Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 47:11
Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, [which] thou shalt not know.
11. evil ] is the same word as “wickedness” in Isa 47:10; the play on the two meanings of the word is intentional.
from whence it riseth ] The literal rendering is given in R.V. “the dawning thereof.” But the metaphor is unnatural (of calamity), and the parallelism of the next line shews that an inf. must be read. A similar Arabic verb means “to charm”; accordingly most commentators now translate which thou shalt not know (how) to charm away (see R.V. marg.). Some, however, prefer a slight alteration of the text, reading “to buy off” ( for ; cf. the parallelism in Pro 6:35).
to put off ] is literally to expiate, i.e. avert by an offering. “They try to avert evil and procure good, either by purifications, sacrifices, or enchantments.” (Diodorus Siculus, quoted by Lenormant, l.c. p. 12.)
which thou shalt not know ] The parallelism with the other two lines of the tristich suggests that an inf. should be supplied at the end: which thou shalt not know how to (so Duhm).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Therefore shall evil come upon thee – In consequence of thy pride and self-confidence; of the prevalence of corruption, licentiousness, and sin; of the prevalence of the arts of magic and of divination abounding there; and of the cruel and unfeeling oppression of the people of God; for all these crimes ruin shall come certainly and suddenly upon thee.
Thou shalt not know from whence it cometh – Margin, The morning thereof. The margin expresses the true sense of the phrase. The word used here ( shachar) means the aurora, the dawn, the morning (see the notes at Isa 14:12). Lowth has strangely rendered it, Evil shall come upon thee, which thou shalt not know how to deprecate. But the word properly means the dawning of the morning, the aurora; and the sense is, that calamity should befall them whose rising or dawning they did not see, or anticipate. It would come unexpectedly and suddenly, like the first rays of the morning. It would spring up as if from no antecedent cause which would seem to lead to it, as the light comes suddenly out of the darkness.
And mischief – Destruction; ruin.
Thou shalt not be able to put it off – Margin, Expiate. This is the sense of the Hebrew (see the notes at Isa 43:3). The meaning is, that they could not then avert these calamities by any sacrifices, deprecations, or prayers. Ruin would suddenly and certainly come; and they had nothing which they could offer to God as an expiation by which it could then be prevented. We need not say how strikingly descriptive this is of the destruction of Babylon. Her ruin came silently and suddenly upon her, as the first rays of morning light steal upon the world, and in such a way that she could not meet it, or turn it away.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 47:11-15
Therefore shall evil come upon thee
Sudden destruction
The predicted calamity is represented as a great storm, which suddenly arises in eastern countries, and blows with such violence as to Spread devastation and ruin wherever its fury extends.
(R. Macculloch)
False securities: an exposure and a challenge
Can you find a solitary instance in which God approved iniquity? Was ever His sword sheathed in presence of evil? This constancy of judgment upon corrupt ways is itself an argument. One act of moral hesitation would have destroyed God! Time cannot modify Divine judgments. What was wrong in Babylon is wrong here: what was right in the most ancient time will be right on the worlds last day. We should remind ourselves of these elementary principles; for their very simplicity may cause us to neglect their claims. We shall regard the solemn denunciations as if spoken to our own city.
I. LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF UTTER AND MOST PAINFUL BEWILDERMENT. Evil shall come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know. There are times when the wind seems to be blowing from all quarters at once. There are times when all things seem to have a controversy with us. We set down our feet, and, lo, they are fastened to the ground: we put forth our hand, and an invisible weapon smites it: we look round, and behold the path is ploughed up, so that there is no way of retreat. We lose our own sagacity. Our wit fails us. Once our mind was quick, now it is dead or helpless. We lose confidence in ourselves; substances become shadows; the strongest of our fortresses melt away; and in our friends face there are discovered lines of suspicion or of mortal hate. This is the necessary and inevitable result of sin.
1. We have been warned of it.
2. A way of escape has been made.
II. HEAR THE DIVINE CHALLENGE ADDRESSED TO THE FALSE POWERS IN WHICH WE HAVE TRUSTED. Stand now with thine enchantments, &c. (Isa 47:12). Think that we are now called upon to set out in order the false securities in which we have trusted! There is one,–Money; there is two,–Chance; there is three,–Self-confidence; there is four–Atheisticspeculation. Now let them do for us all they can. God has challenged them!
