Biblical Commentary

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.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 5: The Vineyard of Yahweh

Here we shall continue our discussion of this second vision which had been recorded in the words of the prophet Isaiah, which runs through four chapters of the book, and now upon our coming to chapter 5 we are nearing its end. This chapter contains a rather brief song of a vineyard, and it is within this context that we should also consider the parable of the vineyard, as well as the parable of the vineyard workers, which are found in the Gospel of Christ. This song is a song of lamentation, accompanied with a message of a coming punishment. In the words of the later prophet Jeremiah, Yahweh further laments His vineyard, and then even later, Yahshua Christ makes an example of a portion of its history, however in His Gospel it is also evident that the lamentation shall ultimately turn to wrath, and that wrath is expressed in even stronger terms in His Revelation. In these messages it is fully evident that the vineyard is an allegory for the society of His people, in which the grapes are metaphors for the people themselves.

As we had discussed in Isaiah chapter 3, where the punishment of the people of Judah for their sins was first announced by the prophet, it is evident that the Patterns of Societal Collapse which had been described there are aspects of that punishment, and they had evidently already come upon Judah even before Isaiah had begun writing. They are the inevitable result of sin which would lead to the breakdown of society and its ultimate punishment. So in the course of the execution of that punishment, the great, wise and mighty men of the society would be neutralized, in one way or another. Then while the youth are magnified and the women caught up in feminism, they would all be humbled by the violence of their enemies. The men would end up dead, and the women, scarred with their own excess of debauchery, would be laid bare in the face of their enemies.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 4: Patterns of Societal Collapse

Isaiah chapter 2 had opened with a promise of hope, which was evidently a vision for some time far off in the future, since it was followed by a much more immediate condemnation and imminent judgment of the people of Israel of Isaiah’s own time. This condemnation was for greater Israel, since it had made references to the cedars of Lebanon, the oaks of Bashan, which were allegories for various of the tribes of ancient Israel, and also to the ships of Tarshish, the ships by which the children of Israel had spread themselves abroad. In this condemnation they were condemned for their sorceries, for their idolatry, for their haughtiness, and because they had pleased themselves in the children of strangers, which is fornication or race-mixing.

Therefore we must understand that since there was a message of hope which had accompanied the condemnation of Israel for their sins, that Yahweh God had never intended to destroy Israel entirely, but rather, His intention was, and is, to punish them for their sins, so that they would ultimately conform to His will and through their conformance, He could fulfill the things which He had promised to their fathers. As we also hope to have illustrated, it is very likely that by the time Isaiah had written these words, the prophet Amos had already completed the course of his prophecy, and in Amos chapter 3 we read: “1 Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, 2 You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

In Isaiah chapter 1 we hope to have elucidated the commonality of the opening message of the prophet with those of his contemporaries, Hosea and Amos. In verses 2 through 5 the prophet upbraids the children of Israel for rebelling against Yahweh their God, and departing from Him. Then in verses 6 through 9 the inevitable result of that rebellion is described, where strangers, people of other nations and races, have devoured their land. This prophecy also parallels other similar prophecies of Scripture, both contemporary and remote. One example is found in Joel chapter 1, who wrote in reference to the land of Israel some short time after the deportations of Israel and much of Judah by the Assyrians, and said “4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.”

But then this also parallels another example, a more distant prophecy in Revelation chapter 9, where there is a vision of the hordes of Arabia who tormented the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years: “2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. 4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. 5 And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.”

In the opening presentation of this commentary on Isaiah we had sought to focus upon the historical circumstances in which the prophet had begun his ministry. So with the evidence we presented, Jonah had already prophesied some decades earlier, and it seems that the prophet Hosea had already begun his ministry, which, like that of Isaiah, had also endured to the time of Hezekiah. The prophet Amos had also already begun, even if his ministry had evidently not endured for as long as that of Hosea. Now along comes Isaiah, in what appears to be the final years of the rule of Uzziah king of Judah, some time before 740 BC. We have also explained, from evidence which Isaiah provides in chapters 7 and 8 of his prophecy, that he is a man a Judah, that he was married and had at least one child, and he was of some importance to the degree where he could have the attention of the king, and he could command scribes and priests. So it seems that Isaiah may even have been a man of rank in the court of the king before he started his prophetic ministry.

