Verse 1
Darkness Awaits Those Who Turn From Yahweh But In The Latter Times Will Come Light in Galilee (Isaiah 8:21 to Isaiah 9:1 ).
The offer having been made of light or darkness most of the people will choose darkness. A bleak future awaits them. But all is not despair. For there is the promise of Immanuel yet to come. And in the latter times light will come to Galilee, (and it will lead up to the triumph of the great coming King - Isaiah 9:6-7).
Analysis.
a And they will pass through it hardly pressed and hungry, and it will be that when they are hungry they will fret themselves and curse by their king and their God, and turn their faces upward (Isaiah 8:21).
b And they will look to the earth, and behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and into thick darkness they will be driven away (Isaiah 8:22).
b But there will be no gloom to her who was in anguish (Isaiah 9:1 a).
a In the former time He brought into contempt the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time He has made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations (Isaiah 9:1 b).
In ‘a’ they will pass through it hardly pressed and hungry, and it will be that when they are hungry they will fret themselves and curse by their king and their God, and turn their faces upward and in the parallel this turning upward in their despair will finally result in Galilee of the nations being made glorious (filled with His glory). In ‘b’ they will look to the earth, and behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and into thick darkness they will be driven away, and in the parallel there will be no gloom to her who was in anguish (those who suffered first will be blessed first).
‘And they will pass through it hardly pressed and hungry, and it will be that when they are hungry they will fret themselves and curse by their king and their God, and turn their faces upward, and they will look to the earth, and behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and into thick darkness they will be driven away.’
The significance of ‘no morning’ is now explained. There is great stress on continuing darkness. They will be in despair and in great need, they will have nowhere to look, their king and God will be merely swear words, names by which to curse, whether they look upwards or to the earth they will be in desolation and thick darkness. Because for those who turn from God’s word there is only darkness.
‘They will pass through it.’ The ‘it’ is not defined. It could refer to their time of hopelessness, to the land through which they will pass into exile, or to the time of darkness which will never turn into morning. The verbs are in the singular. We could therefore translate, ‘each of them will --’, emphasising the personal effect for all.
The picture is one of total hopelessness and despair. They will be hard pressed and hungry. They will be under stress and fret themselves. The king, whom they at present see as the anointed of Yahweh, will be simply a name to curse by, or even curse at. God too will be the same. But then, in despair, some will turn their faces upwards.
But all most will see when they look to the earth (or the land) will be distress and darkness, gloom and anguish. And finally they will be driven away into thick darkness. The future without God must in the end be harsh.
(Isa 8:23 in the Hebrew text) ‘But there will be no gloom to her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations.’
For those who turn their face upwards there will be hope (Isaiah 8:2). Most of the verbs in this and the following verses are in the perfect tense. In Hebrew the perfect tense does not necessarily indicate the past, it indicates something which is completed. Thus the prophets used the tense to indicate that which, while future, was certain. Because God was going to do it, it was already seen as completed.
For, for one part of Israel and Judah, Galilee of the nations, there will be no such gloom. That will be because having already passed through their gloom in the earlier invasion they are under the Assyrian heel. They are not therefore in a position to make any choice with respect to present circumstances. They will not be involved in the present disobedience. Thus they need not fear, for when Immanuel comes he will bring them light in their darkness (see Isaiah 60:1-2). The next thing therefore that they await is for the light which will come to Galilee. But that will only be once they have passed through their ‘gloom of anguish’ (Isaiah 8:22). It is to them, walking as they are in darkness, that great light will come, so that their gloom will vanish.
Galilee were the first to suffer in any invasion from the north and had been seized in about 733 BC during the initial invasions (2 Kings 15:29). So while their leaders were exiled in accordance with Assyrian policy (leaderless people were more easily controlled) it is probable that they escaped the worst kind of treatment, for at that stage of their capture there would still be hope in Assyria’s mind that Israel would submit and escape the final vengeance, which in fact under Hoshea they did, although being left that much smaller.
Thus when Hoshea later rebelled and Samaria was finally taken Galilee had already long since been in submission as part of Megiddo, one of the three Assyrian provinces which had been set up, and was therefore probably not settled by the foreigners brought into Israel by Esarhaddon (2 Kings 17:24). Indeed being a land of mixture, with many ‘Gentiles’ settled there and surrounding it, something which brought them into contempt in Israel, they may well have been seen by Assyria as not fully Israel at all but as a subject people (there were no maps and no boundaries permanently laid down). It should be noted in this regard that they were never seen as part of the mixture who arose from the settling of foreign nations in Israel.
This prophecy may have first arisen at the time of their separation, which would explain why Galilee is selected out for mention, as an assurance to them not to despair in their plight because there was hope for their future in the latter times in the coming king. Or it may simply be pointing out that in their case they had no choice whether to obey or disobey, and did not therefore share the guilt of Israel and Judah. But God clearly had a greater purpose in this in that it was in Galilee that the King when He came would grow to mature years, and it was in Galilee where He would first widely proclaim the Kingly Rule of God as at hand (Mark 1:14-15). It was to be a chosen land. Light would arise first in Galilee. It was a clear indication that God’s light was to be shared with Gentiles.
The land of Naphtali lay on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and extended northwards, Zebulun was west and south-west of Naphtali, in the centre of the northern part of the land. As we know these areas were where Jesus particularly ministered
‘In the latter time He has made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations.’ The origin of the name Galilee is unknown, although it is very ancient. It is nowhere else described as ‘of the nations’ but its position made it susceptible to Gentile influence and penetration. Presumably the name had been given because Israel saw it jestingly, and contemptuously, as ‘half-Gentile’. The sea may be the Sea of Galilee beyond the part of Jordan familiar to Judah, or the ‘way of the sea’ may define territory on the way to the Great Sea (the Mediterranean) going from Jordan. The thought of Galilee being ‘made glorious’ would bring a smile to the faces of men of Judah, but here Isaiah declares that in the latter time it will indeed be so. As a prophet he spoke on behalf of the whole of God’s people. He wanted all to know that God had not finally forsaken them, even Galilee. Little did any realise at the time that Galilee would bring forth the Light of the world to the nations.
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