What is the context?
The song is to be sung in Judah. Its strong city has salvation for walls, and its gates open to a righteous, faithful people. The Lord keeps those who trust Him in peace, while the lofty city falls beneath the feet of the oppressed.
In verse 3, the Hebrew word שָׁלוֹם, shalom, pronounced shah-LOHM, is repeated twice. Brown–Driver–Briggs explains the word in terms of soundness, well-being and peace. The repetition gives weight to the peace the BSB describes as perfect, grounded here in trust in the Lord.
The song then speaks of waiting for God and longing for Him through the night. His judgments teach righteousness, yet the wicked can resist both His favor and His raised hand. His people acknowledge that He has established their peace and enabled what they have accomplished.
Former rulers have lost their power, while the Lord has enlarged His people. Looking back on distress, the singers compare their efforts to painful labor that produces only wind: they have not brought salvation or life to the world.
The answer is the promise that God’s dead will live and their bodies rise. The chapter closes by calling His people into shelter while His judgment passes. The bloodshed the earth has concealed will be brought to light. Trust and hope are held together with a sober expectation of accountability.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Henry and Wesley read the strong city in relation to God’s protection of His people and apply its peace to life under His care. Gill distinguishes the firm foundation of that peace from how fully a believer may feel it at a particular time.
The promise in verse 19 receives two main kinds of explanation. The NABRE notes read it as the restoration of a people whose numbers and national life had been devastated. Henry includes the raising of the church from a low condition, but also applies the words to bodily resurrection. Gill likewise includes bodily resurrection among the promised hopes.
Wesley understands the former rulers in verse 14 as unable to rise again to trouble God’s people. That keeps the line about their not rising within the song’s contrast between broken oppression and renewed life for the people who trust the Lord.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
The hope of life beyond the grave is developed around the Son in John 5:24–29. Jesus says that those who hear His word and believe the One who sent Him have crossed from death to life. He also speaks of the coming hour when those in their graves hear His voice and rise.
This is a connection through resurrection and God-given life, rather than a claim that Jesus directly quotes Isaiah 26. The song’s confession that human effort cannot produce salvation stands beside the New Testament’s announcement that life and judgment are entrusted to the Son.
The larger hope therefore rests on God doing what His people cannot accomplish for themselves. The Lord who keeps them in peace is also able to bring life where their own labor has reached its limit.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.