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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 28:18 - 28:18
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And the whip which Jehovah swings will not be satisfied with one stroke, but will rain strokes. “And your covenant with death is struck out, and your agreement with Hades will not stand; the swelling scourge, when it comes, ye will become a thing trodden down to it. As often as it passes it takes you: for every morning it passes, by day and by night; and it is nothing but shuddering to hear such preaching. For the bed is too short to stretch in, and the covering too tight when a man wraps himself in it.” Although berı̄th is feminine, the predicate to it is placed before it in the masculine form (Ges. §144). The covenant is thought of as a document; for khuppar (for obliterari (just as the kal is used in Gen 6:14 in the sense of oblinere; or in Pro 30:20, the Targum, and the Syriac, in the sense of abstergere; and in the Talmud frequently in the sense of wiping off = qinnēăch, or wiping out = mâchaq - which meanings all go back, along with the meaning negare, to the primary meaning, tegere, obducere). The covenant will be “struck out,” as you strike out a wrong word, by crossing it over with ink and rendering it illegible. They fancy that they have fortified themselves against death and Hades; but Jehovah gives to both of these unlimited power over them. When the swelling scourge shall come, they will become to it as mirmâs, i.e., they will be overwhelmed by it, and their corpses become like dirt of the streets (Isa 10:6; Isa 5:5); וִהְייִתֶם has the mercha upon the penult., according to the older editions and the smaller Masora on Lev 8:26, the tone being drawn back on account of the following לֹוֹ. The strokes of the scourge come incessantly, and every stroke sweeps them, i.e., many of them, away. מִדּיֵ (from דַּי, construct דֵּי, sufficiency, abundance) followed by the infinitive, quotiescunque irruet; lâqach, auferre, as in Jer 15:15, and in the idiom lâqach nephesh. These scourgings without end - what a painful lecture Jehovah is reading them! This is the thought expressed in the concluding words: for the meaning cannot be, that “even (raq as in Psa 32:6) the report (of such a fate) is alarming,” as Grotius and others explain it; or the report is nothing but alarming, as Gussetius and others interpret it, since in that case שְׁמועָה שְׁמֹעַ (cf., Isa 23:5) would have been quite sufficient, instead of שְׁמוּעָה הָבִין. There is no doubt that the expression points back to the scornful question addressed by the debauchees to the prophet in Isa 28:9, “To whom will he make preaching intelligible?” i.e., to whom will he preach the word of God in an intelligible manner? (as if they did not possess bı̄nâh without this; שְׁמוּעָה, ἀκοή, as in Isa 53:1). As Isa 28:11 affirmed that Jehovah would take up the word against them, the drunken stammerers, through a stammering people; so here the scourging without end is called the shemū‛âh, or sermon, which Jehovah preaches to them. At the same time, the word hâbhı̄n is not causative here, as in Isa 28:9, viz., “to give to understand,” but signifies simply “to understand,” or have an inward perception. To receive into one's comprehension such a sermon as that which was now being delivered to them, was raq-zevâ‛âh, nothing but shaking or shuddering (raq as in Gen 6:5); זוּעַ (from which comes זְוָעָה, or by transposition זַעֲוָה) is applied to inward shaking as well as to outward tossing to and fro. Jerome renders it “tantummodo sola vexatio intellectum dabit auditui,” and Luther follows him thus: “but the vexation teaches to take heed to the word,” as if the reading were תָּבִין. The alarming character of the lecture is depicted in Isa 28:20, in a figure which was probably proverbial. The situation into which they are brought is like a bed too short for a man to stretch himself in (min as in 2Ki 6:1), and like a covering which, according to the measure of the man who covers himself up in it (or perhaps still better in a temporal sense, “when a man covers or wraps himself up in it,” cf., Isa 18:4), is too narrow or too tight. So would it be in their case with the Egyptian treaty, in which they fancied that there were rest and safety for them. They would have to acknowledge its insufficiency. They had made themselves a bed, and procured bed-clothes; but how mistaken they had been in the measure, how miserably and ridiculously they had miscalculated!