Isaiah 65:16

Isa 65:16 That he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes.

Ver. 16. That he who blesseth himself in the earth, &c.] Or, That blesseth, either himself or any other.

Shall bless himself in the God of truth.] Heb. Shall bless in the God of Amen - that is, say some, in Christ, who is "Amen, the faithful and true witness," {Rev 3:14} in whom all the promises are, Yea, and Amen, {2Co 1:20} and who was wont often to say, Amen, amen. Others render it thus, Benedicat sibi per Deum firmi, shall bless himself by the God of the firm or faithful people, founded and rooted in God, so as that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against them."

Shall swear by the God of truth.] Or, By the God of the firm and faithful people, as before.

Because the former troubles are forgotten.] Remembered no otherwise than "as waters that are past." See Zec 10:6. {See Trapp on "Zec 10:6"}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Isa 65:16. That he who blesseth himself in the earth — In any part of the world, for God shall have servants out of all nations, that shall be dignified with this new name; shall bless himself in the God of truth — That is, in his name; shall renounce every species of idolatry, and invoke and praise the true God alone. They shall have recourse to, and trust in, him alone, for blessing and happiness, and for a supply of all their wants. Observe, reader, it is of great consequence what that is which we bless ourselves in, and which we most please ourselves with. Worldly people bless themselves in the abundance which they have of this world’s goods, Psa 49:18; Luk 12:19; but God’s servants bless themselves in him, as a God all- sufficient for them. And he that sweareth, &c. — By him also they shall swear, and not by any creature, or any false god. To his judgment they shall refer themselves, from whom every man’s judgment proceeds. Both in prayer and praise, and in every act of homage and worship, they shall give honour to him as the God of truth — Hebrew, Amen, which some understand of Christ, who is himself the Amen, the faithful and true witness, and in whom all the promises are yea and amen. In him we must bless ourselves, and by him we must swear unto the Lord, and covenant with him. Some read it, He that is blessed in the earth shall be blessed in the true God; for Christ is the true God and eternal life, 1Jn 5:20. And it was promised of old, that in him should all families of the earth be blessed. Because the former troubles are forgotten — Namely, the troubles of the church. They shall see that what God hath promised he hath also fulfilled, and that he hath put an end to the troubles of his people, the remembrance of which shall be swallowed up in their present comforts. The chief reason of this is assigned in the next verse.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Isaiah

‘THE GOD OF THE AMEN’

Isa 65:16.

The full beauty and significance of these remarkable words are only reached when we attend to the literal rendering of a part of them which is obscured in our version. As they stand in the original they have, in both cases, instead of the vague expression, ‘The God of truth,’ the singularly picturesque one, ‘The God of the Amen.’

I. Note the meaning of the name. Now, Amen is an adjective, which means literally firm, true, reliable, or the like. And, as we know, its liturgical use is that, in the olden time, and to some extent in the present time, it was the habit of the listening people to utter it at the close of prayer or praise. But besides this use at the end of some one else’s statement, which the sayer of the ‘Amen’ confirms by its utterance, we also find it used at the beginning of a statement, by the speaker, in order to confirm his own utterance by it.

And these two uses of the expression reposing on its plain meaning, in the first instance signifying, ‘I tell you that it is so’; and in the second instance signifying, ‘So may it be!’ or, ‘So we believe it is,’ underlie this grand title which God takes to Himself here, ‘the God of the Amen,’ both His Amen and ours. So that the thought opens up very beautifully and simply into these two, His truth and our faith.

First, it emphasises the absolute truthfulness of every word that comes from His lips. There is implied in the title that He really has spoken, and declared to man something of His will, something of His nature, something of His purposes, something of our destiny. And now He puts, as it were, the broad seal upon the charter and says, ‘Amen! Verily it is so, and My word of Revelation is no man’s imagination, and My word of command is the absolute unveiling of human duty and human perfectness, and My word of promise is that upon which a man may rest all his weight and be safe for ever.’ God’s word is ‘Amen!’ man’s word is ‘perhaps.’ For in regard to the foundation truths of man’s belief and experience and need, no human tongue can venture to utter its own asseverations with nothing behind them but itself, and expect men to accept them; but that is exactly what God does, and alone has the right to do. His word absolutely, and through and through, in every fibre of it, is reliable and true.

