‘THE ISLES’ – OLD TESTAMENT POINTS TO BRITAIN
UK
ISAIAH’S PROPHETIC ALLUSIONS to the restoration of Israel in connection with islands are many and striking. What had Israel or Judah of old to do with islands? In the Old Testament times they were in no way connected with them, and of this much we are certain from subsequent history – that the Jews also have had nothing to do with them either. Since Old Testament references cannot therefore apply to Jewry – the remnant of Judah – it follows as a logical conclusion they must refer to the House of Jacob-Israel.
‘Take Isaiah  41:1, ‘Keep silence before Me, O Islands; and let the people renew their strength’, etc.
What islands are these of which the prophet speaks? Are they the Aegean Islands, or Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, or the British Isles? Does the Bible throw light on this matter to assist us in determining what these islands are and where situated?
In Isaiah 11:11, we read of the regathering of Israel and Judah to occupy the ‘land promised to the fathers’, and learn that from amongst the places from which Israel is finally to return are ‘the islands of the sea’:
‘And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people, which shall be left from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the Islands of the sea.’
There must be some special significance attached to this expression ‘the islands of the sea’, for we read also in Isaiah 24: 14-16,
‘They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the Lord, they shall cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires, even the name of the Lord God of Israel in the isles of the sea. From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, even glory to the righteous.’
Why put in ‘of the sea’? The answer is that the words ‘sea’ and ‘west’ are in the original Hebrew script generally translations of the same word, so that it would be perfectly correct to say ‘isles of the west’, an important fact, since it eliminates all the islands of the Mediterranean. In short, ‘the isles’ or ‘islands of the west’ can only be the Isles of Tarshish – the British Isles as we know them today. Notice that in the last clause of the verse, it speaks of the ‘uttermost part of the earth’. These Isles of the West were in those days of the prophet in fact the uttermost part of the earth – the Ultima Thule as the Roman legions far from their native land first called them, nothing further west being known at that time. It was therefore in these islands at the end of the earth that Israel a maritime people, were to ‘glorify the Lord, even the name of the God of Israel’.
Cecil Roth in his History of the Jews in England quotes Rabbi Menahem ben Jacob of Worms as having said this country was known as ‘the Isles of the Sea’ and ‘that the classical name for England in medieval Jewish literature was ‘the end of the earth’.
Dr. Moses Margouliouth, a Jewish scholar of the 19th century, in his History of the Jews said, ‘It may not be out of place to state that “the isles afar off’ mentioned in the 31st chapter of Jeremiah were supposed by the ancients to be Britannia, Scotia, and Hibernia’, the isles often visited we know by the merchant mariners of Phoenicia whose fleets included ships and crews drawn from the tribes of Dan, Asher and Zebulun of the coastal areas of the Land of Israel.
Thus in Isaiah 49:1, we read:
‘Listen,O isles unto Me, and hearken ye people from afar: the Lord hath called me from the womb, from the bowls of my mother hath He made mention of my name … and said unto me, Thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’
Here again we have Israel described ‘a people from afar’ connected with islands which are not the Mediterranean islands, but the far-off British Isles of the Ultima Thule. It is here that God is to be glorified in Israel His Chosen People – His Inheritance, as verse 12 of the same chapter referring to the return of Israel from the Isles clearly indicates:
‘Behold, these shall come from afar: and lo, these from the north and from the west: and these from the land of Sinim.’
 In Hebrew there is no one word for north-west, it has to be expressed by the words ‘the north and the west’ so that here we have mention of a specific locality which cannot be other than the British Isles situated afar to the north-west of  Palestine.’
(‘Editor: We are particularly glad to have the above reminder from our contributor since in the Revised Standard Version-which is based on our 1611 translation-the ‘isles’ appear as ‘coastlands’.)
Â
Courtesy of – Thy Kingdom Empire. NZ
