A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 38: The Beginning of Encouragement

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 38: The Beginning of Encouragement

As we had discussed introducing our last presentation of Isaiah, the commentary on chapter 40 which was titled The Comfort in Judgement, that chapter serves as a bridge to this exclusively prophetic portion of Isaiah which has a different perspective than the first thirty-nine historical chapters, and it also serves as a conclusion to those historical chapters. While there are many significant prophecies in those historical chapters which would not be fulfilled until long after Isaiah’s own time, they were interspersed with prophecies and records of events which had occurred in his own time, events which are now all transpired. Examples of those prophecies which have not yet transpired at this point in the life of Isaiah are the still-future fall of Assyria, which happened around 612 BC, and the rise and fall of Babylon as an empire, which began around 605 BC and lasted until about 530 BC. Those events were both prophesied by Isaiah in chapters 10 through 14. Then there was the prophesied destruction of Tyre, which would not be completed until 330 BC, in Isaiah chapters 23 through 25.

Speaking of ancient Tyre, we shall take a brief digression. The mainland city of Tyre was called Ushu by the Assyrians and Uzu by the Egyptians. It was evidently destroyed by the Babylonians (Ezekiel chapter 29) but the island city was not destroyed until the time of Alexander of Macedon around 330 BC. However much earlier, in the time of Ashurbanipal, in his ninth campaign, which must have been some time around 660 BC, we read: “On my return march [from Arabia] I captured the city of Ushu, which is located on the shore of the sea. The people of Ushu, who had not cowered before their governor(s), and had not paid their tribute, their yearly gifts, I slew. Among (those) insubmissive people I applied the rod(?). Their gods, their people, I carried off to Assyria. The insubmissive people of Akkû (Acre) I slaughtered. Their corpses I hung on stakes, surrounding the city (with them). Those who were left I carried away to Assyria, joined them to (my) military organization, adding them to the many troops which Assur had given me.” Therefore it is evident that Israelites continued to be taken into captivity, or slaughtered by the Assyrians, long after the destruction of Samaria by Sargon II. The fulfillments of many prophecies often occur in processes extended over many years, or even centuries.

Despite the opinions of the academic world, which follows the lies of Jewry in all things Biblical, ancient Tyre was a city of Israel; it was not a Canaanite city. The beginning of the proof of that assertion is the fact that Isaiah spent three chapters of this book both prophesying and lamenting its downfall, which is probably more time than he spent prophesying the fall of Samaria. The prophet Ezekiel also prophesied, lamented and described the fall of Tyre, and its king, in four chapters of his own book. The contents of those chapters in both prophets clearly shows that the inhabitants of Tyre were apostate Israelites. For example, in Isaiah chapter 23 the Tyrians were accused of committing fornication, but the Canaanites were certainly never under the law.

In Amos chapter 1 we read “9 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Tyrus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they delivered up the whole captivity to Edom, and remembered not the brotherly covenant: 10 But I will send a fire on the wall of Tyrus, which shall devour the palaces thereof.” The Tyrians remained subject to Babylon during the Babylonian siege and destruction of Jerusalem, and having been vassals of the Babylonians, they would have contributed to its effort in that siege. So here in Amos the Tyrians were accused of having profitted in the booty once the city was taken, but also having “delivered up the whole captivity to Edom”, evidently surrendering the captured people of Judah to the Edomite slave merchants, and doing so they “remembered not the brotherly covenant”, because Tyrians were brethren to the people of Judah whom they had forsaken. This is very pertinent here in Isaiah chapter 41, that the Tyrians were Israelites, because as it is also alluded to in those earlier chapters of Isaiah and The Burden of Tyre, many Israelites had been escaping the Assyrian captivity and departing by sea for the islands and coastlands of the West. But of course, those islands and coastlands had been colonized and exploited for trade by the Israelites of Tyre for many centuries before the time of Isaiah. So those Israelites are also a subject of the beginning of encouragement for Israel which is found here in this chapter.

