15 You have made the nation great, O Lord, you have made it great; glory is yours: you have made wide the limits of the land.
You have made them very glad, increasing their joy. They are glad before you as men are glad in the time of getting in the grain, or when they make division of the goods taken in war.
For though your people, O Israel, are as the sand of the sea, only a small number will come back: for the destruction is fixed, overflowing in righteousness.
And at the sounding of the seventh angel there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he will have rule for ever and ever. And the four and twenty rulers, who are seated before God on their high seats, went down on their faces and gave worship to God, saying, We give you praise, O Lord God, Ruler of all, who is and who was; because you have taken up your great power and are ruling your kingdom. And the nations were angry, and your wrath has come, and the time for the dead to be judged, and the time of reward for your servants, the prophets, and for the saints, and for those in whom is the fear of your name, small and great, and the time of destruction for those who made the earth unclean.
Jesus said these things; then, lifting his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the time has now come; give glory to your Son, so that the Son may give glory to you:
Here is my Father's glory, in that you give much fruit and so are my true disciples.
And Jesus said to them in answer, The hour of the glory of the Son of man has come. Truly I say to you, If a seed of grain does not go into the earth and come to an end, it is still a seed and no more; but through its death it gives much fruit. He who is in love with life will have it taken from him; and he who has no care for his life in this world will keep it for ever and ever. If any man is my servant, let him come after me; and where I am, there will my servant be. If any man becomes my servant, my Father will give him honour. Now is my soul troubled; and what am I to say? Father, keep me from this hour. No: for this purpose have I come to this hour. Father, give glory to your name. Then there came a voice out of heaven, saying, I have given it glory, and I will give it glory again.
And they will be put to death with the sword, and will be taken as prisoners into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be crushed under the feet of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles are complete.
A third of you will come to death from disease, wasting away among you through need of food; a third will be put to the sword round about you; and a third I will send away to every wind, letting loose a sword after them.
See, I will get them together from all the countries where I have sent them in my wrath and in the heat of my passion and in my bitter feeling; and I will let them come back into this place where they may take their rest safely.
Your people will all be upright, the land will be their heritage for ever; the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, to be for my glory.
Make wide the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your house be stretched out without limit: make your cords long, and your tent-pins strong. For I will make wide your limits on the right hand and on the left; and your seed will take the nations for a heritage, and make the waste towns full of people.
Make a song, O heavens, for the Lord has done it: give a loud cry, you deep parts of the earth: let your voices be loud in song, you mountains, and you woods with all your trees: for the Lord has taken up the cause of Jacob, and will let his glory be seen in Israel.
Your eyes will see the king in his glory: they will be looking on a far-stretching land.
And I will make of you a great nation, blessing you and making your name great; and you will be a blessing:
Let all the nations whom you have made come and give worship to you, O Lord, giving glory to your name. For you are great, and do great works of wonder; you only are God.
And you made their children as great in number as the stars of heaven, and took them into the land, of which you had said to their fathers that they were to go in and take it for themselves.
Till the Lord put Israel away from before his face, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was taken away from their land to Assyria, to this day.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and took Israel away to Assyria, placing them in Halah and in Habor on the river Gozan, and in the towns of the Medes.
I said I would send them wandering far away, I would make all memory of them go from the minds of men: But for the fear that their haters, uplifted in their pride, might say, Our hand is strong, the Lord has not done all this.
And the Lord will send you wandering among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other: there you will be servants to other gods, of wood and stone, gods of which you and your fathers had no knowledge.
Your fathers went down into Egypt with seventy persons; and now the Lord your God has made you like the stars of heaven in number.
And the Lord will send you wandering among the peoples; only a small band of you will be kept from death among the nations where the Lord will send you. There you will be the servants of gods, made by men's hands, of wood and stone, having no power of seeing or hearing or taking food or smelling.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 26
Commentary on Isaiah 26 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 26
This chapter is a song of holy joy and praise, in which the great things God had engaged, in the foregoing chapter, to do for his people against his enemies and their enemies are celebrated: it is prepared to be sung when that prophecy should be accomplished; for we must be forward to meet God with our thanksgivings when he is coming towards us with his mercies. Now the people of God are here taught,
And this is written for the support and assistance of the faith and hope of God's people in all ages, even those upon whom the ends of the world have come.
Isa 26:1-4
To the prophecies of gospel grace very fitly is a song annexed, in which we may give God the glory and take to ourselves the comfort of that grace: In that day, the gospel day, which the day of the victories and enlargements of the Old-Testament church was typical of (to some of which perhaps this has a primary reference), in that day this song shall be sung; there shall be persons to sing it, and cause and hearts to sing it; it shall be sung in the land of Judah, which was a figure of the gospel church; for the gospel covenant is said to be made with the house of Judah, Heb. 8:8. Glorious things are here said of the church of God.
Isa 26:5-11
Here the prophet further encourages us to trust in the Lord for ever, and to continue waiting on him; for,
Isa 26:12-19
The prophet in these verses looks back upon what God had done with them, both in mercy and judgment, and sings unto God of both, and then looks forward upon what he hoped God would do for them. Observe,
Isa 26:20-21
These two verses are supposed not to belong to the song which takes up the rest of the chapter, but to begin a new matter, and to be rather an introduction to the following chapter than the conclusion of this. Of whereas, in the foregoing song, the people of God had spoken to him, complaining of their grievances, here he returns an answer to their complaints, in which,