Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 42:23 - 42:23
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
When they ceased to be deaf to this crying contradiction, they would recognise with penitence that it was but the merited punishment of God. “Who among you will give ear to this, attend, and hear afar off? Who has give up Jacob to plundering, and Israel to the spoilers? Is it not Jehovah, against whom we have sinned? and they would not walk in His ways, and hearkened not to His law. Then He poured upon it in burning heat His wrath, and the strength of the fury of war: and this set it in flames round about, and it did not come to be recognised; it set it on fire, and it did not lay it to heart.” The question in Isa 42:23 has not the force of a negative sentence, “No one does this,” but of a wish, “O that one would” (as in 2Sa 23:15; 2Sa 15:4; Ges. §136, 1). If they had but an inward ear for the contradiction which the state of Israel presented to its true calling, and the earlier manifestations of divine mercy, and would but give up their previous deafness for the time to come: this must lead to the knowledge and confession expressed in Isa 42:24. The names Jacob and Israel here follow one another in the same order as in Isa 29:23; Isa 40:27 (compare Isa 41:8, where this would have been impracticable). זוּ belongs to לוֹ in the sense of cui. The punctuation does not acknowledge this relative use of זו (on which, see at Isa 43:21), and therefore puts the athnach in the wrong place (see Rashi). In the words “we have sinned” the prophet identifies himself with the exiles, in whose sin he knew and felt that he was really involved (cf., Isa 6:5). The objective affirmation which follows applies to the former generations, who had sinned on till the measure became full. הָלוֹךְ takes the place of the object to אָבוּ (see Isa 1:17); the more usual expression would be לָלֶכֶת; the inverted order of the words makes the assertion all the more energetic. In Isa 42:25 the genitive relation אַפּוֹ חַמַת is avoided, probably in favour of the similar ring of חֵמָה and מִלְחָמָה. חֵמָה is either the accusative of the object, and אַפּוֹ a subordinate statement of what constituted the burning heat (cf., Ewald, §287, k), or else an accusative, of more precise definition = בְּחֵמָה in Isa 66:15 (Ges. §118, 3). The outpouring is also connected by zeugma with the “violence of war.” The milchâmâh then becomes the subject. The war-fury raged without result. Israel was not brought to reflection.