Isaiah 7:19

7:17-25 Let those who will not believe the promises of God, expect to hear the alarms of his threatenings; for who can resist or escape his judgments? The Lord shall sweep all away; and whomsoever he employs in any service for him, he will pay. All speaks a sad change of the face of that pleasant land. But what melancholy change is there, which sin will not make with a people? Agriculture would cease. Sorrows of every kind will come upon all who neglect the great salvation. If we remain unfruitful under the means of grace, the Lord will say, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth for ever.

And they shall come,.... The Egyptian and Assyrian armies, when the Lord calls for them in his providence, and his time is come to make use of them as a scourge to his people: and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys: made so by war; this is said in allusion to flies and bees resting on trees and flowers; and signifies that these armies, after long and tedious marches, should all of them, without being diminished by the way, enter the land of Judea, fill all places, and take up their abode there for a while: and in the holes of the rocks. Kimchi thinks that the former phrase designs cities in valleys, and this fortified cities which are upon rocks: and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes; in allusion to flies and bees. Kimchi interprets this of unwalled towns and villages. The Targum of the whole verse is, "and they shall all of them come and dwell in the streets of the cities, and in the clifts of the rocks, and in all deserts full of sedges, and in all houses of praise.'' The sense is, that they should be in all cities, towns, and villages, whether fortified or not, and in all houses of high and low, rich and poor, in cottages and in palaces; there would be no place free from them, nor no escaping out of their hands.

They; the flies, and especially the bees. Shall rest all of them; they shall have an easy victory; few or none of them shall be slain in the attempt. The desolate valleys; either, 1. Such as were and had long been desolate. So it signifies the vast numbers of their enemies, which filled all places, both such as were well inhabited, and such as were in a great measure desolate. Or, 2. Such as they found very fruitful, but made them desolate. The rocks; to which possibly the Israelites fled for refuge. Bushes; which he mentions, partly because flies and bees use frequently to rest there, and partly to intimate that no place should escape the fury of this enemy.

Verse 19. - And rest ; or, settle . In the desolate valleys . Gesenius and Vance Smith translate "the precipitous valleys;" Mr. Cheyne, "the steeply walled valleys." But the cognate word used in Isaiah 5:6 can only mean "waste," which supports the rendering of the Authorized Version. The exact word used does not occur elsewhere. Upon all bushes; rather, upon all pastures . Isaiah 7:19

And they shall come - The idea in this verse is, that they would spread over the land, and lay it waste. The poetic image of flies and bees is kept up; meaning, that the armies would be so numerous as to occupy and infest all the land. And shall rest - As bees do. Thus the "locusts" are said to have "rested" in all the land of Egypt; Exodus 10:14. In the desolate valleys - The word translated "valleys" usually means "a valley with a brook," or a brook itself. The Chaldee translates it, 'In the streets of cities.' But the idea is derived from the habits of flies and bees. The meaning is, that they should fill all the land, as innumerable swarms of flies and bees - would settle down everywhere, and would infest or consume everything. Bees, probably, chose situations near to running streams. Virgil, in his directions about selecting a place for an apiary, gives the following among others: At liquidi fontes, et stagna virentia musco Adsint, et tennis fugiens per gramina rivus. Georg. iv. 18, 19. But there let pools invite with moss arrayed, Clear fount and rill that purls along the glade. Sotheby. In the holes of the rocks - Probably the same image is referred to here. It is well known that in Judea, as well as elsewhere, bees were accustomed to live in the holes or caverns of the rocks. They were very numerous; and the figure here is, that the Assyrians would be numerous as the swarms of bees were in that land, even in the high and inaccessible rocks; compare Isaiah 2:19-21.

Upon all thorns - The image here is kept up of flies and bees resting on everything. "Thorns" here refer to those trees and shrubs that were of little value; but even on these they would rest. All bushes - Hebrew 'All trees that are commendable, or that are to be praised;' see the margin. The word denotes those shrubs and trees that were objects of "praise;" that is, that were cultivated with great attention and care, in opposition to "thorns" that grew wild, and without cultivation, and that were of little value. The meaning of the passage is, that the land would be invaded in every part, and that everything, valuable or not, would be laid waste.

"And it comes to pass in that day, Jehovah will hiss for the fly which is at the end of the Nile-arms of Egypt, and the bees that are in the land of Asshur; and they come and settle all of them in the valleys of the slopes, and in the clefts of the rocks, and in all the thorn-hedges, and upon all grass-plats." The prophet has already stated, in Isaiah 5:26 , that Jehovah would hiss for distant nations; and how he is able to describe them by name. The Egyptian nation, with its vast and unparalleled numbers, is compared to the swarming fly; and the Assyrian nation, with its love of war and conquest, to the stinging bee which is so hard to keep off ( Deuteronomy 1:44 ; Psalm 118:12 ). The emblems also correspond to the nature of the two countries: the fly to slimy Egypt with its swarms of insects (see Isaiah 18:1 ), (Note: Egypt abounds in gnats, etc., more especially in flies (muscariae), including a species of small fly (nemâth), which is a great plague to men throughout all the country of the Nile (see Hartmann, Natur-geschichtlich-medicinische Skizze der Nillnder, 1865, pp. 204- 5).) and the bee to the more mountainous and woody Assyria, where the keeping of bees is still one of the principal branches of trade. יאר, pl. יארים, is an Egyptian name (yaro, with the article phiaro, pl. yarōu) for the Nile and its several arms. The end of the Nile-arms of Egypt, from a Palestinian point of view, was the extreme corner of the land.

The military force of Egypt would march out of the whole compass of the land, and meet the Assyrian force in the Holy Land; and both together would cover the land in such a way that the valleys of steep precipitous heights (nachalee habbattoth), and clefts of the rocks (nekikē hasselâ‛im), and all the thorn-hedges (nâ‛azūzı̄m) and pastures (nahalolim, from nihēl, to lead to pasture), would be covered with these swarms. The fact that just such places are named, as afforded a suitable shelter and abundance of food for flies and bees, is a filling up of the figure in simple truthfulness to nature. And if we look at the historical fulfilment, it does not answer even in this respect to the actual letter of the prophecy; for in the time of Hezekiah no collision really took place between the Assyrian and Egyptian forces; and it was not till the days of Josiah that a collision took place between the Chaldean and Egyptian powers in the eventful battle fought between Pharaoh-Necho and Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish (Circesium), which decided the fate of Judah. That the spirit of prophecy points to this eventful occurrence is evident from Isaiah 7:20, where no further allusion is made to Egypt, because of its having succumbed to the imperial power of Eastern Asia.