Isaiah 51:13 Ulasan

This chapter is designed for the comfort and encouragement of those that fear God and keep his commandments, even when they walk in darkness and have no light. Whether it was intended primarily for the support of the captives in Babylon is not certain, probably it was; but comforts thus generally expressed ought not to be so confined. Whenever the church of God is in distress her friends and well-wishers may comfort themselves and one another with these words, I. That God, who raised his church at first out of nothing, will take care that it shall not perish (Isa 51:1-3). II. That the righteousness and salvation he designs for his church are sure and near, very near and very sure (Isa 51:4-6). III. That the persecutors of the church are weak and dying creatures (Isa 51:7, Isa 51:8). IV. That the same power which did wonders for the church formerly is now engaged and employed for her protection and deliverance (Isa 51:9-11). V. That God himself, the Maker of the world, had undertaken both to deliver his people out of their distress and to comfort them under it, and sent his prophet to assure them of it (Isa 51:12-16). VI. That, deplorable as the condition of the church now was (Isa 51:17-20), to the same woeful circumstances her persecutors and oppressors should shortly be reduced, and worse (Isa 51:21-23). The first three paragraphs of this chapter begin with, "Hearken unto me," and they are God's people that are all along called to hearken; for even when comforts are spoken to them sometimes they "hearken not, through anguish of spirit" (Exo 6:9); therefore they are again and again called to hearken (Isa 51:1, Isa 51:4, Isa 51:7). The two other paragraphs of this chapter begin with "Awake, awake;" in the former (Isa 51:9) God's people call upon him to awake and help them; in the latter (Isa 51:17) God calls upon them to awake and help themselves.

INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH 51 This chapter gives the church and people of God reason to expect comfortable times and certain salvation, though they had many enemies. They are directed to look to Abraham and Sarah, signified by the rock and hole of the pit, and observe how he was called alone, blessed and increased; which should be improved as an argument to strengthen their faith, that God could and would bless and increase his church, though in a low estate, and bring it into a flourishing one, Isa 51:1. They are assured of the publication of the Gospel, expressed by the law, doctrine, and judgment of the Lord; by which means the righteousness and salvation of Christ should be brought nigh to them, as the object of their trust and confidence, Isa 51:4, and also of the perpetuity of his righteousness and salvation, when the heavens, and the earth, and the inhabitants of it, should decay, even their revilers and persecutors, and therefore they need not fear their reproaches and revilings, Isa 51:6, upon which follows a prayer of faith, that the Lord would exert his power as in former times, when he destroyed the Egyptians, and dried up the Red sea for Israel to pass through, the ransomed of the Lord; from whence it might be concluded, that the redeemed of the Lord would be brought into a very comfortable condition again, Isa 51:9 wherefore they had no reason to be afraid of men, since the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, would deliver, comfort, and establish them, of which he assured them by his prophet, Isa 51:12, and though Jerusalem and her sons were, or would be, in a very distressed condition, through the sword and famine, which is described, Isa 51:17, yet they should be delivered out of it, and their persecutors should be brought into the same, Isa 51:21.

And forgettest the Lord thy Maker,.... That he is thy Maker, and therefore is able to protect and preserve thee; when the fear of man prevails God is forgotten, his power, his providence, his promises, and past instances of divine favour and goodness; were these more frequently recollected, considered, and thought of, they would prove an antidote against the fear of men; and especially when it is observed, that he that is our Maker is he that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; these are amazing works of his hands; and what is it that he cannot do that has made these? these he upholds and maintains in being, and does all things in them as he pleases, and overrules all for his own glory and his people's good, and therefore they have nothing to fear from men; and yet they are afraid of them, such is their distrust and unbelief: and hast feared continually every day; not only at some certain times, when the enemy has appeared very formidable, and threatened with destruction, or some terrible rumour has been spread, but every day, every hour, and every moment; and to be always in a panic must be very uncomfortable living, as well as very dishonourable: because of the fury of the oppressor; either the king of Babylon, or antichrist: as if he were ready to destroy: had drawn his sword, and just going to give the fatal blow: and where, or "but where", is the fury of the oppressor? where's the fury of Pharaoh, that great oppressor of God's Israel formerly? it is gone and vanished like smoke: where's the fury of Sennacherib king of Assyria, and his army, that threatened Jerusalem with ruin? it was over in a short time, in one night the whole host, or the greater part of it, were destroyed by an angel: and where is, or will be, the fury of the king of Babylon? it will not last always; nor the fury of the antichristian oppressor.

And David being taught this, and knowing that the Lord’s hand was nothing else than Wisdom, he says in the psalm, “In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creation.” Solomon also received the same from God and said, “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth.” And John, knowing that the Word was the hand and the Wisdom, preached, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … without him was not anything made.”

