What does Isaias Chapter 27 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The chapter’s sequence retains its particular images and conditions. Edition interpretations remain separately attributed rather than certified claims. Promises and warnings retain their scope without invented scenes or universal practical guarantees.

Chapter breakdown

Isaias 27 announces the Lord's sword against leviathan, bar and crooked serpent, and the sea's whale. The edition identifies devil, strength, wiles, worldly tyranny and spiritual defeat by Christ's death. Singing turns to the pure-wine vineyard, identified by the edition as Christ's Church. The Lord keeps it night and day and suddenly gives drink; the note provides continual watering as an alternative rendering.

Questions concerning indignation, thorns, briers, marching, fire and taking hold of strength retain their form. The edition interprets them through the Church's lasting peace. Israel blossoms and fills the world with seed when they rush upon Jacob; the edition offers both vain enemy invasion and apostolic advance. Questions about striking and killing precede measure-for-measure judgment. The edition's explanation about persecuting Jews and the synagogue is expressly commentary, not an independent assessment of people today.

Jacob's iniquity is forgiven with broken altar stones and groves and temples no longer standing; the note limits its application to converts. The desolate city, identified by the edition as Jerusalem, becomes pasture. Drought destroys harvest and women come and teach it: gathering and burning sticks is not substituted. Israel is gathered one by one from the unnamed river's channel to Egypt's torrent. A great trumpet brings lost and outcast people from Assyria and Egypt to Jerusalem worship; the edition interprets it as gospel preaching for Jewish conversion.

The story inside

Opening: The chapter’s sequence retains its particular images and conditions. Development: Edition interpretations remain separately attributed rather than certified claims. Conclusion: Promises and warnings retain their scope without invented scenes or universal practical guarantees.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The chapter’s sequence retains its particular images and conditions.
2
Edition interpretations remain separately attributed rather than certified claims.
3
Promises and warnings retain their scope without invented scenes or universal practical guarantees.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 80596–80598
27:1. In that day the Lord with his hard, and great, and strong sword shall visit leviathan the bar serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent, and shall slay the whale that is in the sea.
Lines 80600–80604
Leviathan.... That is, the devil, the great enemy of the people of God. He is called the bar serpent from his strength, and the crooked serpent from his wiles; and the whale of the sea, from the tyranny he exercises in the sea of this world. He was spiritually slain by the death of Christ, when his power was destroyed.
Lines 80610–80611
27:3. I am the Lord that keep it, I will suddenly give it drink: lest any hurt come to it, I keep it night and day.
Lines 80628–80629
27:6. When they shall rush in unto Jacob, Israel shall blossom and bud, and they shall fill the face of the world with seed.
Lines 80649–80652
27:9. Therefore upon this shall the iniquity of the house of Jacob be forgiven: and this is all the fruit, that the sin thereof should be taken away, when he shall have made all the stones of the altar, as burnt stones broken in pieces, the groves and temples shall not stand.
Lines 80670–80673
27:13. And it shall come to pass, that in that day a noise shall be made with a great trumpet, and they that were lost, shall come from the land of the Assyrians, and they that were outcasts in the land of Egypt, and they shall adore the Lord in the holy mount in Jerusalem.