Isaiah 29 commentary

ISAIAH 29 COMMENTARY
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Woe to David’s City
1 Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel,
the city where David settled!
Add year to year
and let your cycle of festivals go on.
1.BARNES, “Wo - (compare the note at Isa_18:1).
To Ariel - There can be no doubt that Jerusalem is here intended. The declaration that it was
the city where David dwelt, as well as the entire scope of the prophecy, proves this. But still, it is
not quiet clear why the city is here called “Ariel.” The margin reads, ‘O Ariel, that is, the lion of
God.’ The word (‫אריאל‬ 'arı y'el) is compounded of two words, and is usually supposed to be
made up of ‫ארי‬ 'arı y, “a lion,” and ‫אל‬ 'el, God; and if this interpretation is correct, it is
equivalent to a strong, mighty, fierce lion - where the word ‘God’ is used to denote greatness in
the same way as the lofty cedars of Lebanon are called cedars of God; that is, lofty cedars. The
“lion” is an emblem of strength, and a strong lion is an emblem of a mighty warrior or hero.
2Sa_23:20 : ‘He slew two “lion-like” ‫אריאל‬ 'arı y'el men of Moab’ 1Ch_11:22. This use of the
word to denote a hero is common in Arabic (see Bachart, “Hieroz.,” i. 3. 1).
If this be the sense in which it is used here, then it is applied to Jerusalem under the image of
a hero, and particularly as the place which was distinguished under David as the capital of a
kingdom that was so celebrated for its triumphs in war. The word ‘Ariel’ is, however, used in
another sense in the Scriptures, to denote an “altar” Eze_43:15-16, where in the Hebrew the
word is “Ariel.” This name is given to the altar, Bachart supposes (“Hieroz.,” i. 3. 1), because the
altar of burnt-offering “devours” as it were the sacrifices as a lion devours its prey. Gesenius,
however, has suggested another reason why the word is given to the altar, since he says that the
word ‫ארי‬ 'arı y is the same as one used in Arabic to denote a fire-hearth, and that the altar was
so called because it was the place of perpetual burnt-offering. The name “Ariel,” is, doubtless,
given in Ezekiel to an altar; and it may be given here to Jerusalem because it was the place of the
altar, or of the public worship of God. The Chaldee renders it, ‘Wo to the altar, the altar which
was constructed in the city where David dwelt.’ It seems to me that this view better suits the
connection, and particularly Isa_29:2 (see Note), than to suppose that the name is given to
Jerusalem because it was like a lion. If this be the true interpretation, then it is so called because

Jerusalem was the place of the burnt-offering, or of the public worship of God; the place where
the fire, as on a hearth, continually burned on the altar.
The city where David dwelt - David took the hill of Zion from the Jebusites, and made it
the capital of his kingdom 2Sa_5:6-9. Lowth renders this, ‘The city which David besieged.’ So
the Septuagint: ᅠπολέµησε Epolemese; and so the Vulgate, Expugnavit. The word ‫חנה‬ chanah
properly means “to encamp, to pitch one’s tent” Gen_26:17, “to station oneself.” It is also used
in the sense of encamping “against” anyone, that is, to make war upon or to attack (see Isa_29:3,
and Psa_27:3; 2Sa_12:28); and Jerome and others have supposed that it has this meaning here
in accordance with the interpretation of the Septuagint and the Vulgate. But the more correct
idea is probably that in our translation, that David pitched his tent there; that is, that he made it
his dwelling-place.
Add ye year to year - That is, ‘go on year after year, suffer one year to glide on after another
in the course which you are pursuing.’ This seems to be used ironically, and to denote that they
were going on one year after another in the observance of the feasts; walking the round of
external ceremonies as if the fact that David had dwelt there, and that that was the place of the
great altar of worship, constituted perfect security. One of the sins charged on them in this
chapter was “formality” and “heartlessness” in their devotions Isa_29:13, and this seems to be
referred to here.
Let them kill sacrifices - Margin, ‘Cut off the heads.’ The word here rendered ‘kill’ (‫נקף‬ na
qaph) may mean to smite; to hew; to cut down Isa_10:34; Job_19:26. But it has also another
signification which better accords with this place. It denotes to make a circle, to revolve; to go
round a place Jos_6:3, Jos_6:11; to surround 1Ki_7:24; 2Ki_6:14; Psa_17:9; Psa_22:17;
Psa_88:18. The word rendered ‘sacrifices’ (‫חגים‬ chagiym) may mean a sacrifice Exo_23:18;
Psa_118:27; Mal_2:3, but it more commonly and properly denotes feasts or festivals Exo_10:9;
Exo_12:14; Lev_23:39; Deu_16:10, Deu_16:16; 1Ki_8:2, 1Ki_8:65; 2Ch_7:8-9; Neh_8:14;
Hos_2:11, Hos_2:13. Here the sense is, ‘let the festivals go round;’ that is, let them revolve as it
were in a perpetual, unmeaning circle, until the judgments due to such heartless service shall
come upon you. The whole address is evidently ironical, and designed to denote that all their
service was an unvarying repetition of heartless forms.
2. CLARKE, “Ariel - That Jerusalem is here called by this name is very certain: but the
reason of this name, and the meaning of it as applied to Jerusalem, is very obscure and doubtful.
Some, with the Chaldee, suppose it to be taken from the hearth of the great altar of burnt-
offerings which Ezekiel plainly calls by the same name, and that Jerusalem is here considered as
the seat of the fire of God, ‫אור‬‫אל‬ ur el which should issue from thence to consume his enemies:
compare Isa_31:9. Some, according to the common derivation of the word, ‫ארי‬‫אל‬ ari el, the lion
of God, or the strong lion, suppose it to signify the strength of the place, by which it was enabled
to resist and overcome all its enemies. Τινες δε φασι την πολιν οᆓτως ειρησθαι· επει, δια Θεου, λεοντ
ος δικην εσπαραττε τους ανταιροντας. Procop. in loc. There are other explanations of this name
given: but none that seems to be perfectly satisfactory. - Lowth.
From Eze_43:15, we learn that Ari-el was the name of the altar of burnt-offerings, put here for
the city itself in which that altar was. In the second verse it is said, I will distress Ari-el, and it
shall be unto me as Ari-el. The first Ari-el here seems to mean Jerusalem, which should be
distressed by the Assyrians: the second Ari-el seems to mean the altar of burntofferings. But why

is it said, “Ari-el shall be unto me as Ari-el?” As the altar of burntofferings was surrounded daily
by the victims which were offered: so the walls of Jerusalem shall be surrounded by the dead
bodies of those who had rebelled against the Lord, and who should be victims to his justice. The
translation of Bishop Lowth appears to embrace both meanings: “I will bring distress upon Ari-
el; and it shall be to me as the hearth of the great altar.”
Add ye year to year - Ironically. Go on year after year, keep your solemn feasts; yet know,
that God will punish you for your hypocritical worship, consisting of mere form destitute of true
piety. Probably delivered at the time of some great feast, when they were thus employed.
3. GILL, “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt,.... Many Jewish writers by
"Ariel" understand the altar of burnt offerings; and so the Targum,
"woe, altar, altar, which was built in the city where David dwelt;''
and so it is called in Eze_43:15 it signifies "the lion of God"; and the reason why it is so called,
the Jews say (i), is, because the fire lay upon it in the form of a lion; but rather the reason is,
because it devoured the sacrifices that were laid upon it, as a lion does its prey; though others of
them interpret it of the temple, which they say was built like a lion, narrow behind and broad
before (k); but it seems better to understand it of the city of Jerusalem, in which David
encamped, as the word (l) signifies; or "encamped against", as some; which he besieged, and
took from the Jebusites, and fortified, and dwelt in; and which may be so called from its
strength and fortifications, natural and artificial, and from its being the chief city of Judah,
called a lion, Gen_49:9 whose standard had a lion on it, and from whence came the Messiah, the
Lion of the tribe of Judah; or rather from its cruelty in shedding the blood of the prophets, and
was, as the Lord says, as a lion unto him that cried against him, Jer_12:8 and so the words may
be considered as of one calling to Jerusalem, and lamenting over it, as Christ did, "O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets", &c. Mat_23:37 and the mention of David's name, and
of his dwelling in it, is not only to point out what city is meant, and the greatness and glory of it;
but to show that this would not secure it from ruin and destruction (m):
add ye year to year; which some understand of two precise years, at the end of which
Jerusalem should be besieged by the army of Sennacherib; but that is not here meant. Cocceius
thinks that large measure of time is meant, that one year is the length of time from David's
dwelling in Jerusalem to the Babylonish captivity; and the other year from the time of
Zerubbabel and Nehemiah to the destruction by the Romans, which is more likely; but rather
the sense is, go on from year to year in your security and vain confidence; or keep your yearly
feasts, and offer your yearly sacrifices; as follows:
let them kill sacrifices; the daily and yearly sacrifices; let the people bring them, and the
priests offer them, for the time is coming when an end will be put to them; "the feasts shall be
cut off": so the words may be rendered; the festivals shall cease, and be no more observed; and
so the Targum,
"the festivities shall cease;''
or, feasts being put for lambs, so in Psa_118:27 as Ben Melech observes, the sense is, their heads
should be cut off (n).

(i) Yoma apud Jarchi in loc. (k) T. Bab. Middot, fol. 37. 1. (l) ‫חנה‬ "castrametatus est", Vatablus,
Junius & Tremellius; "castra habuit", Piscator. (m) The words are rendered by Noldius, "woe to
Ariel, to Ariel: to the city in which David encamped"; and he observes, that some supply the
copulative "and; woe to Ariel, and to the city", &c.; So making them distinct, which seems best to
agree with the accents, and may respect the destruction both of their ecclesiastic and civil state;
the temple being designed by "Ariel", and "Jerusalem" by the city. See Concord. Ebr. Part. p.
183. No. 842. (n) ‫חגים‬‫ינקפו‬ "agni excervicabuntur", Montanus; "excidentur", Vatablus;
"jugulentur", Munster.
4. HENRY, “That it is Jerusalem which is here called Ariel is agreed, for that was the city
where David dwelt; that part of it which was called Zion was in a particular manner the city of
David, in which both the temple and the palace were. But why it is so called is very uncertain:
probably the name and the reason were then well known. Cities, as well as persons, get
surnames and nicknames. Ariel signifies the lion of God, or the strong lion: as the lion is king
among beasts, so was Jerusalem among the cities, giving law to all about her; it was the city of
the great King (Psa_48:1, Psa_48:2); it was the head-city of Judah, who is called a lion's whelp
(Gen_49:9) and whose ensign was a lion; and he that is the lion of the tribe of Judah was the
glory of it. Jerusalem was a terror sometimes to the neighbouring nations, and, while she was a
righteous city, was bold as a lion. Some make Ariel to signify the altar of burnt-offerings, which
devoured the beasts offered in sacrifice as the lion does his prey. Woe to that altar in the city
where David dwelt; that was destroyed with the temple by the Chaldeans. I rather take it as a
woe to Jerusalem, Jerusalem; it is repeated here, as it is Mat_23:37, that it might be the more
awakening. Here is,
I. The distress of Jerusalem foretold. Though Jerusalem be a strong city, as a lion, though a holy
city, as a lion of God, yet, if iniquity be found there, woe be to it. It was the city where David
dwelt; it was he that brought that to it which was its glory, and which made it a type of the
gospel church, and his dwelling in it was typical of Christ's residence in his church. This
mentioned as an aggravation of Jerusalem's sin, that in it were set both the testimony of Israel
and the thrones of the house of David. 1. Let Jerusalem know that her external performance of
religious services will not serve as an exemption from the judgments of God (Isa_29:1): “Add
year to year; go on in the road of your annual feasts, let all your males appear there three times
a year before the Lord, and none empty, according to the law and custom, and let them never
miss any of these solemnities: let them kill the sacrifices, as they used to do; but, as long as their
lives are unreformed and their hearts unhumbled, let them not think thus to pacify an offended
God and to turn away his wrath.” Note, Hypocrites may be found in a constant track of devout
exercises, and treading around in them, and with these they may flatter themselves, but can
never please God nor make their peace with him. 2. Let her know that God is coming forth
against her in displeasure, that she shall be visited of the Lord of hosts (Isa_29:6); her sins shall
be enquired into and punished: God will reckon for them with terrible judgments, with the
frightful alarms and rueful desolations of war, which shall be like thunder and earthquakes,
storms and tempests, and devouring fire, especially upon the account of the great noise. When

