11:1  A shoot will spring up from the stock of Jesse and a branch from its graft bear fruit.

So not everything falls; there is some provision made for the deliverance of a remnant.  They are represented by this allegory.  The shoot and the stock and the branch are all metaphors describing individuals, as well as the nation as a whole.  Now the king of a nation, or the leader of a people, or the father of a nation – they often personify in their person what the nation goes through as a whole.  What he does, they do; or what he experiences in his lifetime, the nation itself experiences.  We see that, for example, in chapter 36 where the Assyrians lay siege to Zion, or to Jerusalem, after they have conquered the entire world, and they try to destroy the Lord’s people there.  Of course they don’t succeed, because the people there are righteous.  The king is righteous, the people are loyal to the king, and the king is loyal to God.  This is the exact opposite of what we have in the Ahaz scenario.  People are disloyal to the king, and the king is disloyal to the Lord.   And so there we have, again, what the individual experiences, the people experience.  When the Assyrians threaten their lives as a nation or as a people in Jerusalem or in Zion, the king experiences a mortal illness, or his life is threatened individually.  The king survives that illness or that near death experience, and the people survive, as the Lord destroys the Assyrian army of 185,000 men in one night.  That’s basically the scenario.  The Assyrians conquer the world and they capture people, and when they try to destroy the righteous of the Lord’s people then they themselves are destroyed.  Whatever they did to others is then done to them.  So here we have a phenomenon that describes, in 11:1, both the people as a whole, and also individuals in leadership position.  A shoot will spring up from the stock of Jesse … a branch from its graft bear fruit.  The stock of Jesse implies the lineage of King David.  King David was the son of Jesse, and out of him will spring a shoot and the branch from its graft will bear fruit.  That implies that the ultimate goal of this scenario is to bear fruit, the tree may bear fruit, good fruit.  Because in chapter 5 we saw that the Lord’s people, as a whole, don’t bear fruit; and the Assyrians are allowed to come into the vineyard and destroy it.  So the object of this thing is that the Lord’s people will again bear fruit, keep covenant with the Lord, and be blessed of him with covenant blessings.  In order for the tree again to bear fruit, a shoot is taken advantage of.  Now the Hebrew word for shoot is choter, which means, the technical term, is a water sprout, or suckers.  They come from the trunk of the tree, and they grow straight up; and they suck out all the moisture of the tree, and the energy of the tree.  So in the springtime you tear those off.  Those shoots don’t bear fruit themselves, they just grow up like a rod, straight up, and just come to nothing.  But if that’s all you’ve got left, if the rest of the tree is corrupt, and you’ve got a shoot coming up, you can save it, especially with an olive tree, a tree that can renew itself.  You can use a shoot like that to graft into it when it’s big enough.  If a shoot like that comes up it’s a wild shoot, it doesn’t itself bear fruit, so it implies gentile lineages;  and you can keep such a choter, or such a shoot or water sprout, alive.  When it gets big enough you can cut it off at its base and graft into it a natural branch, a domesticated variety, and that will bear fruit again.  That can become a new tree, thus the tree can renew itself totally.  So it implies a wild lineage, perhaps Gentile, makeup of the tree for a time until a natural branch is grafted back in, and then it will become its own tree again.  So you get the idea that there will be a time of judgment, when the trees will be cut down, at the end of chapter 10.  And that idea carries right on over into 11:1, because that tree is not surviving.  The only part of that tree that survives is a graft that’s grafted into the shoot.  That graft becomes a new branch, and that branch becomes a new tree.  So we have something like this.  We have a tree and that tree is not bearing fruit.  So along with all the other trees at the end of chapter 10, or in that context of cutting down the trees - that’s the way Isaiah’s placed this – that tree, because it does not bear fruit, is cut off.  However, there is a water sprout growing from the trunk, like a rod that grows straight up, that normally you wouldn’t even bother with.  