Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 29:7
And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision.
7. her munition ] perhaps her citadel (R.V. “stronghold”).
a dream of a night vision ] R.V. a dream, a vision of the night.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
7, 8. The figure of the dream is applied in two ways; first, objectively, to the vanishing of the enemy; second, subjectively, to his disappointment.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And the multitude of all the nations – The Assyrians, and their allied hosts.
And her munition – Her fortresses, castles, places of strength 2Sa 5:7; Ecc 9:14; Eze 19:9.
Shall be as a dream of a night vision – In a dream we seem to see the objects of which we think as really as when awake, and hence, they are called visions, and visions of the night Gen 46:2; Job 4:13; Job 7:14; Dan 2:28; Dan 4:5; Dan 7:1, Dan 7:7, Dan 7:13, Dan 7:15. The specific idea here is not that of the suddenness with which objects seen in a dream appear and then vanish, but it is that which occurs in Isa 29:8, of one who dreams of eating and drinking, but who awakes, and is hungry and thirsty still. So it was with the Assyrian. He had set his heart on the wealth of Jerusalem. He had earnestly desired to possess that city – as a hungry man desires to satisfy the cravings of his appetite. But it would be like the vision of the night; and on that fatal morning on which he should awake from his fond dream Isa 37:36, he would find all his hopes dissipated, and the longcherished desire of his soul unsatisfied still.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 29:7-8
As a dream of a night vision
The visions of sin
There are two grand truths of a most stirring import unfolded in the text.
1. That wicked men are frequently employed to execute the Divine purpose. The Almighty determined to humble Jerusalem, and He employed Sennacherib as the engine of His justice. He makes the wrath of man to praise Him. What a revelation is this of His absolute command over the fiercest and freest workings of the most depraved and rebellious subjects!
2. That whilst wicked men execute the Divine purpose, they frustrate their own. Sennacherib worked out the Divine result, but all his own plans and wishes were like the visions of the famished traveller on the Oriental desert, who, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, lies down and dreams, under the rays of a tropical sun, that he is eating and drinking, but awakes and discovers, to his inexpressible distress, that both his hunger and thirst are but increased. Hell works out Gods plans and frustrates its own; Heaven works out Gods plans, and fulfils its own. Let us look at the vision before us as illustrating the visions of sin.
I. IT IS A DREAMY VISION. It is as a dream of a night vision. There are waking visions. The orient creations of poetry, the bright prospects of hope, the appalling apprehensions of fear–these are visions occurring when the reflective powers of the soul are more or less active, and are, therefore, not entirely unsubstantial and vain. But the visions which occur in sleep, when the senses are closed, and the consciousness is torpid, and the reason has resigned her sway to the hands of a lawless imagination, are generally without reality. Now, the Scriptures represent the sinner as asleep. But where is the analogy between the natural sleep of the body and the moral sleep of sin?
1. Natural sleep is the ordination of God, but moral is not.
2. Natural sleep is restorative, but moral is destructive.
3. In both there is the want of activity. The inactivity of the moral sleep of the sinner is the inactivity of the moral faculty–the conscience.
4. In both there is the want of consciousness. With the sinner in his moral slumbers–God, Christ, the soul, heaven, hell, are nothing to him.
II. IT IS AN APPETITIVE VISION. What is the dream of the man whom the Almighty brings under our notice in the text, who lies down to sleep under the raging desire for food and water? It is that he was eating and drinking. His imagination creates the very things for which his appetite was craving. His imagination was the servant of his strongest appetites. So it is ever with the sinner: the appetite for animal gratifications will create its visions of sensual pleasure: the appetite for worldly wealth will create its visions of fortune; the appetite for power will create its visions of social influence and applause. The sinners imagination is ever the servant of his strongest appetites, and ever pictures to him in airy but attractive forms the objects he most strongly desires.