In the opening words of his prophecy, in the first nine verses, there is a blanket condemnation of the entire nation of Israel, which includes both Israel and Judah, and it is not entirely certain that anyone in Israel proper had yet been taken into captivity, but it is evident in the inscriptions that many Israelites dwelling north of Israel proper, in lands already captured by the Assyrians, had most likely been taken, and as we have also seen, as early as the time of Ahab the Israelites had been sending men north to fight against the Assyrians, in league with the Syrians of Damascus and other towns which at one time had been governed by Judah. So concerning this struggle, which is evident in the prophecy which Jonah had made concerning Jeroboam II, and the Assyrian success against Aram and Israel after the time of Jeroboam, it is difficult to tell whether Isaiah is speaking prophetically, or if he is speaking as if the news were a current or recent event, where he announced in verse 7 that “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.”

Here we are going to venture a commentary on the book of the prophet Isaiah. While it seems as though it may be a long journey, and I am persuaded that it may take as long as a year and a half to complete, the Genesis commentary had taken that long to complete. I can only pray that it is worth the time and effort in the end. As we discussed here last week, I am still pondering some supplementary material for the Genesis commentary, so I may occasionally revert to that in the near future. The Book of Isaiah is nearly as long as the Book of Genesis, about 37,000 words in the King James Version where Genesis has just over 38,000, and the dives into ancient history and some elements of the language may be nearly as deep. However we also hope to elucidate its close relationship to the Gospel of Christ and the epistles of His apostles in ways beyond those we have already discussed in our New Testament commentaries.

Here we are going to venture a commentary on the book of the prophet Isaiah. While it seems as though it may be a long journey, and I am persuaded that it may take as long as a year and a half to complete, the Genesis commentary had taken that long to complete. I can only pray that it is worth the time and effort in the end. As we discussed here last week, I am still pondering some supplementary material for the Genesis commentary, so I may occasionally revert to that in the near future. The Book of Isaiah is nearly as long as the Book of Genesis, about 37,000 words in the King James Version where Genesis has just over 38,000, and the dives into ancient history and some elements of the language may be nearly as deep. However we also hope to elucidate its close relationship to the Gospel of Christ and the epistles of His apostles in ways beyond those we have already discussed in our New Testament commentaries.

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 1: The Sinful Nation

The prophet Isaiah describes himself as the son of Amoz, and little more can be known about him with any absolute certainty, aside from the apparent fact that he was a man of Judah. Being a man of Judah, he could have been of the tribe of Judah or of Levi, or perhaps even of Benjamin, and the only indication is found in circumstantial evidence later in his writing. There it is also evident that Isaiah had been married with children, as he recorded in chapter 7 that he had been told to go to meet Ahaz the king, and to bring “Shearjashub thy son” along with him. If this were the only reference to a son, we may think the Hebrew term בן or ben (# 1121), which is literally a son, was being used metaphorically, as it is used on many occasions. But in the subsequent text there is another indication that he did indeed have a wife and children, and very much in the same fashion that the prophet Hosea had children – as an example to the people for whom he had prophesied.

On Genesis, Part 60: A Post-Genesis Chronology

As we have often stated, one of the primary endeavors of this ministry is to provide Christian Identity with a firm academic foundation. That is because Christian Identity is Truth, and it certainly can be established in Scripture, history and archaeology that it is truth. Of course, our enemies can find ways to try to undermine us, just as they have found countless ways to criticize Scripture itself. But those ways are hardly honest, and always deceptive. One of the many avenues they have exploited in order to achieve their ends is Biblical chronology. They take simplistic interpretations of certain passages and use them to assert that somehow the Bible is false, that it can only be a collection of fairy tales, because, for example, there is no record in Egypt that the Israelites were in slavery there for four hundred years. But upon deep scrutiny of those same passages, and with an accurate understanding of Scripture and history, all of their attacks fail.

