Isaiah 37:27

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

²¹Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Because you prayed to Me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, ²²this is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: 'The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you; the Daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you. ²³Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel! ²⁴Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said: "With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypress trees. I have reached its farthest heights, the densest of its forests. ²⁵I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt." ²⁶Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it; in days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble. ²⁷Therefore their inhabitants, devoid of power, are dismayed and ashamed. They are plants of the field, tender green shoots, grass on the roofs, scorched before it is grown.²⁸But I know your sitting down, your going out and coming in, and your raging against Me. ²⁹Because your rage and arrogance against Me have reached My ears, I will put My hook in your nose and My bit in your mouth; I will send you back the way you came.' ³⁰And this will be a sign to you, O Hezekiah: This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from the same. But in the third year you will sow and reap; you will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

their inhabitants: Isaiah 19:16, Numbers 14:9, 2 Kings 19:26, Psalms 127:1, Psalms 127:2, Jeremiah 5:10, Jeremiah 37:10

of small power: Heb. short of hand

as the grass of: Isaiah 40:6-8, Psalms 37:2, Psalms 90:5, Psalms 90:6, Psalms 92:7, Psalms 103:15, Psalms 129:6, James 1:10, James 1:11, 1 Peter 1:24

Reciprocal: 2 Kings 3:25 - beat down 2 Kings 19:25 - Hast thou not Isaiah 7:2 - And his heart Isaiah 10:6 - will I give Isaiah 13:7 - shall all Jeremiah 46:17 - Pharaoh Ezekiel 28:14 - and I Haggai 2:17 - with blasting Revelation 6:4 - power

Cross-References

Genesis 29:14
Then Laban declared, "You are indeed my own flesh and blood." After Jacob had stayed with him a month,

Genesis 37:14
Then Israel told him, "Go now and see how your brothers and the flocks are faring, and bring word back to me." So he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. And when Joseph arrived in Shechem,

Genesis 37:17
"They have moved on from here," the man answered. "I heard them say, 'Let us go to Dothan.'" So Joseph set out after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

Genesis 37:22
"Do not shed his blood. Throw him into this pit in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him." Reuben said this so that he could rescue Joseph from their hands and return him to his father.

Genesis 42:21
Then they said to one another, "Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us."

Exodus 21:16
Whoever kidnaps another man must be put to death, whether he sells him or the man is found in his possession.

Exodus 21:21
However, if the servant gets up after a day or two, the owner shall not be punished, since the servant is his property.

1 Samuel 18:17
Then Saul said to David, "Here is my oldest daughter Merab. I will give her to you in marriage. Only be valiant for me and fight the LORD's battles." But Saul was thinking, "I need not raise my hand against him; let the hand of the Philistines be against him."

2 Samuel 12:9
Why then have you despised the command of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife as your own, for you have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.

Nehemiah 5:8
and said, "We have done our best to buy back our Jewish brothers who were sold to foreigners, but now you are selling your own brothers, that they may be sold back to us!" But they remained silent, for they could find nothing to say.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Therefore their inhabitants were of small power,.... Or, "short of hand" u; it was not in the power of their hands to help themselves, because the Lord took away their strength, having determined that they should be destroyed for their sins; otherwise it would not have been in the power of Sennacherib to have subdued them; this takes off greatly from the king of Assyria's triumph, that they were a weak people, whom he had conquered, and were given up into his hands by the Lord, according to his purposes, or he had never been lord over them:

they were dismayed and confounded; not so much at the sight of Sennacherib's army, but because the Lord had dispirited them, and took away their natural courage from them, so that they became an easy prey to him:

they were as the grass of the field: which has no strength to stand before the mower:

and as the green herb; which is easily cropped with the hand of man, or eaten by the beasts of the field:

as the grass on the housetops: which has no matter of root, and is dried up with the heat of the sun:

and as corn blasted before it be grown up; before it rises up into anything of a stalk, and much less into ears; so the Targum,

"which is blasted before it comes to be ears;''

all which represent the feeble condition of the people overcome by him; so that he had not so much to glory of, as having done mighty things.

u קצרי יד breviati, "vel breves manu", Forerius; "abbreviati manu", Vatablus, Montanus.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Therefore - Not because you have so great power; but because I have rendered them incapable of resisting you.

Were of small power - Hebrew, ‘Short of hand;’ they were feeble, imbecile, unable to resist you.

They were dismayed - Hebrew, ‘They were broken and ashamed.’ Their spirits sank; they were ashamed of their feeble powers of resistance; and they submitted to the ignominy of a surrender.

They were as the grass of the field - The same idea is expressed by Sennacherib himself in Isaiah 10:15, though under a different image (see the note on that verse). The idea here is, as the grass of the field offers no resistance to the march of an army, so it was with the strongly fortified towns in the way of Sennacherib.

As the grass on the housetops - In eastern countries the roofs of houses are always flat. They are made of a mixture of sand gravel, or earth; and on the houses of the rich there is a firmly constructed flooring made of coals, chalk, gypsum, and ashes, made hard by being beaten or rolled. On these roofs spears of wheat, barley, or grass sometimes spring up, but they are soon withered by the heat of the sun Psalms 129:6-8. The idea here, therefore, is that of the greatest feebleness. His enemies were not simply like the grass in the field, but they were like the thin, slender, and delicate blade that sprung up in the little earth on the roof of a house, where there was no room for the roots to strike down, and where it soon withered beneath the burning sun.

As corn blasted before it is grown up - Before it acquires any strength. The idea in all these phrases is substantially the same - that they were incapable of offering even the feeblest resistance.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Isaiah 37:27. Corn blasted — שדמה shedemah, parched: it does not appear that there is any good authority for this word. The true reading seems to be שדפה shedephah, blasted, as it is in six MSS. (two ancient) here, and in the other copy.