Isaiah 30 · The Lantern

“Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.

Reprimand is disapproval expressed in correction or strongly worded blame. The Educator resorts to this method of training when he says through Isaiah, "Woe to you, apostate children, says the Lord, that you would take counsel and not of me, and make treaties and not of my Spirit." He flavors each pronouncement in turn with the tart spice of fear to whet the appetite of his peo…

(Chapter 30, Verse 1 and following) Woe to the rebellious children, says the Lord, who make plans that are not from me, who weave a web without my Spirit, adding sin upon sin. You who walk to go down to Egypt, without consulting me, hoping for help from Pharaoh's strength and relying on the protection of Egypt's shadow.

667. Woe to you, apostate children. In this part, the prophet threatens against those who despised the prophet Jeremiah, and who went into Egypt against his counsel, as it says in Jeremiah 42 and 43.

They set out to go down to Egypt without asking My advice, to seek shelter under Pharaoh’s protection and take refuge in Egypt’s shade.

But Pharaoh’s protection will become your shame, and the refuge of Egypt’s shade your disgrace.

For though their princes are at Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes,

everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them. They bring neither help nor benefit, but only shame and disgrace.”

This is the burden against the beasts of the Negev: Through a land of hardship and distress, of lioness and lion, of viper and flying serpent, they carry their wealth on the backs of donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people of no profit to them.

Egypt’s help is futile and empty; therefore I have called her Rahab Who Sits Still.

Go now, write it on a tablet in their presence and inscribe it on a scroll; it will be for the days to come, a witness forever and ever.

[Isaiah] set his prophecy down in writing in a new book so that, after his prophecy was fulfilled, what he had written might bear witness against the Jews of what the inspired prophet predicted to them a long time before.

(Verse 8.) Now, write for them on a tablet. Carefully inscribe it in the book: and it shall be a testimony until the last day. The Hebrews say that in the Prophets there is one spirit, and all times are connected before the Lord. Jeremiah commands, and it is God's command, that he writes on a tablet when entering Egypt, which is made of imperishable wood.

Second, he sets out the confirmation of the command. Now therefore, you, Isaiah, go in, by prophetic vision, or you, Jeremiah, go in, into Egypt with the people, as it says in Jeremiah 43; third, he assigns the fruit of this confirmation: and it shall be in that day for a testimony for ever: write this for a memorial (Exod 17:14).

These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to obey the LORD’s instruction.

They say to the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words; prophesy illusions.

The chief priests and the Pharisees, through the agency of Pilate, sealed the tomb; but the women saw him who was risen.… The chief priests lacked understanding, but the women beheld with their own eyes.

Say, when is a person most insulted—when he is silent, and one makes no answer, or, when he does speak (and is unheeded)? So that the insult is greater in the present case, when He does speak and thou wilt not hear: greater the contempt. "Speak not to us," we read, they said of old to the Prophets: but ye do worse, saying, Speak: we will not do.

Second, he sets out their contempt of the prophets: who say to the seers, according to which they prohibited them from carrying out their proper office: you seer, go, flee away (Amos 7:12); inasmuch as they induced them to lie: speak unto us pleasant things: behold the words of the prophets with one mouth declare good things to the king (1 Kgs 22:13).

Get out of the way; turn off the road. Rid us of the Holy One of Israel!”

Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says: “Because you have rejected this message, trusting in oppression and relying on deceit,

this iniquity of yours is like a breach about to fail, a bulge in a high wall, whose collapse will come suddenly—in an instant!

It will break in pieces like a potter’s jar, shattered so that no fragment can be found. Not a shard will be found in the dust large enough to scoop the coals from a hearth or to skim the water from a cistern.”

For the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, has said: “By repentance and rest you would be saved; your strength would lie in quiet confidence—but you were not willing.”

Would you know the power of repentance? Would you understand this strong weapon of salvation and the might of confession? By confession Hezekiah routed 185,000 of the enemy. That was important, but it was little compared to what shall be told. The same king's repentance won the repeal of the sentence God had passed on him.

So useful are trials for Christians that through them, our spirit becomes a sacrifice to God. For it is written in the psalm: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Enlightened by this and innumerable other texts of this type, let us hasten as rapidly as possible to be converted to God absolutely.… Convert…

676. For thus says the Lord. Here he denounces their contempt of divine counsel, and concerning this, he sets out three things. First, the counsel: if you return, below: be converted to me, and you shall be saved (Isa 45:22).

“No,” you say, “we will flee on horses.” Therefore you will flee! “We will ride swift horses,” but your pursuers will be faster.

A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee, until you are left alone like a pole on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill.

Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore He rises to show you compassion, for the LORD is a just God. Blessed are all who wait for Him.

(Verse 18) Therefore the Lord waits, to have mercy on you, and therefore he will be exalted in showing mercy to you, because the Lord is a God of justice: blessed are all they that wait for him. Great is the mercy of God, that he waits for our repentance, and until we turn away from our vices, he restrains his mighty hand, so as not to be forced to strike.