So returning to this 41st chapter of Isaiah, here we find the beginning of prophecies which have fulfillments which all lie exclusively and completely beyond Isaiah’s own time. Therefore in the balance of this book, there are no further mentions of any historical figures or events from the time of Isaiah and that of Hezekiah his king. While throughout these chapters Assyria, Babylon and Egypt are mentioned, as well as the patriarchs of old, there is only one future historical figure who is explicitly mentioned by name, although Cyrus, the future king of Persia, would not be born for perhaps as many as another hundred and thirty years, so he is far off in Isaiah’s future in spite of the fact that Isaiah had called him by name. Here there is also a plethora of significant Messianic prophecies which have clearly been fulfilled in the life and ministry of Yahshua Christ, some of which span several chapters of this portion of Isaiah.

So, as an example, when I embarked on this commentary I created a list of passages in the New Testament where Isaiah was explicitly cited or referenced, and it contains twenty-four passages of Isaiah from chapters 1 through 40, and twenty-seven from chapters 41 through 66. So while other methods of counting may produce somewhat different results, proportionally these last twenty-six chapters are referenced more frequently by New Testament authors than were the first forty chapters. In any event, those authors also lead us to believe that it is all one and the same Isaiah who had written both portions of this book.

This also leads me to another digression, so that I may remark on the ordering of chapters in Isaiah. Here we have found no evidence of any of the chapters of this work being out of order, and that distinguishes this book from those of the other major prophets, since Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel all have chapters which are clearly arranged out of their historical order in modern Bibles. In the Septuagint, there is a different order for all of Jeremiah chapters 25 through 52. In Daniel chapter 6 there is a Persian ruler, but in chapters 7 and 8 there are several years of a Babylonian ruler, and in chapter 9 there is a Persian ruler once again, which is contrary to history and the context of Daniel. In Ezekiel chapter 26 he wrote “in the eleventh year”, referring to the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah in which he himself was taken. But in Ezekiel chapter 29 he wrote “in the tenth year” at the beginning of the chapter and “in the twenty-seventh year” at its end. Then Ezekiel chapter 40 is “in the five and twentieth year”, so there are certainly some things to be considered in all of that.

Now as for this remaining portion of Isaiah upon which we are about to embark, while the Messianic prophecies are indeed quite significant, there is another major feature of these chapters which is practically ignored by the organized churches, and that is the fact that the main subject of these chapters is the future of the children of Israel after the time of the Assyrian conquests, or, ostensibly, those who had escaped the captivity by sea. In the Burden of Tyre, Yahweh had made promises which demonstrated that they would not escape His will. So in the Messianic prophecies found in these chapters, the future of the children of Israel, their sin, their forgiveness, their salvation, their healing, their redemption, and their reconciliation, are the reasons for the promises of a Messiah, a Savior, and no other reasons are ever given. Therefore this chapter marks the beginning of encouragement for a post-captivity Israel, as the balance of the writing of Isaiah is replete with such encouragement, but also contains a few warnings.

So, for example, in Isaiah chapter 43 where Yahweh God is explicitly addressing the children of Israel, we read, in part: “14 Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships. 15 I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King.” Then earlier in that chapter, where He is also explicitly addressing Israel, we read, in part: “ 3 For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. 4 Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.” These words were uttered even before Babylon had become an empire, so this is the second prophecy of the Babylonian empire found in Isaiah, the other being in chapters 13 and 14.

Because Yahweh God had stated explicitly that he gave up entire nations of people for the sake of the children of Israel, to imagine that He would later include those same nations in His salvation is a direct contradiction of His Word, and it also contradicts all of the unconditional promises which He had made to the patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Furthermore, those same academics who have errantly imagined that Tyrians were Canaanites also think that the tribes of Israel taken into captivity simply vanished. But these chapters of Isaiah, and our own view of ancient history, which we can substantiate through archaeology and ancient writings, both agree that they have never vanished. In fact, to a great extent, our view of ancient history developed on account of these chapters of Isaiah. Isaiah informs us precisely where the children of Israel had gone, and the apostles of Christ followed the way to which Isaiah had pointed. So the truth is, that truth has only been swept under a carpet by Jewry, so that Jews can maintain their own lie in their claims that they are Israel.

So Identity Christians are the only Christians who accept and believe the promises of God as they were written, which in Romans chapter 4 and elsewhere is how Paul of Tarsus informs us that the promises should be believed. We are also the only Christians who believe Christ, who identified the Jews and denied them the claim that they are Israel. We shall also see that the same pattern found in Isaiah chapter 43 had been expressed in different ways throughout these final twenty-six chapters of Isaiah, and hopefully we shall also be able to fully elucidate how these prophecies concerning Israel were reflected in the words of Paul of Tarsus as well as the other apostles of Christ, and even Christ Himself.

With that, we shall begin with Isaiah chapter 41:

1 Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the people renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us come near together to judgment. 

The Hebrew word translated as keep silence here, and as be silent in the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, is חרש or cheresh (# 2790), which means to scratch, according to Strong’s, and therefore has extended uses such as to plough or engrave, as if scratching the land or the surface of some object. Strong’s adds that it may also therefore mean to fabricate or devise, and “hence (from the idea of secrecy) to be silent, to let alone…” But the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon distinguishes this word as a separate but identically spelled word, defining it similarly but without making the connection between the ideas of scratching and being silent which had been made by Strong. [1]

Curiously, the Greek of the Septuagint begins the verse with a phrase, Ἐγκαινίζεσθε πρός με, νῆσοι, which Brenton translated as “Hold a feast to me, ye islands” but which I would translate as “Consecrate yourselves to Me, O islands”, as the children of Israel are being called to repentance, and as the verb ἐγκαινίζω means to renovate or consecrate, and appears in the Medium or Middle Voice, where the doer of the action is also the recipient. According to Origen’s Hexapla, Aquila and Theodotion each have a verb which means to be dumb, or silent, while evidently some copies of Symmachus had a verb which means serve, but others be silent. Where we read people here, the Septuagint has princes, although the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible also has people. In the Hexapla, the Old Latin reading and that of Symmachus have nations, which loosely agrees with the Hebrew. [2]

The Hebrew word translated as islands here is a plural form of אי or ay (# 339), which Strong’s defined as “a habitable spot (as desirable); dry land, a coast, an island”, and gave its root as a word which means to covet, אוה or avah (# 183), although we may think that the opposite is true, that ay is the root of avah and not the other way around. So the meaning of the word islands also includes coastlands, as being more desirable places to live than the interior deserts and mountains. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew lexicon defines the word, in part, to mean “coast, region … [a] place whither one betakes oneself for resting, etc., originally from [a] mariner's standpoint” and then they further state: “coast, border, region (mostly late), of Philistia & Phenicia with adjacent country [citing] Isaiah 20:6, 23:2, 23:6 …” [3] So we may view this word as having described the more desirable islands and coastlands of the ancient Mediterranean world, and the very use of such word reveals the fact that the children of Israel had been a maritime people.

Now at this point in Isaiah, as Isaiah himself has often already attested, with the exception of Tyre the coasts of Israel are practically devoid of Israelites, as they had for the most part been taken off into captivity by the Assyrians. Yet we have even seen that ancient Tyre would also be destroyed, in Isaiah chapter 23 where the prophet presented the burden of Tyre. We have also seen that the Assyrians had continued to oppress and reduce the other inhabitants remaining on the coasts, as Acre, mentioned in the inscription of Ashurbanipal which we have already discussed, was another seaport of the tribe of Asher to the south of Tyre. The continued Assyrian oppression of the coasts of Palestine does not allow the people in the isles to renew their strength, which is the promise here, so it is not the people on the coastlands of ancient Palestine who are the subject of this beckoning to come together to judgment, and rather, this is a vision of a people far away.

