Isaiah 29. The Doom of Ariel. Possibly Isaiah 29:7 f., with most of Isaiah 29:5, is an insertion to turn a prophecy of judgment into one of mercy. Isaiah 29:1-6 is then a prophecy of ruin to Jerusalem, visited meaning visited in judgment (Isaiah 24:18). Isaiah 29:16-24 also seems to be late. Woe is pronounced in Isaiah 29:15 on the promoters of the Egyptian alliance, who sought to conceal their plans from God, and we should expect the prophecy to continue with a prediction of punishment and frustration of their plans, yet in Isaiah 29:17 the prediction of the happy future begins.
Isaiah 29:1-8. Within a year Ariel, i.e. Jerusalem, will be distressed and be an altar-hearth indeed, flowing with the blood of human victims. Yahweh will lay siege to her. She will be crushed into the dust, so that her moans will sound as feeble as those made by a necromancer (Isaiah 8:19) when he imitates the voices of the dead and seems to make them arise from the ground. Very suddenly the scene changes, and all the foes of Israel are like finely-powdered dust or chaff before the wind, driven in utter rout. Yahweh will intervene in tempest and earthquake, and the enemy is all at once an unsubstantial dream, a nightmare from which Zion will soon awake. Like a dream too will be the foes-' experience; from their dream that they will soon slake their thirst for Jerusalem they will awake to the unwelcome reality.
Isaiah 29:1. Ariel: of the two margins the latter is to be preferred, but we might render altar hearth (cf. Isaiah 31:9). add... round: add a year to the current year, so in a year's time, when the feasts have run their course once more.
Isaiah 29:6. visited: i.e. in mercy.