Isaiah 51:1-23
1 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.
2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
4 Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people.
5 My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.
7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings.
8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.
9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
10 Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?
11 Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
12 I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass;
13 And forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor?
14 The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed, and that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread should fail.
15 But I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: The LORD of hosts is his name.
16 And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.
17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.
18 There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth; neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought up.
19 These two things are come unto thee; who shall be sorry for thee? desolation, and destruction, and the famine, and the sword: by whom shall I comfort thee?
20 Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net: they are full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God.
21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:
22 Thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again:
23 But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.
Isaiah 51:4. A law shall proceed from me. The gospel law of liberty and love is here intended, as in Joel 2:31. No other law ever emanated from Jerusalem.
Isaiah 51:5. My righteousness is near. Christ, the Just and Holy one, the Lord our righteousness. The isles shall wait upon me. Better thus, the distant lands shall expect me, the desire of all nations. Christ was the earnest expectation of the whole creation. Romans 8:19.
Isaiah 51:6. They that dwell therein shall die in like manner. The sense of the English is, they shall die as the heavens vanish, and as the earth waxes old like a garment. Thus is a sublime passage gaited and marred; whereas the true reading relieves it at once. “They shall die as the feeble insect.”
Isaiah 51:9. That cut Rahab, called by the Arabians Rav or Rif; that is, Memphis, the capital of Egypt, so surnamed for her pride; and wounded Pharaoh, the dragon. God will destroy all the future enemies of his church, as he destroyed Egypt and Babylon.
Isaiah 51:11. The redeemed of the Lord shall return. These words afforded great consolation to the Jews, under the Babylonian oppression; but they shall give still greater comfort to the church in the latter day, when many nations shall come to the gospel Zion, built on the tops of the mountains. Preachers improve and apply these words to penitents that seek the Lord, who wipes away their tears, and fills the contrite with everlasting joy.
Isaiah 51:20. As a wild bull in a net, they are full of the fury of the Lord. There is no better figure than an infuriated bull, to describe a wicked army to whom no quarter will be given. They have often cut their way through the mass of their fellow soldiers, as when the trumpets of Gideon were sounding behind the Midianites. But he who rests in Zion shall not make haste. Isaiah 28:16.
REFLECTIONS.
This and the following Chapter s obviously comprise the same subject, and often in the same words. There were four captivities of the Jewish nation, the Egyptian, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and their present dispersion, which Abarbanal, on Isaiah 49:1, calls the Roman captivity. Vitringa says, Censet Abarbanal prophetam hic transitum facere a Liberatione ex exilo Babylonico ad Liberationem exilo Romano. Israel menaced with the rod, Israel languishing in Babylon, and Israel under the long and gloomy dispersion by the Romans, are here called to look to the rock whence they were hewn, and to see what God did in calling Abraham, and in giving an heir to the world by those two righteous persons, whose bodies were as good as dead. Therefore the same God can still repeat his mercies to the promised seed. When a good man is in trouble, the idea of what God has done for his religious parents emboldens his confidence in the rock of his fathers.
The Lord will surely keep his word: he will comfort Zion, he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her waste places as the garden of the Lord. This promise comforted the people in Babylon: yet as Judea never recovered the glory which Solomon shed upon it; and as both Antiochus Epiphanes, and the Romans, did most awfully profane the sanctuary, which is contrary to the promise that the unclean and the uncircumcised should not pollute it, Isaiah 52:1, Messiah spake here of more than the Babylonian deliverance, because he says a law, the evangelical law shall proceed from me; consequently he must speak of the latter day, when the exiled Hebrews shall enjoy more glory than their fathers ever saw. Then shall the isles wait for him, all the gentile nations shall trust in him, and all the enemies of truth vanishing like smoke, or fretting like a garment, shall perish under the displeasure of heaven. There is no text which speaks of the millennium but it speaks of the terrors of God on the unbelieving world. The change shall be so great, that in a manner it may be called a new heaven and a new earth.
The church, hearing these glad tidings, implores the Lord to make haste. Awake, awake, put on strength, oh arm of the Lord, as when thou didst cut Rahab, and wound Pharaoh, as the dragon of the sea. So also in the eleventh chapter, which speaks of the restoration of the Jews, the Lord promises to deliver his people by the power which smote the Egyptians. The redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy.
God gives a speedy answer to the cry of his afflicted people. I, even I, am he that comforteth you. I who have laid the foundations of the earth, and who divided the sea. Hence I bid thee not to be afraid of men who shall die. Therefore awake, oh Jerusalem; recover from thy stupor, occasioned by my bitter cup, which henceforth shall be drunk by thine enemies, and no more by thee. The messengers shall bring thee joyful tidings, not only of deliverance from Babylon, but of restoration to the christian Zion, the city of glory and of beauty.