Isaiah 31:5

As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem,.... As the preceding metaphor expresses the mighty power of God, this his tenderness and affection, as well as his speed and swiftness in the deliverance of his people.

As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver it; and passing over he will preserve it. As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem.

As birds flying; which come from above, and so cannot be kept off; which fly swiftly, and engage themselves Valiantly and resolutely, when they perceive that their young ones are in eminent danger. He seems to allude, and to oppose this, to those boasting expressions of the Assyrian, : compare ,12 Mt 23:37. Passing over; the destroying angel shall pass over Jerusalem untouched, and shall fall upon the Assyrians. He seems to allude to the history of God’ s passing over and sparing the houses of the Israelites, when he slew the Egyptians, in which this word is constantly used, ,23,27.

Isaiah 31:5 As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver [it; and] passing over he will preserve it.Ver. 5. As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts.] This is the second similitude; the eagle, when she flieth highest of all from the nest, and seemeth to set herself among the clouds, still keeps her eye on her nest, so that if any come near her young ones to offend them, she makes all possible speed for their defence. Such an eagle is Almighty God, such a hen is Jesus Christ. The Church is God’ s nest; who dare meddle with it? Sennacherib had threatened to destroy nest and young ones together, because he had done so elsewhere, and none dared wag the wing at him, but he found it otherwise here.

(5) As birds flying . . .—The picture that follows (Æschylean, as the former was Homeric; see “Æsch. Agam. 49-54, though there the point is the wailing of the parent birds over the plundered nest) is, at least, not doubtful in its meaning, whether it be meant as a counterpart or antithesis to that which precedes it. The eagles hovering over their nest, and scaring off man or beast that attacked their nestlings, supplied the most vivid image possible of protection. (Comp. the image, like, but not the same, in Deuteronomy 32:11.) Passing over.—The word is the same as that used in connection with the Passover festival, and may perhaps imply a reference to it.

Verse 5. Passing over - "Leaping forward"] The generality of interpreters observe in this place an allusion to the deliverance which God vouchsafed to his people when he destroyed the first-born of the Egyptians, and exempted those of the Israelites sojourning among them by a peculiar interposition. The same word is made use of here which is used upon that occasion, and which gave the name to the feast which was instituted in commemoration of that deliverance, פסח pesach. But the difficulty is to reconcile the commonly received meaning of that word with the circumstances of the similitude here used to illustrate the deliverance represented as parallel to the deliverance in Egypt. "As the mother birds hovering over their young, So shall JEHOVAH God of hosts protect Jerusalem; Protecting and delivering, passing over, and rescuing her." This difficulty is, I think, well solved by Vitringa, whose remark is the more worthy of observation, as it leads to the true meaning of an important word, which hitherto seems greatly to have been misunderstood, though Vitringa himself, as it appears to me, has not exactly enough defined the precise meaning of it. He says, "פסח pasach signifies to cover, to protect by covering: σκεπασωὑμας, Septuagint. JEHOVAH obteget ostium; 'The Lord will cover or protect the door:'" whereas it means that particular action or motion by which God at that time placed himself in such a situation as to protect the house of the Israelite against the destroying angel; to spring forward, to throw one's self in the way, in order to cover and protect. Cocceius comes nearer to the true meaning than Vitringa, by rendering it gradum facere, to march, to step forward; Lexicon in voc. The common meaning of the word פסח pasach upon other occasions is to halt, to be lame, to leap, as in a rude manner of dancing, (as the prophets of Baal did, 1Kg 18:26,) all which agrees very well together; for the motion of a lame person is a perpetual springing forward, by throwing himself from the weaker upon the stronger leg. The common notion of God's passage over the houses of the Israelites is, that in going through the land of Egypt to smite the first-born, seeing the blood on the door of the houses of the Israelites, he passed over, or skipped, those houses, and forbore to smite them. But that this is not the true notion of the thing, will be plain from considering the words of the sacred historian, where he describes very explicitly the action: "For JEHOVAH will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood on the lintels and on the two side posts, JEHOVAH will spring forward over (or before) the door, ופסח יהוה על הפתח upasach Yehovah al happethach, and will not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you," Exodus 12:23. Here are manifestly two distinct agents, with which the notion of passing over is not consistent, for that supposes but one agent.

5. Jehovah’s protection of Jerusalem is expressed by a very different figure—that of birds hovering over their nests. The word for birds denotes especially small, sparrow-like, birds; and its use here might seem less appropriate than in Psalms 11:1 as a synonym for timidity. It is, however, frequently used of birds in general (e.g. Psalms 8:8). passing over] The verb is that from which the word Pesaḥ ? (Passover) is derived; it occurs again only in Exodus 12:13; Exodus 12:23; Exodus 12:27. For preserve read rescue. 6 contains the only summons to repentance in this whole series of discourses. It must not be understood as implying that the deliverance of Jerusalem is conditional upon a national repentance. The verse is connected with Isaiah 31:7; and the thought is that the approaching deliverance will be a decisive manifestation of the sole deity of Jehovah, which will put idolatry to shame; and therefore the prophet calls on his hearers to realise the magnitude of their sin in having forsaken the one true God. have deeply revolted] cf. Isaiah 1:5. In spite of the change from second to third person (cf. Isaiah 1:29, Isaiah 5:8), the words children of Israel should probably be translated as a vocative.

As birds flying - This is another comparison indicating substantially the same thing as the former, that Yahweh would protect Jerusalem.

4, 5. The prophet, as if from a new assurance from Heaven, reasserts Jehovah as their only protector. He illustrates by two comparisons worthy of Homer.