"Hear Me, you who know what is right, you people who have taken My instruction to heart: Do not fear the reproach of mere mortals or be terrified by their insults. For the moth will eat them up like a garment; the worm will devour them like wool. But My righteousness will last forever, My salvation throughout all generations." (Isaiah 51:7-8)
The wicked will be "devoured" (judged and sentenced and taken out of the way) like moths and worms devour fabrics. But those who fear (reverence) the Lord need not fear anyone else. Jesus said not to fear mankind, because humans have no power over our eternal souls, but to fear the Lord. (Matthew 10:28) Likewise, the Apostle Paul affirmed that if we belong to the Lord, the Lord is with us and we need not fear anything man can do to us. (Romans 8:31) You may have heard the saying, "They who kneel before God can stand before anyone," and that is the sentiment expressed by verses 7 and 8.
Can the Lord rid the people of their oppressors and bring them home? Of course He can. He is still the same God that He always was and can still judge their enemies the same way He always has and can still provide for them the same way He always has. This next segment below appears to be spoken either by the prophet Isaiah or by the people of Isaiah's nation who have remained faithful to the Lord.
"Awake, awake, arm of the Lord, clothe Yourself with strength! Awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old. Was it not You who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through? Was it not You who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over? Those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." (Isaiah 51:9-11)
The Lord never sleeps but whoever is speaking these words is using the term "awake" poetically to mean something like "stir Yourself up and come to battle for us". The word "Rahab" means "pride" and the Lord may be using this word to indicate His victory over that prideful serpent, Satan, or it could be He is using this word for the enemies of the people, for it is evident in the Bible that Israel's enemies were prideful in their belief that they could wipe the Israelites from the earth.
In response to the cry for help in verses 9-11, the Lord restates His intention to rescue the people from captivity and to preserve the descendants of Jacob as a people. "I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mere mortals, human beings who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretches out the heavens and who lays the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction?" (Isaiah 51:12-13a)
In some translations of the Bible we find an earlier passage of Isaiah worded like this: "Do not anxiously look about you," (Isaiah 41:10) because when we anxiously look around at our circumstances it can be easy to fall into a panic. That's because we have taken our eyes off the Lord and have begun to be discouraged about our hardships and obstacles. The more we focus on our problems, the bigger they seem to us. In this same way, if we keep our attention fixed on the Lord, He will appear bigger to us. Our faith that He can handle our problems will increase and our anxiety and discouragement will decrease.
Soon the oppressor will be no more. The Neo-Babylonian Empire will cause the fall of Isaiah's nation because so many will have turned to idolatry by the time that enemy is powerful enough to defeat them, but the Lord will allow the enemy to be defeated by the Medo-Persian Empire and the captives will be set free, as we see below.
"For where is the wrath of the oppressor? The cowering prisoners will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread. For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar---the Lord Almighty is His name. I have put My words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of My hand---I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who says to Zion, 'You are My people.'" (Isaiah 51:13b-16) These are words the people can cling to and trust in when they are in Babylon. The Lord is not making an end of them as a nation or as a distinct people in the world.
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