Isaiah 9: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah speaks first of light coming to a land that had been humbled: Zebulun, Naphtali, and Galilee. He describes a broken yoke, an end to war gear, and a child born to rule on David's throne with justice forever. The chapter then turns to a message sent against the northern kingdom, whose people answer disaster with pride, and it moves through rounds of judgment, three of them closing with the line that God's anger has not turned away and his hand is still raised.

Claim by Claim

1. 9:1
   • The coming gloom will not be like the gloom that was in her earlier distress.
   • At the first he made light of the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali.
   • Afterward he dealt heavily with the way of the sea, the region beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
   • The two verbs are ambiguous: the first act may be either a light affliction or a treating with contempt, and the later act either a heavier affliction or a bestowing of honor.
2. 9:2
   • The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
   • Those who dwell in a land of deepest darkness, the shadow of death, have had light shine upon them.
3. 9:3
   • God has multiplied the nation.
   • God has not increased the joy.
   • The text can also be read as saying God increased the nation's joy, the opposite of the negative reading.
   • They rejoice before God.
   • Their rejoicing is like the joy of harvest.
   • Their rejoicing is like the gladness of men dividing spoil.
4. 9:4
   • God has broken the yoke of his burden.
   • God has broken the bar across his shoulder.
   • God has broken the rod of his oppressor.
   • God did this as in the day of Midian.
5. 9:5
   • Every boot of the warrior tramping in the tumult of battle, and every garment rolled in blood, will be burned.
   • These will become fuel for the fire.
6. 9:6
   • A child is born to us.
   • A son is given to us.
   • The government will be upon his shoulder.
   • His name will be called Wonderful Counselor.
   • His name will be called Mighty God.
   • His name will be called Everlasting Father.
   • His name will be called Prince of Peace.
   • The first title can be read as one name, Wonderful Counselor, or as two names, Wonderful and Counselor.
7. 9:7
   • There will be no end to the increase of his government.
   • There will be no end to peace.
   • He will rule on the throne of David and over David's kingdom.
   • He will establish and uphold that kingdom with justice and righteousness.
   • This will be so from now on and forever.
   • The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.
8. 9:8
   • The Lord sent a word against Jacob.
   • That word has fallen upon Israel.
9. 9:9
   • All the people will know it.
   • Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria are those who will know it.
   • They speak in pride and arrogance of heart.
10. 9:10
    • They say the bricks have fallen down.
    • They say they will rebuild with hewn stone.
    • They say the sycamores have been cut down.
    • They say they will replace them with cedars.
11. 9:11
    • The LORD will raise up the adversaries of Rezin against him.
    • The LORD will stir up his enemies together.
    • It is unclear whether the adversaries raised up are Rezin's own foes or the foes allied with Rezin.
12. 9:12
    • The Arameans attack from in front, on the east.
    • The Philistines attack from behind, on the west.
    • They devour Israel with open mouth.
    • Despite all this, his anger is not turned away.
    • His hand is still stretched out.
13. 9:13
    • The people have not turned to the one who struck them.
    • They have not sought the LORD of hosts.
14. 9:14
    • The LORD will cut off from Israel both head and tail.
    • The LORD will cut off palm branch and reed.
    • He will do this in one day.
15. 9:15
    • The elder and honored man is the head.
    • The prophet who teaches lies is the tail.
16. 9:16
    • The guides of this people lead them astray.
    • Those who are led by them are swallowed up.
17. 9:17
    • The Lord takes no joy in their young men.
    • The Lord will not have mercy on their fatherless and widows.
    • Every one of them is godless.
    • Every one of them is an evildoer.
    • Every mouth speaks folly.
    • Despite all this, his anger is not turned away.
    • His hand is still stretched out.
18. 9:18
    • Wickedness burns like fire.
    • It devours briers and thorns.
    • It kindles the thickets of the forest.
    • They roll upward as a column of smoke.
19. 9:19
    • By the wrath of the LORD of hosts the land is scorched.
    • The people have become fuel for the fire.
    • No man spares his brother.
20. 9:20
    • He cuts off food on the right hand and is still hungry.
    • He eats on the left hand and they are not satisfied.
    • Each man eats the flesh of his own arm.
    • The word for what is eaten can mean his own arm or his own kin.
21. 9:21
    • Manasseh devours Ephraim.
    • Ephraim devours Manasseh.
    • Together they are against Judah.
    • Despite all this, his anger is not turned away.
    • His hand is still stretched out.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

9:1

Zebulun and Naphtali were two of Israel's twelve tribes, and their territories lay in the far north, around the Sea of Galilee. Being border land, they were the first to be overrun when armies came down from the north; Assyria took them in 733–732 BC. "The road by the sea" was the main trade route running from Damascus down past the lake to the Mediterranean coast, and "Galilee of the nations" means Galilee of the foreigners, the northern district had a heavily mixed population of non-Israelites. In Hebrew Bibles this verse is numbered 8:23, so verse numbers here run one behind for the rest of the chapter in some editions.

