Therefore, thus saith the Lord God - The design of this verse is to show what would be the difference between those who kept and those who forsook his commandments. The one would be objects of his favor, and have abundance; the other would be objects of his displeasure, and be subjected to the evils of poverty, grief, and want.

My servants shall eat - Shall have abundance. They shall be objects of my favor.

But ye - Ye who revolt from me, and who worship idols.

Shall be hungry - Shall be subjected to the evils of want. The idea is, that the one should partake of his favor; the other should be punished.

My servants shalt eat, but ye shall be hungry - Rabbi Joachan ben Zachai said in a parable: There was a king who invited his servants, but set them no time to come to the feast. The prudent and wary who were among them adorned themselves; and, standing at the gate of the king's house, said, Is there any thing lacking in the king's house? i.e., Is there any work to be done in it? But the foolish which were among them went, and mocking said, When shall the feast be, in which there is no labor? Suddenly, the king sought out his servants: they who were adorned entered in, and they who were still polluted entered in also. The king was glad when he met the prudent, but he was angry when he met the foolish. Therefore he said, Let those sit down, and let them eat; but let these stand and look on.

This parable is very like that of the wise and foolish virgins, Matthew 25, and that of the marriage of the king's son, Matthew 22.

Therefore thus saith the Lord God,.... This being the case, the following contrast is formed between those that believed in Christ, and those that rejected him:

behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry: which has been verified in a literal sense; for the Christians, the Lord's righteous servants, as the Targum in the several clauses calls them, were, as Eusebius (e) relates, by a divine warning, directed to leave Jerusalem, before the destruction of it; when they removed to a place called Pella, beyond Jordan, where they had proper accommodations; while the unbelieving Jews were penned up in the city, and were starved, and multitudes of them died by famine: and in a figurative sense they had a famine, not of bread, or of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord; the Gospel being taken from them, and sent to another people, who received it, and ate it, and were nourished by it; which is bread that strengthens, meat that is savoury, milk that nourishes, honey that is sweet to the taste, delicious fruit, and all that is wholesome and healthful; Christ in the word particularly, who is the Lamb of God, the fatted calf, the hidden manna, the bread of life and spiritual meat, as his flesh is, is the food which believers eat by faith, and feed upon, and are nourished with; while others starve, feeding upon ashes and husks, on that which is not bread. Kimchi interprets this and the following clauses, figuratively, of the reward of the world to come, and of the delights and pleasures of the soul, signified by eating and drinking; and so, he says, their Rabbins interpret it; see Luke 14:15.

Behold, my servants shall drink, and ye shall be thirsty; which has the same sense as before, the same thing in different words. Particularly true believers in Christ drink of his blood by faith, which is drink indeed; and of the grace of Christ, which is the water of life, of which they may drink freely; and of the Gospel of Christ, which is as wine and milk, and as cold water to a thirsty soul; and of the love of Christ, which is better than wine; and they shall drink of new wine with him in the kingdom of his Father; while the wicked shall thirst after their sins and lusts now, and have no satisfaction in them, and hereafter will want a drop of water to cool their tongues.

Behold, my servants shall rejoice; in Christ, in his person, grace, and fulness; in his righteousness and salvation; and in hope of the glory of God by him:

but ye shall be ashamed; of their vain confidence; of their trust in their own righteousness, in their temple, and the service of it; in their troops and numbers, particularly when taken and carried captive; and more especially this will be their case at the great day of judgment, when they shall see him whom they have pierced.

(e) Hist. Eccl. I. 3. c. 5. p. 75.

