Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament · Isaiah Capítulo 8

Not till then would this overflowing reach as far as Judah, but then it would do so most certainly and incessantly. ”And presses forward into Judah, overflows and pours onward, till it reaches to the neck, and the spreading out of its wings fill the breadth of thy land, Immanuel.” The fate of Judah would be different from that of Ephraim. Ephraim would be laid completely under water by the river, i.e., would be utterly destroyed. And in Judah the stream, as it rushed forward, would reach the most dangerous height; but if a deliverer could be found, there was still a possibility of its being saved. Such a deliverer was Immanuel, whom the prophet sees in the light of the Spirit living through all the Assyrian calamities. The prophet appeals complainingly to him that the land, which is his land, is almost swallowed up by the world-power: the spreadings out ( muttoth , a hophal noun: for similar substantive forms, see Isaiah 14:6; Isaiah 29:3, and more especially Psalms 66:11) of the wings of the stream (i.e., of the large bodies of water pouring out on both sides from the main stream, as from the trunk, and covering the land like two broad wings) have filled the whole land. According to Norzi, Immanuël is to be written here as one word, as it is in Isaiah 7:14; but the correct reading is Immân El , with mercha silluk (see note on Isaiah 7:14), though it does not therefore cease to be a proper name. As Jerome observes, it is nomen proprium , non interpretatum ; and so it is rendered in the Sept., Μεθ ̓ ἡμῶν ὁ Θεός .

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The words that follow in Isaiah 8:16, “Bind up the testimony, seal the lesson in my disciples,” appear at first sight to be a command of God to the prophet, according to such parallel passages as Daniel 12:4, Daniel 12:9; Revelation 22:10, cf., Daniel 8:26; but with this explanation it is impossible to do justice to the words “in my disciples” ( b'ilmmudâi ). The explanation given by Rosenmüller, Knobel, and others, viz., “by bringing in men divinely instructed” ( adhibitis viris piis et sapientibus ), is grammatically inadmissible. Consequently I agree with Vitringa, Drechsler, and others, in regarding Isaiah 8:16 as the prophet's own prayer to Jehovah. We tie together ( צרר , imperf. צור = צר ) what we wish to keep from getting separated and lost; we seal ( C hâtam ) what is to be kept secret, and only opened by a person duly qualified. And so the prophet here prays that Jehovah would take his testimony with regard to the future, and his instruction, which was designed to prepare for this future - that testimony and thorah which the great mass in their hardness did not understand, and in their self-hardening despised - and lay them up well secured and well preserved, as if by band and seal, in the hearts of those who received the prophet's words with believing obedience ( limmūd , as in Isaiah 50:4; Isaiah 54:13). For it would be all over with Israel, unless a community of believers should be preserved, and all over with this community, if the word of God, which was the ground of their life, should be allowed to slip from their hearts. We have here an announcement of the grand idea, which the second part of the book of Isaiah carries out in the grandest style. It is very evident that it is the prophet himself who is speaking here, as we may see from Isaiah 8:17, where he continues to speak in the first person, though he does not begin with ואני .

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Whilst offering this prayer, and looking for its fulfilment, he waits upon Jehovah. “And I wait upon Jehovah, who hides His face before the house of Jacob, and hope for Him.” A time of judgment had now commenced, which would still last a long time; but the word of God was the pledge of Israel's continuance in the midst of it, and of the renewal of Israel's glory afterwards. The prophet would therefore hope for the grace which was now hidden behind the wrath.

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His home was the future, and to this he was subservient, even with all his house. “Behold, I and the children which Jehovah hath given me for signs and types in Israel, from Jehovah of hosts, who dwelleth upon Mount Zion.” He presents himself to the Lord with his children, puts himself and them into His hands. They were Jehovah's gift, and that for a higher purpose than every-day family enjoyment. They subserved the purpose of signs and types in connection with the history of salvation. “ Signs and types:” 'oth (sign) was an omen or prognostic ( σημεῖον ) in word and deed, which pointed to and was the pledge of something future (whether it were in itself miraculous or natural); mopheth was either something miraculous ( τέρας ) pointing back to a supernatural cause, or a type ( τύπος , prodigium = porridigium ) which pointed beyond itself to something future and concealed, literally twisted round, i.e., out of the ordinary course, paradoxical, striking, standing out (Arab. aft , ift , res mira , δεινόν τι ), from אפת (related to הפך , אבך ) = מאפת , like מוסר = מאסר . His children were signs and enigmatical symbols of the future, and that from Jehovah of hosts who dwelt on Zion. In accordance with His counsel (to which the עם in מעם points), He had selected these signs and types: He who could bring to pass the future, which they set forth, as surely as He was Jehovah of hosts, and who would bring it to pass as surely as He had chosen Mount Zion for the scene of His gracious presence upon earth. Shear-yashub and Mahershalal were indeed no less symbols of future wrath than of future grace; but the name of the father ( Yesha'hâhu ) was an assurance that all the future would issue from Jehovah's salvation, and end in the same. Isaiah and his children were figures and emblems of redemption, opening a way for itself through judgment. The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2:13) quotes these words as the distinct words of Jesus, because the spirit of Jesus was in Isaiah - the spirit of Jesus, which in the midst of this holy family, bound together as it was only to the bands of “the shadow,” pointed forward to that church of the New Testament which would be found together by the bands of the true substance. Isaiah, his children, and his wife, who is called “the prophetess” ( nebi'ah ) not only because she was the wife of the prophet but because she herself possessed the gift of prophecy, and all the believing disciples gathered round this family - these together formed the stock of the church of the Messianic future, on the foundation and soil of the existing massa perdita of Israel.