Normally you’d just cut it off and take it out, but since it’s the only thing that’s really alive, or not corrupted, you keep it going until it’s big enough, and then you cut it off.  You implant into it a natural branch, a sprig, or a graft.  And, if you know anything about horticulture, that can grow into a new branch.  And if it’s an olive tree that we’re talking about, which represents the House of Israel, then that can grow into a branch that bears fruit and is eventually a new tree itself.  Who survives?  Why those who were grafted in; they survive.  They, in fact, become the new tree.  Now, what kind of category of people is it that bears the graft?  So you have a shoot and you graft into it.  What category of people is it that remains with the tree?  They are the kings and queens of the gentiles, the foster fathers and foster mothers.  They are the ones who sustain the natural branches of the House of Israel, who minister to them.  It’s a two-edged sword, too, isn’t it.  It shows the positive aspect of those who actually fulfill that sustaining calling to bring other members of the House of Israel back, like Joseph performed the saving mission to his brothers in Egypt.  And then those who don’t are cut off from the tree.  As far as percentage of the size of the shoot, the main body is cut off.  We began the Book of Isaiah with which category of people that were apostatizing in the latter days?  Us.  Here in one verse it describes the whole process, and in the rest of the chapter, beginning verse 10, it describes the process in more length, in more detail.  A branch doesn’t become a branch overnight, first it is a sprig.  Then it grows a little bigger, and bigger.  Then it is able to sustain fruit, right?  How did it become a branch?  Which branch is it?  It’s a little sprig that was grafted in that became the branch that became the tree that bore fruit.  It kind of gives you a summary of it here in verse 1.  So the stock of Jesse represents the people of God led by the house of David, and the shoot represents an interim situation where wild elements are helping to sustain the tree but they don’t of themselves bear fruit.  The branch represents the graft that is grafted in at some point of those returnees, or those who repent and return from out there, of the House of Israel who, when they are brought back into a covenant relationship with the Lord, again bear fruit.  The Lord confirms his covenant upon them, and his covenant blessings.  Fruit is a covenant blessing.  No fruit is a covenant curse.  So here we have three groups of people represented:  the original covenant people, the origins, represented by the stock of Jesse; then a shoot, such as the gentiles that for awhile flourish in the tree but in a branch, in this case a natural branch, grafted back into the original tree which, in a millennial context, bears fruit.  But individuals represent the group entity as we see in others parts of the scriptures, such as in Ezekiel 17 where a young sprig is taken from the top of a cedar, representing the house of David at the time of the exile, which Davidic dynasty is transplanted to other parts of the world.  They are to rule over Israelites in that part of the world in accordance with the Lord’s promise to King David that Davidic rule would continue throughout all generations.  In that exilic context the house of David does not rule in a vacuum, they rule over a people transplanted to others parts of the world.  Another example is Hosea’s prophecy that says, “I have called my son out of Egypt…” which talks about the people of the Lord coming out of Egypt at the time of Moses.  But Matthew applies it to Jesus Christ, where Jesus as a young child is brought back out of the land of Egypt, back to the land of Palestine.  That’s because the king of a nation, or the father of a people, can represent the people in his person, and so it is here in 11:1.  A king, or a leader, can represent the group.  So this shoot and the stock and the branch can also refer to individuals who do the leading at that time.  11:10  talks about a sprig of Jesse, who stands for an ensign to the peoples; in other words, a descendant of David who in his early grafting phase gathers the people of Israel, as we’ll see in just a moment.  And that sprig, once it’s grafted in, represents the branch.  So the branch represents both the person and also the group.  Now we go into more detail.  It’s like the caption of the chapter when you read it in the context of the end of chapter 10, where the trees are cut down.  So all elements that don’t bear fruit will be cut down, and only those that bear fruit will eventually survive.

