Isaiahchapter 12
6 verses · Isaiah · 8th century BC · The Prophets
Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. For the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and He also has become my salvation.”
Introduction
Isaiah, The Prophets, Isaiah Overview.
This short hymn closes the first part of Isaiah's book, the chapters that began with the case against Judah. Its first hearers sang the song of Moses at the sea as part of their worship and knew its words. It is written as the song of a delivered people on a day still to come. Listen for the phrase borrowed from the song at the Red Sea. Notice how the song moves from one person thanking God to a people telling the nations. Mark the name of God that ends the chapter. The chapter gives the reader the words of praise before the rescue has come.
Context
- Who
- Judeans who sang the Exodus song every year and were handed a new one
- What
- A hymn of thanksgiving for the day God turns His anger away and becomes the salvation of His people.
- Where
- Zion, among a people who make God's deeds known among the nations.
- When
- Spoken about 730 to 700 BC as the song of a future day of deliverance.
- Why
- To give the hearers of judgment a song for the day of rescue and to point them to the Holy One of Israel in their midst.
Historical context
This is a hymn, and a short one, two stanzas, the way a psalm ends a section. Its opening line quotes the song Moses and Israel sang at the Red Sea: the LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. Every hearer knew that line. Isaiah puts it in the mouth of a generation that has just been rescued from a different empire.
Show the rest of the historical context, 2 more paragraphs
Drawing water with joy from the wells of salvation is a picture from a real ceremony. At the Feast of Tabernacles, a priest carried a golden pitcher down to the spring below the city, filled it, and brought it back up through the Water Gate to be poured out beside the altar while the people sang. The rules for it are preserved in the Mishnah, written down much later but describing a rite already old, and Jewish tradition connects this very verse with that pouring. In a land where the year lived or died on rainfall, water carried up from the spring and poured out before God was a whole theology in one gesture.
The two commands that fill the second stanza are the ordinary duties of a worshipper: call on his name, and make his deeds known among the peoples. Israel's songs were public property; they were sung in the courts where foreigners stood.
Significance
After eleven chapters of lawsuit, invasion, and felled forests, the first hearers were handed the words they would use on the far side. That is a kindness, you are told now what you will sing later.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
And the reason for the singing is not the rescue but the rescuer: great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. The title that terrified Isaiah in chapter 6 is the one the saved people shout in the street.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
No part of this chapter is read in the synagogue. Probed for this lane, the site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot 0 and haftarah uses 0 for Isaiah 12, and no festival reading for the book. Across chapters 1 to 22 of Isaiah the same probe found a Haftarah only in chapters 1, 6, 7 and 9.
How it is read
The corpus keeps both Ibn Ezra and Rashi on this short song. Ibn Ezra is quoted from the Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah, translated by M. Friedlander in 1873, which Sefaria reports as Public Domain. Rashi is quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY.
Ibn Ezra reads "thou" as the returned exiles: "The second person refers to the Israelites, who returned home" (Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 12:1:1). Rashi reads the thanks of the first verse as thanks for exile itself, because "my exile atoned for me" (Rashi on Isaiah 12:1:2).
On the drawing of water with joy the two part. Ibn Ezra reads a figure of gladness, "as the thirsty rejoices when he draws water" (Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 12:3:1). Rashi follows the Targum: "You shall receive a new teaching" (Rashi on Isaiah 12:3:1). He adds that secrets of the Torah forgotten during the exile will be restored (Rashi on Isaiah 12:3:2).
Rashi's note on the second verse reads the divine name of the verse through Exodus 17:16, where the Name is written short. "Until now His Name was divided, and with the downfall of Amalek, it became whole" (Rashi on Isaiah 12:2:2). The corpus also carries five notes on this chapter with no English text, and they are listed below.
The corpus carries five notes on this chapter without an English text, marked linked. The notes of Radak at 12:3:1, 12:5:1 and 12:6:1 stand cited and unquoted because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. The note of Malbim at 12:6:1 stands cited and unquoted because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. The note of Metzudat David at 12:6:1 stands cited and unquoted because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries 34 rabbinic locators on the verses of this chapter, 7 in the Talmud and 27 in the Midrash. It carries the text of none, so each is cited by ref here and never quoted or paraphrased. The verse numbers are the Hebrew ones the corpus prints.
On verse 1 it holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Chayei Sarah 12, Ein Yaakov, Niddah 3:8 and Midrash Aggadah, Exodus 1:2:1. It also holds Midrash Lekach Tov, Exodus 1:2:1, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 25:6 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Shemot 5:5. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot 3:2, Midrash Tehillim 118:18 and Midrash Tehillim 118:2. It also holds Midrash Tehillim 12:4, Midrash Tehillim 136:2 and Midrash Tehillim 60:2. It also holds Niddah 31a:15, Vayikra Rabbah 32:1 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 162:7. On verse 2 it holds Shemot Rabbah 23:6 and Tanna DeBei Eliyahu Zuta 11:1. On verse 3 it holds Jerusalem Talmud Sukkah 5:1:3, Midrash Aggadah, Numbers 24:7:5 and Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 16:14:3. It also holds Ruth Rabbah (Lerner) 4:12:4, Ruth Rabbah 4:9 and Sukkah 48b:4. It also holds Sukkah 50b:1 and Tanna DeBei Eliyahu Rabbah 10:1. On verse 4 it holds Avodah Zarah 24b:15, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Avodah Zarah 2:1 and Ein Yaakov, Avodah Zarah 2:2. On verse 5 it holds Midrash Tehillim 118:20 and Shir HaShirim Rabbah 4:8:3.
On verse 6 it holds Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 1:5:23, Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2:3:2 and Midrash Tehillim 113:3. It also holds Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:4:7.
