Isaiah 66:16

For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(16) Will the Lord plead . . .—Better, will the Lord hold judgment. The thoughts of the seer pass on to the retributive side of the Divine righteousness. Fire and sword have been used by the enemies of God against His people, and shall, in turn, be the instruments of His vengeance. The “sword” may, however, be the symbol of the Divine judgment, apart from any reference to its human instrument (Deuteronomy 32:41; Revelation 1:16).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

66:15-24 A prophetic declaration is given of the Lord's vengeance on all enemies of his church, especially that of all antichristian opposers of the gospel in the latter days. Ver.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For by fire and by his sword - The sword is an instrument by which punishment is executed (see the notes at Isaiah 34:5; compare Romans 13:4).

Will he plead with all flesh - Or rather, he will judge (נשׁפט nı̂shephaṭ), that is, he will execute his purposes of vengeance on all the human race. Of course, only that part is intended who ought to be subject to punishment; that is, all his foes.

And the slain of the Lord shall be many - The number of those who shall be consigned to woe shall be immense - though in the winding up of the great drama at the close of the world, there is reason to hopethat a large proportion of the race, taken as a whole, will be saved. Of past generations, indeed, there is no just ground of such hope; of the present generation there is no such prospect. But brighter and happier times are to come. The true religion is to spread over all the world, and for a long period is to prevail; and the hope is, that during that long period the multitude of true converts will be so great as to leave the whole number who are lost, compared with those who are saved, much less than is commonly supposed. Still the aggregate of those who are lost, 'the slain of the Lord,' will be vast. This description I regard as having reference to the coming of the Lord to judgment (compare 2 Thessalonians 1:8); or if it refer to any other manifestation of Yahweh for judgment, like the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, it has a strong resemblance to the final judgment; and, like the description of that by the Saviour Matthew 24, the language is such as naturally to suggest, and to be applicable to, the final judgment of mankind.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

16. Rather, "With fire will Jehovah judge, and with His sword (He will judge) all flesh." The parallelism and collocation of the Hebrew words favor this (Isa 65:12).

all flesh—that is, all who are the objects of His wrath. The godly shall be hidden by the Lord in a place of safety away from the scene of judgment (Isa 26:20, 21; Ps 31:20; 1Th 4:16, 17).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

This kind of rebuking is also called a pleading with them; so he threatens to plead against Gog with pestilence and blood, Ezekiel 38:22. God at first pleads with sinners by words; but if he cannot so prevail, he will plead with them in a way by which he will overcome by fire, pestilence, and blood.

With all flesh; thus he threatens to do with all sinners, or with all the wicked Jews.

The slain of the Lord shall be many; to the fire he threatens to add the sword, so as the slain of the Lord, that is, those whom God should cause to be slain, should be many.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For by fire, and by his sword, will the Lord plead with all flesh,.... With the Mahometans, the Turks, the Ottoman empire, against whom he will call for a sword, and will rain upon them fire and brimstone, signified by Gog and Magog, Ezekiel 38:22 and with the other antichristian powers at the battle of Armageddon; and when the fourth vial will be poured upon the sun, and men will be scorched with fire; see Revelation 16:8,

and the slain of the Lord shall be many; that is, those that will be slain by the Lord, both in the attempt of the Turks to recover the land of Canaan out of the hands of the Jews, possessed of it; whose numbers of slain will be so many, that the burying of them will last seven months, Ezekiel 39:12 and in the battle between the Christian princes, Christ at the head of them, and the antichristian armies, led on by the beast and the kings of the earth; when the fowls of the air will be invited to the great supper of the Lord, to eat the flesh of kings, captains, and mighty men, so great will the slaughter be, Revelation 19:17, see also Isaiah 11:13.

Geneva Study Bible

For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

16. by his sword] See ch. Isaiah 27:1, Isaiah 34:5-6.

plead] i.e. “enter into judgement,” as Ezekiel 38:22; Joel 3:2. the slain of the Lord shall be many] Cf. Jeremiah 25:33; Zephaniah 2:12 (Hebr.)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 16. - By fire and by his sword (see the introductory paragraph). The "sword of Jehovah" is spoken of also in Isaiah 27:1 and Isaiah 34:5, 6 (comp. Revelation 19:15, 21). Will the Lord plead with all flesh; rather, will the Lord judge all flesh (comp. Jeremiah 25:31, where the same phrase occurs). Isaiah 66:16

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Jehovah appears with these warlike terrors because He is coming for a great judgment. "For in the midst of fire Jehovah holds judgment, and in the midst of His sword with all flesh; and great will be the multitude of those pierced through by Jehovah." The fire, which is here introduced as the medium of judgment, points to destructive occurrences of nature, and the sword to destructive occurrences of history. At the same time all the emphasis is laid here, as in Isaiah 34:5-6 (cf., Isaiah 27:1), upon the direct action of Jehovah Himself. The parallelism in Isaiah 66:16 is progressive. Nishpat 'ēth, "to go into judgment with a person," as in Ezekiel 38:22 (cf., עם in Isaiah 3:14, Joel 3:2; 2 Chronicles 22:8; μετά, Luke 11:31-32). We find a resemblance to Isaiah 66:16 in Zephaniah 2:12, and this is not the only resemblance to our prophecy in that strongly reproductive prophet.