Isaiah 14:1 says, For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. Isaiah said that one day God would restore the people of Israel to a nation that was His nation and that strangers would be joined with them. I believe this means that the people of Israel, who were God’s people because of their covenant relationship with Him would again enter into that covenant relationship with Him. They were not His people because they were better than anyone else by their own merit, but because of that covenant relationship with Him, which is why they often were defeated when they failed to live up to that covenant relationship. Had they been morally superior to others by their own merit, they never would have been defeated. This promise was ultimately fulfilled through the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and His salvation gift was to all people and not just the Jews.
Verse two adds, And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors. Isaiah said when the people of Israel were returned to their land by being obedient to their covenant relationship with Him that they would rule over those who had oppressed them. This was ultimately and forever fulfilled when Jesus Christ died for the sins of all men, and I don’t believe it has to do with an earthly kingdom but a heavenly one. This prophesy may have been temporarily fulfilled when the people of Israel returned from Babylon, but it was not permanently fulfilled until Jesus Christ came to bring the new covenant between man and God, since no one else was able to live up to the old one.
Verse three continues, And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, I believe the day that the Lord will do this refers to God’s judgment Day, when we will have rest from our sorrows and fear and the hard bondage that sin had brought to us.
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