{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"ISA","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Isaiah","commonName":"Isaiah","introduction":"ISAIAH, son of Amoz (not Amos); contemporary of Jonah, Amos, Hosea, in Israel, but younger than they; and of Micah, in Judah. His call to a higher degree of the prophetic office (Isa 6:1-13) is assigned to the last year of Uzziah, that is, 754 B.C. The first through fifth chapters belong to the closing years of that reign; not, as some think, to Jotham's reign: in the reign of the latter he seems to have exercised his office only orally, and not to have left any record of his prophecies because they were not intended for all ages. The first through fifth and sixth chapters are all that was designed for the Church universal of the prophecies of the first twenty years of his office. New historical epochs, such as occurred in the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah, when the affairs of Israel became interwoven with those of the Asiatic empires, are marked by prophetic writings. The prophets had now to interpret the judgments of the Lord, so as to make the people conscious of His punitive justice, as also of His mercy. Isa. 7:1-10:4 belong to the reign of Ahaz. The thirty-sixth through thirty-ninth chapters are historical, reaching to the fifteenth year of Hezekiah; probably the tenth through twelfth chapters and all from the thirteenth through twenty-sixth chapters, inclusive, belong to the same reign; the historical section being appended to facilitate the right understanding of these prophecies; thus we have Isaiah's office extending from about 760 to 713 B.C., forty-seven years. Tradition (Talmud) represents him as having been sawn asunder by Manasseh with a wooden saw, for having said that he had seen Jehovah (Exo 33:20; Kg2 21:16; Heb 11:37). Ch2 32:32 seems to imply that Isaiah survived Hezekiah; but \"first and last\" is not added, as in Ch2 26:22, which makes it possible that his history of Hezekiah was only carried up to a certain point. The second part, the fortieth through sixty-sixth chapters, containing complaints of gross idolatry, needs not to be restricted to Manasseh's reign, but is applicable to previous reigns. At the accession of Manasseh, Isaiah would be eighty-four; and if he prophesied for eight years afterwards, he must have endured martyrdom at ninety-two; so Hosea prophesied for sixty years. And Eastern tradition reports that he lived to one hundred and twenty. The conclusive argument against the tradition is that, according to the inscription, all Isaiah's prophecies are included in the time from Uzziah to Hezekiah; and the internal evidence accords with this.\n\nHis WIFE is called the prophetess [Isa 8:3], that is, endowed, as Miriam, with a prophetic gift.\n\nHis CHILDREN were considered by him as not belonging merely to himself; in their names, Shearjashub, \"the remnant shall return\" [Isa 7:3, Margin], and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, \"speeding to the spoil, he hasteth to the prey\" [Isa 8:1, Margin], the two chief points of his prophecies are intimated to the people, the judgments of the Lord on the people and the world, and yet His mercy to the elect.\n\nHis GARMENT of sackcloth (Isa 20:2), too, was a silent preaching by fact; he appears as the embodiment of that repentance which he taught.\n\nHis HISTORICAL WORKS.--History, as written by the prophets, is retroverted prophecy. As the past and future alike proceed from the essence of God, an inspired insight into the past implies an insight into the future, and vice versa. Hence most of the Old Testament histories are written by prophets and are classed with their writings; the Chronicles being not so classed, cannot have been written by them, but are taken from historical monographs of theirs; for example, Isaiah's life of Uzziah, Ch2 26:22; also of Hezekiah, Ch2 32:32; of these latter all that was important for all ages has been preserved to us, while the rest, which was local and temporary, has been lost.