For he calls and invites us, when he says, "All the day long I stretched forth my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people"; and he is invited by us when we say to him, "All the day long I have stretched forth my hands unto you." He waits for us, when it is said by the prophet, "Therefore the Lord waits to have compassion upon us"; and he is waited for by us, when we say, "…

677. Therefore the Lord waits. Here he sets out consolation, and concerning this, he does two things: first, he sets out the intention of having mercy; second, he describes the benefit of mercy: for the people (Isa 30:19). Concerning the first, he sets out three things.

O people in Zion who dwell in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. He will surely be gracious when you cry for help; when He hears, He will answer you.

The Lord will give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, but your Teacher will no longer hide Himself—with your own eyes you will see Him.

(Verse 20.) Crying, you will not weep in vain, showing compassion, he will have compassion on you: at the sound of your cry, as soon as he hears, he will answer you. When you return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem, you will not weep as you wept before, but your mourning will turn into joy: For blessed are those who weep, for they themselves will laugh (Luke VI, 21).

He has seen us sinning and has borne with it. He who forbade us to sin before we did it does not stop waiting to pardon us even after we have sinned. The one we have rejected is calling us. We have turned away from him, but he has not turned away.

Against poverty: and the Lord will give you spare bread, and this is the sense: they will be content with little food: the chief thing for man's life is water and bread (Sir 29:28[21]); or because in the return from Babylon they suffered scarcity. This should be understood mystically, according to the Gloss. 679.

And whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.”

(Verse 21.) And the Lord will give you tight bread and brief water. If we refer these times to Zerubbabel, the interpretation is easy; that under him there was not perfect joy, as David says: When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion, we were made like those who are comforted: so that they would receive not full and perfect consolation, but a likeness of consolation.

God opens the bosom of his loving kindness to us if we return to him after sinning, for he says by the prophet, "If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him and marries another man, shall he return to her any more? Shall not that woman be polluted and defiled?

Behind your back, like someone fleeing when called back by his pursuer: he has given you a teacher of justice (Joel 2:23); and he sets out the teaching: this is the way: we will go the king's highway (Num 21:22).

So you will desecrate your silver-plated idols and your gold-plated images. You will throw them away like menstrual cloths, saying to them, “Be gone!”

Then He will send rain for the seed that you have sown in the ground, and the food that comes from your land will be rich and plentiful. On that day your cattle will graze in open pastures.

(Verse 23.) And you shall defile the plates of your carved silver, and the garment of your molded gold, and scatter them like the impurity of a menstruating woman: go forth, you shall say to it. LXX: And you shall defile the silver and the gold idols: you shall break them and scatter them like the water of a menstruating woman, and you shall cast them away like feces.

For "in a good heart wisdom will rest," and "he that fears the Lord shall find knowledge with righteousness." But that we must attain to spiritual knowledge in the order of which we have already spoken, we are taught also by the blessed apostle.

680. And first, he promises fertility of the land, promising the cause: and rain shall be given: he will make the early and the latter rain to come down to you (Joel 2:23); and the effect, as to the food of men: and the bread of the corn of the land shall be most plentiful, and fat: Aser, his bread shall be fat (Gen 49:20); he fills you with the fat of corn (Ps 147:14); as to t…

The oxen and donkeys that work the ground will eat salted fodder, winnowed with shovel and pitchfork.

And from every high mountain and every raised hill, streams of water will flow in the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall.

The light of the moon will be as bright as the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter—like the light of seven days—on the day that the LORD binds up the brokenness of His people and heals the wounds He has inflicted.

(Verse 26) And there will be the light of the moon, like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day when the Lord binds up the wounds of his people and heals the bruises inflicted by his blow.

Why should the lunar reckoning be calculated from the noontide hours, seeing that the moon had not yet been placed in the heavens or gone forth over the earth? On the contrary, none of the feast days of the law began and ended at noon or in the afternoon, but all did so in the evening.

682. Third, the radiance of heaven: and the light of the sun shall be as the light of seven days, that is, as much light in one day as there is now in seven days, as if sevenfold; or as it was in the first week of seven days.

Behold, the Name of the LORD comes from afar, with burning anger and dense smoke. His lips are full of fury, and His tongue is like a consuming fire.

His breath is like a rushing torrent that rises to the neck. He comes to sift the nations in a sieve of destruction; He bridles the jaws of the peoples to lead them astray.

You will sing as on the night of a holy festival, and your heart will rejoice like one who walks to the music of a flute, going up to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.

And the LORD will cause His majestic voice to be heard and His mighty arm to be revealed, striking in angry wrath with a flame of consuming fire, and with cloudburst, storm, and hailstones.

For Assyria will be shattered at the voice of the LORD; He will strike them with His scepter.

And with every stroke of the rod of punishment that the LORD brings down on them, the tambourines and lyres will sound as He battles with weapons brandished.

For Topheth has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the king. Its funeral pyre is deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood. The breath of the LORD, like a torrent of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.

Isaiah30