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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 40:4 - 40:4
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The summons proceeds in a commanding tone. “Let every valley be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; and let the rugged be made a plain, and the ledges of rocks a valley.” וְהָיָה, which takes its tone from the two jussive verbs, is also itself equivalent to ויִהִי. Instead of גֵּיא (from גַּיְא), the pointing in Zec 14:4, we have here (according to Kimchi) the vowel-pointing גֶּיא; at the same time, the editions of Brescia, Pesaro, Venice 1678, have גֵּיא (with tzere), and this is also the reading of a codex of Luzzatto without Masoretic notes. The command, according to its spiritual interpretation, points to the encouragement of those that are cast down, the humiliation of the self-righteous and self-secure, the changing of dishonesty into simplicity, and of unapproachable haughtiness into submission (for ‛âqōbh, hilly, rugged,
(Note: In this ethical sense Essex applied the word to Queen Elizabeth. See Hefele, Ximenes, p. 90 (ed. 2).)
compare Jer 17:9 together with Hab 2:4). In general, the meaning is that Israel is to take care, that the God who is coming to deliver it shall find it in such an inward and outwards state as befits His exaltation and His purpose.