Isaiah 44:3

For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(3) I will pour water . . .—The latter words of the verse interpret the former. It is not the union of material or spiritual blessings, but first the symbol, and then the reality. The “thirst” is that of Psalm 42:1; John 4:13-14. In the promise of the Spirit we have an echo of Joel 2:28.

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 44:3-5. I will pour water — My Spirit, as it is expounded in the latter part of the verse, frequently compared to water in the Scriptures; upon him that is thirsty — That is destitute of it, and that sincerely and earnestly desires it; and my blessing upon thine offspring — All the blessings of my covenant, especially those of a spiritual nature. This promise seems to have been made with a design to raise the minds and hearts of the Jews from carnal and worldly things, to which they were too much addicted, to spiritual and heavenly blessings, and thereby to prepare them for the reception of the gospel. And they shall spring up, &c. — They shall increase and flourish like grass, and those herbs and plants which grow up in the midst of it. One shall say, I am the Lord’s, &c. — This verse seems to relate to the increase of the church by the accession of the Gentiles: as if he had said, The blessing of God upon the Jews shall be so remarkable that many of the Gentiles shall join themselves unto them, and accept Jehovah for their God, and own themselves for his people.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

44:1-8 Israel is here called Jeshurun, which means the upright one. Such only are Israelites indeed, in whom is no guile. Those that serve God he will own. He will help them over difficulties, and in their services. Water is the emblem of the Holy Spirit; as water refreshes, cleanses, and makes the earth fruitful, so do his influences the soul. This gift of the Holy Ghost is the great blessing, the plentiful pouring out of which God kept for the latter days. Where God gives his Spirit, he will give all other blessings. Hereby shall be a great increase of the church; thus it shall be spread to distant places. Was there any other Rock, or Protector, that could defend them? None besides could foretell these things to come, of which God by his prophets gave notice. All was set in order in the Divine predictions, as well as in the Divine purposes. Could any other have done so? Who can compare with Israel's Redeemer and King?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For I will pour water - Floods, rivers, streams, and waters, are often used in the Scriptures, and especially in Isaiah, to denote plenteous divine blessings, particularly the abundant influences of the Holy Spirit (see the note at Isaiah 35:6-7). That it here refers to the Holy Spirit and his influences, is proved by the parallel expressions in the subsequent part of the verse.

Upon him that is thirsty - Or rather, 'on the thirsty land.' The word צמא tsâmē' refers here rather to land, and the figure is taken from a burning sandy desert, where waters would be made to burst out in copious streams (see Isaiah 35:6-7). The sense is, that God would bestow blessings upon them as signal and marvelous, as if floods of waters were made to descend on the dry, parched, and desolated earth.

And floods - The word נוזלים nôzelı̂ym, from נזל nâzal, "to flow," to run as liquids, means properly flowings, and is used for streams and rivers Exodus 15:8; Psalm 78:16; Proverbs 5:15; Jeremiah 18 It means here that the spiritual influences which would descend on the afflicted, desolate, comfortless, and exiled people, would be like torrents of rain poured on the thirsty earth. This beautiful figure is common in the Scriptures:

He shall come down like rain upon the grass,

And as showers that water the earth.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

3. (Isa 41:18).

him … thirsty—rather, "the land" (Isa 35:6, 7), figuratively for man thirsting after righteousness (Mt 5:6).

floods—the abundant influences of the Holy Spirit, stronger than "water."

spirit—including all spiritual and temporal gifts, as the parallel, "blessing," proves (Isa 11:2; 32:15).

seed—(Isa 59:21).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I will pour water; my Spirit and blessing, which is frequently compared to water; and so it is expounded in the latter part of the verse.

Upon him that is thirsty: either,

1. Upon him that desires it. Or rather,

2. Upon him that is destitute of it; for what is here thirsty, in the next clause it is called dry ground.

My Spirit; the gifts and graces of my Spirit; which expression he seems designedly to use, to lift up the minds and hearts of the Jews from carnal and worldly things, to which they were too much addicted, unto spiritual and heavenly blessings, and thereby to prepare them for the better entertainment of the gospel.

