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Selected Verse: Isaiah 29:7 - King James
| Verse |
Translation |
Text |
| Isa 29:7 |
King James |
And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
| A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
| munition--fortress. |
| Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
And the multitude of all the nations - The Assyrians, and their allied hosts.
And her munition - Her fortresses, castles, places of strength Sa2 5:7; Ecc 9:14; Eze 19:9.
Shall be as a dream of a night vision - In a dream we seem to see the objects of which we think as really as when awake, and hence, they are called visions, and visions of the night Gen 46:2; Job 4:13; Job 7:14; Dan 2:28; Dan 4:5; Dan 7:1, Dan 7:7, Dan 7:13, Dan 7:15. The specific idea here is not that of the "suddenness" with which objects seen in a dream appear and then vanish, but it is that which occurs in Isa 29:8, of one who dreams of eating and drinking, but who awakes, and is hungry and thirsty still. So it was with the Assyrian. He had set his heart on the wealth of Jerusalem. He had earnestly desired to possess that city - as a hungry man desires to satisfy the cravings of his appetite. But it would be like the vision of the night; and on that fatal morning on which he should awake from his fond dream Isa 37:36, he would find all his hopes dissipated, and the longcherished desire of his soul unsatisfied still. |
| Adam Clarke Commentary on the Whole Bible - Published 1810-1826 |
As a dream - This is the beginning of the comparison, which is pursued and applied in the next verse. Sennacherib and his mighty army are not compared to a dream because of their sudden disappearance; but the disappointment of their eager hopes is compared to what happens to a hungry and thirsty man, when he awakes from a dream in which fancy had presented to him meat and drink in abundance, and finds it nothing but a vain illusion. The comparison is elegant and beautiful in the highest degree, well wrought up, and perfectly suited to the end proposed. The image is extremely natural, but not obvious: it appeals to our inward feelings, not to our outward senses; and is applied to an event in its concomitant circumstances exactly similar, but in its nature totally different. See De S. Poes. Hebr. Praelect. 12. For beauty and ingenuity it may fairly come in competition with one of the most elegant of Virgil, greatly improved from Homer, Iliad 22:199, where he has applied to a different purpose, but not so happily, the same image of the ineffectual working of imagination in a dream: -
Ac veluti in somnis, oculos ubi languida pressit
Nocte quies, necquicquam avidos extendere cursus
Velle videmur, et in mediis conatibus aegri
Succidimus; non lingua valet, non corpore notae
Sufficiunt vires, nec vox, nec verba sequuntur.
Aen., 12:908.
"And as, when slumber seals the closing sight,
The sick wild fancy labors in the night;
Some dreadful visionary foe we shun
With airy strides, but strive in vain to run;
In vain our baffled limbs their powers essay;
We faint, we struggle, sink, and fall away;
Drain'd of our strength, we neither fight nor fly,
And on the tongue the struggling accents die."
Pitt.
Lucretius expresses the very same image with Isaiah: -
Ut bibere in somnis sitiens quum quaerit, et humor
Non datur, ardorem in membris qui stinguere possit;
Sed laticum simulacra petit, frustraque laborat,
In medioque sitit torrenti flumine potans.
As a thirsty man desires to drink in his sleep,
And has no fluid to allay the heat within,
But vainly labors to catch the image of rivers,
And is parched up while fancying that he is drinking at a full stream.
Bishop Stock's translation of the prophet's text is both elegant and just: -
"As when a hungry man dreameth; and, lo! he is eating:
And he awaketh; and his appetite is unsatisfied.
And as a thirsty man dreameth; and, lo! he is drinking:
And he awaketh; and, lo! he is faint,
And his appetite craveth."
Lucretius almost copies the original.
All that fight against her and her munition "And all their armies and their towers" - For צביה ומצדתה tsobeyha umetsodathah, I read, with the Chaldee, צבאם ומצדתם tsebaam umetsodatham. |
36 Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.
8 It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against mount Zion.
15 I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.
13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.
1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.
5 I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head troubled me.
28 But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these;
14 Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions:
13 In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,
2 And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I.
9 And they put him in ward in chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon: they brought him into holds, that his voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.
14 There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:
7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.