20 Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers won't be hidden anymore, but your eyes will see your teachers;
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
When the Lord shall have given you. He continues the same subject, and strengthens believers, that they may not faint; for patience springs from the hope of a more prosperous issue. Accordingly, he prepares them for enduring future chastisement, for the wrath of God will press hard on them for a time; but he immediately promises that a joyful issue awaits them, when they shall have endured those calamities and distresses; for God will restrain his severity. Thus, I consider v (vau) to mean "When" or "After;" as if he had said, "When you shall have endured those troubles, then will the Lord bless you; for he will change your condition for the better." Thy rain shall no longer be restrained. [1] The word mvrh (mOrEh) is viewed by some commentators as meaning "a teacher." But this does not agree with the context; for, although the chief fruit of our reconciliation to God is to have faithful "teachers," yet, as the ignorant multitude was more deeply affected by the want of food, Isaiah accommodates his language to their ignorance, and gives them a taste of God's fatherly kindness under the emblem of abundance of food. By the words "bread" and "water," he means extreme want and scarcity of all things, and therefore he calls it "bread of anguish and water of affliction." [2] Instead of this famine, he says that he will send them plenty and abundance. This is what he means by the word rain; for he describes the cause instead of the effect, as if he had said, "The earth shall yield fruit in abundance." This had a literal and special reference to a country, the fertility of which depended entirely on heaven; for it was not watered by rivers or fountains, but by rains. "The land whither ye go to possess it," says Moses, "is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven." (Deuteronomy 11:11.) He declares that the fruits of the earth, which the Lord took away or diminished by barrenness, will return; because, in consequence of the copious "rains," [3] there will be large and abundant produce. Thus, when the Lord shall punish us, let us comfort our hearts with these statements and promises.
1 - "Though ye find yourselves reduced to extremities usual in long sieges, though ye be stinted to a short allowance of bread and water,' and are forced to undergo a great many other inconveniences, yet use not my prophets ill, make them not to run into corners to hide themselves from the violence of an impatient multitude; but be glad to see them among you, and let their examples encourage you to bear up handsomely under the short afflictions which shall then be upon you. This is the plain meaning of the words, without running to the whimsical expositions of some who by Panis Angustiæ,' as the Vulgate renders lchm tsr (lEchEm tzar,) make the prophet mean the compendious doctrine of the gospel, or Christ himself, or the eucharist, and like dreams." -- Samuel White
2 - "Kimchi's explanation of the word (mvrh, mOrEh, or rather mvrym, mOrim,) as meaning the early rain, (which sense it has in Joel 2:23, and perhaps also in Psalm 84:6,) has been retained only by Calvin and Lowth. The great majority of writers adhere not only to the sense of teacher,' but to the plural import of the form, (mvrym with 2 Sing. Affix.,) and understand the word as a designation or description of the prophets, with particular reference, as some suppose, to their reappearance after a period of severe persecution or oppression." -- Alexander
3 - "The ephods of your molten images, -- short cassocks, without sleeves, with which the heathens adorned their idols." -- Stock. Cicero tells a story about Dionysius, who found in the temple of Jupiter Olympius a golden cloak of great weight, with which the statue of Jupiter had been ornamented by Gelo out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and, after making the witty observation that it was too heavy for summer and too cold for winter, carried it off, and threw around the statue a woolen mantle, which, he said, was adapted to every season of the year. (Cic. de Nat. Deor. l. iii.) -- Ed
And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity - The bread that is eaten in a time of calamity; that is, he would bring upon them sore distress and want.
The water of affliction - Margin, 'Oppression.' That is, water drank in times of affliction and oppression, or in the long and weary days of captivity.
Yet shall not thy teachers - Your public instructors and guides Psalm 74:9; Isaiah 43:27; Daniel 12:3; Amos 8:11-12. This refers to "all" those who would be the true guides and teachers of the people of God in subsequent times; and relates, therefore, not only to prophets and pious men whom God would raise up under their own dispensation, but also to all whom he would appoint to communicate his will. It is a promise that the church of God should never want a pious and devoted ministry qualified to make known his will and defend his truth.
