Isaiah 27

In that day the LORD will take his sharp, huge, mighty sword and bring punishment on Leviathan, the darting serpent, Leviathan, the twisting serpent. He will kill the dragon that lives in the sea.

1In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

Note"In that day" is a recurring marker in Isaiah for a future moment of reckoning or rescue; it does not point to a dated calendar day. Leviathan is a monstrous sea creature of ancient Near Eastern poetry, also known from Canaanite texts found at Ugarit, where a many-headed sea serpent is called by the same name and described with the same two words used here. The Hebrew adjectives are uncertain: the first suggests either "fleeing/darting" or "gliding, bar-like"; the second means "twisting" or "coiling." "Dragon" translates Hebrew *tannin*, a general word for a large sea monster or serpent.

2In that day, sing about her: "A vineyard that gives good wine!"

2In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine.

NoteThe vineyard is a standing image for Israel in Isaiah. The same image opened a song in chapter 5, where the vineyard yielded bad grapes and was abandoned; this verse deliberately echoes and reverses it. The Hebrew wording is uncertain here: the letters behind "red wine" (as in the King James) differ by one from a word meaning "delightful" or "pleasant," and ancient copies split between the two readings.

3"I, the LORD, take care of that vineyard. I water it every moment. So that no one can harm it, I guard it night and day.

3I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.

4I am not angry. Who would put briers and thorns up against me in a fight? I would march straight through them and burn them all up together.

4Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together.

NoteBriers and thorns are what take over a vineyard nobody tends; in Isaiah 5 they were the sign of the vineyard's ruin. Burning off thorn scrub was ordinary vineyard work, so the picture is of clearing, not of destroying the vineyard itself.

5Or else let him take hold of my strength and make peace with me. Yes, let him make peace with me."

5Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me.

Note"Take hold of my strength" translates a Hebrew word meaning a stronghold or place of refuge. The picture is of someone seizing hold of a fortress, or of a fugitive gripping something for sanctuary, and so claiming protection from the one who owns it.

6He will make the children of Jacob take root. Israel will bud and bloom and fill the whole world with fruit.

6He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.

NoteJacob and Israel are the same man: Jacob, grandson of Abraham, was renamed Israel, and his descendants were called by both names. Here, as often in Hebrew poetry, the two names are paired as parallel terms for the same people.

7Has the LORD struck his people the way he struck the ones who struck them? Were his people killed the way those he killed were killed?

7Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him?

NoteThe Hebrew of this verse uses unnamed pronouns throughout ("he," "him," "them") without saying who is who. The usual reading is that God punished his own people far more lightly than he punished the nations who attacked them, but the wording itself leaves the parties unspecified.

8You punished her only in measure, by driving her away. His harsh wind carried her off on the day the east wind blows.

8In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind.

NoteThe word behind "in measure" and "when it shooteth forth" occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, and this is one of the most disputed lines in Isaiah; suggested senses range from "measure by measure" (a limited, weighed-out punishment) to "by driving her away" (exile). The east wind is the sirocco, the scorching wind off the desert that withers crops in a day; it is a standard image for a sudden, drying blow.

9So this is how Jacob's guilt will be wiped away, and this is the whole result of taking his sin away: he will smash every stone of the altar into pieces like crushed chalk, and no idol poles or incense altars will be left standing.

9By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.

NoteThe altar in view is not the one in Jerusalem but the local altars used for other gods. Grinding their limestone blocks to powder made them unusable rather than merely unattended. "Groves" in the King James translates *asherim*: wooden poles or stylised trees set up beside altars for the goddess Asherah. The "images" are incense stands or small altars for burning incense to other gods.

10But the walled city sits empty. The homestead is abandoned and left like a desert. Calves graze there and lie down there, and they strip its branches bare.

10Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.

NoteThe city is not named, and readers have argued since antiquity over whether it means a foreign capital or Jerusalem itself. "Defenced" is older English for fortified, a city with walls. Cattle grazing and bedding down inside the walls is the standard picture of a place so long abandoned that livestock use it as pasture.

11When its branches dry out, they are snapped off. Women come and use them for firewood. For this is a people with no understanding. So the one who made them will not pity them, and the one who formed them will show them no kindness.

11When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour.

12In that day the LORD will thresh his harvest from the Euphrates River all the way to the streambed at the border of Egypt. And you, people of Israel, will be gathered up one by one.

12And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.

Note"Beat off" describes threshing, or beating an olive tree or grain stalks with a stick to knock the fruit loose so it can be picked up piece by piece, hence "gathered one by one." The two limits named, the Euphrates in the northeast and the wadi at Egypt's border in the southwest (a seasonal desert streambed, not the Nile), were the traditional outer bounds of the land promised to Israel.

13In that day a great trumpet, a ram's horn, will be blown. Those who were dying in the land of Assyria will come, along with those who were driven out into the land of Egypt. And they will worship the LORD on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

13And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem.

NoteThe trumpet is the *shofar*, a ram's horn. It was blown to muster an army, sound an alarm, or call people together for a festival, so the sound signals a summons rather than music. Assyria and Egypt were the two great powers between which Israel and Judah sat, and the two places where scattered survivors ended up. The "holy mountain" is the temple hill in Jerusalem, also called Zion.