\n\nThe INSCRIPTION (Isa 1:1) applies to the whole book and implies that Isaiah is the author of the second part (the fortieth through sixty-sixth chapters), as well as of the first. Nor do the words, \"concerning Judah and Jerusalem\" [Isa 1:1], oppose the idea that the inscription applies to the whole; for whatever he says against other nations, he says on account of their relation to Judah. So the inscription of Amos, \"concerning Israel\" [Amo 1:1], though several prophecies follow against foreign nations. EWALD maintains that the fortieth through sixty-sixth chapters, though spurious, were subjoined to the previous portion, in order to preserve the former. But it is untrue that the first portion is unconnected with those chapters. The former ends with the Babylonian exile (Isa 39:6), the latter begins with the coming redemption from it. The portion, the fortieth through forty-sixth chapters, has no heading of its own, a proof that it is closely connected with what precedes, and falls under the general heading in Isa 1:1. JOSEPHUS (The Antiquities of the Jews, 11. 1, sec. 1, 2) says that Cyrus was induced by the prophecies of Isaiah (Isa 44:28; Isa 45:1, Isa 45:13) to aid the Jews in returning and rebuilding the temple Ezr 1:1-11 confirms this; Cyrus in his edict there plainly refers to the prophecies in the second portion, which assign the kingdoms to him from Jehovah, and the duty of rebuilding the temple. Probably he took from them his historical name Cyrus (Coresh). Moreover, subsequent prophets imitate this second portion, which EWALD assigns to later times; for example, compare Jer. 50:1-51:64 with Isaiah's predictions against Babylon [Isa. 13:1-14:23]. \"The Holy One of Israel,\" occurring but three times elsewhere in the Old Testament [Kg2 19:22; Psa 78:41; Psa 89:18; Jer 50:29; Jer 51:5], is a favorite expression in the second, as in the first portion of Isaiah: it expresses God's covenant faithfulness in fulfilling the promises therein: Jeremiah borrows the expression from him. Also Ecclesiasticus 48:22-25 (\"comforted\"), quotes Isa 40:1 as Isaiah's. Luk 4:17 quotes Isa 61:1-2 as Isaiah's, and as read as such by Jesus Christ in the synagogue.\n\nThe DEFINITENESS of the prophecies is striking: As in the second portion of isaiah, so in Mic 4:8-10, the Babylonian exile, and the deliverance from it, are foretold a hundred fifty years before any hostilities had arisen between Babylon and Judah. On the other hand, all the prophets who foretell the Assyrian invasion coincide in stating, that Judah should be delivered from it, not by Egyptian aid, but directly by the Lord. Again Jeremiah, in the height of the Chaldean prosperity, foretold its conquest by the Medes, who should enter Babylon through the dry bed of the Euphrates on a night of general revelry. No human calculation could have discovered these facts. EICHORN terms these prophecies \"veiled historical descriptions,\" recognizing in spite of himself that they are more than general poetical fancies. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was certainly written ages before the Messiah, yet it minutely portrays His sufferings: these cannot be Jewish inventions, for the Jews looked for a reigning, not a suffering, Messiah.\n\nRationalists are so far right that THE PROPHECIES ARE ON A GENERAL BASIS whereby they are distinguished from soothsaying. They rest on the essential idea of God. The prophets, penetrated by this inner knowledge of His character, became conscious of the eternal laws by which the world is governed: that sin is man's ruin, and must be followed by judgment, but that God's covenant mercy to His elect is unchangeable. Without prophetism, the elect remnant would have decreased, and even God's judgments would have missed their end, by not being recognized as such: they would have been unmeaning, isolated facts. Babylon was in Isaiah's days under Assyria; it had tried a revolt unsuccessfully: but the elements of its subsequent success and greatness were then existing. The Holy Ghost enlightened his natural powers to discern this its rise; and his spiritual faculties, to foresee its fall, the sure consequence, in God's eternal law, of the pride which pagan success generates--and also Judah's restoration, as the covenant-people, with whom God, according to His essential character, would not be wroth for ever. True conversion is the prophet's grand remedy against all evils: in this alone consists his politics. Rebuke, threatening, and promise, regularly succeed one another. The idea at the basis of all is in Isa 26:7-9; Lev 10:3; Amo 3:2.\n\nThe USE OF THE PRESENT AND PRETERITE in prophecy is no proof that the author is later than Isaiah. For seers view the future as present, and indicate what is ideally past, not really past; seeing things in the light of God, who \"calls the things that are not as though they were.\" Moreover, as in looking from a height on a landscape, hills seem close together which are really wide apart, so, in events foretold, the order, succession, and grouping are presented, but the intervals of time are overlooked. The time, however, is sometimes marked (Jer 25:12; Dan 9:26). Thus the deliverance from Babylon, and that effected by Messiah, are in rapid transition grouped together by THE LAW OF PROPHETIC SUGGESTION; yet no prophet so confounds the two as to make Messiah the leader of Israel from Babylon. To the prophet there was probably no double sense; but to his spiritual eye the two events, though distinct, lay so near, and were so analogous, that he could not separate them in description without unfaithfulness to the picture presented before him. The more remote and antitypical event, however, namely, Messiah's coming, is that to which he always hastens, and which he describes with far more minuteness than he does the nearer type; for example, Cyrus (compare Isa 45:1 with Isa 53:1-12). In some cases he takes his stand in the midst of events between, for example, the humiliation of Jesus Christ, which he views as past, and His glorification, as yet to come, using the future tense as to the latter (compare Isa 53:4-9 with Isa 53:10-12). Marks of the time of events are given sparingly in the prophets: yet, as to Messiah, definitely enough to create the general expectation of Him at the time that He was in fact born.\n\nThe CHALDÆISMS alleged against the genuineness of the second portion of Isaiah, are found more in the first and undoubted portion. They occur in all the Old Testament, especially in the poetical parts, which prefer unusual expressions, and are due to the fact that the patriarchs were surrounded by Chaldee-speaking people; and in Isaiah's time a few Chaldee words had crept in from abroad.\n\nHis SYMBOLS are few and simple, and his poetical images correct; in the prophets, during and after the exile, the reverse holds good; Haggai and Malachi are not exceptions; for, though void of bold images, their style, unlike Isaiah's, rises little above prose: a clear proof that our Isaiah was long before the exile.\n\nOf VISIONS, strictly so called, he has but one, that in the sixth chapter; even it is more simple than those in later prophets. But he often gives SIGNS, that is, a present fact as pledge of the more distant future; God condescending to the feebleness of man (Isa 7:14; Isa 37:30; Isa 38:7).\n\nThe VARIETIES IN HIS STYLE do not prove spuriousness, but that he varied his style with his subject. The second portion is not so much addressed to his contemporaries, as to the future people of the Lord, the elect remnant, purified by the previous judgments. Hence its tenderness of style, and frequent repetitions (Isa 40:1): for comforting exhortation uses many words; so also the many epithets added to the name of God, intended as stays whereon faith may rest for comfort, so as not to despair. In both portions alike there are peculiarities characteristic of Isaiah; for example, \"to be called\" equivalent to to be: the repetition of the same words, instead of synonyms, in the parallel members of verses; the interspersing of his prophecies with hymns: \"the remnant of olive trees,\" &c., for the remnant of people who have escaped God's judgments. Also compare Isa 65:25 with Isa 11:6.\n\nThe CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT favors the opinion that Isaiah himself collected his prophecies into the volume; not Hezekiah's men, as the Talmud guesses from Pro 25:1. All the portions, the dates of which can be ascertained, stand in the right place, except a few instances, where prophecies of similar contents are placed together: with the termination of the Assyrian invasion (the thirty-sixth through thirty-ninth chapters) terminated the public life of Isaiah. The second part is his prophetic legacy to the small band of the faithful, analogous to the last speeches of Moses and of Jesus Christ to His chosen disciples.