Bible Commentaries
Isaiah 65

Verses 1-25

Isaiah 65:4 . Which remain among the graves. The LXX add, dream. Perhaps Jude had this text in his eye, when he calls the wicked “filthy dreamers.”

See Augustine’s city of God. Which eat swine’s flesh, forbidden by the law, Leviticus 11:26, as less healthy than beef and mutton, and tending to scrophulous disease, as stated by Dr. Buchan.

Isaiah 65:10 . The valley of Achor. This valley was very fertile, a presentiment of what the earth shall be in the latter day. Another prophet makes the same remark. Hosea 2:15.

Isaiah 65:11 . Ye prepare a table for that troop. Hebrews for Gad, good fortune. They worshipped the stars, Mercury, Mars, and others, for good luck. The heathens worshipped them as a goddess, and exposed themselves to the satire of their poets.

Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia: sed te Nos facimus, fortuna, deum cœloq; locamus. There wants no god where prudence doth preside, But we fond fools have fortune deified.

Isaiah 65:13 . Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry. While the Romans besieged Jerusalem, the famine so prevailed in the city that they destroyed one another for food, and delicate women, as Moses had foretold, ate the fruit of their own bodies. Deuteronomy 28:56. Meanwhile, the christians, having been driven out by persecution, were growing rich in gentile cities; and on the approach of the Roman armies, those that remained fled to Pella beyond the Jordan, where they found peace and protection. Eusebius’s Ecclesiastes Hist.

Isaiah 65:15 . God shall slay thee, oh unbelieving Jew, as all the history of this people proves, since the burning of their city and temple by the Romans. Then God shall call his servants by another name Christians, after Christ their Saviour and their Lord. Surely this is a striking prediction. See the general Reflections at the end of this book.

Isaiah 65:16 . Shall bless himself in the God of truth. באלהי אמן Bealohe Amen, in the God Amen. This is the title of Christ, of him who speaks, and no man can disannul his word. Revelation 3:14. These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness.

Isaiah 65:17 . Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. Whatever part of the Jews may be gathered to their own land, will not, it would seem, continue long under their old dynasty. The Messiah’s laws will soon supersede those of Moses, according to the current language of the new covenant.

REFLECTIONS.

This chapter opens with the calling of the gentiles, and the rejection of the jews. Romans 10:20-21. Consequently, though Isaiah addressed those awful things to the jews of his own times; yet he looked forwards to happier days. The Lord stretched out his hands to a rebellious and idolatrous people, who practised necromancy in burial grounds; and the Lord latterly stretched out his hands by our Saviour to a stiffnecked and obdurate age, However, the gospel was graciously welcomed among the gentiles.

The sin of eating the flesh and the broth of abominable things, and doing worse than the heathen, was peculiarly provoking to the Lord; and justifies the severe strokes of his providence in visiting upon them, both their own sins and the sins of their fathers.

When God destroyed the idolaters by the Babylonians, and the unbelievers by the Romans, he left a remnant, as the seeds in a cluster of grapes, in order that the counsel of his grace and love might take effect. A remnant returned from Babylon, to inherit the mountain of the Lord; and in the Roman times a remnant inherited the mountain of our christian Zion, while another, yea an unbelieving remnant was dispersed on the face of the whole earth.

From the seventeenth verse the promises of the restoration of Jerusalem, under a new heaven and a new earth, or an infinitely better state of things, are so far superior to anything that happened after the Babylonian captivity, that we must either understand them of the latter-day glory, or believe that the prophets were deranged, and the apostles wicked in applying them to the times of the restitution of all things. Acts 3:21. It is introduced with, “Behold, I create!” And surely a note of admiration was never better employed. It is the jewish and gentile converts made one in Zion, under an entire new heaven of government, grace and love, as illustrated in the general reflections at the end of this book.