My blessing; all the blessings of my covenant, both spiritual and temporal.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For I will pour water oh him that is thirsty,.... Or rather upon the thirsty land, as the Targum; and so the Syriac version, "in a thirsty place"; as a dry land is a thirsty land; it thirsts for water, gapes and opens for it: see Psalm 63:1 "and floods upon the dry ground"; large quantities of rain to moisten it, and make it fruitful; these figurative expressions are explained in the next clauses:

I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring; by which "seed" and "offspring" are meant the spiritual seed of this remnant or little church of Christ among the Jews, in the first times of the Gospel: such as should be regenerated and converted in it, and who are signified by the "dry" and "thirsty" ground; for being made sensible of their desolate condition, their barrenness and unfruitfulness, they hungered and thirsted after righteousness; were desirous of Christ and his grace, and more knowledge of him, and eagerly sought after them; and to these are promised the Spirit, and his gifts and graces, compared to water, for its purifying, softening, fructifying, and refreshing nature, and for extinguishing thirst, and giving a real pleasure and delight; see Ezekiel 36:25 and the abundance thereof is signified by "floods" of water; for in first conversion especially, there is an abounding, yea a superabounding of the grace of God; it is a well of living water; yea, out of the believer flow rivers of living water, John 4:14 and this grace of the Spirit is always a blessing: and indeed all the blessings of grace go along with it, as to the manifestation and application of them as justification, pardon of sin, adoption, &c.; here perhaps a more special regard is had to the extraordinary effusion of the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, when the apostles of Christ being furnished with his gifts and graces, were fitted to go forth with the "fullness of the blessing" of the Gospel of Christ. The Targum of the whole is,

"for as waters are given upon the thirsty land, and they flow upon the dry land, so will I give my Holy Spirit on thy children, and my blessing upon thy children's children;''

a succession of converts in the Christian church.

Geneva Study Bible

For I will pour water upon him that is {c} thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thy offspring:

(c) Because man of himself is as the dry and barren land, he promises to moisten him with the waters of his Holy Spirit, Joel 2:28, Joh 7:38, Ac 2:17.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

3. On the first half of the verse see ch. Isaiah 41:17 ff. Here, however, a figurative sense predominates, as is shewn by what follows. The “spirit” is the agent both of physical and moral regeneration, as in ch. Isaiah 32:15 (cf. Ezekiel 37:11-14); the former idea being prominent; hence the parallelism “spirit”—“blessing,” the former being the cause, the latter the effect. On the figure of water for the spirit, cf. John 1:33 etc. seed and offspring are individual Israelites.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 3. - I will pour water upon him that is thirsty. "Water" is, in Isaiah, the common metaphor for Divine grace. Sometimes, as in this place (and Isaiah 35:6; Isaiah 43:20; Isaiah 55:1), the simple maim, "water" or "waters," is the word used. At other times we have instead, or in addition, "rain" (Isaiah 5:6; Isaiah 30:23; Isaiah 55:10), or "dew" (Isaiah 26:19), or "rivers" (Isaiah 30:25; Isaiah 32:2; Isaiah 33:21; Isaiah 41:18; Isaiah 43:19, etc.), or "streams" (Isaiah 30:25; Isaiah 35:6), or "floods" (as in this place). At his coming on earth, our blessed Lord took up the comparison, and has made it familiar to all men throughout the whole Christian world (see John 3:5; John 4:10, 11, 13-15; John 7:37-39). We may note here that the "water" is only poured on him who is athirst for it. Thy seed... thine offspring. Not "Israel after the flesh" only, but also Israel after the Spirit - the true "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). Isaiah 44:3

