Isaiah 60 Footnotes

60:16 In a metaphor for receiving sustenance and support from a nurturing authority, Isaiah spoke of God’s people nursing on “the milk of nations” and “the breast of kings.” The help the people will receive was compared to the care of a nursing mother, even if the kings and their regimes were not feminine. Whereas kings and foreign nations formerly destroyed God’s people, one day they will look out for their needs. It is possible to see some historical fulfillment in the provisions Cyrus, and other Medo-Persian rulers, made for the community of returned Jews.

60:19-20 Taking this expression literally, Isaiah would be picturing a major disruption of the solar system in which life on the planet would not survive. The sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies often have a symbolic function in Scripture. Isaiah was comparing God’s light and the light of these bodies; their radiance, in the physical sense, cannot compare with the holy radiance of the presence of the Lord. The same thought recurs in the Bible’s final pages, where the Jerusalem from heaven is illuminated not by the sun and moon but by the “glory of God” (Rv 21:23). Isaiah was looking ahead to that time.