Isaiah 24:15

(15) Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires.—The last word, which is identical in form with the Urim of the high priest’s breastplate, has been very differently interpreted:—(1) Taking it in the sense of “light,” it has been taken as meaning the east, as contrasted with the “isles of the sea” as a synonym for the west, and so standing parallel to the familiar phrase “from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same” (Malachi 1:11; Isaiah 59:19), and, we may add, to the like formula in Assyrian inscriptions, e.g., that of Esarhaddon (Records of the Past, iii. 111). So Homer, “the dawn and the sun” (Il, xii. 239) as a phrase for the East; and our Orient and East have substantially the same significance. (2) It has been rendered simply “regions,” or “countries” (Cheyne). (3) It has been interpreted of the “fiery trial” of tribulation, or of the “light” of Divine truth. Of these, (1) has the merit of being more in harmony with the primary meaning of the word, and giving a more vivid antithesis. The “isles of the sea” we have met in Isaiah 11:11.