26:1.
“In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong
city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.”
“... that day”
will be the Millennium; and Judah, meaning he shall be praised,
represents the nation Israel as a redeemed and praising people.
The “strong
city” is Jerusalem, but it won’t be the city’s fortifications on which those
worshipers will rely for security: it will be their faith in Jehovah that
will guarantee them His protection; and it is our salvation, our faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ, that assures us of that same preservation today. All
believers can live in the peaceful assurance of knowing that nothing can
touch them except what God orders or permits, our confidence being based on
His promise that “... all things work together for good to those who love
God,” Romans 8:28, obedience being the evidence of our professed love, as
declared by the Lord in John 14:15, 21, “If ye love me, keep my commandments
.... He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me
....”
26:2.
“Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may
enter in.”
The song
continues, not so much with the plea, but rather the assurance that in the
Millennium, Israel - then become a righteous nation - will have Jerusalem
not only as her capital city, but as the center of government of the
millennial earth, she herself being chief among the nations.
26:3.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because
he trusteth in thee.”
26:4.
“Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting
strength:”
“... perfect
peace” is that which cannot be disturbed. It is possessed by the very rare
few who realize that “ All things work together for good to those who
love God,” Romans 8:28, love being demonstrated in obedience, as declared by
the Lord in John 14:15, 21, “If ye love me, keep my commandments .... He
that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he
that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will
manifest myself to him.” Their thinking is governed, not by circumstances,
but by the knowledge that God is omnipotent, and orders or permits every
circumstance for the ultimate blessing of His own.
26:5.
“For he bringeth down them that dwell on high; the lofty city, he layeth it
low; he layeth it low, even to the ground; he bringeth it even to the dust.”
In the past
the “lofty city” was Babylon whose counterpart today is Rome, the evil
religious system which has ruled much of apostate Christendom for almost two
thousand years, and whose tentacles extend into every corner of the earth.
As literal Babylon was destroyed, and has never been rebuilt, so also will
Rome be toppled, never to rise again.
26:6.
“The foot shall tread it down, even the foot of the poor, and the steps of
the needy.”
As the streets
of Rome have been trodden by the feet of many of earth’s great ones, so in a
soon coming day will God scatter those who today are high and mighty; the
“poor and needy,” i.e., true believers, being delivered from their thralldom
during Christ’s millennial reign, that literal deliverance being a picture
of the emancipation enjoyed by every man who confesses himself a sinner, and
who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior.
26:7.
“The way of the just is uprightness: thou, most upright, dost weigh the path
of the just.”
The “just” are
believers, their faith in Christ as Savior absolving them from all guilt in
God’s sight, and setting them before Him as justified and upright: as
sinless in His sight as is the Lord Jesus Christ himself, for faith enables
God, on a basis of perfect righteousness, to impute His Son’s righteousness
to every believer, so that “There is therefore now no condemnation to those
who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit,” Romans 8:1.
Relative to
God’s weighing “the path of the just,” other translations render this
as directing: making level: right: even: smooth: straight.
“The path of
the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the
perfect day” Proverbs 4:18; but “The way of the wicked is as darkness: they
know not at what they stumble,” Proverbs 4:19.
26:8.
“Yea, in the way of thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for thee; the
desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee.”
“...
judgments” is also translated regulations; and Taylor’s translation
of the latter half of the verse reads, “O Lord, we love to do Your will!
Our hearts’ desire is to glorify Your name.”
26:9.
“With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within
me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the
inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”
When Isaiah
woke in the middle of the night his thoughts turned immediately to God; and
if he awoke at dawn his thoughts were also of Him. It is to be feared that
few of today’s professing Christians could make the same claim; yet few
things are more likely to preserve our obedience than just such remembrance
of the Lord. (Incidentally, the difference between soul and spirit is that
with our souls we have self-consciousness; and with our spirits,
consciousness of God).
Relative to
God’s judgments being in the earth, many take this to mean that when
obedience to His laws is enforced, as it will be in the Millennium, there
will be righteousness. Others understand it to be a general description of
millennial blessedness resulting from free-willed obedience impelled by love
rather than by fear of punishment.
26:10.
“Let favor be showed to the wicked (lawless), yet will he not learn
righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will
not behold the majesty (splendor) of the Lord.”
Other
renderings of this verse are, “The wicked man, spared, does not learn
justice; in an upright land he acts perversely, and sees not the majesty of
the Lord,” NAB; “The wicked are destroyed, they have never learnt justice;
corrupt in a land of honest ways, they do not regard the majesty of the
Lord,” NEB.
During this
age of grace the wicked are not instantly struck dead by God; but instead of
being led to repentance by His mercy, they are emboldened to sin even more,
neither knowing nor caring that His forbearance is designed to lead them to
repentance so that He might save them. They are not awed by His glory
before which even angels fall upon their faces, see Revelation 7:11, “And
all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the
four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God.”
A day is
swiftly approaching however, when they will be awed and terrified at
His presence, see Revelation 6:15-17, “And the kings of the earth, and the
great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and
every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the
rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and
hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath
of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able
to stand?”
26:11.
“Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see: but they shall see,
and be ashamed for their envy at the people; yea, the fire of thine enemies
shall devour them.”