III. IT IS AN ILLUSORY VISION. The food and water were a mirage in the visionary desert, dissipated into air as his eye opened. All the ideas of happiness entertained by the sinner are mental illusions. There are many theories of happiness practically entertained by men that are as manifestly illusive as the wildest dream.
1. Every notion of happiness is delusive that has not to do more with the soul than the senses.
2. Every notion of happiness is delusive that has not more to do with the character than the circumstances.
3. Every notion is delusive that has not more to do with the present than with the future. He that is preparing intentionally for happiness is not happy, nor can he be: the selfish motive renders it impossible. He that seeketh his life shall lose it. Heaven is for the man that is now blessed in his deeds, and for him only. The present is everything to us, because God is in it, and out of it starts the future
4. Every notion is delusive that has not more to do with the absolute than the contingent.
IV. IT IS A TRANSITORY VISION. In the text, the supposed dreamer was led to feel the illusion which his wayward imagination had practised upon him. He awaketh, and his soul is empty. Every moral sleeper must awake either here or hereafter; here by disciplinary voices, or hereafter by retributive thunders. (Homilist.)
Dreaming
As the army of Sennacherib were dreaming, literally or figuratively, of a conquest which had no real existence, so are there multitudes of persons now dreaming that they are accomplishing the great object of their existence who are no more doing so than if they lay wrapped in the slumbers of the night. I propose to speak of them under three heads.
All three are capable of being substituted, and often are substituted, for the real and proper business of life.
I. PLEASURE.
1. How comes it to pass that people can live such lives, dreaming all the while that they are fulfilling the true purpose of their existence, or, at least, without any uneasy sense that they are criminally failing to do so?
(1) One cause of it is that the thing in question is pleasure. Nothing succeeds like success.
(2) Another explanation is, that many of the pleasures for which men live make great demands on their exertions. Some kinds of play are harder than work. Men, therefore, feel it difficult to believe that what bears so near a resemblance to work is not work, and that very work which they were sent into the world to do.
(3) A great many of the pleasures of life are enjoyed in association with others. And amidst the exhilaration of spirits, the brisk laughter, the friendly encounters, it is very difficult to believe that a life made up largely of such occupations is not the life we were intended to live.
(4) Then, a great deal of the pleasure is intimately associated with fashion.
(5) The alleged innocence of the pleasures indulged in contributes also to the deception.
(6) Again, it is sometimes said that, however censurable a life of pleasure may be for those in advanced life, it is innocent and even suitable for the young.
2. But it may be said, What is there to show that such a life is only a dream-like substitute for our real life?
(1) It leaves our best faculties unused.
(2) A life of pleasure, moreover, is a selfish life.
(3) A life of pleasure also exposes to temptation.
(4) A life devoted to pleasure, too, unfits men for another world.
II. WORK. By work is meant some secular occupation by which money, or its equivalent, is gained. The Bible praises work. Work keeps us from being dependent on others. It tends to the benefit of those dependent on us.
And work is good as furnishing a man with the means of helping his neighbours, and of contributing to the support of the great movements in operation for lessening the suffering and the sin of the world. And work is good, as giving a man influence by means of the wealth it produces. It is also in favour of a life of diligent employment, that it keeps from much evil. And yet neither is work, any more than pleasure, the great end of man; and those who deem it so are indulging in a baseless dream. The moral value of work is to be measured by its motive and its influence. A life of excessive devotion to work is hostile to the higher life of a man. It leaves but little time for those exercises which are found so essential to a life of godliness. It indisposes for such employments. It shuts out the other world by the undue prominence it gives to this. It banishes God from the thoughts. It is a practical neglect of the soul. Others suffer also. Such a life makes us indifferent to the interests of others.
III. RELIGION. And this time, you will perhaps say, they are likely to be right. On the contrary, there is more danger of their going wrong here than in either of the previous cases. And for this reason–that the sacred name of religion disposes men to think all is as it should be if they can persuade themselves that they are religious. Religion assumes a great variety of forms, and some of them not only worthless, but pernicious.
1. Can it be questioned that a great deal of the religion of England now is nothing more than amusement, and often amusement of the most childish nature?
2. If religion in other cases seems to go deeper, it is too often only another name for superstition, where chief importance is attached to the conventional sanctity of the persons who officiate, the garments they wear, the sacraments they administer, the postures they adopt, the seasons they observe.
3. Then there is the religion of sentiment, of which the chief object is to awaken certain emotions.
4. There is also a religion in which the intellect performs the principal function.
5. We might speak of that religion which is hereditary, where a man adopts a particular faith or worship because his ancestors did so before him.
6. We might speak of the religion of fashion, where the fashionable gathering forms the great attraction.
7. We might speak of the religious observances in which men engage to fill up time which they are forbidden by custom to employ in secular pursuits; or of the religion which is only occasional and spasmodic; or of that which consists in bustle and superficial activity. These religions all agree in being good for nothing. Some of them do harm. Religion is a life. Religion has two sides. On the one it turns toward God, on the other toward man. But all dreams must come to an end. There is a dread awaking in prospect. Think of the disappointment that will attend the awaking! Let us not be deceived by the apparent reality of the life we are leading. What can seem more real than a dream? yet what more unsubstantial? With the feeling of disappointment will be mingled one of contempt. As a dream when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise their image. We experience a sort of resentment on finding that we have been so deceived by that which had no reality. Will there be nothing like this on awaking from a life wasted in trifling? (D. P. Pratten, B. A.)
The disappointments of sin
The general truth taught by these words is this: wrong-doing promises much, but it certainly ends in bitter disappointment. The good to be gained by sin is seen and tasted and handled only in dream. It is never actually possessed, and visible disappointment is the bitter fruit of transgression.
I. THE VERY NATURE OF SIN SUGGESTS THIS FACT.
1. Sin is a wandering from the way which God has appointed for us–the way which was in His mind when He made man–the only way which has ever been in His mind as the right way. There is no adaptation in mans real nature to any way but one, and that is obedience to a Father in Heaven, the result and fruit of true love for that Father.
2. Sin is a practical withdrawing from the protection of Divine providence. It thus wounds, sometimes instantly, and always eventually, the transgressor himself. It is as when a hungry man dreameth, and awaketh, and behold, he is faint.
II. LOOK AT A FEW RECOGNISED FACTS ABOUT SIN.
1. The angels who kept not their first estate left their own habitation. So far as we can understand the matter they sought freedom, but they found chains. They sought light; they found darkness. They sought happiness; they found misery,–as when a hungry man dreameth and eateth, and awaketh and finds himself famishing.
2. Our first parents, in yielding to the first temptation, soughs equality with God; but they soon found themselves fallen below the natural human level
3. The general history of sin is found in epitome in the life of every sinner. In families and Churches and nations, in societies of all kinds, we see illustrated the truth that sin everywhere, by whomsoever committed, is the occasion of most bitter disappointment. (S. Martin.)
Life a dream
Lord Brougham relates an occurrence which strikingly shows how short a thing a dream is. A person who had asked a friend to call him early in the morning, dreamed that he was taken ill, and that, after remedies had been tried in vain by those about him, a medical man was sent for who lived some miles away, and who did not arrive before some hours had elapsed. On his arrival he threw some cold water upon the face of the patient. Thereupon the sleeper awoke. The water was, in fact, applied by his friend, for the purpose of awaking him. The inference is that this apparent dream of hours was the affair of a moment. Such is human life. (D. P.Pratten, B. A.)
A dream
The figure of the dream is applied in two ways.
