Isaiah 26:19

Thy dead [men] shall live,.... These are the words of Christ to his church and people, promising great and good things to them after their troubles are over, thereby comforting them under all their

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.

Thy dead men shall live. The prophet here turneth his speech to God’ s people, and gives them a cordial to support them in their deep distress, expressed in the foregoing verse. Thy dead men are not like those , for they shall not live, as I there said; but thine shall live. You shall certainly be delivered from all your fears and dangers. Nothing is more frequent, both in Scripture and other authors, than for great calamities to be compared to death, and deliverance from them to life, and reviving, and resurrection; and particularly the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, and their deliverance out of it, is largely expressed by this very similitude, , &c. Together with my dead body; as I myself, who am one of your number, and of these dead men, shall live again. You shall be delivered together with me. Which he might add, to meet with an objection; for they might think that God would take some special care of this holy prophet, and would preserve him when they should he destroyed. No, saith he, as I am at present like a dead carcass no less than you, so you shall be restored to life no less than I. If the supplement of our translation seems to be too literal, it may be rendered to the same purpose, as my body, the particle as being oft understood, as I have divers times observed: As my dead body shall rise, so shall theirs also; we are equally dead, and shall equally live again. Shall they arise unto life, as appears from the former clause. Awake out of your sleep, even the sleep of death, as it is called, ; death being oft compared to a sleep, as , and restoration to life unto awaking, as . Ye that dwell in the dust; you that are dead and buried in the dust, as the dead are said to deep in the dust, . Thy dew; the favour and blessing of God upon thee, which is oft compared to the dew, as . The pronoun thy is here taken not efficiently, but objectively, as thy curse, , is the curse coming upon thee. Is as the dew of herbs, which gently refresheth and reviveth them, and maketh them to grow and flourish. The earth shall cast out the dead, as an abortive birth is cast out of the womb, to which the grave is compared. . But because the verb here used doth not signify to cast out, but to cast down, which seems not proper here, these words may be, and are, both by ancient and later interpreters, rendered otherwise, and thou wilt cast down the land of the giants, or of the violent ones, of the proud and potent tyrants of the world. For the word here rendered dead is elsewhere rendered giants, as ,18. See also 21:16. But then the words seem to be better rendered, and thou wilt cast the giants down to the ground: either, 1.

Isaiah 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.Ver. 19. Thy dead men shall rise.] So shall not thine enemies. This may seem to be Christ’ s gracious answer to his poor desponding people; and it is, say some, argumentum a beata resurrectione sumptum, an argument taken from the happy resurrection of the righteous; the wicked also shall be raised at the last day, but not by the like means, nor for the like blessed purpose. Some read the words thus: "Thy dead, my dead body shall live"; for the faithful, say they, are Christ’ s body; and therefore, to shew this, "my dead body" is here added by apposition, to show how the faithful, being dead and buried, are to be accounted of, even Christ’ s dead body, &c., and shall be raised at the last day by virtue of that mystical ration which still they hold with Christ. Hence they are said to "sleep in Jesus," to be "dead in Christ," who shall "change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." The Hebrews call a dead corpse Nephesh, i.e., a soul, to note that it shall live again, and that the soul shall return to it. At this day also they call the churchyard Bethcaiim, the "house of the living"; and as they return from the burial place, every one plucks off grass from off the ground twice or thrice, and casts it over his head, saying, florebunt de civitate tanquam faenum terrae, &c. so to set forth their hopes of a resurrection, Neither need it seem "incredible" with any "that God should raise the dead" considering what followeth: (1.) "Together with my dead body shall they arise," i.e., with Christ’ s body raised as the "first fruits of them that sleep." One of the Rabbis readeth it, As my dead body, they shall arise. (2.) The force of Christ’ s all-powerful voice, saying, "Awake and sing ye that dwell in dust": arise and come away, lift up your heads, for your redemption is at hand. The resurrection is in the Syriac called the "consolation." (3.) "Thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead," i.e., Qua facilitate herbulas reficit Deus, eadem mortuos animare potest. God can as easily raise the dead as refresh the herbs of the earth with a reviving dew, when they were even scorched to death with the heat of the sun. See we not a yearly resurrection of grass, grain, flowers, fruits, every spring tide.

(19) Thy dead men shall live.—Better, Thy dead shall live; my corpses shall rise. The words, though they imply a belief more or less distinct in a resurrection, are primarily like the vision of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14, and like St. Paul’s “life from the dead” in Romans 11:15 (comp. also Hosea 6:2), used of national and spiritual resurrection. For thy dew is as the dew of herbs.—The rendering is a tenable one, and expresses the thought that as the dew that falls upon the parched and withered plant quickens it to a fresh life, so should the dew of Jehovah’s grace (comp. 2 Samuel 23:4) revive the dying energies of His people. Most interpreters, however, render the words the dew of lights (plural expressing completeness), the dew which is born of the womb of the morning (Psalms 110:3). This, coming as it does from the “Father of Lights” (so the LXX., “The dew that is from Thee shall be healing for them”), shall have power to make the earth cast forth even the shadowy forms of the dead. The verb for “cast forth” is another form of that used in Isaiah 26:18 of childbirth, and is, in this interpretation, used in the same sense.