a foreign enemy was not in the borders, but in the bowels of their country, roaring and ravaging,
and laying all waste (especially such an army as that of the Assyrians, whose commanders being
so very insolent, as appears by the conduct of Rabshakeh, the common soldiers, no doubt, were
much more rude), they might see the Lord of those hosts visiting them with thunder and storm.
Yet, this being here said to be a great noise, perhaps it is intimated that they shall be worse
frightened than hurt. Particularly
5. JAMISON, “Isa_29:1-24. Coming invasion of Jerusalem: Its failure: Unbelief of the
Jews.
This chapter opens the series of prophecies as to the invasion of Judea under Sennacherib,
and its deliverance.
Ariel — Jerusalem; Ariel means “Lion of God,” that is, city rendered by God invincible: the
lion is emblem of a mighty hero (2Sa_23:20). Otherwise “Hearth of God,” that is, place where
the altar-fire continually burns to God (Isa_31:9; Eze_43:15, Eze_43:16).
add ... year to year — ironically; suffer one year after another to glide on in the round of
formal, heartless “sacrifices.” Rather, “add yet another year” to the one just closed [Maurer]. Let
a year elapse and a little more (Isa_32:10, Margin).
let ... kill sacrifices — rather, “let the beasts (of another year) go round” [Maurer]; that is,
after the completion of a year “I will distress Ariel.”
6. K&D 1-4, “The prophecy here passes from the fall of Samaria, the crown of flowers
(Isa_28:1-4), to its formal parallel. Jerusalem takes its place by the side of Samaria, the crown of
flowers, and under the emblem of a hearth of God. 'Arı̄'el might, indeed, mean a lion of God. It
occurs in this sense as the name of certain Moabitish heroes (2Sa_23:20; 1Ch_11:22), and Isaiah
himself used the shorter form ‫ל‬ ֶ‫א‬ ְ‫ר‬ ֶ‫א‬ for the heroes of Judah (Isa_33:7). But as ‫ל‬ ֵ‫יא‬ ִ‫ר‬ፍ (God's heart,
interchanged with ֵ‫אל‬ ְ‫ר‬ ַ‫ה‬ htiw degna, God's height) is the name given in Eze_43:15-16, to the altar
of burnt-offering in the new temple, and as Isaiah could not say anything more characteristic of
Jerusalem, than that Jehovah had a fire and hearth there (Isa_31:9); and, moreover, as
Jerusalem the city and community within the city would have been compared to a lioness rather
than a lion, we take ֵ‫יאל‬ ִ‫ר‬ፍ in the sense of ara Dei (from ‫ה‬ ָ‫ר‬ፎ, to burn). The prophet commences in
his own peculiar way with a grand summary introduction, which passes in a few gigantic strides
over the whole course from threatening to promise. Isa_29:1 “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the castle
where David pitched his tent! Add year to year, let the feasts revolve: then I distress Ariel, and
there is groaning and moaning; and so she proves herself to me as Ariel.” By the fact that
David fixed his headquarters in Jerusalem, and then brought the sacred ark thither, Jerusalem
became a hearth of God. Within a single year, after only one more round of feasts (to be
interpreted according to Isa_32:10, and probably spoken at the passover), Jehovah would make
Jerusalem a besieged city, full of sighs (vahatsı̄qothı̄, perf. cons., with the tone upon the
ultimate); but “she becomes to me like an Arı̄el,” i.e., being qualified through me, she will prove
herself a hearth of God, by consuming the foes like a furnace, or by their meeting with their

destruction at Jerusalem, like wood piled up on the altar and then consumed in flame. The
prophecy has thus passed over the whole ground in a few majestic words. It now starts from the
very beginning again, and first of all expands the hoi. Isa_29:3, Isa_29:4 “And I encamp in a
circle round about thee, and surround thee with watch-posts, and erect tortoises against thee.
And when brought down thou wilt speak from out of the ground, and thy speaking will sound
low out of the dust; and thy voice cometh up like that of a demon from the ground, and thy
speaking will whisper out of the dust.” It would have to go so far with Ariel first of all, that it
would be besieged by a hostile force, and would lie upon the ground in the greatest extremity,
and then would whisper with a ghostlike softness, like a dying man, or like a spirit without flesh
and bones. Kaddur signifies sphaera, orbis, as in Isa_22:18 and in the Talmud (from kadar = ka
thar; cf., kudur in the name Nabu-kudur-ussur, Nebo protect the crown, κίδαριν), and is used here
poetically for ‫יב‬ ִ‫ב‬ ָ‫.ס‬ Jerome renders it quasi sphaeram (from dur, orbis). ‫ב‬ ָ ֻ‫מ‬ (from ‫ב‬ ַ‫צ‬ָ‫,נ‬ ‫ב‬ ַ‫צ‬ָ‫)י‬ might
signify “firmly planted” (Luzzatto, immobilmente; compare shuth, Isa_2:7); but according to the
parallel it signifies a military post, like ‫ב‬ ָ ַ‫,מ‬ ‫יב‬ ִ‫צ‬ְ‫.נ‬ Me
tsuroth (from matsor, Deu_20:20) are
instruments of siege, the nature of which can only be determined conjecturally. On 'obh, see
Isa_8:19;
(Note: The 'akkuubh mentioned there is equivalent to anbub, Arab. a knot on a reed stalk,
then that part of such a reed which comes between two knots, then the reed stalk itself; root
‫,נב‬ to rise up, swell, or become convex without and concave within (Fl.). It is possible that it
would be better to trace 'obh back to this radical and primary meaning of what is hollow (and
therefore has a dull sound), whether used in the sense of a leather-bag, or applied to a spirit
of incantation, and the possessor of such a spirit.)
there is no necessity to take it as standing for ba‛al 'obh.
7. PULPIT, “A WARNING TO JERUSALEM. Expostulation is followed by threats. The prophet is
aware that all his preaching to the authorities in Jerusalem (Isa_28:14-22) will be of no avail, and that
their adoption of measures directly antagonistic to the commands of God will bring on the very evil which
they are seeking to avert, and cause Jerusalem to be actually besieged by her enemies. In the present
passage he distinctly announces the siege, and declares that it will commence within a year.
Isa_29:1
Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! "Ariel' is clearly a mystic name for Jerusalem, parallel to
"Sheshach" as a name for Babylon (Jer_25:26) and "'Ir-ha-heres" as a name for Heliopolis (Isa_19:18). It
is generally explained as equivalent to Art-El, "lion of God;" but Delitzsch suggests the meaning of "hearth
of God," or "altar of God," a signification which "Ariel" seems to have in Eze_43:15, Eze_43:16. But there
is no evidence that "Ariel" was ever employed in this sense before the time of Ezekiel. Etymologically,

"Ariel" can only mean "lion of God," and the name would in this sense be sufficiently descriptive of the
Jewish capital, which had always hitherto been a sort of champion of Jehovah—a warrior fighting his
battles with a lion's courage and fierceness. Dwelt; literally, pitched his tent—an expression recalling the
old tent-life of the Hebrews. And ye year to year; rather, a year to a year; i.e. the coming year to the
present one. The intention is to date the commencement of the siege. It will fall within the year next
ensuing. Let them kill sacrifices. The best modern authorities translate, "Let the feasts run their
round" (Kay, Cheyne, Delitzsch); i.e. let there be one more round of the annual festival-times, and then let
the enemy march in and commence the siege.
8. CALVIN, “1.This appears to be another discourse, in which Isaiah threatens the city of Jerusalem.
He calls it “” (251) because the chief defense of the city was in the “” (252) for although the citizens relied
on other bulwarks, of which they had great abundance, still they placed more reliance on the Temple
(Jer_7:4) and the altar than on the other defences. While they thought that they were invincible in power
and resources, they considered their strongest and most invincible fortress to consist in their being
defended by the protection of God. They concluded that God was with them, so long as they enjoyed the
altar and the sacrifices. Some think that the temple is here called “” from the resemblance which it bore to
the shape of a lion, being broader in front and narrower behind; but I think it better to take it simply as
denoting “ Altar,” since Ezekiel also (Eze_43:15) gives it this name. This prediction is indeed directed
against the whole city, but we must look at the design of the Prophet; for he intended to strip the Jews of
their foolish confidence in imagining that God would assist them, so long as the altar and the sacrifices
could remain, in which they falsely gloried, and thought that they had fully discharged their duty, though
their conduct was base and detestable.
The city where David dwelt. He now proceeds to the city, which he dignifies with the commendation of its
high rank, on the ground of having been formerly inhabited by David, but intending, by this admission, to
scatter the smoke of their vanity. Some understand by it the lesser Jerusalem, that is, the inner city, which
also was surrounded by a wall; for there was a sort of two-fold Jerusalem, because it had increased, and
had extended its walls beyond where they originally stood; but I think that this passage must be
understood to relate to the whole city. He mentions David, because they gloried in his name, and boasted
that the blessing of God continually dwelt in his palace; for the Lord had promised that “ kingdom of David
would be for ever.” (2Sa_7:13; Psa_89:37.)
Hence we may infer how absurdly the Papists, in the present day, consider the Church to be bound to
Peter’ chair, as if God could nowhere find a habitation in the whole world but in the See of Rome. We do
not now dispute whether Peter was Bishop of the Church of Rome or not; but though we should admit

