Isaiah 51:9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?
Psalms 89:9-10 You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. 10 You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.
Isaiah’s words summon one of the most dramatic images of God’s saving power: the Z’roah — the Arm of the LORD — cutting Rahab in pieces and piercing the dragon.
Here, Rahab is not the woman of Jericho but a poetic name for Egypt (Psalm 87:4), often symbolizing arrogant nations and the dark spiritual powers behind them. In Hebrew poetry, Rahab also evokes the sea monster of chaos, a stand-in for the forces that oppose God’s order. To say the Arm “cut Rahab in pieces” is to recall how God shattered Egypt’s pride and broke the grip of the powers that enslaved His people.
The dragon, or serpent, is another layer of this imagery. Behind Pharaoh’s cruelty and Egypt’s gods was the same ancient serpent that slithered into Eden — the chaos-bringer, the deceiver, the enemy of God’s purposes. When the Arm of the LORD struck Egypt with plagues and split the Red Sea, it was not only Pharaoh who was defeated; it was the serpent himself who was pierced, exposed as powerless against the covenant God of Israel. The Exodus was more than political liberation — it was a cosmic showdown, and the Arm of God prevailed.
The cry “Awake, awake!” is not a suggestion that God has grown weary or inattentive. In Hebrew, “lavesh oz” — “put on strength” — means to clothe oneself for action, to rise up ready for battle. The exiles were invoking the Arm that once destroyed Rahab, pleading for Him to act again in their day. This was a declaration of faith: the God who pierces the dragon once will pierce him again.
Yet the Arm does not only strike; it saves. The same Arm that shattered Egypt also carried Israel safely through the sea, making a way where there was none. The battle was never for spectacle but for the flock’s safety. Every sword-thrust against the dragon clears a path for God’s people to walk in freedom. His piercing blow is always for the sake of deliverance.
Prophetically, this piercing of the dragon finds its ultimate fulfillment in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus). At the cross, the Arm of the LORD struck the serpent’s head, disarming principalities and powers (Colossians 2:14-15). In His resurrection, He proved that the dragon has no final claim over His people. Revelation picks up the same imagery, declaring the final defeat of the great dragon, Satan, who is cast down forever (Revelation 12:9; 20:10). The Arm that pierced in Egypt pierced again at Calvary — and will pierce once more at the end of the age.
For us today, Isaiah’s cry becomes our own. In seasons when chaos swirls and the enemy’s roar seems loud, we call upon the Arm of the LORD — not as if He were asleep, but as an act of faith that He will rise and act again. The dragon still snarls, but his fate is sealed. The Arm has already pierced him, and His victory is our inheritance.
The Arm that pierced the dragon is the very Arm stretched wide at the cross for you. Call upon Him, and remember that He has already given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:18–19). He will carve a way for you through raging seas, opening a path where there seems to be no way. So stand firm — for the dragon’s roar is nothing more than the echo of his defeat, and his end is already sealed. The same Arm that cut Rahab in pieces, that split the waters, that crushed the serpent’s head, is the Arm that now holds you secure and will carry you all the way home!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.
During the Great Depression, poverty swept across America like a whirling tornado, ripping up dreams and scattering hopes to the wind. One such poverty twister hit a small part of Texas where a man named Yates ran a sheep ranch. Struggling even to keep food on the table, Yates and his wife did all they could to survive. Finally, they had to accept a government subsidy or lose their home and land to the creditors.
When Joseph was thrown into prison, his life was thought to be over. How could anyone escape an Egyptian prison? But then, in one day, according to God’s perfect timing, he was instantly promoted to reign over all Egypt with only the Pharoah, (“god on earth”) as his Lord…
As we continue our study of Mashiach ben Yosef, we observe that both Joseph and Yeshua (Jesus) were chosen or ‘anointed’ for a special task. When Jacob gifted his son Joseph with a coat of many colors, lifting him up above his brothers, he reflected Joseph’s calling by the Lord for a life work as a leader.
Joseph interpreted dreams and revealed their meaning to those around him, and so Pharaoh gave him the name, Tsofnat Paneach (Zaphnathpaaneah) which means the “Decipherer or Revealer of Secrets”. Yeshua, (Jesus) at his first advent as “Mashiach ben Yosef” also came revealing secrets; not as an interpreter of dreams, but as one who disclosed the secrets of men…