For Yahweh will execute judgment by fire and by his sword on all flesh; and those slain by Yahweh will be many.
Parallel Translations
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For Yahweh will execute judgment by fire and by his sword on all flesh; and those slain by Yahweh will be many.
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For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.
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For by fire will the LORD contend, and by His sword with all flesh; and the slain of the LORD shall be many.
Cross-references (6)
Passages linked to Isaiah 66:16 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Ezekiel 38:21-22 I will call for a sword against him to all my mountains,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. I will enter into judgment with him with pestilence and with blood. I will rain on him, and on his hordes, and on the many peoples who are with him, an overflowing shower, with great hailstones, fire, and sulfur.
- Isaiah 30:30 Yahweh will cause his glorious voice to be heard, and will show the descent of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and the flame of a devouring fire, with a blast, storm, and hailstones.
- Ezekiel 39:2-10 I will turn you around, and will lead you on, and will cause you to come up from the uttermost parts of the north; and I will bring you onto the mountains of Israel. I will strike your bow out of your left hand, and will cause your arrows to fall out of your right hand. You will fall on the mountains of Israel, you, and all your hordes, and the peoples who are with you. I will give you to the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the animals of the field to be devoured. You will fall on the open field; for I have spoken it,” says the Lord Yahweh. “I will send a fire on Magog, and on those who dwell securely in the islands. Then they will know that I am Yahweh. “ ‘ “I will make my holy name known among my people Israel. I won’t allow my holy name to be profaned any more. Then the nations will know that I am Yahweh, the Holy One in Israel. Behold, it comes, and it will be done,” says the Lord Yahweh. “This is the day about which I have spoken. “ ‘ “Those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out, and will make fires of the weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the war clubs and the spears, and they will make fires with them for seven years; so that they will take no wood out of the field, and not cut down any out of the forests; for they will make fires with the weapons. They will plunder those who plundered them, and rob those who robbed them,” says the Lord Yahweh.
- Isaiah 27:1 In that day, Yahweh with his hard and great and strong sword will punish leviathan, the fleeing serpent, and leviathan the twisted serpent; and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.
- Revelation 19:11-21 I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it is called Faithful and True. In righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has names written and a name written which no one knows but he himself. He is clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood. His name is called “The Word of God.” The armies which are in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in white, pure, fine linen. Out of his mouth proceeds a sharp, double-edged sword, that with it he should strike the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod. He treads the wine press of the fierceness of the wrath of God, the Almighty. He has on his garment and on his thigh a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” I saw an angel standing in the sun. He cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the sky, “Come! Be gathered together to the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, small and great.” I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse, and against his army. The beast was taken, and with him the false prophet who worked the signs in his sight, with which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword of him who sat on the horse, the sword which came out of his mouth. All the birds were filled with their flesh.
- Isaiah 34:5-10 For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment. Yahweh’s sword is filled with blood. It is covered with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah, And a great slaughter in the land of Edom. The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; and their land will be drunken with blood, and their dust made greasy with fat. For Yahweh has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. Its streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, And its land will become burning pitch. It won’t be quenched night nor day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (10 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Isa 66:16 For by fire and by his sword…
Isa 66:16 For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.
Ver. 16. For with fire.] Than which nothing is more formidable.
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And with his sword.] Which is no ordinary one. {Isa 27:1}
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.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This kind of rebuking is also called a pleading…
This kind of rebuking is also called a pleading with them; so he threatens to plead against Gog with pestilence and blood, Eze 38:22. God at first pleads with sinners by words; but if he cannot so prevail, he will plead with them in a way by which he will overcome by fire, pestilence, and blood.
With all flesh; thus he threatens to do with all sinners, or with all the wicked Jews.
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The slain of the Lord shall be many; to the fire he threatens to add the sword, so as the slain of the Lord, that is, those whom God should cause to be slain, should be many.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain For by fire, and by his sword, will the…
For by fire, and by his sword, will the Lord plead with all flesh,.... With the Mahometans, the Turks, the Ottoman empire, against whom he will call for a sword, and will rain upon them fire and brimstone, signified by Gog and Magog, Eze 38:22 and with the other antichristian powers at the battle of Armageddon; and when the fourth vial will be poured upon the sun, and men will be scorched with fire; see Rev 16:8,
and the slain of the Lord shall be many; that is, those that will be slain by the Lord, both in the attempt of the Turks to recover the land of Canaan out of the hands of the Jews, possessed of it; whose numbers of slain will be so many, that the burying of them will last seven months, Eze 39:12 and in the battle between the Christian princes, Christ at the head of them, and the antichristian armies, led on by the beast and the kings of the earth; when the fowls of the air will be invited to the great supper of the Lord, to eat the flesh of kings, captains, and mighty men, so great will the slaughter be, Rev 19:17, see also Isa 11:13.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Plead - God at first pleads with sinners by…
Plead - God at first pleads with sinners by words, but if he cannot so prevail, he will plead with them in a way by which he will overcome; by fire, pestilence and blood. All flesh - Thus he threatens to do with all the wicked Jews. The slain - Those whom God should cause to be slain.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain For by fire and by his sword - The…
For by fire and by his sword - The sword is an instrument by which punishment is executed (see the notes at Isa 34:5; compare Rom 13:4).
