A New Study Series: The Book of Daniel

Henry Ossawa Tanner (United States, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, 1859-1937)

My next series of notes will cover the book of Daniel.

I believe that Daniel is my favorite prophet.  The story of his life is fascinating, and his prophecies, even by the most skeptical standards of dating, are the clearest predictors of Christ’s life that appear in the Bible.  The introductory notes will be appearing soon!

Isaiah Chapter 64 Notes

Chapter Sixty-four:

v.2:  The prophet wants God to make the nations to tremble with fear as fire makes a burning bush and boiling water tremble.  The quaking mountains also express the theme of trembling in the presence of God; perhaps the specific reference is to God’s descent on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:18.  Another continuation of the fire/quaking theme may be in v.7 where the speaker says God has “delivered us [Israelites] into the hand of our iniquity.”  There, the word “delivered” literally means “melted” according to both Barnes and the Oxford commentary.

v. 5:  Barnes and the Oxford commentary note that this verse is difficult to translate.  The NRSV translation says that the Israelites sin because God has hidden his face from them.  I have no doubt that when God hides his face from us, we are even more inclined to sin, but I do not believe that he does this before we have already given ourselves over to sin.  See notes on 63:17.

v. 8:  The same image appears in 29:16.

Isaiah Chapter 63 Notes

Chapter Sixty-three: v. 1: The Oxford commentary believes that these are the words of the sentinels described in 62:6.  That seems reasonable to me. The image of God stained in the blood of his enemies is quite fearsome, but the method of presenting this image is still more ominous and chilling.  Rather than simply saying that God is covered in the blood of his enemies, the writer has the sentinel gradually come to recognize what the red stain on God’s splendid robes is. I call the image fearsome and chilling, and so it is to me.  So it also must have been on some level for the book’s original audience, but I wonder if the more dominant feeling they had was joyful vindication.  The Jews hated Edom bitterly^[1] because the Edomites conspired with Babylon in subjugating the kingdom of Judah.  For my brief history of Edom and its relationship with the Israelites, see notes on Isaiah 34. I do not know if John had this place in mind when he wrote Revelation 19:13-16, but the image of Christ there is very similar: blood stained clothes, the wine press of God’s wrath, etc. v. 5: Compare this with 59:16.  Here in chapter 63, the vengeance of God is emphasized; there in 59 his salvation is emphasized, but they are two sides of the same coin: destroying the enemies of his children and saving his children from their enemies.  Ultimately, however, the vengeance and destruction are directed against malevolent spiritual forces rather than human ones.  Edom’s destruction was simply a foreshadowing of Satan’s.  Perhaps the spiritual quality of this ultimate war is reflected in the fact that  Christ has a sword in his mouth rather than his hand in Revelation 19:15 where, as I noted above (v.1), John uses imagery very similar to that which describes God here in Isaiah. v. 11: Some versions translate this singularly as “he remembered” rather than “they remembered.”  Barnes favors the singular version and believes that “he” refers to God.  This would require us to interpret the following verses as a conversation God is having with himself, as if he were trying to rouse himself to action by asking himself why he does not help his children as he used to.  I prefer another interpretation.  If the pronoun should be translated as “he” then I think “he” is the Messiah.  At any rate, “me” of verse 15 cannot be God.  That would be more than simply having a conversation with oneself; it would be positively schizophrenic. v. 15: Verses 7-19 (and all of chapter 64) seem like the sort of thing that the speaker in 62:1 and the sentinels of 62:6-7 would say as they give the LORD no rest from their prayers to reestablish Jerusalem.  Perhaps the speaker here is the Messiah.  The complaint that God’s compassion has been withheld from the speaker reminds me of Jesus’s cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) v. 17: The German translation of this passage seems to make God’s involvement in his people’s free will more passive.  It says something like “Why do you allow us to stray from your ways…” as opposed to the NRSV which reads, “Why do you make us stray from our ways….”  I do not know which agrees more literally with the Hebrew, but I think the interpretation is the same either way.  Even if the language is as strong as the NRSV makes it out to be, I believe this is simply a rhetorical device, similar to the one used in 6:9.  One should not deduce from such a statement that we have no free will.  Sometimes God may harden our hearts for one reason or another, but always it is after we have begun the work of hardening them ourselves.  It is contrary to any reasonable interpretation of the Bible, which constantly exhorts us to choose good over evil (and thus assumes that we have the freedom to choose), to believe otherwise.  If anyone is worried that God may have already hardened his heart, I believe he can take comfort in the fact that he is worried; somebody whose heart is impenetrably hardened (either by himself or God) will, by definition, not be bothered by the thought, nor by the sin against which his heart is hard.

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^[1] See, for instance, Psalm 137:7.

Isaiah Chapter 62 Notes

Chapter Sixty-two:

The speaker in these first verses is hard to determine.  Perhaps it is the Messiah; his function looks very similar to that of the speaker in 61:1-4.

He seems distinct from God, as such, because he refers to God in the third person.[1]  Since the Messiah can be understood as being distinct from God (although we Christians believe that he is also paradoxically one and the same with God) it is possible that the speaker here is the Messiah.  He appears to place himself at the head of a class of people (prophets?) whose job is to petition God for Israel’s salvation.  Notice in v. 1 he says, “I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest….”  Compare this with the purpose of the sentinels he has placed on Jerusalem’s walls.  He commands them “never to be silent.  You who remind the Lord, take no rest, and give him no rest[2] until he establishes Jerusalem…” (vs.6-7).  Of course, the speaker may also be Isaiah.  Compare this speaker, for instance, with the speaker of 21:6 and 21:11, who seems to be Isaiah.  In 21:6 God asks the speaker to “post a lookout” as the speaker here in chapter 62 does.  The prophecy beginning in 21:11 also describes sentinels, and it deals with Edom.

v. 2:  For notes on new names see Revelation 2:17.

v. 4:  It is interesting that the people and the land both symbolize the same thing: the bride of God.

v. 7:  The people are exhorted to give God no rest, but rather to pray unceasingly for the reestablishment of Jerusalem.  It reminds me of the parable of the unjust judge in Luke 18:1-8.

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[1] This is potentially deceptive, however.  God may very well refer to himself in the first and third person at different times, as he does in vs. 8-9.

[2] Given the fluid pronoun references, I suppose this could be God himself encouraging these sentinels to give him no rest, and that that is one way that God could give himself no rest if he is the speaker in v. 1, but this interpretation is not as believable to me.

Isaiah Chapter 58 Notes

Chapter Fifty-eight:

v. 2:  The NRSV says, “[D]ay after day they seek me and delight to know my ways…,” and “…they delight to draw near to God.”  Out of context, these words could describe people who love God, but in the context of this chapter they clearly describe hypocrites.  The people here do not delight to draw near to God because they love him but because they want things from him and because they want to seem righteous to others.  Note in vs.3-4 how cruelly they treat those who are in their power.  As John says in 1^st John 4:20-21, those who love God also love their brothers and sisters.  While the people these hypocrites are abusing may not be their blood relatives, I think the principle still applies.  Note also in v. 5 how they make external shows of “piety” and suffering.  I wonder if Jesus had this passage in mind when he said, “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting” (Matthew 6:16). Of course it is right to want things from God.  In fact, I believe one of the main reasons for fasting is to show God the intensity of our desire for something.  Note, for example, David’s fast in 2^nd Samuel 12:16. However, the desire for this thing should never be greater than our love for God.  There is a parallel in the mortal relationships we form with each other; we may want things from those we love, but these things are insignificant compared to the relationships themselves. There are many reasons to fast.  One, as I said above, is to show God the intensity of our desire for something. Another is to free up more time than we would normally have to devote to prayer.  Another may be to discipline our physical appetites more strictly for a set period of time so that we can govern them more easily when we are not fasting.  I believe another purpose of fasting is to sharpen our focus.  I am not saying that fasting in itself (physiologically) will make our thinking clearer (although many people do believe this, perhaps correctly).  What I am saying is that during the period of a fast, the fasting itself should serve as a constant reminder that we are seeking something from God, and this, in turn, should remind us that he also earnestly wants something from us: our love and obedience.  I know that we should always strive to have this sort of awareness in prayer even when we are not fasting, but I do not think it is possible, in actual practice, to do it.  As crude as it sounds, I believe fasting has the potential to heighten our awareness for a period of time by motivating us not to waste the suffering that we are undergoing during the fast.  The thought that we are suffering for nothing because our hearts are not right might strengthen our normal attempts to be good.  It might make us more introspective, bringing us to a clearer understanding of our sins, and leading us to repentance.  Thus, while I think the admonition in this chapter is for hypocrites who really do not love God and have no sincere desire to be good, I think it also has application for those who do love God and want to please him.

