Isaiah 40:15 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 40:15
Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine plural absolute
drop
כְּמַ֣רke.Mar
H4752
a drop · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
bucket
מִדְּלִ֔יmi.de.Li
H1805
a pail or jar (for drawing water) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
counted
נֶחְשָׁ֑בוּnech.Sha.vu
H2803
properly · verb, niphal perfect, 3rd person common plural
dust
וּכְשַׁ֥חַקu.khe.Sha.chak
H7834
a powder (as beaten small) · conjunction + preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
balance
מֹאזְנַ֖יִםmoz.Na.yim
H3976
(only in the dual) a pair of scales · noun, common masculine dual absolute
up
יִטּֽוֹלyi.Tol
H5190
to lift · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
isles
אִיִּ֖ים'i.Yim
H339
properly · noun, common masculine plural absolute
thing
כַּדַּ֥קka.Dak
H1851
crushed · preposition with the article + adjective, masculine singular absolute
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 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a cu…
Jeremiah 10:10 But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not…
Job 34:14-15 If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;
Isaiah 29:5 Moreover the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth away…
Isaiah 11:11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which sh…
Genesis 10:5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
Isaiah 41:5 The isles saw it, and feared; the ends of the earth were afraid, drew near, and came.
Isaiah 59:18 According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recomp…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 40:12-17
The scope of these verses is to show what a great and glorious being the Lord Jehovah is, who is Israel's God and Saviour. It comes in here, 1. To encourage his people that were captives in Babylon to hope in him, and to depend upon him for deliverance, though they were ever so weak and their oppressors ever so strong. 2. To engage them to cleave to him, and not to turn aside after other gods; for there are none to be compared with him. 3. To possess all those who receive the glad tidings of redemption by Christ with a holy awe and reverence of God. Though it was said (Isa 40:9), Behold your God, and (Isa 40:11) He shall feed his flock like a shepherd, yet these condescensions of his grace m…
of--rather, (hanging) from a bucket [MAURER].
he taketh up . . . as a very little thing--rather, "are as a mere grain of dust which is taken up," namely, by the wind; literally, "one taketh up," impersonally (Exo 16:14) [MAURER].
isles--rather, "lands" in general, answering to "the nations" in the parallel clause; perhaps lands, like Mesopotamia, enclosed by rivers [JEROME] (so Isa 42:15). However, English Version, "isles" answers well to "mountains" (Isa 40:12), both alike being lifted up by the power of God; in fact, "isles" are mountains upheaved from the bed of the sea by volcanic agency; only that he seems here to have passed from unintelligent creatures (Isa 40:12) to intelligent,…
Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket,.... Not only the Chaldeans and Babylonians, and other nations most known, and most troublesome to the Jews, but all the nations of the world; these, in comparison of God, of his infinite and immense Being, are but as a drop of water that hangs upon the bucket, or falls from it, when water is drawn by it, or is left in it, when poured out of it; which is nothing in comparison of the well out of which the water is drawn, or even of the water in the bucket drawn out of it:
and are accounted as the small dust of the balance; that is, they are accounted nothing of with God, comparatively speaking, any more than the small dust which hangs upon the ba…
The Church Fathers
For it was fitting that (since all the nations are reckoned as a droplet of the bucket) he who for the salvation of all became all things should become also a droplet, to set them free. For what did he not become for our salvation? We are empty; and he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. We are a foolish people and not wise; and he became the foolishness of preaching, that the foolishness of God might be made wiser than men. We are weak; the weakness of God was made stronger than men.
(Verse 15) Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. LXX: Behold, all the nations are as a drop in a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales. All peoples who did not know their Creator or the whole human race in comparison to God are like a drop from a bucket and like a speck of dust on a scale that tilts lightly to one side. And just as if a small drop falls from a bucket, it is ignored by the one carrying it; so too the entire multitude of nations, compared to the divine ministries and the multitude of angels, is considered as nothing. Even islands are considered like spit, or as Symmachus and Theodotion place it in their Hebrew translation, as 'leptos (a little thing)' which falls off, for which Aquila translated as 'leptos ballōmenon (a tiny thing thrown).' But the Hebrews say that this word signifies the finest dust, which, being carried by the wind, is often thrown into the eyes and is felt rather than seen. Therefore, the tiniest particles of dust, almost invisible, are called by this word: which perhaps Democritus, with his atom, calls them with Epicurus. There are many names which are read (or understood) in Greek in the same way as they are in Hebrew, because of the difficulty of interpretation, and for the comparison of the poverty of the Hebrew language, both in Greek and in Latin speech.
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
Bucket — A vessel to draw water with (Isa. 40:15); used figuratively, probably, of a numerous issue (Num. 24:7).
Isaiah, The Book of — Consists of prophecies delivered (Isa. 1) in the reign of Uzziah (1-5), (2) of Jotham (6), (3) Ahaz (7-14:28), (4) the first half of Hezekiah’s reign (14:28-35), (5) the second half of Hezekiah’s…
Balances · Used for weighing — Used for weighing
Bucket · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
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).
Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket. If we wish to understand the Prophet's meaning, and to read these words with advantage, we must (as I remarked a little before) understand his design. He does not celebrate the greatness of God in a detached manner, but extols it with the utmost possible adaptation to the present subject, that Israelites may know that this shield alone is sufficient to protect them, and that they will have no reason to dread the efforts, or rage, or violence of the world, if God be reconciled to them, and that they may thus learn to betake themselves to God's protection; for if they were not fully convinced of this, there would arise at every moment various caus…
From His exaltation as Creator, the prophet now proceeds to His exaltation as Governor of the world. "Behold, nations like a little drop on a bucket, and like a grain of sand in a balance, are they esteemed; behold, islands like an atom of dust that rises in the air." Upon Jehovah, the King of the world, does the burden rest of ruling over the whole human race, which is split up into different nations; but the great masses of people over whom Jehovah rules are no more burden to Him than a drop hanging upon a bucket is a burden to the man who carries it (min is used in the same sense as in Sol 4:1; Sol 6:5), no more than the weight in a balance is perceptibly increased or diminished by a grai…
God is sovereign over all the nations of the world and over their human power structures. In comparison to God, they are almost nothing. This included the Babylonian Empire, which was merely a tool in God’s hand. • whole earth: Literally coastlands or islands.
Rashi on Isaiah 40:15
Behold the nations are like a drop from a bucket And are not worthy to Him to appoint some of them as prophets to reveal His secret.
like a drop from a bucket Heb. כְּמַר, like a bitter drop that drips from the bottom of the bucket, bitter from the putrid water that is embedded in the bucket and the decay of the wood, limonede in O.F.
and like the dust of a balance for the copper corrodes and wears off.
like fine fine dust.
that blows away [lit. that will be taken.] Like dust that is picked up and goes up through the wind, like fine dust that is carried away.