11:2  The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him—the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of valor, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

Well, all of those terms have word links to other parts of Isaiah beginning with the Spirit of the Lord resting upon him.  In the Book of Isaiah the Spirit of the Lord rests upon the Lord’s servant. He is endowed by the Lord’s spirit in 42:1.  It says: My servant whom I sustain, my chosen one in whom I delight, him I have endowed with my Spirit; he will dispense justice to the nations.  In 61:1, that’s cross-referenced there, it says:  The Spirit of my Lord Jehovah is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the lowly; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the eyes to the bound…Those passages in Isaiah are interconnected with these word links and ideas, such as spirit endowment, the attributes of valor, counsel.  We saw those in 9:6.  Without connecting them up with the other passages you really wouldn’t understand what this one is talking about, or who this is referring to.  It says:  The spirit of the Lord will rest upon him…  Which one are we talking about?  Are we talking about the stock of Jesse? The shoot? Or the branch?  Or all three?  Which one is it?  Well, all three.  They are all Messianic personalities.  The Spirit rests upon all of them; the Lord most of all, Himself, because he’s our exemplar, but those categories below him also.  The Spirit of the Lord rests upon them, therefore, with wisdom and understanding, counsel and valor, knowledge and fear of the Lord.  These are divine attributes that we acquire as we ascend up the spiritual ladder.  We grow into these attributes and we acquire them in relation of the Lord above us.  But it applies, particularly, to the last one mentioned.  Right?  The branch from its graft will bear fruit.  In a particular sense, the last person that you mention is the one that you are talking about still.  Right?  So that would apply to the branch which is the Lord’s servant.  In the Book of Jeremiah the Lord’s servant is also called a branch, …my servant the branch of the house of David.  In fact the king of Assyria in the Book of Isaiah is also called by that word branch in one place.  So, there’s two branches, the righteous branch and the unrighteous branch.  It’s like you have two hands, two ensigns, two staffs, two rods. 

11:3  His intuition will be guided  by the fear of the Lord; he will not judge by what his eyes see, nor establish proof by what his ears hear.

So, that’s another sense.  It’s actually his smell, or his sense of intuiting things that is guided not by apparent physical proof.  Empirical evidence doesn’t mean much to the Lord because the Lord knows what’s true in spite of seeming evidence people provide.  Also, we saw earlier where it says, …sanctify the Lord of Hosts, and make him your fear, and him your awe.  So he’s an exemplar of doing that.

11:4  He will judge the poor with righteousness, and with equity arbitrate for the lowly in the land; he will smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips slay the wicked.

Now in the Book of Isaiah there are two who judge, both the Lord and his servant.  Take the word judge all the way through the Book of Isaiah and you’ll see that the Lord is judge and he judges, and his servant also judges.  There are others who judge, like judges who are raised up.  We would say the 144,000 servants of God will all be judges under the twelve apostles of Christ who were appointed to be judges in the house of Israel by the Lord.  So there are many judges.  It depends on which level you judge.  In the Sinai wilderness Moses judged all the difficult cases of the people, and he appointed lesser judges under him who were appointed the easier cases.  So there’s a hierarchy with theocracy in which, depending on your position of authority, you were a judge.  You may have to acquiesce to a judge higher than you in difficult cases.  But, basically, there are two who judge.  Apart from the lesser judges, there are two who judge in the Book of Isaiah, and that is the Lord and his servant.  Of course the Lord is the higher judge than the servant.  He will judge the poor with righteousness… If we are talking about the servant judging in this case, then we are saying that the servant will judge the people righteously.  He will not judge them wickedly, or in a corrupt fashion, as the judges have hitherto in the corrupt government that’s being destroyed.  Here we will have a righteous judge finally.  If you’re thinking that the Lord is the judge, we take the Lord as the judge, and he refers to the Lord, then he judges the poor with righteousness.  He judges them through his servant, who personifies righteousness.  So you can read it on two different levels like that.  …he will smite the earth with the rod of his mouth… the same way.  If you’re talking about the Lord, he will smite the earth using the rod of his mouth.  Well, there are two rods and there are two mouths.  …and with the breath of his lips slay the wicked.  It could be the king of Assyria, right?  The king of Assyria is smiting the wicked, and the Lord is using him as his instrument, and the king of Assyria is both the rod and the mouth.  Or if it’s the servant who’s smiting the earth then he’ll have power through his word.  He’ll have power over the elements, or over people, to slay them just by his word.  To speak the word and the wicked perish.  The same with the breath of his lips slay the wicked.   Depending which way you read that, so it’s a very versatile verse, depending on which level you want to read it.  That’s the beauty of Isaiah.  There are so many meanings you can read into it because of all the ideas he establishes in various ways, using word links, using metaphors.  There’s different scenarios going on in the same verse.

