Isaiah 2:7 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 2:7
Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots:
the earth (at large · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
full
וַתִּמָּלֵ֤אva.ti.ma.Le'
H4390
to fill or (intransitively) be full of · conjunction + verb, niphal sequential imperfect, 3rd person feminine singular
silver
כֶּ֣סֶףKe.sef
H3701
silver (from its pale color) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
gold
וְזָהָ֔בve.za.Hav
H2091
gold · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular absolute
end
קֵ֖צֶהKe.tzeh
H7097
an extremity · noun, common masculine singular absolute
treasures
לְאֹצְרֹתָ֑יוle.'o.tze.ro.Tav
H214
a depository · preposition + noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
land
אַרְצוֹ֙'ar.Tzo
H776
the earth (at large · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
full
וַתִּמָּלֵ֤אva.ti.ma.Le'
H4390
to fill or (intransitively) be full of · conjunction + verb, niphal sequential imperfect, 3rd person feminine singular
horses
סוּסִ֔יםsu.Sim
H5483
a horse (as leaping) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
end
קֵ֖צֶהKe.tzeh
H7097
an extremity · noun, common masculine singular absolute
chariots
לְמַרְכְּבֹתָֽיוle.mar.ke.vo.Tav
H4818
a chariot · preposition + noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Deuteronomy 17:16-17 But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch a…
Psalms 20:7 Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.
Isaiah 30:16 But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue y…
Isaiah 31:1 Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they…
Micah 5:10 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chari…
1 Kings 4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.
1 Kings 10:21-27 And all king Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were…
2 Chronicles 9:20-25 And all the drinking vessels of king Solomon were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold: none…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 2:6-9
The calling in of the Gentiles was accompanied with the rejection of the Jews; it was their fall, and the diminishing of them, that was the riches of the Gentiles; and the casting off of them was the reconciling of the world (Rom 11:12-15); and it should seem that these verses have reference to that, and are designed to justify God therein, and yet it is probable that they are primarily intended for the convincing and awakening of the men of that generation in which the prophet lived, it being usual with the prophets to speak of the things that then were, both in mercy and judgment, as types of the things that should be hereafter. Here is,
I. Israel's doom. This is set forth in two words, th…
gold--forbidden to be heaped together (Deu 17:17). Solomon disobeyed (Kg1 10:21, Kg1 10:27).
horses . . . chariots--forbidden (Deu 17:16). But Solomon disobeyed (Kg1 20:26). Horses could be used effectively for war in the plains of Egypt; not so in the hilly Judea. God designed there should be as wide as possible a distinction between Israel and the Egyptians. He would have His people wholly dependent on Him, rather than on the ordinary means of warfare (Psa 20:7). Also horses were connected with idolatry (Kg2 23:11); hence His objection: so the transition to "idols" (Isa 2:8) is natural.
John Gill on Isaiah 2:7
Their land also is full of silver and gold,.... Procured by pardons, indulgences, masses, praying souls out of purgatory, tithes, annates, Peter's pence, &c.
neither is there any end of their treasures; laid up in the pope's coffers, in their churches, monasteries, and convents:
their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots; for the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, &c. to ride on and in. Horses and chariots are mentioned among the wares and merchandise of Rome, in Revelation 18:13.
John Calvin on Isaiah 2:7
Their land is filled with silver and gold We must attend to the order which the Prophet here observes; for he now enumerates the reasons why the Lord rejected his people. In the former verse he began with divinations and the customs of strangers; he now comes down to silver and gold; and afterwards he will speak of horses and chariots. There can be no doubt that, having first condemned idolatry, he reproves them, secondly, for covetousness, and, thirdly, for sinful trust, when men depart from God, and contrive for themselves vain grounds of confidence. It was not a thing in itself to be condemned, that this nation had abundance of gold and silver; but because they burned with insatiable cove…
The Church Fathers
Someone might ask, what is wrong with having silver or horses, particularly when what the people believed was not rigorous? How should we respond? The prophet was not criticizing the use of these possessions but the misuse of them. When he said, "Woe to the mighty," he was not condemning them for having possessions but for hoarding so much more than they needed.
