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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 38:10 - 38:10
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Strophe 1 consists indisputably of seven lines:
“I said, In quiet of my days shall I depart into the gates of Hades:
I am mulcted of the rest of my years.
I said, I shall not see Jah, Jah, in the land of the living:
I shall behold man no more, with the inhabitants of the regions of the dead.
My home is broken up, and is carried off from me like a shepherd's tent:
I rolled up my life like a weaver; He would have cut me loose from the roll:
From day to night Thou makest an end of me.”
“In quiet of my days” is equivalent to, in the midst of the quiet course of a healthy life, and is spoken without reference to the Assyrian troubles, which still continued. דְּמִי, from דָּמָה, to be quiet, lit., to be even, for the radical form דם has the primary idea of a flat covering, of something stroked smooth, of that which is level and equal, so that it could easily branch out into the different ideas of aequabilitas, equality of measure, aequitas, equanimity, aequitas, equality, and also of destruction = complanatio, levelling. On the cohortative, in the sense of that which is to be, see Ewald, §228, a; אֵלֵכָה, according to its verbal idea, has the same meaning as in Ps. 39:14 and 2Ch 21:20; and the construction with בְּ (= וְאָבוֹאָה אלכה) is constructio praegnans (Luzzatto). The pual פֻּקַּדְתִּי does not mean, “I am made to want” (Rashi, Knobel, and others), which, as the passive of the causative, would rather be הָפְקַשַׂדְתִּי, like הָנְסהַלְתִּי, I am made to inherit (Job 7:3); but, I am visited with punishment as to the remnant, mulcted of the remainder, deprived, as a punishment, of the rest of my years. The clause, “Jah in the land of the living,” i.e., the God of salvation, who reveals Himself in the land of the living, is followed by the corresponding clause, הָדֶל עִם־יוֹשְׁבֵי, “I dwelling with the inhabitants of the region of the dead;” for whilst הֶלֶד signifies temporal life (from châlad, to glide imperceptibly away, Job 11:17), הֶלֶד signifies the end of this life, the negation of all conscious activity of being, the region of the dead. The body is called a dwelling (dōr, Arab. dâr), as the home of a man who possesses the capacity to distinguish himself from everything belonging to him (Psychol. p. 227). It is compared to a nomadic tent. רֹעיִ (a different word from that in Zec 11:17, where it is the chirek compaginis) is not a genitive (= רֹעֶה, Ewald, §151, b), but an adjective in i, like אֱוֶיִלִי רֹעֶה in Zec 11:15. With niglâh (in connection with נִסַּע, as in Job 4:21), which does not mean to be laid bare (Luzz.), nor to be wrapt up (Ewald), but to be obliged to depart, compare the New Testament ἐκδημεῖν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος (2Co 5:8). The ἁπ γεγρ קָפַד might mean to cut off, or shorten (related to qâphach); it is safer, however, and more appropriate, to take it in the sense of rolling up, as in the name of the badger (Isa 14:23; Isa 34:11), since otherwise what Hezekiah says of himself and of God would be tautological. I rolled or wound up my life, as the weaver rolls up the finished piece of cloth: i.e., I was sure of my death, namely, because God was about to give me up to death; He was about to cut me off from the thrum (the future is here significantly interchanged with the perfect). Dallâh is the thrum, licium, the threads of the warp upon a loom, which becomes shorter and shorter the further the weft proceeds, until at length the piece is finished, and the weaver cuts through the short threads, and so sets it free (בִצֵּעַ, cf., Job 6:9; Job 27:8). The strophe closes with the deep lamentation which the sufferer poured out at that time: he could not help feeling that God would put an end to him (shâlam, syn. kâlâh, tâmam, gâmar) from day to night, i.e., in the shortest time possible (compare Job 4:20).