Isaiah 26:14

They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(14) They are dead . . .—We get a more vivid rendering by omitting the words in italics, Dead, they live not; shadows (Rephaim, as in Psalm 88:10), they rise not. Those of whom the prophet speaks are the rulers of the great world-empires, who, as in Isaiah 14:9; Ezekiel 32:21, have passed into the gloomy world of Hades, out of which there was, for them at least, no escape. Their very names should perish from the memories of men. The LXX., adopting another etymology of the word Rephaim, gives the singular rendering, “Physicians shall not raise them up to life.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

26:12-19 Every creature, every business, any way serviceable to our comfort, God makes to be so; he makes that work for us which seemed to make against us. They had been slaves of sin and Satan; but by the Divine grace they were taught to look to be set free from all former masters. The cause opposed to God and his kingdom will sink at last. See our need of afflictions. Before, prayer came drop by drop; now they pour it out, it comes now like water from a fountain. Afflictions bring us to secret prayer. Consider Christ as the Speaker addressing his church. His resurrection from the dead was an earnest of all the deliverance foretold. The power of his grace, like the dew or rain, which causes the herbs that seem dead to revive, would raise his church from the lowest state. But we may refer to the resurrection of the dead, especially of those united to Christ.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

They are dead - That is, the kings and tyrants to whom reference is made in Isaiah 26:13. The principal enemies of the Jews, who had oppressed them, were slain when Babylon was taken by Cyrus (see the notes at Isaiah 13; 14)

They shall not live - They shall not again live, and be permitted to harass and enslave us.

They are deceased - Hebrew, רפאים repâ'iym - a name given to the shades or manes of the dead, from an idea that they were weak and powerless (see the notes at Isaiah 14:9-10; compare Psalm 88:11; Proverbs 2:18; Proverbs 9:18; Proverbs 21:16). The sense here is, that they had died and gone to the land of shades, and were now unable anymore to reach or injure the people of God.

Therefore - Or rather, "for"; the word לכן lākên being used evidently in the sense of because that, as in Genesis 38:26; Numbers 11:31; Numbers 14:13; Psalm 42:7; Psalm 45:3. The declaration that follows is given as the reason why they were dead, and incapable of again injuring or annoying them.

Hast thou visited ... - (see the note at Isaiah 24:22) The word 'visit' here is used in the sense of to punish.

And made all their memory to perish - Hast blotted out their name; hast caused their celebrity to cease.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

14. They—The "other lords" or tyrants (Isa 26:13).

shall not live—namely, again.

deceased—Hebrew, "Rephaim"; powerless, in the land of shades (Isa 14:9, 10).

therefore—that is, inasmuch as. Compare "therefore" (Ge 18:5; 19:8).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

They shall not rise; those tyrants and enemies are utterly and irrecoverably destroyed, so as they shall never live or rise again to molest us. Possibly he speaks of the miraculous destruction of Sennacherib’s army before Jerusalem.

Therefore, that they might be so effectually destroyed, thou didst undertake the work. Or rather, because (as this particle is used, Numbers 14:43 Psalm 42:6)

thou hast, & c., as it follows.

Destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish; thou hast destroyed both them and theirs, and all the monuments or memorials of their greatness and glory.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise,.... The above tyrannical lords, the kings of the earth and their mighty men, associates of the Romish antichrist, who shall be gathered together, and slain at the battle at Armageddon; these shall not live again in this world, nor rise from their graves, and return to their former state, power, and authority; or tyrannise over, molest, disturb, oppress, and persecute the people of God any more; though they shall live again at the end of the thousand years, and shall awake to everlasting shame and contempt, and come forth to the resurrection of damnation. The Targum is,

"they worship the dead, who do not live; and their mighty men, who shall not rise;''

and are opposed to the worshippers of the only Lord God:

therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish; or, "because thou hast visited", &c. (d); for these words are a reason why they are irrecoverably lost, and shall not live in eternal life, or rise in the resurrection of the just; because God has visited them in wrath, destroyed them in and for their sins, with such an utter destruction, that they shall be remembered no more. This visitation will be at Armageddon, when the kings, and captains and great men will be slain; the beast and false prophet taken, and cast alive into the furnace of fire; and the rest will be killed by the sword, proceeding out of the mouth of Christ, Revelation 19:18. The Targum interprets it of God's casting the wicked into hell.

(d) "propterea", V. L. Junius & Tremellius; "propterea quod", Piscator, De Dieu.

Geneva Study Bible

They are {n} dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.

(n) Meaning that the reprobate even in this life will have the beginning of everlasting death.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

14. Render: The dead shall not live, the Shades (Rěphâ’ îm, as in Isaiah 14:9) shall not rise, &c. In the form of a general proposition the writer expresses Israel’s sense of security with regard to those “other lords” who have now vanished from the earth. The idea is probably suggested by ch. Isaiah 14:9 ff. There is no contradiction between this verse and Isaiah 26:19, nor is there any evidence of a merely nascent belief in the possibility of a resurrection; because the subjects in the two verses are different. The resurrection of Isaiah 26:19 is distinctly represented as miraculous, and is limited to members of the covenant people; over those who are unvisited by the life-giving “dew” of Jehovah, the sway of death is absolute.

therefore …] i.e. in token that they shall never reappear, all traces of their supremacy have been obliterated.

all their memory] every memorial of them.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 14. - They are dead, etc.; literally. Dead, they shall not live (i.e. return to life); deceased, they shall not arise. The power of the idol-gods is altogether passed away. It was for this end - therefore - that God had visited and destroyed them, and made their very memory to perish. How strange it seems that the "great gods" whom so many millions worshipped in former times - Bel, and Asshur, and Ammon, and Zeus, and Jupiter - should have passed so completely away as to be almost wholly forgotten! Isaiah 26:14

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The tyrants who usurped the rule over Israel have now utterly disappeared. "Dead men live not again, shades do not rise again: so hast Thou visited and destroyed them, and caused all their memory to perish." The meaning is not that Jehovah had put them to death because there was no resurrection at all after death; for, as we shall see further on, the prophet was acquainted with such a resurrection. In mēthim (dead men) and rephâ'im (shades) he had directly in mind the oppressors of Israel, who had been thrust down into the region of the shades (like the king of Babylon in chapter 14), so that there was no possibility of their being raised up or setting themselves up again. The לכן is not argumentative (which would be very freezing in this highly lyrical connection), but introduces what must have occurred eo ipso when the other had taken place (it corresponds to the Greek ἄρα, and is used here in the same way as in Isaiah 61:7; Jeremiah 5:2; Jeremiah 2:33; Zechariah 11:7; Job 34:25; Job 42:3). They had fallen irrevocably into Sheol (Psalm 49:15), and consequently God had swept them away, so that not even their name was perpetuated.