Commentari biblici

Israel should be delivered from the Babylonish captivity: their triumphant insultation over Babel, Isaiah 14:1-23. God’s purpose against Assyria, Isaiah 14:24-27. Palestina is threatened, Isaiah 14:28-32.

The Lord will have mercy on Jacob; God will pity and deliver his people; and therefore will destroy Babylon, which hinders it, and set up Cyrus, who shall promote it.

will yet choose Israel; will renew his choice of them; for he had refused and rejected them.

The stranger shall be joined with them: so they did in part at their coming from Babylon, being thereunto moved either by the favour which the Jews had in the Persian court, or by the consideration of their wonderful deliverance, and that exactly in the time designed by their holy prophets. But what was then begun was more fully accomplished at the coming of the Messiah.

Which they might do literally, and sometimes did, after their return into their own land, either by their power with the Persian monarchs, as in the days of Cyrus and Darius, and especially of Ahasuerus; or by their own prowess, as in the time of the Maccabees. But this was more evidently and eminently verified in a spiritual sense, in the days of the gospel, when the apostles and other ministers, who were of the Jewish nation, conquered a great part of the Gentile world to the worship and obedience of their Messiah.

From thy fear; for besides their present hard service, they were in perpetual fear of further severities and sufferings, at the pleasure of their cruel lords and masters.

Shalt take up into thy mouth, as it is fully expressed, Psalm 50:16.

How hath the oppressor ceased! this is spoken by way of astonishment and triumph. Who would have thought this possible?

The golden city, as they used to call themselves; which therefore he expresseth here in a word of their own language.

This is an answer to the foregoing question. It is God’s own work, and not man’s; and therefore it is not strange that it is accomplished.

In anger; with rigour, and not with clemency, as many conquerors have done.

Non hindereth; neither the Babylonians themselves, nor their confederates, could withstand the power of the Medes and Persians.

The whole earth; the inhabitants and subjects of that vast empire, who groaned under their cruel bondage.

The cedars of Lebanon, which were felled down for the service of her pride and luxury, but now are suffered to stand and flourish. It is a figure usual in sacred and profane writers, called prosopopaeia.