Isaiah27chapter 27

Isaiah 27:1

leviathan the piercing serpent: Leviathan the piercing serpent, that crooked serpent, and the dragon in the sea receive the same titles Job forty-one and Psalm seventy-four use of the same creature, and the older writers name two readings without forcing one, the historical empires that oppressed Judah, Assyria the piercing serpent and Babylon and Egypt the crooked serpent and the dragon, and a reading tied back to the serpent of Genesis three verse fifteen, the sea itself as the place of chaos the Lord alone subdues. Delitzsch favors the historical reading as the oracle's first sense, while Gill notes the same imagery reappears of Satan in Revelation twelve, naming the connection without collapsing the two readings into one. The sword that punishes leviathan answers the sword drawn against Judah's enemies through this whole section of burdens.

Isaiah 27:2-6

A vineyard of red wine: The vineyard sung of here answers the vineyard of chapter five directly, that one yielded wild grapes and was given to briers and thorns and drought, this one the Lord waters every moment and keeps night and day, with no fury and no briers left standing against him. Jacob is promised roots, and Israel is promised blossom and fruit filling the face of the world, the same nation once compared to a trampled vine now compared to an orchard the Lord himself tends. Henry reads the reversal as the whole point of singing the song a second time, and Barnes notes the change from ruin to keeping marks the difference between the two songs as the difference between judgment served and grace renewed.

Isaiah 27:7-9

as he smote those that smote him: Verse seven asks whether Jacob's chastening matched the blow dealt his enemies, and the expected answer is no, the Lord's own people are struck in measure while the nations that struck them are struck in full. The purging in view is named plainly, the removal of the altars and the groves and images that carried Jacob's idolatry, made as powerless as chalkstones beaten in pieces. Gill and Calvin both read verse nine as defining what the exile itself was for, not annihilation but purgation, the sin taken away rather than the people.

Isaiah 27:10-11

the defenced city shall be desolate: The defenced city left desolate answers the strong city of chapter twenty six by contrast, one kept and walled by the Lord, this one abandoned to become a wilderness where cattle graze and women gather dead branches for fuel. Barnes reads the city as likely Samaria or a like Gentile stronghold rather than Jerusalem, its fall the visible sign of the people of no understanding named in the same verse. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown tie the withheld mercy of verse eleven to Jacob's own promised mercy in verse nine, the same chapter holding both a people spared and a people given up.

Isaiah 27:12-13

gathered one by one: The gathering is deliberate and personal, one by one, from the Euphrates to the stream of Egypt, no outcast too scattered to be named and recovered. The great trumpet gathers exiles from both directions Israel had been driven, Assyria and Egypt, and brings them to worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem, the geography as literal as the exile that scattered them. Delitzsch reads the ingathering as the burden section's own resolution, judgment on the nations closing in worship restored for Israel, and Henry notes later trumpet language draws on this picture without displacing Israel as the verse's own subject.