Isaiah 4:5

And the Lord will create on every dwelling place of Mount Zion,.... That is, on every particular church of Christ in Gospel times, and especially in the latter day; which are the dwelling places of

And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.

Will create; will in a marvellous manner produce, as it were by a new work of creation. A cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flashing fire by night; a pillar of cloud and fire, like that wherewith the Lord directed, and protected, and honoured the israelites, when they came out of Egypt; whereby he implies that God would be their protector and their glory. Upon all the glory; upon all that church and people, which God will make so glorious, not only in his own eyes, but even in the eyes of the world; upon all holy assemblies of sincere Christians.

Isaiah 4:5 And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory [shall be] a defence.Ver. 5. And the Lord will create.] For the safeguard and security of his peculiar people thus purified unto himself, and that they may serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all and every day of their lives. God, rather than fail, will "create," as he did of old in Egypt and the wilderness, "a cloud by day, a flaming fire by night"; against heat, a "tabernacle"; against storm and rain, a "covert"; anything, everything that heart can wish or need require: dux erit et defensor, lux erit et consolator. He will be to all his "a sun and a shield; he will give grace and glory," &c. Upon every dwelling place.] Upon every private house, and place of his people’ s abode: their walls are continually before him. He loveth to look upon their habitations, and will hedge them about. And upon her assemblies.] Or, Meeting places for God’ s services. Howbeit this is to be taken cum exceptione crucis: with the exception of the cross, the poor Protestants in France have not only been disturbed, but destroyed, at their church assemblies, by the Duke of Guise and other Popish persecutors. But the godly in such a case "glorify God in the very fire," and bear fruit in such a tempest by God’ s defence and benediction. A cloud and smoke.] Or, A smokey cloud, alluding to that cloudy pillar which was a cloud by day and a fire by night to Israel: so is Christ a cooling refreshment to his own in the scorching day of temptation or trouble, and a comfortable lamp of light to direct and protect them through the wilderness of this world. The cloud was spread over them for a covering, and sometimes came between them and their enemies behind them; and this was done in Egypt, where was no rain: how then was there a cloud? God "created it." For upon all the glory.] Israel is called "God’ s glory"; the "house of his glory"; "a crown of glory"; a "throne of glory"; God’ s ornament; the beauty of his ornament, and that set in majesty; his royal "diadem"; his "jewels," which he wears, as great men do their jewels, to make him glorious in the eyes of men; they are the signet on his right hand. Shall be a covering] As the cloud covered the tabernacle, and as the rams’ skins covered the ark from the violence of wind and weather; so will Christ the Church.

(5) And the Lord will create . . .—The verb “create” has all the solemn force with which we find it in Genesis 1:1. It is one of Isaiah’s favourite words. The word for “dwelling-place” is almost invariably used for the tabernacle or temple, and would seem to have that meaning here. This determines the character of the “assemblies.” They are not the meetings of the people for counsel or debate, as in a Greek ecclesia, but their “gatherings,” their “solemn assemblies,” in the courts of the temple. The thoughts of the prophet travel back to the history of the Exodus, when the presence of Jehovah was manifested as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21; Numbers 9:15; Numbers 10:34; Numbers 14:14). In that Presence there would be safety and peace. The image is a favourite one with Isaiah, possibly as connected with the vision of Isa 6:4, for God’s protection of His people. Upon all the glory shall be a defence.—The phrase is almost startlingly abrupt. The thought seems to be that over the “glory” of the new Jerusalem, as just described, there shall be stretched the overarching canopy of the Divine Love. The word for “defence” occurs in this sense in Psalms 19:5, Joe 2:16, and is still used by Jews of the “canopy” held over bride and bridegroom at a wedding. The “baldacchino” over the altar of an Italian church probably represents the image that was present to Isaiah’s mind.

Verse 5. And the Lord will create - One MS., the Septuagint, and the Arabic, have יביא yabi, He shall bring: the cloud already exists; the Lord will bring it over. This is a blessed promise of the presence of God in all the assemblies of his people. Every dwelling place - "the station"] The Hebrew text has, every station: but four MSS. (one ancient) omit כל col, all; very rightly, as it should seem: for the station was Mount Zion itself, and no other. See Exodus 15:17. And the Septuagint, Arabic, and MSS., add the same word כל col, before מקראה mikraeha, probably right: the word has only changed its place by mistake. מקראיה mikrayeh, "the place where they were gathered together in their holy assemblies," says Sal ben Melech. But twenty-five of Kennicott's MSS., and twenty-two of De Rossi's fifty-three editions, besides the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic, have the word in the plural number. A cloud and smoke by day] This is a manifest allusion to the pillar of a cloud and of fire which attended the Israelites in their passage out of Egypt, and to the glory that rested on the tabernacle, Exodus 13:21; Exodus 40:38. The prophet Zechariah, Zechariah 2:5, applies the same image to the same purpose: - "And I will be unto her a wall of fire round about; And a glory will I be in the midst of her." That is, the visible presence of God shall protect her. Which explains the conclusion of this verse of Isaiah; where the makkaph between כל col, and כבוד cabod, connecting the two words in construction, which ought not to be connected, has thrown an obscurity upon the sentence, and misled most of the translators. For upon all the glory shall be a defense.] Whatever God creates, he must uphold, or it will fail, Every degree of grace brings with it a degree of power to maintain itself in the soul.

2–6. The Final State of Zion and the Redeemed IsraelBeyond the great judgment there is revealed to the prophet a vision of the ideal religious community, blessed with an exuberant supernatural fertility imparted to the soil (Isaiah 4:2), purified from sin (Isaiah 4:3-4), and overshadowed by the protecting presence of Jehovah (Isaiah 4:5-6). It is a picture of the glorious Messianic age which immediately follows the day of the Lord. Those who inherit its glories are the survivors of the catastrophe (Isaiah 4:2-3). Although the section has no definite historical background, it is obviously written as the sequel to ch. 2. 3; the allusion to the “daughters of Zion” (Isaiah 4:4) would scarcely be intelligible apart from Isaiah 3:16 ff., and possibly the glory of nature mentioned in Isaiah 4:2 may form an antithesis to the artificial glories of civilisation in Isaiah 2:7 ff. At the same time it is reasonable to suppose that the verses have only a literary connexion with the preceding oracles, and formed no part of Isaiah’s spoken message in the time of Ahaz. By some recent critics (Duhm, Hackmann, Cheyne) the passage is assigned to a later editor of Isaiah’s prophecies, and even so cautious a scholar as Dillmann hesitates with regard to the last two verses.” The objections are based chiefly on considerations of style, and on the alleged post-Exilic character of the ideas and the symbolism. It is true that some leading words (such as those rendered “branch,” “create,” “defence,” “covert”) do not occur elsewhere in genuine writings of Isaiah. The imagery also is of a more pronounced apocalyptic cast than we might expect from Isaiah, and the style seems somewhat laboured and cumbrous. But on the other hand the main ideas—the salvation of a remnant, purification through judgment, the regeneration of nature—can all be paralleled from Isaiah, and this fact must be allowed some weight in favour of his authorship.

And the Lord will create - The meaning of this verse and the next is, that God would take his people into his holy care and protection.

5. When such times come, the Lord will create — Renew, and make holy. Every dwelling place — Every household in mount Zion. “Zion,” the local, prefigures “Zion,” the universal — the “Zion” of all ages and places.