Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 1:30
For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.
30. To the nature worshippers themselves the falling leaf of the terebinth and the failure of the spring in the garden, would mean the decay of the divine life which was supposed to animate these objects. To Isaiah, who recognises no divine life in nature but that of Jehovah, they are simply appropriate images of the collapse of superstition.
31 refers probably (though not certainly) to idolatry in the strict sense of image-worship. the strong ] Apparently “the powerful (opulent) man.” The word occurs only once again in Amo 2:9.
and the maker of it ] Render with R.V. and his work, i.e. either “his idol,” or “his unrighteous work.”
they shall both burn quench them ] The “work” is a spark and the worker like tinder. The idea is that the product of sin will become the means of the sinner’s destruction.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For ye … – The mention of the tree in the previous verse, gives the prophet occasion for the beautiful image in this. They had desired the oak, and they should be like it. That, when the frost came, was divested of its beauty, and its leaves faded, and fell; so should their beauty and privileges and happiness, as a people, fade away at the anger of God.
A garden that hath no water – That is therefore withered and parched up; where nothing would flourish, but where all would be desolation – a most striking image of the approaching desolation of the Jewish nation. In Eastern countries this image would be more striking than with us. In these hot regions, a constant supply of water is necessary for the cultivation, and even for the very existence and preservation of a garden. Should it lack water for a few days, everything in it would be burned up with neat and totally destroyed. In all gardens, therefore, in those regions; there must be a constant supply of water, either from some neighboring river, or from some fountain or reservoir within it. To secure such a fountain became an object of indispensable importance, not only for the coolness and pleasantness of the garden, but for the very existence of the vegetation. Dr. Russell, in his Natural History of Aleppo, says, that all the gardens of Aleppo are on the banks of the river that runs by that city, or on the sides of the rill that supplies their aqueduct; and all the rest of the country he represents as perfectly burned up in the summer months, the gardens only retaining their verdure, on account of the moistness of their situation.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 30. Whose leaf – “Whose leaves”] Twenty-six of Kennicott’s, twenty-four of De Rossi’s, one ancient, of my own, and seven editions, read aleyha, in its full and regular form. This is worth remarking, as it accounts for a great number of anomalies of the like kind, which want only the same authority to rectify them.
As a garden that hath no water – “A garden wherein is no water.”] In the hotter parts of the Eastern countries, a constant supply of water is so absolutely necessary for the cultivation and even for the preservation and existence of a garden, that should it want water but for a few days, every thing in it would be burnt up with the heat, and totally destroyed. There is therefore no garden whatever in those countries but what has such a certain supply, either from some neighbouring river, or from a reservoir of water collected from springs, or filled with rain water in the proper season, in sufficient quantity to afford ample provision for the rest of the year.
Moses, having described the habitation of man newly created as a garden planted with every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, adds, as a circumstance necessary to complete the idea of a garden, that it was well supplied with water, “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden;” Ge 2:10: see also Ge 13:10.
That the reader may have a clear notion of this matter, it will be necessary to give some account of the management of their gardens in this respect.
“Damascus,” says Maundrell, p. 122, “is encompassed with gardens, extending no less, recording to common estimation, than thirty miles round; which makes it look like a city in a vast wood. The gardens are thick set with fruit trees of all kinds, kept fresh and verdant by the waters of the Barrady, (the Chrysorrhoas of the ancients,) which supply both the gardens and city in great abundance. This river, as soon as it issues out from between the cleft of the mountain before mentioned into the plain, is immediately divided into three streams; of which the middlemost and biggest runs directly to Damascus, and is distributed to all the cisterns and fountains of the city. The other two (which I take to be the work of art) are drawn round, one to the right hand, and the other to the left, on the borders of the gardens, into which they are let as they pass, by little currents, and so dispersed all over the vast wood, insomuch that there is not a garden but has a fine quick stream running through it. The Barrady is almost wholly drunk up by the city and gardens. What small part of it escapes is united, as I was informed, in one channel again on the southeast side of the city; and, after about three or four hours’ course finally loses itself in a bog there, without ever arriving at the sea.” This was likewise the case in former times, as Strabo, lib. xvi., Pliny, lib. v. 18, testify; who say, “that this river was expended in canals, and drunk up by watering the place.”
