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Isaiah 56

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Foreigners and eunuchs in Yahweh's house

1 Thus says Yahweh: Keep justice and do righteousness, for My salvation is near to come, and My righteousness to be revealed. 2 Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast; who keeps Shabbat from profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.

3 Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh say, "Yahweh will surely separate me from His people"; and let not the eunuch say, "See, I am a dry tree." 4 For thus says Yahweh: To the eunuchs who keep My Shabbats, and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, 5 I will give them in My house and within My walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 6 And the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh, to serve Him, and to love the name of Yahweh, to be His servants, everyone who keeps Shabbat from profaning it, and holds fast My covenant: 7 even them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on My altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the peoples. 8 Adonai Yahweh, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares: I will gather yet others to him, besides those already gathered.

Blind watchmen

9 All you beasts of the field, come to devour, all you beasts in the forest! 10 His watchmen are blind, they are all without knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber. 11 The dogs have a mighty appetite; they never have enough. And they are shepherds who cannot understand; they have all turned to their own way, each one to his own gain, to the last one. 12 "Come, I will get wine, and let us fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow will be like this day, great beyond measure."

Notes

  • 56:1 "Righteousness" (tsedakah) appears twice with two sides: the right conduct Yahweh asks of His people, and His own saving righteousness, which He is about to reveal. Because His deliverance is near, His people are to live now in the way He will set right.
  • 56:3 Two kinds of people feared being left outside. The foreigner (ben-hannekhar, literally "son of foreignness") was not born into Israel, and the Torah kept some peoples out of the assembly of Yahweh (Deuteronomy 23:3-6). The eunuch could have no children to carry on his name, and Deuteronomy 23:1 kept the mutilated man out of the assembly. To both Yahweh now gives a promise. In Acts 8:27-39 an Ethiopian eunuch, returning from worship in Jerusalem, was reading the scroll of Isaiah when Philip met him and told him the good news about Yeshua.
  • 56:5 "A monument and a name" is yad vashem, literally "a hand and a name." Yad is the word used of Absalom's Monument, the pillar he set up because "I have no son to keep my name in remembrance" (2 Samuel 18:18). The man with no sons receives from Yahweh a place in His own house and a name that will never be cut off. The phrase later gave its name to Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
  • 56:6 "The foreigners" is bene hannekhar, "sons of foreignness," the same words as in Nehemiah 9:2 (see the note there). "To serve Him" is sharat, the word used for the ministry of priests and Levites at the sanctuary. The covenant they hold fast is the one whose sign is the Shabbat: "My Shabbats you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you" (Exodus 31:13). Foreigners who join Yahweh keep the same Shabbat and the same covenant as Israel and are counted among His servants (compare 54:17).
  • 56:7 Solomon had prayed that Yahweh would hear the foreigner who comes to pray toward His house (1 Kings 8:41-43). Here the foreigner is not only heard from afar but brought up to the holy mountain, his offerings accepted on the altar itself. When Yeshua cleared the temple courts, He quoted this verse (Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46); Mark alone keeps the closing words about all the nations, spoken where the trading was going on, most likely in the outer court open to the nations.
  • 56:10 The watchmen and shepherds are Israel's own leaders, who should have warned the people as a watchdog barks at danger (compare Ezekiel 3:17; 33:6). Instead they sleep, and when awake they think only of their appetites (verses 11-12). The beasts of verse 9 are the nations, invited to devour a flock left without guardians.

Isaiah 55 · Isaiah 57

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