The Lord had tried through several methodologies over time to speak of the judgment that would come upon the Israelites if they did not stop their sin. This is the concluding statement of all those warnings. Specifically, God says that the Vineyard has gone totally wrong and He is going to destroy it. The grapes are all bitter and all the leader's feeble excuses for their sins cannot make them sweet again. Now nothing else can be done to restore the Vineyard in its present condition except to destroy it and start over. This will all occur because the sins including judicial corruption, are a rejection of the LORD of hosts by the leaders of the Israelites.The text here is, 'The tongue of fire.' The figure is beautiful and obvious. It is referencing the shape of an actively burning flame, or tongue-like appearance of a flame. The word devoureth is eateth in Hebrew. So, the imagery projected is as a tongue of fire eats up the fuel. This is the only occurrence of this phrase in the Old Testament. Because of this uniqueness of this phraseology, the name tongue is given from the resemblance of a pointed flame to the human tongue. Anything long, narrow, and tending to a point is called a tongue in Hebrew. The word here references the fact that the Lord through Isaiah has spoken (anthropomorphically, with His tongue) to the Israelites and now uses tongues of fire as the last means for correction. Fire is a commonly used means of refinement, judgment, and testing in the Bible (e.g. Isaiah 66:16; Amos 7:5; Jeremiah 15:14; Ezekiel 30;48; I Corinthians 3:15 etc.). A rapidly occurring fire is the imagery of the quickly and suddenly appearing judgment coming upon the nation Israel.
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