Chapter 29
2021 - I am quite drained from all the work on 28, but will try to stick with it a while longer.
2024 - Same as above...but it is also Sunday morning. Reading on through 29.
Speaks to the siege of "Ariel". I think this must mean Jerusalem. (2021 - Looked up Ariel in an online Bible dictionary and it says this is a symbolic name for Jerusalem.) TCR footnote says it could mean lion of God, or hero, or altar hearth. MSB says we'll see in later verses that Jerusalem is in mind here.
2021 - Look at how Ariel is used in vs 2:
[Isa 29:2 ESV] Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and she shall be to me like an Ariel.
Surely here, Ariel has the sense of altar, where sacrifices are made to appease God. Jerusalem, the city on which God puts His own Name, has so rebelled that sacrifice is required to turn back God's wrath. Therefore the City of God becomes the altar of sacrifice. Blood will be shed on this altar.
Jerusalem is to be beaten into dust by her enemies.
Vss 1-4 seem to be near future prophecies. Isaiah is saying that Jerusalem is going to fall. She will be surrounded, besieged, attacked. Assyria is going to surround them quite soon. Babylon will surround them at a later time. The siege in Babylon's time will be horrific for those inside the city. And the siege will be successful, reducing the city of Jerusalem to nothing. This is not what happens at the end of the Millennial when Jerusalem is surrounded, so that too indicates a short term prophecy.
Then there is a reference to thunder, earthquake, great noise - like what we see in Revelation. And the nations that were against Jerusalem/Judah/Israel will be judged. They will be judged so completely that the harm they did will seem like it was only a dream.
2021 - Vss 5-8 seem to have jumped far into the future. This looks like the final battle when Jerusalem is surrounded and Jesus defeats them with his breath. How to resolve this?
I note that all the verbs in vs 2 are "sequential perfect". Same with vs 4. Here is what that means:
A Sequential Perfect verb often expresses the same kinds of action as the Imperfect conjugation, but it also connects to an earlier verb to form either a sequence of time or a sequence of thought. However, in Biblical Hebrew a Sequential Perfect verb has an additional and unique potential to express the same kind of action as the verb immediately preceding it.
This is not all that clear to me, but I think it is notable that it is much like the imperfect. We have already seen that the imperfect means there is continuous, ongoing, but possibly incomplete action going on, and we don't have a "fix" on the time of the action. We only know that it is not "done". SO, vss 1-4 are expressing a time - a long, ongoing time - during which Israel will be brought low. So this could be about Assyria, about Babylon, and even go on into the blindness and deafness of the Jews. Surely the Jews are still "speaking from the dust", demeaned and looked down on by the nations.
But here is what happens in vss 5-8: Verse 5 continues in the sequential perfect, but 6 switches from that to the imperfect tense. Remember that we cannot know the actual time that the action of this verb takes place. Given that it speaks of signs - thunder, earthquake, whirlwinds and so on, and that these are the kinds of things that take place in Revelation, in the last days, I think the verb tense alerts us that the prophecy has moved to a different "time" than those first 5 verses were about. Looking on through vs 8 I think we get a picture of that last battle at the end of the Millennial reign. Jerusalem will be surrounded and the number of enemies will be staggering, and with a breath, they will just not be there anymore.
Here is a thought for interpreting Isaiah - As previously noted, I have always had a very difficult time trying to decipher "when" Isaiah was talking about. Turns out that his frequent use of the perfect and imperfect and now the sequential perfect is the key to understanding, not the time he means, but understanding when he "switches" from one time to another time. Or from ongoing to "completed" actions. It is confusing to us because English DOES NOT HAVE these tenses! We cannot be alerted to these changes in English, because there is no English counterpart to make them clear. So it is NO WONDER Isaiah can be so confusing to English readers. The key to figuring out Isaiah is to dig into the tenses in the Hebrew language. This is something that previous generations weren't really able to do, but with our computers and Bible apps, and all those resources, this door to better understanding is now open to many more people than it was before. A result of this, a very positive result of this, should be that our understanding of prophecy and of which prophecies we are seeing fulfilled in the present day, should be far more nearly accurate than in previous generations.
9, 10 says that God has made it difficult, if not impossible, for Jerusalem to realize what is going on. Their prophets aren't even seeing the truth. Here is 10:
10 For the LORD has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes (the prophets), and covered your heads (the seers). [Isa 29:10 ESV]
So this curse on the Jews does not originate in the NT when they reject Christ. It actually begins way back here in Isaiah. God has ordained earthy justice for the nation of Israel - both north and south - and they are kept from seeing what is coming. Because it is done. They have passed the last turnaround, and from here forward they are doomed to destruction. Is this where the US is? I saw John MacArthur talking about something like this. He said we've passed the point where we can go back. He says we've let evil come too far and we cannot reverse it. He may be right...but God can reverse anything.