Isaiah Chapter 55 Notes

Chapter Fifty-five:

v. 7:  I wonder exactly who the “our” here is.  It could be the Jews in general addressing the Gentiles; this would fit nicely with the calling of the nations in v. 5.  It might also simply be the faithful Jews and Gentiles together (Spiritual Israel) addressing the unfaithful Jews and Gentiles.

v. 8:  Let the wicked return to God, and he will pardon them because his thoughts are not our thoughts.  Our thoughts find it difficult to imagine that forgiveness could be so freely given (and acquired).  And the way he forgives us (through the suffering and death of Christ) is still more incomprehensible.[1]

v. 10:  I can imagine some skeptic pointing to this verse to demonstrate that the ancient Hebrews did not understand the cycle of water and the process of evaporation, but I think interpreting the verse in this way would be taking the analogy too far.  Besides, I do not believe the writer is saying that the rain and snow will not return to the sky in any form, simply that they will not return in the form in which they fell to earth.  Rain does not return to heaven as rain, nor does snow as snow.  Both fall to the earth, accomplish their purpose in watering the earth, and then return as gas.

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[1] See 53:1 note.

Isaiah Chapter 54 Notes

Chapter Fifty-four:

v. 1:  Isaiah uses a mixed metaphor to describe Jerusalem in verses four and seven.  In verse four she is a widow, whereas in verse seven she is a woman whose husband has divorced her because of her unfaithfulness.  Both metaphors, however, meet in the image of “the desolate woman” here in verse one.  The desolate woman has no husband.  And yet, says God, the woman who is desolate now will have more blessings (children) than the woman who is married.  By analogy, the woman who is married represents any nation whose current circumstances promise future prosperity.

v. 5:  Obviously pagans do not call God “the God of the whole earth,” but this is a true title of his, and all who know him use it.

Vs. 8-9:  God’s wrath was “overflowing” when he sent the Babylonians to destroy the Israelites and take them into captivity.  According to Barnes, this word “means a gushing out, an overflowing, an inundation, a flood” (299).  Thus, God’s wrath against the Israelites was like the flood of Noah’s day (v.9) in several ways.  It was a very destructive event that only a remnant of faithful people survived (though even these were swept away from their homeland), and to those survivors God promised that nothing like that would happen again.

God’s promise that nothing like the Babylonian captivity would happen again should be examined.  What does it mean?  If one takes this promise at face value and applies it to the Israelites, then one could make the argument that God broke his word.  After all, the second temple, which the Jews built upon returning from the Babylonian captivity was utterly destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. and has not been rebuilt since.  Of course, the situations are not exactly parallel; as far as I know, the Romans did not deport the Jews[1] wholesale from their homeland as did the Babylonians.  Nevertheless, the parallels are close enough to merit comparison.  I wonder how orthodox Jews today explain this passage.

As for me, I believe the passage refers ultimately to spiritual Israel (i.e. the kingdom of the Messiah) and this may explain how the promise is fulfilled by God: He made it to the returning Jews as he reestablished their physical kingdom on earth, but he referred to the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah (to which all who love God belong, and of which the physical kingdom was merely a type).  Notice how the description of Jerusalem in vs. 11-12 is similar to the description of the New Jerusalem (spiritual Israel) in Revelation 21.

Besides, the specific promise is that God will not strike his people in anger any more: “I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you.”  Notice how the ministry of Christ reflects this sentiment.  On the cross, Christ asks God to forgive those who are crucifying him because they do not understand what they do.  When James and John want to call down fire on those who do not receive Christ hospitably, he admonishes the two brothers, presumably by telling them that his ministry was not one of righteous vengeance but of mercy (Luke 9:51-56).  Perhaps this is another facet of the promise as it applies specifically to the Jews.  God had acted on his righteous anger against the Jews earlier, and the result was the Babylonian captivity.  Perhaps God is saying he will no longer actively punish the Jews.  This would still leave open the possibility of their suffering at the hands of enemies if they chose to reject the protection God promises in vs. 15-17; in that case, they would not be suffering because God was actively punishing them but rather because they had rejected the protection of his kingdom.  I believe the Jews did just this when they rejected Christ as their king.  At the crucifixion, the Jews cried out, “We have no king but the [Roman] emperor” (John 19:15), and “His [Christ’s] blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25).  The results may look the same to us (Babylonian brutality and Roman brutality) but the causes may be different.

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[1] Many Jews did disperse throughout the empire, but I think this was a voluntary flight (spanning generations of time) from the Roman oppression in Judea rather than a Roman-organized, official plan of resettlement.

Isaiah Chapter 53 Notes

Chapter Fifty-three:

v. 1:  “Who has heard what we have heard?”  Who indeed?  And who, having heard it, has been able to understand?[1] This question accurately predicts all the controversy that these passages about the Suffering Servant have inspired over the centuries.  This is the very chapter of Isaiah with which the Ethiopian eunuch is struggling in Acts 8:30-35.  It seems to me that the difficulties of this section can be divided into two types.  First, there is the honest difficulty of someone who has no historical knowledge of the life of Christ.  This is the Ethiopian eunuch’s difficulty.  Then there is the difficulty which people who have knowledge of the life of Christ make for themselves by refusing to concede that he and this Suffering Servant are one.

“To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?”  The revealing of the LORD’s arm is a threat, a prelude to an attack from the LORD, like rolling up one’s sleeves, or taking off one’s jacket.[2]  Of course, everyone to whom the arm of the LORD is revealed may not necessarily be threatened by that arm.  For instance, if the LORD is defending someone against his enemies, then the revealing of the arm to that person may be an assurance of his deliverance.   Therefore, I am not exactly sure how to answer this question.  One answer may be that he has bared his arm to Babylon and by extension to all the evil forces that will oppose God and the Messiah[3].  I believe this is the proper interpretation of 52:10 where the LORD bares “his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations” who then witness his destruction of Babylon and deliverance of the captive Jews.

But I suspect that the person to whom the LORD reveals his arm here in 53:1 is the Messiah.  If so, then clearly one sense in which he reveals his arm is to conqueror the Messiah’s enemies, as the first part of v. 12 describes.  But I think there is another, ominous sense in which the LORD reveals his arm to the Messiah: He means to crush the Messiah, who has chosen to be “numbered with the transgressors” (53:12).  V. 10 says, “It was the will of the LORD to crush him with pain.”  In fact, I think this is the primary sense in which the question should be answered.  This whole chapter is mostly concerned with the Messiah’s shocking role as a scapegoat, “wounded for our transgressions” (v.5) on whom “the LORD has laid…the iniquity of us all” (v.6).  This role is so shocking that it would merit a question, almost of disbelief:  “Has the arm of the LORD really been bared to the Messiah?  Would God really have his Messiah undergo such things for our sake?”  This also would explain the first question of the chapter:  “Who is going to believe that?”

v. 2:  The young plant and the root in the dry ground are metaphors for the Messiah.  The young plant may symbolize the vulnerability and innocence of the Messiah.  It may also refer to the fact that the Messiah was a young man when he was sacrificed.[4] The root in dry ground could symbolize either the fact that the Messiah would appear in a place (Nazareth[5]) and time which nobody expected, just as people would not look for a plant to sprout in dry ground.  But it may also refer to the fact that a plant whose roots are in dry ground is not likely to look very impressive.  Because of the second part of this verse (which refers to the Messiah’s unimpressive form) I suspect that this last interpretation is the main one.  The young plant metaphor could be interpreted similarly since a young, fledgling plant is not as impressive to behold as its full grown counterpart.

If Christ’s physical appearance was unimpressive by nature (even before it was marred during his execution) as this scripture seems to imply, then that would compliment God’s decision to manifest himself on earth as a humble servant.  He would have come as a poor carpenter with an unremarkable body rather than as a handsome, powerful king.[6] I do believe, however, that the unfathomable beauty of Christ’s spirit would so have affected those who loved him that they would hardly have been able to see him as plain or unattractive in spite of his natural appearance.

v. 4:  The truly staggering quality of this chapter is how closely its description of the Suffering Servant matches Christ’s life.  Who else could this be but Christ?  Apparently some Jews since Christ have tried to interpret the Suffering Servant as a personification of the Israelites, or of the faithful among the Israelites.  However, who is the “our” of “our infirmities”?  The most reasonable answer seems to be that it is Isaiah and his readers, and surely Isaiah should be considered among the faithful of Israel, yet here he speaks of the Suffering Servant as being distinct from him.  This convinces me that the Suffering Servant is not a personification of Israel, or even of the faithful of Israel.  See also vs. 5 and 7.

