Isaiah 26:14 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

They are dead... — We get a more vivid rendering by omitting the words in italics, Dead, they live not; shadows (Rephaim, as in Psalms 88:10), they rise not. Those of whom the prophet speaks are the rulers of the great world-empires, who, as in Isaiah 14:9; Ezekiel 32:21, have passed into the gloomy world of Hades, out of which there was, for them at least, no escape. Their very names should perish from the memories of men. The LXX., adopting another etymology of the word Rephaim, gives the singular rendering, “Physicians shall not raise them up to life.”