“The best sight,” says the same Maundrell, p. 39, “that the palace of the emir of Beroot, anciently Berytus, affords, and the worthiest to be remembered, is the orange garden. It contains a large quadrangular plat of ground, divided into sixteen lesser squares, four in a row, with walks between them. The walks are shaded with orange trees of a large spreading size. Every one of these sixteen lesser squares in the garden was bordered with stone; and in the stone work were troughs, very artificially contrived, for conveying the water all over the garden; there being little outlets cut at every tree for the stream as it passed by to flow out and water it.” The royal gardens at Ispahan are watered just in the same manner, according to Kempfer’s description, Amoen. Exot., p. 193.
This gives us a clear idea of the palgey mayim, mentioned in the first Psalm, and other places of Scripture, “the divisions of waters,” the waters distributed in artificial canals; for so the phrase properly signifies. The prophet Jeremiah, Jer 17:8, has imitated, and elegantly amplified, the passage of the psalmist above referred to: –
“He shall be like a tree planted by the water side,
And which sendeth forth her roots to the aqueduct.
She shall not fear, when the heat cometh;
But her leaf shall be green;
And in the year of drought she shall not be anxious,
Neither shall she cease from bearing fruit.”
From this image the son of Sirach, Ecclus. 24:30, 31, has most beautifully illustrated the influence and the increase of religious wisdom in a well prepared heart.
“I also come forth as a canal from a river,
And as a conduit flowing into a paradise.
I said, I will water my garden,
And I will abundantly moisten my border:
And, lo! my canal became a river,
And my river became a sea.”
This gives us the true meaning of the following elegant proverb, Pr 21:1: –
“The heart of the king is like the canals of
waters in the hand of JEHOVAH;
Whithersoever it pleaseth him, he inclineth it.”
The direction of it is in the hand of JEHOVAH, as the distribution of the water of the reservoir through the garden by different canals is at the will of the gardener.
“Et, cum exustus ager morientibus aestuat herbis,
Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam
Elicit: illa cadens raucum per levia murmur
Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva.”
Virg., Georg. i. 107.
“Then, when the fiery suns too fiercely play,
And shrivelled herbs on withering stems decay,
The wary ploughman on the mountain’s brow
Undams his watery stores; huge torrents flow;
And, rattling down the rocks, large moisture yield,
Tempering the thirsty fever of the field.”
DRYDEN.
Solomon, Ec 2:5-6, mentions his own works of this kind: –
“I made me gardens, and paradises;
And I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees.
I made me pools of water,
To water with them the grove flourishing with trees.”
Maundrell, p. 88, has given a description of the remains, as they are said to be, of these very pools made by Solomon, for the reception and preservation of the waters of a spring, rising at a little distance from them; which will give us a perfect notion of the contrivance and design of such reservoirs.
“As for the pools, they are three in number, lying in a row above each other; being so disposed that the waters of the uppermost may descend into the second, and those of the second into the third. Their figure is quadrangular, the breadth is the same in all, amounting to about ninety paces. In their length there is some difference between them; the first being about one hundred and sixty paces long, the second, two hundred, and the third, two hundred and twenty. They are all lined with wall and plastered; and contain a great depth of water.”
The immense works which were made by the ancient kings of Egypt for recovering the waters of the Nile, when it overflowed, for such uses, are well known. But there never was a more stupendous work of this kind than the reservoir of Saba, or Merab, in Arabia Felix. According to the tradition of the country, it was the work of Balkis, that queen of Sheba who visited Solomon. It was a vast lake formed by the collection of the waters of a torrent in a valley, where, at a narrow pass between two mountains, a very high mole or dam was built. The water of the lake so formed had near twenty fathoms depth; and there were three sluices at different heights, by which, at whatever height the lake stood, the plain below might be watered. By conduits and canals from these sluices the water was constantly distributed in due proportion to the several lands; so that the whole country for many miles became a perfect paradise. The city of Saba, or Merab, was situated immediately below the great dam; a great flood came, and raised the lake above its usual height; the dam gave way in the middle of the night; the waters burst forth at once, and overwhelmed the whole city, with the neighbouring towns and people. The remains of eight tribes were forced to abandon their dwellings, and the beautiful valley became a morass and a desert. This fatal catastrophe happened long before the time of Mohammed, who mentions it in the Koran, chap. xxxiv. ver. 15. See also Sale, Prelim. s. i. p. 10, and Michaelis, Quest. aux Voyag. Dan. No. 94. Niebuhr, Descrip. de l’Arabie. p. 240.-L.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
As you have sinned under the oaks and in gardens, so you shall be made like unto oaks and gardens, not when they are green and flourishing, but when they wither and decay.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
30. oakYe shall be like the”oaks,” the object of your “desire” (Isa1:29). People become like the gods they worship; they never riseabove their level (Ps 135:18).So men’s sins become their own scourges (Jer2:9). The leaf of the idol oak fades by a law of necessaryconsequence, having no living sap or “water” from God. So”garden” answers to “gardens” (Isa1:29).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth,…. Shall be stripped of all their dependencies and self confidence, and be as naked and as bare as an oak that has cast its leaves; or thus, in a way of just retaliation, since they have desired oaks, and sacrificed under them, they shall be like them as in the wintertime, stripped of all their riches, honour, substance, and desirable things; see
