Commentaries and Podcasts

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 14: Lucifer, Son of the Morning

The Roman Catholic images of a fallen angel named Lucifer have permeated Christian society for at least fifteen hundred years, but they are related far more closely to the allegorical images which are found in ancient Mesopotamian carvings than they are to the truths of Scripture. The epithet Lucifer, which is known only from Isaiah chapter 14, does not actually exist in the original language of Scripture, and the words from which the epithets were formed were used in reference to a man, and not as an address for some mystical and supernatural demon or fallen angel. They were used to describe a certain and then-future king of Babylon, whom we would assert could represent any king of any world empire at any given time, a man standing in opposition to God, and not some other-worldly adversary with super-human powers.

The Roman Catholic visions of Lucifer actually detach the Biblical warnings from the realities of everyday life, and the context here in Isaiah concerns the punishment of the children of Israel for their sins. Lucifer does indeed exist, and has existed throughout all of history, but as a man, or as a long series of men, the nature of which the Roman Catholic fables have forever prevented Christians from understanding. The true meaning of the words requires an understanding of ancient history as well as the Biblical context which is found here in the surrounding text of Isaiah. Having obfuscated the meaning of the term Lucifer, the popes of the Roman Catholic Church have actually quite often fulfilled the role of Lucifer, through which they have pretended to be the light-bearers for Christian society while they have actually stood in opposition to Christ. But the people never noticed, because they saw Lucifer as some far-off and mystical, ethereal demon.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 13: Visions of Empires

Discussing Isaiah chapter 11, there is a prophecy of a rod which would come forth “out of the stem of Jesse,” and in an apparent Hebrew parallelism, also a branch which would “grow out of his roots.” Then where this phenomenon is described further, it becomes apparent that the branch is a man: “a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles [Nations] seek: and his rest shall be glorious.” It is even more evident that this rod is a man, for example where it says that “he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked” and then “righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.” But the language indicates that the man is both the origin of Jesse, and a descendant of Jesse. Therefore this man can only be one and the same as the child who had been prophesied earlier in Isaiah, in chapter 9, who would be called the “mighty God”, the “everlasting Father” and the “Prince of Peace.”

No other man could fulfill the plain meanings of all of these statements unless the promised Messiah is God incarnate. So in language which further illustrates this assertion, here in Isaiah chapter 11 this Root of Jesse is also prophesied to “recover the remnant of his people” from all of the places to where they had gone in their captivity, and only Yahweh God would have the authority and the ability to do that. Furthermore, at this point in the time of Isaiah, the promise to regather His people comes even before most of them are taken into captivity. Then, accompanying that promised regathering, there is also a promise of great peace, and the child of Isaiah chapter 9 would be called the Prince of Peace.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 12: Root and Branch

As we had explained at length in our introduction to the later portion of Isaiah chapter 10 and The Promise in the Flames, or the promises which had been given to Israel as the twelve tribes were about to go into captivity, throughout these chapters of Isaiah, where both Israel and Judah are repeatedly condemned and destined to go into captivity, there are also many repeated promises of salvation, and that salvation would ostensibly be achieved through the birth of a child who would be called “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, [and] the Prince of Peace”, among other things which apparently could only describe Yahweh God Himself even if this child would be born of a woman just like any other ordinary man.

In Isaiah chapter 10 we had seen a prophecy warning that Assyria would be destroyed, and assuring the children of Israel that once in captivity, they would escape and even have a part in the destruction of their captors. From the time that Isaiah uttered this prophecy, it would be as many as a hundred and twenty years before Assyria was destroyed around 612 BC. But Jerusalem was also destined for captivity in the words of the prophet, and up to this point, explicit examples of such prophecies concerning Jerusalem are found in the parable of the vineyard of Isaiah chapter 4, and the parable of blindness in Isaiah chapter 6. So if it seems that Jerusalem had escaped its fated captivity once Assyria had fallen, Isaiah had also prophesied concerning Babylon, in chapters 13 and 14, and later, in the closing verses of chapter 39, Isaiah warned Hezekiah that his sons “shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” So Jerusalem would indeed go into captivity, even it it did not fall to the Babylonians until about 586 BC.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 11: The Promise in the Flames

As we have already discussed at length, in Isaiah chapter 7 Ahaz king of Judah was given a sign, that a virgin would conceive a child, and that before the child could eat solid food, or before he could call out to his mother or father, that the kings of both Israel and Syria would be cut off. This judgment upon those kings was described in several different ways, even in chapter 9 where the birth of the child was announced. But there is something much greater being prophesied here, because in spite of the fact that the sign which had been promised to Ahaz was fulfilled, in chapter 9 we read that this child would be a ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and have no end to the increase of his government and peace, that he would forever establish his kingdom with judgment and with justice, and that his name would be called Wonderful Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.

