Isaiah 37:30 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 37:30
And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such as groweth of itself; and the second year that which springeth of the same: and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof.
a year (as a revolution of time) · conjunction + preposition with the article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
springeth
שָׁחִ֑יסsha.Chis
H7823
aftergrowth · noun, common masculine singular absolute
third
הַשְּׁלִישִׁ֗יתha.she.li.Shit
H7992
third · definite article + ordinal number, feminine singular absolute
year
וּבַשָּׁנָ֣הu.va.sha.Nah
H8141
a year (as a revolution of time) · conjunction + preposition with the article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
sow
זִרְע֧וּzir.'U
H2232
to sow · verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
reap
וְקִצְר֛וּve.kitz.Ru
H7114
to dock off · conjunction + verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
plant
וְנִטְע֥וּve.nit.'U
H5193
properly · conjunction + verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
vineyards
כְרָמִ֖יםkhe.ra.Mim
H3754
a garden or vineyard · noun, common masculine plural absolute
eat
וְאִכְל֥וּve.'a.khol
H398
to eat (literally or figuratively) · conjunction + verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
fruit
פִרְיָֽםfir.Yam
H6529
fruit (literally or figuratively) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
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
2 Kings 19:29 And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of…
Exodus 3:12 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the peo…
Leviticus 25:4-5 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vi…
1 Kings 13:3-5 And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the LORD hath spoken; Behold, the altar shall be rent, and the ashes that ar…
2 Kings 20:9 And Isaiah said, This sign shalt thou have of the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he hath spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten…
Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Leviticus 25:20-22 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:
Isaiah 7:21-25 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 37:21–end
We may here observe, 1. That those who receive messages of terror from men with patience, and send messages of faith to God by prayer, may expect messages of grace and peace from God for their comfort, even when they are most cast down. Isaiah sent a long answer to Hezekiah's prayer in God's name, sent it in writing (for it was too long to be sent by word of mouth), and sent it by way of return to his prayer, relation being thereunto had: "Whereas thou hast prayed to me, know, for thy comfort, that thy prayer is heard." Isaiah might have referred him to the prophecies he had delivered (particularly that ch. 10) and bid him pick out an answer from thence; but, that he might have abundant cons…
Addressed to Hezekiah.
sign--a token which, when fulfilled, would assure him of the truth of the whole prophecy as to the enemy's overthrow. The two years, in which they were sustained by the spontaneous growth of the earth, were the two in which Judea had been already ravaged by Sennacherib (Isa 32:10). Thus translate: "Ye did eat (the first year) such as groweth of itself, and in the second year that . . . but in this third year sow ye," &c., for in this year the land shall be delivered from the foe. The fact that Sennacherib moved his camp away immediately after shows that the first two years refer to the past, not to the future [ROSENMULLER]. Others, referring the first two years to th…
And this shall be a sign unto thee,.... Not to Sennacherib, but to Hezekiah; for here the Lord turns himself from the former, and directs his speech to the latter, in order to comfort him under the dreadful apprehensions he had of the Assyrian monarch, and his army; assuring him of deliverance; giving him a sign or token of it, and which was a wonder, as the word sometimes signifies, and was no less marvellous than the deliverance itself:
ye shall eat this year such as groweth of itself: and the second year that which springeth of the same: and in the third year sow ye, and reap and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof: all which was very wonderful; for whereas, either through the inv…
The Church Fathers
(Vers. 30 seqq.) But this will be a sign for you: Eat in this year what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that; then in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. The remaining survivors of the house of Judah shall take root downward and bear fruit upward; for out of Jerusalem shall come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. All these things the Prophet speaks through messengers to Hezekiah, what Sennacherib said, what the Lord answered him: now he speaks to him directly, so that he may not doubt the things that were said to come. And for this reason, especially, the words of the prophets had credibility among the people: because they not only remembered things that would happen many centuries in the future, but also things that would happen immediately, and would be fulfilled after a short period of time: and that within two years, the Assyrian king would perish and security would be restored to the city of Jerusalem. This will be, he says, a sign of what I predict will happen, that in this year you will eat what grows naturally. Or according to the Seventy, those things which you harvest first. But in the second year, according to Symmachus, eat from the fruits: or according to the same people, those things which have sprouted from the past crops and fallen to the ground as seed. But in the third year, after the Assyrians have been driven away and the siege has been lifted, sow, reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits of them. Indeed, the remaining fragments of this small city, which are now being surrounded by hostile armies, do not believe that they will escape. They will receive such an abundance and happiness of all things that they will be filled, like a tree firmly rooted in a high mountain, with the thickest of fruits. For the remnants will come forth from Jerusalem and from Mount Zion, and they will fill the land of Judaea, not by their own merit, but by the mercy of God, indeed by the zeal that He has shown towards His wicked people.
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
Egypt — The land of the Nile and the pyramids, the oldest kingdom of which we have any record, holds a place of great significance in Scripture. The Egyptians belonged to the white race, and their original…
Libnah · .Sennacherib besieged; his army — .Sennacherib besieged; his army
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).
And this shall be a sign to thee. He now directs his discourse to Hezekiah and the whole nation; for he did not address Sennacherib as if he expected him to listen, but in order that, by contemptuously mocking at the absent tyrant, he might more powerfully stimulate the minds of believers to stronger confidence. If he had simply said, "Take courage, Hezekiah; though Sennacherib is insolent, yet in due time I will restrain him;" that discourse would have been less impressive, than when he addresses the tyrant, and, by thundering against him, encourages believers to despise his presumption. [67] Accordingly, the speech directed to the tyrant is now followed by a seasonable address to Hezekiah…
The prophet now turns to Hezekiah. "And let this be a sign to thee, Men eat this year what is self-sown; and in the second year what springs from the roots (shâc, K. sâchı̄sh); and in the third year they sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat (chethib אכול) their fruit." According to Thenius, hasshânâh (this year) signifies the first year after Sennacherib's invasions, hasshânâh hasshēnı̄th (the second year) the current year in which the words were uttered by Hezekiah, hasshânâh hasshelı̄shith (the third year) the year that was coming in which the land would be cleared of the enemy. But understood in this way, the whole would have been no sign, but simply a prophecy that the cond…
In this prophecy of salvation, Isaiah assured Hezekiah that Jerusalem would be spared and that the remnant was under God’s protection. The names of Isaiah and his sons anticipated God’s rescue (see 7:1–11:16). The book’s record of God’s presence and rescue provided assurance that the Lord would always have a remnant that he will protect and rescue.
37:30 This year . . . next year . . . the third year: Because of the Assyrian siege and its destruction of agriculture, the people of Judah would not be able to plant and harvest as usual. The promise that life would resume after the siege assured them that God was with them and would provide as they carried out their everyday activities. They ne…
And this shall be the sign for you This statement is not addressed to Sennacherib, but the prophet said to Hezekiah, “And this salvation shall be a sign for you for another promise. Now the legions have destroyed all the vegetation and chopped off the trees, and the Holy One, blessed be He, promises you that you will have sufficient from the shoots of the plants that will grow by themselves.”
this year you shall eat (אָכוֹל) to eat this year.
and the next year what grows from the tree stumps (Heb. שָׁחִיס.) They are the shoots of the stumps. So it appears in Seder Olam (ch. 23), but Jonathan renders: כַּתְכַּתִּין, the shoots of the shoots. And this will be the sign for you; when you see t…
