Isaiah 29

29 : 1 Ho Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped! add ye year to year; let the feasts come round: then will I distress Ariel, and there shall be mourning and lamentation: and she shall be unto me as Ariel. And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a fort, and I will raise siege works against thee. And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust; and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust. But the multitude of thy foes shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones as chaff that passeth away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly. She shall be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire. And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her strong hold, and that distress her, shall be as a dream, a vision of the night. And it shall be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against mount Zion.

9. Tarry ye and wonder; take your pleasure and be blind: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes, the prophets; and your heads, the seers, hath he covered. And all vision is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed: and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.

13. And the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw nigh unto me, and with their mouth and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men which hath been taught them: therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.

15. Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Ye turn things upside down! Shall the potter be counted as clay; that the thing made should say of him that made it, He made me not; or the thing framed say of him that framed it, He hath no understanding? Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be counted for a forest? And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For the terrible one is brought to nought, and the scorner ceaseth, and all they that watch for iniquity are cut off: that make a man an offender in a cause, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just with a thing of nought. Therefore thus saith the LORD, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob: Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his face now wax pale. But when he seeth his children, the work of mine hands, in the midst of him, they shall sanctify my name; yea, they shall sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall stand in awe of the God of Israel. They also that err in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmur shall learn doctrine.

The Woe on Jerusalem.

THE woe on Samaria, the proud crown of Ephraim, serves chiefly to introduce a message to the people and rulers of Judah, the direct objects of Isaiah’s ministry. But now the message turns directly to Jerusalem. It announces the overflowing scourge of the Assyrian campaigns, and the sudden overthrow of the fierce invaders. A stern reproof of the rulers of Judah for their sensual blindness, when the judgment was so near, is followed by the promise of a great moral revolution. Birks.

This chapter consists of two parts, parallel to one another—i.e., each containing the same series of promises and threatenings, but in different forms. The prophetic substance or material of both is that Zion should be threatened and assailed, yet not destroyed, but on the contrary strengthened and enlarged. These ideas are expressed in the second part much more fully and explicitly than in the first, which must therefore be interpreted according to what follows. In the first part, the threatening is that Zion shall be assailed by enemies and brought very low (verses 1–4). The promise is that the assailants shall be scattered like dust and chaff, vanish like a dream, and be wholly disappointed in their hostile purpose (verses 5–8). In the second part, the prophet brings distinctly into view, as causes of the threatened judgments, the spiritual intoxication and stupor of the people, their blindness to revealed truth, their hypocritical formality, and their presumptuous contempt of God (verses 9–16). The judgment itself is described as a confounding of their fancied wisdom (verse 14). The added promise is that of an entire revolution, including the destruction of the wicked, and especially of wicked rulers, the restoration of spiritual sight, joy to the meek and poor in spirit, and the final recovery of Israel from a state of alienation and disgrace to the service of Jehovah and to the saving knowledge of the truth (verses 17–24). That the second part describes not physical but spiritual evils is admitted on all hands, and indeed asserted by the prophet himself. This description is directly and repeatedly applied in the New Testament to the Jews contemporary with our Saviour. It does not follow from this that it is a specific and exclusive prophecy respecting them; but it does follow that it must be so interpreted as to include them, which can only be effected by regarding this last part of the chapter as descriptive of the Jews, not at one time merely, but throughout the period of the old dispensation, an assumption fully confirmed by history. The judgment threatened will then be the loss of their peculiar privileges and an exchange of state with others who had been less favored, involving an extension of the Church beyond its ancient bounds, the destruction of the old abuses, and the final restoration of the Jews themselves. If this be the meaning of the second part, it seems to determine that of the first as a figurative expression of the truth, that the Church should suffer but not perish, the imagery used for this purpose being borrowed from the actual sieges of Jerusalem. Thus understood, the chapter is prophetic of two great events, the seeming destruction of the ancient Church, and its reproduction in a new and far more glorious form, so as not only to include the Gentiles in its bounds, but also the converted remnant of God’s ancient people. A.

This is the prophetic conception: Jerusalem, the city of God, standing for the capital of His spiritual kingdom on earth; besieged violently, but rescued from ruin and her assailants scattered like chaff because she is God’s altar; yet when in the character of God’s visible Church she becomes spiritually blind, bigoted and hardened, God will marvellously scourge and judicially abandon her, taking away her prerogatives and giving them to others—i.e., taking them away from the blinded Jew to give them to the Gentile. For the prophecy in its application contemplates not a supposed but a real case, lifting the curtain of the future and looking directly into that marvellous change by which the kingdom of God was taken from the unfruitful Jews and given to the fruit-bearing Gentiles, in the opening of the Christian age. Such is manifestly the scope of this chapter.