But at the very same time, the children of Israel had also been warned that their kingdoms would be destroyed, and that for their sins they would either perish or be taken into captivity. So the child described in chapter 9 is not the same child who fulfilled the promise of a sign to Ahaz made in chapter 7. In fact, the child, Mahershalalhashbaz, was a son of Isaiah himself, and he was not in line to succeed to the throne of David. Since from this point forward both the Bible and history are silent concerning Mahershalalhashbaz, he could not have been the child which the prophecy in chapter 9 had described.

Rather, the child of chapter 9 is a future Messiah, a promise of Yahweh God come in the flesh to rule His people forever, at some point in the distant future because in the meantime, Israel and Judah were destined to suffer greatly, and also to remain in a period of blindness, or darkness. For example, in Isaiah chapter 8 Yahweh had attested that He “17 …hideth his face from the house of Jacob… 22 And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.” While Ahaz had a temporary comfort in Mahershalalhashbaz, the true Light would be far in the future, and Israel would suffer in the meantime. But as we shall see, there is hope and a promise in the flames of their trials.

In the last presentation of our commentary on Isaiah, titled A Child is Born, we had mainly sought first to rectify the understanding of the phrase “Galilee of the Gentiles”, or correctly, circuit of the nations, in prophecy, and to illustrate the reasons for its dual meaning, since within the greater context and scope of the prophecy of Isaiah it refers to something other than its later colloquial use in reference to the aliens who had come to dwell in and around Galilee during the intertestamental period, among whom portions of the people of ancient Judah who returned from the Babylonian captivity had later settled. It is in that later historical context in which the apostle Matthew had interpreted the passage in reference to Christ, which is appropriate for His time, however the phrase itself must have had another meaning in reference to the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun, as Isaiah had presented it here.

So in the time of Isaiah, the prophecy at the beginning of chapter 9 could not have applied to the region of Galilee in the short term. That is because in Isaiah chapter 7, it is evident that at this time Pekah is king in Israel, and the prophecies in Isaiah chapters 7 and 8 had promised his removal in a very short time. So in the near vision, which is the immediate fulfillment of those prophecies, we read in 2 Kings chapter 15: “29 In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglathpileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abelbethmaachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria. 30 And Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah, and smote him, and slew him, and reigned in his stead, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah.” As we have already discussed, in his own inscriptions Tiglathpileser had boasted of having set Hoshea on the throne of Israel himself.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 9: A Child is Born

Thus far in these first 8 chapters of Isaiah, there have been condemnations of both Israel and Judah, and similar condemnations shall be found repeatedly throughout the first 40 chapters of the words of the prophet. But if one were to sit and read Isaiah through all at once, this seems repetitious, and it may seem that at least some of the language is repeated unnecessarily. But we must bear in mind that during the life of the prophet himself, the prophecies recorded in these chapters happened over the space of as many as fifty years. So elements of his message were repeated frequently, but it was indeed necessary to present such a testimony to the people of Judah over that long span of time.

Isaiah had begun prophesying these things during the reign of Uzziah, and through the reigns of three generations of his sons who had followed him, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, who is last mentioned in Isaiah chapter 39. There Isaiah had informed Hezekiah that his own sons and all of his riches would be taken into captivity to Babylon. Of course, that did not happen for nearly another hundred and twenty years, and we do not know whether Isaiah had outlived Hezekiah, who would live for another fifteen years from that point. But if Jotham and Ahaz had each ruled for sixteen years, discounting the possibility of coregencies, and since the fourteenth year of Hezekiah is mentioned in Isaiah chapter 36 and made evident again in chapter 38, then the prophet had been prophesying for nearly fifty years by that time. Then some time after that, he had written the last twenty-six chapters of his book, which are addressed to Israel in captivity.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 8: A Stone of Stumbling

