Isaiah 5:14 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 5:14
Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.
to descend (literally · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 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
Proverbs 30:16 The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough.
Habakkuk 2:5 Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, a…
Luke 21:34 And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so th…
Psalms 55:15 Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.
Proverbs 27:20 Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.
Isaiah 30:33 For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the…
Matthew 7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in there…
Revelation 20:13-15 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man a…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 5:8-17
The world and the flesh are the two great enemies that we are in danger of being overpowered by; yet we are in no danger if we do not ourselves yield to them. Eagerness of the world, and indulgence of the flesh, are the two sins against which the prophet, in God's name, here denounces woes. These were sins which then abounded among the men of Judah, some of the wild grapes they brought forth (Isa 5:4), and for which God threatens to bring ruin upon them. They are sins which we have all need to stand upon our guard against and dread the consequences of.
I. Here is a woe to those who set their hearts upon the wealth of the world, and place their happiness in that, and increase it to themselves…
hell--the grave; Hebrew, sheol; Greek, hades; "the unseen world of spirits." Not here, "the place of torment." Poetically, it is represented as enlarging itself immensely, in order to receive the countless hosts of Jews, which should perish (Num 16:30).
their--that is, of the Jewish people.
he that rejoiceth--the drunken reveller in Jerusalem.
John Gill on Isaiah 5:14
Therefore hell hath enlarged herself,.... That is, the grave, to receive the dead which die with famine and thirst; signifying that the number of the dead would be so great, that the common burying places would not be sufficient to hold them; but additions must be made to them; or some vast prodigious pit must be dug, capable of receiving them; like Tophet, deep and large: or "hath enlarged her soul" (d); her desire after the dead, see Habakkuk 2:5 being insatiable, and one of those things which are never satisfied, or have enough, Proverbs 30:15 wherefore it follows:
and opened her mouth without measure; immensely wide; there being no boundary to its desires, nor any end of its cravings, o…
Therefore hell hath enlarged his soul [86] In this verse the Prophet intended to heighten the alarm of men who were at their ease, and not yet sufficiently affected by the threatenings which had been held out to them. Though it was shocking to behold captivity, and also famine, yet the slowness and insensibility of the people was so great that they did not give earnest heed to these tokens of God's anger. Accordingly the Prophet threatens something still more dreadful, that hell has opened his belly to swallow them all up.
I said a little ago, that what is here stated in the past tense refers partly to the future. Nor is it without good reason that the Prophet speaks of the events as plain…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 14, 15.) Therefore, hell enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without any limit, and its strong ones, and its people, and its high and glorious ones descended to it. And man will be humbled, and the man will be brought low, and the eyes of the proud will be cast down. Those who rose early to pursue wine, and remained in drunkenness until evening, and were occupied with pleasure and indulgence, did not want to consider the work of the Lord, nor did they contemplate the works of His hands. Therefore they were brought into captivity because they did not have knowledge of the Son of God, as He himself said to them, 'You neither know me nor the one who sent me' (John 8:19), and in that very captivity they died of famine and wasted away from thirst. Where Hell and death extended their souls, and opened their mouths, and devoured without number and satiety those to be punished forever: so that the princes and people, and the sublimity and glory of the land of Judah would descend to him, and all pride would be humbled, and the eyes of the lofty would be lowered, understanding themselves to be mortals; and all things were fulfilled, which the Lord had foretold through the prophets. However, Hell is said to have a soul, not that it is a living creature, according to the error of some; but that by the words of human custom, we express the impassivity of things that do not sense, that it is insatiable, and is never filled by the multitude of the dead. And in the hand of the tongue, death is spoken (Prov. XVIII), and the almighty God hates the Sabbaths, and speaks of the Jews despising their own soul (Isai. I). Whatever we have said about the Jewish people can be metaphorically applied to those who are occupied with the pleasures of the world, not looking to the works of God, they are led captive into sin, and have no knowledge of God: and therefore, they perish from hunger and thirst for good works and virtues, and are dragged into hell, where they are assigned to eternal torments, and they witness the power and pride of misery being transformed by humility.
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
Measure — Several words are so rendered in the Authorized Version. (1.) Those which are indefinite. (a) Hok, Isa. 5:14, elsewhere “statute.” (b) Mad, Job 11:9; Jer. 13:25, elsewhere “garment.” (c) Middah, the…
Glory · Of the wicked: Ends in destruction — Of the wicked: Ends in destruction
Hades · 2. The realm (state) of the — 2. The realm (state) of the
Hell · In the R. V. of O. T. it appears only in — In the R. V. of O. T. it appears only in
Measures · Illustrative: (Opening the mouth without measure,) of the insatiableness of hell — Illustrative: (Opening the mouth without measure,) of the insatiableness of hell
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 threat of punishment commences again with "therefore;" it has not yet satisfied itself, and therefore grasps deeper still. "Therefore the under-world opens its jaws wide, and stretches open its mouth immeasurably wide; and the glory of Jerusalem descends, and its tumult, and noise, and those who rejoice within it." The verbs which follow lâcēn (therefore) are prophetic preterites, as in Isa 5:13. The feminine suffixes attached to what the lower world swallows up do not refer to sheol (though this is construed more frequently, no doubt, as a feminine than as a masculine, as it is in Job 26:6), but, as expressed in the translation, to Jerusalem itself, which is also necessarily required…
The grave (Hebrew Sheol) represented the place of the dead in ancient Near Eastern thinking (see 14:9).
Rashi on Isaiah 5:14
Therefore, the nether-world has expanded Retribution corresponding to deed; they expanded themselves to swallow much food and drink, and they opened their mouth to swallow, so will the nether world expand itself to swallow.
and opened Heb. פָּעֲרָה.
without measure Without end; and why [did the grave open] without measure? Because these people had no measure or limit to their enjoyments.
shall descend There the splendor of Jerusalem.
And those who rejoice therein Heb. ועלז בה. [I.e., those who rejoiced in Jerusalem, or in all the Land of Israel, with the plenty they had there, will fall into Sheol, i.e., they will die.]
