10 Thy holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers eat it up in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
and he burned the house of Jehovah, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; and every great [man's] house he burned with fire.
And they burned the house of God, and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all the palaces thereof with fire, and all the precious vessels thereof were given up to destruction. And them that had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they became servants to him and his sons, until the reign of the kingdom of Persia; to fulfil the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath, to fulfil seventy years.
{A Psalm of Asaph.} O God, the nations are come into thine inheritance: thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem in heaps. The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowl of the heavens, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth: Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury [them]. We are become a reproach to our neighbours, a mockery and a derision to them that are round about us. How long, O Jehovah? wilt thou be angry for ever? Shall thy jealousy burn like fire? Pour out thy fury upon the nations that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that call not upon thy name: For they have devoured Jacob, and laid waste his habitation.
How doth the city sit solitary [that] was full of people! She that was great among the nations is become as a widow; the princess among the provinces is become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she hath no comforter; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude; she dwelleth among the nations, she findeth no rest: all her pursuers have overtaken her within the straits. The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly: all her gates are desolate; her priests sigh, her virgins are in grief; and as for her, she is in bitterness.
He hath bent his bow like an enemy; he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and hath slain all that was pleasant to the eye: in the tent of the daughter of Zion, he hath poured out his fury like fire. The Lord is become as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel; he hath swallowed up all her palaces; he hath destroyed his strongholds, and hath multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. And he hath violently cast down his enclosure as a garden; he hath destroyed his place of assembly: Jehovah hath caused set feast and sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger king and priest. The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath rejected his sanctuary; he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces: they have made a noise in the house of Jehovah, as on the day of a set feast. Jehovah hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out the line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying; and he hath made the rampart and the wall to lament: they languish together.
Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: foxes walk over it.
And after the sixty-two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, and shall have nothing; and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with an overflow, and unto the end, war, -- the desolations determined. And he shall confirm a covenant with the many [for] one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and because of the protection of abominations [there shall be] a desolator, even until that the consumption and what is determined shall be poured out upon the desolate.
And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river; and he held up his right hand and his left hand unto the heavens, and swore by him that liveth for ever that it is for a time, times, and a half; and when the scattering of the power of the holy people shall be accomplished, all these things shall be finished.
Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed [as] a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.
Then let those who are in Judaea flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of it depart out, and those who are in the country not enter into it;
And there was given to me a reed like a staff, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship in it. And the court which [is] without the temple cast out, and measure it not; because it has been given [up] to the nations, and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty-two months.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 64
Commentary on Isaiah 64 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 64
This chapter goes on with that pathetic pleading prayer which the church offered up to God in the latter part of the foregoing chapter. They had argued from their covenant-relation to God and his interest and concern in them; now here,
And this was not only intended for the use of the captive Jews, but may serve for direction to the church in other times of distress, what to ask of God and how to plead with him. Are God's people at any time in affliction, in great affliction? Let them pray, let them thus pray.
Isa 64:1-5
Here,
Isa 64:6-12
As we have the Lamentations of Jeremiah, so here we have the Lamentations of Isaiah; the subject of both is the same-the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans and the sin of Israel that brought that destruction-only with this difference, Isaiah sees it at a distance and laments it by the Spirit of prophecy, Jeremiah saw it accomplished. In these verses,