In subsequent chapters of this prophecy, on more than a few occasions it is evident that here Isaiah is addressing Israel in captivity, but here we shall read from Jeremiah chapter 30: “10 Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.” Then, a little further on, in chapter 31, “1 At the same time, saith the LORD, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. 2 Thus saith the LORD, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. 3 The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Having such a rest, the children of Israel would indeed renew their strength, in the islands and coastlands of the West, as we shall see:

2 Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? he gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow. 3 He pursued them, and passed safely; even by the way that he had not gone with his feet. 

Without substantiation or any noted differences in the Hebrew, the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible has victory here rather than righteous man. However while the Hebrew word צדק or tsedeq (# 6664) may mean victory in certain contexts, it is primarily righteousness or justice. However the Hebrew in the scroll known as 1QIsaiah^a has many variant readings in this passage, many of which we shall neglect to note. One example is that rather than “rule over kings” it has “bring down kings”. 

This prophecy may indeed have three fulfillments, because first, Abraham was raised up from the east, having come from Ur of the Chaldees which is about 630 miles almost directly east of Jerusalem. Abraham was, on limited occasions, given the nations as dust to his sword, but this was fulfilled to a much greater degree in the form of his descendants. However from a prophetic perspective, this also describes Jacob in the form of his own descendants, the children of Israel. As Yahweh God had attested in Isaiah chapter 23, many Israelites had already fled to Tarshish, Chittim and the other isles of the sea. In those places they had come to dominate the nations of Japheth which had first been settled throughout the region. But apart from the people of Tyre, there is other Biblical and historical evidence that many other Israelites had departed by sea at an even earlier time, and settled in various places along the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean. From their perspective, since it is they who are being addressed here, Jacob was raised up from the east.

But furthermore, in Isaiah chapter 66 the prophet informs his readers of the fate of the Israelites who went into Assyrian captivity, where we read in part: “19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the [Nations].” Among the places in that passage, Tarshish was known to the Greeks as Tartessus, a region of what is now southwestern Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. Lud is Lydia, which was a group of cities on the Western coast of Anatolia, and according to ancient Greek writers, the Etruscans of northern Italy also came as a colony from Lud. Javan was a son of Japheth, in Genesis 10:2, but here the name is a transliteration of the Hebrew and Persian name for the Ionian Greeks, who dwelt in the isles and coastlands of the Mediterranean, as well as having had colonies on the Black Sea. These Greeks were descendants of Javan. Where the word Grecians appears in the King James Version in Joel 3:6, the Hebrew word is a form of the name Javan (# 3125).

Like Javan and Tarshish, Tubal was also a son of Japheth, and at one time Tubal was a nation on the coast of the Black Sea. In an Assyrian inscription of Sargon II there is a reference to “all Tabali and Cilicia, who chased away Midas king of Musku” [4], and Tabali and Musku are references to the Tubal and Meshech of Genesis chapter 10, nations which were also mentioned over two centuries later by the Greek historian Herodotus [5]. While the identity of Pul is less certain, it is evident that the same name was used to refer to an Assyrian king, mentioned in 2 Kings chapter 15 and 1 Chronicles chapter 5, and that Assyrian kings and other high-ranking officials were often rewarded with their own districts within the lands which had been conquered by the Empire. But Pul may just be an allegorical name for Assyria itself, after the king whom the Israelites had known as Pul, and at least many Israelites were resettled in Assyria. But as we had discussed in Part 11 of this commentary, The Promise in the Flames, the captive children of Israel were indeed found in the regions of northern Assyria, Tubal and Meshech in the Assyrian records of the late 8th and 7th centuries BC, under the name of Kimmerians.

So as we shall see in greater detail later in these chapters of Isaiah, this prophecy would be fulfilled in Jacob as his descendants migrated west, and had, in the course of their migrations, made war with the other Adamic nations which had preceded them. Those wars had already begun in some degree long before this point in Isaiah, as some of the various Greek tribes had descended from Israel and had emigrated to Europe and other Mediterranean islands and coastlands as many as eight hundred years before Isaiah’s time. Notable among these were the Dorians, Danaans [6] and Trojans [7], whereas the Phoenicians also settled in Greece at an early time, as well as the coasts of Western Anatolia, and only much later in Iberia and the coasts of Africa around Carthage, a settlement founded about a hundred and forty three years after Solomon built the Temple, according to Flavius Josephus in his treatise Against Apion (1:108). That is not long after the time of the ships of Tarshish belonging to Hiram and Solomon, first mentioned in Scripture in 2 Chronicles chapter 9.