that this is fully proved, was any promise made to Rome such as was made to Jerusalem? “ is my rest for
ever: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it.” (Psa_132:14.) And if even this were granted, do not we see
what Isaiah declares about Jerusalem? That God is driven from it, when there is no room for doctrine,
when the worship of God is corrupted. What then shall be said of Rome, which has no testimony? Can
she boast of anything in preference to Jerusalem? If God pronounces a curse on the most holy city, which
he had chosen in an especial manner, what must we say of the rest, who have overturned his holy laws
and all godly institutions.
Add year to year. This was added by the Prophet, because the Jews thought that they had escaped
punishment, when any delay was granted to them. Wicked men think that God has made a truce with
them, when they see no destruction close at hand; and therefore they promise to themselves unceasing
prosperity, so long as the Lord permits them to enjoy peace and quietness. In opposition to this
assurance of their safety the Prophet threatens that, though they continue to “ sacrifices,” (253) and
though they renew them year by year, still the Lord will execute his vengeance. We ought to learn from
this, that, when the Lord delays to punish and to take vengeance, we ought not, on that account, to seize
the occasion for delaying our repentance; for although he spares and bears with us for a time, our sin is
not therefore blotted out, nor have we any reason to promise that we shall make a truce with him. Let us
not then abuse his patience, but let us be more eager to obtain pardon.
(251) “Il l’ Ariel, c’ à dire, autel de Dieu;” — “ calls it Ariel, that is, Altar of God.”
FT509 “ with the Chaldee, suppose it to be taken from the hearth of the great altar of burnt-offerings, which
Ezekiel plainly calls by the same name; and that Jerusalem is here considered as the seat of the fire of
God, la ‫אור‬ ‫אל‬ (ōr ē,) which should issue from thence to consume his enemies. Compare chap. Isa_31:9.
Some, according to the common derivation of the word, ‫ארי‬ ‫אל‬ (ărīē,) the lion of God, or the strong lion,
suppose it to signify the strength of the place, by which it was enabled to resist and overcome all its
enemies.” — Lowth. “ interprets it the altar of the Lord, and Ezekiel also (Eze_43:15) gives it this name. It
is so called, on account of the fire of God, which couched like ‫ארי‬ (ărī,) a lion on the altar. Our Rabbins
explain ‫אריאל‬ (ărīē) to denote the temple of Jerusalem, which was narrow behind, and broad in front.” —
Jarchi. “ greater part of interpreters are agreed, that ‫אריאל‬ (ărīē) compounded of ‫ארי‬ (ărī) and ‫אל‬ (ēl,)
denotes the lion of God, or, as Castalio renders it, The Lion — God. But they differ in explaining the
application of this name to Jerusalem.” — Rosenmü. “ meaning of the Prophet, in my opinion, is, that ‘ will
make Jerusalem the heart of his anger, which shall consume not only the enemies but the obstinate
rebellious Jews.’ This meaning is elegant and emphatic, and agrees well with the wisdom of the prophet

Isaiah. Ariel is here taken, in its true signification, not for the altar, but for the hearth of the altar, as in
Ezekiel. The import of the name lies here. The hearth of the altar sustained the symbol of the most holy
and pure will of God, by which all the sacrifices offered to God must be tried; and to this applies the
justice of God, burning like a fire, and consuming the sinner, if no atonement be found. Jerusalem would
become the theater of the divine judgments.” — Vitringa. “ foresees that the city will, in a short time, be
besieged by a very numerous army of the Assyrians, and will be reduced to straits, and yet will not be
vanquished by those multitudes, but, like a lion, will rise by divine power out of the severest encounters.”
— Doederlein
FT510 Instead of “ them kill sacrifices,” Vitringa’ rendering, in which he has been followed by Lowth, Stock,
and Alexander, is, “ the feasts revolve.” — Ed
FT511 Symmachus, on whom Montfaucon bestows the exaggerated commendation of having adhered
closely to the Hebrew text, wherever it differed from the Septuagint, renders the clause, καὶ ἐσταὶ
κατώδυνος καὶ ὀδυνωµένη, which has been closely followed by Jerome’ version, “Et erit tristis ac
moerens;” — “ she shall be sad and sorrowful.” — Ed
FT512 In both cases there are two synonyms, ‫תאניה‬ ‫ואניה‬ (thăăīā văăīā,) which are derived from the same
root. This peculiarity is imitated by the version of Symmachus quoted above, κατώδυνος καὶ ὀδυνωµένη,
and by that of Vitringa, (“mœ et mœ,” who remarks: “ is somewhat unusual to bring together words of the
same termination and derived from the same root, but in this instance it produces an agreeable echo,
which convinces me that it must have been frequently employed in poetical writings.” — Ed
FT513 “Que les ennemis feront en Jerusalem;” — “ the enemies shall make in Jerusalem.”
FT514 “ a circle of tents. ‫,נדור‬ (kăū,) like a Dowar; so the Arabs call a circular village of tents, such as they
still live in.” — Stock
FT515 “Qu’ parleront bas, et comme du creux de la terre;” — “ they will speak low, and as out of the heart
of the earth.”
FT516 “ from the dust thou shalt chirp thy words, or, utter a feeble, stridulous sound, such as the vulgar
supposed to be the voice of a ghost. This sound was imitated by necromancers, who had also the art of
pitching their voice in such a manner as to make it appear to proceed out of the ground, or from what
place they chose.” — Stock

FT517 The Septuagint renders it, καὶ ἔσται ὡς κονιορτὸς ἀπὸ τροχοὺ ὁ πλοῦτος τῶν ἀσεβῶν, “ as the
small dust from the wheel shall be the multitude of the wicked.” Here it is necessary to attend to the
distinction between τρόχος and τροχὸς — Ed
FT518 The military forces of Sennacherib, which shall be fuel for the fire, and shall be reduced to powder.”
— Jarchi
FT519 “ shall be destroyed by the pestilential blast Simoom, whose effects are instantaneous. Thevenot
describes this wind with all the circumstances here enumerated, with thunder and lightning, insufferable
heat, and a whirlwind of sand. By such an ‘ of Jehovah,’ as it is called below, (Isa_37:36,) was the host of
Assyria destroyed.” — Stock
FT520 “ a dream, when one thinks that he sees, and yet does not in reality see, so shall be the multitude of
nations; they will indeed think that they are subduing the city of Jerusalem, but they shall be disappointed
of that hope, they shall not succeed in it.” — Jarchi
FT521 The comparison is elegant and beautiful in the highest degree, well wrought up, and perfectly suited
to the end proposed: the image is extremely natural, but not obvious; it appeals to our inward feelings, not
to our outward senses, and is applied to an event in its concomitant circumstances exactly similar, but in
its nature totally different. For beauty and ingenuity it may fairly come in competition with one of the most
elegant of Virgil, (greatly improved from Homer, Iliad, 22:199,) where he has applied to a different
purpose, but not so happily, the same image of the ineffectual working of imagination in a dream. Virg. Æ
12:908. Lucretius expresses the very same image with Isaiah, (iv. 1091.)” — Lowth
FT522 “ ye out, and cry, or, Take your pleasure and riot.” — Eng. Ver. “ yourselves and stare around.” —
Stock. Lowth’ rendering resembles this, but is somewhat paraphrastic, “ stare with a look of stupid
surprise.” Professor Alexander’ comes nearer that of Calvin, “ merry and blind!” —Ed
FT523 “ prophets, and your rulers (Heb. heads).” — Eng. Ver. Our translators very correctly state that the
literal meaning of ‫רשיכם‬ (rāēĕ) is, “ heads.” Calvin treats it as an adjective, “ principal seers.” — Ed
9. BI, “Ariel
The simplest meaning of “Ariel” is “lion of God”; but it also signifies “hearth of God” when
derived from another root.
In the former sense it comes to mean “a hero,” as in 2Sa_23:20; Isa_33:7;and in the latter it
occurs in Eze_43:15-16 for the brazen hearth of the great altar of burnt offerings, thence

commonly called “the brazen,” though the rest of it was of stone. There is no doubt that
Jerusalem is pointed out by this enigmatical name; and the immediate context, as well as the
expression in Isa_31:9 —“Jehovah, whose fire is in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem”—makes
it probable that Isaiah intended to involve both meanings in the word, as though he had said,
“Woe to the city of heroes, woe to the city of sacrifices: it shall now be put to the test what God
and what man think as to both.” (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)
Jerusalem, “the lion of God”
David, that lion of God, had first encamped against Jerusalem, and then made it the abode of his
royal house, and the capital of his kingdom; so that it became itself an Ariel, the lion of God, in
the land (Gen_49:9-10). (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)
Jerusalem, “the hearth of God”
By David’s pitching his camp and then bringing the sacred ark there, Jerusalem became God’s
hearth. (F. Delitzsch.)
Ariel
The Rabbins combine the two explanations of the Hebrew word by supposing that the altar was
itself called the lion of God, because it devoured the victims like a lion, or because the fire on it
had the appearance of a lion, or because the altar (or the temple) was in shape like a lion, that is,
narrow behind and broad in front. (J. A. Alexander.)
Ariel
In either case applied as a symbol of hope. “But she shall be unto Me as an Ariel,” i.e., in the
extremity of her need I will enable her to verify her name (Cheyne). (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
Woe to Ariel
After the vicissitudes of 300 years, and in the midst of present dangers, the people of Jerusalem
were still confident in the strength of their “lion of God,” and year by year came up to the public
festivals to lay their accustomed offerings on the “altar of God”; though with little remembrance
that it was not in the altar and the city, but in Jehovah Himself, that David put trust, and found
his strength. Therefore Jehovah will bring Ariel low; the proud roar of the lion shall be changed
for the weak, stridulous voice, which the art of the ventriloquising necromancer brings out of the
ground; and the enemies of Jehovah shall be sacrificed and consumed on the hearth of this altar.
First, His spiritual enemies among the Jews themselves, but afterwards the heathen oppressors
of His people; and the lion shall recover his God-derived strength; and thus, both in adversity
and in success, “it shall be unto Me as Ariel.” (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)
Woe to Ariel

