Isaiah 48:17-19

b) SECOND INSERTION

Lament that Israel would not hear at the right time

Isaiah 48:17-19

17          Thus saith the Lord,

Thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel;I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit,

Which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.

18     O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!

Then had thy peace been as a river,And thy righteousness as the waves of the sea:

19     Thy seed also had been as the sand,

And the offspring of thy bowels 10like the gravel thereof;

His name 11should not have been cut off nor destroyed from before me.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

These words interrupt the connection just as does Isaiah 48:16, and make the impression of belonging to the time when the Prophet was prophesying. For chap. 43 is a recapitulation of the thoughts of chaps. 40–47. This recapitulation continues in Isaiah 48:20-21, as we shall show afterwards. But in these Isaiah 48:17-19 there is not a trace of recapitulation. [It is hard to resist the conviction, that were our Author less dominated by this notion of recapitulation, he would see more clearly. See in the Introduction, p. 17, the remarks quoted from J. A. Alex.—Tr.] They bear a retrospective character. After announcing the deliverance by Cyrus, the Prophet is constrained to make the mournful remark, that Israel might have come to the same goal of salvation by the normal and direct way. This thought was perhaps in place after the recapitulation, but not during it, as a break in the context.

Jehovah, the Redeemer, the Holy One, the God of Israel, is naturally, as such, the teacher and leader also of the nation, and has the right to demand that the nation let itself be taught and led by Him. מלמדך להועיל (see List); הוֹעִיל is frugi esse, and is used of being able, ability in regard to useful things generally (comp. Isaiah 30:5-6; Jeremiah 2:8, etc.). Here it stands particularly for doing that which is morally profitable. לוא הקשׁבת ונו׳ (Isaiah 48:18) can only mean: if thou hadst regarded, then thy salvation had been, etc. Comp. Ewald, § 329, b; 358, a. Isaiah 63:19 reads exactly and literally: if thou hadst rent the heavens, and were come down. Of course in that passage it is not essentially important if one translate (inexactly) O that thou mightest rend the heavens and mightest come down. For the only difference is that the more exact construction expresses the impatient wish that the rending and coming down had already taken place. But in our passage one cannot say, that the Lord, if the words must relate to the future, wishes Israel might already have completed giving its attention. Every one would expect the wish to be that Israel would give attention now and in all the future. But to express that requires the imperfect or the imperative, and in the apodosis וִיהִי or וְהָיָה. To be grammatically exact, therefore, one can only construe the words as retrospective. Had Israel regarded the commandments of the Lord, then its salvation had been as the river (the Euphrates, comp. Isaiah 59:19; Isaiah 66:12, where כְּנָהָר is used), and its righteousness as waves of the sea. Corporeal and spiritual salvation would have extended over Israel in measureless abundance (comp. Isaiah 10:22, and on the relation of שׁלום to צדקת, Isaiah 32:16; Isaiah 46:13). All promises of salvation contain the benedictio vere theocratica of numerous posterity; for power and developed civilization presuppose a numerous people. A people few in numbers can neither be powerful nor enjoy in spiritual respects an all-sided development. Our passage is founded on Genesis 22:17; Genesis 32:13; comp. Genesis 12:2; Genesis 13:16; Genesis 15:5, etc. צאצאים occurs only in Job (Job 5:25; Job 21:8; Job 27:14; Job 31:8), and in Isa., see List. מֵעוֹת is of uncertain meaning. It occurs only here. The ancient versions convey the notion of “gravel, lapilli.” Gesenius, on the other hand, translates: “propagines viscerum tuorum ut (propagines) viscerum ejus,” and by, propagines viscerum maris are to be understood the fish (sea-animals). [The invariable usage of the Bible is to refer to “the sand of the sea” as the figure for multitude; we think there is not an instance of the animal life of the sea being so used. As a combined figure of multitude and off-spring the sand is more appropriate than the fish. It is beside the standing comparison for the Abrahamic blessing, Tr.] Hitzig, Maurer, Knobel [Barnes, J. A. Alex.] follow the exposition of Gesenius [J. A. A. ascribes it to J. D. Michaelis, Tr.]. Both interpretations have a weak foundation. Yet the latter has in its favor, that מֵעוֹת, viscera = מעים, after the analogy of נהרות along with נהרים, etc., is more probable than the ingeniously deduced lapilli.

Therefore the Prophet here expresses the thought, that, had Israel followed the commandments of Jehovah, then the promises given the fathers would have been fulfilled without the mournful intervening stadium of the Exile. [It seems better, with most commentators, to regard Isaiah 48:16-19 as spoken from the stand-point of the foregoing and subsequent context, i.e., of the Exile. This is involved in interpreting “the river” to mean the Euphrates. “Nothing could well be more appropriate at the close of this division of the prophecies, than such an affecting statement of the truth, so frequently propounded in didactic form already, that Israel, although the chosen people of Jehovah, and as such secure from total ruin, was and was to be a sufferer, not from any want of faithfulness or care on God’s part, but as the necessary fruit of its own imperfections and corruptions.” J. A. Alex. on Isaiah 48:18. “His name shall not be cut off nor destroyed before me.” “We may suppose that the writer, after wishing that the people had escaped the strokes provoked by their iniquities, declares that even now they shall not be entirely destroyed. This is precisely the sense given to the clause in the LXX. (οὐδὲ νῦν ἁπολεῖται), and is recommended by two considerations: first, the absence of the Vav conversive, which in the other clause may indicate an indirect construction; and secondly, its perfect agreement with the whole drift of the passage, and the analogy of others like it, when the explanation of the sufferings of the people as the fruit of their own sin is combined with a promise of exemption from complete destruction,” ibid.on Isaiah 48:19. Delitzsch similarly—Tr.]

Footnotes:

[10]like that of its (the sea’s) bowels.

[11]shall not be