Isaiah 65:11

But ye are they that forsake the Lord,.... Here the Lord returns to the body of the people again, the unbelievers and rejecters of the Messiah, who turned away from him, would not hear his doctrine,

But ye are they that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for that troop, and that furnish the drink offering unto that number.

Do not you that are idolaters think that these promises belong to you, ye are they that forsake the Lord, that is, the way of the Lord; it is a phrase opposed to a walking with God. Our walking with God is in the way of his statutes, forsaking of him signifieth a declining or turning aside from that way. To forget God’ s holy mountain, signifies not to regard the true worship of God, or not to mind it. God calleth Zion his holy mountain, , and Jerusalem is called God’ s holy mountain. The hill of Zion is called the mountain of God’ s holiness, ; as the temple is called the beauty of holiness, 96:9: their not regarding the worship of God there, but worshipping God or idols in gardens, amongst the graves and monuments, is what is here called a forgetting his holy mountain. Isaiah prophesied in the time of Ahaz, ; of whom it is said, , that he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus, that he cut in pieces the vessels of the Lord’ s house, shut the doors of the house of the Lord, and made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem; and in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense to other gods. See also more of his practices , and ,10-12. And there were certainly many of his people that joined with him in his worship, who are all here said to forget God’ s holy mountain, and to prepare a table for that troop; the idols of the ten tribes, , and of the Assyrians, , which were a troop, whereas the God of Israel was one God. And as God had altars, which are sometimes called a table, as in ; so they prepared altars for the idols, as may be read in the aforementioned story of Ahaz; though by preparing a table here seems rather to be meant the feasts they made upon their sacrifices in their festival days, which was in imitation of what the true God had commanded his people, ,15. Idolaters also made feasts in honour to their idols, as appears from ,11 Am 2:8 . Nor did they only feast in honour to the idols, but they furnished drink-offerings unto their number. God had appointed drink-offerings for his honour, and as a piece of homage to him, ,41 Le 23:18,37; these people had paid this homage to idols. See 19:13 32:29. What we translate number in the Hebrew is la Meni, to Meni. Avenarius translates it Mercury, an idol whom merchants worshipped for good success in trading; others understand it of the host of heaven; others of the multitude of their idols; our translation reads it their number. The word coming from a Hebrew root, which signifieth to number, is no where else found in Scripture, which makes it hard too positively to assert the true meaning of it.

Isaiah 65:11 But ye [are] they that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for that troop, and that furnish the drink offering unto that number.Ver. 11. But ye are they that forsake the Lord.] Or, As for you, that have forsaken the Lord to observe lying vanities, and so are miserable by your own election, you shall be yet more miserable at the great day of judgment especially, of which some take this following part of the chapter to be meant and intended. Then these improbi et reprobi shall be sure to smoke for it; then they shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked; yea, the judge himself shall show them a manifest difference. That forget my holy mountain,] i.e., My temple and pure worship, which ye slight and neglect, q.d., There is no new wine in your cluster, but rather gall and deadly poison; therefore it shall be otherwise with you. That prepare a table for that troop.] As the Israelites feasted before the Lord; so in an apish imitation did the heathens before their idols; and of them these superstitious Jews had learned to do the like, in the days of Ahaz and Manasseh, who degenerated into his grandfather Ahaz, as if there had been no intervention of a Hezekiah. For that troop.] So the prophet speaketh, as pointing to their idols, whereof they had great store. Gad (here used) and Menni (rendered number here likewise), some interpret fortune and fate; others, Jupiter and Mercury. The Septuagint, for "to that number," hath "to the devil." Oecolampadius thinks the prophet alludeth to the Pythagorean numbers, and especially to the number of four (τετρακτος), which they superstitiously observed. Others say, the Jews symbolised with the heathens in drinking to their idols by number. To such an idol they would drink so many cups, and that was called a drink offering to that number. Hence Antiphanes in Athenaeus saith, “ Adusque tria pocula venerandos esse deos. ” Lib. x.

(11) That forget my holy mountain . . .—The words imply, like Isaiah 65:3-5, the abandonment of the worship of the Temple for a heathen ritual, but those that follow point, it will be seen, to Canaanite rather than Babylonian idolatry, and, so far, are in favour of the earlier date of the chapter. The same phrase occurs, however, as connected with the exiles in Psalms 137:5. That prepare a table for that troop.—Hebrew, “for the Gad,” probably the planet Jupiter, worshipped as the “greater fortune,” the giver of good luck. The LXX. renders “for the demon” or “Genius.” The name of Baal-Gad (Joshua 11:17; Joshua 12:17) indicates the early prevalence of the worship in Syria. Phœnician inscriptions have been found with the names Gad-Ashtoreth and Gad-Moloch. The “table” points to the lectisternium (or “feast”), which was a prominent feature in Assyrian and other forms of polytheism. Unto that number.- Here, again, we have in the proper name of a Syrian deity, probably of the planet Venus as the “lesser fortune.” Some scholars have found a name Manu in Babylonian inscriptions; and Manât, one of the three deities invoked by the Arabs in the time of Mahomet, is probably connected with Mëni the it (Cheyne). See Sayce, as in Note on Isaiah 65:4.

Verse 11. That prepare a table for that troop - "Who set in order a table for Gad"] The disquisitions and conjectures of the learned concerning Gad and Meni are infinite and uncertain: perhaps the most probable may be, that Gad means good fortune, and Meni the moon. "But why should we be solicitous about it?" says Schmidius. "It appears sufficiently, from the circumstances, that they were false gods; either stars, or some natural objects; or a mere fiction. The Holy Scriptures did not deign to explain more clearly what these objects of idolatrous worship were; but chose rather, that the memory of the knowledge of them should be utterly abolished. And God be praised, that they are so totally abolished, that we are now quite at a loss to know what and what sort of things they were." Schmidius on the place, and on Judges 2:13, Bibl. Hallensia. Jerome, on the place, gives an account of this idolatrous practice of the apostate Jews, of making a feast, or a lectisternium, as the Romans called it, for these pretended deities. Est in cunctis urbibus, et maxime in AEgypto, et in Alexandria, idololatriae vetus consuetudo, ut ultimo die anni, et mensis ejus qui extremus est, ponant mensam refertam varii generis epulis, et poculum mulso mixtum; vel praeteriti anni vel futuri fertilitatem auspicantes. Hoc autem faciebant et Israelitae, omnium simulachrorum portenta venerantes; et nequaquam altari victimas, sed hujusmodi mensae liba fundebant. "In all cities, and especially in Egypt and Alexandria, it was an ancient idolatrous custom on the last day of the year, to spread a table covered with various kinds of viands, and a goblet mixed with new wine, referring to the fertility either of the past or coming year. The Israelites did the same, worshipping all kinds of images, and pouring out libations on such tables," c. See also Le Clerc on the place and on lxvi. 17, and Dav. Millii Dissert. v. The allusion to Meni, which signifies number, is obvious. If there had been the like allusion to Gad, which might have been expected, it might perhaps have helped to let us into the meaning of that word. It appears from Jerome's version of this place, that the words τῳδαιμονιω, to a demon, (or δαιμονι, as some copies have it,) and τῃτυχῃ, to fortune, stood in his time in the Greek version in an inverted order from that which they have in the present copies; the latter then answering to גד gad, the former to מני meni: by which some difficulty would be avoided; for it is commonly supposed that גד gad signifies τυχη, fortune. See Genesis 30:11, apud Sept. This matter is so far well cleared up by MSS. Pachom. and I. D. II., which agree in placing these two words in that order, which Jerome's version supposes. - L. My Old MS. Bible translates: That putten the borde of fortune; and offreden licours upon it; and so the Vulgate.

11, 12. A renewed threat against the apostates, with a further allusion to their idolatry. But ye are they that forsake &c.] Render: But as for you that forsake Jehovah (ch. Isaiah 1:4) &c. The whole verse is a descriptive anticipation of the object of the verb “destine” in Isaiah 65:12 (see R.V.). that forget my holy mountain] The phrase may denote either simple indifference to the welfare of Zion (cf. Psalms 137:5), or deliberate abstention from the Temple ritual. The second view implies residence in Palestine at a time when the Temple services were in full operation; hence the other is necessarily adopted by all who hold the prophecy to have been written in Babylon. It is perhaps impossible to decide which is right, although those who recognise a Palestinian colouring throughout the chapter will naturally prefer the second as the more forcible interpretation, and find in it some confirmation of their theory. that prepare a table &c.] Better: that spread a table for Gad, and fill up mixed wine (see ch. Isaiah 5:22) to Meni. The rites described are the lectisternia, well known throughout the ancient world, in which a table was spread, furnished with meats and drinks as a meal for the gods (Liv. Isaiah 5:13; Herodot. 1:183; Ep. of Jeremiah , vv. 27 f.; Bel and the Dragon, v. 11; cf. Jeremiah 7:18; Jeremiah 19:13; Jeremiah 44:17, 1 Corinthians 10:21). A parallel in the O.T. religion is the Shewbread in the Temple (or Tabernacle), Exodus 25:30 &c. Gesenius remarks that the description of the complete lectisternium extends over both members of the parallelism, and infers that the two deities were worshipped together. This is probable, being in accordance with ancient custom (Liv. Isaiah 5:13), but the laws of Hebrew parallelism hardly permit us to say that this must be the meaning. That Gad and Meni are divine proper names is universally acknowledged, although neither has quite lost its appellative signification and both are here pointed with the article. Gad means “good fortune”; he is personified luck. [The rendering “troop” in A.V. is a mistake. Cf. Genesis 30:11, where “A troop cometh” should be “With fortune!” as R.V. marg. In Genesis 49:19, where a different etymology is supposed, the word for “troop” is not gad but gĕ ?dϋd.] The existence of a Syrian god of this name (or the Greek equivalent Τύχη) is well established, and his worship is proved to have extended over a very wide area (see Baethgen, Beitrδge zur Sem. Rel.-Gesch. pp. 76–80). It appears that the evidence is most copious amongst the Greek inscriptions of the Hauran (note the proximity to the Hebrew tribe of Gad) where there must have been numerous temples in his honour. But the name occurs also in Ph�nician and Palmyrene inscriptions, and on coins of several cities, including Ashkelon, while a temple to the “Fortune” of Gaza is known to have existed in that city (Baethgen, p. 66).

But ye are they that forsake the Lord - Or rather, ‘Ye who forsake Yahweh, and who forget my holy mountain, I will number to the sword.’ The design of this verse is to remind them of their

11, 12. Ye are they that forsake the Lord — Freely paraphrased, the passage is thus: “But as for you, ye forsakers of God, ye men who forget my holy mountain, (Isaiah 2:1-5,) ye who set (or lay out)