Thy heart shall meditate on terror Where is the scribe? where is the receiver? where is he that counted the towers?
Isaiah 33 ends a siege. Enemy officials had counted the city's towers and weighed its tribute money, and now the rescued look around and ask one question: where are those men?
The people asking these three questions are already safe. One writer points to the sweetness of looking back, and to where the experts went wrong.
Their hearts will think back on the terror, which is now happily and forever past. It is all the sweeter to look back and remember the rescue they can never forget, when every expert failed in his calculations — the scribe, or the receiver. The wisest were wrong. They were wrong to add up human resources as if these could help, and wrong to overlook the only sure Deliverer, though He is not far from any one of us.
"The scribe" and "the receiver" are older wording for the two men named in the verse: the one who counted, and the one who weighed the tribute money.
The verse before this one lifts the eye to a distant land. This one shows why that view is possible now.
Peace is established. Men look around, even to the most distant parts of the land. They think back on the terror that no longer fills them. The danger was overwhelming; the deliverance was sudden and complete. Everything they dreaded has vanished away.
One official in the verse weighed the tribute — the payment the invader demanded. King Hezekiah had made such a payment to Assyria, and it bought him nothing.
The tribute Hezekiah sent to the king of Assyria was, he found, no guarantee of protection from attack. Hezekiah might have kept the gold and silver and still not have been defeated by Assyria, as he found by experience in trusting the Lord.
The money went, and so did the man who weighed it. Neither the payment nor the men who counted it saved the city.
The New Testament asks a similar question about human wisdom. One writer traces Paul's words straight back to this verse.
In Isaiah 33 the whole plan is developed. Verse 20 [of 1 Corinthians 1] quotes Isaiah 33:18. That verse comes just after "Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty." Sinners are afraid, and then he says, Where is the wisdom of man? Here they were counting up the towers and so on — but what was the point of it all?
Commentators differ on how tight the link is. Another writer calls it an echo, not a formal quotation, and notes that the tone changes between the two passages.
In the last words there is no more than an illustrative allusion to Isaiah 33. There we hear a burst of surprise at the deliverance from the scornful power of the enemy. Here we hear a triumphant challenge over the failure of its proud pretensions against God.
The siege under Hezekiah is the obvious setting. But the chapter promises a settled city that history has not yet produced. That gap is why many read the passage as still future.
Is it not completely pointless to apply words like these to the days of Hezekiah, as some ancient writers do? Or to the days of the Maccabees, as others do? Or to gospel times, as thoughtless moderns do? Suppose the rest of the circumstances of the Jews at either of those periods matched the strength of the prophet's language — which is not admitted at all. Even then, captivity was approaching. Servitude to the Gentile powers went on and on. A still more disastrous scattering under the Romans followed, and its effects last to this day. Who, faced with all that, can say that Jerusalem has been seen as a quiet home, a tent that will not be taken down?
- Counted — the enemy's officials were busy counting: weighing the tribute, measuring the towers. The verse asks where all those counters have gone.
- Costly — the payment bought nothing. Hezekiah's tribute to Assyria was no guarantee against attack.
- Cancelled — when God acts, the overwhelming danger ends suddenly and completely. Everything they dreaded is gone.
- Challenged — the New Testament raises the same question about human wisdom. Commentators differ on whether Paul quotes this verse or echoes it. Either way, the target is the same: human calculation that leaves God out.
- Coming — the chapter promises a quiet home, a tent that will not be taken down. History has not shown it yet. The rescued look back on terror only when the King is in view.
Thou shalt no more see the fierce people, a people of a deeper speech than thou canst comprehend, of a stammering tongue that cannot be understood.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.