Be removed into a corner - The word used here (יכנף yikânēp from כנף kânap) occurs nowhere else in the Scriptures. It is probably derived from כנף kânâp, "a wing;" and in the Syriac and Chaldee, it means to collect together. The Septuagint renders this, 'And they who deceived thee shall no more come near unto thee.' The Syriac, 'And he (that is, the Lord) shall no more collect thy seducers.' The Chaldee, 'And he shall no more take away his own glory from the house of his sanctuary.' Rosenmuller, in accordance with Schultens, renders it, 'And thy teachers shall no more hide themselves,' referring to the fact that the wing of a fowl furnishes a hiding-place or shelter. This would accord with the general idea that they should not be removed from public view. Lowth, singularly, and without authority from versions or manuscripts, renders it,
'Yet the timely rain shall no more be restrained.'
The general idea is, evidently, that they should be no more taken away; and probably the specific idea is that proposed by Taylor ("Hebrews. Con."), that thy teachers shall no more, as it were, be winged, or fly away; that is, be removed by flight, or as a flock of birds moving together rapidly on the wing.
Though the Lord "Though Jehovah" - For אדני Adonai, sixteen MSS. and three editions have יהוה Yehovah, many of De Rossi's have the same reading; all my own have יהוה Yehovah.
And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction,.... Either at this present time, when the city was besieged by Sennacherib; or when it should be besieged by the Chaldeans, when adversity was their bread, and affliction their water; or when they had only bread and water in their adversity and affliction; or a famine of bread and water, as is common in times of a siege. It may refer to the poor, and mean, and afflicted state of the people of God, in the first times of the Gospel especially:
yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more; or, "thy rain" (b), as some interpret it; one and the same word signifies both rain and a teacher, because doctrine from the mouth of a teacher drops like rain upon the tender herb, and as showers on the grass; and is to be understood, not merely in a literal sense, of rain, and fruitfulness by it, in opposition to penury and famine for want of it; but of rain of spiritual doctrine; and so the sense is much the same as if it was rendered teachers; that though the people of God should be attended with afflictions, yet they should have spiritual consolation; and though they might have a famine of bread and water, yet not of hearing the word of the Lord; their teachers should not be removed from them, as they had formerly been, perhaps in the time of Ahaz: or "take wing" (c), and fly away from them, as the word signifies, being scared by persecutors; so the prophets in the time of Ahab were forced to fly, and were hid by fifty in a cave. The word here used has in the Arabic language the signification of hiding, as Maimonides (d) from Aben Ganach has observed; and so may be read, "thy teachers shall not be hidden any more"; things being hidden under wings; see Psalm 17:8,
but thine eyes shall see thy teachers; in their proper place, doing the work of their office: it denotes not a bare seeing them with their bodily eyes, but a seeing them with pleasure and delight, a wistfully looking at them, and a diligent and attentive observance of what they said. Some understand these teachers of Hezekiah and his princes, as Aben Ezra, Kimchi, and Abendana; others of the priests and prophets in his time, the principal of which was Isaiah; others of the prophets a little before, in, and after the Babylonish captivity; it may be applied to John the Baptist, Christ, and his apostles, and other Gospel ministers. Jarchi interprets it of God himself, who teaches to profit, and who would not hide his face from his people; the Targum, of the Shechinah not removing from the sanctuary, but being seen there; and being in the plural number, may denote all the three Persons.
(b) "pluvia tua", some in Munster, Calvin; so Ben Melech interprets it; and the same in the next clause. (c) "non avolabit", Piscator; "ad verb. alabitur", Forerius. (d) More Nevochim, par. 1. cap. 43. p. 61. So "operuit, sub alis tutatus est", Castel. col. 1760.
Rather, "The Lord will give"; the "though" is not in the original.
bread of adversity--He will not deny you food enough to save you in your adversity (1-Kings 22:27; Psalm 127:2).
be removed--rather, "hide themselves"; they shall no more be forced to hide themselves from persecution, but shall be openly received with reverence [MAURER]. Contrast with this Psalm 74:9; Amos 8:11.
*More commentary available at chapter level.