9:2

The Hebrew word behind "the land where death casts its shadow" can mean either deep, total darkness or, by an old reading of its parts, the shadow cast by death itself. Translations split between the two, and the King James "shadow of death" preserves the darker of the options.

9:3

The Hebrew text here contains a famous crux. As written, the sentence says "you have not increased the joy" (what the King James follows); an ancient marginal reading, which sounds identical when spoken aloud, gives "you have increased its joy for it" (what most modern translations follow). The rest of the verse, about harvest and plunder, fits the positive reading, which is why the two versions on this page differ.

9:4

A yoke was the wooden beam strapped across the necks of draft animals to make them pull; laid on a person, it was the standard picture of being owned and driven by someone else. "The day of Midian" refers to Gideon's night victory over the Midianite raiders (Judges 7), where a tiny force won without a pitched battle, the stock example of an enemy broken by something other than Israel's own strength.

9:5

The word the King James renders as "battle of the warrior... with confused noise" is a rare Hebrew term, and its sense is uncertain. It is now generally taken to be a loanword for a soldier's heavy boot, so the line lists two pieces of battlefield gear, boots and bloodied clothing, being thrown on a bonfire. The older reading heard in it the din of battle instead.

9:6

In Hebrew, the name given at a birth was expected to say something true about the child or the circumstances, and royal accession names in the ancient Near East worked the same way: a new king received titles describing the reign. The four titles here are of that kind. The Hebrew does not mark where one title ends and the next begins, so "Wonderful, Counselor" and "Wonderful Counselor" are both legitimate readings. "Everlasting Father" is a standard ancient way of calling a king the permanent protector and provider of his people, not a statement about family relations.

9:7

David was Israel's second king, around 1000 BC, and God's promise that his descendants would rule permanently (2 Samuel 7) made "David's throne" shorthand for legitimate rule over the whole nation. Isaiah is writing some 250 years later, when that dynasty held only the small southern kingdom of Judah. "LORD of Armies" translates a title also rendered "LORD of hosts": the commander of heaven's armed forces.

9:8

Jacob was the ancestor whose twelve sons gave the tribes their names, and who was himself renamed Israel. From here to the end of the chapter, "Jacob" and "Israel" mean the northern kingdom specifically (the ten tribes that had broken away from Jerusalem's rule), not the whole people.

9:9

Ephraim was the largest northern tribe, and its name was commonly used as a nickname for the whole northern kingdom, the way "England" gets used for Britain. Samaria was that kingdom's capital city, roughly forty miles north of Jerusalem.

9:10

This is a boast about upgrading. Ordinary walls were sun-dried mud brick, cheap and quick; dressed stone blocks were the expensive material used for palaces and temples. Sycamore-fig was a common local timber of poor quality; cedar had to be imported from Lebanon at great cost. The speakers are claiming the disaster will leave them better off than before.

9:11

Rezin was king of Aram (Syria), whose capital was Damascus. He and the northern kingdom of Israel were allies against Assyria at this time. The Hebrew phrase can be read either as the enemies Rezin himself faced (that is, Assyria) now being turned loose on Israel, or as Rezin's own forces being counted among Israel's attackers; translators divide on it.

9:12

The Arameans (called Syrians in the King James) lived to the north and east around Damascus; the Philistines held the coastal plain to the southwest. "His hand is still raised to strike" is a refrain that closes several sections of this chapter, the picture is of an arm drawn back and held there, the blow not yet finished.

9:14

"Head and tail, palm branch and reed" is a Hebrew way of naming the two ends of a range in order to include everything in between: from the highest of society to the lowest, the tall palm crown down to the marsh reed. The next verse spells the figure out.

9:15

A prophet was someone who told people what God said. Some prophets made things up instead of telling the truth.

9:17

Orphans and widows were the class Israelite law singled out for special legal protection, since they had no man to defend their interests in court or provide for them. The shock of the line is that the group normally shielded first is not spared here.

9:18

The hills were covered in dry thornbushes. One spark could set them off, and the fire would race into the woods before anyone could stop it.

9:20

The last phrase is uncertain. The Hebrew word means "arm," which the King James keeps, giving a picture of a starving man eating himself. But the same consonants can mean "offspring" or "seed," and the parallel with the next verse, tribes devouring their own relatives, leads many translators to read it that way.

9:21

Manasseh and Ephraim were brother tribes, both descended from Joseph, and their territories sat side by side in the northern kingdom. Judah was the separate southern kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital. The picture is of the closest relatives turning on each other first, then jointly on the south.