Vanity is the general term for vices, but vain in the particular sense means that which is found alien to God. Just as trusting in the Godhead is fruitful constancy, so deviating from him is the vanity that perishes.… So those who burned with the most base love of idols are convicted, and the phrase is to be pronounced as a rebuke, as if the words were, "Why do you love the vanity by which you perish?" We ought to love things that are beneficial, not harmful, for it is better to curse the things that cause the punishment of lasting damnation to afflict us.
(Verse 7) Because they were once filled, and they had augurs, like the Philistines. For the Philistines always interpreted seventy foreign guests as their own, a common name for a particular people, which is today the nation of the Palestinians, as if they were Philistines, because the Hebrew language does not have the letter P; but instead uses the Greek letter Phi. Therefore, what is said in the Psalms, with the enumeration of other nations: "Foreigners have submitted to me" (Psalm 59:10), does not mean all foreign nations, but specifically the Palestinians. And the reasons why God expelled his people, the house of Jacob, from Reddit are as follows: because, as he says, they were full, just as they were in the beginning, of soothsayers, and omens, and all the filth of idolatry. We know, from Moses' writing, that we should not pay attention to omens or auguries, which the nations that the Lord expelled from the presence of Israel, the Canaanites, the Amorites, and the Hittites, practiced. The interpreters of the Church have interpreted this passage differently, one from another. What does this want to signify? That, after the population of the Jews was expelled, the Roman army entered the land once promised; and after the Jews were driven out, foreign peoples inhabited Judea, who were immigrants from different nations all over the world, brought by Titus, Vespasian, Hadrian, and other leaders. However, others think that this does not pertain to Roman times, but to earlier times, before they were devastated by the Babylonians, as they are said to have been under impious kings and were abandoned by the Lord. And they befriended foreign boys. For which reason, seventy were transferred: And many children of foreigners were born to them. Symmachus: And they applauded with foreign children. For which reason, it is written in Hebrew, 'they adhaeserunt', which the Hebrews interpret as ἐσφηνώθησαν, and we translate as 'they befriended', in order to display the shamefulness of vices in the Jewish nation. In fact, the Greeks and Romans were once afflicted by this vice, so much so that even the most renowned philosophers of Greece openly had lovers: and Adrian, skilled in the arts of philosophy, consecrated Antinous as a god, and established a temple for him, along with sacrifices and priests, and from him the city and region of Egypt received its name. Also, among…
Dictionary and topics
Chariots · The Jews condemned for: Multiplying — The Jews condemned for: Multiplying
Gold · Jews condemned for multiplying — Jews condemned for multiplying
Horse · Israel reproved for keeping — Israel reproved for keeping
Horse, The · The Jews: Condemned for multiplying — The Jews: Condemned for multiplying
Isaiah · and distrust of God — and distrust of God
Silver · Abundance of — Abundance of
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
In Isa 2:7, Isa 2:8 he describes still further how the land of the people of Jehovah, in consequence of all this (on the future consec. see Ges. 129, 2, a), was crammed full of objects of luxury, of self-confidence, of estrangement from God: "And their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end of their treasures; and their land is filled with horses, and there is no end of their chariots. And their land is filled with - idols; the work of their own hands they worship, that which their own fingers have made." The glory of Solomon, which revived under Uzziah's fifty-two years' reign, and was sustained through Jotham's reign of sixteen years, carried with it the curse of the law;…
Isaiah pointed out all the things that people substitute for the true God: material achievements and securities (silver . . . treasures), military strength (warhorses . . . chariots), and objects of affection (idols). Such wealth and military strength characterized the reign of King Uzziah (2 Chr 26:6-21). Elsewhere, Isaiah pointed out the sheer folly of worshiping anything that is made with one’s own hands (see Isa 44:9-20; 45:16).