1. Objectively, to the vanishing of the enemy.
2. Subjectively, to his disappointment. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Disenchantment
(Isa 29:8):–A more vivid representation of utter disenchantment than this verse gives can scarcely be conceived. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Disappointing fancies
No sooner had I shut my eyes than fancy would convey me to the streams and rivers of my native land. There, as I wandered along the verdant bank, I surveyed the clear stream with transport, and hastened to swallow the delightful draught; but alas! disappointment awakened me, and I found myself a lonely captive, perishing of thirst amid the wilds of Africa. (Mungo Parks Journal.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 7. As a dream] This is the beginning of the comparison, which is pursued and applied in the next verse. Sennacherib and his mighty army are not compared to a dream because of their sudden disappearance; but the disappointment of their eager hopes is compared to what happens to a hungry and thirsty man, when he awakes from a dream in which fancy had presented to him meat and drink in abundance, and finds it nothing but a vain illusion. The comparison is elegant and beautiful in the highest degree, well wrought up, and perfectly suited to the end proposed. The image is extremely natural, but not obvious: it appeals to our inward feelings, not to our outward senses; and is applied to an event in its concomitant circumstances exactly similar, but in its nature totally different. See De S. Poes. Hebr. Praelect. xii. For beauty and ingenuity it may fairly come in competition with one of the most elegant of Virgil, greatly improved from Homer, Iliad xxii. 199, where he has applied to a different purpose, but not so happily, the same image of the ineffectual working of imagination in a dream: –
Ac veluti in somnis, oculos ubi languida pressit
Nocte quies, necquicquam avidos extendere cursus
Velle videmur, et in mediis conatibus aegri
Succidimus; non lingua valet, non corpore notae
Sufficiunt vires, nec vox, nec verba sequuntur.
AEn., xii. 908.
“And as, when slumber seals the closing sight,
The sick wild fancy labours in the night;
Some dreadful visionary foe we shun
With airy strides, but strive in vain to run;
In vain our baffled limbs their powers essay;
We faint, we struggle, sink, and fall away;
Drain’d of our strength, we neither fight nor fly,
And on the tongue the struggling accents die.”
PITT.
Lucretius expresses the very same image with Isaiah: –
Ut bibere in somnis sitiens quum quaerit, et humor
Non datur, ardorem in membris qui stinguere possit;
Sed laticum simulacra petit, frustraque laborat,
In medioque sitit torrenti flumine potans.
iv. 1091.
As a thirsty man desires to drink in his sleep,
And has no fluid to allay the heat within,
But vainly labours to catch the image of rivers,
And is parched up while fancying that he is
drinking at a full stream. Bishop Stock’s translation of the prophet’s text is both elegant and just: –
“As when a hungry man dreameth; and, lo! he is eating:
And he awaketh; and his appetite is unsatisfied.
And as a thirsty man dreameth; and, lo! he is drinking:
And he awaketh; and, lo! he is faint,
And his appetite craveth.”
Lucretius almost copies the original.
All that fight against her and her munition – “And all their armies and their towers”] For tsobeyha umetsodathah, I read, with the Chaldee, tsebaam umetsodatham.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Wherein it shall be so is explained in the next verse.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
7. munitionfortress.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,…. The Roman army, which consisted of men of all nations, that fought against Jerusalem; the city in which was the altar, as the Targum paraphrases it:
even all that fight against her, and her munition, and that distress her; that besieged it, and endeavoured to demolish its walls, towns, and fortifications, as they did:
shall be as a dream of a night vision: meaning either that the Roman empire should quickly fall, and pass away, and come to nothing, like a dream in the night, as it soon began to decay after the destruction of Jerusalem, and also the Pagan religion in it; or that the Roman army would be disappointed at the taking of the city, expecting to find much riches, and a great spoil, and should not; and so be like a man that dreams, and fancies he is in the possession of what he craves, but, when he awakes, finds he has got nothing. This is more largely exemplified in the following verse Isa 29:8.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
7. As a dream of a night-vision. This verse also I interpret differently from others; for they think that the Prophet intended to bring consolation to the godly. There is undoubtedly great plausibility in this view, and it contains an excellent doctrine, namely, that the enemies of the Church resemble “dreamers” in this respect, that the Lord disappoints their hopes, even when they think that they have almost gained their object. (263) But this interpretation does not appear to me to agree well with the text. Sometimes it happens that, when a sentence is beautiful, it attracts us to it, and causes us to steal away from the true meaning, so that we do not adhere closely to the context, or spend much time in investigating the author’s meaning. Let us therefore inquire if this be the true meaning of the Prophet.
