27:1. “In that
day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan
the piercing (twisting) serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent: and he
shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”
Leviathan is Satan, who is
also called “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan,”
Revelation 20:2. His destruction mentioned here will come at the conclusion
of the Millennium, during which time he will be shut up in the bottomless
pit, see Revelation 20:2-3, but then released for a brief period, to be
finally “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the
false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever,”
Revelation 20:7-10.
The sea is one of the
Biblical symbols of earth’s unconverted masses, see, e.g., Isaiah 57:20-21,
“The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters
cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked,” so
its being said that leviathan “is in the sea” is simply another way of
saying that Satan’s evil activity is in the great sea of humanity.
27:2. “In that
day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine.”
“... that day” is the
Millennium, in which the nations will sing praises in honor of converted
Israel, describing her as “a vineyard of red wine,” i.e., a people who will
bring delight to God’s heart; for as “wine maketh glad the heart of man,”
Psalm 104:15, so will converted Israel gladden God’s heart in that day.
27:3. “I the
Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep
it night and day.”
This declares God’s
unceasing loving care for Israel whose disobedience has all too often
provoked his chastisement, but it is to be remembered that His chastening is
that of a loving Father, as declared in Job 5:17, “Happy is the man whom God
correcteth,” and again, “For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth,” Proverbs
3:12. See also Hebrews 12:6-8, “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth
with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement whereof all are partakers, then are ye
bastards, and not sons.” See also Hebrews 12:11, “Now no chastening for the
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it
yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them, which are exercised
thereby.”
God’s love for the Church
is no less than it is for Israel, the assurance of that love being declared
in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the
church, and gave himself for it ....”
God’s watering it “every
moment” is accomplished through the written Word, as it is written, “That he
might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,”
Ephesians 5:26. We however, are responsible to submit to that cleansing by
reading and obeying the Word every day, as it is written, “But grow in
grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” 2 Peter
3:18.
We do well to note the
reason for the continuous watering: “lest any hurt it.” When we neglect to
read and obey the written Word we render ourselves vulnerable, for neglect
of that reading and obedience makes us easy prey for Satan, of whom we are
warned, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a
roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” 1 Peter 5:8.
27:4. “Fury is
not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I
would go through them, I would burn them together.”
Taylor has rendered this
verse, “My anger against Israel is gone. If I find thorns and briers
bothering her, I will burn them up.”
That day of Israel’s
blessedness will not be until the Tribulation judgments have brought her to
penitent obedience. In the ensuing Millennium God will pour out His
blessing upon her, elevating her to the pinnacle of glory and supremacy over
the nations. “Briers and thorns” are used here figuratively to describe any
harm others might seek to inflict upon her, God’s warning to her enemies
being that any such injury will be visited with His instant fiery
destruction. God’s love for Israel is nowhere more clearly declared than in
Zechariah 2:8, “For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath he
sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you
toucheth the apple (pupil) of his eye.”
27:5. “Or let
him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall
make peace with me.”
The Jerusalem Bible
translates this, “... if they would shelter under my protection, let them
make peace with me.”
Since God is omnipotent He
cannot be successfully opposed, hence the imperative of being reconciled to
Him through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, as Paul
exhorted the Corinthians, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though
God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled
to God,” 2 Corinthians 5:20.
The dreadful alternative
to being reconciled to God is to die in unbelief, and suffer eternal torment
in the lake of fire.
27:6. “He
shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and
bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.”
Taylor’s translates this
verse, “The time will come when Israel will take root and bud and blossom
and fill the whole earth with her fruit.”
Since Jacob refers to the
nation as an earthly people; and Israel as a spiritual, the double name here
points to the fact that while the Millennium will begin with her as a
believing people, the children of those believers will be like all others
born into this world: they will be unbelievers requiring a spiritual birth
to fit them for heaven when the Millennium ends, so that as the Millennium
progresses the world population will consist of a mixed multitude of
believers and unbelievers, those unbelievers being allowed to live only as
long as their rebellion remains covert. The moment it becomes overt they
will die. The eternal duration of believing Israel is declared in the
assurance that she “will take root and bud and blossom and fill the whole
earth with her fruit,” that same assurance being given also to the believing
Gentiles.