1. They ought to be most useful when most needed.
2. They should show their sufficiency by their fearlessness. It is a challenge. I hear the whirlwind coming,–get out your money. You thought something would happen–something is happening,–Gods judgment is descending; where is your God Chance? You have confidence in yourself; be it so; make bare your arm,–see, it is but lightning,–it is but flood upon flood,–it is but world dashing against world, &c. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. There is to be a great collision. In that collision only the true can stand.
III. SEE THE DOOM OF FALSE SECURITIES. Behold, they shall be as stubble, &c. (Isa 47:14).
1. Let no man complain of want of opportunity of observing the value of his moral securities.
2. Let no man complain of having been allowed to live unwarned.
3. Think of so living that at last a man shall be left without a coal at which to warm himself! This is the end of sin,–this is the worthlessness of false gods! So far as we have had experience of life, we have seen the terrible failure of all false things. We have seen the judgment of God in parts. It is not all left to be revealed. We are entitled to reason from the past to the future; and when our own experience has, as a matter of fact, confirmed the revelation of God, we may know that future to be a terrible one to the servants of unrighteousness. What is the duty of man as dictated by mere common sense? It is to seek and trust that which is true.
(1) We cannot escape the trial of our securities.
(2) If we set ourselves against God, we challenge all the forces of His creation, fire, wind, flood, pestilence, &c. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Monthly prognosticators
(Isa 47:13):–The special reference is to the preparation of monthly almanacs (based on astrological calculations) in which coming (disasters were foretold, lucky and unlucky days pointed out, &c. A specimen of these almanacs is translated by Sayce in Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 11. Thou shalt not know from whence it riseth – “Thou shalt not know how to deprecate”] shachrah; so the Chaldee renders it, which is approved by Jarchi on the place; and Michaelis Epim. in Praelect. xix.; see Ps 78:34.
Videtur in fine hujus commatis deese verbum, ut hoc membrum prioribus respondeat. “A word appears to be wanting at the end of this clause to connect it properly with the two preceding. – SECKER.
In order to set in a proper light this judicious remark, it is necessary to give the reader an exact verbal translation of the whole verse: –
“And evil shall come upon thee, thou shalt not know how to
deprecate it;
And mischief shall fall upon thee, thou shalt not be able
to expiate it;
And destruction shall come suddenly upon thee, thou shalt
not know” —
What? how to escape, to avoid it, to be delivered from it? perhaps tseth mimmennah, “they could not go out from it,” Jer 11:11. I am persuaded that a phrase is here lost out of the text. But as the ancient versions retain no traces of it, and a wide field lies open to uncertain conjecture, I have not attempted to fill up the chasm, but have in the translation, as others have done before me, palliated and disguised the defect, which I cannot with any assurance pretend to supply. – L.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Therefore shall evil come upon thee; or rather, when it shall come: Heb. the morning of it, the day or time of its approach. And they are justly upbraided and derided for this ignorance, because the astrologers, the star-gazers, and the monthly prognosticators, mentioned here, Isa 17:13, pretended punctually to foretell the particular time of all future events. And this explication agrees with the history, Babylon being surprised by Cyrus when they were in deep security, as is manifest, both from Scripture, Jer 51:31; Da 5, and from other histories.
Desolation shall come upon thee suddenly; or, when thou shalt not know it. Thou shalt not apprehend thy danger till it be too late.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
11. from whence it risethHebrew,“the dawn thereof,” that is, its first rising. Evil shallcome on thee without the least previous intimation [ROSENMULLER].But dawn is not applied to “evil,” but to prosperityshining out after misery (Isa21:12). Translate, “Thou shall not see any dawn” (ofalleviation) [MAURER].
put . . . offrather,as Margin, “remove by expiation”; it shall be neverending.