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The prophet cannot bear to dwell any longer upon this dark picture of their state of punishment; and light of the promise breaks through again, and in this third field of the fourth prophecy in all the more intensive form. "And now hear, O Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen. Thus saith Jehovah, thy Creator, and thy Former from the womb, who cometh to thy help; Fear not, my servant Jacob; and Jeshurun, whom I have chosen! For I will pour out water upon thirsty ones, and brooks upon the dry ground; will pour out my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine after-growth; and they shoot up among the grass, as willows by flowing waters." In contrast with the cheerem, i.e., the setting apart for destruction, there is here presented the promise of the pouring out of the Spirit and of blessing; and in contrast with the giddūphı̄m, the promise of general eagerness to come and honour Israel and its God (Isaiah 44:5). The epithets by which Jehovah designates Himself, and those applied to Israel in Isaiah 44:1, Isaiah 44:2, make the claim to love all the more urgent and emphatic. The accent which connects מבּטן ויצרך, so as to make יעזרך by itself an attributive clause like בו בּחרתּי, is confirmed by Isaiah 44:24 and Isaiah 49:5 : Israel as a nation and all the individuals within it are, as the chosen servant of Jehovah (Isaiah 49:1), the direct formation of Jehovah Himself from the remotest point of their history. In Isaiah 44:26, Jeshurun is used interchangeably with Jacob. This word occurs in three other passages (viz., Deuteronomy 32:15; Deuteronomy 33:5, Deuteronomy 33:26), and is always written with kibbutz, just as it is here. The rendering ̓Ισραελίσκος in Gr. Ven. is founded upon the supposition that the word is equivalent to ישׂרלוּן - a strange contraction, which is inadmissible, if only on account of the substitution of שׁ for שׂ. The שׁ points back to ישׁר, to be straight or even; hence A. S. Th. εὐθύσς (elsewhere εὐθύτατος), Jerome rectissimus (though in Deuteronomy 32:15 he renders it, after the lxx, dilectus). It is an offshoot of ישׁר equals ישׁר (Psalm 25:21), like זבלוּן, ידתוּן from זבל, ידת; and ūn ( equals ōn) does not stamp it as a diminutive (for אישׁון, which Kamphausen adduces in opposition to Hengstenberg and Volck, does not stand in the same relation to אישׁ as mannikin to man, but rather as the image of a man to a man himself; compare the Arabic insân). We must not render it therefore as an affectionate diminutive, as Gesenius does, the more especially as Jehovah, though speaking in loving terms, does not adopt the language of a lover. The relation of Jeshurun to ישׁר is rather the same as that of שׁלמה to שׁלום, so that the real meaning is "gentleman," or one of gentlemanly or honourable mind, though this need not appear in the translation, since the very nature of a proper name would obliterate it. In Isaiah 44:3, the blessings to be expected are assigned as the reason for the exhortation to be of good cheer. In Isaiah 44:3 water is promised in the midst of drought, and in Isaiah 44:3 the Spirit and blessing of God, just as in Joel the promise of rain is first of all placed in contrast with drought; and this is followed by the promise of the far surpassing antitype, namely, the outpouring of the Spirit. There is nothing at variance with this in the fact that we have not the form צמאה in the place of צמא fo e (according to the analogy of עיפה ארץ, ציּה, נלאה, Psalm 68:10). By צמא) we understand the inhabitants of the land who are thirsting for rain, and by yabbâshâh the parched land itself. Further on, however, an express distinction is made between the abundance of water in the land and the prosperous growth of the nation planted by the side of water-brooks (Psalm 1:3). We must not regard Isaiah 44:3, therefore, as a figure, and Isaiah 44:3 as the explanation, or turn Isaiah 44:3 into a simile introduced in the form of a protasis, although unquestionably water and mountain streams are made the symbol, or rather the anagogical type, of spiritual blessings coming down from above in the form of heavenly gifts, by a gradual ascent from מים and נוזלים (from נזל, to trickle downwards, Sol 4:15, Jeremiah 18:14) to ה רוּח and ה בּרכת (בּרכּת). When these natural and spiritual waters flow down upon the people, once more restored to their home, they spring up among (בּבין only met with here, lxx and Targum כּבין) the grass, like willows by water-brooks.