Verse 19. My dead body - "My deceased"] All the ancient Versions render it in the plural; they read נבלותי niblothai, my dead bodies. The Syriac and Chaldee read נבלותיהם niblotheyhem, their dead bodies. No MS. yet found confirms this reading. The dew of herbs - "The dew of the dawn"] Lucis, according to the Vulgate; so also the Syriac and Chaldee. The deliverance of the people of God from a state of the lowest depression is explained by images plainly taken from the resurrection of the dead. In the same manner the Prophet Ezekiel represents the restoration of the Jewish nation from a state of utter dissolution by the restoring of the dry bones to life, exhibited to him in a vision, Ezekiel 37:1-14, which is directly thus applied and explained, Ezekiel 37:11-13. And this deliverance is expressed with a manifest opposition to what is here said above, Isaiah 26:14, of the great lords and tyrants, under whom they had groaned: - "They are dead, they shall not live; They are deceased tyrants, they shall not rise:" that they should be destroyed utterly, and should never be restored to their former power and glory. It appears from hence, that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was at that time a popular and common doctrine; for an image which is assumed in order to express or represent any thing in the way of allegory or metaphor, whether poetical or prophetical, must be an image commonly known and understood; otherwise it will not answer the purpose for which it is assumed. - L. Kimchi refers these words to the days of the Messiah, and says, "Then many of the saints shall rise from the dead." And quotes Daniel 12:2. Do not these words speak of the resurrection of our blessed Lord; and of that resurrection of the bodies of men, which shall be the consequence of his body being raised from the dead? Thy dead men shall live, - with my dead body shall they arise.] This seems very express.

19. The answer to these utterances of disappointed hopes is the promise of the Resurrection. The speaker throughout is the community, and the words are addressed to God, with the exception of an apostrophe to the buried Israelites in the middle of the verse. There is indeed no decisive argument against the view of those who think that the first half of the verse expresses the longing of the nation for the restoration of its dead (“May thy dead live, &c.”), and the second the triumphant assurance of the prophet that the prayer shall be fulfilled. But it is more probable that the language throughout is that of confident belief and hope. Thy dead … arise] Render with R.V., Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies (collect. in Hebr.) shall arise. The dead saints are at once Jehovah’s dead and Israel’s. for thy dew is as the dew of herds] Better, for a dew of lights is thy dew (O Jehovah). Comp. James 1:17. The word means “herbs” in 2 Kings 4:39, but the idea is too prosaic for this passage. It is a heavenly, supernatural, dew that is meant; as soon as this falls on the dead they awake to life. Duhm refers to a Talmudic representation of a dew kept in the seventh heaven which is to descend on the bones of the dead and quicken them into life. “Light” and “life” are frequently and naturally associated: Psalms 36:9; Psalms 56:13; Job 3:20; Job 33:30; John 1:4. the earth shall cast out the dead] Render: the earth (or the land) shall bring forth shades (Isaiah 26:14). The verb is lit. “cause to fall,” but obviously in the sense explained under Isaiah 26:18. The doctrine of the resurrection here presented is reached through the conviction, gradually produced by the long process of revelation, that the final redemption of Israel could not be accomplished within the limits of nature. It became clear that the hopes and aspirations engendered by the Spirit in believing minds pointed forward to the great miracle here described, and thus the belief in the resurrection was firmly bound up with the indestructible hopes of the future of Israel (cf. Romans 11:15). The idea is exhibited in a form which is immature in the light of New Testament teaching, but it practically represents the highest development of Old Testament revelation on this subject. The only passage which is slightly in advance of this is Daniel 12:2, and even there a universal resurrection is not taught. Here the hope is restricted to Israelites (see Isaiah 26:14) and no doubt to those Israelites who had departed this life in the faith and fear of God. On the other hand, the teaching of this verse is quite different from such passages as Hosea 6:2; Ezekiel 37:1-14. There rising from the dead is but a figurative clothing of the idea of national regeneration, whereas there can be no doubt that here a literal resurrection of individuals is foretold.

Thy dead men shall live - Very various interpretations have been given of this verse, which may be seen at length by comparing Vitringa, Rosenmuller, Gesenius, and Poole’s Synopsis.

19. But in strong contrast with the preceding despair, the cheering word comes. Thy dead men shall live — Civilly, nationally, dead in Babylon, is the primary meaning.