Bible Commentaries

GENTILES HELPING JEWS

‘And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place.’

Isaiah 14:2

I. It is more exactly explained that this adhesion of strangers will not be to seek protection, but to form an honourable and serviceable attendance as friends and admirers.—This is a thought that often recurs in the second part of Isaiah: Isaiah 44:5; Isaiah 49:22 sqq.; Isaiah 55:5; Isaiah 60:4-9 sqq. This notion that strangers should amicably attend Israel and then be enslaved for it occasions offence. But the heathen will only display this friendliness constrained thereto by the mighty deeds of Jehovah. And even if the Old Testament knows of a conversion of the heathen to Jehovah (Hosea 2:23; Isaiah 65:1; comp. Romans 9:24 sqq.; Romans 10:18 sqq.)—yet, from the Old Testament view-point, there remains ever such a chasm between Israel and even the converted heathen that for the latter no other position was conceivable than that of those strangers who went along to Canaan out of Egypt or the desert, or of the Canaanites that remained (1 Kings 9:20 sqq.). This is a consequence of that fleshly consciousness of nobility of which Israel was full.

II. Only by Christ could that chasm be bridged over, in whom there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision (Galatians 5:6; Galatians 3:28; Romans 10:12). The simple meaning of this promise seems to be that the church or chosen people and the other nations should change places, the oppressed becoming the oppressor, and the slave the master. This of course admits both an external and internal fulfilment. In a lower sense and on a smaller scale it was accomplished in the restoration of the Jews from exile; but its full accomplishment is yet to come, not with respect to the Jews as a people, for their pre-eminence has ceased for ever, but with respect to the church, including Jews and Gentiles, which has succeeded to the rights and privileges, promises and actual possessions of God’s ancient people. The true principle of exposition is adopted even by the Rabbins. Jarchi refers the promise to the future, to the period of complete redemption. Kimchi more explicitly declares that its fulfilment is to be sought partly in the restoration from Babylon, and partly in the days of the Messiah.