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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 26:16 - 26:16
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The tephillâh now returns to the retrospective glance already cast in Isa 26:8, Isa 26:9 into that night of affliction, which preceded the redemption that had come. “Jehovah, in trouble they missed Thee, poured out light supplication when Thy chastisement came upon them. As a woman with child, who draws near to her delivery, writhes and cries out in her pangs, so were we in Thy sight, O Jehovah. We went with child, we writhed; it was as if we brought forth wind. We brought no deliverance to the land, and the inhabitants of the world did not come to the light.” The substantive circumstantial clause in the parallel line, לָמוֹ מוּסָרְ, castigatione tua eos affilgente (ל as in Isa 26:9), corresponds to בַּצַּר; and לַחַשׁ צָקוּן, a preterite עצוּק etire = יָצַק, Job 28:2; Job 29:6, to be poured out and melt away) with Nun paragogic (which is only met with again in Deu 8:3, Deu 8:16, the yekōshūn in Isa 29:21 being, according to the syntax, the future of kōsh), answers to pâkad, which is used here as in Isa 34:16; 1Sa 20:6; 1Sa 25:15, in the sense of lustrando desiderare. Lachash is a quiet, whispering prayer (like the whispering of forms of incantation in Isa 3:3); sorrow renders speechless in the long run; and a consciousness of sin crushes so completely, that a man does not dare to address God aloud (Isa 29:4). Pregnancy and pangs are symbols of a state of expectation strained to the utmost, the object of which appears all the closer the more the pains increase. Often, says the perfected church, as it looks back upon its past history, often did we regard the coming of salvation as certain; but again and again were our hopes deceived. The first כְּמוֹ is equivalent to כְּ, “as a woman with child,” etc. (see at Isa 8:22); the second is equivalent to כַּאֲשֶׁר, “as it were, we brought forth wind.” This is not an inverted expression, signifying we brought forth as it were wind; but כְמוֹ governs the whole sentence in the sense of “(it was) as if.” The issue of all their painful toil was like the result of a false pregnancy (empneumatosis), a delivery of wind. This state of things also proceeded from Jehovah, as the expression “before Thee” implies. It was a consequence of the sins of Israel, and of a continued want of true susceptibility to the blessings of salvation. Side by side with their disappointed hope, Isa 26:18 places the ineffectual character of their won efforts. Israel's own doings - no, they could never make the land into יְשׁוּעֹת (i.e., bring it into a state of complete salvation); and (so might the final clause be understood) they waited in vain for the judgment of Jehovah upon the sinful world that was at enmity against them, or they made ineffectual efforts to overcome it. This explanation is favoured by the fact, that throughout the whole of this cycle of prophecies yōshbē tēbēl does not mean the inhabitants of the holy land, but of the globe at large in the sense of “the world” (Isa 26:21; Isa 24:5-6). Again, the relation of יִפְּלוּ to the תַּפִּיל in Isa 26:19, land the figure previously employed of the pains of child-birth, speak most strongly in favour of the conclusion, that nâphal is here used for the falling of the fruit of the womb (cf., Wis. 7:3, Il. xix. 110, καταπεσεῖν and πεσεῖν). And yōshbē tēbēl (the inhabitants of the world) fits in with this sense (viz., that the expected increase of the population never came), from the fact that in this instance the reference is not to the inhabitants of the earth; but the words signify inhabitants generally, or, as we should say, young, new-born “mortals.” The punishment of the land under the weight of the empire still continued, and a new generation did not come to the light of day to populate the desolate land (cf., Psychol. p. 414).