\n\nThe EXPECTATION OF MESSIAH is so strong in Isaiah, that JEROME To Paulinus calls his book not a prophecy, but the gospel: \"He is not so much a prophet as an evangelist.\" Messiah was already shadowed forth in Gen 49:10, as the Shiloh, or tranquillizer; also in Psalms 2, 45, 72, 110. Isaiah brings it out more definitely; and, whereas they dwelt on His kingly office, Isaiah develops most His priestly and prophetic office; the hundred tenth Psalm also had set forth His priesthood, but His kingly rather than, as Isaiah, His suffering, priesthood. The latter is especially dwelt on in the second part, addressed to the faithful elect; whereas the first part, addressed to the whole people, dwells on Messiah's glory, the antidote to the fears which then filled the people, and the assurance that the kingdom of God, then represented by Judah, would not be overwhelmed by the surrounding nations.\n\nHis STYLE (HENGSTENBERG, Christology of the Old Testament,) is simple and sublime; in imagery, intermediate between the poverty of Jeremiah and the exuberance of Ezekiel. He shows his command of it in varying it to suit his subject.\n\nThe FORM is mostly that of Hebrew poetical parallelism, with, however, a freedom unshackled by undue restrictions.\n\nJUDAH, the less apostate people, rather than Israel, was the subject of his prophecies: his residence was mostly at Jerusalem. On his praises, see Ecclesiasticus 48:22-25. Christ and the apostles quote no prophet so frequently. \n\n\n\nNext: Isaiah Chapter 1\n\n","order":23,"numberOfChapters":66,"sha256":"05afbc35163ce25bd06467062226b36d66e6285d8ca85b4815540db57d9466be","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ISA/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ISA","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":66,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ISA/66.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ISA","chapter":66},"totalNumberOfVerses":1200},"chapter":{"number":28,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["strong one--the Assyrian (Isa 10:5). \n\ncast down--namely, Ephraim (Isa 28:1) and Samaria, its crown. \n\nwith . . . hand--with violence (Isa 8:11).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["crown . . . the drunkards--rather, \"the crown of the drunkards.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["Rather, \"the fading flower, their glorious beauty (Isa 28:1), which is on the head of the fat (fertile) valley, shall be as the early fig\" [G. V. SMITH]. Figs usually ripened in August; but earlier ones (Hebrew bikkurah, Spanish bokkore) in June, and were regarded as a delicacy (Jer 24:2; Hos 9:10; Mic 7:1). \n\nwhile it is yet--that is, immediately, without delay; describing the eagerness of the Assyrian Shalmaneser, not merely to conquer, but to destroy utterly Samaria; whereas other conquered cities were often spared.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["The prophet now turns to Judah; a gracious promise to the remnant (\"residue\"); a warning lest through like sins Judah should share the fate of Samaria. \n\ncrown--in antithesis to the \"fading crown\" of Ephraim (Isa 28:1, Isa 28:3). \n\nthe residue--primarily, Judah, in the prosperous reign of Hezekiah (Kg2 18:7), antitypically, the elect of God; as He here is called their \"crown and diadem,\" so are they called His (Isa 62:3); a beautiful reciprocity.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["Jehovah will inspire their magistrates with justice, and their soldiers with strength of spirit. \n\nturn . . . battle to . . . gate--the defenders of their country who not only repel the foe from themselves, but drive him to the gates of his own cities (Sa2 11:23; Kg2 18:8).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["Though Judah is to survive the fall of Ephraim, yet \"they also\" (the men of Judah) have perpetrated like sins to those of Samaria (Isa 5:3, Isa 5:11), which must be chastised by God. \n\nerred . . . are out of the way--\"stagger . . . reel.\" Repeated, to express the frequency of the vice. \n\npriest . . . prophet--If the ministers of religion sin so grievously, how much more the other rulers (Isa 56:10, Isa 56:12)! \n\nvision--even in that most sacred function of the prophet to declare God's will revealed to them. \n\njudgment--The priests had the administration of the law committed to them (Deu 17:9; Deu 19:17). It was against the law for the priests to take wine before entering the tabernacle (Lev 10:9; Eze 44:21).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["Here the drunkards are introduced as scoffingly commenting on Isaiah's warnings: \"Whom will he (does Isaiah presume to) teach knowledge? And whom will He make to understand instruction? Is it those (that is, does he take us to be) just weaned, &c.? For (he is constantly repeating, as if to little children) precept upon precept,\" &c. \n\nline--a rule or law. [MAURER]. The repetition of sounds in Hebrew tzav latzav, tzav latzav, qav laqav, qav laquav, expresses the scorn of the imitators of Isaiah's speaking; he spoke stammering (Isa 28:11). God's mode of teaching offends by its simplicity the pride of sinners (Kg2 5:11-12; Co1 1:23). Stammerers as they were by drunkenness, and children in knowledge of God, they needed to be spoken to in the language of children, and \"with stammering lips\" (compare Mat 13:13). A just and merciful retribution.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["For--rather, \"Truly.\" This is Isaiah's reply to the scoffers: Your drunken questions shall be answered by the severe lessons from God conveyed through the Assyrians and Babylonians; the dialect of these, though Semitic, like the Hebrew, was so far different as to sound to the Jews like the speech of stammerers (compare Isa 33:19; Isa 36:11). To them who will not understand God will speak still more unintelligibly.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["Rather, \"He (Jehovah) who hath said to them.\" \n\nthis . . . the rest--Reference may be primarily to \"rest\" from national warlike preparations, the Jews being at the time \"weary\" through various preceding calamities, as the Syro-Israelite invasion (Isa 7:8; compare Isa 30:15; Isa 22:8; Isa 39:2; Isa 36:1; Kg2 18:8). But spiritually, the \"rest\" meant is that to be found in obeying those very \"precepts\" of God (Isa 28:10) which they jeered at (compare Jer 6:16; Mat 11:29).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["But--rather, \"Therefore,\" namely, because \"they would not hear\" (Isa 28:12). \n\nthat they might go--the designed result to those who, from a defect of the will, so far from profiting by God's mode of instructing, \"precept upon precept,\" &c., made it into a stumbling-block (Hos 6:5; Hos 8:12; Mat 13:14). \n\ngo, and fall--image appropriately from \"drunkards\" (Isa 28:7-8, which they were) who in trying to \"go forward fall backward.\"\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["scornful--(See on Isa 28:9).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["said--virtually, in your conduct, if not in words. \n\ncovenant--There may be a tacit reference to their confidence in their \"covenant\" with the Assyrians in the early part of Hezekiah's prosperous reign, before he ceased to pay tribute to them, as if it ensured Judah from evil, whatever might befall the neighboring Ephraim (Isa 28:1). The full meaning is shown by the language (\"covenant with death--hell,\" or sheol) to apply to all lulled in false security spiritually (Psa 12:4; Ecc 8:8; Jer 8:11); the godly alone are in covenant with death (Job 5:23; Hos 2:18; Co1 3:22). \n\noverflowing scourge--two metaphors: the hostile Assyrian armies like an overwhelming flood. \n\npass through--namely, through Judea on their way to Egypt, to punish it as the protector of Samaria (Kg2 17:4). \n\nlies--They did not use these words, but Isaiah designates their sentiments by their true name (Amo 2:4).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["Literally, \"Behold Me as Him who has laid\"; namely, in My divine counsel (Rev 13:8); none save I could lay it (Isa 63:5). \n\nstone--Jesus Christ; Hezekiah [MAURER], or the temple [EWALD], do not realize the full significancy of the language; but only in type point to Him, in whom the prophecy receives its exhaustive accomplishment; whether Isaiah understood its fulness or not (Pe1 1:11-12), the Holy Ghost plainly contemplated its fulfilment in Christ alone; so in Isa 32:1; compare Gen 49:24; Psa 118:22; Mat 21:42; Rom 10:11; Eph 2:20. \n\ntried--both by the devil (Luk 4:1-13) and by men (Luke 20:1-38), and even by God (Mat 27:46); a stone of tested solidity to bear the vast superstructure of man's