But it seems that the third and ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy is in the person of Yahshua Christ Himself, as He has promised elsewhere to destroy the nations wherever Israel had been scattered. This we read in the very next verse of Jeremiah chapter 30 which we have already cited: “11 For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.” So ultimately, as it is also described in Revelation chapter 19 and the Wedding Supper of the Lamb which is promised to the children of Israel, the nations shall all be dust to the sword of Christ, and stubble to His bow. From the perspective of Israel in captivity, Abraham, Jacob and Yahshua Christ are all righteous men raised up from the east. With most of the children of Israel found in the nations of the west, Christ is the ultimate man of righteousness raised up from the east.

Now Yahweh assures the fulfillment:

4 Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he. 

The word translated as generations isדור or dor (# 1755), which Strong’s defines as “a revolution of time, i.e. an age or generation; also a dwelling”. But the word was also used to describe a posterity, and for that reason it was usually translated into Greek in the Septuagint as γενεά, which is a race or the generation of a particular race, and sometimes as γένεσις, which is an origin. So this word was translated into Greek in Genesis 6:9 as γενεά, although the Codex Alexandrinus has γένεσις which is more properly an origin.

Yahweh is the first and the last, and in these last twenty-six chapters of Isaiah, Yahweh had declared that “I am he” on eight significant occasions, and all of them are messages of encouragement for the captive children of Israel. So in Isaiah chapter 43 we read: “10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.” Yahshua Christ is God, as the apostle Thomas had declared upon realizing the fact of His Resurrection, in John chapter 20 (20:28) and addressed Him as “My Lord and my God.” But since Yahshua Christ cannot be some other God, or some God apart from Yahweh who declared that “before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me”, Yahshua Christ must be one and the same with Yahweh, and He cannot be some other god in a trinity of gods, since Israel had only One God, and not a committee of gods.

So here in Isaiah we have just read the Word of Yahweh which says “I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he”, and in Revelation chapter 1 we read where John had professed to have seen Yahshua Christ: “17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”

Likewise, in Isaiah chapter 43, in words attributed to Yahweh we read: “25 I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” Then later, in John chapter 8, Yahshua Christ had told the men of Judaea which were opposed to Him that “ 24 I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”

As Christ had also said, “My sheep hear My voice”, in John chapter 10, and in Isaiah chapter 52, in an explicit prophecy of the message of the Gospel, we read: “6 Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I. 7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!” So in chapter 1 of the Revelation, after the Resurrection of Christ had demonstrated to men that He was God, John had described Christ as having said “11 … I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.” Christ can only be the “first and the last” if He is Yahweh God manifest in the flesh.

The people would only fear the righteous man who was raised up from the east if they were caught up in a state of sin, which indicates that they should fear the wrath of God, and therefore we read:

5 The isles saw it, and feared; the ends of the earth were afraid, drew near, and came. 

And now the reason for their fear is elucidated, that they had been practicing idolatry:

6 They helped every one his neighbour; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. 7 So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved. 

This describes the making of idols, and after the long address for Israel which now follows, we read in the final verses of this chapter: “28 For I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there was no counsellor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. 29 Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten images are wind and confusion.” So that conclusion substantiates our interpretation here, that verses 6 and 7 refer to the idolatry of the nations in the isles and coastlands of the earth. Now Israel is addressed directly:

8 But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend. 9 Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. 

The Hebrew word translated as taken here is חזק or chazaq (# 2388), and taken is a poor translation in this context. Strong’s defines the word as “to fasten upon; hence to seize, be strong (figuratively courageous, causatively strengthen, cure, help, repair, fortify), obstinate; to bind, restrain, conquer” and gives a long list of ways it had been translated with words having related meanings to these definitions or even in metaphorical terms in the King James Version. Here the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible has encouraged rather than taken, and in this context in Isaiah that rendering is far better. In verse 6, the word which the King James Version had translated as courage is also this word chazaq, and in verse 7 the word translated in the King James version as encouraged is once again chazaq. So how should it be taken here? 

