Isaiah 33:22

For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(22) The Lord is our judge . . .—The verb is better omitted, and the threefold iteration of the name of Jehovah, in each case with a special characteristic, taken as the subject of the final verb: “The Lord, our judge, the Lord, our lawgiver . . . He will save us.”

MacLaren's Expositions

Isaiah

JUDGE, LAWGIVER, KING

Isaiah 33:22.

There is reference here to the three forms of government in Israel: by Moses, by Judges, by Kings. In all, Israel was a Theocracy. Isaiah looks beyond the human representative to the true divine Reality.

I. A truth for us, in both its more specific and its more general forms.

{a} Specific. Christ is all these three for us-Authority; His will law; Defender.

{b} More general. Everything that human beings are to us, they are by derivation from Him-and He sums in Himself all forms of good and blessing. Every name among men for any kind of helper belongs to Him. All tender, helpful relationships are but ‘broken lights of Thee.’

II. A lesson hard to learn and to remember.

One knows not whether it is harder for faith to look beyond the visible helpers or delights to the Unseen Real One, or to look through tears, when these are gone, and to see Him clearly filling an otherwise empty field of vision. When we have a palpable prop to lean on, it is difficult to be clearly aware that, unless the palpable support were held up by the Unseen, it could not be a prop, and to lean on it would be like resting one’s weight on a staff stuck in yielding mud. But it is no less difficult to tell our hearts that we have all that we ever had, when what we had leaned on for many happy days and found to hold us up is stricken from beneath us. Present, the seen lawgiver, judge, or king stays the eyes that should travel past him to God Himself; removed, his absence makes a great emptiness, in whose vacuity it is difficult for faith to discern the real presence of Him who is all that the departed seemed to be. The painted glass stays the eye; shattered, it lets in only the sight of a void and far-off sky.

Israel could not breathe freely in the rarefied air on the heights of a theocracy, and demanded a visible king. It had its desire, and as a consequence, ‘leanness in its soul.’ Christendom has found it as difficult to do without visible embodiments of authority, law, defence, and hence many evils and corruptions in the institutions and practices of organised Christianity.

III. A conviction which makes strong and blessed.

To have dominant in our minds, and operative through our lives, the settled conviction that God in Christ is for us judge, lawgiver, and king, and that the purpose of all these offices or relationships is that ‘He will save us’ is the secret of tranquillity, the fountain of courage, the talisman which makes life all different and us who live in it different. Fear cannot survive where that conviction rules and fortifies a heart. We shall not be slavish adherents of men if we are accustomed to take our orders from our Lawgiver. Earthly prizes or dignities will not dazzle eyes that have seen the King in His beauty. We shall pay little heed to men’s judgments if there flames ever before conscience the thought, ‘He that judgeth me is the Lord.’ ‘He will save us’; who can destroy what His hand is stretched out to preserve? ‘If God is for us, who is against us? It is God that justifieth; who is He that condemneth?’

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

33:15-24 The true believer watches against all occasions of sin. The Divine power will keep him safe, and his faith in that power will keep him easy. He shall want nothing needful for him. Every blessing of salvation is freely bestowed on all that ask with humble, believing prayer; and the believer is safe in time and for ever. Those that walk uprightly shall not only have bread given, and their water sure, but they shall, by faith, see the King of kings in his beauty, the beauty of holiness. The remembrance of the terror they were in, shall add to the pleasure of their deliverance. It is desirable to be quiet in our own houses, but much more so to be quiet in God's house; and in every age Christ will have a seed to serve him. Jerusalem had no large river running by it, but the presence and power of God make up all wants. We have all in God, all we need, or can desire. By faith we take Christ for our Prince and Saviour; he reigns over his redeemed people. All that refuse to have Him to reign over them, make shipwreck of their souls. Sickness is taken away in mercy, when the fruit of it is the taking away of sin. If iniquity be taken away, we have little reason to complain of outward affliction. This last verse leads our thoughts, not only to the most glorious state of the gospel church on earth, but to heaven, where no sickness or trouble can enter. He that blotteth out our transgressions, will heal our souls.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For the Lord is our judge - Yahweh will be to us nothing but a source of happiness, truth, and prosperity. His presence will be to us only a blessing, and a means of success and joy. The repetition of the name Yahweh three times is common in the Scriptures.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

22. Lord—thrice repeated, as often: the Trinity (Nu 6:24-26).

judge … lawgiver … king—perfect ideal of the theocracy, to be realized under Messiah alone; the judicial, legislative, and administrative functions as king to be exercised by Him in person (Isa 11:4; 32:1; Jas 4:12).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The Lord is our Judge; to judge for us, to plead our cause against our enemies, as the ancient judges of Israel did, Judges 2 16.