Since he afterwards proceeds again to utter threatenings, I have no doubt that here he follows out the same subject, which otherwise would be improperly broken off by the present statement. He censures the Jews, and rebukes them for their obstinacy, in boldly despising God and all his threatenings. In short, by a most appropriate metaphor, he reproves them for their false confidence and presumption, when he threatens that the enemies shall arrive suddenly and unexpectedly, while the Jews shall imagine that they are enjoying profound peace, and are very far from all danger; and that the event shall be so sudden and unexpected, that it will appear to be “a dream.” “Although then,” says he, “thou indulgest the hope of uninterrupted repose, the Lord will quickly awake thee, and will drive away thy presumption.”
The Prophet says wittily, that the Jews are “dreaming,” because, in consequence of being drowned in their pleasures, they neither see nor feel anything, but, amidst the dizzy whirl, stupidly fancy that they are happy. Hence he infers that the enemies will come, as in “a dream,” to strike terror into those who are asleep, as it frequently happens that a pleasant and delightful sleep is disturbed by frightful dreams. It follows from this, that the pleasures which have lulled them to sleep will be of no advantage to them; for, though they do not at all think of it, yet a tumult will arise suddenly. This might still have been somewhat obscure, if he had not explained the subject more fully in the following verse.
(263) Bogus footnote
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
DREAMING
Isa. 29:7-8. Shall be as a dream of a night vision, &c.
The reference in these two verses is to the threatened attack on Jerusalem by the Assyrian invasion in the reign of Hezekiah. They take us to the time the invader had taken all the other fortified places in the kingdom; and now his general, Rabshakeh, was encamped before the capital, with the confident expectation of easily taking it. It would seem as if, the requisite preparations having been made, that immense army had retired to rest, with the intention of making the assault on the next day. We can imagine them in their dreams picturing to themselves the scenes of the approaching capture, the shouting, the onset, the slaughter, the devastation, the prisoners, the booty, the triumph, the gloryscenes, however, these which they were destined never to witness! For, in the dead of night, the Destroying Angel went forth, and in the morning nothing remained of 185,000 of them but their lifeless corpses. So ended their dreams!
Even as the army of Sennacherib was dreaming of a conquest which had no real existence, so are there multitudes of persons now dreaming that they are accomplishing the great object of their existence who are no more doing so than if they lay wrapped in the slumbers of the night. I propose to speak of such persons under the three heads of PLEASURE, WORK, RELIGION.
I. PLEASURE. I am not condemning pleasure. Pleasure has its place in every human life, just as truly as work and religion. I am speaking of a life devoted to pleasure. Nor do I speak of the grosser pleasuresthese shock us at once, others delude usbut of those whose great aim in life is to please themselves; who, in respect to any proposed course of action, never think of asking, Is it my duty? But what is there to show that such a life is only a dream-like substitute for real life?
1. It leaves our best faculties unused. Can it be believed that God made us a little lower than the angels that we might spend our lives in pursuits which hardly require the faculties of a man?
2. A life of pleasure is a selfish life. Where pleasure is the habitual object of pursuit there must be selfishness. Wherever pleasure is the great object of life, the interest of others will be held in low esteem.
3. A life of pleasure also exposes to temptation.
4. It unfits men for another world. We shall never be ready for heaven if we never think seriously about it; and pleasure pre-eminently withdraws our thoughts from that world (H. E. I., 5059).
