Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 58:8 - 58:8

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 58:8 - 58:8


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The prophet now proceeds to point out the reward of divine grace, which would follow such a fast as this, consisting of self-renouncing, self-sacrificing love; and in the midst of the promise he once more reminds of the fact, that this love is the condition of the promise. This divides the promises into two. The middle promise is linked on to the first; the morning dawn giving promise of the “perfect day” (Pro 4:18). The first series of promises we have in Isa 58:8, Isa 58:9. “Then will thy light break forth as the morning dawn, and thy healing will sprout up speedily, and thy righteousness will go before thee, the glory of Jehovah will follow thee. Then wilt thou call and Jehovah will answer; thou wilt beseech, and He will say, Here am I!” The love of God is called “light” in contrast with His wrath; and a quiet cheerful life in God's love is so called, in contrast with a wild troubled life spent in God's wrath. This life in God's love has its dawn and its noon-day. When it is night both within and around a man, and he suffers himself to be awakened by the love of God to a reciprocity of love; then does the love of God, like the rising sun, open for itself a way through the man's dark night and overcome the darkness of wrath, but so gradually that the sky within is at first only streaked as it were with the red of the morning dawn, the herald of the sun. A second figure of a promising character follows. The man is sick unto death; but when the love of God stimulates him to reciprocal love, he is filled with new vigour, and his recovery springs up suddenly; he feels within him a new life working through with energetic force like a miraculous springing up of verdure from the earth, or of growing and flowering plants. The only other passages in which אֲרוּכָה occurs are in the books of Jeremiah, Chronicles, and Nehemiah. It signifies recovery (lxx here, τὰ ἰάματά σου ταχὺ ἀνατελεῖ, an old mistake for ἱμάτια, vestimenta), and hence general prosperity (2Ch 24:13). It always occurs with the predicate עָלְתָה (causative הֶעֱלָה, cf., Targ. Psa 147:3, אַרְכָא אַסֵּק, another reading אֲרוּכִין), oritur (for which we have here poetically germinat) alicui sanitas; hence Gesenius and others have inferred, that the word originally meant the binding up of a wound, bandage (impontiru alicui fascia). But the primary word is אָרַךְ = אֲרַךְ, to set to rights, to restore or put into the right condition (e.g., b. Sabbath 33b, “he cured his wounded flesh”), connected with אֲרִיךְ, Arab. ârak, accommodatus; so that אֲרוּכָה, after the form מְלוּכָה, Arab. (though rarely) arika, signifies properly, setting to rights, i.e., restoration.

The third promise is: “thy righteousness will go before thee, the glory of Jehovah will gather thee, or keep thee together,” i.e., be thy rear-guard (lxx περιστελεῖ σε, enclose thee with its protection; אָסַף as in מְאסֵּף, Isa 52:12). The figure is a significant one: the first of the mercies of God is δικαιοῦν, and the last δοξάζειν. When Israel is diligent in the performance of works of compassionate love, it is like an army on the march or a travelling caravan, for which righteousness clear and shows the way as being the most appropriate gift of God, and whose rear is closed by the glory of God, which so conducts it to its goal that not one is left behind. The fourth promise assures them of the immediate hearing of prayer, of every appeal to God, every cry for help.