2021 - What an odd way ESV chooses to translate vs 10? I note that "has poured out" is in perfect tense. This is a done deal - at some time. We must think of it as a completed action, without fixing the time of the action. However, as my previous note indicated, I think God blinded the Jews when he pronounced the curse in Manasseh's time. So I think the actual time of the action indicated by this perfect tense, is in the past. So the translation using the past tense in English sort of "fits" in this case. Here is how some other translations render the verse:
[Isa 29:10 KJV] For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered.
[Isa 29:10 NASB95] For the LORD has poured over you a spirit of deep sleep, He has shut your eyes, the prophets; And He has covered your heads, the seers.
[Isa 29:10 HNV] For the LORD has poured out on you the spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes, the prophets; and your heads, the seers, has he covered.
These wide differences make it obvious that this is a difficult verse to translate. So what does it really mean? Perhaps that the prophets are the eyes of the people, and the seers are the head of the "body of the people". So the prophet's ability to foretell future events will soon go away - a prediction of the 400 years of silence at the end of the OT? And the seers - also predictors of what is to come, have covered their heads, indicating that they are "off duty" perhaps? Maybe they only uncovered their heads, these seers, when they were making predictions? There is one more possibility for that last little phrase. Looking at the interlinear, there is another word in that phrase that none of the translation seem to bring over. It is a Hebrew word for rules. Makes me wonder if the idea is that the "head of the people", that is, their rulers, who are responsible for guiding the nation forward with their ability to anticipate problems, are not wearing crowns anymore, but have covered their heads. That is, the leaders are no longer able to lead? This is really a difficult verse.
2024 - Actually, that NASB95 version makes it pretty clear. The prophets are the eyes of Israel, and the seers are its head. There was no Holy Spirit. What is coming, long after Babylon, is an end to prophets and seers. There will be no oracles of God to show them the way anymore. This way of communication from God is going to stop - as it did during the intertestamentary period. Vs 11 says they will be blinded. They will have the word but they won't be able to open the scroll and read it - it will be locked away from them. They won't have "heads" to figure out what it all means. They will be locked in ignorance as to their Messiah - whom they will both deny and kill - and they won't be able to figure it out even after the fact. And look what we get in vs 13! Jesus quotes this verse, and he makes it absolutely certain that it is HIS DAY that this prophecy is about! "Their wise" might be the scribes and Pharisees. Chapter 29 might be about the coming fall of Jerusalem, but it seems to me that it is "mostly" about the 1st Century, and the coming of Christ, and the end of the Old Covenant and the start of the New. Maybe that is why it says Ariel, instead of Jerusalem? Because Ariel is about far future Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that Christ will know.
2021 - I am just going to read on through the end of the chapter at vs. 24. Each verse is LONG, each is full of stuff. Maybe next year I can get to the rest.
These verses:
11 And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, "Read this," he says, "I cannot, for it is sealed." 12 And when they give the book to one who cannot read, saying, "Read this," he says, "I cannot read." [Isa 29:11-12 ESV]
This says they are all making excuses, claiming not to understand what is going on. They are capable of understanding the warnings, but they refuse to do so.
Interesting, Islam claims that these verses are a reference to Mohammad, who could not read or write when the Quran was revealed to him. He balked, because he was illiterate. Yet Gabriel persisted in giving him the Quran. Seems a very odd place, in context, to insert a reference to an illiterate prophet coming 1000 years later.
I think the real point of the passage is that the people of Isaiah's time were in denial about God's impending wrath. I think the sealed up book that the illiterate cannot read is about the blindness on Israel that is their punishment for rejecting God in Isaiah's time and rejecting Jesus in his time. The double rejection gets double punishment, and the curse is that the Jews CANNOT recognize what is coming because they WOULD NOT recognize what is coming.
13-16, indictment of the shallowness of the worship being practiced at this time, and a promise that God will show them wonders again to remind them that He is God. But they still balk. They make themselves the masters, put themselves above God, by asking the potter why He made them thus, and questioning the way that God does the things He does. They try and tell God that He is doing things wrong. I like the wording here in the ESV:
16 You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, "He did not make me"; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, "He has no understanding"? [Isa 29:16 ESV] compared to the NKJV, which says:
16 Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; For shall the thing made say of him who made it, "He did not make me"? Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, "He has no understanding"? [Isa 29:16 NKJV]
17-19 seem to prophesy the coming of Jesus to Lebanon - to the Gentiles? Or it may be more a reference to the geographical location. Or maybe not. Lebanon was never Galilee. Still, it talks about healing and about the poor exulting in the Hole One of Israel. This text is about the coming Messiah, and his preaching that the poor and downtrodden are his people, not the rich and powerful. Last few verses of the chapter speak to a future time when Israel will recognize and return to God through the Messiah.