12 Lord, you will give us peace: for all our works are the outcome of your purpose. 13 O Lord, our God, other lords than you have had rule over us; but in you only is our salvation, and no other name will we take on our lips. 14 The dead will not come back to life: their spirits will not come back to earth; for this cause you have sent destruction on them, so that the memory of them is dead. 15 You have made the nation great, O Lord, you have made it great; glory is yours: you have made wide the limits of the land. 16 Lord, in trouble our eyes have been turned to you, we sent up a prayer when your punishment was on us. 17 As a woman with child, whose time is near, is troubled, crying out in her pain; so have we been before you, O Lord. 18 We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have given birth to wind; no salvation has come to the earth through us, and no children have come into the world. 19 Your dead will come back; their dead bodies will come to life again. Those in the dust, awaking from their sleep, will send out a song; for your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the shades.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Isaiah 26:12-19
Commentary on Isaiah 26:12-19
(Read Isaiah 26:12-19)
Every creature, every business, any way serviceable to our comfort, God makes to be so; he makes that work for us which seemed to make against us. They had been slaves of sin and Satan; but by the Divine grace they were taught to look to be set free from all former masters. The cause opposed to God and his kingdom will sink at last. See our need of afflictions. Before, prayer came drop by drop; now they pour it out, it comes now like water from a fountain. Afflictions bring us to secret prayer. Consider Christ as the Speaker addressing his church. His resurrection from the dead was an earnest of all the deliverance foretold. The power of his grace, like the dew or rain, which causes the herbs that seem dead to revive, would raise his church from the lowest state. But we may refer to the resurrection of the dead, especially of those united to Christ.