The prophet has a very startling message to deliver: that God will besiege His own city, the city
of David! Before God can make her in truth His own, make her verify her name, He will have to
beleaguer and reduce her. For so novel and startling an intimation the prophet pleads a
precedent: “City which David” himself “beleaguered.” Once before in thy history, ere the first
time thou wast made God’s own hearth, thou hadst to be besieged. As then, so now. Before thou
canst again be a true Ari-El I must “beleaguer thee like David.” This reading and interpretation
gives to the enigma a reason and a force which it does not otherwise possess. (Prof. G. A. Smith,
D. D.)
“The city where David dwelt”
We consider it every way remarkable that David should be mentioned in connection with the
woe about to be uttered. If it had been, “Woe unto Ariel, the city where flagrant sins are
committed, the city which is overrun with idols, and filled with all kinds of abomination,” we
should have seen at once the force of the sentence, and must have felt the wrath warranted by
the alleged crimes. But why bring it as a chief accusation against Jerusalem—indeed, as the only
charge that was to justify God in pouring out His vengeance—that it was the city where David
had dwelt? We can hardly think that the definition is meant as nothing more than a statement of
fact. David had long been dead; strange changes had occurred, and it would be making the
essential term too insignificant to suppose it to contain only a historical reference to an assertion
that no one doubted, but which is quite unconnected with the present message from God. We
must rather believe that the city is characterised, “where David dwelt,” in order to show that it
deserved the woe about to be denounced. This is evidently mentioned as aggravating the
guiltiness of the city. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Good men increase the responsibility of a community
We seem warranted in concluding that, its having been made eminent by the piety of the
servants of God, by their zeal for God, and by their earnestness in preserving the purity of their
worship, entails a weighty responsibility on a city or country; so that if, in any after time, that
city or country degenerate in godliness, and become, by its sins, obnoxious to vengeance, it will
be one of the heaviest items in the charge brought against it, that it was dwelt in by saints so
distinguished. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
National mercies
I. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE WOE OF JERUSALEM AND JERUSALEM BEING
THE CITY WHERE DAVID DWELT. There are other considerations, over and above the general
one of the responsibility fastened on a people by the having had a king of extraordinary piety,
which go to the explaining why the woe upon Jerusalem should be followed by a reference to
David. David was eminent as a prophet of the Lord; he had been commissioned to announce, in
sundry most remarkable predictions, the Messiah, of whom, in many respects, he was,
moreover, an illustrious type. It was true, there had been others of whom the prophet might
think. There is a peculiar appositeness in the reference to David, because his writings were the
very best adapted to the fixing themselves on the popular mind. These writings were the
national anthems; they were the songs to be chanted in those daily and annual solemnities
which belonged to the Jews in their political as much as in their religious capacity, in which the
princes were associated with the priests, so that the civil was hardly to be distinguished from the

ecclesiastic. So beloved as David was of God, he must have bequeathed a blessing to the nation:
for righteous kings, like righteous fathers, entail good on a nation. Indeed, it is evident, from
other parts of Isaiah, that the memory of David was still a tower of strength at Jerusalem, so
that, for his sake, was evil averted from the city. When Sennacherib and his hosts encamped
against the city, and the heart of Hezekiah was dismayed, it was in terms such as these that God
addressed Israel, “I will defend this city, to save it for Mine own sake, and for My servant David’s
sake.” Was it not like telling the Jews that they were no longer to be borne with for the sake of
David, to pronounce, “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt”? Was it not declaring,
that the period was drawing to a close, during which the conservatism of the monarch’s piety
could be felt? The prophet might be considered as showing both how just and how terrible those
judgments would be. He showed their justice, because the having had amongst them such a king
and prophet as David, made the Jews inexcusable in their wickedness: he showed their severity,
because it was the city of David which God was about to punish.
II. MAKE AN APPLICATION OF THE SUBJECT. We pass at once to the Reformation, and
substitute the reformers for David, and England for Ariel. We must consider what it was that the
reformers did for us; from what they delivered us; and in what they instructed us. (H. Melvill, B.
D.)
Ariel
“It will be to Me as an Ariel” (Isa_29:2), i.e., through My help it will prove itself a hearth of God,
consuming its enemies like a fiery furnace, or these enemies finding destruction in Jerusalem,
like wood heaped on an altar and set ablaze. (F. Delitzsch.)
Love and chastisement
The Lord has never spared the elect. Election gives Him rights of discipline. We may inflict
punishment upon those who are ours, when we may not lay the hand of chastisement upon
those who do not belong to us. Love has its own law court. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Add ye year to year; let the feasts come round (R.V.)
Links in a golden chain (from R.V.)
Speaking of the gay temper of the Greeks, Quinet describes them as “a people who count their
years by their games.” In a more serious spirit the Jews counted their years by their religious
festivals, We have a Christian year whose festivals celebrate the great events in the life of our
Lord. We are adding year to year, the feasts come and go, and it behoves us to inquire what we
are doing with them, what they are doing for us.
I. THERE IS AN UNSATISFACTORY WAY OF SPENDING THE YEARS. The implied complaint
of the text is that the inhabitants of Jerusalem failed to benefit by their recurring privileges, and
that the lapse of time brought them nearer to destruction. The trumpet of the new year in vain
called them to a new life; the day of atonement passed leaving them with uncancelled sin; the
Feast of Tabernacles and that of Pentecost awoke in them no love, constrained them to no
obedience to the Giver of the harvest. Is this not true of thousands of those over whom pass the
festivals of the Christian year? They are, indeed, all the worse for the lengthening days and
multiplying Opportunities.

II. THERE IS A TRUE WAY OF SPENDING THE YEARS, and that is in enjoying and improving
this life in the fear of God and in the light of eternity. Victor Hugo speaks of an old man as “a
thinking ruin.” Paul the aged was such a “ruin,” and he had something grand to think about. (W.
L. Watkinson.)
10. EBC, “ORATIONS ON THE EGYPTIAN INTRIGUES AND ORACLES ON
FOREIGN NATIONS
705-702 B.C.
Isaiah:
29 About 703
30 A little later
31 A little later
32:1-8 Later
32:9-20 Date uncertain
-----------------
14:28-21 736-702
23 About 703
WE now enter the prophecies of Isaiah’s old age, those which he published after 705, when his
ministry had lasted for at least thirty-five years. They cover the years between 705, the date of
Sennacherib’s accession to the Assyrian throne, and 701, when his army suddenly disappeared
from before Jerusalem.
They fall into three groups:-
1. Chapters 29-32., dealing with Jewish politics while Sennacherib is still far from Palestine,
704-702, and having Egypt for their chief interest, Assyria lowering in the background.
2. Chapters 14:28-21 and 23, a group of oracles on foreign nations, threatened, like Judah, by
Assyria.
3. Chapters 1, 22, and 33, and the historical narrative in 36, and 37., dealing with Sennacherib’s
invasion of Judah and siege of Jerusalem in 701; Egypt and every foreign nation now fallen out
of sight, and the storm about the Holy City too thick for the prophet to see beyond his
immediate neighbourhood.
The first and second of these groups-orations on the intrigues with Egypt and oracles on the
foreign nations-delivered while Sennacherib was still far from Syria, form the subject of this
Third Book of our exposition.
The prophecies on the siege of Jerusalem are sufficiently numerous and distinctive to be put by
themselves, along with their appendix (38, 39), in our Fourth Book.
Isaiah 29:1-24
ARIEL, ARIEL

ABOUT 703 B.C.
IN 705 Sargon, King of Assyria, was murdered, and Sennacherib, his second son, succeeded
him. Before the new ruler mounted the throne, the vast empire, which his father had
consolidated, broke into rebellion, and down to the borders of Egypt cities and tribes declared
themselves again independent. Sennacherib attacked his problem with Assyrian promptitude.
There were two forces, to subdue which at the beginning made the reduction of the rest certain:
Assyria’s vassal kingdom and future rival for the supremacy of the world, Babylon; and her
present rival, Egypt. Sennacherib marched on Babylon first.
While he did so the smaller States prepared to resist him. Too small to rely on their own
resources, they looked to Egypt, and among others who sought help in that quarter was Judah.
There had always been, as we have seen, an Egyptian party among the politicians of Jerusalem;
and Assyria’s difficulties now naturally increased its influence. Most of the prophecies in
chapters 29-32 are forward to condemn the alliance with Egypt and the irreligious politics of
which it was the fruit.
At the beginning, however, other facts claim Isaiah’s attention. After the first excitement,
consequent on the threats of Sennacherib, the politicians do not seem to have been specially
active. Sennacherib found the reduction of Babylon a harder task than he expected, and in the
end it turned out to be three years before he was free to march upon Syria. As one winter after
another left the work of the Assyrian army in Mesopotamia still unfinished, the political tension
in Judah must have relaxed. The Government-for King Hezekiah seems at last to have been
brought round to believe in Egypt-pursued their negotiations no longer with that decision and
real patriotism, which the sense of near danger rouses in even the most selfish and mistaken of
politicians, but rather with the heedlessness of principle, the desire to show their own
cleverness, and the passion for intrigue which run riot among statesmen, when danger is near
enough to give an excuse for doing something, but too far away to oblige anything to be done in
earnest. Into this false ease, and the meaningless, faithless politics, which swarmed in it, Isaiah
hurled his strong prophecy of chapter 29. Before he exposes in chapters 30 and 31 the folly of
trusting to Egypt in the hour of danger, he has here the prior task of proving that hour to be near
and very terrible. It is but one instance of the ignorance and fickleness of the people, that their
prophet has first to rouse them to a sense of their peril, and then to restrain their excitement
under it from rushing headlong for help to Egypt.
Chapter 29 is an obscure oracle, but its obscurity is designed. Isaiah was dealing with a people in
whom political security and religious formalism had stifled both reason and conscience. He
sought to rouse them by a startling message in a mysterious form. He addressed the city by an
enigma:-
"Ho! Ari-El, Ari-El! City David beleaguered! Add year to a year, let the feasts run their
round, then will I bring straitness upon Ari-El, and there shall be moaning and bemoaning,
and yet she shall be unto Me as art Ari-El"
The general bearing of this enigma became plain enough after the sore siege and sudden
deliverance of Jerusalem in 701. But we are unable to make out one or two of its points. "Ari-El"
may mean either "The Lion" of 2Sa_23:20, or "The Hearth of God". (Eze_43:15-16) If the same
sense is to be given to the four utterances of the name, then "God’s-Lion" suits better the
description of Isa_29:4 : but "God’s-Hearth" seems suggested by the feminine pronoun in
Isa_29:1, and is a conception to which Isaiah returns in this same group of prophecies.
(Isa_31:9) It is possible that this ambiguity was part of the prophet’s design: but if he uses the
name in both senses, some of the force of his enigma is lost to us. In any case, however, we get a
picturesque form for a plain meaning. In a year after the present year is out, says Isaiah, God
Himself will straiten the city, whose inhabitants are now so careless, and she shall be full of

