OUR FATHER WHO EMPOWERS HIS REMNANT PEOPLE

The book of Isaiah chapter 10 verse 27 says this;

In that day their burden will be lifted from your shoulders, their yoke from your neck; the yoke will be broken because you have grown so fat.

This verse speaks of the causal agent of the end of the bondage of slavery of the Assyrians over the people of God.

In the interpretation of the NIV and many other versions, the yoke of oppression is removed because of  the increase of fat. This is then read to mean the prosperity and well-being of the people of God expands beyond the capability of the Assyrian oppressor to contain or control them.

Alternately, versions such as the NKJV, render the text this way;

It shall come to pass in that day That his burden will be taken away from your shoulder, And his yoke from your neck, And the yoke will be destroyed because of the anointing oil.

In this case, instead of 'fat', the translators interpreted the Hebrew to say, 'annointing oil'.

Instead of a mechanical metaphor representing the cessation of bondage because of a misfitting of the yoke as the size of those yoked grew, the causal agent of the end of bondage is represented as an 'annointing oil' which can be understood to be a spiritual amplifier of strength in the natural realm.

Thus, the text can be read to mean that the oppression of God's people is brought to an end because they are annointed with oil and are able, even as a remnant, to break away from under the Assyians by the strength they are imbued with.

Because the narrative has a unambiguous backdrop of the people of God being a small remnant at the time of the events being described, I believe it is more accurate to see the causal agent of the removal of the yoke of bondage over God's people as a function of a spiritual empowering via announting oil rather than an enlargement of their numbers or prosperity represented as fat.

Amen.

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