Taylor’s
translation of this verse reads, “They do not listen when You threaten; they
will not look to see Your upraised fist. Show them how much You love Your
people. Perhaps then they will be ashamed! Yes, let them be burned up by
the fire reserved for Your enemies.”
Too late to
save themselves, unbelievers will yet see how much God loves His own, and
how great is His hatred of those who refuse to confess themselves sinners,
and who, despising the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shed at
Calvary for the remission of their sins, pass for ever beyond the pale of
mercy into the eternal torment of the unquenchable flame of the lake of
fire.
“... devour”
in the present context does not mean to end the existence of those who die
in unrepentant unbelief.
26:12.
“Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our
works in us.”
The prophet
here makes it clear that those who will enjoy temporal and eternal peace are
they who yield themselves as willing instruments to the control of the Holy
Spirit Who indwells every believer, for it can’t be over-emphasized that
though He desires our submission to His control, He will never override our
will to compel obedience.
26:13.
“O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us: but by
thee only will we make mention of thy name.”
“... once we
worshiped other gods; but now we worship you alone,” is Taylor’s translation
of this verse.
26:14.
“They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise;
therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to
perish.”
By God’s grace
they had been taught that the “gods” they once worshiped had no real
existence: those idols were the products of their own deluded and corrupt
imaginations; but by God’s enlightenment they had been led to see their
error, and were now His devotees. God’s having “made all their memory to
perish” doesn’t mean that He had come down and literally destroyed the
idols, but that He had shown the people the utter folly of idolatry.
26:15.
“Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord, thou hast increased the nation:
thou art glorified: thou hast removed it far unto all the ends of the
earth.”
Other
translations of this verse read, “Thou hast enlarged the nation, O Lord,
enlarged it and won thyself honor,” NEB; “O praise the Lord! He has made our
nation very great,” Taylor; “You have swelled the ranks of our nation, Lord,
you have shown us your glorious power. You have extended our borders on
every side,” Phillips.
This past
extension of Israel’s dominion foreshadows her coming world-wide rule in the
Millennium.
26:16.
“Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy
chastening was upon them.”
In response to
God’s chastening, Israel had turned again to Jehovah in repentant
submission, this being His objective in chastisement in every age, as it is
written, “For whom the Lord loved He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son
whom He receives. 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 .... 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,” Hebrews 12:6-11.
26:17.
“Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is
in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O Lord.”
The NT
counterpart of this is recorded in John 16:21, “A woman when she is in
travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is
delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a
man is born into the world.” As the anguish of labor must precede the joy
that follows the birth of a child, so must the pain of chastening under
God’s hand precede the peace and joy which follow repentant submission to
His correction.
Two thousand
years ago Israel could have entered into that joy had they received the Lord
Jesus Christ as their long-promised Messiah, but in rejecting Him they
doomed themselves instead to writhe in the equivalent of labor pain, and
will continue to do so until that day, now fast approaching, when their
sin-blinded eyes will be opened, the terrible “labor pains” of the
Tribulation judgments resulting in their seeing in the despised and
long-rejected Jesus their equally long-awaited Messiah.
26:18.
“We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought
forth wind: we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have
the inhabitants of the world fallen.”
For Israel
weary century has succeeded weary century without the coming of the Messiah,
their sin-blinded eyes having failed to recognize Him when he was born in
their midst in a stable in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago. Even
though Scripture attested the circumstances of His birth, their
preoccupation with the coming of a world-conquering king prevented their
seeing that no mere man could have performed the miracles he wrought in
their midst for over three years; nor did the manner of His death convince
them that the death to which they consigned Him had already been foretold in
detail in their own Scriptures, see Psalm 22, for example.
They spoke
absolute truth when they here confessed their failure to bring deliverance
to the earth, and equal failure to bring its inhabitants under Jewish
dominion. That day however, is now imminent, for all the signs point to the
fact that the rapture of the Church could occur today, to be followed
shortly by the seven-year Tribulation era, which will end with the Lord’s
return in power and glory to establish His millennial kingdom, which will
bring earth’s history to a peaceful and glorious close.
26:19.
“Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they rise. Awake
and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the
earth shall cast out the dead.”
This describes
the resurrection of life, i.e., the raising of the bodies of all believers
at the end of the Great Tribulation being described here as being “cast out”
or yielded up by the graves. The resurrected believers, then complete as
body, soul, and spirit, will dwell for ever in heaven with Christ.
“... thy dew
is as the dew of herbs” is translated by Taylor as, “For God’s light of life
will fall like dew upon them.” As dew is mainly associated with morning,
the beginning of the day, so does the resurrection of life introduce the
believer to the complete enjoyment of a new day: eternal life in heaven with
Christ.
26:20.
“Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about
thee; hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be
overpast.”
This is
generally understood as being God’s encouragement to believers in the coming
Great Tribulation, “the indignation” being the terrible judgments that will
ravage the earth during that three-and-a-half year period. This may not be
taken to mean that all believers will be preserved alive through that
terrible time, for Scripture teaches otherwise.
26:21.
“For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of
the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and
shall no more cover her slain.”
The
description continues to be of the judgments of the Great Tribulation, which
will be God’s just punishment of man’s wickedness in every form, but
particularly in his destruction of life by both murder and warfare. There
is however, good reason to believe that this judgment may refer also to that
of the Great White Throne.
