The Book of Isaiah
Isaiah Chapter Thirty-One

INTRODUCTION TO THIS STUDY

The purpose of this work is to guide you in Spirit Filled interpretation of this "Selected Study". As necessary we will provide outlines, historical backgrounds, note the purpose and focus of the text, and also provide the original hebrew language definitions for the key words in the highlighted text. The English translation used is the King James (Authorized) Version, not because it is the best translation available, but because I just plain prefer it for study!

All Scripture text will be presented in normal cased lettering, and all notes within the text will be in TRUE TYPE FONT, as shown. This (I hope) will allow you to avoid confusion between God's Word and my notes. As I update this website, I will continue to embellish the text so that anyone using NETSCAPE 3.0 or MICROSOFT 3.0 or higher will be able to read the document easier.
 

An excellent site to study Biblical Hebrew is by Lee R. Martin, Biblical Hebrew. The following are excerpts from his Hebrew Dictionary (if you want more, go to his site):

ABSOLUTE: In Hebrew Greek grammar, a word is absolute when it stands independently and has no grammatical relation to other elements in the sentence. The most common instance in Greek is the genitive absolute.

ABSOLUTE STATE: The Hebrew absolute together with a word in the construct state expresses the genitive. Do not confuse with the infinitive absolute. Heb: king (absolute); horse of (construct) the king (absolute), i.e., the king's horse (genitive).

ACCIDENCE: That part of grammar that treats inflection; a subcategory of morphology.

ACCUSATIVE CASE: A substantive used as the direct object of a transitive verb is said to be in the accusative case. In Greek, the accusative is the case of extension. Heb: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gk: "He gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12).

ACCUSATIVE ENDING: In Hebrew see DIRECTIVE h.

ACTIVE VOICE: In the active voice, the subject is the doer of the action that is expressed by the verb.

AKTIONSART: German for "kind of action."

ANARTHROUS: A word that appears without the article is anarthrous.

ARAMAIC: A branch of the northwest Semitic languages that is closely related to Hebrew. In the OT Masoretic text, Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Dan. 2:4b-7:28; and Jer. 10:11 are in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Aramaic had become the common language of the Jewish people by NT times.

CASE: Case shows the grammatical relation of inflected forms such as nouns and pronouns to other words (nominative, possessive, objective cases).

CAUSATIVE VERB: A transitive verb that can be said to cause the action depicted in a corresponding intransitive verb. Ex: lay ("cause to lie") is the causative of lie; raise, the causative of rise.

DIRECT OBJECT: The word, phrase, or clause that is the primary goal or result of the action of the verb (cf. accusative case); the person or thing is directly affected by the action of the verb. Heb: "God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gr: "He grabbed him and began to choke him" (Matt. 18:28).

GENITIVE: The case that expresses possession or specifies a relationship that can be expressed in English by "of." In Hebrew this is called a construct relationship. The Greek genitive is the specifying case answering the question "What kind?" Heb: "the expanse of the sky" (Gen. 1:21). Gk: "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4).

GUTTURALS: The mute consonants whose sounds are produced when the front of the tongue approaches the palate of the mouth. Four letters in Hebrew, a h j and [ are the guttural letters (r has some guttural characteristics). Hebrew gutturals cannot be doubled, prefer a-class vowels, and composite shevas. In Greek, the guttural letters are g k and c also called velars, laryngeals, or palatals.

HITHPAEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action (classified by some grammars as causative action) and reflexive voice. For this emphasis in Greek, middle voice. Heb: "A group of adventurers gathered around [lit., gathered themselves around] him" (Judg. 11:3).

HOPHAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses causative action and passive voice. Heb: "Let seven of his male descendants be given [hophal] to us" (2 Sam. 21:6).

IMPERATIVE: A verb or verbal mood that expresses command or makes a request.

IMPERFECT: In Hebrew, the form of the verb used to express action that is incomplete or unfinished. Heb: "What if they do not believe me" (Exod. 4:1). The Greek imperfect tense expresses incomplete, linear action in past time. Gk: "People were eating and drinking..." (Luke 17:28). Other regular uses of the tense include iterative, frequentative, inceptive, and conative.

INFINITIVE: A verbal noun that has characteristics of both verbs and nouns. In English usually introduced by to. Hebrew has both infinitive absolute and infinitive construct forms. Heb: "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land" (Gen. 15:7). The Greek infinitive is used as a substantive, in subordinate clauses, with prepositions, and in epexegesis. Gk: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Phil. 1:21).

INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE: A form of the Hebrew infinitive that may function in a number of ways: to express certainty or intensification ("you will surely die," Gen. 2:17); to express repeated or continued action ("Be ever hearing," Isa. 6:9); as a finite verb ("They...broke the jars," Judg. 7:19); to express an emphatic imperative ("Remember the Sabbath day," Exod. 20:8).

MASORETIC TEXT: The vocalized text of the Hebrew Bible, prepared by a group of Jewish scholars around A.D. 700 to preserve the oral pronunciation of the Hebrew words.

MOOD: Mood indicates the manner in which the action is conceived (or its relation to reality). Moods are indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative. Mood may be expressed by finite verbs in Greek and by various means (form, words, or context) in Hebrew. Mode.

NIPHAL: A verbal form (stem) in Hebrew that expresses simple action and passive or reflexive voice. Heb: "She was given in marriage to Adriel of Meholah" (1 Sam. 18:19).

OPTATIVE MOOD: The mood of possibility and more doubtful assertion that expresses wish or desire. See also jussive and cohortative. Heb: "If only we had died in Egypt!" (Num. 14:2). Gk: "Maythe Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance" (2 Thess. 3:5).

