Isaiah 26:16 (LSB)

Passage

O Yahweh, they visited You in distress; They could only whisper a prayer; Your chastening was upon them.

Nearby Context

Isaiah 26:14 The dead will not live; the departed spirits will not rise; Therefore You have visited and destroyed them, And You have made all remembrance of them perish.

Isaiah 26:15 You have increased the nation, O Yahweh; You have increased the nation, You are glorified; You have extended all the borders of the land.

Isaiah 26:16 O Yahweh, they visited You in distress; They could only whisper a prayer; Your chastening was upon them.

Isaiah 26:17 As the woman with child draws near to the time to give birth, She writhes and cries out in her pangs of labor, Thus were we before You, O Yahweh.

Isaiah 26:18 We were with child, we writhed in labor; We gave birth, as it seems, only to wind. We could not accomplish salvation for the earth, And the inhabitants of the world were not born.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "yahweh", "visited", "distress", "only", "whisper", "prayer", "chastening", and "upon". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "yahweh" and "visited", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 15's "You have increased the nation O Yahweh..." into verse 17's "As the woman with child draws near...", so "yahweh" and "visited" belong inside that flow. In Isaiah context, the local focus is the Holy One of Israel, judgment and restoration, the servant of the LORD, and Zion's hope.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "yahweh" and "visited" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.