Isaiah 49:19

For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(19) Shall even now be too narrow.—Literally, with a vivid abruptness, thou shalt be . . . The over population of the future is contrasted with the depopulation of the past (Isaiah 3:6; Isaiah 4:1).

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 49:19-21. For thy waste and desolate places, &c. — He alludes to the land of Judea lying waste during the Babylonish captivity. Thus the church of God was in a waste, desolate, and barren state, till the coming of the Messiah, the introduction of the gospel, and the conversion of the Gentiles; and the land of thy destruction — Or, thy land of destruction. He still alludes to Judea, thus characterized, because it was devoted, and should be exposed to destruction, first by the Chaldeans, and again by the Romans, a lively emblem of the ruined state of their church; shall even now be too narrow — To contain the multitude of converts that shall be made. The middle wall of partition that separated the Jews from the Gentiles shall be broken down, and the pale of the church shall be enlarged. The children which thou shalt have, &c. — Hebrew, בני שׁכלין, The children of thy orbity, or, barren and childless state. Those children which thou shalt have when thou art past the ordinary age and state of childbearing, as Sarah in her old age was made the mother of a most numerous posterity; to which he seems to allude: those children which shall be begotten to thee by the gospel when thou shalt be deprived of thine own natural children, or when thou shalt become barren as to the conversion of natural Jews; when the generality of the Jews shall cut themselves off from God and his true church, by their apostacy from him, and by their unbelief and rejection of their Messiah; shall say again — Or rather, shall yet say, though for the present it be far otherwise, The place is too strait for me, &c. — This is figuratively spoken, merely to signify the great enlargement of the church by the accession of the Gentiles. See Isaiah 54:1. Then shalt thou say in thy heart — Not without admiration, Who hath begotten me these — Whence, or by whom, have I this numerous issue? Seeing I have lost my children — Seeing it is not long since that I was in a manner childless? And am desolate — Without a husband, being forsaken of God, who formerly owned himself for my husband, Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 31:32; a captive, and removing to and fro — In an unsettled condition, and not likely to bear and bring up children for God or myself. Who hath brought up these? — The same thing is repeated in these words to express the miraculousness of this work, and the great surprise of the Jews at it: which shows that he speaks of the conversion of the Gentiles.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

49:18-23 Zion is addressed as an afflicted widow, bereaved of her children. Numbers flock to her, and she is assured that they come to be a comfort to her. There are times when the church is desolate and few in number; yet its desolations shall not last for ever, and God will repair them. God can raise up friends for returning Israelites, even among Gentiles. They shall bring their children, and make them thy children. Let all deal tenderly and carefully with young converts and beginners in religion. Princes shall protect the church. It shall appear that God is the sovereign Lord of all. And those who in the exercise of faith, hope, and patience, wait on God for the fulfilment of his promises, shall never be confounded.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For thy waste and thy desolate places - Thy land over which ruin has been spread, and ever which the exile nation mourns.

And the land of thy destruction - That is, thy land laid in ruins. The construction is not uncommon where a noun is used to express the sense of an adjective. Thus in Psalm 2:6, the Hebrew phrase (margin) is correctly rendered 'my holy hill.' Here the sense is, that their entire country had been so laid waste as to be a land of desolation.

Shall even now be too narrow - Shall be too limited to contain all who shall become converted to the true God. The contracted territory of Palestine shall be incapable of sustaining all who will acknowledge the true God, and who shall be regarded as his friends.

And they that swallowed thee up - The enemies that laid waste thy land, and that "absorbed," as it were, thy inhabitants, and removed them to a distant land. They shall be all gone, and the land shall smile again in prosperity and in loveliness.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

19. land of thy destruction—thy land once the scene of destruction.

too narrow—(Isa 54:1, 2; Zec 10:10).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Thy waste and thy desolate places; thy own land, which is now waste and desolate, and whereof divers parts lay formerly waste and desolate for want of people to possess and manage them.