mourning and lamentation. Nevertheless in the end she shall be a true Ari-El: be it a true
"God’s-Lion," victor and hero; or a true "God’s-Hearth," His own inviolable shrine and
sanctuary.
The next few verses (Isa_29:3-8) expand this warning. In plain words, Jerusalem is to undergo a
siege. God Himself shall "encamp against thee-round about" reads our English version, but
more probably, as with the change of a letter, the Septuagint reads it-"like David." If we take this
second reading, the reference to David in the enigma itself (Isa_29:1) becomes clear. The
prophet has a very startling message to deliver: that God will besiege His own city, the city of
David! Before God can make her in truth His own, make her verify her name, He will have to
beleaguer and reduce her. For so novel and startling an intimation the prophet pleads a
precedent: "‘City which David’ himself ‘beleaguered!’ Once before in thy history, ere the first
time thou wast made God’s own hearth, thou hadst to be besieged. As then, so now. Be-before
thou canst again be a true Ari-El I must ‘beleaguer thee like David.’" This reading and
interpretation gives to the enigma a reason and a force which it does not otherwise possess.
Jerusalem, then, shall be reduced to the very dust, and whine and whimper in it (like a sick lion,
if this be the figure the prophet is pursuing), when suddenly it is "the surge of" her foes-literally
"thy strangers"-whom the prophet sees as "small dust, and as passing chaff shall the surge of
tyrants be; yea, it shall be in the twinkling of an eye, suddenly. From Jehovah of hosts shall she
be visited with thunder and with earthquake and a great, noise, -storm-wind, and tempest and
the flame of fire devouring. And it shall be as a dream, a vision of the night, the surge of all the
nations that war against Ariel, yea all that war against her and her stronghold, and they that
press in upon her. And it shall be as if the hungry had been dreaming, and lo! he was eating; but
he hath awaked, and his soul is empty; and as if the thirsty had been dreaming, and lo! he was
drinking; but he hath awaked, and lo! he is faint, and his soul is ravenous: thus shall be the
surge of all the nations that war against Mount Zion." Now that is a very definite prediction, and
in its essentials was fulfilled. In the end Jerusalem was invested by Sennacherib, and reduced to
sore straits, when very suddenly-it would appear from other records, in a single night-the
beleaguering force disappeared. This actually happened; and although the main business of a
prophet, as we now clearly understand, was not to predict definite events, yet, since the result
here predicted was one on which Isaiah staked his prophetic reputation and pledged the honour
of Jehovah and the continuance of the true religion among men, it will be profitable for us to
look at it for a little.
Isaiah foretells a great event and some details. The event is a double one: the reduction of
Jerusalem to the direst straits by siege and her deliverance by the sudden disappearance of the
besieging army. The details are that the siege will take place after a year (though the prophet’s
statement of time is perhaps too vague to be treated as a prediction), and that the deliverance
will come as a great natural convulsion-thunder, earthquake, and fire-which it certainly did not
do. The double event, however, stripped of these details, did essentially happen.
Now it is plain that any one with a considerable knowledge of the world at that day must easily
have been able to assert the probability of a siege of Jerusalem by the mixed nations who
composed Sennacherib’s armies. Isaiah’s orations are full of proofs of his close acquaintance
with the peoples of the world, and Assyria, who was above them. Moreover, his political advice,
given at certain crises of Judah’s history, was conspicuous not only for its religiousness, but for
what eve should call its "worldly wisdom": it was vindicated by events. Isaiah, however, would
not have understood the distinction we have just made. To him political prudence was part of
religion. "The Lord of hosts is for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in judgment, and for
strength to them that turn back the battle to the gate." Knowledge of men, experience of nations,
the mental strength which never forgets history, and is quick to mark new movements as they
rise, Isaiah would have called the direct inspiration of God. And it was certainly these qualities

in this Hebrew, which provided him with the materials for his prediction of the siege of
Jerusalem.
But it has not been found that such talents by themselves enable statesmen calmly to face the
future, or clearly to predict it. Such knowledge of the past, such vigilance for the present, by
themselves only embarrass, and often deceive. They are the materials for prediction, but a ruling
principle is required to arrange them. A general may have a strong and well-drilled force under
him, and a miserably weak foe in front; but if the sun is not going to rise tomorrow, if the laws of
nature are not going to hold, his familiarity with his soldiers and expertness in handling them
will not give him confidence to offer battle. He takes certain principles for granted, and on these
his soldiers become of use to him, and he makes his venture Even so Isaiah handled his mass of
information by the grasp which he had of certain principles, and his facts fell clear into order
before his confident eyes. He believed in the real government of God. "I also saw the Lord
sitting, high and; lifted up." He felt that God had even this Assyria in His hands. He knew that
all God’s ends were righteousness, and’ he was still of the conviction that Judah for her
wickedness required punishment at the Lord’s hands. Grant these convictions to him in the
superhuman strength in which he tells us he was conscious of receiving them from God, and it is
easy to see how Isaiah could not help predicting a speedy siege of Jerusalem, how he already
beheld the valleys around her bristling with barbarian spears.
The prediction of the sudden raising of this siege was the equally natural corollary to another
religious conviction, which held the prophet with as much intensity as that which possessed him
with the need of Judah’s punishment. Isaiah never slacked his hold on the truth that in the end
God would save Zion, and keep her for Himself. Through whatever destruction, a root and
remnant of the Jewish people must survive. Zion is impregnable because God is in her, and
because her inviolateness is necessary for the continuance of true religion in the world.
Therefore as confident as his prediction of the siege of Jerusalem is Isaiah’s prediction of her
delivery. And while the prophet wraps the fact in vague circumstance, while he masks, as it were,
his ignorance of how in detail it will actually take place by calling up a great natural convulsion;
yet he makes it abundantly clear - as, with his religious convictions and his knowledge of the
Assyrian power, he cannot help doing-that the deliverance will be unexpected and unexplainable
by the natural circumstances of the Jews themselves, that it will be evident as the immediate
deed of God.
It is well for us to understand this. We shall get rid of the mechanical idea of prophecy,
according to which prophets made exact predictions of fact by some particular and purely
official endowment. We shall feel that prediction of this kind was due to the most unmistakable
inspiration, the influence upon the prophet’s knowledge of affairs of two powerful religious
convictions, for which he himself was strongly sure that he had the warrant of the Spirit of God.
Into the easy, selfish politics of Jerusalem, then, Isaiah sent this thunderbolt, this definite
prediction: that in a year or more Jerusalem would be besieged and reduced to the direst straits.
He tells us that it simply dazed the people. They were like men suddenly startled from sleep,
who are too stupid to read a message pushed into their hands (Isa_29:9-12).
Then Isaiah gives God’s own explanation of this stupidity. The cause of it is simply religious
formalism. "This people draw nigh unto Me with their mouth, and with their lips do they honour
Me, but their heart is far from Me, and their fear of Me is a mere commandment of men, a thing
learned by rote." This was what Israel called religion-bare ritual and doctrine, a round of
sacrifices and prayers in adherence to the tradition of the fathers. But in life they never thought
of God. It did not occur to these citizens of Jerusalem that He cared about their politics, their
conduct of justice, or their discussions and bargains with one another. Of these they said, taking
their own way, "Who seeth us, and who knoweth us?" Only in the Temple did they feel God’s
fear, and there merely in imitation of one another. None had an original vision of God in real

life; they learned other men’s thoughts about Him, and took other men’s words upon their lips,
while their heart was far away. In fact, speaking words and listening to words had wearied the
spirit and stifled the conscience of them.
For such a disposition Isaiah says there is only one cure. It is a new edition of his old gospel, that
God speaks to us in facts, not forms. Worship and a lifeless doctrine have demoralised this
people. God shall make Himself so felt in real life that even their dull senses shall not be able to
mistake Him. "Therefore, behold, I am proceeding to work marvellously upon this people, a
marvellous work and a wonder! and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the
cleverness of their clever ones shall be obscured." This is not the promise of what we call a
miracle. It is a historical event on the same theatre as the politicians are showing their
cleverness, but it shall put them all to shame, and by its force make the dullest feel that God’s
own hand is in it. What the people had ceased to attribute to Jehovah was ordinary intelligence;
they had virtually said, "He hath no understanding." The "marvellous work," therefore, which
He threatens shall be a work of wisdom, not some convulsion of nature to cow their spirits, but a
wonderful political result, that shall shame their conceit of cleverness, and teach them reverence
for the will and skill of God. Are the politicians trying to change the surface of the world,
thinking that they "are turning things upside down," and supposing that they can keep God out
of account: "Who seeth us, and who knoweth us?" God Himself is the real Arranger and
Politician. He will turn things upside down! Compared with their attempt, how vast His results
shall be! As if the whole surface of the earth were altered, "Lebanon changed into garden-land,
and garden-land counted as forest!" But this, of course, is metaphor. The intent of the miracle is
to show that God hath understanding; therefore it must be a work, the prudence and intellectual
force of which politicians can appreciate, and it shall take place in their politics. But not for mere
astonishment’s sake is the "wonder" to be done. For blessing and morality shall it be: to cure the
deaf and blind; to give to the meek and the poor a new joy; to confound the tyrant and the
scorner; to make Israel worthy of God and her own great fathers. "Therefore thus saith Jehovah
to the house of Jacob, He that redeemed Abraham: Not now ashamed shall Jacob be, and not
now shall his countenance blanch." So unworthy hitherto have this stupid people been of so
great ancestors! "But now when his (Jacob’s) children behold the work of My hand in the midst
of him, they shall hallow My name, yea, they shall hallow the Holy One of Jacob, and the God of
Israel shall they make their fear. They also that err in spirit shall know understanding, and they
that are unsettled shall learn to accept doctrine." Such is the meaning of this strong chapter.
It is instructive in two ways.
First, it very clearly declares Isaiah’s view of the method of God’s revelation. Isaiah says nothing
of the Temple, the Shechinah, the Altar, or the Scripture; but he points out how much the
exclusive confinement of religion to forms and texts has deadened the hearts of his countrymen
towards God. In your real life, he says to them, you are to seek, and you shall find, Him. There
He is evident in miracles, -not physical interruptions and convulsions, but social mercies and
moral providences. The quickening of conscience, the dispersion of ignorance, poor men
awakening to the fact that God is with them, the overthrow of the social tyrant, history’s plain
refutation of the atheist, the growth of civic justice and charity-In these, said the Hebrew
prophet to the Old Testament believer, Behold your God!
Wherefore, secondly, we also are to look for God in events and deeds. We are to know that
nothing can compensate us for the loss of the open vision of God’s working in history and in life
about us, -not ecstasy of worship nor orthodoxy of doctrine. To confine our religion to these
latter things is to become dull towards God even in them, and to forget Him everywhere else.
And this is a fault of our day, just as it was of Isaiah’s. So much of our fear of God is
conventional, orthodox, and not original, a trick caught from men’s words or fashions, not a part
of ourselves, nor won, like all that is real in us, from contact with real life. In our politics, in our

conduct with men, in the struggle of our own hearts for knowledge and for temperance, and in
service-there we are to learn to fear God. But there, and wherever else we are busy, self comes
too much in the way; we are fascinated with our own cleverness; we ignore God, saying, "Who
seeth us? Who knoweth us?" We get to expect Him only in the Temple and on the Sabbath, and
then only to influence our emotions. But it is in deeds, and where we feel life most real, that we
are to look for Him. He makes Himself evident to us by wonderful works.
For these He has given us three theatres-the Bible, our country’s history, and for each man his
own life.
We have to take the Bible, and especially the life of Christ, and to tell ourselves that these
wonderful events did really take place. In Christ God did dwell; by Christ He spoke to man; man
was converted, redeemed, sanctified, beyond all doubt. These were real events. To be convinced
of their reality were worth a hundred prayers.
Then let us follow the example of the Hebrew prophets, and search the history of our own people
for the realities of God. Carlyle says in a note to Cromwell’s fourth speech to Parliament, that
"the Bible of every nation is its own history." This note is drawn from Carlyle by Cromwell’s
frequent insistence, that we must ever be turning from forms and rituals to study God’s will and
ways in history. And that speech of Cromwell is perhaps the best sermon ever delivered on the
subject of this chapter. For he said: "What are all our histories but God manifesting Himself,
that He hath shaken, and tumbled down and trampled upon everything that He hath not
planted!" And again, speaking of our own history, he said to the House of Commons: "We are a
people with the stamp of God upon us…whose appearances and providences among us were not
to be outmatched by any story." Truly this is national religion:-the reverential acknowledgment
of God’s hand in history; the admiration and effort of moral progress; the stirring of conscience
when we see wrong; the expectation, when evil abounds, that God will bring justice and purity to
us if we labour with Him for them.
But for each man there is the final duty of turning to himself.
"My soul repairs its fault
When, sharpening sense’s hebetude,
She turns on my own life! So viewed,
No mere mote’s breadth but teems immense
With witnessings of providence:
And woe to me if when I look
Upon that record, the sole book
Unsealed to me, I take no heed
Of any warning that I read!"
2
Yet I will besiege Ariel;