1. “The city where David dwelt” is of course Jerusalem. Consequently “Ariel” means Jerusalem, but the reason why it is called Ariel has been given variously.

5. This is promise. “Thy strangers” are the foreign armies that have besieged her. They become like fine dust and like chaff driven before the tempest—terribly significant figures to denote the ease, rapidity and enthriness of their destruction. The extreme weakness of the city shows that this victory is not of her achieving, but is of God alone. H. C.

6. “Thou” is not the city. Neither the gender of the verb nor the course of thought permit this construction. It is the enemy, the “multitude of strangers” who had invested her in siege. “Visited”—i.e., with the judgments of the Almighty—thunder, earthquake—a fearful group of the most terrific and destructive agencies in the material world.

7,8. The phenomena of dreams admits in this case of a twofold application: (1) To the experience of the Jews; (2) to the experiences of their enemies. As all the scenes and excited fears of a dream may suddenly disappear when one awakes, so the Jews will be suddenly relieved as from a nightmare of horrors, by awakening some morning to find that God’s tempest and fire have scattered their enemies like fine dust and chaff. Then, on the other hand, their enemies, who in their confidence of success had been dreaming of pillage and plunder, awake to find their souls no less hungry and thirsty than before. This is a phase of the phenomena of dreaming, quite distinct from the former. It supposes a man to be hungry and to dream of eating; thirsty, and to dream of drinking; yet he awakes to find that his dream is only a tantalizing delusion. So with the fond but vain hopes of the besiegers. Both of these illustrations from dreams are true to nature.

9. Here commences the second part of this chapter—the analogous description of the spiritual blindness and guilt of the people and their consequent rejection of God. The manner of presenting such truths by imperative verbs is this: Go on in your sins; you will reap what you sow. The prophet describes their sins by (apparently) commanding them to do those sins. Yet the simple thought is, If you will sin, you must suffer. The last part of the verse falls back to the usual form of plain description. They are spiritually drunken, morally infatuated in a sort of drunkenness which comes on men not through wine, but through the madness of sin. They stagger—i.e., reel in judgment and in life, yet not through strong drink, but through the moral blindness and infatuation which sin begets. And this (verse 10 proceeds to say) is of the Lord in righteous judgment upon the people for their abuse of light enjoyed. It is the deep sleep of dead insensibility as to moral relations and duties—the eyes being shut as if utterly blind to moral truth. “The prophets and your rulers” (better, your “heads”—i.e., head-men, leaders in public sentiment) “hath He covered—i.e., as to the eyes, so that they see not the plain truths of God.” Remarkably this very state of moral blindness appeared in the case of the scribes and Pharisees among whom Christ lived. They seemed utterly incapable either of just moral sentiments or of a clear intellectual view of moral truth. God had left them to moral blindness. This fact accords with and illustrates the main point of this prophecy. It is an awful fact, and should admonish sinners to beware how they resist the Holy Ghost and abuse the appeals of Divine mercy. H. C.

10. It is yet more strange that God Himself has “poured out upon them a spirit of deep sleep” and “has closed their eyes,” that He who bids them awake and open their eyes should yet lay them to sleep and shut their eyes; but it is in a way of righteous judgment to punish them for their loving sleep. When God by His prophets called them, they said, “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber;” and therefore He gave them up to strong delusions. This is applied to the unbelieving Jews who rejected the Gospel of Christ, and were justly hardened in their infidelity till wrath came upon them to the uttermost. And we have reason to fear it is the woful case of many who live in the midst of Gospel light. H.

11,12. A sealed book is handed to a man who knows how to read with request that he read it, but he says, “I cannot, for it is sealed.” Then it is handed (unsealed perhaps) to one who has never learned to read, and he cannot read because he does not know how. This is the sense of verse 12, where “not learned” means only, “I do not know book”—i.e., do not know how to read a book. Thus the import of these verses is that in one way or another God’s revelations avail the people nothing. Their moral blindness precludes the practical utility of God’s revelations, just as the sealing of the book in one case and ignorance of the art of reading in the other makes this supposed book of no account.

