Isaiah 26:6

The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(6) Even the feet of the poor . . .—The downfall of the haughty city is emphasised by the fact that the instruments of its destruction are to be the very people it had oppressed. The “saints of God” are in this sense to judge the world.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

26:5-11 The way of the just is evenness, a steady course of obedience and holy conversation. And it is their happiness that God makes their way plain and easy. It is our duty, and will be our comfort, to wait for God, to keep up holy desires toward him in the darkest and most discouraging times. Our troubles must never turn us from God; and in the darkest, longest night of affliction, with our souls must we desire him; and this we must wait and pray to him for. We make nothing of our religion, whatever our profession may be, if we do not make heart-work of it. Though we come ever so early, we shall find God ready to receive us. The intention of afflictions is to teach righteousness: blessed is the man whom the Lord thus teaches. But sinners walk contrary to him. They will go on in their evil ways, because they will not consider what a God he is whose laws they persist in despising. Scorners and the secure will shortly feel, what now they will not believe, that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. They will not see the evil of sin; but they shall see. Oh that they would abandon their sins, and turn to the Lord, that he may have mercy upon them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor - That is, evidently, those who had been despised by them, and who had been overcome and oppressed by them. The obvious reference here is to the Jews who had been captives there. The idea is not necessarily that the 'poor' referred to here I would be among the conquerors, but that when the Babylonians should be overcome, and their city destroyed, those who were then oppressed should be in circumstances of comparative prosperity. No doubt the Jews, who in subsequent times traveled to the site of Babylon for purposes of traffic, would trample indignantly on the remains of the city where their fathers were captives for seventy years, and would exult in the idea that their own once down-trodden city Jerusalem was in a condition of comparative prosperity. That there were many Jews in Babylon after that city began to decline from its haughtiness and grandeur, we learn expressly from both Philo and Josephus. Thus Philo (De Legatione ad Caium, p. 792) says, that 'it is known that Babylon and many other satraps were possessed by the Jews, not only by rumour, but by experience.' So Josephus (Ant. xv. 2.) says, that there were in the time of Hyrcanus many Jews at Babylon.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6. poor—(Isa 25:4), the once afflicted Jewish captives. "Foot shall tread," is figurative for exulting in the fall of God's enemies (Re 18:20).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

God will bring it under the feet of his poor, and weak, and despised people.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The foot shall tread it down,.... Trample upon it when brought down, laid low, and level with the ground, as mire is trodden in the streets, and straw for the dunghill; as grapes in the winepress, or grass by the feet of cattle: not the foot of a prince, as Aben Ezra observes, or of mighty men; but, as follows,

even the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy; these are not the Israelites in a literal sense, as Kimchi explains it; but the spiritual Israel of God; the righteous, as the Targum paraphrases it; the saints of the most High, to whom the kingdom and dominion under the whole heaven will now be given, and who will be just come out of great tribulation; for the words suggest, that the people of God will be a poor and afflicted people, and very feeble, and sore distressed, a little before the destruction of antichrist; but as God has been always used to do his work by the poor and weak things of this world, by mean and feeble instruments, so he will now, and raise his poor and needy ones to a very high and exalted estate; all their enemies shall be subdued and crushed under their feet; see Malachi 4:3 Jarchi interprets the feet of the poor of the feet of the King Messiah, according to Zechariah 9:9.

Geneva Study Bible

The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the {f} poor, and the steps of the needy.

(f) God will set the poor afflicted over the power of the wicked.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

6. The poor and needy are the Jews, as in ch. Isaiah 25:4. The oppressed triumph over their oppressors. But that they are actually the instruments of Jehovah’s vengeance on the “lofty city” is not necessarily implied.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 6. - The foot shall tread it down; rather, trode it down. The feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy; i.e. the feet of God's people, the weak and afflicted of this world, trod down ultimately, or brought to destruction and ruin, the great world-power - not so much that they were victorious in an actual physical contest, as that they, finally triumphed through God's judgment on the world-power, which brought it to naught, and left it for his people to show their contempt by trampling upon the smoking ruins. Isaiah 26:6

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

He has already proved Himself to be such a rock, on which everything breaks that would attack the faithful whom He surrounds. "For He hath bent down them that dwell on high; the towering castle, He tore it down, tore it down to the earth, cast it into dust. The foot treads it to pieces, feet of the poor, steps of the lowly." Passing beyond the fall of Moab, the fall of the imperial city is celebrated, to which Moab was only an annex (Isaiah 25:1-2; Isaiah 24:10-12). The futures are determined by the preterite; and the anadiplosis, which in other instances (e.g., Isaiah 25:1, cf., Psalm 118:11) links together derivatives or variations of form, is satisfied in this instance with changing the forms of the suffix. The second thought of Isaiah 26:6 is a more emphatic repetition of the first: it is trodden down; the oppression of those who have been hitherto oppressed is trodden down.