Isaiah 4:2 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 4:2
In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.
fruit (literally or figuratively) · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct
earth
הָאָ֙רֶץ֙ha.'A.retz
H776
the earth (at large · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
excellent
לְגָא֣וֹןle.ga.'on
H1347
arrogance or majesty · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
for
וּלְתִפְאֶ֔רֶתu.le.tif.'E.ret
H8597
ornament (abstractly or concretely · conjunction + preposition + noun, common feminine singular absolute
escaped
לִפְלֵיטַ֖תlif.lei.Tat
H6413
deliverance · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵֽלYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
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
Jeremiah 23:5 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execut…
Zechariah 6:12 And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of hi…
Zechariah 3:8 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring fort…
Isaiah 27:6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.
Joel 2:32 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be…
Jeremiah 33:15 In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteous…
Romans 11:4-5 But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.
Exodus 28:2 And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 4:2–end
By the foregoing threatenings Jerusalem is brought into a very deplorable condition: every thing looks melancholy. But here the sun breaks out from behind the cloud. Many exceedingly great and precious promises we have in these verses, giving assurance of comfort which may be discerned through the troubles, and of happy days which shall come after them, and these certainly point at the kingdom of the Messiah, and the great redemption to be wrought out by him, under the figure and type of the restoration of Judah and Jerusalem by the reforming reign of Hezekiah after Ahaz and the return out of their captivity in Babylon; to both these events the passage may have some reference, but chiefly to…
In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious,.... When the beauty of the Jewish women shall be taken away, and their men shall he slain; by whom is meant, not the righteous and wise men left among the Jews, as Jarchi and Aben Ezra; nor Hezekiah; which is the sense of some, as the latter observes: but the Messiah, as Kimchi, and so the Targum, which paraphrases the words thus,
"at that time shall the Messiah of the Lord be for joy and glory;''
and the Septuagint understand it of a divine Person appearing on earth, rendering the words, "for in that day God shall shine in counsel with glory upon the earth"; and so the Arabic version. Christ is called "the branch", not as…
In that day shall the branch of the Lord be for beauty and glory. [71] This consolation is seasonably added; for the announcement of a dreadful calamity might have alarmed the godly, and led them to doubt as to the stability of God's covenant being maintained amidst the destruction of the people. For there is a wide difference between the two statements, that the people will be like the sand of the sea, (Genesis 22:17; Isaiah 10:22,) and yet that they would be cut down by such a frightful massacre, that in the remnant there would be found no dignity, no magnificence, and hardly any name. Isaiah, therefore, according to the custom generally followed by himself and by the prophets, provides ag…
The Church Fathers
The Lord indeed gave of his generosity in that he arranged to liberate the human race from the crime of its transgression through his only-begotten Son. He gave of his generosity because with the grace of the Holy Spirit he consecrated for his entry the temple of a virginal womb. And our earth gave its fruit because the same virgin who had her body from the earth bore a son who was coequal to God the Father in his divinity but by the reality of [his] flesh consubstantial with her. Concerning this, Isaiah also, looking toward the time of human redemption, said, "On that day the branch of the Lord will be in magnificence and in glory, and the fruit of the earth will be sublime." The branch of the Lord was in magnificence and glory when the undying Son of God, appearing temporally in the flesh as a bright light, poured out upon the world the greatness of his heavenly virtues. The fruit of the earth became sublime when the mortal flesh that God received from our nature, already rendered immortal in virtue of the resurrection, was raised up to heaven.
(Verse 2, 3) On that day, the Lord's shoot will be in splendor and glory, and the fruit of the earth will be exalted, and those who have been saved from Israel will rejoice. And it will be, everyone who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who is recorded in life in Jerusalem. When the daughters of Zion have lost all their pride and all their adornment, and her gates have mourned and she herself is desolate, and all her warriors have perished in battle, to the point that many women can hardly find one man: then the shoot of the Christian name will arise, and the land will yield its fruit. And there will be rejoicing for those who have been saved from Israel, of whom it has been said before: Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been like Sodom, and similar to Gomorrah (Isa. 1:9). And note that not all Israel will be saved, but the remnant of the people of Zion and the remainder in Jerusalem; all who are enrolled in life in Jerusalem, to whom the Lord also spoke: Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). It signifies the Apostles and those who believed through the Apostles.
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
Christ — Anointed, the Greek translation of the Hebrew word rendered “Messiah” (q.v.), the official title of our Lord, occurring five hundred and fourteen times in the New Testament. It denotes that he was…
Nazareth — Separated, generally supposed to be the Greek form of the Hebrew netser, a “shoot” or “sprout.” Some, however, think that the name of the city must be connected with the name of the hill behind it,…
Branch · .A title of Christ — .A title of Christ
Fruits · Called the: Fruit of the earth — Called the: Fruit of the earth
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 that day will the sprout of Jehovah become an ornament and glory, and the fruit of the land pride and splendour for the redeemed of Israel." The four epithets of glory, which are here grouped in pairs, strengthen our expectation, that now that the mass of Israel has been swept away, together with the objects of its worthless pride, we shall find a description of what will become an object of well-grounded pride to the "escaped of Israel," i.e., to the remnant that has survived the judgment, and been saved from destruction. But with this interpretation of the promise it is impossible that it can be the church of the future itself, which is here called the "sprout of Jehovah" and "fruit of…
In bold contrast to the desperate picture of 3:16–4:1, this prophecy of salvation and hope (see also 2:2-4) promised cleansing, consecration, and the renewal of God’s presence with the remnant. The imagery in 4:5-6 alludes to Israel’s exodus from Egypt, when a pillar of cloud and of fire guided and protected them. Israel’s restoration from exile would be a second exodus.
4:2 The branch in this context probably refers to the remnant that would constitute Israel’s new beginning after the Exile (see 6:13). Some also understand it as representing the ideal descendant of David, the Messiah (see 11:1; Jer 23:5; 33:15-16; Zech 3:8; 6:12). • A beautiful and glorious transformation from shame and di…
On that day After the beauty of the ornaments of the adulteresses and the wanton women is curtailed, the glory of My people and the beauty of their honor will no longer depend upon these things.
the sprout of the Lord shall be to you for beauty.
for beauty and for honor They are the righteous who remain among them, and the sages, the students of the Torah; upon them will they depend the beauty of their honor.
and the fruit of the land They are the children of the righteous, the fruit of the Tree of Life. They shall be for greatness and glory, for the survivors of Israel will boast and praise themselves with them. צְבִי means ‘beauty,’ an object of desire, for there is desire in it.