she will mourn and lament,
she will be to me like an altar hearth.[a]
1.BARNES, “Yet I will distress Ariel - The reference here is doubtless to the siege which
God says Isa_29:3 he would bring upon the guilty and formal city.
And there shall be heaviness and sorrow - This was true of the city in the siege of
Sennacherib, to which this probably refers. Though the city was delivered in a sudden and
remarkable manner (see the note at Isa_29:7-8), yet it was also true that it was reduced to great
distress (see Isa. 36; 37)
And it shall be unto me as Ariel - This phrase shows that in Isa_29:1 Jerusalem is called
‘Ariel,’ because it contained the great altar, and was the place of sacrifice. The word “Ariel” here
is to be understood in the sense “of the hearth of the great altar;” and the meaning is, ‘I will
indeed make Jerusalem like the great altar; I will make it the burning place of wrath where my
enemies shall be consumed as if they were on the altar of burnt sacrifice.’ Thus in Isa_30:9, it is
said of Yahweh that his ‘fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem.’ This is a strong expression,
denoting the calamity that was approaching; and though the main reference in this whole
passage is to the distress that would come upon them in the invasion of Sennacherib, yet there is
no impropriety in supposing that there was presented to the mind of the prophet in vision the
image of the total ruin that would come yet upon the city by the Chaldeans - when the temple,
the palaces, and the dwellings of the magnificent city of David would be in flames, and like a vast
blazing altar consuming that which was laid upon it.
2. CLARKE, “There shall be heaviness and sorrow “There shall be continual
mourning and sorrow” - Instead of your present joy and festivity.
And it shall be unto me as Ariel “And it shall be unto me as the hearth of the
great altar” - That is, it shall be the seat of the fire of God; which shall issue from thence to
consume his enemies. See note on Isa_29:1 (note). Or, perhaps, all on flame; as it was when
taken by the Chaldeans; or covered with carcasses and blood, as when taken by the Romans: an
intimation of which more distant events, though not immediate subjects of the prophecy, may
perhaps be given in this obscure passage.
3. GILL, “Yet I will distress Ariel,.... Or "straiten" it, by causing it to be besieged; and this
he would do, notwithstanding their yearly sacrifices, and their observance of their solemn feasts,
and other ceremonies of the law, in which they placed their confidence, and neglected weightier
matters:
and there shall be heaviness and sorrow; on account of the siege; by reason of the
devastations of the enemy without, made on all the cities and towns in Judea round about; and
because of the famine and bloodshed in the city:

and it shall be unto me as Ariel; the whole city shall be as the altar; as that was covered with
the blood and carcasses of slain beasts, so this with the blood and carcasses of men; and so the
Targum,
"and I will distress the city where the altar is, and it shall be desolate and empty; and it shall be
surrounded before me with the blood of the slain, as the altar is surrounded with the blood of
the holy sacrifices on a solemn feast day all around;''
4. PULPIT, “Yet will I distress Ariel; rather, and then will I distress Ariel. The sense runs on from the
preceding verse. There shall be heaviness and sorrow. Mr. Cheyne's "moaning and bemoaning"
represents the Hebrew play upon words better. The natural consequence of the siege would be a
constant cry of woe. And it shall be unto me as Ariel. It would be better to translate, "Yet she shall be
unto me as Ariel." The meaning is that, though distressed and straitened, Jerusalem shall still through all
be able by God's help to answer to her name of "Ariel"—to behave as a lien when attacked by the
hunters.
5. JAMISON, “Yet — rather, “Then.”
heaviness ... sorrow — rather, preserving the Hebrew paronomasia, “groaning” and
“moaning.”
as Ariel — either, “the city shall be as a lion of God,” that is, it shall emerge from its dangers
unvanquished; or “it shall be as the altar of burnt offering,” consuming with fire the besiegers
(Isa_29:6; Isa_30:30; Isa_31:9; Lev_10:2); or best, as Isa_29:3 continues the threat, and the
promise of deliverance does not come till Isa_29:4, “it shall be like a hearth of burning,” that is,
a scene of devastation by fire [G. V. Smith]. The prophecy, probably, contemplates ultimately,
besides the affliction and deliverance in Sennacherib’s time, the destruction of Jerusalem by
Rome, the dispersion of the Jews, their restoration, the destruction of the enemies that besiege
the city (Zec_14:2), and the final glory of Israel (Isa_29:17-24).
6. CALVIN, “2.But I will bring Ariel into distress. I think that ‫ו‬ (vau) should here be taken for a
disjunctive conjunction: “ yet I will execute my judgments and take vengeance, though, by delaying them
for a time, it may seem as if I had forgiven.” He next threatens that he will give them grief andmourning,
instead of the joy of the festivals. ‫אניה‬ (ănīā) is viewed by some as an adjective, (254) but improperly; for it
is used in the same manner by Jeremiah. (255) (Lam_2:5.) He declares that the Lord will reduce that city
to straits, that the Jews might know that they had to contend with God, and not with men, and that, though
the war was carried on by the Assyrians, still they might perceive that God was their leader.
And it shall be to me as Ariel. This clause would not apply to the Temple alone; for he means that

everything shall be made bloody by the slaughter which shall take place at Jerusalem; (256) and therefore
he compares it to an “” on which victims of all kinds are slain, in the same manner as wicked men
destined for slaughter are frequently compared to a sacrifice. In short, by alluding here to the word “” he
says, that the whole city shall be “ Ariel,” because it shall overflow with the blood of the slain. Hence it is
evident that the outward profession of worship, ceremonies, and the outward demonstrations of the favor
of God, are of no avail, unless we sincerely obey him. By an ironical expression he tells hypocrites, (who
with an impure heart present sacrifices of beasts to God, as if they were the offerings fitted to appease his
anger,) that their labor is fruitless, and that, since they had profaned the Temple and the Altar, it was
impossible to offer a proper sacrifice to God without slaying victims throughout the whole city, as if he had
said, “ will be carnage in every part.” He makes use of the word “” figuratively, to denote the violent
slaughter of those who refused to offer themselves willingly to God.
3
I will encamp against you on all sides;
I will encircle you with towers
and set up my siege works against you.
1.BARNES, “And I will camp against thee - That is, I will cause an army to pitch their
tents there for a siege. God regards the armies which he would employ as under his control, and
speaks of them as if he would do it himself (see the note at Isa_10:5).
Round about - (‫כדוּר‬ kadur). As in a circle; that is, he would encompass or encircle the city.
The word used here ‫דור‬ dur in Isa_22:18, means a ball, but here it evidently means a circle;
and the sense is, that the army of the besiegers would encompass the city. A similar form of
expression occurs in regard to Jerusalem in Luk_19:43 : ‘For the days shall come upon thee,
than thine enemies shall cast a trench (χάρακα charaka - “a rampart,” a “mound”) about thee σοί
soi “against thee”), and “compass thee round” περικυκλώτονσί σε perikuklosousi se, “encircle
thee”).’ So also Luk_21:20. The Septuagint renders this, ‘I will encompass thee as David did;’
evidently reading it as if it were ‫כדוּד‬ kadud; and Lowth observes that two manuscripts thus read
it, and he himself adopts it. But the authority for correcting the Hebrew text in this way is not
sufficient, nor is it necessary. The idea in the present reading is a clear one, and evidently means
that the armies of Sennacherib would encompass the city.
With a mount - A rampart; a fortification. Or, rather, perhaps, the word ‫מצב‬ mutsab means a
post, a military station, from ‫יצב‬ yatsab, “to place, to station.” The word in this form occurs

nowhere else in the Scriptures, but the word ‫מצב‬ matsab occurs in 1Sa_13:23; 1Sa_14:1,
1Sa_14:4; 2Sa_23:14, in the sense of a military post, or garrison.
I will rise forts - That is, ramparts, such as were usually thrown up against a besieged city,
meaning that it should be subjected to the regular process of a siege. The Septuagint reads, Πύργ
ου Purgou; ‘Towers;’ and so also two manuscripts by changing the Hebrew letter ‫ד‬ (d) into the
Hebrew letter ‫ר‬ (r). But there is no necessity for altering the Hebrew text. Lowth prefers the
reading of the Septuagint.
2. CLARKE, “And I will camp against thee round about “And I will encamp
against thee like David” - For ‫כדור‬ caddur, some kind of military engine, ‫כדוד‬ kedavid, like
David, is the reading of the Septuagint, two MSS. of Kennicott’s, if not two more: but though
Bishop Lowth adopts this reading, I think it harsh and unnecessary.
3. GILL, “And I will camp against thee round about,.... Or as a "ball" or "globe" (o); a
camp all around; the Lord is said to do that which the enemy should do, because it was by his
will, and according to his order, and which he would succeed and prosper, and therefore the
prophecy of it is the more terrible; and it might be concluded that it would certainly be fulfilled,
as it was; see Luk_19:43,
and will lay siege against thee with a mount: raised up for soldiers to get up upon, and
cast their arrows into the city from, and scale the walls; Kimchi and Ben Melech interpret it a
wooden tower. This cannot be understood of Sennacherib's siege, for he was not suffered to raise
a bank against the city, nor shoot an arrow into it, Isa_37:33 but well agrees with the siege of
Jerusalem by the Romans, as related by Josephus (p):
and I will raise forts against thee; from whence to batter the city; the Romans had their
battering rams.
4. HENRY, “Jerusalem shall be besieged, straitly besieged. He does not say, I will destroy
Ariel, but I will distress Ariel; and she is therefore brought into distress, that, being thereby
awakened to repent and reform, she may not be brought to destruction. I will (Isa_29:3)
encamp against thee round about. It was the enemy's army that encamped against it; but God
says that he will do it, for they are his hand, he does it by them. God had often and long, by a
host of angels, encamped for them round about them for their protection and deliverance; but
now he was turned to be their enemy and fought against them. The siege laid against them was
of his laying, and the forts raised against them were of his raising. Note, When men fight against
us we must, in them, see God contending with us. (2.) She shall be in grief to see the country laid
waste and all the fenced cities of Judah in the enemies' hand: There shall be heaviness and
sorrow (Isa_29:2), mourning and lamentation - so these two words are sometimes rendered.
Those that are most merry and jovial are commonly, when they come to be in distress, most
overwhelmed with heaviness and sorrow; their laughter is then turned into mourning. “All
Jerusalem shall then be unto me as Ariel, as the altar, with fire upon it and slain victims about
it:” so it was when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldeans; and many, no doubt, were slain

