Isaiah 33:17

the(or a) king in his beauty The reluctance of many expositors to interpret this phrase of the Messiah is incomprehensible. Delitzsch says that "the king of Isaiah 33:17 is no more the Messiah than the Messiah in Micah 5:1 [E.V. Isaiah 33:2] is the same person as the king who is smitten on the cheek in Isa 4:14 [E.V. Isaiah 33:1]." But in Micah the humiliated king is replacedby the Messiah, and surely the same conception would be in place here. That the king is Jehovah (Vitringa) is no doubt a possible alternative in view of Isaiah 33:22, but since whatever be the date of the passage the Messianic hope must have been a living idea of Jewish religion, there seems no reason for trying to evade what seems the most natural explanation. On the "beauty" of the king see Psalms 45:2.

the land that is very far off Rather as R.V., a far stretching land (lit. "a land of distances"), the spacious and ever-extending dominions of the Messiah. Few verses of the O.T. have been more misapplied than this.