Now do not forget that there was one who came to us and said, ‘Amen! Amen! I say unto you.’ Jesus Christ, in all His deep and wonderful utterances, arrogated to Himself the right which God here declares to be exclusively His, and He said, ‘I too have, and I too exercise, the right and the authority to lay My utterances down before you, and expect you to take them because of nothing else than because I say them.’ God is the God of the Amen! The last book of Scripture, when it draws back the curtain from the mysteries of the glorified session of Jesus Christ at the right hand of God, makes Him say to us, ‘These things saith the Amen!’ And if you want to know what that means, its explanation follows in the next clause, ‘the faithful and true witness.’

But then, on the other hand, necessarily involved in this title, though capable of being separately considered, is not only the absolute truthfulness of the divine word, but also the thorough-going reliance, on our parts, which that word expects and demands. God’s ‘Amen,’ and ‘Verily,’ of confirmation, should ever cause the ‘Amen’ of acceptance and assent to leap from our lips. If He begins with that mighty word, so soon as the solemn voice has ceased its echo should rise from our hearts. The city that cares for the charter which its King has given it will prepare a fitting, golden receptacle in which to treasure it. And the men who believe that God in very deed has spoken laws that illuminate, and commandments that guide, and promises that calm and strengthen and fulfil themselves, will surely prepare in their hearts an appropriate receptacle for those precious and infallible words. God’s truth has corresponding to it our trust. God’s faithfulness demands, and is only adequately met by, our faith. If He gives us the sure foundation to build upon, it will be a shame for us to bring wood, hay, stubble, and build these upon the Rock of Ages. The building should correspond with its foundation, and the faith which grasps the sure word should have in it something of the unchangeableness and certainty and absoluteness of that word which it grasps. If His revelation of Himself is certain, you and I ought to be certain of His revelation of Himself. Our certitude should correspond to its certainty.

Ah! my friend, what a miserable contrast there is between the firm, unshaken, solid security of the divine word upon which we say that we trust, and the poor, feeble, broken trust which we build upon it. ‘Let not that man think that He shall receive anything of the Lord’; but let us expect, as well as ‘ask, in faith, nothing wavering’; and let our ‘Amen!’ ring out in answer to God’s.

The Apostle Paul has a striking echo of the words of my text in the second Epistle to the Corinthians: ‘All the promises of God in Him are yea! and through Him also is the Amen!’ The assent, full, swift, frank -the assent of the believing heart to the great word of God comes through the same channel, and reaches God by the same way, as God’s word on which it builds comes to us. The ‘God of the Amen,’ in both senses of the word, is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the seal as well as the substance of the divine promises, and whose voice in us is the answer to, and the grasp of, the promises of which He is the substance and soul.

II. Now notice, next, how this God of the Amen is, by reason of that very characteristic, the source of all blessing.

‘He who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of Truth.’ That phrase of blessing oneself in, which is a frequent Old Testament expression, is roughly equivalent to invoking, and therefore receiving, blessing from. You find it, for instance, in the seventy-second Psalm, in that grand burst which closes one of the books of the Psalter and hails the coming of the Messianic times, of which my text also is a prediction. ‘Men shall be blessed in Him,’ or rather, ‘shall bless themselves in Him,’ which is a declaration, that all needful benediction shall come down upon humanity through the coming Messias, as well as that men shall recognise in that Messias the source of all their blessing and good. So the text declares that, in those days that are yet to come, the whole earth shall be filled with men whose eyes have been purged from ignorance and sin, and from the illusions of sense and the fascinations of folly, and who have learned that only in the God of the Amen is the blessing of their life to be found.

Of course it is so. For only on Him can I lean all my weight and be sure that the stay will not give. All other bridges across the great abysses which we have to traverse or be lost in them, are like those snow-cornices upon some Alp, which may break when the climber is on the very middle of them, and let him down into blackness out of which he will never struggle. There is only one path clear across the deepest gulf, which we poor pilgrims can tread with absolute safety that it will never yield beneath our feet. My brother! there is one support that is safe, and one stay upon which a man can lean his whole weight and be sure that the staff will never either break or pierce his palm, and that is the faithful God, in whose realm are no disappointments, amongst whose trusters are no heart-broken and deceived men, but who gives bountifully, and over and above all that we are able to ask or think. They who have made experience, as we have all made experience, of the insufficiency of earthly utterances, of the doubtfulness of the clearest words of men, of the possible incapacity of the most loving, to be what they pledge themselves to be, and of the certainty that even if they are so for a while they cannot be so always-have surely learned one half, at least, of the lesson that life is meant to teach us; and it is our own fault if we have not bettered it with the better half, having uncoiled the tendrils of our hearts from the rotten props round which they have been too apt to twine themselves, and wreathed them about the pillars of the eternal throne, which can never shake nor fail. ‘He that blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself’-unless he is a fool-’in the God of the Amen!’ and not in the man of the ‘peradventure.’

III. Lastly, note how the God of the Amen should be the pattern of His servants.

‘He that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth,’ or, ‘of the Amen.’ The prophet deduces from the name the solemn thought that those who truly feel its significance will shape their words accordingly, and act and speak so that they shall not fear to call His pure eyes to witness that there are neither, hypocrisy, nor insincerity, nor vacillation, nor the ‘hidden things of dishonesty’ nor any of the skulking meannesses of craft and self-seeking in them. ‘I swear by the God of the Amen, and call Thy faithfulness to witness that I am trying to be like Thee,’ that is what we ought to do if we call ourselves Christians. If we have any hold at all of Him, and of His love, and of the greatness and majesty of His faithfulness, we shall try to make our poor little lives, in such measure as the dewdrops may be like the sun, radiant like His, and of the same shape as His, for the dewdrop and the sun are both of them spheres. That is exactly what the apostle does, in that same chapter in 2 Cor., to which I already referred. He takes these very thoughts of my text, and in their double aspect too, and says, ‘Just because God is faithful, do you Corinthians think that, when I told you that I was coming to see you, I did not mean it?’ He brings the greatest thought that He can find about God and God’s truth, down to the settlement of this very little matter, the vindication of Himself from the charge, on the one hand, of facile and inconsiderate vacillation, and, on the other hand, of insincerity. So, we may say, the greatest thoughts should regulate the smallest acts. Though our maps be but a quarter of an inch to a hundred miles, let us see that they are drawn to scale. Let us see that He is our Pattern; and that the truthfulness, the simplicity, and faithfulness, which we rest upon as the very foundation of our intellectual as well as our moral and religious being, are, in our measure, copied in ourselves. ‘As God is faithful,’ said Paul, ‘our word to you was not yea! and nay!’ And they who are trusting to the God of the Amen! will live in all simplicity and godly sincerity; their yea will be yea, and their nay, nay.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

65:16 evil of earlier days: Cp. Rev 21:4.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

I will no more suffer my Church to be desolate as in times past.

By blessing, and by swearing is meant the praising of God for his benefits, and the true worshipping of him, which shall not be only in Judea, but through all the world.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

That he--rather, "he who," &c.

blesseth, &c.-- (Psa 72:17; Jer 4:2).

God of truth--very God, as opposed to false gods; Hebrew, Amen: the very name of Messiah (Co2 1:20; Rev 3:14), faithful to His promises (Joh 1:17; Joh 6:32). Real, substantial, spiritual, eternal, as opposed to the shadowy types of the law.

sweareth, &c.--God alone shall be appealed to as God (Isa 19:18; Deu 6:13; Psa 63:11).

troubles--that is, sins, provocations [LOWTH]. Rather, calamities caused by your sins; so far from these visiting you again, the very remembrance of them is "hid from Mine eyes" by the magnitude of the blessings I will confer on you (Isa 65:17, &c.). [MAURER].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(16) Shall bless himself in the God of truth . . .—Literally, the God of the Amen. In Rev_3:14 we have an echo of the Hebrew; in Joh_17:3 we have as distinct an echo of the LXX. rendering, τὸν θεὸν τὸν ἀληθινόν. The words seem to imply that the prophet had entered into the inner meaning of what was to most men only a liturgical formula.

Because the former troubles . . .—The addition of the clause emphasises the thought that it is the truth or faithfulness of God, who keepeth His promise for over, that will lead men to use that new Name as a formula of benediction.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

16. That] R.V., So that (as Gen_11:7; Psa_95:11; Mal_4:1, &c.).

he who blesseth himself in the land] i.e. “who invokes a blessing on himself”; cf. Gen_22:18; Gen_26:4; Gen_48:20; Jer_4:2.

shall bless himself by the God of truth] using such expressions as, “May the God of truth bless me.” By the fulfilment both of His threatenings and His promises Jehovah will have shewn Himself to be the God of truth, so that a blessing uttered in His name is certainly effective. God of truth is strictly “God of the Amen” (cf. 2Co_1:20; Rev_3:14), but this is a too artificial phrase for so early a period. Read ’ômen (= “truth,” “fidelity”).

swear by the God of truth] Cf. ch. Isa_48:1.

the former troubles are forgotten] See Rev_21:4. hid from

mine eyes] a reminiscence probably of Hos_13:14.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That he who blesseth himself in the earth,.... That is sensible he stands in need of blessings, and wishes for them, and prays he might have them; or that takes notice that he is blessed with them, and acknowledges them, and is thankful for them:

shall bless himself in the God of truth; shall pray to him for blessings he wants, and ascribe what he has unto him, and give him the praise and glory of them; by whom is meant, either God the Father, in opposition to idols, the fictitious deities of the Gentiles, those lying vanities, which were not gods by nature, and to whom the God of truth, or the true God, is often opposed, and whom the Targum here calls the living God; or rather the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ: for the words may be rendered, "shall bless himself in God Amen" (f); that is, in God, who is the "Amen", which is one of the names of Christ, Rev 3:14 in whom believers are blessed with all spiritual blessings, and reckon themselves blessed in him, and ascribe blessing to him for them; in whom all the promises of God are yea and amen, and who is the true God, and eternal life, Co2 1:20,

and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; when an oath is necessary on any account, and it is proper to appeal to the supreme Being for the truth of anything, this, in Gospel times, should be done in the name of Christ; he, who is the Amen and faithful witness, is to be appealed unto, who is God omniscient, the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Of forms of swearing by Christ, see Rom 9:1. Besides, swearing, as it is a part of religious worship, may here be put for the whole; so it signifies, that as all blessings come from Christ, so all worship and duty should be performed unto him, and in his name.

Because the former troubles are forgotten, they are hid from mine eyes; which is to be understood not of afflictions and persecutions for the sake of Christ and his Gospel, for these, especially in the first times of it, were very great; though in the latter day they will cease, to which indeed this prophecy extends: but rather either of the idolatry and superstition of the Gentile world, which were troublesome and offensive to God, but now removed by the clear light of the Gospel, and so forgotten by him, and hid from his eyes; or the carnal ordinances of the legal dispensation, which gave great trouble to the worshippers then, and could not cleanse their consciences, and through the fear of death, on the breach of them, were all their lifetime subject to bondage; but now these are all done away by Christ, and in Gospel times forgotten by men, and hid from the sight of God, who regards them no more; see Jer 3:16, which sense suits with what follows.

(f) "benedicet sibi in Deo Amen", Pagninus, Montanus, Vitringa; "benedicturus sit in Deo Amen", Cocceius.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

That he who blesseth himself in the earth - That is, he who shall invoke blessings on himself.

Shall bless himself in the God of truth - Or by the true God. He shall not seek a blessing from a false god; but he shall come before the true God, and seek a blessing at his hand.

And he that sweareth - Every oath that is taken in the land shall be by the true God. There shall be no swearing by idols; but the true God shall be everywhere acknowledged.

Because the former troubles are forgotten - The former punishments and calamities shall be passed away. The favor of God shall be restored. His pure worship shall be re-established, and his name shall be celebrated again in the land. The image here is one of returning prosperity and favor; a state when the happiness will be so great that all the former trials will be regarded as not worthy of recollection.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Amen, or "of truth." False gods shall be neglected. They shall not swear by them, as formerly, Sophonias i. 5. --- Christ usually adopted the asseveration, Amen, Amen, to enforce his truths. (Haydock)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

I will bring it to pass, that over all the world, if any man bless himself, or bless another, it shall be in God Amen. So the Hebrew (we translate it the God of truth). Amen is a name given to Christ, Rev 3:14, These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness; being here applied to God, many think it makes a great proof of the Godhead of Christ, and judge the sense of this text to be, that under the times of the gospel men should not bless themselves (as before) in the names of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, but in the name of Christ, in the God Amen; nor is this an improbable sense. Others taking it more appellatively, by Elohim Amen, here understand that God who shows himself true and faithful in his promises. In like manner it is prophesied, that those that swear (by which some understand worship God, others, calling God to be a witness) should swear by the

God of truth, or in the God of truth; either worshipping God in Christ the Amen, or calling the faithful God to attest their sincerity, or swearing by that God who hath approved his truth and faithfulness by saving and delivering his people.