Our Lawgiver; our chief Governor, to whom it. belongs to give laws, and to defend his people.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For the Lord is our Judge,.... The Lord Christ, who has all judgment committed to him by the Father, who will judge his people, right their wrongs, and avenge their injuries:

the Lord is our Lawgiver; who has enacted wholesome laws for his church, writes them on their hearts, and puts his Spirit within them, to enable them to keep them:

the Lord is our King: King of saints, King of Zion, made so by his Father, owned by his church, under whose government it is in safety:

he will save us; from all sin, and from all enemies, with an everlasting salvation. The church here speaks with great pleasure of her interest in Christ under every character, and of her safety as depending upon him. The Targum is,

"the Lord is our Judge, who brought us by his power out of Egypt; the Lord is our teacher, who gave us the doctrine of the law from Sinai; the Lord is our King, he will redeem us, and take vengeance of judgment for us on the army of Gog;''

which shows that the ancient Jews understood this prophecy as referring to times yet to come.

Geneva Study Bible

For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

22. In the New Jerusalem Jehovah is Judge, Lawgiver and King, and therefore also its Deliverer from every danger.

Isaiah 33:22

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

No (Nō' 'Amōn in Nahum 3:8) is the Egyptian nu-Amun equals Διόσπολις (nu the spelling of the hieroglyphic of the plan of the city, with which the name of the goddess Nu̇ t equals Rhea is also written). The ordinary spelling of the name of this city corresponds to the Greek ̓Αμμωνόπολις.

Isaiah 33:21It is also a great Lord who dwells therein, a faithful and almighty defender. "No, there dwells for us a glorious One, Jehovah; a place of streams, canals of wide extent, into which no fleet of rowing vessels ventures, and which no strong man of war shall cross. For Jehovah is our Judge; Jehovah is our war-Prince; Jehovah is our King; He will bring us salvation." Following upon the negative clauses in Isaiah 33:20, the next v. commences with kı̄ 'im (imo). Glorious ('addı̄r) is Jehovah, who has overthrown Lebanon, i.e., Assyria (Isaiah 10:34). He dwells in Jerusalem for the good of His people - a place of streams, i.e., one resembling a place of streams, from the fact that He dwells therein. Luzzatto is right in maintaining, that בּו and יעברנּוּ point back to מקום, and therefore that mekōm is neither equivalent to loco (tachath, instead of), which would be quite possible indeed, as 1 Kings 21:19, if not Hosea 2:1, clearly proves (cf., 1 Kings 22:38), nor used in the sense of substitution or compensation. The meaning is, that, by virtue of Jehovah's dwelling there, Jerusalem had become a place, or equivalent to a place, or broad streams, like those which in other instances defended the cities they surrounded (e.g., Babylon, the "twisted snake," Isaiah 27:1), and of broad canals, which kept off the enemy, like moats around a fortification. The word יארים was an Egyptian word, that had become naturalized in Hebrew; nevertheless it is a very natural supposition, that the prophet was thinking of the No of Egypt, which was surrounded by waters, probably Nile-canals (see Winer, R.W. Nahum 3:8). The adjective in which yâdaim brings out with greater force the idea of breadth, as in Isaiah 22:18 ("on both sides"), belongs to both the nouns, which are placed side by side, ὰσυνδέτως (because permutative). The presence of Jehovah was to Jerusalem what the broadest streams and canals were to other cities; and into these streams and canals, which Jerusalem had around it spiritually in Jehovah Himself, no rowing vessels ventured בּ הלך, ingredi). Luzzatto renders the word "ships of roving," i.e., pirate ships; but this is improbable, as shūt, when used as a nautical word, signifies to row. Even a majestic tsı̄, i.e., trieris magna, could not cross it: a colossal vessel of this size would be wrecked in these mighty and dangerous waters. The figure is the same as that in Isaiah 26:1. In the consciousness of this inaccessible and impenetrable defence, the people of Jerusalem gloried in their God, who watched as a shōphēt over Israel's rights and honour, who held as mechoqēq the commander's rod, and ruled as melekh in the midst of Israel; so that for every future danger it was already provided with the most certain help.