Re 18:12
and as a garden that hath no water; in which the herbs and plants are dried up and withered: it signifies the uncomfortable condition such shall be in, as before.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
He still continues in the same excitement, piling a second explanatory sentence upon the first, and commencing this also with “for” ( Chi ); and then, carried away by the association of ideas, he takes terebinths and gardens as the future figures of the idolatrous people themselves. “For ye shall become like a terebinth with withered leaves, and like a garden that hath no water.” Their prosperity is distroyed, so that they resemble a terebinth withered as to its leaves, which in other cases are always green ( nobleth aleah , genitives connection according to (Ges. 112, 2). Their sources of help are dried up, so that they are like a garden without water, and therefore waste. In this withered state terebinths and gardens, to which the idolatrous are compared, are easily set on fire. All that is wanted is a spark to kindle them, when they are immediately in flames.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
30. Ye shall certainly be (33) as an oak whose leaf fadeth The Hebrew particle כי ( ki) may be taken in an affirmative sense, as I have translated it; and the Prophet appears to allude to those groves to which they had improperly restricted the worship of God; for, having mentioned gardens, he reproaches them with the confidence which they placed in theme and threatens drought. “You take pleasure,” says he, “in your gardens and trees, but you shall be like withered trees that have lost their foliage.” God therefore mocks the vain boasting of idolaters, who marvellously flatter themselves with their contrivances, and think that heaven is open to them, when they are employed in their ceremonies. Just as at the present day, when the papists have lighted their lamps and adorned their temples, when they dazzle with gold and precious stones, when they have played on their organs and rung their bells, they imagine that they are the happiest of all men, as if there were now no reason to dread that any evil should come to them from God, who had received from them a hundredfold satisfaction.
(33) For ye shall be. — Eng. Ver.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(30) Ye shall be . . .Men were to think of the pleasant places that had tempted them, not as they had seen them, fresh and green, but as burnt up and withered, and then were to see in that desolation a parable of their own future. The word for strong occurs only in Amo. 2:9, where we find strong as the oaks.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
30. An oak whose leaf fadeth “Notice the beautiful sarcasm. Ye have chosen oaks, and as a fading-leafed oak ye shall be; ye have chosen gardens, and ye shall be as a garden dry and parched. The objects or your idolatry are the images of your ruin.” Whedon.
“Handfuls of Purpose”
For All Gleaners
“A garden “that hath no water.” Isa 1:30
How wonderfully the powers of nature co-operate! How wonderfully, too, things that are far separated from one another have a mutual influence! Yet the influence is not always mutual; sometimes it is entirely on one side. The garden has no effect upon the clouds, but the clouds have a wonderful effect upon the garden. What would the garden be without rain? Soon it would be but so much dry and fruitless dust. It is united in its substance and made productive in its influence by the sun, the rain, and the living air. These do for the garden what the Spirit of the Lord did for man when he was made out of the dust of the ground. They breathe into the garden the breath of life, they redeem the ground from desolation and turn it into a garden of beauty. How often we see in character the exact counterpart of this picture! A man may have many qualities which are totally useless for beneficent purposes on account of the baseness of some one agent or influence. The garden, for example, may be large, and may be laid out with picturesque effect as to its outlines; the paths may be broad, the beds may be shapely, and the whole may be complete as a picture; yet for want of the rain what have we but fruitlessness and desolation! So it is with character. Men may have great intellectual capacity; but unless they be filled with the spirit of grace their very intellect becomes but an instrument of ignorance itself. Men may have large material resources, but if they never receive the shower of divine blessing those resources will be without fruitfulness in relation to surrounding poverty and pain. We often see a man who is ruined for want of one thing. He has bodily strength, he has great material riches, he has a good social position, yet for want of grace or courage or patience or sympathy the whole estate seems to be lost. The rain itself would do no good if it had not a garden to fall upon. The rain does not make the garden, it only falls upon the soil and puts it into workable conditions. So the very grace of God must have something to fall upon. We must supply the outline, the nominal man, the capacity; and the grace of God working upon these will issue in a great miracle. A rich man who has no sympathy is as a garden that hath no water. An intellectual man without religiousness of feeling is as a garden that hath no water. A well-read man without the disposition to communicate his knowledge is as a garden that hath no water. A family that has no outlying dependants or clients is as a garden that hath no water. Do not call it a garden; call it a wilderness. We should seek out the name of the blessing which we most need, and should ply heaven with our prayers until we receive that essential gift: otherwise the best of us will be as a garden that hath no water.
