Isaiah 37:26

26 Have you not heard? I designed it long ago; I planned it in days gone by. I have now brought it to pass, and you have crushed fortified cities into piles of rubble.

Isaiah 37:26 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 37:26

Hast thou not heard long ago?
&c.] By report, by reading the history of ancient times, or by means of the prophets; these are the words of the Lord to Sennacherib. The Targum adds,

``what I did to Pharaoh king of Egypt;''

it follows: how I have done it; and of ancient times that I have formed it?
meaning either the decree in his own breast from all eternity, and which he had published by his prophets, of raising up him, this wicked prince, to be the scourge of nations; or by the "it" are meant the people of the Jews, God's Israel, whom he had made, formed into a body politic, and into a church state, and had done great things for, in bringing them out of Egypt, leading them through the Red sea, providing for them, and protecting them in the wilderness, subduing nations under them, and settling them in the land of Canaan; now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste
defenced cities into ruinous heaps
^F20; which some render interrogatively, now should I bring, it to be laid waste, and fenced cities to be
ruinous heaps?
that is, the people of the Jews, the city of Jerusalem, and other fenced cities? no, I will not: or the meaning is, that that decree, which he had framed and formed in his own mind from all eternity, he was now bringing to pass; which was, that this king of Babylon should be a waster and destroyer of fortified cities, which he should reduce to heaps of ruin; wherefore he had no reason to vaunt as he had done, for he was only an instrument of executing the purposes and designs of God, though it was not in his heart, nor did he so mean.

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FOOTNOTES:

F20 (Myun Mylg) "in acervos et flores", "into heaps and flowers", that is, into heaps of dust, which being moved, and raised by the wind, fly away like flowers and blossoms of trees; so Gussetius, "in acervos volantes, aut ad volandum excitatos, scil. dum redacti in pulveres, magna ex parte, volant, excitati a ventis", Comment. Ebr. p. 502.

Isaiah 37:26 In-Context

24 You have mocked the Lord through your servants. You have said: With my many chariots I have gone up to the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon. I cut down its tallest cedars, its choice cypress trees. I came to its remotest heights, its densest forest.

25 I dug [wells] and drank water. I dried up all the streams of Egypt with the soles of my feet.

26 Have you not heard? I designed it long ago; I planned it in days gone by. I have now brought it to pass, and you have crushed fortified cities into piles of rubble.

27 Their inhabitants have become powerless, dismayed, and ashamed. They are plants of the field, tender grass, grass on the rooftops, blasted by the east wind.

28 But I know your sitting down, your going out and your coming in, and your raging against Me.