PARTICIPLE: A verbal form that has characteristics of both noun and verb. In Hebrew it represents characteristic, continual, uninterrupted action. Heb: "The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Gen. 1:2). The Greek participle is widely used as a substantive, adjective, and adverb in phrases and clauses. Gk:"...in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him" (1 Peter 1:21).

PARTICLE: A unit of speech that is ranked as an uninflected word but expresses some kind of syntactical relationship or some general aspect of meaning. Some grammarians classify all conjunctions, prepositions, and negatives as particles.

PASSIVE VOICE: A voice form of the verb that represents the subject as receiver of the action. Heb: "This land was given to us as our possession" (Ezek. 11:15). Gk: "You were marked in him with a seal" (Eph. 1:13).

PERFECT/PERFECT TENSE: In Hebrew, this form of the verb is used to express completed action, whether in reality or in the thought of the speaker or writer. Heb: rm'v; is a perfect form of the verb and would be translated "he guarded." The Greek perfect tense, by contrast, represents a state of completion with abiding results and is often translated as a present perfect. Gk: The perfect leluke would be rendered "he has released."

PIEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and active voice. Heb: "They destroyed the high places and the altars" (2 Chron. 31:1).

PREPOSITION: A word that shows relationships between its object and some other word in the sentence. Some common English prepositions are in, to, from, with, above, for, by.

PRETERITE: A Latin name for the past tense; it is the equivalent of the perfect in Hebrew and the aorist indicative in Greek.

PUAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and passive voice. Heb: "There was Baal's altar, demolished" (Judg. 6:28).

QAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses simple action and active voice; it is sometimes spelled Kal. Ex:"Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew" (Gen.25:34).

REFLEXIVE VOICE: Denotes an action that is directed back upon the agent or subject; expressed in Hebrew by the niphal and the hithpael, in Greek by the middle voice.Heb: "I have...kept myself from sin" (Ps. 18:23). Gk: "Then he went away and hanged himself" (Matt. 27:5).

ROOT: That part of a word left when all affixes are removed; the morpheme that carries the minimal unit of meaning in a word and can be common to several different words. The three consonants in Hebrew that ordinarily compose the basic uninflected spelling of a word are called the root letters. Occasionally a Hebrew word may have two or four root letters. Gk: the root dik- is common to dikaio", "righteous," dikh, "justice," and dikaiow, "to acquit." Also called "Lexeme."

STATIVE VERB, STATIC VERB: A stative verb is one that indicates a state of being or relationship rather than action. In Hebrew, its vowel pattern is different from that of verbs of action or motion. Greek statives include eijmi, ginomai, and uJparcw. Heb: "the hands...will be strengthened (2 Sam. 16:21). Gk: "Who, being in very nature God" (Phil. 2:6).

STEM: The noun or verb base formed by the addition of derivational affixes to the root. Thus, in Greek, doro- is the stem of the noun doron, "gift"; do- is the root, ro is the affix (in this case, a suffix). Also called base in recent grammars. In Hebrew, the term is used to designate verb forms that express certain kinds of action and voice; the major Hebrew verbal stems are qal, niphal, piel, pual, hithpael, hiphil, and hophal.

STRONG VERB: In Hebrew, the regular verb whose stem consonants do not change, i.e., remain unmodified in conjugation, in contrast to the weak verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed from the verb stem or root itself by vowel gradation.

VOICE: Voice is a modification of a verb that tells whether the subject of the verb acts or is acted upon. There are three voices in English, Hebrew, and Greek: active, passive, and reflexive.

WEAK VERB: In Hebrew, the verbs with gutturals or weak letters ( n in first root position, y and w in first or second root position, identical second and third root letters) as radicals, which produce modifications in the conjugation, in contrast to the strong verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed by adding a suffix to the verb stem or root.

If you discover obvious errors (as I am human, and do make mistakes), please let me know. Do not contact me to argue about the doctrinal differences that you may have with my teaching. I do not argue Theology with anyone, so all Legalists, cultists, and others with extremist views, please save your (and my) time. If you want to discuss your doctrinal differences, or share a viewpoint, please contact me at Didaskalos Ministries. I am not so arrogant as to think I know it all, or even 1% of what the scripture teaches.

Isaiah 31:1

Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because [they are] many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, (refers to Jesus Christ) neither seek the LORD!

Isaiah 31:2

Yet he also [is] wise, and will bring evil, (ra`, retribution, punishment. Refers to the invasion of the Assyrians under Sennacherib, 701-700 BC)

and will not call back his words: but will arise against the house of the evildoers, (refers to Hezekiah and his "state department")

and against the help of them that work iniquity.

Isaiah 31:3

Now the Egyptians [are] men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When the LORD shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen (`azar, is helped or aided)

shall fall down, and they all shall fail together.

Isaiah 31:4

For thus hath the LORD spoken unto me, Like as the lion and the young lion roaring on his prey, (it takes a roaring lion 5 seconds to travel 100 feet to its prey. Once God starts moving in judgment, it will occur very quickly)

when a multitude of shepherds (analogy to the Assyrian army. They are like shepherds, helping God do his business)

is called forth against him, [he] will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the LORD of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof.

Isaiah 31:5

As birds flying, (`uwph, covering. God will cover Jerusalem like a mother bird will cover and protect her nest)

so will the LORD of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending also he will deliver [it; and] passing over he will preserve it.

Isaiah 31:6

Turn ye unto [him from] whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted.

Isaiah 31:7

For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you [for] a sin.

Isaiah 31:8

Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him: but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited.

Isaiah 31:9

And he shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith the LORD, whose fire [is] in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem.

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