11:5  Righteousness will be as a band about his waist, faithfulness a girdle round his loins.

If we’re talking about the servant, then righteousness and faithfulness are his two main attributes, or two prominent attributes, that he has acquired.  If we are talking about the Lord, himself, then righteousness and faithfulness refer to the Lord’s servant, who he uses as a way of ministering to his people.

11:6  Then shall the wolf dwell among lambs and the leopard lie down with young goats; calves and young lions will feed together, and a youngster will lead them to pasture.

So here we have the millennial context.  In fact verse 1 of chapter 11 is really kind of the little verse between these two extremes of destruction at the end of chapter 10 at the hands of the king of Assyria, the battering down, terrifying power, Lebanon falling spectacularly, the whole scenario of the wicked.  On the other hand we have a beautiful scenario of the righteous inheriting the millennium.  11: 1 is kind of the transitional verse between the two extremes.  You can either be cut off with the wicked who don’t bear fruit; or if you do bear fruit, then you’re part of the tree that remains, or becomes the tree, the remnant, that survives that becomes the new people of Israel.  Then you will inherit the Millennium.  The wolf – notice the animals, the clean and the unclean, living together.  The wolf is an unclean animal, it is not a kosher.  It does not divide the hoof, or chew the cud.  Lambs do, young goats do, calves do.  Leopards don’t, and young lions don’t.  So we have the unclean – the wolf and the lamb; the leopard and young goats; calves and young lions.  In each sentence they have the clean and the unclean together, in harmony.  Since animals represent peoples, since they are metaphors to describe people, we have here house of Israel people, covenant lineages, represented by the clean animals; and the wild animals, or the unclean, representing the gentiles, or the heathen, living in harmony in that millennial time.  In fact, Isaiah talks about proselytes; proselytes joining the people of God, becoming part of the people of God.  In the millennial context it implies that all people of the world will become God’s people, because they will all be righteous.  The wicked will be eliminated from the earth.  …a youngster will lead them to pasture.  That’s a very pregnant line because the youngster is the child, ... to us a child is born, a son appointed.  That’s the child that records the few trees that are left of Assyria.  Those are references to the Lord’s servant.  And who leads the people of God in the exodus back to Zion and to the Millennium?  The Lord’s servant does.  When it says a youngster will lead them to pasture, it means that he’s the one that’s bringing these people safely through this ordeal into the Millennium.  But he’s not just alone.  Beginning chapter 54 it starts talking about other servants that do this, too.  They are the equivalent in Isaiah of the 144,000 servants in the Book of Revelation.  They all do that.

11:7  When a cow and bear browse, their young will rest together; the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The lion will become domesticated, it will become a clean animal.  It will refer literally to animals, and also to people.  It will refer to the conversion of the gentiles, of those who remain.  This is a time of peace.  The Millennium is always a rural context, and there will be the rest of peace, implying that there’s strife now before that time or warfare or lack of rest.

11:8  A suckling infant will play near the adder’s den, and the toddler reach his hand over the viper’s nest.