Because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes; because they shall see what God promised is fulfilled, the troubles of his people are at an end, and they are hid from God’s eyes, that is, they are at an end.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

That he who blesseth himself; rather, so that he who blesses himself. The sequence of the argument is not altogether clear. Perhaps it is recant that God will call them by his own Name (Amo_9:12) people of God"; (Heb_4:9) and thence it will become natural for them to use no other name, either when they call for a blessing on themselves, or have to confirm a covenant with others. In the God of truth; literally, in the God of the Amen; i.e. the God who keeps covenant and promise, to which the strongest formula of consent was the word "Amen". (see Num_5:22 Deu_27:15-26 1Ki_1:36, etc.) Similarly, St. John calls our Lord "the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness". (Rev_3:14) Because the former troubles are forgotten. When the blessed time has come wherein men call themselves by the Name of the Lord, and know of only one God as the Source of blessing and the confirmation of an oath, then the former state of human affairs, with all its "troubles," will have passed away, and the new era will be inaugurated, which the prophet proceeds to describe at length (vers. 17-25).

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

God of truth - Because they shall see what God promised is fulfilled. Are hid - That is, they are at an end.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

“(By) which the (man) blessing himself in the land (or earth) shall bless himself by the God of truth, and (by which) the (man) swearing in the land (or earth) shall swear by the God of truth, because forgotten are the former enmities (or troubles), and because they are hidden from my eyes.” Two things have divided and perplexed interpreters in this verse, as it stands connected with the one before it. The first is the apparent change of subject, and the writer’s omission to record the new name which had just been promised. The other is the very unusual construction of the relative. The first of these has commonly been left without solution, or referred to the habitual freedom of the writer. The other has been variously but very unsuccessfully explained. All objections may be obviated by referring the relative to an expressed antecedent, viz. name, a construction given both in the Septuagint and Vulgate versions, although otherwise defective and obscure. Another advantage of this construction is that it removes the abrupt transition and supplies the name, which seems on any other supposition to be wanting. According to this view of the place, the sense is that the people shall be called after the God of truth, so that His name and theirs shall be identical, and consequently whoever blesses or swears by the one blesses or swears by the other also. The form in which this idea is expressed is peculiar but intelligible and expressive: ‘His people He shall call by another name, which (i.e., with respect to which, or more specifically by which) he that blesseth shall bless by the God of truth,’ etc. Most interpreters understand by blessing himself; praying for God’s blessing, and by swearing, the solemn invocation of His presence as a witness, both being mentioned as acts of religious worship and of solemn recognition. ‘Amen’ (translated ‘truth’) is properly an adjective meaning sure, trustworthy, and therefore including the ideas of reality and faithfulness, neither of which should be excluded, and both of which are comprehended in the English phrase, ‘the true God’, or retaining more exactly the form of the original, ‘the God of truth’. This Hebrew word is retained in the Greek of the New Testament, not only as a particle of asseveration, but in a still more remarkable manner as a name of Christ (Rev 1:18; Rev 3:14), with obvious reference to the case before us; and there must be something more than blind chance in the singular coincidence thus brought to light between this application of the phrase and the sense which has been put upon the foregoing verse, as relating to the adoption of the Christian name by the church or chosen people. As applied to Christ, the name has been well explained to describe Him as very God, as a witness to the truth, as the substance or reality of the legal shadows, and as the fulfiller of the divine promises. The last clause gives the reason for the application of the title, God of truth, viz because in His deliverance of His people He will prove Himself to be the true God in both senses, truly divine and eminently faithful. This proof will be afforded by the termination of those evils which the sins of his own people once rendered necessary.

Joseph Addison Alexander, The Prophecies of Isaiah (1846–1847; New York: Scribner, 1870–1878) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For whoever blesses himself on the earth For My fear shall be over all of them, and the earth shall be full of knowledge, and whoever praises himself or lauds himself on the earth, will bless himself by the true God, he will praise himself that he is a servant of the true God, the God of truth, Who realized and observed this, His promise.

for the first troubles have been forgotten Therefore, they shall call Me the true God.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

המתברך He who blesseth himself. This word is not like ונברכו and shall be blessed (Gen. 18:18); there is a difference between the two words.

באלהי אמן In the God whom all the world will acknowledge to be the true God, and that there is none besides Him. אמן is an adjective of the same root as אמונה truth (25:1); יתברך ונו׳ Shall bless himself, etc. He shall thankfully acknowledge that this is true, or wish and pray that it may become true.

Because the former troubles, etc., are hid from mine eyes. The troubles which have befallen the righteous, the servants of the Lord, have been intensified by the circumstance that the wicked used to mock at the pious and their piety, when the latter were afflicted with calamities

Ibn Ezra on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Yalkut, Sifsei Chachomim Chumash, Metsudah Publications, 2009” (CC BY 4.0); and “Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah - trans. by M. Friedlander, 1873” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.