redemption. The tested righteousness of Christ gives its peculiar merit to His vicarious sacrifice. The connection with the context is, though a \"scourge\" shall visit Judea (Isa 28:15), yet God's gracious purpose as to the elect remnant, and His kingdom of which \"Zion\" shall be the center, shall not fail, because its rests on Messiah (Mat 7:24-25; Ti2 2:19). \n\nprecious--literally, \"of preciousness,\" so in the Greek, (Pe1 2:7). He is preciousness. \n\ncorner-stone-- (Kg1 5:17; Kg1 7:9; Job 38:6); the stone laid at the corner where two walls meet and connecting them; often costly. \n\nmake haste--flee in hasty alarm; but the Septuagint has \"be ashamed\"; so Rom 9:33, and Pe1 2:6, \"be confounded,\" substantially the same idea; he who rests on Him shall not have the shame of disappointment, nor flee in sudden panic (see Isa 30:15; Isa 32:17).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["line--the measuring-line of the plummet. HORSLEY translates, \"I will appoint judgment for the rule, and justice for the plummet.\" As the corner-stone stands most perpendicular and exactly proportioned, so Jehovah, while holding out grace to believers in the Foundation-stone, will judge the scoffers (Isa 28:15) according to the exact justice of the law (compare Jam 2:13). \n\nhail--divine judgment (Isa 30:30; Isa 32:19).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["disannulled--obliterated, as letters traced on a waxen tablet are obliterated by passing the stylus over it. \n\ntrodden down--passing from the metaphor in \"scourge\" to the thing meant, the army which treads down its enemies.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["From the time, &c.--rather, \"As often as it comes over (that is, passes through), it shall overtake you\" [HORSLEY]; like a flood returning from time to time, frequent hostile invasions shall assail Judah, after the deportation of the ten tribes. \n\nvexation . . . understand . . . report--rather, \"It shall be a terror even to hear the mere report of it\" [MAURER], (Sa1 3:11). But G. V. SMITH, \"Hard treatment (HORSLEY, 'dispersion') only shall make you to understand instruction\"; they scorned at the simple way in which the prophet offered it (Isa 28:9); therefore, they must be taught by the severe teachings of adversity.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["Proverbial, for they shall find all their sources of confidence fail them; all shall be hopeless perplexity in their affairs.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["Perazim--In the valley of Rephaim (Sa2 5:18, Sa2 5:20; Ch1 14:11), there Jehovah, by David, broke forth as waters do, and made a breach among the Philistines, David's enemies, as Perazim means, expressing a sudden and complete overthrow. \n\nGibeon-- (Ch1 14:16; Sa2 5:25, Margin); not Joshua's victory (Jos 10:10). \n\nstrange--as being against His own people; judgment is not what God delights in; it is, though necessary, yet strange to Him (Lam 3:33). \n\nwork--punishing the guilty (Isa 10:12).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["mockers--a sin which they had committed (Isa 28:9-10). \n\nbands--their Assyrian bondage (Isa 10:27); Judah was then tributary to Assyria; or, \"lest your punishment be made still more severe\" (Isa 24:22). \n\nconsumption--destruction (Isa 10:22-23; Dan 9:27).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["Calling attention to the following illustration from husbandry (Psa 49:1-2). As the husbandman does his different kinds of work, each in its right time and due proportion, so God adapts His measures to the varying exigencies of the several cases: now mercy, now judgments; now punishing sooner, now later (an answer to the scoff that His judgments, being put off so long, would never come at all, Isa 5:19); His object being not to destroy His people any more than the farmer's object in threshing is to destroy his crop; this vindicates God's \"strange work\" (Isa 28:21) in punishing His people. Compare the same image, Jer 24:6; Hos 2:23; Mat 3:12.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["all day--emphatic; he is not always ploughing: he also \"sows,\" and that, too, in accordance with sure rules (Isa 28:25). \n\ndoth he open--supply \"always.\" Is he always harrowing?