Rather, it should certainly be read in verse 9 in the same way it is understood in verses 6 and 7. The children of Israel had in past times encouraged one another to idolatry, but now it is Yahweh who is encouraging them all to worship and obey Him, because He has chosen them and has promised to preserve them. At this point in history, the seed of Israel are being sent into captivity, most of them are already in captivity, or escaped to the islands, the remnant of Jerusalem is still prophesied to go into captivity, and for that reason, the much later Gospel of Christ would be sent to the ends of the earth, where Yahweh is encouraging Jacob here in verses 8 and 9. 

So much of Jacob already resides at the ends of the earth, and this is foreseen in the words of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 33, in the Song of Moses where he blessed Joseph and said: “17 His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.”

Here in verse 8 and in verses 6 and 7 we may also translate chazaq as strengthen, to reflect the prophetic assurance of the statement in verse 1 which says “and let the people renew their strength”, but that strength also comes through encouragement, and different words were used for strength in both verse 1 and in the verse which follows, where this encouragement continues:

10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. 

Of course, the children of Israel were at the weakest point they had seen since the days of the Judges, when they were oppressed by a series of nations on diverse occasions for about a hundred and fourteen years out of a span of four hundred and fifty years, and before the time of Saul they had been oppressed for forty of those years by the Philistines. Now, however, they are scattered far and wide, there is only a small remnant in Jerusalem and scattered other places in Israel, and it seems as if there is no coming back. So all of the ancient enemies of Israel must have rejoiced, yet here there is also encouragement concerning them:

11 Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish. 12 Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought. 

By the time of Christ, the Assyrians were no more, even if certain Arab bastards consider themselves to be Assyrians today, and the Babylonians, Egyptians and others of the ancient enemies of the children of Israel were found in the same circumstances. Nineveh was gone, Babylon had become insignificant, and while there was a Hellenistic Egypt, it consisted mainly of Macedonian Greeks who appropriated the ancient Egyptian culture for themselves. Neither were there any identifiable Philistines, Ammonites or Moabites, which had also disappeared in the Babylonian and Persian periods, having been absorbed into the Arab masses. While Esau was a special case, as Yahweh had made promises of enmity between Esau and Jacob which had not yet been fulfilled, by the time of Christ the Edomites had become Judaeans, whereby they have sought to steal an inheritance which was justly acquired by Jacob. But the Edomites were also Arab bastards, having been descended mostly from the ancient Hurrians to whom Esau had joined himself in Mount Seir.

So all of the ancient enemies of Israel had come to nought, but Jacob would still contend with Esau, as Paul had written in Romans chapter 9: “21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? 22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: 23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,” Today the chief struggle in the world is between Christians and Jews, who are primarily Jacob and Esau, and although that cannot be properly quantified here, this passage is also an encouragement that Jacob shall indeed prevail.

13 For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. 14 Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. 

Once again, the Hebrew word for hold here is chazaq (# 2388), and it would have better been translated as encourages, or strengthens, as it is here in the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. 

Here we would interpret the word worm as an allegory for the memory of something despised, which is the state of the posterity of Jacob at this very point in history. Israel was despised, and is now scattered abroad, along with much of Judah which was also despised, and the people of Jerusalem shall also soon be scattered, when Isaiah’s prophecy, found in the final verses of Isaiah chapter 39, is fulfilled, that the sons of Hezekiah and all of the treasures of Jerusalem would be carried away to Babylon. So at that point, they would be no better than a worm, because that is often all that may be left of a dead cadaver, along with the bones. Once a body is dead and has been picked clean, as was ancient Israel, there is nothing left but a worm.