Here, in fact, you have the unclean animal – the adder – the most unclean of all, the reptile juxtaposed or linked up with the suckling infant which is a human, not just a clean animal.  And the toddler with the viper.  So, it’s kind of heightening those two ideas, of the clean and the unclean, even more; saying that there will be harmony between the two.

11:9  There shall be no harm or injury done throughout my holy mountain, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the oceans are overspread with waters.

There shall be no harm or injury done, as there has hitherto been, by the Assyrians in particular, brought about by the wickedness of the Lord’s people.  …throughout my holy mountain…Literally mountain, perhaps, but certainly a nation – throughout his holy nation.  Also implying that the nation will be holy, and the mountain          being holy could be an actual physical place in the mountains.  That’s a sanctuary, a holy mountain, a sanctified place, depending on which level you read that.  Of course in Isaiah it is the elect who are saved who Isaiah calls holy.  In chapter 4 we saw those who are spared and delivered and survive are called holy.  …for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord…  Knowledge is a covenant term, it implies covenantal knowledge, not just information, knowledge about the universe or makeup of things, but the knowledge of the Lord’s covenants.  An understanding of how the Lord works and how we work in relation to the Lord, and how we obtain blessings from him through the things that we do as we ascend the spiritual ladder.  We gain such knowledge, knowledge of the things of God, human relationships, divine relationships, of our ministering or saving missions to others.  …as the oceans are overspread with waters.  Well, waters have hitherto been threatening.  The king of Assyria was a flood that inundated the whole earth.  It was destructive.  It implies that now at the time of peace those destructive powers, or those powers of chaos, are now subdued.  The king of Assyria is no longer a force to be reckoned with.

11:10  In that day the sprig of Jesse, who stands for an ensign to the peoples, shall be sought by the nations, and his residence shall be glorious.

So in that context of that millennium, in the ushering in of that millennium that we just talked about, this scenario is introduced, which is the gathering of the Lord’s people from exile.  Just as we began this scenario, this millennial scenario, with allusion to the Lord’s servant, or direct mention of the Lord’s servant in the first 3 verses of the chapter, it now goes back to him.  So, the millennial context is placed right between two servant passages, or two passages that talk about this individual, the sprig of Jesse.  The sprig of Jesse, or the root of Jesse, or the graft of Jesse, implies the early grafting phase in that allegory in verse 1 before the sprig becomes a branch and bears fruit.        (can’t understand)  What does he have to do?  He has to prove himself, too, this sprig of Jesse does, the one who becomes the branch.  He has to prove himself, he has to fulfill his mission.  What is it?  When will the tree bear fruit?  When will Israel again assume its true glory, the millennial glory?  Well, first of all they have to come out of exile.  They have to qualify spiritually to do that; they have to repent.  Then they will physically return.  They will come to Zion in an exodus, as these next few verses tell us.  They will become one people again from their dispersed state among many different nations from the four directions of the earth, it says in verse 12, they will come to Zion, to one place, and they will become one people, and then they will bear fruit.  It’s all through the agency of this servant, or this person, this son of Jesse.  …the sprig of Jesse…stands for an ensign to the peoples…  So he is an ensign to the people.  In the Book of Isaiah there are two ensigns.  Isaiah 13:1, there is another ensign.  Raise the ensign on a barren mountain; sound the voice among them!  That is the wicked ensign.  That is the king of Assyria, who rallies an alliance of wicked nations to help him in destroying and conquering the world.  Here in 11:10, it’s a peaceful ensign.  It’s a person who rallies the righteous to repent, or he rallies people of God to repent so they may become righteous, and return from exile.  In that day the sprig of Jesse, who stands for an ensign to the peoples, shall be sought by the nations…  By the nations of the gentiles, but among those nations are the remnants of Israel; or those nations are the nations of Israel in exile.  Those nations, or at least representatives of those nations, will seek him.  He will be sought by them.  They’ll seek him out, they will want to be associated with him because he is a servant of God. God has sent him to prepare the way for his coming, and so they will want to be part of that.  …and his residence… or his place of rest …shall be glorious – because that’s in Zion where the Lord dwells.  Isaiah 12:6 talks about the Lord in Zion.

