Isaiah 57:2

He shall enter into peace,.... Or "shall go in peace" (d); the righteous man goes in peace now; he has peace from his justifying righteousness; he has peace through believing in Christ; he has peace

He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness. He shall enter into peace - in contrast to the persecutions which he suffered in this world (Job 3:13; Job 3:17).

He shall enter into peace; this just and merciful man shall enter into a state of peace and rest, where he shall be out of the reach of the approaching miseries. Or, He shall go (to wit, to his fathers, as it is fully expressed, ; or, he shall die; going being put for dying, as , compared with 14:20 , and elsewhere) in peace. They; just men. Here is a sudden change of the number, which is very frequent in the prophets. In their beds; in their graves, which are not unfitly called their beds, or sleeping houses, as their death is commonly called sleep in Scripture. Walking; or, that walketh or did walk, i.e. live. In his uprightness; in a sincere and faithful discharge of his duties to God and men. Or, before him, i.e. before God, according to the usual phrase of Scripture, as 8:25. For God is oft understood where he is not expressed, but only designed by this or the like pronoun, as , and elsewhere.

Isaiah 57:2 He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, [each one] walking [in] his uprightness.Ver. 2. He shall enter into peace,] i.e., Into heaven, where the righteous - however looked upon as lost - shall have "life and peace," joy and bliss, rest and peace, and this απαρτι amodo, strait upon it so soon as ever they are dead; from henceforth forthwith their souls have happiness inconceivable. As for their bodies, They shall rest in their beds.] So their graves are called, by an elegant metaphor, like as the bier that carrieth to it is called matteh, a couch, the burying place, a dormitory, or place to sleep in, and the resurrection an awakening. To this bed Moses went up when his Father bade. He died ad os Iehovae according to the word of God, which the Jewish doctors expound as though God did take away his soul with a kiss, like as the loving mother kisseth the child, and then layeth it down to sleep. Rhodingus, a Dutch divine, when he perceived he should die, desired to be laid in another bed, which he called his bed of rest, and upon which he had long before written this verse - “ Ut somnus mortis, sic lectus imago sepulchri. ” In this short bed of the grave shall be laid up the infinite miseries of many years; the bodies of the saints shall, by rotting, be refined, their precious dust preserved, till at last it arise incorruptible. O dieculam illam! Each one walking in his uprightness.] Or, Walking before him, or right over against him; that is, keeping equipage with him, as when one friend walketh with another. κοιμητηριον. Maimonid. Melch. Adam.

(2) He shall enter into peace . . .—Notice- able as presenting the brighter side of the dim thoughts of Israel as to the life behind the veil, and so far contrasted with Hezekiah’s shrinking fear. (Comp. Job 3:17.) For the righteous there was peace in death as in life. For the wicked there was peace in neither (Isaiah 57:21). They shall rest in their beds.—The “bed” is obviously the grave, the thought following naturally on that of death being as the sleep “after life’s fitful fever.” (Ezekiel 32:25.) Each one walking in his uprightness.—Better, every one who has walked straight before him—has taken, i.e., the straight path of duty (Isaiah 30:21.)

Verse 2. He shalt enter into peace - "He shall go in peace"] יבוא שלום yabo shalom; the expression is elliptical, such as the prophet frequently uses. The same sense is expressed at large and in full terms, Genesis 15:15: ואתה תבא אל אבותיך בשלום veattah libbo al abotheycha beshalom, "and thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace." They shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness - "He shall rest in his bed; even the perfect man."] This obscure sentence is reduced to a perfectly good sense, and easy construction by an ingenious remark of Dr. Durell. He reads ינוח על משכבו תם yanuach al mishcabo tam, "the perfect man shall rest in his bed." Two MSS. (one of them ancient) have ינוח yanuach, singular; and so the Vulgate renders it, requiescat, "he shall rest." The verb was probably altered to make it plural, and so consistent with what follows, after the mistake had been made in the following words, by uniting משכבו mishcabo and תם tam into one word. See Merrick's Annotations on the Psalms, Addenda; where the reader will find that J. S. Moerlius, by the same sort of correction, and by rescuing the adjective תם tam, which had been swallowed up in another word in the same manner, has restored to a clear sense a passage before absolutely unintelligible: - למו חרצבות אין כי lemo chartsubboth ein ki אולם ובריא תם ulam ubari tham "For no distresses happen to them; Perfect and firm is their strength." Psalms 73:4. To follow on my application of this to our Lord: - HE, the JUST ONE, shall enter into peace - the peaceable, prosperous possession of the glorious mediatorial kingdom. They shall rest upon their beds - the hand of wrong and oppression can reach these persecuted followers of Christ no more. (But see below.) The perfect man walking in his uprightness. This may be considered as a general declaration. The separated spirit, though disunited from its body, walking in conscious existence in the paradise of God, reaping the fruit of righteousness. The word which we render their beds, משכבותם mishkebotham, the learned bishop supposes to be two words; and to be compounded of משכבו mishkabo, his bed, and תם tam, the upright or perfect man. This is the reading both of the Syriac and Vulgate, and it is favoured by the Chaldee: and one of De Rossi's MS. has משכבו mishkabo, his bed, without the word תם tam, which has been added by a later hand. Bishop Lowth, as we have seen, adopts this separation of the word and for ינוחו yanuchu, they shall rest, reads ינוה yanuach, he shall rest, which is supported by two of Dr. Kennicott's MSS., and by the Vulgate, Septuagint, and Arabic. The word תם tam, taken from משכבותם mishkebotham, should begin the latter clause of the verse; and then the interpolated words, each one, which our translators supplied, may be very well spared.

2. Render with R.V. (and marg.) He entereth into peace; they rest in their beds, each one that walked straight before him. The “peace” and “rest” spoken of are those of the grave (Job 3:13 ff.), the “bed” is the bier or coffin; cf. 2 Chronicles 16:14; Ezekiel 32:25. The same word is used of the sarcophagus in the Phœnician inscription of Eshmunazar (“the lid of this bed”). “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.” The same feeling is expressed with great pathos in an eloquent passage of the book of Job (Isaiah 3:13 ff.). It is a sentiment that has appealed to the human mind in all ages; but to the O.T. believers it brought no relief from the shuddering recoil from death expressed in other passages, nowhere more forcibly than in the words of Job himself. each one that walked, &c.] i.e. every one who led a simple, straightforward, upright life; cf. Proverbs 4:25-27. The clause is an extension of the subject of the sentence.

He shall enter into peace - Lowth, ‘He shall go in peace.’ So the margin.

1, 2. The righteous perisheth — Under ministrations above described. Moral starvation stares them in their faces. Honest seekers after truth come to disappointment.