Isaiah 27

Isaiah is still eschatological. Even E. Young felt that way in his 1975 commentary. It is about the Warrior Messiah or Christ’s divine battle. “In that day” the Lord will punish/visit. It is after the Millennium of drying of tears (Isaiah 25:8b) and after many days this punishment comes (Isaiah 24:22d). Lucifer or Satan is called “Leviathan the fleeing serpent”. God will do it with His fierce, great and mighty sword (v. 1b). It sounds very militant but Sookyoung Kim in her dissertation indicated that the Warrior Messiah only speaks. His word is the sword. His word is creatively mighty and creatively strong so that waves of the sea calm down. The Leviathan is a twisted serpent because he twisted the Word of God to Eve in the Garden of Eden (v. 1c). The snake was a flying animal and the most beautiful of creatures and Satan chose it to approach Eve. Christ the Warrior Messiah in the Eschatological Executive Judgment or Hell will kill the Tannin (rendered dragon by the Greek) in the sea (v. 1d). In that Executive Judgment day, Christ will take any briars or thorns and weed and burn it completely in Hell (v. 4c). Christ explains to Isaiah that He has a vineyard (v. 2b) of which He is the farmer, just like the previous explanation in Isaiah 5:1-12. “I, the Lord am its Keeper” (v. 3a). He is the protection of it during the Time of Trouble “I guard it night and day” (v. 3d). The Lord waters also the vineyard. God keeps bad company by asking the bad, while there is time, to make friends with God (v. 5). He will give such a person also protection and that person will become part of the vineyard of God. “Let him make peace with Me” (v. 5c). The salvation time before the Eschaton will be a time of God causing those who come of Jacob to Him He will cause to take root, He shall cause to blossom and He shall cause Israel to have fruit and they shall fill the face of the earth with fruit (v. 6). It is not Jacob that shall blossom and one can see it in the extra “and” in the Qumran Isaiah scroll A from Cave 1, “and He shall cause to blossom”. The Syriac translators also understood it as “the gathering/congregation/assembly of Jacob”. It is not Jacob but the remnant that will be made to blossom. The Targum of 132-200 AD served as source for Origen’s additions in the Greek “children of Jacob” because the Targum added “Jacob shall beget children”. Now Isaiah wants to compare the punishment of God’s people with that of the evil in the Eschaton. In the Eschaton the evil will be no more. But God’s punishment to the faithful remnant of all generations are not the same as the final evil one (v. 7). God had an investigative judgment with them (rib) and drove them away “with His fierce wind” using the Assyrians and later the Babylonians to take them into exile (v. 8). Isaiah wants to say that through this, meaning through the rib or Investigative Judgment in heaven process starting in 1844, Jacob’s iniquity will be forgiven and this will be the full price of the pardoning of his sin” (v. 9a-b). Isaiah then looks over his shoulder to his audience behind him and in his day and says that “Asherim and incense altars will not stand” for the cities of the gods that are fortified will be isolated (v. 9d-10a). Ahaz for example in 727 BCE went to Damascus to copy the altar fashion there and placed it in the temple of Jerusalem, and this was in Isaiah’s time. Isaiah sees some vineyards dry and broken off and made fire with for they are “not a people of discernment” for spiritual things (v. 11c)) and Christ the Creator and Maker of them will not be gracious to them (v. 11d-e). Spiritual Israel that has gone sour will not receive grace from the Lord when the Executive Judgment comes. This is serious. Making fire with the dry vineyard of secularized spiritual Israel, the Targum changed to “and shall teach them”, and Symmachus in 170 CE read similarly “and reveal it” as did the Vulgate of Jerome in 396 CE. Origen changed the original Hebrew “upon it” to “upon them” in 230 CE in the Greek. The Latter Rain for the harvest of the Lord will be starting in the area of the Euphrates or modern Iraq? and the Arabic belt up to Egypt “and you will be gathered up one by one” the faithful spiritual of the Lord (v. 12). The byzantine preserved Septuagint used Rhinocura instead of Egypt here. They are the spiritual sons of Israel and has nothing to do with ethnic Israel. It was always God’s intention that all should have access to Him in a relationship and these faithful are part of His remnant and thus spiritual Israel. Those who will perish in the Time of Jacob’s Trouble in the area of Assyria or Iraq and who were scattered in Egypt will due to the Second Coming of Christ after the Time of Trouble (Daniel 12:1-2) “come and worship the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem. Years ago I thought it refers to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah but the context of a number of chapters has changed my view to Eschaton in mind by Isaiah. 

Dear God

Grant that all faithful will be harvested by You when the Latter Rain will fall and that none of us, part of Your vineyard, will be found dry and useless. Amen.

Koot van Wyk, (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Kyungpook National University, Department of Liberal Education, Sangju, South Korea; conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia