Isaiah Twenty Seven

by Dr. Henry M. Morris

(taken from the Defender's Study Bible)

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Isaiah 27:1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

leviathan. “Leviathan” is here also called “the dragon.” The references to “leviathan” in Psalm 74:13-14; Psalm 104:26; and Job 41:1-34 make it clear that this was a real animal, probably a fearsome marine reptile, like a dinosaur. This passage, as well as Psalm 74:13, 14, also shows that the many references to “dragons” in the Bible (Hebrew tannin) must refer to great monsters, now extinct, such as dinosaurs. Only the false idea of the supposed evolutionary ages of geology says that dinosaurs became extinct seventy million years before man evolved.

that crooked serpent. Leviathan, though a real animal, also symbolizes that old serpent, the devil, who will indeed be judged “in that day,” first bound in “the bottomless pit,” later consigned forever to “the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:3, 10).

dragon. The “dragon that is in the sea,” actually a marine dinosaur-like reptile (called a plesiosaur today), here symbolizes both Satan and the Beast of the end-times. See Revelation 12:3, 9; 13:1-2. The Beast, the Man of sin, is energized and possessed by Satan. Both will be destroyed “in that day.”

Isaiah 27:2 In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine.

A vineyard. Isaiah here returns to the symbol of Israel as a vine (see note on Isaiah 5:1), that would eventually “fill the face of the earth with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6).

Isaiah 27:3 I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.

Isaiah 27:4 Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together.

Isaiah 27:5 Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me.

Isaiah 27:6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.

Isaiah 27:7 Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him?

Isaiah 27:8 In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind.

Isaiah 27:9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.

Isaiah 27:10 Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof.

Isaiah 27:11 When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will show them no favour.

Isaiah 27:12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.

Isaiah 27:13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem.

trumpet shall be blown. When the great tribulation is over (Matthew 24:29) and “the time of Jacob's trouble” is finally ended (Jeremiah 30:7), the angelic trumpet of Matthew 24:31 will “gather together His elect ... from one end of heaven to the other.”