(Verse 12, 13.) I, I myself will comfort you. Who are you that you fear from a mortal man, and from the son of man, who will dry up like grass? And you have forgotten the God your maker, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth; and you were constantly afraid all day long because of the fury of the one who was afflicting you, who had prepared to destroy. Where is the fury of the one afflicting you now? It will come quickly, walking to open and will not kill to the point of destruction: and his bread will not fail. But I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar; the Lord of hosts is His name. I have put My words in your mouth, and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, that I may plant the heavens, lay the foundations of the earth, and say to Zion, 'You are My people.' LXX: I am, I am He who comforts you. Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who will die, and of the son of a man who will be made like grass? And you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth; you have feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he has prepared to destroy. But where is the fury of the oppressor now? For when you are saved, it will not stand, nor will it remain; it will not bring destruction, and its bread will not fail. For I am your God, who stirs up the sea and makes its waves roar. The Lord of hosts is my name. I will put my words in your mouth, and cover you with the shadow of my hand; in which I have set the heavens and established the earth; and Zion will say, 'You are my people.' The people of the faithful is the arm of the Lord, who is the strength of God and the wisdom of God, and they had prayed that he would rise up and provide them with aid, and with him fighting for the saints, they would have joy and gladness, with sorrow and groaning banished. Therefore, either the arm of the Lord, or the Lord Himself responded: I am, I am; and not through the Prophets, but I myself will console you: God of mercies, and Father of all consolation. And I wonder how, with me saying above: Do not fear the reproach of men and their blasphemies, you may fear the rage of persecutors, and not know that they are mortals, who dry up suddenly like hay, and perish. And certainly at that time when you feared them, you forgot the Lord your Maker. For if you had always kept me in your heart, you would never have feared men who are destined to turn to ashes. And whom have you forgotten? God, who suspends the heavens with incredible power and establishes the earth with solid mass. And you feared your adversaries, not for a short time, which could have been granted to you in some way; but constantly and throughout the day, so that even when you had the light of faith, darkness of fear would possess you, and the one who believed you would perish. Where now is the pride of the persecutors? Where is the secular power by which they raged with furious mouth against you? My son will come quickly, treading on and trampling your adversaries, to open for you the way of victory: whether to open the abyss, which he will not destroy until complete annihilation; but he desires to save the converted. Finally, the bread of him, who is interpreted by the Gospel, the teaching proving, will never fail, but will always be open to those willing to partake. At the same time, He makes reference to the Son, whom He promises will come quickly and whose bread He says is eternal: because He is the Lord God Himself, who, in the dispensation of assumed flesh, causes the sea to be troubled and its waves to swell, so that the pride of persecutors may be inflated against His servants, who will then find rest again with the help of the Lord. And He says that He has placed His words in his mouth. For whatever the Son speaks, the words are of the Father, and He will protect him in the shadow of His hand. And for this reason he will be protected so that he may plant new heavens and pour out a new earth, and say to Zion, that is, to the Church: You are my people. Therefore, Zion is none other than the people of God. Symmachus, in that place where we said, 'He will come quickly, walking to open,' and he will not kill until extermination, he interpreted it thus: Hell will open quickly, and he will not die into corruption. Christ is understood, who speaks in the fifteenth psalm: You will not abandon my soul to hell, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption. In that place also we translate the words in the Hebrew and Aquila: I have set my words in your mouth, and I have covered you with the shadow of my hand, that you may plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth and say to Zion: You are my people. He translated it in this way: I will put my words in your mouth, and I will protect you with the shadow of my hand, in which I have planted the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and that I may say to Zion: You are my people. According to the LXX, it is said to the soul of every believer, because it, having been created in the image and likeness of God, has ignored its own dignity; but it fears man and the son of man, who can only kill the body, and has not known that it is immortal, nor has it said with the Prophet: The Lord is my light and my savior, whom should I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; from whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1, 2) And again: The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man can do to me. The Lord is my helper, and I will look down upon my enemies. (Psalm 118:6, 7) The nature of man is shown in another verse: In the Lord I will put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do to me. (Psalm 56:5) Therefore it is now said: You have feared mortal man, and the son of man, who are as dry grass. For all flesh is grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass (Isaiah XL), and you have been terrified by the power of the judge, forgetting that he was your protector, who made the heaven and the earth, and all the elements that we see; or those heavens that bear the image of the celestial above, and that earth which multiplies the seed of the Lord. However, what is said above: And his flesh shall not decay, and his bread shall not fail, is added from the edition of Theodotion from the Hebrew. He stirs up the sea and makes its waves roar, as is sung in the Psalms: You rule the might of the sea and calm the tumult of its waves (Psalm 89:9). In Jeremiah it is also written: You shall not fear me, says the Lord, and from my presence you shall not tremble, who have set a boundary for the sea, an everlasting decree that will not be surpassed (Jeremiah 5:22). The seas were stirred up when the net of the Lord drew in a multitude of fish (Matthew 13). And the Lord put His words in the mouth of the believer, and He covered him with the shadow of His hand. He also speaks in the Gospel: When they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you should say; for it will be given to you in that hour what you should say. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you (Matthew 10:19-20). And in another place, He says to the righteous: Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it (Psalm 81:10). And again: Open your mouth to the word of God: for the Lord will give the word to those who proclaim it with great power. Therefore, God speaks to the inner man of Jeremiah, after touching his mouth: Behold, I have put my words in your mouth (Jeremiah 1:9). Who could sing with the Psalmist: He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God (Psalm 40:4). But who has worked all these things if not the Lord and Savior, who made heaven and earth, and says to Zion: You are my people? What belongs to the gathered people of the Church. And in Hosea, He promises to those who believe, saying: I will call them 'my people,' who were not my people; and they will say to me, 'You are my God' (Hosea 2:24).