v. 5:  Notice that this Servant suffers in the place of the guilty (like a scapegoat) not along side them.  Usually, however, the faithful as well as the unfaithful have suffered together throughout history.  Consider, as an example, the suffering of both faithful and unfaithful Jews during the Babylonian Captivity. The suffering of this servant is unique in this regard and goes even further to convince me not to read the Suffering Servant as a personification of the faithful people of Israel.  This servant is someone distinct from the people of Israel.  He suffers (even though he is innocent) so that they will not have to suffer.  Thus we see the terrible, beautiful irony of his purpose: “By his bruises we are healed.”

v.7:  Both the faithful and the unfaithful naturally lament when they suffer, whereas this Suffering Servant “did not open his mouth.”  This is yet another reason to read the Suffering Servant as Christ, who was very noticeably silent before his accusers; see Matthew 26:62-63.

v. 9:  This Suffering Servant not only suffers, he dies:  “His grave [italics mine] is with the wicked.”  As this relates to Jesus, I suppose that saying “his grave is with the wicked” may be a reference specifically to the fact that he was buried in tombs usually reserved for rich, worldly people, or to the fact that he was executed as a criminal between two criminals.  I believe that this and the next phrase “his tomb with the rich” are meant to be paralleled, to say basically the same thing twice.  I believe this because that type of parallelism was a common literary convention among the Hebrews and is present throughout the Bible.  According to Gesenius, the word translated as “rich” can be understood as connoting something like “worldly” (qtd. in Barnes 277).  Barnes does not agree, however, that that is the proper translation here.  He thinks it should be translated simply as rich, without the underlying suggestion of evil, because he sees this as a reference to the rich man’s grave which Joseph of Arimathea (a good man) provided for Christ.    I agree with Barnes that this is a reference to Joseph of Arimathea’s gift of the tomb, but I do not think Joseph’s goodness invalidates the fact that Jesus was buried “with the worldly,” in an area typically inhabited by people who had been worldly in life.  After all, he was not buried with Joseph of Arimathea.

vs.10-11:  In verses 8-9, one learns that this Suffering Servant actually dies.  He is cut off from the land of the living and has a grave.  Yet here in v. 10 we find that God will “prolong his days,”  and verse 11 says, “out of his anguish he shall see light.”  If he had not died, such language could be interpreted to mean that God would vindicate him after his suffering and bless him again in this lifetime, as he did Job.  But what could it mean if “his anguish” culminates in death?  To me, the most reasonable answer is that God would bring him back to life.  This is exactly what God did for Christ, and now Christ can see us, his metaphorical offspring, as a result of his sacrifice.

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[1] See Isaiah 6:9-10

[2] See 52:10.

[3] See v. 12 for instance, where God has conquered the Messiah’s enemies.

[4] See John 8:57.

[5] See John 1:46.

[6] See notes on 52:14.

Isaiah Chapter 51 Notes

Chapter Fifty-one:

Vs. 1-2:  The rock from which Israel was hewn and the quarry from which it was dug are Abraham and Sarah.  God calls attention to them to illustrate his power to bless: Just as God had the power to bless Abraham so that the whole nation of Israel came from that single man, so God still has the power to strengthen Israel and lead it out of the Babylonian Captivity.

Identifying the speaker in this chapter is a little difficult because the grammatical person shifts so fluidly.  For instance, the speaker in verses one and two is God.  There he speaks in the first person: “Listen to me…I blessed him and made him many.”  However, in the very same verses, he also refers to himself in the third person:  “…you that seek the LORD.” I can think of two explanations.  Either the speaker is the Messiah and he is distinguishing between himself (as God) and the Father (as God) by these shifts in grammatical person, or the speaker is the Father and he refers to himself stylistically in the third person sometimes, as Christ occasionally does in the Gospels.  The same thing happens in v. 15.

v. 3:  There are other references to Eden, or rather the return of Eden, in Isaiah.  11:6-9 and 2:2-4 come to mind; see notes there.

v. 6:  Just as in vs. 1-2, God references his blessing of Abraham to reassure his people that he can and will bless them, so here he references the creation, which he made and which seems so permanent.  The Israelites (as well as all the rest of us) think of the creation as something stable, but God assures them that his promise to save them is even more stable, since creation will eventually pass away.

