Isaiah 49:8-26--The Restoration of Israel

Isaiah 49:8-26
English Standard Version

The Restoration of Israel
8 Thus says the LORD:
“In a time of favor I have answered you;
    in a day of salvation I have helped you;
I will keep you and give you
    as a covenant to the people,
to establish the land,
    to apportion the desolate heritages,
9 saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’
    to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’
They shall feed along the ways;
    on all bare heights shall be their pasture;
10 they shall not hunger or thirst,
    neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them,
for he who has pity on them will lead them,
    and by springs of water will guide them.
11 And I will make all my mountains a road,
    and my highways shall be raised up.
12 Behold, these shall come from afar,
    and behold, these from the north and from the west,
    and these from the land of Syene.”

13 Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;
    break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the LORD has comforted his people
    and will have compassion on his afflicted.

14 But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me;
    my Lord has forgotten me.”

15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child,
    that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
    yet I will not forget you.
16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
    your walls are continually before me.
17 Your builders make haste;
    your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you.
18 Lift up your eyes around and see;
    they all gather, they come to you.
As I live, declares the LORD,
    you shall put them all on as an ornament;
    you shall bind them on as a bride does.

19 “Surely your waste and your desolate places
    and your devastated land--
surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants,
    and those who swallowed you up will be far away.
20 The children of your bereavement
    will yet say in your ears:
‘The place is too narrow for me;
    make room for me to dwell in.’
21 Then you will say in your heart:
    ‘Who has borne me these?
I was bereaved and barren,
    exiled and put away,
    but who has brought up these?
Behold, I was left alone;
    from where have these come?’”

22 Thus says the LORD God:
“Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations,
    and raise my signal to the peoples;
and they shall bring your sons in their arms,
    and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders.
23 Kings shall be your foster fathers,
    and their queens your nursing mothers.
With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you,
    and lick the dust of your feet.
Then you will know that I am the LORD;
    those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.”

24 Can the prey be taken from the mighty,
    or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?
25 For thus says the LORD:
“Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken,
    and the prey of the tyrant be rescued,
for I will contend with those who contend with you,
    and I will save your children.
26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
    and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.
Then all flesh shall know
    that I am the LORD your Savior,
    and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

---

First, let's start by saying that this cannot be a prophecy about the return of the people to the Land after the Babylonian Exile.  Why?  Because we're still talking about a time when Messiah is on the throne leading His people in the fulfillment of the covenant--when all the people of Israel will be gathered together in the Land and all the apportioned lands will be returned to their respective families (who will have knowledge of the apportionments or the families other than God Himself).  Notice also that the text talks about people coming back into the Land from the North, South and West (it doesn't mention from the East where they currently are in captivity).  Tey have never in history been spread out to the West to this point--that won't happen until around the time of Pentecost when we see Jewish synagogues as far away as Rome.  The people would be dispersed during what we call the Diaspora in AD 70 when the Temple was destroyed, and although they would be the rightful owners of the Land, the world would not recognize their right to the Land (and in some ways it still does not) until after World War 2--specifically on May 14th, 1948). . It really doesn't matter whether the USA or the USSR or anyone else recognized the Land as the home of the people of Israel--God had already given them the title deed in Genesis, Exodus and Numbers that we've seen so far, and we will see a slightly different deed for the Land in the book of Ezekiel (we'll talk about that when we get there).

For now, let's say that we should be looking for these promises made in this section of Scripture to be fulfilled in the Millennial reign of Christ and that fulfillment is at some point in the future and takes place in the literal Promised Land promised to the literal descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacoc (there is still a place prepared for the other people who belong to God within the bigger borders of the Promised Land, but the land of Canaan is given as an eternal inheritance to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--it belongs to no one else, not even Gentile believers.  This was an issue during the Crusades though I understand they didn't want Jerusalem to be under the control of the Islamic peoples, Christians with a Replacement Theology imagined the Church as the "New Israel" that would receive the promise of the Land, and they had a Postmillennial eschatological view where they needed to "bring in the kingdom" before Jesus would return.  They thought that the kingdom of God was something that would be achieved by converting souls and slaying the infidels that would not repent, even though the Bible teaches our battle is not against flesh and blood and that the kingdom is not a battle won with the physical weapons of war.)  Bad theology leads to bad interpretation of biblical prophecy and bad actions that put man and not God at the center of fulfilling His plans and purposes for the fulfillment of His covenant.  While we are to be obedient to His commands, not once in the Bible does He ever ask us to help Him bring about what He has promised to us.  That is a me-centric theology and not a Christ-centric theology.

Jesus will lead His people and Shepherd them giving them food and drink from places that they did not expect just like how He made water come from the rock in the wilderness during the time of their wandering and gave them manna from heaven.  The language here harkens back to the time of the Exodus when the physical manifestation of the LORD's presence was always with them and leading them--it will be like that again, but the physical manifestation of the LORD's presence will not be pillar of cloud or the pillar of fire, but the person of Christ.

Israel imagines that the LORD has forgotten them (probably no thanks to the rampant anti-Semitism they have experienced, some of it even from people who claim to be a part of the Church like the bad theology that I just described that easily leads to other false teachings about God abandoning the Jews and hating them and breaking His covenant with them).  God comforts them and assures them that they could never be forgotten, and He has never stopped loving them.  Like a mother can never stop loving her children.  Then a very prophetic phrase, "Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."  If only they understood the meaning of that--how the nail prints in His hand atoned for all the wrongdoing they did and their names were written in blood--His blood--and no one would be able to take their names out of His Book of Life.

Everyone will be jealous of the Promised Land of Canaan that the LORD gives to the descendants of Jacob.  They will complain that they do not have enough land for their own people and need some of Israel's land to be given to them (we hear that not), but the LORD established the boundaries of all nations and peoples and this Land was given to the people of Israel and to no one else.  No one else has a right to it.  There will be plenty of room in the Promised Land of the New Heavens and the Earth for the Gentile believers.  In this one way there appears to be distinction between Jew and Gentile in God's plan.  He made a special covenant with a special people that He intends to fulfill.  If I'm wrong and God makes room in the Land of Canaan for all the Redeemed people, I would imagine there would be some massive overcrowding.  That is why many with such a view have to move towards a non-literal fulfillment of these promises, but everything regarding promises of Land up to this point has had a literal fulfillment, so why should we expect something different in the future?

The LORD says that the wicked will have no way of stopping His promises from coming true.  He is the Mighty One and will conquer all of Israel's enemies and they will celebrate the victory as if it was their own (though they will not need to lift a finger to achieve the victory but will raise their voices in praise to the LORD for saving them once again).  He is the LORD, their Savior and Redeemer.