And the power of God protecting them: and you have forgotten the Lord your maker? You have forsaken the God that begot you, and have forgotten the Lord that created you (Deut 32:18); and the mockery of the enemy: where is now the fury of the oppressor?, Nabuchodonosor or Sennacherib: if your pride mount up even to heaven (Job 20:6).

Sequel of the prophecies of Jeremiah against Babylon. The dreadful, sudden, and final ruin that shall fall upon the Chaldeans, who have compelled the nations to receive their idolatrous rites, (see an instance in the third chapter of Daniel), set forth by a variety of beautiful figures; with a command to the people of God, (who have made continual intercession for the conversion of their heathen rulers), to flee from the impending vengeance, Jer 51:1-14. Jehovah, Israel's God, whose infinite power, wisdom and understanding are every where visible in the works of creation, elegantly contrasted with the utterly contemptible objects of the Chaldean worship, Jer 51:15-19. Because of their great oppression of God's people, the Babylonians shall be visited with cruel enemies from the north, whose innumerable hosts shall fill the land, and utterly extirpate the original inhabitants, vv. 20-44. One of the figures by which this formidable invasion is represented is awfully sublime. "The Sea is come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof." And the account of the sudden desolation produced by this great armament of a multitude of nations, (which the prophet, dropping the figure, immediately subjoins), is deeply afflictive. "Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness; a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby." The people of God a third time admonished to escape from Babylon, lest they be overtaken with her plagues, Jer 51:45, Jer 51:46. Other figures setting forth in a variety of lights the awful judgments with which the Chaldeans shall be visited on account of their very gross idolatries, Jer 51:47-58. The significant emblem with which the chapter concludes, of Seraiah, after having read the book of the Prophet Jeremiah against Babylon, binding a stone to it, and casting it into the river Euphrates, thereby prefiguring the very sudden downfall of the Chaldean city and empire, Jer 51:59-64, is beautifully improved by the writer of the Apocalypse, Rev 18:21, in speaking of Babylon the Great, of which the other was a most expressive type; and to which many of the passages interspersed throughout the Old Testament Scriptures relative to Babylon must be ultimately referred, if we would give an interpretation in every respect equal to the terrible import of the language in which these prophecies are conceived.

Of the oppressor, as if he, etc. - "The כ caph in כאשר keasher seems clearly to have changed its situation from the end of the preceding word to the beginning of this; or rather, to have been omitted by mistake there, because it was here. That it was there the Septuagint show by rendering המציקך hammetsikech θλιβοντος σε, of him, that oppressed thee. And so they render this word in both its places in this verse. The Vulgate also has the pronoun in the first instance; furoris ejus qui te tribulabat." Dr. Jubb. The correction seems well founded; I have not conformed the translation to it, because it makes little difference in the sense.

ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE FAITHFUL REMNANT OF ISRAEL TO TRUST IN GOD FOR DELIVERANCE, BOTH FROM THEIR LONG BABYLONIAN EXILE, AND FROM THEIR PRESENT DISPERSION. (Isa. 51:1-23) me--the God of your fathers. ye . . . follow after righteousness--the godly portion of the nation; Isa 51:7 shows this (Pro 15:9; Ti1 6:11). "Ye follow righteousness," seek it therefore from Me, who "bring it near," and that a righteousness "not about to be abolished" (Isa 51:6-7); look to Abraham, your father (Isa 51:2), as a sample of how righteousness before Me is to be obtained; I, the same God who blessed him, will bless you at last (Isa 51:3); therefore trust in Me, and fear not man's opposition (Isa 51:7-8, Isa 51:12-13). The mistake of the Jews, heretofore, has been, not in that they "followed after righteousness," but in that they followed it "by the works of the law," instead of "by faith," as Abraham did (Rom 9:31-32; Rom 10:3-4; Rom 4:2-5). hole of . . . pit--The idea is not, as it is often quoted, the inculcation of humility, by reminding men of the fallen state from which they have been taken, but that as Abraham, the quarry, as it were (compare Isa 48:1), whence their nation was hewn, had been called out of a strange land to the inheritance of Canaan, and blessed by God, the same God is able to deliver and restore them also (compare Mat 3:9).

(Isa 40:12, Isa 40:26, Isa 40:28), the same argument of comfort drawn from the omnipotence of the Creator. as if . . . ready, &c.--literally, "when he directs," namely, his arrow, to destroy (Psa 21:12; Psa 7:13; Psa 11:2) [MAURER].

The prophetic address now turns again from the despisers of the word, whom it has threatened with the torment of fire, to those who long for salvation. "Hearken to me, ye that are in pursuit of righteousness, ye that seek Jehovah. Look up to the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hollow of the pit whence ye are dug. Look up toe Abraham your forefather, and to Sara who bare you, that he was one when I called him, and blessed him, and multiplied him. For Jehovah hath comforted Zion, comforted all her ruins, and turned her desert like Eden, and her steppe as into the garden of God; joy and gladness are found in her, thanksgiving and sounding music." The prophecy is addressed to those who are striving after the right kind of life and seeking Jehovah, and not turning from Him to make earthly things and themselves the object of their pursuit; for such only are in a condition by faith to regard that as possible, and in spirit to behold that as real, which seems impossible, and in spirit to behold that as real, which seems impossible to human understanding, because the very opposite is lying before the eye of the senses. Abraham and Sarah they are mentally to set before them, for they are types of the salvation to be anticipated now. Abraham is the rock whence the stones were hewn, of which the house of Jacob is composed; and Sarah with her maternal womb the hollow of the pit out of which Israel was brought to the light, just as peat is dug out of a pit, or copper out of a mine. The marriage of Abraham and Sarah was for a long time unfruitful; it was, as it were, out of hard stone that God raised up children to Himself in Abraham and Sarah. The rise of Israel was a miracle of divine power and grace. In antithesis to the masculine tsūr, bōr is made into a feminine through maqqebheth, which is chosen with reference to neqēbhâh. to חצּבתּם we must supply ממּנּוּ ... אשׁר, and to נקּרתּם, ממּנּה ... אשׁר. Isa 51:2 informs them who the rock and the hollow of the pit are, viz., Abraham your forefather, and Sarah techōlelkhem, who bare you with all the pains of childbirth: "you," for the birth of Isaac, the son of promise, was the birth of the nation. The point to be specially looked at in relation to Abraham (in comparison with whom Sarah falls into the background) is given in the words quod unum vocavi eum (that he was one when I called him). The perfect קראתיו relates the single call of divine grace, which removed Abraham from the midst of idolaters into the fellowship of Jehovah. The futures that follow (with Vav cop.) point out the blessing and multiplication that were connected with it (Gen 12:1-2). He is called one ('echâd as in Eze 33:24; Mal 2:15), because he was one at the time of his call, and yet through the might of the divine blessing became the root of the whole genealogical tree of Israel, and of a great multitude of people that branched off from it. This is what those who are now longing for salvation are to remember, strengthening themselves by means of the olden time in their faith in the future which so greatly resembles it. The corresponding blessing is expressed in preterites (nicham, vayyâsem), inasmuch as to the eye of faith and in prophetic vision the future has the reality of a present and the certainty of a completed fact. Zion, the mother of Israel (Isa 50:1), the counterpart of Sarah, the ancestress of the nation-Zion, which is now mourning so bitterly, because she is lying waste and in ruins - is comforted by Jehovah. The comforting word of promise (Isa 40:1) becomes, in her case, the comforting fact of fulfilment (Isa 49:13). Jehovah makes her waste like Eden (lxx ὡς παράδεισον), like a garden, as glorious as if it had been directly planted by Himself (Gen 13:10; Num 24:6). And this paradise is not without human occupants; but when you enter it you find joy and gladness therein, and hear thanksgiving at the wondrous change that has taken place, as well as the voice of melody (zimrâh as in Amo 5:23). The pleasant land is therefore full of men in the midst of festal enjoyment and activity. As Sarah gave birth to Isaac after a long period of barrenness, so Zion, a second Sarah, will be surrounded by a joyous multitude of children after a long period of desolation.