The land of thy destruction; or rather, thy land of destruction; so called because it is devoted and shall be exposed to destruction. Shall be far away, to wit, from thee.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction,.... Or "thy land of destruction, or thy destroyed land" (n); laid waste and desolate by the enemy, without inhabitants; such countries in which there were few professors of the true religion:

shall even now be too narrow, by reason of the inhabitants; because of the multitude of them; a hyperbolical expression, setting forth the great numbers of Christian converts everywhere: this straitness will not be on account of strangers or enemies having taken possession; but on account of those who are true and proper possessors: for it follows,

and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away; from the church; the Heathen, the Gentiles, or Papists,

shall now perish out of his, Jehovah's, "land"; "sinners shall be consumed out of the earth, and the wicked be no more", Psalm 10:16. Antichrist and his abettors, which "swallowed" up the people, their riches, and substance, like beasts of prey, to which he is compared, shall go into perdition, and never disturb the church any more, Revelation 13:1.

(n) "terra tua destructa", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, De Dieu; "et terram destructionis tuam", Cocceius; "et terram tuam quae destructa est", Vitringa.

Geneva Study Bible

For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

19. For as for thy waste and thy desolate places and thy land that hath been destroyed, surely now shalt thou be too strait for the inhabitants, &c.] So R.V. But there appears to be some textual disorder, the subjects in the first half of the verse having no predicate. The R.V. gets over the difficulty by taking “thy waste places” &c. as a sort of casus pendens, resumed in the “thou” of the last clause; but this is a forced construction. The most probable solution is that the original conclusion of the first clause has been lost in copying (Duhm); the second would then commence with the words For now.

the land of thy destruction] lit. “thy land of destruction,” i.e., as R.V., thy land that hath been destroyed.

19, 20. In place of her present solitude, the ideal Zion shall yet look down on a densely peopled city, whose inhabitants are embarrassed for want of room.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 19. - The land of thy destruction; or, of thy overthrow - i.e, where thou wert overthrown by Nebuchadnezzar - shall even now be too narrow, etc. This must not be understood literally. Palestine, after the return from the Captivity, was at no time over-populated; and when the conversion of the Gentiles took place it caused no influx of fresh settlers into the Holy Land. The object of the prophet is simply to mark the vast growth of the Church, which would necessarily spread itself far beyond the limits of Palestine, and would ultimately require the whole earth for its habitation. Isaiah 49:19

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Thus will Zion shine forth once more with the multitude of her children as with a festal adorning. "For thy ruins and thy waste places and thy land full of ruin - yea, now thou wilt be too narrow for the inhabitants, and thy devourers are far away. Thy children, that were formerly taken from thee, shall say in thine ears, The space is too narrow for me; give way for me, that I may have room." The word "for" (kı̄) introduces the explanatory reason for the figures just employed of jewellery and a bridal girdle. Instead of the three subjects, "thy ruins," etc., the comprehensive "thou" is employed permutatively, and the sentence commenced afresh. כּי is repeated emphatically in עתּה כּי (for now, or yea now); this has essentially the same meaning as in the apodosis of hypothetical protasis (e.g., Genesis 31:42; Genesis 43:10), except that the sense is more decidedly affirmative than in the present instance, where one sees it spring out of the confirmative. Zion, that has been hitherto desolate, now becomes too small to hold her inhabitants; and her devourers are far away, i.e., those who took forcible possession of the land and cities, and made them untenable. עוד is to be understood in accordance with Psalm 42:6, and בעזניך in accordance with Psalm 54:2 (see at Isaiah 5:9). It will even come to this, that the children of which Zion was formerly robbed will call to one another, so that she becomes a witness with her ears to that which they have so clearly seen: the space is too narrow, give way (geshâh, from nâgash, to advance, then to move generally, also to move in an opposite direction, i.e., to fall back, as in Genesis 19:9) for me, that I may be able to settle down.