Isaiah 51:7

Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) Ye that know righteousness.—Jehovah, through His Servant, speaks to the Israel within Israel, the Church within the Church. They need support against the scorn and reproach of men, and are to find it in the thought that the revilers perish and that Jehovah is eternal.

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 51:7-8. Hearken, ye that know righteousness — Who not only understand, but love and practise it; whose persons are justified, whose nature is renewed, and whose lives are subject to my laws. These seem to be distinguished from those who are spoken of (Isaiah 51:1) as following after righteousness. These had attained what the others were only in pursuit of. The people in whose heart is my law — Who are here opposed to the carnal Jews, that had the law written only on tables of stone. Compare 2 Corinthians 3:3; Hebrews 8:10. Fear ye not the reproach of men — The censures of your carnal countrymen, who load their believing and godly brethren with a world of reproaches; but let not these things discourage you: for the moth shall eat them up, &c. — Those that reproach you shall be easily and soon destroyed, and so God will avenge your cause upon them, and deliver you from their injurious treatment; and the worm shall eat them like wool — Like a woollen garment, which is sooner corrupted by moths, or such creatures, than linen.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

51:4-8 The gospel of Christ shall be preached and published. How shall we escape if we neglect it? There is no salvation without righteousness. The soul shall, as to this world, vanish like smoke, and the body be thrown by like a worn-out garment. But those whose happiness is in Christ's righteousness and salvation, will have the comfort of it when time and days shall be no more. Clouds darken the sun, but do not stop its course. The believer will enjoy his portion, while revilers of Christ are in darkness

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness - My people who are acquainted with my law, and who are to be saved. This is addressed to the pious parlor the Jewish nation.

Fear ye not the reproach of men - If we have the promise of God, and the assurance of his favor, we shall have no occasion to dread the reproaches and the scoffs of people (compare Matthew 10:28).

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. know righteousness—(See on [839]Isa 51:1).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

That know righteousness; that love and practise it, as knowing is commonly used.

In whose heart is my law; who are tacitly opposed to the carnal Jews that had the law written only in tables. Compare 2 Corinthians 3:3 Hebrews 8:10.

The reproach of men; the censures of the carnal Jews. who will lead their believing and godly brethren with a world of reproaches: but let not these things discourage you.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness,.... The righteousness of God, and of his law; the purity of his nature, what righteousness is agreeable to him, and required by him; the imperfection and insufficiency of a man's own righteousness, and the glory and fulness of Christ's righteousness, revealed in the Gospel; and so know that, as to approve of it, follow after it, lay hold upon it, believe in it, and rejoice in it, as their justifying righteousness:

the people in whose heart is my law; not in their heads only, but in their hearts; having an understanding of it, an affection for it, and the bias of their minds toward it; being written there by the finger of the divine Spirit, according to the covenant of grace, Jeremiah 31:33, and not in tables of stone, as the law of Moses, and of which this is not to be understood; but of the law or doctrine of Christ, even the everlasting Gospel; which coming with power, and the Holy Ghost, into the hearts of the Lord's people, is received by them with great approbation and affection, in faith and love; they obey it from their hearts, and are cast into the mould of it:

fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings; either of the Jews, the Scribes and Pharisees, for renouncing a pharisaical righteousness, and embracing the righteousness of Christ; for rejecting the traditions of the elders, the rituals of the ceremonial law, and the doctrine of justification by the works of the moral law; and for cordially receiving the pure Gospel of Christ: or of idolatrous Heathens, from whom they were called, and that for leaving the religion of their country, and the gods of their fathers, and professing the one only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent: or of the antichristian worshippers, and of the man of sin at the head of them, who belches out his blasphemies against God and Christ, his tabernacle and saints; but neither their shocking blasphemies, nor spiteful taunts and jeers, nor menacing words, nor even cruel persecutions, should deter the saints from the profession of Christ and his Gospel.

Geneva Study Bible

Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. To know righteousness does not differ in meaning from “follow after righteousness” in Isaiah 51:1. Both expressions refer to righteousness in the ethical sense; there it is represented as an ideal steadily pursued, here as a rule of life apprehended by the heart and conscience. This inward possession of righteousness is the earnest of the external righteousness, the vindication of right, spoken of in Isaiah 51:6; Isaiah 51:8.

the people in whose heart is my instruction] Cf. Jeremiah 31:33.