not knowunawares:which thou dost not apprehend. Proving the fallacy of thy divinationsand astrology (Job 9:5; Psa 35:8).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Therefore shall evil come upon thee,…. The evil of punishment, a great calamity; so Nebuchadnezzar foretold, as Abydenus relates o, that , a calamity, should come upon the Babylonians; a day of evil, because of the above sins Babylon was guilty of:
thou shall not know from whence it riseth; from what quarter it will come, little dreaming of Cyrus, with whom the Chaldeans had had no quarrel. So mystical Babylon will not know from whence her ruin will come; little thinking that the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication with her, and have given their kingdoms to her, will hate her, and burn her flesh with fire: or, “thou shall not know the morning of it” p: that is, on what day, or at what time, it will be. Babylon was taken when it was not thought of, as appears from the book of Daniel, and profane history. Aristotle q reports, that it was said, that the third day after Babylon was taken, one part of the city did not know that it was taken. Or the sense is, this day of evil and calamity should be such a dark and gloomy day, there should be no light in it, it should be as the night, and therefore its morning or light should not be known, so Aben Ezra: “and mischief shall fall upon thee”; contrived for others; the pit dug for others she should fall into herself: though the phrase seems to denote the mischief coming from above, by the hand of heaven, and suddenly and irresistibly; which should fall with weight and vengeance upon her, to the crushing and utter destruction of her:
thou shalt not be able to put it off; or, “to expiate it” r; and atone for it, either by prayers and entreaties, which God will not regard, Isa 47:3 or by gifts, or by ransom price, by gold and silver, which the Medes and Persians were no lovers of, Isa 13:17:
and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know; that is, before hand; neither the persons from whom nor the time when it shall come; notwithstanding their astrologers, diviners, and monthly prognosticators, pretended to tell what would come to pass every day; but not being able by their art to give the least hint of Babylon’s destruction, as to either time or means, the Chaldeans were in great security, quite ignorant of their ruin at hand, and which therefore came suddenly and unawares upon them; as will the destruction of mystical Babylon.
o Ib. c. 41. p. 456. p “non scis auroram ejus”, Montanus, Vatablus, Cocceius; “cujus non cognoscis auroram”, Vitringa. That is, as Ben Melech explains it, thou shalt not know the time of its coming; for it shall come suddenly, as a thing comes in a morning, which a man is not aware of till he sees it. q Politic. l. 3. c. 3. r “non potens placare eam”, Montanus; “expiare”, Tigurine version, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius, Vitringa.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
11. Therefore shall evil come upon thee. Continuing the subject which he had formerly introduced, he ridicules the foolish confidence of the Babylonians, who thought that by the position of the stars they foresaw all events. He therefore says that they shall soon be overtaken by that which Scripture threatens generally against all despisers of God, (1Th 5:3,) that, “when they shall say, Peace and safety, sudden destruction shall overwhelm them,” and that at the dawning of the day they shall not know what shall be accomplished in the evening; and it, is very clear from the book of Daniel that this happened. (Dan 5:30.)
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
FALSE SECURITIES
Isa. 47:11-15, Therefore shall evil come upon thee, &c.
I. Look at this picture of utter and painful bewilderment. This is the necessary and inevitable result of sin.
1. We have been warned of it.
2. A way of escape has been made.
II. Hear the divine challenge addressed to the false powers in which we have trusted, as money, chance, self-confidence, atheism.
1. They ought to be most useful when most needed.
2. They should show their sufficiency by their fearlessness. See text.
(1.) There is to be a great collision.
(2.) In that collision only the true can stand.
III. See the doom of false securities.
1. Let no man complain of want of opportunity of estimating the value of his moral securities; or,
2. Of having been allowed to live unwarned.
APPLICATION.
1. We cannot escape the trial of our securities.
2. If we set ourselves against God, we challenge all the forces of His creationfire, wind, flood, pestilence, &c.J. C. Gray: Biblical Museum, in loco.
THE PORTION OF THE UNGODLY. [1474]
[1474] A minister, living at Wisbech, authenticates the following singular case of conversion through our sermon on The Portion of the Ungodly, No. 444. The writer says in a recent letter to us, Seventeen years ago it pleased the Lord to permit me to dream that the end of the world was come, and in my dream I saw the saints rising with the Lord Jesus to glory. I was left, and near me, upon a large quantity of stubble stood an acquaintance who addressed me thus:They used to say in the other world that we should be in fire, but it is not so. In a moment flames burst out, and in my fright I awoke. A few days after my dream my friend and I heard you preach at the Tabernacle. Judge how great was our surprise when you announced for your text, Isa. 47:14, Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it. In August, 1876, a severe affliction, the dream, and our sermon resulted in our friends conversion.Rev. C H. Spurgeon, in the Sword and Trowel, vol. xv. pp. 294, 295.
Isa. 47:14. Behold, they shall be as stubble, &c.
Part of a terrible description of Gods judgment upon Babylon and Chaldea. It is a truth beyond dispute that Gods justice is not partial; that the description of the destruction which He awards to one class of sinners is a most fair picture of what He will do with others, for God hath not two or three ways of dealing with men in His justice. The ruin of Chaldea is to us, to-day, a representation and metaphorical description of the destruction which shall surely come upon impenitent sinners when the Lord cometh out of His place to judge His enemies, &c. At first sight the figures in our text seem contradictory.