Vs. 9-10:  Here is another instance where the speaker is hard to identify.  The arm of the LORD is being addressed, but by whom?  The Messiah?  Isaiah?  Israel?

The theme of calling something or someone to wake up is repeated in v. 17, and in 52:1.

v. 16: Barnes believes that “your mouth” here refers to the Israelites’ collective mouth.  God has taught his people wisdom.  One could argue, I suppose, that it might be Isaiah’s mouth or the Messiah’s mouth, but I see no reason to reject Barnes’s idea, especially since God addresses Zion at the end of the verse, saying “you are my people.”

Isaiah Chapter 49 Notes

Chapter Forty-nine:

v. 2: I like the way these images are arranged: God makes the weapon (the sharp sword and polished arrow) and then protects it (in the shadow of his hand and in the quiver).  It is a very beautiful juxtaposition of qualities to describe a dangerous weapon along with its need for protection.

Since the sword is described as being a metaphor for the narrator’s mouth (i.e. his words, his message) I assume the same is true of the arrow.  John uses the image of a sword similarly in Revelation 1:16.

v. 3: “You are my servant, Israel.” This is an unexpected sentence.  The servant in this chapter is the Messiah, who will save Israel (v. 5), so it seems odd to refer to the servant himself as Israel.  The Oxford commentary notes that the word “Israel” here in v. 3 is “absent from some Hebrew manuscripts” and thus believes it is a gloss added by a later editor rather than a part of the original text.  That makes sense to me.^[1]

v. 4: I believe this verse describes the feelings of Jesus as he suffered from disappointment at the sinfulness and lack of faith in his followers.  He expressed such disappointment when he said, “How much longer must I put up with you?” (Matt 17:17) and “Have I been with you all this time, Phillip, and you still do not know me?”  (John 14:9) and “So, could you not stay awake with me one hour?” (Matt 26:40)  And he expressed it with a look when Peter denied knowing him at the trial before his crucifixion (Luke 22:61).

This chapter is Messianic, but it differs from some earlier Messianic chapters of Isaiah in that it sometimes seems to refer to Jesus directly rather than through one of his prefiguring types (like Cyrus in 41:2-3 or Immanuel in chapter 7).^[2] Verses 8-21, use the imagery of Judah’s return from Babylonian captivity, so if this chapter were to reference one of Christ’s prefiguring types, I would guess that the reference would be to Cyrus, but how can verses like 4 and 7 refer to Cyrus? When would Cyrus have said something like what the speaker of v. 4 says, or how could Cyrus, triumphant emperor of the Persians, be reasonably described as “the slave of rulers” as this servant is described in v. 7?  Verse 6 is also a little awkward to apply to Cyrus.  He could be said to be the savior of Israel (and thus prefigure Christ) in that he conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland.  He could also be said to be the savior of the rest of the known world in as much as he rid the world of the Babylonian tyrants, but it seems more natural to see Cyrus as the savior of the known world first and then as the savior of the Jews (and other individual races enslaved in the empire) secondarily as a consequence of having conquered Babylon.  But here in verse 6, the servant saves Israel first, then the rest of the world.

v. 5: What “the LORD says” is in actually in v. 6.

v. 7: Saying that kings shall stand and princes fall prostrate makes me think of all these rulers in a confused scramble, eager to honor the Christ.

v. 8: The phrase “in a time of favor” begins the words of God in this section.  I do not know why the NRSV does not put quotation marks here as it does in other places (like v. 6).

v. 12: I am not sure about whether these people coming from far away are Jews returning from exile, or Gentiles being drawn in to Jerusalem from all over the earth.  Maybe the passage is meant to be ambiguous in order to allude to the fact that, once the Messiah comes, there will be no more Jews and Gentiles as such; everyone in the new spiritual kingdom will be a child of God.

As for the place “Syene,” I am not sure where it is.  The Oxford commentary thinks it is a place in upper Egypt where a Jewish community once existed before the Persians conquered Egypt.  Barnes seems convinced that it is China, citing the linguistic similarity of “Syene” with “Sina” (209-210).  He makes an interesting argument, but I am not sure whom to believe.