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It is to this ecclesiola in ecclesia that the prophet's admonition is addressed. “And when they shall say to you, Inquire of the necromancers, and of the soothsayers that chirp and whisper:-Should not a people inquire of its God? for the living to the dead?” The appeal is supposed to be made by Judaeans of the existing stamp; for we know from Isaiah 2:6; Isaiah 3:2-3, that all kinds of heathen superstitions had found their way into Jerusalem, and were practised there as a trade. The persons into whose mouths the answer is put by the prophet (we may supply before Isaiah 8:19, “Thus shall ye say to them;” cf., Jeremiah 10:11), are his own children and disciples. The circumstances of the times were very critical; and the people were applying to wizards to throw light upon the dark future. 'Ob signified primarily the spirit of witchcraft, then the possessor of such a spirit (equivalent to Baal ob ), more especially the necromancer. Yidd‛oni , on the other hand, signified primarily the possessor of a prophesying or soothsaying spirit ( πύθων or πνεῦμα τοῦ πύθωνος ), Syr. yodūa‛ (after the intensive from pâ‛ul with immutable vowels), and then the soothsaying spirit itself (Leviticus 20:27), which was properly called yiddâ'ōn (the much knowing), like δαίμων , which, according to Plato, is equivalent to δαήμων . These people, who are designated by the lxx, both here and elsewhere, as ἐγγαστρόμυθοι , i.e., ventriloquists, imitated the chirping of bats, which was supposed to proceed from the shadows of Hades, and uttered their magical formulas in a whispering tone.

(Note: The Mishnah Sanhedrin 65 a gives this definition: “ Baal'ob is a python, i.e., a soothsayer ('with a spirit of divination'), who speaks from his arm-pit; yidd‛oni , a man who speaks with his mouth.” The baal ob , so far as he had to do with the bones of the dead, is called in the Talmud obâ temayya' , e.g., the witch of Endor (b. Sabbath 152b). On the history of the etymological explanation of the word, see Böttcher, de inferis, §205-217. If 'ob , a skin or leather bottle, is a word from the same root (rendered “bellows” by the lxx at Job 32:19), as it apparently is, it may be applied to a bottle as a thing which swells or can be blown out, and to a wizard of spirit of incantation on account of this puffing and gasping. The explanation “ le revenant ,” from אוּב = Arab. âba , to return, has only a very weak support in the proper name איוב = avvâb (the penitent, returning again and again to God: see again at Isaiah 29:4).)

What an unnatural thing, for the people of Jehovah to go and inquire, not of their won God, but of such heathenish and demoniacal deceivers and victims as these ( dârash 'el , to go and inquire of a person, Isaiah 11:10, synonymous with shâ'ar b' , 1 Samuel 28:6)! What blindness, to consult the dead in the interests of the living! By “ the dead ” ( hammēthim ) we are not to understand “the idols” in this passage, as in Psalms 106:28, but the departed, as Deuteronomy 18:11 (cf., 1 Sam 28) clearly proves; and בּעד is not to be taken, either here or elsewhere, as equivalent to tachath (“instead of”), as Knobel supposes, but, as in Jeremiah 21:2 and other passages, as signifying “for the benefit of.” Necromancy, which makes the dead the instructors of the living, is a most gloomy deception.

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In opposition to such a falling away to wretched superstition, the watchword of the prophet and his supporters is this. “To the teaching of God ( thorah, Gotteslehre), and to the testimony! If they do not accord with this word, they are a people for whom no morning dawns.” The summons, “to the teaching and to the testimony” (namely, to those which Jehovah gave through His prophet, Isaiah 8:17), takes the form of a watchword in time of battle (Judges 7:18). With this construction the following אם־לא (which Knobel understands interrogatively, “Should not they speak so, who, etc.?” and Luzzatto as an oath, as in Psalms 131:2, “Surely they say such words as have no dawn in them”) has, at any rate, all the presumption of a conditional signification. Whoever had not this watchword would be regarded as the enemy of Jehovah, and suffer the fate of such a man. This is, to all appearance, the meaning of the apodosis שׁהר אין־לו אשׁר . Luther has given the meaning correctly, “If they do not say this, they will not have the morning dawn;” or, according to his earlier and equally good rendering, “They shall never overtake the morning light,” literally, “They are those to whom no dawn arises.” The use of the plural in the hypothetical protasis, and the singular in the apodosis, is an intentional and significant change. All the several individuals who did not adhere to the revelation made by Jehovah through His prophet, formed one corrupt mass, which would remain in hopeless darkness. אשׁר is used in the same sense as in Isaiah 5:28 and 2 Samuel 2:4, and possibly also as in 1 Samuel 15:20, instead of the more usual כּי , when used in the affirmative sense which springs in both particles out of the confirmative ( namque and quoniam ): Truly they have no morning dawn to expect.

(Note: Strangely enough, Isaiah 8:19 and Isaiah 8:20 are described in Lev. Rabba, ch. xv, as words of the prophet Hosea incorporated in the book of Isaiah.)

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