The corpus file also carries one locator anchored to a verse this chapter does not have, and it is left out of the list above. Otzar Midrashim, Midrashim of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Prayer of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 9 is anchored at Isaiah 12:12. The chapter has 6 verses in the Berean Standard Bible as the store holds it.
What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 12:1:1 to 12:6:1, Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah - trans. by M. Friedlander, 1873, reported Public Domain; Rashi, Rashi on Isaiah 12:1:1 to 12:4:2, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Radak, Radak on Isaiah 12:3:1, 12:5:1 and 12:6:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Malbim, Malbim on Isaiah 12:6:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on Isaiah 12:6:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/isaiah/12.json, the 34 Talmud and Midrash locators on the verses of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for Isaiah 12: parashot 0, haftarah uses 0, and no festival reading for the book.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Drawing Water from the Wells of Salvation
Isaiah 12:1-3
In that day you will say: The chapter is a psalm sung on the far side of the judgments pronounced. Its line "the LORD GOD is my strength and my song" is drawn from the Song of Moses at Exodus 15:2. The exodus language of chapter 11's highway is carried into the psalm that answers it.
Isaiah 12:1
THIS prophesy is said by some to relate to the invasion by Sennacherib. That calamity threatened to be a very terrible display of Divine anger. It seemed inevitable that the Assyrian power would make an utter desolation of all Judea. But God promised that He would interpose for the deliverance of His people and punish the stout heart of the king of Assyria. And in that day His people should say, "We will praise You though You were angry with us, and therefore sent the Assyrian monarch to chastise us. Your anger is turned away, and You comfort us."
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Isaiah 12:1
“By Jesus Christ, the root of Jesse, God's anger against mankind was turned away; for he is our peace. (3.) Those whom God is reconciled to he comforts; even the turning away of his anger is a comfort to them; yet that is not all: those that are at peace with God may rejoice in hope of the glory of God, Rom. v. 1, 2 .”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Isaiah 12:1
“And in that day - The day referred to in the previous chapter, the time of the Messiah, when the effects of his reign shall be seen everywhere. The duty of praise, however, is couched in such language as to make it applicable to the event predicted in the former part of the prophecy Isa. 10 - the delivering of the nation from the invasion of Sennacherib, as well as the more glorious event on which the prophet fixed his eye Isa. 11 - the coming and reign of the Messiah.”
the LORD GOD is my strength and my song: The words my strength and my song repeat the song of Moses at Exodus 15:2, and Psalm 118:14 repeats them again. Clarke held that the doubled name behind the LORD GOD, Yah Jehovah, came from a habit of the scribes. Barnes traced the salvation directly to God.
Isaiah 12:2
“The Lord Jehovah - The word יה Yah read here is probably a mistake; and arose originally from the custom of the Jewish scribes, who, when they found a line too short for the word, wrote as many letters as filled it, and then began the next line with the whole word. In writing the word יהוה Jehovah, the line might terminate with יה Yah, the two first letters; and then at the beginning of the next line the whole word יהוה Yehovah would be written. This might give rise to יה יהוה Yah Yehovah.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
draw water from the springs of salvation: With joy Israel draws water from these springs, and Barnes recorded that the Jews applied the verse to the Holy Spirit. He thought it probably the source of the custom of pouring water from Siloam at the feast, the setting of John 7:37-38. The springs are salvation from the LORD.
Isaiah 12:3
“Therefore - In view of all his mercies, the Hebrew is, however; simply, ‘” and” ye shall draw.’ It has already been intimated that the Jews applied this passage to the Holy Spirit: and that probably on this they based their custom of drawing water from the fountain of Siloam at the feast of the dedication (note, Joh 7:37). The fountain of Siloam was in the eastern part of the city, and the water was borne from that fountain in a golden cup, and was poured, with every expression of rejoicing, on the sacrifice on the altar.”
ConnectionsRevelation 22:17
Cry Aloud and Shout, Inhabitant of Zion
Isaiah 12:4-6
The confession turns corporate at verse 4: "Make His works known among the peoples," the deeds of the two chapters before now made public praise. The chapter closes on the title "great among you is the Holy One of Israel," the seraphim's word now sung by the remnant.
Isaiah 12:4
“Call upon his name - קראו בשמו kiru bishmo, invoke his name. Make him your Mediator, or call the people in his name. Preach him who is the Root of Jesse, and who stands as an ensign for the nations. Call on the people to believe in him; as in him alone salvation is to be found.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 12:4
“By prayer: Call upon his name. As giving thanks for former mercy is a decent way of begging further mercy, so begging further mercy is graciously accepted as a thankful acknowledgment of the mercies we have received. In calling upon God's name we give unto him some of the glory that is due to his name as our powerful and bountiful benefactor.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
for He has done glorious things: Barnes heard the opening words as the song at Exodus 15:21, sung after the crossing of the sea. He read the glorious things, geuth in Hebrew, as things exalted and worthy of praise. The news goes to all the earth, as verse 4 asks.
Isaiah 12:5
“Sing unto the Lord - This is the same expression which occurs in the song of Moses Exo 15:21. Isaiah evidently had that in his eye. He hath done excellent things - Things that are exalted (גאות gê'ûth); that are worthy to be celebrated, and had in remembrance; things that are majestic, grand, and wonderful. This is known in all the earth - Or, more properly, ‘Let this be known in all the earth.’ It is worthy of being celebrated everywhere. It should be sounded abroad through all lands.”
O citizen of Zion: Barnes noted that the verb cry out is used of the neighing of a horse in Jeremiah 5:8 and of loud joy here. The Holy One of Israel, Isaiah's own name for God, is great among the people of Zion. Clarke read the citizen of Zion as the whole Church.
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.