11:11  In that day my Lord will again raise his hand to reclaim the remnant of his people—those who shall be left out of Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the islands of the sea.

a remnant of his people…  That is his covenant people, as distinct from these people, the ones who are destroyed.  He will again raise his hand…, or he will raise his hand again the second time.  There seems to be a scribal error there, and verse 12 talks about him raising the ensign. 

11:12  He will raise the ensign to the nations and assemble the exiled of Israel; he will gather the scattered of Judah from the four directions of the earth.

Notice the paralleling of verses 11 and 12.  He will raise his hand at the beginning of verse 11, and the remnant of his people out of all those nations will be reclaimed.  He will raise his ensign to the nations, in verse 12, and assemble Judah and Israel from the four directions of the earth.  That’s basically the same scenario, stated in two different ways.  The raising of the hand in verse 11 is paralleled with the raising of the ensign in verse 12.  And, of course, we see the paralleling of hand and ensign in other places, as well. Look across in Isaiah 13:2:  Do you see the paralleling there?  The raising of the ensign on a barren mountain / the beckoning of the hand.  Isaiah 49:22 which is cross referenced to 11:12 says, I will lift up my hand to the nations, raise my ensign to the peoples…  So the paralleling there of hand and ensign occurs, which means that the one who is the ensign is also the hand.  They are paralleled in a synonymous parallelism.  That’s how Isaiah establishes that this person, this sprig of Jesse, is both an ensign and also the hand of the Lord, he is the Lord’s hand.  The Lord raises him up to gather his people in the last days.  That gathering, as we saw in chapter 2, occurs in the last days.  In the latter days the mountain of the Lord’s house shall become established in the tops of the mountains, and so forth, and all nations will flow to it.  And the law and the word go forth from Zion and from Jerusalem.  So this is the servant’s mission.  As the king of Assyria’s job is to rally an alliance of nations to attack the Lord’s people, so the Lord’s servant’s job is to rally the Lord’s people to repent and to return from exile – of Judah and of Israel both, which implies a uniting of the two kingdoms again.  Anciently King David established the type for that.  After King David had ruled over Judah for seven years the ten tribes of the north came to him and said, rule over us also because we see that people prosper when you rule over them.  Thus King David united Israel and Judah, and so that has a repeat scenario here.  When they gather again out of exile, they will become one people again.  They will gather from the four directions of the earth, from all of those nations; Assyria in the north, Egypt in the south, wherever.  All of those are just a sampling of nations, and the isles of the sea.

11:13  Ephraim’s jealousy shall pass away and the hostile ones of Judah be cut off; Ephraim will not envy Judah, nor Judah resent Ephraim.

So the enmity between the two will be taken away, and I must say that it could be Judah’s jealousy and Ephraim’s hostility.  The way Isaiah puts it doesn’t just limit one solely to one, and one to the other.  Anybody who’s jealous or anybody’s who’s hostile could be cut off, and if they don’t put away their jealousies and their envies they won’t be around.  Ephraim will not envy Judah, nor Judah resent Ephraim.  Why did the two envy and resent each other?  Because there was competition there for the leadership of the people.  Judah led the people, and so did Ephraim lead the northern kingdom.  Judah is like the faithful son when the prodigal son came back and tried to reclaim his identity.  Those are actual parables of the kingdom of Judah and Ephraim that Jesus taught, and so that enmity at that time will be taken away.  We see a beautiful example of that in the parable of Ezekiel in Ezekiel 37 with the parable of the two sticks, or the two trees - in Hebrew it says trees, not sticks – and they will become one tree again, two main branches.  It’s like every olive tree has two grafts that become one tree.  You go to the near east and see how olive trees grow there with two main trunks.  They came from two grafts that fused together into one at the bottom.  And then the parable of Ezekiel helps you understand that because it says when the people ask you what this means about the two trees, it says they shall become one nation in the land of their fathers and they shall no more be two nations.  It says it right there.  Ephraim will not envy Judah, nor Judah resent Ephraim.

