Isaiah 51 Footnotes

51:22-23 The final line of v. 22 claims that the people of God will never drink the cup of God’s fury again. History is filled with occasions when the Jews suffered greatly at their enemies’ hands after the return from Babylonian exile, from the time of the Syrian ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (second century BC) onward. Christians, likewise, as “the Israel of God” (Gl 6:16), have seen repeated persecution. The prophetic statement can be viewed in several ways. (1) God was indicating that they would not drink any longer from the Babylonian cup of God’s wrath, since he would remove that cup from their hands. (2) This promise could be seen as a promise for God’s fulfillment of his kingdom. (3) The statement could be interpreted to mean that the Judeans did not need to drink from this cup again, implying that a close walk with God would prevent it from ever happening again. That, indeed, was the thrust of Jesus’s warning, “Unless you repent, you will all perish” (Lk 13:3).