In Isaiah chapter 7 it is described that Ahaz, King of Judah, had been vexed by the kings of Israel and Aram, or Syria. With that, we had examined the historical accounts of Scripture in the books of Kings and Chronicles, wherein it is described that both kings working together in an alliance had invaded Judah, killed many tens of thousands of men in battle, and had taken many of the people into captivity. The scale of the war which they made with Judah was not fully reflected in the words of Isaiah, which were directed personally towards Ahaz himself. But in the historical books it also becomes evident that Yahweh had humbled Judah on account of the sins of Ahaz, who had led the kingdom much deeper into idolatry than it had been in the days of his fathers. But in spite of those sins, and in spite of the great harm which had come upon Judah, here in Isaiah Ahaz had been granted mercy, and Yahweh had promised him deliverance from those hostile kings, who had even sought to kill and replace him. As a sign of this forthcoming deliverance we read in verse 14 that “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

But this Immanuel was a sign, and the child should not be confused with the method by which Ahaz would be delivered. In the text of the passage in chapter 7, it is said that “16 … before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.” Therefore the child would only be an infant when the kings of Israel and Aram would be removed. So we should not confuse this child with the king of Assyria through whom the removal had come, or with any historical figure of the period, since the child is otherwise unknown and unidentified in Scripture – except for what we are about to see here in Isaiah chapter 8. We have also stated that this child cannot be the good king Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, as some commentators have imagined, since Hezekiah must have been born before Ahaz his father had become king, and now Ahaz has already been king for at least a couple of years and the child is still not born. That is made evident where Hezekiah became king at age twenty-five after his father had ruled for only sixteen years, as we have already elucidated from Scripture.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 7: A Virgin Shall Conceive

Thus far in Isaiah we have seen three recorded visions, first in chapter 1 where there was a general condemnation of Israel, then in chapters 2 through 5 where there was another condemnation of Israel, and a lengthier condemnation concerning Judah, and finally, in chapter 6, there was another vision in which it was proclaimed that the people would be blind, and deaf, ostensibly so that the Will of Yahweh described in the prophecies which concerned them would be fulfilled. That is how Isaiah understood it, where in verse 11 he described himself as having responded to the vision by asking “How long, Lord?” and the answer he received was: “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, 12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.”

So Judah is condemned, the cities of Judah were destined to become wasted and without inhabitant, and at this time there had not been any contingencies provided by which Judah may escape such a fate. Therefore, as we proceed throughout Isaiah from this point, we must keep in consideration the fact that these judgments would indeed be executed in spite of any other promises of deliverance, or a promised appearance of a beneficent ruler, or even of a savior or messiah figure, things which we shall see here in the next several chapters. In that it becomes evident that such promises may have some partial near-term fulfillment, but ancient Judah was not going to be saved, and therefore the promises must indicate something else, something with a long-term fulfillment, a fulfillment far off in the future. This is a phenomenon of many prophecies, that they have a dual nature, which we label as the near vision and the far vision.Now before we discuss Isaiah chapter 7, we should recall that in an appendix to our recent Genesis commentary, and in the opening chapter of our commentary on Isaiah, we spoke of some of the problems with rectifying the chronology of the kings of Judah, and that may start to become apparent here. Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he ruled in Judah for sixteen years, according to 2 Kings chapter 16 (16:2) and 2 Chronicles chapter 28 (28:1). In 2 Kings chapter 17 (17:1) it states that in the twelfth year of king Ahaz, Hoshea became the king of Israel. So Ahaz is likely to have died some time in Hoshea’s fourth year as king of Israel.

Here we shall continue our commentary on Isaiah with the later half of chapter 5, where we are still in the second vision that had been recorded in the words of the prophet. As we had explained, this vision runs through four chapters of the book, and now we are nearing its end. In the opening verses of the chapter there is a rather brief song of a vineyard. That the vineyard serves as an allegory for the children of Israel was stated explicitly where we read in verse 5 that “…the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant…” Later in Isaiah, in chapter 18, there is yet another description of a vineyard where we read what seems to have been a rather ominous warning: “5 For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, He will both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches.” While we should not get too far ahead of ourselves, for now it may suffice to say that the vineyard in Isaiah chapter 18 is also an allegory for the children of Israel, and as we had already explained in relation to this chapter, it also relates to the Gospel of Christ and the Parable of the Vineyard, as well as the visions of the harvests of the grapes found in chapter 14 of His Revelation.