Isaiah 2:2

And it shall come to pass in the last days,.... The days of the Messiah, as Aben Ezra rightly interprets it; and it is a rule laid down by Kimchi and Ben Melech, that wherever the last days are

And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

And; or, now, as this particle is rendered, , &c. In the last days; in the times of the Messias or the gospel, as the generality both of Jewish and Christian writers understand it, and as may further appear both from the use of this phrase in this sense, 49:39 ,16 Daniel 10:14 , and from the conversion of the Gentiles here promised, which was not to be till that time; and from the nature of the thing, for this really was the last time and state of the church in the world; the Jewish pedagogy was to be abolished, but Christ’ s institutions were to continue to the end of the world. The mountain of the Lord’ s house; the temple of the Lord which is upon Mount Moriah; which yet is not to be understood literally of that material temple, but mystically of the church of God, as appears from the next following words, which will not admit of a literal interpretation; and from the flowing of all nations to it, which was not to that temple, nor indeed was fulfilled till that temple was destroyed; and from the frequent use of this metaphor, the temple, or the house of the Lord, concerning the Christian church, both in the Old and the New Testament. Shall be exalted above the hills; shall be placed and settled in a most conspicuous and glorious manner, being advanced above all other churches and kingdoms in the world. All nations, those Gentiles, whom you now despise, and judge to be abhorred and quite forsaken by God, shall flow unto it, shall come in great abundance, and with great eagerness, like a river, as the word signifies.

Isaiah 2:2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, [that] the mountain of the LORD’ S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.Ver. 2. And it shall come to pass, &c.] where we shall find that that prophet hath the same words with this αυτολεξει. So hath Obadiah the same with Jeremiah, St Mark with St Matthew, St Jude with St Peter, the blessed Virgin in her Magnificat with holy Hannah in her Canticle, &c.

(2) It shall come to pass in the last days.—The three verses that follow are found in almost identical form in Micah 4:1-3, with the addition of a verse (Micah 4:4) which describes the prosperity of Judah—every man sitting “under his vine and his fig-tree,” as in the days of Solomon. Whether (1) Isaiah borrowed from Micah, or (2) Micah from Isaiah, or (3) both from some earlier prophet, or (4) whether each received an independent yet identical revelation, is a problem which we have no adequate data for solving. Micah prophesied, like Isaiah, under Ahaz, Jotham, and Hezekiah, and so either may have heard it from the other. On the other hand, the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, on which these verses follow, in Micah 3:12, appears from Jeremiah 26:18 to have been spoken in the days of Hezekiah. On the whole, (3) seems to have most to commend it. (See Introduction.) For “in the last days” read latter or after days; the idea of the Hebrew words, as in Genesis 49:1; Numbers 24:14, being that of remoteness rather than finality. For the most part (Deuteronomy 4:30; Deuteronomy 31:29) they point to the distant future of the true King, to the time of the Messiah. The mountain of the Lord’s house.—The prophet’s vision of the far-off days sees, as it were, a transfigured and glorified Jerusalem. Zion, with the Temple, was to be no longer surrounded by hills as high as, or higher than, itself (Psalms 125:2), scorned by other mountains (Psalms 68:16-17); but was to be to Israel as a Sinai or a Lebanon, as a Mount Meru, or an Olympus, “an exceeding high mountain” (Ezekiel 40:2), whose physical elevation should answer to its spiritual. (Comp. Zechariah 14:10.) So in that vision of the future, the waters of Shiloah, that went softly, were to become a broad and rushing river (Isaiah 33:21; Ezekiel 47:3-12). So, when men had been taught by experience that this ideal was to be realised in no Jerusalem or earth, the seer of Patmos saw a yet more transcendent vision of the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 21:10 to Revelation 22:5), and yet even these were but types and figures of divine and ineffable realities. All nations shall flow unto it.—Better, all the nations—i.e., the heathen as distinct from Israel. The prophet sees and welcomes the approach of pilgrims from all regions of the earth to the new sanctuary. Thus early in his work was Isaiah (half unconsciously as to the manner in which his vision was to be realised) the prophet of a universal religion, of which the truths of Judaism were the centre, and of a catholic Church. In the admission of proselytes, commemorated in Psalms 87 (probably written about this time), we may see what may either have suggested the prophecy, or have seemed as the first-fruits of its fulfilment.

Verse 2. In the last days - "In the latter days"] "Wherever the latter times are mentioned in Scripture, the days of the Messiah are always meant," says Kimchi on this place: and, in regard to this place, nothing can be more clear and certain. And the mountain of the Lord's house, says the same author, is Mount Moriah, on which the temple was built. The prophet Micah, Micah 4:1-4, has repeated this prophecy of the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, and of its progress to universality and perfection, in the same words, with little and hardly any material variation: for as he did not begin to prophesy till Jotham's time, and this seems to be one of the first of Isaiah's prophecies, I suppose Micah to have taken it from hence. The variations, as I said, are of no great importance. Isaiah 2:2. הוא hu, after ונשא venissa, a word of some emphasis, may be supplied from Micah, if dropped in Isaiah. An ancient MS. has it here in the margin. It has in like manner been lost in Isaiah 53:4, (see note on the place, See Clarke on Isaiah 53:4) and in Psalms 22:29, where it is supplied by the Syriac, and Septuagint. Instead of כל הגוים col haggoyim, all the nations, Micah has only עמים ammim, peoples; where the Syriac has כל עמים col ammim, all peoples, as probably it ought to be. Isaiah 2:3. For the second אל el, read ואל veel, seventeen MSS., one of my own, ancient, two editions, the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, Chaldee, and so Micah, Micah 4:2. Isaiah 2:4. Micah adds עד רחק ad rachok, afar off, which the Syriac also reads in this parallel place of Isaiah. It is also to be observed that Micah has improved the passage by adding a verse, or sentence, for imagery and expression worthy even of the elegance of Isaiah: - "And they shall sit every man under his vine, And under his fig tree, and none shall affright them: For the mouth of JEHOVAH, God of hosts, hath spoken it." The description of well established peace, by the image of "beating their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks," is very poetical. The Roman poets have employed the same image, Martial, xiv. 34. "Falx ex ense." "Pax me certa ducis placidos curvavit in usus: Agricolae nunc sum; militis ante fui." "Sweet peace has transformed me. I was once the property of the soldier, and am now the property of the husbandman." The prophet Joel, Joe 3:10, hath reversed it, and applied it to war prevailing over peace: - "Beat your ploughshares into swords, And your pruning-hooks into spears." And so likewise the Roman poets: - ________________ Non ullus aratro Dignus honos: squalent abductis arva colonis, Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem. Virg., Georg. i. 506.

2. And it shall come to pass] This formula (so common in continuous discourse) nowhere else introduces a prophetic oration (Ezekiel 38:10 is not really an exception), and shews that the passage has been detached from its original context. in the last days] Better, in the after-days (Cheyne) or “latter days” (R.V.), lit. “in the sequel of the days.” The phrase in itself denotes simply the (remote) future, and is so used in Genesis 49:1; Numbers 24:14; Deuteronomy 4:30; Deuteronomy 31:29. An exact Assyrian parallel to this use (akhrat yumi) is given by Cheyne and Delitzsch. By the prophets the expression is often specialised in an eschatological sense, as in Hosea 3:5; Ezekiel 38:16 (cf. Isaiah 2:8), and probably Jeremiah 48:47; Jeremiah 49:39, where it means (as here) the final age of the world’s history following the establishment of the kingdom of God. In Jeremiah 23:20; Jeremiah 30:24, however, the vaguer sense is more probable. the mountain of the Lord’s house] the Temple mount, which is also the seat of the Messiah’s government. The phrase occurs in the parallel passage in Micah, also in Micah 3:12 (“mount of the house”); 1Ma 16:20 (“mount of the temple”). In the next verse it is resolved into the two members of a parallelism: “mountain of Jehovah” and “house of the God of Jacob.” established in the top of …] Better as R.V. at the head of … (cf. 1 Samuel 9:22; Amos 6:7); although the translation “as the chief of the mountains” would also be admissible (Davidson, Synt. § 101 R, 1 a.). A miraculous physical elevation of Zion may possibly be thought of (Ezekiel 40:2; Zechariah 14:10); but the idea (seriously entertained by some) that Zion is to be literally set on the top of the other hills is too grotesque to be attributed to any prophet, save under compulsion. In this passage a metaphorical exaltation, in respect of political and religious importance, seems to satisfy all the requirements both of syntax and exegesis (cf. Psalms 68:15 f.). all (the) nations shall flow] Properly “shall stream,” a verb only used figuratively of the movement of masses of men to great centres of intercourse like Babylon (Jeremiah 31:12; Jeremiah 51:44). Instead of “all the nations” Micah has (in harmony with Isaiah 2:3 f.) simply “peoples,” which probably preserves the original text. The universality of the true religion is in either case implied; and the bare suggestion is perhaps more effective than an explicit assertion would be.

In the last days - הימים באחרית be'achărı̂yth hāyâmı̂ym. In the “after” days; in the “futurity” of days; that is, in the time to come. This is an expression that often occurs in the Old Testament.

2. In the last days — Literally, in the end, or latter part, of the days; the entering upon the Messianic period, including even its onward, indefinite continuance.