I. THE FIRST FIGURE. The punishment of the wicked will be,
1. easily inflicted. They shall be as stubble. Nothing can be more easy than to kindle stubble when it is fully dry. So shall it be with impenitent sinners.
(1.) The power of memory shall become a vehicle of sorrow.
(2.) Conscience.
(3.) Increased knowledge. Now you know enough to leave you without excuse, but then your knowledge shall increase so as to leave thee without pretence of apology.
(4.) Companions.
2. Most searching and terrible. The metaphor of fire is used in Scripture, because it is that which of all things causeth most pain, and is the most searching and trying.
3. Most inevitable. They shall not, &c. There is hope now; there shall be no hope then. How can it be avoided? Man has no strength to match the Most High; no wisdom to invent another plan of salvation; no ability to hide from Gods presence.
If you profess to be a Christian nominally, you believe thisone of the fundamental truths of revelation.
II. THE SECOND FIGURE. There shall not be a coal, &c.; by which is meant that there shall be nothing in hell that can give the sinner a moments comfort. Nothing as the soul lifts its eye to heaven, for that is lost. Nothing in hell itself, for the more there are, the more wretched. Nothing in themselves, nor in their thoughts. Nothing in God, for the sting of all the punishment will beI deserve it; I brought this on myself. Nothing in the past, for that will give agony. Nothing in the souls present condition. Nothing in their future condition, for they shall never see the shadow of a hope.
III. BEHOLD. Turn not away your eyes from this meditation. Children of God, behold it; it will make you grateful; make you love poor sinners. Unconverted sinner, behold it. Better to think of it now than to think of it for ever. If false, reject it; but if real, meditate upon these things; and may God lead you out of self to Christ. Turn ye, &c.C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 444.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(11) Thou shalt not be able to put it off . . .The words have been variously rendered: (1) of which thou shalt know no dawn, i.e., after the night of calamity; and (2) which thou shalt not be able to charm away. Stress is laid on the destruction being at once unforeseen and irretrievable.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
“Therefore will evil come on you.
You will not know its dawning.
And mischief will fall on you.
You will not be able to ward it off by atonement.
And desolation will come on you suddenly,
Which you know not.”
Because she has trusted in extreme wickedness, wicked things (same word) will come on her. She will sow what she has reaped. And it will come surreptitiously, she will not know its dawning (in spite of her fortune-tellers and diviners). And she will not be able to ward off what is coming by atonement. She has gone too far for atonement. Her sin is unforgivable. So will come on her such desolation as she could not even begin to comprehend, for it is beyond anything she has ever known or heard of.
Again the ideas go far beyond anything Cyrus would do. What is being described here does not have Cyrus in mind. It is the ultimate judgment that will leave her stripped and bare.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Isa 47:11 Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, [which] thou shalt not know.
Ver. 11. Therefore shall evil come upon thee. ] An evil, “an only evil,” as Eze 7:5 both unexpected and inexpiable; such as thou canst neither avoid nor abide.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
evil = calamity. Hebrew. ra’a’.
mischief = ruin; especially as prepared for others. Not the same word as in Isa 59:4. Only here and Eze 7:26.
put it off = expiate it, or charm it away.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
thou shalt not know: Isa 37:36, Exo 12:29, Exo 12:30, Neh 4:11, Rev 3:3
from whence it riseth: Heb. the morning thereof
thou shalt not be: Psa 50:22, Jer 51:39-42, Dan 5:25-30, 1Th 5:3, Rev 18:9, Rev 18:10
put it off: Heb. expiate, Mat 18:34, Luk 12:59
Reciprocal: Jdg 20:34 – knew not Isa 19:14 – hath mingled Jer 51:31 – to show Hab 2:7 – they
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
In spite of how the Babylonians thought, God would bring judgment on them suddenly that incantations would not affect, sacrifices could not deflect, and magic could not anticipate. Daniel 5 describes Belshazzar’s feast, which took place on the night Babylon fell. Cyrus took the Babylonian king and his city completely by surprise, and the empire fell suddenly.
"Cyrus took Babylon effortlessly, and by morning every citizen of the empire was not a Babylonian but a Persian." [Note: Motyer, p. 372.]