The Conclusion of the Song (Part 5b)

Pastor Bill Farrow

Isaiah 27:1b

¹In that day the Lord with His severe sword, great and strong, Will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan that twisted serpent; And He will slay the reptile that is in the sea.

The fleeing serpent - The term ‘serpent’ may be given to a dragon, or an extended sea monster. (Compare Job 26:13). The term ‘piercing,’ is, in the Margin, ‘Crossing like a bar.’ The Septuagint renders it ‘Flying serpent. The Hebrew rendered ‘piercing,’ is derived from “to flee;” and then to stretch across, or pass through, as a bar through boards (Exo. 36:33). Hence, this word may mean fleeing; extended; cross bar for fastening gates; or the cross piece for binding together the boards for the tabernacle of the congregation (Exo. 26:26; 36:31). One writer renders it, ‘The rigid serpent;’ probably with reference to the hard scales of the crocodile. In Job 26:13, it is rendered, ‘the crooked serpent;’ referring to the constellation in the heavens by the name of the Serpent (see the note at that place). The idea of piercing is not in the Hebrew word, nor is it ever used in that sense.

Leviathan, that twisted serpent - This is correctly rendered; and refers to the fact that the monster here referred to throws itself into immense volumes or folds, a description that applies to all serpents of vast size. The two references here in Isaiah, I suppose, is not to “different” kings or enemies of the people of God, but to the same. It is customary in Hebrew poetry to refer to the same subject in different members of the same sentence, or in different parts of the same parallelism.

And He will slay the reptile - Referring to the same thing under a different image - to the king of Babylon. On the meaning of the word ‘dragon,’ (see the note at Isa. 13:22).

That is in the sea - In the Euphrates; or in the marshes and pools that encompass Babylon (see Isa. 11:15, note; 18:2, note). The sense of the whole verse is that God would destroy the Babylonian power that was to the Jews such an object of loathsomeness and of terror.

By way of summary, when the Lord comes out of his place, to punish the inhabitants of the earth (ch. 26:21), he will be sure to punish leviathan, the dragon that is in the sea, every proud oppressing tyrant, that is the terror of the mighty, and, like the leviathan, is so fierce that none dares stir him up, and his heart as hard as a stone, and when he raises up himself the mighty are afraid, (Job 41:10, 24, 25). God’s people have many enemies, but commonly some one that is more formidable than the rest. So Sennacherib was in his day, and Nebuchadnezzar in his, and Antiochus in his; so Pharaoh had been formerly, and is called leviathan and the dragon, (51:9; Ps. 74:13, 14; Eze. 29:3).

The New Testament church has had its leviathans; we read of a great red dragon ready to devour it, (Rev. 12:3). Those malignant persecuting powers are here compared to the leviathan for bulk, and strength, and the mighty bustle they make in the world, - to dragons for their rage and fury, - to serpents, piercing serpents, penetrating in their counsels, quick in their motions, and which, if they once get in their head, will soon wind in their whole body, - crossing like a bar (so the margin), standing in the way of all their neighbors and obstructing them, - to crooked serpents, subtle and insinuating, but perverse and mischievous.

Great and mighty princes, if they oppose the people of God, are in God’s account as dragons and serpents, the plagues of mankind; and the Lord will punish them in due time. They are too big for men to deal with and call to an account, and therefore the great God will take the matter into his own hands. He has a sore, and great, and strong sword, wherewith to do execution upon them when the measure of their iniquity is full and their day has come to fall.

It is emphatically expressed in the original: The Lord with his sword, that cruel one, and that great one, and that strong one, shall punish this unwieldy, this unruly criminal; and it shall be capital punishment: He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea; for the wages of his sin is death. This shall not only be a prevention of his doing further mischief, as the slaying of a wild beast, but a just punishment for the mischief he has done, as the putting of a traitor or rebel to death. God has a strong sword for the doing of this, variety of judgments sufficient to humble the proudest and break the most powerful of his enemies; and he will do it when the day of execution comes: In that day he will punish, his day which is coming, Ps. 37:13. This is applicable to the spiritual victories obtained by our Lord Jesus over the powers of darkness. He not only disarmed, spoiled, and cast out, the prince of this world, but with his strong sword, the virtue of his death and the preaching of his gospel, he does and will destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, that great leviathan, that old serpent, the dragon. He shall be bound, that he may not deceive the nations, and that is a punishment to him (Rev. 20:2, 3); and at length, for deceiving the nations, he shall be cast into the lake of fire, Rev. 20:10.