Isaiah 42:17 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

This may be understood either,

1. Of the converted Gentiles; who shall be turned back from their former sinful course, and shall sincerely grieve, and be ashamed that they did trust, &c., as the word may be rendered; that they should ever be guilty of such wickedness and madness to worship and trust in idols. Or rather,

2. Of those Gentiles who, when their brethren embraced the true God and Christ, persisted obstinately in their idolatrous courses, who shall be confounded and destroyed; for this phrase of being turned back is generally used in Scripture in a bad sense; or of them who are overthrown, or put to flight in battle, as Psalms 9:3, Psalms 35:4 70:2,3, &c. And the like I may say of being ashamed, or confounded, or put to shame, especially where this phrase is joined with the other, as it is in the two places of the Psalms last quoted.

Isaiah 42:17

17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye are our gods.