So later on in prophecy, in Jeremiah chapter 25 (25:11-12), it was told that Jerusalem would lie desolate for seventy years, and that also seems to correspond to the seventy years during which Tyre would be forgotten and sing as a harlot, which is prophesied here in Isaiah chapter 23 (23:15-16). That would be the low point for Jacob, at least in Palestine where Israel is most apparent in the eyes of the world of that time. However here Yahweh promises to strengthen Jacob’s right hand as Israel is in captivity, and if God Himself is strengthening Jacob’s right hand, then Israel shall not fail to fulfill the many promises which Jacob had received, among which are those found in Genesis chapter 35: “11 And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; 12 And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.” 

However Jacob also inherited the even earlier promises which Abraham had received from God, such as that which is found in Genesis chapter 17: “5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. 6 And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” The fact that the same Jacob, and therefore the same Israel, has these promises today, as God continues to strengthen Jacob’s right hand, is fully assured in Christ, who had attested in Matthew chapter 22 that “32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 

Now, strengthening Jacob’s right hand, which is the hand of Israel in the isles and coastlands of the West:

15 Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. 16 Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the LORD, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel. 

We have already asserted that the Dorian and Danaan Greeks, as well as the Trojans, were all of the early dispersions of the children of Israel. In 2 Kings chapter 4, Solomon is compared in wisdom to certain descendants of a man of the tribe of Judah, among whom were two named Darda and Chalcol, where it was also said that Solomon’s “fame was in all nations round about.” While these men are otherwise unknown from Scripture, in early Greek poetry Dardanus was the legendary founder of what had become ancient Troy, and Chalcas a legendary founder of ancient Pamphylia. These names would have still been famous at the time of Solomon, only a few generations later. The same myths and legends, as well as ancient Greek historians, attest that the Romans were a colony of Trojans who settled in Italy after the Trojan War.

In Greek Tragic Poetry, the Danaans were said to have come from Egypt into Greece, and were also linked to Phoenicians who had also settled in Greece. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul of Tarsus informed the Corinthians, who were Dorian Greeks, that their fathers had been baptized in the cloud and in the sea with Moses, so their ancestors must have been Israelites in the Exodus. Sparta was also a Dorian city. In the 2nd century BC, a Spartan king named Areus had written a letter to a certain high priest in Jerusalem who was named Onias, and claimed ties of kinship with the people of Judah, evidently from their own ancient writings. The letter is recorded in both 1 Maccabees chapter 12 and Book 12 of the Antiquities of the Judaeans by Flavius Josephus, which was written at the end of the 1st century AD.

In relation to all of this, the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, citing an earlier historian called Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian and philosopher of the 4th century BC, had given a strange account of the Israelite Exodus from what must have been an Egyptian point of view, where he had written that “the aliens were driven from the country, and the most outstanding and active among them banded together and, as some say, were cast ashore in Greece and certain other regions; their leaders were notable men, chief among them being Danaus and Cadmus. But the greater number were driven into what is now called Judaea ... The colony was headed by a man called Moses, outstanding both for his wisdom and for his courage” [8] So ancient Greeks understood the settlement of the isles and coasts of Europe by early Israelites, even as early as those who were captive in Egypt.

While these few points are not the full body of proof for our assertions, they should be cause to pursue the fuller investigations which we have already conducted. So if the Romans, Dorians, Danaans and others from ancient Israel, such as the Carthaginians and Iberians, had dominated the Mediterranean world as well as much of the near East, from the time of Alexander, through the time of Christ and well into the Middle Ages, that is Yahweh God strengthening the hand of Jacob in the lands of his captivity in the isles of the West. But that is only half the story, and perhaps later in this Commentary on Isaiah we shall discuss the origins of the Germanic tribes who had also descended from Israelites of the Assyrian captivity, as they were the heirs of ancient Rome after the fall of its empire.

Through these people, the mountains, or great nations, as well as the hills, or smaller nations of antiquity, had indeed all been beaten into chaff. But there is a deeper meaning in the promises that follow:

17 When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. 18 I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. 

Unlike the deserts of Palestine, where many wells had to be dug, and protected, in order to secure water, the islands and coastlands of the Mediterranean as they were in the ancient world were never so much in want of a supply of water. So it is not a reference to literal water which is the promise in this prophecy. Rather, when the woman of Samaria had asked Christ how He could ask her, a lowly Samaritan, for water, where He had replied we read: “10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. ” Of course, the woman did not understand that answer, so it continues where she replies and: “11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? 12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? 13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. 15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.”

