Isaiah 26:16

How strange it seems that the times of "trouble" should be mentioned here in that proleptic song of the redeemed at the very moment of their being participants in the joys of eternal life! In this, their minds go back to the sorrows and tribulations they suffered during their earth-life; and they find something for which to be thankful even in all that trouble. Rawlinson explained it thus:

"They remember what brought them back to God from the alienation which they confessed (Isaiah 26:13). It was the affliction which they so long endured. Their present bliss is the result of their former woe, and recalls the thought of it."[17]

"We have brought forth wind ..." (Isaiah 26:18). This simply means that all human efforts toward salvation are futile, with no result whatever. We have not been able to defeat our enemies, nor has the entrenched wickedness of mankind diminished.

Isaiah 26:19 speaks of the resurrection. "Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust ... The earth shall cast forth the dead." It is surprising that Barnes applied this resurrection to the resurrection of the state of Israel. "They had been dead, that is, civilly dead in Babylon ... `Shall live' means `they shall be restored to their country'."[18] Although ingenious, such an explanation seems totally inadequate.

Hailey gave three widely accepted explanations of what this resurrection is: (1) the figurative resurrection of the state of Israel, following their Babylonian captivity; (2) the final resurrection of the body at the end of time; and (3) the spiritual resurrection that occurred in the Messianic age. Hailey favored the third of these explanations as, "The most plausible of the three."[19]

Others, with whom this writer agrees, accept the second of the above three understandings of this resurrection. "The prophet draws out the implications of Isaiah 25:8 in Isaiah 26:19 ... yesterday and today's martyrs shall live. Few Old Testament writers were granted this glimpse beyond the grave."[20] "Though obscure in details, Isaiah 26:19 clearly promises bodily resurrection."[21]

Some cannot see the final resurrection here because the passage makes no mention of the resurrection of the wicked; but it is a characteristic of the Bible that the "whole truth" on any subject is seldom, if ever, given by any writer; but as Isaiah himself said, "here a little and there a little." See our introduction to this prophecy. Kidner noted this; and in connection with what Isaiah revealed here, he pointed out that Daniel (Daniel 12:2) specifically included the resurrection of the wicked also in what appears to be a simultaneous resurrection. In fact, there are a number of other Old Testament revelations of the resurrection. If this were not true, how? we may ask could the writer of Hebrews have stated that "Some were tortured, not accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection" (Hebrews 11:35).

Christ stated that God's declaration to Moses (Exodus 3:6) that, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" is a clear indication of the resurrection; because God is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matthew 22:28-33). In that same passage, Jesus stated that the refusal of the Sadducees to believe in the resurrection was due to "their ignorance of the scriptures," the Old Testament.

We feel certain that the passages in this division, namely, Isaiah 25:5 and Isaiah 26:19, as Gleason stated it, "Are a most explicit prediction of the bodily resurrection of believers."[22]

The prophet did not linger over this world-shaking revelation of a bodily resurrection but went forward at once to give practical admonition and to reiterate the certainty of God's punishment of the wicked.