Notice how the prophet gives four directions from which “the people” (v.8) will come to Zion: “Far away…the north…the west…the land of Syene.”  Since the number of directions is four here, I would expect them to correspond to the four directions of the compass, but only two do this overtly (north and west).  I might argue that the other two imply the missing directions, and that Syene (China) could fill in for the east, but it seems a stretch to suggest that such a general term as “far away” is meant to refer specifically to any direction, and thus it seems a stretch to suggest that either of these two vague directions should refer to directions of the compass.

Nevertheless, it does seem odd to me (since these chapters either refer directly to the return of the Jews from Babylon or use the return more indirectly as a metaphor for other things) that “the east” is not given as a direction from which people will come.  One could argue that the Jews actually arrived from Babylon back into their homeland via the highways which approach Israel from the north, but it still seems like “the east” would have been mentioned since Babylon is to the east of Jerusalem.  After all, the wise men who came to see Jesus were “from the East” (Matthew 2:1) even though they may have approached Israel from the north.

v. 15: “I will not forget you [Zion].”  This is a beautiful feminine image of God.  In fact, it is sort of a superfeminine image of God because he is described as a more faithful mother than some human mothers.  It reminds me of Matthew 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”  And there are also other places in the Bible where feminine imagery is used to describe God.  Compare the feminine personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 3:13-14,16; 4:6;8:1,12,23,27-29 with the description of Christ as the Word in John1:1-3,14.  See also notes on Genesis 1:27.

The image of God as a mother is particularly poignant here because Mount Zion in Jerusalem is personified as a mother bereft of her children.  By reminding her that he loves her just as she loves her own children (i.e. the Jews carried away to captivity) God assures Zion that he has not forsaken her.  See verses 20-23.

v. 16: Inscribing her (Zion) on the palms of his hands is a fascinating idea.  There may be no intentional reference here to the crucifixion, but it would be very good poetry if one were to make such a reference.

Vs. 20-23: This is my understanding of the imagery in these verses:  Zion is a bereaved and barren mother who suddenly is blessed with such a rush of children coming to her that the land is filled to the brim.  Thus, they will say, “The place is too crowded for me; make room for me to settle.” She has not known about these children because they were born away from her “in the time of …[her] bereavement” and reared by somebody else.  Thus, she asks in joy and surprise: “Who has reared these?”  The answer is that the kings and queens of the Gentiles have raised them.  “Kings shall be your foster fathers and queens your nursing mothers.”^[3] These foster parents are now happily returning the children to their rightful mother.  “They shall bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders.”  These same kings and queens, upon returning her children, will then acknowledge her as their High Queen and submit to her authority.

Here is my interpretation of these images: The mother Zion is a somewhat fluid metaphor: she represents both the physical (historical) and spiritual (Messianic) kingdom of Israel, and by extension, the true religion of God.  The substance of these verses is derived from the Jewish return from the Babylonian Captivity.  Historically, the land of Judah was bereft of its inhabitants.  These were taken away and “reared” in the Gentile lands for seventy years until the Persians conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland.  Thus, the Gentiles returned Zion’s children to her.  However, I can think of no corresponding event in the history of the physical kingdom of Judah to match the Gentiles’ submission to Zion.  Persia was still Judah’s earthly master even after the return from Babylon, and after Persia, Greece, and after Greece, Rome, in the time of Christ, and Rome eventually annihilated Judah as a kingdom.  One could interpret this submission as a reference to mass conversions of Gentiles to Judaism, but I do not believe that ever happened.  This is only fulfilled in the Messianic kingdom of Jesus, where the Gentile world entered the kingdom by acknowledging the God of the Jews as the true God, and by submitting to his authority.  See also notes on 60:14.

v. 26: Some scholars think these verses describe the desperate sort of cannibalism that people have resorted to during prolonged sieges, but I do not believe that is what the prophet intends.  The wording does not suggest desperation but rather debauchery.  The oppressors of the Jews will be drunk on their own blood as with wine.  If this refers to the siege of Babylon (as I believe most people think it does) then my interpretation has a nice parallel with Daniel 5.  The fact that these oppressors are metaphorically drunk on their own blood refers to the seductive and self-destructive nature of sin.

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^[1] If it is a gloss, I wonder if it was added by Jews after the time of Christ in an attempt to make these verses seem less applicable to him.  See note on  42:2-3.

^[2] Similarly, chapter 42 seems to make direct references to Jesus.

^[3] I.e. the foster fathers and nursing mothers of your children.