Isaiah 11:3

And His regal conduct is regulated by this His thoroughly spiritual nature."And fear of Jehovah is fragrance to Him; and He judges not according to outward sight, neither does He pass sentence according to outward hearing." We must not render it: His smelling is the smelling of the fear of God, i.e., the penetration of it with a keen judicial insight (as Hengstenberg and Umbreit understand it); for hērı̄ach with the preposition Beth has not merely the signification to smell (as when followed by an accusative, Job 39:25), but to smell with satisfaction (like בּ ראה, to see with satisfaction), Exo 30:38; Lev 26:31; Amo 5:21. The fear of God is that which He smells with satisfaction; it is rēach nı̄choach to Him. Meier's objection, that fear of God is not a thing that can be smelt, and therefore that hērı̄ach must signify to breathe, is a trivial one. Just as the outward man has five senses for the material world, the inner man has also a sensorium for the spiritual world, which discerns different things in different ways. Thus the second David scents the fear of God, and only the fear of God, as a pleasant fragrance; for the fear of God is a sacrifice of adoration continually ascending to God. His favour or displeasure does not depend upon brilliant or repulsive external qualities; He does not judge according to outward appearances, but according to the relation of the heart to His God.

It is a very good transition in prophecy (whether it be so in rhetoric or no), and a very common one, to pass from the prediction of the temporal deliverances of the church to that of the great salvation, which in the fulness of time should be wrought out by Jesus Christ, of which the other were types and figures, to which all the prophets bore witness; and so the ancient Jews understood them. For what else was it that raised so great an expectation of the Messiah at the time he came. Upon occasion of the prophecy of the deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib, here comes in a prophecy concerning Messiah the Prince. I. His rise out of the house of David (Isa 11:1). II. His qualifications for his great undertaking (Isa 11:2, Isa 11:3). III. The justice and equity of his government (Isa 11:3-5). IV. The peaceableness of his kingdom (Isa 11:6-9). V. The accession of the Gentiles to it (Isa 11:10), and with them the remnant of the Jews, that should be united with them in the Messiah's kingdom (Isa 11:11-16) and of all this God would now shortly give them a type, and some dark representation, in the excellent government of Hezekiah, the great peace which the nation should enjoy under him, after the ruin of Sennacherib's design, and the return of many of the ten tribes out of their dispersion to their brethren of the land of Judah, when they enjoyed that great tranquility.

11:3 obeying the Lord: Literally the fear of the Lord, as in 11:2 (see Prov 1:7).