Likewise in this prophecy, the promise of water represents a promise that the children of Israel would again receive the Word of God, and that promise was fulfilled in the Gospel of Christ. Therefore we read in John chapter 7: “37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” Paul of Tarsus also expressed this understanding where he wrote, in Ephesians chapter 5: “25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”

Now a similar allegory concerns trees, and if these are literal trees then we must assume that the islands and mountains of the west had no trees?

19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil [olive] tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: 20 That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it. 

As we read in Jeremiah chapter 31, “2 Thus saith the LORD, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest.” Here in Isaiah the planting of trees is in the wilderness, representing the places to which Israel had been sent. In another place, in Revelation chapter 12, the children of Israel are described as a woman taken into the wilderness, where she would then be fed with the Gospel of Christ, where we read: “ 6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.” Then a little further on: “14 And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.” So in all of these places, the children of Israel in the time and in the places of their captivity, and up to the time when they would receive the Gospel of Christ, the good message of His grace, are described as having been in the wilderness. When the Christian society of the Middle Ages flourished, many men knew that they were Israel, not from history and archaeology, but simply because they understood that it was them who had fulfilled these prophecies here in Isaiah. Sadly, most people have now once again forgotten that simple but honest Christian truth.

This pattern which we see here in the destruction of the enemies of Israel, being refreshed and exalted by God, and then planted as flourishing trees, is also the theme of the 92nd Psalm, which is attributed to David:

5 O LORD, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep. 6 A brutish man knoweth not; neither doth a fool understand this.”

This evokes the remark I had just made concerning Christians not understanding their fulfillment of prophecy.

7 When the wicked spring as the grass, and when all the workers of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever: 8 But thou, LORD, art most high for evermore. 9 For, lo, thine enemies, O LORD, for, lo, thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered. 10 But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil. 11 Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me.

This evokes the words in verses 11-12 and 15-16 of this chapter. But the exalting of David’s horn and his being anointed with oil seems to represent the refreshing that the water of the Word would do for Jacob here.

12 The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 13 Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. 14 They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;

This evokes the words in verses 19-20 of this chapter.

15 To shew that the LORD is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

This is Yahweh strengthening the hand of Jacob, as we see here in Isaiah. Therefore this promise in Isaiah parallels both the words of Christ, and these earlier words of David from the 92nd Psalm. So this too is the beginning of encouragement for Israel in captivity. This is also how the promises to Abraham were fulfilled, that his seed would inherit the earth, become many nations, be as the sand of the sea, and that kings would come from his loins.

In the next passage of this chapter of Isaiah, there is a challenge to Israel concerning the idolatry in which they had engaged. The same passage also represents what we may consider to be the test of Scripture itself, because only Yahweh God, through His prophets, has revealed the things which were to come, and even today, those which are yet to come.

We shall commence at that point, Yahweh God be willing, when we return for our next presentation. 
 

Footnotes

1 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, F. Brown, S. Driver and C. Briggs, 1906, reprinted in 2021, Hendrickson Publishers, pp. 360-361.

1 Origenis Hexaplorum, Fridericus Field, AA. M., Volume II, Clarendon Press, 1875, p. 512.

3 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, p. 15.

4 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 284.

5 Herodotus, The Histories, 3.94, 7.78.

6 Classical Records of the Dorian & Danaan Israelite-Greeks, William Finck, https://christogenea .org/essays/classical-records-dorian-danaan-israelite-greeks, accessed July 25th, 2025

7 Classical Records of Trojan-Roman-Judah, William Finck, https://christogenea.org/essays/classical-records-trojan-roman-judah, accessed July 25th, 2025.

9 Library of History, Diodorus Siculus, 40.3.1-3.