Will he plead with all flesh - Or rather, he will judge (נשׁפט nı̂shephaṭ), that is, he will execute his purposes of vengeance on all the human race. Of course, only that part is intended who ought to be subject to punishment; that is, all his foes.
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And the slain of the Lord shall be many - The number of those who shall be consigned to woe shall be immense - though in the winding up of the great drama at the close of the world, there is reason to hopethat a large proportion of the race, taken as a whole, will be saved. Of past generations, indeed, there is no just ground of such hope; of the present generation there is no such prospect. But brighter and happier times are to come. The true religion is to spread over all the world, and for a long period is to prevail; and the hope is, that during that long period the multitude of true converts will be so great as to leave the whole number who are lost, compared with those who are saved, much less than is commonly supposed. Still the aggregate of those who are lost, ‘the slain of the Lord,’ will be vast. This description I regard as having reference to the coming of the Lord to judgment (compare 2Th 1:8); or if it refer to any other manifestation of Yahweh for judgment, like the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, it has a strong resemblance to the final judgment; and, like the description of that by the Saviour Matt. 24, the language is such as naturally to suggest, and to be applicable to, the final judgment of mankind.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Many. Few are chosen. (Haydock) --- All the wicked…
Many. Few are chosen. (Haydock) --- All the wicked shall perish eternally. (Menochius)
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).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Rather, "With fire will Jehovah judge, and with His…
Rather, "With fire will Jehovah judge, and with His sword (He will judge) all flesh." The parallelism and collocation of the Hebrew words favor this (Isa 65:12).
all flesh--that is, all who are the objects of His wrath. The godly shall be hidden by the Lord in a place of safety away from the scene of judgment (Isa 26:20-21; Psa 31:20; Th1 4:16-17).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 16. by his sword] See ch. Isa_27:1, Isa_34:5-6.
16. by his sword] See ch. Isa_27:1, Isa_34:5-6.
plead] i.e. “enter into judgement,” as Eze_38:22; Joe_3:2. the slain of the Lord shall be many] Cf. Jer_25:33; Zep_2:12 (Hebr.)
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.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (16) Will the Lord plead . . .—Better, will…
(16) Will the Lord plead . . .—Better, will the Lord hold judgment. The thoughts of the seer pass on to the retributive side of the Divine righteousness. Fire and sword have been used by the enemies of God against His people, and shall, in turn, be the instruments of His vengeance. The “sword” may, however, be the symbol of the Divine judgment, apart from any reference to its human instrument (Deu_32:41; Rev_1:16).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain By fire and by his sword (see the introductory…
By fire and by his sword (see the introductory paragraph). The "sword of Jehovah" is spoken of also in Isa_27:1 and Isa_34:5, 6 Rev_19:15, Rev_19:21. Will the Lord plead with all flesh; rather, will the Lord judge all flesh. (comp. Jer_25:31, where the same phrase occurs)
"The slain of the Lord.
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While it is doubtful as to what special juncture the prophet refers when he says that" the slain of the Lord shall be many," it is painfully and practically certain that at all times these slain ones are many. For
I THE VICTIMS OF SIN ARE THE SLAIN OF THE LORD. The laws which work the penalty they suffer are God"s laws. It is under his administration that pain, weakness, impotence, trouble, sorrow, death, slay guilty souls. These are his sword, and they do his work, his "strange work," but yet his.
II THEIR NUMBER IS TERRIBLY LARGE. Who shall count the number of those that have fallen, or of those that are falling now? In every city, town, village, hamlet, men are to be found who, through their folly, or their vice, or their crime, or their ungodliness, are suffering pitifully from the sword of Divine retribution.
III WE MAY BRING THEM INTO THE PRESENCE OF THE DIVINE HEALER. Many of the slain survive. Our mission is to bring these to that merciful and mighty One who can and will "make them whole. C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.