II. Another form of the dream is the impression that WORK, i.e., secular occupation, is the great business of life. Work is not to be spoken of without respect.
1. The Bible praises work. Six days shalt thou labour.
2. It keeps us from dependence on others.
3. It benefits those dependent upon us.
4. It is good as enabling a man to help his neighbours.
5. Good as giving a man influence by means of the wealth it produces.
6. Good as keeping us out of much evil. Intemperance is usually the vice of the idle. So of other vices. But still it has its dangerous side. It shuts out the other world by the undue prominence it gives to this. It diminishes our sympathy with the suffering, and makes us unconcerned about the kingdom of Christ. Noble as work is when compared with idleness, it is not the great business of life. God did not endow us with intellect, heart, and spirit, with relations to Himself, to our fellows, and to immortality, that we might spend our lives in a practical denial of them all. A life of mere work is a dream as truly as a life of pleasure.
III. Another thing which men are apt to consider the great business of life is RELIGION. In many cases religion is little more than amusement; in others superstition; in others mere sentiment. There is a religion which is merely an affair of the intellect; another where it is hereditary, where a man follows a form of religion because his fathers did so before him. It is forgotten that religion is a life. Religious knowledge, beliefs, feelings, exercises are but the scaffolding and not the building; means to an end, not the end itself. The great end of life is not to be religious, but to be good. True religion has two sides: it first puts us right with God and then with our fellow-men. We love God first, and only then do we love man and work for his good.
The prophet tells us how the dreams of these Assyrians vanished. Even such will be the disappointment of those who are dreaming away the grand possibilities of the present life.B. P. Pratten, B.A.: Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii. pp. 187191.
AWAKENED FROM THE DREAM
Isa. 29:8. It shall be even as when an hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty.
This passage describes the disappointment of the Assyrians, whose imagination had feasted on the conquest of Jerusalem. The simile is striking. A man in extreme hunger or thirst will dream that his craving is satisfied. He awakes to feel the privation more acutely. The text may be applied to the case of a man disappointed with the world, awakened to a sense of its emptiness, concerned for his soul. There is a sense of sin, danger, need. On the day of Pentecost the awakened cried, What shall we do? Thus the Philippian jailor. We will address this state of mind
I. In words of sympathy. The awakened solicitude is justified by
1. the value of the soul;
2. the fact of sin;
3. the reality of danger;
4. the provision of the gospel;
5. the call of God;
6. the unsatisfactoriness of neglect;
7. the flight of time.
II. In words of caution.
1. Beware of relapsing into indifference (H. E. I., 14791490). Many are awakened and anxious, but it does not endure. Herod heard John gladly and did many things. Transient impressions are like Ephraims goodness (Hos. 6:4). Some are excitable but fickle. When the charm of novelty departs, their enthusiasm departs. Religion experiences similar treatment. Nor is it from yourself alone that you are exposed to this peril. You will meet with those who will endeavour to repress your earnestness. They will commend a moderate attention to religion, but will counsel you to wait until you are older, &c. A quiet, sober, decent attention to religious duties is well enough, but they cannot see the necessity for making religion the primary concern. Beware of such advisers. This is a matter in which earnestness is demanded. Keep fresh and vigorous in your mind the considerations by which you were first awakened. Salvation is either the supremely important thing the gospel declares, or it is nothing. Is the sick man too anxious for health, too attentive to the physicians directions? When the starving man has dreamed of food, does any one repress his eagerness for the reality when, on awaking, he finds it was only a dream? Beware lest either unsympathising friends or your own weakness administer the opiate that will send you back into the slumber of indifference from which you have been awakened.
2. Beware of assuming that you are converted because you are awakened. Awakening is not conversion. Conviction is not conversion; it does not necessarily end in it. Pharaoh said, I have sinned. It is a hopeful circumstance; a step on the road; attention called to the disease; disappearance of the dream. The awakened on the day of Pentecost were directed respecting conversion.
3. Beware of finding comfort anywhere else than in the gospel. Performance of religious duties; prayers; peaceful feeling, you know not why; impression that you are forgiven. It is untempered mortar; it will not bind the walls. Nothing less than faith in Jesus.
III. In words of counsel. Comply at once with the call of the Gospel. Christs work is all-sufficient. Faith and repentance is submission at both points. The call is
1. Gracious.
2. Immediate. Do not delay; do not wait for the Spirit nor anything else. You are a man, not a machine. You must obey the gospel. The Spirit is working with the gospel.John Rawlinson.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(7) Against her and her munition.The word is a rare one, but probably stands here for the new fortifications by which Uzziah and Hezekiah had defended Jerusalem.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Isa 29:7-8. And the multitude of all the nations These verses contain the event of the siege of Jerusalem, with respect to the Chaldees and Romans; and the meaning of the parable appears to he this, that the joy of the enemies, after the destruction of Jerusalem, shall not be of a long continuance, but imaginary; such as is the joy and pleasure of dreamers; for, persuading themselves, after the great labour of taking and destroying Jerusalem, that they may give themselves up to rest, or sleep; that with the destruction of this state they had entirely cut off the religion of the true God, so that it could never more raise its head, and give trouble to the Roman empire and superstition; and on this account giving themselves awhile up to a dream of imaginary joy, they should at length be awakened from their sleep, and be experimentally convinced that they had fed themselves with false and delusive ideas; for, so far from hurting the true religion, these judgments of God should conduce to extend and amplify it, and to give it establishment over that idolatry which its enemies patronized. This was the case with many of the Chaldees, who became proselytes to the Jewish religion; and remarkably with the Romans; over whom that religion of Jesus Christ which came from the Jerusalem which they had destroyed, so remarkably triumphed: insomuch that Seneca, speaking of the Jews, says, that the conquered gave laws to the conquerors; victi victoribus leges dederint; and Rutilius, (who lived in the fifth century,) referring more immediately to the Christians, victoresque suos natio victa premit. See Vitringa.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Isa 29:7 And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision.
Ver. 7. Shall be as the dream of a night vision. ] Both in regard of thee to whom this siege and ruin shall happen beyond all thought, judgment, and expectation, as also in respect of the Chaldees themselves, who will never be satisfied with tormenting thee, as Isa 29:8 and yet shall fail of what they hope for too. a Spes mortalium sunt somnia vigilantium, saith Plato.
a Diod.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Ariel. Here it is plainly Jerusalem.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
the multitude: Isa 37:36, Isa 41:11, Isa 41:12, Jer 25:31-33, Jer 51:42-44, Nah 1:3-12, Zec 12:3-5, Zec 14:1-3, Zec 14:12-15, Rev 20:8, Rev 20:9
that distress: Isa 29:2
as a dream: Job 20:8, Psa 73:20
Reciprocal: Psa 90:5 – as a sleep Isa 10:12 – I will Eze 43:15 – the altar Oba 1:16 – and they shall be Nah 1:15 – he
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
29:7 And the {f} multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her strong hold, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision.
(f) The enemies that I will bring to destroy you, and that which you place your vain trust in will come at unawares even as a dream in the night. Some read as if this was a comfort to the Church for the destruction of their enemies.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
However, eventually "all" the enemies of Israel would vanish, just as the subject of a nightmare disappears when one wakes up (cf. Isa 37:36-37). This points beyond the Assyrian invasion and includes all similar attempts to destroy Jerusalem in the future. The events of 701 B.C. were a partial fulfillment, but the ultimate fulfillment is still future (cf. Rev 20:8-9). The Exodus was a similar earlier deliverance.
"Sennacherib’s forces lifted the siege to fight the Egyptians at Eltekeh. It was on their return from that victorious engagement that the devastating stroke of God here predicted fell upon them." [Note: Archer, p. 629.]