13,14. These statements are plain. The people are formal, hypocritical and heartless. Their fear of God is a thing of precept, not of heart; a thing taught, but not felt; taught, but not accepted and inwrought into the moral and spiritual life. Therefore God will do a very marvellous thing; He will let the wisdom of their wise men perish. Moral blindness will hide the light of moral truth from their eyes. Our Lord cites this passage (Matt. 15:7-9) as applying fitly to the perversions of the law by the Pharisees through their traditions. This was perverting—i.e., wrestling and distorting the very substance as well as the letter of the law. In the days of Isaiah men may have held the truth unchanged as to its form of expression, yet blunted and made morally inoperative through their perverseness. The prophecy may be fulfilled in either way. Probably our Lord quotes this passage in full accordance with its original meaning. Isaiah’s prophetic eye is on that period of national blindness and infatuation in which the people rejected their own Messiah, and so plucked down ruin upon their city and nation. H. C.

It is a spiritual judgment with which God threatens to punish them for their spiritual wickedness. They did one strange thing, they removed all sincerity from their hearts; now God will go on and do another, He will remove all sagacity from their heads; “the wisdom of their wise men shall perish.” They played the hypocrite, and thought to put a cheat upon God, and now they are left to themselves to play the fool; and not only to put a cheat upon themselves, but to be easily cheated by all about them. Those that make religion no more than a pretence, to serve a turn, are out in their politics; and it is just with God to deprive those of their understanding who part with their uprightness. H.

15. This is a further description of the people or their leaders, as not only wise in their own conceit, but as impiously hoping to deceive God or elude His notice. The absurdity of such an expectation is exposed in the following verse. In the last clause of this the interrogative form implies negation. A.

16. The prophet compares the moral perverseness of men who think their plans too deep for God to comprehend, to the absurdity of the notion that the potter is only as his clay, or to the impudence that would be manifested if anything made could and should say to the maker of it, “He never made me!” or if anything produced should say as to him that produced it, “He knows nothing!” H. C.

17. The only natural interpretation of the verse is that which regards it as prophetic of a mutual change of condition, the first becoming last and the last first. If, as we have seen sufficient reason to believe, the previous context has respect to the Jews under the old dispensation, nothing can be more appropriate or natural than to understand the verse before as foretelling the excision of the unbelieving Jews and the admission of the Gentiles to the Church.

A.—The forests of ages, the Lebanon of this figure, represent the Gentile nations, long shut off from moral culture, and bearing no fruit unto God. But they become the fruit-bearing fields—the Carmel of Gospel times! Over against this, the old fruit-bearing fields—the Jewish people—go back by reason of their unbelief to the state of a forest, under no moral culture and yielding no Gospel fruit. As our Lord often expressed it: “Many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first” (Matt. 19: 30). “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21: 43).

18,19. The expressions here allude to verses 11, 12, and aim to put in antithesis the moral blindness of the Jews as predicted there, and the docility and consequent joy in God and in His Gospel among the Gentile converts. The history of the Acts of the Apostles is a striking comment on these verses. Men long deaf to God’s words now hear with open ears. The eyes of men long sitting in darkness now look forth from that darkness and see a glorious light. “And there is great joy in that city” (Acts 8: 8) among those converts from Gentile nations.

20,21. The general sense of these verses is that the Gospel, going abroad among the Gentile nations, bore with it reform in morals and in the civil and common life of men. This was indeed the glory of Christianity. It moulded society; became a mightily transforming power in courts of justice, in the defence of human rights, in promoting peace, good order, and the general welfare of society. H. C.

23. The emphatic mention of the Holy One of Jacob and the God of Israel, as the object to be sanctified, implies a relation still existing between all believers and their spiritual ancestry, as well as a relation of identity between the Jewish and the Christian Church.

24. If the foregoing verse predicts the reception of the Gentiles into the family of Israel, and if this reception, as we learn from the New Testament, was connected with the disinheriting of most of the natural descendants, who are nevertheless to be restored hereafter, then the promise of this final restoration is a stroke still wanting to complete the fine prophetic picture now before us. That finishing stroke is given in this closing verse, which adds to the promise that the Gentiles shall become the heirs of Israel, another that the heirs of Israel according to the flesh shall themselves be restored to their long-lost heritage, not by excluding their successors in their turn, but by peaceful and brotherly participation with them. A.