasts of the field, that should feed here, without any molestation or disturbance: there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof; which the Targum interprets of the army belonging to the city; it denotes the utter destruction of it, and its inhabitants; see Rev 18:2. Some of the Jewish writers (e) interpret this passage of Edom or Rome, and of the Messiah being there to take vengeance on it. (b) "sed", Junius & Tremellius, Forerius; "tamen, nihilominus", Calvin. (c) "solitaria", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. (d) "amoenum habitaculum", Tigurine version; Piscator (e) Shemot Rabba, sect. 1. fol. 91. 3.

(Verse 10) The fortified city will be deserted; the beautiful city will be abandoned and left like a wilderness. There the calf will graze, and there it will lie down and consume its branches. Their idols will be cut down like groves, and the flock that dwells far away will be left like a deserted flock, and it will be a long time in the pasture, and there the flocks will rest, and after a long time there will be no green in it, for it is dried up. Jerusalem, once a strong and fortified city, because it did not receive its masters but said: Come, let us kill him, for this is the heir and our inheritance (Matthew 21:38), will be deserted. And that which was once beautiful, of which it is said in Ezekiel: You ate fine flour, honey, and oil, and you became exceedingly beautiful (Ezek. 16:13), and in which dwells He of whom it is written: You are fairer than the sons of men (Ps. 45:3), will be left and abandoned like a desert, as the Lord says to the Apostles: Arise, let us go from here (John 14:31). There the calf, the Roman army, will graze, of which it is also said in another place under the name of boar: The boar from the forest will ravage it, and the singular wild beast has grazed on it (Ps. 80:14). And there he will lie down and consume its branches under the metaphor of a vine and its shoots, so that nothing green remains in it, nothing of the branches, but the enemy consumes everything. According to the Septuagint, because they did not receive a good shepherd: therefore they will be like a forsaken flock, and will be open to the bites of beasts; and nothing green will remain in them, because drought will possess everything.

626. The strong city, namely, Jerusalem: how doth the city sit solitary that was full of people? (Lam 1:1); as to the power of the enemy: there the calf, the army of the enemy, shall feed, as though resting without fear; branches, metaphorically, that is, ears of wheat, which signify princes, above: wild beasts shall rest there (Isa 13:21); or literally, it may be a sign of desolation: they saw the chambers joining to the temple thrown down (1 Macc 4:38).

Ambassadors being come from several neighboring nations to solicit the king of Judah to join in a confederacy against the king of Babylon, Jeremiah is commanded to put bands and yokes upon his neck, (the emblems of subjection and slavery), and to send them afterwards by those ambassadors to their respective princes; intimating by this significant type that God had decreed their subjection to the Babylonian empire, and that it was their wisdom to submit. It is farther declared that all the conquered nations shall remain in subjection to the Chaldeans during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and those of his son and grandson, even till the arrival of that period in which the Babylonians shall have filled up the measure of their iniquities; and that then the mighty Chaldean monarchy itself, for a certain period the paramount power of the habitable globe, shall be voted with a dreadful storm of Divine wrath, through the violence of which it shall be dashed to pieces like a potter's vessel, the fragments falling into the hands of many nations and great kings, Jer 27:1-11. Zedekiah, particularly, is admonished not to join to the revolt against Nebuchadnezzar, and warned against trusting to the suggestions of false prophets, Jer 27:11-18. The chapter concludes with foretelling that what still remained of the sacred vessels of the temple should be carried to Babylon, and not restored till after the destruction of the Chaldean empire, Jer 27:19-22.

There shall the calf feed - That is, the king of Egypt, says Kimchi.

CONTINUATION OF THE TWENTY-FOURTH, TWENTY-FIFTH, AND TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTERS. (Isa 27:1-13) sore--rather, "hard," "well-tempered." leviathan--literally, in Arabic, "the twisted animal," applicable to every great tenant of the waters, sea-serpents, crocodiles, &c. In Eze 29:3; Eze 32:2; Dan 7:1, &c. Rev 12:3, &c., potentates hostile to Israel are similarly described; antitypically and ultimately Satan is intended (Rev 20:10). piercing--rigid [LOWTH]. Flying [MAURER and Septuagint]. Long, extended, namely, as the crocodile which cannot readily bend back its body [HOUBIGANT]. crooked--winding. dragon--Hebrew, tenin; the crocodile. sea--the Euphrates, or the expansion of it near Babylon.

city--Jerusalem; the beating asunder of whose altars and images was mentioned in Isa 27:9 (compare Isa 24:10-12). calf feed-- (Isa 17:2); it shall be a vast wild pasture. branches--resuming the image of the vine (Isa 27:2, Isa 27:6).

The prophet said this from out of the midst of the state of punishment, and was therefore able still further to confirm the fact, that the punishment would cease with the sin, by the punishment which followed the sin. "For the strong city is solitary, a dwelling given up and forsaken like the steppe: there calves feed, and there they lie down, and eat off its branches. When its branches become withered, they are broken: women come, make fires with them; for it is not a people of intelligence: therefore its Creator has no pity upon it, and its Former does not pardon it." The nation without any intelligence (Isa 1:3), of which Jehovah was the Creator and Former (Isa 22:11), is Israel; and therefore the fortress that has been destroyed is the city of Jerusalem. The standpoint of the prophet must therefore be beyond the destruction of Jerusalem, and in the midst of the captivity. If this appears strange for Isaiah, nearly every separate word in these two vv. rises up as a witness that it is Isaiah, and no other, who is speaking here (compare, as more general proofs, Isa 32:13-14, and Isa 5:17; and as more specific exemplifications, Isa 16:2, Isa 16:9; Isa 11:7, etc.). The suffix in "her branches" refers to the city, whose ruins were overgrown with bushes. Synonymous with סעפּים, branches (always written with dagesh in distinction from סעפים, clefts, Isa 2:21), is kâtzir, cuttings, equivalent to shoots that can be easily cut off. It was a mistake on the part of the early translators to take kâtzir in the sense of "harvest" (Vulg., Symm., Saad., though not the lxx or Luther). As kâtzir is a collective term here, signifying the whole mass of branches, the predicate can be written in the plural, tisshâbarnâh, which is not to be explained as a singular form, as in Isa 28:3. אותהּ, in the neuter sense, points back to this: women light it האיר, as in Mal 1:10), i.e., make with it a lighting flame (אור) and a warming fire (אוּר, Isa 54:16). So desolate does Jerusalem lie, that in the very spot which once swarmed with men a calf now quietly eats the green foliage of the bushes that grow between the ruins; and in the place whence hostile armies had formerly been compelled to withdraw without accomplishing their purpose, women now come and supply themselves with wood without the slightest opposition.