27:7. “Hath he
smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? Or is he slain according to
the slaughter of them that are slain by him?”
This question is purely
hypothetical. God has not smitten disobedient Israel as hard as He has
those who have smitten her. While He has utterly destroyed some of those
who sought her destruction, His smiting of her has been the loving parental
chastisement designed to secure the obedience that ensures blessing.
27:8. “In
measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it; he stayeth his
rough wind in the day of the east wind.”
The ambiguity of this KJ
translation is clarified by other renderings, e.g., “He has expelled them
into exile, taking issue with them, sweeping them off with a blast that
blows hard from himself,” Moffatt. “You have punished it with
expulsion and exile; he pursued it with a blast as fierce as the wind from
the east,” Jerusalem; “He hath removed them with his rough
blast in the day of the east wind,” ASV.
The east, incidentally,
always has an evil connotation, there being not a single good reference to
it in the whole Bible. It is always associated with sin and departure from
God, note e.g., Genesis 3:24 relative to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from
Eden.
27:9. “By this
therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit
to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as
chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand
up.”
By His chastisement God
seeks to bring men to repentance and blessing, Jacob/Israel here being the
outstanding example. By destroying the altars, groves and images associated
with their idolatry He sought to remind them that He, the omnipotent
Jehovah, was alone to be worshiped. Nor is it different today: the gods
worshiped by our modern world being money, education, pleasure, political
power, art, music, sport, etc. But all of these things will be left here on
earth when death transports the deluded devotees into the eternal torment of
hell and the lake of fire. Only then, and too late for repentance, will the
worshipers discover that their gods and shrines were as worthless as
Israel’s chalkstone altars, groves, and images.
27:10. “Yet
the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left
like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down,
and consume the branches thereof.”
That desolation occurred
when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC.
While the description may
be of Israel suffering Divine chastisement in the past, the ultimate
application seems to be to the desolation, not just of Israel, but of the
whole world following the now imminent Great Tribulation judgments. Many of
earth’s great cities will become abandoned overgrown ruins, with animals as
the only inhabitants.
27:11. “When
the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come,
and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he
that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will
shew them no favor.”
Another translation of
this reads, “They are a foolish nation, a witless, stupid people, for they
turn away from God. Therefore, He who made them will not have pity on them
or show them His mercy,” Taylor.
The description is of
rebel Israel, who in spite of countless manifestations of God’s love and
kindness, had turned her back on Him to join their heathen neighbors in the
worship of idols; and only the willfully blind will refuse to see that the
Gentiles, to whom God has similarly revealed Himself during this present
dispensation of grace, have been guilty of the same willful rebellion.
Except for the small minority of true believers, the so-called Christian
world has been equally assiduous in its efforts to banish the true knowledge
of Christ from the earth, its so-called worship being a mere religious
ritual which glorifies man rather than God.
The gathering and burning
of the literal dead branches speaks symbolically of the ultimate end of all
unbelievers. They will be cast into the eternal torment of the terrible
lake of fire.
Romans 11 should be
studied carefully relative to this breaking off of the Jewish “branches.” A
day is coming in which they will be grafted in again.
27:12. “And it
shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall beat off from the
channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one
by one, O ye children of Israel.”
Taylor’s translation of
this verse reads, “Yet the time will come when the Lord will gather them
together one by one like handpicked grain, selecting them here and there
from His great threshing floor that reaches all the way from the Euphrates
River to the Egyptian boundary.” The area mentioned was virtually the known
world of that day; and the gathering of the seed, grain by grain, speaks of
God’s gathering those individuals who through faith belong to Him. (“the
stream of Egypt,” incidentally is not the Nile, but the much smaller stream
called The River of Egypt, and which is the southern boundary of
Israel). The gathering of them “one by one” may be a picture of God’s
calling home to heaven by way of death, the believers of this present age of
grace; and everything points to the imminence of that day when the last
believer will be called home just prior to the beginning of the Great
Tribulation.
27:13. “And it
shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and
they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the
outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount
of Jerusalem.”
“that day” is further
described in Matthew 24:27-31, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east,
and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man
be .... Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall
from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall
appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes
of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds
of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with
a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
“... that day” will be the
Millennium, during which Jerusalem will be the center of the world’s worship
and government, Israel being the chief amongst the nations.
