Isaiah 51:1

ye that follow after(lit. "pursue") righteousness "Righteousness" here means, not "salvation" (as in Isaiah 51:5; Isaiah 51:8), but righteousness in conduct, a way of life in accordance with the will of God (as Isaiah 51:7); cf. Proverbs 15:9; Romans 9:30 f.

look unto the rock &c. The ancestors of the nation are compared to a quarry, the Israelites to the stones hewn from it, a peculiar image found nowhere else. The word for holedoes not occur again in the O.T.; but a noun from the same root is found in the first line of the Siloam Inscription with the sense of "perforation" or "excavation."