Q. “W.” “The second time” (Isa. 11:1111And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. (Isaiah 11:11)). If the future restoration of Israel is the “second time,” what is the first? There is nothing about the return! from the Babylonish captivity in Isaiah.
A. It might have been said that the return of the Jews from the captivity in Babylon, as well perhaps as that of some of Israel from Assyria, etc., was the deliverance as forecasted by the prophet, had not the words “the second time” been used. Isaiah wrote and prophesied until the end of Hezekiah’s reign, some time before the Babylonish captivity. The prophetic Spirit thus makes the return from it only a little rehearsal of the great future one, but names this latter as the “second” great intervention of the Lord, when He would not only recover a remnant from Assyria and Babylon (Shinar), but from Pathros, Cush, Elam, etc., as well. He may refer, too, to the first great deliverance out of Egypt, as typical of the final one; still it was rather a whole “nation,” than the “remnant of his people, which shall be left.” The first and “second” seems to refer to the return from Babylon, &c., then to come, and the final return when the day of glory arrives.