Woe to Ariel, &c.— It is evident from Isaiah 29:8 and all interpreters have agreed, that this prophesy is directed against Jerusalem; and it has been commonly thought that אריאל Ariel, which signifies the lion of God, and was the name of the altar of burnt-offerings, is here put for the city of Jerusalem, where this celebrated altar was erected;—which has appeared the more probable from the apparent allusion in the latter part of this verse to the rites performed at that altar. But Vitringa is of opinion, that Ariel, or the city of Ariel, means the city of David, as the next clause explains it; for he thinks that Ariel was a mystical name for David, and one which was usual for the most celebrated warlike heroes among the Hebrews. Our prophet has used it in this sense in chap. Isaiah 33:7. See also 2 Samuel 23:20. And Bochart informs us, that even yet, among the Arabs and Persians, their most celebrated warriors are called, "The lions of God." There is great emphasis in the passage thus understood. The author of the Observations, however, cannot agree in this interpretation of Vitringa's; he asks, "How will this account for the altar's being called Ariel: Ezekiel 43:15.? Is it not proper rather to think of some circumstance which agreed with both, and might be the occasion of calling each of them Ariel?" Such, according to the eastern taste, was the confirming great quantities of provision, and especially of flesh. The modern Persians will have it, says D'Herbelot, in his account of Schiraz, a city of that country, that this name was given to it, because this city consumes and devours like a lion (which is called Schir in Persian) all that is brought to it; by which they express the multitude, and, it may be, the good appetite of its inhabitants. The prophet then denounces Woe; perhaps to Zion, as too ready to trust to the number of its inhabitants and sojourners, which may be insinuated by the same term, Ariel: and conformably to this interpretation, the threatening in the last clause of the second verse may be understood of Jerusalem consuming its inhabitants. We read of a land eating up its inhabitants. Numbers 13:32. So that Jerusalem, which had been called
Ariel on account of the great quantities of flesh consumed there, above all the other cities of Judah, might be threatened by the prophet to be called Ariel, as consuming its inhabitants themselves: a very different sense from the preceding, and an extremely severe one. Observations, p. 114. Bishop Lowth renders the latter part of the first verse, Add year to year; let the feasts go round in their course. The general meaning of the whole passage is, that though the hypocritical inhabitants might think to please God by external worship, by their annual festivals and repeated sacrifices, yet these, without faith and right dispositions, would avail them nothing: God, notwithstanding them, would distress, or rather inclose and besiege them, (see Jeremiah 19:9.) and reduce them to great sorrow and misery. The last clause, And it shall be unto me as Ariel, is differently understood. We have just seen one interpretation of it by the author of the Observations: Vitringa thinks that the sense of the prophet is, that God would make Jerusalem the fiery centre of his indignation; for Ariel is here taken, says he, in its true signification, not for the altar, but for the centre of the altar; and herein consists the force of the sentence. The centre of the altar sustained the symbol of the most holy and pure will of God, by which all the victims offered to God were to be approved, to which pertains the justice of God, burning like fire, and consuming the sinner, if no propitiation intervenes, but Jerusalem should become the theatre of the divine judgments; it should consume, like the fire upon the altar, as well the wicked and refractory sinners who should miserably perish in it, as the enemy who should besiege it: for a fire should burst forth from the face of the Lord, and consume the enemy, as it happened to the Assyrians. To shew the propriety of this interpretation, compare chap. Isaiah 31:8-9 which refers to the present passage.