Again, the land of Zebulun is Nazareth and its vicinity. The land of Naphtali is the Sea of Galilee region. As a result of Assyria’s invasion of northern Israel in 733 b.c. and again in 722 b.c., the Israelite population of these regions was deported and the areas repopulated with Gentiles who did not know the God of Israel or anything about the true Messiah. Hence, they walked in darkness. In the second or first century b.c., Jews of a Davidic clan began resettling the region. One segment of this new Jewish population was made up of the ancestors of Joseph and Mary. Mary’s infant Son, Jesus, who was the Light of the World, thus brought to the land the great light prophesied by Isaiah.
Messianic prophecy (using future perfect tense verbs as if already accomplished): the people who walked in the darkness of apostasy, those who lived in the land of the shadow of death (where the ancient armies of the Near East marched through)—those people have seen the great Light, the Messiah.
Fulfillment: Jesus is the “great light” (Matthew 4:16).
Isaiah’s description of “people that walked in darkness” and “dwell in the shadow of death” refers not only to their living in the darkness of sin and apostasy but also to a very physical image. The Galilee is covered with dark volcanic basalt, spewed all over the region by several now-extinct volcanoes on the Golan, east of the lake, and the black stone casts a dark shadow across the land.
The people who dwell in the shadow of death are also all people who experience mortality, who live with the shadow of death hanging over them; it is a dark thing to us, able to be dispelled only by the Light of life.