4 Fury is not in me. Oh that I had briars [and] thorns in battle against me! I would march against them, I would burn them together.
and the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briars in one day,
whose winnowing fan [is] in his hand, and he shall thoroughly purge his threshing-floor, and shall gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.
But [the sons] of Belial [are] all of them as thorns thrust away, Because they cannot be taken with hands;
Thou hast withdrawn all thy wrath; thou hast turned from the fierceness of thine anger.
For wickedness burneth as a fire: it devoureth briars and thorns, and kindleth in the thickets of the forest, and they go rolling up like a pillar of smoke.
And in that day thou shalt say, Jehovah, I will praise thee; for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou hast comforted me.
Come, my people, enter into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself just for a little moment, until the indignation be past. For behold, Jehovah cometh out of his place to visit the iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth upon them; and the earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.
For Jehovah hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and as a wife of youth, that hath been refused, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In the outpouring of wrath have I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting loving-kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith Jehovah, thy Redeemer. For this is [as] the waters of Noah unto me, since I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth: so have I sworn that I will no more be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my loving-kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith Jehovah, that hath mercy on thee.
that thou mayest remember, and be ashamed, and no more open thy mouth because of thy confusion, when I forgive thee all that thou hast done, saith the Lord Jehovah.
Jehovah is slow to anger, and great in power, and doth not at all clear [the guilty]: Jehovah, -- his way is in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains quake before him, and the hills melt, and the earth is upheaved at his presence, and the world, and all that dwell therein. Who shall stand before his indignation? and who shall abide in the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken asunder by him. Jehovah is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.
And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I prepare, saith Jehovah of hosts.
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.