Isaiah Chapter 11 verse 14 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 14-16. - THE UNITED CHURCH SHALL TRIUMPH OVER ITS ENEMIES. PHYSICAL OBSTACLES TO ITS UNION GOD WILL REMOVE. Israel's most persistent enemies had been the border-nations of the Philistines, the Edomites, the Arabs, Moab and Ammon. These are now taken as types of the enemies of the Church, and victory over them is promised (ver. 14). A further promise is made that physical difficulties shall not prevent the return of the Jewish exiles from distant countries (vers. 15, 16). Verse 14. - They shall fly upon the shoulders of the philistines. It is not to be supposed that actual war is intended. The subjects of the Prince of Peace will not draw the sword. But the Church will for many centuries be confronted by enemies, and must contend with them with legitimate weapons. It is this warfare of which Isaiah now speaks. The united Church will be strong enough to assail her enemies on all sides, and will "swoop" upon the border country of the Philistines like a bird of prey. They shall spoil them of the east; or, the Bent Kedem. The phrase is commonly used in an ethnic sense of the nomadic Arabs inhabiting the deserts east of Jordan, beyond the Ammonite and Moabite country, from whose raids Palestine frequently suffered (see Jeremiah 49:28, 29; Ezekiel 25:4, 10).

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(14) They shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines . . .--The English version is ambiguous, and half suggests the thought that the Philistines should bear the returning Israelites as on their shoulders; so the LXX. gives, "And they shall speed their wings in the ships of the aliens." What is meant, however, is that the returning exiles shall swoop down, as a bird of prey after its flight, "upon the shoulder of the Philistines," that name being applied (as in Ezekiel 25:9; Joshua 15:10) to the shape of the seaward- sloping country occupied by that people. From this victorious onset in the West, they are to pass on to "the children of the East," the generic name for the nomadic tribes that are found associated with the Midianites and Amalekites (Judges 6:3; Judges 6:33; Judges 7:12), and in Isaiah 2:6, with the Philistines themselves, and then to complete their triumph by avenging themselves on their old enemies of Edom, and Moab, and Ammon. The whole verse is singularly characteristic of what has been already spoken of as the limitation of prophetic knowledge. The seer has had revealed to him the glory of the Messianic kingdom as a restored Eden, full of the knowledge of Jehovah, the Gentiles seeking light and salvation from it. Suddenly he blends this with anticipations that belong to the feelings and complications of his own time. He sees Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites, in that far future. They will be then, as they were in his own times, the persistent foes of Israel (comp. Zephaniah 2:7-9), but will be, at last, subdued. . . .