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Isaiah 5 · a question people ask

Who is the nation from far away (5:26)?

In the text

The chapter doesn't say. It says what the LORD will do: "He will lift up a banner to the nations from far away, and he will whistle for them from the end of the earth" (5:26). And it says what those who come are like: "No one shall be weary nor stumble among them" (5:27), "whose arrows are sharp" (5:28), "Their roaring will be like a lioness" (5:29). Isaiah names nations in later chapters, and these notes don't carry any of them back into 5:26. What the chapter does say is who lifts the banner and whistles: the LORD, whose "anger is not turned away" (5:25). These notes apply 5:26-30 to no nation, people or war today.

From Favor's study of Isaiah 5

Isaiah 5: The song of the vineyard

The song asks the men of Judah to judge between the owner and his vineyard (5:3) before it tells them they are its plant (5:7). And the LORD looked for mishpat, justice, and found mispach, oppression; for tsedaqah, righteousness, and found tse'aqah, a cry: in Hebrew each pair is spelled almost alike.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions