Isaiah 33:20-24 Look on Zion, the city of our solemnities: your eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down… Among the images which crowd the concluding verses of this chapter, we may perhaps, without fancifulness, distinguish an under-current of thoughts suggested by the circumstances of the times at which this prophecy was delivered; the promised "quiet" seems to point to the existing commotion; the "tabernacle which shall not be taken down," reminds us not only of the fast-founded Temple which had replaced the tabernacle, and become the fixed centre of their 'solemnities,' but also of the tents of Sennacherib s hosts, then, as now, made of black camels' or goats' hair, now blackening the valleys round Jerusalem, but soon to be swept away "like the thistle-down before the whirlwind"; the broad "rivers and streams" suggest the thought that though Hezekiah's precautions would have secured the absolutely necessary supply of water for the beleaguered city, they felt the want of that abundance of it which is still more grateful in an Eastern climate than in our own; while the promise that "the inhabitants should no longer say, I am sick," favours the conjecture that the illness of Hezekiah may have been one instance of the disease which usually attends on the confinement and discomforts of a city shut-up against an enemy in the field. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.) Parallel Verses KJV: Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. |
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