11:14  But they will swoop on the Philistine flank toward the west, and together plunder those to the east; they will take Edom and Moab at hand’s reach, and the Ammonites will obey them.

This is a new conquest scene.  It’s like the Israelites conquered the land of Canaan, it became the land of their inheritance.  So they do again.  They will take Edom and Moab at hand’s reach, and the Ammonites will obey them.  They will subject and conquer the surrounding peoples.  It will become their land of inheritance because it was legitimately theirs.  It’s promised to Abraham or to Joseph, or whoever it was promised to.

11:15  The Lord will dry up the tongue of the Egyptian Sea by his mighty wind; he will extend his hand over the River and smite it into seven streams to provide a way on foot.

Just like at the exodus out of Egypt, they will come over on dry land; however this time the power that is being overcome is not Egypt, but Assyria.  …he will extend his hand over the River… The river being the king of Assyria in all his glory, as we saw in chapters 7 and 8.  The king of Assyria was called the river there, he’s also the sea.  The Egyptian Sea could imply that the king of Assyria has conquered Egypt by now and has power over the land of Egypt, as he does conquer the land of Egypt.  In chapter 37, which we read earlier, it mentions his conquest of Egypt.  So Sea and River there are the two names of the power of chaos that we mentioned earlier in the Canaanite mythology, which Isaiah uses in terms to describe the king of Assyria.  He is a power of chaos.  A sea in commotion and a river in flood are very destructive.  And now the Lord gives his servant, his hand, the hand mentioned in verse 11, power over the king of Assyria.  …He will extend his hand over the River…  He gives his servant, a descendant of David, power over the king of Assyria, like David had power over Goliath.  When?  At the time when the people need to come on an exodus, he will dry up the tongue of the Egyptian Sea -  the king of Assyria is also the tongue – and smite it into seven streams to provide a way on foot.  When the Assyrians conquer the world, they have their garrisons all over the place, so they become thinly spread out after awhile.  At any rate the servant is given power over the Assyrian power so that he can bring people out.

11:16  And there shall be a pathway out of Assyria for the remnant of his people who shall be left, as there was for Israel when it came up from the land of Egypt.

So, the exodus out of Assyria is like the exodus out of Egypt.  But not only out of Assyria, because there are all these other nations mentioned in verse 12 – Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the isles of the sea.  …from the four directions of the earth in verse 11.  It will be an exodus from all over the world; particularly out of Assyria because Assyria is the world power that holds sway at that time.  It will have conquered the world, or it will be in the process of conquering the world, and these people will be taken out of Assyria in spite of that.  …for the remnant of his people who shall be left…  There’s the word left again, referring to a remnant, the ones who describe the destruction that was decreed, remember?  The universal destruction that the Lord decreed, these are the ones that survived.  Like the exodus out of Egypt.  In fact in the Book of Jeremiah it mentions twice that the people will no more say the Lord God who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but the Lord God who brought the children of Israel out of all countries wheresoever he scattered them.  Meaning that the latter day exodus, when people return from the four directions and so forth to Zion, will be greater by far than the ancient exodus out of Egypt.  So the ancient exodus will pale in significance, but all through the Millennium instead of the Passover being celebrated as we do today, the exodus out of Egypt, we will celebrate the new Passover, the new exodus.

Just as there was a song of salvation, or deliverance, in the Book of Exodus after the Israelites came out of Egypt, I think it’s Exodus 14, as Moses sang a song of salvation, so there is one here in chapter 12, a song of salvation, a song of praise.  We see lots of other songs of salvation later on in the Book of Isaiah in connection with the Lord’s deliverance, at that time, of the righteous.