On the ground of the sin thus referred to again, the proclamation of punishment is renewed, and the different fates awaiting the servants of Jehovah and those by whom He is despised are here announced in five distinct theses and antitheses. "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Jehovah: Behold my servants will eat, but ye will hunger; behold my servants will drink, but ye will thirst; behold my servants will rejoice, but ye will be put to shame; behold my servants will exult for delight of heart, but ye will cry for anguish of heart, and ye will lament for brokenness of spirit. And ye will leave your name for a curse to my chosen ones, and the Lord, Jehovah, will slay thee; but His servants He will call by another name, to that whoever blesseth himself in the land will bless himself by the God of truthfulness, and whoever sweareth in the land will swear by the God of truthfulness, because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they have vanished from mine eyes." The name Adonai is connected with the name Jehovah for the purpose of affirming that the God of salvation and judgment has the power to carry His promises and threats into execution. Starving, confounded by the salvation they had rejected (תּבשׁוּ as in Isaiah 66:5), crying and wailing (תּילילוּ, fut. hiph. as in Isaiah 15:2, with a double preformative; Ges. 70, 2 Anm.) for sorrow of heart and crushing of spirit (shebher, rendered very well by the lxx συντριβή, as in Isaiah 61:1, συντετριμμένους ), the rebellious ones are left behind in the land of captivity, whilst the servants of Jehovah enjoy the richest blessings from God in the land of promise (Isaiah 62:8-9). The former, perishing in the land of captivity, leave their name to the latter as shebhū‛âh, i.e., to serve as a formula by which to swear, or rather to execrate or curse (Numbers 5:21), so that men will say, "Jehovah slay thee, as He slew them." This, at any rate, is the meaning of the threat; but the words וגו והמיתך cannot contain the actual formula, not even if we drop the Vav, as Knobel proposes, and change לבחירי into לבחיריו; for, in the first place, although in the doxologies a Hebrew was in the habit of saying "berūkh shemō" (bless his name) instead of yehı̄ shemō bârukh (his name be blessed), he never went so far as the Arab with his Allâh tabâr, but said rather יתברך. Still less could he make use of the perfect (indicative) in such sentences as "may he slay thee," instead of the future (voluntative) ימיתך, unless the perfect shared the optative force of the previous future by virtue of the consecutio temporum. And secondly, the indispensable כּהם or כּאלּה would be wanting (see Jeremiah 29:22, cf., Genesis 48:20). We may therefore assume, that the prophet has before his mind the words of this imprecatory formula, though he does not really express them, and that he deduces from it the continuation of the threat. And this explains his passing from the plural to the singular. Their name will become an execration; but Jehovah will call His servants by another name (cf., Isaiah 62:2), so that henceforth it will be the God of the faithfully fulfilled promise whose name men take into their mouth when they either desire a blessing or wish to give assurance of the truth (hithbâr be, to bless one's self with any one, or with the name of any one; Ewald, 133, Anm. 1). No other name of any god is now heard in the land, except this gloriously attested name; for the former troubles, which included the mixed condition of Israel in exile and the persecution of the worshippers of Jehovah by the despisers of Jehovah, are now forgotten, so that they no longer disturb the enjoyment of the present, and are eve hidden from the eyes of God, so that all thought of ever renewing them is utterly remote from His mind. This is the connection between Isaiah 65:16 and Isaiah 65:13-15. אשׁר does not mean eo quod here, as in Genesis 31:49 for example, but ita ut, as in Genesis 13:16. What follows is the result of the separation accomplished and the promise fulfilled. For the same reason God is called Elohē'âmēn, "the God of Amen," i.e., the God who turns what He promises into Yea and Amen (2 Corinthians 1:20). The epithet derived from the confirmatory Amen, which is thus applied to Jehovah, is similar to the expression in Revelation 3:14, where Jesus is called "the Amen, the faithful and true witness." The explanatory kı̄ (for) is emphatically repeated in וכי, as in Genesis 33:11 and 1 Samuel 19:4 (compare Job 38:20). The inhabitants of the land stand in a close and undisturbed relation to the God who has proved Himself to be true to His promises; for all the former evils that followed from the sin have entirely passed away.

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, my servants shall {r} eat, but ye shall be hungry: behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty: behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed:

(r) By these words, eat and drink, he means the blessed life of the faithful, who have always had consolation and full contentment of all things in their God, though sometimes they lack these corporal things.

13. eat-enjoy all blessings from me (So 5:1).

hungry-(Am 4:6; 8:11). This may refer to the siege of Jerusalem under Titus, when 1,100,000 are said to have perished by famine; thus Isa 65:15 will refer to God's people without distinction of Jew and Gentile receiving "another name," namely, that of Christians [Houbigant]. A further fulfilment may still remain, just before the creation of the "new heavens and earth," as the context, Isa 65:17, implies.

65:11-16 Here the different states of the godly and wicked, of the Jews who believed, and of those who persisted in unbelief, are set against one another. They prepared a table for that troop of deities which the heathen worship, and poured out drink-offerings to that countless number. Their worshippers spared no cost to honour them, which should shame the worshippers of the true God. See the malignity of sin; it is doing by choice what we know will displease God. In every age and nation, the Lord leaves those who persist in doing evil, and despise the call of the gospel. God's servants shall have the bread of life, and shall want nothing good for them. But those who forsake the Lord, shall be ashamed of vain confidence in their own righteousness, and the hopes they built thereon. Wordly people bless themselves in the abundance of this world's goods; but God's servants bless themselves in him. He is their strength and portion. They shall honour him as the God of truth. And it was promised that in him should all the families of the earth be blessed. They shall think themselves happy in having him for their God, who made them forget their troubles.