when it was besieged by the Assyrians. “the whole city shall be an altar, in which sinners, falling
by the judgments that are abroad, shall be as victims to divine justice.” Or thus: - “There shall be
heaviness and sorrow; they shall repent, and reform, and return to God, and then it shall be to
me as Ariel. Jerusalem shall be like itself, shall become to me a Jerusalem again, a holy city,”
Isa_1:26. (3.) She shall be humbled, and mortified, and made submissive (Isa_29:4): “Thou
shalt be brought down from the height of arrogancy and insolence to which thou hast arrived:
the proud looks and the proud language shall be brought down by one humbling providence
after another.” Those that despise God's judgments shall be humbled by them; for the proudest
sinners shall either bend or break before him. They had talked big, had lifted up the horn on
high, and had spoken with a stiff neck (Psa_75:5); but now thou shalt speak out of the ground,
out of the dust, as one that has a familiar spirit, whispering out of the dust. This intimates, [1.]
That they should be faint and feeble, not able to speak up, nor to say all they would say; but as
those who are sick, or whose spirits are ready to fail, their speech shall be low and interrupted.
[2.] That they should be fearful, and in consternation, forced to speak low as being afraid lest
their enemies should overhear them and take advantage against them. [3.] That they should be
tame, and obliged to submit to the conquerors. When Hezekiah submitted to the king of Assyria,
saying, I have offended, that which thou puttest on me I will bear (2Ki_18:14), then his speech
was low, out of the dust. God can make those to crouch that have been most daring, and quite
dispirit them.
5. JAMISON, “I — Jehovah, acting through the Assyrian, etc., His instruments (Isa_10:5).
mount — an artificial mound formed to out-top high walls (Isa_37:33); else a station,
namely, of warriors, for the siege.
round about — not fully realized under Sennacherib, but in the Roman siege (Luk_19:43;
Luk_21:20).
forts — siege-towers (Deu_20:20).
6. PULPIT, “I will camp against thee round about; i.e. "I will bring armed men against thee who shall
encamp around the entire circuit of thy walls." There was small chance of forcing an entrance into
Jerusalem on any side except the north; but, order to distress and harass her, an enemy with numerous
forces would dispose them all round the walls, thus preventing all ingress or egress (see Luk_19:43). And
lay siege against thee with a mount; or, with a mound. Artificial mounds were raised up against the
walls of cities by the Assyrians, as a foundation from which to work their battering rams with greater
advantage against the upper and weaker portion of the defenses. And raise forts against
thee. "Forts" were usually movable, and accompanied the battering-ram for its better protection. Archers
in the forts cleared the walls of their defenders, while the ram was employed in making a breach.
7.CALVIN, “3.And I will camp against thee round about. By the word ‫כדור‬ (kāū) (257) he alludes to the
roundness of a ball; and the expression corresponds to one commonly used, (“Je l’,” “ shall surround it.”

Thus he shews that all means of escape will be cut off.
And will lay siege against thee. This alludes to another method of invading the city; for either attacks are
made at various points, or there is a regular siege. He confirms the doctrine of the former verse, and
shews that this war will be carried on under God’ direction, and that the Assyrians, though they are
hurried on by their passions and by the lust of power, will undertake nothing but by the command of God.
He reckoned it to be of great importance to carry full conviction to the minds of the Jews, that all the evils
which befell them were sent by God, that they might thus be led to enter into an examination of their
crimes. As this doctrine is often found in the Scriptures, it ought to be the more carefully impressed on our
minds; for it is not without good reason that it is so frequently repeated and inculcated by the Holy Spirit.
4
Brought low, you will speak from the ground;
your speech will mumble out of the dust.
Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth;
out of the dust your speech will whisper.
1.BARNES, “And shalt speak out of the ground - (see the note at Isa_8:19). The sense
here is, that Jerusalem, that had been accustomed to pride itself on its strength I would be
greatly humbled and subdued. Its loud and lofty tone would be changed. It would use the
suppressed language of fear and alarm as if it spoke from the dust, or in a shrill small voice, like
the pretended conversers with the dead.
And thy speech shall whisper out of the dust - Margin, ‘Peep,’ or ‘Chirp,’ (see the note
at Isa_8:19).
2. CLARKE, “And thy speech shall be low out of the dust “And from out of the
dust thou shalt utter a feeble speech” - That the souls of the dead uttered a feeble
stridulous sound, very different from the natural human voice, was a popular notion among the
heathens as well as among the Jews. This appears from several passages of their poets; Homer,
Virgil, Horace. The pretenders to the art of necromancy, who were chiefly women, had an art of
speaking with a feigned voice, so as to deceive those who applied to them, by making them
believe that it was the voice of the ghost. They had a way of uttering sounds, as if they were
formed, not by the organs of speech, but deep in the chest, or in the belly; and were thence
called εγγαστριµυθοι, ventriloqui: they could make the voice seem to come from beneath the
ground, from a distant part, in another direction, and not from themselves; the better to impose

upon those who consulted them. Εξεπιτηδες το γενος τουτο τον αµυδρον ηχον επιτηδευονται, ᅷνα δια
την ασαφειαν της φωνης τον του ψευδους αποδιδρασκωσιν ελεγχον. Psellus De Daemonibus, apud
Bochart, 1 p. 731. “These people studiously acquire, and affect on purpose, this sort of obscure
sound; that by the uncertainty of the voice they may the better escape being detected in the
cheat. “From these arts of the necromancers the popular notion seems to have arisen, that the
ghost’s voice was a weak, stridulous, almost inarticulate sort of sound, very different from the
speech of the living.
3. GILL, “And thou shalt be brought down,.... To the ground, and laid level with it, even
the city of Jerusalem, as it was by the Romans; and as it was predicted by Christ it would,
Luk_19:44 though some understand this of the humbling of the inhabitants of it, by the
appearance of Sennacherib's army before it, and of which they interpret the following clauses:
and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust; which
some explain of the submissive language of Hezekiah to Sennacherib, and of his messengers to
Rabshakeh, 2Ki_18:14 as Aben Ezra and Kimchi; but it is expressive of the great famine in
Jerusalem, at the time of its siege by the Romans, when the inhabitants were so reduced by it, as
that they were scarce able to speak as to be heard, and could not stand upon their legs, but fell to
the ground, and lay in the dust, uttering from thence their speech, with a faint and feeble voice:
and thy voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy
speech shall whisper out of the dust: or peep and chirp, as little birds, as Jarchi and
Kimchi, as those did that had familiar spirits; and as the Heathen oracles were delivered, as if
they came out of the bellies of those that spoke, or out of caves and hollow places in the earth;
and this was in just retaliation to these people, who imitated such practices, and made use of
such spirits; see Isa_8:19.
4. HENRY, “She shall be humbled, and mortified, and made submissive (Isa_29:4): “Thou
shalt be brought down from the height of arrogancy and insolence to which thou hast arrived:
the proud looks and the proud language shall be brought down by one humbling providence
after another.” Those that despise God's judgments shall be humbled by them; for the proudest
sinners shall either bend or break before him. They had talked big, had lifted up the horn on
high, and had spoken with a stiff neck (Psa_75:5); but now thou shalt speak out of the ground,
out of the dust, as one that has a familiar spirit, whispering out of the dust. This intimates, [1.]
That they should be faint and feeble, not able to speak up, nor to say all they would say; but as
those who are sick, or whose spirits are ready to fail, their speech shall be low and interrupted.
[2.] That they should be fearful, and in consternation, forced to speak low as being afraid lest
their enemies should overhear them and take advantage against them. [3.] That they should be
tame, and obliged to submit to the conquerors. When Hezekiah submitted to the king of Assyria,
saying, I have offended, that which thou puttest on me I will bear (2Ki_18:14), then his speech
was low, out of the dust. God can make those to crouch that have been most daring, and quite
dispirit them.
5. JAMISON, “Jerusalem shall be as a captive, humbled to the dust. Her voice shall come
from the earth as that of the spirit-charmers or necromancers (Isa_8:19), faint and shrill, as the

voice of the dead was supposed to be. Ventriloquism was doubtless the trick caused to make the
voice appear to come from the earth (Isa_19:3). An appropriate retribution that Jerusalem,
which consulted necromancers, should be made like them!
6. PULPIT, “Thy speech shall be low. The feeble cries of a people wasted and worn out by a long
siege are intended. These cries would resemble those which seemed to come out of the ground when a
necromancer professed to raise a ghost. The Hebrew 'ohv is used both of the necromancers (Le
19:31; Isa_20:6, etc.) and of the ghosts which they professed to raise (1Sa_28:7, 1Sa_28:8; 2Ki_20:6,
etc.). Here the "ghost" is spoken of. Thy speech shall whisper; literally, chirp (comp. Isa_8:19). The
word used occurs only in Isaiah.
7.CALVIN, “4.Then shalt thou be laid low. He describes scornfully that arrogance which led the Jews
to despise all threatenings and admonitions, so long as they enjoyed prosperity, as is customary with all
hypocrites. He says therefore, that, when their pride has been laid aside, they will afterwards be more
submissive; not that they will change their dispositions, but because shame will restrain that wantonness
in which they formerly indulged. We ought therefore to supply here an implied contrast. He addresses
those who were puffed up by ambition, carried their heads high, and despised every one, as if they had
not even been subject to God; for they ventured to curse and insult God himself, and to mock at his holy
word. “ pride,” says Isaiah, “ be laid low, and this arrogance shall cease.”
And thy voice shall be out of the ground. (258) What he had formerly said he expresses more fully by a
metaphor, that they will utter a low and confused noise as out of caverns. (259) The voice of those who
formerly were so haughty and fierce is compared by him to the speech of soothsayers, who, in giving
forth their oracles out of some deep and dark cave under ground, uttered some sort of confused
muttering; for they did not speak articulately, but whispered. He declares that these boasters ( ἀλάζονες)
shall resemble them. Some interpret this expression as if the Prophet meant that they will derive no
benefit from the chastisement; but the words do not convey this meaning, and he afterwards says that the
Jews will be brought to repentance. Yet he first strikes terror, in order to repress their insolence; for they
arrogantly and rebelliously scorned all the threatenings of the Prophet. By their being “ down,” therefore,
he means nothing else than that they shall be covered with disgrace, so that they will not dare to utter, as
from a lofty place, their proud and idle boastings.

5
But your many enemies will become like fine dust,
the ruthless hordes like blown chaff.
Suddenly, in an instant,
1.BARNES, “Moreover - These verses Isa_29:5, Isa_29:7-8 contain a beautiful description
of the destruction of the army of Sennacherib. Though they had laid the plan of a regular siege;
though the city, in itself, would not be able to hold out against them, and all was alarm and
conscious imbecility within; yet in an instant the siege would be raised, and the advancing hosts
of the Assyrians would all be gone.
The multitude of thy strangers - The multitude of the strangers that shall besiege thee;
called ‘thy strangers,’ because they besieged, or oppressed thee. The word ‘strangers’ here, as
elsewhere, means “foreigners” (see the note at Isa_1:7; compare Isa_2:6; Isa_5:17; Isa_14:1;
Isa_25:2, Isa_25:5; Isa_29:5; Isa_60:10).
Shall be like small dust - Light, fine dust that is easily dissipated by the wind.
Of the terrible ones - Of the invading, besieging army, that is so much the object of dread.
As chaff that passeth away - (see the note at Isa_17:13). This image of chaff driven before
the wind, to denote the sudden and entire discomfiture of enemies, is common in the Scriptures
(see Job_21:18; Psa_1:4; Psa_35:5; Hos_13:13).
Yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly - The forces of Sennacherib were destroyed in a
single night by the angel of the Lord (Isa_37:36; the note at Isa_10:12, Isa_10:28-34, note), and
the siege of Jerusalem was of course immediately raised.
2. CLARKE, “The multitude of thy strangers “The multitude of the proud” - For
‫זריך‬ zarayich, thy strangers, read ‫זדים‬ zedim, the proud, according to the Septuagint; parallel to
and synonymous with ‫עריצים‬ aritsim, the terrible, in the next line: the ‫ר‬ resh was at first ‫ד‬ daleth
in a MS. See note on Isa_25:2.
The fifth, sixth, and seventh verses contain an admirable description of the destruction of
Sennacherib’s army, with a beautiful variety of the most expressive and sublime images: perhaps
more adapted to show the greatness, the suddenness, and horror of the event, than the means
and manner by which it was effected. Compare Isa_30:30-33.
3. GILL, “Moreover, the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust,.... Or "of
those that fan thee" (q), as the Vulgate Latin Version; and so the Targum,
"of those that scatter thee;''

or of thine enemies, as others; meaning the Romans, who were a strange people to them, who
got the dominion over them, and scattered them abroad in the world: and the simile of "small
dust", to which they are compared, is not used to express the weakness of them, but the
greatness of their number, which was not to be counted, any more than the dust of the earth; see
Num_23:10,
and the multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth away; designing
the same numerous army of the Romans as before, who were terrible to the Jews: nor does this
metaphor signify any imbecility in them, and much less the ruin of them, but their swiftness in
executing the judgments of God upon his people, who moved as quick as chaff, or any such light
thing, before a mighty wind:
yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly; either the numerous army should be suddenly
before Jerusalem, or the destruction of that city should be as it were in a moment; and though
the siege of it lasted long, yet the last sack and ruin of it was suddenly, and in so short a time,
that it might be said to be in an instant, in a moment, as it were. The Jewish writers interpret
this of the sudden destruction of Sennacherib's army by the angel, 2Ki_19:35 but the next words
show that the destruction of Jerusalem is meant.
4. HENRY, “The destruction of Jerusalem's enemies is foretold, for the comfort of all that
were her friends and well-wishers in this distress (Isa_29:5, Isa_29:7): “Thou shalt be brought
down (Isa_29:4), to speak out of the dust; so low thou shalt be reduced. But” (so it may be
rendered) “the multitude of thy strangers and thy terrible ones, the numerous armies of the
enemy, shall themselves be like small dust, not able to speak at all, or as much as whisper, but
as chaff that passes away. Thou shalt be abased, but they shall be quite dispersed, smitten and
slain after another manner (Isa_27:7); they shall pass away, yea it shall be in an instant,
suddenly: the enemy shall be surprised with the destruction, and you with the salvation.” The
army of the Assyrians was by an angel laid dead upon the spot, in an instant, suddenly. Such will
be the destruction of the enemies of the gospel Jerusalem. In one hour shall their judgment
come, Rev_18:10. Again (Isa_29:6), “Thou shalt be visited, or (as it used to be rendered) She
shall be visited with thunder and a great noise. Thou shalt be put into a fright which thou shalt
soon recover.
5. JAMISON, “Moreover — rather, “Yet”; yet in this extremity help shall come, and the
enemy be scattered.
strangers — foreign enemies, invaders (Isa_25:2).
it shall be — namely, the destruction of the enemy.
at an instant — in a moment (Isa_30:23).
6. K&D, “Thus far does the unfolding of the hoi reach. Now follows an unfolding of the words
of promise, which stand at the end of Isa_29:1 : “And it proves itself to me as Ariel.” Isa_29:5-8
: “And the multitude of thy foes will become like finely powdered dust, and the multitude of the
tyrants like chaff flying away; and it will take place suddenly, very suddenly. From Jehovah of
hosts there comes a visitation with crash of thunder and earthquake and great noise,
whirlwind and tempest, and the blazing up of devouring fire. And the multitude of all the

nations that gather together against Ariel, and all those who storm and distress Ariel and her
stronghold, will be like a vision of the night in a dream. And it is just as a hungry man dreams,
and behold he eats; and when he wakes up his soul is empty: and just as a thirsty man dreams,
and behold he drinks; and when he wakes up, behold, he is faint, and his soul is parched with
thirst: so will it be to the multitude of the nations which gather together against the mountain
of Zion.” The hostile army, described four times as hamon, a groaning multitude, is utterly
annihilated through the terrible co-operation of the forces of nature which are let loose upon
them (Isa_30:30, cf., Isa_17:13). “There comes a visitation:” tippaqed might refer to Jerusalem
in the sense of “it will be visited” in mercy, viz., by Jehovah acting thus upon its enemies. But it
is better to take it in a neuter sense: “punishment is inflicted.” The simile of the dream is applied
in two different ways: (1.) They will dissolve into nothing, as if they had only the same apparent
existence as a vision in a dream. (2.) Their plan for taking Jerusalem will be put to shame, and
as utterly brought to nought as the eating or drinking of a dreamer, which turns out to be a
delusion as soon as he awakes. Just as the prophet emphatically combines two substantives
from the same verbal root in Isa_29:1, and two adverbs from the same verb in Isa_29:5; so does
he place ‫א‬ ָ‫ב‬ ָ‫צ‬ and ‫ה‬ ָ‫ב‬ ָ‫צ‬ together in Isa_29:7, the former with ‫ל‬ ַ‫ע‬ relating to the crowding of an army
for the purpose of a siege, the latter with an objective suffix (compare Psa_53:6) to the attack
made by a crowded army. The me
tsodah of Ariel (i.e., the watch-tower, specula, from tsud, to spy)
(Note: In Arabic, also, masad signifies a lofty hill or mountain-top, from a secondary form
of tsud; and massara, to lay the foundations of a fortified city (‛ı̄ r matsor, Psa_31:22), from
tsur.))
is the mountain of Zion mentioned afterwards in Isa_29:8. ‫ר‬ ֶ‫שׁ‬ ֲ‫א‬ⅴ, as if; comp. Zec_10:6;
Job_10:19. ‫ל‬ ֵ‫אוֹכ‬ ‫ה‬ֵ ִ‫ה‬ְ‫ו‬ without ‫;הוּא‬ the personal pronoun is frequently omitted, not only in the
leading participial clause, as in this instance (compare Isa_26:3; Isa_40:19; Psa_22:29;
Job_25:2; and Köhler on Zec_9:12), but also with a minor participial clause, as in Psa_7:10;
Psa_55:20, and Hab_2:10. The hungering and thirsting of the waking man are attributed to his
nephesh (soul: cf., Isa_32:6; Isa_5:14; Pro_6:30), just because the soul is the cause of the
physical life, and without it the action of the senses would be followed by no sensation or
experience whatever. The hungry stomach is simply the object of feeling, and everything
sensitive in the bodily organism is merely the medium of sensation or feeling; that which really
feels is the soul. The soul no sooner passes out of the dreaming state into a waking condition,
than it feels that its desires are as unsatisfied as ever. Just like such a dream will the army of the
enemy, and that victory of which it is so certain before the battle is fought, fade away into
nothing.
7. PULPIT, “THE WARNING FOLLOWED BY A PROMISE. It is ever God's care to prevent men from
being "swallowed up with overmuch sorrow" (2Co_2:7). As long as he is not about to "make a full end"
(Jer_4:27), he mingles promises with his threats, words of cheer with words of warning. So now the
prophet is directed to attach to his four verses of denunciation (Isa_29:1-4) four others of encouragement,
and to declare the utter discomfiture of the vast host of enemies which for a time has besieged and
"distressed" Ariel.

Isa_29:5
Moreover; rather, but. The relation of Isa_29:5-8 to Isa_29:1-4 is that of contrast. The multitude of thy
strangers; i.e. "of thy enemies" (comp. Isa_25:5). In primitive societies every stranger is an enemy; and
hence language—the formation of primitive men—often has one word for the two ideas. In Latin hostis is
said to have originally meant "foreigner" (Cic; 'De Off',' 1.12). Shall be like small dust. Ground down, i.e.
to an impalpable powder—rendered utterly weak and powerless. The meaning is determined by the
clause which follows, with which it must necessarily be in close accordance. As chaff that passeth
away. "Chaff," in Scripture, is always a metaphor for weakness
(comp. Isa_5:24; Isa_17:13; Isa_33:11; Isa_41:15; and see
also Psa_1:4; Psa_35:5; Job_21:18; Hos_13:3; Dan_2:35; Zep_2:2). It has no value; man's object is to
get rid of it: a light wind carries it away, and no one inquires whither. Yea, it shall be at an instant
suddenly. Dr. Kay says it is "the collapse of Jerusalem" which is here intended. But most other
commentators understand, with more reason, the collapse of her enemies (Cheyne, Delitzsch, Vance
Smith, Knobel, etc.).
8. CALVIN, “5.And as the small dust. (260) I shall first state the opinions of others, and afterwards I
shall bring forward what I consider to be more probable. Almost all the commentators think that this
expression denotes the enemies of the Jews; for they consider “” to mean “” and allege that the multitude
of those who shall oppress the Jews shall be “ dust;” that is, it shall be innumerable. But when I examine
closely the whole passage, I am more disposed to adopt a contrary opinion. I think that the Prophet
speaks contemptuously of the garrisons on which the Jews foolishly relied, for they had in their pay
foreign soldiers who were strong men.
The multitude of the mighty ones. Such is the interpretation which I give to ‫עריצים‬ (gnăīī), which is also its
literal meaning; and I see no reason why some of the Jews should suppose it to mean ungodly or wicked
persons. Since, therefore, the Jews brought various garrisons from a distance, they thought that they
were well defended, and dreaded no danger. The Prophet threatens that their subsidiary troops, though
they were a vast multitude, shall in vain create a disturbance, for they shall be like “” or “” that is, useless
refuse, for they shall produce no effect.(261) Hence we ought to infer, that our wealth and resources,
however great they are, shall be reduced to nothing, as soon as the Lord shall determine to deal with us
as he has a right to do. The assistance of men lasts indeed for a time; but when the Lord shall lift up his
hand in earnest, their strength must crumble down, and they must become like chaff.

Isaiah 29 commentary

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Isaiah 29 commentary