a ram (just old enough to butt) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
feed
וְרָע֥וּve.ra.'U
H7462
to tend a flock · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 3rd person common plural
manner
כְּדָבְרָ֑םke.da.ve.Ram
H1699
a pasture (from its arrangement of the flock) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
places
וְחָרְב֥וֹתve.cha.re.Vot
H2723
properly · conjunction + noun, common feminine plural construct
ones
מֵחִ֖יםme.Chim
H4220
fat · noun, common masculine plural absolute
strangers
גָּרִ֥יםga.Rim
H1481
properly · verb, qal active participle, masculine plural absolute
eat
יֹאכֵֽלוּyo.Khe.lu
H398
to eat (literally or figuratively) · verb, qal imperfect, 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
Zephaniah 2:6 And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks.
Isaiah 7:25 And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the…
Zephaniah 2:14 And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper li…
Deuteronomy 28:33 The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway…
Deuteronomy 32:15 But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made…
Nehemiah 9:37 And it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins: also they have dominion over our bodies, and ov…
Psalms 17:10 They are inclosed in their own fat: with their mouth they speak proudly.
Psalms 17:14 From men which are thy hand, O LORD, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid…
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…
after their manner--literally, "according to their own word," that is, at will. Otherwise, as in their own pasture [GESENIUS]: so the Hebrew in Mic 2:12. The lands of the Scenite tent dwellers (Jer 35:7). Arab shepherds in the neighborhood shall roam at large, the whole of Judea being so desolate as to become a vast pasturage.
waste . . . fat ones--the deserted lands of the rich ("fat," Psa 22:29), then gone into captivity; "strangers," that is, nomad tribes shall make their flocks to feed on [MAURER]. Figuratively, "the lambs" are the pious, "the fat ones" the impious. So tender disciples of Jesus Christ (Joh 21:15) are called "lambs"; being meek, harmless, poor, and persecuted. Compare E…
Then shall the lambs feed after their manner,.... That is, the people of God, the disciples of Christ, either apostles and ministers of the Gospel, whom he sent forth as lambs among wolves, Luke 10:3 who fed the flock of Christ after their usual manner, and as directed by him; even with knowledge and understanding, by the ministry of the word, and administration of ordinances; or the people of God fed by them, who are comparable to lambs for their harmlessness and innocence; and who feed in green pastures, "according as they are led"; as the word used may be rendered (f); or "according to their word"; the doctrine of the ministers of the Gospel, by whom they are instructed and directed to fe…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 17) And the lambs will be fed in their order: and the deserted places will be turned into abundance, and strangers will feast upon them. Instead of the lambs being fed in their order, which is understood in a positive sense, I do not know what the LXX, desiring something else, translated as 'they will be fed as plundered bulls'; understanding lambs as bulls, and again interpreting strangers as lambs. But when the Lord is exalted in judgment, and sanctified in His righteousness, so that the evil farmers may be destroyed, and the lofty cedar may be cut down by the axe of the Lord; then those who are among the number of lambs, not of goats, will be fed in the meadows of the Church, and will say: 'The Lord feeds me, and I lack nothing' (Psalm 23:1); and the people of the nations will eat the deserted things of the Jews, turned into abundance. This is according to the tropology. Moreover, to complete the order of the narrative, the same thing is said in other words, which we have read above: Your land is devoured by strangers in your presence, and it is deserted and destroyed by foreign peoples (Isaiah 1:7). For the multitude of nations gathered from the whole world dwell in Judea, and the previous peoples being expelled, therefore blindness has happened to the house of Israel, so that the fullness of the Gentiles may enter (Romans 11). Beautifully, according to the LXX, they were plundered and devastated and led into captivity like bulls, of whom the Lord had said: Fat bulls have surrounded me, so that the lambs may occupy the places of the bulls.
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
Lamb, The · Illustrative: Of the Lord’s people — Illustrative: Of the Lord’s people
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 the lambs shall feed after their manner. Some render it according to their measure, or, in proportion to their capacity, but it means in the usual manner. There are various ways of explaining this verse; but we ought first of all to observe that the Prophet intended to bring consolation to the godly, who trembled at hearing the dreadful judgments of God; for the more powerfully a man is under the influence of religion, the more does he feel the presence of the hand of God, and the more is he impressed by the apprehension of his judgment. In short, fear and reverence for God cause us to be deeply moved by everything that is presented to us in his name.
Accordingly, after having heard suc…
And when we consider that the Holy Land is at the present time an extensive pasture-ground for Arab shepherds, and that the modern Jerusalem which has arisen from the dust is a Mohammedan city, we may see in this also a literal fulfilment of Isa 5:17 : "And lambs feed as upon their pasture, and nomad shepherds eat the waste places of the fat ones." There is no necessity to supply an object to the verb ורעוּ, as Knobel and others assume, viz., the waste lands mentioned in the second clause; nor is Cedâbrâm to be taken as the object, as Caspari supposes; but the place referred to is determined by the context: in the place where Jerusalem is sunken, there lambs feed after the manner of their…
God’s kingship is by definition just and righteous, and he will be exalted by his justice. At his exaltation, oppressors will be condemned (see 1:21-23).
Rashi on Isaiah 5:17
And lambs shall graze as their wont The righteous who are compared to a flock of ewes.
as their wont Heb. כדברם. According to their habit, with equity and with a measure, guiding their affairs with justice, like these lambs. [Variant reading: According to their habit, with equity and of their own, for there will no longer be wicked people in the world, who will rob them.] Our Rabbis expounded כְּדָבְרָם to mean: According to all that was spoken regarding them, [i.e.,] the consolations spoken for them.
and...the ruins of the fat ones the houses of the wicked, who are fat.
sojourners shall eat The righteous, who are like sojourners, shall eat them.
fat Heb. מֵחִים, meaning “fat,” as (Psalm…
