Isaiah 65:11 - Exposition

But ye are they that forsake the Lord ; rather, but as for you who forsake the Lord. And forget my holy mountain ; i.e. either, literally, forget Zion. being absent from it so long ( Psalms 137:5 ), or, possibly, neglect Zion, though you might worship there if you pleased. That prepare a table for that troop ; rather, that prepare a table for Gad. There is ground for believing that "Gad" was a Phoenician deity, perhaps "the god of good fortune" (Cheyne), though this is not clearly ascertained; sometimes worshipped as an aspect of Baal, whence the name, Baal-Gad ( Joshua 11:17 ; Joshua 12:7 ); sometimes connected with other deities, as Moloch and Ashtoreth. The practice of "preparing tables" for the heathen gods was a common one, and appears in Herod; 1.181; in Baruch 6:30; in Bel and the Dragon, verse 11; and in the Roman lectisternia. The tables prepared for the dead in Egyptian tombs were not very different, and implied a qualified worship of ancestors. And that furnish the drink offering unto that number; rather, and that fill up mixed drink for M ' ni. M'ni appears, like Gad, to have been a Syrian deity, the name Ebed-M'ni, "servant of M'ni," occurring on Aramaeo-Persian coins of the Achaemenian period. The word may be suspected to be cognate to the Arabic "Manat," a god recognized in the Koran as a mediator with Allah; but can scarcely have any connection with the Aryan names for the moon deity, ΄ήν ΄ήνη , Mena , and the like. Its root is probably the Semitic manah , "to number" or" apportion," the word designating a deity who" apportions" men's fortunes to them ( τύχη , LXX .).