The willows

(Note: "The garab," says Wetzstein, "was only met with by me in one locality, or, at any rate, I only noticed it once, namely in the Wady So'b, near to a ford of the river which is called the Hd ford, from the chirbet el-Hd, a miserable ruin not far off. It is half an hour to the west of Nimrin (Nimrim, Isaiah 15:6), or, speaking more exactly, half an hour above (i.e., to the east of) Zaft Nimriin, an antique road on the northern bank of the river, hewn in a precipitous wall of rock, like the ladder of Tyre. I travelled through the valley in June 1860, and find the following entry in my diary: 'At length the ravine opened up into a broader valley, so that we could get down to the clear, copious, and rapid stream, and were able to cross it. Being exhausted by the heat, we lay down near the ford among the oleanders, which the mass of flowers covered with a rosy glow. The reed grows here to an unusual height, as in the Wady Yarmk, and willows (zafzaf) and garab are mingled together, and form many-branched trees of three or four fathoms in height. The vegetation, which is fresh and luxuriant by the water-side, is scorched up with the heat in the valley within as little as ten paces from the banks of the stream. The farthest off is the 'osar plant, with its thick, juicy, dark green stalks and leaves, and its apple-like fruit, which is of the same colour, and therefore not yet ripe. The garab tree has already done flowering. The leaves of this tree stand quite close around the stem, as in the case of the Sindiana (the Syrian oak), and, like the leaves of the latter, are fringed with little thorns; but, like the willow, it is a water plant, and our companions Abdallah and Nasrallah assured us that it was only met with near flowing water and in hot lowlands. Its bunches of flowers are at the points of the slender branches, and assume an umbelliferous form. This is the ערב of the Bible.' Consequently the garab (or (as nom. unitatis) the garaba cannot be regarded as a species of willow; and Winer's assumption (Real-Wrterbuch, s.v. Weiden), that the weeping willow is intended at any rate in Psalm 137:2, is an error. In Arabic the weeping willow is always called shafshaf mustachi (the drooping tree). At the same time, we may render ערבים 'willows,' since the garab loves running water as well as the willow, and apparently they seek one another's society; it is quite enough that the difference should be clearly pointed out in the commentary. The reason why the garab did not find its way into my herbarium was the following. On my arrival in Salt, I received the first intelligence of the commencement of the slaughter of the Christians on Antilibanus, and heard the report, which was then commonly believed, that a command had been sent from Constantinople to exterminate Christianity from Syria. This alarming report compelled me to inquire into the actual state of affairs; therefore, leaving my luggage and some of my companions behind, I set off with all speed to Jerusalem, where I hoped to obtain reliable information, accompanied by Herr Drgen, my kavas, and two natives, viz., Abdallah the smith, from Salt, and Nasrallah the smith, from Ain Genna. For a ride like this, which did not form part of the original plan of my journey, everything but weapons, even a herbarium, would have been in the way. Still there are small caravans going every week between Salt and Jerusalem, and they must always cross the Hd ford, so that it would be easy to get a twig of the garab. So far as I remember, the remains of the blossom were of a dirty white colour." (Compare p. 213, where we have taken nachal hâ‛ărâbhı̄m, according to the meaning of the words, as a synonym of Wady Sufsaf, or, more correctly, Safsf. From the description given above, the garab is a kind of viburnum with indented leaves. This tree, which is of moderate height, is found by the side of streams along with the willow. According to Sprengel (Gesch. der Botanik. i. 25), the safsâf is the salix subserrata of Wildenow).)

are the nation, which has hitherto resembled withered plants in a barren soil, but is now restored to all the bloom of youth through the Spirit and blessing of God. The grass stands for the land, which resembles a green luxuriant plain; and the water-brooks represent the abundant supply of living waters, which promote the prosperity of the land and its inhabitants.