In recent weeks here we have concluded a commentary of the Book of Genesis, and in the course of that work we had provided a rather detailed chronology, using the Septuagint as our primary resource, which in this respect is certainly much more accurate than the translations which are based on the Masoretic Text, such as the popular King James Version. In that chronology, we asserted that among the last significant events in Genesis, Jacob had gone to Egypt with his family around 1665 BC, and since the call of Abraham was about 1880 BC, when the patriarch was 75 years old, and since Paul of Tarsus had written in Galatians chapter 3 that there were 430 years from the time of that call to the giving of the law at Sinai, the sojourn to Egypt was halfway through that period, leaving 215 years. So from the time Jacob went to Egypt, there would be another 215 years until the giving of the law at Sinai some time around 1450 BC. Moses, having been 80 years old at Sinai, must have been born some time around 1530 BC.

On Genesis, Part 59: The End of the Beginning

The first and last books of the Bible are its most important books. The book of Genesis is the story of the origin of our race, and the Revelation is the story of its destiny after its reconciliation to Christ. The entire purpose in the interim, is succinctly described by Solomon, in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 where he wrote that “13 … I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.” With this, Paul of Tarsus agreed, and upon it he expounded, in Romans chapter 8 where he wrote: “18 Therefore I consider that the happenstances of the present time are not of value, looking to the future honor to be revealed to us. 19 Indeed in earnest anticipation the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of Yahweh. 20 To transientness the creation was subjected not willingly, but on account of He who subjected it in expectation 21 that also the creation itself shall be liberated from the bondage of decay into the freedom of the honor of the children of Yahweh.” By “creation” in that passage, Paul meant the Adamic creation, since later in the chapter he compared that creation to other elements of the creation of God.

So while the Greek word γένεσις means origin or beginning, and the book of Genesis describes the origin and beginning of our race, the Revelation describes the beginning of the end. While Genesis contains the promises to our race, the Revelation reveals how Yahweh God shall keep those same promises. Here as the book of Genesis closes, it offers an uncertain future for the children of Israel since it has already warned that they would be afflicted in Egypt, in the promises which Yahweh had made to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. But in the final chapters of the Revelation, that end is described as having a more promising future, where it offers yet another beginning and the promise of something much greater than what this world has offered, although we continue to remain uncertain as to how that shall materialize.

On Genesis, Part 58: Premonitions

As we have already discussed at length where Jacob had first blessed the sons of Joseph in Genesis chapter 48, thereby leaving his favorite son with the inheritance of The Double Portion, Jacob was ill and he knew that he was about to die, at the age of a hundred and forty-seven years, which was some time around 1648 BC. While Abraham had lived to be a hundred and seventy-five years old, and Isaac lived even longer, having attained a hundred and eighty years, the typical lifespans of men in general seem to have been gradually getting shorter over the many centuries which followed the Flood of Noah, and now at this point it has been fifteen hundred and thirty-eight years since that event had occurred. Following the death of his father, at which time he was about fifty-seven years old, Joseph would live to be only a hundred and ten, although Levi lived for a hundred and thirty-seven years and his son Kohath for a hundred and thirty-three (Exodus 6:16-18).

Perhaps Joseph’s shorter lifespan could be seen as an act of mercy by Yahweh God, rather than as a curse, as life gets more difficult for men as they advance in age. It certainly is evident that Jacob did not want to live as long as he did, and when he had first arrived in Egypt, at the age of a hundred and thirty, and he was reunited with Joseph, he is recorded in Genesis chapter 46 as having said to him: “30... Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.” But perhaps Yahweh kept Jacob alive for another seventeen years so that Ephraim and Manasseh could receive his blessing as young men, rather than as young boys. The fact that Joseph and his two sons were blessed first by Jacob, and apart from the others, is quite significant, since they were the recipients not only of the double-portion of the inheritance, but they had also explicitly received the greater promises which were made to Abraham, and passed on to Jacob.