True Quiet Grows from Righteousness, Not Complacency

David’s last words describe this kind of ruler: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning” (2 Samuel 23:3-4). “Princes” are the king’s officials, the class denounced in 1:23 as “companions of thieves”, now ruling “in judgment”.

The four pictures, shelter from wind, cover from storm, water in the desert and shade from a rock, are what 25:4 said God himself is to the poor, “a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat”. In the desert a big rock is the only shade there is. The ruler becomes, on a human scale, what God is.

“Shall not be dim” uses the verb of smearing the eyes shut, the one in the commission of 6:10, “shut their eyes”, and in 29:9. Here it is negated. The ears that hear “shall hearken”, paying attention, the difference between hearing a sound and taking it in.

“The rash” are the hasty, those who jump to conclusions. “Plainly” is tsachot, clear and bright, the word for the shimmering “clear heat” of 18:4. Moses called himself “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10); here the stammerer speaks with dazzling clarity.

“Vile person” is naval, the fool, the name of Nabal, of whom his wife said, “as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him” (1 Samuel 25:25). The same chapter calls Nabal “churlish” (25:3); a churl in 1611 was a coarse, grasping man, the Hebrew kilay, a miser.

Nabal’s crime was to refuse bread and water to David’s hungry men: “Shall I then take my bread, and my water... and give it unto men, whom I know not?” (1 Samuel 25:11). The verse describes the fool the same way, emptying the throat of the hungry and cutting off drink from the thirsty.

“Instruments” is kelav, his tools, a pun on kelay, the churl: the knave and his kit. His method is lying words in court against a poor man who has the right on his side, the plot that killed Naboth, when two false witnesses were hired against a man who had done nothing (1 Kings 21:10-13).

“Liberal” is nadiv, noble, but its root means willing, freely offering; it is the word for those “of a willing heart” who brought gifts for the tabernacle (Exodus 35:5). Proverbs 11:25 puts the same promise another way: “The liberal soul shall be made fat.”

“At ease” is sha’ananot, complacent, and “careless” is botechot, confident, from the root of trust. Isaiah had already addressed the haughty daughters of Zion with their anklets and mirrors (3:16-24), and Amos called Samaria’s wealthy women “kine of Bashan” (Amos 4:1). Now the women of the city are told to stand and listen.

“Many days and years” is literally “days upon a year”, a year and some days: the trouble is not far off but within the next harvest cycle. The vintage is the grape harvest; the gathering is the autumn ingathering of fruit, the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year (Exodus 23:16).

In 20:2 Isaiah was told to loose the sackcloth from his loins; here the women are told to put it on. Stripping off fine clothes and wrapping coarse cloth round the waist was what mourners did. The verbs come in a rapid string: tremble, be troubled, strip, make bare, gird.

Mourners beat their breasts in grief, as the maids of Nineveh are pictured in Nahum 2:7, “tabering upon their breasts”. The breasts may also be the land’s own, the fields that nursed the people. “Pleasant fields” is sede chemed, the fields of delight, the best land.

The “houses of joy” are the feasting houses of 22:13, where the city answered the call to mourning with “joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep”. Thorns come up over the ground and then into the houses themselves, the whole space of pleasure reclaimed by weeds.

The “forts” are the Ophel, the fortified hill between the city of David and the temple, which Jotham built on (2 Chronicles 27:3). The wild ass is the onager, of which Job 39:7 says “He scorneth the multitude of the city”. The creature that despises cities gets a city to enjoy.

The book promises the same pouring in 44:3, “I will pour my spirit upon thy seed”, and Joel 2:28 widens it: “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.” The reversal of 29:17, field and forest, reappears, but here the forest is growth, not ruin.

Judgment and righteousness, mishpat and tsedaqah, are the pair whose absence made the pun of the vineyard song: God looked for mishpat and found mispach, bloodshed, for tsedaqah and heard tse’aqah, a cry (5:7). Now the two words that were missing have homes. “Dwell” is shakan, the tabernacle verb.

“Assurance” is betach, secure trust, the same root as the “careless” women’s false confidence in verses 9 to 11. The chapter uses one word twice: once for the ease that is about to end and once for the security that lasts “for ever”. The difference is what the security rests on.

“Quiet resting places” is menuchot sha’ananot, and sha’ananot is the word used of the women “at ease” in verse 9. The ease that was condemned there is promised here, now as a gift and a right. “Sure dwellings” are homes of trust, with the same root as “assurance” in verse 17.

The Hebrew makes a sound play: “it shall hail”, barad, “when the forest comes down”, beredet. The forest in Isaiah has stood for Assyria’s army (10:18-19, 34), and the lowered city may be its capital. The hail from heaven falls on the proud, as it did at Gibeon.

“Blessed are ye” is ashrekhem, the second such blessing after 30:18. Fields were normally fenced off from livestock; here the ox and ass are let loose to roam and graze, because there is enough water and grain for all. Sowing “beside all waters” means every plot is watered, the answer to the failed vintage of verse 10.