\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["face--the \"surface\" of the ground: \"made plain,\" or level, by harrowing. \n\nfitches--rather, \"dill,\" or \"fennel\"; Nigella romana, with black seed, easily beaten out, used as a condiment and medicine in the East. So the Septuagint, \"cummin\" was used in the same way. \n\ncast in . . . principal wheat--rather, plant the wheat in rows (for wheat was thought to yield the largest crop, by being planted sparingly [PLINY, Natural History, 18.21]); [MAURER]; \"sow the wheat regularly\" [HORSLEY]. But GESENIUS, like English Version, \"fat,\" or \"principal,\" that is, excellent wheat. \n\nappointed barley--rather, \"barley in its appointed place\" [MAURER]. \n\nin their place--rather, \"in its (the field's) border\" [MAURER].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["to discretion--in the due rules of husbandry; God first taught it to man (Gen 3:23).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["The husbandman uses the same discretion in threshing. The dill (\"fitches\") and cummin, leguminous and tender grains, are beaten out, not as wheat, &c., with the heavy corn-drag (\"threshing instrument\"), but with \"a staff\"; heavy instruments would crush and injure the seed. \n\ncart wheel--two iron wheels armed with iron teeth, like a saw, joined together by a wooden axle. The \"corn-drag\" was made of three or four wooden cylinders, armed with iron teeth or flint stones fixed underneath, and joined like a sledge. Both instruments cut the straw for fodder as well as separated the corn. \n\nstaff--used also where they had but a small quantity of corn; the flail (Rut 2:17).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["Bread corn--corn of which bread is made. \n\nbruised--threshed with the corn-drag (as contrasted with dill and cummin, \"beaten with the staff\"), or, \"trodden out\" by the hoofs of cattle driven over it on the threshing-floor [G. V. SMITH], (Deu 25:4; Mic 4:13). \n\nbecause--rather, \"but\" [HORSLEY]; though the corn is threshed with the heavy instrument, yet he will not always be thus threshing it. \n\nbreak it--\"drive over it (continually) the wheel\" [MAURER]. \n\ncart--threshing-drag. \n\nhorsemen--rather, \"horses\"; used to tread out corn.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["This also--The skill wherewith the husbandman duly adjusts his modes of threshing is given by God, as well as the skill (Isa 28:26) wherewith he tills and sows (Isa 28:24-25). Therefore He must also be able to adapt His modes of treatment to the several moral needs of His creatures. His object in sending tribulation (derived from the Latin tribulum, a \"threshing instrument,\" Luk 22:31; Rom 5:3) is to sever the moral chaff from the wheat, not to crush utterly; \"His judgments are usually in the line of our offenses; by the nature of the judgments we may usually ascertain the nature of the sin\" [BARNES].\n\nThis chapter opens the series of prophecies as to the invasion of Judea under Sennacherib, and its deliverance.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Isaiah Chapter 29\n\n"]}],"introduction":"(Isa. 28:1-29)\n\ncrown of pride--Hebrew for \"proud crown of the drunkards,\" &c. [HORSLEY], namely, Samaria, the capital of Ephraim, or Israel. \"Drunkards,\" literally (Isa 28:7-8; Isa 5:11, Isa 5:22; Amo 4:1; Amo 6:1-6) and metaphorically, like drunkards, rushing on to their own destruction. \n\nbeauty . . . flower--\"whose glorious beauty or ornament is a fading flower.\" Carrying on the image of \"drunkards\"; it was the custom at feasts to wreathe the brow with flowers; so Samaria, \"which is (not as English Version, 'which are') upon the head of the fertile valley,\" that is, situated on a hill surrounded with the rich valleys as a garland (Kg1 16:24); but the garland is \"fading,\" as garlands often do, because Ephraim is now close to ruin (compare Isa 16:8); fulfilled 721 B.C. (Kg2 17:6, Kg2 17:24).\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ISA/28.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ISA","chapter":28},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ISA/29.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ISA","chapter":29},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/ISA/27.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"ISA","chapter":27},"numberOfVerses":26}