But before the prophet brings his promises up to their culminating point, he once more lays down the condition upon which they rest. “If thou put away from the midst of thee the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking of evil, and offerest up thy gluttony to the hungry, and satisfiest the soul that is bowed down: thy light will stream out in the darkness, and thy darkness become like the brightness of noon-day. And Jehovah will guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in droughts, and refresh thy bones; and thou wilt become like a well-watered garden, and like a fountain, whose waters never deceive. And thy people will build ruins of the olden time, foundations of earlier generations wilt thou erect; and men will call thee repairers of breaches, restorers of habitable streets.” מוֹטָה, a yoke, is here equivalent to yoking or oppression, as in Isa 58:6, where it stands by the side of רֶשַׁע. שְׁלַח־אֶצֵבַּא (only met with here, for שְׁלֹחַ, Ges. §65, 1, a), the stretching out of the finger, signifies a scornful pointing with the fingers (Pro 6:13, δακτυλοδεικτεῖν) at humbler men, and especially at such as are godly (Isa 57:4). דַּבֶּר־אָוֶן, the utterance of things which are wicked in themselves and injurious to one's neighbour, hence sinful conversation in general. The early commentators looked for more under נַפְשֶׁךָ, than is really meant (and so does even Stier: “they soul, thy heart, all thy sympathetic feelings,” etc.). The name of the soul, which is regarded here as greedily longing (Isa 56:11), is used in Deu 24:6 for that which nourishes it, and here for that which it longs for; the longing itself (appetitus) for the object of the longing (Psychol. p. 204). We may see this very clearly from the choice of the verb תָּפֵק (a voluntative in a conditional clause, Ges. §128, 2), which, starting from the primary meaning educere (related to נְפַק, Arabic anfaqa, to give out, distribute, nafaqa, distribution, especially of alms), signifies both to work out, acquire, carry off (Pro 3:13; Pro 8:35, etc.), and also to take out, deliver, offer, expromere (as in this instance and Psa 140:9; Psa 144:13). The soul “bowed down” is bowed down in this instance through abstinence. The apodoses commence with the perf. cons. וְזָרחַ. אֲפֵלָה is the darkness caused by the utter absence of light (Arab. afalat esh-shemsu, “the sun has become invisible”); see at Job 10:22. This, as the substantive clause affirms, is like the noon-day, which is called צָהָרַיִם, because at that point the daylight of both the forenoon and afternoon, the rising and setting light, is divided as it were into two by the climax which it has attained. A new promise points to the fat, that such a man may enjoy without intermission the mild and safe guidance of divine grace, for which נָחָה (הִנְחָה, syn. נִהֵל) is the word commonly employed; and another to the communication of the most copious supply of strength. The ἅπαξ γεγρ בְצַחְצָחוֹת does not state with what God will satisfy the soul, as Hahn supposes (after Jerome, “splendoribus”), but according to צְסהִיחָה (Psa 68:7) and such promises as Isa 43:20; Isa 48:21; Isa 49:10, the kind of satisfaction and the circumstances under which it occurs, viz., in extreme droughts (Targ. “years of drought”). In the place of the perf. cons. we have then the future, which facilitates the elevation of the object: “and thy bones will He make strong,” יַחֲלִיח, for which Hupfeld would read יַחֲלִיף, “will He rejuvenate.” חֶחֱלִיץ is a denom. of חָלוּץ, expeditus; it may, however, be directly derived from a verb חָלַץ, presupposed by חֲלָצַיִם, not, however, in the meaning “to be fat” (lxx πιανθήσεται, and so also Kimchi), but “to be strong,” lit., to be loose or ready for action; and b. Jebamoth 102b has the very suitable gloss גרמי זרוזי (making the bones strong). This idea of invigorating is then unfolded in two different figures, of which that of a well-watered garden sets forth the abundance received, that of a spring the abundance possessed. Natural objects are promised, but as a gift of grace; for this is the difference between the two testaments, that in the Old Testament the natural is ever striving to reach the spiritual, whereas in the New Testament the spiritual lifts up the natural to its own level. The Old Testament is ever striving to give inwardness to what was outward; in the New Testament this object is attained, and the further object now is to make the outward conformed to the inward, the natural life to the spiritual.

The last promise (whether the seventh or eighth, depends upon whether we include the growing of the morning light into the light of noon, or not) takes its form from the pining of the exiles for their home: “and thy people (מִמְּךָ) build” (Ewald, §295, c); and Böttcher would read ממךְ וּבֻנּוּ; but מִן with a passive, although more admissible in Hebrew than in Arabic, is very rarely met with, and then more frequently in the sense of ἀπό than in that of ὑπό, and בֻּנּוּ followed by a plural of the thing would be more exact than customary. Moreover, there is no force in the objection that מִמְּךָ with the active can only signify “some of thee,” since it is equivalent to ממך אֲשֶׁר, those who sprang from thee and belong to thee by kindred descent. The members born to the congregation in exile will begin, as soon as they return to their home, to build up again the ruins of olden time, the foundations of earlier generations, i.e., houses and cities of which only the foundations are left (Isa 61:4); therefore Israel restored to its fatherland receives the honourable title of “builder of breaches,” “restorer of streets (i.e., of places much frequented once) לָשָׁבֶת” (for inhabiting), i.e., so that, although so desolate now (Isa 33:8), they become habitable and populous once more.