1 In that day Jehovah with his hard and great and strong sword will punish leviathan the swift serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent; and he will slay the monster that is in the sea.
Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the sea-monsters in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces; Thou gavest him to be food to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou wast likened unto a young lion of the nations: yet art thou as a monster in the seas; and thou didst break forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: I will spread out my net upon thee with a company of many peoples; and they shall bring thee up in my net. And I will leave thee upon the land, I will cast thee forth upon the open field, and will cause all the birds of the heavens to settle upon thee, and I will satisfy the beasts of the whole earth with thee. And I will lay thy flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with thy height.
For my sword hath drunk its fill in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. The sword of Jehovah is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Jehovah hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
Then Job answered and said, No doubt but ye are the people, And wisdom shall die with you. But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you: Yea, who knoweth not such things as these? I am as one that is a laughing-stock to his neighbor, I who called upon God, and he answered: The just, the perfect man is a laughing-stock. In the thought of him that is at ease there is contempt for misfortune; It is ready for them whose foot slippeth. The tents of robbers prosper, And they that provoke God are secure; Into whose hand God bringeth `abundantly'. But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; And the birds of the heavens, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these, That the hand of Jehovah hath wrought this, In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind? Doth not the ear try words, Even as the palate tasteth its food? With aged men is wisdom, And in length of days understanding. With `God' is wisdom and might; He hath counsel and understanding. Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again; He shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening. Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up; Again, he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth. With him is strength and wisdom; The deceived and the deceiver are his. He leadeth counsellors away stripped, And judges maketh he fools. He looseth the bond of kings, And he bindeth their loins with a girdle. He leadeth priests away stripped, And overthroweth the mighty. He removeth the speech of the trusty, And taketh away the understanding of the elders. He poureth contempt upon princes, And looseth the belt of the strong. He uncovereth deep things out of darkness, And bringeth out to light the shadow of death. He increaseth the nations, and he destroyeth them: He enlargeth the nations, and he leadeth them captive. He taketh away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth, And causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. They grope in the dark without light; And he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.
If I whet my glittering sword, And my hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine adversaries, And will recompense them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, And my sword shall devour flesh; With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the head of the leaders of the enemy.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 27
Commentary on Isaiah 27 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Upon whom the judgment of Jehovah particularly falls, is described in figurative and enigmatical words in Isaiah 27:1 : “In that day will Jehovah visit with His sword, with the hard, and the great, and the strong, leviathan the fleet serpent, and leviathan the twisted serpent, and slay the dragon in the sea.” No doubt the three animals are emblems of three imperial powers. The assertion that there are no more three animals than there are three swords, is a mistake. If the preposition were repeated in the case of the swords, as it is in the case of the animals, we should have to understand the passage as referring to three swords as well as three animals. But this is not the case. We have therefore to inquire what the three world-powers are; and this question is quite a justifiable one: for we have no reason to rest satisfied with the opinion held by Drechsler, that the three emblems are symbols of ungodly powers in general, of every kind and every sphere, unless the question itself is absolutely unanswerable. Now the tannin (the stretched-out aquatic animal) is the standing emblem of Egypt (Isaiah 51:9; Psalms 74:13; Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 32:2). And as the Euphrates-land and Asshur are mentioned in Isaiah 27:12, Isaiah 27:13 in connection with Egypt, it is immediately probable that the other two animals signify the kingdom of the Tigris, i.e., Assyria, with its capital Nineveh which stood on the Tigris, and the kingdom of the Euphrates, i.e., Chaldea, with its capital Babylon which stood upon the Euphrates. Moreover, the application of the same epithet Leviathan to both the kingdoms, with simply a difference in the attributes, is suggestive of two kingdoms that were related to each other. We must not be misled by the fact that nâchâsh bâriach is a constellation in Job 26:13; we have no bammarōm (on high) here, as in Isaiah 24:21, and therefore are evidently still upon the surface of the globe. The epithet employed was primarily suggested by the situation of the two cities. Nineveh was on the Tigris, which was called Chiddekel ,
(Note: In point of fact, not only does Arab. tyr signify both an arrow and the Tigris, according to the Neo-Persian lexicons, but the old explanation “Tigris, swift as a dart, since the Medes call the Tigris toxeuma ” (the shot or shot arrow; Eustath, on Dion Perieg. v. 984), is confirmed by the Zendic tighri , which has been proved to be used in the sense of arrow or shot ( Yesht 8, 6, yatha tighris mainyavacâo ), i.e., like a heavenly arrow.)
on account of the swiftness of its course and its terrible rapids; hence Asshur is compared to a serpent moving along in a rapid, impetuous, long, extended course ( bâriach , as in Isaiah 43:14, is equivalent to barriach, a noun of the same form as עלּיז , and a different word from berriach , a bolt, Isaiah 15:5). Babylon, on the other hand, is compared to a twisted serpent, i.e., to one twisting about in serpentine curves, because it was situated on the very winding Euphrates, the windings of which are especially labyrinthine in the immediate vicinity of Babylon. The river did indeed flow straight away at one time, but by artificial cuttings it was made so serpentine that it passed the same place, viz., Arderikka, no less than three times; and according to the declaration of Herodotus in his own time, when any one sailed down the river, he had to pass it three times in three days (Ritter, x. p. 8). The real meaning of the emblem, however, is no more exhausted by this allusion to the geographical situation, than it was in the case of “the desert of the sea” (Isaiah 21:1). The attribute of winding is also a symbol of the longer duration of one empire than of the other, and of the more numerous complications into which Israel would be drawn by it. The world-power on the Tigris fires with rapidity upon Israel, so that the fate of Israel is very quickly decided. But the world-power on the Euphrates advances by many windings, and encircles its prey in many folds. And these windings are all the more numerous, because in the prophet's view Babylon is the final form assumed by the empire of the world, and therefore Israel remains encircled by this serpent until the last days. The judgment upon Asshur, Babylon, and Egypt, is the judgment upon the world-powers universally.
The prophecy here passes for the fourth time into the tone of a song. The church recognises itself in the judgments upon the world, as Jehovah's well-protected and beloved vineyard.
In that day a merry vineyard - sing it!
I, Jehovah, its keeper,
Every moment I water it.
That nothing may come near it,
I watch it night and day.
Wrath have I none;
O, had I thorns, thistles before me!
I would make up to them in battle,
Burn them all together.
Men would then have to grasp at my protection,
Make peace with me,
Make peace with me.