Isaiah 30:26 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 30:26
Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.
illumination or (concrete) luminary (in every sense · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct
seven
שִׁבְעַ֣תshiv.'At
H7651
seven (as the sacred full one) · cardinal number, both genders singular construct
days
הַיָּמִ֑יםhai.ya.Mim
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · definite article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
day
בְּי֗וֹםbe.Yom
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
LORD
יְהוָה֙Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
up
חֲבֹ֤שׁcha.Vosh
H2280
to wrap firmly (especially a turban · verb, qal infinitive construct
breach
שֶׁ֣בֶרShe.ver
H7667
a fracture · noun, common masculine singular construct
people
עַמּ֔וֹa.Mo
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
healeth
יִרְפָּֽאyir.Pa'
H7495
properly · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
stroke
וּמַ֥חַץu.Ma.chatz
H4273
a contusion · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct
wound
מַכָּת֖וֹma.ka.To
H4347
a wound · noun, common feminine singular 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
Isaiah 60:19-20 The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD shall be unto thee an ev…
Deuteronomy 32:39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can del…
Revelation 22:5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall rei…
Revelation 21:23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light the…
Job 5:18 For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole.
Isaiah 24:23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his a…
Zechariah 14:7 But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be li…
Jeremiah 33:5-6 They come to fight with the Chaldeans, but it is to fill them with the dead bodies of men, whom I have slain in mine anger and in my fury, a…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 30:18-26
The closing words of the foregoing paragraph (You shall be left as a beacon upon a mountain) some understand as a promise that a remnant of them should be reserved as monuments of mercy; and here the prophet tells them what good times should succeed these calamities. Or the first words in this paragraph may be read by way of antithesis, Notwithstanding this, yet will the Lord wait that he may be gracious. The prophet, having shown that those who made Egypt their confidence would be ashamed of it, here shows that those who sat still and made God alone their confidence would have the comfort of it. It is matter of comfort to the people of God, when the times are very bad, that all will be well…
Image from the heavenly bodies to express the increase of spiritual light and felicity. "Sevenfold" implies the perfection of that felicity, seven being the sacred number. It shall also be literally fulfilled hereafter in the heavenly city (Isa 60:19-20; Rev 21:23-24; Rev 22:5).
breach--the wound, or calamity, sent by God on account of their sins (Isa 1:5).
John Gill on Isaiah 30:26
Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun,.... An hyperbolical expression, used to set forth the exceeding great light of the Gospel under the dispensation of it, which would as far exceed the light of the former dispensation, comparable to the moon, as the light of the sun exceeds the light of the moon; as also that great degree of spiritual joy and comfort that should be in those times, especially in the latter day; and the Jews themselves apply this to the times of the Messiah, and to the times after the war of Gog and Magog, after which they say there will be no more sorrow and distress; so Kimchi; and to these times it is applied in the Talmud (h); and Aben Ezra sa…
And the light of the moon shall be. The Prophet was not satisfied with describing an ordinary state of prosperity, without adding something extraordinary; for he says that the Lord will go beyond the course of nature in this kindness and liberality. It never happened that the brightness of "the sun" was increased, unless when "the sun" stood still in the days of Joshua, in order to give time for pursuing the enemies, (Joshua 10:12,13,) and when, for the sake of Hezekiah, the dial went backward. (2 Kings 20:11; Isaiah 38:8.) But on this occasion nothing is said about those miracles. [304] Besides, the Prophet does not speak about prolonging the course of "the sun" above our horizon, but about…
The Church Fathers
Moreover, when the day of judgment has been completed and the glory of the future life has become evident with the new heaven and the new earth, then will come to pass what the same prophet announced elsewhere: "The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be increased sevenfold, like the light of seven days."
But when there will be a new heaven and a new earth after the judgment—which is not one heaven and earth replacing another but these very same ones which will shine forth, having been renewed by fire and glorified by the power of the resurrection—then, as Isaiah predicts, "The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days."
Does not Scripture say universally of all the things that were created by God, "Behold, everything that God made was very good"? … The things that belong to the present, then, are not declared good in a merely minimal sense but are emphatically "very good." For, in fact, they are useful for us while we are living in this world, whether to sustain life or as medicine for the body or on account of some benefit unknown to us. Or else they are very good in that they let us "see the invisible things of God, his eternal power and his divinity, from the creation of the world, through things that have been made graspable"23—that is, from the great and well-ordered construction and arrangement of the world—and let us contemplate them from the existence of everything that is in it. Yet all of these will be unable to maintain their title to goodness if they are compared with the future age, where no mutability in good things and no corruption of true blessedness is to be feared. The blessedness of this world is described as follows: "The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." The things that are great, then, and splendid and marvelous to behold will immediately seem empty if they are compared with the future promises in faith.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Hezekiah — Whom Jehovah has strengthened. (1.) Son of Ahaz (2 Kings 18:1; 2 Chr. 29:1), whom he succeeded on the throne of the kingdom of Judah. He reigned twenty-nine years (B.C. 726-697). The history of this…
Moon · .Shining of — .Shining of
Peace · SPIRITUAL — SPIRITUAL
Sun · FIGURATIVE — FIGURATIVE
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).
The promise now rises higher and higher, and passes from earth to heaven. "And the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be multiplied sevenfold, like the light of seven days, in the day that Jehovah bindeth the hurt of His people, and healeth the crushing of His stroke." Modern commentators from Lowth downwards for the most part pronounce היּמים שׁבעת כּאור a gloss; and there is one external evidence in favour of this, which is wanting in the case of the other supposed glosses in Isaiah, namely, that the words are omitted by the lxx (though not by the Targum, the Syriac, or Jerome). Even Luther (although he notices these words in his exposition and…
