Isaiah 58:12

They that shall be of thee, i.e. either,

1. A remnant of thee among the captivity, that shall be as persons raised from the dead; or,

2. Thy posterity, expressed thus, because they sprang or proceeded from them. The old waste places, Heb. wastes of eternity, i.e. which have lain long waste; for holam doth not always signify what is bounded by no time, but what respects a long time, looking either forward, as Genesis 13:15 Exodus 21:6, or backward, as here, viz. the space of seventy years, and so may truly be rendered the wastes of an age. By waste places he means the city and temple, with cities and places adjacent, turned as it were all into a waste, or wilderness, void and untilled, and which was done not only by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, but by Sennacherib also, and the other kings of Assyria. They had lain so long desolate, that the foxes inhabited them instead of men, Lamentations 5:18. And it was turned so much into a desert, that they were forced to fight with the beasts that possessed it to get their food, Lamentations 5:9. The foundations of many generations; either the foundations that were laid many generations ago, as those of Jerusalem, which was not only built, but was the head of a kingdom, in the days of Melchizedek, who was king thereof in the days of Abraham, as appears, Genesis 14:18; if that Salem were Jerusalem, as is generally agreed, and Josephus writes, lib.

1. Antiquit. cap. 10; who was born about the three hundredth year after the flood: the superstructures were now destroyed, viz. of Jerusalem, and divers other cities. Or, that shall continue for many generations yet to come. Thou shalt be called; thou shalt be honoured with this title, as we use to say the father of our country, i.e. deservedly so called, because thou art so; the like phrase Isaiah 48:8. The repairer of the breach: breach is put here collectively for breaches, which were made by God's judgment breaking in upon them in suffering the walls of their towns and cities to be demolished, and their state broken, Isaiah 5:5. The restorer of paths; such a one was Moses, Psalms 106:23. And this tends to the same sense with the former expression, because men were wont to make paths over those breaches, to go the nearest way. Or it may more particularly point at the recovering of the ancient paths, and bringing them into their wonted course, which were either those chief streets through the gates of the cities, or other lanes out of those streets, which were now forgotten and lost, partly by being covered with rubbish, and partly by those shorter paths that were trod and made over the breaches; such a restorer of paths was Nehemiah, Nehemiah 6:1. And we read of the several repairers he made use of, Ne 3. Or those paths that leads from city to city, which being now laid desolate, and uninhabited, were grown over with grass and weeds, for want of travellers, or safety of travelling, (of something a like case we read in the time of the judges, Judges 5:6,7) and so lost as in a wilderness, wherein there is no way; and by building up those cities again the several paths leading to them would be restored. To dwell in; these accommodations being all recovered, their ancient cities might be fit to be reinhabited.