7, 8. In the hope of this everlasting salvation the true Israelites may well endure for a season the reproach of men.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness. The highest grade of faithfulness is here addressed - not those who "seek" (ver. 1), but those who have found - who "know righteousness," and have the "law" of God in their "hearts." Such persons may still be liable to one weakness - they may "fear the reproach of men." The prophet exhorts them to put aside this fear, remembering

(1) the nothingness of humanity, and

(2) the eternity and imperishableness of God's judgments. Isaiah 51:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Upon this magnificent promise of the final triumph of the counsel of God, an exhortation is founded to the persecuted church, not to be afraid of men. "Hearken unto me, ye that know about righteousness, thou people with my law in the heart; fear ye not the reproach of mortals, and be ye not alarmed at their revilings. For the moth will devour them like a garment, and the worm devour them like woollen cloth; and my righteousness will stand for ever, and my salvation to distant generations." The idea of the "servant of Jehovah," in its middle sense, viz., as denoting the true Israel, is most clearly set forth in the address here. They that pursue after righteousness, and seek Jehovah (Isaiah 51:1), that is to say, the servants of Jehovah (Isaiah 65:8-9), are embraced in the unity of a "people," as in Isaiah 65:10 (cf., Isaiah 10:24), i.e., of the true people of God in the people of His choice, and therefore of the kernel in the heart of the whole mass - an integral intermediate link in the organism of the general idea, which Hvernick and, to a certain extent, Hofmann eliminate from it,

(Note: Hvernick, in his Lectures on the Theology of the Old Testament, published by H. A. Hahn, 1848, and in a second edition by H. Schultz, 1863; Drechsler, in his article on the Servant of Jehovah, in the Luth. Zeitschrift, 1852; V. Hofmann, in his Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 147. The first two understand by the servant of Jehovah as an individual, the true Israel personified: the idea has simply Israel as a whole at its base, i.e., Israel which did not answer to its ideal, and the Messiah as the summit, in whom the ideal of Israel was fully realized. Drechsler goes so far as to call the central link, viz., an Israel true to its vocation, a modern abstraction that has no support in the Scriptures. Hofmann, however, says that he has no wish to exclude this central idea, and merely wishes to guard against the notion that a number of individuals, whether Israelites generally or pious Israelites, are ever intended by the epithet "servant of Jehovah." "The nation," he says himself at p. 145, "was called as a nation to be the servant of God, but it fulfilled its calling as a church of believers." And so say we; but we also add that this church is a kernel always existing within the outer ecclesia mixta, and therefore always a number of individuals, though they are only known to God.)

but not without thereby destroying the typical mirror in which the prophet beholds the passion of the One. The words are addressed to those who know from their own experience what righteousness is as a gift of grace, and as conduct in harmony with the plan of salvation, i.e., to the nation, which bears in its heart the law of God as the standard and impulse of its life, the church which not only has it as a letter outside itself, but as a vital power within (cf., Psalm 40:9). None of these need to be afraid of men. Their despisers and blasphemers are men ('ĕnōsh; cf., Isaiah 51:12, Psalm 9:20; Psalm 10:18), whose pretended omnipotence, exaltation, and indestructibility, are an unnatural self-convicted lie. The double figure in Isaiah 51:8, which forms a play upon words that cannot well be reproduced, affirms that the smallest exertion of strength is quite sufficient to annihilate their sham greatness and sham power; and that long before they are actually destroyed, they carry the constantly increasing germ of it within themselves. The sâs, says a Jewish proverb, is brother to the ‛âsh. The latter (from ‛âshēsh, collabi, Arab. ‛aththa, trans. corrodere) signifies a moth; the former (like the Arabic sūs, sūse, Gr. σής) a moth, and also a weevil, curculio. The relative terms in Greek are σής (Armen. tzetz) and κίς. But whilst the persecutors of the church succumb to these powers of destruction, the righteousness and salvation of God, which are even now the confidence and hope of His church, and the full and manifest realization of which it will hereafter enjoy, stand for ever, and from "generation to generation," ledōr dōrı̄m, i.e., to an age which embraces endless ages within itself.