Foreigners will be your servants. They will feed your flocks and plow your fields and tend your vineyards.
Parallel translations
- WEB Strangers will stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners will work your fields and your vineyards.
- KJV And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
- BSB Strangers will stand and feed your flocks, and foreigners will be your plowmen and vinedressers.
- NKJV Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, And the sons of the foreigner Shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
- NASB Strangers will stand and pasture your flocks, And foreigners will be your farmers and your vinedressers.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Foreigners will serve and support God's restored people by tending their flocks and fields. It matters because it pictures the reversal of Israel's servitude and the ingathering of the nations.
Overview
Where Israel had been subjugated, now strangers will assist them, a sign of restored honor and blessing. The verse anticipates the broader biblical theme of the nations being drawn into the orbit of God's people. Faithful readers differ over how literally to apply such promises, but all agree they point to the worldwide blessing fulfilled as Gentiles are gathered into the people of God through Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 3
- Isa 60:10–14“Foreigners will build up your walls, and their kings will serve you: for in my wrath I struck you, but in my favor I have had mercy on you.
- Isa 14:1–2For Yahweh will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land. The foreigner will join himself with them, and they will unite with the house of Jacob.
- Eph 2:12–20that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
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Christ at the center
Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).
How Isaiah 61:5 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.