Isa 1:30 For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.
Ver. 30. For ye shall be as an oak. ] Peccato poenam accommodat; By oaks they sinned, and by a withering a oak is their punishment set forth: as also by a garden that wanteth water, wherein everything fadeth and hangeth the head, as suffering a marasm. Well might God say, Hos 12:10 , “I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets,” such as are very natural, plain, and proper.
a Infelicissime marcescetis et exarescetis. – Jun.
Isaiah
WHAT SIN DOES TO MEN
Isa 1:30 – Isa 1:31 The original reference of these words is to the threatened retribution for national idolatry, of which ‘oaks’ and ‘gardens’ were both seats. The nation was, as it were, dried up and made inflammable; the idol was as the ‘spark’ or the occasion for destruction. But a wider application, which comes home to us all, is to the fatal results of sin. These need to be very plainly stated, because of the deceitfulness of sin, which goes on slaying men by thousands in silence.
‘That grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace.’
I. Sin withers.
We see the picture of a blasted tree in the woods, while all around are in full leaf, with tiny leaves half developed and all brown at the edges. The prophet draws another picture, that of a garden not irrigated, and therefore, in the burning East, given over to barrenness.
Sin makes men fruitless and withered.
It involves separation from God, the source of all fruitfulness Psa 1:1 – Psa 1:6.
Think of how many pure desires and innocent susceptibilities die out of a sinful soul. Think of how many capacities for good disappear. Think of how dry and seared the heart becomes. Think of how conscience is stifled.
All sin-any sin-does this.
Not only gross, open transgressions, but any piece of godless living will do it.
Whatever a man does against his conscience-neglect of duty, habitual unveracity, idleness-in a word, his besetting sin withers him up.
And all the while the evil thing that is drawing his life-blood is growing like a poisonous, blotched fungus in a wine-cask.
II. Sin makes men inflammable.
A subsidiary reference may be intended to the sinful man as easily catching fire at temptation. But the main thought is that sin makes a man ready for destruction, ‘whose end is to be burned.’
The materials for retribution are laid up in a man’s nature by wrong-doing. The conspirators store the dynamite in a dark cellar. Conscience and memory are charged with explosives.
If tendencies, habits, and desires become tyrannous by long indulgence and cannot be indulged, what a fierce fire would rage then!
We have only to suppose a man made to know what is the real moral character of his actions, and to be unable to give them up, to have hell.
All this is confirmed by occasional glimpses which men get of themselves. Our own characters are the true Medusa-head which turns a man into stone when he sees it.
What, then, are we really doing by our sins? Piling together fuel for burning.
III. Sin burns up.
Evil deeds are the occasion of the divine retribution. They are ‘a spark.’ It is they who light the pyre, not God. The prophet here protests in God’s name against the notion that He is to be blamed for punishing. Men are their own self-tormentors. The sinful man immolates himself. Like Isaac, he carries the wood and lays the pile for his own burning.
Christ severs the connection between us and our evil. He restores beauty and freshness to the blighted tree, planting it as ‘by the river of water,’ so that it ‘bringeth forth its fruit in its season,’ and its ‘leaf also doth not wither.’
be = become.
leaf. Some codices (one in margin), with four early printed editions, Septuagint, Syr, and Vulgate, read “Leaves” (plural)
ye shall be: Isa 5:6, Jer 17:5, Jer 17:6, Eze 17:9, Eze 17:10, Eze 17:24, Mat 21:19
garden: Isa 58:11, Jer 31:12, Eze 31:4-18
Reciprocal: Isa 6:13 – teil tree Jer 11:16 – with
Isa 1:30. For ye shall be as an oak, &c. As you have sinned under the oaks and in the gardens, so you shall be like unto oaks and gardens, not when they are green and flourishing, but when they wither and decay. This verse is remarkably elegant, in which, what was the pleasure and confidence of those idolaters, is made to denote their punishment. All the gardens in the East, says a late writer, have water in them, which is so absolutely necessary, that without it every thing, in summer, would be parched up. This is a circumstance which we should attend to, if we would enter into the energy of the latter clause.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments