Damascus was sacked and almost ruined. To this corresponds a first series of visions (chaps. 1-12). Its main features are a stern warning to Israel and Judah of troubles at hand from the Assyrian, mingled with prophecies of Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, the Rod from the stem of Jesse, in whom the Gentiles were to trust and Zion was to rejoice forever. A second period of sixteen years reaches from the fourth year of Ahaz to the fourth of Hezekiah, when the siege of Samaria began. During its course Ephraim barely survived, and Judah was brought very low through the sin of Ahaz. The Assyrian went on confirming and extending his dominion in all the border lands, but had not resumed any direct aggression on the land of Israel. The Burdens on the Nations, a second series of visions, belong to this period, with a sequel in which warnings of judgment are followed by new messages of grace (chaps. 13-27). This series closes, like the first, with a full promise of the gathering of Israel (chaps. 11 : 11-16 ; 27 : 12, 13). The third period reaches from the siege of Samaria to the overthrow of the Assyrian host. It is marked by the fall of Israel and the sore distress of Judah, followed by the speedy destruction of the Assyrian army. The visions begin with four woes on Israel and Judah, mingled with promises of a signal deliverance. They continue with a woe on the Assyrian spoiler, a message of judgment to all the nations, and a glorious prophecy of the good things to come (chaps. 28-35). The later, or post-Assyrian prophecies, belong to the peaceful close of Hezekiah's reign. Hence their order and succession is fixed by no historical changes, but by the nature of that future to which the predictions belong. The prophet, whose lips had so early been touched with heavenly fire, attains in his old age to a peaceful and lofty elevation, like that of Moses on Pisgah, whence his eye ranges far and wide over the landscape of ages to come (chaps. 40-66). Birks. [For a detailed examination of the disruptive theories of the earlier Continental critics bearing upon the first thirty-five chapters of Isaiah, see the Introduction to Volume of Dr. J. Addison Alexander, on the "Earlier Prophecies," pages 25-68. The main question, touching the unity of authorship of the earlier and later prophecies, is treated more fully in the special introduction to chaps. 40-66, to which the reader's attention is called. B.] I : 1 THE vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the LORD hath spoken : I have nourished 3 and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, 4 and the ass his master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that deal corruptly : they have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are estranged 5 and gone backward. Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt more and more ? the whole 6 head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it ; but wounds, and bruises, and festering sores : they have not been 7 closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with oil. Your country is desolate ; your cities are burned with fire ; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as 8 overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a 9 lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah. 10 Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom ; give ear unto the law of our God, ye 11 people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD : I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight 12 not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before 13 me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; new moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies, 14 I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed 15 feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, 16 I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the 17 evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. 18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, 19 they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye 20 be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. 21 How is the faithful city become an harlot! she that was full of judgement! righteousness 22 lodged in her, but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water. 23 Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. 24 Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me 25 of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies: and I will turn my hand upon thee, 26 and thoroughly purge away thy dross, and will take away all thy tin: and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called 27 The city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with judgement, and 28 her converts with righteousness. But the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners 29 shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that 30 ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no 31 water. And the strong shall be as tow, and his work as a spark; and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them. # First Series of Visions, Chaps. 1-12. THESE twelve chapters, though composed of an earlier portion (chaps. 2-6), in the reign of Uzziah, and of a later (chaps. 1, 7-12), in the reign of Ahaz, still form one connected whole, distinct in character from the burdens and woes that follow. They fall naturally into a sevenfold division: 1. The Preface or General Introduction (1:2-31); 2. The Earliest Prophecy (chaps. 2-4); 3. The Parable of the Vineyard (chap. 5); 4. The Prophet's Call (chap. 6); 5. The Prophecy of Immanuel (chaps. 7-9:7); 6. The Warning of Assyrian Conquests (chap. 9:8 to chap. 10); 7. The Times of Messiah (chaps. 11, 12). Of these the second, third and fourth will belong to the last year of Uzziah; and the rest will be considerably later, in the second and third years of Ahaz. Birks. Chap. 1. It is neither easy nor specially important to decide whether this chapter was written first in the order of time. Opinions are divided between this and the sixth. The latter refers either to the induction of Isaiah into the prophetic office, or to his reconsecration to it as a special anointing that he might be the better qualified to go to an obdurate people. Very probably this chapter may have been simply suggested by great judgments in the time of Ahaz, following in consequence of previous great sins, and may then have been written as an introduction to the book. For it has the appearance of a general epitome of his prophetic messages—a brief summary view of the main points which they embrace. Here are the great sins of the people; the Lord's call to them to repent, coupled with His promise to them of free pardon; the calamities sent upon them, either in chastisement to reclaim, or (this failing) in righteous retribution to destroy. These are the points made in this chapter. They are also the points made in general throughout the book. Hence this may be taken as a summary or chapter of contents, introductory in the sense of being a brief presentation of the subject-matter of the whole. This view of the chapter is now adopted by some of the best critics. Dr. Alexander says: "It is probable that this chapter exhibits a sequence of events or providential scheme which might be realized in more than one emergency; not so much a prediction as a prophetic lesson with respect to the effects which certain causes must infallibly produce. Such a discourse would be peculiarly appropriate as an introduction to the prophecies which follow." This view, if accepted, practically disposes of our preliminary question of date, the chapter being written for an introduction, and yet not written first in order of time, but suggested by events in the reign of Ahaz, or possibly yet later. H. C. The design of this chapter is to show the connection between the sins and sufferings of God's people and the necessity of further judgments as means of purification and deliverance. The popular corruption is first exhibited as the effect of alienation from God, and as the cause of national calamities (verses 2-9). It is then exhibited as coexisting with punctilious exactness in religious duties, and as rendering them worthless (verses 10-20). It is finally exhibited in twofold contrast, first with a former state of things and then with one still future, to be brought about by the destruction of the wicked, and especially of wicked rulers (verses 21-31). The first part of the chapter describes the sin and then the suffering of the people. The former is characterized as filial ingratitude, stupid inconsideration, habitual transgression, contempt of God, and alienation from Him (verses 2-4). The suffering is first represented by the figure of disease and wounds, and then in literal terms as the effect of an invasion, by which the nation was left desolate, and only saved by God's regard for His elect from the total destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (verses 5-9). The second part is connected with the first by the double allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah with which one closes and the other opens. In this part the prophet shows the utter inefficacy of religious rites to counteract the natural effect of their iniquities, and then exhorts them to the use of the true remedy. Under the former head, addressing them as similar in character to Sodom and Gomorrah, he describes their sacrifices as abundant and exact, but not acceptable; their attendance at the Temple as punctual, and yet insulting; their bloodless offerings as abhorrent, and their holy days as wearisome and hateful on account of their iniquities; their very prayers as useless, because their hands were stained with blood (verses 10-15). As a necessary means of restoration to God's favor, he exhorts them to forsake their evil courses and to exercise benevolence and justice, assuring them that God was willing to forgive them and restore the advantages which they had forfeited by sin, but at the same time resolved to punish the impenitent transgressor (verses 16-20). The transition from the second to the third part is abrupt, and introduced by a pathetic exclamation. In this part the prophet compares Israel as it is with what it has been and with what it shall be. In the former comparison, he employs two metaphors, each followed by a literal explanation of its meaning; that of a faithful wife become a harlot, and that of adulterated wine and silver, both expressive of a moral deterioration, with special reference to magistrates and rulers (verses 21-23). In the other comparison, the coming judgments are presented in the twofold aspect of purification and deliverance to the Church, and of destruction to its wicked members. The prophet sees the leading men of Israel destroyed, first as oppressors, to make room for righteous rulers and thus save the state; then as idolaters consumed by that in which they trusted for protection. A. 1. The first verse is plainly a common title of the whole book. This title implies the Divine authority of the whole book. It answers to the promise (Num. 12:6), "If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision." It implies, further, the unity of the whole work. These are no fragments, thrown fortuitously together. They form a gospel of the Old Testament, midway in time between Moses and Christ, between the first passover of the Exodus and the finished and all-perfect sacrifice of the Son of God. 2,3. The message of the prophet begins with an echo to the sublime appeal in the song of Moses, the parting voice of the law—"Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth" (De. 32:1). The subject of each appeal is the same. Moses predicts the perverseness and rebellion of Israel. Isaiah, the foremost of the prophets, opens his message by proclaiming that the warning given seven hundred years before by Moses is now fulfilled. The same witnesses, summoned before to give solemnity to the warning, must now attest its fulfilment. All angels above, and all men below, and all the visible works of God are to give ear with reverence, while Jehovah, the Lord of heaven and earth, pleads with His rebellious people. When the Creator speaks, all creatures are bound to give ear. Birks. The Bible constantly and unfalteringly appeals to the analogy of the deepest and most familiar emotions of our own nature. It does not scruple to resort to the most naked anthropopathic images and expressions; either secure, according to the saying of Coleridge, that it could not be misconstrued amid such clear and copious assertions of the Divine spirituality, or else as careless, even though it were in some degree misunderstood, if it could but win us from our fears and our distrust. It is impossible to imagine anything more intensely pathetic than the daring imagery by which the prophets after represent God as chiding, upbraiding, threatening, and anon relentingly beseeching His perverse and ungrateful creatures. (See also Jer. 31:18-21; 32:36-40; Ezek. 16:3; Hos. 6:4; 7:13-16; 11:7, 8; 13:4-10, and a host of other passages.) Henry Rogers. 2. The relation in which the Lord delights to exhibit Himself to His people is that of a father to his children; and when they are disobedient and rebellious, He impresses upon us the enormity of their conduct, by reminding us of the sternest of life's sorrows—a father's grief at the unworthiness of his son. "I have nourished and brought up children," He says, "and they have rebelled against Me." He had not only nourished them—that is, nursed their infant and helpless years—but had watched over and sustained their growth—had "brought them up" to the strength and glory of manhood, and then—they rebelled against Him. There is a deep pathos in the suggestion here presented to the mind, of the solemn grief of a father over a rebellious and worthless son, on the one hand; and of the intensity of the son's ingratitude in rebelling against the paternal hand, on the other. Kitto.—Essentially this very sin of cold ingratitude and rebellion against God's authority, charged here upon Israel, lies at the door of all ungodly, unrepenting sinners in every age and in every land, with only the difference of greater guilt in the case of the more enlightened. For, who of us all hath not been nourished and brought up as a child by our great Father above? Whose life has not been crowned by His lovingkindness and tender mercies? H. C. The highest and most natural conception of the universe is that which makes God the Father of His rational and spiritual creatures, which constitutes them a family, and which implies communication between Him and them as personal beings, He making known His will and character, and they obeying and adoring Him. If we believe that God made man with a rational and a religious nature—a child—capable of communion with Him, and of finding in Him only the highest source of happiness and means of moral perfection, then it would be exceedingly strange if God should not reveal Himself to him. Shall not a father speak to his own child? It is demonstrable, on the principles of reason, that if man had continued in a state of innocence, the highest progress and expansion and felicity of his nature could not have been attained except by communion with God. Man becomes assimilated to that with which he voluntarily holds communion. And since God is the fountain of all excellence, why should He not communicate Himself to an innocent creature whom He had made with faculties to know and love and enjoy Him? M. Hopkins. What God desires by our training here is, that we become like to Him; that there be nurtured in us a power to discern between good and evil; that by giving our own voluntary consent to His appointments, and that by discovering in various and perplexing circumstances what is the right thing to do, we may have our own moral natures as enlightened, strengthened and fully developed every way as possible. The object of God in declaring His will to us is not to point out particular steps, but to bring our wills into conformity with His, so that whether we err in any particular step or no, we shall still be near to Him in intention. He does with us as we with children. We do not always at once relieve them from their little difficulties, but watch with interest the working of their own conscience regarding the matter, and will give them no sign till they themselves have decided. Dods. 3. No sooner had we got within the walls of Tiberias, than the drove began to disperse. Every ox knew perfectly well his owner, his house, and the way to it, nor did he get bewildered for a moment in the mazes of these narrow and crooked alleys. As for the asses, they walked straight to the door, and up to their master's "crib." I followed one company clear into their habitation, and saw each take his appropriate manger, and begin his evening meal of dry tilm. Isaiah says in all this they were wiser than their owners, who neither knew nor considered, but forsook the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel. Thomson. Like the ox and the ass, Israel had a master, upon whom he was dependent, and to whom he owed obedience; but, unlike them, he did not recognize and would not serve his rightful sovereign and the author of his mercies. A.—The chosen people have become brutish, and debased themselves below the beasts of the field. Mere animal instinct is a safer guide than reason, perverted by pride and sensual vice. Contempt for God renders men more senseless than brutes themselves. Birks. Narrow the prospects of man to this time-world, and it is impossible to escape the conclusions of the epicurean sensualist. If tomorrow we die, let us eat and drink to-day. If we die the sinner's death, it becomes a matter of mere taste whether we shall live the sinner's life or not. But if our existence is forever, then plainly that which is to be daily subdued and subordinated is the animal within us; that which is to be cherished is that which is likest God within us—which we have from Him, and which is the sole pledge of eternal being in the spirit-life. F. W. R. Doth not consider. The want of thought about sin is one of the most radical hindrances to conversion, as it is one of the gravest causes of defective, barren piety. Out of this want of intelligent thoughtfulness grows the imperfect estimate and superficial feeling respecting the intrinsic nature and heinousness of sin which are found so largely in the world and in the Church. B. 4. They are gone backward.** Every step away from the Lord is really a step backward. It is like turning one's face away from the sun, and walking toward darkness. There are two standards of life—this world's and Christ's; we may be making progress according to the former, and at the same time going backward according to the latter. Away from God is always downward, no matter if we be climbing among men. Getting nearer to God in heart, in life, is always getting onward; though in the world's scale we may be descending. We need, therefore, to watch our hearts and our spiritual life when we are prospering in earthly ways. We need to beware lest, while we are going forward enthusiastically in men's eyes, we may be going backward as God and angels see us. S. S. T. 5,6. The Divine medicines appear only to aggravate the disease. It is no spot on the surface, but a deep-seated infection, poisoning the springs of life. Their afflictions have been followed by deeper sin. "In the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord—this king Ahaz" (2 Chron. 28: 22). As it was with their king, so with the people. The furnace, in which wax and silver are melted or refined, only hardens clay. Birks. 6. Sin is deep in all the soul. The mind is enmity against God, so unsound that it is not subject to God's law, neither indeed can be; and it is an affecting thought, that from the hour when he was born the unconverted sinner has hardly ever felt one right emotion Godward. There has never been one breath of free and cordial and filial devotion, never the pulse of spontaneous, unforced loyalty, never one hour of simple, genuine piety. The whole head is sick, the whole heart faint, and instead of tending toward self-cure, each day makes the earthcliness more intense, the carnality more complete. Hamilton. The Lord takes none up but the forsaken, makes none healthy but the sick, gives sight to none but blind, brings none to life but the dead, sanctifies none but sinners and bestows wisdom upon none but the foolish. Luther. 9. A faithful remnant still survived. The covenant of God could not fail, and a holy seed was kept alive in the land. But it was small and feeble, and the general corruption rivalled the cities of the plain. Birks. 11-20. The prophets everywhere recognize and insist upon the distinction between the outward forms of the Old Testament and their inward spiritual meaning. Isaiah declares that it is not sacrifices and burnt offerings, oblations and incense, treading God's courts, new moons and Sabbaths, feasts and assemblies, that God requires, but purity of heart and life, and obedience to His will. W. H. G.—Prophetism, while confirming the historical reality of all the institutions of the law, presented their spiritual bearing, without which it declared the observance of the letter to be not only meaningless, but an absolute perversion of their Divine purpose. Sacrifices were meaningless without brokenness of heart. Festivals and fasts and all rites were a perversion and abomination unless pervaded by the moral and spiritual element. A. E.—It is marvellous that the practical working of the theocracy, as reflected in its writings—the pervading and intensely ethical spirit that characterizes these, and that in respect to the heart not less than the outward conduct—should not alone have been sufficient to convince all of the fundamentally spiritual character of the theocratic constitution and its ordinances of service. If all was merely national, outward, ceremonial, in the framework of the polity, would it not be an inexplicable anomaly that the writings connected with it—its histories, songs, didactic and prophetic discourses—should all be so peculiarly ethical in their tone, and personal in their application? But it was morally impossible that the laws and ordinances of the theocracy could be of such a merely formal and outward character; the spiritual and holy nature of God forbade it; and from that nature everything took its determining and influential form. P. F. 11-15. The Jewish sacrifices did not evince God's pleasure in suffering; they evinced God's hatred of sin. They were not to supersede penitence and faith, but to deepen the conviction by a representation of the death which the offerer of the sacrifice had himself deserved. There was nothing purifying about that. They were worthless except that they typified the Divine Victim on whom God laid the iniquity of us all. But, above all, we in these evangelical days, heirs of all the ages and of all the economies, should understand why God desires not our sacrifice. Why should He, when He looks upon His own? Christ hath died; then live, ye flocks of Kedar! The Redeemer of the world atones; then crumble, ye altars of mere external worship! The blood is on the mercy-seat; then it need be nowhere else. It need not be on the skirts of the garments, nor in the Temple, nor on the hands of the worshipper. "That blood we take, that blood alone, Should make the covenant peace our own." Bring obedience to God's commands, therefore, and believe Him. He likes that better than sacrifice. Hearken to His precepts. He prefers that to the fat of rams. Punshon. The system of sacrifices and ceremonies was not in the centre of the Old Testament religion; it was altogether and utterly upon the outside. It lay within the sphere of the Old Testament religion; but it lay within that sphere only at a distance from the heart and centre of religion and religious life. The great teachers never treat the sacrificial and ritual system as belonging, in any central way, to the Old Testament religion. Read the teachings, read the sermons of the great religious preachers of Israel and Judah. Take the prophets and go through them carefully, and see what they say about religion. If they speak of the rites and ceremonies that were the ritual system of Israel, they do it only to show that they have no part whatever in the true religious life; or they do it simply to show that they stand on the outside of religious life, concerned in religious life only as outside things which religious men will attend to because they were asked of them as religious men by God. That is the most you can say the religious teachers of Israel have said about the system of sacrifices and rituals. There is not a single passage in the Old Testament in which any saint of God connects his sense of forgiveness of sin, his feeling of acceptance with God, the fact that he is accepted of God as a forgiven sinner, his sense of joy in the Divine presence, or his hope of being like God and with God in the future life, literally, figuratively or typically, with the system of sacrifices and rites set before us in the Pentateuch—not one passage. S. Burnham. Sacrifice is still required of men, by the law of the Master; but it is now the sacrifice of confession, of repentance and restitution, where another has been injured; the sacrifice of whatever is lower in our nature to whatever is higher, of whatever is pleasing in our custom of life to the glory of God, in the welfare of others, or in our own noblest advancement; the sacrifice, always, of ease and inclination to the imperative claims of duty; the sacrifice of a supreme dedication of soul and life to Him from whom our life has come, and by whom the soul, in its marvellous powers, has been ordained. It is rooted, fundamentally, this Christian sacrifice, in the idea of sin, as a force which separates man from God; in the idea of God, who requires self-surrender on the part of His worshippers. It is not, therefore, a sacrifice to be accomplished by the hands, accomplished by another, in grove or glen or solemn Temple. It is to be accomplished within the heart, by each for himself; and the things devoted, the things destroyed, are the very things most natively precious—our passions, appetites and eager desires; the pride which forbids us to acknowledge wrong-doing; the love of enjoyment, which prompts us to use the world for our luxury; the desire for eminent position and power, which seems as native to aspiring spirits as the function of breathing to the lungs. In comparison with these sacrifices, moral, invisible, which have been made by millions uncounted since Jesus showed the Invisible Father to the homage of mankind, the offering of hecatombs of oxen and sheep were a trifling thing. That might involve a small loss of possessions; but this implies the destruction of the passion which insists on possession. That might simply intensify pride, where this overwhelms it; and all sensual desire, all purely secular and selfish ambition, might perfectly consist with external offerings most numerous and costly, even under the solemn Hebrew ritual. But that which the Lord asks, as the primal element in the worship of God, is a complete self-devotion to Him; the offerer and the victim being the same, the scene of the transcendent offering being the soul. R. S. S. 13. The calling of assemblies I cannot away with.** God speaks of the meetings of His people, the new moon, sacrifices and Sabbaths, as an offence unto Him. The "multitude" of them wearies, and He asks to what purpose are all these busy, frequent, yet empty services. Do not mistake services for service! If we are doing God's work fervently, humbly, patiently, though obscurely, looking to Him alone, we, like our Master, will finish the work that He has given us to do. Only as we abide in Christ can we be able to complete our work. Mere machinery and outward activity are of no account without this daily dwelling in and drawing from Him. Then our service and our services will be acceptable. T. Monod. 13-15. The unquestionable sense of the Hebrew is not merely that their solemn meetings were an iniquity, but that God cannot endure the solemn meeting when thus united with wickedness. When men come before God in worship, let their hands be clean of wickedness; let their hearts reverence and fear the Holy God. H. C.—No instituted service, no positive part of religion whatsoever, was ever acceptable when moral duties were neglected; nay, so far from this are they, that God rejects them with abhorrence and disdain. We see from this what was acceptable to God for itself and its own sake in the Jewish religion; and under the Gospel our Saviour prefers a moral duty before any gift (Matt. 5: 23, 24). Abp. Tillotson.—What God says here to the Jews for their overmultiplied fasts and uncommanded sacrifices, He will say to all who do anything that agrees not with His laws, however specious and plausible, however good and acceptable it may seem to them. God “cannot away with” anything but the performance of His own will. Bp. Beveridge. Formalism does for the present time. It satisfies the man’s conscience; it satisfies his neighbors if he comes to church, if he lives creditably, if he attends the Holy Communion; if, in fact, he has the outside of a Christian. It does very well for this world; yes, but only for this world. G. Calthrop.—So of the moralist. All that can be said of him, all that he will say for himself, is that he has had it for his law to speak the truth, fulfil his promises, and deal fairly by his fellow-men. Still it is not, and has never been, his aim or object to do what is right to God; and that is a matter of much higher consequence, and more necessary to his real integrity. God is a person as truly as men are, more closely related to us than they, a better friend, one who has more feeling to be injured than they all, claims of right more sacred. What, then, does it signify that a man gives men their due, and will not give God His? Bushnell. The external part of religion is, doubtless, of little value in comparison with the internal; but if there were no Sundays or holy days, no ministers, no churches or religious assemblies, no prayers or sacraments, no Scriptures read or sermons preached, how long would there be any religion left in the world; and who would desire to live in a world where there was none? Horne. Most true it is that God has no pleasure in any mere formalities or observances. Inspiration, impulse, liberty, a service of freedom and gladness—this only is His delight. But in order to this, there must also be subjection to His rule, a systematic care, a prescribed obedience of duty, a holy drill of times patiently accepted. The way to find liberty is to come into the schooling of order and law, and let our will be harnessed in a punctual keeping of holy times. Ah! it is a greater thing than you imagine to stand fast in the order and system of a faithful life. Half the benefit you get in holy times, and punctualities, lies in the fact that for Christ’s sake you keep them. You cannot be too rigid in this matter. A loose way makes a loose man. Prove your fidelity by your painstaking, and it will be strange if you do not stand fast even though you stand alone—blessed and great honor this, to stand alone! Such a man has no dull time anywhere, his inspiration is full, his confidence sure, his peace the calm, deep flow of a river. Bushnell. 16. God will have nothing to do with uncleanness. “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings,” is the continual voice of God to the human soul. He will pity weakness; He will not be offended by ungainliness; He understands all the meaning of poverty—in all these directions we have nothing to fear; but when we hide uncleanness, or endeavor to make excuse for sin, all heaven burns against us with unquenchable anger. J. P. The pardon of sin upon repentance is expressed in Scripture by cleansing and purifying, to denote that the outward cleansing of the flesh was designed to put men in mind of the inward purification from sin and unrighteousness. Jenkin.—What is this but the first word of the Gospel and first branch of the covenant, “Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins”? Wogan. 16,17. Six short precepts unfold the nature of this repentance. “Abstain at once from all acts of oppression and open injustice. Strive, with persevering effort, to attain habits of truth, justice, and kindness to your fellow-men. Be upright yourselves, and set your faces against the wrong-doing of others. Be upright as judges, zealous as advocates, in maintaining the cause of the helpless, whom the proud and selfish would trample in the dust.” Birks. It is a sure sign of hypocrisy to be unrighteous and careless in civil dealings, how conscientious soever thou mayest seem to be in sacred duties. He that seems righteous toward men and is irreligious toward God is but an honest heathen; and he that seems religious toward God and is unrighteous toward men is but a dissembling Christian. To make conscience of one duty and not of another is to make true conscience of neither. The soul that ever had communion with God above comes down, like Moses out of the Mount, with both tables in his hands, the second as well as the first, the first as well as the second. Swinnock. 17. The negative exhortation is followed by a positive one. Ceasing to do evil was not enough, or rather was not possible, without beginning to do good. "Learn to do good," implying that they never yet had known what it was. This general expression is explained by several specifications, showing how they were to do good. "Seek judgment"—i.e., justice; not in the abstract, but in act; not for yourselves, but for others; be not content with abstinence from wrong, but seek opportunities of doing justice, especially to those who cannot right themselves. "Redress wrong, judge the fatherless"—i.e., act as a judge for his benefit, or, more specifically, do him justice; "befriend the widow," take her part, espouse her cause. Orphans and widows are continually spoken of in Scripture as special objects of Divine compassion, and as representing the whole class of helpless innocents. A. A masterful man could do what he pleased in the heroic age of ancient Greece, till he met with one more masterful than himself. The widows' and the orphans' cries were then unheeded. Hebrew law abhorred this indifference to right. It threw a shield around the weak, the helpless, the unprotected. It defied the strongest to set its commands at naught. It warned him of a mightier than the mightiest, who regarded the tears of the oppressed, with full purpose of avenging their wrongs. Sime. These verses, in their connection, express with great force the oft-recurring sentiment that God "will have mercy and not sacrifice"—i.e., mercy before and above sacrifice, and will never accept sacrifice or any of the mere forms of religious worship in place of the moral duties of justice and love to man, or as an atonement for their neglect or violation. H. C.—Active love is the criterion of judgment of the last day; let not this be ignored, though at the first hearing the word sounds strangely unbelieving. Even the righteous, to whom is addressed the "Come, ye blessed," cannot restrain the question, "Lord, when saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink?" Yet the Lord does not assert that to visit the poor and minister to the sick could obtain for us the kingdom of God as a just recompense; all the gold mines of earth do not conceal the price of heaven. He only points to the infallible characteristic which separates His people from such as merely confess Him with their lips, and places a life of love in the balance against one of selfishness solely, because the first shows more than anything else that we have passed from death unto life. Van O. This world, our own little corner of it, wants sacrifice and labor, running feet and open hands, busy thoughts and gentle tongues—all for Christ and the honor of His Church. The world's ways are not clean; there is too much oppression of the weak by the strong, of the fatherless and widow by cunning and power, of the nobler spirit in man by the meaner senses of him. There is too much cruelty in its habitations; too much darkness on its face; too much filth on its breast. Come and work for it. Its surface is rough, and wants much leveling down and casting up to make it smooth for the Messiah's feet. Believe in Him, and for this end. Confess Him before men, to follow Him in these pathways among the multitude; worship Him in sincerity, that you may gain inward power and love and light and grace for this faithful witnessing from on high. Wait for Him, by watching at the gate, by working in the field. F. D. H. To have all our faculties developed, all our affections raised and purified, and to employ them all in His service whom we love—this, after all, is the truest reward, the loftiest and most complete. And this is the reward that comes to us, not when we are seeking gain or craving reward, but when we are content to do good, hoping for nothing again. The River of Peace runs hard by the Path of Duty; but we shall never find the sweet cool waters while we look for them alone; we shall come on them when we least expect it, and while all our care is to keep the path. Cox. 18. The scarlet was regarded as the most fast or fixed of colors. Neither dew, nor rain, nor washing, nor long usage, could remove it. Hence it is used to represent the fixity or permanency of sins in the heart. No human means will wash them out. No effort of man, no external rite, no tears, nor sacrifices, nor prayers, are of themselves sufficient to take them away. They are deeply fixed in the heart, as the scarlet color was in the web of cloth, and an Almighty power is needful to remove them. The prophet means to say that, although they are thus fixed and immovable by any human means, yet that the mercy of God can take away all the stains. Kitto. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Reasoning with the Lord is very different from reasoning about the Lord. There is little gain in reasoning about the Lord, in reasoning about His existence, in reasoning about His attributes, in reasoning about His eternal and infinite purposes; for all these things are utterly beyond the extremest scope of human wisdom. But there is very great gain in reasoning with the Lord, in bringing to Him our troubles, our fears, our needs, and in applying to our case the teachings of His word, His providence, and His Spirit. In the contemplation of God, faith is worth vastly more than reason. H. C. T. Frankness is due because God is ever frank with us. Frank in rebuke, frank in explanation, frank in forgiveness. He asks us to be frank with Him. "Come, now, let us reason together;" "Bring forth your strong reasons." He therefore invites us to make a clean breast of our secret troubles and sins. This will ever bring blessing. The clearest and best-intentioned openness before man may be misconstrued, but never before God. J. W. B. 18-20. The beauty and force of these wonderful words are heightened by their connection. Though your crimes toward your fellow-beings have been bloody and most revolting, and your sacrifices at My altar have been unutterably loathsome; and though for every reason justice seems to demand your sudden and fearful destruction, yet if ye turn to become willing and obedient, ye shall be forgiven and blessed again most abundantly. As said through Jeremiah (31:34), "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more;" or through Micah (7:19), "Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." How inexpressibly wonderful! H. C.—Forgiveness! This is God's first message to man. Forgiveness free and ample, sure and immediate, conscious and happy, eternal and irreversible. Forgiveness without reserve; forgiveness to the chief of sinners; forgiveness of all sins. In this forgiveness is, of course, wrapt up peace with God, peace of conscience, "the answer of a good conscience toward God," the removal of the heavy burden that weighed the sinner down, of the dark cloud that overshadows all his life. H. Bonar. There is not a case of transgression, magnify it as you may, which redeeming mercy cannot reach, nor a sin of a dye so deep as to neutralize the purifying efficacy of a Redeemer's atonement. The unpardoned sinner carries his oppressive load of guilt upon the conscience, and at last sinks under its weight to a deep perdition, not because God could not or would not save him, but because he refuses to avail himself of the ample provision which a God of infinite wisdom and mercy has made for his relief. E. M. When we forgive our child, what does it mean? Sometimes, not always, the remission of penalties, but always the remission of the worst penalty, the frown of the father's face, the sense of displeasure weighing on the child's heart, and the unimpeded flow of the parent's love. So God's pardon often leaves some of the natural consequences, which are the penalties of our sins, in order that we may hate and avoid the evil, but it brings the assurance that there is nothing in God's heart toward the sinner but pure and perfect love. All the barriers to its flow are removed by God's own act. None but God can do that. A. M. Even Christ does not undo the wrong past, and make that which has been done as though it never had been done. It never can be made true that the thief did not once steal; but grace may so make over a marred life, that where the blemish was some special beauty may appear. "The oyster mends its shell with a pearl." Where the ugly wound was there comes, with the healing, not a scar, but a pearl. So sins that we truly repent of become pearls in the character. It is the experience of all whose lives grow into Christ-like nobleness, that many of the golden lines of their later lives have been wrought out by their regrets and their repentings of wrong-doings. Even our mistakes and sins, if we leave them and find our way to Christ, will be transmuted into growth and upbuilding of character. "We can so deal with the past, that we can make it give up to us virtue and wisdom." "We can make wrong the seed of right and righteousness; we can transmute error into wisdom; we can make sorrow bloom into a thousand forms, like fragrant flowers." J. R. M. The Bible is wonderful! It teaches man to acknowledge himself vile and even abominable, yet requires him, at the same time, to aspire to a resemblance of God. Were not things thus balanced, either such exaltation would inflate him with pride, or such debasement would drive him to despair. The incarnation discovers to man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy required. Pascal. Where else but in this Divine word do we learn the dignity and elevation of humility before God; so that, lying at the footstool of Divine mercy, the contrite and broken heart does not feel degraded, but exalted? Where but here do we see man raised to communion with the Most High—yea, to union with the incarnate Son of God—and yet retain the spirit of lowliness, of self-condemnation, of utter dependence on Divine grace? It is this combination of the full revelation of our sin, disease, and misery, and of the abundant grace of God, which produces in us, in our inmost soul, the assured conviction of the Divine authority of Scripture, of God's own voice speaking to us in this inspired word. Saphir. 20. This is the converse of the nineteenth verse, a threat corresponding to the promise. And if ye refuse to comply with My conditions, and rebel, continue to resist My authority, by the sword of the enemy shall ye be eaten. This is no human menace, but a sure prediction, for the mouth of Jehovah speaks, not man's. 21. Here the prophet seems to pause for a reply, and on receiving no response to the promises and invitations of the foregoing context, bursts forth into a sudden exclamation at the change which Israel has undergone, which he then describes both in figurative and literal expressions (verses 21–23). In the verse before us he contrasts her former state, as the chaste bride of Jehovah, with her present pollution, the ancient home of justice with the present haunt of cruelty and violence. A. Verse 23 indicates that her rulers were specially corrupt, rebellious against God in the matter of their official duties, confederate with thieves, encouraging their crime for a share of the plunder; accepting bribes for unjust decisions, and quite refusing to hear the cause of the fatherless and of the widow, who had no bribe to offer. Considering that, under the Jewish system, their judges were of the priests and the Levites, and likely, therefore, to represent the best piety of the times, these touches give an appalling view of the ungodliness of that age and of the fearful prevalence of depravity and crime. H. C. 24–27. The threefold title of God implies the solemn earnestness of the message. He who speaks is the governor of the world, unchangeable in His counsels, whose word cannot fail, mighty to subdue and destroy the proudest rebels. Since His lighter strokes have led to no repentance, His coming judgments shall be more severe; and only genuine faith and holiness will endure the visitation. But the effect shall be blessed and glorious. The harlot city shall be betrothed once more to the heavenly bridegroom with "lovingkindness and mercies" (Hos. 2: 19). Birks. 25. The purifier puts every vessel into the furnace, and Himself superintends the process; He allows nothing to be consumed but the dross, and this He will purge from them. They often object to His manner of dealing with them, but He says, "I will turn mine hand upon thee, I will purge thee in the furnace of thy dross, and will take away all thine alloy." Jas. Smith. 30. The mention of trees and gardens, as places of idolatrous worship, suggests a beautiful comparison, under which the destruction of the idolaters is again set forth. They who choose trees and gardens, in preference to God's appointed place of worship, shall themselves be like trees and gardens, but in the most alarming sense. For, in answer to the tacit question why they should be ashamed and confounded for their oaks and gardens, ye shall be like an oak or terebinth, fading in its leaf, and like a garden which has no water—a lively emblem, to an Oriental reader, of entire desolation. 31. A closing threat of sudden, total, instantaneous destruction to the Jewish idolaters, to be occasioned by the very things which they preferred to God, and in which they confided. And the strong, the mighty man, alluding no doubt to the unjust rulers of the previous context, shall become tow, an exceedingly inflammable substance, and his work, his idols, often spoken of in Scripture as the work of men's hands, shall become a spark, the means and occasion of destruction to their worshippers, and they shall burn both of them together, and there shall be no one quenching or to quench them. A. and other respects; in some cases poetry and prose are intermingled. In fine, this is a document covering the same ground with the volume of Jeremiah's prophecies written by Baruch (Jer. 36: 9-32). If it cannot be proved to be the same document, at least this cannot be disproved. As it is, on the whole, the earliest paper in the series, the collector takes it as the beginning of his projected work. It is our present Jeremiah, chaps. 1-20. Among the remaining larger papers he finds a connected narrative of the experiences of Jeremiah in connection with the downfall of Jerusalem, the narrative found in Jer. 37-44. It is carefully written and classical, quite different from the rough sketch in the first twenty chapters. As it contains the latest recorded facts in the personal history of Jeremiah, he lays it beside the rough sketch, to form the conclusion of that part of the proposed work. Next he finds, perhaps already put together, and at all events marked by their contents as a group by themselves, certain poems, of different dates, concerning the nations; and groups these, after the narrative, as a new section of his work (Jer. 46-51). To this group of poems he prefixes the little poem concerning Baruch (Jer. 45), finding no better place for it elsewhere. Among the remaining papers, he finds one that is peculiar, the one now constituting Jer. 52; it seems to be a study in the history of Israel, connected with the matters recorded in Kings concerning the building and the destruction of Solomon's Temple. As it has no affiliation with any other documents in his collection, he assigns to it its proper place as an appendix. He now has remaining the fifteen prophecies contained in Jer. 21-36. Most of these are dated. Among them are poems, addresses, narratives and one epistle. Some of them deal with events already treated of in the rough sketch and the narrative; but as a whole, they belong between the two, and the collector disposes of them by placing them in that position, without the trouble to arrange them further. And at this point his work was arrested, leaving the book in the shape in which we find it. Presumably he intended to arrange these fifteen papers chronologically, and to revise the whole, but was somehow prevented from carrying out his intention. W. J. B. 2:1 THE word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2. And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations 3 shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the 4 LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge between the nations, and shall reprove many peoples: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5, 6 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. For thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be filled with customs from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of strangers. 7 Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their 8 land also is full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots. Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own flaggers have 9 made. And the mean man is bowed down, and the great man is brought low: therefore 10 forgive them not. Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, from before the terror of 11 the LORD, and from the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be brought low, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in 12 that day. For there shall be a day of the LORD of hosts upon all that is proud and haughty, 13 and upon all that is lifted up; and it shall be brought low: and upon all the cedars of 14 Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan; and upon all the 15 high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up; and upon every lofty tower, and 16 upon every fenced wall; and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant imagery. 17 And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought 18 low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass 19 away. And men shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into the holes of the earth, from before the terror of the LORD, and from the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake 20 mightily the earth. In that day a man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of 21 gold, which they made for him to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the caverns of the rocks, and into the clefts of the ragged rocks, from before the terror of the LORD, and from the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake mightily the earth. 22 Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of? 3:1 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from 2 Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water; the mighty man, 3 and the man of war; the judge, and the prophet, and the diviner, and the ancient; the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the 4 skilful enchanter. And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. 5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honour- 6 able. When a man shall take hold of his brother in the house of his father, saying, Thou 7 hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand: in that day shall he lift up his voice, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor cloth- 8 ing: ye shall not make me ruler of the people. For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of 9 his glory. The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto 10 themselves. Say ye of the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the 11 fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his 12 hands shall be given him. As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of 13, 14 thy paths. The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the peoples. The LORD will enter into judgement with the elders of his people, and the princes thereof : It is ye that have eaten up the vineyard ; the spoil of the poor is in your houses : what mean ye that ye crush my people, and grind the face of the poor ? saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts. 16. Moreover the LORD said, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a 17 tinkling with their feet : therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of 18 the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will lay bare their secret parts. In that day the Lord 19 will take away the bravery of their anklets, and the cauls, and the crescents ; the pendants, 20 and the bracelets, and the mufflers ; the headtires, and the ankle chains, and the sashes, and 21, 22 the perfume boxes, and the amulets ; the rings, and the nose jewels ; the festival robes, 23 and the mantles, and the shawls, and the satchels ; the hand mirrors, and the fine linen, and 24 the turbans, and the veils. And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness ; and instead of a girdle a rope ; and instead of well set hair baldness ; and 25 instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth : branding instead of beauty. Thy men shall 26 fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn ; and 4 : 1 she shall be desolate and sit upon the ground. And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel : only let us be called by thy name ; take thou away our reproach. 2. In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land 3 shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even 4 every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem : when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from 5 the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgement, and by the spirit of burning. And the LORD will create over the whole habitation of mount Zion, and over her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night : for over all the glory shall be spread 6 a canopy. And there shall be a pavilion for a shadow in the day-time from the heat, and for a refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain. CHAPS. 2-4 constitute one message, introduced by one rich Messianic prophecy (2 : 2-4), and closed with another (4 : 2-6). The intermediate portion details the sins of the people, and threatens sore judgments. This prophecy affords no decisive indications of its date. H. C.—These chapters constitute the second prophecy, the two grand themes of which are the reign of the Messiah and intervening judgments on the Jews for their iniquities. The first and greatest of these subjects occupies the smallest space, but stands both at the opening and the close of the whole prophecy. A.—The first verse is their common title. The message has five parts : (1) The Vision of Zion's Future Glory (2 : 1-5) ; (2) The Sin and Judgment of Judah (2 : 6-22) ; (3) Their Political Downfall (3 : 1-15) ; (4) The Sentence on Zion's Daughters (3 : 16 to 4 : 1) ; and lastly (5) The Promise of Coming Deliverance (4 : 2-6). Birks. 2 : 2-4. This passage occurs with no material variation in Micah 4 : 1-4. It stands there in manifest connection with what precedes in the close of chap. 3. Here no such connection appears. It can never be known absolutely which of these prophets (if either) quoted from the other. H. C. Here the Church is represented as being central and accessible to the entire race, and as capable of receiving and accommodating a worshipping world, as the temple on Zion had been to the tribes of Israel. And the points to be particularly remarked are, that of the nations thronging to it, the great mass has been influenced by the exhortation, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah ;" and that the reason which moves the world toward this central point is, that "out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem"—that through the appointed instrumentality of the Gospel, they hope to be made wise unto salvation ; while the result of that Divine teaching upon the great society of the nations is to be the utter abolition of war, the cultivation of the arts of peace, and the recognition of the Divine authority as universal and supreme. J. Harris. 2. The mountain of the Lord's house. From the situation of the Jewish Temple on Mount Moriah, a mountain is made to stand for the Christian Church ; of the exaltation of which, and its wonderful prosperity and enlargement, this passage is a prophetical promise. Bp. Hurd. 3. There "He will teach us of His ways." God's ways are to be learned in His Church, in communion with His people and in the use of instituted ordinances; the ways of duty which He requires us to walk in, the ways of grace in which He walks toward us. It is God that teaches His people by His Word and Spirit. It is worth while to take pains to go up to His holy mountain to be taught His ways, for those who are willing to take that pains shall never find it labor in vain. Then "shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord." H. That the Lord is King of all the earth, and that He will eventually establish His kingdom, is the broad and general way of stating the prophetic character of Scripture, and it is one that is incontrovertible, while the character itself is without parallel elsewhere. Exclusive as the Jewish nation was, it was nevertheless profoundly impressed with the consciousness of having a mission to the whole world, and possessing a knowledge of God that would one day be confessed. And it is no insignificant fact that the entire Christian Church has accepted that knowledge as authentic, and so far confessed the mission of Israel to have been Divine. This circumstance alone is a striking commentary on such words as "Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. The Lord thy God, O Zion, shall be King forevermore and throughout all generations" (Ps. 146: 10). Leathes. 4. God shall administer His government over the nations, rebuking their sins and securing radical reform. The instance cited as both proof and specimen is the cessation of all war; the conversion of its implements into those of husbandry, and the utter disuse of the study and drill which prepare men for war. Considering what desolations, moral and physical, war has wrought; how deeply its causes have been imbedded in human selfishness; and, moreover, what mischiefs have come of learning war, it must be admitted that this illustrative case bears in it volumes of precious meaning. If under the universal diffusion of God's law war shall cease, so shall all other moral and social evils. The very heart of man will be renewed; human society will be regenerated. H. C. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Throughout the prophets the time of the Messiah is represented as a time of universal peace and godliness, in which the natures of men should be changed, and all malice and ill nature rooted out. He Himself is called "the Prince of Peace." The spiritual sense implies Christ's being the great Peace maker, who should reconcile both Jews and Gentiles to God and to each other. If we look upon this and like prophecies as foretelling the outward peacefulness of the kingdom or Church of Christ, they seem to relate to some future flourishing state of the Church, when, after having subdued all His enemies, He shall give rest unto His faithful servants. W. Loweth. 5. From this distant prospect of the calling of the Gentiles, the prophet now reverts to his own times and countrymen, and calls upon them not to be behind the nations in the use of their distinguishing advantages. If even the heathen were one day to be enlightened, surely they who were already in possession of the light ought to make use of it. A. Christ is revealed in His Book. The sacred page is a living word—the voice of God. The Bible, in its simplicity, its calm authoritative-ness and its directness, finds us at the centres of our being, enters into our life and makes of us a new creature. The Bible is therefore the source of light, sweetness, and life. It brings us into direct relations with God and Christ, and therefore becomes to us the means whereby we may be holy as God is holy. Not the righteousness of man, but the righteousness of Christ, becomes ours. By Christ we are made partakers of the Divine nature and heritors of a perfection which would have been impossible had not Jesus Christ lived and died upon the earth. Interior. 6-8. The exhortation in verse 5 implied that the Jews were not actually walking in God's light, but were alienated from Him, a fact which is now explicitly asserted and the reason of it given—viz., illicit intercourse with foreign nations, as evinced by the adoption of their superstitious practices, reliance on their martial and pecuniary aid, and last, but worst of all, the worship of their idols. A. 10. Terrible judgments from God are thought of as already present, and the prophet exhorts them to flee for safety to the rocks and caves of the mountains, such as could be readily found in the hill country of Judæ. It would be awful to meet God clothed with vengeance! 12-16. Cedars, oaks, mountains, hills, towers, walls, ships, and pictures are here representatives of human pride. The prophet's meaning is that the pride and the proud men that they represent shall be utterly abased. H. C.—Pride sets a man in opposition against God. Other sins are aversions from God, but this sin is a coming against God. In other sins a man flies from God; but in this sin a man flies upon God. "God resisteth the proud" (Jas. 4: 6). T. Brooks. 22. He shows the folly of transferring their confidence in idols to human patrons, by a general statement of man's weakness and mortality, explained and amplified in the following chapter. "Cease ye from man" (cease to trust him or depend upon him), "whose breath is in his nostrils" (whose life is transient and precarious, with obvious allusion to Gen. 2:7), "for wherein is he to be accounted of" (or at what rate is he to be valued)? A.—In the line of the prophet's thought, thus: Why trust in man, whom you may see fleeing, panic-smitten, before the majesty of Jehovah when He ariseth to smite the earth with terror? H. C. Chap. 3. From the grand moral features of the judgment the prophet turns to describe those great evils in the State which would prepare its way. The bulwarks of the kingdom would be withdrawn, and the whole fabric sink into ruin. Birks. 1. This verse assigns as a reason for the exhortation in the one preceding (2:22), that God was about to take away from the people every ground of reliance, natural and moral. Cease ye from man-i.e., cease to trust in any human protection, "For, behold" (implying a proximate futurity) "the Lord" (God considered as a sovereign) "Jehovah of Hosts" (as self-existent and eternal, and at the same time as the God of revelation and the God of His people) "is taking away" (or about to take away) "from Jerusalem and from Judah" (not only from the capital, but from the whole kingdom) "the stay and the staff" (i.e., all kinds of support, and first of all), "the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water" (the natural and necessary means of subsistence). The terms are applicable either to a general famine produced by natural causes, or to a scarcity arising from invasion or blockade, such as actually took place when Judah was overrun by Nebuchadnezzar. A. 4. Ahaz came to the throne at twenty, Manasseh at twelve, and the reigns of Amon, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, Zedekiah, ended at the ages of twenty-four, twenty-three, thirty-six, eighteen, and thirty-two years. The want of all wisdom in the rulers would cause a rank growth of lawlessness and oppression. The first commandment with promise being thus despised, a curse must follow. Young children disobedient to parents, arrogant and rude to their elders, are one of the plainest portents of national ruin near at hand. Birks. 5. As the preceding verse describes bad government, so this describes anarchy, the suspension of all government, and a consequent dis order in the relations of society, betraying itself in mutual violence, and in the disregard of natural and artificial claims to deference. "And the people shall act tyrannically, man against man, and man against his fellow. They shall be insolent, the youth to the old man, and the mean man to the noble." 6,7. Having predicted the removal of those qualified to govern, the rise of incompetent successors, and a consequent insubordination and confusion, the prophet now describes this last as having reached such a height that no one is willing to hold office, or, as Matthew Henry says, "the government goes a begging." A.-The condition of the State is so bad that no man is willing to hold office in it. This is put by a special case. A man living quietly at home in the house of his father (in the house, rather "of" the house), according to patriarchal usage, is pressed by his brother to take the office of ruler, but positively refuses. He will not take this responsibility of trying to restore a ruined State. These graphic touches indicate both the general destitution and the utter prostration of civil society and government. 8. This explains why the people are without bread, clothing or rulers. Their words and deeds have been utterly "against the Lord," contemptuously hostile and defiant. Surely the Lord would have us understand that He has keen sensibilities to the outrages of sin, and that he feels the abuse and wrong which the sinner perpetrates upon Him. Is anything more sensitive to violence than the eye? 9. These are bold sinners, of shameless, unblushing brow and bearing. The expression of their countenance witnesses to their heart sin. Woe to their souls, for they bring ruin upon themselves! H. C.—The sins of the people, like those of Sodom, are bringing down the fierce anger of God, and to the prophet's eye their ruin seems as if already come. Pride and lust are written on their very faces, and cannot be concealed. Nay, so shameless are they grown they do not even try to conceal them. Effrontery doubles their guilt, and makes judgment inevitable. When vice grows bold and shameless, woe to the guilty land! Birks. 10, 11. The Lord is not a bare spectator, He is both a rewarder and an avenger. Therefore, from the ground of this truth, that the Lord seeth all our ways and counteth all our steps, we, as the prophet exhorts, may "say to the righteous, that it shall be well with him; for they shall eat the fruit of their doings." We may also say, "Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.” Only idols which have eyes and see not, have hands and strike not. Caryl. 10. The righteous are encouraged by the assurance that the judgments of God shall not be indiscriminate. “Say ye of the righteous that it shall be well, for the fruits of their doings they shall eat.” The object of address seems to be not the prophets or ministers of God, but the people at large or men indefinitely. A.—No righteous man would, in his right mind, be willing to make an exchange of his smartest afflictions for a wicked man’s prosperity, with all the circumstances attending. It cannot, therefore, be bad with the righteous in the worst condition. Charnock.—The reward of right living, or of seeking after rightness of life, is sure, because it is among the promises of God. Truthfulness, charitableness, peaceableness—these are primary characteristics of the true followers of the Master. These are graces which may be possessed by the humblest disciples; by those who cannot do “great things” in the eyes of men, but who long to do “right things” in the eyes of God. Now we are assured that, to the truthful, new views of Divine truth will be unfolded; to the gracious and charitable, new conceptions of God’s love will be imparted; to the peaceable, enjoyment of the peace which truly passes all understanding will be vouchsafed. Interior. Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth. These remain. Whatever of excellence is wrought into the soul itself belongs to both worlds. Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life; it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever; but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary and indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie be all sundered, be all broken, he floats away, a worthless atom in the universe; its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe, in such terse but terrific language, as living “without God in the world.” Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away, from the purposes of his creation. Webster. 11. Woe unto the wicked, for the reward of his hands shall be given him.** The determination of character is in man’s own power; for he may get from God what elements of good he pleases, and may have whatever of evil he pleases taken away. The good is of God, and if a man sows that, he shall eat the fruit of it. The bad is of man and Satan, and if a man chooses that, he shall eat of the fruit of that. The warning against it and the salvation from it are of God. The misery consequent upon it is of the sinner’s own self, and not of God; though God is the security, both to the righteous and the wicked, of having their respective wages paid to them. “I will bring evil on this people,” says God, “even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened to My words, nor to My law, but have rejected them. Say ye to the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings; but they that plough iniquity and sow wickedness shall reap the same.” This throws all consequences, even for eternity, back upon character. Character produces consequences, and is the great lord of destiny forever. God tells us that character formed according to His word, by His counsel, is safe, and forms a security of happiness for eternity; but otherwise it is a security of shame and misery, the shame and misery being the inevitable result and production of an irreligious character. And God, by the freedom with which He lets consequences come down even in this world, which confessedly is not the world of retribution, but of restraint, shows us what may be expected when consequences shall have their full swing and development, when complete justice shall be administered, and men shall be judged according to the fruit of their doings as well as the nature of their character. Cheever. So long as God is in the universe every soul that is in the universe must feel His power. No space can be so wide, no time so long as to exhaust His influence. He that obeys must feel the ever-present God in joy. He that disobeys must feel Him in pain everywhere and forever. These are the terrible necessities of obedience and disobedience. We may state it, the Bible often does state it, judicially. We may speak of God’s vengeance. But greater and truer than any picture of angry vengeance, more solemn, more sublime, more impressive to the fear of a reasonable and thoughtful man, there is the mighty image of God standing in the centre of things. And all things have to touch Him. And as all things touch Him, according to their characters, He becomes to them blessing or cursing. He is the happiness of obedience and the misery of disobedience throughout His world. He looks with sympathetic joy or with profoundest pity on the souls He judges, but the judgments both come from Him. The right hand and the left hand are both His. Burning there like the sun to all the world, He must be a comforting and guiding light, or a consuming fire—one or the other—to every soul. Phillips Brooks. Sometimes the wicked eat here in this world of the fruit of their own doings. They receive in themselves that recompense of their error which is meet. This is the case both physically and mentally. The habits of intemperance, of self-indulgence, of the violation of what are called the laws of nature, both of the body and the mind, are followed, after a certain period, with hopeless and incurable misery. Men of intemperate minds experience plenty of warnings as to the conclusion to which their passions are hurrying them; a conclusion as fixed as fate, when habit passes with its owner beyond the world of grace into a world where destiny is determined by character, and character is the sum and expression of all preceding habit. Our passions, even in this world, if we give way to them, are all turned into diseases that prey upon ourselves, making the recesses of our being like sepulchral caves inhabited by legions of evil spirits. Cheever. ‘Say to the righteous, it shall be well with him: woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with him,’ is the voice of both Testaments. For under the New, which brings life and immortality to light, we are still assured that ‘Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.’ But while both the older and the newer revelation of the Divine character and intent thus supplement each other, it is to be observed that it takes the completed life of man to sum up reward and penalty. The revelation by the prophets had chiefly to do with man’s earthly experience; that by the Son had chiefly to do with man’s future blessedness. At the harvest home the minister takes his text from the Old Testament; at the bedside of the dying or at the head of the bier he chooses his Scripture lesson from the New. It takes a wise and well-balanced Christian to so faithfully embrace the two covenants in his creed that his piety be neither mystic nor materialistic. Even in Old Testament times, when the faith of God’s people was supported the rather by reference to temporal rewards, there were exceptions to the rule so notable as to force the most godly to cry out, ‘How doth God know; and is there knowledge with the Most High?’ It was when poverty and bereavement and sickness fell upon such a life that the faith of the servant of Jehovah ‘had almost slipped.’ It was only when he went into the house of God and ‘understood the latter end’ of the sinner and the righteous that the sun again broke over the darkened soul. It is thus even in the days when the supports of faith were chiefly in visible rewards that the soul was ofttimes driven to seek refuge in the unseen world. At no time have the spirits most in touch with God understood the promises of temporal blessings as other than conditional, so given that while their general fulfilment confirmed faith their not less evident exceptions did not destroy it. It cannot be doubted, by those most intimately conversant with the spiritual life of the day, that some of our most devout disciples suffer from a teaching which exaggerates the assurance of temporal prosperity while intending only to honor the word. Assuming that wealth and health are ‘good things,’ the promise that ‘No good thing will be withhold from them that walk uprightly,’ seems conclusive that worldly prosperity and freedom from pain are assured to the faithful disciple. A thorn in the flesh becomes therefore the evidence of unfaithfulness, and the loss of flocks and herds by the Sabeans the sure token of Divine displeasure; ignoring the most evident fact that the one was thrust upon the most eminent New Testament saint and the other befell the only man whom the Old Testament calls ‘perfect.’ It ought never to be forgotten that the Divine intent has but ‘a single eye.’ God’s purpose is ‘not enjoyment and not sorrow,’ but ‘righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.’ Rule and exception are both subservient to the one purpose, the image of God in the life of the believer. The very disciple who preached the Gospel as containing within itself the ‘promise of the life that now is’ had ‘suffered the loss of all things,’ and yet rejoiced with ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory.’ To preach that the upright man will never know Job’s boils or Paul’s thorn in the flesh is to spread a net for the feet of the unwary; to preach that the consecration of any portion of our substance to the Lord will save us from the results of bad business habits or rash investments is to promise what God has nowhere assured. But to say that neither the height of prosperity nor the depth of want shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, is to preach a Gospel good for every age and needed by every soul. Interior. 12. Cause thee to err.** There are persons whose company always betrays us into slandering or scoffing, or bitter envy, or hypocrisy, or some evil passion; there are places in which we cannot maintain, or have at least never yet maintained, even our usual regard to the will of God, and from which we return less disposed than we ought to remember Christ, or engage in any religious duty; there are books we read, or trains of thought we indulge in, which lower our tone and unhinge the mind for serious, vigorous and devout exercise. Now it is very often the case that it is quite at our option that we thus put ourselves in the way of temptation. Dods. 15. The Lord's address to the elders of Israel is continued in a tone of indignant expostulation. "What mean ye" (literally, what is to you, equivalent in English to what have you—i.e., what right, what reason, what motive, what advantage) "that ye crush My people" (a common figure for severe oppression, Job 5:4; Prov. 22:22) "and grind the faces of the poor" (upon the ground, by trampling on their bodies, another strong figure for contemptuous and oppressive violence), "saith the Lord Jehovah of Hosts" (which is added to remind the accused of the sovereign authority, omniscience and omnipotence of Him by whom the charge is brought against them). 16,17. The prophet here resumes the thread which had been dropped or broken at the close of verse 12, and recurs to the undue predominance of female influence, but particularly to the prevalent excess of female luxury, not only as sinful in itself, but as a chief cause of the violence and social disorder previously mentioned, and therefore to be punished by disease, widowhood, and shameful exposure. 18-23. Although the prediction in verse 17 implies the loss of all ornaments whatever, we have now a minute specification of the things to be taken away. This specification had a double use: it made the judgment threatened more explicit and significant to those whom it concerned, while to others it gave some idea of the length to which extravagance in dress was carried. 25. The prophet now assigns as a reason for the grief predicted in verse 24, a general slaughter of the male population, the effect of which is again described in verse 26, and its extent in chap. 4:1, which belongs more directly to this chapter than the next. In the verse before us he first addresses Zion or Jerusalem didirectly, but again, as it were, turns away, and in the next verse speaks of her in the third person. A. Chap. 4:1. In the current sentiments of the Hebrew people, the love of offspring was intensely strong, and the reproach of being childless and unmarried was extreme. The case here stated implies that the male population had been cut off by destructive wars, as said in chap. 3:25. Hence the usual numerical equality of the two sexes was broken up, and the greatest solicitude was felt for the future welfare of society. It therefore becomes one indication of great public calamity that seven women (a large indefinite number) should take hold (earnestly, if not violently) of one man, saying, "We will provide our own bread and clothing, only let us bear thy name; take away our reproach." 2-6. The tone of discourse changes; the Messiah appears coming forth from God on the one hand, and on the other, born of woman, and so of the earth. The remnant who have escaped these fearful visitations of judgment are purified by discipline and become holy; are also shielded from every danger and protected from all evil by this glorious personage. They repose under His shadow and find in Him an everlasting and perfect refuge. H. C.—It is commonly agreed that this prediction has been only partially fulfilled, and that its complete fulfilment is to be expected, not in the literal Mount Zion or Jerusalem, but in those various assemblies or societies of true believers, which now possess in common the privileges once exclusively enjoyed by the holy city and the chosen race of which it was the centre and metropolis. 2. At this point the prophet passes from the tone of threatening to that of promise. Having foretold a general destruction, he now intimates that some should escape it, and be rendered glorious and happy by the presence and favor of the Son of God, who is at the same time the Son of Man. "In that day" (after this destruction) "shall the branch" (or offspring) "of Jehovah be for honor and for glory, and the fruit of the earth for sublimity and beauty, to the escaped of Israel." A. This conception of a shoot springing up from its root appears frequently in the Hebrew prophets. Isaiah uses various parallel terms, and not exclusively this one rendered branch. Thus, in 11:1 "a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots," but even this word rendered branch is a new one. So also in chap. 53:2, "a tender plant, a root out of dry ground." But later prophets concentrate very much upon this word branch, as may be seen in Jer. 23 : 5, "I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper;" also Jer. 33 : 15, "I will cause the branch of righteousness to grow up unto David," etc. So in Zech. 3 : 8, "I will bring forth my servant, Branch;" and also 6 : 12, "Behold the man whose name is Branch." Thus remarkably the usage finally culminates in making this his proper name. No fact could more clearly prove an established Jewish usage of this term to denote their expected Messiah. This is the interpretation also of the Chaldee Paraphrast, one of the oldest records of Jewish opinion. The thing affirmed here of the Messiah, thought of as at first only a weak and tender shoot, is that He shall become a glory and honor, a thing of beauty and exaltation to all the escaped ones of Israel. From the most humble beginnings He shall rise to the loftiest dignity, to be admired, loved, adored as the glorious Deliverer and King of His people. 3,4. The special points made here are that these blessings from the great Messiah shall come to all the survivors of Israel; that their essential and most vital element shall be real holiness, than which nothing can be better, and that this holiness shall come to Israel as a result of the washing away of her filth and blood by God's discipline, coupled with the power of the Divine Spirit. H. C. 5. A cloud and smoke by day, etc.** This is a manifest allusion to the pillar of a cloud, and of fire, which attended the Jews in their passage out of Egypt; and to the glory that rested on the tabernacle (Ex. 40 : 38. See Zech. 2 : 5). Both passages mean, the visible presence of God shall protect the Church. Bp. Lowth. 6. And there shall be a tabernacle.** And whereas the Church shall be still subject to the scorching heats and tempestuous storms of persecution, God shall erect a safe tabernacle for her, to shade her from the heat and shelter her from those violent tempests. Bp. H. Comparing this closing prophecy with that which commences the message (chap. 2 : 2-4), that gives only a general view of the results of His reign upon the nations; this is a more specific view of the origin and person of the Messiah; of the holiness of His people, and of His special relation to them as Redeemer, Protector, and bosom Friend. Both are precious, magnificent predictions. H. C. 5 : 1 Let me sing for my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and he made a trench about it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also hewed out a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; I will break down the fence thereof, and it shall be trodden down: and I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned nor hoed; but there shall come up briars and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgement, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry. Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land! In mine ears saith the LORD of hosts, Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant. For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah. Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that tarry late into the night, till wine inflame them! And the harp and the lute, the tabret and the pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither have they considered the operation of his hands. Therefore my people are gone into captivity, for lack of knowledge : and their honourable men are famished, and their multi- 14 tude are parched with thirst. Therefore hell hath enlarged her desire, and opened her mouth without measure : and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that 15 rejoiceth among them, descend into it. And the mean man is bowed down, and the great 16 man is humbled, and the eyes of the lofty are humbled : but the LORD of hosts is exalted 17 in judgement, and God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness. Then shall the lambs feed as in their pasture, and the waste places of the fat ones shall wanderers eat. 18 Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart 19 rope : that say, Let him make speed, let him hasten his work, that we may see it : and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it ! 20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter ! 21 Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight ! 22 Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong 23 drink : which justify the wicked for a reward, and take away the righteousness of the 24 righteous from him ! Therefore as the tongue of fire devoureth the stubble, and as the dry grass sinketh down in the flame, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust : because they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 25 Therefore is the anger of the LORD kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them, and the hills did tremble, and their carcasses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his 26 hand is stretched out still. And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss for them from the end of the earth : and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly : 27 none shall be weary nor stumble among them ; none shall slumber nor sleep ; neither shall 28 the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken : whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent ; their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their 29 wheels like a whirlwind : their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions : yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and carry it away safe, and there shall be none to 30 deliver. And they shall roar against them in that day like the roaring of the sea : and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and distress, and the light is darkened in the clouds thereof. Chap. 5. This chapter contains a description of the prevalent iniquities of Judah, and of the judgments which, in consequence of these, had been or were to be inflicted on the people. The form of the prophecy is peculiar, consisting of a parable and a commentary on it. The prophet first delivers his whole message in a parabolic form (verses 1-7). He then explains and amplifies it at great length (verses 8-30). The parable sets forth the peculiar privileges, obligations, guilt, and doom of Israel under the figure of a highly favored vineyard, which, instead of good fruit, brings forth only wild grapes, and is therefore given up to desolation (verses 1-6). The application is expressly made by the prophet himself (verse 7). In the remainder of the chapter he enumerates the sins which were included in the general expressions of verse 7, and describes their punishment. In doing this, he first gives a catalogue of sins with their appropriate punishments annexed (verses 8-24). He then describes the means used to inflict them, and the final issue (verses 25-30). This chapter, like the first, is applicable not to one event exclusively, but to a sequence of events which was repeated more than once, although its terms were never fully realized until the closing period of the Jewish history, after the true Messiah was rejected, when one ray of hope was quenched after another, until all grew dark forever in the skies of Israel. A. 1-7. Elsewhere in the Scriptures the Lord's people are His vineyard, with reference to the careful culture He had given them, and the failure of the reasonably expected fruits. (See Ps. 80 : 8-16 ; Jer. 2 : 21 ; Ezek. 19 : 10-14, and Matt. 21 : 33-44.) This last, a parable by our Lord, has points of close resemblance to the one before us, especially in the main feature of keeping back the purposed application until the hearers had passed judgment upon the case, and then showing them that they had right-eously condemned themselves. H. C. 4. What could have been done more that I have not done?** They had everything requisite for instruction and direction in their duty, for the quickening of them to it, and putting of them in mind of it: no inducements were wanting to persuade them to it, but all arguments were used proper to work either upon hope or fear; and they had all the opportunities they could desire for the performance of their duty, the new moons, and the Sabbaths, and solemn feasts; they had the Scriptures, the lively oracles, a standing ministry in the priests and Levites, besides what was extraordinary in the prophets. No nation had statutes and judgments so righteous. H.—He gave them His will, His ordinances, His prophets, and separated them from all nations by peculiar rites, that they might be to Him for a name, and a praise, and a peculiar treasure, above all nations. He has done much more for us under the Gospel. None can be ignorant of the intention of God in all these provisions. R. Hall. The untiring and unceasing work of God's compassion on earth is to bring human hearts out of unconcern to the hearty longing for Christ—for His love, His grace, His life. It is to stir and awaken that desire, which never is despised if it is sincere, and never disappointed if it is persevering. For this the Holy Spirit keeps up His inward and invisible solicitation, speaking through the conscience. For this the providential plan of each individual life is shaped and carried on, with its daily discipline. For this the prophets rebuke, the apostles teach, the martyrs die. For this the Scriptures are written, the Gospel is preached, the Church is planted and extended, the sacraments are ministered, the prayers are offered. For this—all ye whose groans are relieved or smothered—whose tears fall or are forced back upon their fountains in fear or shame—whose springs of joy are dry as summer dust, whose career is a failure, and whose ambition is dead—for this you are "tired and discouraged," scourged and lonely—that you might "want" some voice to "speak to you about Christ and His love;" nay, that you might want to see Jesus Himself. F. D. H. 5,6. Since all culture seems wasted on this vineyard, the owner resolves to change his course and abandon it to sterility. Its fences shall be removed, and the wild boar of the forest and the beast of the field be let in to waste and devour. The showers of blessing shall be withdrawn. The meaning of the parable and the cause of these threatenings are then explained together. The vineyard is the house of Israel and the men of Judah; and the reason of these judgments is the crime and violence that fill their land. Birks.—God in a way of righteous judgment denies His grace to those that have long received it in vain. The sum of all is that they who would not bring forth good fruit should bring forth none. The curse of barrenness is the punishment of the sin of barrenness (as Mark 11:14). This had its accomplishment, in part, in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, its full accomplishment in the final rejection of the Jews, and has its frequent accomplishment in the departure of God's Spirit from those persons who have long resisted Him and striven against Him, and the removal of His Gospel from those places that have been long a reproach to it, while it has been an honor to them. H. It is just as true that God is everywhere about us, always mindful of our wants, though we never think of Him. It is just as true that Christ comes to us by the bright lessons of His example and the melting doctrines of His death, though we turn our backs alike on the manger and the cross. It is just as true that we are pressing onward to eternity, though we grasp after present pleasure, and think not of the future. Truth is perfect and immutable amid all the weakness and changes of man. God is not indifferent when He finds His paternal love slighted and despised. Christ is not unaffected when we turn coldly away from His tender entreaties, though He come repeatedly with the expostulation, "How often would I, but ye would not." Homer.—Well, then, O child of man, may the God of heaven and earth exclaim, "Judge ye between Me and My vineyard!" Well, then, may we heed the awful menace uttered in the song of the vineyard. A nation, a church, a house, a heart, where the grace of God has been received in vain, cannot fail to be an object of His righteous displeasure. Van O. 7. This incidental and quiet showing that the owner of the vineyard is truly the God of Israel is at once beautiful and striking. He is one who can speak to the clouds in tones of lofty command—and they obey! The secret is now out and the prophet has only to put the moral of the parable before the people in explicit terms. "For" (as you will see from His authority over the clouds) the Lord Jehovah is the owner and the cultivator of this vineyard. His vineyard is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are the plant, the vine, upon which He so much sets His heart. He looked for justice, but behold only injustice; for righteousness, but lo, He hears only the outcries of the wronged and crushed. This indicates what special fruit the Lord expected—viz., moral uprightness and a fraternal bearing toward all fellow-men. Especially He did not expect and could not bear man's heartless oppression of His brother-man! The points of moral instruction made prominent in this parable are that God's gifts of truth, light as to duty, moral culture and opportunities for doing good, create peculiar obligations to be morally fruitful, to do justice and to love mercy. Men so blessed with privileges must be held to a stern accountability. Failing to meet this, they must expect that God will take away their privileges and give them to others who will render the fruits in their season. See the doctrine of our Lord on this point (Matt. 21 : 43). H. C. 8. Here begins a detailed specification of the sins included in the general expressions of verse 7. We have first two woes pronounced against as many sins, each followed by a threatening of appropriate punishment, and a general threatening which applies to both (verses 8-17). The first sin thus denounced is that of ambitious and avaricious grasping after property, not merely in opposition to the peculiar institutions of the law, but to the fundamental principles of morals, connected as it always is with a neglect of charitable duties and a willingness to sacrifice the good of others. The verse before us may be understood, however, as descriptive rather of the tendency and aim of this ambitious grasping than of its actual effects. Woe to the joiners of house with house, or those making house touch house, field to field they bring together. 9,10. The inordinate desire of lands and houses shall be punished with the loss of them. And first He threatens that the valuable houses which they coveted and gained by fraud or violence shall one day be left empty, an event implying the death, captivity, or degradation of their owners. A. Who can deny that this covetousness which is idolatry, this selfish and grasping spirit, is of all sins that which always has been and is most common and prevalent in the Church, and even among sincerely religious men? It clothes itself with respectability as with a garment, and walks often unrebuked, often flattered even and admired, in almost every assembly of the saints. How many of us are there who, if we love righteousness, also hanker after the wages of unrighteousness, after the opulence, the gratifications, the success which can only come to us through a selfish and worldly—i.e., a sinful life. No transgression is more common than this among spiritual men, though none is more fatal to the spiritual life, since none renders a man more impervious to the rebukes of conscience or the warnings of the Word and Spirit of God. Cox. Thousands of people might be enjoying reasonable lives, with opportunities for self-culture, for social enjoyment, and for charitable effort, whose whole energy is absorbed in the desperate struggle to add superfluities to comforts. Saturday Review.—The spirit of enterprise is the mainspring of all material progress and prosperity. The Christian farmer need not be covetous. He cultivates the land that God has prepared for him. He trusts in God for rain and sunshine. And if he raises more than he needs, the surplus feeds the hungry at home and abroad. He cannot be utterly selfish even if he wants to. If he prospers, others must be benefited. And so with the inventor and manufacturer. He may get rich, but he enriches every farmer or artisan who is helped by his labor-saving machine. So in all departments of legitimate business. A man may prosper without covetousness, especially if he regards himself as God's steward, and holds his wealth subject to the calls of religion and humanity. But the man who goes to church on the Sabbath, who professes to believe in God, and then goes home, and in the little shrine of his narrow, selfish soul worships mammon—studies day and night how he can get rich by impoverishing others, he is the heathen in the midst of Christendom. Babb. 11-14. The second woe is uttered against drunkenness and heartless dissipation, with its usual accompaniment of inattention to God's providential dealings, and is connected with captivity, hunger, thirst, general mortality, as its appropriate punishment. The description of the sin is contained in verses 11, 12, and first that of drunkenness, considered not as an occasional excess, but as a daily business, diligently prosecuted with a devotion such as would ensure success in any laudable or lawful occupation. A. The next woe falls on those who abandon themselves to sensuality in the line of strong drink, and luxurious feasting and music, to the utter oblivion of God and of all His claims upon His intelligent and moral offspring. This form of sin and its threatened judgment leads the course of thought through verses 11-17. The description of their sin is strongly drawn. They rise early in the morning to follow strong drink, and are up late in the night inflamed with wine as men who make it their life-work to fire their blood and madden their brain under the perpetual stimulus of intoxicating drink. It is but a thing of course that such sensualists should give themselves to feasting, and should also superadd the charms of music. And yet more is it a thing of course that they should forget God! Ah, there can be no right thought or sense of God amid such revelry! One of the main purposes of such indulgence is to banish all thought of God. H. C. 13,14. Here again the sin is directly followed by its condign punishment, drunkenness and disregard of providential warnings by captivity, hunger, thirst, and general mortality. But instead of the language of direct prediction (as in verses 9, 10) the prophet here employs that of description. A. Alcoholic poisoning is responsible for more disease than any other single cause, and its action, being chemical, is more easily investigated than the complicated biologic influences of parasitic micro-organisms. Alcoholic intoxication exhibits in its action phenomena of the same class as present themselves in the case of other chronic poisons. The daily administration of small doses may be continued for an indefinite period without any apparent noxious effect, but its action is cumulative, and may at any moment announce itself as chronic disease. All the indications point to the conclusion that it is the nervous tissue which is especially exposed to the cumulative action of the alcoholic poison. The alcohol sets up a chemical action in the nervous tissue, which at first inaugurates only imperceptible change; but once inaugurated, the process goes on until the tissue passes into a permanently diseased condition. Hence, medical opinion is becoming more and more strengthened in the conviction that it is by no means only the free drinkers and notorious drunkards who are victims of this insidious habit, but also innumerable persons who would repel the appellation "drinker" with indignation. The influence of alcohol on the nerves, and especially on the motor nerves, is seen in the acute stage of intoxication, and in its chronic form is exhibited in delirium tremens, and various forms of neurotic disease. But, fearful as are these diseases, they are of comparatively rare occurrence, while diseases springing from the action of alcohol on the physical organs are of such far more frequent occurrence as to render their consideration of greater practical importance. Alcohol exerts its essential and most significant influence on the vital organs by being taken up in the circulation, and thus brought into direct contact with the cellular tissues of the vital organs. Cirrhose liver, diseases of the heart, of the arteries, of the kidneys, and of the mucous membrane of the alimentary canal, along with gout, diabetes, and fatty degeneration, are all ascribable to it. This is a formidable list when we take into consideration their frequent occurrence. The prevention of the evils of alcoholism, when once realized, should appeal to us as physicians to enlist all our forces in an earnest effort to grapple with them. Prevention is, in principle, so easy. Nothing is needed but insight and good will, and a firm conviction that we are toiling for a good cause in the service of humanity. Dr. Adolf Strümpell, Berlin. 14. The ancient Orientals manifestly thought of the souls of men, good or bad, as going to the under world, though not each to the same apartment in it. The grave, just beneath earth's surface, might receive and retain the body; a lower and quite other one received all human souls, where the wicked wandered in darkness, while the righteous in their apartments had rest. Here this subterranean receptacle opens its mouth even beyond all precedent or limit; and "down into it go their glory" (that of God's guilty people); "their multitude and pomp, with every one who exults in it"—i.e., all those who profanely, impiously exult over the threatened horrors of the grave. Making themselves prominent in their foolhardiness. God makes them specially prominent in this enumeration of what goes down into that world of the dead. H. C. 16. God shall be glorified (verse 16). He that is the Lord of hosts and the holy God shall be exalted and sanctified in the judgment and righteousness of these dispensations. His justice must be owned, in bringing those low that exalted themselves; and herein He is glorified; He will herein be exalted as the Lord of hosts, that is able to break the strongest, humble the proudest, and tame the most unruly. Power is not exalted but in judgment. It is the honor of God that, though He has a mighty arm, yet judgment and justice are always the habitation of His throne (Ps. 89: 13, 14). H. 18. This verse contains the third woe, having reference to presumptuous sinners who defy God's judgments. They are here represented not as drawn away by sin, but as laboriously drawing it to them by soliciting temptation, drawing it out by obstinate persistency in evil and contempt of Divine threatenings. A.—The cause is here put for the effect; "iniquity" and "sin" for the punishment which they provoke. The meaning then is, "Woe unto them who foolishly draw upon themselves the reward of iniquity; nay, set their shoulders to pull it forward, as a beast of burden does a cart rope!" Rosenmüller. The style of sinning here contemplated is fully given in verse 19, where their spirit stands out in their supposed words: "Let Him" (God) "make speed and hasten His work" (of threatened judgment) "that we may see it—and let the Holy One of Israel" (said contemptuously, in bitter scorn) "draw nigh and come that we may know" (Him). "You threaten His coming: let Him come! Let us know Him. Who fears?" This strain of impious blasphemy implies an utter incredulity, or the very extreme of foolhardiness. No human line ever yet fathomed the mysteries of sin madness; the depths of moral infatuation to which depravity in sinning creatures, human and satanic, can sink. In any rational point of light, it seems in the last degree amazing that men should dare the Almighty to vengeance, and heap insults on His name and throne after this manner; but who shall say what the folly and guilt of sin cannot do? Men of this spirit draw all sorts of sin into their souls as if they were eager to be filled with sin to their utmost capacity! H. C. 20. Woe unto them that call evil good, etc.** The prophet compares the difference of moral "good and evil," presented to the human understanding, with that of "light and darkness" discerned by the eye, of "bitter and sweet," tasted by the palate; that is, as a plain and undeniable truth which forceth its evidence upon a rational mind: to transgress God's commandments, His laws and statutes, delivered by His prophets and confirmed by a series of miracles, was a heinous crime; but to "call evil good, and good evil," was to advance a step farther in impiety, to lay the profane axe to the root of righteousness, to destroy all religion, and to sink into mere atheism. Jortin.—Virtue and piety are good, for they are light and sweet, they are pleasant and right; but sin and wickedness are evil, they are darkness, all the fruit of ignorance and mistake, and will be bitterness in the latter end. Those do a great deal of wrong to God and religion and conscience, to their own souls and to the souls of others, who misrepresent these and put false colors upon them, who call drunkenness good fellowship and covetousness good husbandry, and when they persecute the people of God think they do Him good service; and on the other hand, who call seriousness ill nature and sober singularity ill breeding, who say all manner of evil falsely concerning the ways of godliness, and do what they can to form in men's minds prejudices against them; and this in defiance of evidence as plain and convincing as that of sense, by which we distinguish beyond contradiction between light and darkness, and that which to the taste is sweet and bitter. H. This reversal of moral terms and this consequent breaking down of moral distinctions, this calling evil good and good evil, is one of the most common devices of respectable sinning. It is really the testimony which wicked men unconsciously bear to the intrinsic merit and the consequent respectability of goodness. Taxing their sophistry to the utmost, constraining the public sentiment of society to their own purposes, and often, alas! with fearful success, they manage to lessen materially the discomforts of sinning, and to smooth the matter over to their own consciences. H. C.—Whoever does anything to throw the shield of respectability upon a wrong, or cloak it with a smooth name, or to disguise the hateful expression of its face, does something to undermine the very foundations of the moral structure on which all our safety rests. There is a cowardice, a tameness, a complaisance, often, in our judgments of one another which is only second in mischief to the positive wrong it palliates. It is tampering with the foundation principles of good and evil. J. H. Allen. How much wholesome on all accounts is it that there should be an ugly word for an ugly thing, one involving moral condemnation and disgust, even at the expense of a little coarseness, rather than one which plays fast and loose with the eternal principles of morality, which makes sin plausible and shifts the divinely reared landmarks of right and wrong, thus bringing the user under the woe of them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter; a text on which South has written four of his grandest sermons, with reference to this very matter, and bearing this striking title: "On the Fatal Imposture and Force of Words!" How awful, yea, how fearful is this force and imposture of theirs, leading men captive at will. There is an atmosphere about them which they are evermore diffusing, an atmosphere of life or death which we insensibly inhale at each moral breath we draw. Trench. There is hope of reformation as long as the principles remain uncorrupted; but when the light which is in us is converted into darkness, when lies are greedily embraced and errors deliberately justified, the climax of guilt has been reached, the ruin of the character is complete, and the perdition of the soul, without a stupendous miracle of grace, seems to be inevitable. Thornwell.—We hold to no belief in Divine mercy which detracts from the unrelaxed severity of that rule which denounces woe on all those who take pleasure in and who persist in unrighteousness. We can more easily conceive of light without a shadow than believe in sin unaccompanied by penalty. Mercy never lifts her hand to pluck down this high ordinance of God; but she herself, when she has promised hope and relief, repeats with a new emphasis the retributions which are sure to overtake such as obey not her suggestions. W. Adams. It is nothing but the present torpor of the moral sentiments that allows to material ideas so much power to occupy and overwhelm the mind; but when the soul shall be quickened from its lethargy, then good and evil will take that seat of influence which has been usurped by unsubstantial images of greatness, beauty, or terror. What are the thunderings of a thousand storms, what the clangor of the trumpet, or the crash of earth, or the universal blaze, what the dazzling front of the celestial array, or even the appalling apparatus of punishment, to the spirit that has become alive to the consciousness of its own moral condition, and is standing naked in the manifested presence of the High and Holy One? That time of judgment, which is to dispel all disguises and to drag sin from its coverts into the full light of heaven, will assuredly find no moment of leisure for the discursive eye; one perception, one emotion will doubtless rule exclusive in the soul. I. Taylor.—Woe to the soul that fights against God with His own mercies; that will be sinful because He is merciful. Abused mercy will at last turn into a lion, and then woe to the despisers and abusers of it! T. Brooks. 24. To the series of sins enumerated in the six preceding verses there is now added a general description of their punishment. In the first clause the prophet represents the Divine visitation, with its sudden, rapid, irresistible effect, by the familiar figure of chaff and dry grass sinking in the flames. In the second clause he passes from simile to metaphor, and speaks of the people as a tree whose root is rotten and its growth above ground pulverized. In the third, he drops both figures for literal expressions. 25. Having declared in the foregoing verse what should be, he recalls to mind what has already been. As if he had said, “God will visit you for these things; nay, He has done so already, but without reclaiming you or satisfying His own justice, for which purpose further strokes are still required.” The previous inflictions here referred to are described as a stroke from Jehovah’s outstretched hand, so violent as to shake the mountains, and so destructive as to fill the streets with dead bodies. A. 26. Here a foreign foe of fearful power appears as the scourge of the nation. How God calls them to this work is indicated by two figures—the lifting up of a banner around which they are to rally and which they follow; and the hiss or whistle used to call swarming bees home to their hives. With grand sublimity of description, this whistle call is heard from afar across the broad earth, and lo! they come, very swiftly, to fulfil their mission. Such is the power of Almighty God over even heathen nations who neither know nor fear His name. H. C. 30. The roaring of the lion (verse 29) suggests the roaring of the sea, and thus a beautiful transition is effected from the one figure to the other in describing the catastrophe of all these judgments. Israel is threatened by a raging sea, and looking landward sees it growing dark there, until, after a brief fluctuation, the darkness becomes total. And he (the enemy) shall roar against him (Israel) in that day like the roaring of a sea. And he shall look to the land, and behold darkness! Anguish and light! It is dark in the clouds thereof (i.e., of the land, the skies above it). A.—The last touch is graphic. If one looks toward that land, behold! only darkness and sorrow: dense clouds hang deeply over it: all the great lights are darkened in its heavens! The pall of death has fallen and enshrouded the land! So ends this vivid portrayal of the nation’s sins and judgments. As to its fulfilment, many points correspond to the captivity by the Chaldeans; some better to the final destruction by the Romans. Like De. 28, this chapter portrays the fearful judgments held in reserve against the hour when the nation’s sins should imperatively demand their infliction, forbearance and further discipline being in vain. H. C. 6:1 IN the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and 2 lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain 3 he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: 4 the whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds were moved at 5 the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people 6 of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off 7 the altar: and he touched my mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and 8 thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. And I heard the voice of the Lord, say- 9 ing, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I; send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but 10 perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their 11 heart, and turn again, and be healed. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become 12 utterly waste, and the LORD have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many 13 in the midst of the land. And if there be yet a tenth in it, it shall again be eaten up: as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth, when they are felled; so the holy seed is the stock thereof. THIS chapter contains a vision and a prophecy of awful import. The prophet sees the Lord enthroned in the Temple and adored by the seraphim, at whose voice the house is shaken, and the prophet, smitten with a sense of his own corruption and unworthiness to speak for God or praise Him, is relieved by the applica- tion of fire from the altar to his lips, and an assurance of forgiveness, after which, in answer to the voice of God inquiring for a messenger, he offers himself and is accepted, but with an assurance that his labors will tend only to aggravate the guilt and condemnation of the people, who are threatened with judicial blind- ness, and, as its necessary consequence, removal from the desolated country; and the prophecy closes with a promise and a threatening both in one—to wit, that the remnant which survives the threatened judgments shall experience a repetition of the stroke, but that a remnant after all shall continue to exist and to experience God's mercy. The chapter naturally falls into two parts, the vision (verses 1-8) and the mes- sage or prediction (verses 9-13). A. The Temple vision has usually been held to describe the first call of Isaiah to his public work. Its date, the last year of Uzziah, is the earliest given. We learn from chap. 1:1 that Isaiah began to prophesy in that reign, and since he survived it full sixty years, its last year is a more probable date for his prophetic calling than any much earlier year. The first mission of Jeremiah was marked by the touch- ing of his lips in vision, and that of Ezekiel by an appearance of the cherubim. Here both features are combined. The analogy confirms the view that the words recount the first call- ing of Isaiah; and the question, Whom shall I send? further implies that he was now first set apart as the chosen messenger of God. Birks. It was probably their similarity in subject to the preface in chap. 1 that made Isaiah place the prophecy contained in chaps. 2, 3, 4, and that of the unfruitful vineyard (chap. 5), before the account of his inauguration to his office. Thus far all is general. It is the usual lesson of the preacher—and the prophets were Israel's preachers—Repent: for man is corrupt; but God merciful. But the vision of the Almighty on His throne ushers in one of the most remark- able of all Isaiah's predictions—that contained in chaps. 7, 8, and 9:1-7; and the importance of this prophecy was apparently the reason why Isaiah placed in front of it his own solemn call. R. P. S. We find fully revealed, in this interview be- tween the Eternal and His prophet, the three great ideas which were the sustaining powers of his ministry of sixty years. The first, God is holy, therefore His people Israel must be holy. Holiness is to be the unchangeable law of their national existence: "Holy, holy, holy," cry one to another, with subdued voice, the seraphim standing before the throne. And the sanctuary is shaken. Isaiah catches a sudden glimpse, terrible in its clearness, of his own and his people's sin; he feels himself, as it were, struck dead at the sight. Hence the second thought: the nation is already too far gone in sin to be able to accept in earnest the appeals for reform addressed to them by the prophet on behalf of God. "They hear indeed, but do not understand." In order to purify this people, whom God has already ceased to call My people, words are not sufficient; there must be a great national chastisement. "Lord, how long?" asks the prophet. "Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate," is the Lord's answer. But is that to be the end of the prophetic vision? No; and here is the third thought: as the metal comes forth from the crucible, reduced in size but purified, so, after the judgment which shall fall twice upon the people, there shall remain a holy remnant, the germ of the true people of God. "In it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall be eaten; as a teal tree, and as an oak whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof." Thus, holiness as the law, chastisement as the means, and the holy remnant as the result; these are the three fundamental thoughts of this Divine dialogue, the foundation of the whole ministry of Isaiah. They sum up, if I may so say, the whole religious philosophy of the prophet; a philosophy evidently superior to mere human wisdom, and descending from that same Sinai whence came forth the law. Godet. 1-4. The prophet is represented as standing without and immediately before the Holy Place, near the great altar of burnt offering. The doors of entrance to the Holy Place and the veil separating it from the Holy of Holies were thrown wide open, so that the whole inner sanctuary was disclosed to his view. But now its mysterious symbols seemed to be transformed into glorious realities. The Holy of Holies appeared to him as the heaven of heavens. In place of the golden-burnished mercy-seat he saw a throne high and lifted up, of unutterable magnificence. Instead of the resplendent shekinah, the visible symbol of Jehovah, he beheld Jehovah Himself apparently in human form sitting in awfully refulgent majesty upon the throne, clad, after the manner of an ancient monarch, in a robe, the radiant folds of whose flowing train swept over and covered the pavement of the sanctuary. Surrounding this throned Glorious One, instead of the shining cherubim were seen flaming seraphim as His attendant ministers in the attitude of profound veneration, reverently engaged in His worship. These most exalted of created beings severally with two of their wings covered their faces, and with two their feet, thereby betokening their inability steadfastly to behold the glory of God, and the reverence and awe with which they were inspired by His immediate presence, while with the remaining two they were prepared to fly in quick, eager readiness to obey His will. And as thus they stood, with ardent devotion they hymned one to another in alternative responsive doxology, "Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts; filled is all the earth with His glory!" Then were the bases of the thresholds shaken with their loud acclaim, while the whole sacred edifice, suffused with the altar smoke, trembled with the immediate manifest presence of Jehovah. B. 1. I saw the Lord.** It has been a general opinion in all ages of the Church that in every such manifestation it was God the Son who thus revealed Himself. In John 12: 41 it is said to have been Christ's glory that Isaiah saw and spoke of, while Paul cites verses 9 and 10 (Acts 28: 25, 26) as the language of the Holy Ghost. A. 2. "Each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet;" this is the seraph's life of devotion. "And with twain he did fly;" this is his life of active service. If, then, God's will is to be done by His people on earth as it is by His angels in heaven, there must enter into the spiritual life upon earth two great elements—devotion toward God and work for God. The ministry of angels is only half their life. The other half, which indeed makes their ministry glow with zeal, is their worship. And so it must be with God's human servants. Our flying on God's errands will be an unhallowed flight, if we do not first secretly adore Him in our hearts. A prayerless day of hard work, consecrated by no holy meditation, what a dull, plodding, tramping day is it! E. M. G. 3. Two of the Divine attributes form the theme of the seraphs' hymn: God's holiness as inherent in Himself, His glory as manifested in the earth. Holiness denotes fundamentally a state of freedom from all imperfection; a state, moreover, realized with such intensity as to imply not only the absence of evil, but antagonism to it. It is more than goodness, more than purity, more than righteousness; it embraces all these in their ideal completeness, but it expresses besides the recoil from everything which is their opposite. This is the sense which the word bears throughout Scripture. Driver. The seraphim sing responsively to God, as thrice holy, supremely holy, and persevere without weariness in their adoration. But the words allude further to the three persons of the Godhead (John 17 : 11 ; Heb. 7 : 26 ; 1 John 2 : 20) and to the sacred name, including past, present, future time, as in their apocalyptic song, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come" (Rev. 4 : 8). Birks.—The allusion to the Trinity is the more probable because different parts of the chapter are referred in the New Testament to the three persons of the Godhead. A.—In this trisagion, this thrice-repeated "holy," we have no more than a glimpse of the mystery. Yet it was a precious confirmation of the faith, when in a later day this mystery was fully made known, to discover that the rudiments of it had been laid long before in Scripture ; that first and last were there bound together the full unfolded flower of the New Testament shut up in the bud and blossom of the Old. Trench. The doctrine of the Trinity rests upon the sure testimony of the Word of God, and is itself the primal foundation of the great facts of Christianity—atonement for sin by Divine sacrifice, and regeneration of the soul by Divine influence. Only a Divine Saviour could make atonement for sin ; only a Divine Spirit can give life to the soul dead in trespasses and sins. Hence the doctrines of atonement and regeneration rest upon the doctrine of the Trinity, and stand or fall with it. It is a doctrine of the New Testament more than of the Old. Nevertheless, it did not appear in the Christian Church as something altogether new, but by that law of development by which what is concealed in the Old Testament is laid open in the New. It pleases God by means of historic facts to communicate His eternal truth to the world. The doctrines of Scripture are given us mostly by historic mediation, and the facts of the Divine plan of redemption were essential to the full revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity, and the proper use of it for life and salvation. Still, there are numerous and clear intimations of this mystery in the Old Testament, and evident preparations for the revelation of it. Divine attributes are ascribed to the coming Messiah (Isa. 9 : 6 ; Jer. 23 : 6 ; 33 : 16 ; Micah 5 : 2) ; also frequent mention of the Spirit of God (Gen. 6 : 3 ; Ex. 31 : 3 ; 1 Sam. 16 : 13 ; Isa. 61 : 1 ; 63 : 10 ; 48 : 16). These passages, taken together, contain the Trinity germinantly. Robie. The Trinity of our faith means a distinction of persons within one common, indivisible Divine nature. It implies, therefore, as its base that the Divine nature is one and indivisible. It excludes the notion of lords many and gods many. For this reason God revealed the essential oneness of His being first ; and it was only after Israel had, through many weary centuries and many bitter lessons, learned that truth, that Jesus did or could disclose to His disciples the "name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And when you see at the same time how such Hebrews as John, Paul and Peter came to revere Jesus the Son of God as equally to be worshipped with the Father, and received the invisible Spirit who came at Pentecost as no less truly a Divine person, you must feel that this new revelation of a Trinity in God left quite unaltered their old faith that God is one. It was a mighty and a blessed addition to their knowledge of Jehovah ; but it did not shake what they knew before—"Hear, O Israel : Jehovah our God is one Jehovah." Dykes. He who goes about to speak of the mystery of the Trinity, and does it by words and names of man's invention, talking of essences and existences, hypostases and personalities, may build a tabernacle in his head, and talk something he knows not what ; but the renewed man that feels the power of the Father, and to whom the Son has become wisdom, sanctification and redemption, in whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is shed abroad—this man, though he understands nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Jeremy Taylor. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a mere speculative mystery. Each of the Divine persons has His office in the economy of redemption, and this gives us an idea of the grandeur and dignity of that redemption, in the economy of which there is such a co-operation ; the Father devising it, the Son executing, the Spirit applying. And the persons are distinctly named in the New Testament, probably that we may be able the more clearly to trace the plan. . . . Could the whole theory of the Incarnation be laid open to our view, no additional force would be given to those motives to fervent gratitude and devotedness to the service of our Redeemer which the mere fact is adapted to inspire. The practical influence is not at all impaired, but rather heightened, by the speculative difficulties which attend it, because they result merely from its ineffable grandeur. The same may be said with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity. The distinct parts assigned to the three Divine persons exhibit the beautiful harmony of the plan of redemption: the Father sending His Son, the Son executing His Father's will, the Holy Spirit sanctifying the people of God by dwelling in their hearts. These truths are not less practical because of the mystery which attends the doctrine. We are as able to adore the grace of the Father, the love of the Son, the communion of the Holy Spirit—to value the distinct agency of the several persons in the work of our salvation, as if we could perceive the theory of this unspeakable mystery. R. Hall. Thus the doctrine of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost satisfies the deepest wants of the soul. Never so much as in prayer do we feel our need of the presence and aid of the Holy Spirit; never so much as in prayer do we see the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, and rejoice in His mediation with the Father. The doctrine is essential to Christian life and worship. It is the one faith in which we are baptized, and in which we are blessed. And the whole Church is one, now and forever, in the unity of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Robie. To eye God in all our comforts, and observe the smiling aspects of His face when He dispenses them to us; to eye Him in all our afflictions, and consider the paternal wisdom that instructs us in them—how would this increase our mercies and mitigate our troubles! To eye Him in all His creatures, and observe the various prints of the Creator's glory stamped upon them—with how lively a lustre would it clothe the world, and make everything look with a pleasant face! What a heaven were it to look upon God, as filling all in all; and how sweetly would it, erewhile, raise our souls into some such sweet seraphic strains, "Holy, holy, holy—the whole earth is full of His glory." To eye Him in His providences, and consider how all events are with infinite wisdom disposed into an apt subserviency to His holy will and ends—what difficulties would hence be solved! what seeming inconsistencies reconciled! and how much would it contribute to the ease and quiet of our minds! To eye Him in His Christ, the express image of His person, the brightness of His glory, and in the Christian economy, the Gospel revelation and ordinances, through which He manifests Himself; to behold Him in the posture wherein He saves souls, clad with the garments of salvation, girt with power, and apparelled with love, travelling in the greatness of His strength, mighty to save; to view Him addressing Himself to allure and win to Him the hearts of sinners, when He discovers Himself in Christ, upon that reconciling design, makes grace that brings salvation appear; to behold Him entering into human flesh, pitching His tabernacle among men, hanging out His ensigns of peace, laying His trains, spreading His net, the cords of a man, the bands of love; to see Him in His Christ ascending the cross, lifted up to draw all men to Him; and consider that mighty love of justice and of souls, both so eminently conspicuous in that stupendous sacrifice; here to fix our eyes looking to Jesus, and behold in Him, Him whom we have pierced; to see His power and glory as they were wont to be seen in His sanctuaries; to observe Him in the solemnities of His worship, wherein He holds communion with His saints when He seats Himself amid them on the throne of grace, receives their addresses, dispenses the tokens and pledges of His love—into what transports might these visions put us every day! Hone. The whole earth is full of His glory. This prophecy of the far-spreading glory of the Messiah's reign, considered as coming from the lips of the seraphim, those burning messengers from before the heavenly throne, has exquisite beauty, sublimity and force. It opens the vista of Messiah's future kingdom as seen with their eye and from their point of view. No wonder such a theme should touch their lips with hallowed fire, and enkindle the utmost ardor of their souls! H. C. 4. In the dedication by Solomon the song of praise was the signal for the cloud of glory to fill the house, and so also in the Apocalypse. As fire from heaven was the sign of His acceptance of earthly sacrifice, so here this cloud, "dark with excessive bright," is the sublime response to the worship of the seraphim. What nobler answer could be given to their adoration than fresh tokens of the unsearchableness of His glory? Birks. 5-8. We have here the very same elements upon which the inner life of every Christian rests: the holiness of God, the sin of man, the Divine reconciliation. Every Christian feels himself related to Isaiah when he is conscious that the majesty of the holy God brings death to the sinner, and that only after being pardoned he can be an instrument of service in the hands of God; and when, after receiving the atonement, he gives himself gladly and freely to the service of God. There is thus nothing here that is foreign or dark to us. Auberten. 5. Then said I, Woe is me.** He is not lifted up that he should be honored with such a vision of God; but, on the contrary, struck with humble, holy fear—I am undone! This is much of the exercise of souls admitted nearest to God, even this astonishment and admiration that such as they should be regarded and raised to that height and holy fear in a sense of their unholiness. Leighton. It is not of the inferiority of the human mind and of the cloudless height and power of the Divine mind that Isaiah is here led to think, but of his own sinfulness and of God's holiness. The moral humility ever goes lower than the intellectual. A sense of sin brings us down more than a sense of ignorance. . . . Isaiah hears the angelic antiphone, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;" and the pureness, and truth, and equity, and justice, and love, and faithfulness of God, thus expanded and revolved before the prophet's thoughts, lead him to ponder, on the principle of contrast, his own ways, and his own heart, and he exclaims, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Stoughton.—The sense of sin continued and increased in power through the whole of Paul's Christian life. It wrung out from his soul the threefold expression, ever increasing in intensity: "I am not worthy to be called an apostle;" "I am less than the least of all saints;" "I am the chief of sinners." The last of the three is the climax and consummation of all. It goes deeper than his apostolic office, deeper than his church-membership, into the very roots of his character, and into his personal relationship as a sinner to Christ. He never counted himself to have attained the end of his calling; he never thought himself perfect; he was always burdened with a body of sin and death, from which, till the end of life, he longed to be delivered. It was this increasing sense of his own unworthiness that made the sufficient grace of Christ so sweet and precious to him, filled his preaching with the essence of the Gospel, and fired it with an unquenchable zeal. Anon. The King, the Lord of hosts. The same Spirit which displayed this glorious vision to Isaiah has given the interpretation of it by the Evangelist John. John tells us that Christ was that Jehovah whom the entranced prophet saw upon His throne; whose train filled the temple; whose praises were the theme of the seraphic song; whose glory fills the universe. According to the evangelist, it was Christ's glory that Esaias saw; and to Him whose glory he saw the prophet gives the name of Jehovah, and the worshipping angels gave the name of Jehovah God of Sabaoth. D. Horsley. 6,7. It was part of the same fire, which consumed the sacrifices, whereby the prophet's lips were purged in the vision for the fulfilment of his high calling. His own place, in vision, was without in the altar court. The mention of the tongs is a further sign. The atonement was made by the sacrifices on the altar of burnt offering. The act of the seraph denoted the pardon of sin, because the wood was from this altar, where the blood of the sin-offerings was poured out. But it also implied the conveyance of prophetic inspiration, since his lips were now consecrated to God's service with heavenly fire. Birks.—God touched his lips with a coal from the altar, and purified and consecrated him to bear His message, and then He told him that the people would not hear nor understand him. That anointed prophet, the grandest spirit that ever touched the strings of the prophetic harp, should preach to dull ears and to hard hearts. None the less was he to sow the truth of which the reaping would come by and by. He was to draw his inspiration from God, not from success. C. J. Vaughan. 7,8. This fire hath two effects: it works purity and activity, it takes away sin and puts in spirit and life for obedience; and so here thy sin is purged; and then, says he, Here am I; send me; and the former is effectual toward the latter; the more the soul is cleansed, the more alive and able it is made for service. A soul well cleansed from the love of sin, and the world, and self, is in a healthful temper, and goes nimbly to any work; outward discouragements and difficulties are then nothing. Other motives, or the mixtures of them, God may make use of sometimes, yet He sees within and knows what spring makes the wheels go, and He gives them their reward here, somewhat possibly of that they seek (success and credit and a name), but the after reward of faithful servants they need not look for in that work; for they receive their reward, and can they expect more? Many an Here am I comes from other incentives than an altar coal; and so they may burn and shine awhile, but they soon consume and die out in a snuff; the heavenly altar fire alone keeps in and returns to heaven, where it was kindled. This, then, is to be sought for by all that offer any service to God, a readiness from love. Leighton. 8. Jerome's explanation of the plural, as implying a plurality of persons in the speaker, is approved by Calvin. This explanation is the only one that accounts for the difference of number in the verb and pronoun—"whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" A.—"I" in the first form of the question becomes "us" in the second. There should be some good ground for this close relationship. None has ever been assigned; it is safe to say that none can be more plausible and probable than that which assumes a reference to the trinity of persons in the one God. This view has the endorsement of both John and Paul. H. C. The Lord of hosts was communing with His child. The solemn voice was unmistakable, "Whom shall I send to save them?" He bowed himself in the dust and cried, "Send me." Through the long half century of his ministry that hour of his self-consecration seemed never to pass away. For the thought of Jehovah's presence in that sanctuary was ever the material stay on which he leaned for rest when his spirit was worn and weary. That hour's penetrating gaze into the things of God and of men was but the entrance on a life of constant watching and study. The same sense of Divine communion was ever the spring of his great confidence as he preached. A. Duff. Whom shall I send, and who will go? The double form of the question means that God's commission is offered for the acceptance of hearts that are smitten by His love, and that He calls for volunteers, not for pressed men. God's commission is to every one of us. God's voice sounds to me by the very possession of His truth and by all the faculties that I have for the communicating of it; if I have got it, and if I can do anything to spread it, there is the obligation. Most of all, if I have Christ for my Saviour, that makes it a crime in me if I do not carry Him, somehow, to other people. A. M. Every impulse and stroke of missionary power on earth is from the heart of Christ. If there are activity, free giving, ready going, a full treasury, able men who say, "Here am I, send me," it is because through all the organization Christ lives and His personal Spirit works. There is no other possible spring for that enthusiasm. F. D. H. Every man has his proper gift of God—every man, be he ever so humble, ever so retired and relatively insignificant. We shall find our special gift when we are willing to see it in God's light, when, with the simplicity of a child, we are ready to say, "What am I, and what wilt Thou have me to do?" God knows our gift and He wishes that we should know it, and He will lead us into the knowledge of it when we are willing to use it, not for present ease of advancement, but for His glory and the good of others. J. Drummond. 9,10. Though his lips have been touched with fire from God's altar, he is not to expect the general repentance of the people. His burning words would kindle no worthy response in their hearts. They would hear, constantly and repeatedly, and not understand. They would see his warnings fulfilling themselves before their eyes, and be blind to that fulfilment. With stern irony they are told to persevere in this deafness and blindness. In the same way the prophet is taught what would be the direct result of his own labors. His words would leave the people, in general, more hardened; yet knowing this, he was to teach them and to warn them still. The foreseen abuse of God's messages is not always a reason why they should be withheld. Even the Gospel itself is "unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish." And though God, who cannot be tempted of evil, Himself tempts no man, yet the perverseness of the ungodly can never disappoint His counsel; and their foreseen guilt and folly will minister at length to the brighter display of His infinite holiness, and perfect love. Birks. 9,10. These verses are referred to in at least six passages in the New Testament (Matt. 13:14; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:40; Acts 28:26; Rom. 11:8). Our Lord's use of it in Matthew, Mark and Luke was entirely in harmony with its drift and purpose as it stands here in Isaiah—i.e., illustrative of that judicial blindness to which God leaves sinners who resist His Spirit and set at naught His merciful endeavors to enlighten and save them. The phraseology of Matthew (13:14) and of Paul (Acts 28:26) is slightly modified from that of Isaiah. It is not, "Shut thou their eyes," but "their eyes have they closed." This change makes God's permissive and judicial agency less prominent, and the sinner's own voluntary agency more prominent. The latter agency Isaiah most fully and surely implies, and the former, neither Matthew nor Paul would exclude. It should be noted that these apostles, Matthew and Paul, quote from the Septuagint, which reads, "The heart of this people has become gross; with their ears they hear heavily" (in dulness) "and their eyes have they shut lest they should see with their eyes," etc. This is entirely correct in sentiment, yet does not bring out in its full strength the Divine agencies in withdrawing His Spirit and giving up self-hardened sinners in judgment to their own free and guilty choice of rebellion and death. It puts this guilty choice and this persistent refusal of the sinner in the foreground as facts never to be ignored. And rightly. The endorsement of this view by our Lord, as in Matthew (13:14), and by Paul (Acts 28:26) may be taken as a timely suggestion and caution against overstraining the Divine agency in the judicial hardening of the persistent sinner. It would be ineffably revolting to give it such a construction as would ignore God's love and pity for even the guiltiest sinner, or His sincere and earnest desire that they would, any and all, turn from their sins and live. H. C. The system of this world depends, in a way unknown to us, both on God's providence and on human agency. Every event, every course of action has two faces; it is Divine and perfect, and it belongs to man and is marked with his sin. And it is a peculiarity of Holy Scripture to represent the world on its providential side; ascribing all that happens in it to Him who rules and directs it as it moves along, tracing events to His sole agency or viewing them only so far forth as He acts in them. Thus He is said to harden Pharaoh's heart, and to hinder the Jews from believing in Christ; whereby is signified His absolute sovereignty over all human affairs and courses. Newman. It is ever so, and ever must be. There are shut souls, that having eyes will not see, and having ears will not hear, though the vision be open, and the voice as the voice of many waters, and of a great thunder, and of harpers harping with their harps. None the less do the Eternal Truth and the Eternal Way stand fast and offer themselves in mercy inexhaustible to the needy heart of "whosoever will." . . . Glories of heaven and earth, grander than telescopes ever pierced among the stars, or hammers ever uncovered in the rocks, pass by, and there is no vision to behold them. Quick minds, but dull affections! Full understandings and empty hearts! Spiritual things not seen for want of spiritual senses! "O fools and slow of heart to believe" all that God's prophets, God's angels, God's Scriptures have spoken! F. D. H. There is a way of blindness by hardening the heart. Let us not conceal this truth from ourselves. God blinds the eye, but it is in the appointed course of His providential dealings. If a man will not see, the law is he shall not see; if he will not do what is right when he knows the right, then right shall become to him wrong, and wrong shall seem to be right. F. W. R. —God, who punishes sin with death, sometimes punishes sin with sin. At a certain stage in the sinner's dreary downward course the Lord hardens his heart. God is not responsible for his sin; but when he has repelled the voice of conscience, and the warning of his Bible, and the entreaties of friends, then grace is withdrawn from him, and sin puts on a judicial character, and is at once sin and punishment. Abp. Thomson. The process of heart-hardening is no mystery, no miracle enacted by Almighty power, but a natural process begun, carried on, and completed by the sinner himself and the sinner alone. And it is a continuous process. No soul ever reached at once that state of immovable feeling, of active opposition to God which is called a hardened heart. It is, in accordance with the law of the spiritual nature, produced simply by repeated neglect of those passive impressions made upon the heart by the influences of God's truth and Spirit. B. 11,12. The prophet's words are no mere curious inquiry, but a sorrowful complaint. So Jer. 12:4, "How long shall the land mourn for the wickedness of them that dwell therein?" And the beloved Daniel, "How long shall be the vision of the transgression of desolation" (Dan. 8:13)? And the souls under the altar, "How long, O Lord, faithful and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" It is the longing of the faithful, in every age, to look beyond the dark clouds of sin and sorrow to the close of the mystery of God, the times of restitution of all things, and to the full victory of redeeming power and love. The answer declares how complete the judgment will be. Not the cities only, but their separate houses; not only the town, but the country, will be dispeopled. They shall be exiled, not to near districts, whence they might soon return, but far away; and there would be a long-lasting desolation. The warning plainly extends beyond the nearer Assyrian troubles to the captivity of Babylon. And as the reproof was applied anew by Paul to the Jews at Rome, so the words have been fulfilled, even more strikingly, in the wars of Vespasian and Titus, and the dispersion and desolation which lasts even to the present time. So wide in their range are His messages, with whom a thousand years are as a single day. Birks. The cities are "without inhabitant," the houses are "without man," the land is "utterly desolate," judgment has come upon it all, far and near; in a word, the whole of Bashan and Moab is one great fulfilled prophecy. The noble plain of Bashan is thickly studded with cities, towns and villages, intersected with roads, having one of the finest climates of the world; yet is the whole region utterly deserted, literally "without man and without beast" (Isa. 33:10). J. L. Porter ("Giant Cities of Bashan"). 13. The chapter closes with a repetition and extension of the threatening, but in such a form as to involve a promise of the highest import. While it is threatened that the stroke shall be repeated on the remnant that survives its first infliction, it is promised that there shall be such a remnant after every repetition to the last. However frequently the people may seem to be destroyed, there shall still be a surviving remnant, and however frequently that very remnant may appear to perish, there shall still be a remnant of the remnant left, and this indestructible residuum shall be the holy seed, the true Church (Rom. 11:5). This prediction was fulfilled, not once for all, but again and again; not only in the vine-dressers and husbandmen left by Nebuchadnezzar and afterward destroyed in Egypt; not only in the remnant that survived the destruction of the city by the Romans, and increased until again destroyed by Adrian; but in the present existence of the Jews as a peculiar people, notwithstanding the temptations to amalgamate with others, notwithstanding persecutions and apparent extirpations; a fact which can only be explained by the prediction that "all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. 11:26). As in many former instances throughout the history of the chosen people, under both dispensations, "even so, at this present time also, there is a remnant according to the election of grace." A. The two most common forest trees of Palestine were the terebinth and oak. They were strong, hardy trees. It was a matter of difficulty so to cut and maim them as to take the substance or vitality out of them. So long as the trunk or stem was allowed to remain in the soil, they were sure, in course of time, to grow and flourish anew; and Isaiah was taught by God Himself that His people would be equally tenacious of life. Period after period there would be a tenth—a remnant, however diminutive, as many as would, by the blessing of heaven, once more develop into a prosperous nation. Sooner or later the judgments of God would have the desired effect, and the tree that had been hurt and peeled would give indications that it had not been deprived of all its substance or vitality. C. Cron. So holy seed shall be the substance of the human race. They are that part of it which remains living when the generations fall and decay like the leaves from an oak. For the growth and development of the tree the seasons have been made what they are. Indeed, the whole meaning of the season is this—it is God's contrivance to get living, growing, fruitful trees. And the whole meaning of all the seasons of time and history is this—it is a plan of God to get a holy seed, a tree of life, a peculiar people. When the seasons are all past, when the generations have all lived and died, and the true substance of the human remains as the substance of the oak when it casts its leaves, then will there be on the banks of the river of the water of life, in the new heavens and the new earth, a tree of life whose leaf shall not wither and whose fruit shall be yielded every month. W. R. Brooks. 7:1 AND it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went 2 up to Jerusalem to war against it; but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the forest are moved with the wind. 3 Then said the LORD unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy 4 son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the high way of the fuller's field; and say unto him, Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thine heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and of the son 5 of Remaliah. Because Syria hath counselled evil against thee, Ephraim also, and the son of 6 Remaliah, saying, Let us go up against Judah, and vex it, and let us make a breach therein 7 for us, and set up a king in the midst of it, even the son of Tabeel : thus saith the Lord God, 8 It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin : and within threescore and five years shall Ephraim be broken in 9 pieces, that it be not a people : and the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established. 10, 11 And the LORD spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the LORD thy God ; ask 12 it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I 13 tempt the LORD. And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David ; is it a small thing for you 14 to weary men, that ye will weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign ; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, 15 (God is with us.) Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and 16 choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the 17 land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah ; even the king of Assyria. 18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the 19 uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all pastures. 20 In that day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, which is in the parts beyond the River, even with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet : and it shall also consume the beard. 21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two 22 sheep ; and it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter : for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the midst of the land. 23 And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place, where there were a thousand vines 24 at a thousand silverlings, shall even be for briers and thorns. With arrows and with bow 25 shall one come thither ; because all the land shall be briers and thorns. And all the hills that were digged with the mattock, thou shalt not come thither for fear of briers and thorns, but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of sheep. HERE begins a series of connected prophecies (chaps. 7-12), belonging to the reign of Ahaz, and relating in general to the same great subjects, the deliverance of Judah from Syria and Israel, its subsequent subjection to Assyria and other foreign powers, the final destruction of its enemies, the advent of Messiah and the nature of His kingdom. This series admits of different divisions, but it is commonly agreed that one distinct portion is contained in the seventh chapter. The chapter begins with a brief historical statement of the invasion of Judah by Rezin and Pekah, and of the fear which it excited, to relieve which Isaiah is commissioned to meet Ahaz in a public place, and to assure him that there is nothing more to fear from the invading powers, that their evil design cannot be accomplished, that one of them is soon to perish, and that in the mean time both are to remain without enlargement (verses 1-9). Seeing the king to be incredulous, the prophet invites him to assure himself by choosing any sign or pledge of the event, which he refuses to do under the pretext of confidence in God, but is charged with unbelief by the prophet, who nevertheless renews the promise of delivdeliv-erance in a symbolical form, and in connection with a prophecy of the miraculous conception and nativity of Christ, both as a pledge of the event and as a measure of the time in which it is to take place (verses 10-16). To this assurance of immediate deliverance he adds a threatening of ulterior evils, to arise from the Assyrian protection which the king preferred to that of God—to wit, the loss of independence, the successive domination of foreign powers, the harassing and predatory occupation of the land by strangers, the removal of its people, the neglect of tillage, and the transformation of its choicest vineyards, fields and gardens into wastes or pastures (verses 17-25). A. 1. The prophet Isaiah had his commission renewed in the year that King Uzziah died (chap. 6 : 1). Jotham his son reigned, and reigned well, sixteen years ; all that time, no doubt, Isaiah prophesied as he was commanded, and yet we have not in this book any of his prophecies dated in the reign of Jotham ; but this which is put first was in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham. H. Rezin, the king of Damascene Syria or Aram, appears to have formed an alliance with Pekah, the murderer and successor of Pekahiah, king of Israel (2 K. 15 : 27), during the reign of Jotham (verse 37), but to have deferred the actual invasion of Judah until that king's death and the accession of his feeble son, in the first year of whose reign it probably took place, with most encouraging success, as the army of Ahaz was entirely destroyed, and two hundred thousand persons taken captive, who were afterward sent back at the instance of the prophet Oded (2 Chron. 28 : 5-15). But notwithstanding this success, they were unable to effect their main design, the conquest of Jerusalem, whether repelled by the natural strength and artificial defences of the place itself or interrupted in the siege by the actual or dreaded invasion of their own dominions by the king of Assyria (2 K. 16 : 7-9). It seems to be at a point of time between their first successes and their final retreat that the prophet's narrative begins. A. The history of Ahaz may be seen in 2 K. 16 and 2 Chron. 28. Suffice it to say of him here that the sacred record shows him to have been intensely wicked; more radically apostate from God than any Jewish king before him; more propense to idol-worship, and more reckless of God and of the dictates of common humanity. It seems that very early in his reign the Syrians made war upon him; defeated his army with immense slaughter, and took many captives; also that Pekah, king of Israel (here called Ephraim), prevailed against him; "slew one hundred and twenty thousand men in one day, all valiant men, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers," and took two hundred thousand captives. All these, at the instance of the prophet Oded, were restored to their homes. It appears, however, both from 2 K. 16 : 5 and from the statements here that these hostile kingdoms, even combined, were not able to take Jerusalem. Still those allies were a formidable power, and their approach at this time gave the court of Ahaz and the inhabitants of Jerusalem occasion for serious fear. H. C. 2. Syria, the constant foe of the house of David, had regained its former influence. The professed aim of the renewed confederacy was not bloody war, but a friendly revolution to remove an unpopular king. Their real aim was to make Judah a vassal of Syria and Ephraim. There was thus great cause for dismay. The people feared the renewal of former bloodshed, and the house of David were aware of deep discontent among the people. Faith alone could have made them bold, and this faith was wholly wanting. Birks. 3-16. Accompanied by his elder son, Isaiah meets the idolatrous king, assures him of deliverance, and offers him a sign in proof thereof. But Ahaz had cast off his allegiance to Jehovah, and with a certain show of consistency will accept no sign from a Deity whom he no longer serves. But Judah is still Jehovah's people, and He grants them the sign rejected by the royal house. The word "sign" is our word "miracle." In John's Gospel the word rendered "miracle" in our version is constantly in the Greek "sign;" and thus what Isaiah offered was a miracle—that is, a sign of God's presence, not in the ordinary workings of nature, but in some special and supernatural way. Ahaz will have no miracle; Isaiah gives him the miracle of the virgin's child, the Immanuel. A mere ordinary event is not in biblical language a sign. Yet this sign has an ordinary side to it. As far as Ahaz and unbelievers generally were concerned, there was nothing more than a plain promise, though couched in an obscure form, that within about two years all danger from the confederacy would have passed away. R. P. S. 3. The two sons of Isaiah had the same character of "signs from the Lord" (8 : 18). The name of the younger was given by express command (8 : 1-4), and announced the speedy advent of the Assyrian spoiler. Of Shearjashub no such details are given. 6. Taboal. The view of Calvin seems to agree better with the context, that he was the head of the disaffected party in Judah. By promoting a Jewish noble or popular favorite, the confederates would be most likely to secure their object of making Judah a vassal and dependent power. The presence of a stranger, a Syrian noble, would have been a constant motive for revolt, and sign of degradation. Birks. 8,9. Their plans shall not succeed, for Damascus shall continue to be the capital of Syria, and of nothing more; Rezin shall be the headman, the king, of Damascus and not of Jerusalem besides; and within sixty-five years shall Ephraim be so completely crushed as to be no people. And not only so, but up to that time (sixty-five years hence) Samaria shall be the capital of Ephraim only, not of Ephraim and of Judah both. Ye need therefore have no fear of the partition of Judah between these foreign powers, or of her being attached as a tributary to either of them. H. C. 9. If ye will not believe, surely ye will not be established. Their unbelief was the true source of their confusion and sorrow. Birks.—The requirement of faith runs through the entire Old Testament. The leading of Israel, from the time of its deliverance out of Egypt (Ex. 4:31; 14:31, cf. especially De. 1:32; 9:23, and many other passages), rests entirely on faith. But in proportion as its Divine election seemed to human apprehension thwarted, and the promise of redemption forfeited, by the apostasy of the nation and the judgments thereby incurred, the more emphatically is it asserted how all-important faith was, as the root of all righteousness, and the condition on which the blessing was to be obtained. “If ye do not believe, truly ye shall not remain”—i.e., be in a firm and stable condition—is the word of the prophet to Ahaz when he sought help from Assyria. What then is this faith? Negatively speaking, it is a ceasing from all natural confidence in one’s own strength and power, a renunciation of all trust in human support and assistance. Accordingly Jeremiah thus describes unbelief (17:5), “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm” (which was just what Ahaz had done). Positively, it is a fastening or leaning; for this is the proper meaning of the word, namely, a fastening of the heart upon the Divine word of promise, a leaning upon the power and faithfulness of God, by reason of which He can and will effect what He chooses in spite of all earthly obstacles. On its negative side, whereby faith renounces self-chosen human ways; it is a resting in, a quiet waiting for God. Oehler. 10-15. The previous verses are the historical preface to this wonderful prophecy. The sign offered was to be a pledge of God’s enduring favor to the house of David, now threatened at home and abroad, by the disaffected in Judah, and by the confederate kings. The title “thy God” reminds Ahaz of the sure covenant of David, on which he was bound to rest. 11. The answer of Ahaz alludes to De. 6:16. He wrests the command of God into an excuse for rejecting God’s own offer. He did not wish to be bound to God’s service by any fresh tie, and clung to his scheme of hiring the king of Assyria. Birks. 14. The Lord shall give you a sign, behold a virgin, etc.** The main object of this sign of unusual dignity was, in the hour of alarm and terror, to renew the confidence of the faithful in God’s double covenant to Abraham and to David, of One who should possess the gate of His enemies, and of that Son of David who should rise up to sit on His throne, of whose kingdom there should be no end. The purpose of the hostile league was wholly to displace the sacred line, and to set up the son of Tabeal (verse 6), a stranger or a renegade, on David’s throne. The promise, then, to the house of David of the greater Son of David, whose birth would be a miracle of Divine power, the Owner of the land (8:8-10), and the Redeemer of His people from their enemies, is confirmed with greater fulness and clearness than before. But a special warning, due to the present sin of Ahaz and his people, is here joined with the promise. Not only the present invasion, which would very soon be at an end, but heavier troubles and desolations from the Assyrian spoiler (verses 17-20), whom they were blindly inviting to relieve them from a momentary danger, were coming upon the whole land, on Judah as well as Ephraim; and it would thus be reduced to a waste and desolate condition, before this promised child should enter on His work of deliverance. Birks. The sign suited the time of backsliding and apostasy. For it told the house of David that, wearying God as they were doing by their sins, He would vindicate His cause in a way they little expected or desired; that He would secure the establishment of His covenant with the house of David, by raising up a child in whom the Divine should actually commingle with the human; but that this child should be the offspring of some unknown virgin, not of Ahaz or of any ordinary occupant of the throne; and that, meanwhile, everything should go to desolation and ruin—first, indeed, in the allied kingdoms of Israel and Syria (verse 16), but afterward also in the kingdom of Judah (verses 17-25); so that the destined possessor of the throne, when he came, should find all in a prostrate condition, and grow up like one in an impoverished and stricken country, fed with the simple fare of a cottage shepherd (cf. verse 16 with 22). P. F. The article, “the virgin,” is significant. It can refer to no wife of the prophet, since this was to be a royal child; nor of Ahaz, of whom no younger son came to the throne; nor of Hezekiah, still a mere child. The allusion is to the first promise, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. This promise had been limited, first to the race of Abraham, and next, to the seed of David; and “the virgin” must thus mean that damsel of the race of David, for whom the high honor was reserved, in God’s secret counsel, to give birth in due season to the long-promised king of Israel, the Saviour of the world. Birks. Only one virgin and one child Immanuel are spoken of—viz., the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus; they are shown to the prophet in vision with no reference to time, but are shown so vividly that he sees them, and thinks of them as present, and therefore speaks of them as related to present events, and so makes the youthful years and the food of the child indications of important future facts. H. C.—If a thing at all future may be declared as a sign, it makes no difference whether the thing be future by three years, or by three hundred, provided that one circumstance be observed, which is, that the man, or body of men, to whom the fact is declared to be a sign, shall exist and see the thing accomplished. This was manifestly the case here. For not only Ahaz, to whom the second prophecy was delivered, saw that fulfilled as to the two kings his enemies, but also the house of David, to whom the first prophecy was addressed, saw that fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Kennicott.—There is no ground, grammatical, historical, or logical, for doubt as to the main point, that the Church in all ages has been right in regarding this passage as a signal and explicit prediction of the miraculous conception and nativity of Jesus Christ. A. The essential feature of the given sign is not the fact that a virgin conceives, but that the Messiah is Immanuel, that the unchangeable communion of God with His people is actually made apparent in the midst of impending judgments. The mysterious nature, however, of the expression can neither here nor in Micah (5:2) be mistaken. The exalted nature of the Messiah is more definitely brought forward in 9:6, 7: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government is upon His shoulders; and His name is called the Wonderful Counsellor, the mighty God” (for so must it be understood, cf. 10:21), “the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; for the increase of the government and for peace without end on David’s throne and in his kingdom, to establish and support it with judgment and justice, from henceforth and forever.” The Messiah is evidently regarded as a Divine Being, though here also the expressions are mysteriously indefinite. In the Messianic passage (11:1, sqq.), the Divine element in the Messiah appears only as the fulness of the Spirit of the Lord resting upon Him, and endowing Him for His righteous and happy rule. How close, side by side, to use Stier’s expression, the two lines of promise—the appearance of God and the appearance of the Messiah—run, and seem almost to touch without uniting, is shown also by the Messianic predictions of the subsequent prophets. We notice Jer. 23 in connection with 33:14-26. In the first passage, the prophet, who in chap. 22 had declared the race of the two kings Jehoia-chin and Jehoiakim to be excluded from the throne of David, proclaims that the Lord will, at the time when He gathers His flock from all countries whither He has driven them, raise up unto David a righteous Branch. The same expression reappears (33:15); nay, “Branch” becomes even a proper name of the Messiah (Zech. 3:8; 6:12). Oehler. The promise of Immanuel has a primary and a secondary purpose. The first and chief was to strengthen the hope of the faithful in Judah in this hour of fear and danger, that they might stay their souls anew on the covenant to Abraham and to David, and also gain some further insight into the mysterious nature and dignity of the Messiah who was to come. He was to be “Immanuel,” God with us, the Son of the Virgin, pure and sinless from His birth, knowing to choose good and refuse evil. A foundation is thus laid for all Isaiah’s later messages, centring on the same glorious Child; the Rod from the Stem of Jesse, the Root of Jesse, the precious Corner-stone, laid by God Himself in Zion, the King to reign in righteousness, the Divine Shepherd of Israel, the Chosen and Beloved Servant of God, the Man of sorrows, the great Intercessor for transgressors, the Anointed Preacher of comfort to the mourners in Zion, the Salvation of His people, the King who speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. But a secondary object, connected with the time when this great promise is renewed, was to teach them that this Deliverer would not arise and redeem His people till sore calamities from the Assyrian spoilers had first lighted on the whole land of promise, and its fruitful Carmels, its vineyards and oliveyards, had been changed into open pasture-fields and comparative desolation. Birks. We have what may justly be called two inspired commentaries on this prediction—one in the Old, and another in the New, Testament. The prophet Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah, evidently referring to the words before us, says immediately after announcing the birth of the future Ruler of Israel at Bethlehem, “Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she who shall bear hath brought forth” (verse 3). The peculiar expression, “she who shall bear,” points to the already designated mother of the Divine King, but only in this prediction of Isaiah designated as the virgin; so that, in the language of Rosenmüller, “both predictions throw light on each other. Micah discloses the Divine origin of the Person predicted; Isaiah the wonderful manner of His birth." The other allusion in inspired Scripture is by Matthew, when, relating the miraculous circumstances of Christ's birth, he adds, "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child," etc. And the prophecy, as Bishop Lowth has well stated, "is introduced in so solemn a manner; the sign is so marked, as a sign selected and given by God Himself, after Ahaz had rejected the offer of any sign of his own choosing out of the whole compass of nature; the terms of the prophecy are so peculiar, and the name of the child so expressive, containing in them much more than the circumstances of the birth of a common child required, or even admitted, that we may easily suppose, that in minds prepared by the general expectation of a great deliverer to spring from the house of David, they raised hopes far beyond what the occasion suggested; especially when it was found that in the subsequent prophecy, delivered immediately afterward, this child, called Immanuel, is treated as the Lord and Prince of Judah (8: 8-10). Who could this be, other than the heir of the throne of David? under which character a Divine person had been promised." P. F. The Christ would be both God and man, Immanuel, not only the Son of Adam but the Son of God, at once David's Son and David's Lord, the Son of Mary and the Son of the Highest. Isaiah prepared the faithful for this mysterious parentage by his grand prophecy of the birth of the virgin's son, Immanuel. The Messiah would not abhor the virgin's womb, that He might become "God with us." This was done when Messiah was born of Mary, and the Son of God became Jesus, the Son of man (Isa. 7: 14; Matt. 1: 22, 23). The Christ was then divulged, and the Messianic idea fully developed. All the scattered rays of prophecy were concentrated in Jesus as their focus. All the confluent streams of grace and truth met and merged in Him, the end of the law, the goal of the grand march of Messianic prophecy, the revelation of the mystery of the ages, the denouement of the Divine redemptive plan, "the brightness of God's glory and the express impress of His substance" (Heb. 1: 1-3). We find, therefore, not only a gradual objective Messianic revelation, but a corresponding subjective Messianic consciousness, which grew like the rising sun unto the perfect day, and as the mountain stream into the rolling river. At the commencement of this development the promised seed was general, comprehending Christ; then the special seed of Abraham as a unity, his one seed by Sarah and not by Hagar, and his one son Isaac, and afterward the one royal tribe of Judah, the one family and one son of David, prefigured the coming Messianic personage. And now Christ, as the one grand seed of faithful Abraham, has become the typical head of the unity of all believers, the centre of the one collective seed, who are federally and morally all one in Him (Gal. 3: 28). There was a progressive development from seed in general to a particular seed or people; next to a special seed or person; and thence to a living personage, who was to be prophet, priest and king of Israel and of God. The Messianic idea is thus realized in the threefold appellation, Jesus Christ the Lord; the first being His human name among men, the second His historical and official designation, and the last His personal Divine title as Son of God, King of kings and King of Zion (Luke. 2: 11). Jas. Scott. Jesus Christ is God. His divinity is not an acquired decoration of His human soul in His maturer years. It is not merely the highest degree of moral likeness to the Universal Father. It is not the lustre of a soul perpetually communing with God. Our Lord's divinity is not the mere crown and beauty of His manhood; it is not the point which was reached when as man He had in sanctity and sublime perfection reached what other men account the superhuman. Nor is it either the reflected admiration of a loving and grateful disciple, or the idealizing effort of an infant Church, warm in its reverential love, and too intent on worship to be capable of reserve or of criticism. The Godhead of Jesus is not a metaphor, it is a great and solemn fact, the confession of which is for us Christians no lifeless formula or dead dogma. It is not an unwelcome admission, grudgingly yielded by us in obedience to the pressure of orthodox formularies, or to the sterner necessities of honest criticism. It is a living, an intense conviction, resting at once upon authority and upon conscience. It is a conviction to part with which is to part with all that can really brighten the dark prison-house of the human spirit. Deny the Godhead of Jesus, and you forfeit the essence of Christianity. Liddon. That very truth which the Jews of our Lord's time could not bear even to be mentioned in their presence—the truth of His proper Deity—was the indispensable preliminary to the realization of all that was predicted. Hence it is that the four evangelists, each in his own peculiar way, but with a common insight into the import of Old Testament prophecy and the real necessities of the case, all begin with laying this foundation. John opens his narrative with a formal and lengthened statement of Christ's relation to the Godhead, and broadly asserts that in Him the Divine Word was made flesh. Luke also relates at length the circumstances of the miraculous conception, and with the view evidently of conveying the impression that this mode of being born into the world stood in essential connection with Christ's being, in the strictest sense, "the Son of the Highest." Even Mark, while observing the greatest possible brevity, does not omit the essential point, and begins his narrative with the most startling announcement that ever headed an historical composition, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." And the first evangelist, who wrote more immediately for his Jewish brethren, and continually selects the points that were best fitted to exhibit Jesus as the Messiah of the Jewish Scriptures, characteristically enters on his narrative by describing the circumstances of Christ's miraculous birth as the necessary fulfilment of one of the most marvellous prophecies of the incarnation: "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us." P. F. Majesty took upon itself humility; strength, weakness; eternity, mortality, without impairing the properties of each nature and substance that unite in one person. In order to pay the debt due by man, the inviolable nature (of God) united itself with our frail nature in order that, according to the requirements of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, might be mortal according to one side of His being, and immortal according to the other. The true God was, accordingly, born in the full and perfect nature of a real man, complete in the attributes of both His own nature and of ours. For He that is truly God is also truly man; nor is this union merely apparent, the lowliness of humanity and the highness of Deity communicating themselves to each other. For as God is not changed by compassion, so the humanity is not crushed by the dignity conferred upon it. For each nature does, in connection with the other, what is peculiar to itself—i.e., the Word does what is the Word's, while the flesh carries out what belongs to the flesh. Letter of Leo the Great to Flavian. The Lord of heaven and earth blended our nature with His own; He took the manhood into God. He bound us up with Himself as one indivisible being; He shared not only our state, but our nature and essence; He took from us a human nature that He might give us a divine. And this mystery of the God and man is a mystery for everlasting. As there ever has been, and ever will be, the eternal Son of God, so will there ever remain the eternal Son of man. This blessed union is incapable of dissolution; our immortality is suspended on its continuance; we could not have life eternal unless God were to be man eternal. The firstfruits will remain with the rest of the harvest in glory. Yes; forevermore shall the ransomed of Zion behold their own bright model in heaven, and grow more divine as they behold. He will still, as man and God, be the link that connects them with the Father; this poor humanity for which He suffered so bitterly He loves too deeply to part with it. It is said that mothers love with most tenderness the child for whom they have suffered most; the agonies of the eternal endured in our behalf have attached Him forever to our world and our nature. That nature He retains forever. W. A. B. The taking on Himself of our flesh by the Eternal Word was no makeshift to meet a mighty, yet still a particular, emergent need; a need which, conceding the liberty of man's will, and that it was possible for him to have continued in his first state of obedience, might never have occurred. It was not a mere result and reparation of the fall—such an act as, except for that, would never have been; but lay bedded at a far deeper depth in the counsels of God for the glory of His Son, and the exaltation of that race formed in His image and His likeness. For, against those who regard the incarnation as an arbitrary, or as merely an historic event, and not an ideal one as well, we may well urge this weighty consideration, that the Son of God did not, in and after His ascension, strip off this human nature again; He did not regard His humanity as a robe, to be worn for a while and then laid aside; the convenient form of His manifestation, so long as He was conversing with men on earth, but the fitness of which had with that manifestation passed away. So far from this, we know, on the contrary, that He assumed our nature forever, married it to Himself, glorified it with His own glory, carried it as the form of His eternal subsistence into the world of angels, before the presence of His Father. Had there been anything accidental here, had the assumption of our nature been an afterthought (I speak as a man), this marriage of the Son of God with that nature could scarcely be conceived. He could hardly have so taken it, unless it had possessed an ideal as well as an historic fitness; unless pre-established harmonies had existed, such harmonies as only a Divine intention could have brought about between the one and the other. Trench. Our human nature became the tabernacle of God, that He might dwell with men, and make them His people, and be their God. It was an incarnation in which the heart of God reached the most distant part of His spiritual creation—a descent in which infinite greatness takes the deepest form of condescension, and infinite goodness the tenderest form of compassion. When a man's spirit has been opened to it, it reveals to him a universe of love, at the summit and base of which are Divine majesty and human misery, and the incarnate Son of God is seen touching both and bringing them together. Ker. The doctrine of incarnation is the glory of the spiritual history of mankind. It is the central fact in the scheme of moral providence, its unity, harmony and fountain of power. It is the realization of the highest purposes of God, the discovery of the depth of His wisdom, love and might. "Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in flesh." If Jesus be the incarnation of divinity, it is no longer hard to believe that both His entrance into the world and His departure from it were supernatural. So far from being anomalous, this is altogether necessary and natural. Anything else would not have been in keeping with the history. His virgin-mother is a beautiful and simple reality. It would have been incongruous, even offensive, had He not been thus physically separated from all of human kind. His resurrection also, and His ascension to heaven, are transparencies as pure as His miraculous birth. It was most meet that, having lain in the grave and "tasted death for every man," He should rise and pass into the skies. J. Young. The ascended Christ upon the throne, and the historical Christ upon the earth, teach us what man may be, the one in regard of dignity, the other in regard of goodness. Here is a fact. Such a life was verily once lived on earth; a life of true manhood, whatever more it was. In it we may see two things: first, we may see from His perfect purity what it is possible for man to become; and, second, we may see from His experience who said, "The Father hath not left Me alone, because I do always the things which please Him," how close a fellowship is possible between the human spirit that lives for and by obedience, and the Father of us all. The man Christ Jesus was visited by God, yea, God dwelt with Him ever; whatever more He was—and He was infinitely more—He was also our example of communion, as He was our example of righteousness. A. M. The incarnation teaches us, as nothing else conceivably can, the essential dignity of our human nature. For the chief distinction of this human nature and the supreme evidence of its soaring dignity is that—it is capable of the Divine. God can come into it, take it up into His own nature, dwell in it. What promise and potency must there not be in a nature of which this is true! What ranges of culture, what illimitable reaches of development must there not open before a being possessed of such nature as that God deigns to descend into it! And right here is the immense and unfailing spring of courage for all beneficent and uplifting endeavor. Sunk as low as you may find it, human nature is yet a nature capable of the Divine. The incarnation teaches us the truth of a new headship for our fallen race, by which the fallen may be lifted even unto the eternal glory. Adam is the head of the race by generation, through whom the race has fallen into fearful moral lapse. The incarnate Christ is the head of the race by regeneration, by whom the race may be lifted into the deliverance and dignity of the sons of God, into coheirship with Jesus Christ in His glory. W. Hoyt. 18. The evil times threatened in verse 17 are here more explicitly described as arising from the presence and oppression of foreigners, especially Assyrians and Egyptians, whose number and vexatious impositions are expressed by comparing them to swarms of noxious and annoying insects, pouring into the country by Divine command. A. 20. "A razor, hired from beyond the river." Ahaz, in spite of God's warning, was bent on hiring the king of Assyria to crush his present rivals, Rezin and Pekah (2 K. 16:8-10). Proud of this stroke of policy, he despised the warnings and the promises sent to him by the prophet. It succeeded for the moment, as faithless expediency often seems to do, but it would be bitterness in the end. His sin would lead to his own punishment, and that of his people. God Himself would hire this king of Assyria, by the hope of ample spoil, to waste Judah as well as Ephraim. Not only the hair of the head, the luxury and wealth of the king and his nobles, but even the hair of the feet, the scanty necessaries of the poorest classes, would be scraped and shorn away. It would consume "even the beard," the symbol in the East of all that was sacred and venerable. The treasures of God's own Temple, the honor and dignity of the priesthood, would also be swept away by this fierce spoiler. Birks. 21-24. There was the clear threatening, too, of long and desolating invasions. By the eating of curds and honey is signified the cessation of all the ordinary processes of agriculture. There is no corn, no vintage, no olives, but such produce only as grows of itself. On the sloping hill-sides, where there were wont to be vineyards with a thousand vines, each worth a piece of silver, the scanty population will come with bows and arrows to shoot the game which has found there an undisturbed covert, or to pasture the heifer, or two or three sheep, which are all they have managed to save from the invading foe. R. P. S. 21,22. In consequence of these spoliations, the condition of the country will be wholly changed. The population left shall not be agricultural, but pastoral. Instead of living on the fruits of the soil, they shall subsist upon spontaneous products, such as milk and honey, which shall be abundant only because the people will be few and the uncultivated grounds extensive. 25. Not only the fields, not only the vineyards, shall be overrun with thorns and briers, but the very hills, now laboriously cultivated with the hand, shall be given up to like desolation. The reference is probably to the hills of Judea, anciently cultivated to the very top, by means of terraces that still exist. Thus understood, the verse merely strengthens the foregoing description, by declaring that even the most carefully cultivated portions of the land should not escape the threatened desolation. A. 8:1 AND the LORD said unto me, Take thee a great tablet, and write upon it with the pen of a man, For Maher-shalal-hash-baz; and I will take unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah. And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son. Then said the LORD unto me, Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz. For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and, My mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the king of Assyria. 5, 6 And the LORD spake unto me yet again, saying, Forasmuch as this people hath refused the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's son; now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the River, strong and many, even the king of Assyria and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks: and he shall sweep onward into Judah; he shall overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel. 9 Make an uproar, O ye peoples, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. For the LORD spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A conspiracy, concerning all whereof this people shall say, A conspiracy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be in dread thereof. The LORD of hosts, him shall ye sanctify; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble thereon, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken. 16, 17 Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait for the LORD, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion. 19. And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto the wizards, that chirp and that mutter : should not a people seek unto their God? on behalf of 20 the living should they seek unto the dead? To the law and to the testimony ! if they speak 21 not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them. And they shall pass through it, hardly bested and hungry : and it shall come to pass that, when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse by their king and by their God, and turn their 22 faces upward : and they shall look unto the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the 9 : 1 gloom of anguish ; and into thick darkness they shall be driven away. But there shall be no gloom to her that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time hath he made it glorious, by the 2 way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light : they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath 3 the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast increased their joy : they joy 4 before thee according to the joy in harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, thou hast 5 broken as in the day of Midian. For all the armour of the armed man in the tumult, and the 6 garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, for fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given : and the government shall be upon his shoulder : and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with judgement and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts shall perform this. Chap. 8. According to the course of thought, chapter 8 should close with verse 7 of chapter 9. The subject is not complete at any point short of that. These are the times of Ahaz. The historical circumstances which gave occasion to this message are essentially those upon which chap. 7 is based—viz., Ahaz, his court and many at least of his people, greatly alarmed by the combination of Syria and Ephraim against Judah ; and in order to avert this danger, calling to their aid the king of Assyria. This policy displeased God, inasmuch as it implied a most unreasonable, ungrateful, and cruel unbelief in Himself, and exposed them to all the evils of being dependent upon the favor of an idolatrous and wicked nation. The Lord therefore first assures them that they have nothing to fear from Damascus and Samaria (the capitals representing the kingdoms), since those cities would soon be despoiled and erelong laid desolate ; and next, He declares that He will scourge and punish them by bringing upon them as a foe the very power they had been inviting to their aid as a friend, the great Assyrian hosts. In discoursing upon this point, the prophet aims especially to encourage faith in God and not in Assyria or in any other power ; also to lead them to fear God and none else besides, and to resort to God and not to spirits of the dead or of the living for knowledge of the future or for relief from danger. H. C. The prediction of the overthrow of Syria and Israel is now renewed in the form of a symbolical name, to be inscribed on a tablet and attested by two witnesses, and afterward applied to the prophet's new-born son, whose progress as an infant is made the measure of the event (verses 1-4). It is then foretold that the judgment denounced upon Syria and Israel should extend to Judah, as a punishment for distrust of God and reliance upon human aid, in consequence of which the kingdom should be imminently threatened with destruction, yet delivered for the sake of Immanuel, by whom the strength and wisdom of all enemies should be alike defeated (verses 5-10). The Messiah Himself is then introduced as speaking, warning the prophet and the true believers neither to share in the apprehensions nor to fear the reproaches of the people, but to let Jehovah be an object of exclusive fear and reverence to them, as He would be an occasion of destruction to the unbelievers, from whom the true sense of this revelation was to be concealed, and restricted to His followers, who, together with the prophet and the Son of God Himself, should be for signs and wonders to the multitude, while waiting for the manifestation of His presence, and refusing to consult any other oracle except the word of God, an authority despised by none but those doomed to the darkness of despair, which is described as settling down upon them, with a sudden intimation, at the close of a change for the better, especially in reference to that part of the country which had been most afflicted and despised (verses 11-22). A. 1-4. The birth of Maher-shalal-hash-baz. These verses are plainly a sequel to the former message. The promise of Immanuel was a pledge of God's unchanging mercy to the house of David, though long and sore judgments were first coming on the land. This birth of Isaiah's son, and his name, were a pledge of the speedy fall of Pekah and Rezin by the Assyrian. The date is the second year of Ahaz. His third year was the last of Pekah, and toward its close the prediction was fulfilled (2 K. 15: 39; 16: 8-10). The tablet would announce that the prophetess would bear a son to be so named, in less than a year; and that before this child could utter its first articulate speech, the judgment on Ephraim and Syria would have come. Birks. 1-4. In these verses the Lord predicts that Damascus and Samaria, the capitals respectively of Syria and Ephraim, shall be plundered within two or three years by the king of Assyria. Special arrangements are made to fix the date of the prophecy and the interval of time before its fulfilment so as to leave no room to doubt that it was a real prophecy spoken not only before the event, but before such an event had seemed to human view at all probable. These arrangements comprised (1) the writing of the emphatic and significant phrase, "Maher-shalal-hash-baz" upon a large "roll," or rather a smooth tablet, in very large letters; and (2) in giving this name to a child born to the prophet, with the Divine promise that before this child could say "my father, and my mother," the event predicted by his name should take place. This name signifies "Speed the plunder, the spoiling hastens on." More briefly and nearer to the form of the Hebrew, thus: Hasten—booty; speed-spoil. Writing "with a man's pen" is supposed to refer to letters in common use and known to the common people, another sort of pen being used perhaps for characters, known to the learned only. The object was to make the writing entirely legible to all. Verse 2 is supposed to continue the words spoken by the Lord to the prophet, "And let me take witnesses for the truth of this prophecy that I now give you," even Uriah, the same probably who appears in 2 K. 16: 10-16 co-operating with the king in idol-worship, and therefore a specially suitable witness in this case; and Zechariah, who was doubtless the father-in-law of Ahaz, and maternal grandfather of Hezekiah. (See 2 K. 18: 2 and 2 Chron. 29: 1.) These were "faithful witnesses," such men as Ahaz especially would confide in. The significant name given to this child corresponds to the case of his other son, "Shearjashub," "a remnant shall return;" and also to the three children born to Hosea, each of whom had its significant name. All these children became through their very names prophetic heralds; every utterance or thought of either name suggesting the event it predicted. H. C. 5-8. Because this people refuse the protection of the God of Israel, and because they were at that moment exulting in the supposed success of their policy in calling in the Assyrian king, therefore the Lord will bring this same king and his victorious hosts over their land. This Assyrian raid is beautifully expressed here as an inundation of the great Euphrates, which is often called as here "the river," the great river of Western Asia, and subject, much like the Nile, to periodical inundations. It rises mightily, rushes over all its banks; having swept over Syria and Ephraim, it comes down upon Judah too, yet not quite deep enough here to drown all the people, the waters rising only to the neck. But the spreading out of his wings, the outreaching tides of his great waters, shall fill the breadth of thy land, Immanuel—i.e., the land of Judah, still under the protection of Jehovah Jesus, "God with us." Obviously this alludes to the Messiah's birth of the virgin as foretold, or rather seen in vision as present, in chap. 7: 14. Hence it leaves no room for doubt that the prophet thought of this child as really the promised Messiah, already actually ruling in his power, and shielding his people under his omnipotent arm. H. C. 8. Thy land, O Immanuel.** He reigns over the kingdom of David—the Son of Man, as He is the Son of God—God Himself, in His wondrous way, with us. Immanuel! In the whole world of realities there is nothing so real or so comforting to us as this. Immanuel! God with us! F. D. H. 9,10. The course of thought here is obvious. The prophet's soul, touched with the name Immanuel, becomes all aflame with faith in Zion's King and with indignation that heathen powers should combine to lay his land desolate. So he boldly challenges them to do their worst; it should only recoil on themselves and crush them with the more terrible destruction. The mighty Immanuel will make the wrath of men praise Himself, and will gird about Him even the extremest human wrath as His weapon for their ruin. The first verb, rendered "Associate yourselves," comes rather from the Hebrew verb, which means to do evil, to act wickedly, used here in keen irony. Do your worst; be as madly wicked as you will in your rage against God; you will only the more surely be broken to pieces. In the last clause of verse 10 the Hebrew is "for Immanuel," "for God (is) with us." H. C.—Even as a name Immanuel contains a proposition, and here this proposition is distinctly announced, but with a designed allusion to the person whom the name describes. As if he had said, "the assurance of your safety is the great truth expressed by the name of your deliverer, to wit, that God is with us." The mere retention of the Hebrew word could not convey its sense in this connection to the English reader. A. 12, 13. "Dread not, like this people, the league of Ephraim and Syria. Devise no counter league with the Assyrian king. Make no secret terms with these invaders. Form no conspiracy to set up this son of Tabeal. Bring no false charges of treason against the prophets of God. Be not terrified with rumors of new alliances abroad or treacherous plots at home. Fear only God's anger, and rest simply on His promise. Set Him high in your thoughts above every earthly power. Sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself, and let Him be your fear." Birks. 13. Jehovah of hosts, Him shall ye sanctify (i.e., regard and treat as a holy God, and as the Holy One of Israel), and He shall be your fear, and He your dread—i.e., the object of these feelings. If they felt as they ought toward God, as supreme and almighty, and as their own peculiar God, with whom they were united in a national covenant, they could not so distrust Him as to be alarmed at the approach of any earthly danger. The collocation of the words makes the sentence more emphatic. Him shall ye fear is substantially equivalent to Him alone shall ye fear. Thus explained, the passage is at once a condemnation of the terror inspired by the approach of the two kings, and of the application, which it had occasioned, to Assyria for aid against them. A. Let Him be your fear. There is something to fear in God. He speaks in wrath as well as in love; He has a left hand that points to the outer darkness, as well as a right that shows the way to rest and eternal reward. Beware of God—for sin is not all ignorance—it is a crime of the will. Moral suasion is not enough; sentiment alone will not do; sweetness and light have no backbone against the seductions of sin, no motive sufficiently strong to keep men away for the sorcerous shore of the sirens. The soul must be touched with a holy fear of God, if it is to find strength to resist the devil, and put him to flight. J. R. Paxton.—There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him. Pascal. 14. And He (Jehovah) shall be for (or become) a holy thing (an object to be sanctified) and for a stone of stumbling. God was the only proper object to be dreaded, feared and sanctified—i.e., regarded as a holy being in the widest and the most emphatic sense. Thus explained, the Hebrew word corresponds almost exactly to the Greek term applied to Christ by the angel who announced His birth (Luke 1:35). In 1 Pet. 2:7, where this very passage is applied to Christ, the word "precious" seems to be employed as an equivalent to the word here used. To others He is a stone of stumbling, but to you who believe He is something precious, something honored, something looked upon as holy. The same application of the words is made by Paul in Rom. 9:33. These quotations seem to show that the prophet's words have an extensive import, and are not to be restricted either to his own times or the time of Christ. The doctrine of the text is, that even the most glorious exhibitions of God's holiness—i.e., of His infinite perfection, may occasion the destruction of the unbeliever. The most signal illustration of this general truth was that afforded in the advent of the Saviour. It was frequently exemplified, however, in the interval, and one of these exemplifications was afforded by the conduct of the unbelieving Jews in the reign of Ahaz, to whom the only power that could save them was converted by their own unbelief into a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. A. 16-18. The Messiah, present so intimately in thought throughout the two verses preceding, appears here as the speaker. It is He who says (verse 16) "My disciples;" a phrase familiar to His lips during His life in the flesh. It is He who says (verse 18), "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given Me;" these very words being cited by Paul to the Hebrews (2:13) as said by Jesus and as signifying that He is partaker with His children of flesh and blood, and in common with them, has in God a Father, so that they are all of one. But the Messiah being the speaker, what is His meaning? This: Bind up and seal in the hearts of my obedient and trustful people these great truths just spoken. They are to be My witnesses to these truths. 19,20. When they advise you to go to those who profess to know the spirits, the super-wise men ("wizards"), "who peep and mutter," as if strange, uncouth sounds best befitted the dignity of such spirits and of human fellowship with them; then reply to them, Should not people seek unto their own God if they would know the future or the things of the unseen world? Has not the great God all knowledge and supreme control over all other worlds and over all the future of this? Is it not all-sufficient that you may go to your own God for all wisdom and for all needful help? Besides, can the dead bring any help to the living? Go rather to the law and the testimony, the sure word of God, for this reveals all that mortals need to know under the pressure of present ills or the fear of the otherwise dark and unknown future. If any class of men discard this word of God and speak not according to its revelations, they are those upon whose darkness no dawn of hope shall ever rise. H. C. 20. The prophet appeals to the law and the testimony as to an authority which was at once supreme and final. What was this law and testimony if it was not an acknowledged external code which could be bound up and sealed among the Lord's disciples? The moral platform from which the prophets spoke to the men of their own day is abolished if there was no antecedent law to which to recall them, and for the violation of which they could be reproved. There must have been a previous education in spiritual truth ere the prophetic enunciations on either side could have been given or received. The entire foundation of their work was laid in the spiritual recognition of a standard from which their own generation had departed. Leathes. A cardinal canon of certitude for the Christian is, "The Scripture saith it." Now a singular feature of the entire Bible, too little noted, is its own certitude. It is self-assertive throughout; note Gen. 1:1 and John 1:1 as specimens. It speaks, like the Master, "as one having authority." Its Mosaic law bristles with imperious phraseology—"thou shalt," "shalt not." Its gospel bears the sanction, ". . . shall be saved." From Genesis to Revelation not one uncertain note is struck. The entire canon carries the air of easy lordship. This well-known characteristic of Christ's words and manner marks His Book also, the Bible, through and through. The sources of this certitude are not hard to discover. These are two, uttering a blended stream of authority, the first Divine, the second human. God speaks throughout the Book, but not through a tube. He speaks through certain men who are conscious of their appointment to the task and of their authority in discharge of this task. The two sources are not co-ordinate, though in the production of the Book they are co-ordinated—that is, the authority of God in Scripture antedates and conditions that of its human authors, but in actual speech the two become blended. Yet neither is lost in the other. It takes both to make the Book. The more remote authority of God lends supreme sanction to what His human agents say, and holds over from age to age through all periods of human production, unifying His Book. Yet if the authority of the human authors also were wanting, we might have some kind of a Divine message indeed, but we should not have the Bible. There is the dual note of certitude throughout the Book—the self-assertive consciousness of the inspiring Spirit who knew whereof He spake and the self-assertive consciousness of Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Matthew, and the others one by one, whose personalities one by one carry to us weight and definite flavor, who also knew whereof they spake, and who show that they knew it. Two things result from this dual certitude of utterance: First, the Book is vitalized through and through, by the Spirit of God, with the Divine thought, tingling and red with life to its finger-tips, Divine in every turn of expression or shade of meaning; second, it brings us into touch—not with the ever-present Divine Will only, but equally—with the will and within range of the personal magnetism of more than a score of the picked men of the ages, until we drink in instruction from and bow to the appointed authority of the leader of the Exodus, the poet-king, the seer of Babylon, Paul and Paul's physician, the preacher at Pentecost, the exile on Patmos, and all that glorious fellowship who were honored of God by specific and fit appointment to this unique service of His Church and this unique honor in the annals both of literature and of the kingdom of Christ. Of this honor we may not rob them without defacing and somewhat depotentizing the blessed Book, nor without grave damage to ourselves and to the Church of God. Just because inspiration is not mechanical but vital, it involves both the distinct personality of the revealed God and the distinct personalities of His several known human agents and co-workers. Lacking either of these things it were something less than the Bible, "the Word of God written." Lacking either the certitude of its known Divine Author or the certitude of its known human authors, its authority for man might remain, but its power over men would be immeasurably reduced. The word as God gave it to us must be left untarnished by elimination of the inbreathing Spirit from a single page or by the erasure of so much as one human name and personality inwoven with and consciously entering into the Divine utterance. W. W. Faris. We do not ignore reason. She has her mission in regard to the written Word. She is to examine its claims to inspiration. She is to weigh the external and the internal evidences of its divinity. But when she has settled that question her work is done. Thenceforth she is to sit at the feet of the great Teacher and reverently receive His words. She is to study them so as to comprehend their full meaning. But she is never to sit in judgment upon them as wise or unwise, as right or wrong. They come with authority. They are the utterances of Him who gave us reason and who can never tell us anything that is contrary to it, though He may tell us many things that transcend it. Interior. We take the Bible into our hands, and examine diligently its different sections, delivered in different ages of mankind. There is a mighty growth in the discoveries of God's nature and will, as time rolls on from creation to redemption; but as knowledge is increased, and brighter light thrown on the Divine purpose and dealings, there is never the point at which we are brought to a pause by the manifest contradiction of one part to another. It is the wonderful property of the Bible, though the authorship is spread over a long line of centuries, that it never withdraws any truth once advanced, and never adds new without giving fresh force to the old. The brief notices given to patriarchs expand in the institutions of the law and under the breathings of prophecy, till at length, in the days of Christ and His apostles, they burst into magnificence, and fill a world with redemption. It is throughout the same system for the rescue of human kind by the interference of a surety. Melvill. Chap. 9. The subject of chap. 8 continues over into chap. 9 to the end of verse 7. Then follows a message which fills out this chapter and the first four verses of chap. 10, addressed to the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, variously named Jacob, Israel and Ephraim. 1. The exact thought of the original may be expressed thus: "But darkness shall not be [permanent] where this oppression lay; for as the former time dishonored and oppressed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the latter time shall greatly honor and bless those lands, even the way of the sea beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations." The northern and eastern border tribes, including Zebulun and Naphtali on the west of Jordan and the two and a half tribes on the east, had been held in low esteem, as being far from Jerusalem the honored centre; less enlightened religiously, earlier and more apostate into idolatry, more exposed to the nation's foreign enemies (see 1 Chron. 5:25, 26), and more corrupted by heathen families and tribes living among them. Deep traces of the same disesteem appear on the face of the New Testament history. (See John 1:46 and 7:52; also Matt. 26:69 and Acts 2:7.) Over this region the waves of the great Assyrian river had swept with terrible devastation; but it should not be always first in calamity and darkness. The latter time should reverse this law and give to that region distinguished honor, as the next verse proceeds to say. H. C. 2-7. Here the message changes, with a striking abruptness, from the midnight of sorrow to a daybreak of hope and joy; from the Assyrian and Chaldean desolations to the times of Immanuel, the great hope of Israel, and the heir of David's throne. The same region, the borders of the sea of Galilee, where the sorrow of captivity had begun, was to witness the first dawn of the joyful change. 2. This promise is quoted (Matt. 4:14-16), and is given as the reason why our Lord chose Capernaum by the sea of Galilee for the main seat of His earthly ministry. That same district of the Holy Land, marked by the first step of national downfall, was also chosen for the first dawn of light, when it was made the scene of our Lord's personal ministry. He who was despised and rejected of men would choose His apostles and dawn upon the benighted people in despised Galilee. Birks. 3. The prophet now, by a sudden apostrophe, addresses God Himself, who, by bestowing on the Galileans this great light, would not only honor them, but afford occasion of great joy to all the true Israel, including those who should be gathered from the Gentiles. Thou hast enlarged the nation (i.e., Israel in general), thou hast increased its joy (literally, to it thou hast increased the joy), they rejoice before Thee like the joy in harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. A. 5. Carrying forward the same line of thought, the prophet adds yet another cause for the nation's joy. "For every war shoe of the soldier who arms himself at the cry, To battle! and every garment rolled in human blood shall be burned—the food of fire." All that belongs to war—the armor and the weapons of the soldier and the garments drenched in the blood of the slain shall be swept away with fire; and War itself shall die! Unfortunately the English translation misses the full sense and mars the exquisite beauty of this verse. The Messiah abolishes all war; but not until His foes are either swept away by His judgments or melted into penitence and won over to submission by His love. This prophecy looks at the glorious results—the annihilation of all that makes war a scene of horror. 6. From the effects and the results of Messiah's reign, the prophet comes to speak here specifically of the Messiah Himself. A wondrous child is born to the race of man, all unique and peculiar; born a prince, to bear on His shoulder the insignia of supreme power (as the Orientals wore a key upon the shoulder, and modern occidentals, an epaulette, to indicate authority); "and His name shall be called" (i.e., He shall truly be, and therefore shall be worthy to bear these significant names) "Wonderful" (for "great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh"); "Counsellor" (for on Him shall rest the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and might; the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord," etc., Isa. 11:2); "the Mighty God" (not a god in any inferior sense; but the Mighty God, Creator and Lord of all); "the Everlasting Father" (a name entirely applicable to Him as the Creator of all worlds, and as being truly a Father to His people; existing, moreover, through all the depths of a past eternity, and onward through the cycles of an eternal future); also, "the Prince of Peace" (the glorious King whose reign shall be the consummation of peace and prosperity throughout this otherwise troubled and sin-cursed earth). Nor this only; but He gives peace, even a "peace that passeth all understanding," to those who are justified by faith in Him (Rom. 5:1; Phil. 4:7), and who abide in Him with faith unfaltering and love supreme. "Everlasting Father," literally Father of eternity, may mean either, existing eternally, and in this sense one "who only hath immortality" (1 Tim. 6:16); or one that gives eternal life to His people. H. C.—The natural and striking application of the words is to Jesus Christ, as the promised child, emphatically born for us and given to us, as the Son of God and the Son of man, as being wonderful in His person, works and sufferings—a counsellor, prophet or authoritative teacher of the truth, a wise administrator of the Church, and confidential adviser of the individual believer—a real man, and yet the Mighty God—eternal in His own existence, and the giver of eternal life to others—the great peace-maker between God and man, between Jew and Gentile, the umpire between nations, the abolisher of war, and the giver of internal peace to all who being justified by faith have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1). A. The words of this prophecy refer to what the prophet had said in chap. 7 respecting Immanuel, the son of the virgin, and also to the first prediction of the seed of the woman, and to the seed of Abraham, in whom all nations were to be blessed, and to Shiloh—that is, the son whom Jacob had promised. Haldane.—Abraham did see the Saviour's day and was glad. Moses, as lawgiver, did predict the Redeemer, and the law given him was the purposed preparation for the "truth and grace by Jesus Christ." Shiloh does come, with His never-departing sceptre of peace, as Israel promised. All the immense and costly system of sacrifices does verily serve its predestined end as the "shadow of better things to come," things which did come in Him who "once offered up Himself," the Refiner and Purifier of all the sons of Levi, at once High-Priest and Victim, "made higher than the heavens," "continuing ever," "having an unchangeable priesthood," "ever living to make intercession." David, chieftain of kings, takes his singular exaltation not only from the personal worth of his penitence and the inspiration of his song, but as the regal ancestor of the human part in the Prince of all the kings of the earth. The prophecies from age to age and along the pages of the Bible resound the ever-strengthening and ever clearer cry, "He cometh! the Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace! Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" F. D. H. What mean these expressions—His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace—if they do not mark the Divine nature of the Messiah? The words of the seventh verse announce expressly a blessedness and an eternal reign, accompanied with judgment and righteousness, which can only be understood of Jesus Christ, being totally inapplicable to any other king. Haldane.—Great names indeed. But where is the name that is above every name, the name of Jesus, at which every knee shall bow? Perhaps you will find in all these names that one name, but drawn out at length and poured forth. Nor could He at all be called or be a Saviour, if one of these were wanting. Bernard.—The Scriptures style Him Jehovah-jireh (the Lord will provide); Jehovah-nissi (the Lord my banner); Jehovah-shalom (the Lord send peace); Jehovah-rophi (the Lord that healeth thee); Jehovah-tsidkenu (the Lord our righteousness); the Prince of peace; the Prince of life; the King of Zion; Immanuel, God with us; the living God; the true God; the only wise God; the God over the whole earth; the mighty God; God over all, blessed for evermore; Alpha and Omega, the first and the last; the same yesterday, today, and forever; “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, or can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen.” Sherman. intellectual accordance with the Socini, or Blandrata, or Servetus in one cardinal doctrine—and that a doctrine not distinctively Christian, but belonging also to Judaism, to Islam, and to simple Deism—is as nothing compared with the intense response wrung from me by some of Luther's readings of Paul, and by his favorite book, the 'Theologia Germanica.' A child is born. No sleeper waked at His coming; but only they who watched through the night had intelligence of His advent. The earth that night did not shake; the heaven that night did not tremble. Only a few childlike souls, who then kept vigil at His birth, trembled; yet their trembling was a trembling for joy. “The eternal light enters,” says the poet, “and gives the world a new splendor; it shines clearly at midnight, and makes us children of the light. He whom the whole circumference of the world could not embrace lies in the womb of Mary. He who alone sustains the universe has become a little infant.” He who came the first time to save sinners will come the second time to judge them; He who came the first time to bear our sins will come the second time to condemn them. Now we are enjoying the day of comfort, when the Lord does not appear in the tempest but in the soft, gentle sound; oh, then let our hearts be touched by this soft, gentle sound! Let us kneel down at the manger, let us worship with the pious shepherds, let us strew myrrh with the kings from the East. Tholuck. A Son is given. Where did this Man, so fair, so radiant, so human and yet so superhuman, so universal and yet so individual, where did He come from? and where did the Gospel, which flows from Him, and which has done such things in the world as it has done, where did it come from? “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?” If it be true that Jesus Christ is either mistakenly represented in the gospels, or that He made enthusiastic claims which cannot be verified, and if it be true that the faith in a Resurrection, on which Christianity is suspended, and which produced such fruits as we know have been produced, is a delusion; then the noblest lives that ever were lived in the world have found their impulse in a falsehood or a dream; and the richest clusters that ever have yielded wine for the cup have grown upon a thorn. If like produces like, you cannot account for Christ and Christianity by anything short of the belief in His Divine mission. This Man, when He claimed to be God’s Son and the world’s Saviour, was no brain-sick enthusiast; and the results show that the Gospel which His followers proclaim rests upon no lie. A. M. Wonderful. In the announcement of His advent and in the records of His life there is a history which rises above all histories. Christ can no more be classified with mankind than His miracles can be reduced to ordinary events. His whole life attests the truth that He is from above, and that He CAME to save the lost. Christianity is, in this view, “an historically superhuman movement in the world, that is visibly entered into it and organized to be an institution in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the central figure; He is the unfailing power; and with Him the entire fabric either stands or falls.” Christ was Himself a revelation of God. “He was the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person;” He was “God manifest in the flesh.” Humble as He was among men, He willed to be a king, and His ministerial work was one continued proclamation of His absolute and unrivalled sway; and when that ministry on earth had terminated, He encouraged His disciples by the declaration, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,” and by the thrilling promise, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” As we study His character and His claims, we are constrained to acknowledge the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy: “And His name shall be called Wonderful;” and “we discover, as did the first Christians, beneath and beyond all that meets the eye of sense and the eye of conscience, the eternal Person of our Lord Himself. It is not the miracles, but the Maker; not the character, but the living subject; not the teaching, but the Master; not even the death or the resurrection, but He who died and rose again; upon whom Christian thought, Christian love, Christian resolution, ultimately rest." To Him alone believers on earth, like the ransomed in glory, turn as "all their salvation and all their desire." W. Fraser. Wonderful, Counsellor. There is one centre in which all elements of wonder in the Bible are found united—Jesus Christ. He is the keystone of its arch, and it falls or stands with Him. He is more; He is the firmament that holds all its stars and its brightness. But for Him there would have been no Bible, and if we read it without Him it has no coherence and no guiding thought. All the struggling aspirations of the ancient church converge to Him as rays to a focus, and all the great forces of truth and goodness now in the world emerge from Him, whether they know it or not. Isaiah declares His name to be "Wonderful," "Counsellor," and Paul assures us that "in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." If the claims of Jesus Christ are to be maintained, as they must and will be, it is not by lessening, but by enlarging them. We must hold that there is nothing good or true or pure among men but in some way it has its source in Him, for "He is the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Ker. In Christ, the man Christ Jesus, the Son of God, there lie the thoughts for all our knowledge, the master principles of all our conceptions, the light of all our seeing; in Him, His person, His deeds, His utterances, His relations to men, His relation to God, there is the formative basis of everything that is worth thinking about and knowing in regard to every subject which does not belong to the mere material life of man. All philosophy, all ethics, all reasonable history of humanity, the principles of all the communities into which men shall aggregate themselves, light upon the nature of man's spirit, light upon the relations of man to God, the hopes that burn bright with immortality in the midst of the darkness of the grave, and if there be any other theme above the level of the beasts that perish and the wants that are like theirs, they are all to be found in Him—in whom, by no hyperbole, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So in Christ, to be unfolded through slow generations in accordance with human experience and wants, is all that men can know or need to know concerning God and themselves, and the relations of both, their duties, their hopes, their fears, and their love. . . . What we have to do is simply to yield up our understandings, our wills, our hearts, our consciences, and all the activities of our lives to Him; to be commanded, to be cleansed, to be enlightened, to be filled with His love, to be conformed to His likeness, for the voice that spoke from the heavens speaks to us yet—"This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him!" A. M. He is Wonderful, Counsellor. Justly is He called Wonderful, for He is both God and man. His love is the wonder of angels and glorified saints; in His birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension, He was wonderful. A constant series of wonders attended Him, and without controversy, great was the mystery of godliness concerning Him. He is the Counsellor, for He was intimately acquainted with the counsels of God from eternity, and He gives counsel to the children of men, in which He consults our welfare. It is by Him that God has given us counsel (Ps. 16:7; Rev. 3:18). He is made of God to us wisdom. H.—He spoke of His own authority: "Verily, I say unto you." Other teachers explained the law; He is a lawgiver. Others drew more or less pure waters from cisterns; He is in Himself a well of water, from which all may draw. He does not argue; He affirms. He seeks no support from others' teachings; He alone is sufficient for us. He not only speaks the truth, which needs no other confirmation than His own lips, but He is the truth. We may canvass other men's teachings and distinguish their insight from their errors; we have but to accept His. The world outgrows all others; it can only grow up toward the fulness of His. Us and all the ages He teaches with authority, and the guarantee for the truth of His teaching is Himself. "Verily, verily, I say unto you." No other man has a right to say that to me. But Christ dominates the race, and the strong Son of God is the world's teacher. A. M. The mighty God. Enshrined in the light that centres the infinitude of the invisible God, sat One from eternity, in the Divine nature and essence, who was "the express image of His person." "He was God," and "in the form of God." Whatever that form was, it was that, and that alone, that made angelic and other worship possible. To that form, as the empty space began to fill with worlds and their inhabitants, all faces turned, all worship ascended, all prayer arose. From that "form" went forth the words that called everything into being, that gave it shape and purpose, that gave it law and order. "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." We have been taught to call that "form of God" "THE SON," and to speak of Him as "begotten of the Father" from the poverty of human language and the feebleness of human intellect to express or grasp "the deep things of God." It was language that might have risen spontaneously to an archangel's lips if brought suddenly and for the first time since His creation into the presence of the Visible in the bosom of the Invisible, of the Comprehensible on the throne of the Infinite, of the Approachable where he had expected the Inaccessible. "He is the Son in the bosom of the Eternal Father." But there was no priority of existence or inequality of power to give birth to the term of relationship. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the Old Testament ages the Son revealed Himself in human form to man, whom He had created in His own "image and likeness." His name was "Jehovah," and under that name He was and still is the only Divine object of worship to the Hebrew tribes. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," and the New Testament era began. "In Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In His sinless humanity, as in a temple, the Father and blessed Spirit stood enshrined; and the manifestations of the Divine Unity—the Three-One God in Christ—became the central truth of Christianity. "Let all the angels of God worship Him" was the decree attendant on His birth. "Let every knee bow to Him" was the decree that accompanied His ascension. . . . His is the "new name" that unites the past with the present, that breaks down "the wall of partition" between the Hebrew worshipper of Jehovah and the Christian worshipper of Christ, that makes both one in adoration of the Incarnate Son. "We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all," in Him "who was, and is, and is to come." "He is the Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace." In Him is realized for us the unity of the Godhead, the embodiment of all we seek to worship, "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end—the Almighty." It is to God, our reconciling Father in Christ, that we pray—God, looking at us through human eyes; listening to us through human ears; speaking to us in human language and by human lips; and wiping from our cheeks the tears of sorrow with gentle human hands—to "God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses." Nearer than this we may not go; higher than this we cannot soar. Robt. Balgarnie. My confidence in the flawless completeness of His human character lives or dies with my belief that He is the Eternal Word, God manifest in the flesh. Certainly we shall never truly grasp the blessed meaning of His life on earth until we look upon it all as the revelation of God. The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;" and all that life so beautiful but so anomalous as to be all but incredible, when we think of it as only the life of a man, glows with a yet fairer beauty, and corresponds with the nature which it expresses, when we think of it as being the declaration to us by the Divine Son of the Divine Father—our loftiest, clearest and authentic revelation of God. A. M. By the whole tenor of revelation, the character of the Messiah is stamped as truly Divine. Who is the substance of all the testimonies of the word of God? The Messiah. Of whom do the history, the miracles, the types, and the prophecies of the Old Testament testify? Of the Messiah. To whom does the whole substance of the New Testament point? To the Messiah. In whom do all the lines of revelation concentrate? In the Messiah. To whom do all the ordinances of worship, both of the Old Testament and the New, direct the observer? To the Messiah. The doctrines of the Bible teach us His character and His works; its precepts take their sanction from His authority; its emblems adumbrate His glory. The heavens and the earth, in their creation, are a figure of His greater work. The object of the Bible is to reveal the Messiah; and in Him the Father, whom no man hath seen or can see, is revealed. Our only discovery of the full character of God is made by Jesus Christ. Haldane. The relation of the Son to the Father involves more than communion—namely, unity. But if we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall understand that the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the communion the manifestation, so far as it can be manifested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words which shine like stars—starlike in that their height above us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and in that they are points of radiance partially disclosing, and separated by abysses of unlighted infinitude—tell us that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there was communion, for "the Word was with God," and there was unity, for "the Word was God." And in the records of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity loftily utters itself in the unfathomable declaration, "I and My Father are one;" while the consciousness of communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which He leaves to Himself, "The Father has not left Me alone, for I do always the things that please Him." The resurrection was the transition from the state of humiliation and limitation; and by it Jesus enters, in His manhood, on the possession of that "glory which He had with the Father" from eternity. In these mighty words, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth," He stretches out the hand that had been pierced with the nails, and shows us that it holds the "unlimited sceptre which His almighty Father has bequeathed Him." It had been His from everlasting, but now His humanity is crowned, and the resurrection is the first step in the glorification of the body of His humiliation. The man Jesus rules the universe. Whatever unknown orders of being and forms of power may fill the heavens, He is their king. Whatever rebellious or unconscious forces may storm on earth, He controls them. There is no power but of God, and all God's power belongs to the Man who died and rose again. The kingdoms of nature, of providence, of grace, and of glory, are His. Thus, deep and broad and firm He lays the foundations for our trust, peace, obedience and hope. If all power be His, none can be against His friends. If He has all power, we need not fear, though we have all weakness. A. M. As we study, with spiritual eyes, into the Saviour's divinity, one after another new points of light, new traits of love, new features of blended majesty and tenderness, gleam out upon our gratitude. We have only to look to find. The heart's matchless telescope is simple, childlike faith. And every spot of common life where Providence plants our feet is an observatory—if we will but stand in it looking upward, devoutly upward—lofty enough for the whole sweep of that condescending heaven. F. D. H. Everlasting Father. Father of eternity, because it is He that gives substance and body to the conception of infinite duration. Duration implies something that endures. Now God is the Being who, having neither beginning of days nor end of years, gives to us the concerte meaning of the abstract statement. And to ascribe this attribute to the Messiah, to Him who is to be born as a child, is exactly in line with the rest of the marvellous prediction, and gives increased emphasis and meaning to the startling collocation of human qualities and divine in the future ruler of Israel. Born in time and seated on the throne of David, he is yet the Everlasting One, whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end, just because of His existence there has been no beginning. Whatever be the meaning of the phrase, the English translation should be "Father of eternity" in accordance with the ancient Arabic and the modern (Dr. Van Dyck's), the Syriac, ancient and modern, the Chaldee Paraphrase, the French of Martin and the Dutch of the States Bible. Chambers. He is called by Isaiah the Prince of Peace. "Of the increase of His government and peace there is said to be no end." A little after, His reign is described by the most pacific emblems that imagination could furnish, by "the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard lying down with the kid." His work of righteousness is peace, and He makes with mankind the covenant of peace. He Himself tells His disciples that "in Him they were to have peace;" and it is the legacy He bequeaths them. "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." The sacred writers continue the same language in the New Testament. "The kingdom of God is joy and peace." His Gospel is called "the Gospel of peace." Bp. Porteus. The title Prince of Peace was indeed appropriate. How quiet and serene He was when tempests of passion were blowing and beating around and upon Him! How like a lamb He appeared in the midst of fierce and wolfish spirits! When His disciples proposed that fire from heaven should consume the Samaritans for their disrespect to their Lord, He rebuked their impatient tempers with the assurance that they were mistaking the design of His mission, which was not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He was smitten He did not smite. When He was unjustly slain by wicked hands, no violence was in His hand, and no reproach in His mouth, but a dying prayer that His murderers might be forgiven. He illustrated, in His life and death, His own teachings, "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you." Was He not the Prince of Peace? Those, therefore, who follow Him must follow peace; they must cherish a meek and quiet spirit. R. T. 7. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end. The government or power thus to be enlarged is of course that of the child, who is described as born and given in the foregoing verse. A striking parallel is furnished by the prophecy in Micah 5:3. There, as here, a king is promised who should be the son of David, and should reign over all the earth in peace and righteousness forever. It is there expressed, and here implied, that this king should reunite the divided house of Israel, although this is but a small part of the increase promised, which includes the calling of the Gentiles also. The reign here predicted was to be not only peaceful, but in every respect prosperous. And this prosperity, like the reign of which it is predicted, is to have no limit, either temporal or local. It is to be both universal and eternal. There is nothing to preclude the very widest explanation of the terms employed. The endless increase of power and prosperity on the throne of David means of course that the Prince whose reign was to be thus powerful and prosperous would be a descendant of David. This is indeed a repetition and explanation of a promise given to David (2 Sam. 7:11-16; 1 K. 8:25) and repeatedly referred to by him (2 Sam. 23:1-5; Ps. 2, 45, 72, 89, 132). Hence the Messiah is not only called the branch or Son of David (2 Sam. 7:12, 13; Jer. 23:5; 33:15), but David himself (Jer. 30:9; Ezek. 34:23, 24; 37:24; Hos. 3:5). The two reigns are identified, not merely on account of an external resemblance or a typical relation, but because the one was really a restoration or continuation of the other. Both kings were heads of the same body, the one a temporal head, the other spiritual; the one temporary, the other eternal. The Jewish nation, as a spiritual body, is really continued in the Christian Church. The subject of the prophecy is the reign of the Messiah; the effect predicted, its stability and increase; the means to be employed, judgment and justice; the efficient cause, the zeal of Jehovah. Grotius distinguishes between judgment and justice, as denoting righteous government on one hand, and righteous subjection to it on the other. The justice spoken of is that of the Messiah and His subjects. All the acts of His administration will be righteous, and the effect of this upon His people will be righteousness on their part, and this prevalence of righteousness will naturally generate the increase and stability here promised. A. Such is the tone of many other prophecies of the Messiah's reign. (See Ps. 2, 22, 72 and 110.) Isaiah elsewhere expands the same views of the magnificence, glory, purity, righteousness and peace of the Messiah's reign. (See chaps. 11, 49 and 60.) All these thoughts are grand and glorious. A reign so purely just, so benign, excluding from earth so entirely those great national sins which have been its curse for ages; a reign destined to endure so long, evermore fraught with blessings to the filling of earth's cup; what can be more magnificent; what can more completely fill out the answer to the divinely prescribed prayer, "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven"? H. C. There is no other influence in the world like that of living personality, and in Christ this is Divine. Amid the philosophic questionings and disputes of the ages there arises this unearthly figure, "the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!" Even the enemies of the cross feel His strange presence in the world. Less and less does candid unbelief know what to think of Jesus. Some of the most eloquent tributes to His unearthly purity have been given by writers who have beheld Him with wonder, though not accepting His salvation. History has made Him its moral centre; the calendar of the nations begins with Him, and the date of His birth is the festival of the civilized world. Most of the sceptics of our time owe whatever is best in them to the culture of the Christian faith, and the most successful apologists for the false religions of the East are those who, as a result of early training, clothe them in a Christian nomenclature, and ennoble them with conceptions borrowed from the New Testament, and of which their own authors never dreamed. Ellinwood. His life is connected with the whole structure of human history—with the life of man from the beginning, and with the life of man unto the end. It is He who was born at Bethlehem; Himself in the lowliest penury, yet signal-stars and angelic choruses heralding and gracing His advent. It is He who was promised to the fallen pair in Eden, the seed of the woman who was to bruise the serpent's head. It is He who was foretold as about to dwell in the tents of Shem, enlarging them above the glory of Japhet. It is He concerning whom it was said to Abraham, beneath the numberless stars of the eastern heavens, "In Him shall all the families of the earth be blessed." It is He of whom the patriarch Jacob did speak, when, like the dying swan, he broke into one and only strain of prophetic song: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, until the Shiloh, the Peacemaker, shall come, whom all the nations should obey." He it is concerning whom Balaam, the seer of Edom, with most reluctant testimony was compelled to predict as the Star and the Ruler who should come forth from Jacob. The same of whom Moses spake as the prophet whom the Lord God should raise up unto whom the world should hearken. It is He of whom David wrote in the Psalms, calling Him Lord, and King, the Son of God, the Christ, the anointed one, and the priest—now waking the echoes of the Mount of Olives, as with jubilant songs he described the splendors of His imperial reign and the glories of His triumphant and universal dominion—and now again, with plaintive measure, as with all minuteness he rehearsed His humiliations and sufferings, His betrayal by a false friend, the parting of His garments by lot, the piercing of His hands and feet, the pouring out of His soul like water, the entombment of His body, and its resurrection while yet uncorrupted by decay. It is He of whom Isaiah spake, as with lips touched with fire from heaven, and wrote with a pen dipped in the glories of the skies, as the Deliverer, the Saviour, the Redeemer, the tried and sure corner-stone, Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, the renovator of the world, the isles waiting for His law; a child to be born, yet bearing the name of the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father. It is He of whom Ezekiel wrote, by the river Chebar, as the glory of God, by whom the earth was to be made to shine. It is He of whom Daniel spake, as the Prince, the Messiah, who was to be cut off, but not for Himself, that He might make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness. Amos the herdsman foretold His coming as a Deliverer, and Micah rejoiced in His advent. Zechariah describes His royal Priesthood; Haggai anticipates His footsteps as the glory of the second Temple, the Lord our righteousness; and Malachi, prolonging the notes of this whole choir of prophecy, bids the world believe that the Messenger of the covenant is nigh at hand, and the Sun of Righteousness is soon to rise upon the benighted earth. All the pregnant and germinant prophecies of Scripture relate to Him. The long procession of the centuries had been pointing to Him. His precursors summon the world to make ready for His approach. When He was born, there was heard a company of angels chanting in the sky: "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to man." When He spake unto men, He claimed to be the very being whom prophecy had promised, and Nature obeyed Him as her Lord. He challenged the faith of the world, when He styled Himself the way, the truth, and the life, predicting His own lifting up upon the cross as the appointed method of drawing all men unto Himself. Plainly, the historic events which occurred in and about Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago were not unanticipated accidents. The life of Christ was a prepared and foretold certainty. A cheering fact is this with which to begin—the assured conviction that it was God's intention to redeem and restore our fallen race. W. Adams. An individual once trod on the earth who by moral omnipotence alone controlled other times and founded an eternity of His own: one who, soft-blooming and easily drawn as a sunflower, burning and attracting as a sun, still in His mild form moved and turned Himself and nations and centuries together toward the all-enlightening primal sun; it is that still spirit which we call Jesus Christ. The power by which this wonderful life of Jesus fed itself was wholly of the spiritual world. He lived in communion with the highest conceptions of virtue; He lived in intimacy with the infinite Father, or at least, as the unbeliever must admit, with a God who to Him was a reality; He had a deep theory of human nature in the ruin of its spiritual capacity, which, joined with His deeper love, moved Him to what He regarded as a life for man's redemption. And the result of His spiritual life and thinking has been the alteration of the world—changes which no laws, nor wars, nor arts could have effected. And by what instruments has He worked so mightily on human hearts and characters? By spiritual ones, by the feeling of guilt, the longing for purity and peace of soul, by offering pardon and the promises of life-giving assistance to the contrite, by a life and example of united love and holiness, by unveiling God and the soul's unending life. Such are the means by which He has set up His throne over mankind, pushing His sway beyond souls into everything which pertains to man. T. D. W. Fifty-five generations have passed away, and there is no name which exercises such an influence in the world to-day as the name of Him who was lifted up on the cross. It is associated with the most advanced civilization; with the best and most enduring literature; with the noblest forms of art; with the broadest systems of education; with the most gigantic enterprises of commerce; with the purest and most extended institutions of philanthropy; with the most refined and healthful social progress; and, in fine, with every element of dignity, prosperity and power among the nations of the earth. Ebenezer P. Rogers.—He said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” And they have not. Children learn them from mothers’ lips. Strong men are made strong wholly by them. The afflicted find in them sole and sufficient comfort. They are rehearsed in the ears of the dying. They are said in hope and triumph by the open grave. Do what you will with His biography—travesty it with Strauss, dislocate it with Renan, use all the power of learning, genius, wit, sarcasm, malice to distort or dwarf its central figure—you cannot, by any possibility, bring Jesus Christ down to the level of ordinary humanity, into line with the men of His generation, or even into line with the great men of all times. He still has a name above every name, and you cannot take it away. His is the only character in history which has no secular parallax, which looks as great in the nineteenth century as in the first. A. P. Peabody.—If we look upon Him as Divine, if we believe that the power of God was resident in Him, then we should have a right to see an influence that never wanes, a voice that never stills, a fulfilment of all prophecies, an utter change in the fashion of the world’s politics, science and its philosophy. And this is exactly what has occurred. Anon. “The argument from prophecy” goes deeper than any isolated passages of the Old Testament. There was a Divine Life in that ancient history. Christ embodied His spirit and power in that progressive movement before He was incarnate in the manger. He was a Life in the ancient world, as well as a Hope, a veritable presence in history, and not simply a power overhanging it. He it was that rolled the cycles and progressions of history with His impulsion. Every tendency toward clearer light or better living was the earthly garment with which He clothed Himself. All those sequences of God’s providence, which seem to be so contrary in direction to every human tendency, betray the presence of a supernatural force—His presence from behind. Though event after event and life after life seem natural enough when looked at one by one, yet in a comprehensive survey they seem to be linked together as the orderly progression of some Divine design, and all facing on toward some far-off Divine result. This coherent and slowly evolving plan was the way in which Christ embodied Himself in the ages of preparation. This history, as the letters are put together, spells the adorable name of the Messiah. Van Slyke. The history of the world would be the strangest of all riddles were it not the history of redemption. Nothing but the preparation for Christ’s coming can explain the events before the incarnation, and nothing but a movement toward the final triumph of His kingdom can explain the history since He came. The events of all the ages find their light and law in Him. They centre in Him, and circle around Him. Like Moses and Elias in the transfiguration, they appear in His glory, and speak to Him of His decease. There is no other law of history than this, for there is no other philosophy of history which can expound the facts of history. J. H. Seeley. From Him as its foundation, its leader, and its life, a new kingdom of heaven rises into existence, comes forth out of the mists and concealments and sensuous coverings of the Mosaic economy, arrayed in robes of love and compassion and faith and truth, breathing only glory to God, peace on earth, and good will to men. This, O fallen man, is our Christ, the Christ of prophecy, the Christ of history; the living, reigning Christ whom we adore as divine, whom we love as the incarnation of all perfection, whom we believe in as the saviour of our souls from the power and penalty of sin. By His side, standing in childlike confidence, the law has no curse, death no sting, the grave no victory. Our life, hidden in His life and deriving from it new life, is purified, exalted, strengthened, comforted, protected and made victorious over all the powers of the world and the devil. In Him is the sacrifice for sin and the way of pardon and peace; in Him is the power which will make the weak strong for the ascent up the narrow way of life; in Him is light on all the dark scenes of time, light to scatter the gloom and darkness of the grave, light opening to us the secrets of immortality. Looking on Him in faith, I find all I want to elevate, purify, enlighten and save. In Him the mighty promises are all yea and amen. He is the captain of our salvation, leading us to glory. No wonder the four and twenty elders praise; no wonder the saints on the sea of glass ascribe dominion and power and glory to Him; no wonder heaven rings with the praises of the Lamb in the midst of the throne; no wonder martyrs and confessors have trusted Him and rejoiced in Him amid the fires; no wonder His people in their sorrow and trials look to Him for comfort and joy; no wonder sin-convicted souls, turning from the world, cry to Him for salvation; no wonder poor penitents love Him who is the end of the law for righteousness. Here, O Christian, is your prophet, priest and king. Here, O sinner, burdened, tossed and uneasy, full of sad anticipations, is thy cure, thy comfort, thy Saviour! S. W. Fisher. Jesus! How does the very word overflow with sweetness and light and love and life; filling the air with odors, like precious ointment poured forth; irradiating the mind with a glory of truths in which no fear can live, soothing the wounds of the heart with a balm that turns the sharpest anguish into delicious peace, shedding through the soul a cordial of immortal strength. Jesus! the answer to all our doubts, the spring of all our courage, the earnest of all our hopes, the charm omnipotent against all our foes, the remedy for all our weakness, the supply of all our wants, the fulness of all our desires. Jesus! at the mention of whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Jesus! our power—Jesus! our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption—Jesus! our elder brother, our blessed Lord and Redeemer. Thy name is the most transporting theme of the Church, as they sing going up from the valley of tears to their home on the mount of God; Thy name shall ever be the richest chord in the harmony of heaven, where the angels and the redeemed unite their exulting, adoring songs around the throne of God. Jesus! Thou only canst interpret Thy own name, and Thou hast done it by Thy works on earth, and Thy glory at the right hand of the Father. Bethune. # Estimates from Other Sources. Byron, in view of the faultless life of the Redeemer: "If ever man was God, or God man, Jesus Christ was both." Rousseau: "Can it be possible that the personage whose history the gospel contains should be a mere man? What sublimity in His maxims! What profound wisdom in His discourses! If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God." Fichte, the noblest representative of recent pantheistic speculation in Germany, bore Christ the highest testimony it was possible for one man to bear another, making Him the propounder of his philosophy. Goethe, the universal genius of modern Germany, speaking of Christ, says, "He is the Divine Man—the Holy One." Said Theodore Parker, in one of his most rigid discourses against evangelical religion, "Try Christ as we try other teachers: how soon their pupils, though humble men, go beyond them! Eighteen centuries have passed; but what man or sect has mastered His thought? He pours out to the world a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as God." And then, after arguing for some length that, though the Bible itself were destroyed, its great precepts would live, he falls into this strain: "But we should lose (O irreparable loss!) the example of that character, so beautiful, so divine, that no human genius could have conceived, as none, after all the progress and refinement of eighteen centuries, seems fully to have comprehended, its lustrous life." L. T. T. It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, natures, temperaments and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. Lecky. Speaking of those who deny the Trinity, James Martineau (in the prime of life) says: "I am constrained to say, that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with their heroes, sects or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavorably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed. In philosophy I have had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text-books, and the authors in chief favor with them. In biblical interpretation, I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham. In devotional literature and religious thought, I find nothing of ours that does not pale before Augustine, Tauler and Pascal. And in the poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley, or of Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor and cold. That I find myself in For "Admissions of Sceptics," see Vol. I., N. T., p. 599. B. 9:8, 9 THE Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in pride and in stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stone; the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. Therefore the LORD shall set up on high against him the adversaries of Rezin, and shall stir up his enemies; the Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 13. Yet the people hath not turned unto him that smote them, neither have they sought the LORD of hosts. Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm-branch and rush, in one day. The ancient and the honorable man, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For they that lead this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall not rejoice over their young men, neither shall he have compassion on their fatherless and widows; for every one is profane and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 18. For wickedness burneth as the fire; it devoureth the briers and thorns; yea, it kindleth in the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in thick clouds of smoke. Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land burnt up: the people also are as the fuel of fire; no man spareth his brother. And one shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim: and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 10:1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that write perverseness: to turn aside the needy from judgement, and to take away the right of the poor of my people, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? They shall only bow down under the prisoners, and shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 5,6. Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation! I will send him against a profane nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few. For he saith, Are not my princes all of them kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? 12. Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he hath said, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and I have brought down as a valiant man them that sit on 14 thrones: and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the peoples; and as one gathereth eggs that are forsaken, have I gathered all the earth: and there was none that moved the wing, or that opened the mouth, or chirped. Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if a rod should shake them that lift it up, or as if a staff should lift up him that is not wood. 16. Therefore shall the Lord, the LORD of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory there shall be kindled a burning like the burning of fire. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briars in one day. And he shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and it shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth. And the remnant of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them. 20. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and they that are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them shall return: a consumption is determined, overflowing with righteousness. For a consummation, and that determined, shall the Lord, the LORD of hosts, make in the midst of all the earth. 24. Therefore thus saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: though he smite thee with the rod, and lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger, in their destruction. And the LORD of hosts shall stir up against him a scourge, as in the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and his rod shall be over the sea, and he shall lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall depart from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing. 28. He is come to Alath, he is passed through Migron; at Michmash he layeth up his baggage: they are gone over the pass; they have taken up their lodging at Geba: Ramah trembleth; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Cry aloud with thy voice, O daughter of Gallim! hearken, O Laishah! O thou poor Anathoth! Madmenah is a futile; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. This very day shall he halt at Nob: he shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. 33. Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the boughs with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the lofty shall be brought low. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. 8. HAVING** repeatedly interchanged the three great subjects of this prophecy—the deliverance of Judah from the power of Syria and Israel, its subsequent punishment by means of the Assyrians, and the reign of the Messiah, for whose sake the kingdom was to be preserved—the prophet passes here abruptly from the last to the first, and again predicts the punishment of Ephraim. He reverts to this event, which had already been repeatedly foretold, for the purpose of declaring that the blows would be repeated as often and as long as might be needed for the absolute fulfilment of God's threatenings. He begins by showing that Israel had already been sufficiently forewarned. The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it came down into Israel. The word which God had uttered against Israel had reached them as a message from Him, as a revelation, so that there could be no doubt as to its authority and genuineness. The two names of the patriarch are here used as equivalents, denoting his descendants, and especially the larger part, the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, to which the national name Israel is wont to be distinctively applied. 10. The very words of the self-confident Ephraimites are now recorded. Instead of being warned and instructed by what they had already suffered, they presumptuously look for greater prosperity than ever. Bricks are fallen, and hewn stone will we build; sycamores are felled, and cedars will we substitute. The Oriental bricks are unburnt, so that most of their brick structures are as little durable as mud walls. The sycamore is durable, but too light and spongy to be used in solid building. The latter is accordingly contrasted with the cedar, and the former with hewn stone, the two most highly valued building materials. A. 12. "The adversaries of Rezin" were the Assyrians. They had already proved a formidable foe to Syria. With them the Lord would combine the old enemies of Israel, the Syrians on the north and the Philistines on the south and west; and then together they should devour Israel as with mouth wide open, to swallow her up. But as these sore national inflictions did not turn the people to God, so His anger did not turn away, but His hand remained still outstretched for yet other and sorer inflictions. So after each successive stroke, God is wont to pause and take note of the moral effect, if any, that He may by all means arrest the process of chastisement at the earliest moment when once the results of penitence and humiliation are secured. H. C. 13. The people has not turned to Him that smote them, and Jehovah of Hosts they have not sought. Sin is described in Scripture as departure from God. Repentance, therefore, is returning to Him. To seek God, in the idiom of Scripture, is to pray to Him (Isa. 55:6), to consult Him (Isa. 8:19), to resort to Him for help (Isa. 31:1), to hold communion with Him (Amos 5:4, 5). Hence it is sometimes descriptive of a godly life in general (Ps. 14:2). So here it includes repentance, conversion, and new obedience. A. 13-16. Because the people would not turn to Him who smote them to heal and to restore, therefore He will cut off from Israel in one day the greatest and the least; the highest in society and the lowest; and by implication, all the intermediate classes also. The extremes are so described as to enhance the moral force of the threatening. None are too venerable in age or wisdom to be punished. The other extreme, being lowest by reason of their meanness in crime, can by no means be passed over. The head and the tail of the animal furnish the first figure; the palm-branch, lofty and magnificent, on the one hand, and the bulrush, sending up its slender stalk from foul marshes, on the other, supply the second. Applying the first figure, he makes the elders, men usually much respected, the head, but the prophet who teaches lies, the tail. This is of course the false prophet who pretends to bring messages from the Lord, but brings only lies. His meanness, hypocrisy and falsehood earn for him richly the disgrace and the curse which are here indicated. 17. Hypocrisy, bold evil-doing and outspoken impiety combine to show that the people are morally rotten—fearfully apostate from God in their whole heart and life. After the judgments pertaining to this series, the Lord waited only till He saw there was no returning to a better life, and then resumed His inflictions. H. C. 19. The figure of a general conflagration is continued in this verse, and then exchanged for a literal description of the miseries produced by civil war. In the wrath of Jehovah of Hosts, the land is darkened with the smoke—or heated by the flame—and the people is like food (or fuel) of fire—one another (literally, man his brother) they do not spare. A. It is the heavy burden of this song (verses 12, 17, 21), “For all this, His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” They do nothing to turn away His anger; they do not repent and reform, do not humble themselves and pray; none answer God’s calls nor comply with the designs of His providences, but they are hardened and secure. His anger therefore continues to burn against them and “His hand is stretched out still.” The reason why the judgments of God are prolonged is because the point is not gained, sinners are not brought to repentance by them; “the people turn not to Him that smites them,” and therefore He continues to smite them; for when God judges He will overcome; and the proudest, stoutest sinner shall either bend or break. H. 19-21. An awful picture is this, indeed, of the way in which the kingdom of Israel fell! An interregnum of nine years, a time doubtless of fearful anarchy, immediately preceded the reign of their last king Hoshea. It was then, probably, that this vial of judgment was poured out. Not only did the leading tribes in this northern kingdom arm against each other, Ephraim against Manasseh and Manasseh against Ephraim; but whenever this strife might subside, they both assaulted Judah. Of this Pekah was himself an instance. He had scarcely reached the throne by means of conspiracy and regicide, when he turned his arms against Judah. Remarkably, of the five last kings of Israel, four were usurpers, reaching the throne by conspiracy! This is a forcible comment on the statements made here in our text. H. C. Chap. 10. The first four verses close the series of sins described and judgments threatened in the case of the kingdom of Israel. The remaining verses (5-34) treat of the Assyrian king, his pride, his ambitious aspirations, his advance to attack Jerusalem, and his utter destruction. This prophecy suggested that recorded in chap. 11, the magnificent results of which gave occasion to the song of praise in chap. 12. Taken together in their natural connection, this series of prophecies is exquisitely grand and precious. H. C. The prophet first completes his description of the prevalent iniquity, with special reference to injustice and oppression, as a punishment of which he threatens death and deportation by the hands of the Assyrians (verses 1-4). He then turns to the Assyrians themselves, God's chosen instruments, whom He had commissioned against Israel, to punish and degrade it, but whose own views were directed to universal conquest, to illustrate which the Assyrian himself is introduced as boasting of his tributary princes and his rapid conquests, which had met with no resistance from the people or their gods, and threatening Judah with a like fate, unaware of the destruction which awaits himself, imputing his success to his own strength and wisdom, and glorying, though a mere created instrument, over his maker and his mover (verses 5-15). His approaching doom is then described under the figure of a forest suddenly and almost totally consumed by fire (verses 16-19). This succession of events is to have the effect of curing the propensity to trust in man rather than God, at least among the elect remnant who survive; for though the ancient promises of great increase shall certainly be verified, only a remnant shall escape God's righteous judgments (verses 20-23). To these the prophet now addresses words of strong encouragement, with a renewed prediction of a judgment on Assyria similar to that on Midian at Oreb and on Egypt at the Red Sea, which is then described, in the most vivid manner, by an exhibition of the enemy's approach, from post to post, until he stands before Jerusalem, and then, with a resumption of the metaphor before used, his destruction is described as the prostration of a forest—trees and thickets—by a mighty axe (verses 24-34). It is commonly agreed that the close of the chapter relates chiefly, if not wholly, to the destruction of Sennacherib's army, recorded in chap. 37:36. The division of the chapters is in this part of the book peculiarly unfortunate; the first part of the ninth (verses 1-7) containing the conclusion of the eighth, and the first part of the tenth (verses 1-4) the conclusion of the ninth. 1-4. In these four verses, as in the different divisions of the ninth chapter, there is an accusation followed by a threatening of punishment. The sin denounced in the first two verses is that of oppression and injustice. The punishment threatened is desolation by a foreign foe, and its effect, captivity and death. Woe unto them that decree decrees of injustice, and that write oppression which they have prescribed. A.—Wickedness is doubly aggravated when framed into law, because its mischief is made to fall on the poor and unprotected classes; because it affords a temptation to cruel, heartless men to oppress, providing for them the means of doing so with impunity; and because its mischiefs are more permanent. H. C. 3. The wicked rulers are themselves addressed, and warned of an approaching crisis, when they must be deprived of all that they now glory in. And (though you are now powerful and rich) what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the ruin (which) shall come from far? The questions imply negation, as if he had said, "You can do nothing to protect yourselves." 5. The Assyrian is now distinctly brought into view as the instrument which God would use in punishing His people. But instead of simply executing this task, the Assyrians would seek their own ends and exceed their commission, and for this they must themselves be punished. The prophet begins, therefore, with a woe against them. Woe unto Asshur (the Assyrian or Assyria itself), the rod of My anger, and the staff in their (the Assyrians') hand is My indignation—i.e., its instrument. A. 7,8. Such a commission from God, however, is far from the thoughts of the Assyrian king. He will ascribe the whole series of his conquests to his own prowess and wisdom alone. Carehemish and Calno on the Euphrates and Tigris, Arpad and Hamath on the Orontes, Damascus and Samaria on the route southward toward Jerusalem, would fall in succession, and some had already fallen. His pride would grow with every victory. Each past conquest would be viewed as a pledge of further triumphs. Birks. The Assyrian committed crime in his invasion; yet he thereby worked out the results which God intended. In the commission of his crime he was perfectly free and perfectly accountable; yet this crime was not only foreseen, but, as we observe, predicted by the Almighty. God was not the author of the sin, though the sin occurred providentially; and, foreseeing this, God recognizes His accountability, and denounces punishment (verse 12), "Wherefore it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed His whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks." If we do not recognize this intervention of Providence in regard to the free acts of creatures, we can never interpret those judgments of God which are wrought by wicked men. Even the free actions of the most wicked man are so governed that his way is not in himself, but in God. J. W. A. 10,11. The Assyrian king boasted that he had subdued idol gods mightier than those worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem; could he not therefore with the greatest ease subdue their inferior gods? At this time he had subjected Samaria and her gods; would he not do the same to Jerusalem and to her gods? H. C. 12. To the boastful speech of the Assyrian succeeds a prediction of his fate. Although he would be suffered to proceed still further in the work of subjugation, till he reached the very verge of Zion and the portals of Jerusalem, God had determined that the work should go no further, but be there cut short by the infliction of a signal vengeance on the selfishness and pride of the invader. By the destruction of Sennacherib's army, God may be said to have cut short the work of that invader, or to have cut short His own work by accomplishing His purpose of destruction, or to have cut short His own work of punishing His people by relieving them from danger. 15. In all this the Assyrian was but an instrument in God's hand, and his proud self-confidence is therefore as absurd as if an axe, or a saw, or a rod, or a staff should exalt itself above the person wielding it. 16-19. The Assyrian overthrow is now foretold under the figure of a vast forest conflagration. It would come direct from God Himself, and be terrible and complete. Not only the rank and file of His soldiers, but the mighty and the noble would perish. Birks. 17. The "light of Israel" is the living God, as the revealer of truth and author of blessings. Note also the tacit antithesis between the relations of Jehovah to Israel, and to His enemies; to the former a light in the sense of a joy and a fountain of blessings; to the latter a light in the sense of a consuming fire. H. C.—The inner essential connection of wrath with the Divine holiness is made especially clear by this passage: "The Light of Israel becomes a fire, and His Holy One a flame, which burns and consumes His thorns and briars." Because wrath is a manifestation of Divine holiness, the occasion of its outburst does not lie in a capricious Divine humor or natural malignity, as the gods of the heathen fall into a passion, but wholly in the person smitten by it. If man denies and rejects the testimony of the holy God which was given to him, justice must be executed upon him in his resistance to God's will, which alone is in the right, by his being reduced to his own nothingness. Breach of the covenant, and the malignant interference with the aim of the covenant, are the offences that chiefly kindle the Divine wrath. O. 20. The name of the prophet's son, Shear-jashub, "a remnant shall return," after being a sign and wonder in Israel more than forty years, will at length be fulfilled. After the great Assyrian overthrow, this remnant will cleave to the Lord with true repentance and living faith. Judgments, in which multitudes will be consumed, are decreed and sure; but not less certainly this remnant will be spared, and will return, in faith and humility, to the God of Israel. And, however numerous the people may be, it will be a remnant only; while sore vengeance will light on all the apostates throughout the land of promise. Birks. 21. The remnant spared through these fearful judgments now return penitently to their God. The words are the same which had become memorable in the name of Isaiah's son, Shear-jashub, a remnant shall return. Their significance was exceedingly precious. In the progress of the Lord's discipline and judgment upon His people, there will be some points where they are brought low and reduced to a very few. Yet then, this promise ever abiding, will be their comfort and hope. A remnant will survive and will return to the mighty God. 22,23. In Rom. 9: 27, 28 Paul quotes this passage in an argument to show the Jews that a large portion of their nation were then doomed to be rejected and destroyed for their unbelief, and that the way would thus be opened for bringing Gentile nations into the Christian Church. The latter point was then incidental, and not embraced originally in the words of Isaiah. The judgments which cut off myriads of the unbelieving Jews were a remarkable fulfilment of the general doctrine of this passage. It has been fulfilled often. H. C. 24. In verse 19, having declared the fate impending over the Assyrian, the prophet turned aside to describe the effect of their destruction on the remnant of Israel, and now resumes the thread of his discourse as if there had been no interruption. Therefore (since this is soon to be the fate of the Assyrians) be not afraid, oh My people inhabiting Zion, of Asshur (or the Assyrian). A. 26. Such are God's judgments on Assyria. Two historical cases set forth their fearfulness —the slaughter of Midian before Gideon's small but chosen band, and the perishing of Egypt's hosts in the Red Sea. The rock of Oreb is specially named because two kings of Midian fell there, as Sennacherib was to fall in his idol temple after his return home from the ruin of his vast army. H. C. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ A child is born. No sleeper waked at His coming; but only they who watched through the night had intelligence of His advent. The earth that night did not shake; the heaven that night did not tremble. Only a few childlike souls, who then kept vigil at His birth, trembled; yet their trembling was a trembling for joy. “The eternal light enters,” says the poet, “and gives the world a new splendor; it shines clearly at midnight, and makes us children of the light. He whom the whole circumference of the world could not embrace lies in the womb of Mary. He who alone sustains the universe has become a little infant.” He who came the first time to save sinners will come the second time to judge them; He who came the first time to bear our sins will come the second time to condemn them. Now we are enjoying the day of comfort, when the Lord does not appear in the tempest but in the soft, gentle sound; oh, then let our hearts be touched by this soft, gentle sound! Let us kneel down at the manger, let us worship with the pious shepherds, let us strew myrrh with the kings from the East. Tholuck. A Son is given. Where did this Man, so fair, so radiant, so human and yet so superhuman, so universal and yet so individual, where did He come from? and where did the Gospel, which flows from Him, and which has done such things in the world as it has done, where did it come from? “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?” If it be true that Jesus Christ is either mistakenly represented in the gospels, or that He made enthusiastic claims which cannot be verified, and if it be true that the faith in a Resurrection, on which Christianity is suspended, and which produced such fruits as we know have been produced, is a delusion; then the noblest lives that ever were lived in the world have found their impulse in a falsehood or a dream; and the richest clusters that ever have yielded wine for the cup have grown upon a thorn. If like produces like, you cannot account for Christ and Christianity by anything short of the belief in His Divine mission. This Man, when He claimed to be God’s Son and the world’s Saviour, was no brain-sick enthusiast; and the results show that the Gospel which His followers proclaim rests upon no lie. A. M. Wonderful. In the announcement of His advent and in the records of His life there is a history which rises above all histories. Christ can no more be classified with mankind than His miracles can be reduced to ordinary events. His whole life attests the truth that He is from above, and that He CAME to save the lost. Christianity is, in this view, “an historically superhuman movement in the world, that is visibly entered into it and organized to be an institution in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the central figure; He is the unfailing power; and with Him the entire fabric either stands or falls.” Christ was Himself a revelation of God. “He was the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person;” He was “God manifest in the flesh.” Humble as He was among men, He willed to be a king, and His ministerial work was one continued proclamation of His absolute and unrivalled sway; and when that ministry on earth had terminated, He encouraged His disciples by the declaration, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,” and by the thrilling promise, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” As we study His character and His claims, we are constrained to acknowledge the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy: “And His name shall be called Wonderful;” and “we discover, as did the first Christians, beneath and beyond all that meets the eye of sense and the eye of conscience, the eternal Person of our Lord Himself. It is not the miracles, but the Maker; not the character, but the living subject; not the teaching, but the Master; not even the death or the resurrection, but He who died and rose again; upon whom Christian thought, Christian love, Christian resolution, ultimately rest." To Him alone believers on earth, like the ransomed in glory, turn as "all their salvation and all their desire." W. Fraser. Wonderful, Counsellor. There is one centre in which all elements of wonder in the Bible are found united—Jesus Christ. He is the keystone of its arch, and it falls or stands with Him. He is more; He is the firmament that holds all its stars and its brightness. But for Him there would have been no Bible, and if we read it without Him it has no coherence and no guiding thought. All the struggling aspirations of the ancient church converge to Him as rays to a focus, and all the great forces of truth and goodness now in the world emerge from Him, whether they know it or not. Isaiah declares His name to be "Wonderful," "Counsellor," and Paul assures us that "in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." If the claims of Jesus Christ are to be maintained, as they must and will be, it is not by lessening, but by enlarging them. We must hold that there is nothing good or true or pure among men but in some way it has its source in Him, for "He is the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Ker. In Christ, the man Christ Jesus, the Son of God, there lie the thoughts for all our knowledge, the master principles of all our conceptions, the light of all our seeing; in Him, His person, His deeds, His utterances, His relations to men, His relation to God, there is the formative basis of everything that is worth thinking about and knowing in regard to every subject which does not belong to the mere material life of man. All philosophy, all ethics, all reasonable history of humanity, the principles of all the communities into which men shall aggregate themselves, light upon the nature of man's spirit, light upon the relations of man to God, the hopes that burn bright with immortality in the midst of the darkness of the grave, and if there be any other theme above the level of the beasts that perish and the wants that are like theirs, they are all to be found in Him—in whom, by no hyperbole, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So in Christ, to be unfolded through slow generations in accordance with human experience and wants, is all that men can know or need to know concerning God and themselves, and the relations of both, their duties, their hopes, their fears, and their love. . . . What we have to do is simply to yield up our understandings, our wills, our hearts, our consciences, and all the activities of our lives to Him; to be commanded, to be cleansed, to be enlightened, to be filled with His love, to be conformed to His likeness, for the voice that spoke from the heavens speaks to us yet—"This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him!" A. M. He is Wonderful, Counsellor. Justly is He called Wonderful, for He is both God and man. His love is the wonder of angels and glorified saints; in His birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension, He was wonderful. A constant series of wonders attended Him, and without controversy, great was the mystery of godliness concerning Him. He is the Counsellor, for He was intimately acquainted with the counsels of God from eternity, and He gives counsel to the children of men, in which He consults our welfare. It is by Him that God has given us counsel (Ps. 16:7; Rev. 3:18). He is made of God to us wisdom. H.—He spoke of His own authority: "Verily, I say unto you." Other teachers explained the law; He is a lawgiver. Others drew more or less pure waters from cisterns; He is in Himself a well of water, from which all may draw. He does not argue; He affirms. He seeks no support from others' teachings; He alone is sufficient for us. He not only speaks the truth, which needs no other confirmation than His own lips, but He is the truth. We may canvass other men's teachings and distinguish their insight from their errors; we have but to accept His. The world outgrows all others; it can only grow up toward the fulness of His. Us and all the ages He teaches with authority, and the guarantee for the truth of His teaching is Himself. "Verily, verily, I say unto you." No other man has a right to say that to me. But Christ dominates the race, and the strong Son of God is the world's teacher. A. M. The mighty God. Enshrined in the light that centres the infinitude of the invisible God, sat One from eternity, in the Divine nature and essence, who was "the express image of His person." "He was God," and "in the form of God." Whatever that form was, it was that, and that alone, that made angelic and other worship possible. To that form, as the empty space began to fill with worlds and their inhabitants, all faces turned, all worship ascended, all prayer arose. From that "form" went forth the words that called everything into being, that gave it shape and purpose, that gave it law and order. "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." We have been taught to call that "form of God" "THE SON," and to speak of Him as "begotten of the Father" from the poverty of human language and the feebleness of human intellect to express or grasp "the deep things of God." It was language that might have risen spontaneously to an archangel's lips if brought suddenly and for the first time since His creation into the presence of the Visible in the bosom of the Invisible, of the Comprehensible on the throne of the Infinite, of the Approachable where he had expected the Inaccessible. "He is the Son in the bosom of the Eternal Father." But there was no priority of existence or inequality of power to give birth to the term of relationship. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the Old Testament ages the Son revealed Himself in human form to man, whom He had created in His own "image and likeness." His name was "Jehovah," and under that name He was and still is the only Divine object of worship to the Hebrew tribes. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," and the New Testament era began. "In Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In His sinless humanity, as in a temple, the Father and blessed Spirit stood enshrined; and the manifestations of the Divine Unity—the Three-One God in Christ—became the central truth of Christianity. "Let all the angels of God worship Him" was the decree attendant on His birth. "Let every knee bow to Him" was the decree that accompanied His ascension. . . . His is the "new name" that unites the past with the present, that breaks down "the wall of partition" between the Hebrew worshipper of Jehovah and the Christian worshipper of Christ, that makes both one in adoration of the Incarnate Son. "We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all," in Him "who was, and is, and is to come." "He is the Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace." In Him is realized for us the unity of the Godhead, the embodiment of all we seek to worship, "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end—the Almighty." It is to God, our reconciling Father in Christ, that we pray—God, looking at us through human eyes; listening to us through human ears; speaking to us in human language and by human lips; and wiping from our cheeks the tears of sorrow with gentle human hands—to "God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses." Nearer than this we may not go; higher than this we cannot soar. Robt. Balgarnie. My confidence in the flawless completeness of His human character lives or dies with my belief that He is the Eternal Word, God manifest in the flesh. Certainly we shall never truly grasp the blessed meaning of His life on earth until we look upon it all as the revelation of God. The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;" and all that life so beautiful but so anomalous as to be all but incredible, when we think of it as only the life of a man, glows with a yet fairer beauty, and corresponds with the nature which it expresses, when we think of it as being the declaration to us by the Divine Son of the Divine Father—our loftiest, clearest and authentic revelation of God. A. M. By the whole tenor of revelation, the character of the Messiah is stamped as truly Divine. Who is the substance of all the testimonies of the word of God? The Messiah. Of whom do the history, the miracles, the types, and the prophecies of the Old Testament testify? Of the Messiah. To whom does the whole substance of the New Testament point? To the Messiah. In whom do all the lines of revelation concentrate? In the Messiah. To whom do all the ordinances of worship, both of the Old Testament and the New, direct the observer? To the Messiah. The doctrines of the Bible teach us His character and His works; its precepts take their sanction from His authority; its emblems adumbrate His glory. The heavens and the earth, in their creation, are a figure of His greater work. The object of the Bible is to reveal the Messiah; and in Him the Father, whom no man hath seen or can see, is revealed. Our only discovery of the full character of God is made by Jesus Christ. Haldane. The relation of the Son to the Father involves more than communion—namely, unity. But if we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall understand that the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the communion the manifestation, so far as it can be manifested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words which shine like stars—starlike in that their height above us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and in that they are points of radiance partially disclosing, and separated by abysses of unlighted infinitude—tell us that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there was communion, for "the Word was with God," and there was unity, for "the Word was God." And in the records of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity loftily utters itself in the unfathomable declaration, "I and My Father are one;" while the consciousness of communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which He leaves to Himself, "The Father has not left Me alone, for I do always the things that please Him." The resurrection was the transition from the state of humiliation and limitation; and by it Jesus enters, in His manhood, on the possession of that "glory which He had with the Father" from eternity. In these mighty words, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth," He stretches out the hand that had been pierced with the nails, and shows us that it holds the "unlimited sceptre which His almighty Father has bequeathed Him." It had been His from everlasting, but now His humanity is crowned, and the resurrection is the first step in the glorification of the body of His humiliation. The man Jesus rules the universe. Whatever unknown orders of being and forms of power may fill the heavens, He is their king. Whatever rebellious or unconscious forces may storm on earth, He controls them. There is no power but of God, and all God's power belongs to the Man who died and rose again. The kingdoms of nature, of providence, of grace, and of glory, are His. Thus, deep and broad and firm He lays the foundations for our trust, peace, obedience and hope. If all power be His, none can be against His friends. If He has all power, we need not fear, though we have all weakness. A. M. As we study, with spiritual eyes, into the Saviour's divinity, one after another new points of light, new traits of love, new features of blended majesty and tenderness, gleam out upon our gratitude. We have only to look to find. The heart's matchless telescope is simple, childlike faith. And every spot of common life where Providence plants our feet is an observatory—if we will but stand in it looking upward, devoutly upward—lofty enough for the whole sweep of that condescending heaven. F. D. H. Everlasting Father. Father of eternity, because it is He that gives substance and body to the conception of infinite duration. Duration implies something that endures. Now God is the Being who, having neither beginning of days nor end of years, gives to us the concerte meaning of the abstract statement. And to ascribe this attribute to the Messiah, to Him who is to be born as a child, is exactly in line with the rest of the marvellous prediction, and gives increased emphasis and meaning to the startling collocation of human qualities and divine in the future ruler of Israel. Born in time and seated on the throne of David, he is yet the Everlasting One, whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end, just because of His existence there has been no beginning. Whatever be the meaning of the phrase, the English translation should be "Father of eternity" in accordance with the ancient Arabic and the modern (Dr. Van Dyck's), the Syriac, ancient and modern, the Chaldee Paraphrase, the French of Martin and the Dutch of the States Bible. Chambers. He is called by Isaiah the Prince of Peace. "Of the increase of His government and peace there is said to be no end." A little after, His reign is described by the most pacific emblems that imagination could furnish, by "the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard lying down with the kid." His work of righteousness is peace, and He makes with mankind the covenant of peace. He Himself tells His disciples that "in Him they were to have peace;" and it is the legacy He bequeaths them. "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you." The sacred writers continue the same language in the New Testament. "The kingdom of God is joy and peace." His Gospel is called "the Gospel of peace." Bp. Porteus. The title Prince of Peace was indeed appropriate. How quiet and serene He was when tempests of passion were blowing and beating around and upon Him! How like a lamb He appeared in the midst of fierce and wolfish spirits! When His disciples proposed that fire from heaven should consume the Samaritans for their disrespect to their Lord, He rebuked their impatient tempers with the assurance that they were mistaking the design of His mission, which was not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He was smitten He did not smite. When He was unjustly slain by wicked hands, no violence was in His hand, and no reproach in His mouth, but a dying prayer that His murderers might be forgiven. He illustrated, in His life and death, His own teachings, "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you." Was He not the Prince of Peace? Those, therefore, who follow Him must follow peace; they must cherish a meek and quiet spirit. R. T. 7. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end. The government or power thus to be enlarged is of course that of the child, who is described as born and given in the foregoing verse. A striking parallel is furnished by the prophecy in Micah 5:3. There, as here, a king is promised who should be the son of David, and should reign over all the earth in peace and righteousness forever. It is there expressed, and here implied, that this king should reunite the divided house of Israel, although this is but a small part of the increase promised, which includes the calling of the Gentiles also. The reign here predicted was to be not only peaceful, but in every respect prosperous. And this prosperity, like the reign of which it is predicted, is to have no limit, either temporal or local. It is to be both universal and eternal. There is nothing to preclude the very widest explanation of the terms employed. The endless increase of power and prosperity on the throne of David means of course that the Prince whose reign was to be thus powerful and prosperous would be a descendant of David. This is indeed a repetition and explanation of a promise given to David (2 Sam. 7:11-16; 1 K. 8:25) and repeatedly referred to by him (2 Sam. 23:1-5; Ps. 2, 45, 72, 89, 132). Hence the Messiah is not only called the branch or Son of David (2 Sam. 7:12, 13; Jer. 23:5; 33:15), but David himself (Jer. 30:9; Ezek. 34:23, 24; 37:24; Hos. 3:5). The two reigns are identified, not merely on account of an external resemblance or a typical relation, but because the one was really a restoration or continuation of the other. Both kings were heads of the same body, the one a temporal head, the other spiritual; the one temporary, the other eternal. The Jewish nation, as a spiritual body, is really continued in the Christian Church. The subject of the prophecy is the reign of the Messiah; the effect predicted, its stability and increase; the means to be employed, judgment and justice; the efficient cause, the zeal of Jehovah. Grotius distinguishes between judgment and justice, as denoting righteous government on one hand, and righteous subjection to it on the other. The justice spoken of is that of the Messiah and His subjects. All the acts of His administration will be righteous, and the effect of this upon His people will be righteousness on their part, and this prevalence of righteousness will naturally generate the increase and stability here promised. A. Such is the tone of many other prophecies of the Messiah's reign. (See Ps. 2, 22, 72 and 110.) Isaiah elsewhere expands the same views of the magnificence, glory, purity, righteousness and peace of the Messiah's reign. (See chaps. 11, 49 and 60.) All these thoughts are grand and glorious. A reign so purely just, so benign, excluding from earth so entirely those great national sins which have been its curse for ages; a reign destined to endure so long, evermore fraught with blessings to the filling of earth's cup; what can be more magnificent; what can more completely fill out the answer to the divinely prescribed prayer, "Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven"? H. C. There is no other influence in the world like that of living personality, and in Christ this is Divine. Amid the philosophic questionings and disputes of the ages there arises this unearthly figure, "the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!" Even the enemies of the cross feel His strange presence in the world. Less and less does candid unbelief know what to think of Jesus. Some of the most eloquent tributes to His unearthly purity have been given by writers who have beheld Him with wonder, though not accepting His salvation. History has made Him its moral centre; the calendar of the nations begins with Him, and the date of His birth is the festival of the civilized world. Most of the sceptics of our time owe whatever is best in them to the culture of the Christian faith, and the most successful apologists for the false religions of the East are those who, as a result of early training, clothe them in a Christian nomenclature, and ennoble them with conceptions borrowed from the New Testament, and of which their own authors never dreamed. Ellinwood. His life is connected with the whole structure of human history—with the life of man from the beginning, and with the life of man unto the end. It is He who was born at Bethlehem; Himself in the lowliest penury, yet signal-stars and angelic choruses heralding and gracing His advent. It is He who was promised to the fallen pair in Eden, the seed of the woman who was to bruise the serpent's head. It is He who was foretold as about to dwell in the tents of Shem, enlarging them above the glory of Japhet. It is He concerning whom it was said to Abraham, beneath the numberless stars of the eastern heavens, "In Him shall all the families of the earth be blessed." It is He of whom the patriarch Jacob did speak, when, like the dying swan, he broke into one and only strain of prophetic song: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, until the Shiloh, the Peacemaker, shall come, whom all the nations should obey." He it is concerning whom Balaam, the seer of Edom, with most reluctant testimony was compelled to predict as the Star and the Ruler who should come forth from Jacob. The same of whom Moses spake as the prophet whom the Lord God should raise up unto whom the world should hearken. It is He of whom David wrote in the Psalms, calling Him Lord, and King, the Son of God, the Christ, the anointed one, and the priest—now waking the echoes of the Mount of Olives, as with jubilant songs he described the splendors of His imperial reign and the glories of His triumphant and universal dominion—and now again, with plaintive measure, as with all minuteness he rehearsed His humiliations and sufferings, His betrayal by a false friend, the parting of His garments by lot, the piercing of His hands and feet, the pouring out of His soul like water, the entombment of His body, and its resurrection while yet uncorrupted by decay. It is He of whom Isaiah spake, as with lips touched with fire from heaven, and wrote with a pen dipped in the glories of the skies, as the Deliverer, the Saviour, the Redeemer, the tried and sure corner-stone, Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, the renovator of the world, the isles waiting for His law; a child to be born, yet bearing the name of the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father. It is He of whom Ezekiel wrote, by the river Chebar, as the glory of God, by whom the earth was to be made to shine. It is He of whom Daniel spake, as the Prince, the Messiah, who was to be cut off, but not for Himself, that He might make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness. Amos the herdsman foretold His coming as a Deliverer, and Micah rejoiced in His advent. Zechariah describes His royal Priesthood; Haggai anticipates His footsteps as the glory of the second Temple, the Lord our righteousness; and Malachi, prolonging the notes of this whole choir of prophecy, bids the world believe that the Messenger of the covenant is nigh at hand, and the Sun of Righteousness is soon to rise upon the benighted earth. All the pregnant and germinant prophecies of Scripture relate to Him. The long procession of the centuries had been pointing to Him. His precursors summon the world to make ready for His approach. When He was born, there was heard a company of angels chanting in the sky: "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to man." When He spake unto men, He claimed to be the very being whom prophecy had promised, and Nature obeyed Him as her Lord. He challenged the faith of the world, when He styled Himself the way, the truth, and the life, predicting His own lifting up upon the cross as the appointed method of drawing all men unto Himself. Plainly, the historic events which occurred in and about Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago were not unanticipated accidents. The life of Christ was a prepared and foretold certainty. A cheering fact is this with which to begin—the assured conviction that it was God's intention to redeem and restore our fallen race. W. Adams. An individual once trod on the earth who by moral omnipotence alone controlled other times and founded an eternity of His own: one who, soft-blooming and easily drawn as a sunflower, burning and attracting as a sun, still in His mild form moved and turned Himself and nations and centuries together toward the all-enlightening primal sun; it is that still spirit which we call Jesus Christ. The power by which this wonderful life of Jesus fed itself was wholly of the spiritual world. He lived in communion with the highest conceptions of virtue; He lived in intimacy with the infinite Father, or at least, as the unbeliever must admit, with a God who to Him was a reality; He had a deep theory of human nature in the ruin of its spiritual capacity, which, joined with His deeper love, moved Him to what He regarded as a life for man's redemption. And the result of His spiritual life and thinking has been the alteration of the world—changes which no laws, nor wars, nor arts could have effected. And by what instruments has He worked so mightily on human hearts and characters? By spiritual ones, by the feeling of guilt, the longing for purity and peace of soul, by offering pardon and the promises of life-giving assistance to the contrite, by a life and example of united love and holiness, by unveiling God and the soul's unending life. Such are the means by which He has set up His throne over mankind, pushing His sway beyond souls into everything which pertains to man. T. D. W. Fifty-five generations have passed away, and there is no name which exercises such an influence in the world to-day as the name of Him who was lifted up on the cross. It is associated with the most advanced civilization; with the best and most enduring literature; with the noblest forms of art; with the broadest systems of education; with the most gigantic enterprises of commerce; with the purest and most extended institutions of philanthropy; with the most refined and healthful social progress; and, in fine, with every element of dignity, prosperity and power among the nations of the earth. Ebenezer P. Rogers.—He said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” And they have not. Children learn them from mothers’ lips. Strong men are made strong wholly by them. The afflicted find in them sole and sufficient comfort. They are rehearsed in the ears of the dying. They are said in hope and triumph by the open grave. Do what you will with His biography—travesty it with Strauss, dislocate it with Renan, use all the power of learning, genius, wit, sarcasm, malice to distort or dwarf its central figure—you cannot, by any possibility, bring Jesus Christ down to the level of ordinary humanity, into line with the men of His generation, or even into line with the great men of all times. He still has a name above every name, and you cannot take it away. His is the only character in history which has no secular parallax, which looks as great in the nineteenth century as in the first. A. P. Peabody.—If we look upon Him as Divine, if we believe that the power of God was resident in Him, then we should have a right to see an influence that never wanes, a voice that never stills, a fulfilment of all prophecies, an utter change in the fashion of the world’s politics, science and its philosophy. And this is exactly what has occurred. Anon. “The argument from prophecy” goes deeper than any isolated passages of the Old Testament. There was a Divine Life in that ancient history. Christ embodied His spirit and power in that progressive movement before He was incarnate in the manger. He was a Life in the ancient world, as well as a Hope, a veritable presence in history, and not simply a power overhanging it. He it was that rolled the cycles and progressions of history with His impulsion. Every tendency toward clearer light or better living was the earthly garment with which He clothed Himself. All those sequences of God’s providence, which seem to be so contrary in direction to every human tendency, betray the presence of a supernatural force—His presence from behind. Though event after event and life after life seem natural enough when looked at one by one, yet in a comprehensive survey they seem to be linked together as the orderly progression of some Divine design, and all facing on toward some far-off Divine result. This coherent and slowly evolving plan was the way in which Christ embodied Himself in the ages of preparation. This history, as the letters are put together, spells the adorable name of the Messiah. Van Slyke. The history of the world would be the strangest of all riddles were it not the history of redemption. Nothing but the preparation for Christ’s coming can explain the events before the incarnation, and nothing but a movement toward the final triumph of His kingdom can explain the history since He came. The events of all the ages find their light and law in Him. They centre in Him, and circle around Him. Like Moses and Elias in the transfiguration, they appear in His glory, and speak to Him of His decease. There is no other law of history than this, for there is no other philosophy of history which can expound the facts of history. J. H. Seeley. From Him as its foundation, its leader, and its life, a new kingdom of heaven rises into existence, comes forth out of the mists and concealments and sensuous coverings of the Mosaic economy, arrayed in robes of love and compassion and faith and truth, breathing only glory to God, peace on earth, and good will to men. This, O fallen man, is our Christ, the Christ of prophecy, the Christ of history; the living, reigning Christ whom we adore as divine, whom we love as the incarnation of all perfection, whom we believe in as the saviour of our souls from the power and penalty of sin. By His side, standing in childlike confidence, the law has no curse, death no sting, the grave no victory. Our life, hidden in His life and deriving from it new life, is purified, exalted, strengthened, comforted, protected and made victorious over all the powers of the world and the devil. In Him is the sacrifice for sin and the way of pardon and peace; in Him is the power which will make the weak strong for the ascent up the narrow way of life; in Him is light on all the dark scenes of time, light to scatter the gloom and darkness of the grave, light opening to us the secrets of immortality. Looking on Him in faith, I find all I want to elevate, purify, enlighten and save. In Him the mighty promises are all yea and amen. He is the captain of our salvation, leading us to glory. No wonder the four and twenty elders praise; no wonder the saints on the sea of glass ascribe dominion and power and glory to Him; no wonder heaven rings with the praises of the Lamb in the midst of the throne; no wonder martyrs and confessors have trusted Him and rejoiced in Him amid the fires; no wonder His people in their sorrow and trials look to Him for comfort and joy; no wonder sin-convicted souls, turning from the world, cry to Him for salvation; no wonder poor penitents love Him who is the end of the law for righteousness. Here, O Christian, is your prophet, priest and king. Here, O sinner, burdened, tossed and uneasy, full of sad anticipations, is thy cure, thy comfort, thy Saviour! S. W. Fisher. Jesus! How does the very word overflow with sweetness and light and love and life; filling the air with odors, like precious ointment poured forth; irradiating the mind with a glory of truths in which no fear can live, soothing the wounds of the heart with a balm that turns the sharpest anguish into delicious peace, shedding through the soul a cordial of immortal strength. Jesus! the answer to all our doubts, the spring of all our courage, the earnest of all our hopes, the charm omnipotent against all our foes, the remedy for all our weakness, the supply of all our wants, the fulness of all our desires. Jesus! at the mention of whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Jesus! our power—Jesus! our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption—Jesus! our elder brother, our blessed Lord and Redeemer. Thy name is the most transporting theme of the Church, as they sing going up from the valley of tears to their home on the mount of God; Thy name shall ever be the richest chord in the harmony of heaven, where the angels and the redeemed unite their exulting, adoring songs around the throne of God. Jesus! Thou only canst interpret Thy own name, and Thou hast done it by Thy works on earth, and Thy glory at the right hand of the Father. Bethune. # Estimates from Other Sources. Byron, in view of the faultless life of the Redeemer: "If ever man was God, or God man, Jesus Christ was both." Rousseau: "Can it be possible that the personage whose history the gospel contains should be a mere man? What sublimity in His maxims! What profound wisdom in His discourses! If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God." Fichte, the noblest representative of recent pantheistic speculation in Germany, bore Christ the highest testimony it was possible for one man to bear another, making Him the propounder of his philosophy. Goethe, the universal genius of modern Germany, speaking of Christ, says, "He is the Divine Man—the Holy One." Said Theodore Parker, in one of his most rigid discourses against evangelical religion, "Try Christ as we try other teachers: how soon their pupils, though humble men, go beyond them! Eighteen centuries have passed; but what man or sect has mastered His thought? He pours out to the world a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as God." And then, after arguing for some length that, though the Bible itself were destroyed, its great precepts would live, he falls into this strain: "But we should lose (O irreparable loss!) the example of that character, so beautiful, so divine, that no human genius could have conceived, as none, after all the progress and refinement of eighteen centuries, seems fully to have comprehended, its lustrous life." L. T. T. It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, natures, temperaments and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. Lecky. Speaking of those who deny the Trinity, James Martineau (in the prime of life) says: "I am constrained to say, that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with their heroes, sects or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavorably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed. In philosophy I have had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text-books, and the authors in chief favor with them. In biblical interpretation, I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham. In devotional literature and religious thought, I find nothing of ours that does not pale before Augustine, Tauler and Pascal. And in the poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley, or of Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor and cold. That I find myself in For "Admissions of Sceptics," see Vol. I., N. T., p. 599. B. 9:8, 9 THE Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in pride and in stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stone; the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. Therefore the LORD shall set up on high against him the adversaries of Rezin, and shall stir up his enemies; the Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 13. Yet the people hath not turned unto him that smote them, neither have they sought the LORD of hosts. Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm-branch and rush, in one day. The ancient and the honorable man, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For they that lead this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall not rejoice over their young men, neither shall he have compassion on their fatherless and widows; for every one is profane and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 18. For wickedness burneth as the fire; it devoureth the briers and thorns; yea, it kindleth in the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in thick clouds of smoke. Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land burnt up: the people also are as the fuel of fire; no man spareth his brother. And one shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim: and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 10:1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that write perverseness: to turn aside the needy from judgement, and to take away the right of the poor of my people, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? They shall only bow down under the prisoners, and shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. 5,6. Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation! I will send him against a profane nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few. For he saith, Are not my princes all of them kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols? 12. Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he hath said, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and I have brought down as a valiant man them that sit on 14 thrones: and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the peoples; and as one gathereth eggs that are forsaken, have I gathered all the earth: and there was none that moved the wing, or that opened the mouth, or chirped. Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if a rod should shake them that lift it up, or as if a staff should lift up him that is not wood. 16. Therefore shall the Lord, the LORD of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory there shall be kindled a burning like the burning of fire. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briars in one day. And he shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and it shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth. And the remnant of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them. 20. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and they that are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them shall return: a consumption is determined, overflowing with righteousness. For a consummation, and that determined, shall the Lord, the LORD of hosts, make in the midst of all the earth. 24. Therefore thus saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: though he smite thee with the rod, and lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger, in their destruction. And the LORD of hosts shall stir up against him a scourge, as in the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and his rod shall be over the sea, and he shall lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall depart from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing. 28. He is come to Alath, he is passed through Migron; at Michmash he layeth up his baggage: they are gone over the pass; they have taken up their lodging at Geba: Ramah trembleth; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Cry aloud with thy voice, O daughter of Gallim! hearken, O Laishah! O thou poor Anathoth! Madmenah is a futile; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. This very day shall he halt at Nob: he shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. 33. Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the boughs with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the lofty shall be brought low. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. 8. HAVING** repeatedly interchanged the three great subjects of this prophecy—the deliverance of Judah from the power of Syria and Israel, its subsequent punishment by means of the Assyrians, and the reign of the Messiah, for whose sake the kingdom was to be preserved—the prophet passes here abruptly from the last to the first, and again predicts the punishment of Ephraim. He reverts to this event, which had already been repeatedly foretold, for the purpose of declaring that the blows would be repeated as often and as long as might be needed for the absolute fulfilment of God's threatenings. He begins by showing that Israel had already been sufficiently forewarned. The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it came down into Israel. The word which God had uttered against Israel had reached them as a message from Him, as a revelation, so that there could be no doubt as to its authority and genuineness. The two names of the patriarch are here used as equivalents, denoting his descendants, and especially the larger part, the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, to which the national name Israel is wont to be distinctively applied. 10. The very words of the self-confident Ephraimites are now recorded. Instead of being warned and instructed by what they had already suffered, they presumptuously look for greater prosperity than ever. Bricks are fallen, and hewn stone will we build; sycamores are felled, and cedars will we substitute. The Oriental bricks are unburnt, so that most of their brick structures are as little durable as mud walls. The sycamore is durable, but too light and spongy to be used in solid building. The latter is accordingly contrasted with the cedar, and the former with hewn stone, the two most highly valued building materials. A. 12. "The adversaries of Rezin" were the Assyrians. They had already proved a formidable foe to Syria. With them the Lord would combine the old enemies of Israel, the Syrians on the north and the Philistines on the south and west; and then together they should devour Israel as with mouth wide open, to swallow her up. But as these sore national inflictions did not turn the people to God, so His anger did not turn away, but His hand remained still outstretched for yet other and sorer inflictions. So after each successive stroke, God is wont to pause and take note of the moral effect, if any, that He may by all means arrest the process of chastisement at the earliest moment when once the results of penitence and humiliation are secured. H. C. 13. The people has not turned to Him that smote them, and Jehovah of Hosts they have not sought. Sin is described in Scripture as departure from God. Repentance, therefore, is returning to Him. To seek God, in the idiom of Scripture, is to pray to Him (Isa. 55:6), to consult Him (Isa. 8:19), to resort to Him for help (Isa. 31:1), to hold communion with Him (Amos 5:4, 5). Hence it is sometimes descriptive of a godly life in general (Ps. 14:2). So here it includes repentance, conversion, and new obedience. A. 13-16. Because the people would not turn to Him who smote them to heal and to restore, therefore He will cut off from Israel in one day the greatest and the least; the highest in society and the lowest; and by implication, all the intermediate classes also. The extremes are so described as to enhance the moral force of the threatening. None are too venerable in age or wisdom to be punished. The other extreme, being lowest by reason of their meanness in crime, can by no means be passed over. The head and the tail of the animal furnish the first figure; the palm-branch, lofty and magnificent, on the one hand, and the bulrush, sending up its slender stalk from foul marshes, on the other, supply the second. Applying the first figure, he makes the elders, men usually much respected, the head, but the prophet who teaches lies, the tail. This is of course the false prophet who pretends to bring messages from the Lord, but brings only lies. His meanness, hypocrisy and falsehood earn for him richly the disgrace and the curse which are here indicated. 17. Hypocrisy, bold evil-doing and outspoken impiety combine to show that the people are morally rotten—fearfully apostate from God in their whole heart and life. After the judgments pertaining to this series, the Lord waited only till He saw there was no returning to a better life, and then resumed His inflictions. H. C. 19. The figure of a general conflagration is continued in this verse, and then exchanged for a literal description of the miseries produced by civil war. In the wrath of Jehovah of Hosts, the land is darkened with the smoke—or heated by the flame—and the people is like food (or fuel) of fire—one another (literally, man his brother) they do not spare. A. It is the heavy burden of this song (verses 12, 17, 21), “For all this, His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” They do nothing to turn away His anger; they do not repent and reform, do not humble themselves and pray; none answer God’s calls nor comply with the designs of His providences, but they are hardened and secure. His anger therefore continues to burn against them and “His hand is stretched out still.” The reason why the judgments of God are prolonged is because the point is not gained, sinners are not brought to repentance by them; “the people turn not to Him that smites them,” and therefore He continues to smite them; for when God judges He will overcome; and the proudest, stoutest sinner shall either bend or break. H. 19-21. An awful picture is this, indeed, of the way in which the kingdom of Israel fell! An interregnum of nine years, a time doubtless of fearful anarchy, immediately preceded the reign of their last king Hoshea. It was then, probably, that this vial of judgment was poured out. Not only did the leading tribes in this northern kingdom arm against each other, Ephraim against Manasseh and Manasseh against Ephraim; but whenever this strife might subside, they both assaulted Judah. Of this Pekah was himself an instance. He had scarcely reached the throne by means of conspiracy and regicide, when he turned his arms against Judah. Remarkably, of the five last kings of Israel, four were usurpers, reaching the throne by conspiracy! This is a forcible comment on the statements made here in our text. H. C. Chap. 10. The first four verses close the series of sins described and judgments threatened in the case of the kingdom of Israel. The remaining verses (5-34) treat of the Assyrian king, his pride, his ambitious aspirations, his advance to attack Jerusalem, and his utter destruction. This prophecy suggested that recorded in chap. 11, the magnificent results of which gave occasion to the song of praise in chap. 12. Taken together in their natural connection, this series of prophecies is exquisitely grand and precious. H. C. The prophet first completes his description of the prevalent iniquity, with special reference to injustice and oppression, as a punishment of which he threatens death and deportation by the hands of the Assyrians (verses 1-4). He then turns to the Assyrians themselves, God's chosen instruments, whom He had commissioned against Israel, to punish and degrade it, but whose own views were directed to universal conquest, to illustrate which the Assyrian himself is introduced as boasting of his tributary princes and his rapid conquests, which had met with no resistance from the people or their gods, and threatening Judah with a like fate, unaware of the destruction which awaits himself, imputing his success to his own strength and wisdom, and glorying, though a mere created instrument, over his maker and his mover (verses 5-15). His approaching doom is then described under the figure of a forest suddenly and almost totally consumed by fire (verses 16-19). This succession of events is to have the effect of curing the propensity to trust in man rather than God, at least among the elect remnant who survive; for though the ancient promises of great increase shall certainly be verified, only a remnant shall escape God's righteous judgments (verses 20-23). To these the prophet now addresses words of strong encouragement, with a renewed prediction of a judgment on Assyria similar to that on Midian at Oreb and on Egypt at the Red Sea, which is then described, in the most vivid manner, by an exhibition of the enemy's approach, from post to post, until he stands before Jerusalem, and then, with a resumption of the metaphor before used, his destruction is described as the prostration of a forest—trees and thickets—by a mighty axe (verses 24-34). It is commonly agreed that the close of the chapter relates chiefly, if not wholly, to the destruction of Sennacherib's army, recorded in chap. 37:36. The division of the chapters is in this part of the book peculiarly unfortunate; the first part of the ninth (verses 1-7) containing the conclusion of the eighth, and the first part of the tenth (verses 1-4) the conclusion of the ninth. 1-4. In these four verses, as in the different divisions of the ninth chapter, there is an accusation followed by a threatening of punishment. The sin denounced in the first two verses is that of oppression and injustice. The punishment threatened is desolation by a foreign foe, and its effect, captivity and death. Woe unto them that decree decrees of injustice, and that write oppression which they have prescribed. A.—Wickedness is doubly aggravated when framed into law, because its mischief is made to fall on the poor and unprotected classes; because it affords a temptation to cruel, heartless men to oppress, providing for them the means of doing so with impunity; and because its mischiefs are more permanent. H. C. 3. The wicked rulers are themselves addressed, and warned of an approaching crisis, when they must be deprived of all that they now glory in. And (though you are now powerful and rich) what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the ruin (which) shall come from far? The questions imply negation, as if he had said, "You can do nothing to protect yourselves." 5. The Assyrian is now distinctly brought into view as the instrument which God would use in punishing His people. But instead of simply executing this task, the Assyrians would seek their own ends and exceed their commission, and for this they must themselves be punished. The prophet begins, therefore, with a woe against them. Woe unto Asshur (the Assyrian or Assyria itself), the rod of My anger, and the staff in their (the Assyrians') hand is My indignation—i.e., its instrument. A. 7,8. Such a commission from God, however, is far from the thoughts of the Assyrian king. He will ascribe the whole series of his conquests to his own prowess and wisdom alone. Carehemish and Calno on the Euphrates and Tigris, Arpad and Hamath on the Orontes, Damascus and Samaria on the route southward toward Jerusalem, would fall in succession, and some had already fallen. His pride would grow with every victory. Each past conquest would be viewed as a pledge of further triumphs. Birks. The Assyrian committed crime in his invasion; yet he thereby worked out the results which God intended. In the commission of his crime he was perfectly free and perfectly accountable; yet this crime was not only foreseen, but, as we observe, predicted by the Almighty. God was not the author of the sin, though the sin occurred providentially; and, foreseeing this, God recognizes His accountability, and denounces punishment (verse 12), "Wherefore it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed His whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks." If we do not recognize this intervention of Providence in regard to the free acts of creatures, we can never interpret those judgments of God which are wrought by wicked men. Even the free actions of the most wicked man are so governed that his way is not in himself, but in God. J. W. A. 10,11. The Assyrian king boasted that he had subdued idol gods mightier than those worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem; could he not therefore with the greatest ease subdue their inferior gods? At this time he had subjected Samaria and her gods; would he not do the same to Jerusalem and to her gods? H. C. 12. To the boastful speech of the Assyrian succeeds a prediction of his fate. Although he would be suffered to proceed still further in the work of subjugation, till he reached the very verge of Zion and the portals of Jerusalem, God had determined that the work should go no further, but be there cut short by the infliction of a signal vengeance on the selfishness and pride of the invader. By the destruction of Sennacherib's army, God may be said to have cut short the work of that invader, or to have cut short His own work by accomplishing His purpose of destruction, or to have cut short His own work of punishing His people by relieving them from danger. 15. In all this the Assyrian was but an instrument in God's hand, and his proud self-confidence is therefore as absurd as if an axe, or a saw, or a rod, or a staff should exalt itself above the person wielding it. 16-19. The Assyrian overthrow is now foretold under the figure of a vast forest conflagration. It would come direct from God Himself, and be terrible and complete. Not only the rank and file of His soldiers, but the mighty and the noble would perish. Birks. 17. The "light of Israel" is the living God, as the revealer of truth and author of blessings. Note also the tacit antithesis between the relations of Jehovah to Israel, and to His enemies; to the former a light in the sense of a joy and a fountain of blessings; to the latter a light in the sense of a consuming fire. H. C.—The inner essential connection of wrath with the Divine holiness is made especially clear by this passage: "The Light of Israel becomes a fire, and His Holy One a flame, which burns and consumes His thorns and briars." Because wrath is a manifestation of Divine holiness, the occasion of its outburst does not lie in a capricious Divine humor or natural malignity, as the gods of the heathen fall into a passion, but wholly in the person smitten by it. If man denies and rejects the testimony of the holy God which was given to him, justice must be executed upon him in his resistance to God's will, which alone is in the right, by his being reduced to his own nothingness. Breach of the covenant, and the malignant interference with the aim of the covenant, are the offences that chiefly kindle the Divine wrath. O. 20. The name of the prophet's son, Shear-jashub, "a remnant shall return," after being a sign and wonder in Israel more than forty years, will at length be fulfilled. After the great Assyrian overthrow, this remnant will cleave to the Lord with true repentance and living faith. Judgments, in which multitudes will be consumed, are decreed and sure; but not less certainly this remnant will be spared, and will return, in faith and humility, to the God of Israel. And, however numerous the people may be, it will be a remnant only; while sore vengeance will light on all the apostates throughout the land of promise. Birks. 21. The remnant spared through these fearful judgments now return penitently to their God. The words are the same which had become memorable in the name of Isaiah's son, Shear-jashub, a remnant shall return. Their significance was exceedingly precious. In the progress of the Lord's discipline and judgment upon His people, there will be some points where they are brought low and reduced to a very few. Yet then, this promise ever abiding, will be their comfort and hope. A remnant will survive and will return to the mighty God. 22,23. In Rom. 9: 27, 28 Paul quotes this passage in an argument to show the Jews that a large portion of their nation were then doomed to be rejected and destroyed for their unbelief, and that the way would thus be opened for bringing Gentile nations into the Christian Church. The latter point was then incidental, and not embraced originally in the words of Isaiah. The judgments which cut off myriads of the unbelieving Jews were a remarkable fulfilment of the general doctrine of this passage. It has been fulfilled often. H. C. 24. In verse 19, having declared the fate impending over the Assyrian, the prophet turned aside to describe the effect of their destruction on the remnant of Israel, and now resumes the thread of his discourse as if there had been no interruption. Therefore (since this is soon to be the fate of the Assyrians) be not afraid, oh My people inhabiting Zion, of Asshur (or the Assyrian). A. 26. Such are God's judgments on Assyria. Two historical cases set forth their fearfulness —the slaughter of Midian before Gideon's small but chosen band, and the perishing of Egypt's hosts in the Red Sea. The rock of Oreb is specially named because two kings of Midian fell there, as Sennacherib was to fall in his idol temple after his return home from the ruin of his vast army. H. C. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 11:1 AND there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit: and the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; and his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. 10 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, which standeth for an ensign of the peoples, unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting place shall be glorious. 11 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 remain, 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. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and they that vex Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. And they shall fly down upon the shoulder of the Philistines on the west; together shall they spoil the children of the east: they shall put forth their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them. And the LORD shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his scorching wind shall he shake his hand over the River, and shall smite it into seven streams, and cause men to march over dryshod. And there shall be an high way for the remnant of his people, which shall remain, from Assyria; like as there was for Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt. 12:1 And in that day thou shalt say, I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD; for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid: for the LORD JENOVAH is my strength and song; and he is become my salvation. Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. And in that day shall ye say, Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the peoples, make mention that his name is exalted. Sing unto the LORD; for he hath done excellent things: let this be known in all the earth. Cry aloud and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee. Chap. 11. The glorious truth which links this chapter to the preceding one is well expressed under this figure. God's enemies fall like forest trees, never to rise again; but God's people, cut down, spring up again with new vigor and a more heavenly growth. Assyria's proud cedars fall with a fearful and final crash; but the tree of David, though cut back to the stump of Jesse, starts again for a nobler life. A Divine vitality is in it. The cause of God can never die! Such is the law of contrast which engrafts this chapter so beautifully upon the closing sentence of the last. A rod out of the stem (stump) of Jesse springs up; it proves to be a most extraordinary personage, none other than the oft and long-promised Messiah. We have His intrinsic qualities of wisdom, knowledge and piety; His intuitive discernment and appreciation of character; the perfect justice of His administration; the fraternal peace and love which consequently ensue; the knowledge of the Lord pervading the earth and excluding sin and evil from His realm. This rod of Jesse becomes a rallying point for the nations; they come to Messiah's feet; His resting-place and home in this wide earth become all glorious. The people of God wander in captivity no more. His dispersed ones are regathered; they live in mutual love, and no more in jealous rivalry; they combine against their common foes; the Lord is with them in glorious help for victory as of old in His miracles of power, and Zion, everywhere triumphant, reposes under the sheltering wing of her Redeemer. There can be no doubt that this description sets forth the great Messiah's reign; that the rod from the stem of Jesse is Jesus the son of David. Every attempt to interpret the passage otherwise must needs confront the whole array of Messianic prophecies, explaining them all away, or denying their validity and inspiration; must make the great points affirmed here nugatory and ignore their apt and perfect fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, the Messianic interpretation of this chapter is fully sustained by the tenor of all other Messianic prophecies. The points made here apply to no one else—never have been or can be fulfilled in any other than the Messiah. H. C. This chapter is occupied with promises of restoration and deliverance, external safety and internal peace, to God's own people, as contrasted with the ruin previously threatened to their enemies. Borrowing his imagery from the fall of the Assyrian forest, just before predicted (10:34), the prophet represents a shoot as springing from the prostrate trunk of Jesse, and invested by the Spirit of Jehovah with all the necessary attributes of a righteous judge and ruler (verses 1-4). The pacific effect of the Messiah's reign is then described by the beautiful figure of wild and domestic animals dwelling and feeding together, and of children unhurt by the most venomous reptiles; to which is added an express prediction that all mutual injuries shall cease in consequence of the universal prevalence of the knowledge of Jehovah (verses 5-9). To these figures borrowed from the animal creation, the prophet now adds others from the history of Israel, but intended to express the same idea. The Messiah is here represented as a signal set up to the nations, gathering the outcasts of His people from all quarters, and uniting them again into one undivided body, free from all sectional and party animosities (verses 10-13). Under figures of the same kind, the triumph of the Church is then represented as a conquest over the old enemies of Israel, especially those nearest to the Holy Land; while the interposition of God's power to effect this and the preceding promises is vividly described as a division of the Red Sea and Euphrates, and a deliverance from Egypt and Assyria (verses 14-16). The evidently figurative character of some parts of this chapter seems to furnish a sufficient key to the interpretation of those parts which in themselves would be more doubtful. A. 1-10. So much of this prediction as relates to the personal character and qualities of the promised Prince found its counterpart in the just, the meek, the wise, the gracious, the loving, the holy Jesus of Nazareth. So much as relates to the principles that through the Messiah should transform society and rule the world was met in the doctrines and precepts of Christ. The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity gave promise of the early realization of the whole of this glorious picture; and, though that promise is yet delayed, all things are moving toward its consummation. With the growth of Christ's kingdom, the most hostile and noxious things shall be subdued; the most incongruous elements of human society shall be harmonized; bloody men, in disposition like the wolf, the leopard, the lion, the bear, deceitful men like the asp and the cockatrice, shall be changed in their nature to the spirit of a little child. There is no reformer like the Gospel; it is the kingdom of Christ, filling the earth, that will bring peace and good-will to men. J. P. T. It was not by chance that the Messiah appeared, not in Egypt in the days of Pharaoh, nor in Nineveh, or Babylon, or Greece, or Rome, but among the Jewish people, who alone were prepared for His advent. Admit the historic reality of the Divine revelations recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, and we see at once how the way for the Saviour's advent was prepared, and why He was of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh. Deny the historic reality of these preparatory revelations, and we have a mystery, but not one of Divine origin. It is simply a man-made mystery, created in the interest of those who have decided beforehand that the true supernatural is an impossibility, and that, accordingly, its existence anywhere in the line of human history must be stoutly denied in the face of all possible evidence. But the impossibility of the attempt to dissever the revelations of the New Testament from the preparatory revelations of the Old appears most clearly when we consider the explicit declarations of our Saviour, and, after Him, of His apostles, on this point. If we know anything whatever concerning the teachings of our Lord, we know that He constantly affirmed that He had come in accordance with the prophecies of the Old Testament. E. P. Barrows. 1. The figure of the preceding verse is continued, but applied to the downfall of the house of David and the Jewish State, which is contrasted with the downfall of Assyria. The Assyrian forest was to fall forever, but that of Judah was to sprout again. And there shall come forth a twig (or shoot) from the stock (or stump) of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall grow. The only application of the passage that can be sustained is that to Jesus Christ, who sprang from the family of Jesse when reduced to its lowest estate, and to whom alone the subsequent description is literally applicable. It is enough to know that the fact of Christ's descent from David is not only repeatedly affirmed, but constantly presupposed in the New Testament, as a fact too notorious to be called in question or to call for proof. A. A rod out of the stem of Jesse. We shall lose much of the force of the expression unless we refer to the verses immediately preceding. The prophet has just been speaking of the fall of the mighty trees of Lebanon. These trees, which symbolize Assyria, are to be cut down. They are cedars, the grandest of all the daughters of the forest. But the cedar, when once cut down, never springs up again. It belongs to the Conifera, the cone-bearing family, including all the pines and firs; and none of these (with the exception of one or two species, like the canary pine, unknown in Europe or Asia) are capable of sending up shoots, when once they have been hewn down to the ground. Hence "to cut down like a cedar" signifies to destroy without hope of resurrection. Here, in contrast with the monarch of Lebanon, cut down never to rise again, is contrasted, in the first verse, the lowly vine of Judah, from which, though now pruned down to the very root, shall spring a vigorous branch. No plants can offer a greater contrast in appearance and treatment than the cedar and the vine. The vine, low and inconspicuous, scarcely lifting itself above the ground, unlike the towering cedar, dependent upon external support to rise at all. But its whole value depends upon its being systematically cut back, "pruned that it may bear more fruit." In the Holy Land, the vine is not even trellised, as in Italy. Every year the whole of the young wood is cut back to the stump, which alone remains, and is said to remain and to throw out vigorous branches for successive centuries, without any renewing of the plant. Thus from the vine-plant of Jesse, now by captivity cut down to the very root, a Branch shall spring. The word is not that usually translated "branch," but has a special force, meaning a brilliant or shining bough, as though to imply it surpassed all others in beauty, while the passage should be translated more literally, as in the Revised Version, "A branch out of his roots shall bear fruit;" the Hebrew word being that from which Ephra-thah, the title of Bethlehem, is formed—that is, "the fruitful." Tristram. 2. The person whose origin and descent are metaphorically described in the preceding verse is here described by his personal qualities as one endowed with the highest intellectual and moral gifts by the direct influences of the Holy Spirit. And upon him shall rest the Spirit of Jehovah, a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, a Spirit of counsel and strength, a Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah. The only person in whom the terms of this prediction have been verified is Jesus Christ, whose wisdom displayed itself in early life and is expressly ascribed to a special Divine influence; who proved Himself a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; whose ministry was not only characterized by fortitude and boldness, but attested by miracles and mighty deeds; whose knowledge of Divine things far surpassed that of all other men; and who was Himself a living model of all piety. A. The precise thought here is that the Spirit of the Lord, resting upon Jesus the Messiah, will cause Him to have wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and piety. His perfect endowments for ruling well are to be ascribed to the Spirit of God, which dwelt in Him without measure. That the Divine Spirit was thus given to Jesus Christ is the doctrine both of Old Testament prophecy and of New Testament history. In Isa. 61:1 the Messiah Himself says (prophetically), "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me," etc., which prophecy Jesus read publicly in the synagogue and applied it, saying, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:17-21). Of this fact John the Baptist also is a special witness (John 1:32 and 3:34), testifying, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him." "For God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him." H. C.—The resulting character of the Messiah is a fair picture of one who realizes the very ideal of a strong and righteous ruler of men. "Wisdom and understanding" refer mainly to the clearness of intellectual and moral insight; "counsel and might," to the qualities which give sound practical direction and vigor to follow, and carry through, the decisions of practical wisdom; while “the knowledge and fear of the Lord” define religion by its two parts of acquaintance with God founded on love, and reverential awe which prompts to obedience. The fulfilment, and far more than fulfilment, of this ideal, is in Jesus, in whom were “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” to whom no circumstances of difficulty ever brought the shadow of perplexity, who always saw clearly before Him the path to tread, and had always “might” to tread it, however rough, who lived all His days in unbroken fellowship with the Father and in lowly obedience. The prophet saw not all the wonders of perfect human character which that indwelling spirit would bring to realization in Him; but what he saw was indispensable to a perfect king, and was, at all events, an arc of the mighty circle of perfection which has now been revealed in the life of Jesus. The possibilities of humanity under the influence of the Divine Spirit are revealed here no less than the actuality of the Messiah’s character. What Jesus is, He gives it to His subjects to become by the dwelling in them of the Spirit of Life which was in Him. A. M. 3-5. The glory of this kingdom is conspicuous in the principles by which it is administered. Of this Prince it is truly said, “Righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins.” The sceptre of His dominion is grace; grace displayed in the Gospel, grace communicated by the Spirit, is the grand instrument of maintaining His empire. He reveals His glory and imparts His benefits, and thereby attaches His subjects by ties at once the most forcible and the most engaging. A lovely assemblage of qualities characterizes the spirit and genius of His Divine administration; an incomparable majesty, united to a most endearing condescension—a spirit of benignity, joined to impartial justice, distinguishes His conduct. Though the subjects of this kingdom are admitted to it on no other condition than the cordial approbation of the character of the Prince, they are not left lawless or uncontrolled; the revelation of the Divine will is imparted; the most perfect measure of holiness and rules of conduct are enjoined on the conscience and impressed on the heart. This administration exhibits throughout a beautiful model of the moral government of God, attempted to the state of creatures who have fallen from their original rectitude, but are under a dispensation of mercy. R. Hall. 4. The Messiah, as a righteous judge, is now exhibited in contrast with the unjust magistrates of Judah, as described in chaps. 1:23; 10:2; 5:23. A.—Here, as elsewhere, the glory of Messiah’s reign lies, not in its external pomp and splendor, not in its parade and display, not in the magnificence of its surroundings, nor in any of those arts that minister to beauty and taste, but in its intrinsic and perfect justice; in protecting the defenceless; in fulfilling the sublime ends of all good government, human or Divine—viz., to secure the highest possible well-being by putting down injustice and oppression, and by guarding sacredly the equal rights of all. H. C. 6,7. Here, as in chaps. 2:4 and 9:5, 6, universal peace is represented as a consequence of the Messiah’s reign, but under a new and striking figure. A.—The entire drift of thought both before and after these verses (6-8) is of moral and not of physical changes; pertaining to the influence of wise and righteous government over moral agents (verses 3-5), and to the renewing influence of knowing God (verse 9). Hence, if we construe this passage (verses 6-8) in harmony with the context, we shall make it figurative, representing a moral change in the hearts of men, somewhat analogous to the supposed change (understood literally) in the wolf, the lion, and the asp. Yet, again, these verses stand here to account for what immediately follows: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.” But the logical connection here, the reason why men no longer work evil in the earth, is not that lions eat straw; is not that wolves dwell with lambs literally; but is that the savage and ferocious spirit in man’s bosom has turned to love, and that human selfishness is slain by the Gospel of Jesus. The true knowledge of God fills all the earth, and therefore man, made by creation intelligent and moral, and now by His second birth brought under the legitimate influence of knowing God, lives lovingly with all of human kind, even as the animal races might live harmlessly together, supposing them to have lost not only the instincts and the necessities of a carnivorous life, but even the power of subsisting upon animal flesh. But no amount of diffusion of the knowledge of God can literally change the digestive organs of the lion to live on straw. The logical connection of thought, therefore, and the nature of the case demand the figurative construction and forbid the literal. H. C. 9. The strong figures of the foregoing context are now resolved into literal expressions. They (indefinitely, men in general) shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, because the land is full of the knowledge of Jehovah (literally, of knowing Him), like the waters covering the sea. The first clause clearly shows that the foregoing description is to be figuratively understood. That the wolf and the lamb should lie down together means, in other words, that none should hurt or destroy in the Messiah's kingdom. This passage is descriptive of the reign of the Messiah, not at any one period, but as a whole. An historian, as Vitringa well observes, in giving a general description of the reign of David, would not use language applicable only to its beginning. The prophecy is therefore one of gradual fulfilment. So far as the cause operates, the effect follows, and when the cause shall operate without restraint, the effect will be complete and universal. It is not till the land has been filled with that knowledge, that men will cease to injure and destroy. A.—And since this description relates to the Gospel age and to the reign and manifestations of King Messiah, we must assume that the knowledge of God here contemplated is precisely that which comes to our world through Christ, revealing God. The idea, therefore, is that when they come under the power of such manifested love as shines forth in the Son of God living and dying, their hearts, moved and melted by such manifestations, will cease to love sin. They will no more hurt or destroy one another. H. C. The wars and conquests of kings, the ambitious schemes of politicians, have all been overruled by Him who maketh the very wrath of man to praise Him, for the wider extension and the more efficient establishment of His own Church. The very colossal power of the Roman Empire itself was made subservient to the process by which it was to be broken up, and the efficacy of its laws manifested in favor of the religion to which it was inveterately and specially hostile. Little did the Emperor Titus imagine that, while laying waste the Jewish kingdom, he was raising up from its very ruins a kingdom destined speedily to overshadow and overthrow his own empire, and lay his proud religion in the dust. The Roman sword, intent only on self-glorification and the pride of conquest, was wielded by the Almighty Arm to clear the way for the triumphant march of Christianity over every nation and kingdom; and though that sword was frequently turned against the Church, and wrought sad havoc among its members, yet each pruning, each shoot that it cut off, became a separate living vine, extending to other regions the blessings of the Gospel. And in this way the Church grew and spread until now its range extends from sea to sea, and from the river even unto the ends of the earth. Macmillan. 10. The word rendered "root" means here a shoot springing up from the root. The same usage appears in Rev. 22:16, "I am the root, even the offspring of David." Both passages refer to the Messiah as born in the line of Jesse and David. An "ensign," properly a flag-pole or signal to be seen from far, is here supposed to be lifted up for a rallying-point and a trumpet-call to the nations to gather to this standard. The Gentiles come, not "seek" only, but come to it. "Seek unto it" implies an actual coming. The place of Messiah's home and throne where He rests is all glorious. The Hebrew puts it strongly—is glory. H. C. Other landmarks sink below the horizon as the tribes of men pursue their solemn march through the centuries, but the cross on Calvary "shall stand for an ensign of the people, and to it shall the Gentiles seek." To proclaim that accomplished salvation, once for all lodged in the heart of the world's history, and henceforth forever valid, is our unalterable duty. The message carries in itself its own immortal strength. A living Saviour in the present, who works with us, confirming the word with signs following, is the source of our power. Not till He is impotent shall we be weak. The unmeasurable measure of the gift of Christ defines the degree, and the unending duration of His life who continueth forever sets the period, of our possession of the grace which is given to every one of us. He is ever bestowing. He never withdraws what He once gives. The fountain sinks not a hair's breadth, though eighteen centuries have drawn from it. Modern astronomy begins to believe that the sun itself by long expense of light will be shorn of its beams and wander darkling in space, circled no more by its daughter planets. But this Sun of our souls rays out forever the energies of life and light and love, and after all communication possesses the infinite fulness of them all. "His name shall be continued as long as the sun, all nations shall call Him blessed." Here then are the perpetual elements of our constant power, an eternal Word, an abiding Spirit, an unchanging Lord. A. M. The day here is the future times of Messiah. He is called the root of Jesse, as one growing up from the roots of David's family, when cut down and deprived of its royal grandeur. The peoples or nations are the Gentiles, as 2:4; 8:9; 10:13, 14. The ensign is the standard of a captain or military leader. Paul (Rom. 15 : 12) quotes the words as predicting the call of the Gentiles. They shall "seek unto Christ," consult Him as their oracle, and resort to Him as their heavenly Guide. The resting-place is often referred to the Church, where Christ dwells by His Spirit. But 1 Tim. 3 : 16 supplies a simpler and more emphatic meaning. Immanuel, God manifest in the flesh, would first be "preached unto the Gentiles," set up before their eyes as the standard whereto they should resort ; then "believed on in the world," or widely accepted as their Oracle and Teacher ; and lastly, "received up into glory." His resting-place would thus indeed be glorious, "the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb. 1 : 3 ; 8 : 1). Birks. The seat of His dominion is also the seat of His repose. The beneficent activity just described is wielded from a calm, central palace, and does not break the King's tranquillity. That is a paradox, except to those who know that Jesus Christ, sitting in undisturbed rest at the right hand of God, thence works with and for His servants. His repose is full of active energy ; His active energy is full of repose. And that place of calm abode is "glorious," or, more emphatically and literally, "glory." He shall dwell in the blaze of the uncreated glory of God—a prediction which is only fulfilled in its true meaning by Christ's ascension and session at the right hand of God, in the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, and into which He has borne that lowly manhood which He drew from the cut-down stem of Jesse. A. M. 11. As the gathering of the Gentiles to Christ is prominent in verse 10, so is that of the Jews in this verse 11, and both in verse 12. Thought of as scattered in their dispersions as of old over Egypt, Assyria, Chaldea, and other remote regions, the Lord restores them a second time as at the first from their captivity in Babylon, only that here the restoration and gathering are specially unto Christ. Both the case of the Gentiles and the whole drift of the chapter require this view of their restoration. In this list of countries, Egypt and Assyria come first as being the greatest hostile kingdoms known to the Jews of Isaiah's time. At the dispersion many Jews went to Egypt ; the whole kingdom of the Ten Tribes were borne to Assyria. Pathros is the southern part of Egypt ; Cush, mainly Ethiopia, including perhaps the Arabian Cush from which the African family of that name descended and emigrated. Elam was the largest province of ancient Persia. Shinar inincluded Babylon. Hamath lay on the north of Palestine, here comprehending Damascene Syria. "The islands of the sea" were the lands reached by crossing the Mediterranean, whether insular or continental. This enumeration of all the great countries known to the Jews of that age involves the idea of universality. Wherever they may be, the Gospel of the grace of God will find and restore them. H. C. 13. The envy of Ephraim revealed itself in two stages : first, as an internal feud in the nation of Israel, and next as bitter and open hostility against the Zion of God. Under David and Solomon we see the first, but under Pekah and Hoshea this second and worse stage. The first half of the verse predicts the end of foreign hostility and hatred ; the second, that of internal strife and discord. Ephraim and Judah were guilty alike, and both needed a moral conversion. Ephraim, restored to the covenant of God, "shall not envy Judah," as it had done in the times of Gideon, David, and Solomon ; and Judah, humbled by afflictions, "shall not vex Ephraim." The prominence here doubly given to the cure of Ephraim's jealousy refers us back to chap. 7 : 1-18, and shows the striking moral unity of these later messages in the time of Ahaz. Birks. 14. These were the nations nearest to the Israelites and most frequently in war against them during the ages of the judges and kings, even down to the times of Isaiah. But they are all long since extinct, and hence, if for no other reason, we are forbidden to think of a literal sense in this language. And this being of necessity figurative, the rest of the passage (verses 11-16) must be figurative also. H. C. 15. To the destruction of the enemies of Israel is added a prediction that all obstacles, even the most formidable, to the restoration of God's people, shall be overcome or taken away by His almighty power. This idea is naturally expressed by the dividing of the Red Sea and Euphrates, because Egypt and Assyria are the two great powers from which Israel had suffered and was yet to be delivered. A. Chap. 12. Nothing could be more appropriate than to follow such a prophecy with a song of praise. Every impulse of the Christian inspires him to break forth in outbursts of song, ascribing glory, honor and praise to the blessed God for such deliverance to Zion, such triumphs to the kingdom of Christ, and such salvation to this lost world ! Fifty and beautifully God's people are not only exhorted to sing and give praise, but the very words for their song are provided. In verses 1, 2, 6 Zion is personified as if one person, of one heart and voice; while in verses 4, 5, the plural number suggests that Christians do not lose their individuality, however much they blend their hearts and voices in the unison of praise. H. C.—The prophecy closes fitly with a song of praise, the utterance of restored Israel. And this links itself with the fivefold burden of the previous vision (chaps. 5 : 25 ; 9 : 12, 17, 21 ; 10 : 4) in a most impressive contrast. The hand of God, once stretched out in judgment, is now extended in mercy. His anger, once sore and heavy, is now turned away. The ceremony of drawing water from the pool of Siloam on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles would now receive a glorious antitype. Birks. The structure of this psalm is very regular, consisting of two parts, in each of which the prophet first tells the people what they will say, or have a right to say, when the foregoing promises are verified, and then addresses them again in his own person and in the usual language of prediction. In the first stanza they are made to acknowledge the Divine compassion and to express their confidence in God as the source of all their strength, and therefore the rightful object of their praise (verses 1-3). In the second stanza they exhort one another to make known what God has done for them, not only at home, but among all nations, and are exhorted by the prophet to rejoice in the manifested presence of Jehovah (verses 4-6). A. 1. The Christian's heart will not complain that God was angry, since conscious sin gives so just cause for it. We could not love and honor God if He had not been offended with our former sins. But it is special cause for praise when after repentance God forgives, and turning His anger away, gives His loving and comforting smile instead. The "turning away" of His anger suggests that oft-repeated declaration (chaps. 9 : 12, 17, 21 and 10 : 4)—"For all this, His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still." "The former things have passed away." 2. Behold, God is my salvation. He shows this now most abundantly, and my soul shall believe it henceforth and forever. Now, therefore, I will trust, and will fear no more. So many promises have been fulfilled, I never can doubt His love and faithfulness again. For the Lord Jehovah is my strength, achieving all these great things for me. Truly, therefore, He shall be my song, the theme of my praise evermore! H. C. He reigns, O believer, for thee. The stability of His throne is thy safety. The administration of His government is for thy good; and the precious pledge is, that He "will perfect that which concerneth thee." In all thy troubles, and in all thy joy, commit thy way unto Him. He will guard the sacred deposit. Fear not that thou shalt lack any good thing. Fear not that thou shalt be forsaken. Fear not that thou shalt fall beneath the arm of the oppressor. "He went through the fires of the pit to save thee; and He will stake all the glories of His crown to keep thee." Sing, then, thou beloved, "Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my salvation." J. M. Mason. Trust Him implicitly, submit to Him cheerfully, and you will find that all shall be well; that more grace will be given you; that the heavier the trial the larger will be the blessed measure of the strength. The Shepherd is leading you in the right way to His own blessed fold. Leave it all to Him. Alexander McKenzie.—The child cannot better secure any precious thing it has than by putting it into the father's hands to keep. Our mercies are always safest and surest when they are out of our hands and in the hands of God. We trust as we love, and we trust where we love; where we love much we trust much; much trust speaks out much love; if we love Christ much, surely we shall trust Him much. T. Brooks. 3. The everlasting love of the Father, the rich grace of the Son, and the exuberant joy of the Holy Ghost compose these wells of salvation. Yet it is but one fountain of grace flowing from the unity of the Divine essence, and is communicated to us out of the fulness of the man Jesus. Hence we are invited by Him, "O friends, O beloved, drink! yea, drink abundantly." W. Mason. The connection of these words with the story in the Exodus was recognized by the Jews at a very early period, as is plain from their use in the remarkable ritual of the Feast of Tabernacles. That festival was originally appointed to preserve the remembrance of Israel's nomad life in the wilderness. In the later days of the nation a number of symbolical observances were added to those of the original institution. Daily, amid-loud jubilations, the priests wound in long procession down the slope from the Temple to the fountain of Siloam in the valley beneath, and there drew water in golden urns. They bore it back, the crowd surging around them, and then amid the blast of trumpets and a tumult of rejoicing, they poured it on the altar, while thousands of voices chanted Isaiah's words, "with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation." So much for the occasion of the prophecy, now for its meaning and fulfilment. Nearly eight hundred years have passed. Again the festival has come round. For seven days the glad ceremonial had been performed. For the last time the priestly procession has gone down the rocky road; for the last time the vases have been filled at the cool fountain below; for the last time the bright water has been poured out sparkling in the sunlight; for the last time the shout of joy has risen and fallen, and as the words of the ancient chant were dying on the ear, a sudden stir began among the crowd, and from the midst of them, as they parted for His passage, came a young man, rustic in appearance, and there, before all the silence-stricken multitude, and priests with their empty urns, "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." Surely such words in such a connection, at such a time, from such lips, are meant to point the path to the true understanding of the text. A. M. With joy. Joy is the tuning the soul. The command to rejoice precedes the command to pray: "Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing." Delight makes the melody; prayer else will be but a harsh sound. God accepts the heart only when it is a gift given, not forced. With joy we are to draw water out of the wells of salvation. Faith is the bucket, but joy and love are the hands that move it. God does not value that man's service who accounts not His service a privilege and a pleasure. Charnock. True joy is a solid, grave thing, and dwells more in the heart than the countenance, whereas, on the contrary, base and false joys are but superficial. The deepest streams are the stillest. Leighton.—The elements of that joy which makes your whole life successful are consecration, self-revelation of character in all that is pure and noble, having nothing in yourself which wishes to veil itself from the eyes of others; self-sacrifice and renunciation, benevolence in work and success in that beneficent work. These are the elements of true joy and prosperity on which you will look back with gladness from the end of life; on which you will look back with joy unspeakable and full of glory from the heights on high. Anon. The Christian's joy is in every sense a joy of harvest; a joy of life in life's bountiful provision; a joy of the heart in the presence of the great Giver of all good; a joy of the honest laborer in the rewards of his own industry and the end of his patient waiting. Interior. 4. Starting afresh with the prolific theme of praise, the events of "that day"—blessings so great and rich—ye shall all say, Praise the Lord. Let all the nations know what He has done. Remind them (the sense of the last verb); remind them that His name is exalted, that He has glorified it by fulfilling so signally all His good words of promise to His people. H. C. As to the authorship of the twelfth chapter, it is less necessary to insist on the external evidence, because the internal happens to be so strong; and it is less necessary to fall back on the possibility that Isaiah is quoting anonymous psalms, because the probability comes out so clearly that he composed the whole himself. The first eleven chapters are conceded to Isaiah by most modern critics. The testimony of the diction may be summed up by saying that Isa. 12 contains fifty words, of which forty are found in other passages of Isaiah generally acknowledged to be genuine. Of the remaining ten, eight are in the pre-exilic prophets. Of this same remaining ten, six are in psalms commonly considered pre-exilic; and of this same remaining ten, all are in the literature commonly considered pre-exilic. W. H. Cobb. 13:1 THE burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see. 2. Set ye up an ensign upon the bare mountain, lift up the voice unto them, wave the 3 hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles. I have commanded my consecrated ones, yea, I have called my mighty men for mine anger, even my proudly exulting ones. 4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people! the noise of a tumult of the kingdoms of the nations gathered together! the LORD of hosts mustereth the host for 5 the battle. They come from a far country, from the uttermost part of heaven, even the 6 LORD, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land. Howl ye; for the 7 day of the LORD is at hand; as destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Therefore 8 shall all hands be feeble, and every heart of man shall melt: and they shall be dismayed; pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman in travail: they 9 shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be faces of flame. Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to 10 destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall 11 not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will lay low the 12 haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more rare than fine gold, even a man than 13 the pure gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens to tremble, and the earth shall be shaken out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce 14 anger. And it shall come to pass, that as the chased roe, and as sheep that no man gather- eth, they shall turn every man to his own people, and shall flee every man to his own land. 15 Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is taken shall fall by 16 the sword. Their infants also shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses shall 17 be spoiled, and their wives ravished. Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which 18 shall not regard silver, and as for gold, they shall not delight in it. And their bows shall dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their 19 eye shall not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chal- 20 deans' pride, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the 21 Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; 22 and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall 14: 1 not be prolonged. For the LORD will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the stranger shall join himself with them, and 2 they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the peoples shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the LORD for servants and for handmaids: and they shall take them captive, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors. 3 And it shall come to pass in the day that the LORD shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, 4 and from thy trouble, and from the hard service wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor 5 ceased! the golden city ceased! The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre 6 of the rulers; that smote the peoples in wrath with a continual stroke, that ruled the nations 7 in anger, with a persecution that none restrained. The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: 8 they break forth into singing. Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, 9 saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. 10 All they shall answer and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become 11 like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to hell, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is 12 spread under thee, and worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst lay low the nations! 13 And thou saidst in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; and I will sit upon the mount of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the 14 north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High. 15, 16 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the uttermost parts of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, they shall consider thee, saying, Is this the man that 17 made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, 18 and overthrew the cities thereof; that let not loose his prisoners to their home? All the 19 kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, every one in his own house. But thou art cast forth away from thy sepulchre like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, that are thrust through with the sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under foot. Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, thou hast slain thy people; the seed of evil-doers shall not be named for ever. Prepare ye slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they rise not up, and possess the earth, and fill the face of the world with cities. And I will rise up against them, saith the LORD of hosts, and cut off from Babylon name and remnant, and son and son's son, saith the LORD. I will also make it a possession for the porcupine, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the LORD of hosts. 24. The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand: that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulder. This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations. For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? THE first series of Isaiah's prophecies (chaps. 1-12) is followed by a second, composed of Burdens on the Gentile Nations (chaps. 13-23), and summed up in a common sequel of judgment and blessing (chaps. 24-27). The two subjects of the first series are the impending Assyrian woe and the coming and reign of Immanuel, the branch of the Lord. The former is unfolded anew in these burdens themselves, and their sequel points again to the times of Messiah. The date of this second series lies between the third year of Ahaz and the third of Hezekiah, or between the fulfilment of the warning (chap. 8: 1-4) and the opening of the siege of Samaria, predicted (chap. 28: 2). During these sixteen years there seem to have been no direct inroads of Assyria on Ephraim or Judah, but it was extending and confirming its dominion over the surrounding heathen powers. The form of the prophecy corresponds. Burdens on the Gentile nations are successively revealed; and the message returns to Israel and to Judah, when the northern kingdom was ready to suffer once more under the Assyrian scourge. The arrangement has thus a clear basis in the history. The burden on Babylon takes precedence of the rest, since this was the Gentile power ordained to complete the predicted judgment of God on the chosen people. Next are the burdens of Philistia, Moab, and Damascus, the neighbors of Israel on the west, the east, and the north, with a brief sequel of their own. Next is the burden on Egypt and Ethiopia, the southern rival of Assyria. Then follow, as before, three secondary burdens on the border lands of the southern side. The message then returns to Palestine, in the burden of the Valley of Vision; and the series ends with Tyre, the great maritime power of the ancient world. Birks. The complete destruction of Babylon, and her desolation through long ages, is prophesied in Scripture repeatedly, and with a distinctness and minuteness that are very remarkable. The most striking of the prophecies are those contained in these two chapters and in Jer. 50: 10-15, 38-40; 51: 36-43. G. R. The genuineness of the title, and the Isaian authorship of this first burden, have been denied by several modern critics (Justi, Gesenius, Rosenmüller, Hitzig, Knobel, Ewald, Davidson, etc.) on such grounds as these: 1. "The stand point of the writer is in the time of the Captivity, when the Chaldean Empire was flourishing." On the contrary, it begins with the mustering of Median armies, and reaches on to a completed desolation, which has lasted to the present day. Or if the actual date be meant, that is fixed by the close (14: 25) before the fall of Sennacherib. 2. "Isaiah could not transfer his position into the distinct future, disregarding the horizon of his own day." This merely affirms that the Holy Spirit may predict events twenty or thirty, but not two hundred years beforehand. Besides, the political horizon of the time is kept in view, for a solemn oath of the Assyrian's fall closes the prophecy. 3. "The tone and spirit are bitter, revengeful, taunting, sarcastic. It is intelligible from one who had suffered under the Chaldeans, not from Isaiah." This is like one of the predicted "hard speeches" against the Lord of Hosts, whose message it is. The burden is not "bitter," but most solemn and sublime. It breathes not the feeble malice of Jewish exiles, but the holy anger of the Most High, against the oppressors of His people and blasphemers of His great name. It is sarcastic, because it is the voice of Him who "seorneth the scorners, but giveth grace to the lowly." The vengeance is the same as in Rev. 18, given through the apostle of love. 4. "There are imitations of Ezekiel and Joel, and traces of acquaintance with Zephaniah." Between Jer. 50, 51 and Isa. 13 there is considerable likeness. There is here a strong proof of the genuineness, and no argument against it. It is easy to conceive that these later prophets might borrow phrases or images from one earlier and greater; but incredible that a vision so earnest and sublime, full of seraphic fire, should be a cento from three or four sources, turned into a forgery by prefixing a false name. 5. "The style and diction are unlike Isaiah's." On the contrary, there is no passage more characteristic of his style in the whole book. 6. "The prophecy was not fulfilled, as announced. The desolation did not take place by the Medes, as the prophecy asserts." The statement, and not the prediction, is untrue. To the Medes is assigned a fierce slaughter of the men of Babylon, when the city is captured; but how soon, or how slowly, or by what steps the total desolation would follow, of this the text says not a single word. The mention of shepherds and their flocks, and of tents of the Arabians, points to a time beyond the age of the Medo Persian Empire. The reasons thus alleged from internal evidence, to disprove the genuineness, are all worthless. All the external evidence, and decisive reasons from the structure of the book, combine still further to prove that the vision is Isaiah's, and stands here in its proper place. Birks. (See Bib. Sacra, July, 1892, Article on Isa. 13.) Hitzig says expressly that a prophecy against Babylon before the time of Jeremiah is impossible. This of course is tantamount to saying that prophetic inspiration is impossible. And this is, after all, the only question of importance. If there cannot be prophetic foresight, then of course a reference to subsequent events fixes the date of the writing which contains it. If, on the other hand, there is such a thing as inspiration and prophetic foresight, there is nothing to weaken the presumption created by a uniform tradition, the immemorial position of this prophecy, and the express terms of a title not less ancient than the text, of which, according to Oriental usage, it is really a part. The point at issue therefore between Christian and infidel interpreters has reference not to words and phrases merely but to the possibility and reality of inspiration. Assuming this, we can have no hesitation in regarding the prophecy before us as a genuine production of Isaiah. . . . On the one hand, we have only to believe that Isaiah was inspired of God. On the other, we must hold that a writer of the very highest genius either personated the prophet or was confounded with him by the ancient Jews, and that this anonymous writer, whose very name is lost, without any inspiration, uttered a prediction which then seemed falsified by the event, but which has since been accidentally fulfilled! It is universally admitted that the thirteenth chapter, and the greater part, if not the whole, of the fourteenth, constitute a single prophecy. The division of the chapters is, however, not a wrong one. Both parts relate to the destruction of Babylon, setting out from God's decree and winding up with the threatening of total desolation. Chap. 14 is, therefore, not a mere continuation of chap. 13, but a repetition of the same matter in another form. The difference of form is chiefly this: that while chap. 13 is more historical in its arrangement, chap. 14 is dramatic, or at least poetical. Another point of difference is that in chap. 13 the downfall of Babylon is represented rather as an act of Divine vengeance, in chap. 14 as a means of deliverance to Israel, the denunciations of Divine wrath being there clothed in the form of a triumphant song to be sung by Israel when Babylon is fallen. A. With chap. 13 commences a new series of prophecies, filling chaps. 13-23, described by the prophet himself as "burdens" and "woes"—i.e., predictions of calamity to come upon wicked nations for their great sins. This series opens with Babylon, the fall of which is the theme of chap. 13 and of chap. 14: 1-23. This prophecy of the fall of Babylon is very extraordinary in several respects. 1. In the point of its moral relations and bearings upon the Jews of Isaiah's time it stands remarkably disconnected. In chap. 13 there is not the least hint of any special relation to the Jews. But chap. 14 opens with a clear intimation of Divine mercy to Israel in restoring them to their own land after their captivity in Babylon, and also in reversing the recent relation of captor and captive between these two people, bringing Babylon under as Israel had been before. This assumes an ideal present far down into the period of the Captivity, the close of which was one hundred and ninety-two years after the death of Ahaz. The precise date of this prophecy against Babylon is not given, but it stands in the collection among others of the time of Ahaz, and therefore probably belongs there legitimately. (See chap. 14:28.) Hence we have ground for making the interval between the prophet's actual and his ideal present, as above, nearly two hundred years. The facts revealed concerning the fall of Babylon have therefore no particular relation to the actual present of Isaiah's time. 2. Again, these predictions of the fall of Babylon make a strong case of a prophecy which to human view is built upon nothing. For Babylon was then entirely overshadowed by the great empire of Assyria. Who could see that Assyria was to go down, and this small city—then a province of Assyria and a third or fourth-rate power—to come up, to be queen of the nations? Besides, the prophet names the Medes as the conquering power, destined to subvert and supplant proud Babylon. But the Medes at this date were an unborn power. A rude people living on the southern and western shores of the Caspian Sea, who had made no mark yet in Asiatic history and had thrown out no foreshadowings of their future prowess; what mortal eye could see in them the future conquerors of great Babylon? And yet to heighten the complication of future events and put them still further beyond the possible reach of human sagacity, this Median power rose up somewhat suddenly about one hundred years after the writing of this prophecy, and with the aid of Babylon laid siege to Nineveh, captured and destroyed it, and thus subverted the great Assyrian empire, B.C. 625. These are the people named in this prophecy as the future conquerors of Babylon! Whose eye could foresee this, save the eye of God? 3. In point of style, this prophecy respecting Babylon stands unrivalled. The tone of chap. 13 is sublimely bold and graphic, yet even this is in some points surpassed by the exquisite poetic drapery of chap. 14. Throughout this chapter the Lord Himself may be considered the speaker. He gives command to unfurl the banner and to muster His hosts for the war against Babylon. The sound of their tramping squadrons is heard from far; they are seen coming; His instruments of vengeance—and His presence among them—for destruction to all that Chaldean land. He calls for wailing over a ruin so fearful; depicts the ensuing faintness of heart and pangs of agony. You see the stars fading out; the sun darkened in his going forth; men become few; the vast populations of great Babylon flee or die; the Medes appear by name as the Lord's executioners; and Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, goes down to rise no more. Her very site is doomed to sterility and solitude, save as wild beasts gather there who are wont to make their homes in places most desolate. H. C. 2. The attack of the Medes and Persians upon Babylon is now foretold, not in the proper form of a prediction, nor even in that of a description, which is often substituted for it, but in that of an order from Jehovah to His ministers to summon the invaders, first by an elevated signal, and then as they draw nearer by gestures and the voice. Upon a bare hill (with a clear summit) set up a signal, raise the voice (shout or cry aloud) to them (the Medes and Persians), and let them enter the gates of the (Babylonian) nobles. 4. The prophet, in his own person, now describes the enemies of Babylon who had just been summoned, as actually on their way. He hears a confused noise, which he soon finds to be that of confederate nations forming the army of Jehovah against Babylon. The voice of a multitude in the mountains! the likeness of much people! the sound of a tumult of kingdoms of nations gathered! Jehovah of Hosts mustering a host of battle! The absence of verbs adds greatly to the vividness of the description. The sentence really consists of a series of exclamations, describing the impressions made successively upon the senses of an eye and ear-witness. It is commonly agreed that there is here a direct reference to the mixture of nations in the army of Cyrus. Besides the Persians and the Medes, Xenophon speaks of the Armenians, and Jeremiah adds the names of other nations (Jer. 50:9; 51:27). A. 6. "The day of the Lord" is His time for any signal achievement. It is here said to be at hand, not in point of absolute time, which was not far from two centuries to the first fatal blow, and much longer still before Babylon became utterly desolate; but it was near, either as seen by the prophet and with reference to the impressions made on his mind; or with relation to the events immediately preceding and sketched just above. It would be but a short time after the mustering of those Median hosts before the proud city would fall. It will come as a mighty ruin from the Almighty one; where the Hebrew signifies that none other than a resistless overthrow should be expected from an omnipotent arm. The words rendered "destruction" and "Almighty" are from the same root. H. C. 9. All this must happen and at a set time—for behold the day of Jehovah cometh—terrible— and wrath and heat of anger—to place the land a waste—and its sinners He will destroy out of it. The moral causes of the ruin threatened are significantly intimated by calling the people of the earth or land its sinners. 11. The prophet, according to his custom (chaps. 1 : 22 ; 5 : 7 ; 11 : 9), now resolves his figures into literal expressions, showing that the natural convulsions just predicted are to be understood as metaphorical descriptions of the Divine judgments. And I will visit upon the world its wickedness—and upon the wicked their iniquity—and I will cause to cease the arrogance of presumptuous sinners—and the pride of tyrants I will humble. A.—“Punish the world for their iniquity” conceives of the great Chaldean empire as embracing most of the world then known to the Jews. Thus ancient authors called the Roman Empire “the whole world.” 12. “More precious,” in the sense of more scarce and rare. The waste of human life occasioned by war with its triple scourge—the sword, pestilence, and famine—will leave but few men where but lately were so many. H. C. 13. The figurative form of speech is here resumed, and what was before expressed by the obscuration of the heavenly bodies is now denoted by a general commotion of the frame of nature. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth shall shake out of its place in the wrath of Jehovah of Hosts and in the day of the heat of His anger. A. 17. The Medes only are named (without the Persians)—as in Jer. 51 : 11, 28—for the reason that they rose to prominence first in time, and really led in the conquest of Babylon. As bearing on the Divine inspiration of this prophecy, it should be distinctly noted that when Isaiah wrote it, the Medes were yet a dependent province of the great Assyrian empire, and had never been known as a powerful, independent kingdom. Who could foresee that they ever would be? “They revolted” (says Dr. Alexander) “at the time of the Assyrian invasion of Judah and Israel. Their first king, Dejocese was elected about B.C. 700 (i.e., within one year of the death of Hezekiah). His son, Phraortes, conquered Persia. Then the united Medes and Persians, with the aid of the Babylonians, subdued Assyria under the conduct of Cyaxares I. (B.C. 625). The conquest of Babylon was effected in the reign of Cyaxares II., by the Median army, with an auxiliary force of thirty thousand Persians under the command of Cyrus, the king’s nephew, B.C. 538.” Unlike the more southern nations of Asia, the Arab plundering tribes, and indeed unlike most nations that have ever waged war, the Medes, and especially the Persians, thought less of gold than of conquest and glory. Xenophon puts in the mouth of Cyrus, addressing the Medes, sentiments of the same character. “Ye men of Media, and all ye now present ; I know you well, and that ye have not come forth with me in this war as men who want money and goods.” How should the eye of a merely human sagacity have foreseen this special feature of a conquering power as yet unborn and of course with no national character yet developed ? H. C. 19. From the very height of splendor and renown Babylon shall be reduced not only to subjection, but to annihilation. And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the ornament, the pride of the Chaldees, shall be like God’s overthrowing Sodom and Gomorrah—i.e., shall be totally destroyed in execution of a special Divine judgment. 20. The conversion of a populous and fertile district into a vast pasture ground, however rich and well frequented, implies extensive ruin, but not such ruin as is here denounced. Babylon was not even to be visited by shepherds, nor to serve as the encamping ground of wandering Arabs. The completeness of the threatened desolation will be seen by comparing these expressions with chaps. 5 : 5, 17 ; 7 : 21 ; 17 : 2, where it is predicted that the place in question should be for flocks to lie down with none to make them afraid. So fully has this prophecy been verified that the Bedouins, according to the latest travellers, are even superstitiously afraid of passing a single night upon the site of Babylon. A. 21. “Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there ;” “the wild beasts of the desert, with the wild beasts of the islands, shall dwell there” (Jer. 50 : 39). So it was prophesied, and so it is. Speaking of the Babil mound, Mr. Rich observes, “There are many dens of wild beasts in various parts, in one of which I found the bones of sheep and other animals, and perceived a strong smell, like that of a lion.” “There are several deep excavations into the sides of the mound,” remarks Ker Porter. “These souterrains are now the refuge of jackals and other savage animals. The mouths of their entrances are strewn with the bones of sheep and goats ; and the loathsome smell that issues from most of them is sufficient warning not to proceed into the den.” On a visit to the Birs Nimroud, the same traveller observed through his glass several lions on the summit of the great mound, and afterward found their footprints in the soft soil of the desert at its base. This feature of the prophecies also is therefore literally fulfilled. The solitude, deserted by men, is sought the more on that account by the wild beasts of the country; and the lion, the jackal, and probably the leopard, have their lairs in the substructions of the temple of Belus, and the palace of Nebuchadnezzar. G. R. 14:1-23. The destruction of Babylon is again foretold, and more explicitly connected with the deliverance of Israel from bondage. After a general assurance of God's favor to His people, and of an exchange of conditions between them and their oppressors, they are represented as joining in a song of triumph over their fallen enemy. In this song, which is universally admitted to possess the highest literary merit, they describe the earth as again reposing from its agitation and affliction, and then breaking forth into a shout of exultation, in which the very trees of the forest join (verses 1-8). By a still bolder figure, the unseen world is represented as perturbed at the approach of the fallen tyrant, who is met, as he enters, by the kings already there, amazed to find him sunk as low as themselves and from a still greater height of actual elevation and of impious pretensions, which are strongly contrasted with his present condition, as deprived not only of regal honors, but of decent burial (verses 9-20). The threatening is then extended to the whole race, and the prophecy closes as before with a prediction of the total desolation of Babylon (verses 21-23). 1. This verse declares God's purpose in destroying the Babylonian power. For Jehovah will pity (or have mercy upon) Jacob, and will again choose Israel and cause them to rest on their (own) land—and the stranger shall be joined to them—and they shall be attached to the house of Jacob. Jacob and Israel are here used for the whole race. Umbreit correctly understands this not as a mere promise of temporal deliverance and increase to Israel as a nation, but as an assurance that the preservation of the chosen people was a necessary means for the fulfilment of God's purposes of mercy to mankind in general. The literal fulfilment of the last clause in its primary sense is clear from such statements as the one in Esther 8:17. 3. In this verse and the following context the prophet, in order to reduce the general promise of the foregoing verse to a more graphic and impressive form, recurs to the downfall of Babylon, as the beginning of the series of deliverances which he had predicted, and describes the effect upon those most concerned, by putting into the mouth of Israel a song of triumph over their oppressor. This is universally admitted to be one of the finest specimens of Hebrew and indeed of ancient composition. 4. That thou shalt raise this song over the king of Babylon and say, How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden (city) ceased! The king here introduced is an ideal personage, whose downfall represents that of the Babylonian monarchy. 7. At rest, quiet, is the whole earth. They burst forth into singing (or a shout of joy). There is no inconsistency between the clauses, as the first is not descriptive of silence, but of tranquillity and rest. The land had rest is a phrase employed in the Book of Judges (e.g., 5:31) to describe the condition of the country after a great national deliverance. A.—Babylon had subdued all the great powers of Western Asia and Northern Africa—i.e., the whole earth as known to the Jews. When she fell they all breathed freely, and felt themselves at rest. Joyful in the thought of no more servitude to a power so oppressive, they break forth in exultant song. H. C. 8. Not only the earth and its inhabitants take part in this triumphant song or shout, but the trees of the forest. Also the cypresses rejoice with respect to thee—the cedars of Lebanon—(saying) now that thou art fallen, the feller shall not come up against us. Now that we are safe from Thee, we fear no other enemy. The only meaning of these figures that seems consistent with a pure taste is the one proposed by Calvin, who supposes this to be merely a part of one great picture, representing universal nature as rejoicing. The symbolical and mechanical interpretations are as much out of place here as they would be in a thousand splendid passages of classical and modern poetry, where no one yet has ever dreamed of applying them. Both here and elsewhere in the sacred books, inanimate Nature is personified, and speaks herself instead of being merely spoken of. 9. The bold personification is now extended from the earth and its forests to the invisible or lower world, the inhabitants of which are represented as aroused at the approach of the new victim and as coming forth to meet him. Hell from beneath is moved (in commotion) for thee to meet thee (at) thy coming—it rouses for thee the giants (the gigantic shades or spectres), all the chief ones of the earth—it raises from their thrones all the kings of the nations. A.—The regions of the dead are laid open, and Hades is represented as rousing up the shades of the departed monarchs; they rise from their thrones to meet the king of Babylon at his coming, and insult him on his being reduced to the same estate of impotence and dissolution with themselves. This is one of the boldest figures that ever was attempted in poetry, and is executed with astonishing brevity, perspicuity, and force. This image of the state of the dead is taken from the Eastern custom of burying, those at least of higher rank, in large sepulchral vaults hewn in the rock. We must form to ourselves an idea of an immense subterraneous vault, a vast gloomy cavern, all round the sides of which there are cells to receive the dead bodies; here the deceased monarchs lie, in a distinguished sort of state, each on his couch, with his arms beside him and his sword at his head. (See Ezek. 32:27.) These illustrious shades rise at once from their couches, as from their thrones, and advance to the entrance of the cavern, to meet the king of Babylon and to taunt him on his fall. Bp. Lowth. 12. The word hēilēl, rendered Lucifer in the Authorized Version, from the root halal, to shine, here describes the king of Babylon as a shining morning star, to be cast down suddenly from the height of worldly splendor. The frequent application of the words to Satan, and his fall from heaven, is certainly not the direct and proper meaning of the passage. But the analogy is so close between the character of the proud king of Babylon and the lost archangel, the king over all the children of pride, between this political judgment and the revealed warning of our Lord Himself (Luke 10:18), as fully to vindicate this frequent use of the words from the charge of being a gross perversion of the text. The resemblance is very full and complete, both in sin and punishment, between the human and angelic leaders in pride and rebellion, and is fully confirmed by the later prophecies of the New Testament (Rev. 12:9-12; 20:3, 10). Birks.—Tertullian and other fathers, Gregory the Great, and the scholastic commentators, regarding Luke 10:18 as an explanation of this verse, apply it to the fall of Satan, from which has arisen the popular perversion of the beautiful name Lucifer, to signify the devil. Erroneous as this exposition is, it scarcely deserves the severe reprehension which some later commentators give it who receive with great indulgence exegetical hypotheses much more absurd. A. 13. The fall of this proud king was the more fearful by reason of his lofty and even blasphemous pretensions and aspirations. Not satisfied with surpassing everything human and eclipsing all the glory of earth, he had said in his heart, "I will ascend even to heaven itself; I will set my throne above the very stars of God; I will be like the Most High!" The remains of his palace are to-day a huge mass of ruins, sufficing, however, to show that when in their glory they lacked nothing that human genius and the resources of the conqueror of the world could command. 18-20. To heighten his infamy, the prophet represents him as lying unburied, or, if once buried, as being disinterred, exposed, and denied the honors of a decent burial. Through all the ancient world, Jewish or heathen, no infamy or misfortune could exceed that of being denied the honors of interment. Here the king of Babylon is put in contrast with other kings. They all lie in state, every one in his sepulchre, in the "house" appointed for all the living, and often in magnificent tombs, fitted up with immense labor and cost, and with the utmost display; but Chaldea's proud and cruel king is thrust out as a thing despised, even as the clothing of slain men all bloodstained and polluted, like a carcass to be trodden under every foot. He goes to this doom of infamy because he has destroyed his own land, and slain his own people; his haughty and cruel administration having proved the ruin not of his people only, but of his country, their "land." The direct enumeration of the points and features of his infamy closes off with a general principle or law of the moral universe: The race of evil-doers shall never be in honor. The posterity of those who are mighty only to do wrong, who have aspirations only in the line of supreme selfishness, must go down to utter infamy. H. C. 21. The dramatic form of the prediction is repeatedly shifted, so that the words of the triumphant Jews, of the dead, of the prophet, and of God Himself, succeed each other insensibly, without any attempt to make the points of transition prominent. A.—Here the prophet lays aside the dramatic figures of the song, and speaks in his own person, denouncing the utter extinction of the guilty dynasty. "After the storming of Babylon by the Medes, the kingdom and royal house, established by Nabopolassar, vanished entirely from history. The last shoot of the royal family was slain as a child of conspirators." Birks. 22. So was the event. From the first blow struck by Cyrus in the conquest of the city, that kingdom in fact never rose again to power; never regained possession of its former territory; never overspread the earth with its dependent subject cities. This special and striking prophecy that no name or remnant, son or nephew of that fated dynasty should ever rise again to power, has been definitely and undeniably fulfilled. No scion of that royal house ever again sat on the throne of Babylon. Reverting to the strain of these predictions of ruin on the proud monarch of Babylon as culminating in his doom in Sheol, it will be seen that the prophet not only alludes to this after life as a terrible retribution for his sins, but he makes this the fundamental idea of the whole scene. No other one thought is so central; none other so pervades the whole description as this—Retribution for human pride and impiety toward God: Retribution for oppression and wrong toward man. It must be admitted that such and so much prominence must fairly represent both the doctrine taught by the Spirit of God and the views held by the good men of that age, in regard to the state of the wicked after death. H. C. 24-27. There is here a climax which marks strongly the unity of the whole. For in verse 21 we have a prophetic warning; in verses 22, 23 its confirmation by the Lord of Hosts Himself; and here, in verses 24, 28, not only the voice of the Lord of Hosts, but His solemn oath predictive of coming judgment. All creatures are challenged to show whether they can reverse His firm decree or turn back His almighty hand. The warnings and burdens of the more distant future are used to deepen and confirm the certainty of that great visitation, which was nearer at hand, and forms the main central thought in these earlier prophecies. The sore judgment on the Assyrian would also be a gracious reprieve to the kingdom of Judah before its fall, a typical redemption, a pledge of the full and final deliverance in days to come. Birks.—This passage predicts briefly the destruction of the Assyrian army in the Lord's land. The locality "upon my mountains" corresponds with the prophetic account in chap. 10:28-34, the mountainous region near Jerusalem. It is introduced here to impress strongly the fact that what the Lord purposes He surely performs. Let this prediction against Assyria stand as a sample—an illustrative case—of the certain connection between prediction and fulfilment; between the Lord's purpose and its execution. In the case of the Assyrian hosts, the fatal blow followed close upon the prophetic word. After it fell, the example would stand before the nation as a solemn voucher for the truth of these predicted judgments on Babylon. Nor is the analogy restricted to the single point of certain fulfilment upon God's enemies. It covered also another point: deliverance to God's people. When that blow fell on Assyria, it struck the yoke from the neck of the Lord's people, and His burden from their back. So should His fatal blow on great Babylon bring speedy deliverance and restoration to His people. H. C. 26,27. The prophet now explains his previous conjunction of events so remote as the Assyrian overthrow and the fall of Babylon, by declaring both to be partial executions of one general decree against all hostile and opposing powers. This is the purpose that is purposed upon all the earth, and this the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. Here Gill is felicitous in paraphrase—"There's nothing comes to pass but He has purposed, and everything He has purposed comes to pass." A.—The same hand of power and justice that is to be stretched out against the Assyrian for invading the people of God shall be "stretched out upon all the nations" that do likewise. It is still true, and will be ever so, "Cursed is he that curses God's Israel" (Num. 24:9). God will be an enemy to His people's enemies (Ex. 23:22). H. 32 none standeth aloof at his appointed times. What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation? That the LORD hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of his people take refuge. 15 : 1 The burden of Moab. For in a night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought; for in a night Kir of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought. He is gone up to Bayith, and to Dibon, to the high places, to weep: Moab howleth over Nebo, and over Medeba: on all their heads is baldness, every beard is cut off. In their streets they gird themselves with sackcloth: on their housetops, and in their broad places, every one howleth, weeping abundantly. And Heshbon crieth out, and Elealeh; their voice is heard even unto Jahaz: therefore the armed men of Moab cry aloud; his soul trembleth within him. My heart crieth out for Moab; her nobles flee unto Zoar, to Eglath-shelishiyah: for by the ascent of Luhith with weeping they go up; for in the way of Horonaim they raise up a cry of destruction. For the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the grass is withered away, the tender grass faileth, there is no green thing. Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away to the brook of the willows. For the cry is gone round about the borders of Moab; the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof unto Beer-elim. For the waters of Dimon are full of blood: for I will bring yet more upon Dimon, a lion upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the remnant of the land. 16 : 1 Send ye the lambs for the ruler of the land from Sela which is toward the wilderness, unto the mount of the daughter of Zion. For it shall be that, as wandering birds, as a scattered nest, so shall the daughters of Moab be at the fords of Arnon. Give counsel, execute judgement; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday: hide the outcasts; bewray not the wanderer. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; as for Moab, be thou a covert to him from the face of the spoiler: for the extortioner is brought to nought, spoiling ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land. And a throne shall be established in mercy, and one shall sit thereon in truth, in the tent of David; judging, and seeking judgement, and swift to do righteousness. 6. We have heard of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud; even of his arrogancy, and his pride, and his wrath; his boastings are nought. Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab, every one shall howl: for the raisin-cakes of Kir-hareseth shall ye mourn, utterly stricken. For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah; the lords of the nations have broken down the choice plants thereof; they reached even unto Jazer, they wandered into the wilderness; her branches were spread abroad, they passed over the sea. Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen. And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the fruitful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise: no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; I have made the vintage shout to cease. Wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kir-heres. And it shall come to pass, when Moab presenteth himself, when he wearieth himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, that he shall not prevail. 13,14. This is the word that the LORD spake concerning Moab in time past. But now the LORD hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and of no account. 17 : 1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts. 4. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches 7 of a fruitful tree, saith the LORD, the God of Israel. In that day shall a man look unto his 8 Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall he have respect to that which his fingers have 9 made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images. In that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the 10 children of Israel: and it shall be a desolation. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salva- tion, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength; therefore thou plantest pleas- 11 ant plants, and settest it with strange slips: in the day of thy planting thou hedgest it in, and in the morning thou makest thy seed to blossom: but the harvest fleeth away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow. 12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples, which roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing 13 of nations, that rush like the rushing of mighty waters! The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the 14 storm. At eventide behold terror; and before the morning they are not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us. THE burden of Babylon, the main adversary of Judah, is followed by three against the bor- der States on three sides of Palestine; and all these have a common character, agreeing with the date prefixed to the first of them. Sore judgment from Assyrian spoilers was at hand, but Zion was to prove a safe and sure refuge. Birks. 14:28-32. "This burden" is the special prediction of calamity on Philistia. As to the historical allusions in this passage, Palestina is admitted to be the ancient equivalent of Philis- tia, the country of the Philistines, lying along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and on the southwest border of Canaan. The Philis- tines came originally from Egypt; settled in Caphtor (Jer. 47:4—Caphtor probably meaning Crete), and thence took possession of the sea- coast of Canaan. "The rod that smote thee" is the power of Judah; "broken" when for the sins of Ahaz "the Lord brought Judah low," for "He had made Judah naked"—i.e., defence- less, before her enemies. During the reign of Ahaz the Philistines had invaded the cities of the low country, had taken several, and dwelt there. (See 2 Chron. 28:18, 19.) But let not Philistia rejoice in these transient successes against Judah. A more formidable power will rise against her in the Assyrian hosts. They will desolate her country, and bring final relief to Judah from the Philistines. 32. Philistia is now fallen, and Zion has no more to fear from this ancient and long formid- able foe. What now shall one answer the messengers who may come from foreign nations to ask after the fortunes of Israel? This, that the Lord Jehovah hath laid the foundations of Zion, and His poorest, feeblest children may trust His care and love to protect her to the end. The Lord will never forsake the Zion which Himself has founded! Chaps. 15 and 16 are in subject one—a prophe- cy of calamity on Moab. In most points this prophecy bears a very close resemblance to Jer. 48, which treats of the fall of Moab. Ezekiel makes a much more brief allusion to this event (25:8-11). Moab, whose country lies on the east side of the southern half of the Dead Sea, with Edom on its southern border, and Ammon on its northern, was, like Ammon, descended from Lot. Together with Ammon and Edom, he was spared from destruction when God gave to Israel for a possession his neighbors, Sihon and Og, of the Amorites, and the nations of Canaan. At some periods Moab seems to have held toward Israel relations half fraternal; yet sometimes they were hostile, and again tribu- tary. H. C. Chap. 15 is occupied with a description of the general grief, occasioned by the conquest of the chief towns and the desolation of the country at large. Its chief peculiarities of form are the numerous names of places introduced, and the strong personification by which they are repre- sented as grieving for the public calamity. The chapter closes with an intimation of still greater evils. A. 1. The verse states that in a single night the two chief cities of Moab are carried by assault and utterly ruined—brought to a dead silence. Ar Moab was her capital, situated on the south side of the river Arnon. Kir-Mob, a few miles southeast from Ar, was renowned for its mili- tary strength. Its ruins are still identified at Kerak. The fall of these two cities sealed the doom of Moab. H. C. 5. The prophet shares in the sorrow he describes, so vividly is he possessed by the awful picture the Spirit sets before his eyes. In their alarm at the fierce invader, the Moabites are seen hurrying toward Zoar, their extreme southern border. Birks. Chap. 16 opens with an exhortation to the Moabites to seek protection from their enemies by renewing their allegiance to the house of David, accompanied by an intimation that this prospect of deliverance would not in fact be realized (verses 1-6). From this transient gleam of hope the prophecy reverts to a description of the general desolation and distress, in form almost identical with that in the foregoing chapter (verses 7-12). The prophecy then closes with a specification of the time at which it was to be fulfilled (verses 13, 14). A. 1. In this time of her distress Moab needed the protection of Judah, and felt this need. Hence in this verse the people are supposed to suggest to one another, or, as the sense may be, the prophet suggests to them, the resumption of this tribute in the hope of re-establishing friendly relations. Come and let us again send lambs to the legitimate ruler of our land, "and to the mount of the daughter of Zion." "From Selah." "Selah" is the Hebrew word for rock, corresponding to Petra in Greek, both being current names for the famed capital of Edom. This city was mainly built in a deep ravine between the rocks, many of its buildings being hewn from the rock itself. It is named here, we may suppose, either as the place to obtain the lambs, it being a great mart of trade; or as the point where the Moabites, fleeing south, were largely convened. H. C. 6. The prophecy enters here on a new stage, commencing with Moab's sin, and depicting their fate in still more elegiac strains. Delitzsch. 8-12. The people of Moab are here described by a beautiful and expressive figure, taken from the vine, for the culture of which they were famous, and which had ministered to their habits of sensual indulgence. This "vine of Sibmah," a chief seat of the vine culture, spreads its choice tendrils on all sides toward the borders of the land, to Jazer northward, into the wilderness on the east and south, and across the Dead Sea westward. But the Assyrian princes and captains, "the lords of the nations," would break down and destroy its flourishing branches. Their vintage mirth would be exchanged for the war shout of victorious enemies and loud wailings of distress. The prophet ends by recording his deep grief for these sorrows of Moab, and describes their vain resort to senseless idols for help in their time of calamity. Birks. Chap. 17. The most satisfactory view of the whole passage is that it was meant to be a prophetic picture of the doom which awaited the enemies of Judah, and that while many of its expressions admit of a general application, some traits in the description are derived from particular invasions and attacks. Thus Syria and Ephraim are expressly mentioned in the first part, while the terms of the last three verses are more appropriate to the slaughter of the Assyrian host; but as this is not explicitly referred to, there is no need of regarding it as the exclusive subject even of that passage. The eighteenth chapter may then be treated as a part of the same context. In the first part of chap. 17 the prophet represents the kingdoms of Syria and Ephraim as sharing the same fate, both being brought to desolation (verses 1-3). He then describes the desolation of Ephraim especially, by the figures of a harvest and a gathering of olives, in which little is left to be afterward gleaned (verses 4-6). As the effect of these judgments, he describes the people as renouncing their idols and returning to Jehovah (verses 7, 8). He then resumes his description of the threatened desolation, and ascribes it to the general oblivion of God and cultivation of strange doctrines and practices (verses 9-11). This last might be regarded as a simple repetition of the threatenings in verses 4-6, interrupted by the promise in verses 7, 8. But as the desolation of Syria and Israel was actually effected by successive strokes or stages, as Shalmaneser accomplished what Tiglath-pileser had begun, and as history records a partial conversion of the Israelites from their apostasy between these two attacks, it is altogether natural to understand the prophecy as exhibiting this sequence of events. In the close of the chapter, the prophet first describes a gathering of nations, and then their dispersion by Divine rebuke, which he declares to be the doom of all who attack or oppress God's people (verses 12-14). A. 2. The prophet predicts that these cities shall be abandoned of their people, probably by removal into captivity, and their ruins and forsaken mansions be appropriated by shepherds for their flocks. There should be no man to claim these forsaken houses; none to molest the flocks folded there. 3. Fortified cities should cease from Ephraim and royalty from Damascus and Syria. The glory of Syria and Damascus, their greatness and prestige as a kingdom, shall disappear, even as in the case of Israel when the Assyrian cast her utterly down. 4-6. The fall of the kingdom of Israel before the Assyrian arms would leave only a few scattering inhabitants, even as a few ears are left when the grain harvest is gathered, or a few clusters of the grape or the olive, far out in the extreme boughs. The valley of Rephaim lay southwest from Jerusalem toward Bethlehem, and is specified here as being near and within sight from the city walls. As if the prophet would say, As you of the city have often seen in the valley of Rephaim. H. C. 7. Some refer this verse partially or wholly to the times of the New Testament, others more correctly to the effect of the preceding judgments on the Ten Tribes of Israel. It is matter of history that after the Assyrian conquest and the general deportation of the people, many accepted Hezekiah's invitation and returned to the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem (2 Chron. 30:11); and this reformation is alluded to as still continued in the times of Josiah (2 Chron. 34:9). At the same time the words may be intended to suggest that a similar effect might be expected to result from similar causes in later times. 8. The positive declaration of the preceding verse is negatively expressed in this, with a particular mention of the objects which had usurped the place of God. A. 10,11. The prophet now turns his voice of warning directly against Israel, whose league with Syria had led them so far astray. He names the true source of their troubles, and denounces the sure failure of all their schemes to recover political greatness, while forsaking the covenant of their God. The pleasant plants and strange slips are those worldly alliances and expedients, whereby they hoped to regain their lost honor and greatness. Instead of the pleasant crop, so diligently tended, being safely housed, the trees themselves should wither and be cut down, and then be piled into a heap, to be burned up with fire. Birks. 12,13. The vast Assyrian hosts, their sound like the deep roar of the ocean; their rushing like the mighty waters, come on as if they would sweep our beloved Zion utterly away. But God from on high shall rebuke them. One word from His lips scatters them like the chaff on the hills of Judea before the wind, and like a rolling thing (the light thistle down) before the whirlwind! H. C. 14. The abrupt form of the sentence adds to the force of the description. At eventide there was trouble in the mighty camp of Assyria, when the commission of the destroying angel began. Before the morning "he is no more," the work is done. "When they arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." "Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty! just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of nations!" Birks. 14:28 In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden. 29. Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of thee, because the rod that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a basilisk, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent. 30 And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety: and I will 31 kill thy root with famine, and thy remnant shall be slain. Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou art melted away, O Philistia, all of thee; for there cometh a smoke out of the north, and 14:1-23. The destruction of Babylon is again foretold, and more explicitly connected with the deliverance of Israel from bondage. After a general assurance of God's favor to His people, and of an exchange of conditions between them and their oppressors, they are represented as joining in a song of triumph over their fallen enemy. In this song, which is universally admitted to possess the highest literary merit, they describe the earth as again reposing from its agitation and affliction, and then breaking forth into a shout of exultation, in which the very trees of the forest join (verses 1-8). By a still bolder figure, the unseen world is represented as perturbed at the approach of the fallen tyrant, who is met, as he enters, by the kings already there, amazed to find him sunk as low as themselves and from a still greater height of actual elevation and of impious pretensions, which are strongly contrasted with his present condition, as deprived not only of regal honors, but of decent burial (verses 9-20). The threatening is then extended to the whole race, and the prophecy closes as before with a prediction of the total desolation of Babylon (verses 21-23). 1. This verse declares God's purpose in destroying the Babylonian power. For Jehovah will pity (or have mercy upon) Jacob, and will again choose Israel and cause them to rest on their (own) land—and the stranger shall be joined to them—and they shall be attached to the house of Jacob. Jacob and Israel are here used for the whole race. Umbreit correctly understands this not as a mere promise of temporal deliverance and increase to Israel as a nation, but as an assurance that the preservation of the chosen people was a necessary means for the fulfilment of God's purposes of mercy to mankind in general. The literal fulfilment of the last clause in its primary sense is clear from such statements as the one in Esther 8:17. 3. In this verse and the following context the prophet, in order to reduce the general promise of the foregoing verse to a more graphic and impressive form, recurs to the downfall of Babylon, as the beginning of the series of deliverances which he had predicted, and describes the effect upon those most concerned, by putting into the mouth of Israel a song of triumph over their oppressor. This is universally admitted to be one of the finest specimens of Hebrew and indeed of ancient composition. 4. That thou shalt raise this song over the king of Babylon and say, How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden (city) ceased! The king here introduced is an ideal personage, whose downfall represents that of the Babylonian monarchy. 7. At rest, quiet, is the whole earth. They burst forth into singing (or a shout of joy). There is no inconsistency between the clauses, as the first is not descriptive of silence, but of tranquillity and rest. The land had rest is a phrase employed in the Book of Judges (e.g., 5:31) to describe the condition of the country after a great national deliverance. A.—Babylon had subdued all the great powers of Western Asia and Northern Africa—i.e., the whole earth as known to the Jews. When she fell they all breathed freely, and felt themselves at rest. Joyful in the thought of no more servitude to a power so oppressive, they break forth in exultant song. H. C. 8. Not only the earth and its inhabitants take part in this triumphant song or shout, but the trees of the forest. Also the cypresses rejoice with respect to thee—the cedars of Lebanon—(saying) now that thou art fallen, the feller shall not come up against us. Now that we are safe from Thee, we fear no other enemy. The only meaning of these figures that seems consistent with a pure taste is the one proposed by Calvin, who supposes this to be merely a part of one great picture, representing universal nature as rejoicing. The symbolical and mechanical interpretations are as much out of place here as they would be in a thousand splendid passages of classical and modern poetry, where no one yet has ever dreamed of applying them. Both here and elsewhere in the sacred books, inanimate Nature is personified, and speaks herself instead of being merely spoken of. 9. The bold personification is now extended from the earth and its forests to the invisible or lower world, the inhabitants of which are represented as aroused at the approach of the new victim and as coming forth to meet him. Hell from beneath is moved (in commotion) for thee to meet thee (at) thy coming—it rouses for thee the giants (the gigantic shades or spectres), all the chief ones of the earth—it raises from their thrones all the kings of the nations. A.—The regions of the dead are laid open, and Hades is represented as rousing up the shades of the departed monarchs; they rise from their thrones to meet the king of Babylon at his coming, and insult him on his being reduced to the same estate of impotence and dissolution with themselves. This is one of the boldest figures that ever was attempted in poetry, and is executed with astonishing brevity, perspicuity, and force. This image of the state of the dead is taken from the Eastern custom of burying, those at least of higher rank, in large sepulchral vaults hewn in the rock. We must form to ourselves an idea of an immense subterraneous vault, a vast gloomy cavern, all round the sides of which there are cells to receive the dead bodies; here the deceased monarchs lie, in a distinguished sort of state, each on his couch, with his arms beside him and his sword at his head. (See Ezek. 32:27.) These illustrious shades rise at once from their couches, as from their thrones, and advance to the entrance of the cavern, to meet the king of Babylon and to taunt him on his fall. Bp. Lowth. 12. The word hēilēl, rendered Lucifer in the Authorized Version, from the root halal, to shine, here describes the king of Babylon as a shining morning star, to be cast down suddenly from the height of worldly splendor. The frequent application of the words to Satan, and his fall from heaven, is certainly not the direct and proper meaning of the passage. But the analogy is so close between the character of the proud king of Babylon and the lost archangel, the king over all the children of pride, between this political judgment and the revealed warning of our Lord Himself (Luke 10:18), as fully to vindicate this frequent use of the words from the charge of being a gross perversion of the text. The resemblance is very full and complete, both in sin and punishment, between the human and angelic leaders in pride and rebellion, and is fully confirmed by the later prophecies of the New Testament (Rev. 12:9-12; 20:3, 10). Birks.—Tertullian and other fathers, Gregory the Great, and the scholastic commentators, regarding Luke 10:18 as an explanation of this verse, apply it to the fall of Satan, from which has arisen the popular perversion of the beautiful name Lucifer, to signify the devil. Erroneous as this exposition is, it scarcely deserves the severe reprehension which some later commentators give it who receive with great indulgence exegetical hypotheses much more absurd. A. 13. The fall of this proud king was the more fearful by reason of his lofty and even blasphemous pretensions and aspirations. Not satisfied with surpassing everything human and eclipsing all the glory of earth, he had said in his heart, "I will ascend even to heaven itself; I will set my throne above the very stars of God; I will be like the Most High!" The remains of his palace are to-day a huge mass of ruins, sufficing, however, to show that when in their glory they lacked nothing that human genius and the resources of the conqueror of the world could command. 18-20. To heighten his infamy, the prophet represents him as lying unburied, or, if once buried, as being disinterred, exposed, and denied the honors of a decent burial. Through all the ancient world, Jewish or heathen, no infamy or misfortune could exceed that of being denied the honors of interment. Here the king of Babylon is put in contrast with other kings. They all lie in state, every one in his sepulchre, in the "house" appointed for all the living, and often in magnificent tombs, fitted up with immense labor and cost, and with the utmost display; but Chaldea's proud and cruel king is thrust out as a thing despised, even as the clothing of slain men all bloodstained and polluted, like a carcass to be trodden under every foot. He goes to this doom of infamy because he has destroyed his own land, and slain his own people; his haughty and cruel administration having proved the ruin not of his people only, but of his country, their "land." The direct enumeration of the points and features of his infamy closes off with a general principle or law of the moral universe: The race of evil-doers shall never be in honor. The posterity of those who are mighty only to do wrong, who have aspirations only in the line of supreme selfishness, must go down to utter infamy. H. C. 21. The dramatic form of the prediction is repeatedly shifted, so that the words of the triumphant Jews, of the dead, of the prophet, and of God Himself, succeed each other insensibly, without any attempt to make the points of transition prominent. A.—Here the prophet lays aside the dramatic figures of the song, and speaks in his own person, denouncing the utter extinction of the guilty dynasty. "After the storming of Babylon by the Medes, the kingdom and royal house, established by Nabopolassar, vanished entirely from history. The last shoot of the royal family was slain as a child of conspirators." Birks. 22. So was the event. From the first blow struck by Cyrus in the conquest of the city, that kingdom in fact never rose again to power; never regained possession of its former territory; never overspread the earth with its dependent subject cities. This special and striking prophecy that no name or remnant, son or nephew of that fated dynasty should ever rise again to power, has been definitely and undeniably fulfilled. No scion of that royal house ever again sat on the throne of Babylon. Reverting to the strain of these predictions of ruin on the proud monarch of Babylon as culminating in his doom in Sheol, it will be seen that the prophet not only alludes to this after life as a terrible retribution for his sins, but he makes this the fundamental idea of the whole scene. No other one thought is so central; none other so pervades the whole description as this—Retribution for human pride and impiety toward God: Retribution for oppression and wrong toward man. It must be admitted that such and so much prominence must fairly represent both the doctrine taught by the Spirit of God and the views held by the good men of that age, in regard to the state of the wicked after death. H. C. 24-27. There is here a climax which marks strongly the unity of the whole. For in verse 21 we have a prophetic warning; in verses 22, 23 its confirmation by the Lord of Hosts Himself; and here, in verses 24, 28, not only the voice of the Lord of Hosts, but His solemn oath predictive of coming judgment. All creatures are challenged to show whether they can reverse His firm decree or turn back His almighty hand. The warnings and burdens of the more distant future are used to deepen and confirm the certainty of that great visitation, which was nearer at hand, and forms the main central thought in these earlier prophecies. The sore judgment on the Assyrian would also be a gracious reprieve to the kingdom of Judah before its fall, a typical redemption, a pledge of the full and final deliverance in days to come. Birks.—This passage predicts briefly the destruction of the Assyrian army in the Lord's land. The locality "upon my mountains" corresponds with the prophetic account in chap. 10:28-34, the mountainous region near Jerusalem. It is introduced here to impress strongly the fact that what the Lord purposes He surely performs. Let this prediction against Assyria stand as a sample—an illustrative case—of the certain connection between prediction and fulfilment; between the Lord's purpose and its execution. In the case of the Assyrian hosts, the fatal blow followed close upon the prophetic word. After it fell, the example would stand before the nation as a solemn voucher for the truth of these predicted judgments on Babylon. Nor is the analogy restricted to the single point of certain fulfilment upon God's enemies. It covered also another point: deliverance to God's people. When that blow fell on Assyria, it struck the yoke from the neck of the Lord's people, and His burden from their back. So should His fatal blow on great Babylon bring speedy deliverance and restoration to His people. H. C. 26,27. The prophet now explains his previous conjunction of events so remote as the Assyrian overthrow and the fall of Babylon, by declaring both to be partial executions of one general decree against all hostile and opposing powers. This is the purpose that is purposed upon all the earth, and this the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. Here Gill is felicitous in paraphrase—"There's nothing comes to pass but He has purposed, and everything He has purposed comes to pass." A.—The same hand of power and justice that is to be stretched out against the Assyrian for invading the people of God shall be "stretched out upon all the nations" that do likewise. It is still true, and will be ever so, "Cursed is he that curses God's Israel" (Num. 24:9). God will be an enemy to His people's enemies (Ex. 23:22). H. 32 none standeth aloof at his appointed times. What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation? That the LORD hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of his people take refuge. 15 : 1 The burden of Moab. For in a night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought; for in a night Kir of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought. He is gone up to Bayith, and to Dibon, to the high places, to weep: Moab howleth over Nebo, and over Medeba: on all their heads is baldness, every beard is cut off. In their streets they gird themselves with sackcloth: on their housetops, and in their broad places, every one howleth, weeping abundantly. And Heshbon crieth out, and Elealeh; their voice is heard even unto Jahaz: therefore the armed men of Moab cry aloud; his soul trembleth within him. My heart crieth out for Moab; her nobles flee unto Zoar, to Eglath-shelishiyah: for by the ascent of Luhith with weeping they go up; for in the way of Horonaim they raise up a cry of destruction. For the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the grass is withered away, the tender grass faileth, there is no green thing. Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away to the brook of the willows. For the cry is gone round about the borders of Moab; the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof unto Beer-elim. For the waters of Dimon are full of blood: for I will bring yet more upon Dimon, a lion upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the remnant of the land. 16 : 1 Send ye the lambs for the ruler of the land from Sela which is toward the wilderness, unto the mount of the daughter of Zion. For it shall be that, as wandering birds, as a scattered nest, so shall the daughters of Moab be at the fords of Arnon. Give counsel, execute judgement; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday: hide the outcasts; bewray not the wanderer. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; as for Moab, be thou a covert to him from the face of the spoiler: for the extortioner is brought to nought, spoiling ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land. And a throne shall be established in mercy, and one shall sit thereon in truth, in the tent of David; judging, and seeking judgement, and swift to do righteousness. 6. We have heard of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud; even of his arrogancy, and his pride, and his wrath; his boastings are nought. Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab, every one shall howl: for the raisin-cakes of Kir-hareseth shall ye mourn, utterly stricken. For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah; the lords of the nations have broken down the choice plants thereof; they reached even unto Jazer, they wandered into the wilderness; her branches were spread abroad, they passed over the sea. Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen. And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the fruitful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise: no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; I have made the vintage shout to cease. Wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kir-heres. And it shall come to pass, when Moab presenteth himself, when he wearieth himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, that he shall not prevail. 13,14. This is the word that the LORD spake concerning Moab in time past. But now the LORD hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and of no account. 17 : 1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts. 4. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches 7 of a fruitful tree, saith the LORD, the God of Israel. In that day shall a man look unto his 8 Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall he have respect to that which his fingers have 9 made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images. In that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the 10 children of Israel: and it shall be a desolation. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salva- tion, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength; therefore thou plantest pleas- 11 ant plants, and settest it with strange slips: in the day of thy planting thou hedgest it in, and in the morning thou makest thy seed to blossom: but the harvest fleeth away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow. 12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples, which roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing 13 of nations, that rush like the rushing of mighty waters! The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the 14 storm. At eventide behold terror; and before the morning they are not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us. THE burden of Babylon, the main adversary of Judah, is followed by three against the bor- der States on three sides of Palestine; and all these have a common character, agreeing with the date prefixed to the first of them. Sore judgment from Assyrian spoilers was at hand, but Zion was to prove a safe and sure refuge. Birks. 14:28-32. "This burden" is the special prediction of calamity on Philistia. As to the historical allusions in this passage, Palestina is admitted to be the ancient equivalent of Philis- tia, the country of the Philistines, lying along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and on the southwest border of Canaan. The Philis- tines came originally from Egypt; settled in Caphtor (Jer. 47:4—Caphtor probably meaning Crete), and thence took possession of the sea- coast of Canaan. "The rod that smote thee" is the power of Judah; "broken" when for the sins of Ahaz "the Lord brought Judah low," for "He had made Judah naked"—i.e., defence- less, before her enemies. During the reign of Ahaz the Philistines had invaded the cities of the low country, had taken several, and dwelt there. (See 2 Chron. 28:18, 19.) But let not Philistia rejoice in these transient successes against Judah. A more formidable power will rise against her in the Assyrian hosts. They will desolate her country, and bring final relief to Judah from the Philistines. 32. Philistia is now fallen, and Zion has no more to fear from this ancient and long formid- able foe. What now shall one answer the messengers who may come from foreign nations to ask after the fortunes of Israel? This, that the Lord Jehovah hath laid the foundations of Zion, and His poorest, feeblest children may trust His care and love to protect her to the end. The Lord will never forsake the Zion which Himself has founded! Chaps. 15 and 16 are in subject one—a prophe- cy of calamity on Moab. In most points this prophecy bears a very close resemblance to Jer. 48, which treats of the fall of Moab. Ezekiel makes a much more brief allusion to this event (25:8-11). Moab, whose country lies on the east side of the southern half of the Dead Sea, with Edom on its southern border, and Ammon on its northern, was, like Ammon, descended from Lot. Together with Ammon and Edom, he was spared from destruction when God gave to Israel for a possession his neighbors, Sihon and Og, of the Amorites, and the nations of Canaan. At some periods Moab seems to have held toward Israel relations half fraternal; yet sometimes they were hostile, and again tribu- tary. H. C. Chap. 15 is occupied with a description of the general grief, occasioned by the conquest of the chief towns and the desolation of the country at large. Its chief peculiarities of form are the numerous names of places introduced, and the strong personification by which they are repre- sented as grieving for the public calamity. The chapter closes with an intimation of still greater evils. A. 1. The verse states that in a single night the two chief cities of Moab are carried by assault and utterly ruined—brought to a dead silence. Ar Moab was her capital, situated on the south side of the river Arnon. Kir-Mob, a few miles southeast from Ar, was renowned for its mili- tary strength. Its ruins are still identified at Kerak. The fall of these two cities sealed the doom of Moab. H. C. 5. The prophet shares in the sorrow he describes, so vividly is he possessed by the awful picture the Spirit sets before his eyes. In their alarm at the fierce invader, the Moabites are seen hurrying toward Zoar, their extreme southern border. Birks. Chap. 16 opens with an exhortation to the Moabites to seek protection from their enemies by renewing their allegiance to the house of David, accompanied by an intimation that this prospect of deliverance would not in fact be realized (verses 1-6). From this transient gleam of hope the prophecy reverts to a description of the general desolation and distress, in form almost identical with that in the foregoing chapter (verses 7-12). The prophecy then closes with a specification of the time at which it was to be fulfilled (verses 13, 14). A. 1. In this time of her distress Moab needed the protection of Judah, and felt this need. Hence in this verse the people are supposed to suggest to one another, or, as the sense may be, the prophet suggests to them, the resumption of this tribute in the hope of re-establishing friendly relations. Come and let us again send lambs to the legitimate ruler of our land, "and to the mount of the daughter of Zion." "From Selah." "Selah" is the Hebrew word for rock, corresponding to Petra in Greek, both being current names for the famed capital of Edom. This city was mainly built in a deep ravine between the rocks, many of its buildings being hewn from the rock itself. It is named here, we may suppose, either as the place to obtain the lambs, it being a great mart of trade; or as the point where the Moabites, fleeing south, were largely convened. H. C. 6. The prophecy enters here on a new stage, commencing with Moab's sin, and depicting their fate in still more elegiac strains. Delitzsch. 8-12. The people of Moab are here described by a beautiful and expressive figure, taken from the vine, for the culture of which they were famous, and which had ministered to their habits of sensual indulgence. This "vine of Sibmah," a chief seat of the vine culture, spreads its choice tendrils on all sides toward the borders of the land, to Jazer northward, into the wilderness on the east and south, and across the Dead Sea westward. But the Assyrian princes and captains, "the lords of the nations," would break down and destroy its flourishing branches. Their vintage mirth would be exchanged for the war shout of victorious enemies and loud wailings of distress. The prophet ends by recording his deep grief for these sorrows of Moab, and describes their vain resort to senseless idols for help in their time of calamity. Birks. Chap. 17. The most satisfactory view of the whole passage is that it was meant to be a prophetic picture of the doom which awaited the enemies of Judah, and that while many of its expressions admit of a general application, some traits in the description are derived from particular invasions and attacks. Thus Syria and Ephraim are expressly mentioned in the first part, while the terms of the last three verses are more appropriate to the slaughter of the Assyrian host; but as this is not explicitly referred to, there is no need of regarding it as the exclusive subject even of that passage. The eighteenth chapter may then be treated as a part of the same context. In the first part of chap. 17 the prophet represents the kingdoms of Syria and Ephraim as sharing the same fate, both being brought to desolation (verses 1-3). He then describes the desolation of Ephraim especially, by the figures of a harvest and a gathering of olives, in which little is left to be afterward gleaned (verses 4-6). As the effect of these judgments, he describes the people as renouncing their idols and returning to Jehovah (verses 7, 8). He then resumes his description of the threatened desolation, and ascribes it to the general oblivion of God and cultivation of strange doctrines and practices (verses 9-11). This last might be regarded as a simple repetition of the threatenings in verses 4-6, interrupted by the promise in verses 7, 8. But as the desolation of Syria and Israel was actually effected by successive strokes or stages, as Shalmaneser accomplished what Tiglath-pileser had begun, and as history records a partial conversion of the Israelites from their apostasy between these two attacks, it is altogether natural to understand the prophecy as exhibiting this sequence of events. In the close of the chapter, the prophet first describes a gathering of nations, and then their dispersion by Divine rebuke, which he declares to be the doom of all who attack or oppress God's people (verses 12-14). A. 2. The prophet predicts that these cities shall be abandoned of their people, probably by removal into captivity, and their ruins and forsaken mansions be appropriated by shepherds for their flocks. There should be no man to claim these forsaken houses; none to molest the flocks folded there. 3. Fortified cities should cease from Ephraim and royalty from Damascus and Syria. The glory of Syria and Damascus, their greatness and prestige as a kingdom, shall disappear, even as in the case of Israel when the Assyrian cast her utterly down. 4-6. The fall of the kingdom of Israel before the Assyrian arms would leave only a few scattering inhabitants, even as a few ears are left when the grain harvest is gathered, or a few clusters of the grape or the olive, far out in the extreme boughs. The valley of Rephaim lay southwest from Jerusalem toward Bethlehem, and is specified here as being near and within sight from the city walls. As if the prophet would say, As you of the city have often seen in the valley of Rephaim. H. C. 7. Some refer this verse partially or wholly to the times of the New Testament, others more correctly to the effect of the preceding judgments on the Ten Tribes of Israel. It is matter of history that after the Assyrian conquest and the general deportation of the people, many accepted Hezekiah's invitation and returned to the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem (2 Chron. 30:11); and this reformation is alluded to as still continued in the times of Josiah (2 Chron. 34:9). At the same time the words may be intended to suggest that a similar effect might be expected to result from similar causes in later times. 8. The positive declaration of the preceding verse is negatively expressed in this, with a particular mention of the objects which had usurped the place of God. A. 10,11. The prophet now turns his voice of warning directly against Israel, whose league with Syria had led them so far astray. He names the true source of their troubles, and denounces the sure failure of all their schemes to recover political greatness, while forsaking the covenant of their God. The pleasant plants and strange slips are those worldly alliances and expedients, whereby they hoped to regain their lost honor and greatness. Instead of the pleasant crop, so diligently tended, being safely housed, the trees themselves should wither and be cut down, and then be piled into a heap, to be burned up with fire. Birks. 12,13. The vast Assyrian hosts, their sound like the deep roar of the ocean; their rushing like the mighty waters, come on as if they would sweep our beloved Zion utterly away. But God from on high shall rebuke them. One word from His lips scatters them like the chaff on the hills of Judea before the wind, and like a rolling thing (the light thistle down) before the whirlwind! H. C. 14. The abrupt form of the sentence adds to the force of the description. At eventide there was trouble in the mighty camp of Assyria, when the commission of the destroying angel began. Before the morning "he is no more," the work is done. "When they arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." "Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty! just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of nations!" Birks. 14:28 In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden. 29. Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of thee, because the rod that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a basilisk, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent. 30 And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety: and I will 31 kill thy root with famine, and thy remnant shall be slain. Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou art melted away, O Philistia, all of thee; for there cometh a smoke out of the north, and 14:1-23. The destruction of Babylon is again foretold, and more explicitly connected with the deliverance of Israel from bondage. After a general assurance of God's favor to His people, and of an exchange of conditions between them and their oppressors, they are represented as joining in a song of triumph over their fallen enemy. In this song, which is universally admitted to possess the highest literary merit, they describe the earth as again reposing from its agitation and affliction, and then breaking forth into a shout of exultation, in which the very trees of the forest join (verses 1-8). By a still bolder figure, the unseen world is represented as perturbed at the approach of the fallen tyrant, who is met, as he enters, by the kings already there, amazed to find him sunk as low as themselves and from a still greater height of actual elevation and of impious pretensions, which are strongly contrasted with his present condition, as deprived not only of regal honors, but of decent burial (verses 9-20). The threatening is then extended to the whole race, and the prophecy closes as before with a prediction of the total desolation of Babylon (verses 21-23). 1. This verse declares God's purpose in destroying the Babylonian power. For Jehovah will pity (or have mercy upon) Jacob, and will again choose Israel and cause them to rest on their (own) land—and the stranger shall be joined to them—and they shall be attached to the house of Jacob. Jacob and Israel are here used for the whole race. Umbreit correctly understands this not as a mere promise of temporal deliverance and increase to Israel as a nation, but as an assurance that the preservation of the chosen people was a necessary means for the fulfilment of God's purposes of mercy to mankind in general. The literal fulfilment of the last clause in its primary sense is clear from such statements as the one in Esther 8:17. 3. In this verse and the following context the prophet, in order to reduce the general promise of the foregoing verse to a more graphic and impressive form, recurs to the downfall of Babylon, as the beginning of the series of deliverances which he had predicted, and describes the effect upon those most concerned, by putting into the mouth of Israel a song of triumph over their oppressor. This is universally admitted to be one of the finest specimens of Hebrew and indeed of ancient composition. 4. That thou shalt raise this song over the king of Babylon and say, How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden (city) ceased! The king here introduced is an ideal personage, whose downfall represents that of the Babylonian monarchy. 7. At rest, quiet, is the whole earth. They burst forth into singing (or a shout of joy). There is no inconsistency between the clauses, as the first is not descriptive of silence, but of tranquillity and rest. The land had rest is a phrase employed in the Book of Judges (e.g., 5:31) to describe the condition of the country after a great national deliverance. A.—Babylon had subdued all the great powers of Western Asia and Northern Africa—i.e., the whole earth as known to the Jews. When she fell they all breathed freely, and felt themselves at rest. Joyful in the thought of no more servitude to a power so oppressive, they break forth in exultant song. H. C. 8. Not only the earth and its inhabitants take part in this triumphant song or shout, but the trees of the forest. Also the cypresses rejoice with respect to thee—the cedars of Lebanon—(saying) now that thou art fallen, the feller shall not come up against us. Now that we are safe from Thee, we fear no other enemy. The only meaning of these figures that seems consistent with a pure taste is the one proposed by Calvin, who supposes this to be merely a part of one great picture, representing universal nature as rejoicing. The symbolical and mechanical interpretations are as much out of place here as they would be in a thousand splendid passages of classical and modern poetry, where no one yet has ever dreamed of applying them. Both here and elsewhere in the sacred books, inanimate Nature is personified, and speaks herself instead of being merely spoken of. 9. The bold personification is now extended from the earth and its forests to the invisible or lower world, the inhabitants of which are represented as aroused at the approach of the new victim and as coming forth to meet him. Hell from beneath is moved (in commotion) for thee to meet thee (at) thy coming—it rouses for thee the giants (the gigantic shades or spectres), all the chief ones of the earth—it raises from their thrones all the kings of the nations. A.—The regions of the dead are laid open, and Hades is represented as rousing up the shades of the departed monarchs; they rise from their thrones to meet the king of Babylon at his coming, and insult him on his being reduced to the same estate of impotence and dissolution with themselves. This is one of the boldest figures that ever was attempted in poetry, and is executed with astonishing brevity, perspicuity, and force. This image of the state of the dead is taken from the Eastern custom of burying, those at least of higher rank, in large sepulchral vaults hewn in the rock. We must form to ourselves an idea of an immense subterraneous vault, a vast gloomy cavern, all round the sides of which there are cells to receive the dead bodies; here the deceased monarchs lie, in a distinguished sort of state, each on his couch, with his arms beside him and his sword at his head. (See Ezek. 32:27.) These illustrious shades rise at once from their couches, as from their thrones, and advance to the entrance of the cavern, to meet the king of Babylon and to taunt him on his fall. Bp. Lowth. 12. The word hēilēl, rendered Lucifer in the Authorized Version, from the root halal, to shine, here describes the king of Babylon as a shining morning star, to be cast down suddenly from the height of worldly splendor. The frequent application of the words to Satan, and his fall from heaven, is certainly not the direct and proper meaning of the passage. But the analogy is so close between the character of the proud king of Babylon and the lost archangel, the king over all the children of pride, between this political judgment and the revealed warning of our Lord Himself (Luke 10:18), as fully to vindicate this frequent use of the words from the charge of being a gross perversion of the text. The resemblance is very full and complete, both in sin and punishment, between the human and angelic leaders in pride and rebellion, and is fully confirmed by the later prophecies of the New Testament (Rev. 12:9-12; 20:3, 10). Birks.—Tertullian and other fathers, Gregory the Great, and the scholastic commentators, regarding Luke 10:18 as an explanation of this verse, apply it to the fall of Satan, from which has arisen the popular perversion of the beautiful name Lucifer, to signify the devil. Erroneous as this exposition is, it scarcely deserves the severe reprehension which some later commentators give it who receive with great indulgence exegetical hypotheses much more absurd. A. 13. The fall of this proud king was the more fearful by reason of his lofty and even blasphemous pretensions and aspirations. Not satisfied with surpassing everything human and eclipsing all the glory of earth, he had said in his heart, "I will ascend even to heaven itself; I will set my throne above the very stars of God; I will be like the Most High!" The remains of his palace are to-day a huge mass of ruins, sufficing, however, to show that when in their glory they lacked nothing that human genius and the resources of the conqueror of the world could command. 18-20. To heighten his infamy, the prophet represents him as lying unburied, or, if once buried, as being disinterred, exposed, and denied the honors of a decent burial. Through all the ancient world, Jewish or heathen, no infamy or misfortune could exceed that of being denied the honors of interment. Here the king of Babylon is put in contrast with other kings. They all lie in state, every one in his sepulchre, in the "house" appointed for all the living, and often in magnificent tombs, fitted up with immense labor and cost, and with the utmost display; but Chaldea's proud and cruel king is thrust out as a thing despised, even as the clothing of slain men all bloodstained and polluted, like a carcass to be trodden under every foot. He goes to this doom of infamy because he has destroyed his own land, and slain his own people; his haughty and cruel administration having proved the ruin not of his people only, but of his country, their "land." The direct enumeration of the points and features of his infamy closes off with a general principle or law of the moral universe: The race of evil-doers shall never be in honor. The posterity of those who are mighty only to do wrong, who have aspirations only in the line of supreme selfishness, must go down to utter infamy. H. C. 21. The dramatic form of the prediction is repeatedly shifted, so that the words of the triumphant Jews, of the dead, of the prophet, and of God Himself, succeed each other insensibly, without any attempt to make the points of transition prominent. A.—Here the prophet lays aside the dramatic figures of the song, and speaks in his own person, denouncing the utter extinction of the guilty dynasty. "After the storming of Babylon by the Medes, the kingdom and royal house, established by Nabopolassar, vanished entirely from history. The last shoot of the royal family was slain as a child of conspirators." Birks. 22. So was the event. From the first blow struck by Cyrus in the conquest of the city, that kingdom in fact never rose again to power; never regained possession of its former territory; never overspread the earth with its dependent subject cities. This special and striking prophecy that no name or remnant, son or nephew of that fated dynasty should ever rise again to power, has been definitely and undeniably fulfilled. No scion of that royal house ever again sat on the throne of Babylon. Reverting to the strain of these predictions of ruin on the proud monarch of Babylon as culminating in his doom in Sheol, it will be seen that the prophet not only alludes to this after life as a terrible retribution for his sins, but he makes this the fundamental idea of the whole scene. No other one thought is so central; none other so pervades the whole description as this—Retribution for human pride and impiety toward God: Retribution for oppression and wrong toward man. It must be admitted that such and so much prominence must fairly represent both the doctrine taught by the Spirit of God and the views held by the good men of that age, in regard to the state of the wicked after death. H. C. 24-27. There is here a climax which marks strongly the unity of the whole. For in verse 21 we have a prophetic warning; in verses 22, 23 its confirmation by the Lord of Hosts Himself; and here, in verses 24, 28, not only the voice of the Lord of Hosts, but His solemn oath predictive of coming judgment. All creatures are challenged to show whether they can reverse His firm decree or turn back His almighty hand. The warnings and burdens of the more distant future are used to deepen and confirm the certainty of that great visitation, which was nearer at hand, and forms the main central thought in these earlier prophecies. The sore judgment on the Assyrian would also be a gracious reprieve to the kingdom of Judah before its fall, a typical redemption, a pledge of the full and final deliverance in days to come. Birks.—This passage predicts briefly the destruction of the Assyrian army in the Lord's land. The locality "upon my mountains" corresponds with the prophetic account in chap. 10:28-34, the mountainous region near Jerusalem. It is introduced here to impress strongly the fact that what the Lord purposes He surely performs. Let this prediction against Assyria stand as a sample—an illustrative case—of the certain connection between prediction and fulfilment; between the Lord's purpose and its execution. In the case of the Assyrian hosts, the fatal blow followed close upon the prophetic word. After it fell, the example would stand before the nation as a solemn voucher for the truth of these predicted judgments on Babylon. Nor is the analogy restricted to the single point of certain fulfilment upon God's enemies. It covered also another point: deliverance to God's people. When that blow fell on Assyria, it struck the yoke from the neck of the Lord's people, and His burden from their back. So should His fatal blow on great Babylon bring speedy deliverance and restoration to His people. H. C. 26,27. The prophet now explains his previous conjunction of events so remote as the Assyrian overthrow and the fall of Babylon, by declaring both to be partial executions of one general decree against all hostile and opposing powers. This is the purpose that is purposed upon all the earth, and this the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. Here Gill is felicitous in paraphrase—"There's nothing comes to pass but He has purposed, and everything He has purposed comes to pass." A.—The same hand of power and justice that is to be stretched out against the Assyrian for invading the people of God shall be "stretched out upon all the nations" that do likewise. It is still true, and will be ever so, "Cursed is he that curses God's Israel" (Num. 24:9). God will be an enemy to His people's enemies (Ex. 23:22). H. 32 none standeth aloof at his appointed times. What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation? That the LORD hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of his people take refuge. 15 : 1 The burden of Moab. For in a night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought; for in a night Kir of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought. He is gone up to Bayith, and to Dibon, to the high places, to weep: Moab howleth over Nebo, and over Medeba: on all their heads is baldness, every beard is cut off. In their streets they gird themselves with sackcloth: on their housetops, and in their broad places, every one howleth, weeping abundantly. And Heshbon crieth out, and Elealeh; their voice is heard even unto Jahaz: therefore the armed men of Moab cry aloud; his soul trembleth within him. My heart crieth out for Moab; her nobles flee unto Zoar, to Eglath-shelishiyah: for by the ascent of Luhith with weeping they go up; for in the way of Horonaim they raise up a cry of destruction. For the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the grass is withered away, the tender grass faileth, there is no green thing. Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away to the brook of the willows. For the cry is gone round about the borders of Moab; the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof unto Beer-elim. For the waters of Dimon are full of blood: for I will bring yet more upon Dimon, a lion upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the remnant of the land. 16 : 1 Send ye the lambs for the ruler of the land from Sela which is toward the wilderness, unto the mount of the daughter of Zion. For it shall be that, as wandering birds, as a scattered nest, so shall the daughters of Moab be at the fords of Arnon. Give counsel, execute judgement; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday: hide the outcasts; bewray not the wanderer. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; as for Moab, be thou a covert to him from the face of the spoiler: for the extortioner is brought to nought, spoiling ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land. And a throne shall be established in mercy, and one shall sit thereon in truth, in the tent of David; judging, and seeking judgement, and swift to do righteousness. 6. We have heard of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud; even of his arrogancy, and his pride, and his wrath; his boastings are nought. Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab, every one shall howl: for the raisin-cakes of Kir-hareseth shall ye mourn, utterly stricken. For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah; the lords of the nations have broken down the choice plants thereof; they reached even unto Jazer, they wandered into the wilderness; her branches were spread abroad, they passed over the sea. Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen. And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the fruitful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise: no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; I have made the vintage shout to cease. Wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kir-heres. And it shall come to pass, when Moab presenteth himself, when he wearieth himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, that he shall not prevail. 13,14. This is the word that the LORD spake concerning Moab in time past. But now the LORD hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and of no account. 17 : 1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts. 4. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches 7 of a fruitful tree, saith the LORD, the God of Israel. In that day shall a man look unto his 8 Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall he have respect to that which his fingers have 9 made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images. In that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the 10 children of Israel: and it shall be a desolation. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salva- tion, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength; therefore thou plantest pleas- 11 ant plants, and settest it with strange slips: in the day of thy planting thou hedgest it in, and in the morning thou makest thy seed to blossom: but the harvest fleeth away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow. 12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples, which roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing 13 of nations, that rush like the rushing of mighty waters! The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the 14 storm. At eventide behold terror; and before the morning they are not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us. THE burden of Babylon, the main adversary of Judah, is followed by three against the bor- der States on three sides of Palestine; and all these have a common character, agreeing with the date prefixed to the first of them. Sore judgment from Assyrian spoilers was at hand, but Zion was to prove a safe and sure refuge. Birks. 14:28-32. "This burden" is the special prediction of calamity on Philistia. As to the historical allusions in this passage, Palestina is admitted to be the ancient equivalent of Philis- tia, the country of the Philistines, lying along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and on the southwest border of Canaan. The Philis- tines came originally from Egypt; settled in Caphtor (Jer. 47:4—Caphtor probably meaning Crete), and thence took possession of the sea- coast of Canaan. "The rod that smote thee" is the power of Judah; "broken" when for the sins of Ahaz "the Lord brought Judah low," for "He had made Judah naked"—i.e., defence- less, before her enemies. During the reign of Ahaz the Philistines had invaded the cities of the low country, had taken several, and dwelt there. (See 2 Chron. 28:18, 19.) But let not Philistia rejoice in these transient successes against Judah. A more formidable power will rise against her in the Assyrian hosts. They will desolate her country, and bring final relief to Judah from the Philistines. 32. Philistia is now fallen, and Zion has no more to fear from this ancient and long formid- able foe. What now shall one answer the messengers who may come from foreign nations to ask after the fortunes of Israel? This, that the Lord Jehovah hath laid the foundations of Zion, and His poorest, feeblest children may trust His care and love to protect her to the end. The Lord will never forsake the Zion which Himself has founded! Chaps. 15 and 16 are in subject one—a prophe- cy of calamity on Moab. In most points this prophecy bears a very close resemblance to Jer. 48, which treats of the fall of Moab. Ezekiel makes a much more brief allusion to this event (25:8-11). Moab, whose country lies on the east side of the southern half of the Dead Sea, with Edom on its southern border, and Ammon on its northern, was, like Ammon, descended from Lot. Together with Ammon and Edom, he was spared from destruction when God gave to Israel for a possession his neighbors, Sihon and Og, of the Amorites, and the nations of Canaan. At some periods Moab seems to have held toward Israel relations half fraternal; yet sometimes they were hostile, and again tribu- tary. H. C. Chap. 15 is occupied with a description of the general grief, occasioned by the conquest of the chief towns and the desolation of the country at large. Its chief peculiarities of form are the numerous names of places introduced, and the strong personification by which they are repre- sented as grieving for the public calamity. The chapter closes with an intimation of still greater evils. A. 1. The verse states that in a single night the two chief cities of Moab are carried by assault and utterly ruined—brought to a dead silence. Ar Moab was her capital, situated on the south side of the river Arnon. Kir-Mob, a few miles southeast from Ar, was renowned for its mili- tary strength. Its ruins are still identified at Kerak. The fall of these two cities sealed the doom of Moab. H. C. 5. The prophet shares in the sorrow he describes, so vividly is he possessed by the awful picture the Spirit sets before his eyes. In their alarm at the fierce invader, the Moabites are seen hurrying toward Zoar, their extreme southern border. Birks. Chap. 16 opens with an exhortation to the Moabites to seek protection from their enemies by renewing their allegiance to the house of David, accompanied by an intimation that this prospect of deliverance would not in fact be realized (verses 1-6). From this transient gleam of hope the prophecy reverts to a description of the general desolation and distress, in form almost identical with that in the foregoing chapter (verses 7-12). The prophecy then closes with a specification of the time at which it was to be fulfilled (verses 13, 14). A. 1. In this time of her distress Moab needed the protection of Judah, and felt this need. Hence in this verse the people are supposed to suggest to one another, or, as the sense may be, the prophet suggests to them, the resumption of this tribute in the hope of re-establishing friendly relations. Come and let us again send lambs to the legitimate ruler of our land, "and to the mount of the daughter of Zion." "From Selah." "Selah" is the Hebrew word for rock, corresponding to Petra in Greek, both being current names for the famed capital of Edom. This city was mainly built in a deep ravine between the rocks, many of its buildings being hewn from the rock itself. It is named here, we may suppose, either as the place to obtain the lambs, it being a great mart of trade; or as the point where the Moabites, fleeing south, were largely convened. H. C. 6. The prophecy enters here on a new stage, commencing with Moab's sin, and depicting their fate in still more elegiac strains. Delitzsch. 8-12. The people of Moab are here described by a beautiful and expressive figure, taken from the vine, for the culture of which they were famous, and which had ministered to their habits of sensual indulgence. This "vine of Sibmah," a chief seat of the vine culture, spreads its choice tendrils on all sides toward the borders of the land, to Jazer northward, into the wilderness on the east and south, and across the Dead Sea westward. But the Assyrian princes and captains, "the lords of the nations," would break down and destroy its flourishing branches. Their vintage mirth would be exchanged for the war shout of victorious enemies and loud wailings of distress. The prophet ends by recording his deep grief for these sorrows of Moab, and describes their vain resort to senseless idols for help in their time of calamity. Birks. Chap. 17. The most satisfactory view of the whole passage is that it was meant to be a prophetic picture of the doom which awaited the enemies of Judah, and that while many of its expressions admit of a general application, some traits in the description are derived from particular invasions and attacks. Thus Syria and Ephraim are expressly mentioned in the first part, while the terms of the last three verses are more appropriate to the slaughter of the Assyrian host; but as this is not explicitly referred to, there is no need of regarding it as the exclusive subject even of that passage. The eighteenth chapter may then be treated as a part of the same context. In the first part of chap. 17 the prophet represents the kingdoms of Syria and Ephraim as sharing the same fate, both being brought to desolation (verses 1-3). He then describes the desolation of Ephraim especially, by the figures of a harvest and a gathering of olives, in which little is left to be afterward gleaned (verses 4-6). As the effect of these judgments, he describes the people as renouncing their idols and returning to Jehovah (verses 7, 8). He then resumes his description of the threatened desolation, and ascribes it to the general oblivion of God and cultivation of strange doctrines and practices (verses 9-11). This last might be regarded as a simple repetition of the threatenings in verses 4-6, interrupted by the promise in verses 7, 8. But as the desolation of Syria and Israel was actually effected by successive strokes or stages, as Shalmaneser accomplished what Tiglath-pileser had begun, and as history records a partial conversion of the Israelites from their apostasy between these two attacks, it is altogether natural to understand the prophecy as exhibiting this sequence of events. In the close of the chapter, the prophet first describes a gathering of nations, and then their dispersion by Divine rebuke, which he declares to be the doom of all who attack or oppress God's people (verses 12-14). A. 2. The prophet predicts that these cities shall be abandoned of their people, probably by removal into captivity, and their ruins and forsaken mansions be appropriated by shepherds for their flocks. There should be no man to claim these forsaken houses; none to molest the flocks folded there. 3. Fortified cities should cease from Ephraim and royalty from Damascus and Syria. The glory of Syria and Damascus, their greatness and prestige as a kingdom, shall disappear, even as in the case of Israel when the Assyrian cast her utterly down. 4-6. The fall of the kingdom of Israel before the Assyrian arms would leave only a few scattering inhabitants, even as a few ears are left when the grain harvest is gathered, or a few clusters of the grape or the olive, far out in the extreme boughs. The valley of Rephaim lay southwest from Jerusalem toward Bethlehem, and is specified here as being near and within sight from the city walls. As if the prophet would say, As you of the city have often seen in the valley of Rephaim. H. C. 7. Some refer this verse partially or wholly to the times of the New Testament, others more correctly to the effect of the preceding judgments on the Ten Tribes of Israel. It is matter of history that after the Assyrian conquest and the general deportation of the people, many accepted Hezekiah's invitation and returned to the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem (2 Chron. 30:11); and this reformation is alluded to as still continued in the times of Josiah (2 Chron. 34:9). At the same time the words may be intended to suggest that a similar effect might be expected to result from similar causes in later times. 8. The positive declaration of the preceding verse is negatively expressed in this, with a particular mention of the objects which had usurped the place of God. A. 10,11. The prophet now turns his voice of warning directly against Israel, whose league with Syria had led them so far astray. He names the true source of their troubles, and denounces the sure failure of all their schemes to recover political greatness, while forsaking the covenant of their God. The pleasant plants and strange slips are those worldly alliances and expedients, whereby they hoped to regain their lost honor and greatness. Instead of the pleasant crop, so diligently tended, being safely housed, the trees themselves should wither and be cut down, and then be piled into a heap, to be burned up with fire. Birks. 12,13. The vast Assyrian hosts, their sound like the deep roar of the ocean; their rushing like the mighty waters, come on as if they would sweep our beloved Zion utterly away. But God from on high shall rebuke them. One word from His lips scatters them like the chaff on the hills of Judea before the wind, and like a rolling thing (the light thistle down) before the whirlwind! H. C. 14. The abrupt form of the sentence adds to the force of the description. At eventide there was trouble in the mighty camp of Assyria, when the commission of the destroying angel began. Before the morning "he is no more," the work is done. "When they arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." "Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty! just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of nations!" Birks. 14:28 In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden. 29. Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of thee, because the rod that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a basilisk, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent. 30 And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety: and I will 31 kill thy root with famine, and thy remnant shall be slain. Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou art melted away, O Philistia, all of thee; for there cometh a smoke out of the north, and 14:1-23. The destruction of Babylon is again foretold, and more explicitly connected with the deliverance of Israel from bondage. After a general assurance of God's favor to His people, and of an exchange of conditions between them and their oppressors, they are represented as joining in a song of triumph over their fallen enemy. In this song, which is universally admitted to possess the highest literary merit, they describe the earth as again reposing from its agitation and affliction, and then breaking forth into a shout of exultation, in which the very trees of the forest join (verses 1-8). By a still bolder figure, the unseen world is represented as perturbed at the approach of the fallen tyrant, who is met, as he enters, by the kings already there, amazed to find him sunk as low as themselves and from a still greater height of actual elevation and of impious pretensions, which are strongly contrasted with his present condition, as deprived not only of regal honors, but of decent burial (verses 9-20). The threatening is then extended to the whole race, and the prophecy closes as before with a prediction of the total desolation of Babylon (verses 21-23). 1. This verse declares God's purpose in destroying the Babylonian power. For Jehovah will pity (or have mercy upon) Jacob, and will again choose Israel and cause them to rest on their (own) land—and the stranger shall be joined to them—and they shall be attached to the house of Jacob. Jacob and Israel are here used for the whole race. Umbreit correctly understands this not as a mere promise of temporal deliverance and increase to Israel as a nation, but as an assurance that the preservation of the chosen people was a necessary means for the fulfilment of God's purposes of mercy to mankind in general. The literal fulfilment of the last clause in its primary sense is clear from such statements as the one in Esther 8:17. 3. In this verse and the following context the prophet, in order to reduce the general promise of the foregoing verse to a more graphic and impressive form, recurs to the downfall of Babylon, as the beginning of the series of deliverances which he had predicted, and describes the effect upon those most concerned, by putting into the mouth of Israel a song of triumph over their oppressor. This is universally admitted to be one of the finest specimens of Hebrew and indeed of ancient composition. 4. That thou shalt raise this song over the king of Babylon and say, How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden (city) ceased! The king here introduced is an ideal personage, whose downfall represents that of the Babylonian monarchy. 7. At rest, quiet, is the whole earth. They burst forth into singing (or a shout of joy). There is no inconsistency between the clauses, as the first is not descriptive of silence, but of tranquillity and rest. The land had rest is a phrase employed in the Book of Judges (e.g., 5:31) to describe the condition of the country after a great national deliverance. A.—Babylon had subdued all the great powers of Western Asia and Northern Africa—i.e., the whole earth as known to the Jews. When she fell they all breathed freely, and felt themselves at rest. Joyful in the thought of no more servitude to a power so oppressive, they break forth in exultant song. H. C. 8. Not only the earth and its inhabitants take part in this triumphant song or shout, but the trees of the forest. Also the cypresses rejoice with respect to thee—the cedars of Lebanon—(saying) now that thou art fallen, the feller shall not come up against us. Now that we are safe from Thee, we fear no other enemy. The only meaning of these figures that seems consistent with a pure taste is the one proposed by Calvin, who supposes this to be merely a part of one great picture, representing universal nature as rejoicing. The symbolical and mechanical interpretations are as much out of place here as they would be in a thousand splendid passages of classical and modern poetry, where no one yet has ever dreamed of applying them. Both here and elsewhere in the sacred books, inanimate Nature is personified, and speaks herself instead of being merely spoken of. 9. The bold personification is now extended from the earth and its forests to the invisible or lower world, the inhabitants of which are represented as aroused at the approach of the new victim and as coming forth to meet him. Hell from beneath is moved (in commotion) for thee to meet thee (at) thy coming—it rouses for thee the giants (the gigantic shades or spectres), all the chief ones of the earth—it raises from their thrones all the kings of the nations. A.—The regions of the dead are laid open, and Hades is represented as rousing up the shades of the departed monarchs; they rise from their thrones to meet the king of Babylon at his coming, and insult him on his being reduced to the same estate of impotence and dissolution with themselves. This is one of the boldest figures that ever was attempted in poetry, and is executed with astonishing brevity, perspicuity, and force. This image of the state of the dead is taken from the Eastern custom of burying, those at least of higher rank, in large sepulchral vaults hewn in the rock. We must form to ourselves an idea of an immense subterraneous vault, a vast gloomy cavern, all round the sides of which there are cells to receive the dead bodies; here the deceased monarchs lie, in a distinguished sort of state, each on his couch, with his arms beside him and his sword at his head. (See Ezek. 32:27.) These illustrious shades rise at once from their couches, as from their thrones, and advance to the entrance of the cavern, to meet the king of Babylon and to taunt him on his fall. Bp. Lowth. 12. The word hēilēl, rendered Lucifer in the Authorized Version, from the root halal, to shine, here describes the king of Babylon as a shining morning star, to be cast down suddenly from the height of worldly splendor. The frequent application of the words to Satan, and his fall from heaven, is certainly not the direct and proper meaning of the passage. But the analogy is so close between the character of the proud king of Babylon and the lost archangel, the king over all the children of pride, between this political judgment and the revealed warning of our Lord Himself (Luke 10:18), as fully to vindicate this frequent use of the words from the charge of being a gross perversion of the text. The resemblance is very full and complete, both in sin and punishment, between the human and angelic leaders in pride and rebellion, and is fully confirmed by the later prophecies of the New Testament (Rev. 12:9-12; 20:3, 10). Birks.—Tertullian and other fathers, Gregory the Great, and the scholastic commentators, regarding Luke 10:18 as an explanation of this verse, apply it to the fall of Satan, from which has arisen the popular perversion of the beautiful name Lucifer, to signify the devil. Erroneous as this exposition is, it scarcely deserves the severe reprehension which some later commentators give it who receive with great indulgence exegetical hypotheses much more absurd. A. 13. The fall of this proud king was the more fearful by reason of his lofty and even blasphemous pretensions and aspirations. Not satisfied with surpassing everything human and eclipsing all the glory of earth, he had said in his heart, "I will ascend even to heaven itself; I will set my throne above the very stars of God; I will be like the Most High!" The remains of his palace are to-day a huge mass of ruins, sufficing, however, to show that when in their glory they lacked nothing that human genius and the resources of the conqueror of the world could command. 18-20. To heighten his infamy, the prophet represents him as lying unburied, or, if once buried, as being disinterred, exposed, and denied the honors of a decent burial. Through all the ancient world, Jewish or heathen, no infamy or misfortune could exceed that of being denied the honors of interment. Here the king of Babylon is put in contrast with other kings. They all lie in state, every one in his sepulchre, in the "house" appointed for all the living, and often in magnificent tombs, fitted up with immense labor and cost, and with the utmost display; but Chaldea's proud and cruel king is thrust out as a thing despised, even as the clothing of slain men all bloodstained and polluted, like a carcass to be trodden under every foot. He goes to this doom of infamy because he has destroyed his own land, and slain his own people; his haughty and cruel administration having proved the ruin not of his people only, but of his country, their "land." The direct enumeration of the points and features of his infamy closes off with a general principle or law of the moral universe: The race of evil-doers shall never be in honor. The posterity of those who are mighty only to do wrong, who have aspirations only in the line of supreme selfishness, must go down to utter infamy. H. C. 21. The dramatic form of the prediction is repeatedly shifted, so that the words of the triumphant Jews, of the dead, of the prophet, and of God Himself, succeed each other insensibly, without any attempt to make the points of transition prominent. A.—Here the prophet lays aside the dramatic figures of the song, and speaks in his own person, denouncing the utter extinction of the guilty dynasty. "After the storming of Babylon by the Medes, the kingdom and royal house, established by Nabopolassar, vanished entirely from history. The last shoot of the royal family was slain as a child of conspirators." Birks. 22. So was the event. From the first blow struck by Cyrus in the conquest of the city, that kingdom in fact never rose again to power; never regained possession of its former territory; never overspread the earth with its dependent subject cities. This special and striking prophecy that no name or remnant, son or nephew of that fated dynasty should ever rise again to power, has been definitely and undeniably fulfilled. No scion of that royal house ever again sat on the throne of Babylon. Reverting to the strain of these predictions of ruin on the proud monarch of Babylon as culminating in his doom in Sheol, it will be seen that the prophet not only alludes to this after life as a terrible retribution for his sins, but he makes this the fundamental idea of the whole scene. No other one thought is so central; none other so pervades the whole description as this—Retribution for human pride and impiety toward God: Retribution for oppression and wrong toward man. It must be admitted that such and so much prominence must fairly represent both the doctrine taught by the Spirit of God and the views held by the good men of that age, in regard to the state of the wicked after death. H. C. 24-27. There is here a climax which marks strongly the unity of the whole. For in verse 21 we have a prophetic warning; in verses 22, 23 its confirmation by the Lord of Hosts Himself; and here, in verses 24, 28, not only the voice of the Lord of Hosts, but His solemn oath predictive of coming judgment. All creatures are challenged to show whether they can reverse His firm decree or turn back His almighty hand. The warnings and burdens of the more distant future are used to deepen and confirm the certainty of that great visitation, which was nearer at hand, and forms the main central thought in these earlier prophecies. The sore judgment on the Assyrian would also be a gracious reprieve to the kingdom of Judah before its fall, a typical redemption, a pledge of the full and final deliverance in days to come. Birks.—This passage predicts briefly the destruction of the Assyrian army in the Lord's land. The locality "upon my mountains" corresponds with the prophetic account in chap. 10:28-34, the mountainous region near Jerusalem. It is introduced here to impress strongly the fact that what the Lord purposes He surely performs. Let this prediction against Assyria stand as a sample—an illustrative case—of the certain connection between prediction and fulfilment; between the Lord's purpose and its execution. In the case of the Assyrian hosts, the fatal blow followed close upon the prophetic word. After it fell, the example would stand before the nation as a solemn voucher for the truth of these predicted judgments on Babylon. Nor is the analogy restricted to the single point of certain fulfilment upon God's enemies. It covered also another point: deliverance to God's people. When that blow fell on Assyria, it struck the yoke from the neck of the Lord's people, and His burden from their back. So should His fatal blow on great Babylon bring speedy deliverance and restoration to His people. H. C. 26,27. The prophet now explains his previous conjunction of events so remote as the Assyrian overthrow and the fall of Babylon, by declaring both to be partial executions of one general decree against all hostile and opposing powers. This is the purpose that is purposed upon all the earth, and this the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. Here Gill is felicitous in paraphrase—"There's nothing comes to pass but He has purposed, and everything He has purposed comes to pass." A.—The same hand of power and justice that is to be stretched out against the Assyrian for invading the people of God shall be "stretched out upon all the nations" that do likewise. It is still true, and will be ever so, "Cursed is he that curses God's Israel" (Num. 24:9). God will be an enemy to His people's enemies (Ex. 23:22). H. 32 none standeth aloof at his appointed times. What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation? That the LORD hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of his people take refuge. 15 : 1 The burden of Moab. For in a night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought; for in a night Kir of Moab is laid waste, and brought to nought. He is gone up to Bayith, and to Dibon, to the high places, to weep: Moab howleth over Nebo, and over Medeba: on all their heads is baldness, every beard is cut off. In their streets they gird themselves with sackcloth: on their housetops, and in their broad places, every one howleth, weeping abundantly. And Heshbon crieth out, and Elealeh; their voice is heard even unto Jahaz: therefore the armed men of Moab cry aloud; his soul trembleth within him. My heart crieth out for Moab; her nobles flee unto Zoar, to Eglath-shelishiyah: for by the ascent of Luhith with weeping they go up; for in the way of Horonaim they raise up a cry of destruction. For the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the grass is withered away, the tender grass faileth, there is no green thing. Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away to the brook of the willows. For the cry is gone round about the borders of Moab; the howling thereof unto Eglaim, and the howling thereof unto Beer-elim. For the waters of Dimon are full of blood: for I will bring yet more upon Dimon, a lion upon him that escapeth of Moab, and upon the remnant of the land. 16 : 1 Send ye the lambs for the ruler of the land from Sela which is toward the wilderness, unto the mount of the daughter of Zion. For it shall be that, as wandering birds, as a scattered nest, so shall the daughters of Moab be at the fords of Arnon. Give counsel, execute judgement; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday: hide the outcasts; bewray not the wanderer. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; as for Moab, be thou a covert to him from the face of the spoiler: for the extortioner is brought to nought, spoiling ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land. And a throne shall be established in mercy, and one shall sit thereon in truth, in the tent of David; judging, and seeking judgement, and swift to do righteousness. 6. We have heard of the pride of Moab, that he is very proud; even of his arrogancy, and his pride, and his wrath; his boastings are nought. Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab, every one shall howl: for the raisin-cakes of Kir-hareseth shall ye mourn, utterly stricken. For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah; the lords of the nations have broken down the choice plants thereof; they reached even unto Jazer, they wandered into the wilderness; her branches were spread abroad, they passed over the sea. Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen. And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the fruitful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither joyful noise: no treader shall tread out wine in the presses; I have made the vintage shout to cease. Wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kir-heres. And it shall come to pass, when Moab presenteth himself, when he wearieth himself upon the high place, and shall come to his sanctuary to pray, that he shall not prevail. 13,14. This is the word that the LORD spake concerning Moab in time past. But now the LORD hath spoken, saying, Within three years, as the years of an hireling, and the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and the remnant shall be very small and of no account. 17 : 1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid. The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria; they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts. 4. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the standing corn, and his arm reapeth the ears; yea, it shall be as when one gleaneth ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet there shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches 7 of a fruitful tree, saith the LORD, the God of Israel. In that day shall a man look unto his 8 Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall he have respect to that which his fingers have 9 made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images. In that day shall his strong cities be as the forsaken places in the wood and on the mountain top, which were forsaken from before the 10 children of Israel: and it shall be a desolation. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salva- tion, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength; therefore thou plantest pleas- 11 ant plants, and settest it with strange slips: in the day of thy planting thou hedgest it in, and in the morning thou makest thy seed to blossom: but the harvest fleeth away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow. 12 Ah, the uproar of many peoples, which roar like the roaring of the seas; and the rushing 13 of nations, that rush like the rushing of mighty waters! The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the 14 storm. At eventide behold terror; and before the morning they are not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us. THE burden of Babylon, the main adversary of Judah, is followed by three against the bor- der States on three sides of Palestine; and all these have a common character, agreeing with the date prefixed to the first of them. Sore judgment from Assyrian spoilers was at hand, but Zion was to prove a safe and sure refuge. Birks. 14:28-32. "This burden" is the special prediction of calamity on Philistia. As to the historical allusions in this passage, Palestina is admitted to be the ancient equivalent of Philis- tia, the country of the Philistines, lying along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, and on the southwest border of Canaan. The Philis- tines came originally from Egypt; settled in Caphtor (Jer. 47:4—Caphtor probably meaning Crete), and thence took possession of the sea- coast of Canaan. "The rod that smote thee" is the power of Judah; "broken" when for the sins of Ahaz "the Lord brought Judah low," for "He had made Judah naked"—i.e., defence- less, before her enemies. During the reign of Ahaz the Philistines had invaded the cities of the low country, had taken several, and dwelt there. (See 2 Chron. 28:18, 19.) But let not Philistia rejoice in these transient successes against Judah. A more formidable power will rise against her in the Assyrian hosts. They will desolate her country, and bring final relief to Judah from the Philistines. 32. Philistia is now fallen, and Zion has no more to fear from this ancient and long formid- able foe. What now shall one answer the messengers who may come from foreign nations to ask after the fortunes of Israel? This, that the Lord Jehovah hath laid the foundations of Zion, and His poorest, feeblest children may trust His care and love to protect her to the end. The Lord will never forsake the Zion which Himself has founded! Chaps. 15 and 16 are in subject one—a prophe- cy of calamity on Moab. In most points this prophecy bears a very close resemblance to Jer. 48, which treats of the fall of Moab. Ezekiel makes a much more brief allusion to this event (25:8-11). Moab, whose country lies on the east side of the southern half of the Dead Sea, with Edom on its southern border, and Ammon on its northern, was, like Ammon, descended from Lot. Together with Ammon and Edom, he was spared from destruction when God gave to Israel for a possession his neighbors, Sihon and Og, of the Amorites, and the nations of Canaan. At some periods Moab seems to have held toward Israel relations half fraternal; yet sometimes they were hostile, and again tribu- tary. H. C. Chap. 15 is occupied with a description of the general grief, occasioned by the conquest of the chief towns and the desolation of the country at large. Its chief peculiarities of form are the numerous names of places introduced, and the strong personification by which they are repre- sented as grieving for the public calamity. The chapter closes with an intimation of still greater evils. A. 1. The verse states that in a single night the two chief cities of Moab are carried by assault and utterly ruined—brought to a dead silence. Ar Moab was her capital, situated on the south side of the river Arnon. Kir-Mob, a few miles southeast from Ar, was renowned for its mili- tary strength. Its ruins are still identified at Kerak. The fall of these two cities sealed the doom of Moab. H. C. 5. The prophet shares in the sorrow he describes, so vividly is he possessed by the awful picture the Spirit sets before his eyes. In their alarm at the fierce invader, the Moabites are seen hurrying toward Zoar, their extreme southern border. Birks. Chap. 16 opens with an exhortation to the Moabites to seek protection from their enemies by renewing their allegiance to the house of David, accompanied by an intimation that this prospect of deliverance would not in fact be realized (verses 1-6). From this transient gleam of hope the prophecy reverts to a description of the general desolation and distress, in form almost identical with that in the foregoing chapter (verses 7-12). The prophecy then closes with a specification of the time at which it was to be fulfilled (verses 13, 14). A. 1. In this time of her distress Moab needed the protection of Judah, and felt this need. Hence in this verse the people are supposed to suggest to one another, or, as the sense may be, the prophet suggests to them, the resumption of this tribute in the hope of re-establishing friendly relations. Come and let us again send lambs to the legitimate ruler of our land, "and to the mount of the daughter of Zion." "From Selah." "Selah" is the Hebrew word for rock, corresponding to Petra in Greek, both being current names for the famed capital of Edom. This city was mainly built in a deep ravine between the rocks, many of its buildings being hewn from the rock itself. It is named here, we may suppose, either as the place to obtain the lambs, it being a great mart of trade; or as the point where the Moabites, fleeing south, were largely convened. H. C. 6. The prophecy enters here on a new stage, commencing with Moab's sin, and depicting their fate in still more elegiac strains. Delitzsch. 8-12. The people of Moab are here described by a beautiful and expressive figure, taken from the vine, for the culture of which they were famous, and which had ministered to their habits of sensual indulgence. This "vine of Sibmah," a chief seat of the vine culture, spreads its choice tendrils on all sides toward the borders of the land, to Jazer northward, into the wilderness on the east and south, and across the Dead Sea westward. But the Assyrian princes and captains, "the lords of the nations," would break down and destroy its flourishing branches. Their vintage mirth would be exchanged for the war shout of victorious enemies and loud wailings of distress. The prophet ends by recording his deep grief for these sorrows of Moab, and describes their vain resort to senseless idols for help in their time of calamity. Birks. Chap. 17. The most satisfactory view of the whole passage is that it was meant to be a prophetic picture of the doom which awaited the enemies of Judah, and that while many of its expressions admit of a general application, some traits in the description are derived from particular invasions and attacks. Thus Syria and Ephraim are expressly mentioned in the first part, while the terms of the last three verses are more appropriate to the slaughter of the Assyrian host; but as this is not explicitly referred to, there is no need of regarding it as the exclusive subject even of that passage. The eighteenth chapter may then be treated as a part of the same context. In the first part of chap. 17 the prophet represents the kingdoms of Syria and Ephraim as sharing the same fate, both being brought to desolation (verses 1-3). He then describes the desolation of Ephraim especially, by the figures of a harvest and a gathering of olives, in which little is left to be afterward gleaned (verses 4-6). As the effect of these judgments, he describes the people as renouncing their idols and returning to Jehovah (verses 7, 8). He then resumes his description of the threatened desolation, and ascribes it to the general oblivion of God and cultivation of strange doctrines and practices (verses 9-11). This last might be regarded as a simple repetition of the threatenings in verses 4-6, interrupted by the promise in verses 7, 8. But as the desolation of Syria and Israel was actually effected by successive strokes or stages, as Shalmaneser accomplished what Tiglath-pileser had begun, and as history records a partial conversion of the Israelites from their apostasy between these two attacks, it is altogether natural to understand the prophecy as exhibiting this sequence of events. In the close of the chapter, the prophet first describes a gathering of nations, and then their dispersion by Divine rebuke, which he declares to be the doom of all who attack or oppress God's people (verses 12-14). A. 2. The prophet predicts that these cities shall be abandoned of their people, probably by removal into captivity, and their ruins and forsaken mansions be appropriated by shepherds for their flocks. There should be no man to claim these forsaken houses; none to molest the flocks folded there. 3. Fortified cities should cease from Ephraim and royalty from Damascus and Syria. The glory of Syria and Damascus, their greatness and prestige as a kingdom, shall disappear, even as in the case of Israel when the Assyrian cast her utterly down. 4-6. The fall of the kingdom of Israel before the Assyrian arms would leave only a few scattering inhabitants, even as a few ears are left when the grain harvest is gathered, or a few clusters of the grape or the olive, far out in the extreme boughs. The valley of Rephaim lay southwest from Jerusalem toward Bethlehem, and is specified here as being near and within sight from the city walls. As if the prophet would say, As you of the city have often seen in the valley of Rephaim. H. C. 7. Some refer this verse partially or wholly to the times of the New Testament, others more correctly to the effect of the preceding judgments on the Ten Tribes of Israel. It is matter of history that after the Assyrian conquest and the general deportation of the people, many accepted Hezekiah's invitation and returned to the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem (2 Chron. 30:11); and this reformation is alluded to as still continued in the times of Josiah (2 Chron. 34:9). At the same time the words may be intended to suggest that a similar effect might be expected to result from similar causes in later times. 8. The positive declaration of the preceding verse is negatively expressed in this, with a particular mention of the objects which had usurped the place of God. A. 10,11. The prophet now turns his voice of warning directly against Israel, whose league with Syria had led them so far astray. He names the true source of their troubles, and denounces the sure failure of all their schemes to recover political greatness, while forsaking the covenant of their God. The pleasant plants and strange slips are those worldly alliances and expedients, whereby they hoped to regain their lost honor and greatness. Instead of the pleasant crop, so diligently tended, being safely housed, the trees themselves should wither and be cut down, and then be piled into a heap, to be burned up with fire. Birks. 12,13. The vast Assyrian hosts, their sound like the deep roar of the ocean; their rushing like the mighty waters, come on as if they would sweep our beloved Zion utterly away. But God from on high shall rebuke them. One word from His lips scatters them like the chaff on the hills of Judea before the wind, and like a rolling thing (the light thistle down) before the whirlwind! H. C. 14. The abrupt form of the sentence adds to the force of the description. At eventide there was trouble in the mighty camp of Assyria, when the commission of the destroying angel began. Before the morning "he is no more," the work is done. "When they arose in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." "Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty! just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of nations!" Birks. 14:28 In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden. 29. Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of thee, because the rod that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a basilisk, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent. 30 And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety: and I will 31 kill thy root with famine, and thy remnant shall be slain. Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou art melted away, O Philistia, all of thee; for there cometh a smoke out of the north, and 18:1 An, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: 2 that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of papyrus upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people terrible from their begin- 3 ning onward; a nation that meteth out and treadeth down, whose land the rivers divide! All ye inhabitants of the world, and ye dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the 4 mountains, see ye; and when the trumpet is blown, hear ye. For thus hath the LORD said unto me, I will be still, and I will behold in my dwelling place; like clear heat in sunshine, 5 like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. For afore the harvest, when the blossom is over, and the flower becometh a ripening grape, he shall cut off the sprigs with pruning-hooks, and 6 the spreading branches shall he take away and cut down. They shall be left together unto the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the ravenous birds 7 shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them. In that time shall a present be brought unto the LORD of hosts of a people tall and smooth, and from a people terrible from their beginning onward; a nation that meteth out and treadeth down, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of the LORD of hosts, the mount Zion. Behold, the LORD rideth upon a swift cloud, and cometh unto Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it. 2 And I will stir up the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom 3 against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall be made void in the midst of it; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek unto the idols, and to the charmers, and to 4 them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards. And I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the LORD of 5 hosts. And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and become dry. 6 And the rivers shall stink; the streams of Egypt shall be minished and dried up: the reeds 7 and flags shall wither away. The meadows by the Nile, by the brink of the Nile, and all 8 that is sown by the Nile, shall become dry, be driven away, and be no more. The fishers also shall lament, and all they that cast angle into the Nile shall mourn, and they that spread nets 9 upon the waters shall languish. Moreover they that work in combed flax, and they that 10 weave white cloth, shall be ashamed. And her pillars shall be broken in pieces, all they that 11 work for hire shall be grieved in soul. The princes of Zoan are utterly foolish; the counsel of the wisest counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son 12 of the wise, the son of ancient kings? Where then are thy wise men? and let them tell thee 13 now; and let them know what the LORD of hosts hath purposed concerning Egypt. The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have caused Egypt 14 to go astray, that are the corner stone of her tribes. The LORD hath mingled a spirit of per- verseness in the midst of her: and they have caused Egypt to go astray in every work 15 thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit. Neither shall there be for Egypt any work, which head or tail, palm-branch or rush, may do. 16 In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall tremble and fear because of the 17 shaking of the hand of the LORD of hosts, which he shaketh over it. And the land of Judah shall become a terror unto Egypt, every one to whom mention is made thereof shall be afraid, because of the purpose of the LORD of hosts, which he purposeth against it. 18 In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the LORD of hosts; one shall be called The city of destruction. 19 In that day shall there be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a 20 pillar at the border thereof to the LORD. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a defender, and he shall deliver them. 21 And the LORD shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the LORD in that day; yea, they shall worship with sacrifice and oblation, and shall vow a vow unto the LORD, 22 and shall perform it. And the LORD shall smite Egypt, smiting and healing; and they shall return unto the LORD, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them. 23 In that day shall there be a high way out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians. 24 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst 25 of the earth: for that the LORD of hosts hath blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance. 20:1 In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent 2 him, and he fought against Ashdod and took it; at that time the LORD spake by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go, and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put thy shoe from 3 off thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder upon 4 Egypt and upon Ethiopia; so shall the king of Assyria lead away the captives of Egypt, and the exiles of Ethiopia, young and old, naked and barefoot, and with buttocks uncovered, to 5 the shame of Egypt. And they shall be dismayed and ashamed, because of Ethiopia their 6 expectation, and of Egypt their glory. And the inhabitant of this coastland shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whither we fled for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria: and we, how shall we escape? Chap. 18. The two great powers of Western Asia, in the days of Isaiah, were Assyria and Egypt or Ethiopia, the last two being wholly or partially united under Tirhakah, whose name and exploits are recorded in Egyptian monuments still extant, and who is expressly said in Scripture (2 K. 19:9) to have come out against Sennacherib. With one or the other of these great contending powers, Judah was commonly confederate, and of course at war with the other. Hezekiah is explicitly reproached by Rabshakeh (Isa. 36:9) with relying upon Egypt—i.e., the Ethiopico-Egyptian empire. These historical facts, together with the mention of Cush in verse 1, and the appropriateness of the figures in verses 4, 5, to the destruction of Sennacherib's army, give great probability to the hypothesis now commonly adopted, that the prophet here announces that event to Ethiopia, as about to be effected by a direct interposition of Jehovah, and without human aid. At the same time, some of the expressions here employed admit of so many interpretations, that it is best to give the whole as wide an application as the language will admit, on the ground that it constitutes a part of a generic prophecy or picture of God's dealings with the foes of His people, including illustrations drawn from particular events, such as the downfall of Syria and Israel, and the slaughter of Sennacherib's army. The prophet first invites the attention of the Ethiopians and of the whole world to a great catastrophe as near at hand (verses 1-3). He then describes the catastrophe itself, by the beautiful figure of a vine or vineyard suffered to blossom and bear fruit, and then, when almost ready to be gathered, suddenly destroyed (verses 4-6). In consequence of this event, the same people who had been invoked in the beginning of the chapter are described as bringing presents to Jehovah at Jerusalem (verse 7). A. The people specially described here are the Ethiopians, coupled with the Egyptians. Let it be borne in mind that a deep and rankling antipathy had for ages pervaded the two great rival kingdoms that sat respectively on the Nile and on the Euphrates. These valleys were the natural centres of wealth, population and political power, the one for Northern Africa, the other for Western Asia. Hence from the very founding of these kingdoms, Egypt and Assyria, far back at least as the age of Joseph and Moses, savage and bitter wars were waged between these great powers. Ethiopia was naturally associated with Egypt. That they were in closest alliance at this time is certified not only by profane history, but by historic notices in the Scriptures (2 K. 19:9 and Isa. 37:9). The keynote to this chap. 18 is the sending of tidings of the overthrow of the Assyrian army to Ethiopia, and the moral results. In that vast slaughter, the mighty God had shown His great power in destroying His enemies, and His greater love for His people in their protection. It now remained to make the utmost capital out of those displays of His glory by means of their moral impression on the wakened sympathies and eager minds of the great African kingdoms. H. C. 1. The wings, a dual word, are a natural figure for Egypt and Ethiopia, united at this very time, under So and Tirhakah, into a double power, protecting or overshadowing with its greatness the lands on either side. This Ethiopian dynasty in Egypt was a rare exception to its long series of native Pharaohs. It lasted (Herod., Manetho) about fifty years, and began seven or eight years only before the date of these burdens. Birks. 2. These must be the words of the prophet himself. The ambassadors have come to him to learn the news respecting the fall of the Assyrians. He now gives them their message to carry home. "Go," says he, "ye swift messengers" (travelling so rapidly on those light-running boats), go back to your own people—"to a nation," not "trodden down," but a nation of down-treading people; treading down others; of all-crushing power. Whose land the rivers intersect—i.e., whose land is cut in all directions by the head-waters of the Nile. The entire description represents this to be a nation of great power and prowess in arms. 3. In the construction of this verse the choice lies between applying it to the Assyrian hosts preparing for their assault upon God's people, or to God's hosts preparing to annihilate them. The general sense is not materially affected by this choice, since in either case the attention of the wide world is called to witness the same grand scene. But inasmuch as God's agency in this event is specially described in verses 4-6, I incline to refer this verse 3 specially to the Assyrian. On this construction the Lord proclaims, Let all the world look and see this proud Assyrian lifting up his banner on the mountains over against My holy city, and blowing his trumpet to summon his squadrons to the final charge. H. C. 4. For thus said (or saith) Jehovah to me, I will rest (remain quiet), and will look on in my dwelling-place. This verse assigns a reason for the preceding invitation to attend. The obvious meaning of the figure is, that God would let the enemy proceed in the execution of His purposes until they were nearly accomplished. 5. The obvious meaning of the figures is, that although God would suffer the designs of the enemy to approach completion, He would nevertheless interfere at the last moment and destroy both him and them. As if He had said, Let all the world await the great catastrophe—for I will let the enemy almost attain his end—but let them still attend—for before it is attained, I will destroy him. 7. All are agreed that we have here the prediction of an act of homage to Jehovah, occasioned by the great event described in the preceding verses. A.—An offering shall yet come from those far distant lands, high up around the head-waters of the Nile, to His own holy temple on Mount Zion. Nor is this a solitary case. It is rather an illustrative case, developing a great principle or law of His moral reign on earth—viz., that every manifestation of Himself, and especially those that are great and signal, shall surely yield their glorious fruits in the moral conquest of the world to Jesus Immanuel. This particular case has already thrown forward some foreshadowings of its future fulfilment, in the scenes briefly sketched (Acts 8: 26-39), where the prime-minister of a celebrated queen of Ethiopia found Christ by the aid of Philip in the reading of this very Book of Isaiah, and went home to his country rejoicing. Also in the further fact that some vestiges of Christianity—traces of its earlier power and perhaps prophecies of its later—have lived in that remote and almost unknown land unto this day. Assuredly, Ethiopia shall yet stretch forth her hands unto God (Ps. 68: 31). H. C. Chap. 19. This burden of Egypt contains, first, a warning, a political downfall and decay; and next, a promise of conversion to God's service in later times. The main subject of the prophecy is the great change soon to pass over Egypt, when the ancient glory of the Pharaohs would completely die away, and be followed, first by a time of anarchy, next by the severe oppression of the Persian dynasty; and finally, by the renewed prosperity under the Ptolemies, and the dawnings of a purer faith, to be completed by the perfect triumphs of the gospel in later days. Birks. One special reason for bringing before the Jews this prophecy respecting Egypt was to check their tendency to look to Egypt rather than to God alone for help against Assyria. Hence these strong views of her weakness and of her lack of wisdom. Yet another reason may probably have been to show them that their own Jehovah is really the God of all the nations, and has thoughts of ultimate mercy for them all, purposing in His own time to bring them all within the pale of His own spiritual kingdom. H. C.—Isaiah's prophecies with respect to Egypt are almost entirely depreciatory and denunciatory. He is bent on showing that she is a power on whom no dependence can be wisely placed, in the hope that he may thereby prevent Hezekiah and his princes from contracting any alliance with the Egyptian monarch. G. R. This chapter admits of a well-defined division into two parts, one of which contains threatenings (verses 1-17), and the other promises (verses 18-25). The first part may again be subdivided. In verses 1-4 the Egyptians are threatened with a penal visitation from Jehovah, with a downfall of their idols, with intestine commotions, with the disappointment of their superstitious hopes, and with subjection to hard masters. In verses 5-10 they are threatened with physical calamities, the drying up of their streams, the decay of vegetation, the loss of their fisheries, and the destruction of their manufactures. In verses 11-17 the wisdom of their wise men is converted into folly, the courage of their brave men into cowardice, industry universally suspended, and the people filled with dread of the anger of Jehovah. The second part may be also subdivided. In verses 18-21, the Egyptians are described as acknowledging the true God, in consequence of what they had suffered at His hand, and the deliverance which He had granted them. In verses 22-25 the same cause is described as leading to an intimate union between Egypt, Assyria and Israel, in the service of Jehovah, and the enjoyment of His favor. . . . The most correct view of the matter seems to be as follows. The prophet, wishing to announce to the Jews the decline and fall of that great heathen power in which they were so constantly disposed to trust (30:1; 31:1), describes the event under figures borrowed from the actual condition of Egypt. The prophet vividly portrays the fall of Egypt by describing the waters of the Nile as failing, its meadows withering, its fisheries ceasing, and the peculiar manufactures of the country expiring, the proverbial wisdom of the nation changed to folly, its courage to cowardice, its strength to weakness. So too in the second part, the introduction of the true religion, and its effect as well on the internal state as on the international relations of the different countries, is expressed by figures drawn from the civil and religious institutions of the old economy. 1. The burden of Egypt. Behold! Jehovah riding on a light cloud, and He comes into Egypt, and the idols of Egypt move at His presence, and the heart of Egypt melts within him. This verse describes God as the author of the judgments afterward detailed. His visible appearance on a cloud, and the personification of the idols, prepare the mind for a poetical description. 2. Egypt against Egypt involves an allusion to the internal divisions of the kingdom, or rather to the existence of contemporary kingdoms, referred to in the other clause. A.—It is a remarkable illustration of this prophecy to find, as we do, from an inscription of Piankhi-Merammon, that about B.C. 735 Egypt was divided up among no fewer than twenty-two princes, of whom four bore the title of "king," and that a civil war raged among them for some considerable time. Briefly, it may be said that Egypt from about B.C. 735 to B.C. 650 suffered from a continued series of civil wars, which rendered her exceptionally weak, and caused her to fall an easy prey alternately to the Ethiopians and the Assyrians. G. R. 5-10. The decay of Egypt is described under the figure of a failing inundation of the Nile. In chap. 16:8, 9 the vine of Sibmah represents Moab itself, a country famous for its vineyards. Here, in like manner, the Nile, with its pastures, fisheries and manufactures, is made to represent the whole national life and prosperity of Egypt. The things named were main elements of the national wealth and power. But oppression and anarchy would lessen the benefit of prosperous seasons, and double the loss in years of scanty inundation. Thus an excessive and extreme wasting of the Nile becomes a striking emblem for the whole course of national decay. This explains the repeated mention, nine times in succession, of the flood, the waters and the river. Birks. 6. Reeds. Never had prophecy greater circumstances of improbability to overcome, and never was prediction more completely fulfilled, than in the case of the prophecy recorded here. The indispensable papyrus in the time of Isaiah flourished through the whole of the Thebaid, Heptanomos, and the Delta, as the three divisions of ancient Egypt were named. Of its utility no European reader can form an adequate idea. Stringent laws were established for its protection and cultivation, and from its first appearance to maturity the papyrus was considered to be under the special care of local deities; it was planted, tended and cut with an almost religious ceremonial. Adaptable for various uses, not only paper, cloth and brushes, but the roughest and most delicate manufactures were produced from it alike. Sails, cordage and baskets for shipping, sandals, hats, skirts, carpets, chairs and seats for domestic service were made of it. Men and animals fed upon the tender shoots. A syrup was obtained and medicine extracted from it. It formed the cradle of the Nubian baby; it decorated the canopy of Pharaoh's throne; it was scattered in processions through the streets; it was painted on the houses; it was wrought in granite on the temples. The Egyptian ladies twined the living blossoms in their hair, or wore it in chains around their necks as an amulet. Princes, priests, and peasants offered it on the altar in commemoration of the dead. The papyrus was the plaything of the child and the sceptre of the god, the glory of the country, the staple of its commerce, and the hieroglyphic emblem of its name. By withholding the supply of the papyrus, Ptolemy Philadelphus was enabled to repress the formation of a rival library by the Pergamean kings; while, by opening the markets of the Delta, the poetry of Greece and the philosophy of Rome were transmitted throughout the whole of the then known world. Alas for the permanence of mundane glories! Thirty centuries of oppression, superstition and neglect have dried up the artificial lakes in which the plant was cultivated. The hot wind of the south and the sands of the desert have exterminated the lovely paper rush in the empire of the Pharaohs, and there is not a single indigenous papyrus in the whole of Egypt proper. A stream in Sicily and the marshes of Merom in Palestine alone contain the nearly extinct vegetable; and in the conservatories of London, Sion, and Kew, England actually possesses more living papyri than can now be found from Syene to Alexandria. Treasury. 8. Having described the effect of the drought on vegetation, he now describes its effect upon those classes of the people who were otherwise dependent on the river for subsistence. The multitude of fishes in the Nile, and of people engaged in catching them, is attested both by ancient and modern writers. A. 10. This verse sums up the whole description of Egypt's political decay. The pillars or foundations, a word used once only beside (Ps. 11:3), may denote those pursuits of industry which were the mainstay and strength of the nation. These would be broken down, and all the traders and workmen, whose means of livelihood were gone, would grieve in soul at the affliction and ruin of the land. 12. Where are the wise counsellors, who should form one main part of this noble heritage? The mournful change from world-famous wisdom to folly would be God's own judgment on an idolatrous land. When nations reject the words of God, their wisdom soon dies out, and turns to utter foolishness. Birks. 15. The figures of head and tail, branch and rush, are used, as in chap. 9:13, to denote all classes of society, or rather the extremes between which the others are included. 17. This verse relates not to the destruction of Sennacherib's army in Judah, nor to the approach of the Assyrians from that quarter, nor to an attack upon Egypt by Judah itself, but to the new feelings which would be entertained by the Egyptians toward the God of the Jews and the true religion. Judah, in a political and military sense, might still appear contemptible; but in another aspect, and for other reasons, it would be an object of respect and even fear to the Egyptians. A. 18. One view which alone seems to rest on the things actually said in the text is that of Calvin—viz., that out of six cities of Egypt five shall learn of the true God and consecrate themselves to Him; but one shall be destroyed. This is assumed to indicate in general the proportion between those who are converted to God and those who perish in their sins. "Speaking the language of Canaan" means not necessarily that they learn and speak the Hebrew tongue, but that they use the language of Christian experience; of course in sincerity, to express the thoughts, purposes and affections of the Christian heart. At the same time there may be a tacit allusion to the fact that the earliest fulfilment of this prophecy came through the emigration of Jews into Egypt, bringing their own language, literally that of Canaan, and their sacred writings, God's own inspired word. In the age of the Ptolemies, the Jews became quite numerous in Egypt. The well-known translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was then made into Greek (as is said) by request of the Egyptian king. The moral condition of the Egyptians was improved by these agencies. Another stage of fulfilment occurred during the first six centuries of the Christian age, when large and flourishing churches abounded in Egypt. Yet a richer fulfilment remains to be realized. H. C. Many Jews, after Nebuchadnezzar had taken Jerusalem, fled into Egypt, and carried along with them Jeremiah, who there uttered most of his prophecies concerning the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. From thence some knowledge of God and some notices of the prophecies might easily be derived to the Egyptians. Alexander transplanted many of the Jews into his new city, Alexandria; the first Ptolemy carried more; and his successors gave great encouragement to settlers, nor were the Jews less favored by many of the Syrian kings. Bp. Newton. 19. As we might now speak of a missionary pitching his tent at Hebron or at Shechem, without intending to describe the precise form of his habitation, so the prophet represents the converts to the true faith as erecting an altar and a pillar to the Lord in Egypt, as Abraham and Jacob did of old in Canaan. A still more exact illustration is afforded by the frequent use among ourselves of the word altar to denote the practice of devotion, especially in families. 20. If, as we have seen reason to believe, the chapter is a prophecy not of a single event, but of a great progressive change to be wrought in the condition of Egypt by the introduction of the true religion, the promise of the verse before us must be that when they cried God would send them a deliverer, a promise verified not once, but often, not by Ptolemy or Alexander only, but by others, and in the highest sense by Christ Himself. The assertion, that the meaning of the prophecy was exhausted by events before the advent, is as easily contradicted as advanced. It is admitted that the rise of Alexander's power was contemporaneous with a great increase of Jewish population and Jewish influence in Egypt, and also with a great improvement in the social and political condition of the people. This was still more remarkably the case when Christianity was introduced, and who shall say what is yet to be witnessed and experienced in Egypt under the influence of this same gospel? 22. This verse may indeed be regarded as a recapitulation of the whole preceding prophecy, consisting as it does of an extended threatening (verses 1-17) followed by an ample promise (verses 18-21). As if he had said, Thus will God smite Egypt and then heal it. A. 23. The natural significance of a broad highway, a great international road, between Egypt and Assyria, passing through Israel, must be the most free and easy communication and the spirit of mutual fraternity. These nations are no longer foes as for ages past by, but friends—all one in the fellowship of Christian love. The people of each kingdom may pass freely to the other. The Egyptians will serve (God) with the Assyrians (so the last clause must mean). H. C. 24. The meaning obviously is that Israel should be one of three, or a party to a triple union. In verse 25 the perfect union of the three great powers in the service of God and the enjoyment of His favor is expressed by a solemn benediction on the three, in which language commonly applied to Israel exclusively is extended to Egypt and Assyria. A.—They shall all be blessed of the Lord. They shall all be owned by Him as His. Though Egypt was formerly a house of bondage to the people of God, and Assyria an unjust invader of them, all this shall now be forgiven and forgotten, and they shall be as welcome to God as Israel. They are all alike His people, whom He takes under His protection; they are formed by Him, for they are "the work of His hands;" not only as a people, but as His people. They are formed for Him, for they are His inheritance, precious in His eyes, and dear to Him, and from whom He has His rent of honor out of this lower world. They shall be owned together by Him as jointly His; His in concert; they shall all share in one and the same blessing. Those that are united in the love and blessing of God ought, for that reason, to be united to each other in charity. H. This broad outlook of prophecy encompasses the world, and stretches forward into times then far remote. The Assyria of that age has long since passed away; but other nations have come upon her ancient soil and elsewhere in populous Asia—e.g., the Armenians and Parthians of the early Christian ages, and others in modern and yet future times, to take her place and stand forward to receive this blessing which the Lord announced in her name. The Egypt too of that age has gone down very low, and long since ceased to be a great political power among the nations. But Egypt fitly represents Africa. In that continent there are still myriads of human souls sitting in darkness to whom the blessings of the great Messiah must yet come. Looking deeper than the mere costume and drapery of this prophecy, even to its inner spirit, we shall see in it that the old antipathies of belligerent nations who had kept the world in a flame with their wars for more than a thousand years must give place to the freest intercommunication; the most cordial and fraternal fellowship; the hearty and universal service of the living God. This change having come over them, they are joyfully recognized by the great God as being all His own beloved and honored people! Let us bless the name of God for such gleams of light upon the prophetic future of our long-time sin-worn and wasted world! H. C. Chap. 20. About the time of the Assyrian attack on Ashdod, the prophet is directed to walk naked and barefoot as a sign of the defeat and captivity of the Egyptians and Ethiopians who were at war with Assyria. The first verse fixes the date of this symbolical transaction; the second contains the Divine command and the record of its execution; the third and fourth explain the meaning of the symbol; the fifth and sixth predict its effect, or rather that of the event which it prefigured. A. Isaiah, by a Divine direction, makes himself personally a sign to the people by laying off his usual sackcloth and sandals, and "walking naked and barefoot," to indicate how the Egyptians and Ethiopians were to be borne away as captives before the king of Assyria. Cases of such symbolic acts are frequent in Ezekiel. This stands alone in Isaiah. This chapter introduces to our acquaintance a new king of Assyria, not mentioned by name elsewhere in the Scriptures—Sargon. He was one of the greatest of Assyrian monarchs. Tartan, his lieutenant-general, served in the same capacity under his son Sennacherib. (See 2 K. 18:17.) The moral bearing of this prophecy is obvious—viz., to show the Jews how vain were all their hopes of aid from Egypt against Assyria. When they saw Egyptians and Ethiopians led captive in a manner so disgraceful to the prowess of their nation, how could they expect help from that quarter to prevent the Assyrians from coming down upon themselves? H. C. The inscriptions of an Assyrian king who reigned shortly after Tiglath-pileser illustrate several passages of Scripture, more especially Isa. 20:1-5; 2 K. 17:6; 18:10 and 20:12. The name of this monarch is read as Sargina or Sar-kina, and the time of his reign is fixed by the Assyrian canon to the years B.C. 722-705. As Isaiah flourished from about B.C. 750 to 698, Sargina must have been contemporary with him; and as there is no other name at all like Sargina in the Assyrian royal lists, it is impossible to doubt that the monarch in question is identical with the "Sargona king of Assyria," here mentioned (verse 1) by Isaiah as a contemporary. That mention of an Assyrian king named Sargon had, until the Assyrian inscriptions were deciphered, received no confirmation at all from profane history. The occurrence of the name once, and once only, in Isaiah, and not at all in Kings or Chronicles, was commonly felt as a difficulty; and it was generally assumed that the monarch so called must have borne also one of the names assigned to Assyrian sovereigns in the Book of Kings—that he must, in fact, have been either Shalmaneser, or Sennacherib, or Esarhaddon. The inscriptions of Sargina, and other Assyrian documents, have now shown that he was a distinct monarch from any of them, and that his reign of seventeen years intervened between those of Shalmaneser and Sennacherib, the former of whom ceased to reign in B.C. 722, while the latter ascended the throne in B.C. 705. Sennacherib tells us in all his inscriptions that he was Sargina's son; and Sargina is shown by the Assyrian canon to have succeeded Shalmaneser. The history which Isaiah attaches to the name of Sargon also exactly accords with the annals of Sargina. Egypt was at this time closely connected with Ethiopia, which under Piankhi, Shabak, Shabatok, and Tirhakah, exercised the rights of a suzerain power, permitting, however, to certain native Egyptian princes a delegated sovereignty. Hence the close connection in which we find Ethiopia and Egypt placed in the present prophecy. In the year that the Assyrian Tartan, or commander-in-chief, took Ashdod, having been assigned the task by Sargon, king of Assyria, the successor of Shalmaneser IV, and father of Sennacherib—probably the year B.C. 714—Isaiah was directed to renew his warning against trust in these African powers. They had become the "glory" and the "expectation" of his countrymen, whither they were ready to "flee for help" (verses 5, 6). In order to impress the Jews with the folly of their vain hopes, Isaiah was instructed to announce a coming victory of Assyria over combined Egypt and Ethiopia, the result of which would be a great removal of captives, belonging to both nations, from the banks of the Nile to those of the Tigris, to the great "shame" of the conquered and the great glory of the conquerors. To arrest the attention of his nation, he was to take the garb of a prisoner himself, and to go barefoot and "naked"—i.e., clad in a single scant tunic, for three years, at the end of which time his prophecy would be accomplished. The prophecy seems to have had its first accomplishment when, in B.C. 711, Ashdod revolted from Assyria, under promise of support from the Ethiopian Pharaoh of the period, and was captured, with its garrison, which is likely to have consisted in part of Egyptians and Ethiopians. We are expressly told that the prisoners were on this occasion trans- ported into Assyria, their place being supplied by captives taken in some of Sargon's eastern wars. G. R. 2. Naked and barefoot.** Those are said to be naked in the Scripture phrase who go without their upper garment, or have put off the habit proper to their station or quality. Going barefoot was a sign of mourning. Waterland. 3. Isaiah received this commission in the same year in which this siege commenced. The duration of the siege is not stated, but it is supposed to have been three years, so that Isaiah's walking naked and barefoot continued to be a sign and wonder until his prediction was fulfilled in the capture of the city by Sargon and in his treatment of his Egyptian and Ethiopian prisoners. H. C. 5. The meaning of the verse is, that they who had relied on Egypt and its ally Ethiopia for aid against Assyria, whether Jews or Philistines or both, should be confounded at beholding Egypt and Ethiopia themselves subdued. 6. And how shall we (ourselves) escape? The disappointment described in the foregoing verse is now expressed by those who felt it. If the protectors were subdued, what must become of the protected? A. 21 : 1 THE burden of the wilderness of the sea. As whirlwinds in the South sweep through, it cometh from the wilderness, from a terrible land. A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam; besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease. Therefore are my loins filled with anguish; pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman in travail: I am pained so that I cannot hear; I am dismayed so that I cannot see. My heart panteth, horror hath affrighted me: the twilight that I desired hath been turned into trembling unto me. They prepare the table, they set the watch, they eat, they drink: rise up, ye princes, anoint the shield. For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman; let him declare what he seeth: and when he seeth a troop, horsemen in pairs, a troop of asses, a troop of camels, he shall hearken diligently with much heed. And he cried as a lion: O Lord, I stand continually upon the watch-tower in the day-time, and am set in my ward whole nights: and, behold, here cometh a troop of men, horsemen in pairs. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods are broken unto the ground. O thou my threshing, and the corn of my floor: that which I have heard from the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you. 11. The burden of Dumah. One calleth unto me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, the morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: turn ye, come. 13. The burden upon Arabia. 14. In the forest in Arabia shall ye lodge, O ye travelling companies of Dedanites. Unto him that was thirsty they brought water; the inhabitants of the land of Tema did meet the fugitives with their bread. For they fled away from the swords, from the drawn sword, and from the bent bow, and from the grievousness of war. For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Within a year, according to the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail: and the residue of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, shall be few; for the LORD, the God of Israel, hath spoken it. 22:1 The burden of the valley of vision. 2. What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops? O thou that art full of shoutings, a tumultuous city, a joyous town; thy slain are not slain with the sword, 3 neither are they dead in battle. All thy rulers fled away together, they were bound by the 4 archers: all that were found of thee were bound together, they fled afar off. Therefore said I, Look away from me, I will weep bitterly; labour not to comfort me, for the spoiling 5 of the daughter of my people. For it is a day of discomfiture, and of treading down, and of perplexity, from the Lord, the LORD of hosts, in the valley of vision; a breaking down of the 6 walls, and a crying to the mountains. And Elam bare the quiver, with chariots of men and 7 horsemen; and Kir uncovered the shield. And it came to pass, that thy choicest valleys 8 were full of chariots, and the horsemen set themselves in array at the gate. And he took away the covering of Judah; and thou didst look in that day to the armour in the house of 9 the forest. And ye saw the breaches of the city of David, that they were many: and ye 10 gathered together the waters of the lower pool. And ye numbered the houses of Jerusalem, 11 and ye brake down the houses to fortify the wall. Ye made also a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool: but ye looked not unto him that had done this, neither 12 had ye respect unto him that fashioned it long ago. And in that day did the Lord, the LORD of hosts, call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: 13 and behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: 14 let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. And the LORD of hosts revealed himself in mine ears, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts. 15. Thus saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, Go, get thee unto this treasurer, even unto Shebna, 16 which is over the house, and say, What doest thou here? and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out here a sepulchre? hewing him out a sepulchre on high, graving an habi- 17 tation for himself in the rock! Behold, the LORD will hurl thee away violently as a strong 18 man; yea, he will wrap thee up closely. He will surely turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country; there shalt thou die, and there shall be the chariots of thy glory, thou shame 19 of thy lord's house. And I will thrust thee from thine office, and from thy station shall he 20 pull thee down. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim 21 the son of Hilkiah: and I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants 22 of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; and he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. 23 And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a throne of glory to his 24 father's house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, every small vessel, from the vessels of cups even to all the vessels of 25 flagons. In that day, saith the LORD of hosts, shall the nail that was fastened in a sure place give way; and it shall be hewn down, and fall, and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off; for the LORD hath spoken it. Chap. 21. As three of the verses of this chapter begin with the word burden (verses 1, 11, 13), it is now commonly supposed to consist of three distinct prophecies. It is also agreed that the first of these (verses 1-10) relates to the conquest of Babylon by the Medes and Persians; the second (verses 11, 12) either to Edom or the Arabian tribe Dumah, and the third (verses 13-17) to another Arabian tribe or to Arabia in general. The second and third of these divisions are admitted by the recent German writers to be composed by Isaiah himself, while the first is with almost equal unanimity declared to be the product of a later age. This critical judgment, as in other cases, is founded partly on alleged diversities of phraseology, but chiefly on the wonderful coincidences with history both sacred and profane, which could not be ascribed to Isaiah or to any contemporary writer, without conceding the reality of prophetic inspiration. There is nothing in the reasoning of such writers to shake the faith of any who do not hold their fundamental principle of unbelief. In the next place, this hypothesis entirely fails to account for the minute agreement of the prophecy with history in circumstantial, which must therefore be explained away by forced constructions and interpretations. Taking the language in its obvious meaning and excluding all gratuitous assumptions, we shall be constrained to look upon this passage as one of the most striking instances of strict agreement between prophecy and history. A. # Verses 1-10. As the whirlwinds rush up from the desert, so a mysterious terror seizes upon the prophet's spirit. A grievous vision passes before him; an awful voice is heard, summoning his attention to the metropolis of the world, the vast and populous stronghold of Babylon, on the distant Mesopotamian plains. Nay, the air grows full of voices, the darkness of mysterious shapes which come and go, so that he can see nothing clearly, nor hear any distinct and sequent utterance. At last the darkness opens, the curtains of the night are drawn aside, and through the rift he beholds a stately palace blazing with lights and ringing with the sounds of revelry. 'Tis the palace of Belshazzar, the despot of Babylon, who gives a banquet to a thousand of his lords. As he gazes on this strange scene, the prophet reports what he sees: "They cover the table. They set the watch," that they may revel on undisturbed. "They eat. They drink." The orgie is at its height when, lo, a voice quick with alarm peals through the hall, uttering the familiar battle-cry, "Arise, O ye princes! Anoint the shield!" Gazing more eagerly than ever to discover the cause and issue of this appalling cry, the whole scene melts from the prophet's view, the lights are extinguished, the palace with its flushed revellers disappear, and he is left on his windy watch-tower, racked with terror and suspense. Still he gazes—how can he but gaze?—into the darkness that enshrouds the city. And, as he gazes, he detects shadows moving swiftly through the darkness. The starlight faintly gleams from spear and shield. He becomes aware that a mighty host is advancing, under cover of night, against the city in which the king was banqueting with his lords. He can make out the splendid Median cavalry, riding "in pairs," and the Persians with their long array of camels. And now he knows that the Medes and Persians of Cyrus have plunged down from their mountain fastnesses, and are about to assault the mighty city of the plains, which has gathered into itself the wealth of the world. But once more the thick darkness closes over the scene, a darkness in which there is no voice or sound. The suspense grows intolerable to him, when, once more, the darkness lifts, and the air trembles with a shout of victory. He looks, and sees the Median cavalry riding out of the city which they have captured, clashing their shields and brandishing their spears. He listens, and, behold, they cry, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all their gods are dashed to the ground!" This is our first picture from Isaiah; and surely it conveys to us, as no mere history could do, the blended astonishment, terror, joy, with which the ancient world heard of the fall of that mighty Babylonian empire, which seemed founded forever, before the assault of the rude and almost unknown hill-tribes of Persia. It was this overwhelming and incredible event by which the captivity of Zion was turned and the exiles of Israel were set free to return to their native and beloved land. 1. Wilderness of the sea.** As Babylon was a large and most fertile inland plain, no name could at first seem more inappropriate to it; it was not "a sea," or near the sea; it was not a wilderness, for of all lands it was the most prolific of grain. That the name was nevertheless appropriate we may infer from the fact that Herodotus (i. 184) speaks of this vast fertile plain in similar terms. The plain on which Babylon stood ran at the south into the Arabian desert, and owed its amazing fertility to the innumerable fountains and springs which rose up in it, and to the great rivers which flowed through it. Of these the mighty Euphrates, fed by the mountain snows and rains which poured into it through a thousand affluents, used annually to overflow the whole land, transforming it into a sea, until the great Assyrian despots cut their canals and constructed the massive dams which held the river within its bounds. "Wilderness of the sea," therefore, was probably an ancient name, and was certainly no inappropriate name, for the Babylonian plain. Cor. 2. "Go up, Elam," for the Lord of hosts commissions thee to this work of conquest and spoil: "besiege, O Media;" and let the proud city fall. All the sighing which that most oppressive power has caused to the nations she conquered, and especially to My people, the Jews, shall now cease. Elam is another name for Persia, being its largest province. The naming of these very nations that were to conquer Babylon, nearly two centuries before the event, is one of the undeniable attestations of real prophecy. H. C. 3,4. The prophet's fine humanity, sensitive to all human woe, carries him for the time beyond the range of merely personal or national feeling. Among the captives whose sighs have entered into the heart of the Almighty King are thousands of Isaiah's own race; the Jews are in bondage to Babylon, a bondage most bitter and degrading. They therefore will be delivered, their bonds will be broken, their sighs will be changed to mirthful songs, when Babylon, the mistress and despot of the world, is smitten down. And yet the Hebrew prophet, rejoicing in the joy of his people, is convulsed with anguish as he anticipates the judgment which is to set them free. Cox. 5. The Hebrew tense is different in the two clauses, but the imperative in English alone gives the true emphasis of both. The table of the royal banquet is prepared. "Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his nobles, and drank wine before the thousand." The guests are ready to sit down, when the watch, after the custom, is set at the gates of the city. The feast begins, they eat, they drink, in unsuspecting revelry. Birks. 6-9. The structure of the passage is highly dramatic. In the sixth verse, the prophet is commanded to set a watch. In the seventh, the sentinel is ordered to look out for an army of men, mounted on horses, camels and asses. In the eighth, he reports himself as being at his post. In the ninth, he sees the very army which had been described approaching. Answer is used, both in Greek and Hebrew, for the resumption of discourse by the same speaker, especially after an interval. It is here equivalent to spoke again. During the interval implied, the city is supposed to have been taken, so that when the watchman speaks again, it is to say that Babylon is fallen. The omission of all the intermediate details, for the purpose of bringing the extremes together, is a masterly stroke of poetical description, which would never have occurred to an inferior writer. A. 7. The fulfilment of this prophecy is wonderfully definite. Xenophon represents the Persians as advancing two by two in pairs as here said; and although no other people are known to have used camels and asses for cavalry service, yet both Herodotus and Xenophon testify that the Persians used them, partly or wholly, to frighten the horses of their enemies. H. C. 9. This then is the issue of that mysterious conflict, the dim apprehension of which shook the prophet's soul with an intolerable dread; this is the light that arose upon him out of that great darkness—the great empire of wrong dedestroyed, her captives set free, their sighs exchanged for rapturous songs. 10. Oh my threshing and the son of my threshing-floor! What I have heard from Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, I have told you. This part of the prophecy closes with an apostrophe, showing at once by whose power and for whose sake the downfall of Babylon was to be brought about. Though the terms here used are scarcely intelligible when literally rendered into English, it is clear that they mean, oh my oppressed and afflicted people, and must therefore be addressed to the Jews, to whom the fall of Babylon would bring deliverance, and for whose consolation this prediction was originally uttered. The last clause assures them that their own God had sent this message to them. A. And now what lesson are we to learn from this ode? It should perhaps be lesson enough that we have found a Scripture before dark grow full of light. But if other lessons be desired, let us take these two, and think them out and apply them for ourselves. 1. If the ode teaches anything, it teaches that however sorry and reluctant God may be to afflict the children of men, He will not spare a single stroke so long as they cling to the evils which degrade and destroy them. 2. If it teaches anything, it teaches that His design in judging and afflicting us is always most merciful; that He has no pleasure in our sufferings; that He simply intends them to separate the evil in us from the good, to make us perfect, and to fit us for an eternal blessedness. If we love evil in any form, if we habitually do that which is wrong, we may hide our evil habit from men, but we cannot hide it from God; nor can we evade the searching judgments by which He seeks to free us from our bonds. And when the doom falls, when the Divine judgment searches us through and through, we are to remember that God is not so much angry with us as with the evil that is in us; we are to remember that He loves us, and because He loves us, will make us quit our evil; we are to remember that He can only lift His judgments from us as we renounce our sins. Cox. ##### Verses 11, 12. These verses are deeply enigmatic—probably with design. The name "Dumah" probably is a slight modification of the word Edom, or Idumea. Seir is but another name for Edom. The man who calls to the prophet to learn the fate of his people accosts the prophet as a watchman foreseeing the future of nations, and asks, "What of the night?" to be construed either thus: What can you tell us about this terrible night of calamity now pressing upon us? or perhaps in this way, reaching the same ultimate sense: How far along are we in this awful night, and when may we look for day? To this the watchman responds, "Morning comes and night too: if you wish to inquire, ask on; come and ask again." All this is at least very indefinite. Yet we can scarcely put any other construction upon it than this: Morning will come to the people of God; but no morning comes to you; nothing but the dark night of death. H. C. Why has the watchman no better answer for the inquiry from Dumah? Simply because it comes from a race which has no habitual dealings with God. If Edom wants an answer from God in its hour of anxiety or of distress, it must begin by coming over to God's side, and incorporating itself with the people of His choice and of His adoption. How often, in these times, do we find persons utterly irreligious and worldly, entering into questions concerning God and His truth, concerning revelation, inspiration, miracle and prophecy, as though they had a right to all the enlightenment and comfort and assurance which the saints of God have for their guidance and upholding. The cry comes from Dumah, it echoes across the ridge of Seir, it sounds in the ear of the solitary watchman on the afflicted heights of Zion, "Watchman, what of the night? watchman, what of the night?" Tell me, thou man of God, how stands the matter between faith and scepticism? Give me on the instant, give me in brief compass, in terms concise and conclusive, a reason for the hope that is in thee and for the faith once delivered to the saints! Assure me of the eternal verities brought to earth by One who had seen them and even framed them in heaven, and then send me back—for I am in haste—into the world which I love, or into the sin which I cherish, a firm believer, a hopeful, happy Christian, as safe for eternity as tranquil for time! What saith the answer of God to the demand thus addressed to Him? "The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come." To the careless questioner all truth is an enigma. Yes, day comes, and then night again. "Ye will inquire?" Inquire ye! Yes, ask all your questions; go, and come again; spend your day in slumber, your night in pleasure; and yet put in between times your half-meant, half-jesting questions, "What is truth? and evidence what? and what the Bible?" if ye will inquire, inquire ye; but the response must at last be a riddle to him who so questions! Not in the tone of ridicule—God forbid—and not in the spirit of arrogance, as though the watchman cared not for the miseries of Edom; but rather for the sake of Edom—because such questioning cannot profit—because an answer to such questioning could be only for evil—because it is not well for man that he should combine God and the world, a frivolous life with a calm assurance of salvation—are the words here written, and do we seek so to use them, as if a prepared mind were a first condition of religious knowledge, an earnest resolution after God, a necessary prerequisite for the study of His truth and the reception of His salvation. C. J. Vaughan. Verses 13-17. 13-17. Arabia lay eastward and southward of the land of Canaan; much of it was possessed by the posterity of Abraham. The Dedanim here mentioned (verse 13) descended from Dedan, Abraham's son by Keturah; the inhabitants of Tema and Kedar descended from Ishmael (Gen. 25:3, 13, 15). The Arabians generally lived in tents and kept cattle, were a hardy people, inured to labor; probably the Jews depended upon them as a sort of a wall between them and the more war-like eastern nations, and therefore, to alarm them, they shall hear "the burden of Arabia," and see it sinking under its own burden. H. Arabia was a lodging-place rather than a home for its wandering tribes. The caravans of Dedanites are the companies of trading Arabs, descended from Dedan, son of Midian, whose route lay from Damascus to the south of Arabia. Birks. 13. The country was to be in such a state that the caravans which usually travelled undisturbed would be obliged to leave the public road and pass the night among the bushes or thickets, which seems to be here (and perhaps originally) the meaning. Forests properly so called do not exist in the Arabian desert. The Dedanim are mentioned elsewhere in connection with Edom and Teman (Jer. 49:8; Ezek. 25:13), to whom they were probably contiguous. Their precise situation is the less important as they are not the subjects of the prophecy, but spoken of as strangers passing through, the interruption of whose journey is mentioned as a proof of the condition of the country. A. 17. The last clause intimates that God, as the God of Israel, has a quarrel with Kedar, and at the same time that His power and omniscience will secure the fulfilment of the threatening. It is not impossible that future discoveries may yet throw light upon these brief and obscure prophecies. A. Chap. 22. This chapter records a prophetic burden of calamity on Jerusalem. In a series of prophetic burdens on guilty nations and cities—Babylon, Moab, Damascus, Samaria, Egypt and Arabia—a city so guilty as Jerusalem could not be passed by. It is called “the valley of vision,” as being the home of many inspired prophets and the subject of many Divine visions. It is called “the valley of vision,” as some suppose with reference to its geographical position, encompassed by mountains. There is special pertinence in this allusion to her “visions,” because the great light she had from God was a chief element in her guilt. The chapter is peculiar for its special prophecies respecting two individuals, men of prominence—viz., Shebna and Eliakim, the former noted for his wickedness, pride and pernicious influence, and the latter for his fidelity both to God and to his country, and for his great usefulness in bearing public responsibilities. Since these persons, or at least persons bearing these names, appear in the history during Hezekiah’s reign (Isa. 36:3), it can scarcely be doubted that the prophet alludes to them, and hence that the siege of Jerusalem here predicted occurred within their lifetime. H. C. This chapter naturally falls into two parts. The first describes the conduct of the people of Jerusalem during a siege (verses 1–14). The second predicts the removal of Shebna from his post as treasurer or steward of the royal household (verses 15–25). The whole may then be described as a prophecy against the people of Jerusalem in general, and against Shebna in particular, considered as their leader and example. If the whole must be applied to one specific point of time, it is probably the taking of Jerusalem by the king of Assyria in the days of Manasseh, when the latter was himself carried captive with his chief men, and Shebna possibly among the rest. The choice seems to lie between this hypothesis and that of a generic prediction, a prophetic picture of the conduct of the Jews in a certain conjuncture of affairs which happened more than once, particular strokes of the description being drawn from different memorable sieges, and especially from those of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar. A. 1. As usual, the prophet strikes boldly into the heart of his theme. His prophetic eye sees the city in strange commotion, and he cries out, What has befallen thee? What can have happened, that the whole people throng the house-tops? Oriental houses are built with flat roofs made easily accessible from the inner court. Hence these roofs are places of frequent resort for various purposes. H. C.—From verses 4 and 5 it is plain that it was a time of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity; which naturally suggests the idea that the inhabitants had rushed to the tops of the houses to get a sight of those chariots and horsemen of Elam and Kir, with whom their choice valleys were full, and who were thundering against the gates of the city. Thomson. 5. In the original, the words rendered “by the Lord God of hosts,” are closely connected, not with “perplexity,” but with “day;” so that the sense is, This is the Lord’s day for troubling, trampling down and confounding that guilty city, the valley of vision. This day the Lord has brought upon them in righteous judgment, and it is therefore said to belong to the Lord, the Lord’s own day. It is a day of undermining walls and of outcries that send their echoes far off to the mountains. Some suppose that “To the mountains” are the very words of the outcry. 6. This means that the men of Elam (which represents Persia) and the men of Kir were in the besieging army. Kir, supposed to be the modern Kur, was a country on the river Cyrus, to which the Assyrians bore their captives from Syria (2 K. 16:9), a fact which shows that this was a subject province. The same is true of Elam. Hence both these countries were doubtless represented in the armies of Assyria. 11. Their great sin comes to view here. It was not that they had fortified the city, but that they had not also, and much more even, looked to God, the Maker of the city, who had laid its ancient foundations. There is a tacit antithesis in the form of expression: They had looked to the arsenal (verse 8) and to the breaches of the walls (verse 9), but they had not looked to Him who had made all, to whom they should have looked first and chiefly. H. C. 13. And behold mirth and jollity, slaying of oxen and killing of sheep, eating of flesh and drinking of wine; eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. This verse presents the contrast of their actual behavior with that to which God called them by His providence. It has been disputed whether these last words are expressive of contemptuous incredulity or of a desperate determination to spend the residue of life in pleasure. It is by no means clear that these two feelings are exclusive of each other, since the same man might express his disbelief of the threatening, and his resolution, if it should prove true, to die in the enjoyment of his favorite indulgences. At all events, there can be no need of restricting the full import of the language, as adapted to express both states of mind, in different persons, if not in the same. A. 12-14. This passage is introduced with a loud and pressing call to repentance. It describes the contemptuous behavior of the people to whom the call was addressed, and concludes with an alarming denunciation of wrath against those perverse and obstinate transgressors. There is no room to suppose that they had given no attention to the message delivered by the prophet. It would rather appear that they had attended to it with accuracy, nay, studied its meaning, on purpose to counteract it; for a contrast so minutely exact, a scheme of contradiction so completely adjusted, could hardly have been stumbled upon by mere accident. And indeed the latter part of the verse puts this beyond all doubt. "Let us eat and drink," said they, "for to-morrow we shall die." They meant it as a scoff, a turning into ridicule the warning they had received, but which they did not believe. The prophet hath been telling us of desolating judgments just at hand, and with the same breath he calls us to weeping, and mourning, and girding with sackcloth. How absurd, how unreasonably cruel is the demand! Will not the evil day come soon enough, though we should not anticipate the sorrows of it, by afflicting ourselves unnecessarily before its arrival? Nay, rather, if life is to be cut short, let us make the most of it while it lasts. If we must die to-morrow, let us eat and drink, and be merry to-day. By their scoffing reply to the call that was given them, in the name of the Lord God of hosts, they said in effect, with insolent contempt and proud defiance, "Let him make speed and hasten His work, that we may see it; and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it." The prophet therefore proclaims, as on the house-top, what God had revealed in his ears, that from that time forward vengeance should pursue those impious men, till, like their rebellious forefathers, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness, they should be utterly consumed from off the face of the earth. R. W. 15. At this point the "burden" becomes personal, pertaining first to a man by the name of Shebna, and next to another by the name of Eliakim. Both these names appear in the history of Hezekiah (36:3), representing men of prominent official positions. It appears here that they were strong contrasts in character. H. C.—From the people in general the threatening now passes to an individual, no doubt because he was particularly guilty of the crime alleged, and by his influence the means of leading others astray likewise. The phrase this treasurer may either be expressive of disapprobation or contempt, or simply designate the man as well known to the prophet and his readers. These familiar allusions to things and persons now forgotten, while they add to the obscurity of the passage, furnish an incidental proof of its antiquity and genuineness. 19. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will call for My servant, for Eliakim the son of Hilkiah—i.e., will personally designate him. Eliakim appears again in chap. 36:3, and there as here in connection with Shebna. The epithet My servant seems to be intended to describe him as a faithful follower of Jehovah, and as such to contrast him with Shebna, who may have been a heathen. 21. Father is not a mere Oriental synonym of ruler, but an emphatic designation of a wise and benevolent ruler. It seems therefore to imply that Shebna's administration was of an opposite character. The inhabitants of Jerusalem and the family of Judah comprehend the whole nation. 22. In other words, he shall have unlimited control over the royal house and household, which, according to Oriental usages, implies a high political authority. The application of the same terms to Peter (Matt. 16:19) and to Christ Himself (Rev. 3:7) does not prove that they here refer to either, or that Eliakim was a type of Christ, but merely that the same words admit of different applications. A. 23. Two figures are used here to represent the stability and fidelity of Eliakim. He is this tent-pin on which all the glory of his father's house—all the offspring, great and small, high and low—hang in dependence; and he is also a seat of honor ("glorious throne") for them all to sit upon. His name is a tower of strength and of respectability to them all. 25. Most commentators agree therefore that this figure must be transferred to Shebna, as much as to say: Shebna has had these very responsibilities upon himself, but he utterly failed to bear them faithfully; hence the nail came out; everything hung upon it fell, and great was the fall thereof. This was what the Lord had said. The event fulfilled His word. H. C. 23:1 THE burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of Kittim it is revealed to them. Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished. And on great waters the seed of Shihor, the harvest of the Nile, was her revenue; and she was the mart of nations. Be thou ashamed, O Zidon: for the sea hath spoken, the strong hold of the sea, saying, I have not travailed, nor brought forth, neither have I nourished young men, nor brought up virgins. When the report cometh to Egypt, they shall be sorely pained at the 6, 7 report of Tyre. Pass ye over to Tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the isle. Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days, whose feet carried her afar off to sojourn? Who hath purposed this against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth? The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth. Pass through thy land as the Nile, O daughter of Tarshish; there is no girdle about thee any more. He hath stretched out his hand over the sea, he hath shaken the kingdoms: the LORD hath given commandment concerning Canaan, to destroy the strong holds thereof. And he said, Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed virgin daughter of Zidon: arise, pass over to Kittim; even there shalt thou have no rest. Behold, the land of the Chaldeans; this people is no more; the Assyrian hath appointed it for the beasts of the wilderness; they set up their towers, they overthrew the palaces thereof; he made it a ruin. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for your strong hold is laid waste. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years, according to the days of one king: after the end of seventy years it shall be unto Tyre as in the song of the harlot. Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered. And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall return to her hire, and shall play the harlot with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the LORD: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing. TYRE and Zidon, great and ancient maritime cities of Phoenicia—Tyre the greater, but Zidon the more ancient—were situated on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and very near the northwest corner of the Canaan occupied by Israel. They come into notice frequently in the Scriptures, both in history and in prophecy. They were specially distinguished for their commerce and their consequent commercial relations with their colonies on the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean. Indeed, at some periods these commercial relations reached every known country of the world. H. C. The student of the Old Testament is constantly surprised to find such abundant references to this great city in the prophetical writings, and especially to note the numerous and specific predictions concerning Tyre in Holy Writ. Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah, speaking by Divine direction, have placed such predictions on record, and with a fulness and emphasis which hardly have a parallel in the prophetic declarations respecting any other city or people, except Jerusalem and the chosen Hebrew race. The five prophets are named in their historic order, according to the received chronology, and the particular references are as follows: Amos 1:9, 10; Isa. 23, especially verses 15-18; Jer. 25:22; 27:3; Ezek., chaps. 26, 27 and 28 entire, and 29:18; Zech. 9:2-4. See also prophecies in which Tyre and Zidon are associated in a common condemnation, Jer. 47:4; Joel 3:4-8, and others. Note also the instructive allusions in Ps. 45:12; 83:7; 87:4, indicating the close relations between Tyre and Israel. See for further historic reference 1 K. 7:13, 14; 9:11-14; Ezra 3:7; Neh. 13:16; Hos. 9:13, and the impressive allusion of Christ, Matt. 11:21, 22. E. D. Morris. This burden, from its clear prediction of a distant future, has had its genuineness denied by some modern critics. But all the internal evidence of connection and style, as well as all the external, proves it to be Isaiah's. The burdens are a series, of which this of Tyre, the one great maritime power of those days, is the last. So in chap. 2:16, the objects of judgment last named are "all ships of Tarshish, and all desirable merchandise," while in chap. 11:11, "the isles of the sea" close the list of places from which Israel are to return. This burden has also many internal links with those before it. Its opening and closing sentences begin the burden of Moab. The howling of Moab is mentioned six times, and the same word is found three times in this message to Tyre. The form of the phrase "so that there is no house, no entering in," is the same as in the burden of Damascus, "so that it is no city." The repetition, "the sea, the strength of the sea," is like chap. 19:7, "by the river, by the mouth of the river." The title "joyous city" is common with the last burden, and the phrase in chap. 5:11 is the keynote of three earlier visions (5:25; 9:12; 10:4; 14:24, 27). The last words of 5:13 answer to the sentence on Damascus, "it shall be a heap, a ruin." The promise at the close resembles those in the burdens of Damascus, Egypt and the valley of vision. The language is "terse, highly figurative, and sublime," quite in the style of Isaiah, and unlike any later writer (Hend.). Birks This prophecy consists of two parts. The first predicts the fall of Tyre (verses 1-14). The second promises its restoration and conversion (verses 15-18). The fall of Tyre is predicted, not directly, but in the form of apostrophes, addressed to her own people or her colonies (verses 1-7). The destruction is referred to God as its Author, and to the Chaldees as His instruments (verses 8-14). The prediction in the latter part includes three events. Tyre shall be forsaken and forgotten for seventy years (verse 15). She shall then be restored to her former activity and wealth (verses 16, 17). Thenceforth her gains shall be devoted to the Lord (verse 18). Tyre, one of the chief cities of Phœnicia, was situated partly on a rocky island near the coast, and partly in a wide and fertile plain upon the coast itself. Hengstenberg has made it probable that from the beginning the chief part of the city was situated on the island, or rather a peninsula connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus. Tyre is remarkable in history for two things—its maritime trade, and the many sieges it has undergone. The first of these on record was by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, who, according to Menander, a historian now lost, but quoted by Josephus, blockaded Tyre for five years, so as to cut off the supply of water from the mainland, but without being able to reduce the city. The next was by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who besieged it thirteen years; with what result is not expressly mentioned either in profane or sacred history. A third siege was by Alexander the Great, who after seven months and with the utmost difficulty finally reduced it. It was afterward besieged by the Syrian king Antigonus, and more than once during the Crusades, both by Franks and Saracens. After this period it entirely decayed, and has now disappeared, its site being marked by the insulated rock, by the causeway between it and the mainland still existing as a bar of sand, and by columns and other architectural remains mostly lying under water. It has been much disputed which of these events is the subject of the prophecy before us. But the great body of the older writers refer it to the siege by Nebuchadnezzar. The arguments in favor of this application are stated with great learning, force and clearness by Vitringa on the passage. A. I. The message begins with a call to the Tyrian merchants and sailors, far away from their home, to mourn over the ruin of their city. Tarshish is Tartessus in Spain, one chief emporium of Tyrian commerce. Ships of Tarshish thus became a title for all vessels used for long voyages. Chittim is Cyprus, and the sea-coasts of the east of Europe. The mariners, returning homeward, mourn at the tidings of Tyre's calamity. Birks.—The prophet calls on them to wail because Tyre is so completely destroyed that there remains no house and no harbor. They learn this sad news at the land of Chittim, supposed to be the island of Cyprus. It is known that Tyre had a colony there. H. C. 2. "Merchants of Zidon" is a generic term for those of Phœnicia; since either Tyre or Zidon fitly represents the whole nation. Birks. 3. Over the great waters come to her the grains of Egypt, the harvests of the Nile. She is a great emporium for the nations. H. C. 4. The prophet hears a voice from the sea, which he then describes more exactly as coming from the stronghold or fortress of the sea—i.e., insular Tyre as viewed from the mainland. The rest of the verse is intended to express the idea that the city thus personified was childless; was as if she had never borne children. A. 6. Pass over the sea, ye people of Tyre, to Tarshish (Tartessus in Spain) for safety. They did so to some extent no doubt during the siege by Nebuchadnezzar, and yet more in the siege by Alexander the Great. The prophecy refers mainly to the former. H. C. 7. The people of Tyre boasted of their high antiquity. Their priests told Herodotus that their temple of Hercules had lasted twenty-three hundred years. These proud boastings would give double force to the prophet's warning. Where all had been pride and vain security, there would soon be trembling flight, silence and desolation. The Tyrians would escape to remote settlements. "Her own feet" is an expressive figure for the Tyrian navy, by which this merchant city was accustomed to travel swiftly to distant lands. 8,9. Tyre might well be called "the crowning city," or giver of crowns, because of the many kings she set up in the various Phœnician colonies. And by her commerce and wealth she might be said to supply garlands of grace and beauty to all the other nations. The fall of a city so ancient and noble must have some very weighty cause. "The Lord of hosts purposed it," in order to accomplish a great end in His moral government of the world. Birks.—The plan and purpose were of God, who sought to stain the pride of man's glorying and to make light all the heavy men and things of earth. Such is the contrasted significance of these Hebrew verbs. Perhaps the rich were then as now accounted the "solid" men of society; but God would make them light, taking away their wealth and with it their honor and their pride. 11. "He" who "stretches out His hand" is the Lord. The Hebrew word for merchant is canaan, one who gets money. The meaning is that God had given command respecting the city of canaan (the merchant)—viz., Tyre, to destroy her strongholds. 12. The far-reaching ken of prophetic vision saw this Chaldean people, the future conquerors of Tyre, before they became a power among the nations. This reference to Chaldea shows that the prophecy refers to the conquest of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, and not to the earlier assault upon it by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria; nor to the later, a real destruction, by Alexander the Great. H. C.—When Isaiah wrote, Assyria was the ruling power of the world; whatever changes were expected, were expected from that quarter. But here the conquest of Phœnicia is ascribed to a people then but little known, if known at all. It was perfectly natural, therefore, to say negatively that it was not to be effected by Assyria, as well as positively that it was to be effected by Chaldea. 15. The remainder of the chapter predicts the restoration of Tyre, not to its former dignity, but to its wealth and commercial activity, the fruits of which should thenceforth be consecrated to Jehovah. A.—Isaiah predicted that after a definite period—described as seventy years—Tyre should be restored again to something of its former magnificence. And surely it is a remarkable fact that within such a period the Chaldee-Babylonian dynasty, which Nebuchadnezzar had done so much to make historic, had been subverted by Cyrus; and that under the indulgent sway of Cyrus the inhabitants of Tyre were permitted to rebuild the insular city, and there to establish again in large degree those manufacturing and commercial interests which had been so long its peculiar glory. What the pen of prophecy had written two hundred years before actually came to pass, and at the very time specified; and for generations insular Tyre continued to flourish, as had been foretold. E. D. Morris. "After the end of seventy years, according to the years of one king," or one dynasty, or family of kings, that of Nebuchadnezzar; when that expired, the desolations of Tyre came to an end. And we may presume that Cyrus, at the same time when he released the Jews and encouraged them to rebuild Jerusalem, released the Tyrians also, and encouraged them to rebuild Tyre. H.—Nebuchadnezzar began his conquests in the first year of his reign; from thence to the taking of Babylon by Cyrus are the seventy years; and these limit the duration of the Babylonish monarchy. W. Lowth. 17. After the end of seventy years. Tyre is represented as a harlot, and from thence these figures are taken; the meaning is, that she should recover her liberties and trade, and draw in all nations to deal with her. Bp. Newton.—According to the prophecy, the seventy years being expired, we find that the Tyrians were restored to their former privileges, and allowed a king of their own. This favor seems to have been granted them by Darius Hystaspes, in consideration of their usefulness to him in his naval wars; they soon recovered their former prosperity, traffic, power, and riches, and were enabled, on Alexander's invading the East, to make a greater stand against him than all the Persian Empire beside. Prideaux. 18. And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord. The prophet speaks here, not of what the Tyrians would do immediately on their restitution, but some time after, in the days of the Messiah. So that this is a prophecy concerning the conversion of the Tyrians to the true religion, of the accomplishment of which something is said in Acts 21:3, 4, 5, and more in other authors. Poole.—Tyre, after its second destruction by Alexander, again recovered its ancient trade and grandeur. It became early Christian with the rest of the neighboring countries. Paul himself found many Christians there. It suffered much in Diocletian's persecution. Lowth. The Bible contains a series of prophecies, clear, detailed, in many cases most startling in their nature, and in some cases altogether improbable—many would say incredible. The future history and final doom of nations, countries and cities are portrayed with singular clearness. No amount of political sagacity could have foreseen what is predicted; no depth of philosophical speculation could have divined it; no breadth of research could have discovered it; and yet time has converted all those strange and varied and astounding prophecies of Jewish seers into facts which historians have recorded and travellers have witnessed. J. L. Porter. 24:1 BEHOLD, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The earth shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled; for the LORD hath spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the lofty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is polluted under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are found guilty: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left. The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merryhearted do sigh. The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth. They shall not drink wine with a song; strong drink shall be bitter to them that drink it. The city of confusion is broken down: every house is shut up, that no man may come in. There is a crying in the streets because of the wine; all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction. For thus shall it be in the midst of the earth among the peoples, as the shaking of an olive tree, as the grape gleanings when the vintage is done. These shall lift up their voice, they shall shout; for the majesty of the LORD they cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the east, even the name of the LORD, the God of Israel, in the isles of the sea. From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, glory to the righteous. But I said, I pine away, I pine away, woe is me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously. Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows on high are opened, and the foundations of the earth do shake. The earth is utterly broken, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall stagger like a drunken man, and shall be moved to and fro like a hut; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it shall fall, and not rise again. 21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed; for the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously. 25:1 O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things, even counsels of old, in faithfulness and truth. For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built. Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee. For thou hast been a strong hold to the poor, a strong hold to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. As the heat in a dry place shalt thou bring down the noise of strangers; as the heat by the shadow of a cloud, the song of the terrible ones shall be brought low. And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He hath swallowed up death for ever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it. 9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand of the LORD rest, and Moab shall be trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in the water of the dunghill. And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst thereof, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim: and he shall lay low his pride together with the craft of his hands. And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls hath he brought down, laid low, and brought to the ground, even to the dust. THE next four chapters constitute one subject, and should be studied as one whole. It is a prophecy of those great providential events that clustered round the fall of the kingdom and capital of Judah. The desolations of Jerusalem and the captivity of the remnant of its population are in the foreground; but farther back lies the fall of other great cities and kingdoms before the same Chaldean power; and still more remotely, the fall of Babylon and of the sovereignty of Chaldea. That was an era of surpassing energy in those agencies of providence that operate the government of God over nations as such, and especially those which administer its retributions. The Lord came down most signally at that time to take in hand His own apostate people and scourge them for their correction and reformation. For this very reason, He could not let other nations, less guilty only because less enlightened, pass altogether unpunished. Into this scene of vigorous retributive agencies, compassing the wide world in their sweep, these chapters introduce us, setting forth the fearfulness of this far-reaching devastation, but also the milder cast of the inflictions that fall on His own people, and the mingled consolations vouchsafed to them under their deepest afflictions; the merciful designs of discipline, and the broad difference between the discipline that aims to purify and save on the one hand, and, on the other, the judgments that cut down the incorrigible, never to rise again. This prophecy is eminently rich in those gleams of light and joy that soften the gloom of the most appalling calamities ever brought of God upon His chosen people. It would seem that this is their great moral lesson—a precious one for the people of God in every age. H. C. Here begins a series of prophecies (chaps. 24-35), having reference chiefly to Judah. It is not divided into parts by any titles or express intimations of a change of subject. The style is also homogeneous and uniform. The attempts which have been made to subdivide this portion of the book are for the most part arbitrary. The conventional division into chapters may be retained as a matter of convenience. The first four chapters (24-27) are now universally regarded as forming one continuous composition. What is said of chap. 24 is therefore in some degree applicable to the whole. This chapter contains a description of a country filled with confusion and distress by a visitation from Jehovah in consequence of its iniquities (verses 1-12). It then speaks of a remnant scattered among the nations and glorifying God in distant lands (verses 13-16). The prophet then resumes his description of the judgments coming on the same land or another, winding up with a prophecy of Jehovah's exaltation in Jerusalem (verses 16-23). . . . We have here another illustration of the value of the boasted modern criticism. Gesenius is confident that the prophecy was written in Babylon; Ewald and Knobel are equally confident that it was written in the Holy Land. Gesenius disparages the style as cold and artificial; Hitzig speaks of it with contempt as awkward, feeble and inelegant; Ewald treats it with respect as poetical and skilful, although not original; while Umbreit lauds it as a noble specimen of Hebrew poetry. In this case, as in others, each writer first determines upon general grounds the age of the production, and then confirms it by internal proofs. The points of resemblance to the undisputed writings of Isaiah are set down as plagiarisms or imitations. Ewald even goes so far as to mark certain passages as borrowed from older writers no longer extant. The paronomasias and other verbal peculiarities of the passage, instead of proving it the work of Isaiah, in whose acknowledged writings they are also found, prove the contrary because they are so numerous. In this way all proof of the genuineness of a disputed passage is rendered impossible. If it has not the usual characteristics of the author, it is therefore spurious; if it has, it is evidently an imitation. It is true, distinctions are made as to the number, good taste and connection; but they are always made at will, and so as to confirm the previous conclusion. Setting aside this empirical criticism as unworthy of attention, we may observe that the endless diversity of judgment, both among the older and later writers, shows that the prediction is genuine. A. It is agreed that here begins a new sermon, which is continued to the end of chap. 27. And in it the prophet, according to the directions he had received, does, in many precious promises, say "to the righteous, It shall be well with them;" and in many dreadful threatenings he says, "Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with them" (3:10, 11); and these are interwoven, that they may illustrate each other. This chapter is mostly threatening; and as the judgments threatened are very sore and grievous ones, so the people threatened with those judgments are very many. It is not the burden of any particular city or kingdom, as those before, but the burden of the whole earth. H. 24:1. The figure is that of a bottle or other vessel drained of its contents by being turned upside down. The face is the upper part or mouth of the vessel. The last clause resolves the figure into literal expressions. Isaiah here speaks of the Babylonian conquest as still distant, but at the same time as infallibly certain. To avoid this conclusion, Gesenius denies that Isaiah was the author, and violates the usage of the language by translating this whole passage in the past tense. A. 4-6. The sentence of doom is seen taking effect, like the curse on the barren fig-tree. The vision is inexpressibly grand, solemn and mournful. Sin against God's everlasting laws is bearing its natural and certain fruits of sorrow and death. The whole frame of nature is polluted by the transgression of men. The rainbow had been given as the sign of a covenant forever between God and "every living creature of all flesh upon the earth." This covenant was now broken by the gross idolatry of the Gentiles, and even of Israel, the chosen people. Instead of seed-time and harvest, and joyful increase, there would thus be a curse of barrenness, wasting and desolation. Birks. 6. The "curse" which devoured the land ("ate up" is the Hebrew) naturally refers to those fearful curses which God through Moses denounced against idolatry and apostasy. (See De. 27 and 28.) The verb rendered "are desolate" combines the ideas of both sin and punishment—i.e., it signifies sinning, but implies its punishment. These ideas were (rightly) associated very strongly in the Hebrew mind and language. The various agencies of war, siege, famine, sword, with fire also, cut off almost the entire population when Jerusalem fell before the Chaldeans. H. C. 7-12. All festive mirth is changed into silence and sorrow. Men have been lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. And now pleasure, the idol, will be abolished. Wine and song is a cease together, and those who still cling to their worldly delights will find them turn to bitterness and sorrow. Past and future tenses are intermingled, to denote the inevitableness of the coming judgment. Each city of the land, being a scene of moral confusion, will be emptied, and then demolished, and its houses left without inhabitant. A shadow broods over worldly hearts, like the shadow of the grave. Birks. 14,15. Quick as thought is the transition here from sorrow to joy. The few scattered fugitives, seen as captives in foreign lands, are suddenly impressed with the majesty and glory of God, and break forth into exulting praises. They see that God is good and glorious even in His sternest discipline and in His most terrible judgments; and therefore they praise Him. The chastisements of God upon them have been a pure blessing. In verse 15 we may best suppose that the prophet in sympathy with this song interposes his exhortation to all people in the remotest ends of the earth to join in it and give glory to Jehovah, God of Israel. "Wherefore"—i.e., because of His great majesty, "all ye of the East glorify Jehovah, and all ye of the West, in the isles of the sea, glorify the name of the Lord God of Israel." H. C.—The word rendered "fires" has been variously explained as meaning valleys, caverns, doctrines, fires of affliction, exile, Urim, Ur. But the weight of exegetical authority preponderates in favor of the meaning in the east (as the region of sunrise or of dawning light) in opposition to the sea or west. A. 16. In this verse there is a transition back from joy to grief, equally sudden with that from grief to joy in verse 14. "From the uttermost part," the extreme wings (Heb.) "of the earth have we heard songs" of praise, "comely for the righteous." "And then I [saw the dark side again and] said Woe to me," etc. H. C.—Righteous. Should be taken in its general and wider sense, for the upright or faithful man. The songs of praise uttered by these in the fires of trial, or in their farthest exile, will be their beautiful ornament, the signs of a faith which glories in tribulation, pierces through clouds, and triumphs over sorrow. The prophet returns from this bright vision to lament once more the calamities near at hand. Heathen spoilers, treacherous and false, are bringing ruin and desolation on Israel and Judah. The words may apply equally to the apostasies and rebellions of Israel, the true cause of the coming judgments. Birks. 17. Fear.** Fear is not a base motive if it aids us in securing our welfare. It may at times be the only motive within call. A character built on fear is a base character without doubt, but a character in the formation of which fear at the right time and in the right degree has had some share may be the best of all characters. No active principle of our nature is base, which is necessary, as fear is, for our preservation. If there are objective dangers to body or soul, to the interests of time or of eternity, it is not base, it is rather wise to seek by a subjective impulse to avoid the danger. If there are dangers from sin, why should they not be feared when perceived, and be pointed out to the sinner if unperceived? If there are risks to character, how can a reasonable being fail to take them into account, or if he is not aware of them, how can a benevolent man fail to forewarn him? If God's favor is worth everything and we can forfeit or have forfeited it, what but fear can lead us in a world like this to avoid or repair the evil? If sin is eating into our life, blasting its blossoms and despoiling it of all solid fruit, and the time for amendment has not slipped by, how good a friend is that fear which can bring us to reflection, to resolution, to a new life? Why should we refuse to appeal to the motive of fear, when great interests, paramount interests are at stake, and yet appeal to it when the risk is small and the loss would be trivial? Moreover, what does experience say if not this—that few or no persons are led to break the chains of worldly habit, unless some sense of risk, some solicitude for their future welfare, lifts up its startling voice in company with the soft expostulations of the gospel. Suppose that the gospel had sounded no notes of alarm; would man in his sins, who, as it is, moves so sluggishly and tardily in the prospect of a remote evil, be ever led to move at all? Nay, might he not argue, if there were no danger threatened and no harm to be avoided, that sin must be an inconsiderable evil, since the Divine lawgiver has not thought it worth His while to call in the aid of a strong motive, to which all human forms of government find it necessary to appeal even in order to secure outward peace? T. D. Woolsey. 17-20. Successive judgments serve to make the desolation more and yet more complete. Whoever escapes the first falls into the second; and if any escape the second, they are taken in the third. The "windows on high opened" suggest the deluge of Noah's time, the thought being that men can no more escape now than then. The earthquake, rending open the earth's crust and engulfing cities, is the next figure. In verse 20, the "cottage" is supposed by modern critics to be rather the hammock suspended on limbs of trees for the convenience of watching one's garden. The earth swings to and fro like such a hammock before the wind. The sins of the world lie heavy upon it; God is calling nations to their solemn account; some at least shall fall to rise no more. Probably we must assume a somewhat special reference in these verses to Babylon, yet not to the exclusion of Judah and Jerusalem. Babylon was doomed to fall so utterly as to rise no more. Precisely this is not said of Jerusalem. H. C. 23. The simple meaning of the verse appears to be that Jehovah's reign over His people shall be more august than that of any created sovereign. This is true of the Church in various periods of history, but more especially in those when the presence and power of God are peculiarly manifested. A. In the anthem that follows, Isaiah takes his stand in that future, bright with hope, which has been announced in his earlier messages. The strain of praise and hope is continued in the two chapters that follow. Birks. Our grandest Christian enterprises, in fact, still run in prophetic grooves. It is not John and Paul who are the patrons of modern missions, but rather the rapt Isaiah. It is his bugle that still, to-day, rallies and guides the march of the militant host. And as, sometimes, there are stars which refuse to be obscured, making themselves manifest even through the splendor of a noonday sun, so there are passages in this and other prophets so luminous with heavenly hope that, not alone in the gloom of Africa or the twilight of the older civilizations, but at the very focus of Christian civilization and enlightenment, they serve as beacons of inspiration and encouragement. E. C. B. Chap. 25. In the course of this extended prophecy (chaps. 24-27) the prophet had reached the fall of Babylon at the close of chap. 24. He therefore gives us here, as he is wont, an appropriate song to be sung in praise of God for that destruction and for its results of deliverance to His people (verses 1-5); then (verses 6-9) from this minor and antecedent victory for Zion he looks down into the future to another analogous but greater victory, which will bring home the Gentile nations to a joyful feast in Mount Zion; which will pour the light of day over the lands where darkness had reigned; wipe tears away and bring joy to the earth in the salvation of the gospel; closing (verses 10-12) with the utter downtreading of Zion's enemies, despite their puny efforts to resist the Almighty. This chapter consists of three distinguishable parts. The first is a thanksgiving to God for the destruction of Babylon and the deliverance of the Jews (verses 1-5). The second is a promise of favor to the Gentiles and the people of God, when united on Mount Zion (verses 6-9). The third is a threatening of disgraceful ruin to Moab (verses 10-12). A. 1. In this song, the prophet speaks for the Church of God, expressing sentiments and emotions appropriate to her case. In its spirit as well as its occasion this song corresponds to that in chap. 12. 2. "For" (this is the proof) thou hast utterly destroyed Babylon. Thou hast changed that city, even that strongly fortified city, into a heap of ruins; palaces of strangers (foreign and alien from Israel's God) thou hast so entirely destroyed that they shall constitute a city no more; it shall never be built again. So Babylon lies to-day, unbuilt, a pile of ruins. H. C.—The stern, shapeless mound rises like a hill from the scorched plain; fragments of pottery and a stupendous mass of brick-work are occasionally laid bare by the winter rains. He is at a loss to give any form to the rude heap on which he is gazing. Those of whom they are the remains have left no visible traces of their civilization or their arts. The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin. Desolation meets desolation, a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder, for there is nothing to relieve the mound, or tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria make a deeper impression than the temples of Balbec or theatres of Ionia. Layard. 3. These judgments will make a deep impression on the conquerors themselves, and on the whole heathen world. A strong people, the Persian destroyers of Babylon, will glorify the God of Israel. The decrees of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes bear witness to the fulfilment. Birks. 4. The nations shall reverence Jehovah, not merely as the destroyer of Babylon, but as the deliverer of His people, for whose sake that catastrophe was brought about. The two figures of extreme heat and a storm of rain are combined to express the idea of persecution or affliction. A. He is a "Strength to the needy in his distress," then when he needs strength and when his distress drives him to God. And as He strengthens them against their inward decays, so He shelters them from outward assaults; He is a refuge from the storm of rain or hail, and a shadow from the scorching heat of the sun in summer. Whatever dangers or troubles God's people may be in, effectual care is taken that they shall sustain no real hurt or damage. When perils are most threatening and alarming, God will then appear for the safety of His people; and God will be such a shelter to His people that they shall be able to stand the shock, keep their ground, and maintain their integrity and peace. A storm, beating on a ship, tosses it, but that which beats on a wall never stirs it. H. 6. The song of praise now passes on to the days of Messiah. The blessings of the gospel are described under the figure of an ample feast, as Isa. 55:1-6; Matt. 22:1-4; Luke 14:15-20. The Author of this feast is first named, the Lord of hosts. Next, its subjects, or the invited guests, who are "all nations." Thirdly, the place of the entertainment, "in this mountain;" or Jerusalem, where the Son of God began and closed His public ministry, and suffered without the gate. Lastly, the nature of the banquet, the meat of fatlings and choicest wine, free from dregs, but with the strength and richness of long fermentation. This feast is expounded in the gospel, and is the full provision of mercy in the atoning sacrifice and resurrection of the Son of God. Birks.—By the inspired penmen Zion was exalted from its original geographical sense to be the representative of that Divine state of which it was the centre, and of which the Christian Church is the true heir. It is historically true that from Jerusalem the gospel of Christ went forth to bless all nations, and in this sense the feast was spread for them on Mount Zion. But with a far deeper, grander import the expression, "in this mountain," teaches us that the feast which God makes for the world is made in the Church, and is furnished to the nations through her instrumentality. E. P. Barrows. 6,7. The deliverance wrought for God's people in their restoration from Babylon suggested the yet greater deliverance wrought from the Gentile nations in bringing them from darkness to light, from their state of utter want and famine to the fulness and fatness of this rich gospel feast. "This mountain" can be no other than Mount Zion, thought of as a symbol of the gospel Church. The Lord prepares this feast in a very special sense indeed, since Jesus gives His own flesh as the bread of life. With figures of speech, luxuriant, full and rich, the prophet sets forth the fatness and abundance of this feast: "fat things;" wines long kept standing on their lees; fat things full of marrow; wines not only kept long on their lees, but well refined. The Hebrews had no higher ideas of a perfect feast than those which are grouped together here. To heighten the wealth of this prediction, the Lord prepares this feast for all people. So the next verse has it; God removes the vail that has long covered "all people" and has been spread over "all nations." This therefore is the world's great jubilee. Correspondingly the same great fact is revealed in Ps. 22. The world's great sufferer, having borne our griefs and passed through the dreadful agony, makes His thanksgiving feast; His friends partake with Him; "the meek eat and are satisfied;" "all the ends of the world remember and return unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations worship before Him." The essential ideas are that Jesus, having suffered, provides a most magnificent gospel feast; gathers all nations home around His table and to His heart of infinite love; sees the travail of His soul and is satisfied, rejoicing forever in the fruits unto life and salvation which come of His vicarious death. H. C. 8. The true sense seems to be that all misery and suffering, comprehended under the generic name of death, should be completely done away. It is then a description of the ultimate effects of the influence before described as flowing from Mount Zion or the Church of God. In its highest sense this may never be realized by any individual till after death. Paul says accordingly (1 Cor. 15:54), that when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. A.—To swallow up death forever is to abolish it forever; to wipe away tears from all faces is to remove all sorrows; to take away the reproach of His people is to make them honorable throughout all the earth. These words are applied in the New Testament to the final glory and blessedness of the saints in heaven (1 Cor. 15). Barrows. The troubles and labors of the present world, and the dissolution of the body, do still take place as warnings and chastisements for sinners; but the sorrows are not comfortless, nor the dissolution final; the dominion of death consisted in this, that it rendered that dissolution final and irreparable; and the devil is said to have the power of death, because, by seducing man to sin, he subjected him to that irretrievable dissolution. That death should be destroyed and men restored to happiness by the Messiah is confessed by very eminent Jewish writers, who therefore apply to him, in the most rigorous sense, these words of Isaiah. Dean Stanhope. Christ will Himself, in His resurrection, triumph over death; will break its bands, its bars, asunder, and cast away all its cords. The grave seemed to swallow Him up, but really He swallowed it up. The happiness of the saints shall be out of the reach of death, which puts a period to all the enjoyments of this world, embitters them, and stains the beauty of them. Believers may triumph over death, and look upon it as a conquered enemy—"O death, where is thy sting?" When the dead bodies of the saints shall be raised at the great day, and their mortality swallowed up of life, then death will be forever swallowed up of victory; and it is the last enemy. Grief shall be banished, and there shall be perfect and endless joy; "the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces." Those that mourn for sin shall be comforted, and have their consciences pacified. In the covenant of grace there shall be that provided which is sufficient to balance all the sorrows of this present time, to wipe away our tears, and to refresh us. Those particularly that suffer for Christ shall have consolations abounding as their afflictions do abound. But in the joys of heaven, and nowhere short of them, will fully be "brought to pass this saying," as that before, for there it is that God shall "wipe away all tears" (Rev. 7:17; 21:4). And therefore "there shall be no more sorrow," because "there shall be no more death." The hope of this should now wipe away all excessive tears, all the weeping that hinders sowing. H. Hear ye how our Lord Jesus Christ, through the victory which He accomplished in Himself, hath overcome sin, death and the devil. The devil He destroyed in His own body, death He drowned in His own blood, and sin He extinguished in His sufferings. This He accomplished alone and in Himself. But He hath not kept it for Himself alone; for He, as very and eternal God and Lord over all, needed not this victory for Himself, still less did He need to become man, and still less again to suffer under Pontius Pilate. That, however, so great and high a person hath done this concerneth me, and thee, and all of us. It is the power and fruit of the sufferings and resurrection of Christ. Therefore, if there were a thousand hells and a hundred thousand deaths, they would be but a spark or a mere drop in comparison with Christ's resurrection, victory and triumph, which He bestoweth on all who believe in Him. My sin and death are the spark; but the death and resurrection of my Lord Christ are the great sea. For Christ, risen from all suffering, is greater than our sin and death, yea, greater than heaven and earth. Luther. To those to whom the resurrection of Christ is a fact their own future life is a fact. Here we have a solid certainty, and here alone. The heart says as we lay our dear ones in the grave, "Surely we part not forever." The conscience says, as it points us to our own evil deeds, "After death the judgment." A deep, indestructible instinct prophesies in every breast of a future. But all is vague and doubtful. The one proof of a life beyond the grave is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore let us be glad with the gladness of men plucked from a dark abyss of doubt and uncertainty, and planted on the rock of solid certainty; and let us rejoice with joy unspeakable, and laden with a prophetic weight of glory, as we ring out the ancient Easter morning's greeting, "The Lord is risen indeed!" A. M. When Christ our God had been offered up as a sacrifice, and the Resurrection followed, our benignant Master took away the names "death and hades," and introduced into our life a new and strange mode of behavior. Do you see how, thenceforward, death is called "repose and sleep," and he whose face, before this, was terrible, now, since the Resurrection, has become a thing easy to despise? Do you see how splendid is the trophy of the Resurrection? To-day we are keeping our feast of victory in its splendor; to-day our Master, having set up His trophy against death, and overthrown the tyranny of the devil, has granted us the enjoyment of that path to salvation which lies through the Resurrection. Let us all then rejoice, let us leap and exult for joy. For if it was our Master that won the victory, and set up the trophy, yet we share in common with Him the joy and gladness. For it was for our salvation that He did all. Chrysostom. Death is merely a change of place or state, an accident affecting locality, and little more. We have had plenty of changes before. Life has been one long series of departures. This is different from the others mainly in that it is the last, and that to go away from this visible and fleeting show, where we wander aliens among things which have no true kindred with us, is to go home, where there will be no more pulling up the tent-pegs, and toiling cross the deserts in monotonous change. How strong is the conviction, spoken in that name for death, that the essential life lasts on quite unaltered through it all! How slight the else formidable thing is made! We may change climates, and for the stormy bleakness of life may have the long still days of heaven, but we do not change ourselves. We lose nothing worth keeping when we leave behind the body as a dress not fitted for home, where we are going. We but travel one more stage, though it be the last, and part of it be in pitchy darkness. Some pass over it as in a fiery chariot, like Paul and many a martyr. Some have to toil through it with slow steps and bleeding feet and fainting heart; but all may have a brother with them, and holding His hand may find that the journey is not so hard as they feared, and the home from which they shall remove no more, better than they hoped when they hoped the most. A. M. Faith is that looking forward to a future with something like certainty that raises man above the narrow feelings of the present. And therefore it is that faith, and nothing but faith, gives victory in death. It is that elevation of character which we get from looking steadily and forever forward, till eternity becomes a real home to us, that enables us to look down upon the last struggle, and the funeral, and the grave, not as the great end of all, but only as something that stands between us and the end. We are conquerors of death when we are able to look beyond it. Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully—not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts—watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and to plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle-field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with. F. W. Robertson. Paul does not speak of the fulness of the reward as being ready for him at death, but as being "henceforth laid up for him in heaven." So he looks forward beyond the grave. The immediate future after death was to his view a period of blessedness indeed, but not yet full. The state of the dead in Christ was a state of consciousness, a state of rest, a state of felicity, but also a state of expectation. To the full height of their present capacity they who sleep in Jesus are blessed, being still in His embrace and their spirits pillowed on His heart, not so sleeping that, like drowsy infants, they know not where they lie so safe, but only sleeping in so much as they rest from weariness, and have closed their eyes to the ceaseless turmoil of this fleeting world, and are lapped about forever with the sweet, unbroken consciousness that they are "present with the Lord." What perfect repose, perfect fruition of all desires, perfect union with the perfect end and object of all their being, perfect exemption from all sorrow, tumult and sin can bring of blessedness, that they possess in over measure unfailingly. And, in addition, they still know the joy of hope, and have carried that jewel with them into another world, for they wait for "the redemption of the body," in the reception of which, "at that day," their life will be filled up to a yet fuller measure, and gleam with a more lustrous "glory." Now they rest and wait. Then shall they be crowned. A. M. With the advent of the heavenly city, God Himself steps down into new and dearer intimacy with His children. He is no longer their inaccessible "Sky-Father;" henceforth He tents in the midst of His children. "And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and He will be 'God-with-them,' their God." It is in the heavenly city that the old Immanuel promise comes first to its perfect fulfilling; "and He shall be 'God-with-them.'" In the beautiful homes that shall throng the glorious city, no twilight hours of sad foreboding, or of lonely remembering, shall intrude upon the glad music of the satisfied and restful spirit; for there shall be no more sorrow nor crying, for God Himself shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. And over its streets of gold, and out through its gates of pearl, no gathering of bereaved ones shall file in still procession, and group around an open grave in service of deep interment and long farewell, for "the grave has been cast into the lake of fire," "and there shall be no more death." A city in whose homes there is no pang, and without whose gates there is no God's-acre! C. H. P. It would be a great step made in the direction of habitual holiness and caution of living, if we could come to keep the invisible world and its hosts of departed and waiting souls present to our minds as living realities; if we could realize, as a constant thought, the true, present life of all who have been upon the earth, and are no more seen. We should read history with a different and more serious mind; and we should draw directer lessons from it, to our own daily caution and watchfulness of living. We should not feel the dead, who pass away from our sight, lost to our love, but learn to look on them with something of the same tenderness and appropriation (if I may so express it) of feeling with which we regard friends who are gone from us into distant countries, and whom we cannot hope to see again in the flesh. We should come to feel that as our store grows in paradise, by friends who pass, year after year, from the visible to the invisible, our hearts pass thither too in the same degree, and dwell more among the unseen realities than the seen vanities of things. For among the invisible even now is our real life; among them is to be our eternal duration. Bp. Moberly. 9. And they shall say in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is Jehovah; we have waited for Him; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation. When these gracious promises shall be fulfilled, those who have trusted in them shall no longer be ashamed of their strong confidence, because it will be justified by the event, and they will have nothing left but to rejoice in the fulfilment of their hopes. A. Here we have the great ceaseless song of Christendom rejoicing beneath the throne of Christ, congratulating Him on His triumphs, on His glorious presence and power, looking back to the ages which preceded His advent and forward to the completeness of His salvation yet to be revealed. Liddon.—We believe that the history of the world is the unfolding of His will, and the course of opinion guided in its channel by the Voice which the depths have obeyed from of old. Therefore we wait for His working, expecting no miracle, prescribing no time, hurried by no impatience, avoiding no task of defence or confession; but knowing that, unhasting and unresting, He will arise when the storm is loudest, and somehow will say, "Peace! be still." Then they who had not cast away their confidence for any fashion of unbelief that passeth away will rejoice as they sing, "Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us." A. M. Jesus is the way of God to man, the way of man to God. In Jesus man finds God the Father; in Jesus God finds the lost sheep. Man finds in Jesus God, to have God as his portion; God finds in Jesus man, to be His portion for evermore. Blessed be God, He has brought us nigh to Himself. We adore the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. We rejoice with the joy of broken and healed, of contrite and comforted hearts, because Jesus loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and brought us near to God, into the holy of holies—a royal priesthood. We give thanks for the gift of the Holy Ghost, in whom we now worship the Father, and by whom the light and life has been kindled within our hearts. Herein is love, that, notwithstanding our sin, God has brought us nigh unto Himself. More wonderful and glorious than angelic purity or the innocence of Paradise is the Divine righteousness in which we now stand before God; and high above all hopes and thoughts of the human heart are our union with the Incarnate Son of God, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in our souls. A. Saphir. If a man but offers himself up trustfully and clear of all hindrance to the love of God in Jesus Christ, saying, though it be in silence, "be it upon me; let it come and do its sweet will in me; this I will trustfully take and tenderly rest in, for it is all the salvation I want"—plainly that is but letting God love him, and yet what is it but faith? Indeed, there is no so good way of describing faith, as to make it convertible at every point into the mere suffering trustfully of God's love upon us. Yes, O guilty one, let God love thee; yes, believe the love God hath to thee, and rest thy all eternally in it. Bushnell. 10. "In this mountain," here, as in verses 6, 7, locates these manifestations of God's presence and power in His Church, the central throne of His gospel kingdom. Here the Lord's hand (His emblem of power) will abide ("rest") and here it will reveal itself gloriously over His enemies. Moab, as also Edom, is used comprehensively for the enemies of Israel. Historically both were long the jealous rivals of the Lord's people, often in relations of bitter hostility. Here Moab is seen in vision trodden down as straw is trodden down by the cattle in the waters of the dunghill. H. C. 11. Having compared the fall of Moab to the treading down of straw in a filthy pool, the prophet carries out his figure here, but with a change so slight and at the same time so natural as almost to escape observation, while it greatly adds to the life of the description. The downtrodden straw now becomes a living person, struggling in vain to save himself in the pool. A. 12. The Hebrew words give a strong sense of lofty and inaccessible towers, thus: "The inaccessibility of the height of thy walls He brings down, lays low, and causes to touch the earth, even the dust." Such terms, so accumulated, carry our thought to the lofty walls of Babylon, as if he would say, Though Moab were to build her walls high as Babylon did hers, yet God would bring them utterly down to the dust. If we consider Moab as a representative name, standing for the embittered enemies of Zion, the prophet's thought may naturally have been on Babylon as well. H. C. 6-12. This wonderful passage, for depth, grandeur and comprehensiveness of meaning, is not surpassed by anything in the Old Testament that pertains to the glory of the last days. It follows a prediction of the judgments of God upon the oppressors of His people, and it naturally returns, toward the close of the chapter, to the same theme, since the way for the enlargement of Zion is prepared by the overthrow of her enemies. Then follows, in the next chapter, the song of Zion in view of God's mighty interpositions in her behalf. E. P. Barrows. 26:1 In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; 2 salvation will he appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous 3 nation which keepeth truth may enter in. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind 4 is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the 5 LORD JEHOVAH is an everlasting rock. For he hath brought down them that dwell on high, the lofty city: he layeth it low, he layeth it low even to the ground; he bringeth it even to 6 the dust. The foot shall tread it down; even the feet of the poor, and the steps of the 7 needy. The way of the just is uprightness: thou that art upright dost direct the path of the 8 just. Yea, in the way of thy judgements, O LORD, have we waited for thee; to thy name 9 and to thy memorial is the desire of our soul. With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgements are 10 in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet with he not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness will he deal wrong- fully, and will not behold the majesty of the LORD. 11 LORD, thy hand is lifted up, yet they see not: but they shall see thy zeal for the people, 12 and be ashamed; yea, fire shall devour thine adversaries. LORD, thou wilt ordain peace for 13 us: for thou hast also wrought all our works for us. O LORD our God, other lords beside 14 thee have had dominion over us; but by thee only will we make mention of thy name. They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou 15 visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish. Thou hast increased the nation, O LORD, thou hast increased the nation; thou art glorified: thou hast enlarged all the borders of the land. 16 LORD, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy chastening 17 was upon them. Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is 18 in pain and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been before thee, O LORD. We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not 19 wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen. Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead. 20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself 21 for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity : the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain. Chap. 26. The first words of this chapter show its connection with the two chapters that precede it, and also what its subject is—viz., an appropriate song of praise on occasion of the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon. The last two verses (20, 21) suggest beautifully and tenderly that the day of suffering and peril is not altogether past, yet will not be long protracted. H. C. The song opens with an acknowledgment of God's protection and an exhortation to confide therein (verses 1-4). This is founded on the exhibition of His righteousness and power in the destruction of His foes and the oppressors of His people (verses 5-11). The Church abjures the service of all other sovereigns, and vows perpetual devotion to Him by whom it has been delivered and restored (verses 12-15). Her utter incapacity to save herself is then contrasted with God's power to restore His people to new life, with a joyful anticipation of which the song concludes (verses 16-19). The additional sentences contain a beautiful and tender intimation of the trials which must be endured before these glorious events take place, with a solemn assurance that Jehovah is about to visit both His people and their enemies with chastisement (verses 20, 21). A. 1,2. No more vivid picture of peace and security could be presented to the war-harassed Israelite than the triumphant song with which the chapter begins, portraying the time when God's salvation shall take the place of walls and bulwarks; when the gates shall stand open; when men shall go in and out without question; when there shall be no alarm by night or by day, but, trusting in Jehovah's guard alone, all shall be kept in perfect peace. It was a dream never heretofore realized in the history of the Israelitish nation, save during the short reign of Solomon, the transient type of the Messianic kingdom of peace. To-day, in its desolation, that land, as we wander over its hills and valleys, tells the story of its past history. Every hill-top or "tell," as it is called, is crowned with a grass-grown desolate heap, from which ragged stones protrude, or are scattered over its surface. What are these? If we dig into them, we find that they are all the ruins of walls which once encompassed the old cities of Israel and Judah, now laid low even to the ground—brought even to the dust, and trodden down by the foot of the poor and needy. No less than 2770 names of ancient sites have been recovered and laid down in the maps of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the greater part of them being those of ancient walled towns now laid low. Tristram. 3. The original expresses it still more forcibly in its Semitic simplicity, "Thou shalt keep him in peace, peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee." It is not a promise of freedom from sorrow; it is not a promise of success or prosperity on earth; but it is a promise of that inward peace, of that heart's-ease in the breast, with which sorrow itself is a tolerable burden, and without which prosperity itself is a questionable boon. If we be God's true children, then we are in possession of this peace. Farrar.—Thou wilt keep him in peace, peace, in perfect peace, inward peace, outward peace, peace with God, peace of conscience, peace at all times, under all events; this peace shall be put into and kept in the possession of whose mind is stayed upon God, because it trusts in Him. It is the character of every good man, that he trust in God; puts himself under His guidance and government, and depends upon Him that it shall be greatly to his advantage to do so. They that trust in God must have their minds stayed upon Him, must trust Him at all times, under all events, must firmly and faithfully adhere to Him, with an entire satisfaction in Him. Such as do so God will keep in perpetual peace, and that peace shall keep them. When evil tidings are abroad, they shall calmly expect the event, and not be disturbed by frightful apprehensions arising from them, whose hearts are "fixed, trusting in the Lord." H. Confidence is the noblest exercise of faith. Looking steadily upon God in Himself, and in Christ through the promises, it raises the soul above all fears and discouragements, above all doubts and disquietments, either about the removing of evil or the obtaining of good. Hence confidence is called the rest of the soul; therefore such as attain to confidence are said to be in peace, in perfect peace. Caryl.—Peace does not dwell in outward things, but within the soul. We may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remain firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence even in disagreeable things, not in an exemption from suffering. Fenelon. Peace is that state in which there are no desires madly demanding an impossible gratification; that state in which there is no misery, no remorse, no sting. And there are but three things which can break that peace. The first is discord between the mind of man and the lot which he is called on to inherit; the second is discord between the affections and powers of the soul; and the third is doubt of the rectitude and justice and love, wherewith this world is ordered. The deepest want of man is not a desire for happiness, but a craving for peace; not a wish for the gratification of every desire, but a craving for the repose of acquiescence in the will of God. F. D. H. It is a great part of the happiness of our lives to have a confidence or quietness of spirit about the things of this life; nor is anything more uncomely for or uncomfortable to a saint than distrustful thoughts and fears. To carry a troubled mind and a troubling frame of spirit about us, lest some evil should befall us, is more grievous than the present suffering of evil. Distrust is one of the worst diseases or sicknesses of the mind, and to be anxious about our earthly enjoyments is as bad as to trust upon them. As our hopes should be above the creature, so likewise should our fears be. Caryl.—Peace comes just in proportion to trust. The first lesson to learn is God—to know Him, to believe in Him, to have a child-like trust that He will do the very best for all His creatures by the very necessity of His own goodness. He is under the compulsion of His own benevolence. This trust enables us to look through dark hours and to look over trials and griefs. In enables us in the whole daily life to walk with confidence, because things must come out for the best to the loving soul. We know in prayer that what we desire is God's desire; that we can state our wishes as to one who will of course grant all that is best. The soul must learn the way of peace, as it must reach all things, by experience. It is no wonder that peace at first is by broken glimpses, and by snatches; and that prayer goes out often into a dark void. It will take long patience and careful study and gentle teachableness to bring us to the calm, cloudless condition. Whatever else each one may hope for in the heavenly state, this is our common longing and our sure possession. The end of all our strivings and struggling is peace. E. P. Powell. God Himself communicates that peace of mind which flows from a sense of pardon and acceptance. He reveals to the soul in His own way and time, by His own spirit, the love He bears toward it, the mercy He has prepared for it, perhaps the work He has wrought in it. He shows it in the blood of Christ, its freedom from condemnation; in the obedience of Christ, its "robe of righteousness;" in the purifying spirit, the gifts and graces of Christ, its "garment of salvation;" and in the promises and life of Christ, its safety. He unfolds, as it were, the book of life; He shows to the wondering sinner his own poor, despised name shining there; and the consequence is—and how can it be otherwise?—he is "filled with all joy and peace in believing;" he "abounds in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost;" "the peace of God rules," presides and reigns "in his heart." C. Bradley. 4. Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.** We may depend upon Him, for His arm is never dried up, nor does His strength fail. There is no wrinkle upon the brow of Eternity. God is where He was at first; He continues forever a God of infinite power, able to save those that trust in Him. Manton.—"For in the Lord Jehovah is a rock of ages." So the Hebrew has it, including under the figure of a rock the two ideas of a refuge and of a sure foundation. The original makes this special name of God emphatic by repetition, "For in Jah Jehovah"—Jah being a contraction for Jehovah. It should be borne in mind that while all the names of God are significant, each of some one attribute, the special significance of this name is, God as faithful to His promises, ever true to those who trust Him. Immatability is perhaps the primary idea, He who changes never; but the practical and ultimate result is, one who, being changeless, never forgets His promises—experiences no change in the state of mind which gave the promises; one who continues evermore the same, and therefore is ever true and faithful. This is His memorial name, a name to be remembered through all the interval, however long, between promise and fulfilment, till you see the promise verified. (See Hos. 12:5 and Ex. 3:13-15.) H. C.—The double name Jah Jehovah is most emphatic, to denote God's unchangeableness in His love to His people. "Everlasting Strength" is literally "a rock of ages." In Him a sure and eternal support, firm as a rock, lasting as eternity, will be found by His people. Birks.—Therefore the song breaks into triumphant fervor of summons to all who hear it (verse 4) to "trust in Jah Jehovah forever." Such settled, perpetual trust is the only attitude corresponding to His mighty name, and to the realities found in His character. He is the "rock of ages," the grand figure which Moses learned beneath the cliffs of Sinai and wove into his last song, and which tells us of the unchanging strength that makes a sure hiding-place for all generations, and the ample space which will hold all the souls of men, and be for a shadow from the heat, a covert from the tempest, a shelter from the foe, and a home for the homeless, with many a springing fountain in its clefts. A. M. Trust. If you would understand the doctrine of faith and its relations to the cross, you must study it in both Testaments. You must follow its growth through the twilight of earliest ages, when types and ceremonies were the trellis that sustained it, forward to the time when it wreathed itself round the cross. You will first see it in the lives of men who through darkness stretched their hands unto God, and to whom the whole of salvation was in one word, trust. As revelation progresses you will see its vital character passing into such words as come, receive, look and rest. The idea grows with the growth of the Bible. Side lights of Christian lives, of history and prophecy, play upon it all the way along, until, where the apostle exclaims, "now abideth faith, hope and charity," it stands out with its two companions like three graces divinely clear and fair. And so with any religious subject. The Bible development of it makes the most beautiful study of it. C. L. Thompson. If you look into the Old Testament, you will find constantly, "Trust ye in the Lord forever;" "Put thy trust in Jehovah!" There, too, faith was the seed and germ of all religion. There, too, though under the hard husk of apparently external obedience and ceremonial sacrifices, the just lived by faith. The object was the Jehovah of that ancient covenant. Religion has always been the same in every dispensation. At every time, that which made a man a devout man has been identically the same thing. It has always been true that it has been faith which has bound man to God, and given man hope. But when we come to the New Testament, the centre is shifted, as it would seem. What has become of the grand old words, "Trust ye in the Lord Jehovah"? Look! Christ stands there, and says, "Believe upon Me!" With calm, simple, profound dignity, He lays His hand upon all the ancient and consecrated words, upon all the ancient and hallowed emotions that used to set to the unseen God between the cherubim, throned above judgment and resting upon mercy; and He says, They are Mine—give them to Me! That ancient trust, I claim the right to have it. That old obedience, it belongs to Me. I am He to whom in all time the loving hearts of them that loved God have set. I am the Angel of the Covenant, in whom whoever trusteth shall never be confounded! Christ thus steps, in the New Testament—in so far as the direction of the religious emotions of faith and love is concerned—into the place filled by the Jehovah of the Old. Christ was our brother and a man, but He was the Son of God, the Divine Redeemer. The object of faith is Christ; and as object of faith He must needs be Divine. A. M. From beginning to end a Christian life is a life of faith. The word "trust" is the keyword of Old Testament theology, and the word "believe" is the keyword in the New. They both mean the same thing. Cuyler.—We are apt to lose ourselves in the labyrinths of theology, until we learn that Christian faith is essentially personal trust in Christ and the Father. This trust may be sublime even if it cannot solve the Divine mysteries; it can be perfect peace without knowing exactly how God's mercy performs its wonders. What more does love need than the apprehension of God as love? Stuckenberg.—Faith and obedience turn a man into the likeness of that in which he trusts. If we trust Jesus we open our hearts to Him; and if we open our hearts to Him He will come in. Faith and obedience will mould us, by their natural effect, into the resemblance of that on which we lean. As one of the old German mystics said, "What thou lovest, that thou dost become." And it is blessedly true. A. M. The apostle says, "By faith ye stand." He does not say, by patience, or by hope, or the like. They are drawn from faith. Strengthen that, and strengthen all other that are infused from it. As a tree, we cast not water on the branches, but on the root. So strengthen faith. We strengthen love, and hope, and all, if we strengthen faith and assurance of God's love in Christ. Sibbes.—As we put trust in Him and receive the blessing and find Him to be faithful, we come to believe in Him; not merely because of His Word, but because of what we have experienced. Out of all these comes patience under trial, and "patience worketh experience, and experience hope which maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." Out of a fixed confidence groweth contentment, and we find godliness with contentment to be great gain. Kindred graces come to adorn the character, even "the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit, which in Christ's sight is of great price." Out of the whole arises fruit ever becoming richer and mellower—in good works, in almsgiving, in self-sacrifice, in abundant labors for the good of mankind. These react on faith, and by works faith is made perfect. Thus the Christian, by addition, grows up into the measure of the stature of Christ. McCosh. In prayer, it is faith that must make us successful; in obedience, it is faith that must make us cheerful; in afflictions, it is faith that must make us patient; in trials, it is faith that must make us resolute; in desertions, it is faith that must make us comfortable; in life, it is faith which must make us fruitful; and in death, it is faith which must make us victorious. Clarke.—Its nature and office is most simple, as much so as the confidence of a prat-tling child in his father's kindness and wisdom; yet at the same time as expansive in its views as the loftiest science that ever tasked the powers of a created intellect. It is but a hearty assent to the whole testimony of God—a submission of the entire soul, not of the intellect only, but also of the affections and the imagination, to the testimony of God; whether that testimony be employed in prescribing a duty or in establishing a privilege. It is the acknowledgment of human ignorance, united with confidence in Divine wisdom and subjection to Divine authority. Making no reservations, prescribing no terms of limitation, claiming no power of revoking or abridging its grant, it is a surrender of the intelligent spirit to the word of God as its rule and its stay; in conformity to it as the one standard of human conduct, and in dependence upon it as the only fitting nutriment of the spiritual life. W. R. W. While it is a great thing to be an earnest worker in Christ's service, yet the Christian life is not mainly a life of action, but of trust; not of independent exertion, but of self-abandonment to the working of a mightier agency than ours. Even at its outset it is not work, but faith. The beginning of true religion is not the setting out on a new course in the consciousness of unexhausted strength and resolution, but rather the casting of the spirit worn with the burden, soiled with the dust of life's friendless journey, on One who has offered, and is infinitely able to sustain it. And so in its subsequent progress, while there is an aspect in which religion may be contemplated as a life of strenuous work, there is another and higher in which it must be viewed as a life of resignation and of rest. Calmly as the midnight voyager sleeps, while under watchful guidance the vessel bears him onward, so calmly, with such trustful humility, does the believer commit himself and his fates for time and eternity to the unslumbering providence of God. Staying his hand, indeed, from no duty, withholding from no work of self-improvement or of beneficent activity, yielding never to that spurious humility which is but the disguise of indolent fatalism, he yet ever retains in his spirit the unanxious quietness of one who knows that results are not in his hand, but God's. It is little, at best, that he can do to help on the world's progress or his own; but whether he work, or forbear from working, he knows that "the Father worketh hitherto, and will work." In the strife with sin, in the contemplation of moral evil withstanding God's work in the world, there may be much to discourage an earnest mind; but ever when doubts harass, or abortive efforts distress the spirit, and the sense of our human weakness becomes most oppressive, what relief to pass out of self into God, and to stay our feebleness on the everlasting arms. Caird. 7. The way for the righteous is level; Thou most upright wilt level the path of the righteous. A man's way is a common scriptural figure for his course of life. A straight or level way is a prosperous life. It is here declared that the course of the righteous is a prosperous one, because God makes it so. 8. Also in the way of Thy judgments, oh Jehovah, we have waited for Thee; to Thy name and Thy remembrance (was our) soul's desire. For this manifestation of Thy righteousness and goodness we have long been waiting in the way of Thy judgments—i.e., to see Thee come forth as a judge, for the vindication of Thy people and the destruction of their enemies. Name and remembrance or memorial denote the manifestation of God's attributes in His works. A. 8,9. By often thinking of God, the heart will be enticed into desires after Him. "The desire of our soul is to Thy name, and to the remembrance of Thee;" and see what follows, verse 9: "With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early." Love sets the soul on musing, and from musing to praying. Meditation is prayer in bullion, prayer in the ore—soon melted and run into holy desires. The laden cloud soon drops into rain; the piece charged soon goes off when fire is put to it. A meditating soul is in proxima potentia to prayer. William Gurnall. 9. In the night. Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of these sacred solitary moments. There is a Divine depth in silence; we meet God alone! F. W. Robertson. Have I desired Thee, . . . will I seek Thee. A devotional spirit cultivates the habit of seeing God in everything. To such a spirit the earth and the heavens are a temple, the only temple worthy of God. To it the succession of day and night and the march of the seasons are constant hymns. To it, not the heavens alone, but the whole framework and structure of nature with its ongoings "declare the glory of God." This is the spirit which it is the duty and happiness of man to cultivate. The highest use of nature is not the support of man, but to lead him to God. A devotional spirit may also be cultivated by observing the providence of God as it respects nations, individuals and particularly ourselves. Here, as in nature, it is possible for men to substitute something else, as chance, or fate, for God; but those who believe in Him will nowhere find more striking evidence of a Divine hand, and "he who will observe the providence of God will have providences to observe." But the main nutriment of a devotional spirit must be found in the Scriptures. Whatever may be said of the truth of the Scriptures, it is demonstrable that the God whom they reveal must call forth the highest possible adoration, and hence that the knowledge of God as revealed in them must, more than anything else can, quicken intelligent devotion. The attributes and character of God as made known in the Scriptures hold the same relation to devotion that the infinity of space, and the awful force that sustains and moves in it the array of suns and planets, holds to the emotion of sublimity; and as nothing can supersede infinite space in that relation, so nothing can supersede the God of the Bible as the ground and stimulus of the highest possible devotion. Thus recognizing God in the three great modes in which He is revealed—in nature, in providence and in revelation—we shall cultivate a devotional spirit. Mark Hopkins. When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. God does not punish for the sake of punishment merely; even His severities are the effects of goodness, and always directed to the advantage of those who feel them, or at least of others, "that they may hear, and fear, and do no more wickedness." The great comprehensive lesson which He intends to teach by every judgment is, an awful regard to Himself as the moral governor of the world and the practice of religion. Abp. Secker. The only power which is absolutely necessary to the world's good is that of righteousness. This unites a people. This gives clear heads, strong frames, valiant hearts. A nation whose heart is soundly righteous will not fight unless it must; but if it must, it will fight grandly and for a righteous aim. The great God of nations will set His seal of approval on peoples that cleave to the right by giving again and again the victory to that which, humanly speaking, is the weaker side. Scripture cases of this abound: Israel and Pharaoh; Gideon and the Midianites; Hezekiah and Sennacherib; Jehoshaphat and the Ammonites; and (in another sense) Elijah and the priests and prophets of Baal. The Word of God is continually showing us that power is not always where it seems to be, but very often where it seems not to be: Joseph, Daniel, Peter, etc. From all these considerations, there may be drawn out an earnest appeal to men, even if they aim at nought higher than to be the true lovers and guardians of their country and nation, to seek for the sake of their own dear land, to love and to practise righteousness. C. C. 12-19. The prophet, in these verses, looks back upon what God had done with them, both in mercy and judgment, and sings unto God of both; and then looks forward upon what he hoped God would do for them. H. 12. Jehovah, Thou wilt give us peace, for even all our works Thou hast wrought for us. This is an expression of strong confidence and hope, founded on what has already been experienced. God certainly would favor them in future, for He had done so already. A. 13. The grand corruption of the heart of man, the great root-sin which sets itself against Christ as a Lord, is that lord of all misrule, SELF; that is the lord that lords it over you; and all other sins are but under-servants to this great lord of self-love, self-pride and self-righteousness. Now a true believer is righteous by the righteousness of another; he lives by the life of another; he is acted on by the spirit of another; and, therefore, he, of any man in the world, should have least of self in him; because Christ, as Lord, doth absolutely set Himself against this great corruption. And therefore, if you would know one excellent way of judging of Jesus Christ the Lord, His being in you, it is by the breaking and casting down of self; for the more full that a man is of self, the more empty is he of Christ; and the more full he is of Christ, the more empty he is of self; for the lord-self, and the Lord-Christ, cannot stand together; the lordship of Christ and the lordship of self are inconsistent; when you receive the Lord-Christ, then the lord-self is unthroned and thrown down. Erskine. 14. Those whom we lately served are now no more; Thou hast destroyed them and consigned them to oblivion, for the very purpose of securing our freedom and devotion to Thy service. A. 15. The prophet repeats the cherished thought: Thou hast increased Thine own people, and in doing this hast glorified Thyself. "Thou hast enlarged all the borders of the land," is the proper rendering. The sense is that God had moved back the borders of their land on every side to enlarge their territory. The new Zion is to be on a larger scale, filling far more territory. This enlargement (as is shown fully in many other prophecies) contemplates the addition not only of restored Jews, but of converted Gentiles. H. C. 16,17. The song passes now from the past to the future. Israel's national rejection of idols, their increase in number, and their wide dispersion are followed by sore troubles, that prepare the way, in the last times, for their full and final recovery to the covenant and favor of God. Their own efforts will wholly fail. God Himself will then mightily interfere; and Zion, according to the later promise (66: 7-9), will travail not in vain, and will bring forth children. Birks. 16. It was not merely after their deliverance that they turned from idols unto God. Their deliverance itself was owing to their humble prayers. Visit is here used in the unusual but natural sense of seeking God in supplication. It is implied, though not expressed, that their prayer was humble and submissive because they felt that what they suffered was a chastisement from God. 19. Thy dead shall live, my corpses shall arise; (awake and sing ye that dwell in the dust!) for the dew of herbs is Thy dew, and (on) the earth, (on) the dead, Thou wilt cause it to fall. This verse is in the strongest contrast with the one before it. To the ineffectual efforts of the people to save themselves, he now opposes their actual deliverance by God. They shall rise because they are Thy dead—i.e., Thy dead people. Awake, etc., is a joyful apostrophe to the dead, after which the address to Jehovah is resumed. The reference to the dew is intended to illustrate the vivifying power of God. The obvious meaning of the words is an expression of strong confidence and hope, or rather of prophetic foresight, that God will raise the dead, that His live-giving power will be exerted. A. Here the tone changes from sorrow, failure, to life, prosperity and exultant joy. Those who chant this song are themselves of Zion, and speak for her as well as for themselves. "Thy dead, O Zion, shall live again." Thy people have been virtually, civilly, nationally dead; but they shall have a resurrection. "Being My dead body"—the dead of Zion—"they shall rise again." Because these dead are God's people, members of His own Zion, their resurrection from this death is certain. Then, thrilled with the blessed thought, the prophet gives utterance to the voice of God within him, "Awake and sing, ye that lie buried in dust; awake; come forth from your (figurative) graves, and break out in song as ye come up to the light of day and of this new life. For the dew that fell on thy dead body was like the dew of heaven upon vegetation—vivifying, restoring the withered and almost dying plants to life." The last clause will bear this appropriate and beautiful translation, "And on the earth, on the dead thou wilt make it fall." Naturally, the song turns to address Jehovah, who sends down the dew from the lower heavens, and much more His life-giving word of power to raise the dead. This resurrection of God's people stands in contrast with the denial of resurrection to the wicked rulers of Babylon in verse 14. This passage proves beyond a question that the idea of a resurrection from the dead was familiar to the prophet and to his first readers for whose immediate use he wrote. As no writer could draw a figure from what was unknown to himself, so, if he sought to teach, he would not draw one from what was unknown to his readers. As Isaiah could not talk about a resurrection if he had never known the idea and the words to express it, so he would not expect to be understood unless his readers were also familiar with it. H. C. This was undoubtedly one of those texts upon which the ancient Jews grounded their belief of the resurrection, the hope of which was founded on "the law and the prophets," as Paul tells them (Acts 24: 14). W. Lowth.—The ancient Jews understood this passage so; the prophet speaks of the figurative and typical resurrection of the Jewish State and Church, but the phraseology is taken from the resurrection of the last day, and to it is our attention intended to be directed. Vitringa. "Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs"—i.e., as dew revives the herbage, so does the power of God revive thee, and the earth brings forth the shades (the dead). Till then the people are to wait quietly. On the day of the final judgment for which the Lord arises (verse 21), the earth discloses her blood, and no more covers her slain; these being, according to the most probable explanation, awakened to new life, obtain their justification. That the resurrection (verse 19) must not here be regarded as typical (as though only the deliverance of the people of God from their troubles were intended) is evident from the contrast in verse 12 and the whole context. O.—This (as Ezekiel's vision, which is a comment upon it) may be fitly accommodated: 1. To the spiritual resurrection of those that were dead in sin, by the power of Christ's Gospel and grace. So Dr. Lightfoot applies it. The Gentiles shall live, with My body shall they arise; they shall be called in after Christ's resurrection, shall rise with Him, and sit with Him in heavenly places; nay, they shall arise My body (says He); they shall become the mystical body of Christ, and shall rise as part of Him. 2. To the last resurrection; when dead saints shall live and rise together with Christ's dead body; for He rose as the firstfruits, and believers shall rise by virtue of their union with Him, and their communion in His resurrection. H. Awake. The act of dying is but a laying one's self down to rest, and a dropping out of consciousness of the surrounding world. It is very remarkable and very beautiful that the New Testament scarcely ever employs the words dying and death for the act of separating body and spirit, or for the condition either of the spirit parted from the body, or of the body parted from the spirit. It keeps those grim words for the reality, the separation of the soul from God; and it only exceptionally uses them for the shadow and the symbol, the physical fact of the parting of the man from the house which here he has dwelt in. But the reason why Christianity uses these periphrases or metaphors, these euphemisms, for death, is the opposite of the reason why the world uses them. The world is so afraid of dying that it durst not name the grim, ugly thing. The Christian, or, at least, the Christian faith, is so little afraid of death, that it does not think such a trivial matter worth calling ing by the name, but only names it "falling asleep." The sweet emblem suggests repose, and that in that sleep there are folded around the sleepers the arms of the Christ on whose bosom they rest, as an infant does on its first and happiest home, its mother's breast. Besides that, the emblem suggests the idea of continuous and conscious existence. And it suggests the idea of waking. Sleep is a parenthesis. If the night comes, the morning comes. "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" They that sleep will awake, and be satisfied when they awake with Thy likeness. And so these three things—repose, conscious, continuous existence, and the certainty of awaking—all lie in that metaphor. Now, then, the risen Christ is the only ground of such hope, and faith in Him is the only state of mind which is entitled to cherish it. Nothing proves immortality except that open grave. Though we know that much will be changed, that new powers will come and old wants and weaknesses fall away with new environment, still the essential self will be unchanged, and the life will run on without a break. There is no magic in the act of death which changes the set of a character, or the tendencies and desires of a nature. As you die, so you live after your death the same man and woman that you were when the blow fell. A. M. Immediately after death the souls of believers are present with the person of Christ, and enjoy bright revelations of God and the society of the holy angels. . . . Nevertheless, as the complete man consists both of soul and body, the souls of the blessed during the interval between their death and the resurrection, although with Christ and inconceivably happy, have not attained to the perfection of either glory or blessedness, which is designed for them in Christ. The highest state of all must await the redemption of their bodies and of their purchased possession, and of the restitution of all things. A. A. Hodge.—That this is the teaching of the Holy Scriptures is evident from Christ's promise to His disciples at the supper in Jerusalem: "I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, ye may be also" (John 14:3); from the promise to the dying thief: "to-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise" (Luke 23:43); from the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:23, 24); from the prayer of Stephen, who said that he saw heaven opened and Jesus standing in full view, and then cried: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Paul did not believe in any intermediate place, or in any sleep of the soul between death and the resurrection. He writes to the Philippians that he has a desire to depart and be with Christ. He tells the Corinthians that dying is like going out of a tent into a building of God. He adds that "mortality is swallowed up of life"—not of slumber and sweet dreams. He speaks in Eph. 3 : 15 of the Church as one family, partly on earth and partly in heaven. John tells us that, when he was in the spirit on Patmos, he saw a great multitude before the throne of God and the Lamb who had "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," and who are, "therefore, before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His Temple." These are the spirits of "the redeemed from the earth," and they are in heaven. And in the fourteenth chapter we have a vision of the Lamb, with a hundred and forty-four thousand who sang before the throne a new song. These singers, we are expressly told, were redeemed from the earth. C. E. Babb. It is the connection with Christ that gives the safety and the glory. They died with Him; they rose with Him; they suffered with Him; they shall be glorified with Him. The wish of all believers in this world has been, We would see Jesus! Then they shall see Him surrounded by all who have loved Him. "We know not what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." This is the Apostle John's idea of heaven, "We shall see Him as He is." This will be enough. Here we have seen by glimpses, cloudily, in an enigma, "through a glass darkly;" but then, clearly, nearly, fully, "face to face." And the object so seen is of all in the universe the most worthy of being contemplated. God shines in Him. "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." To see Him, in the fulness of His unveiled excellence, will be a celestial pleasure, well worth dying for. J. W. A. The perfect life of the dead in Christ is growth without a limit and without decline. To say that they are ever young is the same thing as to say that their being never reaches its climax, that it is ever but entering on its glory. That is, as we have said, the true conception of their life is that of eternal progress toward infinite perfection. For what is the goal to which they tend? The likeness of God in Christ—all His wisdom, His love, His holiness. He is all theirs, and all that He is to be transfused into their growing greatness. "He is made unto them of God, wisdom, and righteousness, and salvation and redemption," nor can they cease to grow till they have outgrown Jesus and exhausted God. On the one hand is infinite perfection, destined to be imparted to the redeemed spirit. On the other hand is a capability of indefinite assimilation to, by reception of that infinite perfection. We have no reason to set bounds to the possible expansion of the human spirit. If only there be fitting circumstances and an adequate impulse, it may have an endless growth. Such circumstances and such impulse are given in the loving presence of Christ in glory. Therefore we look for an eternal life which shall never reach a point, beyond which no advance is possible. Peter speaks of the believer's departure as "an entrance ministered abundantly." The going out is a going in; looked at from this side, it is a going out; looked at from the other side, it is a coming in. So, when we see a life of which Christian faith has been the underlying motive, and in which many Christian graces have been plainly manifested, passing from among us, let not our love look only at the empty place on earth, but let our faith rise to the thought of the filled place in heaven. Let us not dwell on the departure, but on the abundant entrance. A. M. The old familiar love that blessed us here will greet us in the realms beyond. The daughter of Jairus was restored to the family circle. When she opened her eyes she found father and mother around her bed, as they had been when she fell asleep. We can see in this fact an earnest and type of what shall be the mode of life in the world beyond; an assurance that God will begin our resurrection life, as He began our life here on earth, among those we have known and loved, and in the bosom of the family circle. The "Talitha cumi" of the wonderful miracle teaches us that it is love that quickens the dead soul; that it is love that quickens the mortal body. It is love that builds the earthly home; it is love that builds the heavenly home. And the highest conception we can form of heaven is glorified affection. The sympathies and affections are the primal and the most indestructible elements of our nature, that which we have nearest God and likest God. God is love; and love is love forevermore. Hugh Macmillan. 20. Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers.** The prophet appears here in the person of God to confirm the hopes and expectations contained in the preceding hymn of the faithful, by an exhortation to patience and promise of support and deliverance from all the judgments and persecutions which might in aftertimes befall the people of God, or Church of Christ; to terminate with those terrible but short calamities, which shall be in the days of Antichrist emphatically so called. Vitringa.—The prophet by an exquisite transition intimates that this relief from the effects of God's displeasure with His people must be preceded by the experience of the displeasure itself, that it is still a time of indignation, and that till this is elapsed the promise cannot be fulfilled. This painful postponement of the promised resurrection could not be more tenderly or beautifully intimated than in this fine apostrophe. A. 27:1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the swift serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.2, 3 In that day: A vineyard of wine, sing ye unto it. I the LORD do keep it; I will water it 4 every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Fury is not in me: would that the briers and thorns were against me in battle! I would march upon them, I would burn 5 them together. Or else let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; 6 yea, let him make peace with me. In days to come shall Jacob take root; Israel shall blossom and bud; and they shall fill the face of the world with fruit.7 Hath he smitten him as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the 8 slaughter of them that were slain by him? In measure, when thou sendest her away, thou dost contend with her; he hath removed her with his rough blast in the day of the east wind. 9 Therefore by this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit of taking away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in 10 sunder, so that the Asherim and the sun-images shall rise no more. For the defenced city is solitary, an habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness: there shall the calf feed, 11 and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof. When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off; the women shall come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding; therefore he that made them will not have compassion upon them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour.12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off his fruit, from the flood of the River unto the brook of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great trumpet shall be blown; and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and they that were outcasts in the land of Egypt; and they shall worship the LORD in the holy mountain at Jerusalem. Chap. 27. The topics briefly introduced in the two closing verses of chap. 26 are here resumed and made the subject of this chapter. On the one hand, chastisements for God's people in moderation and in mercy, watched over with the tender care and compassion of a father's heart, and designed only to reclaim and purify; and, on the other, retributive judgments sent in stern but just severity on the incorrigible who will be nothing but enemies to God. The two processes are carried forward jointly in this description, the writer alternating from one to the other throughout the chapter for the purpose of comparing the discipline brought on God's people with the retributive judgments visited upon His persistent enemies. H. C. This chapter is an amplification of the last verse of the one preceding, and contains a fuller statement both of Israel's chastisements and of Jehovah's judgments on His enemies. The destruction of the latter is foretold as the slaughter of a huge sea monster, and contrasted with God's care of His own people even when afflicting them (verses 1-5). Hereafter Israel shall flourish, and even, in the mean time, His sufferings are far less than those of His oppressors (verses 6, 7). The former is visited in moderation for a time, and with the happiest effect (verses 8, 9). The latter is finally and totally destroyed (verses 10, 11). This shall be followed by the restoration of the scattered Jews (verses 12, 13). A. 1. "In that day," when those things are done which are referred to in chap. 26 : 20, 21. "Leviathan," a sea serpent or other monster of the sea, sometimes the crocodile of Egypt and the "dragon," are animals frequently named as symbols or figures to represent the great political powers that were specially hostile and oppressive to God's people. Leviathan appears in this character Ps. 74 : 14, and the dragon in Ezek. 29 : 3 and 32 : 2, and Isa. 51 : 9. Both, being at once formidable and loathsome, are fit emblems for a great persecuting, oppressive power. There can be no doubt that they refer here to Babylon ; possibly to Egypt also. Babylon we know is before the prophet's mind, and there is no special objection to supposing that both terms refer to the same enemy. 3. Keeping up the figure of the vineyard, the verse represents the Lord's constant, precious care that no real harm shall befall His vineyard. He truly loves His people. Never is this love more actively drawn out than while they are in the furnace of affliction ; or, according to this figure, than while foes are coming down upon His vineyard who may crush His vines to the earth, or burn them fatally. H. C. I will keep it night and day. Grace is determined to complete what it has begun, and to perform the good work unto the day of redemption. The whole Church is given to Christ in covenant, and every individual believer has his share in the blessed security. Looking at the internal strength of the Church, we may say it is endangered ; but looking at the covenant, it is safe. "I the Lord do keep it ; I will water it every moment : lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day." God's honor is concerned to bring the disciple through, in spite of all enemies. J. W. A. Perseverance is not only a condition, but a privilege of the covenant of grace ; for it assures supply of spiritual strength to the sincere believer for performing the condition it requires. If grace were the mere product of free will, the most fervent resolutions would vanish into a lie upon the assault of an overpowering temptation. But sanctifying grace is the effect of the Holy Spirit ; and he that "begins that good work in the saints will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." He that inclined them joyfully to choose the spiritual eternal good will bind their unconstant hearts, that by a faithful adherence they shall cleave to their duty and felicity. God hath most graciously declared, "I will put My Spirit into their heart, that they shall never depart from me." Bates. It is not usual with God to leave His people frequently to relapse into enormities ; for by His spirit and grace, by His smiles and frowns, by His word and rod He usually preserves them from these ; yet He does leave His choicest ones frequently to relapse into infirmities (and of His grace He pardons them in course), as idle words, passion and vain thoughts. And though gracious souls strive against, complain of, and weep over these, yet the Lord, to keep them humble, leaves them oftentimes to such relapses ; but they shall never be their bane, because they are their burden. T. Brooks. If we have ever so little sincere desire to serve Him and to be His, is it not absolutely certain, from the whole tenor of His words and deeds, that He will meet us more than half way, and bring us on in the right path with more than a mother's tenderness ? For every responsibility which we have to meet, He offers to qualify us. For every height which we have to climb, He furnishes an inward strength. We need not faint then at any prospect before us. Progress in grace may be arduous, difficult, impossible to flesh and blood—out of the question, it may be said, while living in the old world ; but to all alleged difficulties there is one simple answer, "He giveth more grace." E. M. G. 4. I am no longer angry with My people ; oh that their enemies (as thorns and briers) would array themselves against Me, that I might rush upon them and consume them. This is the sense of the verse preferred by most of the later writers. 5. Or let him lay hold of My strength and make peace with Me ; peace let him make with Me. The verbs are properly indefinite (let one take hold, etc.), but referring to the enemy described in the preceding verse. The general meaning is that the alternative presented is destruction or submission. A.—I can convey the meaning of this passage so that every one may understand it, by what took place in my own family within these few days. One of my little children had committed a fault for which I thought it my duty to chastise him. I called him to me, explained to him the evil of what he had done, and told him how grieved I was that I must punish him for it. He heard me in silence, and then rushed into my arms and burst into tears. I could sooner have cut off my arm than have then struck him for his fault; he had taken hold of my strength, and he had made peace with me. Thomas Toller (quoted by R. Hall). Here is a gracious invitation given us to get these matters in variance accommodated: "Let him that is desirous to be at peace with God take hold on His strength, on His strong arm which is lifted up against the sinner, and let him by supplication keep back the stroke; let him wrestle with Me, as Jacob did, resolving not to let Me go without a blessing; and he shall be Israel—a prince with God." Pardoning mercy is called the power of our Lord; let him take hold on that. Christ is the "arm of the Lord" (53:1). "Christ crucified is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:24); let him by a lively faith take hold on Him as a man that is sinking catches hold of a bough or cord or plank that is in his reach; or as the malefactor took hold on the horns of the altar, believing that there is no other name by which he can be saved, by which he can be reconciled. H.—The strong in faith grasp and keep hold of the promises. They take God at His word. They have believed in Christ, and they know that in Him all the promises are Yea and Amen. With Christ, the greater gift, they know God in His kingdom of grace will freely give us all things. Resting on the promises they pray, and their prayers are deeds. They put God upon His faithfulness, and He honors it and answers them. They wrestle with Him as if they actually had a hold upon Him. Rising up thus in a mighty energy of prayer to God, their souls have wrought with prayerful energy in the world, and their great works for God have marked the history of their race and have changed its currents. Anon. In the Christian life it is invariably true that real strength comes only out of that weakness which, distrustful of itself, gives itself up to God. It is invariably true that weakness grows out of the conceit which refuses to depend, and which trusts its own wisdom or strength. It is invariably true that God's strength shines through human infirmity, and often selects for its best and richest expressions the poorest, weakest, most burdened of mankind. Vincent.—Each new want in us seems to act, as by magnetic influence, in drawing down Divine fulness to meet it; it is a new appeal to His free love, and a new opportunity for its exercise; cise; it is a new knock at His gracious door; it is a new stroke of the rod upon the rock, making the waters to gush forth, and the streams to run down in the desert. Those infirmities of ours, with which we are so often afraid to come to Him, are just the very things which appeal to His strength, and afford occasion for its exercise. They draw it out; they bring it into play; they give it full scope; and thus, instead of making us unwelcome or intrusive applicants, they furnish us with the very claims which He delights to recognize, with the very recommendation which He loves to accept. Instead of separating us, they bring us more closely and directly into contact with Him; they open up to us more of His excellency; they give us a deeper and truer experience of His mighty fulness; they unfold to us something of the inexhaustible resources of His infinite treasure-house of blessing; they afford us an insight into the unsearchable riches of His grace; they bring us acquainted more intimately, more lovingly, more blessedly, with Himself and His love. Anon. For the daily toil of our daily task, with all its disheartening weariness, its trying disappointments, its depressing sense of comparative failure, for the greater conflicts, too, and trials of our ministry, with their sudden pressure of unforeseen difficulties, their sharper anxieties, their keener hopes and fears—for all these there is one, and but one, never-failing source of comfort and of help, one place alone where we may renew our strength—it is at the foot of the cross. There, as we kneel and pray—there, as we kneel and hope—there, as we kneel and vow—as we offer ourselves once more, in the love of our hearts, in the labor of our lives, as willing sacrifices unto God—will there come into our hearts the peace, born not of ease and comfort, but of a death agony of fear, and yet of faith, the peace which came of the vision, seen from afar, of the accomplished travail of the soul of Him who died to win it for us, and with that peace will come the strength it gives, the strength of a heart at one with God, strong in its resolve to do or to suffer His holy will, asking of Him but one thing, to be better taught what that will may be. Abp. Magee. 6. Keeping up still the figure of the vine, the Lord gives a precious promise of future enlargement and prosperity, such enlargement as will overspread the face of the world, such prosperity as will fill all the earth with the fruits of His vineyard. God's correction of His people in discipline, so far from defeating such results, ensures and hastens them. 7. This verse comes back to the great thought of the chapter—viz., that God's smiting of His people is entirely a different thing from His smiting of their enemies. It is moderate in degree, and is not mortal in result. The question put here implies the strongest negation. H. C. 8. In measure, by sending her away, thou dost contend with her. He removes her by his hard wind in the day of the east wind. The negation implied in the preceding verse is here expressed more distinctly. The prophet now proceeds to show that Israel was not dealt with like His enemies, by first describing what the former suffered, then what the latter. Israel was punished moderately, and for a time, by being removed out of His place, as if by a transient storm or blast of wind. A. 9. The facts of history have fully justified this strong prediction that the captivity in Babylon should effectually cure the nation of idolatry. Our passage shows this to have been the special purpose of God in this captivity. So His purpose in all the afflictions sent upon His children is definitely to purify, to make the heart and life better. When God's people truly hunger and thirst after personal righteousness, appreciating heart-purity in some good degree at its real value, they will bless God with overflowing heart for the discipline He finds it wise and needful to inflict, grateful if by any means they may be made more like God, and so more acceptable in His sight. 10,11. These verses take up the case of God's enemies. The passage stands logically connected with verse 7, the intermediate verses (8, 9) having spoken of God's people. This begins, "For" (not "yet"), "for" (as if to develop more fully the fearful scourging of the wicked) "the strongly fortified city is made desolate." The city here thought of is Babylon, seen here forsaken, desolate and made like a wilderness; calves feeding and lying down there; browsing and cropping off all its foliage. Or by yet another figure: when the boughs are withered they are broken off, and then women (who in Oriental life gathered the fuel) came and gathered them to burn—not precisely to set fire to where they lay, but to gather as fuel for household use. Then, dropping all figure, the Lord assigns the reason for such exterminating judgments. They will not consider and understand; will not learn God either through His mercies or His judgments; are therefore unteachable and incorrigible; hence God can show them no mercy. All efforts to enlighten them failing, no hope remains of their turning to God; and therefore destruction must be their doom. H. C. 11. Of no understanding.** A severe judgment from God is described in the words preceding. Here the reason for the judgment is assigned as a guilty ignorance. An ignorance that cannot be helped or remedied is deservedly excused. But an ignorance caused by wilful neglect of the means of knowledge is not excusing, but condemning. Some want of understanding is so far from excusing sin that it is its highest aggravation. In the words that follow, note the strange terms in which God expresses His anger. He assumes the most endearing titles, and under them announces the severest judgments. He joins the creator and the destroyer, expressions that almost confute each other; He clothes Himself in the robes of mercy, and in these pronounces the sentence of death upon the sinner. The remaining words anticipate and forestall an objection frequently in the mouths of the ignorant and in the hearts of the most knowing: that certainly God would never make them to destroy them; and therefore, since He has made them, they roundly conclude that He will not destroy them. South. 12,13. This chapter, and indeed this entire prophetic message of four chapters, closes with a promise of the restoration of God's people from Babylon ("Assyria") and from Egypt. All are to be gathered from the channel of the river (Euphrates) to the stream of Egypt. The expression, "shall beat off," gives us the figure of beating off olives from their tree. So the Lord will carefully gather up His people scattered in their captivity. It is not precisely "gathered one by one," but rather one to one—i.e., one to another; brought together from their dispersions. The blowing of the Lord's great trumpet is the signal for this assembling of the outcast and almost perishing exiles. Restored, they worship the Lord (as their fathers did) in the holy mount at Jerusalem. This was definitely fulfilled under Zerubbabel and Ezra. It closed the scene of the great captivity at Babylon. H. C. 13. A great trumpet shall be blown.** Blessed, eternally blessed be our God, for the blowing of the great trumpet of Gospel grace; it is the sound of great love; it proclaims a great salvation—to whom? Even to great sinners; such as see their sins so great that they are ready to perish. The sound of this great trumpet proclaims that "the great God" is "our Saviour Jesus Christ." It proclaims victory over sin, the law, Satan, death and hell, through Jesus, who loved us and gave Himself for us. Nor less doth it proclaim holiness than happiness; for it calls us to war with our sins, to peace with God, and to walk in sweet fellowship with God the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ. This great Gospel trumpet does not give an uncertain sound; but it proclaims a free, full and finished salvation by Christ, to the glory of God, yea and amen. W. Mason. 28:1 Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with 2 wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hall, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, shall he cast down to the earth with the 3 hand. The crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden under foot: 4 and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the firstripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is 5 yet in his hand he eateth it up. In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, 6 and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people: and for a spirit of judgement to him that sitteth in judgement, and for strength to them that turn back the battle at the 7 gate. But these also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are gone astray; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are gone astray through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgement. 8, 9 For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. Whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to understand the message? them that are 10 weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts? For it is precept upon precept, pre- 11 cept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little. Nay, but by 12 men of strange lips and with another tongue will he speak to this people: to whom he said, This is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary; and this is the refreshing: yet they would 13 not hear. Therefore shall the word of the LORD be unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little; that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. 14 Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in 15 Jerusalem: Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: 16 therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone of sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. 17 And I will make judgement the line, and righteousness the plummet: and the hail shall 18 sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; 19 when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. As often as it passeth through, it shall take you; for morning by morning shall it pass through. 20 by day and by night: and it shall be nought but terror to understand the message. For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than 21 that he can wrap himself in it. For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon; that he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to 22 pass his act, his strange act. Now therefore be ye not scorners, lest your bands be made strong: for a consummation, and that determined, have I heard from the Lord, the LORD of hosts, upon the whole earth. 23,24. Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow 25 continually to sow? doth he continually open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and put in the wheat in rows and the barley in the appointed place and the spelt in the bor- 26, 27 der thereof? For his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him. For the fitches are not threshed with a sharp threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon 28 the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is ground; for he will not ever be threshing it: and though the wheel of his cart and 29 his horses scatter it, he doth not grind it. This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom. AFTER the burdens on the Gentile nations, and their sequel, the prophecy returns more directly to the chosen people. Four successive woes are denounced on Samaria, Jerusalem and on all those in Israel who resorted to Egypt for help, instead of resting in faith on the promise of God. These are followed by another prediction of the times of Messiah, a direct woe on the Assyrian, a more general warning of judgment on the heathen, and a closing prophecy of Messiah's coming, and the full redemption of Israel. The first woe (chap. 28) announces the fall of Samaria as near at hand. Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, here called the proud crown or garland of the drunkards of Ephraim, was built by Omri, and became a place of great wealth and luxury under the following kings. It was besieged by Benhadad (2 K. 6, 7) and reduced to great extremity, but signally delivered. After a three years' siege it was taken by Shalmaneser or Sargon, and reduced to a heap of ruins (Mic. 1:6). This event followed very soon after the present prophecy, which was probably just at the opening of Hezekiah's reign. It afterward revived, and was restored by Herod the Great, who gave it the name Sebaste in honor of Augustus Caesar; and this name, slightly varied, is retained by a small village which still occupies its site. The warning passes on, as before, from Ephraim to Judah, and denounces the sensual blindness and pride of the rulers, when the judgment of God, after lighting on Israel, was just ready to visit the southern kingdom. The scourge of the Assyrian armies would soon pass over to Judah, and all their false hopes of deliverance from Egypt would perish. But the promise of Messiah would secure the preservation of a faithful remnant; and the holy discipline of God, however severe, would issue in a harvest of righteousness and praise. The last verses unfold this truth in a striking parable, drawn from the various processes of natural husbandry. Chap. 28. This prophecy, as appears from its opening verses, belongs to the earlier years of the reign of Hezekiah. The final siege of Samaria, ending in the destruction of the city, which is here represented as imminent, lasted from the fourth to the sixth year of Hezekiah (2 K. 18:9, 10). Shortly before that siege began the prophet depicts the judgment that shall overwhelm the northern kingdom in their drunken revelry and carnal security (verses 1-6). He then turns to Judah, who are given up to the same sins (verses 7, 8), and who scoffingly repel the admonitions and warnings of the prophet (verses 9, 10), and tells them that, since they refuse to hear God's message of peace and safety, He would speak to them by foreign invaders, to their fall and ruin (verses 11-13). Refusing the sure ground of dependence which God had established in Zion, their trust was in a refuge of lies, which would fail them in their extremity (verses 14-18). W. H. G.—Their impious contempt of God and self-reliance shall but hasten their destruction. All who do not build upon the sure foundation laid in Zion must inevitably perish as the enemies of Israel were destroyed of old (verses 14-22). The delay of judgment no more proves that it will never come, than the patience of the husbandman and his preparatory labors prove that he expects no harvest; and the difference of God's dealings with different men is no more inconsistent with His general purposes of wrath or mercy than the husbandman's treatment of the different grains is inconsistent with his general purpose of securing and enjoying them (verses 23-29). 1. Here, as in chap. 9:9, 21; 11:13, we are to understand by Ephraim the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, by the drunkards of Ephraim its vicious population, and by the lofty crown the city of Samaria, so called as the chief town and the royal residence, but also with allusion to its local situation on an insulated hill overlooking a rich plain or valley. Wine, smitten or wine-stricken is a strong description of the intellectual and moral effects of drunkenness. Gill's lively paraphrase is: smitten, beaten, knocked down with it as with a hammer, and laid prostrate on the ground, where they lie fixed to it, not able to get up. A.—The luxurious self-indulgence of the inhabitants of Samaria and their drinking to intoxication, a vice that infected even the women (Amos 4:1), are severely reproved by both Hosea (Hos. 4:11; 7:5) and Amos (Amos 6:4-6). That which awakens the displeasure of God and stirs the indignation of the prophet is both the criminality of these excesses in themselves and the moral insensibility which accompanied them and resulted from them. W. H. G. Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim. This may be more exactly translated, "The crown of the pride of Ephraim's drunkards"—that is, Samaria—for her people were both drunken with wine and intoxicated with pride. The frequent references in this chapter to the garlands or crowns of flowers worn by the drunkards reveals, when carefully examined by the light of profane history, an awful and systematic indulgence in excess of wine. The use of chaplets at festive entertainments sprang up at an early period in Egypt, whence, no doubt, the Israelites derived it; but it reached its climax in Greece. It was part of a deliberate intention to drink to excess and to mitigate the effects of intoxication. The wreaths were bound tightly round the head, and were composed of various flowers and shrubs, which were supposed to carry off the fumes of wine, such as roses, violets, myrtle and ivy. In later times the custom spread to Rome; but the old Romans before the empire had some regard for decency, and revellers who appeared with their garlands in public were punished with imprisonment. The descriptions which have come down to us of the orgies of the Dionysia, when all the votaries of Bacchus wore ivy wreaths, present a hideous picture. It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. The fading flower; the firstripe fig. Samaria, that crown of the drunkard's pride, notwithstanding its glorious beauty, shall wither as a fading flower from the reveller's chaplet. There is much in the natural configuration of Samaria and its neighborhood which adds force to the poetic language of the prophet. The site of Herod's Samaria, which, there is little doubt, occupies the exact position of the city of Omri, crowns a gently rising circular hill, from the base of which a wide, grassy plain sweeps in a perfect amphitheatre, encircled by a loftier mountain range. There is but one break in the mountain wall, and that reveals a view of the wide plain of Sharon and the sea beyond. The ruins which crown the central hill suggest the idea of a ruined crown, the bare columns representing the bare stems and stalks from which every flower and leaf has been stripped. Again, the "fat valleys" (or, literally, "the valleys of oil") still deserve the epithet, studded, as all of them are, with rich and ancient olive yards straggling in every direction. Again, this fading flower is to be "as the hasty fruit before the summer," or, as the Revised Version more accurately renders it, "as the firstripe fig before the summer," which is easily seen, and is at once gathered and eaten by the passer-by. Tristram. 2. The mighty and strong one of the Lord, or appointed by Him for the work of judgment, is the king of Assyria, Shalmaneser or Sargon, who completed the overthrow. He is described (as in chap. 10) as the tool or instrument to execute the warnings of God. He would soon pluck this proud and beautiful garland from the head of the drunkards of Ephraim, and cast it down to the earth with His hand, as a fierce tempest or flood sweeps everything away before it. 3,4. The figures in the first verse are here carried further. The proud crown or garland of the drunkards, when the spoiler has torn it from their brows, and cast it on the ground, will be trodden under his feet. Samaria, the glorious beauty or ornament of Ephraim, would be indeed like a fading flower, a wreath withering away; and also like the early fig, which drops when the tree is shaken, and which he who sees it no sooner sets his eyes upon than he devours it with greedy haste. Birks. 5,6. But storms sweep the air clear, and everything will not go down before this one. The flower fadeth, but there is a chaplet of beauty which men may wreathe round their heads, which shall bloom forever. All sensuous enjoyment has its limits in time, as well as in nobleness and exquisiteness; but when it is all done with, the beauty and festal ornament which truly crowns humanity shall smell sweet and blossom. The prophecy had regard simply to the issue of the historical disaster to which it pointed, and meant that, after the storm of Assyrian conquest, there would still be, for the servants of God, the residue of the people, both in Israel and in Judah, a fuller possession of the blessings which descend on the men who make God their portion. But the principle involved is forever true. The sweeping away of the perishable does draw true hearts nearer to God. So the two halves of this prophecy give us eternal truths as to the certain destruction awaiting the joys of sense and the permanence of the beauty and strength which belong to those who take God for their portion. Drunkenness seems to have been a national sin in Israel; for Micah rebukes it as vehemently as Isaiah, and it is a clear bit of Christian duty in America and England to-day to "set the trumpet to thy mouth" and show the people this sin. But the lessons of the prophecy are wider than the specific form of evil denounced. All setting of affection and seeking of satisfaction in that which, in all the pride of its beauty, is "a fading flower," is madness and sin. Into every life thus turned to the perishable will come the crash of the destroying storm, the mutterings of which might reach the ears of the feasters, if they were not drunk with the fumes of their deceiving delights. Only one kind of life has its roots in that which abides, and is safe from tempest and change. Amaranthine flowers bloom only in heaven, and must be brought thence if they are to garland earthly foreheads. If we take God for ours, then whatever tempests may howl, and whatever fragile though fragrant joys may be swept away, we shall find in Him all that the world fails to give to its votaries. He is "a crown of glory" and "a diadem of beauty." Our humanity is never so fair as when it is made beautiful by the possession of Him. All which sense vainly seeks in earth, faith finds in God. Nor only beauty, but "a spirit of judgment," in its narrower sense and in its widest, is breathed into those to whom God is "the master light of all their seeing;" and, yet more, He is strength to all who have to fight. Thus the close union of trustful souls with God, the actual inspiration of these, and the perfecting of their nature from communion with God, are taught us in the great words, which tell how beauty, justice and strength are all given in the gift of Jehovah Himself to His people. 7. 8. The prophet turns to Judah, and charges them with the same disgusting debauchery. His language is vehement in its loathing, and describes the filthy orgies of those who should have been the guides of the people with almost painful realism. A. M. That even these men, the nominal prophets and priests of Judah, should reel and stagger ger through wine; blunder and err themselves and mislead others through strong drink; that their shameless intoxication should foul their very tables, so as to leave no place undefiled—this is truly a dark picture! It must be that in those days wine-drinking made men drunk. H. C. Intemperance is the most ghastly and God-defying and man-depraying crime of our age. It is a sin which associates every manner of sin with it. It is an evil for the measurement of which arithmetic gives us no figures, and speech no descriptive terms. It debauches the conscience of the nation. It pollutes the blood of the people with diseases unnamable in decent society. It blasts the brow of youth with a deadly mildew; bends the back of manhood to the burdens of poverty, and blots out the star of hope by the blaze of the fires of hell. And for the extermination of this extortionate enemy of all righteousness there is one, and but one, remedy. And that is, the cordial agreement of those who realize its awfulness, in methods for destroying it. Withrow. The drinker has no shadow of excuse for his course. He does everything in spite of everything. Every inducement of healthy mind and body is against it. But the foolish hardness and perversity of a devil's nature drives from step to step, until habits, environment, everything, have been revolutionized, and the man is another self. Then he may not stop. Then he may not be accountable. But he is responsible for the foolishness and hardness that has brought him into the place he now stands. God pity the drunkard; but what pity for the self who made the drunkard, and recklessly and ruthlessly ruined the man that might have been. Here in these ranks is many a Cain, whose punishment is greater than he can bear; many a sunken hulk who only knows what he once was; many who could bear witness to the truth of the proverb: "At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." F. S. Arnold. The two unanswerable arguments against the drinking usages are these: An alcoholic beverage endangers me if I tamper with it; it endangers my fellow-man if I offer it to him. My Bible teaches me to let it alone for the sake of the "weak" and those who stumble. Ah, those stumblers! How many wrecks the word reveals! How many tombs it opens, whose charitable turf hides out of sight what surviving kindred would love to hide from memory! For Jesus' sake, and for the sake of the easily tempted, who will hide behind our example, let us who call ourselves Christians put away this bottled devil, which conceals damnation under its ruby glow. This subject of self-surrender for Jesus' sake is as wide as the domain of Christian duty. To live for Christ is the sweetest and holiest life we can live; to live for self is the most wretched. Every cross is turned into a crown, every burden becomes a blessing, every sacrifice becomes sacred and sublime the moment that our Lord and Redeemer writes on it "For My sake." Cuyler. 9-13. The scoffers mentioned below (verse 14) are here introduced as uttering their sententious speeches; they treat God's method of dealing with them and warning them by His prophets with contempt and derision. What, say they, doth He treat us as mere infants just weaned? doth He teach us like little children, perpetually inculcating the same elementary lessons, the mere rudiments of knowledge; precept after precept, line after line, here and there, by little and little? imitating at the same time, and ridiculing (in verse 10) the concise prophetic manner. God, by His prophet (verses 11-13), retorts upon them with great severity their own contemptuous mockery, turning it to a sense quite different from what they intended. Yes, saith He, it shall be in fact as you say; ye shall be taught by a strange tongue and a stammering lip; in a strange country; ye shall be carried into captivity by a people whose language shall be unintelligible to you, and which ye shall be forced to learn like children. And My dealing with you shall be according to your own words; it shall be command upon command for your punishment; it shall be line upon line, stretched over you to mark your destruction (cf. 2 K. 21 : 13); it shall come upon you at different times and by different degrees; till the judgments, with which from time to time I have threatened you, shall have their full accomplishment. A. C. 9,10. The loose livers of all generations talk in the same fashion about the stern morality which rebukes their vice. They call it weak, commonplace, fit for children, and they pretend that they despise it. They are much too enlightened for such antiquated teaching. Old women and children may take it in; but men of the world, who have seen life and know what is what, are not to be fooled so. "What will this babbler say?" was asked by the wise men of Athens, who were but repeating the scoffs of the prophets and priests of Jerusalem, and the same jeers are bitter in the mouths of many a profligate man to-day. It is the fate of all strict morality to be accounted childish by the people whom it inconveniently condemns. A. M. 12. It enhanced their guilt that God had kindly promised them rest and refreshing, the best of blessings, but they would not hear. Omitting the words in italics, we may translate thus: "These are the men to whom God had said, This is the rest; give rest to the weary; this is the refreshing; but they would not hear." The Lord had plainly indicated that simple obedience to Himself, right-doing, would insure them rest and peace. He had exhorted them to lead all the people in this good way. They would neither walk in it themselves nor lead others. H. C. 13. The Old Testament is full of various and gracious repetition. God allowed for Israel's slowness to receive and their slackness to retain instruction. So He gave them line upon line and precept upon precept. This principle of God runs through all His works and through all His training of His people. On this principle alone man's moral culture and spiritual advancement can be attained. D. F. The first part of this verse refers to the method in which God had taught them—i.e., in successive yet brief messages pressed assiduously. The latter part gives the results. Since they would not hear, their end was ruin. The terms used to describe it correspond to those in chap. 24 : 17, 18, the figures being a stone to stumble over and thus fall and be broken, and a pit to fall into. H. C.—Come what may, God is not mocked—that is, He will let no task be shirked in His school; and if men will not learn His lessons of eternal wisdom otherwise, He will certainly beat them into them by His judgments. And He will do this the more severely the more men have set them at naught. It is just because the natural man is so slow to receive them, that the Divine judgments have so much to do. Hupfeld.—If we will not be guided by His eye and voice, we shall be governed by whip and bridle. Our choice is either to hearken to the Divine call, which is loving and gentle, and invites to deep repose springing from faith, or to have to hear the voice of the taskmasters. The monotony of despised moral and religious teaching shall give place to a more terrible monotony, even that of continuous judgments. "The mills of God grind slowly." Bit by bit, with gradual steps, with dismal persistence, like the slow drops on the rock, the judgments of God trickle out on the mocking heart. It takes a long time for a child to learn a pageful when he gets his lesson a sentence at a time. So slowly do His chastisements fall on men who have despised the continuous messages of His love. The word of the Lord, which was laughed at when it clothed itself in a prophet's speech, will be heard in more formidable shape when it is wrapped in the long-drawn-out miseries of years of bondage. The warning is as needful for us as for these drunken priests and scornful rulers. The principle embodied is true in this day as it was then, and we too have to choose between serving God in gladness, hearkening to the voice of His word, and so finding rest to our souls, and serving the world, the flesh, and the devil, and so experiencing the perpetual dropping of the fiery rain of His judgments. A. M. 14,15. These scornful men must be the sensual, debased, drunken priests and prophets who were before us in verses 7, 8; who also scoffed at and repelled the assiduous labors of the true prophets in verses 9, 10. If it be asked how intelligent men can reach such hardihood of scepticism in defiance of their own reason, conscience, and experience, the answer is simply, under the power of sin. They love sinning; they have chosen it as their portion, and hence they must make lies their refuge. They are driven into falsehood as their only relief from the perpetual goadings of conscience. Errors and delusions become welcome to wicked men as a necessity of their moral nature and sinful state. They can have no peace without the help of lies and delusions. The passage before us puts these great moral facts in the philosophy of sinning in a light at once bold, clear and terribly truthful! H. C. Erroneous opinions are criminal, because they falsify the Divine character and destroy the moral influence of the Divine law; because they are always voluntary, the result of criminal negligence to obtain correct knowledge, or of a criminal resistance of evidence, or perversion of the understanding through the depravity of the heart; and because the belief of error is always associated with moral and criminal affections. It is never a mere act of the understanding; the heart decides, and is never neutral. If a truth be rejected, it is also hated; if an error be embraced, it is also loved. It is because men have no pleasure in the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness, that they are given over to believe a lie; and are punished, for believing it, with everlasting destruction. The propagation of error is criminal, of course, because it is destructive to the souls of men; annihilating the influence of the Divine moral government, and the means by which God is accustomed to renew the soul. Lyman Beecher. 16. Thus saith the Lord.** They are truly the Lord's words. It is the veritable language of the Infinite speaking through media to the finite mind, even as one unseen human soul speaks to another human soul, through the outward undulations of the air. And yet we do not mar the thought of the Infinite by any such conception. All things, in their imageless ideas, lie in that ineffable mind. But when God puts them forth in the forms of time and space—i.e., actually thinks them and utters them, then one mode is as outward—i.e., to Deity, as finite, as much necessitated to some form of sense, or sense conception, or sense imagery, as another. T. Lewis. Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone. To the words of the scoffers are now opposed the words of God Himself. Because you say thus and thus, therefore the Lord says in reply what follows. You trust for safety in your own delusions; on the contrary, I lay a sure foundation, and no other can be laid. This foundation is the Messiah, to whom it is repeatedly and explicitly applied in the New Testament (Rom. 9:33; 10:11; 1 Pet. 2:6). A. The course of thought here is admirable. The stone which wicked men stumble over and the lies under which they hide for refuge combine to suggest the better things which God provides for those who love and obey Him. He will lay in Zion a stone far other than that—a far more sure foundation, tried, proved and precious; whoever believeth shall not have occasion to flee in haste and perturbation. Beyond a doubt this corner and foundation stone is the Messiah, the sinner's real friend and refuge. So Peter believed and taught (1 Pet. 2:6-8). There is special pertinence in specifying those who believe as blessed in the Saviour. They are contrasted with the sceptical who make lies their refuge. There must always be essential scepticism underlying those bold, scornful attitudes of sinning mind. H. C. So, says the prophet, shall be laid—and so, add apostles, has been laid—in the coming of Christ into the world, the enduring foundation on which the whole system of truth and of salvation for mankind is to arise. The solid corner of all is set in that unique constitution of His being, in which are hidden supremest wonders of power and glory. Because He is not, in their conception, a man like themselves, imperfect and finite, though of a rare religious genius; because He is not an angel, merely, bidden of God to mask His brightness beneath the figure and face of man, but not able really to assume our nature or partake our experience; because He is, as they behold Him, the Son of man, yet also truly the Son of God—whom neither chance, nor force, nor time, can strike with change; in whom eternal perfections are combined with a tender and suffering sympathy for our need—therefore do His messengers command that this Lord be trusted forever by those who seek for their salvation; therefore do they show Him the source and the support of that Divine life which through Him is revealed, to all the world, in all the ages. The mystery of Incarnation, which they recognize in Him, becomes the essential and unchangeable foundation on which is established whatever they afterward require or declare. R. S. S. The plan of salvation was drawn in the eternal counsel. It is founded in the love of the Father; effected by the obedience and sufferings of His Son. Hence what was contrived in infinite wisdom above is laid as a sure foundation in the Church below, by the love and power of the Spirit, the Comforter. It is His peculiar office to lay this foundation in Zion, and to manifest and make known to the prophets and apostles, teachers and saints, that Jesus is the only foundation; as a stone for strength; a tried stone, approved of by the Father, and by His children in all ages; a precious corner-stone; the ornament and beauty, as well as strength and security, of the whole Church. Precious is Christ in all His offices to them that believe: a sure foundation; sure to all the seed; certain to all the purposes of their salvation. And, as the Lord the Spirit lays this foundation in the Church in the truth of doctrine, so also in the faith and experience of all redeemed souls. What the word speaks of Jesus, that we prove and find Him to be. This is our mercy. "He that believeth shall not make haste." He shall possess such serenity and composure of mind that he shall not be frightened, in times of distress and calamity, to quit his confidence; not be ashamed of his hope in the Lord. He will, by faith, patiently wait and quietly hope for the fulfilment of every promise. Sin and Satan shall not overcome him. In the awful hour of death he shall not be confounded, because his heart standeth fast, believing in the Lord. And when Jesus, his Friend, appears, he shall stand forth with boldness; and shall find an abundant entrance into the presence of God and the Lamb, to live, and love, and reign in glory forever and ever. W. Mason Jesus Christ is something to each of us. For you who have heard His name ever since you were children, your relation to Him settles your condition and your prospects, and moulds your character. Either He is for you the tried Corner-stone, the sure Foundation, on which whosoever builds will not be confounded, or He is a stone of stumbling, against which whosoever stumbles will be broken, and which will crush to powder whomsoever it falls upon. "This Child is set for the rise" or for the fall of all who hear His name; He leaves no man at the level at which He found him, but either lifts him up nearer to God and purity and joy, or sinks him into an ever-descending pit of darkening separation from all these. A. M. 17. Another thing God will do also. He will institute a process of simple and stern justice toward those guilty sinners who will not have salvation in His Son. The first clause does not mean that God will apply His measuring line to justice in the abstract, but that He will measure out and award to each sinner his doom in strict justice. He will use justice for His measuring line and judgment for His plumb line. The figure of a builder is still before the mind from the verse previous. The last clause portends those visitations of Divine justice which shall tear down and sweep away the refuges of the guilty. It shall avail them nothing that they think themselves securely sheltered. What will they do when the shelter itself shall be swept away in the dreadful storm! 18,19. God sought patiently and with assiduity long unwearied to impress a just sense of these truths upon their minds. Every other means failing, He comes at length to these appalling judgments as His last resort. H. C. 20. That in which they thought to shelter themselves proves insufficient to answer the intention: "The covering is narrower than that a man can wrap himself in it." Those that do not build upon Christ as their foundation, but rest in a righteousness of their own, will prove in the end thus to have deceived themselves; they can never be easy, safe or warm; the bed is too short, the covering too narrow. H. 21. Judgment is God's strange work, because His especial delight is in mercy. It is even His "strange task," because He doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men. Dirks.—God, more tender than the indulgent mother, and more merciful than the pitiful judge, is willingly unwilling that any sinner should die. He punisheth no man as he is a man, but as he is a sinful man. He loves him, yet turns him over to justice. It is God's work to punish, but it is withal His "strange work," His strange and foreign act, not "His good will and pleasure," His nature and property being to have mercy on all men. Spencer. Vengeance is one way in which God works, but it is not His usual one. The showers of mercy fall constantly, and become an ocean, while the angry and desolating storms are few; and He seems forced by our sins to send them, rather than by the promptings of His nature; and we find His reluctance to it thus expressed by His prophet: "The Lord shall rise up as in Mount Perazim, He shall be wroth as in the Valley of Gibeon, that He may do His work, His strange work, and bring to pass His act, His strange act." "In this you observe," as one has well remarked, "the work of wrath is a strange work, and the act of punishment a strange act. God strikes, but the striking might almost be declared foreign to His nature; it is necessary to the vindication of His attributes, but can hardly be said to be congenial with them. There is much in this to encourage the penitent, but not the presumptuous. God may be loth to punish, but nevertheless He will punish; and I am only impressed with a greater sense of the tremendousness of Divine wrath when I find that bringing it into act is an effort even to the Omnipotent. How weighty must that be which God Himself has difficulty in raising!" R. T. 23-29. This parable, which (as many of our Saviour's parables) is borrowed from the husbandman's calling, is ushered in with a solemn preface demanding attention, "He that has ears to hear, let him hear, hear and understand" (verse 23). H.—Men remember what they heed and regard. The wise man in the Book of Proverbs says, "Attend to my sayings; keep them in the midst of thine heart"—i.e., in a place where nothing can come to take them away. The memory may be called the chest or ark of Divine truths, and we should try and carefully retain them there. Isaiah says, "Hearken and hear my speech." Now, hearkening denotes reverence and seriousness, as it is said, "The ears of them that hear shall hearken." Reverence, then, and seriousness in the admission of the word are helps to us in the retaining of it. Truths are lost by inattention. T. Manton. These lessons drawn from the processes of agriculture are in two parts; the first (verses 24-26) represents that the husbandman does not plough and harrow all the year, forever, as his only business, and without reference to seed-sowing and harvests. On the contrary, he always has his eye on the outcome, and shapes his ploughing to his desired results. God teaches him to do so; hence God must have wisdom sufficient to order His own processes of breaking up human hearts by discipline and judgment—processes somewhat analogous to the work of the plough and the harrow. (See Hosea 10:11-13.) The second part of the comparison (verses 27-29) is of the same general character. The husbandman threshes out his seed with instruments adapted to the grains in hand. The very fine seeds and stalks of the fitches and cummin (both garden vegetables used as condiments) he does not grind to atoms by driving over them his huge threshing wain. But he does use this heavy instrument in threshing his wheat [bread-corn], but he does not thresh this forever. There is a limit to the bruising which is useful for either the grain or the straw. As this huge threshing wain is often a symbol for stern and crushing afflictions, it must obviously be so applied here. God chastens in wisdom, evermore adapting His agencies to the case in hand. In the severest inflictions of His rod He goes the length of wisdom—no farther. Therefore "be ye not mockers" lest ye compel the Almighty to make your punishment indefinitely more rigorous and crushing. Remember, God seeks your reformation, and shapes His discipline to your case. Therefore do not compel Him to a degree of rigor which can be only painful to Him; only ruinous to yourself. H. C. "Does the ploughman plough all day" and "break the clods" of his ground, that it may receive the seed, and does not God by His ministers break up the fallow ground? Does not the ploughman, when the ground is fitted for the seed, cast in the seed in its proper soil? He does so, and so the great God sows His word by the hand of His ministers (Matt. 13:19), who are to divide the word of truth, and give every one their portion. Whatever the soil of the heart is, there is some seed or other in the word proper for it. And as the word of God, so the rod of God is thus wisely made use of. Afflictions are God's threshing instruments, designed to loosen us from the world, to part between us and our chaff, and to prepare us for use. And as to these, God will make use of them as there is occasion: but He will proportion them to our strength, they shall be no heavier than there is need. If the rod and the staff will answer the end, He will not make use of His cart-wheel and His horsemen. And where these are necessary, as for the bruising of the bread-corn (which will not otherwise be got clean from the straw), yet He will not be ever threshing it, will not always chide, but His anger shall endure but for a moment; nor will He "crush under His feet the prisoners of the earth." And herein we must acknowledge Him "wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom." H. 29 : 1 Ho Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped! add ye year to year; let the feasts come round: then will I distress Ariel, and there shall be mourning and lamentation: and she shall be unto me as Ariel. And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a fort, and I will raise siege works against thee. And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust; and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust. But the multitude of thy foes shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones as chaff that passeth away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly. She shall be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire. And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her strong hold, and that distress her, shall be as a dream, a vision of the night. And it shall be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against mount Zion. 9. Tarry ye and wonder; take your pleasure and be blind: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes, the prophets; and your heads, the seers, hath he covered. And all vision is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot, for it is sealed: and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned. 13. And the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw nigh unto me, and with their mouth and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men which hath been taught them: therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. 15. Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Ye turn things upside down! Shall the potter be counted as clay; that the thing made should say of him that made it, He made me not; or the thing framed say of him that framed it, He hath no understanding? Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be counted for a forest? And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in the LORD, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For the terrible one is brought to nought, and the scorner ceaseth, and all they that watch for iniquity are cut off: that make a man an offender in a cause, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just with a thing of nought. Therefore thus saith the LORD, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob: Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his face now wax pale. But when he seeth his children, the work of mine hands, in the midst of him, they shall sanctify my name; yea, they shall sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and shall stand in awe of the God of Israel. They also that err in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmur shall learn doctrine. #### The Woe on Jerusalem. THE woe on Samaria, the proud crown of Ephraim, serves chiefly to introduce a message to the people and rulers of Judah, the direct objects of Isaiah's ministry. But now the message turns directly to Jerusalem. It announces the overflowing scourge of the Assyrian campaigns, and the sudden overthrow of the fierce invaders. A stern reproof of the rulers of Judah for their sensual blindness, when the judgment was so near, is followed by the promise of a great moral revolution. Birks. This chapter consists of two parts, parallel to one another—i.e., each containing the same series of promises and threatenings, but in different forms. The prophetic substance or material of both is that Zion should be threatened and assailed, yet not destroyed, but on the contrary strengthened and enlarged. These ideas are expressed in the second part much more fully and explicitly than in the first, which must therefore be interpreted according to what follows. In the first part, the threatening is that Zion shall be assailed by enemies and brought very low (verses 1–4). The promise is that the assailants shall be scattered like dust and chaff, vanish like a dream, and be wholly disappointed in their hostile purpose (verses 5–8). In the second part, the prophet brings distinctly into view, as causes of the threatened judgments, the spiritual intoxication and stupor of the people, their blindness to revealed truth, their hypocritical formality, and their presumptuous contempt of God (verses 9–16). The judgment itself is described as a confounding of their fancied wisdom (verse 14). The added promise is that of an entire revolution, including the destruction of the wicked, and especially of wicked rulers, the restoration of spiritual sight, joy to the meek and poor in spirit, and the final recovery of Israel from a state of alienation and disgrace to the service of Jehovah and to the saving knowledge of the truth (verses 17–24). That the second part describes not physical but spiritual evils is admitted on all hands, and indeed asserted by the prophet himself. This description is directly and repeatedly applied in the New Testament to the Jews contemporary with our Saviour. It does not follow from this that it is a specific and exclusive prophecy respecting them; but it does follow that it must be so interpreted as to include them, which can only be effected by regarding this last part of the chapter as descriptive of the Jews, not at one time merely, but throughout the period of the old dispensation, an assumption fully confirmed by history. The judgment threatened will then be the loss of their peculiar privileges and an exchange of state with others who had been less favored, involving an extension of the Church beyond its ancient bounds, the destruction of the old abuses, and the final restoration of the Jews themselves. If this be the meaning of the second part, it seems to determine that of the first as a figurative expression of the truth, that the Church should suffer but not perish, the imagery used for this purpose being borrowed from the actual sieges of Jerusalem. Thus understood, the chapter is prophetic of two great events, the seeming destruction of the ancient Church, and its reproduction in a new and far more glorious form, so as not only to include the Gentiles in its bounds, but also the converted remnant of God's ancient people. A. This is the prophetic conception: Jerusalem, the city of God, standing for the capital of His spiritual kingdom on earth; besieged violently, but rescued from ruin and her assailants scattered like chaff because she is God's altar; yet when in the character of God's visible Church she becomes spiritually blind, bigoted and hardened, God will marvellously scourge and judicially abandon her, taking away her prerogatives and giving them to others—i.e., taking them away from the blinded Jew to give them to the Gentile. For the prophecy in its application contemplates not a supposed but a real case, lifting the curtain of the future and looking directly into that marvellous change by which the kingdom of God was taken from the unfruitful Jews and given to the fruit-bearing Gentiles, in the opening of the Christian age. Such is manifestly the scope of this chapter. 1. "The city where David dwelt" is of course Jerusalem. Consequently "Ariel" means Jerusalem, but the reason why it is called Ariel has been given variously. 5. This is promise. "Thy strangers" are the foreign armies that have besieged her. They become like fine dust and like chaff driven before the tempest—terribly significant figures to denote the ease, rapidity and enthriness of their destruction. The extreme weakness of the city shows that this victory is not of her achieving, but is of God alone. H. C. 6. “Thou” is not the city. Neither the gender of the verb nor the course of thought permit this construction. It is the enemy, the “multitude of strangers” who had invested her in siege. “Visited”—i.e., with the judgments of the Almighty—thunder, earthquake—a fearful group of the most terrific and destructive agencies in the material world. 7,8. The phenomena of dreams admits in this case of a twofold application: (1) To the experience of the Jews; (2) to the experiences of their enemies. As all the scenes and excited fears of a dream may suddenly disappear when one awakes, so the Jews will be suddenly relieved as from a nightmare of horrors, by awakening some morning to find that God’s tempest and fire have scattered their enemies like fine dust and chaff. Then, on the other hand, their enemies, who in their confidence of success had been dreaming of pillage and plunder, awake to find their souls no less hungry and thirsty than before. This is a phase of the phenomena of dreaming, quite distinct from the former. It supposes a man to be hungry and to dream of eating; thirsty, and to dream of drinking; yet he awakes to find that his dream is only a tantalizing delusion. So with the fond but vain hopes of the besiegers. Both of these illustrations from dreams are true to nature. 9. Here commences the second part of this chapter—the analogous description of the spiritual blindness and guilt of the people and their consequent rejection of God. The manner of presenting such truths by imperative verbs is this: Go on in your sins; you will reap what you sow. The prophet describes their sins by (apparently) commanding them to do those sins. Yet the simple thought is, If you will sin, you must suffer. The last part of the verse falls back to the usual form of plain description. They are spiritually drunken, morally infatuated in a sort of drunkenness which comes on men not through wine, but through the madness of sin. They stagger—i.e., reel in judgment and in life, yet not through strong drink, but through the moral blindness and infatuation which sin begets. And this (verse 10 proceeds to say) is of the Lord in righteous judgment upon the people for their abuse of light enjoyed. It is the deep sleep of dead insensibility as to moral relations and duties—the eyes being shut as if utterly blind to moral truth. “The prophets and your rulers” (better, your “heads”—i.e., head-men, leaders in public sentiment) “hath He covered—i.e., as to the eyes, so that they see not the plain truths of God.” Remarkably this very state of moral blindness appeared in the case of the scribes and Pharisees among whom Christ lived. They seemed utterly incapable either of just moral sentiments or of a clear intellectual view of moral truth. God had left them to moral blindness. This fact accords with and illustrates the main point of this prophecy. It is an awful fact, and should admonish sinners to beware how they resist the Holy Ghost and abuse the appeals of Divine mercy. H. C. 10. It is yet more strange that God Himself has “poured out upon them a spirit of deep sleep” and “has closed their eyes,” that He who bids them awake and open their eyes should yet lay them to sleep and shut their eyes; but it is in a way of righteous judgment to punish them for their loving sleep. When God by His prophets called them, they said, “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber;” and therefore He gave them up to strong delusions. This is applied to the unbelieving Jews who rejected the Gospel of Christ, and were justly hardened in their infidelity till wrath came upon them to the uttermost. And we have reason to fear it is the woful case of many who live in the midst of Gospel light. H. 11,12. A sealed book is handed to a man who knows how to read with request that he read it, but he says, “I cannot, for it is sealed.” Then it is handed (unsealed perhaps) to one who has never learned to read, and he cannot read because he does not know how. This is the sense of verse 12, where “not learned” means only, “I do not know book”—i.e., do not know how to read a book. Thus the import of these verses is that in one way or another God’s revelations avail the people nothing. Their moral blindness precludes the practical utility of God’s revelations, just as the sealing of the book in one case and ignorance of the art of reading in the other makes this supposed book of no account. 13,14. These statements are plain. The people are formal, hypocritical and heartless. Their fear of God is a thing of precept, not of heart; a thing taught, but not felt; taught, but not accepted and inwrought into the moral and spiritual life. Therefore God will do a very marvellous thing; He will let the wisdom of their wise men perish. Moral blindness will hide the light of moral truth from their eyes. Our Lord cites this passage (Matt. 15:7-9) as applying fitly to the perversions of the law by the Pharisees through their traditions. This was perverting—i.e., wrestling and distorting the very substance as well as the letter of the law. In the days of Isaiah men may have held the truth unchanged as to its form of expression, yet blunted and made morally inoperative through their perverseness. The prophecy may be fulfilled in either way. Probably our Lord quotes this passage in full accordance with its original meaning. Isaiah's prophetic eye is on that period of national blindness and infatuation in which the people rejected their own Messiah, and so plucked down ruin upon their city and nation. H. C. It is a spiritual judgment with which God threatens to punish them for their spiritual wickedness. They did one strange thing, they removed all sincerity from their hearts; now God will go on and do another, He will remove all sagacity from their heads; "the wisdom of their wise men shall perish." They played the hypocrite, and thought to put a cheat upon God, and now they are left to themselves to play the fool; and not only to put a cheat upon themselves, but to be easily cheated by all about them. Those that make religion no more than a pretence, to serve a turn, are out in their politics; and it is just with God to deprive those of their understanding who part with their uprightness. H. 15. This is a further description of the people or their leaders, as not only wise in their own conceit, but as impiously hoping to deceive God or elude His notice. The absurdity of such an expectation is exposed in the following verse. In the last clause of this the interrogative form implies negation. A. 16. The prophet compares the moral perverseness of men who think their plans too deep for God to comprehend, to the absurdity of the notion that the potter is only as his clay, or to the impudence that would be manifested if anything made could and should say to the maker of it, "He never made me!" or if anything produced should say as to him that produced it, "He knows nothing!" H. C. 17. The only natural interpretation of the verse is that which regards it as prophetic of a mutual change of condition, the first becoming last and the last first. If, as we have seen sufficient reason to believe, the previous context has respect to the Jews under the old dispensation, nothing can be more appropriate or natural than to understand the verse before as foretelling the excision of the unbelieving Jews and the admission of the Gentiles to the Church. A.—The forests of ages, the Lebanon of this figure, represent the Gentile nations, long shut off from moral culture, and bearing no fruit unto God. But they become the fruit-bearing fields—the Carmel of Gospel times! Over against this, the old fruit-bearing fields—the Jewish people—go back by reason of their unbelief to the state of a forest, under no moral culture and yielding no Gospel fruit. As our Lord often expressed it: "Many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first" (Matt. 19: 30). "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21: 43). 18,19. The expressions here allude to verses 11, 12, and aim to put in antithesis the moral blindness of the Jews as predicted there, and the docility and consequent joy in God and in His Gospel among the Gentile converts. The history of the Acts of the Apostles is a striking comment on these verses. Men long deaf to God's words now hear with open ears. The eyes of men long sitting in darkness now look forth from that darkness and see a glorious light. "And there is great joy in that city" (Acts 8: 8) among those converts from Gentile nations. 20,21. The general sense of these verses is that the Gospel, going abroad among the Gentile nations, bore with it reform in morals and in the civil and common life of men. This was indeed the glory of Christianity. It moulded society; became a mightily transforming power in courts of justice, in the defence of human rights, in promoting peace, good order, and the general welfare of society. H. C. 23. The emphatic mention of the Holy One of Jacob and the God of Israel, as the object to be sanctified, implies a relation still existing between all believers and their spiritual ancestry, as well as a relation of identity between the Jewish and the Christian Church. 24. If the foregoing verse predicts the reception of the Gentiles into the family of Israel, and if this reception, as we learn from the New Testament, was connected with the disinheriting of most of the natural descendants, who are nevertheless to be restored hereafter, then the promise of this final restoration is a stroke still wanting to complete the fine prophetic picture now before us. That finishing stroke is given in this closing verse, which adds to the promise that the Gentiles shall become the heirs of Israel, another that the heirs of Israel according to the flesh shall themselves be restored to their long-lost heritage, not by excluding their successors in their turn, but by peaceful and brotherly participation with them. A. The grand, all-regenerating force is already entered into the world, and is working steadily on through all retrocessions and advances alike. Lift up your heads, O ye drooping ones! Christ is in the world! Jesus, Son of God, and word of God's eternity—He is about us, within us, going through all things, moving onward in all. Leaven does not make a noise when it works, and yet it works! And so the Gospel works, the progress goes on, a grand, mighty progress, and there is really no retrocession. No river runs to the sea more certainly or steadily than the great salvation for man runs to conquest and a kingdom. Bushnell. 30:1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; 2 and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the 3 strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of 4 Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion. For his 5 princes are at Zoan, and his ambassadors are come to Hanes. They shall all be ashamed of a people that cannot profit them, that are not an help nor profit, but a shame, and also a reproach. 6 The burden of the beasts of the South. Through the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the lioness and the lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and 7 their treasures upon the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit them. For Egypt 8 helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: there have I called her Rahab that sitteth still. Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to 9 come for ever and ever. For it is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not 10 hear the law of the Lord: which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy 11 not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. 12 Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in 13 oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon; therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an 14 instant. And he shall break it as a potter's vessel is broken, breaking it in pieces without sparing; so that there shall not be found among the pieces thereof a sherd to take fire from 15 the hearth, or to take water withal out of the cistern. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be 16 your strength: and ye would not. But ye said, No, for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be 17 swift. One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till 18 ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill. And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgement; blessed are all they that wait for him. 19 For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more; he will surely 20 be gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear, he will answer thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy 21 teachers be hidden any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it; when ye turn to the right hand, 22 and when ye turn to the left. And ye shall defile the overlaying of thy graven images of silver, and the plating of thy molten images of gold : thou shalt cast them away as an unclean 23 thing ; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence. And he shall give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground withal ; and bread of the increase of the ground, and it shall be fat 24 and plenteous : in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. The oxen likewise and the young asses that till the ground shall eat savoury provender, which hath been winnowed 25 with the shovel and with the fan. And there shall be upon every lofty mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters, in the day of the great slaughter, when the 26 towers fall. Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the hurt of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound. 27 Behold, the name of the LORD cometh from far, burning with his anger, and in thick rising 28 smoke : his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue is as a devouring fire : and his breath is as an overflowing stream, that reacheth even unto the neck, to sift the nations with the 29 sieve of vanity : and a bridle that causeth to err shall be in the jaws of the peoples. Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept ; and gladness of heart, as when one 30 goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel. And the LORD shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and the flame of a devouring fire, with a blast, and tempest, 31 and hailstones. For through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian be broken in pieces, 32 which smote with a rod. And every stroke of the appointed staff, which the LORD shall lay upon him, shall be with tabrets and harps : and in battles of shaking will he fight with them. 33 For a Topheth is prepared of old ; yea, for the king it is made ready ; he hath made it deep and large : the pile thereof is fire and much wood ; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it. 31 : 1 Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, and stay on horses ; and trust in chariots, because they are many, and in horsemen, because they are very strong ; but they look 2 not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD ! Yet he also is wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back his words : but will arise against the house of the evil-doers, and 3 against the help of them that work iniquity. Now the Egyptians are men, and not God ; and their horses flesh, and not spirit : and when the LORD shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is holpen shall fall, and they all shall fail together. 4 For thus saith the LORD unto me, Like as when the lion growleth and the young lion over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him, he will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them : so shall the LORD of hosts come down to 5 fight upon mount Zion, and upon the hill thereof. As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts 6 protect Jerusalem ; he will protect and deliver it, he will pass over and preserve it. Turn 7 ye unto him from whom ye have deeply revolted, O children of Israel. For in that day they shall cast away every man his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands 8 have made unto you for a sin. Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of man ; and the sword, not of men, shall devour him : and he shall flee from the sword, and his young 9 men shall become tributary. And his rock shall pass away by reason of terror, and his princes shall be dismayed at the ensign, saith the LORD, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem. Chap. 30. This chapter contains an exposure of the sin and folly of ancient Israel in seeking foreign aid against their enemies, to the neglect of God, their rightful sovereign and their only strong protector. The costume of the prophecy is borrowed from the circumstances and events of Isaiah's own times. Thus Egypt is mentioned in the first part of the chapter as the chosen ally of the people, and Assyria in the last part as the dreaded enemy. There is no need, however, of restricting what it said to that period exclusively. The presumption, as in all such cases, is that the description was designed to be more general, although it may contain allusions to particular emergencies. Reliance upon human aid, involving a distrust of the Divine promises, was a crying sin of the ancient Church, not at one time only, but throughout her history. To denounce such sins and threaten them with condign punishment was no small part of the prophetic office. A. This chapter opens with rebuke of the Jews for seeking help from Egypt against Assyria, accounting it rebellion against God and declaring that it should avail them nothing (verses 1-7); and closes with predictions of the overthrow of the Assyrians by the high hand of Jehovah Himself (verses 27-33). The connection between these extremes of the chapter is made by dwelling at some length upon the sins of the people, from which their seeking help from Egypt was a natural outgrowth (verses 8-17), and then turning in Divine mercy to great promises of spiritual renovation, followed legitimately with promises of temporal deliverance from their enemies, from which the prophet passes to the special case of Assyria as happily illustrating the general principle of help from God to His believing people in their need (verses 18-26). It is more than legitimate to give the doctrines of this chapter a universal application to the sin of seeking help from man and to the duty of seeking help from God, for it was plainly the Divine purpose to illustrate and impress these general principles—practically good for every age—rather than merely to give the world certain facts of Jewish history in respect to their relations to Egypt and Assyria. What is said here of God's visitations of judgment upon wicked nations has an air of grandeur and magnificence rarely equalled by any other writer and rarely surpassed by Isaiah. 1,2. The Lord does not say, "My children," for they had practically disowned this relation by their rebellion against His authority. They were active and earnest in taking counsel, but not of God; in framing profound plans, but not in sympathy with God's Spirit. They were bent on making a league with Egypt against Assyria. So doing, they would add to the sin of heart apostasy from God the farther sin of a foreign alliance which would be at once insulting to God and ensnaring to themselves. No step of such importance should under any circumstance be taken without first seeking counsel from God. But in this case the people knew they were going against His revealed will. Egypt is more precisely seeking shelter under her shadow, in the shade of her protection. 4. Manifestly these princes and ambassadors are those of the Jews, now seen in Egypt, to carry into effect the schemes of their king and his counsellors in a league with the king of Egypt. "Zoan" is referred to (19:11) as the residence of the king and his court. It was a very ancient city (Num. 13:22) and one of national importance (Ps. 78:43). 6. The prophet sees and describes the caravan of Jewish ambassadors as they cross the Arabian desert on their way to Egypt, bearing ample presents to ingratiate the good will of Egypt's king. Lo! see the burden of those beasts going south, through a land of trouble and discomfort (to all travellers) whence come the lion and the lioness (Heb.), etc. H. C. 7. The historical chapters of Isaiah, especially chaps. 36 and 37, show that Hezekiah received no help at all from the subordinate Pharaoh, who was probably Shabatok, and that though Tirhakah did move on his behalf (37:9), yet that he neither engaged the forces of Sennacherib nor seriously troubled him. The relief of Hezekiah and the relief of Egypt itself—whose subjection to Assyria was thereby deferred for a generation—came from another quarter. When Hezekiah gave up his trust in any arm of flesh and made his appeal to God, spreading before Him the blasphemous letter of Sennacherib, then Isaiah was commissioned to assure him of a miraculous deliverance (37:36). The deliverance itself and its marvellous character was acknowledged by the Egyptians no less than by the Israelites. G. R. The Jewish party, which sought for an alliance with Egypt, was pursuing a policy which on human as well as on Divine grounds was utterly fatal. The party was in high favor in the time of Hezekiah; it seemed to advocate the only line of policy by which the independence of the Jewish state could be secured, and Isaiah's opposition and words of warning were disregarded. But events showed that he was right. The alliance with Egypt, which had been purchased with the treasures of Jerusalem, and the toilsome journey of the Jewish ambassadors into the heart of Ethiopia was shattered by the battle of Eltekh, while the overthrow of the army of Sennacherib before Jerusalem proved that trust in their God was the only defence the rulers of Judah needed, and that their strength was, as Isaiah, had declared, "to sit still." From that time onward, to the death of Hezekiah, there was no more straining after an Egyptian alliance, and Isaiah's later years were cheered by the consciousness that the policy he had preached and struggled for was at last triumphant. For nearly a century Egypt disappeared from the political horizon of the Jews. Sayee. 8,9. What needed so lasting a record was rather the engrained perverseness of the people, out of which all their acts of sin arose, than the details of this Egyptian embassy. Its failure was rather a lesson for the moment; but the perverseness of the Jewish people in despising God's word and rejecting His prophets was a weighty and solemn lesson for every age. They continually urged the prophets to give answers that would encourage them in their worldly schemes instead of reporting truly the messages of God. Birks. 10. Smooth things or words is a common figurative term for flatteries. Luther's expressive version is, preach soft to us. A. 10,11. So deeply infatuated in sin were this people that they even sought to seduce the Lord's prophets, exhorting them (so the Hebrew states and repeats it) not to see the truth for them, but to speak to them only smooth and delusive words. They chose pleasing lies rather than unwelcome truth. They could not bear to be annoyed in their sinful pursuits and pleasures, and were therefore ready to grasp the good of sinning recklessly and risk all the bad consequences! "Get ye out of the way" does not mean precisely get out of our way so that we may have a clear field for sinning with no obstructions; but this: Turn ye out of the right way; do not hesitate to turn aside never so much from the path of duty and right; run the risks of disobeying God even as we have resolved to do. Dare to sin on at all hazards and fear nothing! And especially bring before us no more "The Holy One of Israel." H. C. Here are some so much in love with their own ruin as to own plainly and roundly what they would be at; "Prophesy not unto us," they say, "right things, but smooth things." As if they had said, "Do but oil the razor for us, and let us alone to cut our own throats." South.—It is not pleasant to tell people what they don't want to hear. It is a great deal nicer to prophesy smooth things than to cry, "Repent or perish." And there are a great many beautiful things in the Bible. The preacher can if he will find texts to last a lifetime that will not offend the most fastidious. He can be Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year "as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument." No wonder that many yield to this temptation, and that ever and anon there is a new theology to meet the demand of those to whom the cross is an offence. But some one may ask, If we are to preach a gospel that offends men how are we going to save them? The answer is, we don't expect to save them. No preacher ever was or ever will be so attractive as to be able in and of himself to draw one sinner to Christ. It is "not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord." Interior. In dealing with ourselves or with one another, if we aim at deep work or thorough results we must go bravely and honestly at this mark. Pre-eminently it is the prophet's business. Men in earnest will not shrink from the awful office—stern, searching, incisive, painful, and therefore very often unwelcome, but merciful with the far-sighted mercy which regards the true peace beyond the transient pain. F. D. H. 15. These titles of God have here a special force. Their resorting to Egypt for help was a direct affront to the unchangeable Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel. It was a denial of every lesson taught by the plagues of Egypt, the passover and Exodus, when that name was more fully revealed. Distrust of God had caused a feverish restlessness. Their punishment would resemble their sin. By rejecting the prophet's warning they virtually claimed to be wiser than God, and they would now be filled with their own devices. Birks. In returning to Me and in resting upon Me ye shall have salvation; in quietness as opposed to agitation and anxiety; in confidence as opposed to distrust and unbelief, shall be your strength—said with an eye to their national danger from the Assyrians when they were disowning God and looking to Egypt instead. The sentiments are good for all circumstances of human want and trial. God would have His teaching in this case apply to every possible case which involves like principles. H. C. Would we be saved from the evil of every calamity, guarded against the temptation of it, and secured from the curse of it, which are the only evil things in it? It must be in returning and rest; in returning to God and reposing in Him as our rest. In returning, in the thorough reformation of your hearts and lives; and in rest, in an entire submission of your souls to God, and a complacency in Him, "you shall be saved." Would we be strengthened to do what is required of us and to bear what is laid upon us? It must be in quietness and in confidence; we must keep our spirits calm and sedate by a continual dependence upon God and His power and goodness; we must retire into ourselves with a holy quietness, suppressing all turbulent and tumultuous passions, and keeping the peace in our own minds. And we must rely upon God with a holy confidence that He can do what He will, and will do what is best for His people. And this will be our strength; it will inspire us with such a holy fortitude as will carry us with ease and courage through all the difficulties we may meet with. H. More progress is to be made by waiting than by working; there may be a greater power in silent, patient looking for than in the restless exertion of all the forces of the mind and of the body. It was Israel that so frequently, against God's will, in the pressure of the moment said, "We will flee upon horses, we will ride upon the swift" (verse 16); and the path they had chosen in self-will as conducting to sure victory led to destruction. Have we also something of that rash temper which prefers to cut the knot of difficulty rather than wait till the time comes, when higher wisdom shall unravel it? Then stands before us, as inscribed in capitals, this passage, "In quietness and in confidence shall be your rest." It is not stated that this way to real strength and rest is the most easy, a smooth path for all feet. To wait is often harder than to work; drudgery not seldom easier than doing nothing, except when carried beyond all bounds. And yet this last, most difficult requirement is in a thousand circumstances that which is asked of us; and at every turn God shows us that the strength born of still trust is not alone our highest, but, in fine, our only power. Van O.—Much of Christian duty is not active, bustling work, but quiet, patient waiting. There come many times in the experience of every life when victory can be gained in no other way. We must stand still and wait for God. Immeasurable harm is wrought in personal lives and in the work of God by the impatience that cannot wait for the Divine bidding to go forward. J. R. M. An active social life, with its sympathies, its friendships and its close contact of mind with mind, interspersed with hours of solitude for quiet thought and serious meditation, seems to be the Divine order for man's best growth. We acquire most rapidly in society; we ripen best in solitude. We receive new ideas, devise new plans, welcome new impulses most readily when under the influence of other minds; we mature all these and render them effective in our lives in the quiet meditation of the still hour. There is therefore a sense in which we ought to be never less alone than when alone. And in view of this truth, we should learn to be company for ourselves, and good company, too. S. S. T.—Solitude is no word for a true, God-loving heart. We are least alone when we are most alone, for then, if we are His, we may most fully realize His presence. So if any of you are disposed sometimes to say the road is dark and long and rough, and I have to tread it unaccompanied, "set the Lord always before" you, and, with Him at your "right hand," He and you will be—I was going to say, enough for one another, and, at any rate, will be too many for all opposition. "I was left alone, and I saw this great vision." I was left alone, and God came to keep me company. That may be the experience of every soul. . . . The secret of a quiet heart—which is a very different thing from a stagnant one—is to keep ever near God. Leaning upon Him, we shall not be shaken as we otherwise would, and shall be masters of ourselves; and if we are masters of ourselves nothing outside of us will much move us. "His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord." In everything, by prayer and thanksgiving, make God present to yourselves, and yourselves present to God, and "the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds." A. M. Peace comes swiftest when you seek it as an end least. Seek purity, seek renewal of heart and life, seek harmony with God, seek the society of Christ as a Saviour and Intercessor for you, and peace, in God's good time, will come of itself. How many really earnest souls of us are spoiling our work because we will invert God's order, and instead of seeking faith supremely, leaving comfort for an incident, go about to get comfort first, and thus miss faith and comfort both! Let us be patient. Stillness is our needed sacrifice. Baffled and broken the soul must often be before its immortal strength comes. Humiliation of pride, an utter consciousness of infirmity, to be kept painfully out of our inheritance, fasting and mortified ambition, forty days in the wilderness, three years in Arabia—all these are the price of conquest. Do not pray for exemption from them, but for victory by them. F. D. H. Must life be a failure for one compelled to stand still in enforced inaction and see the great throbbing tides of life go by? No; victory is then to be gotten by standing still, by quiet waiting. It is a thousand times harder to do this than it was in the active days to rush on in the columns of stirring life. It requires a grander heroism to stand and wait and not lose heart and hope, to submit to the will of God, to give up work and honors to others, to be quiet, confident and rejoicing, while the happy, busy multitude goes on and away. It is the grandest life “having done all, to stand.” J. R. M. 17. The thought seems to be, Ye shall flee in all directions till two are nowhere left together. Ye may be seen winding your way over the distant hill-tops, or standing there in dismay; but every man alone, so utter is your dispersion and so completely is your military power broken. The threatening of calamity closes here; indeed how could it farther go? The people are utterly broken down. Hence this extremity becomes God’s opportunity for signal mercy; as we shall see. H. C. 18-26. These verses refer to the Assyrian deliverance. The connection is direct and forcible. However severe God’s discipline, its design was gracious. His dealings are full of wisdom. There is, on His part, no slackness or indifference, but the calm waiting of an ever-patient love. Even in the hour of judgment God will be exalted, not to crush His people with the terrors of His majesty, but only “that He may have mercy” upon them. He knows how to temper their afflictions, that they may yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Since He waits in patient love, to show them favor at the last, they also are bound to wait, in faith and patience, until the blessing shall come. Birks.—He waits that He may be gracious. Goodness sets God upon the exercise of patience, and patience sets many a sinner on running into the arms of mercy. That mercy which makes God ready to embrace returning sinners makes Him willing to bear with them in their sins, and wait their return. Charnock. 20. The restored and forgiven people are not placed instantly in the height of prosperity. As in the case of those who returned from captivity in Babylon, serious hardships were the first lessons; but God gave them a precious faith and a rich renewal of Divine light, instruction and consequent spiritual comfort. Such is the course of thought here. We may expect some straitness for earthly bread; but ye shall have an abundance of the bread of Divine light, the bread of heaven. Thy teachers shall not hide themselves away in corners any more, as men driven from their homes by persecution; but thine eyes shall see them at all points present and ready to teach thee the word and will of God. H. C. 21. This idea of a road as the highway of God’s kingdom shows itself all along in the Bible record. Again and again, fidelity to God’s service is spoken of as continuing in “the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in.” (See, for example, De. 13:5; 31:29; Judges 2:22; 2 K. 21:22; Jer. 5:4, 5.) And because there are roads which are not the king’s highway, frequent mention is made in the Bible of ways of evil, as well as ways of good—roads within the kingdom which are not roads of the kingdom. “Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of life, and the way of death” (Jer. 21:8). And this view of the possibility of being out of the way while in a way, gives added force to the cry of the psalmist: “Teach me Thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path” (Ps. 27:11). It also gives added preciousness to the Lord’s assurance to those who trust in Him: “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.” H. C. T. 23-26. In this passage some expressions are manifestly figurative. But whatever doubt may rest on any clause as between the literal and the figurative sense, of this we may be sure: it testifies to the loving-kindness of God—always the main and vital thing. 25,26. Rivers and streams run usually in valleys and not on the hill or mountain tops. Hence the thing affirmed of them here must denote very rich blessings; as, on the other hand, great slaughter and falling towers indicate fearful calamities. The same sense is given under other figures in the next verse. In the day when God bindeth up the breach of His people, the augmentation of light from the heavenly bodies shall be great, even sevenfold and more. The light of seven days compressed into one; the light of the moon becoming as that of the sun; these are magnificent figures and must be freighted with a wealth of precious significance. It has been fitly said that these must be figures, for the literal fulfilment would be a calamity and not a blessing. These mortal eyes could not bear such outbursting, dazzling, perpetual effulgence. But Zion’s spiritual light can never be in excess. H. C. 27-34. The fall of the Assyrian is here foretold in words most impressive and sublime. They strongly confirm the view of Vitringa, that a violent thunderstorm was the chief agency by which the commission of the destroying angel was fulfilled. Birks.—Verse 31 makes it certain that this entire passage has a somewhat special reference to the destruction of Sennacherib’s army. Yet this case is referred to here, in part at least, as an illustration of the general law of Divine interposition for the deliverance of His prayerful, trusting people. What God did for Hezekiah and his people He will do in like circumstances for any and every other generation of His chosen. The "name of the Lord" means His manifestations, God Himself as seen in the special revelations of His glory. The whole description is grand, not to say awful. Jehovah, awakening the energies of His being to intense activity, is seen coming from afar, burning with anger (speaking after the manner of men), and heavy are the columns of rising smoke (the probable sense of the Hebrew); His lips full of indignation; His tongue like a devouring fire; who could stand before such consuming wrath? He comes forth to lay low in death that great Assyrian host. All the agencies of fire, coupled with accumulated declarations of burning wrath, set forth His earnest zeal in this work and the fearfulness of His manifestations to effect it. H. C. 29. The night may be particularly mentioned in the first clause, either because all the Mosaic festivals began in the evening, or with special allusion to the passover, which is described in the law (Ex. 12: 42) as "a night to be much observed unto the Lord, as that night of the Lord to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations." This verse gives an interesting glimpse of ancient usage as to the visitation of the Temple at the greater yearly festivals. The Rock of Israel is not Mount Zion or Moriah, but Jehovah Himself, to whose presence they resorted, as appears from 2 Sam. 23: 3. A. 30,31. While His people make their voice heard in songs of praise to God, He makes His voice heard in thunder and the flash of His arms seen in lightning for the overwhelming of His foes. In this verse again the prophet groups boldly and almost rudely together all the grand agencies of lightning and fire, tempest and storm. Before such an inundation of agencies for destruction, the Assyrian is beaten down—falling never to rise. 33. This allusion to Tophet is the earliest which appears in the Scriptures. Additional particulars appear in the history of Josiah's reformation (2 K. 33: 10; Jer. 7: 31 and 19: 6, 11-14). The prophet here represents Tophet as a place prepared for the burning of the Assyrian king. Made deep and large, with fire and wood in abundance, prepared for the king, and of course, he being thrown upon it, the breath of the Lord kindles it into its fearful conflagration. This is, of course, a figurative description, Tophet being made the central point in the figure because it was a well-known place for the burning of dead bodies, and also of all manner of filth from the city, Jerusalem. H. C. The whole picture is a most solemn warning of judgments to alight hereafter on the open enemies of the true Church of God. Birks. Chap. 31. The scope of thought in this short chapter resembles that in chap. 30, save that it omits the detailed account of the sins of Judah which appears in chap. 30: 8-17. This begins with a woe on those who go to Egypt for help; declares this help to be weakness, on which moreover God will bring ruin; but He will Himself deliver His own people. This chapter closes like the one before with the illustrative case of His destroying the Assyrian power. H. C. Reliance upon Egypt is distrust of God, who will avenge Himself by destroying both the helper and the helped (verses 1-3). His determination and ability to save those who confide in His protection are expressed by two comparisons (verses 4, 5). The people are therefore invited to return to Him, from every false dependence, human or idolatrous, as they will be constrained to do with shame, when they shall witness the destruction of their enemies by the resistless fire of His wrath (verses 6-9). 2. God was as wise as the Egyptians, and ought therefore to have been consulted; He was as wise as the Jews, and could therefore thwart their boasted policy. 3. This verse repeats the contrast between human and Divine aid, and the threatening that the unbelievers and their foreign helpers should be involved in the same destruction. The antithesis of flesh and spirit, like that of God and man, is not metaphysical, but rhetorical, and is intended simply to express extreme dissimilitude or inequality. Reliance upon Egypt is again sarcastically represented as reliance upon horses, and as such opposed to confidence in God. As Egypt here means the Egyptians, it is afterward referred to as a plural. Stumble and fall are here poetical equivalents. A. As it is good for men to "know themselves to be but men" (Ps. 9: 20), so it is good for us to consider that those we love and trust to are but men. They therefore can do nothing without God, nothing against Him, nothing in comparison with Him. They are men, and therefore fickle and foolish, mutable and mortal, here to-day and gone to-morrow; they are men, and therefore let us not make gods of them, by making them our hope and confidence, and expecting that in them which is to be found in God only; they are not God, they cannot do that for us which God can do, and will, if we trust in Him. Let us not then neglect Him to seek to them; let us not forsake the rock of ages for broken reeds, nor the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns. H. The grand, all-regenerating force is already entered into the world, and is working steadily on through all retrocessions and advances alike. Lift up your heads, O ye drooping ones! Christ is in the world! Jesus, Son of God, and word of God's eternity—He is about us, within us, going through all things, moving onward in all. Leaven does not make a noise when it works, and yet it works! And so the Gospel works, the progress goes on, a grand, mighty progress, and there is really no retrocession. No river runs to the sea more certainly or steadily than the great salvation for man runs to conquest and a kingdom. Bushnell. 30:1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; 2 and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the 3 strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the strength of 4 Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion. For his 5 princes are at Zoan, and his ambassadors are come to Hanes. They shall all be ashamed of a people that cannot profit them, that are not an help nor profit, but a shame, and also a reproach. 6 The burden of the beasts of the South. Through the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the lioness and the lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses, and 7 their treasures upon the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit them. For Egypt 8 helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: there have I called her Rahab that sitteth still. Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to 9 come for ever and ever. For it is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not 10 hear the law of the Lord: which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy 11 not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. 12 Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in 13 oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon; therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an 14 instant. And he shall break it as a potter's vessel is broken, breaking it in pieces without sparing; so that there shall not be found among the pieces thereof a sherd to take fire from 15 the hearth, or to take water withal out of the cistern. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be 16 your strength: and ye would not. But ye said, No, for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be 17 swift. One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till 18 ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill. And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgement; blessed are all they that wait for him. 19 For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more; he will surely 20 be gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear, he will answer thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy 21 teachers be hidden any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it; when ye turn to the right hand, 22 and when ye turn to the left. And ye shall defile the overlaying of thy graven images of silver, and the plating of thy molten images of gold : thou shalt cast them away as an unclean 23 thing ; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence. And he shall give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground withal ; and bread of the increase of the ground, and it shall be fat 24 and plenteous : in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures. The oxen likewise and the young asses that till the ground shall eat savoury provender, which hath been winnowed 25 with the shovel and with the fan. And there shall be upon every lofty mountain, and upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters, in the day of the great slaughter, when the 26 towers fall. Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the hurt of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound. 27 Behold, the name of the LORD cometh from far, burning with his anger, and in thick rising 28 smoke : his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue is as a devouring fire : and his breath is as an overflowing stream, that reacheth even unto the neck, to sift the nations with the 29 sieve of vanity : and a bridle that causeth to err shall be in the jaws of the peoples. Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept ; and gladness of heart, as when one 30 goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel. And the LORD shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and the flame of a devouring fire, with a blast, and tempest, 31 and hailstones. For through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian be broken in pieces, 32 which smote with a rod. And every stroke of the appointed staff, which the LORD shall lay upon him, shall be with tabrets and harps : and in battles of shaking will he fight with them. 33 For a Topheth is prepared of old ; yea, for the king it is made ready ; he hath made it deep and large : the pile thereof is fire and much wood ; the breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it. 31 : 1 Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, and stay on horses ; and trust in chariots, because they are many, and in horsemen, because they are very strong ; but they look 2 not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD ! Yet he also is wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back his words : but will arise against the house of the evil-doers, and 3 against the help of them that work iniquity. Now the Egyptians are men, and not God ; and their horses flesh, and not spirit : and when the LORD shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is holpen shall fall, and they all shall fail together. 4 For thus saith the LORD unto me, Like as when the lion growleth and the young lion over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him, he will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them : so shall the LORD of hosts come down to 5 fight upon mount Zion, and upon the hill thereof. As birds flying, so will the LORD of hosts 6 protect Jerusalem ; he will protect and deliver it, he will pass over and preserve it. Turn 7 ye unto him from whom ye have deeply revolted, O children of Israel. For in that day they shall cast away every man his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands 8 have made unto you for a sin. Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of man ; and the sword, not of men, shall devour him : and he shall flee from the sword, and his young 9 men shall become tributary. And his rock shall pass away by reason of terror, and his princes shall be dismayed at the ensign, saith the LORD, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem. Chap. 30. This chapter contains an exposure of the sin and folly of ancient Israel in seeking foreign aid against their enemies, to the neglect of God, their rightful sovereign and their only strong protector. The costume of the prophecy is borrowed from the circumstances and events of Isaiah's own times. Thus Egypt is mentioned in the first part of the chapter as the chosen ally of the people, and Assyria in the last part as the dreaded enemy. There is no need, however, of restricting what it said to that period exclusively. The presumption, as in all such cases, is that the description was designed to be more general, although it may contain allusions to particular emergencies. Reliance upon human aid, involving a distrust of the Divine promises, was a crying sin of the ancient Church, not at one time only, but throughout her history. To denounce such sins and threaten them with condign punishment was no small part of the prophetic office. A. This chapter opens with rebuke of the Jews for seeking help from Egypt against Assyria, accounting it rebellion against God and declaring that it should avail them nothing (verses 1-7); and closes with predictions of the overthrow of the Assyrians by the high hand of Jehovah Himself (verses 27-33). The connection between these extremes of the chapter is made by dwelling at some length upon the sins of the people, from which their seeking help from Egypt was a natural outgrowth (verses 8-17), and then turning in Divine mercy to great promises of spiritual renovation, followed legitimately with promises of temporal deliverance from their enemies, from which the prophet passes to the special case of Assyria as happily illustrating the general principle of help from God to His believing people in their need (verses 18-26). It is more than legitimate to give the doctrines of this chapter a universal application to the sin of seeking help from man and to the duty of seeking help from God, for it was plainly the Divine purpose to illustrate and impress these general principles—practically good for every age—rather than merely to give the world certain facts of Jewish history in respect to their relations to Egypt and Assyria. What is said here of God's visitations of judgment upon wicked nations has an air of grandeur and magnificence rarely equalled by any other writer and rarely surpassed by Isaiah. 1,2. The Lord does not say, "My children," for they had practically disowned this relation by their rebellion against His authority. They were active and earnest in taking counsel, but not of God; in framing profound plans, but not in sympathy with God's Spirit. They were bent on making a league with Egypt against Assyria. So doing, they would add to the sin of heart apostasy from God the farther sin of a foreign alliance which would be at once insulting to God and ensnaring to themselves. No step of such importance should under any circumstance be taken without first seeking counsel from God. But in this case the people knew they were going against His revealed will. Egypt is more precisely seeking shelter under her shadow, in the shade of her protection. 4. Manifestly these princes and ambassadors are those of the Jews, now seen in Egypt, to carry into effect the schemes of their king and his counsellors in a league with the king of Egypt. "Zoan" is referred to (19:11) as the residence of the king and his court. It was a very ancient city (Num. 13:22) and one of national importance (Ps. 78:43). 6. The prophet sees and describes the caravan of Jewish ambassadors as they cross the Arabian desert on their way to Egypt, bearing ample presents to ingratiate the good will of Egypt's king. Lo! see the burden of those beasts going south, through a land of trouble and discomfort (to all travellers) whence come the lion and the lioness (Heb.), etc. H. C. 7. The historical chapters of Isaiah, especially chaps. 36 and 37, show that Hezekiah received no help at all from the subordinate Pharaoh, who was probably Shabatok, and that though Tirhakah did move on his behalf (37:9), yet that he neither engaged the forces of Sennacherib nor seriously troubled him. The relief of Hezekiah and the relief of Egypt itself—whose subjection to Assyria was thereby deferred for a generation—came from another quarter. When Hezekiah gave up his trust in any arm of flesh and made his appeal to God, spreading before Him the blasphemous letter of Sennacherib, then Isaiah was commissioned to assure him of a miraculous deliverance (37:36). The deliverance itself and its marvellous character was acknowledged by the Egyptians no less than by the Israelites. G. R. The Jewish party, which sought for an alliance with Egypt, was pursuing a policy which on human as well as on Divine grounds was utterly fatal. The party was in high favor in the time of Hezekiah; it seemed to advocate the only line of policy by which the independence of the Jewish state could be secured, and Isaiah's opposition and words of warning were disregarded. But events showed that he was right. The alliance with Egypt, which had been purchased with the treasures of Jerusalem, and the toilsome journey of the Jewish ambassadors into the heart of Ethiopia was shattered by the battle of Eltekh, while the overthrow of the army of Sennacherib before Jerusalem proved that trust in their God was the only defence the rulers of Judah needed, and that their strength was, as Isaiah, had declared, "to sit still." From that time onward, to the death of Hezekiah, there was no more straining after an Egyptian alliance, and Isaiah's later years were cheered by the consciousness that the policy he had preached and struggled for was at last triumphant. For nearly a century Egypt disappeared from the political horizon of the Jews. Sayee. 8,9. What needed so lasting a record was rather the engrained perverseness of the people, out of which all their acts of sin arose, than the details of this Egyptian embassy. Its failure was rather a lesson for the moment; but the perverseness of the Jewish people in despising God's word and rejecting His prophets was a weighty and solemn lesson for every age. They continually urged the prophets to give answers that would encourage them in their worldly schemes instead of reporting truly the messages of God. Birks. 10. Smooth things or words is a common figurative term for flatteries. Luther's expressive version is, preach soft to us. A. 10,11. So deeply infatuated in sin were this people that they even sought to seduce the Lord's prophets, exhorting them (so the Hebrew states and repeats it) not to see the truth for them, but to speak to them only smooth and delusive words. They chose pleasing lies rather than unwelcome truth. They could not bear to be annoyed in their sinful pursuits and pleasures, and were therefore ready to grasp the good of sinning recklessly and risk all the bad consequences! "Get ye out of the way" does not mean precisely get out of our way so that we may have a clear field for sinning with no obstructions; but this: Turn ye out of the right way; do not hesitate to turn aside never so much from the path of duty and right; run the risks of disobeying God even as we have resolved to do. Dare to sin on at all hazards and fear nothing! And especially bring before us no more "The Holy One of Israel." H. C. Here are some so much in love with their own ruin as to own plainly and roundly what they would be at; "Prophesy not unto us," they say, "right things, but smooth things." As if they had said, "Do but oil the razor for us, and let us alone to cut our own throats." South.—It is not pleasant to tell people what they don't want to hear. It is a great deal nicer to prophesy smooth things than to cry, "Repent or perish." And there are a great many beautiful things in the Bible. The preacher can if he will find texts to last a lifetime that will not offend the most fastidious. He can be Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year "as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument." No wonder that many yield to this temptation, and that ever and anon there is a new theology to meet the demand of those to whom the cross is an offence. But some one may ask, If we are to preach a gospel that offends men how are we going to save them? The answer is, we don't expect to save them. No preacher ever was or ever will be so attractive as to be able in and of himself to draw one sinner to Christ. It is "not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord." Interior. In dealing with ourselves or with one another, if we aim at deep work or thorough results we must go bravely and honestly at this mark. Pre-eminently it is the prophet's business. Men in earnest will not shrink from the awful office—stern, searching, incisive, painful, and therefore very often unwelcome, but merciful with the far-sighted mercy which regards the true peace beyond the transient pain. F. D. H. 15. These titles of God have here a special force. Their resorting to Egypt for help was a direct affront to the unchangeable Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel. It was a denial of every lesson taught by the plagues of Egypt, the passover and Exodus, when that name was more fully revealed. Distrust of God had caused a feverish restlessness. Their punishment would resemble their sin. By rejecting the prophet's warning they virtually claimed to be wiser than God, and they would now be filled with their own devices. Birks. In returning to Me and in resting upon Me ye shall have salvation; in quietness as opposed to agitation and anxiety; in confidence as opposed to distrust and unbelief, shall be your strength—said with an eye to their national danger from the Assyrians when they were disowning God and looking to Egypt instead. The sentiments are good for all circumstances of human want and trial. God would have His teaching in this case apply to every possible case which involves like principles. H. C. Would we be saved from the evil of every calamity, guarded against the temptation of it, and secured from the curse of it, which are the only evil things in it? It must be in returning and rest; in returning to God and reposing in Him as our rest. In returning, in the thorough reformation of your hearts and lives; and in rest, in an entire submission of your souls to God, and a complacency in Him, "you shall be saved." Would we be strengthened to do what is required of us and to bear what is laid upon us? It must be in quietness and in confidence; we must keep our spirits calm and sedate by a continual dependence upon God and His power and goodness; we must retire into ourselves with a holy quietness, suppressing all turbulent and tumultuous passions, and keeping the peace in our own minds. And we must rely upon God with a holy confidence that He can do what He will, and will do what is best for His people. And this will be our strength; it will inspire us with such a holy fortitude as will carry us with ease and courage through all the difficulties we may meet with. H. More progress is to be made by waiting than by working; there may be a greater power in silent, patient looking for than in the restless exertion of all the forces of the mind and of the body. It was Israel that so frequently, against God's will, in the pressure of the moment said, "We will flee upon horses, we will ride upon the swift" (verse 16); and the path they had chosen in self-will as conducting to sure victory led to destruction. Have we also something of that rash temper which prefers to cut the knot of difficulty rather than wait till the time comes, when higher wisdom shall unravel it? Then stands before us, as inscribed in capitals, this passage, "In quietness and in confidence shall be your rest." It is not stated that this way to real strength and rest is the most easy, a smooth path for all feet. To wait is often harder than to work; drudgery not seldom easier than doing nothing, except when carried beyond all bounds. And yet this last, most difficult requirement is in a thousand circumstances that which is asked of us; and at every turn God shows us that the strength born of still trust is not alone our highest, but, in fine, our only power. Van O.—Much of Christian duty is not active, bustling work, but quiet, patient waiting. There come many times in the experience of every life when victory can be gained in no other way. We must stand still and wait for God. Immeasurable harm is wrought in personal lives and in the work of God by the impatience that cannot wait for the Divine bidding to go forward. J. R. M. An active social life, with its sympathies, its friendships and its close contact of mind with mind, interspersed with hours of solitude for quiet thought and serious meditation, seems to be the Divine order for man's best growth. We acquire most rapidly in society; we ripen best in solitude. We receive new ideas, devise new plans, welcome new impulses most readily when under the influence of other minds; we mature all these and render them effective in our lives in the quiet meditation of the still hour. There is therefore a sense in which we ought to be never less alone than when alone. And in view of this truth, we should learn to be company for ourselves, and good company, too. S. S. T.—Solitude is no word for a true, God-loving heart. We are least alone when we are most alone, for then, if we are His, we may most fully realize His presence. So if any of you are disposed sometimes to say the road is dark and long and rough, and I have to tread it unaccompanied, "set the Lord always before" you, and, with Him at your "right hand," He and you will be—I was going to say, enough for one another, and, at any rate, will be too many for all opposition. "I was left alone, and I saw this great vision." I was left alone, and God came to keep me company. That may be the experience of every soul. . . . The secret of a quiet heart—which is a very different thing from a stagnant one—is to keep ever near God. Leaning upon Him, we shall not be shaken as we otherwise would, and shall be masters of ourselves; and if we are masters of ourselves nothing outside of us will much move us. "His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord." In everything, by prayer and thanksgiving, make God present to yourselves, and yourselves present to God, and "the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds." A. M. Peace comes swiftest when you seek it as an end least. Seek purity, seek renewal of heart and life, seek harmony with God, seek the society of Christ as a Saviour and Intercessor for you, and peace, in God's good time, will come of itself. How many really earnest souls of us are spoiling our work because we will invert God's order, and instead of seeking faith supremely, leaving comfort for an incident, go about to get comfort first, and thus miss faith and comfort both! Let us be patient. Stillness is our needed sacrifice. Baffled and broken the soul must often be before its immortal strength comes. Humiliation of pride, an utter consciousness of infirmity, to be kept painfully out of our inheritance, fasting and mortified ambition, forty days in the wilderness, three years in Arabia—all these are the price of conquest. Do not pray for exemption from them, but for victory by them. F. D. H. Must life be a failure for one compelled to stand still in enforced inaction and see the great throbbing tides of life go by? No; victory is then to be gotten by standing still, by quiet waiting. It is a thousand times harder to do this than it was in the active days to rush on in the columns of stirring life. It requires a grander heroism to stand and wait and not lose heart and hope, to submit to the will of God, to give up work and honors to others, to be quiet, confident and rejoicing, while the happy, busy multitude goes on and away. It is the grandest life “having done all, to stand.” J. R. M. 17. The thought seems to be, Ye shall flee in all directions till two are nowhere left together. Ye may be seen winding your way over the distant hill-tops, or standing there in dismay; but every man alone, so utter is your dispersion and so completely is your military power broken. The threatening of calamity closes here; indeed how could it farther go? The people are utterly broken down. Hence this extremity becomes God’s opportunity for signal mercy; as we shall see. H. C. 18-26. These verses refer to the Assyrian deliverance. The connection is direct and forcible. However severe God’s discipline, its design was gracious. His dealings are full of wisdom. There is, on His part, no slackness or indifference, but the calm waiting of an ever-patient love. Even in the hour of judgment God will be exalted, not to crush His people with the terrors of His majesty, but only “that He may have mercy” upon them. He knows how to temper their afflictions, that they may yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Since He waits in patient love, to show them favor at the last, they also are bound to wait, in faith and patience, until the blessing shall come. Birks.—He waits that He may be gracious. Goodness sets God upon the exercise of patience, and patience sets many a sinner on running into the arms of mercy. That mercy which makes God ready to embrace returning sinners makes Him willing to bear with them in their sins, and wait their return. Charnock. 20. The restored and forgiven people are not placed instantly in the height of prosperity. As in the case of those who returned from captivity in Babylon, serious hardships were the first lessons; but God gave them a precious faith and a rich renewal of Divine light, instruction and consequent spiritual comfort. Such is the course of thought here. We may expect some straitness for earthly bread; but ye shall have an abundance of the bread of Divine light, the bread of heaven. Thy teachers shall not hide themselves away in corners any more, as men driven from their homes by persecution; but thine eyes shall see them at all points present and ready to teach thee the word and will of God. H. C. 21. This idea of a road as the highway of God’s kingdom shows itself all along in the Bible record. Again and again, fidelity to God’s service is spoken of as continuing in “the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in.” (See, for example, De. 13:5; 31:29; Judges 2:22; 2 K. 21:22; Jer. 5:4, 5.) And because there are roads which are not the king’s highway, frequent mention is made in the Bible of ways of evil, as well as ways of good—roads within the kingdom which are not roads of the kingdom. “Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of life, and the way of death” (Jer. 21:8). And this view of the possibility of being out of the way while in a way, gives added force to the cry of the psalmist: “Teach me Thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path” (Ps. 27:11). It also gives added preciousness to the Lord’s assurance to those who trust in Him: “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.” H. C. T. 23-26. In this passage some expressions are manifestly figurative. But whatever doubt may rest on any clause as between the literal and the figurative sense, of this we may be sure: it testifies to the loving-kindness of God—always the main and vital thing. 25,26. Rivers and streams run usually in valleys and not on the hill or mountain tops. Hence the thing affirmed of them here must denote very rich blessings; as, on the other hand, great slaughter and falling towers indicate fearful calamities. The same sense is given under other figures in the next verse. In the day when God bindeth up the breach of His people, the augmentation of light from the heavenly bodies shall be great, even sevenfold and more. The light of seven days compressed into one; the light of the moon becoming as that of the sun; these are magnificent figures and must be freighted with a wealth of precious significance. It has been fitly said that these must be figures, for the literal fulfilment would be a calamity and not a blessing. These mortal eyes could not bear such outbursting, dazzling, perpetual effulgence. But Zion’s spiritual light can never be in excess. H. C. 27-34. The fall of the Assyrian is here foretold in words most impressive and sublime. They strongly confirm the view of Vitringa, that a violent thunderstorm was the chief agency by which the commission of the destroying angel was fulfilled. Birks.—Verse 31 makes it certain that this entire passage has a somewhat special reference to the destruction of Sennacherib’s army. Yet this case is referred to here, in part at least, as an illustration of the general law of Divine interposition for the deliverance of His prayerful, trusting people. What God did for Hezekiah and his people He will do in like circumstances for any and every other generation of His chosen. The "name of the Lord" means His manifestations, God Himself as seen in the special revelations of His glory. The whole description is grand, not to say awful. Jehovah, awakening the energies of His being to intense activity, is seen coming from afar, burning with anger (speaking after the manner of men), and heavy are the columns of rising smoke (the probable sense of the Hebrew); His lips full of indignation; His tongue like a devouring fire; who could stand before such consuming wrath? He comes forth to lay low in death that great Assyrian host. All the agencies of fire, coupled with accumulated declarations of burning wrath, set forth His earnest zeal in this work and the fearfulness of His manifestations to effect it. H. C. 29. The night may be particularly mentioned in the first clause, either because all the Mosaic festivals began in the evening, or with special allusion to the passover, which is described in the law (Ex. 12: 42) as "a night to be much observed unto the Lord, as that night of the Lord to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations." This verse gives an interesting glimpse of ancient usage as to the visitation of the Temple at the greater yearly festivals. The Rock of Israel is not Mount Zion or Moriah, but Jehovah Himself, to whose presence they resorted, as appears from 2 Sam. 23: 3. A. 30,31. While His people make their voice heard in songs of praise to God, He makes His voice heard in thunder and the flash of His arms seen in lightning for the overwhelming of His foes. In this verse again the prophet groups boldly and almost rudely together all the grand agencies of lightning and fire, tempest and storm. Before such an inundation of agencies for destruction, the Assyrian is beaten down—falling never to rise. 33. This allusion to Tophet is the earliest which appears in the Scriptures. Additional particulars appear in the history of Josiah's reformation (2 K. 33: 10; Jer. 7: 31 and 19: 6, 11-14). The prophet here represents Tophet as a place prepared for the burning of the Assyrian king. Made deep and large, with fire and wood in abundance, prepared for the king, and of course, he being thrown upon it, the breath of the Lord kindles it into its fearful conflagration. This is, of course, a figurative description, Tophet being made the central point in the figure because it was a well-known place for the burning of dead bodies, and also of all manner of filth from the city, Jerusalem. H. C. The whole picture is a most solemn warning of judgments to alight hereafter on the open enemies of the true Church of God. Birks. Chap. 31. The scope of thought in this short chapter resembles that in chap. 30, save that it omits the detailed account of the sins of Judah which appears in chap. 30: 8-17. This begins with a woe on those who go to Egypt for help; declares this help to be weakness, on which moreover God will bring ruin; but He will Himself deliver His own people. This chapter closes like the one before with the illustrative case of His destroying the Assyrian power. H. C. Reliance upon Egypt is distrust of God, who will avenge Himself by destroying both the helper and the helped (verses 1-3). His determination and ability to save those who confide in His protection are expressed by two comparisons (verses 4, 5). The people are therefore invited to return to Him, from every false dependence, human or idolatrous, as they will be constrained to do with shame, when they shall witness the destruction of their enemies by the resistless fire of His wrath (verses 6-9). 2. God was as wise as the Egyptians, and ought therefore to have been consulted; He was as wise as the Jews, and could therefore thwart their boasted policy. 3. This verse repeats the contrast between human and Divine aid, and the threatening that the unbelievers and their foreign helpers should be involved in the same destruction. The antithesis of flesh and spirit, like that of God and man, is not metaphysical, but rhetorical, and is intended simply to express extreme dissimilitude or inequality. Reliance upon Egypt is again sarcastically represented as reliance upon horses, and as such opposed to confidence in God. As Egypt here means the Egyptians, it is afterward referred to as a plural. Stumble and fall are here poetical equivalents. A. As it is good for men to "know themselves to be but men" (Ps. 9: 20), so it is good for us to consider that those we love and trust to are but men. They therefore can do nothing without God, nothing against Him, nothing in comparison with Him. They are men, and therefore fickle and foolish, mutable and mortal, here to-day and gone to-morrow; they are men, and therefore let us not make gods of them, by making them our hope and confidence, and expecting that in them which is to be found in God only; they are not God, they cannot do that for us which God can do, and will, if we trust in Him. Let us not then neglect Him to seek to them; let us not forsake the rock of ages for broken reeds, nor the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns. H. 5. These "flying birds," being feminine, are the mother birds hovering round their young to protect them. As such flying birds do, so will the Lord defend His nestlings, however weak they may be in themselves. Our Saviour has nearly the same figure, "How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens" (Matt. 23:37). "Passing over" is the word made sacred in Hebrew history and literature on that eventful night when Egypt's first-born fell, but the destroyer "passed over" the thresholds on which the blood of sprinkling had fallen. So under the shield of atoning blood and Divine mercy Israel is now safe. God will pass over her in a sense analogous to that ancient passing over. H. C. 7. Trust in idols and reliance upon human helpers are here, and often elsewhere, put together, as identical in principle, and closely connected in the experience of ancient Israel. A. 8,9. All the main features of the coming judgment are here given. The enemies would be overthrown by the sword of no mighty captain or numerous army, but by the direct visitation of the Lord of hosts. Their king would seek his safety by inglorious flight. The survivors, panic-struck and dismayed, would many of them be made captive; and those become a spoil and prey to others, who exacted tribute before. The crestfallen monarch would not pause in his flight till he reached Nineveh, his stronghold, "the dwelling-place of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions" (Nah. 2:11). His princes would also be terrified at the display of God's mighty power. Jerusalem would prove to be indeed an Ariel, a fireplace of God, where His presence would be like a fiery furnace, to consume and destroy the mighty oppressors of His people, and put out their name for ever and ever. Birks. 32: 1 BEHOLD, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgement. 2 And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as 3 rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And the eyes 4 of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready 5 to speak plainly. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be 6 bountiful. For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise profaneness, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, 7 and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the meek with lying words, even when the needy speak- 8 eth right. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and in liberal things shall he continue. 9. Rise up, ye women that are at ease, and hear my voice; ye careless daughters, give ear 10 unto my speech. For days beyond a year shall ye be troubled, ye careless women: for the 11 vintage shall fail, the ingathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. 12, 13 They shall smite upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the 14 joyous city: for the palace shall be forsaken; the populous city shall be deserted; the hill 15 and the watch-tower shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks; until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and 16 the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgement shall dwell in the wilderness, and 17 righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; 18 and the effect of righteousness quietness and confidence for ever. And my people shall abide 19 in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. But it shall hail, 20 in the downfall of the forest; and the city shall be utterly laid low. Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth the feet of the ox and the ass. Chap. 32. In this chapter the first eight verses constitute one distinct portion; the remaining twelve verses another. In the first part a new state of things appears, morally and politically—a king reigning for the ends of righteousness; the moral perceptions of the people quickened and corrected; their sentiments also brought back to truth and righteousness. The choice of construction lies between the theory of a general statement with no special, exclusive reference to any one king, and the theory of a primary reference to Hezekiah and a secondary one to the Messiah—the former in his character as a great moral reformer being considered as a sort of representative of the latter. I incline to this last-mentioned view. The second part (verses 9–20) makes a special call to the careless women of Jerusalem; predicts grievous calamities which shall continue until a precious effusion of God's spirit shall bring the people back to God and righteousness. Then prosperity shall ensue. 1. The scenes now before the prophet stand in close relation with the recent past. The king and people have ceased to trust in Egypt; the blindness and unbelief which turned their eye of hope from God to Egypt have passed away, and better moral vision has taken its place; Divine judgments have been sanctified to the people; and not least, the signal overthrow of the Assyrian host has made solemn impressions of the power, the faithfulness and the loving care of God for His Zion. Now the good Hezekiah appears, ruling for the interests and ends of righteousness and calling the people back to the pure worship of their God. Hence this new scene has in its foreground the good Hezekiah and shows how he reigns—viz., for the purpose of promoting intrinsic righteousness; a righteous heart and life as toward both their fellow-men and their God. The recent history of the nation and the points brought forward in the three next preceding chapters accord well with the interpretation which applies this verse primarily to Hezekiah. This general accord becomes an argument at once legitimate and strong for its reference in its primary sense to him. 2. In its primary sense this must mean, Behold, how one good man may become a great moral power for the protection of the wronged and for the comfort and happiness of a whole people. The figures to represent this are plain as well as beautiful; a shelter from fierce wind; a covert from storm; or like rivers over a dry desert; or the shadow of a great rock in a land where men become weary with toil, heat and thirst, and find no shade of leaf or dell—naught but a great rock to cast a shadow for their shelter from the sun. These are lively emblems of the rich, exhaustless blessings that have come to our lost race through the one great man Jesus, in whom the Divine Messiah became incarnate. How distinctly the prophet had this in view it may not be possible for us to determine. The fulness and wealth of his figures seem to favor this reference, and yet more does the allusion (verse 15) to the "pouring out of the spirit" as the special agent and cause of this great moral renovation and its consequent fruits of righteousness and peace. H. C. 2. Not more beautiful and suggestive than logical are the thoughts as the spirit of inspiration has given them utterance. "And a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Refuge, refreshment, repose, or deliverance, life, peace, is the order of the spirit. Christ, the Divine Man, is the peace or repose of the believing soul. Birks.—In these words, so full of encouragement and hope, the prophet seems again to point to the coming of Christ—the theme which was the undertone of his entire prophecy. Although he may have had a primary reference to the good king Hezekiah, in whose reign justice, peace and the reviving of pure religion succeeded the oppression, turbulence and idolatry of the reign of Ahaz, yet the full glory of the restoration here depicted could be realized only under the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah. How perfect the sense of rest, security and refreshment indicated in these promises! The images are all borrowed from the climate of Palestine, where the traveller may be suddenly overtaken by a scorching wind or a violent tempest, or find himself under the blaze of noon, remote from water or shade. How welcome the sight of a shelter, the sound of a gurgling brook, even the shadow of a rock in which one may rest till the heat is over! Christ is that covert of defence, that fountain of refreshment, that rock of shelter and shade. In Him we find refuge from calamity, solace for grief and loss, supply for inward want, rest from care. And while He gives to us personally this spiritual rest and comfort, the working of His principles tends to a condition of outward peace and safety. Therefore should we sow in hope, and wait for His blessed appearing. J. P. T. The only reference of these words which gives full weight to their wealth of blessing is to regard them as a prophecy of the man—Christ Jesus; hiding in whom we are safe, “coming” to whom we “never thirst,” guarded and blessed by whom no weariness can befall us, and dwelling in whom this weary world shall be full of refreshment and peace! I do not need to point out the exquisite beauty of the imagery or the pathos and peace that breathe in the majestic rhythm of the words. There is something more than poetical beauty or rhetorical amplification of a single thought in those three clauses. The “hiding-place” and “covert” refer to one class of wants; the “river of water in a dry place” to yet another; and “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” to yet a third. And though they be tinged and dyed in Eastern imagery, the realities of life in Western lands and in all ages give them a deeper beauty than that of lovely imagery, and are the best keys to understanding their meaning. The three classes of promises have correlative with them three phases of man’s condition, three diverse aspects of his need and misery. The “covert” and the “hiding-place” imply tempest and storm and danger; the “river of water” implies drought and thirst; “the shadow of a great rock” implies lassitude and languor, fatigue and weariness. The view of life that arises from the combination of all three bears upon its front the signature of truth in the very fact that it is a sad view. For notwithstanding all that we may say concerning the beauty and the blessedness scattered broadcast round about us, notwithstanding that we believe, and hold as for our lives the “happy faith that all which we behold is full of blessing,” it needs but a very short experience of this life, and but a superficial examination of our own histories and our own hearts, in order to come to the conclusion that the world is full of strange and terrible sadness, that every life has dark tracts and long stretches of sombre tint, and that no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light and flings no shadow on the canvas. There is no depth in a Chinese picture because there is no shade. It is the wrinkles and marks of tear and wear that make the expression in a man’s portrait. “Life’s sternest painter is the best.” The gloomy thoughts which are charged against Scripture are the true thoughts about man, and the world as man has made it. Not, indeed, that life needs to be so, but that by reason of our own evil and departure from God there have come in as a disturbing element the retributive consequences of our own godlessness, and these have made danger where else were safety, thirst were else were rivers of water, and weariness and lassitude where else were strength and bounding hope! But there is a man, our brother, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, who can be to single souls the adequate object of their perfect trust, the abiding home of their deepest love, the unfailing supply for their profoundest wants. There is one man, whom it is wise and blessed to look to as the exclusive source of all our peace, the absolute Ruler of all our lives. There is a man in whom we find all that we have vainly sought in men. There is a man who can be to all ages and to the whole race their refuge, their satisfaction, their rest. “It behooved Him to be made in all points like unto His brethren,” that His succor might be ever near and His sympathy sure. The man Christ Jesus, who, being man, is God manifest in the flesh, exercises in one and the same act the offices of Divine pity and human compassion, of Divine and human guardianship, of Divine and human love. “And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought.” The dreams of weary hearts that have longed for an impossible perfection are all below the reality. The fact surpasses all expectation. It is more than all prophecies, it is more than all hopes, it is more than all praise. It is God’s unspeakable gift. Well might an angel voice proclaim the mystery of love, “Unto you is born a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” The ancient promise of our text is a history now. A man has been and is all these things for us. A. M. 3,4. The main feature of these promises is the perfecting of faculties, previously defective and imperfect. Eyes that were dim shall see clearly, listless ears shall hearken, the rash and hasty become thoughtful, and understand knowledge; and tongues that stammered before shall utter clearly the praises of God. Birks. 4. It seems more natural to understand the bodily defects here mentioned as denoting others of an intellectual and spiritual nature, neglect and ignorance of spiritual matters. The minds of men shall begin to be directed to religious truth, and delivered from ignorance and error in relation to it. 5. When men's eyes are thus opened, they will no longer confound the essential distinctions of moral character, because they will no longer be deceived by mere appearances. Things will then be called by their right names. The fool (in the emphatic scriptural sense, the wicked man) will no longer be called noble (men will no longer attach ideas of dignity and greatness to the name or person of presumptuous sinners), and the churl (or niggard) will no more be spoken of as liberal. A. 6. This verse endorses the correct moral sentiments of which he had just spoken, declaring that they are in accordance with facts and righteousness. The vile person ought to be no more called liberal "for" he will speak villainy, etc. The extreme inhumanities here adduced are manifestly thought of as outrages against God, and practically as involving the worst forms of error as to Him and as to the duties we owe Him. 7. The "churl" (a man both niggardly and covetous) should by no means be called "bountiful"—i.e., liberal, generous, for his means of enriching himself ("his instruments") will be bad. He will devise crafty schemes to destroy the poor with lying words (overreaching, defrauding, getting the advantage unjustly) even when the poor man has justice on his side—i.e., as said here, when his speaking (statements) are all right (in Heb. "judgment"). They that will be rich fall into this ruinous temptation to overestimate their own claims, and underestimate or even quite disregard the claims and rights of others, and especially of those who are defenceless against their aggressions. 8. On the other hand, the really liberal, noble-hearted man will approve himself by his deeds. He will devise not "wicked devices," but "liberal things," and upon these he will stand in the sense of persevering in them and building up himself upon them. Hence, as the conclusion of this special subject, that is a blessed state of society in which men are estimated according to what they truly are and the name they bear in common parlance witnesses truly to the character of their deeds. When every man's reputation and name shall be as his heart and life, virtue will have its due honor and vice its merited disgrace. One that is truly liberal, and deserves the honor of being called so, makes it his business to do good to everybody, according as his sphere is. Observe, 1. The care he takes and the contrivances he has to do good. He devises liberal things; as much as the churl or niggard projects how to save and lay up what he has for himself only, so much the good, charitable man projects how to use and lay out what he has in the best manner for the good of others. Charity must be directed by wisdom, and liberal things done prudently and with device, that the good intention of them may be answered, that it may not be charity misplaced. The liberal man, when he has done all the liberal things that are in his own power, devises liberal things for others to do according to their power, and puts them upon doing them. 2. The comfort he takes and the advantage he has in doing good; by liberal things he shall stand or be established. The providence of God will reward him for his liberality with a settled prosperity and an established reputation. The grace of God will give him abundance of satisfaction and confirmed peace in his own bosom; what disquiets others shall not disturb him; his heart is fixed. This is the recompense of charity (Ps. 112 : 5, 6). H. Let it not be supposed that liberality is confined to the giving of money for the doing of good. A fair and open demeanor; a candid consideration of the rights and feelings of others; a relaxation or a waiving of our own rights when the pursuing of them is likely to be injurious; an avoidance of all captiousness and contention; a scorning to take advantage, and a willingness that others should be benefited as well as ourselves—these are some of the ways in which true liberality will manifest itself. Ferguson. "It is more blessed to give than to receive." That saying takes heaven's point of view in regard to what makes true blessedness. The world says the exact opposite, because the world is based on self-regard. God is Himself the great example of the higher truth, because God is love. He is "the giving God," therefore He is "the blessed God." Love ever delights to bestow. In the measure in which we drink in Christ's spirit we shall know the blessedness which filled His heart, and find in imparting a purer joy than in acquiring. Unless we have begun to know and feel this, what token do we show of being Christ's? A. M. Giving is the nobler part of man, the side of him that lies highest and nearest to God. We of the present generation enjoy abundant opportunity for the exercise of this grace, if this grace live in our hearts. The heathen are in great need; their need is better known and their locality more easily reached than in former times. At home, too, the harvest is great and ripe, and ready to perish; it lies, moreover, close to the reaper's hand. Those who count it blessed to do and give may be very happy in our day, for the sources of their enjoyment are accessible and full. Arnot. There is no necessary antagonism between material and spiritual wealth. Both come from God. Moses brought down from Sinai this message to the Hebrews. "Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for He it is who giveth the power to get wealth." That message is not obsolete. It is a message for the men of all lands and ages. It is right to pray for temporal prosperity. But we cannot pray for it so as to be heard and answered unless we ask also for the true riches, the faith that will enable us to use our gold and silver aright, to lay up treasures in heaven by employing them for the good of our fellow-men and for the glory of God. The man who, in the midst of his abundance, can look up with a grateful heart and say, "All things are of Thee," and who, trusting that the giver will help him to keep and to use aright what he has given, lives and gives as a steward of the Lord, that man can enjoy his wealth here. It is worth more to him now a "hundredfold" than the wealth which is selfishly sought and hoarded. And when the earth and all that is therein is burned up, he will have durable riches in heaven. Babb. The unvarying law of God which attaches an obligation to every opportunity and places a duty over against every right extends to the use of wealth, as well as to the use of the other powers which are under the control of a man's will. Wealth is power. The possession of wealth gives a man potential power of service. By this ability to serve which wealth confers, its owner is bound actually to serve the best interests of his fellow-men. And for the unselfish use of all his powers, every man must give an account to the God who has taught us that no man liveth to himself alone. M. E. Gates. Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. Use that which is so generally abused that men shall praise and bless you. The possessors of wealth should feel themselves called of God to become the benefactors of the race, to lay plans and create institutions that shall become fountains of widespread and permanent good. He who uses his wealth in this way, making it the instrument of an intelligent beneficence, will not grind the faces of the poor nor defraud the laborer of his hire. The Church and the world will always need the gifts of the poor, and we are warned not to despise the widow's mite; but there are and there will continue to be demands for alleviating suffering and increasing general comfort, that can be met only as the prospered few hear in them the voice of God. Wealth has its opportunity and use; and when it shall be rightly used everywhere and by all, the poorest will have occasion for thanksgiving. Behrends. 9-20. Long desolations are here foretold, to cease only by a large outpouring of the spirit of God. The women of Israel are first addressed, as sharing largely in the sin of the people. The address is not to be confined to Jerusalem and Judah alone. The warning is general, and reaches from Isaiah's days till the wasting is complete. Birks. 13-15. Though the immediate bearing of these words is, in all probability, upon the state and prospects of the Jewish people, yet by parity of reasoning it may be extended much farther, and may be considered as assigning the reason why the nations of the earth continue in so wretched a state, with respect to things spiritual and divine, as that which they now exhibit; and they may be considered as directing our expectations and regulating our confidence respecting the final termination of this state of things, teaching that it will come to an end, that a great and beneficial change will take place, but not till the Spirit be poured out from on high. Then, and not till then, will "the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest." R. Hall. The contrasts are most impressive. The palace, once the scene of feasting and merriment, is forsaken and lonely. The peopled city, once filled with the hum and murmur of thronging multitudes, is a deserted solitude. Fortress and tower, once garrisoned by the strength of the land, are to be dens for the beasts of the field. The careless mirth of luxurious women is to be replaced by the joy of wild asses, that rove carelessly amid deserted ruins. These desolations, caused by national sin, will cease only when true repentance has followed the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Then the wilderness will become a planted field, like the vineyard and oliveyard, and the planted field like the forest of Lebanon, with its glorious clothing of lofty pines and stately cedars. The barren will become beautiful, and the beautiful majestic and sublime. Such a pentecostal blessing still awaits the land of promise at the final recovery and ingathering of Israel. Birks. 15. It can scarcely be doubted that this allusion to the Spirit has a somewhat special reference to that great effusion with which the gospel age opened. Yet this should not be pressed so as to exclude other cases of like sort. The passage rather teaches the general doctrine that moral degeneracy brings upon men physical desolation and that both the degeneracy and the desolation will continue according to the laws of human nature and of society, until God's Spirit is poured out from on high. The recuperative power which redeems society and recalls men to penitence and a new life is not in themselves, nor in God's judgments alone, but really in the Spirit of God. Hence the Jewish nation continued impenitent and unreclaimed through the wicked reign of Ahaz, and onward until the effusions of God's Spirit in the times of Hezekiah. On a yet broader scale, the nation, save at few exceptional periods, declined in its moral tone during the ages until their Messiah came, and yet more rapidly during His earthly life and public ministry until the Spirit was gloriously shed forth on the day of Pentecost; then blessed life came up upon that death, and a precious remnant were redeemed. H. C. The truth of Christ taught and preached, accompanied by the Spirit of Christ, is the agency of the world's renovation. It is this that is to change the whole moral and spiritual condition of this disordered and suffering world, the means by which the conquests of this new kingdom are to be achieved, its government established over the life, its principles implanted in the heart, and the millennial blessings of its beneficent reign bestowed on universal man. Gospel truth is the instrumental means, and the Holy Spirit, who is so emphatically termed in the New Testament "the Spirit of Christ," is the quickening and efficient power. Loraine. The native character of man is an odious character; it has no moral beauty until it is transformed by the power of God. The more immediate effects of that transformation are beautiful to look upon, though they present but the faint lineaments of the veriest babe in Christ. Its first emotions of love, its first beamings of hope, its first lispings of prayer, its first notes of praise, how beautiful and heavenly they are! We are told that "there is joy among the angels of God when one sinner repenteth." A beautiful sight it is when, though he treads the straight and narrow way alone, he enters upon the path of life. There are thoughts of wisdom in his bosom, and there are transparent emotions and heaven-imparted purposes of devotedness to God, which are in sympathy with angels. It is a renovated mind which he possesses, one that "is come to excellent ornaments," and one that will be recognized and honored in the day "when the Lord of hosts shall make up His jewels." And when such instances of moral transformation are multiplied and simultaneous, as they often are when the Spirit is poured from on high, what scenes of beauty does the eye rest upon! How much more beautiful than dewy landscape or blushing morn when "the desert thus blossoms as the rose, and the wilderness becomes as the garden of the Lord." H. B. Smith. 16,17. Whether men's external circumstances correspond to a wilderness or to a fruitful field, the fruits of the Spirit of God in their souls will be judgment and righteousness. How little those fruits of the Spirit are dependent on earthly conditions, on the trivial circumstances of wealth and prosperity, affliction or poverty, all experience and observation testify. In verse 17 "righteousness" must be taken in a broad sense, involving primarily a just government, but including also righteousness in all the relations and transactions of life—righteousness between man and man; righteousness in the family as well as in general society; and radically righteousness toward God, the fear of His name and reverence for His law. The fruit of such righteousness is forcibly said to be "peace;" and since the last clause is strictly parallel, its fruit is also "quietness and assurance forever." Being at peace with God as well as with each other, men who are thoroughly, religiously righteous, repose sweetly in God and rest in the assurance of His love forever. H. C. 17. "Inward peace" follows upon the indwelling of righteousness (verse 16). Those in whom that work is wrought shall experience this blessed product of it. It is itself peace, and the effect of it "quietness and assurance forever," a holy serenity and security of mind, by which the soul enjoys itself and its God, and it is not in the power of this world to disturb it in those enjoyments. Peace and quietness and everlasting assurance may be expected, and shall be found, in the way and work of righteousness. True satisfaction is to be had only in true religion, and there it is to be had without fail. H.—The peace which is found in the Christian's heart grows out of something else which God has put into the Christian's heart. It is the fruit of that grace and holiness, the result of those pure and heavenly dispositions, which are wrought within him by the Holy Ghost. Holiness is the root of happiness. It contains within itself the germ, the elements and materials, of it. Hence the Lord says, "The work of righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever." C. Bradley. As there is but one atonement by which guilty sinners are pardoned, so there is but one righteousness, even Christ's perfect righteousness, by which alone unrighteous sinners are made righteous in God's sight. He accepts no other. His law is honored by no other. The Scriptures reveal no other. Faith receives no other. The Spirit bears witness to no other. Sinners have no other to stand in before God, and enjoy peace with Him. But possessing this righteousness by faith, we enjoy a peace which passeth all understanding. There are many things from a sinful nature, Satan and the law, to disquiet our minds daily. But the blessed effect of Jesus' righteousness is quietness to the conscience. This comforting thought, my Father hath accepted me through the righteousness which my glorious Redeemer wrought out for me, quiets my mind. I am satisfied. I can seek no better. I dare trust in no other. W. Mason. Peace is sure; peace with God, peace in my own tranquil and righteous heart, peace for a world from out of which sin shall be scourged; peace is sure because righteousness is ours, since it is Christ's. And for ourselves, if we want—and who does not want?—to "be found of Him in peace, without spot, blameless," let us see to it that we "are found, not having our own righteousness, but that which is of God through faith." Christ is King of Peace only to those to whom He has become, through their humble trust, the King of Righteousness. Anon. The Christian, "being justified by faith," he has first "peace with God;" then he "joys in God by whom he has received the atonement;" and then he enters into that "great peace" which they have "who love God's law." Taught to long and pray and labor for conformity to His holy precepts, he finds that "the fruit of righteousness is peace, and the effect thereof quietness and assurance forever." And this is the Christian's peace. It has as its basis forgiving mercy; it is connected with a discovery of this mercy; it proceeds from a conviction of a real and peculiar interest in it; it is established and enlarged and sweetened by that purification of the mind, which is the work of the Holy Ghost. Bradley. 18. And my people shall abide in a home of peace, in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places. There is something tranquillizing in the very sound of this delightful promise, which, as usual, is limited to God's own people, implying either that all should have become such, or that those who had not should be still perturbed and restless. A. 20. Taken figuratively, as the exigencies of the context require, the prophet declares the blessedness of those who, however disturbed society may be, or however much the nation may rock under hail-storms and bewail its fallen cities, yet press on with unwearied assiduity, doing what good they can, sowing seed unto salvation beside all waters and pushing every fit agency wisely and without faltering. The spirit of the verse suggests these words of the psalmist: "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him" (Ps. 126: 6). In Christ's gospel kingdom there will be such faithful workers. The words that affirm their blessedness of course assume their existence and their faithful work. H. C. 33:1 Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! When thou hast ceased to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou hast made an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee. O LORD, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee: be thou their arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble. At the noise of the tumult the peoples are fled; at the lifting up of thyself the nations are scattered. And your spoil shall be gathered as the caterpillar gathereth: as locusts leap shall they leap upon it. The LORD is exalted; for he dwelleth on high: he hath filled Zion with judgement and righteousness. And there shall be stability in thy times, abundance of salvation, wisdom and knowledge: the fear of the LORD is his treasure. 7, 8 Behold, their valiant ones cry without: the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly. The high ways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth: he hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth not man. The land mourneth and languisheth: Lebanon is ashamed and withereth away: Sharon is like a desert; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves. Now will I arise, saith the LORD; now will I lift up myself; now will I be exalted. Ye shall conceive chaff, ye shall bring forth stubble: your breath is a fire that shall devour you. And the peoples shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire. 13 Hear, ye that are far off, what I have done; and, ye that are near, acknowledge my might. 14 The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling hath surprised the godless ones. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? 15 He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil; he shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: his bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure. Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold a far stretching land. 18 Thine heart shall muse on the terror: where is he that counted, where is he that weighed the tribute? where is he that counted the towers? Thou shalt not see the fierce people, a people of a deep speech that thou canst not perceive; of a strange tongue that thou canst not understand. Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tent that shall not be removed, the stakes whereof shall never be plucked up, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. But there the LORD will be with us in majesty, a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us. Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not strengthen the foot of their mast, they could not spread the sail: then was the prey of a great spoil divided; the lame took the prey. And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity. Chap. 33. The central historic fact of this chapter is the destruction of the Assyrian army, apparently when near Jerusalem. The woe of verse 1 refers to them; the prayer of verse 2 seeks help from God against them; the scenes that follow cluster about that great event. In the last half of the chapter (verses 13-24) the event is supposed to have taken place, and the prophet gives us some of its various effects and results. H. C. This chapter contains a general threatening of retribution to the enemies of God's people, with particular reference to Sennacherib or the Assyrian power. The spoiler shall himself be spoiled in due time, through the Divine interposition, and for the exaltation of Jehovah (verses 1-6). The state of desolation and alarm is followed by sudden deliverance (verses 7-13). The same vicissitudes are again described, but in another form (verses 14-19). The peace and security of Zion are set forth under the figures of a stationary tent, and of a spot surrounded by broad rivers, yet impassable to hostile vessels (verses 20-22). By a beautiful transition, the enemy is described as such a vessel, but dismantled and abandoned to its enemies (verse 23). The chapter closes with a general promise of deliverance from suffering, as a consequence of pardoned sin (verse 24). A. 1. It is due to the great law of Divine retribution that wicked nations, having abused their great power to subdue, spoil and oppress others, should be themselves in turn subdued and spoiled. If they have not had their retribution yet, all the more surely is it still in store, awaiting its time. Hence this woe on the proud and conquering Assyrian. H. C. 2. The truth seems to be, as Barnes well says, that Isaiah here interposes his own feelings, and offers his own prayer that God would be the strength of the nation, and then, with an immediate change of form, presents the prayer of the people. Arm is a common Hebrew metaphor for strength or support. (See chap. 9:19.) A.—In our spiritual warfare our own hands are not sufficient for us, nor can we bring anything to pass unless God not only strengthens our arms, but be Himself our Arm; so entirely do we depend upon Him as our Arm every morning, so constantly do we depend upon His power, as well as His compassions, which are new every morning. If God leaves us to ourselves any morning, we are undone; we must therefore every morning commit ourselves to Him, and go forth in His strength to do the work of the day in its day. H. How much care a man hath to please God, so much confidence may he have to cast all his care upon Him. J. Arrowsmith.—Believers have a present faith, which they exercise every day, saying, “Be Thou their arm every morning!” They do not imagine that by having trusted in God years ago they have obtained salvation, and therefore may now live without faith; but they believe to-day as they believed from the beginning of their Christian life, and so prove it true that “the just shall live by his faith.” Every step they are depending, every morning they are looking up to the hills whence cometh their help. These are the true people of God, and the only people of God—trusting, hoping, expecting, relying and resting upon the Lord their God. The fear of the Lord is their treasure, and they cry with exultation in the language of the twenty-second verse, “The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us.” The description in our actual text is the portrait of their outer life; but a living faith is the secret basis and foundation of it all. Spurgeon. Guard thyself from sin and temptation, but know that thy own strength is not sufficient for this great work, and therefore do not forget most humbly and earnestly to implore the Divine mercy and protection. For when the door is sealed and kept by Him, all thy faculties will be under His government; no thought can go in or out, or lodge there, but by His permission; the family of heaven and earth will bear thee company; thousands of angels will pitch their tents about thee, and guard the passes of thy outward senses, that no unclean thing enter there. And the great adversary of souls, how mighty and formidable soever in himself, will not be able to break through these bright armies, nor dare to make his attacks, which he foresees will prove unsuccessful. So great an awe will the dread of this Divine Keeper strike; so sure a defence will these heavenly succors be against that otherwise invincible enemy. Bernard. 5. The Lord is (or has been) exalted—i.e., in the overthrow of the Assyrian host—a thing He could easily do, “for He dwelleth on high,” clothed with all power in heaven and earth. He hath thoroughly vindicated His Zion against the contempt of her enemies, revealing Himself as the righteous God so gloriously that He may be said to have filled Zion with these manifestations. H. C.—Safety in Zion belongs to those born in her by regeneration, reared in her by sanctification, enfranchised in her by faith in the Son of God, settled in her by fixed principles, confirmed in her by obedience to her laws, and bound to her by intense love of her king and her citizens. Such “shall dwell on high” secure from danger, and only such. Spurgeon. 6. The sentiment of the verse is that God has now become everything, all in all, to His saved and trusting people—their stability as a nation; their fountain of salvation; their source of wisdom and knowledge. H. C. The passage is a plain prediction as to the state of affairs in the kingdom the coming Messiah was to establish on earth and in heaven, the kingdom of God. It is a prediction as to principles and their operation; moral energies and their results. It reveals forces and foreshows effects that were little known or acknowledged when it was spoken. Wisdom is the living embodiment, action and direction of the fundamental and vital principles on which God constituted all things and built the worlds. It is the projected energy of the Divine mind, pouring itself, according to the nature, constitution and relation of the infinite reason, power, liberty and love of God, into all moral intelligences, all ranks of created being and all things formed by the hand Divine. Private probity, personal worth, general intelligence and public integrity are the bulwarks of peace, and the sure and only safeguards of the steady ongoing of public affairs; and this is what we mean by "the stability of the times;" not immobility, but steady, healthful progress. Human society avoids sudden revolutions only by healthful advancement. Government is solid and secure only as it deviseth liberal measures, maintains just and honorable dealings, searches out and promotes the general good and cherishes philanthropy and freedom. All the moral forces of the universe, all the energy of the great God, all the constitution and course of nature, all providential movements and provisions, are pledged to the overthrow of any and every people that regard not justice, right and truth. No nation can endure built on violence, pride and wrong. The mightiest empires have been swept away; and so must it continue under the government of God, till men learn righteousness, charity and faith. Only so can they learn war no more. Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of the times when Jesus, the Messiah, reigns, whose right it is. Salvation is of God, originates in His wisdom, love and power, and culminates in the energy Divine to the Divine glory. But as displayed among men, wisdom and knowledge are the staying strength of salvation, imparting its fibre and aggressive strength, filling it with an unconquerable energy. It is wisdom and knowledge, not fanaticism and ignorance; not spasm and vain enthusiasm, but steady wisdom and calm, clear knowledge that are the strength of salvation. A. Carman. Our age is one of intense earnestness and action both for good and evil. The old truth and the old error which have struggled throughout the past are in the field. But neither is slumbering, both are vigilant, extending their lines, increasing their forces, devising and adopting new modes of defence and attack, as if conscious that a blow was about to be struck which would mark another great era in the conflict between the powers of good and evil. There are giants on the earth in these days both in the one encampment and in the other. A mighty force is on the side of the friends of truth, but it is sadly divided and scattered. What is wanting is the strength of union, the concentration of those energies in defending the citadel and making inroads on the enemy, which are spent on the defence of comparatively unimportant posts, or in one detachment of the same corps guarding against the encroachment of another. The champions of error, though not without their discords and divisions, are yet wiser in their generation than the children of light. As of old they discern the signs of the times, and take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed. The press, to which under God we owe so much of our light and liberties, wields a mighty influence on the side of evil. The halls of philosophy, hallowed though they be by many a name illustrious for Christian worth as well as intellectual greatness, are often sending forth doctrines as gross as the earth or as vague as the air, but alike adverse to that truth which coming from above is above all. Our current literature and works on science, with not a few bright and beneficent exceptions, are hostile either by their silence in reference to Divine truth when their subjects afford them occasions to speak out, or by their avowed opposition to much of what constitutes the essence of true religion. And what is peculiar in a great measure to our times, and throws a vast potency into the scale of irreligion, is the unceasing effort of infidels to diffuse their principles among the artisans and laboring classes of the land. The earth is not still and at rest. Men of every class are searching after an unknown good. One dreary theory succeeds another, like storm-cloud chasing storm-cloud over the face of the sky, and yet man is not at peace. The cravings of his mind are agonized, not satisfied. It becomes those then who know the truth and whom the truth has made free, those who having believed do enter into rest, to arouse themselves for the twofold object of meeting infidelity at its various points and combatting its diversified forms, and of presenting in every lawful way that truth which they know only can give rest to a laboring and heavy-laden world. Let the antagonist forces on the one side as well as on the other be pressed into the unfettered conflict, and the lovers of God and the friends of man have nothing to fear, but much to hope. "Christianity may feel assured that, as in so many past instances of premature triumph, on the part of her enemies, the ground they occupy will one day be her own; that the very discoveries, apparently hostile, of science and philosophy will be ultimately found elements of her strength." Pearson. 7. The next three verses (7-9) fall back to describe the scenes of dismay and agitation which immediately preceded that night of great deliverance. "The ambassadors of peace" are probably those three men whose names, mission, negotiations, failure and bitter grief appear in the passages, 2 K. 18: 18-37 and Isa. 36: 3-22. The history records that they came back to Hezekiah "with their clothes rent," corresponding to the statement here, "Shall weep bitterly." H. C.—The prophet describes the disappointment of Hezekiah's ambassadors, who humbly sued for peace (which indeed had been bought, 2 K. 18: 14, 15, 16, though Sennacherib would not stand to the agreement); the damp that struck upon the spirits of the whole nation; and (verse 10) the immediate interposition of God when matters became desperate. W. Lowth. 9. This group of figures represents all nature as afflicted, depressed and desolate, to give the reader an idea of the state of the kingdom and people on the eve of being (to human view) utterly crushed before the resistless power of Assyria. H. C. 10-12. In this crisis the arm of the Almighty would be made bare, "In the mount the Lord shall be seen." The word now, three times repeated, sets this truth in fullest relief. That earlier message must now be verified—"And the loftiness of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." That day is now come, the type of one still more solemn, when the world of sinners shall be arraigned before the judgment-seat of Christ. 11. Your breath.** The threats, in which they breathed out destruction against God's people, would recoil on themselves. As they had sought to do, so God would requite them. The punishment would answer to the sin. The boasts and blasphemics of Rabshakeh made keen and sharp the sword of the destroying angel. Thorns cut up were used as fuel in the lime-kilns of Palestine. Birks.—Those people among the rocks yonder are cutting up thorns with their mattocks and pruning-hooks, and gathering them into bundles to be burned in these burnings of lime. It is a curious fidelity to real life, that, when the thorns are merely to be destroyed, they are never cut up, but set on fire where they grow. They are only cut up for the lime-kiln. Thomson. 12. These various forms of destruction by fire are of course figures to represent that swift, terrible, resistless ruin with which God swept the Assyrian host. 14. The second clause should be read, consternation has seized upon hardened sinners! The questions that follow are put by these wicked Jews of Jerusalem in view of a judgment so appalling before their very eyes. "Who of us," living so near to such a God, and more guilty than even the Assyrians, "shall dwell with the devouring fire," of which these fires of God (verses 11, 12) on the Assyrians are a symbol? "Who of us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" For if the burnings of Divine judgment for one night are so fearful, who shall abide them when they burn forever? This is manifestly the spirit of these interrogations. Who can say that their logic is not appropriate and even resistless? They assume (why should they not?) that the judgments of God on guilty nations fairly represent the spirit of Divine retributions for sin in general, and therefore give us the data from which to infer the judgments of God on individual sinners in the world to come, where only we can rationally locate the real and full retributions of justice upon sinners in their individual character and relations. H. C. 15,16. The words are not an answer to the previous questions, but a transition from the deep alarm of one class to the peaceful security of the other. How safe are they whom His favor encompasses like a shield! Their wants, even in this life, will be provided for. But above all they will eat of that bread of life, and drink of that water of life, which satisfy forever. Birks.—The wicked have one doom, the righteous another. The doom of the former is set forth as inconceivably awful; the latter under illustrative images of peace, safety, abundance, blessedness. This description of the good man is strong on the points most distinctive of upright character in those times. H. C. 15. This verse contains a description of the righteous man, not unlike that in the fifteenth and twenty-fourth Psalms. "Walking righteousness"—i.e., leading a righteous life. "Walk" is a common scriptural expression for the course of conduct. The plural form of the other word may either be used to mark it as an abstract term or as an emphatic expression for fulness or completeness of rectitude. A. True firmness is only the result of a perpetual and persevering honesty of mind. He that always walks by the same rule need not be afraid of inconsistency. Make the love of truth the supreme principle of thought, guard against the influences which are likely to seduce you into error, love truth for itself and not for its dowry, and your path will be as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. Thornwell.—All noble, cultured character is reached only through struggle. It is not natural, but is the fruit of toil and conquest. It bears the marks and scars of many a conflict. Contentment, self-control, sweetness of disposition, submissiveness to God's will or power of sympathy are things that cannot be bought and that cannot be learned in any school. Such qualities can be gotten only through victorious struggle during years of experience. We say that Christ gives His disciples this spiritual loveliness, that He renews their natures and transforms their lives, imprinting His own image upon them. This is true. If it were not, there could never be any hope of saintliness in any human life; yet Christ does not produce this change in us merely by instantaneously printing His likeness upon our souls as the photographer prints one's picture on the glass in his camera. He works in us, but we must work out the beauty which He puts in germ into our hearts. Thus the noble things of spiritual attainment lie away beyond the hills and the rivers, and we must toil far through strife and pain before we can get them. Every good thing and every noble thing must be won. Heaven is for those who overcome. J. R. M.—The stirring times in which we are privileged to live call for heroic efforts, but the efforts will not be unavailing. They call for faith and truth, but it is on these foundations that all great results must rest. They call for self-denial and discipline, but so it is alone that we can learn what is the peace of perfect freedom. They call for trustful love for man, for loving trust in God, but it is by love that the heart of man is opened, and by trust that the help of God is won. The very dangers which seem imminent rouse us to a sublimer faith. Human weakness is the vantage-ground of Divine strength. Bp. Westcott. 16. Words cannot tell the privilege of the man who lives in God, and lives with God! He need not shiver in the damps of earth—he lives on high; he need not fear the fury of the enemy, for he has a place of defence; he need not dread the lapse of time, his munitions are of rock; he need not tremble at famine and drought, his needs shall all be met by the care of heaven. The man who knows his sins are forgiven, who is covered with the righteousness of Christ, who is in vital union with the Lord Jesus, who is indwelt by the Holy Ghost—that man, I say, need not desire to be any other than he is, but may give himself up to blessing and praising and magnifying the Most High every moment of his life till he is caught up to the highest heaven, to dwell where enemies cannot threaten nor necessities arise. Spurgeon. 17. The pious in Jerusalem rejoice over the ruin of the Assyrian army. Again they shall see their king in his beauty (no longer, as of late, in sackcloth and tears). They shall behold the land to a great distance, as contrasted with being closely shut up within the walls of Jerusalem. Now they go abroad far as they choose in safety. Practically their country is to them greatly enlarged, which is a rich blessing. H. C.—To the believer the King is the same as in verse 22, "The Lord is our King. He will save us." It is thus "Immanuel, God with us," the Child whose name shall be called "the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." He is the same of whom the psalmist writes, "Thou art fairer than the children of men." The faithful will see this King in His heavenly beauty, and seeing Him, be transformed into His image. They will be like Him, for they will see Him as He is. Birks. The prophet tells us that under the Gospel covenant God's servants will have the privilege of seeing those heavenly sights which were but shadowed out under the law. As Christ, who is the truth, has come to us, so does He in return require that we should be true and sincere in our dealings with Him. To be true and sincere is really to see with our minds those great wonders which He has wrought in order that we might see them. The promise is expressly made to us (Isa. 30: 20; 32: 3, 5) that "our teachers shall not be removed into a corner any more, but our eyes shall see our teachers;" that "the eyes of them that see shall not be dim;" that "the vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl bountiful;" in a word, as the text speaks, that "our eyes shall see the King in His beauty; we shall behold the land that is very far off." Our professions, our creeds, our prayers, our dealings, our conversation, our teaching, must henceforth be sincere, or, to use an expressive word, must be real. We must aim at seeing things as God sees them; forming judgments about persons, events, fortunes, changes, objects, such as God forms; looking at this life, at the life to come and the world unseen as God looks at them. We must aim at "seeing the King in His beauty." All things that we see are but shadows to us and delusions unless we enter into what they really mean. Newman. Every honest searching of the heart to root out of it what God hates; every earnest effort to lay hold upon the forgiveness which is Christ's Gospel; every sorrowful, tearful prayer for the help and grace and love of God; every intense aspiration after a diviner life than yet has been realized, and a more Christlike spirit than has yet been manifested, is a seeking after "the things above." Every soul's hunger and thirst after God's kingdom and righteousness; every brave blow struck at a sin; every sincere endeavor to make an ignorant, an unhappy life brighter and better, is a seeking of "the things above." By degrees there shall be in every such seeker a change of places between earth and heaven. Earth shall take a new position in that man, and heaven a new position in his heart and in his affections. From seeking he shall rise into thinking "the things above;" and when at last the door opens and he is called in to see "the King in His beauty," he shall find himself in no strange scene, in no unfamiliar company. Seeking has become seeing; prayer has become converse, warfare has become victory; he has "come to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus Christ, Lord both of the dead and the living." C. J. Vaughan. We too often speak as if the "entrance ministered at last to" a believing soul "into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour," were our first entrance therein, and forget that we enter it as soon as we yield to the drawings of Christ's love and take service under the king. The change then is greater than at death. When we die, we shall change provinces, and go from an outlying colony to the mother city and seat of empire, but we shall not change kingdoms. We shall be under the same government, only then we shall be nearer the King and more loyal to Him. That change of king is the real fitness for heaven. We know little of what profound changes death may make, but clearly a physical change cannot effect a spiritual revolution. They who are not Christ's subjects will not become so by dying. If here we are trying to serve a king who has delivered us from the tyranny of darkness, we may be very sure that He will not lose His subjects in the darkness of the grave. Let us choose our king. If we take Christ for our heart's Lord, every thought of Him here, every piece of partial obedience and stained service, as well as every sorrow and every joy, our fading possessions and our undying treasures, the feeble new life that wars against our sins, and even the very sins themselves as contradictory of our deepest self, unite to seal to us the assurance, "Thine eyes shall the King in His beauty. They shall behold the land that is very far off." A. M. The central charm of Heaven is the King in His beauty. The Lamb is the light thereof. It needs no temple, for He is the temple of it. Every attraction centres in Him. And he to whom Christ is not the altogether lovely is not prepared for heaven. The heavenly land is the home of the saints—a promised land indeed, an abiding place. There is the river of the water of life and the tree of life. There can be no hunger or thirst. There is no night there, and so no gloom or shadow. All tears are wiped away. The tabernacle of God is with men. And nothing enters that defiles. Such a land is very far off—not perhaps in locality, but in experience and in perfection. Sherwood. For light to walk by, for strength to work, for patience to wait, for steadfastness to watch, may I dwell consciously and continually with the Lord Jesus. For power to resist the devil and to conquer sin; for grace to deny self and to bear the reproach of Christ; to chose, to refuse, to be active, to be patient for His sake; for courage to confess Him, and to be instant in season and out of season in winning souls to Him; for wisdom to know when to speak and when to be silent; when to be cheerful and when to be grave; for grace to be meek and lowly in heart, and to be tender, as the Lord was, to sinners, and to be pure even as He is pure; and that I may be made to overflow with unwearying, unquenchable love—love to Himself—love to the brethren and love to all creatures for whom He died; that I may be able to enjoy and feed upon His word, and to find it life and strength to my soul, and to preserve me from being corrupted from the simplicity which is in Christ—God over all, blessed forever, so fill me with Thy spirit that I may constantly realize my union with Thy blessed Son—as one spirit with a living, loving Saviour; and by faith see Him who is invisible, until the day when mine eyes shall see the King in His beauty. Miss Marsh's Shining Light. 18. The general meaning of the verse is plain, as an expression of surprise and joy that the oppressor or besieger had now vanished. The Apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. 1: 20, has a sentence so much like this, in the threefold repetition of the question where, and in the use of the word scribe, that it cannot be regarded as a mere fortuitous coincidence. 20. Instead of the presence of foreign enemies, see Jerusalem once more the scene of stated solemnities. The peculiar beauty of the imagery lies in ascribing permanence to a tent, which from its very nature must be movable. This may either imply a previous state of agitation and instability, or that the Church, though weak in herself, should be strengthened and established by the power of God. A.—The sacred city is to stand unharmed by her fierce and bloody foes, a living type of the ever-enduring Church of God, against which no weapon forged by wicked hands shall prosper. 21. The figure represents Jehovah as being to Jerusalem what the great Euphrates was to Babylon or the Nile to Thebes—its glory, beauty and wealth; yet with this remarkable exception, that it should open no avenue for an armed foe to approach by water. The war vessels of ancient times are described here—a galley with oars and a gallant ship proudly bearing its implements of death. H. C.—It is the glorious Lord who will be unto us a “place of broad rivers and streams;” and with the infinite “depth of the riches both of His wisdom and knowledge,” we shall feel that “neither height nor depth shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ker. 22. This verse translates the figures of the two verses previous into literal language. The Lord, our King and Lawgiver, holding us while obedient under His perfect protection, is pre-eminently our glory and strength. H. C. 23. Interpreters are agreed that there is at the beginning of this verse a sudden apostrophe to the enemy considered as a ship. This figure would be naturally suggested by those of verse 21. It was there said that no vessel should approach the holy city. But now the prophet seems to remember that one had done so, the proud ship of Assyria. He sees it dismantled and abandoned to its enemies. A. 24. All is well in the holy city. The allusion to the “lame” may have suggested that now and onward, in these better days of Zion, none shall say, “I am sick.” None are disabled, none are suffering. Blessedness is the common lot—rich, deep and pure, for this figure can mean nothing less. The people who dwell there are forgiven; their sins and iniquities are remembered no more. H. C.—The words may be taken in a wide sense—viz., that suffering shall cease with sin which is its cause. Thus understood, the words are strictly applicable only to a state of things still future, either upon earth or in heaven. A. The truth of the promise remains, though we have no means of knowing more than the fact, that we shall receive a body, fashioned like His who dieth no more. There shall be no weariness nor consequent need for repose—“they rest not day nor night.” There shall be no faintness nor consequent craving for sustenance—“they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.” There shall be no disease—“the inhabitant thereof shall no more say, I am sick,” “neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels.” And if all this be true, that glorious and undecaying body shall then be the equal and fit instrument of the perfected spirit, not, as it is now, the adequate instrument only of the natural life. A. M. The essence of eternal life consists in its entire freedom from sin. It is the presence of sin in our nature which is at the root of every other evil, and deliverance from suffering in heaven is connected with perfect deliverance from sin. “The inhabitants shall not say, I am sick, for the people of the land are forgiven their iniquity.” Doubt about God and distrust of Him are the most painful of all things to any one who feels what the soul’s life ought to be—a perfect repose in God’s love that there may be freedom and happiness in His service. This world to most Christians is a fitful struggle to attain a portion of this. When Moses said, “I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory,” he was answered that he could not see God’s face, but that His name would be made to pass before him, as “the Lord God merciful and gracious.” It is still the utmost we can hope for here, and we do not always enjoy it. But of the resurrection state it is said, “They shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads.” That must be a happy condition when all of them shall feel the blessedness of the man whose iniquity is forgiven, and the subject which often causes anxious thought, “can I look to God as my friend and Father?” shall be settled for perpetuity—no doubt, nor shadow of a doubt upon it, but quietness and assurance forever. And when there shall be not only no guilt on the conscience, no sin in the heart, no lurking sympathy with it, but every fibre of the root of poison extracted, and the tree of life shall find its counterpart in the perfect fruit of every redeemed soul! How blessed must that state be when there shall be no envy nor uncharitableness to any one, nothing of humiliation or shame for having done or cherished what is impure and base, nothing of the feeling of lurking evil within, which makes us wishful, if it were possible, to hide our hearts from the sight of God! This is an ideal which it never entered into man’s heart to conceive, which the Gospel alone has taught us, and which we feel to be worthy of God and of our spiritual nature. Ker. Soon, soon, the saints of the earth shall be saints in light; their hairs of snowy age shall be crowned with perpetual joy and everlasting youth; their eyes suffused with tears shall be made bright as stars, never to be clouded again by sorrow; their hearts that tremble now are to be made joyous and fast, and set forever like pillars in the temple of God. Their follies, their burdens, their griefs, their woes, are soon to be over; sin is to be slain, corruption is to be removed, and a heaven of spotless purity and of unmingled peace is to be theirs forever. But it must still be by grace. As was the foundation such must the top-stone be; that which laid on earth the first beginning must lay in heaven the topmost stone. Spurgeon.—Then we shall be enabled to look back at ourselves and to see all the way that the Lord hath led us through the wilderness; how untiring has been His patience, how immeasur- able His grace, how inexhaustible the resources of His wisdom, how unwearied the watchfulness of His love, how unremitting the exercise of His power, how unchangeable the constancy of His faithfulness; or in one summary expression of the apostle, how unsearchable the riches of Christ, as they have been expended, lavished on such sinners, in calling and keeping us and bringing us to Zion! What a thought, that we may be in a moment in the midst of all this; that we must be so very soon; that all this world shall be like clouds that have flown along the face of the sky—gone, passed; and where are they? So shall all the things of time be to us then; we shall carry nothing with us but the remembrance of ourselves, our sins, and the unsearchable riches of our Lord's grace, goodness and glory—all He has been to us and done for us. McGhee. 34:1 Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye peoples: let the earth hear, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all things that come forth of it. For the LORD hath indignation against all the nations, and fury against all their host: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and the stink of their carcasses shall come up, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fade away, as the leaf fadeth from off the vine, and as a fading leaf from the fig tree. For my sword hath drunk its fill in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and upon the people of my curse, to judgement. The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. And the wild-oxen shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be drunken with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For it is the day of the LORD's vengeance, the year of recompence in the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the pelican and the porcupine shall possess it; and the owl and the raven shall dwell therein: and he shall stretch over it the line of confusion, and the plummet of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and thistles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. And the wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there, and shall find her a place of rest. There shall the arrowsnake make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: yea, there shall the kites be gathered, every one with her mate. Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall be missing, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line : they shall possess it for ever, from generation to generation shall they dwell therein. Chap. 34. This chapter and the next make one distinct prophecy ; an entire, regular and beautiful poem, consisting of two parts—the first containing a denunciation of Divine vengeance against the enemies of the people or Church of God ; the second describing the flourishing state of the Church consequent upon the execution of those judgments. The event foretold is represented as of universal concern ; all nations are called upon to attend to the declaration of it ; and the wrath of God is denounced against all the nations who had provoked to anger the defender of the cause of Zion. Bp. Lowth. This chapter presents a broadly comprehensive view of God's judgments on guilty nations, of which Idumea is an instance and an illustration ; and the next a corresponding view of God's blessings upon His people. The nations judged and punished in this chapter are contemplated as the bitter and determined enemies of God and of His people ; so that the exterminating judgments sent on them and the restoring mercies sent on His people are parts of the same Divine policy, manifestations of one and the same Divine Father, promoting the great ends of righteousness and well-being. The same contrast in deeds and in destiny is strongly put in two contiguous verses (3 : 10, 11), " Say ye to the righteous, it shall be well with him : for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked ! it shall be ill with him : for the reward of his hands shall be given him." The same good Father, because He is good and because He rules justly, awards to each class its destiny according to its doings and deserts. So in these two contiguous chapters, first the wicked, next the righteous, have their destiny portrayed. Let it be noted that these two chapters (34 and 35) naturally close the series which began with chap. 13, grouping together the prophecies of Isaiah against idolatrous nations with whom the Jews came in contact, including also the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and indeed the southern kingdom as well so far forth as that kingdom was in apostasy and rebellion against God. In the portions that relate to Judah and Jerusalem, promises alternate with threatenings, indicating God's thoughts of mercy and His purpose in regard to them to reclaim and save. But in the main this series of prophecies makes the judgments of God on wicked nations its central theme, and in this point of view it naturally culminates in the chapter now before us. In point of fearfulness and appalling grandeur, these images of destruction and desolation are unsurpassed. H. C. The threatenings of chap. 34 are directed, first against the nations in general (verses 1-4), and then against Edom in particular (verses 5-15), with a closing affirmation of the truth and certainty of the prediction (verses 16, 17). The destruction of the enemies of Zion and the desolation of their lands are represented by the figures of a great sacrifice or slaughter, the falling of the heavenly bodies, the conversion of the soil into brimstone and the waters into pitch, and the inhabitation of animals peculiar to the desert. A.—This chapter is not a direct and simple delineation of the judgments that were destined to alight upon Idumea, but rather an ideal representation of the judgments preparing to alight on the enemies generally of God's people, founded upon the approaching desolations of Edom, which it contemplates as the type of the destruction that awaits all the adversaries. P. F. 1. As usual with the prophet when any specially solemn and fearful announcement is to be made, he summons all earth to give attention. The call is to all the people and nations of the wide world. H. C. 4. The best explanation seems, however, to be that proposed by Pfeiffer in his " Dubia Vexata"—to wit, that as God is elsewhere described as having stretched out the heavens like a curtain, their destruction or any total change in their appearance would be naturally represented as a rolling up of the expanse. The context clearly shows that the terms used are not symbolical but poetical, and that here, as in chap. 13 : 10, the idea which they are all intended to convey is that of revolution, of sudden, total and appalling change. The imagery of the passage has been partially adopted in Matt. 24 : 29 and Rev. 6 : 13, neither of which, however, is to be regarded either as a repetition or an explanation of the one before us. A.—God's terrible judgments upon the nations of men, sweeping them away into the gulf of doom, are thought of as changing the face of the earth, even as rolling up the curtain of the visible heavens and laying it aside would change the whole aspect of the blue concave above us. H. C. As the centrifugal strength of the sun's arm weakens, ethereal friction clogs the course of earth and the planets, so that they draw nearer in long spirals, and will some time fall into the sun, bringing in the collision a blaze of fire, in which they will melt and be consumed. Of such celestial disappearances, more than one has been observed; a notable instance being that of the star in the Northern Crown, which burst into blaze in 1866. The theories of today imply that this is the normal course of things throughout the universe—worlds falling together, to melt and perhaps emerge into new worlds and systems again. All this the Scripture has foretold; Isaiah declaring that "All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their hosts shall fall down, as the leaf falleth from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig-tree;" and Peter, that the "heavens and the earth, which are now, are reserved unto fire," that "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with ferrent heat, the earth also; and the works that are therein shall be burned up." "Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." Perhaps we have accounted the words of Revelation too exclusively abstract and figurative, and are summoned by the voice of modern science to notice and apply more confidently and literally the angel's words to John, "These sayings are faithful and true." J. B. Thomas. Every world, whether sun, planet or satellite, has its appointed lifetime. By the arrangement of nature, a certain cycle of conditions must be completed, and the body has then reached a state of cosmical death. Our own planet is in the midst of visible changes, which carry it continually toward some finality which must constitute an end of the present terrestrial order. What we witness of terrestrial changes belongs to the planetary stage of cosmical being; but on a grander scale the other planets, and even the suns in the firmament, reveal the progress of a cycle of events which involves every cosmical body in the visible universe. The world beneath our feet is growing cold. The time is approaching when no warmth will remain of all that store of heat which once lighted our planet to a state of incandescence. Undoubtedly the loss of the world's inherent heat will exert an important influence on the population which occupy its surface. But a juncture of greater significance will arrive. The waters which belong to the earth percolate through the rocks and saturate the crust to a certain depth. At that depth the heat of the world's interior is such that water is converted into vapor and returned toward the surface. With progressive cooling and progressive thickening of the cold crust, the volume of water required to fill the pores will continually increase. When the earth is cooled to the centre, the waters of the ocean will not be sufficient to satisfy them. The ocean will be drunk up. A cold crust nine hundred miles thick will absorb all the water belonging to our planet. Indeed, the atmosphere will follow the ocean in progress of retirement into the pores of a cold world, and the time must come when water and air will both be absent from the surface of our globe. Then the earth will have reached a stage which is a present reality in the life of our moon; for our satellite gives no sign of air or water, and hangs suspended in the heavens, simply a fossil world, unfolding its "nightly tale" of events impending over the future history of our own world. What shall prevent the fires of the sun from dying out? Is there any heat so intense or any mass of heated matter so vast that time will not suffice to exhaust its force? The earth was once a sun; the moon was once a sun. The radiation which has reduced them from a solar temperature will bring dimness and feebleness to the powers of the great sun of our system. There is no process known by which the heat and light of the sun are perpetuated. The great source of warmth for the generations of animals and plants must inevitably become exhausted, and the sun will stand "blind and blackening" in the midst of space. Then will winter and midnight reign throughout the solar system. A. Winchell. 5. The best explanation is that of Calvin, who refers the expression to the Divine determination and foreknowledge. In the sight of God the sword, although not yet actually used, was already dripping blood. The sword is mentioned as a natural and common though poetical expression for any instrument of vengeance. A.—The imagination of the prophet gives the sword not only life, but a moral sense; the impulses of a righteous retribution. Idumea represents not itself alone—the ancient Edom—but all the malign, persistent, incorrigible enemies of God and of His earthly kingdom. H. C.—Miserable, forever miserable, are they that have by their sins made themselves the people of God's curse; for the sword of the Lord will infallibly attend the curse of the Lord and execute the sentences of it; and those whom He curses are cursed indeed. It shall come down to judgment, to execute judgment upon sinners. God's sword of war is always a sword of justice. H. 6. By poetic figure, the sword is here a beast or bird of prey, carnivorous, thirsting for blood, and satiating itself upon its slain. The point to be illustrated is the vastness of the slaughter and the terribleness of the doom visited upon these rebels against God and enemies of His throne. The "Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah," in the sense of a vast slaughter. Bozrah is equivalent to Idumea, one of its great cities representing the whole country. H. C. 9. This verse, as Calvin well observes, announces nothing new, but repeats the same prediction under other figures, borrowed from the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, which throughout the Bible are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire (Jude 7). A. 9,10. In this description, the language is obviously drawn from the case of the doomed cities of the plain, and is therefore figurative. The results—the country lying waste from generation to generation and no traveller passing through it forever—have been wonderfully verified for many ages past and are so still. It would not be easy to find on the face of our globe a spot ever inhabited by man that is now so utterly desolate as this same Idumea, or one as to which there is so much testimony to show that for ages "no man has passed through it." The latter fact is more remarkable because when Isaiah wrote and for some centuries subsequently its capital, Petra, was a great thoroughfare of travel and of commerce. The desolate land of Edom is a standing witness at this day, not merely of the truth and accuracy of this prophecy, but of the fearfulness of the doom which God visits upon the nation that distinguishes itself by its hostility to His own people, and in a yet broader sense, of the fearfulness of that final doom which awaits every persistent rebel in the world of retribution. 12. In harmony with the context which represents the land as utterly void of men and peopled only with such animals as dwell in the most dismal solitudes, this verse must be taken as a way of saying, not that there was an actual call from the people to their princes to assume the reins of government, but that there was neither government, princes nor people to call them. 16. This is obviously addressed to those who should live in the distant future and could compare the prophecy with its fulfilment. The prophet invites them to this comparison. Assuming that his own prophetic writings—this prophecy against Edom among the rest—are in "the Book of the Lord," he calls upon men in the remote ages to look up this prophecy and read it. H. C. We have here a striking witness to the high early estimation and sacred authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. Birks.—"The Book" may be this particular prophecy or the entire Scripture, without material change of sense. A. There are traces in Isaiah of the existence in his time of a "Book of the Lord," which was to be studied for its authoritative teaching, which in a future day (29:18) should be understood even better than it was then, which waited therefore for the fulness of its meaning, which was consequently prophetic in its character. And a like reference is made again to the same Book in a previous verse (29:11). It may be a matter of question whether the prophet in either case is speaking of his own book, as he certainly does in chap. 30:8, and probably in chap. 8:1, but there is no doubt as to the character he assigns to it, whether it be his own or the book of the law. There is here an indication of consciousness, on the part of the writer, of a work being then in process of formation, if not in a condition of completeness, to which men might appeal as to an ultimate authority, on account of its being somehow endowed with the Divine sanction. Leathes. Seek ye the Book of the Lord, and read. Attested incontrovertibly by three distinct sources of proof—its wonderful origin and contents, the complete adaptation of its truths to every spiritual need of man, and its actual effects upon communities and individuals—the Bible presents itself as the utterance of God to man, demanding for its sublime disclosures man's closest inspection, his most earnest, profound and habitual study. In these indisputable facts, upon which its claim is based, we find transcendent reasons why it should be thoroughly searched, why its truths and promises should be deeply pondered and personally appropriated by every soul to whom it speaks. The fact cannot be too often considered that all individual advancement in the Divine life, all legitimate acquisition, all healthful, permanent, spiritual progress and all Christian activity and efficiency are based of necessity upon the personal study, apprehension and application of these Divine truths; of necessity, because in these truths alone are found the grounds, the means and the motives of Christian faith, and hope, and love, of prayer and effort. B. The Christian holds his Bible in a warm and sacred reverence. When he opens it he experiences a sense of pleasure; when he reads it, it is with a sense of satisfaction which rises to a mild exhilaration. It is delightful to him. He loves it, and a profane or critical hand laid upon it gives him pain. There is one element of worship in this feeling—viz., reverence. But a moment's examination will show him that this is not reverence for the Book, but for God. It is God's voice that reaches him through its pages, and he is thus brought into the Divine presence. The Bible is desired, revered, loved and cherished because it gratifies spiritual hunger. It is food for the soul. It is usually read as a preparation for prayer. It gives strength and elevation to the spiritual impulses and aspirations, increases confidence and faith in God, makes the soul stronger every way. The Christian who neglects to read his Bible soon finds himself becoming spiritually weak, despondent, irresolute, beset with all the symptoms of exhaustion. The minister who expounds the Scriptures to his people is said to "break the bread of life" to them, and the aptness of this metaphor, as setting forth the reality, is universally recognized. The people go away from the sermon with a feeling of refreshment. They have been fed and made strong for the duties and responsibilities, and filled with fortitude against the ills and sorrows of life. Now nothing is more natural than that we should come to love the Book as a book, and even to love a particular copy of the Book, because of associations which have, in the course of time, clustered around it. But this is not bibliolatry—there is no element of idolatry in it. Interior. "Other things pertain," says Cicero, "to times, and ages, and places, but books instruct youth, delight age, adorn prosperity, afford solace and relief to adversity, give pleasure at home, and do not burden abroad, they lodge with us, they travel with us, they rusticate with us." With what force may all this be applied to the Book of God! This portable revelation may be the companion of all men, at all times, to all places. Instead of being confined, like the Sibylline Books, at the Roman capital, in a chest of gold, under an official custodian, every mariner may take it with him when he goes forth upon the sea; the traveller, far removed from the sound of the Sabbath bell and the voice of the living ministry, carries this wherever he goes; the emigrant, departing from his native land, is not separated from the revelation of God; it is in the hands of the child at school, of the old man at the head-springs of wisdom, the soldier takes it into camp and battle, the collier bears it down with him into the depths of the earth, and the prisoner, deprived of all human society, is not so lonely and forlorn as to be without this inspiration of the Almighty. We cannot conceive now of any circumstances so deplorable, no distance so great, no solitude so complete, in which this written revelation of God may not be accessible and available. W. Adams. After many years spent in studying the Bible, and in teaching it both to the adult and the young, I find it hard to say how deeply I am impressed with the conviction that, to fairly master any one portion of Scripture, however small, is, for educational purposes, worth infinitely more than the widest desultory reading. A. M. 35:1 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, 2 and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon: they shall see the glory of the LORD, the excellency of our God. 3, 4 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the 5 recompence of God; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, 6 and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams 7 in the desert. And the glowing sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water: in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. 8 And an high way shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, yea fools, shall 9 not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon, they shall 10 not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. THE earlier visions of Isaiah (chaps. 1-35), in their three distinct series, point throughout to the approaching crisis of Assyrian conquest, and to the deliverance of Jerusalem by the sudden overthrow of the invading host. Already, in chap. 2, a day of solemn visitation is announced against all the splendor and beauty of the land of promise. In chap. 5 the invading power is more clearly foreshow, and summoned by the voice of God Himself from a distant land, to execute His judgment. In chaps. 7-12 the warning grows more distinct, being prefaced by the promise of Immanuel, the heir of David's throne, whose kingdom should never fail. The invasion is to be a flood, reaching to the neck; and Zion alone, the head, would escape from the wide-reaching desolation. The Assyrian would reach the heights on the north of Jerusalem, and threaten it with captivity, but then be suddenly cut down; and the vista closes with a picture of Messiah's happy reign. The burdens begin with one on Babylon, to be last fulfilled. Then follow judgments to be inflicted by Assyria, the rod of God's anger, on Philistia, Moab, Syria, Ephraim, Egypt and Ethiopia, and the Arabian tribes; and then on Samaria and the northern kingdom, with a promise of Jerusalem's deliverance through her recovery from sensual blindness to faith in the God of Israel. The last burden on Tyre reaches onward to the times of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus; and the series closes with a general warning, and renewed promises of the good things to come. The woes, dating from the first years of Hezekiah, first denounce the speedy downfall of Samaria, the utter failure of the worldly hopes of the scornful in Judah, and the investment of Jerusalem by the alien armies; and then reveal, more clearly than before, the overthrow of the Assyrian spoiler by the hand of God. Chap. 35:1, 2 describes the joy of Israel's final recovery. The next verses announce that coming of Messiah which was to precede, and through which alone their recovery could be fulfilled. The rest of the chapter unfolds the blessings that are to follow, or the glorious reign of the promised Immanuel, the Prince of Peace. There seems no reason for confining the words in the opening verse to Palestine, and the absence of the article justifies us in giving them the widest sense. Everywhere, except in that doomed region of judgment, the wildernesses are to rejoice. The creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:21). The four chapters of history (36-39) are the natural sequel of these prophecies, and the preparation for the later visions that follow. They occur also in 2 K. 18-20, with a few slight variations, and the omission of the writing of Hezekiah. But there are many internal signs that their original place is in this Book of Isaiah. The changes in the Book of Kings consist chiefly in the replacement of more dramatic by simply historical expressions, as in chap. 39:2, "was glad of them" becomes "hearkened to them." Also the historical order is restored in the last verses of chap. 38, with other alterations suited to a book of simple history. Their connection with the structure of the whole book is most intimate and vital. The earlier prophecies all converge on that coming Assyrian overthrow, of which chaps. 36, 37 are the historical record; while the illness and recovery of Hezekiah (chap. 38) marks the transition from times of peril and danger to a gracious reprieve in years of peace and truth. Lastly, the message of Merodach, king of Babylon (chap. 39), and the weakness of Hezekiah, occasion a warning of that future captivity, from which all the later prophecies diverge; passing onward into a prediction of the days of Cyrus, the times of Messiah, and the full and final deliverance of Zion from her long sorrows. Birks. Chap. 35. As said in the introduction to chap. 34, this chapter stands over against that; this giving the joyful changes which God achieves for His people; that, the woeful changes of ruin and desolation which God brings upon His incorrigible enemies. The central idea of this chapter is the wealth of God's resources for blessing those who trust in Him, and the consequent richness and glory of those blessings. The change wrought in those who find mercy and rest in God is like that of a barren and waste wilderness becoming verdant and blooming; the blind restored to sight; the deaf to hearing; the lame to leaping and the dumb to songs again; sandy deserts bursting forth with bubbling fountains; a glorious highway for Zion's pilgrims over what was only a waste of pathless sands before, upon which highway no dangerous beasts should ever ascend—none but God's redeemed, and they, with songs and everlasting joy. It has been well said that the tenor of this description is so general and comprehensive that it may be applied to Israel returning from her long captivity in Babylon; to the calling of the Gentiles and to their great joy in the Gospel; to the Christian dispensation as revealing more richly than ever before the love of God and the power of His Spirit; to the experience of every true convert to Christ; and to the perfect bliss of heaven. H. C. A great and glorious change is here described under the figure of a desert clothed with luxuriant vegetation (verses 1, 2). The people are encouraged with the prospect of this change and with the promise of avenging judgments on their enemies (verses 3, 4). The same change is then expressed, by a change of figure, as a healing of corporeal infirmities (verses 5, 6). The former figure is again resumed, and the wilderness described as free from all its wonted inconveniences, particularly those of barrenness and thirst, disappointment and illusion, pathlessness and beasts of prey (verses 7-9). The whole prediction winds up with a promise of redemption, restoration and endless blessedness (verse 10). The best description of the chapter is that given by Augusti in the title to his version of it, where he represents it as the description of a happy condition of the Church after a period of suffering. This is no doubt its true import, and when thus explained it may be considered as including various particulars, none of which can be regarded as its specific or exclusive subject. Without any change of its essential meaning it may be applied to the restoration of the Jews from Babylon, to the vocation of the Gentiles, to the whole Christian dispensation, to the course of every individual believer, and to the blessedness of heaven. The ground of this manifold application is not that the language of the passage is unmeaning or indefinite, but that there is a real and designed analogy between the various changes mentioned which brings them all within the natural scope of the same inspired inscription. A. 2. "It" (the wilderness) "shall blossom abundantly." The imagination of the poet gives life and emotion to this desert—late a waste; now all verdant and beautiful—for it now rejoices even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon (not shall be, but) has been given to it; and herein lies this surprising change. All shall see the manifestations of God's glory; His power to save and the infinite love of His heart, out of which all salvation flows. H. C. 3. With the prospect of this glorious change the people are commanded to encourage themselves and one another. The hands and knees are here combined, as Vitringa observes, to express the powers of action and endurance. The participial forms represent the hands as actually hanging down, relaxed or weakened, and the knees as actually giving way. The passage thus explained is far more expressive as denoting a permanent quality or habitual condition. In itself the language of this verse is applicable either to self-encouragement or to the consolation of others. There is no reason why the words should not be taken in their widest sense, as meaning, let despondency be exchanged for hope. That self-encouragement is not excluded may be learned from Paul's use of the words in that sense (Heb. 12 : 12). That mutual encouragement is not excluded is sufficiently apparent from the following verse. 4. This verse shows how the command in the one before it is to be obeyed, by suggesting, as topics of mutual encouragement, the vindicatory justice of God, and His certain interposition in behalf of His people. The words are really a promise of deliverance to God's people, and include the unspeakable gift of Christ and His salvation. A.—Let the saints have patience and never fear lest God should forget His words of promise or the interests of His people and kingdom. He will vindicate Himself as true to His words, both of threatening against His foes and of promise in behalf of His friends. H. C. He will come and save. There was a solemn refrain, echoing alike from the Adamic and Abrahamic promises, caught up in the dying blessings of Jacob and of Moses, and repeated like the subtle motive of a fugue through all cadences of the statutes for sacrifices, festivals and Sabbaths. He will come—the Seed, the Shiloh, the Prophet will come. He will gather all nations to fellowship with Israel. Israel shall spread His blessedness over all lands. He will remove every curse and govern the world in righteousness and love. He will provide a sacrifice suited in character and occasion for all the earth and all the nations. Grey. 5,6. The change in the condition of the people is now represented by another figure, the removal of corporeal infirmities. The reason assigned in this last clause for the joy to be expressed shows clearly that the miraculous removal of disease and the miraculous irrigation of the desert are intended to express one and the same thing. The essential idea in both cases is that of sudden and extraordinary change. To the question whether this prediction is in no sense applicable to our Saviour's miracles, we may reply with Calvin, that although they are not directly mentioned, they were really an emblem and example of the great change which is here described. So too the spiritual cures effected by the Gospel, although not specifically signified by these words, are included in the glorious revolution which they do denote. The simple meaning of the passage is that the Divine interposition which had just been promised should produce as wonderful a change in the condition of mankind as if the blind were to receive their sight, the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, and deserts to be fertilized and blossom as the rose. In the process of this mighty transmutation miracles were really performed, both of a bodily and spiritual nature, but the great change which includes these includes vastly more. A. There must be nobler things in store for that race with which the Son of God is contented to have such patience. If the great Husbandman waits so long for the feeble, springing blade, how precious must the full harvest be! There will be plentiful stores of pure wisdom for the world and boundless treasures for each immortal soul that covets truth. There are ages for the world to learn in and an eternity for the individual; and when the soul is able to bear full light, how many things will the great Teacher have to disclose! What secrets in providence and grace shall be uncovered—what blank deserts on the map of knowledge filled up with rich discoveries—what pauses and silences in the speech of Christ, replaced by matter of adoring wonder and praise! We shall find out why we can get no answer to many questions now. Where we are compelled to stand in awe before mysteries which stretch away like trackless wastes, we shall advance and see proofs of larger wisdom and deeper love than it entered our hearts to conceive. "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing, for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert." We shall drink at the fountain head of illumination, see light in God's light, and find it all the sweeter that it comes from Him into whose lips grace is poured. Ker. 7. The idea of complete and joyful change is still expressed by the transformation of a desert and the consequent removal of its inconveniences, among which the prophet here particularly mentions the tantalizing illusions to which travellers in the wilderness are subject. A.—Glowing sand. Refers to a certain illusive appearance of water far in the distance over the desert sands which has often tantalized thirsty travellers, only to aggravate their disappointment. It is best known by the French name of "the mirage," and is occasioned by the peculiar refraction of the sun's rays passing over the sands of the desert, giving the distant horizon precisely the appearance of a vast lake. Hence the meaning here is that this deceitful mirage shall become really a pool of water, and bubbling springs shall burst forth in the very desert—which in that climate would clothe regions otherwise wasted and desolate, with magnificent verdure and beauty. 8. A new figure still appears. We have seen the great Sahara, putting on the glory of Lebanon, Carmel and Sharon; her desolate and scorching sands blooming with roses and even pouring forth her new joy in song; the mirage becoming pools of living water; moisture and consequent verdure succeeding to sterility and vast desolation; but here this trackless desert and its vast waste of drifting, pathless sands is cut by a highway—a road well cast up and fitted for rapid and easy travel. It shall be called—i.e., shall really be, the way of holiness, a new road made to bear men safely, high above the quicksands of temptation and the dreary wastes of sin. The unclean go not there. The clause, “It shall be for those,” with this construction, means, It shall be for the people of God alone for whom it was built. H. C.—The precise import of the original expression seems to be that the highway shall belong exclusively to them for whose sake it was made, for whose use it was intended. A.—The last clause means that travellers, even though of only ordinary intelligence, shall not miss the road. With honest hearts, though of only very moderate knowledge, this highway is very readily followed. The way of salvation is travelled safely by some who are only babes and children in understanding. H. C. The distinctive features of revealed truth are presented so clearly that “the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err” regarding them. They are like lines of light running through the Bible, illuminating all, and explaining all. No man who is willing to give to the interests of his deathless spirit a tithe even of the attention which he knows they justly demand need remain in doubt about the revelations of the Bible concerning the essentials of vital godliness, nor commit a mistake as to the method it discloses for securing everlasting life. E. M. 9. The wilderness, though no longer barren or pathless, might still be the resort of beasts of prey. The promised highway might itself be exposed to their incursions. But immunity from this inconvenience is here promised. A.—God provides against all dangers. There shall be nothing there to hurt or destroy. This blessed pathway is reserved for the redeemed alone and is made safe for them against all evil. H. C. 10. The whole series of promises is here summed up in that of restoration and complete redemption. A.—Those who are purchased with redeeming blood, bought off from their bondage to sin by a redemption as of captives, shall return from their captivity and come even to Zion, the very abode of the living God. H. C.—The highway before described not only leads to Zion the Church below, but to the Zion above, to the heavenly glory; and all the redeemed, all that walk in this way, shall come thither; at death their souls return to God that gave them, and in the resurrection their bodies shall return from their dusty beds and appear before God in Zion. Gill. When they shall “enter into the joy of their Lord,” it shall be what the joys of this world never could be, everlasting joy, without mixture, interruption or period; it shall not only fill their hearts, to their own perfect and perpetual satisfaction, but it shall be upon their heads, as an ornament of grace and a crown of glory, as a garland worn in token of victory; their joy shall be visible, and no longer a secret thing, as it is here in this world; it shall be proclaimed, to the glory of God and their mutual encouragement; they shall then obtain the joy and gladness which they could never expect on this side heaven; “and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” forever, as the shadows of the night before the rising sun. Thus these prophecies which relate to the Assyrian invasion conclude, for the support of the people of God under that calamity and to direct their joy, in their deliverance from it, to something higher. Our joyful hopes and prospects of eternal life should swallow up both all the sorrows and all the joys of this present time. H.—That redemption complete, there will be no second apostasy. The perpetuity of restored humanity is guaranteed by a special decree of the Almighty. No tempter will be permitted to enter the celestial Paradise. Well may they exult who come home to the heavenly Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. Members of His body who sitteth upon the throne, oft as they turn a grateful eye to Him they are reminded of the perpetuity of their new life. Long as Christ lives they shall live with Him and in Him. No cloud obscures the prospects of futurity. The life which Christ restores is secured beyond the reach of power, and accident, and apostasy, and peril. It is a life of joy, without the possibility of falling away and without an end; for the well-spring of it is not our personal obedience, but the life of the Redeemer, the very life of God. W. Adams. O eternal kingdom, kingdom of all ages, where is light that fails not, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding; wherein the souls of the saints are at rest, and "everlasting joy is on their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away!" O how glorious is the kingdom in which all Thy saints, O Lord, reign with Thee, clothed with light as with a garment, having crowns of precious stones on their heads! O kingdom of everlasting bliss, where Thou, O Lord, the hope of the saints, and their diadem of glory, art seen face to face by the saints, gladdening them on all sides with that peace of Thine which passeth all understanding! There is joy without end, gladness without sorrow, health without pain, life without toil, light without darkness, life without death, all good without any evil. There youth never grows old, there life knows no end; where beauty never grows pale, and love never grows lukewarm, and health never decays, and joy never decreases, and pain is never felt, and gladness is ever retained, and no evil is dreaded; for there the supreme good is enjoyed, which is to seek forever the face of the Lord of hosts. Happy then are they who have already succeeded in coming home from the shipwrecks of this present life to such great joys. O our country, O country of safety, we behold thee from afar; from this sea we greet thee, from this valley we sigh after thee; and we strive with tears, if haply we may reach thee. O hope of mankind, Christ, God of God, our refuge and strength, whose light, beaming from afar amid the dark mists over the tempestuous sea, like the ray of a star of the sea shines brightly before us, that we may be guided to the harbor; steer our bark, O Lord, with Thine own right hand, by the rudder of Thy cross, let us not perish in the billows, let not the raging water drown us, nor the deep swallow us up; but by the power of Thy cross draw us from this sea to Thyself, our only consolation, whom we can scarcely discern through our tears, from afar off, as the morning star and the sun of righteousness, awaiting us on the shore of the heavenly country. Lo, we cry aloud unto Thee, we, Thy redeemed, but now also Thy banished ones, whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood. "Hear us, O God of our salvation, hope of all the ends of the earth, and of those in the sea afar;" wild is the sea through which we are faring onward; Thou art standing on the shore, and looking on our dangers; save us for Thy name's sake. Augustine. In the illumination of eternity, redemption will be seen as the great end and unity of all things human, the key of history, the harmony of events, the beginning and the ending of this world's life. Then shall we attach new meaning to the august titles of our Lord—the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the King of kings and Lord of lords—for of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever! Amen. W. Adams. The field of Messiah's operations is the world; nor will He cease to put forth His power for the extension of His Church till He has made the wilderness and the solitary place to be glad, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. The outward ordinances of visible Christianity shall be universally spread abroad; efficacy shall be given to the means of grace, by the outpouring of the Spirit; and every obstruction to the triumphant progress of the chariot of salvation shall be effectually removed. Ignorance shall be dispelled before the spreading beams of Gospel light. The evidences of Divine truth shall compel infidelity to hide its head. The delusions of the false prophet shall be dissipated by the drying up of the river Euphrates, that a way may be prepared for the kings of the East. Jewish obstinacy and unbelief shall be broken, and the veil taken from the eyes of that interesting people in reading Moses and the prophets. All the hideous forms of polytheistic paganism shall give way to the one religion of Jesus. The anti-Christian leaven, which has been so extensively diffused, shall be purged out of both churches and nations. Every usurper of the rights and prerogatives of Zion's King shall be pushed from his seat. Every rival kingdom shall be overthrown. The civil and ecclesiastical constitutions of the earth shall be regulated by the infallible standard of God's word; their office-bearers, of every kind, shall acknowledge the authority of Messiah the Prince; and the greatest kings on earth shall cast their crowns at His feet. All enemies shall be put under His feet; and such as resist the melting influence of His grace shall be crushed beneath the iron rod of His power. And at the last, there shall not be a spot on the face of the habitable earth where the true Church of Christ shall not have effected a footing, nor a single tribe of the vast family of man which shall not have felt the meliorating and blissful influence of Christian laws and institutions. W. Symington. We have entire confidence in the ultimate success of the missionary enterprise. Christianity triumphantly surmounted, ages ago, far greater obstacles than now lie in the way of its progress. Its whole empire has been wrested from the grasp of paganism, as degraded, as inveterate, as stubborn as the forms with which it now contends. Because we believe it the truth of God, revealed for man, and adapted in its form of communication to the nature, faculties and wants of man, we doubt not that man under every mode of culture may be brought to the intelligent reception of its truths, the practice of its duties, and the enjoyment of its hopes. We receive as from Divine inspiration the predictions of the Hebrew seers and of the Christian apostle, which foretell the entire re- generation of the human family, and cannot but believe that man will yet rewrite in history the brightest pages of prophecy. N. A. Review. This creed of historic Christianity has known eighteen hundred years of battle; it has never known defeat. The Church of God, built on the incarnation and resurrection, and holding from her temple's topmost spire the cross, has seen imperial dominions and hoary superstitions and theologies of error, and ten thousand airy speculations disappear, while she steadily expands her sheltering walls and shining gates to encompass all nations. J. H. Barrows. THESE historical chapters, which conclude the earlier prophecies of Isaiah, are embodied in the history of Hezekiah's reign, Vol. VII., pp. 343-371. B. The next four chapters contain a historical appendix to the first part of Isaiah's prophecies, relating chiefly to Sennacherib's invasion and the slaughter of his host, to Hezekiah's sickness and miraculous recovery, and to the friendly intercourse between him and the king of Babylon. The same narrative is found substantially in the Second Book of Kings (chaps. 18-20), and a different account of the same matters in the Second Book of Chronicles (chap. 32). It may safely be inferred, as a legitimate if not an unavoidable deduction, that these chapters form a continuous, unbroken narrative by one and the same writer; that this writer may as well have been Isaiah as any other person, if we regard internal evidence, and can have been no other, if we regard the immemorial tradition of the Hebrew canon; and that these four chapters, far from having been inserted here at random or through ignorance, are in their proper place, as a connecting link between the earlier and later prophecies, the threatening in chap. 39:6 being really the theme or text of the long prophetic discourse, with which the remainder of the book is occupied. A. Isa. 38: 1 IN those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the LORD, and said, Remember now, O LORD, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying, Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city. And this shall be the sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken: behold, I will cause the shadow on the steps, which is gone down on the dial of Ahaz with the sun, to return backward ten steps. So the sun returned ten steps on the dial whereon it was gone down. The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness. I said, In the noontide of my days I shall go into the gates of the grave: Isa. 38: 1 IN those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the LORD, and said, Remember now, O LORD, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying, Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city. And this shall be the sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken: behold, I will cause the shadow on the steps, which is gone down on the dial of Ahaz with the sun, to return backward ten steps. So the sun returned ten steps on the dial whereon it was gone down. The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness. I said, In the noontide of my days I shall go into the gates of the grave: THE last twenty-seven chapters form a prophecy, whose coherence of structure and unity of authorship are generally admitted even by those who deny that it was written by Isaiah. The point of time and situation from which the prophet here speaks is for the most part that of the captivity in Babylon (compare, e.g., 64 : 10, 11). But this is adopted on a principle which appears to characterize "vision"—viz., that the prophet sees the future as if present. This second part falls into three sections, each, as it happens, consisting of nine chapters; the two first end with the refrain, "There is no peace, saith Jehovah (or 'my God'), to the wicked;" and the third with the same thought amplified. The first section (chaps. 40–48) has for its main topic the comforting assurance of the deliverance from Babylon by Cyrus, who is even named twice (41 : 2, 3, 25 ; 44 : 28 ; 45 : 1–4, 13 ; 46 : 11 ; 48 : 14, 15). It is characteristic of sacred prophecy in general that the "vision" of a great deliverance leads the seer to glance at the great deliverance to come through Jesus Christ. This principle of association prevails in the second part taken as a whole; but in the first section, taken apart, it appears as yet imperfectly. The second section (chaps. 49–57) is distinguished from the first by several features. The person of Cyrus, as well as his name and the specification of Babylon, disappear altogether. Return from exile is indeed repeatedly spoken of and at length (49 : 9–26 ; 51 : 9–52 : 12 ; 55 : 12, 13 ; 57 : 14); but in such general terms as admit of being applied to the spiritual and Messianic, as well as to the literal restoration. In the third section (chaps. 58–66), as Cyrus nowhere appears, so neither does "Jehovah's servant" occur so frequently to view as in the second. The only delineation of the latter is in chap. 61 : 1–3 and in chap. 63 : 1–6, 9. He no longer appears as suffering, but only as saving and avenging Zion. The section is mainly occupied with various practical exhortations founded upon the views of the future already set forth. Dic. B. In these later prophecies, the continuity of subject is remarkable, there being one main course of thought throughout the entire portion. Its central points are, God, the strength and comfort of His people, infinitely surpassing the gods of the heathen in both prescience and power; His people of the Jews, the faithful few among the many faithless, with their Messiah; all in some general respects servants of Jehovah, and the Messiah specially and permanently so; their work, trials and successes; the Gospel age, its nature, its mission, its triumphs, the calling of the Gentiles and the victories of truth in all the earth; the rejection of the unbelieving Jews and their exemplary doom. H. C. The form in which the prophecy begins has been determined by its intimate connection with the threatening in the thirty-ninth chapter. To assure the Israel of God, or true Church, that the national judgments which had been denounced should not destroy it, is the prophet's purpose in the fortieth chapter, and is executed by exhibiting Jehovah's power, and willingness, and fixed determination to protect and save His own elect. In the forty-first, His power and omniscience are contrasted with the impotence of idols, and illustrated by an individual example. In the forty-second, the person of the great Deliverer is introduced, the nature of His influence described, the relation of His people to Himself defined, and their mission or vocation as enlighteners of the world explained. The forty-third completes this exposition by exhibiting the true design of Israel's election as a people, its entire independence of all merit in themselves, and sole dependence on the sovereign will of God. In the forty-fourth the argument against idolatry is amplified and urged, and the Divine sufficiency and faithfulness exemplified by a historical allusion to the exodus from Egypt, and a prophetic one to the deliverance from Babylon, in which last Cyrus is expressly named. The last part of this chapter should have been connected with the first part of the forty-fifth, in which the name of Cyrus is repeated, and his conquests represented as an effect of God's omnipotence, and the prediction as a proof of His omniscience, both which attributes are then again contrasted with the impotence and senselessness of idols. The same comparison is still continued in the forty-sixth, with special reference to the false gods of Babylon, as utterly unable to deliver either their worshippers or themselves. In the forty-seventh the description is extended to the Babylonian government, as wholly powerless in opposition to Jehovah's interference for the emancipation of His people. The forty-eighth contains the winding up of this great argument from Cyrus and the fall of Babylon, as a conviction and rebuke to the unbelieving Jews themselves. The fact that Babylon is expressly mentioned only in these chapters is a strong confirmation of our previous conclusion that it is not the main subject of the prophecy. By a natural transition he reverts in the forty-ninth to the true Israel, and shows the groundlessness of their misgivings, by disclosing God's design respecting them, and showing the certainty of its fulfilment notwithstanding all discouraging appearances. The difference in the character and fate of the two Israels is still more exactly defined in the fiftieth chapter. In the fifty-first the true relation of the chosen people both to God and to the Gentiles is illustrated by historical examples—the calling of Abram and the exodus from Egypt, and the same power pledged for the safety of Israel in time to come. In the last part of this chapter and the first of the fifty-second, which cohere in the most intimate manner, the gracious purposes of God are represented as fulfilled already, and described in the most animating terms. This view of the future condition of the Church could not be separated long from that of Him by whom it was to be effected; and accordingly the last part of this chapter, forming one unbroken context with the fifty-third, exhibits Him anew, no longer as a teacher, but as the great sacrifice for sin. No sooner is this great work finished than the best days of the Church begin, the loss of national distinction being really a prelude to her glorious emancipation. The promise of this great change in the fifty-fourth chapter is followed in the fifty-fifth by a gracious invitation to the whole world to partake of it. The fifty-sixth continues the same subject, by predicting the entire abrogation of all local, personal and national distinctions. Having dwelt so long upon the prospects of the spiritual Israel or true Church, the prophet, in the last part of the fifty-sixth and the first part of the fifty-seventh, looks back at the carnal Israel, as it was in the days of its idolatrous apostasy, and closes with a threatening which insensibly melts into a promise of salvation to the true Israel. The fifty-eighth again presents the carnal Israel, not as idolaters, but as hypocrites, and points out the true mean between the rejection of appointed rites and the abuse of them. The fifty-ninth explains Jehovah's dealings with the nation of the Jews, and shows that their rejection was the fruit of their own doings, as the salvation of the saved was that of God's omnipotent compassions. In the sixtieth he turns once more to the true Israel, and begins a series of magnificent descriptions of the new dispensation as a whole, contrasted with the imperfections and restrictions of the old. The prominent figures of the picture in this chapter are immense increase by the accession of the Gentiles, and internal purity and peace. The prominent figure in the sixty-first is that of the Messiah as the agent in this great work of spiritual emancipation. In the sixty-second it is that of Zion, or the Church herself, in the most intimate union with Jehovah and the full fruition of His favor. But this anticipation is inseparably blended with that of vengeance on the enemies of God, which is accordingly presented in the sublime vision of the sixty-third chapter, followed by an appeal to God's former dealings with His people, as a proof that their rejection was their own fault, and that He will still protect the true believers. These are represented in the sixty-fourth as humbly confessing their own sins and suing for the favor of Jehovah. In the sixty-fifth he solemnly announces the adoption of the Gentiles and the rejection of the carnal Israel because of their iniquities, among which idolatry is once more rendered prominent. He then contrasts the doom of the apostate Israel with the glorious destiny awaiting the true Israel. And this comparison is still continued in the sixty-sixth chapter, where the prophet, after ranging through so wide a field of vision, seems at last to fix his own eye and his reader's on the dividing line or turning point between the old and new economy, and winds up the whole drama with a vivid exhibition of the nations gathered to Jerusalem for worship, while the children of the kingdom—i.e., Israel according to the flesh, are cast forth into outer darkness, where their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched. Upon this awful spectacle the curtain falls, and we are left to find relief from its impressions in the merciful disclosures of a later and more cheering revelation. J. A. Alexander. Isaiah, in the close of the previous part of the prophecies (39:7), had distinctly announced that the nation should be carried to Babylon. He saw that this was inevitable, and that the crimes of the monarch and of the nation were such as would certainly hasten this result. He had retired from the public functions of the prophetic office, and given himself up to the contemplation of happier and purer times. He therefore devoted himself to the task of furnishing consolation for the pious portion of the nation, and especially of recording prophetic descriptions which should comfort the Jews when they should be held in their long captivity in Babylon. We have seen (notes on chaps. 13 and 14) that Isaiah had before this laid the foundation for these consolations by the assurance that Babylon and its mighty power should be entirely destroyed, and, of course, that the Jewish people could not be held always in bondage there. In this part of the prophecy (chaps. 40-66) his object is to give more full and specific consolations. He therefore places himself in vision in the midst of the future scenes which he describes, and states distinctly and fully the grounds of consolation. These topics of consolation would arise from two sources—both of which he presents at great length and with great beauty. The first is, that the nation should be delivered from its long and painful captivity. This was the primary thing to be done, and this was needful in order to furnish to them consolation. He places himself in that future time. He sees his own nation borne to a distant land, according to his own predictions; sees them sighing in their hard bondage; sees the city and the Temple where they once worshipped the God of their fathers laid in ruins, and all their pleasant things laid waste (64:11); and the people dispirited and sad in their long and painful captivity. He predicts the close of that captivity, and speaks of it as present to his view. He consoles the people by the assurance that it was coming to an end; names the monarch—Cyrus—by whom their oppressors were to be punished, and by whom they were to be restored to their own land; and describes in the most beautiful and glowing imagery their certain return. The second source of consolation is that which relates to the coming of a far more important deliverer than Cyrus, and to a far more important deliverance than that from the captivity at Babylon. By the laws of prophetic suggestion, and in accordance with the usual manner of Isaiah, his mind is carried forward to much more momentous events. His thoughts glide easily to the Messiah; and any event which bears a resemblance to His coming suggests His work, His character and the benefit of His advent, and the descriptions of the prophet insensibly change from the immediate subject under contemplation to the far more important events connected with His work. This was the common rule by which the mind of Isaiah acted; and it is no wonder, therefore, that an event so strikingly resembling the deliverance of man from the bondage of sin by the Messiah as was the deliverance from the captivity of Babylon should have been suggested by that, and that his thoughts should pass rapidly from one to the other, and the one be forgotten in the other. The eye of the prophet, therefore, glances rapidly from the object more immediately in view in the future, to the object more remote; and he regards the deliverance from the Babylonish captivity as introductory to a far more important deliverance. In the contemplation of that more distant event, therefore, he becomes wholly absorbed; and from this he derives his main topics of consolation. He sees the future coming of the Messiah; he sees his forerunner; he sees the author of redemption in various scenes—now as a sufferer, humble, poor and persecuted; and now the more distant glories of the Messiah's kingdom rises to view. He sees Him raised up from the dead; he sees His empire extend and spread among the Gentiles; he sees kings and princes from all lands coming to lay their offerings at His feet; he sees the distant tribes of men come bending before Him, and His religion of peace and joy diffusing its blessings around the world. In the contemplation of these future glories, he desires to furnish consolation for his afflicted countrymen in Babylon, and at the same time a demonstration of the truth of the oracles of God, and of the certain prevalence of the true religion, which should impart happiness and peace in all future times. Isaiah was now an old man, and his style and manner of thinking and of utterance would be naturally mellowed by age. His object, also, was not reproof so much as consolation; it was not, as formerly, to denounce judgment, to rebuke kings and nobles for their crimes, and to rouse the nation to a sense of its danger; it was to furnish topics of support to those who were groaning in captivity far from the Temple of their God and from the sepulchres of their fathers. The language of the second part is more gentle and flowing, more tender and mild. There is exquisite beauty and finish, and occasionally there are bursts of the highest sublimity; but there is not the compression of thought and the struggling for utterance, which there is often in the former part. There, the prophetic impulse is often like waters pent up between projecting rocks and hills, and where it struggles and bursts forth impetuously and irresistibly; in this portion of the prophecy it is like the placid stream—the full-flowing, majestic river—calm, pure, deep and sublime. There are, indeed, characteristics of the same style, and of the same author, but it is in different circumstances, and with a different object in view. The portion which follows (chaps. 40-66) is a single prophecy, apparently uttered at one time, and relating to one subject, and having one great design. The former part of his prophecies consists of a number of independent and separate predictions, some of them very brief, and having no immediate connection with each other. Here all is connected; and the same design is kept steadily and constantly in view. His beautiful descriptions roll on, to use one of his own images, "like a river," or like the "waves of the sea," and there is an inimitable beauty and majesty in his sentiments and in his style. Almost everything which occurs in the prophecy relates to that which was to be fulfilled long after the time of Isaiah. Occasionally there is a hint, or glance, or slight allusion to the prevalence of idolatry in his own time; but there is no express mention of the events which were then occurring. He does not mention his own circumstances; he does not allude to the name of the monarch who lived when he wrote. He seems to have forgotten the present, and to live and act in the scenes of the distant future. He therefore speaks as if he were in the midst of them; he speaks as one living among the exiled Jews in Babylon when their long captivity was about to come to an end; he exhorts, rebukes, administers comforts, as if they were present to his mind, and as if he were directly addressing them. He speaks of the life, sufferings and death of the Messiah also, as if passing before his mind, or as events which he saw, and seeks personal consolation and support amid the prevailing crimes and calamities of his own times, in the contemplation of future scenes. Barnes. These chapters have formed a part of the collection of Isaiah's prophecies as far back as the history of the canon can be traced, without the slightest vestige of a different tradition among Jews or Christians as to the author. The tone and spirit of these chapters are precisely such as might have been expected from the circumstances under which they are alleged to have been written, and their variations from the earlier chapters such as must have been expected from the change in the circumstances themselves. A cursory inspection of these later prophecies is enough to satisfy the reader that he has before him neither a concatenated argument nor a mass of fragments, but a continuous discourse in which the same great topics are continually following each other, somewhat modified in form and combination, but essentially the same from the beginning to the end. If these twenty-seven chapters are confessedly the work of one man and indeed a continuous discourse on one great subject, and if a perfectly uniform tradition has attached them to the writings of Isaiah, it remains to be considered whether we have any reason to deny or even to dispute the fact so solemnly attested. All the presumptions are in favor of its truth. For two thousand years, at least, the book was universally regarded as Isaiah's, and no other name has ever been connected with it even by mistake or accident. It is just such a book as the necessities of that age might have been expected to call forth. Its genuineness, therefore, as a writing of Isaiah, is not a fact requiring demonstration by detailed and special proof, but one attested both by its external history and its internal structure, unless positive reasons can be given for rejecting a conclusion which appears not only obvious, but unavoidable. A. The prophecies of Isaiah (chaps. 40-46), which follow the historical episode have been received as genuine, and one main part of Isaiah's writings, by the common faith of Jews and Christians for more than two thousand years. During the last century, however, a school of critics arose in Germany, who ascribe them to one or more unknown writers near the close of the Captivity. So Koppe, Eichhorn, Döderlein, Justi, Paulus, Bauer, Bertholdt, De Wette, Gramberg, Vatke, Rosenmüller, Gesenius, Hitzig, Maurer, Knobel, Ewald, Hendewerk and Umbreit, and others. In some circles the modern theory has even been turned into an axiom, and a test of critical learning. Their authenticity, however, has been upheld in Germany by many able writers; as Hensler, Piper, Beckhaus, Jahn, Dereser, Greve, Möller, Kleinert, Schleier, Hengstenberg, Hävernick and Keil. More recently Stier has vindicated and expounded these chapters in his "Esaias, nicht Pseudo-Esaias," a learned work of a thousand pages. Drechsler, also, in his commentary on the earlier visions, Hahn and Delitzsch in their continuation, and the last in his own complete and able commentary, share the same view, and maintain strongly the organic unity of the whole work. Birks. Attacks have been made by German critics upon the integrity of the whole book, different critics pronouncing different portions of the first part spurious, and many concurring to reject the second part altogether (the last twenty-seven chapters). Defenders of the integrity of the book have not, however, been wanting—e.g., Jahn, Hengstenberg, Möller, Kleinert, Havernick, Stier, Keil, Delitzsch (in Fbn.), etc. The circumstance mainly urged by those who gain-say Isaiah's authorship of this second part is the unquestionable fact that the author takes his standpoint at the close of the Babylonish captivity, as if that were his present, and from thence looks forward into his subsequent future. Other grounds which are alleged are confessedly secondary and external, and are really of no great weight. The most important of these is founded upon the difference of style. On the other hand, for the authenticity of the second part the following reasons may be advanced. (a) Externally. The unanimous testimony of Jewish and Christian tradition (cf. Ecclus. 48:24); the use apparently made of the second part in Jer. 10:1-16, verse 25; 25:31; 50, 51; in Ezek. 23:40, 41 and Zeph. 2:15; 3:10; the decree of Cyrus in Ezra 1:2-4, which plainly is founded on Isa. 44:28; 45:1, 13; and the evidence of the N. T. quotations (Matt. 3:3; Luke 4:17; Acts 8:28; Rom. 10:16, 20). (b) Internally. The unity of design which connects these last twenty-seven chapters with the preceding; the oneness of diction which pervades the whole book; the peculiar elevation and grandeur of style which characterize the second part as well as the first; the absence of any other name than Isaiah's claiming the authorship; the claims which the writer makes to the foreknowledge of the deliverance by Cyrus, which claims, on the opposing view, must be fraudulent; lastly, the Messianic predictions which mark its inspiration, and remove the chief ground of objection against its having been written by Isaiah. Ewald thus characterizes Isaiah: "Just as the subject requires, he has readily at command every several kind of style and every several change of delineation; and it is precisely this that, in point of language, establishes his greatness, as well as in general forms one of his most towering points of excellence. His only fundamental peculiarity is the lofty, majestic calmness of his style. His discourse varies into every complexion; it is tender and stern, dictating and threatening, mourning and again exulting in Divine joy, mocking and earnest; but ever at the right time it returns to its original elevation and repose, and never loses the clear ground-color of its Divine seriousness." In point of style we can find no difficulty in recognizing in the second part the presence of the same plastic genius as we discover in the first. And, altogether, the aesthetic criticism of all the different parts of the book brings us to the conclusion that the whole of the book originated in one mind, and that mind one of the most sublime and variously gifted instruments which the Spirit of God has ever employed to pour forth its voice upon the world. Dic. B. The book in its present form can be traced to the time of Ezra, or nearly, and from that time until what from its recency may be called the other day, its Isaianic authorship has been regarded as an established fact. The Hebrew nation, which guarded its Scriptures with an almost superstitious jealousy, ascribed the Book to Isaiah. Our Lord and His apostles never expressed a doubt, and spoke of the prophet Isaiah as the author of passages which they quoted from the second as well as the first part of the book. This historic evidence is corroborated by many considerations which confirm it. He is a bold man who in these circumstances can say that the generation which stood nearest to the origin of the book was mistaken as to its authorship, and that all the generations which followed failed to discover reasons, external or internal, for doubting the belief which had been entertained from the beginning, that Isaiah was the author of the whole book. Kennedy. The last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah form a continuous literary work. This work may perhaps be best described as a didactic poem, a series of sermons in rhythm, full of feeling and poetic fire, though lacking the progressive action which would be essential in an epic or in a drama. The regular rhythm of the poem is stately, occasionally relieved by the insertion of brief lyric pieces, with an entirely different movement. (See, for example, Isa. 42:10-12.) The poem has three main divisions, each of them containing three subdivisions, each of which consists of three parts. These twenty-seven parts are quite commonly called cantos, in the lack of a better term, by the scholars who have written on the Book of Isaiah. The twenty-seven cantos differ somewhat in their limits from the twenty-seven chapters, as the latter are now divided. Many hold that the poem was written from the point of view of Israel in Babylon, just at the beginning of the conquests of Cyrus. Some of these hold that this point of view was adopted predictively, by inspiration, and others, that the book was written in the time of Cyrus. I cannot accept this opinion. Some parts of the work certainly refer to the period in question—Isa. 44:24-28, and the opening verses of the next chapter, for example. But this is only an occasional mode of representation; the usual mode contemplates Israel as a political power, residing in Jerusalem and the cities of Judah. These twenty-seven cantos are very much more used in the New Testament than is any other continuous portion of the Old Testament of equal length. Some other sections, the middle chapters of Genesis, for example, or a selected tract of the Psalms, might rival it in the number of citations, but the citations from these chapters of Isaiah are longer and fuller, and the imagery of Isaiah is carried over into the New Testament, to an extent altogether without parallel in these other writings. The name of Isaiah, as a concordance shows, is ten times mentioned in the New Testament, in connection with these twenty-seven chapters; in six of these instances, the words cited are attributed, verbally at least, to the person Isaiah; and in the other four, to the Book of Isaiah. There is no historical testimony, either in the Bible or out of it, to the existence of any great prophet named Isaiah, except the one who lived in the days of Hezekiah. The evidence in the case seems to me to preponderate immensely in favor of the conclusion that the twenty-seven cantos are the literary work of the Isaiah who lived in Hezekiah's time. W. J. Beecher. (See Vol. VII., p. 475.) The earliest hint of any new discovery is commonly ascribed to Koppe, who in a note upon his German edition of Bishop Lowth's work suggests that the fiftieth chapter may have been written by Ezekiel or some other Jew in exile. A similar opinion was expressed about the same time by Döderlein and Eichhorn with respect to the entire latter part of Isaiah. The same hypothesis was then carried out in detail by Justi, and adopted by Bauer, Paulus, Bertholdt and Augusti; so that not long after the beginning of this century it was established as the current doctrine of the German schools. This revolution of opinion, though ostensibly the pure result of critical analysis, was closely connected with the growing unbelief in inspiration, and the consequent necessity of explaining away whatever appeared either to demonstrate or involve it. It must also be noted, as a circumstance of great importance in the history of this controversy, that the young theologians of Germany for fifty years were almost as uniformly taught and as constantly accustomed to assume the certainty of this first principle as their fathers had been to assume the contrary. This fact will enable us to estimate at something like their real value the pretensions to superior candor and impartiality advanced by the neological interpreters, and more especially by some of recent date, who are in truth as strongly biased by the prejudice of education as their immediate predecessors by the love of novelty and passion for discovery. All that need be added in relation to the arguments against the genuineness of these chapters drawn from their matter or contents, is the general observation that their soundness may be brought to the test by inquiring whether they do not either take for granted something as belonging to the prophecy which is not found there by a simple and natural interpretation, or proceed upon some general false principle, such as the denial of prophetic inspiration as impossible. If either of these flaws is fatal to the argument affected by it, how much more must it be vitiated by the coexistence of the two, which is the case in many minor arguments of this class, and emphatically true of that main argument to which they are auxiliary—viz., that Isaiah cannot be the writer of these chapters on account of their minute and constant reference to the Babylonian exile. The alleged fact and the inference are equally unfounded. The other main objection to the genuineness of these prophecies is founded not upon their matter, but their manner, or in other words, their diction, phraseology and style, which are said to be entirely unlike those of Isaiah. The rejection of these chapters was not forced upon the critics by a palpable diversity of style and diction, but such diversities were hunted up, laboriously and gradually brought to light, in order to justify the previous rejection. By parity of reasoning it may be foreseen that whoever cannot be convinced of the reality of inspiration will consider these detailed proofs of later date conclusive; while the reader who knows better, or at least has no misgivings upon that point, will as certainly pronounce them "trifles light as air." If we gain nothing more by this investigation, it is at least satisfactory to know that all depends upon a foregone conclusion, and that as to faith in such things no less than in higher matters, he that hath receiveth, and from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath. The objection drawn from indefinite diversities of tone and manner, such as a more flowing style and frequent repetitions, is so far from having any force, that the absence of these differences would in the circumstances of the case be well adapted to excite suspicion. In other words, Isaiah writing at a later period of life, and when withdrawn from active labor, with his view directed not to the present or a proximate futurity, but one more distant, and composing not a series of detached discourses, but a continuous, unbroken prophecy, not only may but must have differed from his former self as much as these two parts of the collection differ from each other. This antecedent probability is strengthened by the fact that similar causes have produced a still greater difference in some of the most celebrated writers, ancient and modern, who exhibit vastly more unlikeness to themselves in different parts of their acknowledged writings than the most microscopic criticism has been able to detect between the tone or manner of Isaiah's earlier and later prophecies. J. A. Alexander. And now we come to Isaiah's final prophecy, published by him some years afterward, probably toward the end of the lives of both Hezekiah and himself. In it, leaving the temporal fortunes of Judah far behind, he soars onward and upward to Christ and His kingdom. The criticism of these twenty-seven chapters has been the crux and opprobrium of modern scholarship. It started with the fullest belief in the unity of this wonderful work, a unity evident to the judgment of every attentive reader; but with equal confidence asserted that it was written by some second Isaiah at the close of the Babylonian captivity, when the growing power of Cyrus justified the use of his name in chap. 45 as the probable conqueror of Babylon. But a close comparison between the words and phrases used in the first thirty-nine and the last twenty-seven chapters showed a very extraordinary amount of resemblance. The language of the two portions is even in minute particulars the same; so, too, are the ideas. If this second part described Judea as desolate, such was the most common picture in the first; if it represented Zion as a wilderness, and God's holy and beautiful house as burned with fire (64:10, 11), though within a few verses it speaks of city and Temple as if still standing (66:6), as just before it had described the watchman standing upon the walls of Jerusalem, so had the prophet started with a quotation from Micah, part of which was that Jerusalem was to become heaps of ruins, and the Temple site a desolate mountain-top. But in fact all is ideal, and the desolation of the city and the burning of the Temple refer rather to the times of the Romans, when the lineal Israel was removed that the spiritual Israel might take its place, than to the capture of the city by Nebuchadnezzar. In fact, in reading it through as modern critics have done to discover by internal evidence proofs of the period when it was written, only two certain facts appear—the first, the mention of Cyrus; the second that the prophecy was written in Judea, and that the people at the time when it was written were given to Moloch worship. This second fact is proved by chap. 57:5.6. The Jews are there represented as sacrificing their children to Moloch in dried-up water-courses, the beds of what in the rainy season were rushing streams; for such is the meaning of the word there rendered "valleys." Now there were no such valleys in Babylonia, and no stones worn smooth by torrents, such as are common in Palestine; for the whole region is alluvial, and watered by canals from the Euphrates. Nor is there the slightest proof, but the contrary, that the horrible fanaticism which drove the people to sacrifice their offspring to Moloch in the days of Hezekiah and his successors ever existed among the exiles at Babylon. Criticism has therefore changed its front, and instead of two portions of Isaiah, one a collection of the most remarkable predictions of his younger days, the other the calm outpouring of his later years, written at a time when he had retired from active life, and was bowed down beneath the load of nearly eighty winters, it now dismembers all Isaiah, and distributes his mangled limbs among a host of prophets known and unknown, extending from Isaiah down to Maccabean times. Manasseh did but saw him asunder, and this was the sole feat attempted by modern critics at first. Having found this simple process impossible, they now hack him into small pieces. R. P. Smith. The objections against the critical hypothesis may be all reduced to this, that the oblivion of the author's name and history is more inexplicable, not to say incredible, than anything about the other doctrine can be to a believer in prophetic inspiration. This is a difficulty which no ingenuity has ever yet been able to surmount. That a writer confessedly of the highest genius, living at one of the most critical junctures in the history of Israel, when the word of God began to be precious and prophetic inspiration rare, should have produced such a series of prophecies as this, with such effects upon the exiles and even upon Cyrus as tradition ascribes to them, and then have left them to the admiration of all future ages, without so much as a trace of his own personality about them, is a phenomenon of literary history compared with which the mystery of Junius is as nothing. It would be so even if we had no remains of the same period to compare with these; but how immensely is the improbability enhanced by the fact that the other prophets of the Exile, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, are not only well known and easily identified, but minutely accurate in the chronological specifications of their prophecies, a feature absolutely wanting in these chapters, though alleged to be the work of a contemporary writer. It is in vain to say, with Ewald, that the suppression of the author's name and the oblivion of his person may be accounted for by the peculiar circumstances of the times, when the other writings of those times still extant not only fail to prove what is alleged, but prove the very opposite. Even this, however, though sufficiently incredible, is still not all we are required to believe; for we must also grant that these anonymous though admirable writings were attached to those of a prophet who flourished in the preceding century, and with whose productions they are said to have scarcely anything in common, and that this mysterious combination took place so early as to lie beyond the oldest tradition of the Hebrew canon, and was so blindly acquiesced in from the first that not the faintest intimation of another author or another origin was ever heard of for two thousand years, when the Higher Criticism first discovered that the prophecies in question were the work of many authors, and then (no less infallibly) that they were really the work of only one, but (still infallibly) that this one could not be Isaiah! To this intrinsic want of credibility now add, as positive considerations, the ancient and uniform tradition of the Jews; the testimony of the general title, which must be regarded as inclusive of these chapters, in the absence of all countervailing evidence; the influence exerted by these prophecies, according to Josephus, on Cyrus and the Restoration, implying their antiquity and previous notoriety; the recognition of the whole book as Isaiah's by the Son of Sirach (48:22-25); and the indiscriminate citation of its different parts in the New Testament. Again, to these external testimonies may be added, as internal proofs, the writer's constant representation of himself as living before some of the events which he describes, and as knowing them by inspiration; his repeated claim to have predicted Cyrus and the Restoration long before the first appearances of those events; the obvious allusions to Jerusalem and Judah as the writer's home, to the Temple and the ritual as still subsisting, and to idolatry as practised by the people, which the Higher Critics can evade only by asserting that the Jews did not cease to be idolaters in Babylon; the historical allusions to the state of the world with which the writer was familiar, precisely similar to those in the genuine Isaiah; the very structure of the prophecies relating to the Exile, clear enough to be distinctly verified, and yet not so minute as a contemporary writer must have made them; and lastly, the identity of Messiah here described with the Messiah of the undisputed prophecies. If the Higher Critics can find nothing in the arguments alleged against them to make inspiration and prophetic foresight credible, they have certainly done still less to drive us from our position, that Isaiah's having written this book is unspeakably more probable than any other supposition. A. With regard to Isaiah's authorship there was for nearly eighteen hundred years only one opinion in the Christian Church and the Jewish nation. It was not until men had ceased to believe in Christ that they began to question the latter prophecy of Isaiah. The Buxtorfs, the Carpzovs, Glassius, Gussetius, Cocceius, Venema, Vitringa, Schultens, Danz, the Michaelis, acquiesced in the judgment of antiquity. Even Paulus says that the diction is as pure as in the other parts of Isaiah. Eichhorn adduced no instances of later language. Bertholdt confesses that there are no traces of later usage. The first, and the great objection still, is that Cyrus is mentioned by name. When men came to teach, either that God could not know beforehand the name of one of His creatures, or if He could He could not or would not communicate it before the existence of that creature, they necessarily thought that the prediction concerning the conque, or of Babylon must have been written after his appearance. The denial of the genuineness came first, the criticism came after, similar to that famous course of law, which first condemned and executed, and afterward proceeded to trial. Yet the process has led to beneficial results. The Rationalist dogmatic criticism has been subjected to a thorough examination by Hengstenberg, Havernik, Kleinert, Drechsler, Keil and many others. The objections have been fairly met, and the claims of Isaiah to the latter chapters vindicated on various grounds; as, for example, the plain references to those chapters in the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah; the circumstances of the times described, so exactly agreeing to the days of Isaiah and not to the close of the Exile; the historical relations; the similarity of style and manner and the peculiarities of diction; the entire tone and coloring, not to mention other evidences external and internal. Indeed, Ewald and Bleck have made a fatal rent in the adverse criticism by confessing that the passage chaps. 56:9-57:11 was written before the Exile. "This passage," they say, "may be received with the highest probability as a prophetic oracle uttered before the Exile perhaps by Isaiah himself, certainly when the Jewish nation still existed, as it is only on this supposition that the contents and composition can be understood." . . . It is a singular coincidence that those portions of the Old Testament which are most essential to New Testament theology, as the Pentateuch, Daniel and the latter part of Isaiah, are just those parts which Rationalist criticism has selected as the favorite fields on which to display its skill. Those Messianic predictions which it can explain with plausibility as expressing Jewish hopes of earthly grandeur and prosperity, and incompatible with the teaching of Christ, it pronounces genuine. The prophecies which represent the Son of man as a heavenly judge coming in the clouds of heaven (Dan. 7); the Messiah as cut off (Dan. 9); Sion's King as meek and lowly and riding upon an ass (Zech. 9); the good shepherd sold for thirty pieces of silver (Zech. 11); pierced by the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Zech. 12:10); despised and rejected of men, cut off out of the land of the living, one upon whom the Lord hath laid the iniquities of us all (Isa. 53), are just the predictions which it pronounces to be ungenuine. All this is in direct opposition to the teaching of the New Testament, which especially ascribes the whole prophecy of Isaiah to him as the writer, and cites as being fulfilled in our Lord, His sufferings and His salvation. McCaul. We are asked to believe "that a writer of transcendent genius admitted by all competent judges to surpass even the greatest writers among the Hebrews, with the exception alone, if exception it be, of Isaiah, grew up among the exiles in Babylon and attracted to himself, as he must have done, by this remarkable prediction (chaps. 44-66) the attention of all his contemporaries and yet afterward dropped so entirely into oblivion that his very name and memory perished. Yet this is but part of the wonder. We are called upon, in addition, to believe that in the midst of a people banished from their native land and compelled to adopt the dialectic peculiarities of the language of their foreign oppressors—which so mingled with, and finally superseded their own, that their original tongue was all but forgotten (Neh. 8:7, 8)—a poet was born and brought up who yet attained to such purity of diction and command of the ancient Hebrew as has never been surpassed, if even equalled!" Forbes. There is no ground for attributing these prophecies to two authors. It is the same Isaiah, the same ambassador from God, now hoary and tremulous, yet not soured in temper nor sickened by a life-long ministration among a gainsaying people, but benign and hopeful as always, who sees in the age to come the wide world "blossoming as the rose." On every page there is the same protest for truth, justice and mercy, between man and man; there is the same message of wrath for the oppressor and the cruel, and the same righteous care for the widow, the fatherless, the bondsman, the stranger. On every page there are the same elements of what we acknowledge to be a true theology. Isaac Taylor. The spirit and moral portraiture are identical in both parts of Isaiah. It is full, as no other book of the Old Testament is, of the magnificence of our human hopes, and of the strange and inconceivable ways in which they were to be secured and fulfilled; and it is unrolled before us like the march of some profound and overpowering musical composition, full of all changeful and unexpected movements, strains of sadness and awe interwoven with thrilling joy and piercing tenderness, appeals the most pathetic with bursts of wrath and terror, but all resulting in a whole of incomparable grandeur. But we may also see in it the mirror of the mind of him who was charged with this wonderful disclosure of the counsels and purposes of God. In this awful volume, in which thought and imagination were allowed to master "the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be," in which he has embodied all that most concerns mankind for the present and the future, and in which the tremendous severity of judgment mingles so strangely with a gracious and inexpressible sweetness which even still takes us by surprise—through all these public and divinely inspired utterances we may trace, with a fulness and richness and depth unequalled in the Old Testament, the personal lineaments of one who not only by faith and self-discipline, but by thought and knowledge, had become fitted to be a saint of the company of that Redeemer, whose person, whose coming, whose life of suffering and glory he was given to foretell, and in whose perfection man was to be made perfect. Church. Affirmatively, my reasons for holding and maintaining that one and the same Isaiah wrote both the earlier and later prophecies of this book are: 1. The internal evidence lying in the book itself. The author's cast of mind, his poetic conceptions, his wonderfully bold, glowing, yet chastened imagination, his manner of predicting future events, his style of poetry and his style as a writer—all combine to identify him as the author of the entire book—of the later as well as the earlier portions. As the world never produced but one Homer and but one Milton, so it never produced but one Isaiah. That two men should appear in history of such transcendent and peculiar genius, towering so high in their line above all other authors, yet so like each other that the great mass of readers see no distinction, and naturally account them the same man, is simply incredible. Even the fact of real prophecy is not more decisively supernatural. For, let it be considered, men of such surpassing genius are always original; are truly Divine creations. No second Isaiah could possibly be a copy of the first—could never be brought out by any supposable amount of effort at imitation. The witness borne by the unsophisticated common sense of the masses is triumphantly decisive. Not one reader in a thousand, in passing from the former portion to the latter, would suspect that he was passing from one author to another. And this may be asserted of the Hebrew reader as well as of the English. In fact the main criteria of authorship are those great salient points of an author's mind which determine his cast of thought and consequently of expression and style, and which are patent to readers of average sagacity. The fact, therefore, that the masses who have read this book have seen no reason to question that one Isaiah wrote the whole, becomes a valid proof that he did. Again, of the fifteen other Hebrew prophets whose writings have come down to us, not one bears a hundredth part so much resemblance to Isaiah as the author of the later prophecies in this book bears to the author of the earlier. That is, the same Isaiah who wrote the entire book has idiosyncrasies of character and of style which no other Hebrew prophet shares with him—to which no other even approximates. Again, as already suggested, if it were a fact that some pseudo-Isaiah, living during the Exile, wrote the latter portion, then the similarity between him and the real Isaiah in respect to cast of mind, style of thought and expression would be a greater miracle than prophetic vision itself. Hence, those critics who espouse this doctrine of a second Isaiah, for the sake of avoiding the admission of supernatural agency in prophecy, have another case of supernatural phenomena to dispose of not a whit less stubborn than that of prophetic vision. In regard to the peculiar and salient points of Isaiah's style, it is scarcely possible by any analysis of particulars to give the reader any stronger impression of the unity of the book than a careful perusal will make on any appreciative mind; yet the following specifications may aid the honest inquirer. Note his boldness in the use of the figure which rhetoricians call "apostrophe"—e.g., invoking "the heavens and the earth." "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth," etc. (1:2 and 34:1). In the later prophecies, "Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth," etc. (41:1; 45:8 and 49:13). Note also one peculiar manner of predicting future events, not by simply affirming that they will be indicatively, but by commanding that they be done, or that the party in question do them imperatively. Of this sort, in the earlier prophecies, see chaps. 10:30; 13:2; 14:29, 31; 21:2, 5; 23:1, 2, etc. In the later prophecies, compare chaps. 44:27; 47:1, 2, 5; 49:9; 51:9; 52:1, 2 and 60:1. This list might be much increased. Again, observe how naturally his strong emotions seek utterance in song. On great occasions of joy, in view of inspiring truths, he calls for songs of praise, and sometimes gives the very words of the song to be sung. In the earlier prophecies, see chaps. 12:1-6; 25:9 and 26:1-4. In the later, chaps. 42:10-12; 44:23; 48:20; 49:13 and 52:9. And finally, as an instance of somewhat minute figures, take his allusions to the potter and his clay; in the former part, chap. 29:16, and in the latter, chaps. 45:9 and 64:8. Hence, the internal evidence becomes an argument for the unity of this book which cannot be gainsayed. Even the German critics (e.g., Ewald), who insist most strenuously that not Isaiah, but some "great unknown" wrote the last twenty-seven chapters, yet ascribe to him essentially the same qualities of mind and of style as to the true Isaiah in the first portion. This frank but inevitable admission is really the strongest internal evidence that the book all comes from one Isaiah. The actual differences of thought and of style are easily accounted for. In this latter portion Isaiah has passed on beyond the scenes of the life of Ahaz and beyond the thrilling events of the reign and personal life of Hezekiah. His external surroundings are therefore very much changed. Enjoying a serene old age, he lives far onward in the better days of Zion. But the man remains the same. The author, the poet, the prophet, the Christian—all are still the same. His conceptions of the Messiah and of the wide extent of His peaceful reign are the same. Lapse of years, the influence of age and the great change in his circumstances, account amply for all the real changes in his style. Hence the inference comes with resistless force that the same Isaiah wrote both portions. 2. The testimony of Jewish authority is unwavering. The compilers of these writings, living far back toward those times, have given us the whole book as the prophecies of one and the same Isaiah. No counter voice has ever been heard from the Jewish fathers—e.g., from those who translated the Septuagint, or those who brought out the Chaldee Paraphrasts, or who have in any way expressed the opinions of the ancient Jews respecting the authorship of this book. In any similar written productions, such testimony would be accounted decisive. The legitimate force of this argument will be seen yet more clearly by supposing the theory of two Isaiahs to be true. Let it then be supposed that about the time of the Restoration, a second Isaiah lived and wrote the last twenty-seven chapters of what comes to us as the book of the prophet Isaiah. This supposition may seem to be easily made; but it creates a demand for an answer to such questions as the following: Who was this Isaiah No. 2? What was his name? How came he to be a "great unknown?" Was he a Jew, living among the Jews of the Exile? So the supposition must assume; but why has he no place and no record in Jewish history? How does it happen that his writings exhibit no traces of Chaldean figures and symbols, such as abound in Ezekiel and Daniel? How could such a man, so great, of qualities so commanding, of influence necessarily so pervading, live and die without making even a ripple on the surface of Jewish history? A contemporary almost necessarily of Ezekiel, certainly of Daniel, at a time when Jewish prophets were rare, were much sought for, and certain to come to the surface of society and of history, too; how can the theory be accounted for, that one of the greatest of all Jewish prophets lived and died unknown to history? But even this is not all. How came his writings to appear in the accepted sacred canon without his name? How came they to be appended to the prophecies of the great Isaiah with no note or hint of their being written by a different author, living one hundred and seventy years later? Who perpetrated this fraud upon the Jewish canon; this fraud upon the Jewish nation and upon the whole religious world? Was this done by Ezra and his associates? Living so near this time, almost within this very age, they could not have done it ignorantly. They must have known all the facts of the case. Did they perpetrate this literary fraud upon the true Isaiah? Were they inspired to do this? Can any of the German critics assign any plausible reason for such a fraud on the Church universal and on mankind? Have they thought of attempting an answer to these and similar questions? Should they not be aware that the Christian feeling, not to say the common sense of men, will and ought to demand a fair answer to all these questions and to many more of the same sort? 3. The authority of the New Testament is most abundant, and with all who accept the testimony of Christ and of His apostles, is perfectly decisive. Thus, Matthew (3:3) quotes from Isa. 40:3-5, affirming, "This is what was spoken of by the prophet Esaias." Again (12:17-21), he quotes from Isa. 42:1-4, here also endorsing Isaiah as the author of this chapter. "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet." John (12:38) ascribes to Isaiah the words found (Isa. 53:1), just as in the next three verses he credits Isaiah with another passage found (Isa. 6:9, 10). In his view, Isaiah wrote chap. 53 as truly as chap. 6—i.e., the latter portion of this book as really as the former. Philip (Acts 8:27-35) met the Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah the prophet, and found the passage to be this very fifty-third chapter. Paul (Rom 10:16) ascribes the first verse of this chapter to Isaiah, and in Rom. 10:20, 21 ascribes to him also the first two verses of chap. 65. And, finally, our Lord Himself (Luke 4 : 17-19) read in the synagogue service from the Book of Isaiah, the passage standing (Isa. 61 : 1, 2). Did Jesus Christ and His inspired apostles know whereof they affirmed, or were they mistaken in attributing these chapters to Isaiah? Do the critics in question know more and better on this point than they? Is it even supposable that inspired men endorsed these as the words of Isaiah without being aware of their mistake; or that, knowing the universal mistake of the Jews in this particular, they did not regard it as sufficiently important to be exposed and rectified? Those who shall carefully and truly weigh all this testimony in support of the genuineness of Isa., chaps. 40-66, will conclude that it cannot be ruled out or overbalanced by the naked assumption that the Infinite God could not, or, being able, would not inspire the real Isaiah to write what now stands in these last twenty-seven chapters. For the controversy comes in the end to this very question: Is prophecy from God? Those who admit this will have no question as to the genuineness of the entire Book of Isaiah. Those who deny real inspiration have a stubborn witness to dispose of in this ancient document bearing the name of the Book of Isaiah the prophet. Fair criticism has never impeached the unity of this book, and has never set aside or rebutted its testimony to the fact of real prophetic inspiration—and never can. The testimonies here adduced from the New Testament show conclusively that, up to that period, no thought of a second Isaiah had yet entered the minds of men. In fact this notion was never broached until a century ago, in 1779-80, by the German critic Koppe, H. C. These chapters do indeed make mention of the Babylonish exile, the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, and the release of the Jews from captivity. But this does not disprove the authorship of Isaiah, except on the assumption that prophetic foresight of specific events is impossible. And it is to be observed: 1. That the author of these chapters nowhere connects himself, in any way, with the Exile, by any mention of localities, incidents, or circumstances belonging to it, as is done, for example, by Ezekiel. 2. While specific mention is made of Babylon, Cyrus and the restoration of the Jews, no such particulars are given as might be expected from one living in the midst of the scenes referred to. The language employed is mostly figurative and general, such as is suggestive of a prophet surveying a future period of calamity and trial, rather than one who is depicting what he has witnessed and experienced. 3. In repeated passages the state of things implied is that which existed before the Exile. Thus the Temple and its services (Isa. 43 : 22-24 ; 65 : 11 ; 66 : 1-3, 6, 20) ; the people seeking alliance with foreign monarchs (Isa. 57 : 9, 11) ; the threatened punishment not yet inflicted (Isa. 56 : 9-57 : 2). 4. Frequent rebukes of idolatry, and passages in which its folly and absurdity are shown. And this in forms which prevailed before the Exile, as the Moloch abomination in the valley of Hinnom (Isa. 57 : 5-7), or rites derived from Egypt rather than Babylon (Isa. 65 : 3, 4 ; 66 : 17). 5. Numerous passages in which the deity of Jehovah is proved, as opposed to idols, who can predict nothing and accomplish nothing, whereas Jehovah both predicted Cyrus long before and raised him up for the deliverance of His people (Isa. 41 : 1, 21-29 ; 42 : 9 ; 43 : 9-12 ; 45 : 3, 4). It is alleged that these events were too remote to be of any present interest to the people in Isaiah's time; but they did not know, and there is no evidence that he knew, that any long interval would elapse before their occurrence. At the outset of his ministry he had predicted the desolation of the land and the exile of the people (Isa. 6 : 11, 12), to be accomplished by a powerful and distant nation (Isa. 5 : 26 sqq.), which, at a later time, he declared would be Babylon (Isa. 39 : 5-7), as did also his contemporary, Micah (Mic. 3 : 12 ; 4 : 10). It was promised that this should not take place in Hezekiah's days (Isa. 39 : 8), whose life was to be prolonged fifteen years (Isa. 38 : 5) ; but no assurance had been given beyond that time. It is alleged that the people are throughout these chapters uniformly represented as actually in exile. But this is a mistake. The prophet here transports himself in thought—as the prophets often do—into the midst of the scenes which he foretells; but his actual present prior to the Exile shines through in numerous passages, as has already been shown. In Isa. 45 : 4-13 he looks forward to the capture of Babylon as future; in Isa. 46 : 1, 2, he looks back upon it as past; in Isa. 51 : 3 (Rev. Ver.) the desolations of Zion are already repaired; in Isa. 53 the humiliation and vicarious death of the Messiah are described as having already taken place. The prophet thus takes his stand successively at different points in the future, showing that these represent not his real, but his ideal, present. It is said that there are many words and phrases in these chapters which are not found in the acknowledged writings of Isaiah, and vice versa. But Dr. Stanley Leathes has shown ("The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ," Boyle Lectures for 1868, pp. 282, 283, quoted by Dr. Edersheim in his "Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah," pp. 283, 284) that there is ten times the reason, on the ground of diversity of diction, for assuming a deutero-Milton or Tennyson as for imagining a deutero-Isaiah. W. H. Green. # Internal Evidence from the Imagery. In the books of the Old Testament the scenery of Palestine is reflected as the mountain which towers above the valley and the cloud that crowns the peak are mirrored in the lake which lies below. If internal evidence be proof at all there is proof abundant that the Pentateuch and all the chapters of Isaiah were written amid the hills of Palestine, in sight of its rocky ridges, with orchard of olive and grove of palm in full view. Interior. With the exception of a very few detached passages, the most conspicuous of these passages being the prophecy concerning Cyrus (chaps. 44, 45), the Book of Isaiah throughout assumes that the Jews were living in their own country when it was written. All the coloring is thoroughly pre-exilic. W. J. Beecher. The latter half of the Book of Isaiah, whose authorship is in question, is a composition abounding in metaphors, imagery, and allusions to natural scenery; and these must have been determined by the physical features of the country in which it had its birth. If not written, as it purports to be, by Isaiah, the alternate theory is that it was written by some one, at the close of the Exile, living in Babylon. No two countries could be much more dissimilar in physical features than Palestine and Babylon; the one a land of rugged, often barren mountains, with little green valleys winding among them, with narrow plains and vine-clad slopes, and cattle upon a thousand hills; the other a flat, irrigated plain, so level that the monarch must build lofty artificial structures to simulate and suggest the mountains for his mountain-bred queen. We have before us, then, a sufficiently practicable problem. Given a certain piece of composition to determine by the figures and illustrations whether it was written in the mountains of Judea or the level stretches of Babylon. We may begin the examination of the document, then, with the understanding that, if written in Babylon, it could not differ very radically in imagery and symbolism from the ordinary native literature, and must be conditioned by the physical features of the landscape and life in Babylon. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 41:1 KEEP silence before me, O islands; and let the peoples renew their strength: let 2 them come near; then let them speak: let us come near together to judgement. Who hath raised up one from the east, whom he calleth in righteousness to his foot? he giveth nations before him, and maketh him rule over kings; he giveth them as the dust to his sword, as 3 the driven stubble to his bow. He pursueth them, and passeth on safely; even by a way 4 that he had not gone with his feet. Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations 5 from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last, I am he. The isles saw, and 6 feared; the ends of the earth trembled: they drew near, and came. They helped every one 7 his neighbour; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth the anvil, saying of the soldering, It is good: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved. 8 But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend; 9 thou whom I have taken hold of from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the corners thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee and not cast thee away; 10 fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that are incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: 12 they that strive with thee shall be as nothing, and shall perish. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contend with thee: they that war against thee shall be as 13 nothing, and as a thing of nought. For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; 14 I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, 16 and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the 17 LORD, thou shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel. The poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst; I the LORD will answer them, I the God of Israel 18 will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. 19 I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I 20 will set in the desert the fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together: that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it. 21 Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of 22 Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and declare unto us what shall happen: declare ye the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; 23 or shew us things for to come. Declare the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it 24 together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you. 25 I have raised up one from the north, and he is come; from the rising of the sun one that calleth upon my name: and he shall come upon rulers as upon mortar, and as the potter 26 treadeth clay. Who hath declared it from the beginning, that we may know? and before-time, that we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is none 27 that sheweth, yea, there is none that heareth your words. I first will say unto Zion, Behold, 28 behold them; and I will give to Jerusalem one that bringeth good tidings. And when I look, there is no man; even among them there is no counsellor, that, when I ask of them, can 29 answer a word. Behold, all of them, their works are vanity and nought: their molten images are wind and confusion. Chap. 41. Until the ends of Israel's national existence are accomplished, that existence must continue, in spite of hostile nations and their gods, who shall all perish sooner than the chosen people (verse 1-16). However feeble Israel may be in himself Jehovah will protect him, and raise up the necessary instruments for his deliverance and triumph (verses 17-29). 1. Having proved the impotence of idols in a direct address to Israel, Jehovah now summons the idolaters themselves to enter into controversy with Him. The challenge is a general one directed to the whole heathen world, and islands is a poetical variation for lands or at the most for maritime lands or sea-coasts. Silence in this connection implies attention or the fact of listening, which is expressed in Job 33:31. A. 2. It was God, the just avenger of His people, acting as the genius or personification of justice, who raised up Cyrus and gave him his great power. The last clause indicates the tremendous energy of his arms. God will make the nations as dust before his sword. Abruptly the first question, "Who raised up," etc., breaks off before it is fully expressed, and the Lord answers it by putting in the foreground the idea that His own avenging justice was aroused to bring out a mighty conqueror for the deliverance of His people. "Called him to His foot" is the Hebrew phrase for service and especially in war. H. C. The Divine appointment, leading, protection and guidance were never more strongly manifested than in the case of Cyrus, whose career, to fulfil which he was raised up, was marked out for him before he was born. It is interesting to observe that in the prophecies of Isaiah there is a gradual preparation for the distinct production of Cyrus by name. In the thirteenth chapter, entitled "The Burden of Babylon," he and his warriors are produced as the ministers of the Lord's judgment upon Babylon, without being named and without Cyrus himself being characterized by any distinguishing epithet. But here he is indicated as "the righteous man out of the East," and in the final prophecy (chaps. 44-46) the Lord not only names Cyrus, but calls him His "shepherd," His "anointed" and "the man that executeth My counsel," forming, taken together, a splendid series of characterizing epithets, such as never in Scripture are given to any but the most illustrious of the Hebrew race. Kitto. 3. This the briefest possible history of the wars of Cyrus, pursuing his fleeing enemies and still passing on with safety to himself, for no nation made an effective stand against him. The last clause expresses the amazing rapidity of his movements by saying that he did not seem to pass over the road with his feet, but rather to fly. 6,7. Now the time has come for the idolatrous nations of the world to bring forward their idol gods and invoke them to show their prowess and to measure arms with the Almighty. H. C.—Both verses contain a sarcastic description of the vain appeal of the idolaters to the protection of their tutelary deities. The sarcasm consists in making the idolaters dependent upon idols, which are themselves dependent upon common workmen and the most trivial mechanical operations for their form and their stability. Hence the particular enumeration of the different artificers employed in the manufacture of these deities. A. 8-10. In verses 8 and 9 the Lord accosts His people and describes them, showing what He has done for them. In verse 10 He reaches the substance of what He would say—an exhortation to dismiss all fear and be assured that as God had helped them, so He would still. Verse 9 refers specially to God's calling the seed of Abraham out from among idolaters (see Josh. 24:2), gathering them from remote lands, Mesopotamia, or Egypt. H. C. 10-20. The scope of these verses is to silence the fears and encourage the faith of the servants of God in their distresses; perhaps it is intended, in the first place, for the support of God's Israel in captivity; but all that faithfully serve God, "through patience and comfort of this Scripture, may have hope." And it is addressed to Israel as a single person, that it might the more easily and readily be accommodated and applied by every Israelite indeed to himself. That is a word of caution, counsel and comfort, which is so often repeated, "Fear thou not;" and again (verse 13), "Fear not," and (verse 14), "Fear not, thou worm Jacob; fear not the threatenings of the enemy, doubt not the promises of thy God; fear not that thou shalt perish in thine affliction, or that the promise of thy deliverance shall fail." It is against the mind of God that His people should be a timorous people. H. 10. "Fear thou not, for I am with thee," here is an antidote for all fears. When tempted to fret because of withholdings or inflictions, or apparent inequalities of providence, let the words "Be not dismayed, for I am thy God," calm and satisfy the soul. And if faintness in sore trial or difficult service steals over the soul, remember who hath said, "I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness." Cox. The soul which has such a relation to God as that God says to him, "I am thy God," can never die. The mere fact that between me and God, through His Spirit, there has come this close, intimate, marvellous connection, is the great guarantee of everlasting life. It is impossible that there should ever come the cessation and the interruption of that fellowship. All religion has immortality in it. God will not slay His own child. If the Spirit is mine here, then the spirit in which that Spirit dwells is gifted with immortality by its indwelling; and the Temple that God has entered shall never be desecrated or cast down. Look at this twofold encouragement, "I am with thee and I am thy God," and "I will strengthen thee, help thee, and uphold thee." Look at the majesty with which the sovereign autocratic I, I, I, keeps rolling forth. God puts His own great being as a shelter and a breakwater between us and that great sea of danger without. Get behind that great Breakwater, for it is quiet riding within. I, I, My own magnificent personality, that is the only thing that can make you strong. Only one antagonist can master fear, and that is faith. And only one Being can evoke faith, and the old word has it in all its beauty and simplicity, "I will trust," and so I will not be afraid. If I trust I find out the "soul of goodness in the thing that is evil," and I cannot be afraid of what He sends me. "I will be with thee, be not dismayed, for I am thy God." And that is beautiful! A single man can lay hold of God, can put out an unpresumptuous hand and say, "I claim Thee for mine!" A. M. What the soul needs is not occasional, but perpetual aid. Its wants never intermit, its enemies are always at hand, its temptations are omnipresent. The moment never comes when it can stand alone. Essential weakness is its own nature, separate from God. Its safety is in a wondrous capacity to be filled, inspired and energized by God. To be thus divinely possessed and used is its true life and power. But that the life and power may be continuous, the Divine indwelling must be perpetual. W. W. Patton. Those who believe in Christ have the promise of eternal life in Him. In hours of relaxed diligence they perhaps let it slip; but under real pressure faith revives and grasps the promise again. They may be humbled and distressed, and they will acknowledge that they have brought this on themselves; but they are persuaded that He is faithful who promised, and so will not cast them off. D. F. I may be faint and weary, but my God cannot. I may fluctuate and alter as to my frames and feelings, but my Redeemer is unchangeably the same always. I might utterly fail and come to nothing, if left to myself. But I cannot be so left to myself. He will renew my strength, either by changing my weakness into strength or by enduing me with His own power. He is wise to foresee and provide for all my dangers. He is rich to relieve and succor me in all my wants. He is faithful to perfect and perform all His promises. He is blessed and immortal, to enrich my poor desponding soul with blessedness and immortality. A. Serle. The grace which God gives is for the real occasions of life. To forget this is to make the whole of our moral and religious life morbid and unreal. When God sends us work, He sends us strength to do it; and when He sends us trouble, He sends us strength to bear it. For troubles which we imagine for ourselves, and for work we imagine for ourselves, we must go for strength to our imagination—not to Him. R. W. Dale.—There are only two salves for sorrow, prayer and work. Trust in God and keep doing are the best recipes for every human care. There are no wounds of the spirit which they will not heal. Strength, fortitude, patience, resignation, are as sure to be vouchsafed to the sufferers who earnestly pray for them, and at the same time are diligent in the performance of their temporal tasks, as the harvest is to follow the planting of the seed. Anon. 14. "Fear not, saith the Lord." We see there is no remedy for this fear but the voice and word of the Lord; only His encouragement can hold us up in the conflict, and no created power will bear us up in the strait; His voice and word give boldness and courage. Let us not, because of our unworthiness, refuse the promise. If it were for our deservings, it were not grace. Labor indeed to be sensible of thy weakness and unworthiness, that thou may the better take the promise. Seeing God knows thy weakness, unworthiness and every evil that troubles thee, and meets them with, "Fear not," take heart—strive on! Dickson. The trouble which we bear rightly with God's help gives new hope. If we have made our sorrow an occasion for learning, by living experience, somewhat more of His exquisitely varied and ever-ready power to aid and bless, then it will teach us firmer confidence in these inexhaustible resources, which we have thus once more proved. If in my sorrow I have been able to keep quiet because I have had hold of God's hand, and if in that unstruggling submission I have found that from His hand I have been upheld and had strength above my own infused into me, then my memory will give the threads with which Hope weaves her bright web. I build upon two things, God's unchangeableness and His help already received; and upon these foundations I may wisely and safely rear a palace of hope which shall never prove a castle in the air. The past, when it is God's past, is the surest pledge of the future. Because He has been with us in six troubles, therefore we may be sure that in seven He will not forsake us. The light of hope is the brightness, the face of God. A. M. 14. The word goel (redeemer) would suggest to a Hebrew reader the ideas of a near kinsman (Lev. 25 : 24, 25) and of deliverance from bondage by the payment of a ransom. Its highest application occurs here and in Job 19 : 25. The reference to the Son of God, although it might not be perceptible of old, is now rendered necessary by the knowledge that this act even under the old dispensation is always referred to the same person of the Trinity. A. "The Holy One of Israel." This title occurs fourteen times in the earlier, fifteen times in these later prophecies, elsewhere only twice in Jeremiah, and also in Ps. 71 : 22 ; 78 : 41. It is here the seal, first of God's threatenings, and next of His glorious promises. The title is both emphatic, and inwrought into the texture of the prophecy (41 : 14, 16, 20 ; 43 : 3, 14 ; 45 : 11 ; 55 : 5 ; 60 : 14). Birks. 15. The image presented is the strange but strong one of a down-trodden worm reducing hills to powder, the essential idea being that of a weak and helpless object overcoming the most disproportionate obstacles by strength derived from another. In verse 16 this figure is carried out and completed. The mountains, having been completely threshed, are winnowed, in the usual Oriental mode, by being thrown to the wind. Israel, on the other hand, is safe, not through his own strength, but in that of his protector, in whom—i.e., in his relation to whom he finds his highest happiness and honor. A. 15. It matters not what strength they have or want to whom the promise is made, for the whole strength stands in the promise. And when God threatens, it matters not what strength be in the party threatened; for albeit they were as mountains, yet He who threatens can make a worm thresh them; God's flail can ding them all in dust. Look never how weak or how strong those are to whom God speaks, for the weak shall be strong, and the strong shall become weak. 16. "And thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, shalt glory in the Holy One." Rejoice is for the time bygone and present, and glory is for the time to come; which lets us see, that the fruit or right use-making of our delivery past, is to make us rejoice for the present, and glory for the time to come. And indeed, the godly, if they will not look to themselves, but to God, may rejoice for time bygone, and glory for time to come. Dickson. 17. There is nothing in the text or context to deprive the passage of its genuine and full sense as a general promise, tantamount to saying, When My people feel their need, I will be present to supply it. Such a promise those in exile could not fail to find appropriate in their case; but it is equally appropriate in others, and especially to the glorious deliverance of the Church from the fetters of the old economy. A. 19,20. He plants all the choicest trees in precisely the most unlikely situations, where you would least of all expect them. With trees, will return even to the ancient deserts rains, vegetable growths, fertility, verdure and beauty. God makes these extraordinary superhuman changes that all men may know that this is His almighty hand, working to new-create where need be, for the relief, comfort and joy of His trusting people. 21,22. The conception of a public hearing as before a tribunal appears again. The Lord demands of His opponents that they do their best; bring forward their strongest proofs; and especially He calls on them now to show if they have prescience of the future—the power of prophecy. 23. The challenge, "Do good, or do evil," we must consider as addressed to idol gods. Let them really show that they do anything, good or evil, and they shall have all credit for it. The implication here—affirmed in the strongest form in verse 24—is that they are mere nothings, utterly powerless for any result, even the least possible, good or evil. H. C. 25. I have raised up one from the north, etc.** Cyrus is represented here as coming from "the north," and from the "east;" he was born of two different people, the Persians by his father, the Medes by his mother. Persia lay to the east of Babylon; Media northward, and Cyrus's army (of which the Medes made a considerable part) is described (Jer. 50: 9, 41) as coming out of the north. For his profession of belief in the great "God of heaven and earth," see Ezra 1: 2. Prideaux. At a very early age Cyrus was removed to Media, lying on the north of Babylon; and it was from Media that he came down at the head of victorious hosts upon the doomed capital. The prophet thus sees in a vision a prince of eastern birth, marching upon the city from the north, and that his name was Cyrus (45: 3). Phelps. 26. The meaning of the whole verse is that the events in question had been foretold by Jehovah and no other. A.—The whole description is true not only in reference to these old idolaters, but to critics in modern times, who see only forgeries after the event in these Divine prophecies. Birks. 28. The verse is full of laconic and elliptical expressions, which however may be easily completed, as will appear from the following brief paraphrase. I will look (once more to see whether any of these idols or their prophet can predict the future), but there is no one (who attempts it). From among (all) these (I seek for a response, but there is none). Yet once more I will ask them, and (perhaps) they will return an answer. The same application of the verb to the prediction of the future occurs in chap. 44: 26. 29. This is at once the termination of the sentence begun in the last clause of the verse preceding, and the summary conclusion of the whole preceding controversy as to the divinity of any gods except Jehovah. To the usual expressions of nonentity the prophet adds two other strong descriptive terms—viz., wind and emptiness. A. 42: 1 BEHOLD my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth: I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgement in truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgement in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law. Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them forth; he that spread abroad the earth and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein: I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. I am the LORD; that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise unto graven images. Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth; ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein, the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit; let the inhabitants of Sela sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the LORD, and declare his praise in the islands. The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man; he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, he shall shout aloud; he shall do mightily against his enemies. I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry out like a travailing woman; I will gasp and pant together. I will make waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs; and I will make the rivers islands, and will dry up the pools. And I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; in paths that they know not will I lead them: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. These things will I do, and I will not for- 17 sake them. They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say unto molten images, Ye are our gods.18, 19 Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see. Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I send? who is blind as he that is at peace with me, and blind as20 the LORD's servant? Thou seest many things, but thou observest not; his ears are open, but21 he heareth not. It pleased the LORD, for his righteousness' sake, to magnify the law, and22 make it honourable. But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a23 spoil, and none saith, Restore. Who is there among you that will give ear to this? that will24 hearken and hear for the time to come? Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the LORD? he against whom we have sinned, and in whose ways they would25 not walk, neither were they obedient unto his law. Therefore he poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle; and it set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart. Chap. 42. The servant of the Lord is the central personage throughout this chapter. This phrase, "My servant," is first applied to the Messiah (verses 1-4); His mission and work are to enlighten the Gentiles (verses 5-7). The blessedness and joy of this stupendous change appear (verses 8-16); consequently idol worshippers shall be confounded (verse 17); and are exhorted to open their long blinded eyes to behold this Gospel light (verse 18). Now the people of the Lord appear also as His servant; they have strangely relapsed into moral blindness (verses 19, 20); for which the Lord gives them up to chastisement and spoiling to reclaim them from their sins and to retrieve His own honor (verses 21-25). 1. My servant.** It is vital to the just exposition of this chapter to fix the exact sense of the phrase, "My servant." With only these verses (1-4) before us, it might appear quite obvious that they refer simply and only to Jesus, the Messiah. That these verses refer to Him primarily and legitimately there can be no doubt. The citation of this entire passage by Matthew (12: 18-21) as a prophecy fulfilled in Christ is itself ample authority, the more conclusive because the special point for which they are cited—viz., the quiet, modest bearing of Jesus in reference to His miracles as contrasted with the noisy, obtrusive, ostentatious pretensions of impostors generally, corresponds precisely with the strain of this prophecy. Then, moreover, the first verse, "Mine elect in whom My soul delighteth," "I have put My Spirit upon Him," is manifestly referred to in the scenes of the Saviour's baptism, when the Holy Spirit fell visibly upon Him, and a voice from heaven announced, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3: 17). The same words were spoken again and distinctly heard at His transfiguration (Matt. 17: 5). The reference of this phrase ("My servant") to the Messiah might be confirmed yet further by comparison with other Messianic prophecies where He bears this name—e.g., chaps. 43: 10; 49: 3, 6; 52: 13 and 53: 11. All then would be very plain, and this view would seem to require no modification were it not for the demands of the context, both the preceding (41: 8, 9) and the succeeding (42: 19, 20). In both these passages it is manifest that Israel as the Lord's professed and chosen people is also called "the servant of the Lord;" "My servant." Hence the phrases, "My servant" and the "servant of the Lord," must be used in a broadly comprehensive sense to include all those by whom the Lord works in promoting His kingdom in this revolted world; Jesus Christ, the head, and His people, the members, all together comprising one complex body. This view is not unfrequently presented in the New Testament. "As My Father hath sent Me, so send I you;" all alike sent forth on the same mission, to do various parts of the same great work. It should also be noticed that this view is entirely in harmony with the scope of the previous chapter (41), the central idea of which is, God and His people versus sin and its earthly champions; a grand antagonism in which the Almighty God is one party, working, however, with and through His Son and His redeemed people; and the nations of idolaters, with all their idol gods, are the other. Entirely in harmony with this strain of chap. 41, our present chapter expands more in detail the agents through whom the Lord works in this world the manner and spirit of their work and the results. In such a detailed account, the Messiah must of necessity be prominent. Hence the chapter speaks first of Him. In the closing paragraph (verses 19-25) His people are altogether in the foreground, this passage being entirely inapplicable to the Messiah, but painfully true of His people, especially in the age before His personal advent. This view of the scope of the chapter and in particular of the phrase, "My servant," seems to meet exegetically all the conditions of the case. Hence there is no occasion to discuss or refute the theory that this "servant" is Isaiah, or the prophets taken collectively. H. C. Briefly, the underlying idea of the Old Testament, in its subjective aspect, is that of "the servant of the Lord." The history of the Old Testament in its progress to the New is that of the widening of the idea of the servant of the Lord into that of the kingdom of God. Lastly, its realization and completion is in the Christ and the Church of God. Unless, indeed, the Old Testament had this higher meaning and unity, it could not possess any permanent or universal interest, except from a historical point of view. It would not permanently concern mankind—no, nor even Israel, at least, in its present relation to the world. On the other hand, without it the New Testament would want its historical basis, and the historical Christ offer what would seem an absolutely unintelligible problem. A. E. 1. My chosen one, or the one whom I have selected to accomplish My great purposes. It implies that God had designated or appointed Him for the purpose. In Matt. 12:18 it is rendered "My beloved." It implies that God had chosen or appointed Him to perform the work of a Messiah. In whom My soul delighteth. This language is applied to the Lord Jesus in Matt. 3:17 and in Matt. 12:18. God regarded Him as qualified for His work; He approved of what He did; He was well pleased with all His words, and thoughts, and plans. I have put My Spirit upon Him. (Cf John 3:34.) "For God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him." The Lord Jesus was Divine, yet as mediator He is everywhere represented as "the anointed" of God, or as endowed with the influences of the Holy Spirit. See Isa. 61:1, where the Messiah says of Himself, "the Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me," etc. (Cf. Luke 4:18.) Before He entered upon His work the Spirit of God descended on Him at His baptism (Matt. 3:17), and in all His work He showed that He was endowed abundantly with that Spirit, and was like God. Barnes. Christ was chosen to the office of God's servant and our Saviour; chosen in the eternal counsel, before time, to assume human nature in the fulness of time. "In whom My soul delighteth." Doth God's soul delight in the person and work of His beloved Son? So doth ours. Is God's soul delighted that Christ hath satisfied His justice, magnified and made honorable His law, and finished salvation for miserable sinners? So is ours. Then as surely as our souls delight in Christ, the Lord's soul delights in us (62:4). W. Mason. By "Spirit," as in all such cases, we are to understand not only Divine influence, but the Divine person who exerts it. The use of the phrase on Him, where in Him might have seemed more natural, is probably intended to suggest the idea of descent, or of an influence from heaven. A. "Judgment," a prominent word in this passage (verses 1, 3, 4), has no better equivalent than true religion, in the sense of what is essentially right in heart and life, both toward God and toward man. It is the spirit of loving and serving God according to truth, made practical also in one's whole heart and life toward mankind. To be righteous in the broad sense of right purpose and right doing is the radical idea. Such true religion the Messiah will bring forth, and diffuse widely throughout the Gentile world. H. C. 2,3. The mode in which the Messiah and His people were to bring forth judgment to the nations, or in other words, to spread the true religion. It was not to be by clamor or by violence. That such is the true import of the words is clear from the addition of the last clause, which would be unmeaning if the verse related merely to a compassionate and sympathetic temper. It was meant to be descriptive not of our Saviour's human virtues, but of the nature of His kingdom and of the means by which it was to be established. In their original connection and in Matthew's application of them they describe that kingdom which was not of this world; which came not with observation (Luke 17:20); which was neither meat nor drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost (Rom. 14:17); which was founded and promoted not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord. A. He shall insure the eventual triumph of judgment or righteousness. And this ascendancy of goodness in the earth, He shall effect by no violent nor forceful measures. He shall not cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets. But full of tenderness, the bruised reed shall He not break; full of patience and holy purpose, the smoking flax shall He not quench; and by this mild and gentle management He shall win for the true religion a worldwide victory. The same principle pervades the Lord's dealing with each individual soul. Hamilton. In His very walks of love, as He went about doing good, while the largesses of His charity flowed to thousands, He fled from the thanks and praises of His beneficiaries, and stole away, again and again, from the captivated populace, to cast Himself before His Father, in the cold recesses of the mountain or the strand. His voice was ascending to heaven in solitary intercession; it was not heard in the streets. J. W. A.—It is true that He denounced the scribes and Pharisees; and against them His voice was heard. But then they were hypocrites, and He came to teach truth as well as mercy. His gentleness was never intended as a renunciation of wisdom or of righteousness; and to disabuse the minds of the people concerning their false guides was clearly part of His office. In relation to others, however, how lowly was His whole deportment; how easy of access; how tender in invitation; how mild in rebuke. How gentle in all His dealings with His apostles; bearing with their mistakes, forgiving their infirmities, and loving them, in spite of repeated provocations, even unto the end. How pitiful toward His enemies, and forgiving even to His murderers. J. Angus. The promises are not made to strong faith, but to true. The promise doth not say, He who hath a giant faith, who can believe God's love through a frown, who can rejoice in affliction, who can work wonders, remove mountains, stop the mouth of lions, shall be saved; but, Whosoever believes, be his faith never so small. A reed is but weak especially when it is bruised; yet the promise is made to it—"A bruised reed will He not break." Watson.—We never have more than we can bear. The present hour we are always able to endure. As our day, so is our strength. If the trials of many years were gathered into one, they would overwhelm us; therefore, in pity to our little strength, He sends first one, then another, then removes both, and lays a third, heavier, perhaps, than either; but all is so wisely measured to our strength that the bruised reed is never broken. H. E. Manning. The prophet employs another and a kindred metaphor, drawn from the common lamps of the Hebrews, in which the wick was of nothing better than flax. The office of the lamp is to blaze and give light; but when instead of this it barely smokes we hasten to extinguish it. Not so the benign Redeemer; He does not extinguish even that which flickers in the socket and is ready to die out. The smoking flax He shall not quench. It is part of His Messiahship to spare the perishing and rejected, the outcast reed, the half-quenched lamp. Blessed be His name! His princely advent is accompanied with a proclamation fitted to "revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones" (Isa. 57:15). J. W. A. His coming was full of mercy and peace, of healing and salvation; noiseless as the light, gentle as the dew; but, like the light, giving life and joy; like the dew, giving beauty, fragrance and refreshment. The heart that is bruised and crushed with its sorrows and sins He will not break with the severity of judgment, but soothe and heal with His pardoning grace. The dim torch of faith and love, though like the just-expiring wick of flax it emits hardly a spark of light. He will not extinguish, but with the oil of His mercy will kindle it to a pure, bright flame. Eyes that have been blinded to truth He will open to the sunlight; souls that have been shut up in the darkness of guilt or of despair He will bring out into the free air of hope and peace. For every sin He has mercy; for every sorrow, healing; while yet His law of truth and holiness shall judge the earth. This holy, just, gracious, merciful Prince of Israel is our Saviour and Lord. J. P. T. Never deviating from the way of God, as mighty in deed, as silent, self-denying and piously trustful in suffering, He was also as mild and full of love as the gentlest woman, when He would aid, console, feelingly sympathize. He went about and did good, helped the poor in body and in spirit. Nothing that concerned humanity was foreign from Him; every man stood near to Him as a brother. His characteristic action was to raise up again the bruised reed, to enkindle anew the glimmering wick. He wept over the city that rejected Him, and prayed on His cross for those who had nailed Him to it. His whole life was a sacrifice. Ullmann. He the All-pure had tenderness for what was not pure. He who stood in Divine uprightness that never faltered felt compassion for the ruined and infinite gentleness for human fall. Broken, disappointed, doubting hearts, in dismay and bewilderment, never looked in vain to Him. Amid the wreck of human nature He was striving to lift it out of its degradation. He was searching out in revolting places that which had fallen down, that He might build it up again in fair proportions a holy Temple to the Lord. Therefore He labored among the guilty; therefore He was the companion of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it was too late, and that the hour of hopeless profligacy was come. It was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, encouraging spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic. "A bruised reed will He not break." F. W. R. And they follow Him who are sought by honor and repute rather than seek them, who delight to live in quiet communion with God, who are lost in their work when they enter upon it without wasting thought on themselves or the impression they make, who are not quick to attract attention, and need some discerning person to seek them out and discover them. Such persons are like Jesus—most like Him if their character rests on the rock of godliness, and more capable than others of becoming like Him, if it has only a natural foundation. T. D. W. 4. This righteous King "shall not fail nor be discouraged." He is to be reckoned on to the uttermost, or, as the New Testament puts it, He is "the faithful and true witness." This is the strong Son of God, who gathered all His powers together to run with patience the race set before Him, and to whom all may turn with the confidence that He is faithful "as a son over his own house," and will inviolably keep the promise of His word and of His past acts. A. M. No matter what may be here, the sun shines on, calmly, perpetually, radiating its light; and so Christ, the great Sun of Righteousness, sits on His throne, and there come from Him the beams of light that are shining upon humanity, penetrating the heart. On and on and ever from Him is this eternal efflux of radiant glory. . . . Now that all power is given Him, now that all thrones are subject to Him, now that He sits on the circle of the heavens, He cannot fail, He cannot be discouraged, and He sees how all things are moving to bring about that mighty triumph of His kingdom. And if He is not discouraged, should we be? Our Saviour is to conquer this world—to subdue the world unto Himself—and it is ours simply to go forward, to take His word, perform His will, to put forth the agencies, to speak, to live, to labor, to love for Christ, and love shall subdue all things. Oh, there is a glorious day; it is a little in advance! I know not how, but He will set judgment in the earth; the isles shall wait for His law. Simpson. They wait for it in the sense that they perish without it, that this only can give them life, and that in God's purpose this shall. The "isles" here are equivalent to the nations as in chaps. 40:15 and 41:1, 5, and must correspond to the Gentiles of verses 1, 6 in this context. Hence the passage must be accepted as a distinct, decisive prophecy that the nations are to be blessed by this life-giving Gospel. The great truths respecting God and salvation as taught by the Messiah are yet to go forth to them all. 5. The Divine name used here, El, meaning a Mighty One, and with the article, the mighty God, is specially appropriate in a passage which speaks of God in His relations as the Creator of all and the God of universal providence. The verbs are all in the present tense. Hence they affirm more than the general fact that God did once create, stretch out, spread forth, and give existence to vegetables and animals. They affirm that He is doing so still and continually. The strongest affirmation of a present activity which is possible in the Hebrew tenses is used throughout the verse, as well of creating and causing the productions of the earth to be as of giving breath and life to its people. 6. This mighty God has commissioned the Messiah, the pre-eminent "servant of the Lord," for the work here indicated, and will sustain Him and energize His work by an agency no less constant than that which fills the realm of nature. "Called Thee in righteousness" means in faithfulness to My word, especially of promise. H. C. Give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles. God expressly declares that the Messiah should mediate a covenant between God and the people, and that the fruit of this covenant should extend to the Gentiles, who should enjoy the same privileges with the Jews, and be incorporated with them (chap. 49:8, 9; 55:3, 4; 61:8, 9). The extension of the Messiah's kingdom over the whole earth is mentioned by Isaiah so often and so emphatically that it seems to be the main drift of all his writings. Allix. All that was in former ages promised and prefigured for the reconciliation of man to God is fulfilled and embodied in Jesus Christ. Jehovah has given Him "for a covenant of the people (Israel), for a light of the Gentiles." In Him all families of the earth are blessed. And He is not remote from us as Abraham or David, with whom the Jews at all events are connected by long pedigrees. Christ is so closely united with all believers, that every fulfilment of the everlasting covenant to Him is also a fulfilment to them; every promise made to Him tends to their benefit, and every boon bestowed on them ought to issue in glory to Him. All the promises of God are to them "Yea and amen in Jesus Christ," having their security and stability in Him as the accepted and beloved of God. Promises there are, exceeding great and precious, covering all wants, suiting all seasons, stretching over all eternity. Mercies there are, everlasting, ever sure, because bestowed in the covenant, and guaranteed by the faithfulness and omnipotence of God, and by the presence of the Mediator of the covenant in heaven itself to make intercession for us. Chastisements, too, are in the covenant; stripes for undutiful children, or blows of the hand or of the rod—never, thank God! any smiting with the sword. It is chastening, not condemnation. The covenant itself cannot be broken, nor can the Lord's faithfulness fail. D. F. Yes; Christ is a light to lighten the Gentiles—and the glory of the upper heavens shall yet scatter and chase away the darkness which still broods sullenly over the earth; and the new, Divine life, long repressed, shall yet reveal itself in fair and wonderful and lavish fertility; the very deserts of the world shall be covered with a moral wealth and beauty of which the brightest spring-time and the richest autumn are poor and pale symbols, and of which the loveliness of Paradise was only a dim and imperfect promise. The songs which filled the night with joy when Christ was born shall be heard again, with sweeter music, deeper harmonies and more exulting raptures; all heaven shall come down to earth—thrones and dominions, seraphim and cherubim, and shining armies of angels—to celebrate with sounding trumpets and golden harps and loud acclamations and tumultuous strains of triumph the final victory of Divine love over human sin, and the restoration of our race to God. We are not "mad" in exulting in these happy and confident expectations. God's mercy is mightier than all the powers of the world, the flesh and the devil. We—fanatics as men may deem us—"speak the words of truth and soberness." R. W. Dale. 7. The "opening of blind eyes" is correlated to giving them light (verse 6), the kind of light in both cases being the same, that of Gospel truth to the mind. The Gospel goes forth to give sight to the spiritually blind, to release spiritual prisoners, and bring forth to the light of a new day the souls long shut up in confinement and darkness. The attempt to apply this to the restoration of the Jews from Babylon is unworthy of learned critics. H. C. This is the craft and subtlety of the evil one, that he makes us fancy we are free, when we are in prison; he makes us fancy we are at liberty, when we are in bondage; he makes us fancy we are our own masters, when we are his slaves; he blinds and cheats and stupefies us, until we deem we are doing our own will and pursuing our own pleasure, when in fact we are drudging in his toils and rushing into the jaws of destruction before his lashing scourge. Therefore, in order that our eyes might be open to our misery and our danger before it was too late, God was mercifully pleased to give us His Scriptures, wherein He declares that, however its appearance may deceive us, sin is not a palace, but a prison, that in that prison we are all shut up, and that no earthly power can deliver us from it. Vinet.—We are captives in a foreign land; Christ was not only to pay our ransom for us, but to take us home when He had ransomed us. We are prisoners sitting in darkness in the prison-house; He is not only to come and throw open our prison-doors, bring us into the cheerful light and set us free; He is to take us by the hand when we are free, and to guide us by the right way to a city prepared for us. So then He who redeemed us keeps us; He who died for us lives for us; He who rescues us from the misery of our fall never leaves us till our whole salvation is completed; never lets one of us go till with His own right hand He has placed us out of the reach of all misery and all danger, in His own safe world of light and joy. C. Bradley. 8. From the assertion of Jehovah's power and perfection as a ground for His people's confidence, the prophet now proceeds, by a natural transition, to exhibit it in contrast with the impotence of those gods in whom the Gentiles trusted. The general doctrine of the verse is that true and false religion cannot coexist; because, however tolerant idolatry may be, it is essential to the worship of Jehovah to be perfectly exclusive of all other gods. This is included in the very name Jehovah, and accounts for its solemn proclamation here. 9. This is an appeal to former prophecies already verified, as grounds of confidence in those yet unfulfilled. The strong and beautiful expression in the last clause can only mean that the events about to be predicted were beyond the reach of human foresight, and is therefore destructive of the modern notion that these prophecies were written after Cyrus had appeared, and at a time when the further events of his history could be foreseen by an observer of unusual sagacity. A. 10-13. The thing really predicted here is the triumph of truth, the diffusion of the Gospel, and the substantial victory of King Messiah over sin and Satan throughout all the earth. This passage should of course be taken in connection with verses 1-4, 6, 7 above, which declare with less of poetry yet perhaps with more precision in the form of statement, that the Messiah shall push onward the victories of truth and righteousness until true religion shall pervade the earth and bless all the nations. 16. The figures here follow the lead of those in verses 6, 7—the Messiah “a light to the Gentiles,” opening blind eyes. Truth is to the mind what light is to the body. The Gentiles, long blind to the true God and to the way of salvation, are to be led in ways never known to them before—the way of holiness and heaven. H. C. There cannot be a human being among us that is not moved by these assurances, because there is no one among us all that has not found out by rough experience that there are crooked things in his life which need to be made straight, and dark places which need to be made light; that there are spots where the ways part, with no guide-post, leaving the judgment and conscience perplexed, and where one is almost certain there must be paths better than that one he is walking in, safer if not smoother, and running to a better end. F. D. H.—There is mystery everywhere in our way to heaven; mystery within us, mystery around us, many mysteries behind us not yet cleared up, and still many before us to be entered and passed through. It would be easy to show that much of this is unavoidable, arising from the character of real religion and our own character; and it would be as easy to show that it all tends to the Divine glory and our good. The Lord brings us acquainted by it with His own glorious perfections, exercises by it the graces He has given us, humbles us, strengthens our faith, teaches us to confide, repose and delight in Him. He works in us by it a meethness for heaven while leading us to it, making the very road which conducts us to His presence fit us for its joys. C. Bradley. It is the very law of God’s dispensations, that when His people are going they know not whither, they are in the very path which the Master has appointed. “I will lead them in paths that they have not known; I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.” The knowledge of this should work in us both submission and hope—submission, because God is sovereign, because He is wise, because He is just, because He is omnipotent, and because all resistance and all repining are fruitless and wicked; hope, because we are assured that all things work together for good to them that love God, being disposed according to a most gracious plan for accomplishing their perfection. J. W. A.— This guiding love of the heavenly Father is entirely independent of anything that we think, or do, or feel. It leads us in paths that we had not known. The love is undeserved and condescending. It comes out to us before we go after it. It deals with us as a mother handles a child just beginning to know only her face or her voice. F. D. H. 19. Why should He call the heathen blind and deaf, when Israel himself, with all his honors and advantages, refused to see or hear? The very people whose mission and vocation it was to make the Gentiles see and hear seemed to emulate their insensibility. The terms must be referred exclusively to Israel, the messenger whom God had sent to open the eyes of the other nations, but who had himself become wilfully blind. A.—“Who is blind as my servant?” The heathens who are blind from their birth, and have only some glimmering apprehensions that eternity succeeds time, are less culpable than those who have infinitely more reason to believe it, and yet believe it less. The plea for them will be a terrible accusation against such unbelievers. If a blind person falls, it moves compassion; but if one voluntarily shuts his eyes against the sun, and refuses the direction of the light, and falls from a precipice, his ruin is the just consequence of his folly. Simple ignorance excuses as to the degrees of the fault, but affected wilful ignorance, now reason and revelation with united beams give so clear a prospect into the eternal world, aggravates the guilt and sentence of such unbelievers. Bates. 20. The thought here is that the Lord’s people had utterly failed to improve their opportunities for Divine knowledge. They had seen many things of God, but would not observe—i.e., would not keep them in view; would not hold them before the mind for close and impressive attention. 21. This verse declares that God is propitious, favorably inclined, for the sake of His own righteous cause—i.e., that He will not abandon them to moral ruin and His kingdom with them, but will persist in remedial efforts; will reclaim His people and will magnify and bring forth in honor the truth and the moral power of His kingdom. H. C. 22-25. While applicable to the sufferings of the Jews in Babylon, it is in itself a general declaration of a fact, often verified and especially exemplified in ancient Israel, that the sufferings of God's people are the consequence of sin. A. 43:1 But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. 2 When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; 3 neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of 4 Israel, thy saviour; I have given Egypt as thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou hast been precious in my sight, and honourable, and I have loved thee; therefore will I 5 give men for thee, and peoples for thy life. Fear not; for I am with thee: I will bring thy 6 seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the 7 earth; every one that is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory; I have 8 formed him; yea, I have made him. Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the 9 deaf that have ears. Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the peoples be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring their 10 witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth. Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he; before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be 11, 12 after me. I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour. I have declared, and I have saved, and I have shewed, and there was no strange god among you: therefore ye 13 are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and I am God. Yea, since the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it? 14 Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and I will bring down all of them as fugitives, even the Chaldeans, in the ships of 15, 16 their rejoicing. I am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus 17 saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; they lie down together, they 18 shall not rise; they are extinct, they are quenched as flax: Remember ye not the former 19 things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in 20 the desert. The beasts of the field shall honour me, the jackals and the ostriches: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my 21, 22 chosen: the people which I formed for myself, that they might set forth my praise. Yet 23 thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel. Thou hast not brought me the small cattle of thy burnt offerings; neither hast thou honoured me with thy sacrifices. I have not made thee to serve with offerings, nor wearied thee with 24 frankincense. Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wea- 25 ried me with thine iniquities. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine 26 own sake; and I will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance; let us plead to- 27 gether: set thou forth thy cause, that thou mayest be justified. Thy first father sinned, and 28 thine interpreters have transgressed against me. Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and I will make Jacob a curse, and Israel a reviling. Chap. 43. This chapter bears general relations to its larger context (chaps. 40-45), but more special relations to its nearer context—viz., chap. 42 : 19-25. In this latter passage, Israel stands as the servant of God, chosen, yet often unfaithful to her trust ; instructed, but yet dark-minded and at best improving very imperfectly her opportunities for Divine knowledge. Hence she was chastened, but never utterly abandoned. 1. God would not have Israel fear the final issue of those afflictions which will befall her. He created and formed her, which means that He has chosen the posterity of Abraham and has made the nation of Israel all that she is in the line of moral worth and of peculiar honor as His chosen people. Therefore she ought to trust her Lord to determine all her future. 2. A blessed truth underlies these figures—viz., that no peril or pain can be so extreme that God's presence shall not be with His trustful people there, and make the martyr's stake a paradise. The antecedent context favors the supposition that the afflictions contemplated here are chastisements from God to humble and reclaim His wandering people. In this view the verse is a promise that however apparently perilous, they shall be really harmless, and even fruitful of blessings. H. C. The sum is this, That no calamity of this world, no troubles of this life, no terrors of death, no guiltiness of sin, can be so great, but that a "godly" man by means of his faith and felicity in Christ shall wade out of them well enough. For howsoever other things go, still he shall have a solace in his soul, a comfort in his conscience, a heaven in his heart, knowing himself reconciled to God and justified by faith. T. Playfere.—Divine grace, even in the heart of weak and sinful man, is an invincible thing. Drown it in the waters of adversity, it rises more beautiful, as not being drowned indeed, but only washed ; throw it into the furnace of fiery trials, it comes out purer, and loses nothing but the dross which our corrupt nature mixes with it. Leighton.—Though it be through darkness, though it be in deep waters, you know whom you have believed. Infinite love, joined to infinite skill, shall pilot the way through every strait, and temptation, and peril. God has ever loved to place His people where they had none to hope in but Him only. J. W. A. God has never promised dying grace when one's duty is to live. He gives living grace then ; grace for temptation, grace for struggle, grace for toil, for service, for all duty. For every hour there is some allotment of obedience or submission, and for each hour strength will be given. "As thy days so shall thy strength be." Then when the hour of death comes, God will give dying grace, and the believing soul will pass into the strange mystery, sustained by the Divine arm and supported by the Divine Presence. The promise is, "When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee ;" it is not, "When thou art approaching, yet far away ;" nor even "When thou drawest near ;" but, "When thou passest through." The storehouse in which God has laid up dying grace is found only in the valley itself, and you cannot get it until you enter the shadows. Grace for duty, for toil, for love, for honesty, for earnest service in every good cause, for heroic struggle, for unselfish ministry, for holy influence ; grace for noble and beautiful living and for loyal devotion to Christ while the heart's pulses are full and while God wants us still in this world ; but not yet grace for dying, since death is far away ; then grace for dying when the life's work is done, its duty finished, and the call comes to leave this world and depart home. J. R. Miller. 3. The description of the speaker in the first clause is intended to conciliate regard to what he says in the other. It was in the character not only of an absolute and sovereign God, but in that of Israel's God, his Holy One, his Saviour, that Jehovah had thus chosen him to the exclusion of all other nations. 5-7. The repetition of the same thought—"created," "formed," "made"—lays special stress on the agency of God through His word and spirit in the regeneration of sinful men, Jews or Gentiles, to render them fit members of His church and fit servants of His earthly kingdom. This great and precious promise is pertinently adduced as a reason why His people need not fear. "For I am with thee, saith the Lord," to ensure to thee success in what thou shouldst regard as thy life-work—the conversion of men from darkness to light. 8,9. The grand conception in these verses (as in chap. 41 : 1, 5, 21) is that of a convocation of the heathen world before an ideal tribunal to test the rival claims of Jehovah, versus idol gods—the decision to turn mainly on the point of prescience, as evinced in prophecy. Who has predicted events far in the future, and they have come to pass ? Have any of the heathen gods done this ? If any, who is he, and what has he predicted ? Let them come forward, produce their witnesses, and prove their claim valid ["justify themselves"] or let them hear my witnesses, and say it is truth. 10. Who His witnesses are to be. They are "ye," His professed people, in the broad sense which appears in verses 5-7—those vast multitudes gathered from every land into the one society of the redeemed, all these and with them "my servant," the Messiah, who comes to earth to bear witness to the truth—i.e., to reveal God to men. The object sought in all this witnessing is that ye may know and believe Me and understand that I am He, the one ever-living God. Similar is the testimony from the Saviour's own lips. "This is life eternal that they might know Thee the only true God." "I have declared unto them Thy name." H. C. Every believer, however humble his position, however few or feeble his qualifications, however multiplied his occupations or cares, every believer has his own testimony to bear. None but he can bear it. In the part assigned him there is no proxyship of word or act. As a called soldier of Christ, he can neither procure nor offer a substitute. Neither voluntary Christian associations, an appointed ministry, nor the church in its organized capacity can do his work. The ministers of God have indeed their own peculiar responsibilities and for these, as individuals, they have to give account. But societies, churches, are only combinations of individual believers, each of whom is God's appointed witness, in his place and to the extent of his ability and opportunity. B. Life, entire life, is a period of witnessing. By act, by omission, by speech, by silence, whether you will or not, you are forever testifying. Hour by hour you are testifying, sometimes much more loudly than by words, either for or against your Master. To be firm for Christ, when all the tide of opinion, business, pleasure, runs the other way, you need a courage which will never come to you except upon your knees. If you only have His spirit, if His life flows into you, if, believing on and clinging to Him, you have inward pulses which keep time with His heart, you will stand in the evil day, you will win souls, you will recommend the Gospel, you will live teaching and die witnessing. J. W. A. What we want, above all things, in this age is heartiness and holy simplicity—men who justify the holy impulse of grace in their hearts, and do not keep it back by artificial clogs of prudence and false fear, or the pretences of fastidiousness and artificial delicacy. These are they whom God will make His witnesses in all ages. They dare to be holy, dare just as readily to be singular. What God puts in them that they accept, and when He puts a song, they sing it. They know Christ inwardly, and therefore stand for Him outwardly. They endure hardness. They fight a fight. And these are the souls who shall stand before God accepted. Bushnell. If the eleven had stopped with being disciples, then we should have said that Christianity meant nothing then and means nothing today but discipleship. But if they went on from being absorbent disciples and became at last radiant apostles, with their mouths full of persuasion and their lives all running over with the demonstration of the Gospel, then we shall be obliged to say that then and now Christianity means apostleship just as much as it means discipleship. It means purpose just as much as it means power; it means making others Christians just as much as it means being Christians ourselves; it means making Christ a real thing in the minds and hearts of others just as much as it means having Christ made a real thing to us; it means to-day as much as it meant 1850 years ago, bearing witness to the Son of God in the narrower circle of the home, the broader circle of the community, and forth even to the uttermost part of the earth. These things when carefully and prayerfully considered will create within us a deep sense of our own individual and personal responsibility. It is a part of Christianity to be apostolic. The anointing of the Holy Ghost sets each one of us—man, woman and child—in the line of the true apostolic succession; and as after the ascension of Christ mankind lay in the hands of the original apostles for them to convert, so today the conversion of the world pertains to us as their spiritual representatives and successors. C. H. P. 12. In view of what God had shown and had done among them and for them, they were competent witnesses to His true divinity. They had seen abundant evidence that Jehovah is indeed the true God. H. C. 13. The best interpreters explain it as meaning since the first day, or since time began. The words are then universal, both in the extent of power claimed and in relation to the time of its execution. Over every object and in every age the power of Jehovah had been clearly proved to be supreme and absolute. A. 14,15. These two verses appeal to the deliverance of the Jews from Babylon as the two next in order (verses 16, 17) appeal to the exodus from Egypt, in proof that Jehovah is truly the mighty God of His people Israel, their Creator, Redeemer, and King. The deliverance from Babylon was indeed in the distant future relatively to the actual life of Isaiah, while that from Egypt was past; yet the former is presented here as seen by the prophet already past or passing. H. C. 14. Note the two qualifications necessary for our spiritual God, or Redeemer. 1. He must be rich enough to purchase back the inheritance, strong enough to destroy the murderer and high enough in rank to take the place of the former husband. Christ, then, must be God. Man is bankrupt and cannot buy the lost estate. Man is murdered, and cannot, therefore, be his own avenger. And God was the first husband—who but God can take God's place? 2. He must be a kinsman, full of sympathy for the impoverished, the smitten, the lost, for the God was no stranger. Indeed the word, originally signifying "a redeemer," became synonymous with kinsman. (See Ruth 4:1, 3.) Christ, then, must be man. He "was made flesh and dwelt among us," and is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Such must have been the Jewish Christian's view of Jesus as the Redeemer, combining in Himself the Divine and the human. The very name, seen through the glass of Jewish law and Jewish usage, showed the Son of God to be the Son of man. Crosby. 16,17. The whole description is graphic and terse, full of fire and withal of most impressive truth for the comfort of God's people in every age. 18. But think not longer of former things, for there are things yet to come vastly greater, eclipsing the old and throwing them entirely into the shade. H. C. 19. It is best to take this and the 16th verses as strong metaphorical descriptions of deliverance from suffering and danger by a direct Divine interposition. Thus understood, the prophet's language means that God could change the face of nature and control the angry elements in favor of His people; that He had so done in time past, and would again do so in time to come. A. 20,21. The language and figures are possibly borrowed from the restoration from Babylon, or more probably brought before the mind in verse 14, from the journeyings through the desert of Sinai; or perhaps from both. But manifestly, these are figures, and refer to spiritual blessings to be shed forth in the gathering of the Gentiles home to God. When these great blessings shall come upon God's people, they will indeed show forth His praise, both actively, out of their full hearts, and passively as illustrating in their own wonderful conversion the large and victorious grace of God. H. C. 21. Another declaration of the end for which Israel existed as a nation. This brings us back to the main proposition of the chapter,—viz., that Jehovah had not only made them what they were, but had made them for the purpose of promoting His own glory, so that any claim of merit upon their part, and any apprehension of entire destruction, must be equally unfounded. A. 23,24. The Israelites are here condemned for their failure in the duties of holy worship. Their sin was partly of omission, partly that of idol offerings and worship in high places, instead of God's own temple; partly weariness and reluctance, and partly also their self-righteous pride. Even the law of sacrifices, when seen and used aright, was "holy and just and good." It was a wise discipline for their infant faith, and its neglect or perversion formed one main part of their national guilt. Their sin is here exposed in its deep ingratitude, that the pardoning grace of God, by contrast, might be more clearly and fully revealed. Birks.—This strain of complaint and rebuke would have been out of place during the exile, for sacrifices were then out of the question. Hence the writer was not living there. H. C. 25. "I, even I, am He who" yet "blotteth out thy transgressions." This gracious declaration of God's readiness to pardon sin comes in very strangely: the charge ran very high, "Thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities" (verse 24). Now one would think it should follow, "I, even I, am He" that will destroy thee, and burden Myself no longer with care about thee." No, "I, even I, am He that will forgive thee;" as if the great God would teach us that forgiving injuries is the best way to make ourselves easy and to keep ourselves from being wearied with them. This comes in here to encourage them to repent, because there is forgiveness with God, and to show the freeness of Divine mercy; where sin has been exceeding sinful, grace appears exceeding gracious. Observe here (1) How the pardon is expressed; He will "blot them out" as a cloud is blotted out by the beams of the sun (44:22), as a debt is blotted out, not to appear against the debtor; the book is crossed as if the debt were paid, because it is pardoned, upon the payment which the surety has made; or as a sentence is blotted out when it is reversed; as the curse was blotted out with the waters of jealousy, which made it of no effect to the innocent (Num. 5: 23). He will not remember the sin; which intimates not only that He will remit the punishment of what is past, but that it shall be no diminution to His love for the future. When God forgives, He forgets. (2) What is the ground and reason of the pardon. It is not for the sake of anything in us, but for His own sake; for His mercies' sake, His promise' sake, and especially for His Son's sake, and that He may Himself be glorified in it. (3) How God glories in it—"I, even I, am He;" He glories in it as His prerogative; none can forgive sin but God only, and He will do it, it is His settled resolution; He will do it willingly and with delight; it is His pleasure, it is His honor; so He is pleased to reckon it. H. What, my soul, the very God whom thou hast "made to serve with thy sins and wearied with thine iniquities," will He blot them all out? Yes, as a black cloud is dispelled by the sun or driven away by the wind; or as an immense debt is discharged by the stroke of the pen of a merciful creditor, never, never more to appear against or be demanded of the debtor. For, O wonder of love! He saith farther, And will not remember thy sins. I cannot forget my sins; how then can my Lord! He laid them upon His Son, thy surety. They were all atoned for by Him. Why all this? For the sake of thy works, or anything thou hast done? Spurn the thought. Hear thy Lord, For mine own sake, I have blotted out thy sins through thy Redeemer's blood. The Father blots them out for the sake of His righteousness and truth. The gracious Spirit blots them out of the conscience, for the glory of the Father and the Son, and because He is the Comforter. Oh, what boundless bliss is here! Believe, rejoice and love. W. Mason. 26. Go, in Christ's name, to the mercy-seat, and take this complete and eternal pardon as your own. To you God says, "Put Me in remembrance. Let us plead together." "Tell Me not forever of thine unfitness for My kingdom, thy rebellion and thy crimes. Tell Me of My invitations to the guilty and My promises to the lost. Tell Me of the blood that was shed to save thee. Tell Me of the tears, and prayers, and righteousness, the cross, and passion, of My Son. Show Me that thou canst trust My word. Only believe, and though thou wert as sinful as the cursing Peter or as unworthy as the persecuting Saul, I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins." C. B. 28. The character just given of the people in all ages is urged not only as a proof that God's compassion must be perfectly gratuitous, but also as a reason for the strokes which they experienced. A. 44 : 1, 2 YET now hear, O Jacob my servant ; and Israel, whom I have chosen : thus saith the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, who will help thee : Fear 3 not, O Jacob my servant ; and thou, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground : I will pour my spirit upon thy 4 seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring : and they shall spring up among the grass, as 5 willows by the watercourses. One shall say, I am the LORD's ; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob ; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the LORD, and sur- name himself by the name of Israel. 6 Thus saith the LORD, the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts : I am the 7 first, and I am the last ; and beside me there is no God. And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people ? and the things 8 that are coming, and that shall come to pass, let them declare. Fear ye not, neither be afraid : have I not declared unto thee of old, and shewed it ? and ye are my witnesses. Is 9 there a God beside me ? yea, there is no Rock ; I know not any. They that fashion a graven image are all of them vanity ; and their delectable things shall not profit : and their own wit- 10 nesses see not, nor know ; that they may be ashamed. Who hath fashioned a god, or molten 11 a graven image that is profitable for nothing ? Behold, ah his fellows shall be ashamed ; and the workmen, they are of men : let them all be gathered together, let them stand up ; they 12 shall fear, they shall be ashamed together. The smith maketh an axe, and worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with his strong arm : yea, he is hun- 13 gry, and his strength falleth ; he drinketh no water, and is faint. The carpenter stretcheth out a line ; he marketh it out with a pencil ; he shapeth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compasses, and shapeth it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a 14 man, to dwell in the house. He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the holm tree and the oak, and strengtheneth for himself one among the trees of the forest : he planteth a fir tree, 15 and the rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn ; and he taketh thereof, and warmeth himself ; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread : yea, he maketh a god, and wor- 16 shippeth it ; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. He burneth part thereof in the fire ; with part thereof he eateth flesh ; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied : yea, 17 he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire : and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image : he falleth down unto it and worshippeth, and 18 prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me ; for thou art my god. They know not, neither do they consider : for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see ; and their hearts, that they 19 cannot understand. And none calleth to mind, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire ; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof ; I have roasted flesh and eaten it : and shall I make the residue thereof an abomina- 20 tion ? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree ? He feedeth on ashes : a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand ? 21 Remember these things, O Jacob ; and Israel, for thou art my servant : I have formed 22 thee ; thou art my servant : O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins : return unto me ; for I have 23 redeemed thee. Sing, O ye heavens, for the LORD hath done it ; shout, ye lower parts of the earth ; break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein : for the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and will glorify himself in Israel. 24 Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb : I am the LORD, that maketh all things ; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone ; that spreadeth abroad 25 the earth ; who is with me ? that frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners 26 mad ; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish : that confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers ; that saith of Jerusa- lem, She shall be inhabited ; and of the cities of Judah, They shall be built, and I will raise 27 up the waste places thereof : that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers : 28 that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Chap. 44. This chapter opens, like the fortieth and forty-third, with cheering promises to Israel, followed by reasons for confiding in them, drawn from the wisdom, power and goodness of Jehovah. The specific promise, which constitutes the theme or basis of the prophecy, is that of abundant spiritual influences and their fruits, not only internal prosperity, but large accessions from without (verses 1-5). The pledge for the fulfilment of this promise is afforded by the proofs of God's omniscience, as contrasted with all other gods (verses 6-9). The folly of image-worship is then established by two arguments. The first is that idols are themselves the creatures of mere men (verses 10-14). The other is that they are not only made, and made by man, but made of the very same materials applied to the most trivial domestic uses (verses 15-20). From this demonstration of the power of Jehovah to perform His promise we are now brought back to the promise itself (verses 21-24). This is again confirmed by an appeal to God's creative power, and illustrated by the raising up of Cyrus as a deliverer to Israel (verses 25-28). Here again it is important to the just interpretation of the passage that we keep in view the true relation which the main theme (the safety and prosperity of Israel) bears to the arguments and illustrations drawn from God's foreknowledge as established by prediction, from the impotence of idols and the raising up of Cyrus. Through all these varied forms of promise and of reasoning there runs a thread uniting them, and this thread is the doctrine of the Church, its origin, its design and its relation to its Head and to the world around it. A. 1. All the promises and every encouraging word sent from God to them in the age of Isaiah are good for their successors through all time, being manifestly designed to strengthen their faith and hope in every age until all these great predictions of future blessings shall have been fulfilled. 2. "Thus saith Jehovah; the same who made thee and formed thee from the womb will help thee." The fact of His having given spiritual existence to Israel, a new-born, regenerated people, and of His having sustained them ever since their birth, guarantees all future blessings which they may need. So, let them never fear. (See the argument of Paul, Rom. 8: 28-39, and his confidence as expressed in Phil. 1: 6.) "Jeshurun," another name for Jacob, occurs elsewhere only in De. 32: 15 and 33: 5, 26. Etymologically it means the upright one. 3. The pouring forth of water, in showers or otherwise, is a frequent figure for the bestowment of copious blessings. Thus Mal. 3: 10 and Ezek. 34: 26. That this passage refers to the spirit is shown by the parallelism, "I will pour My spirit upon thy seed; My blessing upon thine offspring." The same phraseology appears in chap. 32: 15, "Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high." (See also Joel 2: 28; and in the New Testament such passages as John 7: 37-39; Acts 2: 17, 33.) H. C. This is one of the most glorious utterances of the Scriptures of the Old Testament; one of those by which Isaiah has deserved the title of the fifth evangelist. But may it not be termed the summary of all God's promises regarding spiritual blessings to be expected in the fulness of the times; and although the impressive introduction had not been present, "Thus saith the Lord that made thee," who does not feel at once that it is the voice of God and not of man we hear? There are no promises so ample as those which are directed to all whose souls have learned to thirst after the living God. In the Lord's good time they are quickened by fresh streams of life, and not one soul that believes but shall find the fulfilment of this word so as to call forth eternal gratitude. Van O. The office of the blessed spirit is to inspire every Christian for his life-work, to be an inward power in the soul, to be a substitute to the Church for the inspiring visible presence of Jesus Himself till at the end of the world He shall come in His glorious second advent. There is a sense of inspiration in the very knowledge of the fact that we have the perpetual presence of such wisdom, power and love. The idea of a Divine Comforter ever within—the revealer of truth, the bestower of grace, the inworking spiritual life of the soul, as it were the Lord Jesus become an invisible guardian—this of itself ennobles and animates the believer, when it fully possesses the mind. It brings God near, and makes Him as an atmosphere to the soul, a source of perpetual health and vigor. Faith in such boundless aid near at hand, in a spiritual potency which accompanies us at every step, is natural and easy; and thus the child-like, trustful spirit is begotten, which is the secret of all progress and piety. W. W. P. Inspiration-force Christ arranges for and promises in the gift of the spirit. He enters the soul to fill out every lack. He communicates, inbreathes, sheds abroad Himself, configuring it inwardly to all that is most perfect in Himself. We have nothing to do but to be in the spirit, and keep ourselves in Christ's dear walk and company, and we shall be set on surely and constantly toward the completeness required. Christ is the mirror that glasses God's image for us, and the spirit is the plastic force within, that transfers and photographs that image; and so, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord. Bushnell. My blessing upon thine offspring. The text further suggests: 1. That God will pour His blessing on the children of His people—a promise which in all ages, when parents are faithful, is abundantly fulfilled. 2. That one of the richest blessings which can be imparted to a people is that God's spirit should descend on their children. Nothing can be better fitted to comfort them in calamity and trial. 3. That the spirit of God alone is the source of true happiness and prosperity to our children. All else—property, learning, accomplishment, beauty, vigor, will be vain. It is by His blessing only—by the influence of piety—that they will spring forth as among the grass, and like willows by the streams of water. 4. Parents should seek this blessing as the richest inheritance which they can have for their children. Parents may leave the world in peace if they see the Divine blessing—the spirit of God descend on their children. Barnes. 4. This is a picture of fertility, verdure and beauty, to represent the fruits of holiness under the effusions of the Spirit of God. These fruits shall spring up and grow as grass and willows in tropical countries where moisture abounds by the river's side. H. C. 5. It is commonly agreed that this verse predicts the accession of the Gentiles, whom it represents as publicly professing their allegiance to Jehovah and attachment to His people. The act of calling one by name, and that of calling on His name (invoking Him), are intimately blended in the Hebrew usage. Most interpreters understand it here as meaning to praise or celebrate. A. 6-8. The message here reverts from "the new things," the future outpouring of the Spirit on all the people of Israel, to the controversy with idolatry in Isaiah's days. The King of Israel, his Redeemer, the First and the Last, are all titles given expressly to our Lord in the New Testament (Job 1: 49; Luke 24: 21; Gal. 4: 5; Rev. 1: 11; 2: 8; 22: 13). The main subject, then, is Israel's redemption from first to last, and the words, "beside Me there is no God," are the text of that stern condemnation of idolatry with which this new division of the prophecy begins. Birks. 6. Thus saith the Lord, I am the first, etc. In the Revelation Jesus Christ says, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last" (Rev. 22: 13). These titles of "the first" and "the last" are confined in the prophet to him alone, "besides whom there is no God." But Jesus hath assumed these titles to Himself; therefore Jesus is that God, besides whom there is no other. Jones of Nayland. 7. In these prophecies every reader is summoned to observe and recognize a foresight, superhuman and truly Divine. 8. The servants of a God so wise and so mighty have no need to fear. His promises to Israel are not of yesterday, but from the days of their fathers. The pronoun, ye, is emphatic. The whole history of the Jews is one public testimony to the reality and nature of God's moral government of the world. The true God is the only foundation of solid hope, a Rock to His people. There is no help whatever in idols, but in Him alone. Birks. Without belief in a personal God we can have no religion, and without religion we can have really no life to speak of, no life that a man who has once experienced the joy and the hope and the strength of religion would count life at all. There can be no personal intercourse or relationship between us and an impersonal, unknowable First Cause. With a blind, material, mechanical First Cause we can have no communion, for we ourselves are more than material, more than mechanical. We can think, we can propose ends to ourselves, we are conscious of right and of wrong, we can conceive of one great purpose and idea that the whole mass of men can together work out; and, therefore, we crave communion with One who can cherish purpose, and who can guide the whole world to one righteous end. We must, in short, have both our intellect and our moral nature satisfied, and this can be only in One who originates and guides all things with reason and with righteousness. The world becomes rational to us, the world becomes moral only when we believe in a God Himself rational and moral. Dods. The more we dwell on it, the more we shall see that the character of the God of the Bible is absolutely perfect, and therefore, either the God of Christianity is the true God, or there can be no being who shall be God to us—none who shall meet that conception of absolute perfection which we form in our minds, and feel that we must transfer to Him. M. H. 12. The general meaning is clear. You are introduced into the blacksmith's shop; you see the worker in iron getting a red heat upon it in his coals, giving shape to it with his hammer, working it with his strong right arm; but these makers of gods have their human weaknesses. This smith becomes hungry and his strength fails him; having no water to drink, he becomes faint. The poor man has worked hard to make a god; but the god ministers nothing to his help and strength in his time of need! Would not he, if he were a sensible, decent idol, and had any power to befriend his worshippers? H. C. 13. In this and the following verses the prophet exposes the absurdity of image-worship; for what an absurdity is it for a man to dress his meat and make his god with the same stick of wood? or to think that a piece of timber hath any more divinity in it than it had before, because it is fashioned and carved into the figure of a man? The design of the prophet's argument is to show the absurdity of setting up images as the resemblances of God, and the representative objects of worship; or the supposing them to have some Divine power lodged within them; inasmuch as they have no qualities that answer such a character, being endued neither with power, life nor understanding; and are indeed nothing but what they appear to be, bare, senseless matter, wood or stone. Besides, nothing is a greater dishonor to God than to suppose Him like the image of a corruptible creature. W. Lowth. 14. The essential idea is that man, instead of being the creature, is in some sort the creator of the wood he worships, since it does or may owe its existence to his agency. 15. The prophet seems designedly to interchange the singular and plural forms, in order to identify with more effect the idol worshipped and the sticks consumed. He takes of them (the sticks), kindles a fire, warms himself, bakes bread, then makes a god, and worships, yes, bows down before them (the sticks of wood). The argument of this and the succeeding verses is intended to exhibit the absurdity of worshipping the same material that is constantly applied to the most trivial domestic uses. A. 17. "He saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god." There where he pays his homage and allegiance, he justly looks for protection and deliverance. What a strange infatuation is this, to expect help from gods that cannot help themselves! But it is this praying to them that makes them gods, not what the smith or the carpenter did at them. What we place our confidence in for deliverance, that we make a god of. H. 18-20. These are the prophet's reflections and inferences. They have no heart to know the truth. They love to relieve themselves of the thought of an infinite God, holy, and ever present; and therefore God gives them up to this wretched delusion. They are judicially blinded. Paul accounts for the rise of idolatry in this way. H. C. 20. Men may come to be honest atheists, but they did not begin so. They "held down the truth in unrighteousness" and "did not like to retain God in their knowledge," and "were given over to believe a lie"—what at the outset was known to be a lie. There is no error or absurdity so monstrous that the habitual sceptic will not accept it. The incredulity of credulity is absolutely amazing. Pierson. 21. Having completed his detailed exposure of the folly of idolatry, or rather of the impotence of idols as contrasted with the power of God, he now resumes the tone of promise and encouragement with which the chapter opens, and assures the chosen people, here personified as Israel or Jacob, that having been constituted such by Jehovah for a special purpose, they could not cease to be the objects of His watchful care. A. 22. The figure is twofold. As clouds hide from us the face of the sun, so transgression hides from us the face of God; and again, as God brushes away the dark clouds with infinite ease when He will, and lets the sunshine come forth with double glory and sweetness, so He takes away the thick clouds of our sins and lets His own face shine forth in unwonted radiance upon us. H. C. There is a double forgiveness of sin—in heaven and in a man's own conscience; and therefore sometimes compared to the blotting out of something out of a book, sometimes to the blotting out of a cloud. To the blotting out of a book (Isa. 43:25), that it may be no more remembered or charged upon us. To the blotting out of a cloud, as the sun when it breaketh forth in its strength dispelleth the mists and clouds. Sin interposeth as a cloud, hindering the light of God's countenance from shining forth upon us. Both these are God's work—to blot the book and to blot out the cloud. T. Manton.—Here is the work of each Divine person in the ever-glorious Trinity. God the Father blots out sins in the court of heaven; God the Son by His atonement on the cross; and God the Spirit in the court of a sinner's conscience. Behold, love speaks, grace proclaims, mercy declares, I have dispersed the cloud; I have blotted out thy sins. Grace superabounds over all the aboundings of sin. A deluge of pardoning love, mercy and grace washes away all thy transgressions. They are all dispersed like a cloud driven away by the sun. What! all this rich love, mercy and grace to such a sinner as I? and that too without any deserts of mine? Yes, all is of rich love, free grace and sovereign mercy. But behold the end of this. It is to attach thy heart to a sin-pardoning Lord. For He says, "Return unto Me." Oh, nothing attracts the gracious heart from sin, the world and vanity, to the Lord, like free and full declarations of Gospel grace and pardoning love. W. Mason. If sin is opposed as well as felt; if its strivings within you lead to prayer instead of iniquity; if, through the Spirit, the passions of your nature are habitually overcome; if sin is your grief and abhorrence as well as terror; then we are as sure as the Bible can make us, that the warfare in your soul, though painful, and tumultuous, and unceasing, is no mark of the displeasure of heaven; is as plain a token as God can give you, "that He has blotted out your transgressions." C. B. 23. Isaiah's full heart would fain move all heaven and all the lowest depths of the earth; all the mountains and forest trees also, to one vast choral song of praise to God for what He has done and is doing to redeem Jacob and glorify Himself in Israel. "Hath redeemed" and "will glorify Himself," imply that some of this work is seen by the prophet as past, and some of it, or at least, some of its results of glory to God, are seen as future. 24-28. The remaining verses of the chapter fall under one construction and really constitute but one complete sentence. Thus saith the Lord who is thy Redeemer and thy Former from the womb; I am the Lord who maketh all things, doing also all else included in this series. These are some of His great works, enumerated to give His people more enlarged views of His power and of His loving care of every interest of his Zion. H. C. 24. Maketh all things. The whole Cosmos is just as if made by God. We might go on lifting the curtain from before her face ten, twenty, never so many times, and always with the same result. Never a break in the verdict. For now some thousands of years our natural knowledge has been advancing, and the envious curtain has been rising, step by step; and never yet has the observer, after carefully looking on the picture without and carefully listening to the voice within, ever heard any other words than these: "Just as if made by God—Just as if made by God!" Burr. It is the exercise of seeking and finding God and His glory beneath the veil suspended on the frame of universal nature that strengthens, enlarges and elevates the soul, and fits it, if grace be there, for the presence and enjoyment of God, when the veil is removed and the soul in the spiritual world sees no more as through a glass darkly, but face to face. The forms of nature seem to have been designed to discipline man's mind rather than to teach man knowledge; to educate and not to inform the soul is the great object for which the mind is placed within the physical senses, and surrounded by the physical world. The forms of nature are drawn around us not so much to fill us with knowledge or let light into the mind as to make us evolve it ourselves in the exercise of our own powers. Cheever. 27. It cannot well be doubted that the words refer primarily to the fact that God's servant Cyrus dried the bed of the Euphrates and marched his army into the city in its dry channel, under the city walls. Both Herodotus and Zenophon describe this stratagem. H. C.—This remarkable circumstance, in which the event so exactly corresponded with the prophecy, was also noted by Jeremiah (Jer. 50:38; 51:36). A. C. 28. It is now universally admitted that this verse has reference to Cyrus the Elder or the Great, the son of Cambyses, king of Persia, and the grandson of Astyages the Mede, the hero of the Cyropædia and of the first book of Herodotus, the same who appears in sacred history (2 Chron. 36:23; Ezra 1:1) as the actual restorer of the Jews from exile. He is here called Jehovah's shepherd, which may either be the usual poetical designation of a king, so common in the oldest classics, or (as Umbreit suggests) a special description of his mission and vocation to gather the lost sheep of the house of Israel. A. The mention of Cyrus by name is here the seal to the truth and consistency of the whole message. A dim or trivial prediction would be a strange and unnatural sequel to such a glorious array of the Divine titles and perfections. The preface, in its solemnity, and the prophecy, in its clearness and importance, now agree together. The fulfilment was minutely true. The second Temple was founded under Cyrus, and through his decree, but founded only. Its completion and dedication were under Darius after twenty years' delay. Birks. It is only at occasional times and in slight degrees that the veil is withdrawn which hides the counsels of the Lord with reference to man, and man is permitted to see that each individual in his limited sphere and nations in their comparatively mighty influence are but instruments working out the counsels of the Most High. Pharaoh, or Cyrus, or the great Assyrian monarchs, or the Jewish race—how great the influence which they exercised on the destinies of mankind! Yet the Almighty God declares of each of them, that in the exercise of that influence they were but carrying out His will; thereby intimating to us (what our own natural conception of the Almighty might lead us to expect) that all things, small and great, good and evil, are foreseen by His omniscient eye, and work out the purposes of His wisdom and His love. Karslake. Those critics who deny that the original Isaiah could have been the author of these chapters make great account of the minuteness of this prophecy, which even gives the name of Cyrus, though he became king almost two centuries after the death of Hezekiah. They aver that such minuteness of detail is without a parallel, and is entirely foreign from the style of Scripture prophecy. All other prophecies, they say, are general in their statements—so general that human sagacity, coupled with a sort of public anticipation of better days yet to come, will amply suffice to account for their existence. The points to be made in reply to these positions are of this sort: 1. The affirmations made in respect to the general indefiniteness of prophecy are entirely too strong to correspond with the facts. Witness the prophecies respecting the Messiah—one person, mentioned by name, with a very great number of special and minute circumstances connected with His birth, life, spirit, teachings, miracles and death. Witness also the prophecies respecting the fall of Babylon (Jer. 50 and 51; also Isa. 13 and 21: 1-10). 2. The particular circumstance of naming a king has its parallel in the case of Josiah, whose name was given in prophecy as far back as the reign of Jeroboam I., B.C. 975, and was fulfilled in Josiah's reformation, B.C. 630. (See 1 K. 13: 2 and 2 K. 23: 15-20.) 3. It being admitted that prophecy is by inspiration of God, it can be no objection to any given case of prediction that it is unusually specific and definite. God will shape this feature according to His own wisdom. H. C. 45:1 THUS saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings; to open the doors before him, 2 and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee, and make the rugged places plain: I 3 will break in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that 4 I am the LORD, which call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel. For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, 5 though thou hast not known me. I am the LORD, and there is none else; beside me there is 6 no God: I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me: that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me: I am the LORD, and there 7 is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the LORD, that doeth all these things. 8 Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, that they may bring forth salvation, and let her cause righteousness to spring up together; I the LORD have created it. 9 Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! a potsherd among the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no 10 hands? Woe unto him that saith unto a father, What begettest thou? or to a woman, With 11 what travailest thou? Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: Ask me of the things that are to come; concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my 12 hands, command ye me. I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my 13 hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will make straight all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free, not for price nor reward, saith the LORD of hosts. 14 Thus saith the LORD, The labour of Egypt, and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine; they shall go after thee; in chains they shall come over; and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no 15, 16 God. Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. They shall be ashamed, yea, confounded, all of them; they shall go into confusion together that are 17 makers of idols. But Israel shall be saved by the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end. 18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; he is God; that formed the earth and made it; he established it, he created it not a waste, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the 19 LORD; and there is none else. I have not spoken in secret, in a place of the land of darkness; I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, 20 I declare things that are right. Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that carry the wood of their graven 21 image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. Declare ye, and bring it forth; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath shewed this from ancient time? who hath declared it of old? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a saviour; 22 there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am 23 God, and there is none else. By myself have I sworn, the word is gone forth from my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall 24 swear. Only in the LORD, shall one say unto me, is righteousness and strength: even to him 25 shall men come, and all they that were incensed against him shall be ashamed. In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory. Chap. 45. This chapter continues the same general course of thought, beginning with a further description of the victories of Cyrus, and of his work as the deliverer of God's people; and then making this great event the occasion and the ground for renewed declarations of God's infinite supremacy; of His worthiness to be trusted; of His purpose to confound all idols and idol-worshippers, and, with the co-operation of His true people, to bring all nations to acknowledge His name and to worship at His feet. H. C.—As to the order and arrangement of the parts, the chapter opens, in direct continuation of the forty-fourth, with a further prophecy of Cyrus and of his successes (verses 1-3). These are then referred to the power of God and His design of mercy toward His people, so that all misgivings or distrust must be irrational and impious (verses 4-13). Then leaving Cyrus out of view, the prophet turns his eyes to the nations, and declares that they must be subdued, but only in order to be blessed and saved, which is declared to have been the Divine purpose and revealed as such from the beginning (verses 14-25). A. 1. Remarkably the Lord applies to Cyrus the same descriptive term, "anointed," by which Jesus Christ is usually designated in prophecy. "Messiah" means precisely the anointed One, and is the very Hebrew word used here. The just view seems to be that Cyrus was anointed as king for the special work which the Lord had for him to do, as Jesus was for His special work, while yet their respective missions were exceedingly unlike. "To subdue nations" receives from history a striking fulfilment. H. C.—It can scarcely be considered a fortuitous coincidence that Herodotus speaks of the gate which led to the river as having been left open on the night of the attack. Xenophon says the doors of the palace itself having been unguardedly opened, the invaders took possession of it almost without resistance. A. Loose the loins. There is a special allusion to the night when the handwriting appeared on the wall, when "the king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote together one against another" (Dan. 5:6). The opening of the doors and gates has a similar reference to that night of revelry, when the river-gates were carelessly left unclosed. Birks. 2. The gates of brass.** In every side of the great square wall which encompassed Babylon were twenty-five gates, one hundred in all, of solid brass; those which led to the river and those which enclosed the temple of Belus were of the same material. Prideaux.—Without doubt, the distinct prediction by Isaiah, of a matter so much beyond the range of common experience, must have had great weight upon the mind of Cyrus, in convincing him not only that the prophecy was true, but the Divine Author of that prophecy was He who had indeed made straight his path before him, and who had opened to him the two-leaved gates of the numerous strong cities which he had won. Kitto. Herodotus, the ancient historian of the event, writing seventy years afterward, comments upon it in this manner: "If the besieged had been aware of the designs of Cyrus, they might have destroyed his troops. They had only to secure the folding gates leading to the river, and to have manned the embankments on either side, and they would have enclosed the Persians in a trap from which they could never have escaped. As it happened, they were taken by surprise; and such is the extent of the city, that they who lived in the extremities were made prisoners before the alarm reached the palace." "As it happened." Yes, it happened; but a hundred and more years before God had said by His prophet how it should happen. He had said, "I will open the two-leaved gates." So Cyrus found them wide open, and the way clear to the very banquet-hall of the palace, just as Isaiah had said, before Cyrus was born, that they should be. Phelps. 3. It is thought by some eminent writers that no conquests have ever been attended with such acquisition of wealth as those of Cyrus. The last clause gives a reason why this circumstance is mentioned—viz., in order that Cyrus might be able to identify the being who brought it to pass with the being who foretold it. 5. What is said before of naming him is here said of girding him—i.e., investing him with royal dignity or personally strengthening him; both may be included. A. 6. These manifestations of the great God, both in His antecedent predictions respecting Cyrus and in His wonderful providences in fulfilling them, had a vastly important purpose—viz., to make the true God known over all that Eastern world; to give them such demonstrations of His being, His omniscience and His universal providence as should at least suffice to convince all candid minds that He is the one only and infinite God, and that there can be no other besides. 7. The statements made in the previous verses give the clue (probably) to the special significance of this—viz., that the people of the distant East, the regions of the rising sun, might know that there is no God besides Me. For Persia, pre-eminently to the Hebrews the land of the rising sun, was the home of the celebrated doctrine of Zoroaster, taught in the Zend-Avesta—viz., that there is not one God only, but virtually two; one the author of all good, the other, of all evil; one, the former of light; the other, of darkness. But squarely in opposition to this dualistic system, and that His word might go at once through all that Eastern world whence Cyrus came, the Lord here affirms that He alone both formed the light and created the darkness; both makes peace and creates evil; He, the one supreme Lord God, doeth all these things. 8. When this ardent prophet, speaking for God and in sympathy with God, would summon all the active powers of the race to any special work, he is wont to call upon the heavens and the earth, as if to arouse all the realms of nature to combine and to help forward the mighty endeavor. H. C. The figure is varied and complete. The heavens are to distil righteousness, like dew, and the skies to pour it down in copious showers. The earth is to open her bosom, and to receive these gifts of heaven. Both, in concert, are thus to yield the fruit of salvation; and the earth is to bring forth righteousness in response to the floods of righteousness from on high. Birks. It is descriptive, doubtless, of what is yet to take place under the Messiah on the earth, in the better days which are to succeed to the present, when the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth. The heavens shall drop down righteousness, and the clouds shall distil salvation, and the earth shall bring forth the fruits of holiness, and the world shall be full of the love of God. All the earth shall be blessed, as if descending showers should produce universal fertility, and every land, now desolate, barren and sterile, and horrid by sin, shall become “like a well-watered garden” in reference to salvation, and shall be full of the fruits of holiness. Barnes. There is here the first sign of transition, in this prophecy, from Cyrus to the days of Messiah. The Lord, having been revealed as the true God, in contrast to idols and Persian dualism, and also as the God of Israel, is further revealed as the God of all grace, righteousness and salvation. The mercies to the returning exiles were an earnest of this promise. But its main fulfilment is in the Incarnation and Atonement of our Lord, and the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit. Then “truth flourished out of the earth, and righteousness looked down from heaven.” Birks. 9,10. Shall the clay pretend to be wiser than the potter, and therefore to advise him; or mightier than the potter, and therefore to control him? He that gave us being, that gave us this being, may design concerning us, and dispose of us as He pleases; and it is presumption for us to prescribe to Him. Shall we impeach God’s wisdom or question His power, who are ourselves so curiously, so wonderfully made? Shall we say He has no hands whose hands made us, and in whose hands we are? The doctrine of God’s sovereignty has enough in it to silence all our discontents and objections against the methods of His providence and grace (Rom. 9: 20, 21). H. 11. The logical connection of thought here is plain and beautiful. Instead of presuming to call in question the wisdom and goodness of God, the Great Maker and Ruler of all, go rather to Him in due humility and ask Him to reveal the future destinies of His sons, since these are all determined in His all-wise plans and counsels; and in respect to the work of His hands, commit all to Him. H. C. 12. This is a statement of the reason why He could be trusted to protect His people—viz., because He was almighty and had proved Himself to be so in creation. A. 13. I, the same God who created all worlds, evermore controlling all events, have also raised up him, Cyrus. I have done it in righteousness—i.e., for purposes of justice and righteousness both toward my people, whom I am to redeem, and toward the guilty king of Babylon, whom in justice I must destroy. The words do not refer to the character of Cyrus as good or just, but to the purpose of God in raising him up. The last clause means that Cyrus would send home those Jewish exiles without demanding any redemption price, doing it of his own generous and free will. 14. The next thought in order is the accession of the Gentiles to the true Church of God, with their wealth, and of course with their hearts. Egypt, Ethiopia and the Sabeans are named here because they are named in chap. 43: 3, and as specimens of the whole Gentile world, the promise applying not less to all other nations. H. C. 15. An apostrophe, expressive of the prophet’s own strong feelings in contrasting what God had done and would yet do, the darkness of the present with the brightness of the future. If these things are to be hereafter, then oh, Thou Saviour of Thy people, Thou art indeed a God that hides Himself—that is to say, conceals His purposes of mercy under the darkness of His present dispensations. A.— When God is acting as Israel's God and Saviour, "commonly His way is in the sea" (Ps. 77 : 19). The salvation of the Church is carried on in a mysterious way, by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts working on men's spirits (Zech. 4 : 6), by weak and unlikely instruments, small and accidental occurrences, and not wrought till the last extremity; but this is our comfort, though God hide Himself, we are sure He is "the God of Israel, the Saviour." H. We know enough of God to love and adore Him without His explaining to us all the principles of His government. It enters into His character as a sovereign to conceal some of the reasons of His conduct from His subjects. He is a God that hideth Himself. If it were otherwise, He would not be God. And it is best for us that it should be so. It is best for our education that it should be conducted under a system of mysteries. It does not cramp the intellect. It does not impair its freedom. A wish to solve every mystery is indicative of anything but profoundness of views or goodness of heart. Such a system as that under which we live keeps the curiosity awake, enables the soul, shows it the greatness of the kingdom into which it is introduced, inspires it with reverential awe, enlarges its capacities, and fits it for its destinies. B. B. Edwards. How often the people of God say with the prophet, "Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour!" It is true a steadfast faith in the providence of God, that all that He does and all that He permits and disposes is best, will quiet the passions and change the tempestuous ocean into the pacific sea; but when they are admitted into the council of state above and see the immediate reasons of His decrees, what a heavenly wonder, what an exquisite pleasure will fill their minds? When the original fountains of wisdom, as clear as deep, shall be opened, what sweet satisfaction will be shed abroad in their spirits? They will see the beauty of providence in disposing temporal evils in order to their eternal felicity; that as in a curious picture the darkest tinctures are so disposed as to give light and grace to orient colors, so all the afflictions of this state were but shadows or foils, to make their faith, and love, and patience more resplendent, and their reward more excellent. What our Saviour said to Peter is applicable to the impenetrable dispensations of providence to us in our mortal state: "What I do, thou knowest not now, but shalt know hereafter." Then the secrets of His counsels shall be unsealed, and we shall understand that His overruling providence is most eminently glorified in extracting good out of evil, for we shall know as we are known. Bates. 16,17. Two grand facts are here put in antithesis: 1. That the makers of idols shall be confounded and put to shame. 2. That the true Israel shall be saved with everlasting salvation and never be put to shame through disappointment by the failure of her God to fulfil His promises. These promises, now fresh in mind and deeply affecting, are in these words guaranteed against possible failure. 18. That God "made the earth to be inhabited" is significant here in connection with this prophecy of the ultimate conversion of the nations, as much as to say, I have not only made this earth "all very good," but I made it to sustain a vast population, and my ultimate purpose is to bring all these nations up to the gates of Zion to say there, "Surely God is in Thee, and there is none else, no other God." H. C. 19. As He has in His word invited them to seek Him, so He never denied their believing prayers nor disappointed their believing expectations. He said not to them, to any of them, "Seek ye Me in vain;" for if He did not think fit to give them the particular thing they prayed for, yet He gave them grace sufficient and the comfort and satisfaction of soul which were equivalent. God not only gives a gracious answer to, but will be the bountiful rewarder of those that diligently seek Him. H. It should be enough for us to know that God has established an unfailing connection between prayer and blessing; enough that He has promised to answer prayer. We will leave it to Him to reconcile such absolute promises with His sovereignty and immutability. If He see nothing inconsistent in the promise and the purpose, if He assure us that He does not resign His sceptre or falter in His administration while actually answering a human call upon His interposition, it should satisfy us. The difficulties of the case should not trouble us if they do not trouble God. If we become entangled with them our prayers will surely be hindered. R. S. S. Prayer is as much a means as anything else. It seizes the arm that moves the stars. It is a great force, not a physical, which you can measure, but a moral force acting on the mind of God, inducing Him to do what He would not do if we did not pray. It is by the regenerate, through Christ, by one who believes in it as an ordinance of God, submissive, accompanied by earnest and intelligent use of all the available means, and is always answered; either (1) What you ask is granted; or (2) in a different form at some other time; or (3) something else and better is given. When your child asks you for something which your wisdom sees is hurtful, you do not grant it, or you give it something better. Our heavenly Father never gives us a stone when we ask for bread, but, thanks be to His name, He often gives us bread when we ask for a stone. A. A. Hodge. Desires breathed to God are not in vain, but they must be accompanied with seeking, which is effort. What do we do to secure possession of the gifts for which we pray? Spiritual character is not built up in answer to wishes only, whether spoken or unspoken. We have to seek for the treasure, not as if we did not know where it was, but as gold-diggers, who seek for it on their claim, because they know that it is there. The effort is to be continuous. A. M. It is a mistake, a dangerous error to suppose that man should pray only when his heart prompts. Knowest thou not that the soul is stimulated to prayer by prayer itself? How to approach Him who approacheth you so graciously, you know. Seek the still hour every day. Read the holy Scriptures every day. Attend, every hour and every instant, to every attracting influence of the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit keepeth silence, then cling to your prayer. Tholuck. 20,21. To hasten the desired and promised result of converting the nations to God, the summons goes forth. Call them together; let us have a vast convocation; let all those who have survived the judgments of God on guilty nations gather together; let them consider first how utterly ignorant and senseless are all those who set up the wood of their graven image and pray to a god who cannot save. Then let them also consider who hath brought out such minute and wonderful predictions of the distant future, which have moreover been so accurately fulfilled. Is not He who hath done all this the true Jehovah, the omniscient God? Do not these fulfilled predictions prove Him to be indeed the one only God? Yea, let them know that He is a just God and a Saviour, combining perfect justice with boundless mercy; a God whom sinners should fear to offend, yet dare to approach suppliantly, and to whom they should surely be attracted by His great mercies. H. C. 21. A just God, and a Saviour.** The Incarnate Son of God is the Bread of Life. There is no Gospel left when He is stripped of His Deity; nothing remains but precept and example, empty platitudes about virtues and graces without redeeming energy to set the heart on fire and make life an inspiration. "Thy Saviour is thy God!" that makes all things new; that seals my free and full forgiveness; that makes my sonship real and indestructible; that makes my faith omnipotent; that makes me glory in tribulation and infirmities; that makes me sure of holiness and heaven; that sets the flaming cross for me in the blackest firmament; that makes the open grave the Mecca of my perpetual pilgrimage. Behrends. When God absolves, it is only in one way—that is, through a Mediator. God cannot forgive sin at the expense of His justice, His holiness or His truth. It is through the blood of Christ alone that He can do this. Justice asked for the sufferings of a man—Christ rendered the sufferings of a God; hence the Fount of Infinite Justice now waits to forgive; and He forgives, for Christ's sake, the moment that we ask Him. He is just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. Cumming. In this revelation of God in Christ is the assurance that that Holy One, in whose presence angelic purity grows dim, stoops to take the very nature of the guilty, and blend it in mysterious affiance with His own. More than this: the purity of heaven incarnate exposes itself to a long-continued companionship with evil, permits itself to be pierced with all the anguish that sin's hostility could inflict upon it, and at last yields up itself as sin's victim into the hands of death. Yet, with all this, from first to last, infinitely loving right, unerringly cognizant of man's guilt, taking the full gauge of the abhorrent nature of that which He forgave, Jesus is seen with mercy ever on His lip, forgiveness, compassion, love to sinners in His every look and act. And further, the Gospel permits us to think of Christ as one who, in conveying pardon to guilt, instead of relaxing the strictness or bringing slight on the unbending rectitude of God's law, offers up the grandest possible tribute to its majesty and the most awful atonement for the sins that infringed it. Here, therefore, in this Gospel of Christ is the most ample provision made for the guilty spirit's needs. Though my sin cannot be literally unsinned, though the past is irrevocable, yet surely in this my trembling heart may find the rest for which it craves—the assurance that the past may be forgotten, and that sin is blotted out by an act in which its guilt is most fearfully condemned and expiated—when I behold the very God who is Law, Righteousness, Absolute Justice, in human form offering Himself up to the death to save me. Caird. Everything which punishment, in its own nature, as a mere sanction of law, involves, is involved in the great sacrificial offering of Jesus Christ; and more, for punishment, strictly speaking, has no remedial influence about it. Penalty contemplates not so much the good of the offender as the good of the community or state whose rights he has outraged and whose interests he has sacrificed. The atonement of Jesus Christ contemplates both. By one and the same means it upholds and illustrates the righteousness of God, and reforms and renews the guilty. It constitutes the mightiest, nay the only power which can be brought to bear upon the alienated heart, and recover it to the love and service of its rightful Sovereign; and thus it gives to justice all its claims, and affords goodness free scope for its exercise; makes kindness to the sinner consistent with righteousness—blends mercy and truth, good will and justice together, showing to every intelligent being how God can be just and yet justify the sinner. E. M. There is a just God over all, for men ever reap just what they sow. But justice in God is something far grander than the mere exercise of retribution; it is the love of eternal truth, purity, righteousness; and the penalties of untruth, impurity, unrighteousness are the outflashings of that holy anger which is founded in His love of the right, the pure and the true. In the same way God's salvation is more than the mere deliverance from penalty. It is a deliverance from penalty; it is a salvation from the miseries of sin and the agonies inflicted on the soul by the remorse of conscience. But it is at the same time far greater than this; it is the deliverance from evil, salvation from the cruel lusts of wrong; from the bondage of unholy passions growing into the giant-life of eternity; from the deep degradation and horrible selfishness of sin. That is the salvation of God. Here, then, we see how His justice and His salvation are in perfect harmony. His salvation is to free men from the penalties of justice by making them righteous, true and holy in Christ. And thus the purpose of God the Saviour is to change men into the image of God the Just. His justice is not merely a holy anger against all the violations of truth, and righteousness, and purity, but a deep desire to make men like Himself—just, and holy, and true. In a word, God would save men from evil by making them righteous; and thus He is at once the just God and the Saviour. R. T. 22. These great truths crystallize into this broad and blessed invitation, addressed to all people on the wide earth—the most remote as well as the least—saying: "Look unto Me and be ye saved." H. C. This is said in view of the declaration made in the previous verse, that He is a just God and a Saviour. It is because He sustains this character that all are invited to look to Him; and the doctrine is that the fact that God is at the same time just, and yet a Saviour, or can save consistently with His justice, is an argument why they should look to Him, and confide in Him. If He is at the same time just—true to His promises; righteous in His dealings; maintaining the honor of His law and His government, and showing His hatred of sin; and also merciful, kind and forgiving, it is a ground of confidence in Him. The direction to look to God for salvation implies a deep conviction that we cannot redeem ourselves; a deep feeling that salvation is necessary; a deep conviction of helplessness and of sin; and a deep conviction that He only can save. All the Ends of the Earth. The invitation here proves, 1. That the offers of the Gospel are universal. None are excluded. The ends of the earth, the remotest parts of the world, are invited to embrace salvation, and all those portions of the earth might, under this invitation, come and accept the offers of life. 2. That God is willing to save all, or desirous that all should be saved—since He would not give an invitation at all unless He was desirous that they should accept of it; nor would He give an invitation unless He was willing to save them. 3. That there is ample provision for their salvation—since God could not invite them to accept of what was not provided for them, nor could He ask them to partake of salvation which had no existence. 4. That it is His serious and settled purpose that all the ends of the earth shall be invited to embrace the offers of life. The invitation has gone from His lips, and the command has gone forth that it should be carried to every creature, and now it appertains to His Church to carry the glad news of salvation around the world. God intends that it shall be done; and on His Church rests the responsibility of seeing it speedily executed. Barnes. Strange as it is, yet so it is; we can turn round upon Sovereign Fatherhood bidding us to His service and say, "I will not." He pleads with us, and we can resist His pleadings. He holds out the mercies of His hands and the gifts of His grace, and we can reject them. We cannot cease to be the objects of His love, but we can refuse to be the recipients of its most precious gifts. We can bar our hearts against it. Then of what avail is it to us? Not to accept is to refuse; non-submission is rebellion. We do not need to emphasize our refusal by any action—no need to lift our clenched hands in defiance. We have simply to put them behind our backs or to keep them folded. The closed hand must remain an empty hand. “He that believeth not is condemned.” Remember that when Christ pleads and draws, to do nothing is to oppose, and to delay is to refuse. It is a very easy matter to ruin your soul. You have simply to keep still when He says, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.” And all the rest will follow of itself. A. M. Our salvation is not to be deferred to a distant judgment and a distant heaven. God would save us here, and save us now. He would inspire us with hope, bless us with peace and anoint us with gladness. He would bring our humanity under His curative and restorative power. He has actually accomplished this in regard to many. We see and know the men who are actually resuscitated and in process of being restored. They are not perfect. They are not holy as man was in Eden. They are not like the angels. They are men—heirs of all the ills to which our nature is subject; they have sinned; they have wept; but they have begun to hope and begun to live. The salvation begun will be carried on to perfection. W. Adams. 23. God is supreme, and will yet be acknowledged to be so by every rational being. Every knee shall bow to Him in this acknowledgment—freely and lovingly, or by compulsion and fear, for the language of this statement is not restricted to the voluntary submission of real converts. It is (apparently of purpose) made sufficiently general to include both the voluntary submission of the redeemed and the coerced subjection of the incorrigibly impenitent. Paul quotes this passage twice, first applying it (Rom. 14:11) to the whole world standing before Christ’s judgment-seat and recognizing His infinite supremacy there; and again (Phil. 2:9-11) to Christ’s glorious exaltation by the Father to the throne of the universe. H. C. 24. In the Lord the captive Jews had righteousness; grace both to sanctify their afflictions to them and to qualify them for deliverance, and strength for their support and escape. In the Lord Jesus we have righteousness to recommend us to the good will of God toward us, and strength to begin and carry on the good work of God in us; He is the Fountain of both, and on Him we must depend for both, must “go forth in His strength and make mention of His righteousness” (Ps. 71:16). H.—No soldier of His goeth a warfare at his own charge. Christ being both their righteousness and strength, they can want nothing—neither riches nor power. Hence they go on from day to day, glorying in Him as their richest treasure, and trusting in Him as their almighty strength; and this is their constant song in the house of their pilgrimage and all their journey through: “Surely in the Lord have I righteousness and strength.” Jesus’ righteousness inspires the soul with boldness before God. Jesus’ strength obtains victory over every enemy. This is the triumph of faith. So believers walk safely and comfortably. W. Mason. In all thy love and well-doing gird thyself up to improve and use aright what remains free in thee, and if thou doest aught aright, say and thankfully believe that Christ hath done it for thee. Oh, what a miserable, despairing wretch should I be if I gave up the faith that the life of Christ would precipitate the remaining dregs of sin in the crisis of death, and that I should rise in purer capacity of Christ, blind, to be irradiated by His light, empty, to be possessed by His fulness, naked of merit, to be clothed by His righteousness! Coleridge. 25. The verse is really intended to wind up the previous addresses to the Gentiles with a solemn declaration of their true relation to the chosen people, as composed of those who really believed and feared God, whether Jews or Gentiles. This principle was recognized in every admission of a proselyte to the communion of the ancient Church, and is repeatedly asserted as a fundamental law of the Christian Church (Rom. 10:12; Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). A. All believers are the seed of Israel, an upright, praying seed. The great privilege they enjoy by Jesus Christ is that in Him and for His sake they are justified before God, Christ being made of God to them righteousness. All that are justified will own it is in Christ that they are justified, nor could they be justified by any other; and those who are justified shall be glorified. And, therefore, the great duty believers owe to Christ is to glory in Him and to make their boast of Him; therefore He is made all in all to us, that “whoso glories, may glory in the Lord;” and let us comply with this intention. H. 46:1 BEL boweth down, Nebo stoopath; their idols are upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: the things that ye carried about are made a load, a burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. 3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which have been borne by me from the belly, which have been carried from the womb: and even to old age I am he, and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; yea, I will carry, and will deliver. To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like? Such as lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, they hire a goldsmith, and he maketh it a god; they fall down, yea, they worship. 7 They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place, and he standeth; from his place shall he not remove: yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble. 8 Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. 9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me; declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country; yea, I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed, I will also do it. Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness: I bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry; and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory. 47:1 Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones, and grind meal: remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers. Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and will accept no man. Our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel. Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called The lady of kingdoms. I was wroth with my people, I profaned mine inheritance, and gave them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the aged hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke. And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end thereof. 8 Now therefore hear this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and there is none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children; but these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: in their full measure shall they come upon thee, despite of the multitude of thy sorceries, and the great abundance of thine enchantments. For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness; thou hast said, None seeth me; thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee: and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and there is none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know the dawning thereof: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it away: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou knowest not. Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. 13 Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels: let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from the things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: it shall not be a coal to warm at, nor a fire to sit before. Thus shall the things be unto thee wherein thou hast laboured: they that have trafficked with thee from thy youth shall wander every one to his quarter; there shall be none to save thee. Chap. 46. The transition is easy and natural, from the deliverance of Israel by Cyrus, and the richer blessings to follow in the days of the promised Messiah, to the downfall of Babylon and its idols. The prophecy then continues with a vivid picture of the images of the gods of Babylon, turned into packages on the backs of weary beasts, instead of being carried aloft in stately procession, and unable to free themselves or their owners from the power of the conquerors. Birks. The case so often put already in these later prophecies, Jehovah versus idols, becomes in this chapter specific—God versus the idols of Babylon. The great city is seen in prophetic vision, conquered; the vanquished people pack their helpless images upon their beasts of burden to bear them away; the heavy-laden animals stagger and sink under their load, and the god himself is powerless to help. But Jehovah, instead of being borne, Himself bears His people; and shall He be compared to a graven or a molten god? Once more the Lord appeals to His past achievements and to the mission of Cyrus, so signally fulfilling the Divine counsels, and closes with exhorting the ungodly to hear, renewing His promise of salvation near to come for His people. H. C. In confirmation of the general threats and promises with which chap. 45 is wound up, the prophet now exhibits the particular case of the Babylonian idols as a single instance chosen from the whole range of past and future history. They are described as fallen and gone into captivity, wholly unable to protect their worshippers or save themselves (verses 1, 2). With these he then contrasts Jehovah's constant care of Israel in time past and in time to come (verses 3, 4). The contrast is carried out by another description of the origin and impotence of idols (verses 5-7), and another assertion of Jehovah's sole divinity, as proved by His knowledge and control of the future, and by the raising up of Cyrus in particular (verses 8-11). This brings him back to the same solemn warning of approaching judgments, and the same alternative of life or death, with which the foregoing chapter closes (verses 12, 13). A. 1. Bel and Nebo were the chief gods of Babylon, named here to represent the whole set. Etymologically, the word Bel comes from Baal, and Nebo from a word which means a prophet or interpreter. H. C.—The dignity of these two imaginary deities among the Babylonians may be learned from the extent to which these names enter into the composition of the names of men, both in sacred and profane history. Such are Belshazzar, Belteshazzar, Belesys, Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, Nabopolassar, Nabonned, etc. A. 2. In the ruin of the empire these idol gods bow down, like those wounded or decrepit with age. Their images, once raised aloft for worship, are placed on beasts of burden and carried away in disgrace. The gods stoop, like the beasts that pant under their idols; and "their souls," the divinities themselves, are gone into captivity. Birks. The language of the prophet is necessarily figurative, and when he declares that Bel and Nebo had gone into captivity, nothing more is meant than that the people whose gods they were and whom they represented had passed under the yoke of a foreign conqueror. And yet the prophet's prediction was eventually fulfilled in a very literal way. The empire of Cyrus was broken up after the death of Cambyses, and had to be reconquered by Darius, the son of Hystaspes, the real founder of the Persian empire. Darius was a Zoroastrian monotheist as well as a Persian, and under him and his successors polytheism ceased to be the religion of the State. Twice during his reign he had to besiege Babylon. Hardly had he been proclaimed king when it revolted under a certain Nidinta-Bel, who called himself "Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos." Babylon endured a siege of two years, and was at last captured by Darius only by the help of a stratagem. Six years afterward it again rose in revolt, under an Armenian, who professed, like his predecessor, to be "Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabonidos." Once more, however, it was besieged and taken, and this time the pretender was put to death by impalement. His predecessor, Nidinta-Bel, seems to have been slain while the Persian troops were forcing their way into the captured city. After the second capture of Babylon Darius pulled down its walls; and his son Xerxes completed the work of destruction by destroying the great temple of Bel, and carrying away the golden image of the god. Sayce. 3,4. In beautiful contrast the Lord calls the attention of His people to His own relations to them; not borne by them on their weary beasts who sink under their load, but Himself bearing them on His bosom as the mother bears her babe, and this not merely during helpless infancy, but onward even to old age; and finally at the end of their life-journey delivering them safely into their everlasting rest. Verily such a God meets the heart-felt wants of frail mortals! H. C. The two ideas of creating and carrying are thrown together, and in such a way as to show that they are related; that in the fact of God the Creator lies enfolded the fact of God the Redeemer. "I have made, and I will bear." Redemption, in one sense, grows out of creation. Because God made man in His own image, He is bent on restoring him to that image. Because God made us God loves us, educates us, bears with us, carries on the race on the line of His infinite patience, ministers to us with help and sympathy, is burdened with our perverseness and blindness, yea, comes down in person into the sphere of our humanity and takes its awful load of sin and sorrow and pain and death upon Himself. He is under no obligation imposed by any rightful claim of ours. But He is under an obligation stronger than that—an obligation imposed by the stress of His own infinite love for the children He has created. The stress of obligation does not draw Him from our side, it pushes from Him toward us. It is the mighty outgoing of His own fatherly heart toward that which emanates from Himself and which He yearns to see restored to the image in which He made it. Vincent. 5. Where else can such a God as Jehovah be found! With what else can He be even compared? Would you think to compare Him with idol gods? Pause and look at those powerless things. See how they are made. Trace their history from the very outset of their existence. Take the best specimens, those prepared by the wealthy classes, who have money to lavish and who spare it not. 8. Addressing idolaters, the Lord calls upon them to remember these facts in respect to their idol gods and to show themselves men by using the reason God has given them. H. C. —The word hithshashu, derived from 'ish, a man, occurs here only. It answers thus to the apostolic charge, "quit you like men" (1 Cor. 16: 13). In one place the reference is to manly understanding, in the other to manly courage. But the two thoughts are very near akin. All superstition and idol worship is mental cowardice, while true faith and right worship are a manly and reasonable thing. Birks. 9, 10. "I am the Mighty and there is no other God, and there is none like Me, declaring from the first the last, and from ancient time the things which are not (yet) done (or made), saying, My counsel shall stand and all My pleasure I will do." He calls upon them to consider the proofs of His exclusive deity, afforded not only by the nullity of all conflicting claims, but by the fact of His infallible foreknowledge, as attested by the actual prediction of events long before their occurrence. Declaring the last from the first, or the end from the beginning, means declaring the whole series of events included between these extremes. A. 10. "He knows the end from the beginning." In that Eternal Mind lies ever undivided the total idea, the total movement, the total time of the immeasurable universe; "all things stand forever according to His unchanging ordinance;" "He maketh peace in His high places," and yet He hears continually the prayers of His elect. "He putteth their tears in His bottle," "He numbereth the hairs of their heads." Both views belong to the greatness as well as the harmony of the Divine character—great in its condescending depths, as in its ineffable height. God sees all things in their causes, He sees also all things in their effects and as effects, even as they are seen and known by us: He sees them in the infinite, total idea, He sees them also as parts, and in their ever-varied, ever-varying relations; He sees them as ever present, He sees them in their flowing successions; He sees them in their timeless being, before all worlds. He sees them as they are carried out. T. Lewis. Faith and hope, which are prophetic powers in a servant of God, argue from His character and His promises the certainty, the stability of His system. Hence, the visions of faith are sometimes rapturous. But how much more glorious will be the aspect of the system to those who shall be initiated in a future life, into the wondrous counsels of God; who shall see beginning, middle and end; the interruptions, the oppositions, the steps forward, the victory, the closing triumph? God will not seem slow or slack then, but majestic, almighty, all-wise, one and the same through the whole drama. The world will appear to be one, more than now, and the race one, and the counsels of God one from their germ to their perfect fulfilment. Then the perverted will of man, the schemes of imperial power, the theories sanctifying injustice, the great systems of oppression, will seem to have been used by God to spread His glory. As then the enlightened eye shall look back on obstacles, which, at their time, seemed insurmountable, but have now faded away in the distance—on the wrath of man opposing God or defying Him, on revolutions in opinion and in society, they will seem like the storm of yesterday, which has left no trace on the sky, while the steady laws of God run their constant race. "God has triumphed, He has triumphed," they will then say. Woolsey. As God's operations are all according to His counsels, so His counsels shall all be fulfilled in His operations, and none of His measures shall be broken, none of His designs shall miscarry. This yields abundant satisfaction to those who have bound up all their comforts in God's counsels, that His counsel shall undoubtedly stand; and if whatever pleases God pleases us, nothing can contribute more to make us easy than to be assured that "God will do all His pleasure." H. 11. From the general assertion of His providence and power He now passes to that specific proof of it which has so frequently been urged before—viz., the raising up of Cyrus; but without the mention of his name in this case, and with an indefiniteness of expression which is perfectly well suited to the general analogy of prophecy. A.—Cyrus is one of the first who is known to have used the eagle for his military standard. So Xenophon writes of him: "He had for ensign a golden eagle, stretched upon a long spear; and this even still continues to be the ensign of the Persian king." The "man of my purpose" means one set apart by God's decree for a special service. The futurity of the campaigns of Cyrus, when this message was given, can alone make it intelligible. There could be no proof or sign of God's foreknowledge in a record after the event. Birks. 12. By an easy and natural association, He subjoins to these proofs of His own divinity, both past and future, a warning to those who were unwilling to receive them. Strength of heart implies, though it does not directly signify, stubbornness or obstinacy and a settled opposition to the will of God. 13. The exhibition of God's righteousness consists in the salvation of His people and the simultaneous destruction of His enemies. To these two classes it was therefore at the same time an object of desire and dread. The stouthearted mentioned in verse 12 were not prepared for it, and unless they were changed must perish when God's righteousness came near. Chap. 47. The following seems to be the true analysis. Having exemplified his general doctrine as to God's ability and purpose to do justice both to friends and foes, by exhibiting the downfall of the Babylonian idols, he now attains the same end by predicting the downfall of Babylon itself and of the state to which it gave its name. Under the figure of a royal virgin she is threatened with extreme degradation and exposure (verses 1-3). Connecting this event with Israel and Israel's God, as the great themes which it was intended to illustrate (verse 4), he predicts the fall of the empire more distinctly (verse 5), and assigns as a reason the oppression of God's people (verse 6), pride and self-confidence (verses 7-9), especially reliance upon human wisdom and upon superstitious arts, all which would prove entirely insufficient to prevent the great catastrophe (verses 10-15). A. 1-3. This picture of the daughter of Babylon going into exile is a true picture of what happened in the reigns of Sargon and Sennacherib, while it hardly agrees with anything of which we have knowledge concerning the policy of the Persian monarchs or their treatment of Babylon. W. J. B. 1. These two words are forcibly expressive, "no throne!" no longer any throne for thee; no more regal dominion; no more of the dignity and honor of royal power. The name, "Daughter of the Chaldeans," implies that Babylon was originally built by the Chaldean people. H. C. In the dust. The dry, arid aspect of the ruins, of the vast mounds which cover the greater buildings, and even the lesser elevations which spread far into the plain at their base, receives continual notice. "The whole surface of the mounds appears to the eye," says Ker Porter, "nothing but vast, irregular hills of earth, mixed with fragments of brick, pottery, vitrifications, mortar, bitumen, etc., while the foot at every step sinks unto the loose dust and rubbish." And again "Every spot of ground in sight was totally barren, and on several tracts appeared the common marks of former building. It is an old adage that 'where a curse has fallen grass will never grow.' In like manner the decomposing materials of a Babylonian structure doom the earth on which they perish to an everlasting sterility." "On all sides," says Sir Austen Layard, "fragments of glass, marble, pottery and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and hideous waste." G. R. 2. Her debasement is compared to the change from being a queen to being an abject slave. "Take the mill-stones"—i.e., of the small hand-mill—a necessity in every Oriental family, with which the grinding for each day's use was done every morning, and always done by the lowest class of servants. H. C. 3. The daughter of Babylon, this royal damsel, must suffer both abasement and captivity. She must pass through deep waters, and her pride be replaced by a painful and repulsive exposure, both of her political weakness and her moral shame and guilt. Birks. 4. The apparent abruptness between this verse and the preceding is relieved when we consider that retributive judgment on Babylon was mercy and salvation to Zion. It was for the sake of saving Zion and of punishing Babylon for her cruel oppression of God's people that these terrible judgments came upon her. Hence the thought here. Utter destruction upon Babylon is only what might be expected, for our Redeemer is the Lord of hosts, King of the armies of heaven, bearing this name because He is such in fact and therefore clothed with all power to avenge His people on their oppressors. 6. The Lord never fails to hold nations responsible for such violations of natural right and of the impulses of common humanity. (See Amos 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 13, etc.) To this eternal law, written on all hearts, even the most ignorant heathen are held amenable (Rom. 2:14, 15). H. C. 7-15. Babylon, now doomed to ruin, is here justly upbraided with her pride, luxury and security, in the day of her prosperity, and the confidence she had in her own wisdom and forecast, and particularly in the prognostications and counsels of the astrologers. These things are mentioned both to justify God in bringing these judgments upon her and to mortify her and put her to so much the greater shame under these judgments; for when God comes forth to take vengeance glory belongs to Him, but confusion to the sinner. H. 13. These words describe the habitual state and character of Babylon before her calamity. She has abounded in wise men, diviners, interpreters of dreams, observers of the heavens, and has consulted them even to satiety. Birks. 14,15. Here is the result. Instead of affording to Babylon the least help, these magicians are themselves awfully consumed. They are as stubble; fire devours them. They cannot even save themselves, much less the nation and the people. Such is the doom of those with whom thou hast wrought even to weariness to find help from them for thyself. The fire of God's judgments has utterly consumed them. "Thy merchants from thy youth" (i.e., who have been with thee from thy youth) "have scattered, every one going his way, and no one saves thee." The magicians destroyed by fire (this is the figure) and the merchants (her wealthy classes probably) dispersed in every direction to other homes and other openings for trade and wealth, she is left with none to help her. H. C. 48:1 HEAR ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah; which swear by the name of the LORD, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel; the LORD of hosts is his name. I have declared the former things from of old; yea, they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them: suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; therefore I have declared it to thee from of old; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldst say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them. Thou hast heard it; behold all this; and ye, will ye not declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, which thou hast not known. They are created now, and not from of old; and before this day thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldst say, Behold, I knew them. Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from of old thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou didst deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb. For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off. Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, for mine own sake, will I do it; for how should my name be profaned? and my glory will I not give to another. Hearken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel my called: I am he; I am the first, I also am the last. Yea, mine hand hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spread out the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together. Assemble yourselves, all ye, and hear; which among them hath declared these things? The LORD hath loved him: he shall perform his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken; yea, I have called him: I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous. Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; from the beginning I have not spoken in secret; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord God hath sent me, and his spirit. Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD thy God, which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldst go. Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the grains thereof: his name should not be cut off nor destroyed from before me. Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans; with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth: say ye, The LORD hath redeemed his servant Jacob. And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out. There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked. Chap. 48. The first cycle of the later prophecies, after announcing the victories of Cyrus and the fall of Babylon, closes in this chapter with a fresh voice of rebuke and encouragement to Israel. The wisdom of God, revealed in the fulfilment of the "former things," was to prepare them for "new things," or those times of Messiah, of which fuller predictions are now to follow. The chapter has two equal divisions, each opening with a call to listen to the voice of God. The first is mainly rebuke, the second encouragement. The former, again, applies chiefly to the times from Isaiah till the Return, and the latter from the Return to the coming of Messiah; while the whole makes a transition from the days of the prophecy to the times of the New Testament. Birks. From his digression with respect to the causes and effects of the catastrophe of Babylon, the prophet now returns to his more general themes, and winds up the first great division (chaps. 40-48) of the later prophecies by a reiteration of the same truths and arguments which run through the previous portion of it, with some variations and additions. Although Israel is God's chosen and peculiar people, he is in himself unworthy of the honor and unfaithful to the trust (verses 1, 2). Former predictions had been uttered expressly to prevent his ascribing the event to other gods (verses 3-5). For the same reason new predictions will be uttered now of events which have never been distinctly foretold (verses 6-8). God's continued favor to His people has no reference to merit upon their part, but is the fruit of His own sovereign mercy and intended to promote His own designs (verses 9-11). He again asserts His own exclusive deity, as proved by the creation of the world, by the prediction of events still future, and especially by the raising up of Cyrus, as a promised instrument to execute His purpose (verses 12-16). The sufferings of Israel are the fruit of his own sin, his prosperity and glory of God's sovereign grace (verses 17-19). The first part closes as it opened with a promise of deliverance from exile, accompanied, in this case, by a solemn limitation of the promise to its proper objects (verses 20-22). It is evident that these are the same elements which enter into all the later prophecies thus far, and that these elements are here combined in very much the usual proportions, although not in precisely the same shape and order. The most novel feature of this chapter is the fulness with which one principal design of prophecy and the connection between Israel's sufferings and his sins, are stated. A. The moral aim of the chapter is obvious. Its bearings are naturally wholesome. In Isaiah's time and onward to the coming of Christ there was painful occasion for such an expose of the imperfect piety of God's professed people. It was needful in order to put their sins distinctly before their own eyes; to impress them with the fact that God saw those sins and estimated their guilt perfectly; to induce repentance; to keep them humble; to prevent their being elated with their distinguished honor as God's chosen people; to make them feel that this distinction was not due to their merit, but to the fact that God had purposes of glorious mercy for our race and chose them as His instruments in His sovereignty for His higher ends and not at all because of their good deserts. Remarkably the points brought forward and made to bear upon the chosen people, contemplated thus as very defective in their piety, are to a great extent the same which have been most prominent in the previous chapters—e.g., the existence, perfections and creatorship of God; His foreknowledge as evinced repeatedly in prophecy; His wonderful providence in raising up Cyrus, and His great mercies toward His people. 1. This verse strikes the key-note of the chapter in respect to the point of view in which God's people are contemplated. They are insincere and untruthful in their religious professions. H. C.—When Isaiah wrote these later visions, the ten tribes had been wholly carried away. These men of Judah made mention of God's name in vows, oaths, prayers and sacrifices, but not in truth or righteousness, for their services were heartless and insincere. Birks. 3. In chaps. 40-48 we find the greatest emphasis laid upon the circumstances that the deliverance of Israel from the Babylonian captivity had been long predicted by prophecy, and that the prophet foretells the appearance of Cyrus before it takes place. These chapters maintain also that the prediction of such particular events is a proof that the God of Israel is the true God, while on the other hand they assert that the vanity of the heathen gods is manifested by their inability to foretell anything. When it is said (42:9), "New things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them," the idea of pure prediction could hardly be more precisely expressed. The unbelief of the people is here represented as without excuse, for the very reason that the predictions of the prophets were authenticated by their fulfilment. Oehler. 4,5. The special reasons assigned here for the mission of the prophets and for the messages they bore reveal a degree of apostasy that is startling. Because the people were morally hardened so that their neck was an iron sinew (stiff-necked), and their brow unyielding as brass; and lest, if God had not predicted the events beforehand, they would have attributed them to their idol gods. H. C. "Thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass" is the language which God uses to set forth the tremendous strength and determined obduracy of the soul's protracted resistance against Him. In the compass of the Scriptures and of human thought no metaphors stronger or more striking can be found—the neck one consolidated iron sinew, which will not yield to any force, the brow brass, impenetrable to any weapon. By these bold figures God exhibits the utter hardness and unsubmissiveness of the long disobedient heart, its utter invulnerableness to the sword of His own Spirit. And we only need look at the number and the might of the influences exerted by God Himself, which the long resisting spirit actually withstands, to see that these figures are not in the least overdrawn. Begirt with all the motives which time and eternity, heaven, earth and hell can bind around him—motives that combine the urgency of all the goodness, the mercies and the judgments of God, that reach into eternity and compass all the joys of the redeemed and all the woes of the doomed, and added to these the power of conscience and the strivings of the Holy Ghost, the hardened sinner, with neck of iron and brazen brow, defiantly withstands all; nay, in the strength of a will long practiced and indurated in evil doing boldly grapples with and breaks them all asunder! B. 6,7. These prophecies are brought out now and not of old, yet before thou hadst heard anything of these events, lest if it had been otherwise, thou wouldest have said, I knew that myself. God must needs make the evidence of His prescience in prophecy and of His hand in fulfilling it very conclusive, even resistless, or those hardened and idol-worshipping men will deny Him the honor of it and claim it for their gods, or insist that their own sagacity had already seen it. A dark view, indeed, of their perverseness and moral blindness! 8. The Lord knew they would only pervert and abuse the light He should give them, and therefore He gave them light only in small amount. Hence these hardened, perverse men received far less light from prophecy than they otherwise would, because the Lord knew they would not make a good use of it. H. C. 9-11. The deliverance of God's people out of their captivity in Babylon was a thing upon many accounts so improbable that there was need of line upon line for the encouragement of the faith and hope of God's people concerning it. Two things were discouraging to them: their own unworthiness that God should do it for them and the many difficulties in the thing itself; now, in these verses, both these discouragements are removed, for here is a reason why God would do it for them, though they were unworthy; not for their sake, be it known to them, but "for His name's sake, for His own sake." 10. Though He does not find them meet for His favor, He will make them so. And this accounts for His bringing them into the trouble, and continuing them in it so long as He did; it was not to cut them off, but to do them good; it was to refine them, but not as silver, not so thoroughly as men refine their silver, which they continue in the furnace till all the dross is separated from it; if God should take that course with them, they would be always in the furnace, for they are all dross, and as such might justly be put away as reprobate silver (Jer. 6:30). He therefore takes them as they are, refined in part only, and not thoroughly. "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction, I have made thee a choice one by the good which the affliction has done thee, and then designed thee for great things." Many have been brought home to God as chosen vessels and a good work of grace been begun in them in the furnace of affliction. Affliction is no bar to God's choice, but subservient to His purpose. H. A strain of theocratic sovereignty runs through all the teachings of the book on the origin of sorrow. Sorrow never happens; it is inflicted. It never springs up in a night; it is foreordained. God cared enough for the sufferer to think of him, to individualize him from the uncounted millions of the universe, to plan the outline of his destiny and to select and arrange his appointed discipline; and this long before he was born. Every one of us is enclosed in a golden network of eternal and benignant decrees. Phelps. The scope of God in the afflictions of His people is not their hurt, but good; it is not to destroy them for their sin, but to destroy sin in them; it is not to withdraw Himself from them, but to draw them nearer to Himself. All the hurt that the Lord intends us by any affliction is but to get out our dross—to bring us from those things that will undo and ruin us forever. And how great an argument of the goodness of God is it that He designeth the evils which we suffer in these dying bodies to heal the evils and help on the good of our immortal souls! That's all the hurt that the Lord means us. And the Lord's heart is so much in this design (the return of those He afflicts from their iniquity) that He seems confident of it that when they are in affliction surely they will return. Take heed you be not found disappointing Him of His purpose. Caryl. Neither our toils nor our tribulations enter into the price of our redemption; but they are essential elements in our growth in Christian character. For the present they do not "seem to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward they yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." God's end in all that He lays upon us is "our profit that we may be partakers of His holiness." To many God's afflictive providences are stumbling-blocks. Why does He afflict? Why demand self denial and cross-bearing of all? Why lay the rod of chastisement upon His best-loved ones? Why press the cup of bitterness persistently to the lips of His dearest ones? The answer is given in the figure of the fine gold which has been purified in fire. "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" is God's own explanation of the life history of many of His most eminent disciples. W. E. Moore. The unaccountable severities of human experience—the woes of broken health and grim depression; the agonies by which human bodies or human hearts are wrenched for whole years; the wrongs of orphanage or feebleness; pestilence, fire, flood, tempest and famine—how can a good God launch His bolts on men, we ask, in severities like these? And the sufferers themselves sometimes wonder, even in their faith, how it is that if God is a Father, He can let fall on His children such hail storms of inevitable, unmitigated disaster. No, suffering mortal! a truce to all such complainings. These are only God's merciful indirections, fomentations of trouble and sorrow that He is applying, to soften the rugged and hard will in you. These pains are only switches to turn you off from the track of His coming retributions. If your great, proud nature could be won to the real greatness of character by a tenderer treatment, do you not see, from all God's gentle methods of dealing with mankind, that He would gladly soften your troubles? And if diamonds are not polished by soap or oil, or even by any other stone, but only by their own fine dust, why should you complain that God is tempering you to your good only by such throes and lacerations and wastings of life as are necessary? Bushnell. Grace in the saints is often as fire hid in the embers, affliction is the bellows to blow it up into a flame. The Lord makes the house of bondage a friend to our grace; now faith and patience act their part; the darkness of the night cannot hinder the brightness of a star; so the more the diamond is cut, the more it sparkles; and the more God afflicts us, the more our graces cast a sparkling lustre. Watson. Every child of God is led, instructed by the Spirit; and is also corrected, "the sufferings of this present world" thus prepare for "the glory which shall be revealed in us." That is a very spiritual prayer, "Take me, break me, make me." Sometimes God cannot make us until He first breaks us. I saw a golden cup made of old gold coins; they had lost the original image and superscription, and had been put into the melting pot and wrought into a new and beautiful vessel. Sometimes God takes sinners from whom His image and supersuperscription have been worn off in a world of sin; He takes them and breaks them in pieces and melts them and then makes out of them a vessel unto honor. Peter speaks of the "trial of faith," "much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire," "that it might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." A goldsmith makes a chalice for a king's table. He first refines the metal till all the dross is out of it, and then he stamps it approved; that is praise; then he moulds it for the noble ends to which it is destined; that is honor; then he takes the graving tool and polishing instrument, covers it with ornamental inscriptions and devices, and sets it round with gems until it flashes back the many colors of the rainbow; that is glory. So the Lord puts you into His crucible, refines away your dross, and marks you with His approval; that is praise or approbation. Then He shapes you into a vessel for holy uses; that is honor. Then He grinds you on the wheel of affliction, and finishes you with His polishing instrument until you reflect the glorious likeness of His dear son, and that is glory. Pierson. As to the effects of sorrow upon human character there can be no ground for dispute or question. Some natures are elevated, purified and ennobled by sorrow; others are shrivelled, warped and embittered. In some, sorrow arouses and deepens the sympathies, broadens the charity and softens and purifies the whole nature. All the graces of the spirit seem to take deep and abiding root in the heart thus softened, and as some of the most wonderful and beautiful flowers burst into full bloom only in the night, so do these graces bloom and dispense their fragrance in the darkness of affliction; convincing us that, as in the case of night-blooming plants, some wonderful Divine impulse is behind these manifestations, the result of some secret communication of the Divine power and life. On the other hand it is equally apparent that "the sorrow of this world worketh death." All those sorrows that come from the disappointment of worldly ambitions, from inability or unwillingness to exercise self-denial or to submit patiently to the inevitable crosses of life, from failure to curb the temper and the tongue, from envy and strife and self-seeking, from crushed vanity and unattainable worldly desires, all these constitute the sorrow of the world. It finds no alleviation in anything that the Gospel has to offer; it knows nothing of the comfort that the resigned and submissive heart receives from the Divine Comforter. It has none of the supporting, inspiring, strengthening elements that the Christian heart alone can know. And so we see that sorrow, according as it is received, is either “a saviour of life unto life, or of death unto death.” Interior. 11. The terms are comprehensive and contain a statement of the general doctrine, as the sum of the whole argument, that what Jehovah does for His own people is in truth done not for any merit upon their part, but to protect His own Divine honor. A. 12. His regard for the glory of His name moved Him to appeal yet again to their moral sense. Let My people, called mercifully to be My own, listen to My voice, declaring that I am God alone. This fact bore directly and powerfully against their propensity to idols. It was also an impressive fact, apart from its relations to idol worship. No truths are more vital to piety than the existence and perfections of the one glorious God. 13. The last clause reads literally, “I am calling them; they stand up together.” Hence it should naturally refer, not to the original creation of the heavenly bodies, but to God’s present control over them. They obey His orders as His willing servants. He calls; they stand forth promptly to do His bidding. God’s agency is no less active and essential in sustaining every star and planet in its sphere than in their original creation. H. C. Some scientists say that the evolution of worlds by merely natural forces and laws is a matter of established science; that inasmuch as the nebular hypothesis will fully account for everything we find in the heavens without calling in the aid of the supernatural, it is unphilosophical and unreasonable to go outside of nature for its explanation. The testimony of Sir John Herschel, by far the most accomplished of English astronomers since Newton, to the insufficiency of the nebular hypothesis to account for the heavenly bodies, has been greatly strengthened by more recent researches. In fact, the hypothesis, so far as it proposes to explain the heavens without a Deity, has become so burdened with difficulties and insuperables that it no longer deserves serious consideration. On the other hand, the only competing cosmogony, the theistic, while perfectly sufficient and, a priori, at least as credible as any, is greatly the simplest, the surest, the safest, the sublimest, the most salutary and the most in accordance with the convictions and traditions of mankind, especially of the most enlightened and moral part of mankind. In each of these respects it has almost infinitely the advantage over its competitor; and according to the maxims and practice of philosophy in other things, such an aggregate superiority as this ought to cause theism to be promptly accepted and fully rested on as the true explanation of nature. Burr. 15. The word “I,” thrice repeated, makes God’s agency in calling forth Cyrus trebly emphatic. The Lord first called him by name; then brought him forth in His providence, and gave him complete success. 16. Christ appears here as the author and fountain of prophecy; “I have not spoken in secret from the beginning.” Also as the God of universal providence; “from the time that it was, there am I”—i.e., from the time that these prophecies respecting the restoration by means of Cyrus began to be fulfilled, I was there, actively energizing in providence to fulfil My purposes. Now I have a special mission to My people. “The Lord God hath sent me with His Spirit”—filling Me with the Spirit, and thus anointing and endowing Me for My work. That the Son of God, the promised Messiah, is the author and fountain of prophecy, inspiring and directing the prophets of the ancient dispensation, follows naturally from the New Testament doctrine that He is “head over all things to the Church” (Eph. 1:22). Being the Divine regent who rules this world for the interests of His spiritual kingdom, He must of course supervise and control all His servants employed in this kingdom of light and truth. He commissioned the prophets of the Old Testament no less distinctly than the apostles of the New. They were not only prophets of Christ, but prophets speaking for Christ—inspired and sent by Him. Furthermore, that Jesus Christ is the God of universal providence is also taught plainly and abundantly in the New Testament. It is most wise and safe to adopt the construction which is most obvious, natural and easy, provided also that the sense which it brings out is true, and yet more especially, if it be a leading truth, fully taught and made prominent in the Scriptures. All these conditions are met in the construction above, and therefore give it the preference greatly over any and all others. H. C.—The Spirit of God is here spoken of as a person distinct from the Father and the Son, and having a Divine authority to send prophets. Whom God sends, the Spirit sends. Those whom God commissions for any service, the Spirit in some measure qualifies for it; and those may speak boldly and must be heard obediently whom God and His Spirit send. As that which the prophet says to the same purport with this (chap. 61 : 1) is applied to Christ (Luke 4 : 21), so may this be ; the Lord God sent Him, and He had the Spirit without measure. H. 17-19. After severe rebuke there is here a wonderful utterance of Divine compassion toward rebellious Israel. It finds its echo in those later words of the same Divine Person, tabernacling in mortal flesh, "O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace" (Luke 19 : 42). The Son of God, in every age, is the Redeemer, Teacher, Guide and Shepherd of Israel. Birks. 17. God by the prophet sends them a gracious message for their support and comfort under their affliction. The preface to this message is both awful and encouraging. "Thus saith Jehovah," the eternal God, thy Redeemer, that has often been so, that has engaged to be so, and will be faithful to the engagement, for He is "the Holy One," that cannot deceive, "the Holy One of Israel," that will not deceive them. The same words that introduce the law and give authority to that introduce the promise and give validity to that—"I am the Lord thy God," whom thou mayest depend upon as in relation to thee and in covenant with thee. "I am thy God that teaches thee to profit," teaches thee such things as are profitable for thee, things that belong to thy peace. By this God shows Himself to be a God in covenant with us, by His teaching us (Heb. 8 : 10, 11), and none teaches like Him, for He gives an understanding. Whom God redeems, He teaches ; whom He designs to deliver out of their afflictions, He first teaches to profit by their afflictions, makes them partakers of His holiness ; for that is the "profit for which He chastens us" (Heb. 12 : 10). He leads them to the way and in the way by which they should go ; He not only enlightens their eyes, but directs their steps ; by His grace He leads them in the way of duty, by His providence He leads them in the way of deliverance. Happy they that are under such a guidance ! H. We are not governed as the stars. God desires and seeks our joyful acquiescence. We are made willing in the day of His power, but it is without violating our personal freedom. The discipline may be stern through which the providence and grace of God brings us into harmony with Himself, but when the conflict is over it ends forever, and we will bless the hand that wrought out the work in us. T. A. Nelson. My life is not what I would have chosen. I often long for quiet, for reading and for thought. It seems to me to be a very paradise to be able to read, to think, go deep into things, gather the glorious riches of intellectual culture. God has forbidden it in His providence. I must spend hours in receiving people who wish to speak to me about all manner of trifles ; must reply to letters about nothing ; must engage in public work on everything ; employ my life on what seems uncongenial, vanishing, temporary, waste. Yet God knows me better than I know myself. He knows my gifts, my powers, my failings and my weaknesses ; what I can do and what not do. So I desire to be led, and not to lead ; to follow Him. And I am quite sure that He has thus enabled me to do a great deal more in ways which seemed to me almost a waste of life, in advancing His kingdom than I would have done any other way. I am sure of that. Norman McLeod. Believe me, I speak it deliberately and with full conviction ; I have enjoyed many of the comforts of life, none of which I wish to esteem lightly ; often have I been charmed with the beauties of nature, and refreshed with her bountiful gifts. I have spent many an hour in sweet meditation and in reading the most valuable productions of the wisest men. I have often been delighted with the conversation of ingenious, sensible and exalted characters ; my eyes have been powerfully attracted by the finest productions of human art, and my ears by enchanting melodies. I have found pleasure when calling into activity the powers of my own mind ; when residing in my own native land or travelling through foreign parts ; when surrounded by large and splendid companies—still more when moving in the small endearing circle of my own family ; yet, to speak the truth before God, who is my Judge, I must confess I know not any joy that is so dear to me, that so fully satisfies the inmost desires of my mind, that so enlivens, refines and elevates my whole nature, as that which I derive from religion, from faith in God ; as one who not only is the parent of men, but has condescended, as a brother, to clothe Himself with our nature. Nothing affords me greater delight than a solid hope that I partake of His favors and rely on His never-failing support and protection. He who has been so often my hope, my refuge, my confidence, when I stood upon the brink of an abyss where I could not move one step forward ; He who, in answer to my prayer, has helped me when every prospect of help vanished ; that God who has safely conducted me, not merely through flowery paths, but likewise across precipices and burning sands—may this God be thy God, thy comfort, as He has been mine! Lavater. 18. God had taught them well, pointing out the way of life and blessedness! Oh, had they only hearkened and obeyed! The language expresses the strongest desire for this, and most clearly implies God's care and love for His people. If Israel had honestly obeyed, then had her peace, in the sense of prosperity and happiness, been as a river. H. C.—The ideas suggested by the figure of a river are abundance, perpetuity and freshness, to which the waves of the sea add those of vastness, depth and continual succession. A. Oh, that thou hadst. These words would be sad from the lips of man, but coming from God they are inexpressibly touching and solemn. They are the cry of a wounded heart. They tell not of the wrath of justice, but of the sorrows of love. There is indeed mystery, as there must be, whenever we have to do with the Infinite; but that very mystery makes the complaint all the more affecting and impressive. "Oh, that thou hadst!" Anon.—There is to each of us an ideal life that is a bright, pure, perfect course along which we might go from earth into heaven. And this ideal life is the life; the others that come in place of it are usurpers and pretenders. This expression shows that it is no matter of indifference with God how men live. It shows that God feels this matter to pain and intensity, to sorrow and regret, to yearning love and great longing. Raleigh. Peace as a river. There shall be a tide of peace, a wide and deep stream of it, passing into his soul. It shall pervade his soul, reaching every faculty and thought and feeling in it. His understanding, his affections, his will, his whole mind, shall be at rest, and in the end perfectly at rest. The waters shall be deep as well as broad. Thus this prophet speaks elsewhere of the "perfect peace" of the believer; and David, of his "great peace." "The peace of God," we read, "passeth all understanding." It not only exceeds our comprehension in its nature, we can set no bounds to its extent. There is an abundance of peace for us, for there is God's own peace for us, that which reigns over and keeps tranquil His own mighty mind. C. Bradley. Bodily repose, however sweet and salutary, is but the feeble type of that truer "rest which remaineth for the people of God," a rest sweeter than sleep, deeper than death, and more pure in its unselfish calmness than the heaven which sentiment or poetry has pictured. When doubt and disbelief are gone, when the object of life is found in Christ, when God becomes the sure portion and sweetest joy of the heart and the spirit within us, hitherto, it may be, groping bewildered amid earthly hopes and pleasures, like one in the dark for the friendly hand, feels itself at last embraced in the sure grasp of strong and changeless love—then is the true rest of man, the stillness of the weary spirit in the everlasting arms. It is not the occasional refreshment, but the ever-flowing current of the inner life: "Thy peace shall be as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." Even amid the outer toil and distraction of the world, it is "the peace of God which keepeth the heart and mind." Nor does death, which disunites and disturbs all else, for a moment interrupt its continuity; for the rest of the soul in Christ is identical with the rest of heaven—"the rest which remaineth for the people of God." Caird. 20. The message closes with a direct command to the exiles of Israel to set out joyfully on their way to Zion. This exhortation puts the keystone on all the previous promises of deliverance. And here too the visions enter on a new stage. Cyrus, Babylon and the Chaldeans are never mentioned again. The message travels onward to the times of Messiah. The former things are seen, in spirit, as fulfilled; and the new things begin their course, all centring in the person and work of the promised Immanuel, the Messiah of God. 21,22. The returning exiles, while they celebrate their recent redemption, are to call to mind the wonders wrought for their fathers in the days of old. The whole series of mercies, from the Exodus onward, are thus summed up in one song of triumphant praise. The God of Israel was the same through every age, the unfailing Friend and Deliverer of His people. His earlier mercies might be varied in their form, but their substance would be the same in every successive age. He opens evermore "streams in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." But these blessings belong to the faithful alone. The wicked are like the troubled sea, restless and devoid of peace, a gift which belongs only to the true Israel of God. Birks. 22. This verse was intended to restrict the operation of the foregoing promises to true believers, or the genuine Israel; as if He had said, All this will God accomplish for His people, but not for the wicked among them. The grand conclusion to which all tends is, that God is all and man nothing; that even the chosen people must be sufferers, because they are sinners; that peculiar favor confers no immunity to sin or exemption from responsibility, but that even in the Israel of God and the enjoyment of the most extraordinary privileges, it still remains forever true that "there is no peace to the wicked." A.—God will do good both surely and abundantly to all those who humbly and obediently seek Him; but there shall be no peace to the wicked forevermore! How desolate to have no peace, at all, forever! H. C. The wicked, as a matter of sober truth and verity, have no permanent and substantial peace and joy. They have none in the act of wickedness. Sin produces no permanent joy. It may be attended with gratification of bad passions, but in the act of sinning, as such, there can be no substantial happiness. They have no solid, substantial, elevated peace in the business or the pleasures of life. This world can furnish no such joys as are derived from communion with God, and the hope of a life to come. Pleasures "pall upon the sense," riches take wings; disappointment meets them in the way; and the highest earthly and sensual pleasure leaves a sad sense of want—a feeling that there is something in the capacities and wants of the undying mind which has not been met and filled. They have no peace of conscience; no deep and abiding conviction that they are right. They are often troubled in their conscience; and there is nothing which this world can furnish which will give peace to a bosom that is agitated with a sense of the guilt of sin. They have no peace on a death-bed. There may be stupidity, callousness, insensibility, freedom from much pain or alarm. But that is not peace any more than sterility is fruitfulness, or than death is life, or than the frost of winter is the verdure of spring. And there is often in these circumstances the reverse of peace. There is not only no positive peace, but there is the opposite. There is often disappointment, care, anxiety, distress, an awakened conscience, deep alarm and the awful apprehension of eternal wrath. There is no situation in life or death where the sinner can certainly calculate on peace, or where he will be sure to find it. There is every probability that his mind will be often filled with alarm, and that his death-bed will be one of despair. And there is no peace to the wicked beyond the grave. A sinner CAN have no peace at the judgment bar of God; he CAN have no peace in hell. In all the future world there is no place where he can find repose; and whatever this life may be, even if it be a life of prosperity and external comfort, yet to him there will be no prosperity in the future world, and no external or internal peace there. Barnes. To do wrong is the surest way to bring suffering; no wrong deed ever failed to bring it. Those sins which are followed by no palpable pain are yet terribly avenged, even in this life. They abridge our capacity of happiness, impair our relish for innocent pleasure and increase our sensibility to suffering. They spoil us of the armor of a pure conscience and of trust in God, without which we are naked amid hosts of foes, and are vulnerable by all the changes of life. Thus, to do wrong is to inflict the surest injury on our own peace. No enemy can do us equal harm with what we do ourselves whenever and however we violate any moral or religious obligation. Channing.—The soul in its deepest degradation will still cry for its God. It will not, it cannot, be at rest without Him. Man was made for happiness, holiness, God; not for misery, sin, self. Reid. The sentence which Christ passes upon them that will not come to Him is simply, "Depart from Me." If men will not labor to enter into rest, there is no alternative before them but perpetual unrest, lasting as long as they last; and this is itself "the fire prepared for the devil and his angels," for this is the natural state of evil spirits apart from artificial and temporary disguises. R. Winterbotham. Punishment is not the effect of the mere arbitrary will and appointment of God, but arises from the very nature of law. If there be a law, there must be penalties attached to it. And hence it is that the justice and truth of God are concerned in putting these penalties into execution. God is just, and His justice requires that He should render to every man according to his works. God is true, and His truth requires that His threatenings as well as His promises should be fulfilled. God being the moral Ruler and Governor of His intelligent creatures, the punishment due to the transgression of His law is the necessary effect of the Divine righteousness, justice and truth. P. J. Gloag. If you deny the truth as a dogma, you cannot deny the existing facts. Virtue, piety and benevolence constitute heaven, here. Vice, blasphemy and malevolence constitute hell, here. Physical and sanitary cleanliness are necessary to physical life and comfort. Moral and spiritual cleanliness are necessary to the highest pleasure. The one stairway leads down to the sewers—the other leads up to the stars. There is no escaping these truths, and there is no avoiding the two conditions to which they point in the future, if there be any future. There is no way of escaping these truths but by making man a mere animal—and not many are willing to confess that they are mere animals. We are not content to wait for heaven till after death when we may enjoy it largely now. We do not need to go to Dante for descriptions of the goal of sin when we can see it in the slums. There is the pure mother amid her little ones trying to lead them in the way of that wisdom which is pleasantness and whose paths are peace. That is heaven. There is that painted creature on the street, brass in her eyes, alcohol on her breath, blasphemy and moral putridity on her lips, a magazine of foul spiritual and physical infection. That is hell. If you reject the doctrine, what do you propose to do with the fact? Interior. This first series or cycle of the later prophecies has a marked internal unity and a striking termination. It begins by taking up the charge, which closes the earlier prophecies, and giving a message of comfort to the fearful-hearted; a promise of strength to the weak hands and the failing knees, in the prospect of that captivity which the prophet has announced to Hezekiah in the hour of his vainglorious display to the envoys from Babylon. It announces, in its opening, three great mercies to Israel; a victory in its hard and long warfare with heathen idolatry, forgiveness of iniquity through the great sin-offering, on whom the Lord would lay the iniquity of His people; and a double recompense of blessing at last, after ages of conflict and sorrow. The first of these promises has been unfolded in the present series. Birks. 49 : 1 LISTEN, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye peoples, from far: the LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name: and he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me; and he hath made me a polished shaft, in his quiver hath he kept me close: and he said unto me, Thou art my servant; Israel, in whom I will be glorified. But I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and vanity: yet surely my judgement is with the LORD, and my recompence with my God. And now saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, and that Israel be gathered unto him: (for I am honourable in the eyes of the LORD, and my God is become my strength:) yea, he saith, It is too light a thing that thou shouldst be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. Thus saith the LORD, the redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers: Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall worship; because of the LORD that is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee. Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I answered thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee: and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to raise up the land, to make them inherit the desolate heritages; saying to them that are bound, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and on all bare heights shall be their pasture. They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them; for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them. And I will make all my mountains a way, and my high ways shall be exalted. Lo, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim. Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will have compassion upon his afflicted. 14, 15 But Zion said, Jehovah hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her 16 womb? yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon 17 the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me. Thy children make haste; 18 thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee. Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the LORD, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all as with an ornament, and gird 19 thyself with them, like a bride. For, as for thy waste and thy desolate places and thy land that hath been destroyed, surely now shalt thou be too strait for the inhabitants, and they 20 that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children of thy bereavement shall yet say 21 in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where were they? 22 Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold I will lift up mine hand to the nations, and set up my ensign to the peoples: and they shall bring thy sons in their bosom, and thy daughters shall 23 be carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD, and they that wait for me shall 24 not be ashamed. Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captives be deliv- 25 ered? But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with 26 thee, and I will save thy children. And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy saviour, and thy redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. Chap. 49. This chapter, like the whole second part which it introduces (chaps. 49-58), has for its great theme the relation of the Church to the world, or of Israel to the Gen- tiles. The relation of the former to Jehovah is of course still kept in view, but with less ex- clusive prominence than in the first part (chaps. 40-48). The doctrine there established and il- lustrated, as to the mutual relation of the body and the head, is here assumed as the basis of more explicit teachings with respect to their joint relation to the world and the great design of their vocation. There is not so much a change of topics as a change in their relative position and proportions. A. Chap. 49 is a direct address of Messiah, first to the isles of the Gentiles, and then afterward to Zion, announcing His own incarnation and ministry, when He would come as the Lord God, in great humility, to be the Shepherd of Israel, to gather His people and bring them back, after their wanderings, to His fold. Here the con- troversy (chap. 41) of God, the Righteous Gov- ernor of nations, with stubborn heathen idola- try, passes into a gracious invitation to all the isles of the Gentiles, to obey the voice and ac- cept the mercy of the incarnate and glorified Son of God. This is followed by an intimation that Zion, after seeming to be long forgotten, would receive at length, through the coming Messiah, a joyful deliverance. Birks. 1. All nations are invited to give attention "from afar" to what the Messiah is about to say of His wonderful mission. "The Lord hath called Me from the womb," giving His name "Jesus," "Son of God" even before His birth (see Matt. 1:20, 21 and Luke 1:35), thus precisely fulfilling this prediction even in its most specific sense. H. C. 2. By mouth we are of course to understand speech, discourse. The comparison is repeated and explained in the Epistle to the Hebrews (4:12): "The Word of God is quick and pow- erful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." In both cases these qualities are pred- icated not of literal speech merely, but of the instruction of which it is the natural and com- mon instrument. A.—It is pertinent that the power of Jesus' words should be made prominent here because they were so in His history, it being testified of Him, "Never man spake like this man." He Himself accounts His kingdom to be essentially the reign of truth. He explains His work as King, saying, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world that I should bear wit- ness unto the truth" (John 18:37). Giving like prominence to His functions as a Teacher of truth, He is called "the Word" (John 1:1). 3. Israel.** All that precedes and all that follows direct our minds so manifestly and forcibly to Jesus the Messiah, that all other interpretations of this term except that which applies it to Him must be rejected. As reasons for applying this term to Christ, it may be said, He was of the seed of Israel in His human relations, and the context looks specially to His earthly life and to His human relations to His own national people. Again, He fulfilled in Himself the etymological significance of the name Israel—a prince having power with God. He was pre-eminently an Israel—one whom God “always heard”—one “who ever liveth to make intercession for us” (Heb. 7 : 25). But more than all else, probably, is the fact that in Christ’s great work as king in the realm of truth, He was most closely related to His people. They were “laborers together with Him.” He the first great Apostle sent of God, yet Himself sending them even as the Father had sent Him; one in sympathy and one in effort, contemplated with special reference to the evangelization of the world they both properly constituted one party in opposition to all the powers of darkness and sin—i.e., they were one complex “Israel.” In chap. 42 : 1, 19 they were both designated as “My servant.” To that chapter and to this use of the phrase “My servant,” this passage may tacitly allude, and this may account for His taking the name “Israel.” The last words of the verse would better express the original if read, “in whom I will glorify Myself.” Christ as the great Revealer of God shed peculiar and transcendent glory upon His character especially as a God of love—love at once great, pure, deep, exhaustless. The reader will readily recall that wonderful prayer of Christ, recorded in John 17, as exemplifying the interest and joy which He felt in this grand truth, that the Father had been glorified in the Son. H. C. 4. This verse teaches : 1. That the most faithful labors and the most self-denying toil and the efforts of the most holy life may be for a time unsuccessful. If the Redeemer of the world, the Son of God, had occasion to say that He had labored in vain, assuredly His ministers should not be surprised that they have occasion to use the same language. It may be no fault of the ministry that they are unsuccessful. The world may be so sinful, and opposition may be got up so mighty as to frustrate their plans and prevent their success. 2. Yet, though at present unsuccessful, faithful labor will ultimately do good, and be blessed. In some way and at some period all honest effort in the cause of God may be expected to be crowned with success. 3. They who labor faithfully may commit their cause to God with the assurance that they and their work will be accepted. The ground of their acceptance is not the success of their labors. They will be acceptable in proportion to the amount of their fidelity and self-denying zeal. A servant of God will be approved of God according to his fidelity, and not according to the measure of his success. 4. The ministers of religion when they are discouraged and disheartened; when they labor in vain; when their message is rejected, and the world turns away from their ministry, should imitate the example of the Redeemer and say, “My judgment is with Jehovah. My cause is His cause; and the result of my labors I commit to Him.” To do this as He did, they should labor as He did; they should deny themselves as He did; they should honestly devote all their strength and talent and time to His service; and then they can confidently commit all to Him, and then and then only they will find peace, as He did, in the assurance that their work will be ultimately blessed, and that they will find acceptance with Him. Barnes. The last clause is universally explained as an expression of strong confidence that God would make good what was wanting, by bestowing the reward which had not yet been realized. A. 5. The course of thought runs : The eternal Father formed Me from the womb to be His servant, to restore Jacob to Him, and Israel shall truly be gathered to Him, and I shall be honored in the eyes of the Lord (for this great achievement) “and My God shall be My strength”—the ground of all My success. 6. In the first clause, the real meaning is plain. It is too small a thing that Thou shouldst be My servant to restore Jacob and Israel (so much and no more would be too insignificant); I will also make Thee a light to the Gentiles and My salvation to the ends of the earth. It would be too little to save Israel only; I will make Thee the Saviour of all the Gentiles as well. The use of this passage by Paul (Acts 13 : 47) shows that He was not surprised at the unbelief and ruin of some of the Jews, and that He found His work and joy in turning to the Gentiles. The point of most value, however, in this quotation is the light it throws upon the mutual relations of Christ and His apostles in this great work of saving men : “For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set Thee (Jesus) to be a light of the Gentiles.” H. C. Not only were the circumstances of Christ’s life and death minutely pointed out, but His offices were also described. He was to be a prophet, like unto Moses (De. 18 : 18). This is expressly quoted by Peter in the Acts (3 : 22) as fulfilled by Christ. He was to be a priest (Ps. 110 : 4 ; Heb. 5 : 10). He was to be a king (Ps. 2 : 6 ; Matt. 28 : 18 ; 1 Cor. 15 : 25). His kingdom was to be one of peace (Isa. 9 : 6, 7 ; Mic. 4 : 3). His kingdom was also to include the Gentiles (verse 6 ; also 60 : 3, 5). Here, then, we have the three great offices of prophet, priest and king, united by prophecy in one person ; we have a kingdom of peace, and that kingdom one which was to include all nations. And all this is perfectly fulfilled in the person and kingdom of Christ. M. H. 7-12. The one great idea in this passage is that Christ shall bear to the Gentile world the knowledge and the power of salvation. The course of thought is essentially the same as in chaps. 52 : 13-15 ; 53 and 54. 7. The promise of exaltation and glory follows this brief sketch of His humiliation and disesteem. "Kings shall see," and they shall rise up to do Him honor ; princes also shall "worship ;" all because of Jehovah, ever faithful to fulfil His promises, as this name indicates, and "because the Holy One of Israel has truly chosen Thee" for His servant and His Great King of all the earth. 8. "In an acceptable time" means in a time of favor, a day of mercy, when the way is prepared for the exercise and the signal display of God's loving-kindness in the conversion of the heathen. "For a covenant of the people"—i.e., of the Gentile nations ; here as in chap. 42 : 6. Under this picture the whole earth will become a Canaan for the people of God, when the Gentiles shall have come into this relation. H. C. In an acceptable time have I heard Thee. These words, which are spoken to Christ in the person of God the Father, are applied by Paul to the Church in Corinth ; This, says he, when the Gospel is imparted to you, is your time, which ye are concerned not to let slip. The argument drawn from hence is, that when the grace of God is offered, we must be very diligent to lay hold of and improve it ; knowing, as we must, that this life is the utmost period of the day of grace ; that the continuance of life is most uncertain ; and that we cannot be sure that God will extend to us the opportunities of grace so long as life does continue. Dean Stanhope. That which is declared of the world before the Flood, of Nineveh, of the fig-tree, of Jeru- Jerusalem, is the history of each separate soul. Every man has his day of grace. There comes to each man a crisis in his destiny, when evil influences have been removed or some strong impression made. It were an awful thing to watch such a spirit, if we knew that he is on the trial now, by which his everlasting destiny is to be decided ! It were more awful still to see a man who has passed the time of grace, and reached the time of blindness, and to know that the light is quenched forever, that he will go on as before, and live many years, and play his part in life, but that the Spirit of God will come back to that soul no more forever ! F. W. Robertson. 9. Figures accumulate to express the joyful change. The people are as prisoners coming forth from their prison-houses (see chap. 42 : 7) ; as men long in darkness, now coming forth to the light of day. They are also as the flock of the shepherd, feeding securely along their paths. All high places become their pasture grounds. H. C.—Christ shall free the souls of men from the bondage of guilt and corruption and bring them into the glorious liberty of God's children. He shall say to the prisoners that were bound over to the justice of God, and bound under the power of Satan, "Go forth." Pardoning mercy is a release from the curse of the law, and renewing grace is a release from the dominion of sin ; both are from Christ and are branches of the great salvation ; it is He that says "Go forth ;" it is the Son that makes us free, and then we are free indeed. He saith to them that are in darkness, "Show yourselves ;" "Not only see, but be seen, to the glory of God and your own comfort." H. The charms by which the sorcery of sin bewitches men are very numerous and diverse in character. In one man it is a distrust of God's willingness to save, or, if to save, to save him. In another, it is an unwillingness to own the simplicity of God's methods of salvation. In the vast majority, however, it is not in any conceptions cherished about the way of salvation, but in something altogether more tangible and earthly. The whole truth is, that the man loves something more than God. In one it is his property ; in another, his reputation ; in another, his ease ; in another, his literary tastes ; in another, an unchristian employment or habit or association, which he feels to be at war with an earnest Christian life. In some it is an unwillingness publicly to profess religion, to encounter the ridicule of companions or to forgive an injury which rankles in the heart. Some such very simple thing is the citadel in which the forces of guilty resolve intrench themselves. That is the secret reason why the soul is benighted in impotent convictions. Yet what a meanness of spirit does it seem to have indicated when the soul comes out into the liberty of Christ, to have shut itself up in that prison-house of remorse so long, and for such a thing! Phelps. 9,10. Those whom the prophet has thus represented as captives rescued from bondage and darkness into the glorious light and liberty of the Gospel, he next exhibits under the emblem of a flock, feeding at its leisure in secure pastures, guarded by its shepherd from the ill effects of the heat, and plentifully supplied with all necessary food; an emblem not unfrequently used (see chaps. 30 : 24, 25 ; 40 : 11) to shadow out the future situation of the Church of Christ, safe under the protection and watchful care of the great Shepherd of souls, and blessed with the ample opportunities of grace which God shall afford her. Vitringa. 10. He shall bless them and supply their wants as if streams should break out in the desert. Or He will make their journey pleasant as if it lay by the side of running and refreshing streams. The whole figure in this verse is taken from the character of a faithful shepherd who conducts his flock to places where they may feed in plenty; who guards them from the intense heat of a burning sun on sandy plains; and who leads them beside cooling and refreshing streams. It is a most beautiful image of the tender care of the Great Shepherd of His people, and of the blessings which He bestows on His people in a world like this—a world in its main features, in regard to real comforts—not unaptly compared to barren hills and pathless, burning sands. Barnes. Oh, sacred pledge of God, in which each word is priceless, pointing to a gain unspeakable! To be guided, and that by Him, the merciful—to be guided gently by the springs of water—nay, what could give more joy and solace? The benignant Guide chooses the way, and that way is the best; opens the path, but always so that it shall lead us homeward; makes the path easier, yet not by removing every stumbling-block, rather by making these the steps by which to climb to heaven. Gently “He shall lead them,” not hastily, not distractedly. Progress is sought, yet breathing time allowed—breathing time not merely when beside the full, swollen stream, but even by the springs, where the water is clearest, the refreshing most alluring. We are satisfied when we may draw water out of the living stream. God leads His people close by the eternal fountain of salvation. Such a promise, we perceive, points evidently to that better land, where first these words are perfectly fulfilled: “They shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more.” Even here below there is a joy attainable by us, yea, by the least of us, if only we belong to that blessed Israel, that accepts God’s guidance now from Babylon to Zion, and that takes, moreover, and unconditionally, that refreshment which He vouchsafes. Not “a guide shall be given thee,” not “they who know the road shall aid thee,” but “He that hath mercy shall lead thee,” is the promise of the Lord to us; while, on the other hand, He claims unqualified obedience. Van O. 11. By a change of figure they are now a moving army or an Oriental caravan, and over all Jehovah’s mountains a noble highway is built for their safe and delightful pilgrimage to the heavenly city. 12. And now the calling of the Gentiles and their conversion to God appear under the idea of a vast convocation, their moving hosts converging from every part of the wide world to meet in the Zion of the living God, for His worship. “Behold,” see those gathering millions! These come from afar; those from the north and those from the west; those others from the land of Sinim, or China and the farthest east. It can scarcely be doubted that the prophet represents them as gathering from the four cardinal points of the heavens. H. C.—It is well said by a missionary, that the verse before us is the central point of the prophetic discourse, of which it forms a part; inasmuch as it embodies the great promise, which in various forms is exhibited before and afterward. This relation of the text to the context is important, because it creates a presumption in favor of the widest meaning that can be put upon the terms of the prediction. A.—The Gospel has not yet fulfilled the mission here predicted for it. But with most entire confidence the reader of prophecy may put his finger on this verse as on those which promise a reign of universal peace and love, and say, Here are things that have never yet been; therefore they remain to be fulfilled. 13. These great thoughts enkindle the soul of the prophet (why should they not?), and he calls upon the heavens to sing and upon the earth to be full of joy; yea, upon the mountains to break forth in the swelling chorus, so that it shall really seem that all nature pours out its soul in song, to praise God for the comfort He has given His people and the mercy He will show yet more to His afflicted. Not one of these good words can fail. The chorus is yet to be performed, and there will be glad hearts to fill it and to magnify the grace of God together! 14. With exquisite beauty and great force, the prophet turns back from this outburst of joy to note how Zion had felt and spoken during that long night of God's delay and of her sore trial. Then she had said, "The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me." The Lord recalls those desponding words now for the sake of introducing the inimitable reply to them which follows. H. C. 15. I will not forget thee.** The constancy of God's affection for His people is expressed by the strongest possible comparison derived from human instincts. There is a climax in the thought, if not in the expression. What is indirectly mentioned as impossible in one clause is declared to be real in the other. He first declares that He can no more forget them than a woman can forget her child, He then rises higher and declares that He is still more mindful of them than a mother. A. What words shall express the love of God to His redeemed? "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, she may forget, yet will not I forget thee, saith the Lord: I have graven thee on the palms of My hands; thy walls are ever before Me." Is this the language of the Infinite? Does the Eternal Mind thus speak to us, not only through thoughts that necessarily run into the moulds of the temporal and the finite, but in figures and images so purely, so intensely human? Yes, we answer, it is the language of the Infinite, when He converses with the finite. But are these His very words? Yes, His very words, chosen and arranged in every lineament and fibre of their Hebrew tenderness. T. Lewis. The affection and tenderness of an earthly parent are but faint resemblances of God's paternal love. In Him love is an infinite, overflowing fountain of beneficence. And then His love is as permanent as it is extensive. He is always in one mind, and therefore can never leave nor forsake His people. R. W. "Can a mother forget her child? Yea, she may forget." But we have to do with a God, whose love is His very being; who loves us not for reasons in us, but in Himself; whose love is eternal and boundless as all His nature; whose love, therefore, cannot be turned away by our sin—but abides with us forever, and is granted to every soul of man. We cannot believe too firmly, we cannot trust too absolutely, we cannot proclaim too broadly that blessed thought, without which we have no hope to feed on for ourselves, or to share with our fellows—the universal love of God in Christ. Let us individualize that love in our thoughts as it individualizes us in its outflow, and make our own the "exceeding broad" promises, which include us, too. God loves me; Christ gave Himself for me. I have a place in that royal, tender heart. Nor should any sin make us doubt this. He loved us with exceeding love, even when we were "dead in trespasses." He did not begin because of anything in us; He will not cease because of anything in us. We change; He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself. A. M. Yet will I not forget thee. Oh, may faith fasten and live upon this precious word! May love be excited and joy increased by it! As though our dear Lord had said, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love," saved thee with an everlasting salvation, called thee by My grace, made thee know thy poverty and vileness, thy hopeless and helpless state; shall I ever be unmindful of thy distress, deaf to thy cry and unwilling to relieve thy wants? W. Mason. God in the Old Testament is a loving Spirit, fatherly, kind and gracious in His utterances about Himself and in the teachings of the prophets about Him, as He was in the very words of Jesus Christ Himself. There are no words of sweetness so sweet, no words of graciousness so gracious, no providences of the Divine heart so touching and tender as we find in the Old Testament; and the God of Calvary is as truly the God of the Old Testament as the God of the New Testament. Burnham. 18. This expands the thought of the first clause of verse 17, the hastening home of His children. Lift up thine eyes and look all round on every side; see all these coming in from every quarter. Then with the solemnity of His oath, the Lord declares: All these shall be thy ornament and thy glory, to be worn on thy person as the bride wears her ornaments. The figure suggests that the Church is herself the bride, the Lamb's wife, now appearing in her queenly attire. (See Ps. 45: 8-17.) 19. In full accordance with the ancient theocratic state, Zion is a city with its surrounding country; but now under this great accession of her returning children, she is all too narrow for such a population. The sense is fairly put in the English version; yet the Hebrew exhibits that peculiar broken construction which very commonly results from strong feeling, thus: "For thy wastes and thy desolations, and the land of thy wasteness—for now thou wilt be too much straitened for the inhabitants." Her enemies who once swallowed her up—the same referred to in verse 17—are now far away. 21. This is the joyful surprise of the mother, seeing throngs of happy children who seem indeed to be her own, and yet she can scarcely imagine how they can be. She is saying in her heart (what it might not be altogether delicate to express), Who hath begotten for me these children, and whence do they come? The next verse gives the answer. H. C. The image in this entire verse is one of great beauty. It represents a mother who in time of war had been suddenly deprived of all her children, and who had been made a widow, herself a captive and conveyed from land to land. She had been desolate, and had sat down and wept. She had seen ruin spread all around her dwelling, and regarded herself as alone. Suddenly she finds herself restored to her home and again surrounded with a happy family. She sees it increased beyond its former numbers, and herself blessed beyond all her former prosperity. She looks with surprise on this accession, and asks with wonder whence all these have come and where they have been. The language in this verse is beautifully expressive of the agitation of such a state of mind, and of the effect which would be thus produced. It indicates surprise, mingled with wonder and joy. It represents vast numbers coming to her, and filling the soul of the widowed mother with mingled amazement and pleasure. The idea here is plain. Jerusalem had been desolate. Her inhabitants had been carried captive or had been put to death. But she should be restored. And the Church of God should be increased by a vast accession from the Gentile world, so much that the narrow limits which had been formerly occupied—the territory of Palestine—would now be too small for the vast numbers that should be united to those who professed to love and worship God. Barnes. 23. The same promise is repeated in substance with a change of form. Instead of the nations, we have now their kings and queens; and instead of Zion's sons and daughters, Zion herself. This last variation, while it either perplexes or annoys the rhetorical precision, aids the rational interpreter by showing that the figures of the preceding verse, however natural and just, are not to be rigidly explained. In other words, it shows that between the Zion of this passage and her children there is no essential difference, and that what is promised to the one is promised to the other. A. I am the Lord: they shall not be ashamed that wait for Me. "Wait" is but a monosyllable; but it is fuller of meaning than any other word in the language, and it is applicable to all ages and to all circumstances. At the first slight view, merely to "wait" seems so simple a thing as scarcely entitled to be called a grace; and yet larger promises are made to it than to any other grace, except to faith; and hardly, indeed, with that exception, for the grace of "waiting" is part of the grace of faith—is a form of faith—is, as some would describe it, an effect of faith; or, more strictly, one of its most fruitful manifestations. Great and singular is the honor which God has set upon patient waiting for Him. Man, seeing not as God sees, sets higher value upon his fellows' active works—the bright deeds of days or hours. God values these also; but He does not assign them the same pre-eminence as man does; He does not allow them any pre-eminence over that constant and long-enduring struggle with the risings of the natural mind, which is evinced in long and steady waiting under all discouragements for Him—in the assured conviction that He will come at last for deliverance and protection, although His chariot wheels are so long in coming. Anon. 24. The course of thought turns here as it did in verse 14. Zion appears, saying, Lord, how can these things be? What! Shall the prey be wrested away from the mighty? Zion seems to assume that Satan holds the kingdoms of this world by right of possession, and wonders whether he can be ousted! The Lord answers in the next verse. 25. Yes; even the strong case put in the question only serves to illustrate the glory of that power which stands for the help and victory of Zion. When God undertakes, even the captives of the mighty conquerors are rescued from their grasp. Satan holds this world in his chains no longer. God Himself enters the lists to give battle against those that war against Zion. He will save her children. 26. The persistent foes of the Church and of her Messiah must meet this fearful doom. These figures bear upon their face their general significance. Who can say in what specific form these inflictions shall fall? Let these words suffice to show the people of God that their Redeemer is mighty; that He will plead and maintain their cause since it is also His own cause : and that He will make a fearful example of His incorrigible and persistent enemies. And so also let these words suffice to show the wicked that they can never stand against the mighty God ; that, persisting in this madness, they have to expect only a doom unutterably awful ! H. C.—The last clause winds up this part of the prophecy by the usual return to the great theme of the whole book, the relation of Jehovah to His people as their Saviour, Redeemer and Protector, self-existent, eternal and almighty in Himself, yet condescending to be called the Mighty One of Jacob. A. 50 : 1 THUS saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, wherewith I have put her away ? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you ? Behold, for your iniquities were ye sold, and for your transgressions was your mother put away. 2 Wherefore, when I came, was there no man ? when I called, was there none to answer ? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem ? or have I no power to deliver ? Behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness : their fish stinketh, because there 3 is no water, and dieth for thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering. 4 The Lord God hath given me the tongue of them that are taught, that I should know how to sustain with words him that is weary : he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth 5 mine ear to hear as they that are taught. The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not 6 rebellious, neither turned away backward. I gave my back to the smitters, and my cheeks to 7 them that plucked off the hair : I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me ; therefore have I not been confounded : therefore have I set my face like a 8 flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth me ; who will contend 9 with me ? let us stand up together : who is mine adversary ? let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me ; who is he that shall condemn me ? behold, they all shall wax old as a garment ; the moth shall eat them up. 10 Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant ? he that walketh in darkness, and hath no light, let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon 11 his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that gird yourselves about with firebrands : walk ye in the flame of your fire, and among the brands that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand ; ye shall lie down in sorrow. Chap. 50. This chapter contains no entirely new element, but a fresh view of several which have already been repeatedly exhibited. The first of these is the great truth, that the sufferings of God's people are the necessary fruit of their own sins (verse 1). The second is the power of Jehovah to accomplish their deliverance (verses 2, 3). The third is the Servant of Jehovah, His mission, His qualifications for it, His endurance of reproach and opposition on account of it (verses 4-9). The fourth is the way of salvation and the certain doom of those who neglect it (verses 10, 11). This perpetual recurrence of the same great themes in various combinations makes the mere division of the chapters a comparatively unimportant matter. It should be ever borne in mind that these divisions are conventional and modern, and that in this part of Isaiah more especially they might have been omitted altogether without any serious inconvenience to the reader or interpreter. A much greater evil than the want of these divisions is the habit of ascribing to them undue authority and suffering the exposition to be governed by them, as if each were a separate prediction or discourse, instead of being arbitrary though convenient breaks in a continued composition, not materially differing from the paragraphs now used in every modern book. 1. The simplest and most obvious interpretation of the first clause is the one suggested by the second, which evidently stands related to it as an answer to the question which occasions it. In the present case, the answer is wholly unambiguous—viz., that they were sold for their sins, and that she was put away for their transgressions. The general idea of rejection is twice clothed in a figurative dress, first by emblems borrowed from the law and custom of divorce, and then by emblems borrowed from the law and custom of imprisonment for debt. A. God indeed selleth us over to punishment, but not till we have first sold ourselves to sin; we first most unjustly sell away our souls, and then He most justly selleth away our bodies, our liberty, our peace. Let us beware that whatever we do we charge not God wrongfully, by making Him in the least degree the author of our sins or so much as an accessory to our follies. Bp. Sanderson.—When God chastens His children, it is neither for His pleasure (Heb. 12:10) nor for His profit; all that are saved are saved by a prerogative of grace; but those that perish are cut off by an act of Divine holiness and justice, not of absolute sovereignty. H. 2. God had come near to the people, by His word and providence, but without any suitable response on their part. The first clause is explanatory of their being sold and put away, as represented in the foregoing verse. The general truth which it teaches is, that God has never and will never put away His people even for a time without preceding disobedience and alienation upon their part. The other clause precludes the vindication of their unbelief and disobedience on the ground that they had not sufficient reason to obey His commands and rely upon His promises. Such doubts are rendered impious and foolish by the proofs of His almighty power. This power is first asserted indirectly by a question implying the strongest negation: Is My hand shortened, shortened, from redemption? and is there with me no power (i.e., have I no power) to deliver? A. 4. The object seems to be to indicate the relation of Jesus to the Father with special reference to His own human nature. Considered as man, a brother of our race, the Lord God taught Him; opened His ear; became the object of His constant trust for help. H. C.—God the Father hath given to Me, the Messiah, His eternal Word and Son, power to express Him fully unto His people; that I should be able to speak comfortably to the weary and distressed souls; He doth not intermit to furnish me continually with His good Spirit. Bp. Hall.—As applied to Christ, it is descriptive of that power of conviction and persuasion which is frequently ascribed in the New Testament to His oral teachings. As His representative and instrument, the Church has always had a measure of the same gift enabling her to execute her high vocation. A. Christ has come to give rest unto the weary and heavy laden, light to the mind, peace to the conscience, love to the heart, and all is real, divine, eternal, inexhaustible. Not as the world giveth, for the world does not give freely; it only lends to recall, it only exchanges and barters, often taking more and better things from us than it bestows. The world's gifts are not what they seem to be. They do not enrich the heart; they do not last; and, above all, they are dead things which cannot give life. But Jesus gives, and gives Himself. Himself is the light, the life, the peace. God and man, eternal and in time, sinless and a Saviour, the Holy One and Redeemer; there is no question, no longing, no disease, which He does not solve, fulfil, heal. He is the way, where before we saw no way, no possibility of either departure out of our misery or arrival in the far-off eternal city. Only by Him can we come to the fountain of living water, to the Father. A. S. There is not a Sabbath that the pastor does not face many disheartened people sitting in the pews, needing his word of good cheer. If he speaks brave, hopeful words he will help many a weary one to a victorious week. This is part of his work quite as really as the preaching the warnings and threatenings of the law and the Gospel of salvation and life. All of us, wherever we go, are continually meeting those whose hands hang down and whose knees are trembling, and it is our privilege and duty to lift up the one and strengthen the other. Helping by encouragement is one of the very best of all ways of helping. J. R. M. 5,6. The voice, to which the Son of God hearkens, calls Him to lay down His life for the sheep. And He does not turn away from it, but ever replies, "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" He endured shame and spitting in loving obedience to His Father's will. The words are a distinct prophecy of our Lord's patient sufferings, recorded in the Gospels, and of these alone. He who suffers is the same Lord who clothes the heavens with blackness, and makes sackcloth their covering (verse 4). Birks. 6. This Scripture contains a description of the indignities our blessed Saviour suffered, and looks more like an historical narration of facts already past than a prediction of events several hundred years before they happened. We can have no doubt, if we compare this account with that of our Lord's passion in the New Testament, that Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah. Dean Stanhope.—This is among those wonders of that great work, that the sovereign Lord of all, that binds and looses at His pleasure the influences of heaven and the power and workings of all the creatures, would Himself in our flesh be thus bound, the only Son bound as a slave and scourged as a malefactor; and His willing obedience made this an acceptable and expiating sacrifice; among the rest of His sufferings, He gave His back to the smiters. Leighton. It is the Holy One and the Just, the Perfect Son of God, who was publicly stripped, gibbeted, exposed to shame, compelled to die slowly, like a slave, nailed fast upon a cross. He had come into the world on a mission of love from the world above, a perfect character, clothed in the essential glory of a Divine nature, a being whom all the righteous spirits—angels, archangels and seraphim—had been wont to magnify and adore—such was the visitant who lighted, for once, on the earth, and the race of mankind could not suffer Him to live, tore Him away in their spite from His acts of healing and His gentle mercies even to themselves, and thrust Him out of the world in mockeries that forgot even the appearance of dignity. Bushnell. The sin of sins is the failure to recognize Jesus for what He is. His person and claims are the touchstone which tries every beholder of what sort He is. How wonderful the silent patience of Jesus! He withholds not His face "from shame and spitting." He gives "His back to the smiters." Meek endurance and passive submission are not all which we have to behold there. This is more than an uncomplaining martyr. This is the sacrifice for the world's sin; and His bearing of all that men can inflict is more than heroism. It is redeeming love. His sad, loving eyes, wide open below their bandage, saw and pitied each rude smiter, even as He sees us all. They were and are eyes of infinite tenderness, ready to beam forgiveness; but they were and are the eyes of the Judge, who sees and repays His foes, as those who smite Him will one day find out. A. M. Thou Son of the Blessed, what grace was manifest in Thy condescension! Grace brought Thee down from heaven; grace stripped Thee of Thy glory; grace made Thee poor and despicable; grace made Thee bear such burdens of sin, such burdens of sorrow, such burdens of God's curse as are unspeakable. O Son of God, grace was in all Thy tears; grace came forth with every word of Thy sweet mouth; grace came out where the whip smote Thee, where the thorns pricked Thee, where the nails and spear pierced Thee. O blessed Son of God, here is grace indeed! unsearchable riches of grace! unthought-of riches of grace! grace to make angels wonder, grace to make sinners happy, grace to astonish devils! And what will become of them that trample under foot this Son of God. Banyan. 7. The Saviour endured this cruel insult and this contradiction of sinners against Himself with the moral strength of a precious trust in His God to help Him. In this confidence He set His face like a flint, unflinching, patiently enduring, never recoiling or shrinking. H. C.—Our blessed Saviour, having fixed His end, pursued it resolutely, upon all occasions bearing up against all temptation and opposition; becoming thereby to us an example of true courage and unshaken constancy of mind. Bp. Bradford. Our Lord was an example of holiness and obedience set before us, and His sufferings make the pattern perfect; had He lived in worldly prosperity, the poor and unfortunate would perhaps have upbraided the rich and prosperous for not following the copy, but would have thought their own hard circumstances a sufficient excuse for not attempting it. But what pretence is now left for any mortal? are we more wretched than our Master? are we poor and therefore discontented? Let us look to Him who had not where to lay His head, and yet paid a cheerful obedience to His God. Bp. Sherlock. 8. The terms in these verses are forensic, pertaining to judicial trials. Jesus had a personal experience under which this figure became fact. The figure leads the thought here: Who will arraign me before the judge? He who vindicates my cause (God) is near me. Who then will dare contend with me in litigation? H. C. He is near that justifieth me. That is, God, who will vindicate my character and who approves what I do, does not leave nor forsake me, and I can with confidence commit myself and my cause to Him. The word justify here is not used in the sense in which it is often in the Scriptures, as denoting the act by which a sinner is justified before God, but in the proper, judicial sense, He would declare Him to be righteous; He would vindicate His character; He would stand forth as His patron and judge, and would show Him to be innocent. This was done by all the testimonials of God in His favor, by the voice which spake from heaven at His baptism, by all the miracles which He wrought, showing that He was commissioned and approved by God, by the fact that even Pilate was constrained to declare Him innocent, by all the wonders that attended His crucifixion, showing that "He was a righteous man," even in the view of the Roman centurion, and by the fact that He was raised from the dead, and was taken to heaven, and placed at the right hand of the Father, thus showing that His whole work was approved by God, and thus furnishing the most ample vindication of His character from all the accusations of His foes. Barnes. It was verified in Christ; by His resurrection He was proved to be not the man that He was represented, not a blasphemer, not a deceiver, not an enemy to Cæsar. The judge that condemned Him owned he found no fault in Him; the centurion that had charge of His execution declared Him a righteous man; so near was He that justified Him. But it was true of Him in a further and more peculiar sense; the Father justified Him when He accepted the satisfaction He made for the sin of man. He was near who did it; for His resurrection, by which He was justified, soon followed His condemnation and crucifixion; He was straightway glorified. H. 9. By a perfectly natural and common transition, the writer passes from comparison to metaphor, and having first transformed them into garments, says directly that the moth shall devour them, not as men, in which light he no longer views them, but as old clothes. This is a favorite comparison in Scripture to express a gradual but sure decay. (Cf. chap. 51:8 and Hos. 5:12.) A. 10. This prophecy of Messiah's sufferings and of His fidelity to the great work assigned to Him introduces a double lesson of comfort to the faithful, and of warning to His self-righteous adversaries. The Servant here is our Lord Himself, and the address is to His true and humble followers. Birks. The sentiment of the verse is, If any one among you, really fearing the Lord and obeying the voice of His servant (the Messiah) has been walking in darkness analogous to that through which I have walked, under insult, scorn, contempt, persecution, arraignment before courts of law, and with no light shining on his pathway, let him trust as I have done in the name of the Lord and stay upon His God. H. C.—Darkness of state and condition, in the Scripture, denotes disconsolation and trouble. To be then in darkness, where yet there is some light, some relief, though darkness be predominating, is sad and disconsolate; but not only to be, but also to walk—that is, to continue a course in darkness, and that with no light, no discovery of help or relief—this seems to be an overwhelming condition; yet sinners in this estate are called "to trust in the name of the Lord." Owen. Trust in God is the grand principle of religion; it is another word, indeed, for faith, as that term is applied in the New Testament—the grand principle which distinguishes good men from men of the world. The former trust in God, and trusting in Him, their souls are kept in peace. They commit their way to Him, and resign their wills into His hands. R. Hall. Faith is a plant that can grow in the shade, a grace that can find the way to heaven in a dark night. It can "walk in darkness and yet trust in the name of the Lord." We read of promises to those that mourn, "they shall be comforted;" to the contrite, "they shall be revived;" to him that walks in darkness and the like—these belong to believers and none else; surely then there are some believers that are in the dark under the hatches of sorrow, wounded and broken with their sins and temptation for them; they are not such as are assured of the love of God; but their mourning is turned into joy, their night into light, their sighs and sobs into praise. Gurnall. The felt need of God makes us stretch out the hands of our faith and take a stronger hold on God. The stormy sea makes us look for the helping hand of Jesus. And we often learn more of faith in one month of darkness and storm than in years of sunshine. When God would prepare us for higher work, for sweeter peace, for clearer light, He brings them by an increase of faith and increases our faith by trying our faith. The heavenward path of love and prayer is never shut to faith by earthly storms; it is opened by them. From the pillow of stones we see the gates ajar. In the darkness of earth are shown to us the infinite worlds above; our dreams become steps to heaven; and our hills of difficulty mountains of transfiguration. Anon. Sin is a fact before us; sorrow is a fact we all have to face; death is a prospect we all have to meet. We must find God in the cloud or we are lost. We do find Him in the cloud at Calvary. There sin was at its worst, sorrow at its saddest, and death ever present. There also was God bearing our sins, sharing our sorrows, bearing our death. It is not strange that the darkest hour should touch the heart sooner than the brightest day. When the Lord descends to us in a cloud He does more for us than when He shines from afar. There is the sinner's hope. There was a great longing in Moses to see the face of God. The answer was the coming of God to Moses in a cloud. Don't be afraid of any cloud that will bring the Lord nearer to you. There are cloud gates that must be passed before you see the glory of the Lord. Don't be afraid of the cloud hovering around you. Before the Lord comes you are afraid of it, but afterward you will have passed out of darkness into light and joy. Gibson. Darkness is a reason for doubting everything but Christ, but a reason for trusting in Him, drawing near to Him and keeping close at His side. Darkness is a reason for distrusting one's self, and walking warily in prayer, and crying out for Christ's help, but certainly not a reason for unbelief. Darkness in ourselves and darkness around us is no reason for doubting the light, but for believing in it, loving it and pressing forward to it. Again we say darkness is no reason for doubt, but a strong reason for faith; for it is plain that though a man may be in darkness and have great reason to distrust himself, that is no reason for distrusting Christ, but for pressing after Him; for all the real light of the world is in Him, and he that followeth Him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Cheever. 11. "Kindling a fire" and "compassing one's self with sparks of his own kindling" look as figures to the case of one who walks in darkness—i.e., through scenes of calamity and sore trial, but who, instead of seeking light from God, kindles a little fire and surrounds himself with a few sparks of his own—a miserably poor substitute at best for such sunlight as God's! The end of such contempt of God and such reliance on self can be nothing better or other than to "lie down in sorrow." This warning fitly extends to all human endeavors to get up schemes of salvation. H. C. They refresh and please themselves with a conceit of their own merit and sufficiency, and warm themselves with that; it is both light and heat to them. As they trust in their own righteousness, and not in the righteousness of Christ, so they place their happiness in their worldly possessions and enjoyments and not in the favor of God. Creature comforts are as sparks, short-lived and soon gone; yet the children of this world while they last warm themselves by them, and walk with pride and pleasure in the light of them. They are ironically bid to "walk in the light of their own fire." Make your best of it while it lasts. This shall ye have of Mine hand (says Christ, for to Him the judgment is committed), "ye shall lie down in sorrow." A godly man's way may be melancholy, but his end shall be peace and everlasting light. A wicked man's way may be pleasant, but his end and endless abode will be utter darkness. H. 51:1 HEARKEN to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many. For the LORD hath comforted Zion: he hath comforted all her waste places, and hath made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. Attend unto me, O my people: and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall go forth from me, and I will make my judgement to rest for a light of the peoples. My righteousness is near, my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the peoples; the isles shall wait for me, and on mine arm shall they trust. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath : for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner : but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. 7. Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear 8 ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation unto all generations. 9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Art thou not it that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the 10 dragon? Art thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made 11 the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads: they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. 12 I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou art afraid of man that 13 shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; and hast forgotten the LORD thy Maker, that stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and fearest continually all the day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he maketh ready to 14 destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor? The captive exile shall speedily be loosed; 15 and he shall not die and go down into the pit, neither shall his bread fail. For I am the LORD thy God, which stirreth up the sea, that the waves thereof roar: the LORD of hosts is his 16 name. And I have put my words in thy mouth, and have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people. 17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup 18 of his fury; thou hast drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it. There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth; neither is there any that 19 taketh her by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought up. These two things are befallen thee; who shall bemoan thee? desolation and destruction, and the famine and the 20 sword; how shall I comfort thee? Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the top of all the streets, as an antelope in a net; they are full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God. 21, 22 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine: thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no 22 more drink it again: and I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy back as the ground, and as the street, to them that go over. Chap. 51. Throughout this chapter the tone is hopeful and full of promise. Zion is indeed seen in her militant state, but is exhorted not to fear her foes, and is assured that the cup of Divine chastisement is to pass from her lips to the lips of those who have been her oppressors. H. C. The design of this chapter is to comfort the Church under her sufferings and the persecutions of her enemies; and the argument of consolation insisted on is the constancy and perpetuity of God's mercy and faithfulness toward her, which shall be manifest in continuing to work salvation for her, protecting her against all assaults of her enemies and carrying her safely through all the changes of the world, and finally crowning her with victory and deliverance. Edwards. The address, Hearken, thrice repeated, and the summons, Awake, awake, also three times (verses 9, 17; 52:1), mark the unity of this division of the prophecy nearly to its close (52:10). But these words also refer back to chap. 50:10, just before. Birks. 1,2. This address is specially to the portion of God's ancient Zion designated as those who "follow after righteousness" and who "seek the Lord"—i.e., who make personal holiness their special object and aim, and whose supreme endeavor is to please God, and thus find His presence and favor. The central thought is a state of sincere, earnest endeavor to be and to do right—to be like God and to obey Him always and perfectly. To encourage these truly Christian people, the Lord exhorts them to look to Abraham, their national progenitor, and note how, though he was one man when God called him out from his country and kindred, yet God made of him a great nation. So the implication is, God will multiply you, the small body of His true worshippers. That God blessed him with a great increase, is the special point made here, on which also the new promise turns. The "rock" and the "hole of the pit" constitute but a single figure. It compares the Hebrew people to a stone cut from a quarry. Abraham was the old quarry from which all these stones were taken—the hole in the ground whence they were taken out. H. C. 3. The connection with verse 2 is obvious. "I have blessed and increased him, and I will bless and increase him; for Jehovah has begun to comfort Zion." Made her wilderness like Eden. This beautiful comparison is the strongest possible expression of a joyful change from total barrenness and desolation to the highest pitch of fertility and beauty. It is closely copied in Ezek. 31:9; but the same comparison, in more concise terms, is employed by Moses (Gen. 13:10). A. Abraham's call and blessing were the sure earnest of Zion's recovered beauty and glory. The former things are here declared (41:22), that Israel may consider them and know their latter end. They are taught to discern the sovereign grace of God in the history of Abraham and Sarah; and to gather, from God's past mercies, the assurance of still fuller blessings to come. The melody of our version here reflects worthily the beauty and fulness of the promise. Birks. 6. Raise to the heavens your eyes, and look unto the earth beneath. A similar form of address occurs above, in chap. 40:26. (Cf. Gen. 15:5.) Heaven and earth are here put, as in many other places, for the whole frame of nature. The next clause explains why they are called upon to look. For the heavens like smoke are dissolved or driven away. The writer uses distinct forms to express distinct ideas; he first gives a vivid description of the dissolution as already past, and then foretells its consummation as still future. And the earth like the garment (which grows old) shall grow old (or wear out). The same comparison occurs above, in chap. 50:9, and serves to identify the passages as parts of one continued composition. Various hypotheses are reconcilable by making the first clause mean, as similar expressions do mean elsewhere, that the most extraordinary changes shall be witnessed, moral and physical; but that amid them all this one thing shall remain unchangeable, the righteousness of God as displayed in the salvation of His people. (See chaps. 40:8; 65:17; Matt. 5:18; 1 John 2:17.) A. But My salvation will perish never. These promises can never become old and effete so as to lose their vitality. My righteousness, pledged here in the sense of veracity and ever energizing in the Divine bosom, can never become weak—can never be broken down and destroyed. Thus the infinite God guarantees His promises to His people. The mode of statement is analogous to that in chap. 54:10: "For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee." (See also Jer. 31:35-37.) H. C. 7,8. This third appeal answers, in its description of those addressed, to the last beatitude, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake." Thus it belongs to those whose hearts are already "established with grace." They are here encouraged under the persecutions of the world by the promise of a sure deliverance. The persecutors of the faithful will become like a moth-eaten garment, but these confessors shall "receive a crown of righteousness that fadeth not away." Birks. 8. This righteousness and salvation shall be forever, and shall never be abolished. It is an everlasting righteousness that the Messiah brings in (Dan. 9:24), an eternal redemption that He is the Author of (Heb. 5:9). As it shall spread through all the nations of the earth, so it shall last through all the ages of the world. We must never expect any other way of salvation, any other covenant of peace or rule of righteousness than what we have in the Gospel, and what we have there shall continue to the end (Matt. 28:20). It is forever, for the consequences of it shall be to eternity; and by this law of liberty men's everlasting state will be determined. This perpetuity of the Gospel and the blessed things it brings in is illustrated by the fading and perishing of this world and all things in it. H. 9. That bold metaphor of God sleeping and waking is often found in Scripture, and generally expresses the contrast between the long years of patient forbearance, during which evil things and evil men go on their rebellious road unchecked but by love, and the dread moment when some throne of iniquity, some Babylon cemented by blood, is smitten to the dust. Such is the original application of the expression here. But the contrast may fairly be widened beyond that specific form of it, and taken to express any apparent variations in the forthputting of His power. The prophet carefully avoids seeming to suggest that there are changes in God Himself. It is not He, but His arm—that is to say, His active energy, that is invoked to awake. It is true that God's arm slumbers, and is not clothed with power. There are, as a fact, apparent variations in the energy with which He works in the Church and in the world. And they are real variations, not merely apparent. But the next chapter tells us that if God's arm seems to slumber, and really does so, it is because Zion sleeps. In itself that immortal energy knows no variableness. "He fainteth not, neither is weary." "The Lord's arm is not shortened that He cannot save." "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." But He works through us; and we have the solemn and awful power of checking the might which would flow through us; of restraining and limiting the Holy One of Israel. The life which comes from His Spirit is maintained by constant efflux from the fountain of Life, by constant impartation of His quickening breath. And as He must continually impart, so must we continually receive, else we perish. Therefore the first step toward awaking, and the condition of all true revival in our own souls and in our churches, is this earnest cry, "Awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord." God's awaking is our awaking. He puts on strength by making us strong; for His arm works through us, clothing itself, as it were, with our arm of flesh, and perfecting itself even in our weakness. Nor is it to be forgotten that this, like all God's commands, carries in its heart a promise. That earliest word of God's is the type of all His latter behests—"Let there be light"—and the mighty syllables were creative and self-fulfilling. So ever with Him, to enjoin and to bestow are one and the same, and His command is His conveyance of power. He rouses us by His summons, He clothes us with power in the very act of bidding us put it on. A. M. 10. Art Thou not it?** Art thou not still the same? This refers to the arm of Jehovah, and the ground of the appeal is, that God must be the same, and that the same arm that dried up the sea and made a path for the Jewish people was still able to interpose and rescue them. This is the common illustration to which the Hebrew prophets and poets appeal when they wish to refer to the interposition of God in favor of their nation, or to give a striking illustration of His power. Barnes. The allusion to the overthrow of Egypt is carried out and completed by a distinct mention of the miraculous passage of the Red Sea. The interrogative form of the sentence is equivalent to a direct affirmation that it is the same arm, or, in other words, that the same power which destroyed the Egyptians for the sake of Israel still exists, and may again be exerted for a similar purpose. The confidence that this will be done is expressed somewhat abruptly in the next verse. A. 11. The logical connection with the verse preceding is full of force. Because God saved His ransomed ones at the Red Sea, "therefore" His redeemed (a word of like force) shall return and come with songs to Zion. Having the same God for their Redeemer and Saviour, why should not the same result be confidently expected? The words of this verse appear also in substance (chap. 35:10). H. C. Come with singing unto Zion. Praise on earth is the prophecy and pledge, the foretaste and assurance of the heavenly song. Every joyful emotion here springing from every song of the grateful heart is an anticipation and earnest of the more exquisite delight which shall thrill that heart there completely attuned to the high, the perfect praise of Jehovah. Every ascription which here ascends from the praising spirit brings that spirit into truer, closer sympathy with the thousand times ten thousand circling the celestial throne, and fits it for a more perfect unison in singing that song which there ceaselessly ascends, that song ever new, ever rapturing, the song of Redeeming Love. Thus the offering of praise on earth is a preparation for heaven. Proceeding from a fervent, overflowing heart, it is heaven anticipated, heaven begun below. B. 12-16. This Divine Intercessor, the Word of God, is also the Comforter of His people. When they are crushed by their afflictions, He reminds them of His love in earlier days, and encourages them to hope for greater wonders still to come. Birks. 12. "I, even I, am He that comforts you." They prayed for the operations of His power, He answers them with the consolations of His grace, which may well be accepted as an equivalent. If God do not wound the dragon and dry the sea as formerly, yet if He comfort us in soul under our afflictions we have no reason to complain. He takes it among the titles of His honor to be "the God that comforts them that are cast down;" He delights in being so. Those whom God comforts are comforted indeed; nay, His undertaking to comfort them is comfort enough to them. H. The Bible gives emphasis to the fact that God is the chief comfort of those who suffer. The hand that wounds is the hand that heals. The word that kills makes alive again. The Scriptures which teach this have become household words. Our morning and evening prayers rehearse them, and our children sing them. "God is our refuge," has but a short time ago made a belt of song around the world. "I, even I, am He that comforteth you. Fear not; I am with thee; I will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not." A child in the dark trusts in confiding silence to the unseen hand that leads him; such may every sorrowing man be, in the consciousness of God's proximity. Phelps. It is God Himself who draws nigh to the heart drawing nigh to Him. Here and here only is peace and consolation. Seek it not in doctrines skilfully and soothingly arranged to give you calm slumber and a kind of logical and legal trust-deed security; seek it only in and from the living God. "I, even I, am He that comforteth you." It is a Divine prerogative. Thus God says often emphatically, "I, even I," to exclude all idols, however beautiful and elevated—to shut us up to Himself. God alone created the heavens and the earth—"I, even I;" God alone redeemed us, and forgiveth all our iniquities—"I, even I;" God alone, who knows the heart, can heal and gladden it. A. Saphir. 13. The Lord speaks of Himself as the comforter of Zion, He having not merely given her great promises, but also wrought for her great works of power and mercy. The Hebrew idiom means simply, Why then hast thou been afraid? The question expresses an actual and culpable distrust of God. For where now is the fury of thine old oppressors? In the bottom of the sea! Think of their doom, and cease to fear the rage of thine enemies! H. C. When we disquiet ourselves with the fear of man, we forget that there is a God above him, and that the greatest of men have no power but what is given them from above; we forget the providence of God, by which He orders and overrules all events according to the counsel of His own will; we forget the promises He has made to protect His people and the experiences we have had of His care concerning us, and His seasonable interposition for our relief many a time, when we thought the oppressor ready to destroy; we forget our Jehovah-jirehs, monuments of mercy in the mount of the Lord. H. 16. The Lord God puts His words in the mouth of the Messiah and protects Him in the shadow of His hand, not to the end that He may create a new planet or recreate an old one, but in order that He may do the great work of the Gospel age, accomplish His mission connected with His first (and not His second) advent, for to this, beyond all question, the whole context refers. Compare also chap. 49:2, where the same phrases occur, and in the same relations of thought—the Messiah anointed and protected for His earthly mission. H. C.—The new creation thus announced can only mean the reproduction of the Church in a new form, by what we usually call the change of dispensations. The outward economy should all be new, and yet the identity of the chosen people should remain unbroken. For He whom God had called to plant new heavens and to found a new earth was likewise commissioned to say to Zion, Thou art still My people. A. 17. The prophet conceives of the Lord's providential judgments upon wicked nations as an intoxicating, maddening cup, given them to drink. (Sec. Jer. 25:15-29.) The Jews drank deeply of this cup at various points in their national history, and especially during their long captivity in Babylon. H. C. 21. Drunken, but not with wine. The antithesis in the last clause is to be completed from the context. Not with wine, but with the wrath of God, which had already been described as a cup of reeling or intoxication. The same negative expression is employed in chap. 29:9. 22. As the cup was the cup of God's wrath, not of man's, so God Himself is represented as withdrawing it from the sufferer's lips, when its purpose is accomplished. 23. The Israel of God, the Church, or chosen people, continued to exist under every change of dispensation and economy, and notwithstanding all its fluctuations and vicissitudes, shall ultimately be forever rescued by the same hand which destroys its enemies. This is the simple substance of the promise in the verse before us, which includes without specifically signifying all that has been thus represented as its meaning. A. 52:1 AWAKE, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircum- 2cised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit thee down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. 3 For thus saith the LORD, Ye were sold for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without 4money. For thus saith the Lord God, My people went down at the first into Egypt to so- 5journ there: and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now therefore, what do I here, saith the LORD, seeing that my people is taken away for nought? they that rule over 6them do howl, saith the LORD, and my name continually all the day is blasphemed. There- fore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak; behold, it is I. 7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith 8unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! The voice of thy watchmen! they lift up the voice, together 9do they sing; for they shall see, eye to eye, when the LORD returneth to Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the LORD hath comforted his peo- 10ple, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The LORD hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all 11the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Depart ye, de- part ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be 12ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the LORD. For ye shall not go out in haste, neither shall ye go by flight: for the LORD will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rear- ward. Chap. 52. Zion, thought of as embodied in the Jewish nation, is exhorted to arouse herself and come up from her state of depression and degradation. The figures are brought forward from the close of the previous chapter, and conceive of her as having been enslaved and oppressed—the essential idea, however, being her previous low spiritual state and her consequent weakness and disgrace before the nations—to be now exchanged for a new spiritual life under the Gospel dispensation. It was as if the nation had been abused for no good reason—sold, and no worthy price paid to the Lord, who was their rightful owner. Therefore God would redeem them without money (verses 3, 4). His name had been dishonored in their national sufferings; therefore He would vindicate it (verses 5, 6). Joyous messengers announcing the Messiah's advent and the Gospel age and reign are hailed as coming (verse 7); Zion's watchmen see them from the city watch towers, and greet them with songs of joy (verse 8). All the wastes of Zion are summoned to join in these songs, and rejoice in all the redemption God has wrought (verses 9, 10); the transition from the old age and state of Zion to the new is thought of as a solemn march or procession, jointly military and sacerdotal; the Church moving out with slow and solemn tread, joyfully reposing in her God, who both leads her as the captain of her host and follows her as her rear-guard (verses 11, 12). And next "My servant," the great Messiah, comes distinctly to view. It is of no small importance to note that the ground idea of this chapter is the transition from the Mosaic to the Christian economy, which of course involves the coming of the Messiah and a glorious advance in the spiritual life of Zion. To aid in the illustration of this idea, the prophet alludes to the relations of Israel to ancient Egypt and to Assyria (verse 4). The reference to Egypt and to Assyria is historical and illustrative, and not at all prophetic. H. C. 1. The encouraging assurances of the foregoing context are now followed by a summons similar to that in chap. 51:17, but in form approaching nearer to the apostrophe in chap. 51:9. The last clause contains a general promise of exemption from the contaminating presence of the impure and unworthy, as a part of the blessedness and glory promised to God's people, as the end and solace of their various trials. A. The implement of the Church's work is the Word; the arm of the Church's power is the ministry; but the power itself is the Holy Ghost. In this view, the call of the text is full of meaning. It is the Spirit's call: Awake! awake! put on thy strength!—the strength which he proffers. Thy strength is My strength—put it on; put it forth. The strength of the Church is a trinity—the Word, the Ministry, the Spirit—but it is a trinity in unity; for the power, the one power, is the Holy Ghost. The Word, in its adaptation to the wants of man, has a power of congruity; the ministry, by the bond that connects man with man, has the power of sympathy, but neither, alone, is adequate to the supernatural aim of the Church's mission. The Word, alone, cannot raise the dead; the ministry, alone, cannot convert or save; but the Holy Ghost can make both mighty—the Word a thunderbolt, and the ministry a flame of fire. The Word is the Spirit's word. It has a Divine authority behind it, a Divine life in it, a Divine power accompanying it. The ministry is the ministration of the Spirit, for, of every function, He is the author and the life. He calls the minister, qualifies him with gifts and graces, fills him with the fulness of the Gospel of peace, and makes his word an arrow that penetrates—a sword quick and powerful, a hammer that breaks in pieces, and a weapon that smites and prostrates the stronghold of Satan. W. M. Paxton. Wheresoever we lift up the cry, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord," there follows, swift as the thunderclap on the lightning flash, the rousing summons, "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!" Wheresoever it is obeyed there will follow in due time the joyful chorus, as in this context, "Sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; the Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God." A. M. 2. The conception of Zion as covered with dust follows the thought in the close of the previous chapter where she lay on the ground, her enemies treading her into the very dust and soiling her garments. So also the "bands of her neck" assume that she has been a captive in bonds. 4. These are special cases under the general statements of the previous verse. Israel went down into Egypt for the innocent purpose of sojourning there a short time only, till the famine should be over. It was therefore a mere outrage on the part of Egypt's king to seize them and subject them to servile bondage. No price was paid to their Divine owner for them. No regard was had to essential righteousness and justice. God might therefore fitly recover them with no money, but indeed at the cost to Egypt of her king and his whole army. Equally without cause was their oppression under the Assyrian power, and with like terrible retribution upon his vast army did the Lord avenge and deliver His people. H. C. 6. In contrast to this state of intense sorrow, God's people shall learn the truth, that He is "a very present help in the time of trouble." The words "in that day" prove that the time of deliverance was actually future when the prophet wrote, and had been made present in prophetic vision alone. Birks.—I paraphrase thus: Therefore, because I cannot endure such things longer, My people shall know My faithfulness, power and grace ("My name"); they shall surely know in that day when these coming events shall take place, that I am He who has said and is still saying, "Behold Me!" They shall experience ("know") the gloriously saving power of their own God, who has so often called their attention and sought to inspire their faith by this expression, "Behold Me!" H. C. 7. How beautiful upon the mountains, etc. This passage is applied by Paul to the ministers of the Gospel. (See Rom. 10:15.) The meaning here seems to be this: Isaiah was describing the certain return of the Jews to their own land. He sees in vision the heralds announcing their return to Jerusalem running on the distant hills. A herald bearing good news is a beautiful object; and he says that his feet—i.e., his running is beautiful. He came to declare that the exiles were about to return; that their long and painful captivity was closed; and that the holy city and its Temple were again to rise with splendor, and that peace and plenty and joy were to be spread over the land. Such a messenger coming with haste, the prophet says, would be a beautiful object. Nahum, who is supposed to have lived after Isaiah, has evidently copied from him this image (1:15): Behold upon the mountains the feet of the joyful messenger, Of him that announceth peace; Celebrate, O Judah, thy festivals; perform thy vows: For no more shall pass through thee the wicked one; He is utterly cut off. Barnes. Paul is chargeable with no misapplication of the words when he applies them to the preachers of the Gospel. The contents of the message are the manifestation of the reign of God, the very news which Christ and His forerunner published when they cried, saying, The kingdom of God is at hand. A. The word which is rendered "bringeth good tidings" means precisely one who is publishing this Gospel, corresponding to the Greek Evangelico, and to the etymological sense of the word Evangelist, as we apply it—e.g., to the first preachers of the Gospel. Precisely this expressive word, a herald of glad tidings, appears in chaps, 40 : 9 and 41 : 27, and serves to connect those passages with this. The reader will note the strength of this idea in the verse before us—repeated, expanded, modified in every form to give the fullest and strongest sense of joyful tidings, tidings of good ; publishing peace ; publishing salvation. H. C. The Gospel of Christ, the Word Incarnate of God, entering into our life is indeed good tidings—good tidings as reaching down to the lowest depths where humanity still lingers, and growing with man's growth to the utmost bounds of his possible attainments, reaching and growing without limit. It turns our thoughts from what we can do to what God has done and is doing. It discloses in the idea of creation a splendor which communicates its light to all created things. It pierces to the depths of misery, and brings back even from their darkness a promise of hope. It transfigures all personal suffering by the thought of a fellowship with God in Christ. It is a new, an eternal commandment in which all things, our utmost hopes and efforts, are shown to be of Him, and through Him, and unto Him. This is the Gospel which all have to hold and to publish, to hold with a firmer grasp by publishing with a more personal devotion. Here is the joy which we all are charged to make our own by extending it to others. Bp. Westcott. Thy God reigneth. Christ commissions His ministers to proclaim this joyful truth to Zion, His Church, that every member of His may receive it in faith, change the pronoun, and say, My God reigneth. Christ's reign is His people's glory, their triumph on earth, and the song of disembodied saints in glory. W. Mason. 8. The idea is, that when Jehovah should bring back and bless His people, the watchmen should have a full and glorious exhibition of His mercy and goodness. And the result should be, that they would greatly rejoice and unitedly celebrate His name. According to this interpretation, it does not mean that the ministers of religion should have the same precise views or embrace the same doctrines, however true this may be or however desirable in itself, but that they should have an open, clear and bright manifestation of the presence of God, and should lift up their voices together with exultation and praise. Barnes. 8. Zion's watchmen are the first to see on the distant mountains the feet of those Gospel heralds. This conception is thoroughly Oriental. The bold form of the first clause is expressive. The far-seeing vision of the prophet gave him first the coming heralds seen crossing the distant mountain tops, rushing on with their burden of glad tidings. Next, lo! a shout of the watchmen! All as one they lift up their voice in joyous outcries; at one and the same moment they all catch the sight of the coming heralds. They seem intuitively to seize the joyous import of their tidings and pour forth their soul and voice in triumphant song! Is not the scene inspiring? And why should it not be so painted and so felt? H. C. 9. It is a cold, lifeless thing to speak of spiritual things upon mere report; but they that speak of them as their own, as having share or interest in them, and some experience of their sweetness, their discourse is enlivened with firm belief and ardent affection; they cannot mention them but their hearts are straight taken with such gladness as they are forced to vent in praises. Leighton. 9,10. This section of the prophecy closes here with a glorious promise. It is rehearsed at the opening of the Baptist's message (Luke 3 : 6), but remains to be more fully realized in the last days. Birks. 10. The Lord girds Himself for mighty and glorious manifestations of His spiritual power that the ends of the earth may see His salvation. To make bare the arm is to gird the loins, leaving the arm uncovered and unincumbered for the most vigorous activities. History records of many celebrated warriors that they went into battle with their right arm naked. The genius of the Christian age is not centralization, but diffusion; is not inaction, but earnest work—its great command being, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." This done, all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God. H. C. The prominent encouragement to labor for the Christianization of the nations is found in the design and promise of God that every people and nation shall be willingly subject to the spiritual sway of the Redeemer, that the system of truth and faith which has been divinely promulgated shall reach and affect all human hearts and attain a universal and complete supremacy in the earth. Possessed of a complete adaptation to man's moral condition and needs, and accompanied by the grace and might of God's Spirit, this Divine system is completely fitted to enter the heart, to subdue the will and to turn to itself the moving springs of affection and action in the soul. Thus it wins the individual. And from the individual its natural necessary tendency is to a continual diffusion. It makes each captivated soul a minister to extend its sway. As the numbers of its members increase, it gathers them into churches, and here organizes agencies for the wider dissemination of its influences. It makes each community in which it is established a centre from which its powerful quickening beams shall continually flow forth with an ever-widening compass and reach, until all are enlightened and its mighty, outspread circle shall include the race! For this the Christian system is fitted—admirably, wondrously fitted—as is the sun to give light and life to the worlds of His system! B. Countless millions are shortly to awake from the sleep and darkness of a hundred ages to hail the day that will never go down. I see the darkness rolling upon itself and passing away from a thousand lands. I see a cloudless day following and spreading itself over all the earth. I see the nations coming up from the neighborhood of the brutes to the dignity of the sons of God. I see the meekness of the Gospel assuaging ferocious passions, melting down a million contending units into one, silencing the clangor of arms, and swelling into life a thousand budding charities which had died under the long winter. I hear the voice of their joy. It swells from the valleys and echoes from the hills. I already hear on the eastern breeze the songs of new-born nations. I already catch from the western gale the praise of a thousand islands. I ascend the Alps and see the darkness retiring from the papal world. I ascend the Andes and see South America and all the islands of the Pacific one altar. I ascend the mountains of Thibet, and hear from the plains of China and from every jungle and pagoda of Hindustan the praises of the living God. I see all Asia bowing before Him who eighteen centuries ago hung in the midst of them on Calvary. I traverse oceans and hear from every floating Bethel the songs of the redeemed. "The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks Shout to each other; and the mountain tops, From distant mountains, catch the flying joy; Till, nation after nation taught the strain, Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round." E. D. Griffin. 11,12. The conception here is that of the whole people of God moving in solemn procession in which the sacerdotal and military elements are singularly blended. The march through the wilderness from Egypt to Canaan is the model and furnishes the imagery and the descriptive terms. Apparently the thing really meant is the analogous march out from the old ritual economy into the new spiritual kingdom of the Messiah. Or perhaps we might better say, out from Judaism and the old Jewish Church, now effete and putrid in its moral corruptions, into the new Gospel kingdom. H. C. 11. Be ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.** It is said in Scripture that "they should be holy who bear the vessels of the Lord;" and it is generally believed that the position of a minister is one eminently favorable to personal holiness. But experience shows that such position brings with it great spiritual dangers. Familiarity with sacred things is sure to produce a feeling of indifference, unless counteracted by earnest prayer and secret communion with God. There is nothing more searing to the conscience than an unholy handling of the truth; the use of it for one's own selfish or ambitious ends. If it does not work to cleanse and hallow him who teaches it, it will defile and harden. That position of isolation and elevation in which a minister is placed is, also, dangerous as inspiring pride and self-confidence. Watching over others, he is tempted to forget to keep watch over himself. If there is any one who is called to scrutinize his own heart, and apply diligently the truth he teaches to himself, it is he who ministers in God's temple. Churchman. 12. This verse is crowded with allusions to the earlier history of Israel, some of which consist in the adaptation of expressions with which the Hebrew reader was familiar, but which must of course be lost in a translation. Thus the hasty departure out of Egypt is not only recorded as a fact in the Mosaic history (Ex. 11:1; 12:33, 39), but designated by the very term here used רַבִּי (Ex. 12:11; De. 16:3), meaning terrified and sudden flight. There is likewise an obvious allusion to the cloudy pillar going sometimes before and sometimes behind the host (Ex. 14:19, 20). "For" has reference to the promise, implied in the preceding exhortation, of protection and security. A. The Lord's people are bidden go out with displayed banner, not in haste, or as cowards; and the reason is given, Because the Lord will go before them in the vanguard, and behind them in the rearward, and shall so compass them that they need to stand in awe or be feared for none. Thus He would have them avowing their Lord and boldly professing holiness. Dickson. 7-12. I prefer the interpretation of this passage which applies it primarily and specially to the change from the Mosaic to the Gospel dispensation, including as its leading events the advent of the Messiah, the setting up of His kingdom and the proclamation of the Gospel. 1. Because of the connection of this passage with that which immediately follows (52: 13-15 and 53), where we have a very specific description of the great personage who is here represented as coming and reigning, and as leading His people forth into a new spiritual world of life and labor, this personage being surely the Messiah and none other. 2. Because of the close analogy of this passage with chap. 40: 1-11, which manifestly refers to this great transition from the Mosaic to the Christian age, coupled with the coming of Christ. 3. Because the entire passage admits of a natural, easy and forcible construction on this hypothesis. H. C. Here the chapter should have closed. Here closes the account of the return of the exiles from Babylon. The mind of the prophet seems here to leave the captive Jews on their way to their own land safe, with Jehovah going at their head and guarding the rear of the returning band, and to have passed to the contemplation of Him of whose coming all these events were preliminary and introductory—the Messiah. Perhaps the rationale of this apparent transition is this. It is undoubtedly the doctrine of the Bible that He who was revealed as the guide of His people in ancient times, and who appeared under various names, as “the angel of Jehovah,” “the angel of the covenant,” etc., was He who afterward became incarnate—the Saviour of the world. So the prophet seems to have regarded Him; and here fixing his attention on the Jehovah who was thus to guide His people and be their defence, by an easy transition the mind is carried forward to the time when He would be incarnate, and when He would die for men. Leaving, therefore, so to speak, the contemplation of Him as conducting His people across the barren wastes which separated Babylon from Judea, the mind is, by no unnatural transition, carried forward to the time when He would become a man of sorrows and when He would come to redeem and save the world. According to this supposition, it is the same glorious Being whom Isaiah sees as the protector of His people, and almost in the same instant as the man of sorrows; and the contemplation of Him as the suffering Messiah becomes so absorbing and intense, that he abruptly closes the description of Him as the guide of the exiles to their own land. He sees Him in His humiliation. He sees Him as a sufferer. He sees the manner and the design of His death. He contemplates the certain result of that humiliation and death in the spread of the true religion, and in the extension of His kingdom among men. Henceforward, therefore, to the end of Isaiah, we meet with very few references to the condition of the exiles in Babylon, or to their return to their own land. The mind of the prophet is absorbed in describing the glories of the Messiah, and the certain spread of His Gospel and His kingdom around the globe. Barnes. 52:13 BEHOLD, my servant shall deal wisely, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Like as many were astonished at thee, (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men,) so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand. 53:1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, yet he humbled himself and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea, he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgement he was taken away; and as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living? for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many: and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. THE clear prediction of the sufferings of Christ, with which this section begins, forms the centre and heart of these later prophecies. It reveals the Divine method for accomplishing the second part of the opening promise to Zion, "that her iniquity is pardoned;" while it sets before the Church, in plainest outlines, the great Sacrifice and Divine Sin offering of the Incarnate Son of God. It also prepares the way for a glorious promise of the fruitfulness of the true Church, delivered at length from the reproach of long ages of barrenness, and later signs of desertion and neglect, and of her growth into a beautiful city of God; with an appeal to all the Gentiles once more, to come and partake freely of the sure mercies provided for them in the Son of David, the promised Immanuel, the Lamb of God, appointed to take away the sin of the world. Birks. 52:13-53:1-12. Many centuries before Christ's death and resurrection a prediction was uttered, which not only foretells these events down to the minutest detail, but expounds their significance in such a way as afterward apostles, Church fathers, reformers, only did. . . . If the resurrection of Christ is a fact, if His death and resurrection are the central facts of history, which we know them to be, and if Jesus was justified in declaring Himself to be the Messiah and His entire work to be the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, it will then seem perfectly natural and becoming that the preparatory revelation should foreshadow and foretell these particular facts in the fullest and exactest manner; and we see that Jesus and Paul were specially careful to demonstrate the Divine necessity of these fundamental facts from the prophetic word of the Old Testament. Auberlen. 52:13-15. Here Jehovah speaks. He speaks of His servant the Messiah, and describes the state of His humiliation and of His subsequent exaltation. These verses contain in fact an epitome of what is enlarged upon in the next chapter. The sum of it is, that His servant should be, in the main, or on the whole, prospered and exalted (verse 13); yet He would be subjected to the deepest trial and humiliation (verse 14); but as the result of this, He would redeem the nations of the earth, and their kings and rulers should regard Him with profound reverence (verse 15). A display of the Divine perfections would accompany the work of the servant of Jehovah such as they had never beheld, and they would be called on to contemplate wonders of which they had not before heard. Barnes. The preceding context (52:1-12) treats directly of the coming of the Messiah and of the opening of the Gospel age, the grand transition from Judaism to Christianity—the latter, thought of as opening a new and glorious era of spiritual light and of the power of Divine truth and of the Spirit unto salvation for all the tribes of the earth. Applying it to the transition from Judaism to Christianity, the connection of verse 13 with what precedes is direct and close. Nothing could be more appropriate than to pass from general views of the Gospel age to a more specific view of its great central personage, the Messiah. The connection becomes even more close if we accept the correct view of “the God of Israel their rearward” as presented in the clause immediately preceding. For, who was He that moved at the head of the columns of Israel in their forty years’ procession through the wilderness, manifesting His presence in the pillar of cloud and of fire? His character is well defined and His person identified in these words: “I will send an angel before thee: beware of Him and obey His voice, provoke Him not; for He will not pardon your transgressions, for My name is in Him” (Ex. 23:20-23). This “angel,” so called because sent on this special mission, can be no other than the Messiah, called “the God of Israel” because He led them through that wilderness to Canaan. Here also He appears in analogous relations to His people in the Christian age as the Lord’s servant. The connection of this passage (verses 13-15) with chap. 53 is also direct and immediate. Indeed, the passage (chap. 53:1-10) takes up and expands the thought, briefly presented in the parenthesis (chap. 52:14), showing how it came to pass that “His visage was so marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men.” The remaining verses (chap. 53:10-12) correspond with the leading thought in chap. 52:14, 15—the wonderful relation between Christ’s humiliation and sufferings on the one hand, and His transcendent success in saving lost men on the other. As to the personage spoken of here as “My servant,” only one opinion can be sustained—He is the great Messiah. The connection with the verses preceding shows it. The usage of this term in 42:1-4; 43:10; 49:3, 6; 53:11, and the New Testament quotations of this class of prophecies (e.g., Matt. 12:18-21), combine to place this construction beyond all doubt. Furthermore, the perfect coincidence between this passage and the New Testament doctrine of Christ, first crucified, then rising triumphantly and exalted gloriously, and rewarded with victorious success in the salvation of the nations—brings in an array of evidence which it would seem no candid mind can resist. 52:13. Deal wisely. All His ways will be characterized by consummate wisdom. He will show that He understands perfectly the moral nature of the race He came to save, and will bring the best possible appliances of truth and motive to bear on their consciences and on their hearts. Gifted with such wisdom, and managing His stupendous mission to earth so wisely, the consequence will be, “He will be exalted and lifted up, and be very high.” The drift of this entire passage, closing with chap. 53, contemplates, not Christ’s simple exaltation on His throne in heaven, irrespective of His success in His work as Saviour of men, but precisely His success in this great work—the glory of victory over Satan and sin in the grand conflict in which human souls, the living nations of men, are the prize for the conqueror. H. C. The solemn administration of Christ’s kingly office could not take place till the prophetic and priestly were discharged; the one, by teaching His people and raising their affections and desires by the clearest revelation of happiness in a future state; the other, by making intercession for them, by the atonement of bloody sacrifice, the sacrifice of Himself. This is plainly told us in the ensuing chapter, the twenty-second Psalm, and other prophecies of the Old Testament, which Paul does in effect but expound in Heb. 2 : 10 ; 10 : 12, 13 ; Phil. 2 : 7-11. Stanhope. What being is He who, inverting all the ordinary modes of judgment, is "to sprinkle many nations," and "be exalted and extolled and be very high," and "see His seed and prolong His days;" because He is "brought as a lamb to the slaughter," and "hath poured out His soul unto death;" because "He has made intercession for the transgressors;" because "He is despised and rejected of men," "wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities;" because in short He is the lamb "on whom God has laid the iniquity of us all?" There stands the picture on the page of prophecy—who shall ever be seen to answer it? Centuries come and go, but the lamb that is to be struggles all this time in the womb of providence—expected and not seen, yet waiting always for the birth. At last the fulness of time is come; when a strange, new prophet appears, announcing the kingdom of God now at hand. And he breaks out suddenly at his preaching and baptism by the Jordan, as a particular unknown man is seen approaching to claim the baptism, in the strangely worded salutation—"Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Now at last the advances and preparations of so many ages are ended, the Lamb of God is come. Only what conceivable impulse, if not the direct impulse of the Spirit of God, could have opened the prophet's mouth in this strangely worded salutation? And who is He that He should bear this appellation? That will be known some three years hence more perfectly. When this wonderful, only spotless being of the world, after having breathed purity and love on it for so long a time, goes to His cross in dumb submission to His enemies, and dies there staining the fatal post with His blood, having yet no bone of His passover-body broken, we begin to catch some first intimation of the prophet's meaning, when he declares—"He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter," also of the New Testament prophet in his strange salutation—"Behold the Lamb of God." And then what does He Himself do, three days after, when He encounters the two disciples going back, heavy-hearted, into the country, but open to them all the ancient Scripture, showing out of it how certainly Christ ought to suffer, and so to be the Lamb of prophecy. Bushnell. 14,15. The parenthetic clause in verse 14 suggests the grounds of the astonishment occasioned by the aspect of this servant of the Lord during His humiliation. His visage (general aspect) was that of one worn, wasted and wan—a tearful sufferer, surpassing in these respects what they had ever seen among men. Could He be a King and yet wear such an aspect? Could He be a good man, and yet such a sufferer, moving in a rank so low, and in poverty so extreme? So the many thought, and hence they were astonished at Him—the prophet using here a verb which as Dr. Alexander remarks "expresses a mixture of surprise, contempt and aversion." Such was this "servant" of God in the days of His humiliation in the flesh. With this, the prophet puts in strong antithesis the days of His subsequent success and glory. The many individuals were amazed at His marred visage, and saw only things toward which they felt contempt and aversion; but the many nations shall be baptized into a new life unto God; their kings shall shut their mouths in reverential awe before Him, rejoicing and admiring that through Him they see what no tongue had ever told them before. The word "sprinkle" is richly expressive. Its established use in the Mosaic ritual clothes it with significance as an emblem of moral purification, bringing the sprinkled one into a new moral state and into new moral relations to God as both forgiven and cleansed. Ezekiel takes up from Isaiah this very term and expands its precious significance, "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes that ye may keep My judgments and do them" (Ezek. 36 : 25-27). H. C. 15. The wonders of redemption would stand by themselves as unparalleled in all that they had heard or seen. What is here predicted has been fulfilled. The mystery of the incarnation and the atonement, the sufferings and the death of the Redeemer, His exaltation and His glory, are events which are unparalleled in the history of the world. They stand by themselves, and they will stand by themselves forever in the history of human events. They are events fitted in their nature to excite the profoundest admiration and wonder. That the Son of God should become a man; that His visage should be so disfigured by grief as to have scarcely the aspect of a human being; that He should suffer and die as He did; and that He should be exalted as He is over this whole world, and have the most elevated place in the universe at the right hand of God, are all events fitted to excite the deepest wonder and the profoundest admiration. And it has been done. The prophecy has been fulfilled. It has been a fact that kings and princes have bowed with profound veneration at the name and presence of the Redeemer; and from the time of Constantine not a few of earth's mightiest monarchs have professed a profound regard for the character and the laws of the Messiah. Barnes. Chap. 53 contains a more minute explanation and statement of what is said in general in chap. 52: 13-15. For convenience, it may be regarded as divided into the following portions: 1. An expression of amazement and lamentation at the fact that so few had embraced the annunciation respecting the Messiah, and had been properly affected by the important statements respecting His sufferings, His death and His glorification (verse 1). The prophet laments that so few had credited what had been spoken, and that the power of God had been revealed to so few in consequence of the coming and the work of the Messiah. 2. A description of His rejection, His sufferings, His death (verses 2-10). Here the prophet describes the scene as actually passing before his eyes. He speaks as if he himself were one of the people—one of the Jewish nation—who had rejected Him and who had procured His death. He describes the misapprehension under which it was done, and the depth of the sorrow to which the Messiah was subjected, and the design which Jehovah had in view in these sufferings. His appearance and rejection are described (verses 2, 3). He is as a root or shrub that grows in a parched soil without beauty; He is a man of sorrows, instead of being, as they expected, a magnificent prince; He has disappointed their expectations, and there is nothing that corresponded with their anticipations, and nothing, therefore, which should lead them to desire Him. He is, therefore, rejected and despised. The design for which He endured His sorrows is stated (verses 4-6). He was thought by the people to be justly put to death, and they judged that God had judicially smitten and afflicted Him (verse 4). But this was not the cause. It was because He had borne the sorrows of the nation, and was wounded for their sins (verses 4, 5). They had all gone astray, but Jehovah had caused to meet on Him the iniquity of all. The manner of His sufferings is described (verses 7, 8). He was patient as a lamb; was taken from prison and cut off. The manner of His burial is described (verse 9). It was with the rich. The reason why He was thus buried, and why His grave was thus distinguished from that of malefactors was, that in fact He had been holy and had done no evil. God, therefore, took care that that fact should be marked even in His burial, and though He died with malefactors, yet, as the purpose of the atonement did not require ignominy after death, He should not be buried with them. The design for which all this was done is stated (verse 10). It was that His soul might be made an offering for sin, and that it was thus well pleasing or acceptable to God that He should suffer and die. 3. The result of His sufferings and humiliation, the reward, the glorification, is described (verses 10-12). He should see a numerous spiritual posterity, and should be abundantly satisfied for all His pains and sorrows (verses 10, 11). By the knowledge of Him, a great number should be justified and saved (verse 11). He should be greatly honored, and should proceed to the spiritual conquest of all the world (verse 12). Barnes. This chapter is so full a description of our blessed Saviour's sufferings that it looks more like a history than a prophecy; and might with more reason be suspected to be a copy drawn from His life than not to be a description of it. But this Scripture was in being long before our Lord was born, and was in the keeping of His enemies; of those who hated and despised Him, and at last put Him to a shameful death; and were at once the preservers and the fulfillers of the prophecy. Bp. Sherlock.—It is certain that both ancient and modern Jews interpret it of the Messiah. Dean Alliz. This is the clearest and strongest of all the prophecies of the Old Testament. It is an advantage which it possesses, that it is intermixed with no other subject. It is entire, separate and uninterruptedly directed to one scene of things. The application of it also to the evangelical history is plain and appropriate. Here is no double sense, no figurative language but what is sufficiently intelligible to every reader of every country. Paley. From that prophet, justly called evangelical, who was the first commissioned to lift up the veil that covered the mystery of our redemption and to draw it forth to open view from beneath the shade of Jewish ceremonies and types, through which it had been hitherto but faintly discerned, we have a description of that great propitiatory sacrifice whereby our salvation has been effected, as plain as it is possible for language to convey it. Matthew (8 : 17) and Peter (1 Epistle 2 : 24) directly recognize the prophecy as applied to Christ ; and yet more decisive is the passage, in Acts 8 : 35, in which the eunuch reading this very chapter, and demanding of Philip, of whom speaketh the prophet this ? it is said, that Philip began at the same Scripture, and preached unto Him Jesus. Abp. Magee. In Isa. 53 it is the prophet who comes at once as priest and king ; and the way from the unobserved activity of the prophet is represented as leading to glory and dominion through the deepest humiliation and scorn of the atoning death. The priesthood is unquestionably included in verse 10, the kinghood in verse 12. The expressions and figures have an Old Testament character, and thus are true to nature and full of poetic life. The thoughts are clear, and constitute the Gospel, the New Testament in the Old. For One who in this way unites in Himself the three theocratic offices, prophet, priest and king, is the specific close of the old covenant. Such an One is nowhere to be found but in Jesus Christ ; in Him found in most perfect fulness. Auberlen. It is to be remembered that the scene of this vision is laid in the midst of the work of the Redeemer. The prophet places himself in vision where he has a view of the Messiah. He sees Him a sufferer, despised and rejected. He sees that few come to Him, and embrace Him as their Saviour. He recalls the " report" and the announcement which he and other prophets had made respecting Him ; he remembers the record which had been made centuries before respecting the Messiah ; and he asks with deep emotion, as if present when the Redeemer lived and preached, who had credited what he and the other prophets had said of Him ? The mass had rejected it all. The passage, therefore, had its fulfilment in the events connected with the ministry of the Redeemer, and in the fact that He was rejected by so many. The Redeemer was more successful in His work as a preacher than is commonly supposed, but still it is true that by the mass of the nation He was despised ; and true that the announcement which had been made of His true character and work was rejected. Barnes. In all these villages and cities there are a great many men who treat the whole system of positive Christianity, both doctrine and ordinance, with indifference. They never acknowledge any acquaintance with Revelation, in the street, nor invite it to their houses, till that one guest pushes in which they hold at bay as long as medicine and fear can do it ; and then, inconsistently enough, they ask in, to meet that dark stranger on the way to the graveyard, the minister of the risen Christ, whom they had disowned all their lives. Now, no believer in the reality of his faith, whether he be minister or layman, can look this strange problem in the face without painfully asking the question again and again, What does it mean ? What can break up this strange unconcern ? F. D. H. Arm of the Lord. There is nothing within the compass of God's love to bestow of which Christ is not the giver. There is nothing Divine that is done in the heavens and the earth of which Christ is not the doer. The representation of Scripture is uniformly that He is the activity of the Divine nature ; that He is the energy of the Divine will ; that He is, to use the metaphor of the Old Testament, " the arm of the Lord"—the forthputting of God's power ; that He is, to use the profound expression of the New Testament, the word of the Lord, cognate with and the utterance of the eternal nature ; the light that streams from the central brightness, the river that flows from the else sealed fountain. As the arm is to the body and as is the word to the soul, so is Christ to God—the eternal Divine utterance and manifestation of the Divine nature. And, therefore, to talk about anything that a man can need and anything that God can give as not being given by Christ is to strike at the very foundation not only of our hopes, but at the whole scheme of revealed truth. He is the giver of heaven and everything else the soul requires. A. M. 2. Instead of directly answering the questions of verse 1, showing who or how many, the prophet quietly assumes the truth which the questions imply, and proceeds to assign the occasion. He speaks in the name of the Jewish people who were contemporaries of Christ during His earthly life. They thought the nation needed a mighty conqueror to place Judah at the head among human kingdoms. In such a Messiah they would have seen all beauty and comeliness. In the lowly Jesus they saw none. H. C.—Blinded by their prejudices, they could not bring themselves to believe that the prediction that the Messiah should wield a sceptre was fulfilled in one who held only a reed ; that the prediction that the Messiah should wear a diadem was fulfilled in one who was crowned only with thorns ; or that the prediction that the Messiah should occupy a throne was fulfilled in one who occupied only a cross. The event, which ought to have corrected their error and suggested to them the true interpretation, instead of leading them to spiritual ideas of His character and reign, only drove them to the mad extreme of contempt, crucifixion and rejection. Symington. There is no beauty that we should desire Him. He does not come with the regal pomp and splendor which it was supposed He would assume. He is apparently of humble rank; He is poor; He has few attendants; and He has disappointed wholly the expectation of the nation, and is not such a prince as they had desired. In regard to the personal appearance of the Redeemer, it is remarkable that the New Testament has given us no information. There was evidently design in this; and the purpose was probably to prevent any painting, statuary or figure of the Redeemer that would have any claim to being regarded as correct or true. They evidently intended that His image should not be set up as an object of worship; and designed probably that the view of Him as a man should be comparatively obscured in the contemplation of Him as Divine. As it stands in the New Testament, there is just the veil of obscurity thrown over this whole subject which is most favorable for the contemplation of the incarnate Deity. We are told that He was a man; we are told also that He was God; and the image to the mind's eye is as obscure in the one case as the other; and in both we are directed to His moral beauty, His holiness and benevolence, as objects of contemplation, rather than to His external appearance or form. Barnes. 3. Rejected. Behold what a return Israel made for benefits! They slew their Benefactor, rendering evil for good, death for life. Him who had raised their dead, healed their lame, cleansed their lepers, opened the eyes of their blind, they nailed on the wood; they hung up on the tree Him who spread out the earth; they pierced with nails Him who laid the foundations of the world; they bound Him who absolved sinners; they gave Him vinegar and gall to taste who offered the food and drink of life and righteousness; they marred His hands and feet who had brought healing to theirs; they closed His eyes who had opened theirs; they committed Him to the sepulchre who raised up the dead, not only before His Passion, but even while hanging on the cross. Creation, in amazement, said, "What is this new mystery?" Alexander, of Alexandria. All the rationalistic subterfuges by which this description is applied to the Jewish nation suffering for the heathen, or to the company of the prophets suffering for the nation, are overthrown by this single word, the Man of sorrows, which can only be applied to a person. M. Renan evidently feels this. Accordingly, he applies this passage to some one of those unknown righteous men whose blood crimsoned the streets of Jerusalem at the taking of that city. Read and judge. The sin of the world expiated, the designs of God accomplished, eternal intercession made by — some righteous man put to death by Nebuchadnezzar! This interpretation is the note of despair. Godet. 4-6. The great emphasis of this part is laid on the vicarious nature of the sufferings. Seven times is that asserted in these few verses. Bearing our sicknesses, weighted with our pains, pierced for transgressions of ours, crushed for sins of ours, punished that we might have peace, scourged for our healing, and the object on whom fell in concentrated weight the iniquity (the sin with its guilt and consequences) of us all—what can be plainer than this accumulation of statement? Is there any worthy explanation other than the recognition that the prophet declares the sufferings of the Servant to be the consequence of the people's sins? Whether we regard His bearing of these to include their removal or simply their endurance, there can be no doubt that the innocence of the sufferer is contrasted with the estimate of His guilt formed by falsely judging men, nor that His sufferings are represented as, in the fullest sense, vicarious. The Hebrew puts emphasis in verse 5 on the possessive pronouns "our," and brings them into contrast with the emphatic "He." But not only did He suffer by reason of others' sins, but His sufferings had power to redeem and deliver. Such strange virtue was in His chastisement or punishment that it secured peace for us sinners. So effectual were the strokes which fell on Him that His wounds were our healing. Here is the great wonder which is set forth by these significant juxtapositions of "He" and "we," "our" and "His." The sin with its consequences which was ours becomes, by some undisclosed mystery of love and power, His, and the bruises, chastisements and stripes that were His become, by some undisclosed mystery of efficacy and unity, the reasons for our peace and health. A. M. It is by Christ's suffering for sins that we, in some manner, are delivered from sin. It is by His death that we are made to live. His teachings were of superhuman wisdom and authority; His example was of spotless perfection; but it is His bitter passion, His tasting of death, His cross, which are everywhere set forth—whether in the Old Testament, in the form of the bleeding lamb, or in the New Testament, in the form of didactic statement—as the one reason and method of man's restoration. W. Adams. If Christ will pluck away eternal judgment for the world, He must bleed for it. So great a salvation must tear a passage into the world by some tragic woe—without shedding of blood there is no remission. This blood—oh, it is this that has a purifying touch, working lustily, as the Divine word conceives, on all the stains of our sin, washing us, making us clean, sprinkling even our evil conscience. This tragic power of the cross takes hold, in other words, of all that is dullest, and hardest, and most intractable, in our sin, and moves our palsied nature, all through, in mighty throbs of life. And this is Christianity; meeting us just where we most require to be met. Christ is a great bringer on for us because He suffers for us. Christianity is a mighty salvation because it is a tragic salvation. With a fall and an overspreading curse at the beginning, and a cross in the middle, and a glory and shame at the end, where souls struggle out, through perils, and pains, and broken chains, or bear their chains away unbroken still and still to be—how moving, and mighty, and high must be the sentiment of it! Oh, how grandly harrowing is that joy, how tremulous in tragic excitement is that song of ascription, roaring as a sea-surge round the throne—"unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His blood!" H. B. 5. By His stripes.** How literally this was applicable to the Lord Jesus it is unnecessary to attempt to prove. This could not be mere conjecture. How could Isaiah, seven hundred years before it occurred, conjecture that the Messiah would be scourged and bruised? It is this particularity of prediction compared with the literal fulfilment which furnishes the fullest demonstration that the prophet was inspired. In the prediction nothing is vague and general. Nothing has the aspect of mere conjecture. All is particular and minute, as if he saw what was done and was describing a real transaction, and the description is as minutely accurate as if he was describing what was actually occurring before his eyes. Barnes. Yes, "by His stripes we are healed." It is not a question of words and names, but of Divine realities, of a mystery of righteousness and love, not too dim for us to adore. He, our God and our Second Adam, whose representative Headship was real through one of His natures, and infinitely efficacious through the other, stood in our place, as our Sin-offering, and by a Passion both physical and spiritual inflicted on Him as our substitute, made satisfaction to the claims of Divine justice, and harmonized its action with that of Divine mercy. So much we can see through a glass darkly; enough to guide each Christian's life, enough to illuminate his death. Bp. Jeune. 6. Our sin is charged upon us collectively in common: "we have all gone astray." Distributively: "every one to his own way." We all agree in turning aside from the right way of pleasing and enjoying of God; and we disagree, as each one hath a by-path of his own, some running after this lust, some after that, and so are not only divided from God, but divided from one another, while every one maketh his will his law. T. Manton. Laid on Him. He was human—He was Divine. In His own person was the tangential point between the two natures which sin had sundered. Immediately related was He to the parties between whom reconciliation needs to be effected. He shared the nature of both. He was the mediator between God and man—man's advocate, priest, intercessor, representative and God's image and representative too. He was the God-man. W. Adams. "The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all," that He might Himself bear it. The result of His bearing it is given in this passage so far forth as respects the welfare of His people. It is under God the means of their salvation. His chastisement brings their peace; His stripes, their healing. His being bruised suffices instead of their suffering the penalty of their own sins. The same views are reiterated in the words (verse 8), "For the transgression of My people was He stricken;" and (verse 10), "When His soul shall make a sin offering;" and (verse 11), "By the knowledge of Himself shall the righteous one, My servant, insure justification to many, for He shall bear their iniquities;" and (verse 12) where His magnificent spoils of victory appear as His reward for pouring out His soul even unto death, and for His "bearing the sins of many." We cannot be too grateful for these amplified, varied and yet marvellously coincident and unanimous declarations to the effect of vicarious atonement—Christ suffering for His people, to make the free pardon of their sins possible without peril to the majesty of the law they have broken. And here it cannot be said too emphatically that these numerous, various, yet equivalent forms of expression are all borrowed from the Hebrew sacrificial system, and therefore must be interpreted in the light of that system. They all assume that this great system was instituted of God for the purpose of illustrating to the human mind the vital law of God's kingdom, that suffering must first be borne by some innocent being for the guilty before he can be forgiven. God requires some adequate expression to be made of His displeasure against sin before it is safe for Him to pardon. He must not give the least occasion to His moral subjects to suppose Him indifferent to their sinning. The infliction of suffering is the natural even if not the only possible means by which He can express His abhorrence of sin and His regard for law and obedience. Hence in this great illustrative sacrificial system, the Lord selected those animals which best personify innocence, gentleness, meekness—e.g., lambs, goats, heifers, bullocks, doves; and made them the symbols of the suffering, atoning "Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world." They must die; their blood must be poured forth publicly, solemnly, in sacred symbol; and then be sprinkled upon the guilty, or upon the altar before God. So those animals bore the sins of the people. The system does imply to a certain degree a transfer of suffering from the one who deserved to another who did not deserve it; or in other words, the actual endurance of suffering even unto death by some innocent being as a condition precedent to pardon for the guilty—precedent, that is, to the actual taking away of sin, considered as a fact which in the eye of law demands God's displeasure and His infliction of penalty. Such is the sense required for this class of terms in this chapter, by the genius and the varied phraseology of the Hebrew sacrificial system. It should be added also that the New Testament sustains this view most amply, showing—e.g., that "the Son of man came to give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28); "Who gave Himself a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:6); "who is the Lamb of God, taking away the sin of the world" (John 1:29); "who His ownself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, by whose stripes we are healed" (1 Pet. 2:21). H. C. All other sin offerings were only types and shadows of Christ's; that which He offered by offering Himself was the substance, the true and real sacrifice, which expiated the sins of the world; indeed, the chief end of all the sacsacrifices of the Jews was to put them in mind of that which Christ was to offer for them; and so to give them occasion to exercise their faith, and put their confidence in Him for pardon and salvation. Bp. Beveridge.—And this is the grand foundation of the Christian's confidence, that he has a High Priest who filleth all things; one of a Divine nature and dignity; one who, instead of all other sacrifices, offered Himself as the end and crown of all; by Himself He purged our sins, not by the blood of animal victims; other priests offered first for themselves; but He had no need, being "holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners." They were ever changing, they followed each other like shadows, and they were but shadows, He the eternal substance; their offerings had no virtue of their own to remove an atom of guilt; His one offering of Himself, once for all, has forever perfected them that are sanctified. R. Hall. In 1 Cor. 15:3 Paul tells us "that Christ died," not Jesus. It is a great truth, that the man, our Brother, Jesus, passed through the common lot, but that is not what Paul says here, though he often says it. What he says is that "Christ died." Christ is the name of an office, into which is condensed a whole system of truth, declaring that it is He who is the Apex, the Seal, and ultimate Word of all Divine revelation. It was the Christ that died; unless it was, the death of Jesus is no gospel. "He died for our sins." Now, if the apostle had only said "He died for us," that might conceivably have meant that, in a multitude of different ways of example, appeal to our pity and compassion and the like, His death was of use to mankind. But when he says "He died for our sins," I take leave to think that that expression has no meaning, unless it means that He died as the expiation and sacrifice for men's sins. In what intelligible sense could Christ "die for our sins" unless He died as bearing their punishment and as bearing it for us? And then, finally, "He died and rose . . . according to the Scriptures," fulfilling the Divine purposes revealed from of old. To the fact that a man was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem, "and rose again the third day," which is the narrative, there are added these three things—the dignity of the Person, the purpose of His death, the fulfilment of the Divine intention manifested from of old. And these three things turn the narrative into a gospel. A. M. The death of Christ may be described as an expiation for sin, for it was a Divine act which renders the punishment of sin unnecessary. It was a representative death. It may be described as a ransom. It was a satisfaction to the righteousness of God. It was a sacrifice for sin. It was a propitiation for sin. R. W. Dale.—The very nature and essence of the sufferings and death of Christ is that they are an expiation for sin. This is the very idea of a sacrifice. It is its exhaustive definition. It is the thing itself, and not a deduction or inference from it. This is the fact and not a theory about it. H. B. Smith. We shall never understand the royalty of Jesus unless we begin with His sufferings, nor shall we understand His sufferings unless we see them in the light of that awful but most blessed word, "The Lord hath made to light on Him the iniquity of us all." No cross, no crown, is as true for the master as for His servants. A Christ who did not die for sinners, and bear their sins in His own body on the tree, is an impotent Christ, whose death is of no moment, and followed by no sway over hearts. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." That is not true unless the death be the sacrifice for the world's sin. Then, and only then, is its issue dominion over souls redeemed, and enthronement by the Father's side, with the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession and His enemies for His footstool, and all power wielded in the hands that bear the print of the nails. "He was wounded for transgression of ours." Therefore He is our King and our Lord. He bore on His meek head the sins of us all. Therefore God crowns Him, and we should crown Him, Lord of all. A. M. Jesus often declared that He was under this law of sacrifice. He must give His life for men in labor and suffering, and finally in the death on the cross, before He could be glorified. This was the necessity to which Divine love had subjected Him. His dying for men took its solemn meaning from the fact that He had lived for them. He was giving His life every day of His ministry in a sense far deeper than we have ever fully fathomed yet. He gave the things that really make up life—His sympathy, His personal influence and the helpful offices of love and kindness. Sacrifice is the fruit of love, and it is the nature of love to give. The essence of sacrifice, therefore, is giving. It cannot be deprivation or loss, as some suppose, else God would be incapable of sacrificial love, since He is not capable of deprivation or loss. He who loves, gives. God is the greatest giver, since He loves most, and this giving is sacrificial. His greatest gift to the world is the life of Jesus in humanity, whose law was the law of sacrifice. "God so loved the world that He gave," is the keynote of all that the Gospel teaches of the sacrifice of God in Christ. G. B. Stevens. The one grand central fact which makes the Christian system the supreme and gracious "power" that it is, is God giving Himself to men. It is Infinite Love stirring itself and reaching out to our race, voluntary, unprompted, unsought, unbought, unbargained for. Even human love, in all our common habitations, has this for its secret charm, the mystical beauty of its blessing, that it gives itself. Love takes of its own and puts it away, parting with it at whatever cost or pain to itself for the good of some other soul. All the interchanges of unselfish affection and friendly sacrifice which play to and fro between one heart and another, ranging down in their celestial order from the archangel to the slave, have the "Word made flesh," and crucified for their source and pattern. That was the fountain gift—unpurchased grace. The coarse cradle, the homeless years in Galilee, the Sermon on that mount which became the pulpit of all centuries, the parables which illuminated the whole natural world with supernatural significations, the miracles of patient gentleness which sought to break open by acts of mercy to men's bodies a pathway to a better healing for their disordered souls, the agonies of the garden, the opening of the gates of the everlasting morning on the third day—these are only the magnificent particulars of the one inestimable Free Gift. Christianity is gratuity, through and through. F. D. H. Verses 7-9. The third section sets forth the patient silence of the sufferer. Here the prophet speaks. The "we" does not occur, but we hear of "My people." First, the silent submission of the sufferer is set forth, with a pathos which has touched the hearts of all generations, by the two aspects of the one figure of the lamb. It is "led to the slaughter" unresisting. So He willingly yields to violence and death. It lets itself be shorn without a bleat. So He accepts all suffering without a murmur, and is silent, not in obstinacy, but submission. A. M.—The submission is as complete as the suffering is unfathomable. Here, for the first time, sin is deplored, judged—condemned by the human conscience as God judges and condemns it; for the pain of sin is endured with full acquiescence in the holy will of Him who has inflicted it. This is what constitutes the cost of this sacrifice; it is not the amount of suffering which is included in it, it is the spirit in which this suffering has been accepted and borne. In it God has received the most perfect homage offered to His holiness; and if, in consideration of this offering, He now gives pardon, such pardon would not tend to the increase of sin upon the earth. Where pardon is received, it can have no other effect than the rupture of the will with sin, or, as the apostle says, death to sin. Consequently it is here that God meets all hearts which desire, at the same time, peace and holiness, reconciliation with Him and the destruction of sin, the removal of condemnation and the agreement of their will with the Divine will. Godet. 7. As a lamb which is led to be killed is patient and silent, so was He. "As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so was He." He made no resistance. He uttered no complaint. He suffered Himself to be led quietly along to be put to death. What a striking and beautiful description! How tender and how true! We can almost see here the meek and patient Redeemer led along without resistance; and amid the multitude that were assembled with various feelings to conduct Him to death, Himself perfectly silent and composed. With all power at His disposal, yet as quiet and gentle as though He had no power; and with a perfect consciousness that He was going to die, as calm and as gentle as though He were ignorant of the design for which they were leading Him forth. This image occurs also in Jeremiah (11:19), "but I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter." Barnes. Verses 8 and 9 present many difficulties, but, on the whole, the general drift is clear. The hideous prostitution of the forms of justice to murder is declared as the agency which slew the patient sufferer. "By oppression and judgment"—that is, by oppression which assumed the guise of a judicial act—"He was taken." That is a summary of all the parody of forms of judicial procedure in Christ's passion. And sad and passing strange was the fact that, of all the multitudes of contemporaries who saw the meek beauty of His life, not one comprehended why He died, or read the open secret of His vicarious sufferings. The blindness of those who stand beside the world's great ones reached its tragic climax when the Lamb of God was slain. A. M. 8. And as for His generation [the body of His contemporaries, the mass of those who were living at the time] who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of My people as a curse for them? The rendering here given is that of Dr. Alexander, which is also substantially that of Dr. Dillmann. It agrees with that of the American Appendix in making the entire clause one continuous sentence, which renders the sense clearer, and differs from it simply in preferring a direct to a relative construction of the closing words, "to whom the stroke was due." The rendering of these words in the Revised Version, adopted from the Authorized Version, "was He stricken," assumes an unusual and doubtful form of the Hebrew pronoun. The generation that witnessed the crucifixion, or heard of it at the time, failed to comprehend that this was a vicarious death suffered by Him to make atonement for the transgressions of the true people of God, who obtain salvation by His cross. The margin of the Revised Version, "and His life who shall recount?" puts a meaning upon the words which they will not bear; while the text of the Authorized Version, "who shall declare His generation?" introduces a thought foreign to the passage, whether the reference be to His miraculous birth or to His eternal pre-existence. W. H. G. 9. And they made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich [American Appendix, a rich man] in His death. By a striking providence, a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, provided Him an honorable burial in his own rock-hewn tomb (Matt. 27:57-60). The close coincidence between prophecy and fact, in points so far beyond the range of human sagacity, may well confound gainsayers, and put sceptical critics upon their sharpest devices to break its force. The reason assigned for this honor in His burial is His innocence. H. C. It was intended to cast the highest possible indignity on the Messiah; not only to put Him to death, but even to deny Him the privilege of an honorable burial, and to commit Him to the same grave with the wicked. How remarkably was this fulfilled! As a matter of course, since He was put to death with wicked men, He would naturally have been buried with them, unless there had been some special interposition in His case. He was given up to be treated as a criminal; He was made to take the vacated place of a murderer—Barabbas—on the cross; He was subjected to the same indignity and cruelty to which they were; He died in the same manner; and it was evidently designed also that He should be buried in the same manner, and probably in the same grave. Thus in John 19:31 it is said that the Jews, because it was the preparation, in order that their bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath day, "besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away;" intending evidently that they should be treated alike; that their death should be hurried in the same cruel manner; and that they should be buried in the same way. Who can but wonder at the striking accuracy of the prediction! And with the rich in His death. The sense here is, that after His death He should be with a man of wealth, but without determining anything in regard to His moral character. The exact fulfilment of this may be seen in the account which is given of the manner of the burial of the Saviour by Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was a rich man. He begged the body of Jesus. He took the body, and wound it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, a tomb hewn out of rock—that is, a grave designed for himself; such as a rich man would use; and where it was designed that a rich man should be laid. He was embalmed with myrrh and aloes "about a hundred pound weight," in the mode in which the rich were usually interred. How different this from the interment of malefactors! How different from the way in which He would have been buried if He had been interred with them as it had been designed! And how striking and minutely accurate this prophecy in circumstances which could not possibly have been the result of conjecture! How could a pretended prophet, seven hundred years before the event occurred, conjecture of one who was to be executed as a malefactor and with malefactors, and who would in the ordinary course of events be buried with malefactors—how could he conjecture that he would be rescued from such an ignominious burial by the interposition of a rich man, and buried in a grave designed for a man of affluence and in the manner in which the wealthy are buried? Barnes. 10. Here begins the account of the Messiah's exaltation. All the previous sufferings were to have an end in the erection of God's kingdom upon earth. A.—The death of Christ, regarded with reference to the human actors in this deed of blood, was an act of criminal violence and injustice; but viewed with reference to the Divine counsel and the gracious design of the Lord Jesus, it was the ransom price of the world's redemption—it was the atoning sacrifice by which the pardon of sin and everlasting life were secured for all the children of God. "Therefore doth My Father love Me," said the Saviour, "because I lay down My life for My sheep." It was in this sense that it pleased the Lord to bruise His incarnate Son—not that He took pleasure in His sufferings, but in the work of redemption which He was thus effecting. W. H. G. The transcendent worth of that obedience which Christ rendered, or that oblation which He offered, the power which it possessed of counterbalancing a world's sin, lay in this, that He who offered these, while He bore a human nature, was a Divine person; not God only, for as such He would never have been in the condition to offer; nor as man only, for then the work of His offering could never have reached so far; but that He was God and man in one person indissolubly united, and in this person performing all those acts—man, that He might obey and suffer and die, God that He might add to every act of His obedience, of His suffering, of His death an immeasurable worth, steeping in the glory of His Divine personality all of human that He wrought. Christ was able so summarily to pay one debt, because He had another and a higher coin in which to pay it than that in which it had been contracted. It was contracted in the currency of earth; He paid it in the currency of heaven. Trench. He shall see His seed. The ultimate thought of the verse is that because the Messiah gave up His life as a sin offering, He shall be rewarded with a people indefinitely numerous and a reign of peace and love indefinitely vast and glorious, in all which the Father will rejoice, for this is His pleasure, and this work shall therefore prosper in Messiah's hand. Hengstenberg has well said that this "seed" are the many nations whom He shall sprinkle (52:15); the same whom He takes as His spoil (53:12); whom He justifies (verse 11), and for whom He intercedes (verse 12). H. C.—The sublime joy which is to fill and replenish the mind of Christ is to issue from the success of His redemptive work. That work is emphatically "the pleasure of the Lord," not merely His will, His determined purpose, but the object on which He looks with supremest complacency, and from which He draws a Divine delight! In this respect, in the gathering of a great and peculiar joy from the work of salvation, the Father and the Son are One. Binney. 11. The only satisfactory construction is the passive one which makes the phrase mean by the knowledge of Him upon the part of others; and this is determined by the whole connection to mean practical, experimental knowledge, involving faith and a self-appropriation of the Messiah's righteousness, the effect of which is then expressed in the following words. All mistake and doubt as to the nature of the justification here intended, or of the healing mentioned in verse 6, or of the cleansing mentioned in chap. 52:15, is precluded by the addition of the words, and He shall bear their iniquities. The introduction of the pronoun makes a virtual antithesis, suggesting the idea of exchange or mutual substitution. They shall receive His righteousness, and He shall bear their burdens. A. Guilt and ill desert are personal qualities, and cannot be transferred from one to another. The transgressor alone is ill deserving and blameworthy. But the consequences of guilt may pass over to another; the sufferings which would be a proper expression of the evil of sin may be assumed by another. And this was done by the Redeemer. He suffered in the place of sinners, and for their sake. He stood between the stroke of justice and the sinner, and received the blow Himself. He intercepted, so to speak, the descending sword of justice that would have cut the sinner down, and thus saved him. He thus bore their iniquities. It is in connection with this that men become justified; and it is only by the fact that He has thus borne their iniquities that they can be regarded as righteous in the sight of a holy God. It is not by any merit of theirs; not by any work of righteousness which they have done; it is only by His merits, and by the righteousness which He has thus wrought out for them. He endured the consequences or results of sin; we partake of the consequences or the results of His sufferings and death in our behalf. This is the great cardinal doctrine of justification; the peculiarity of the Christian scheme; the glorious plan by which lost men may be saved, and by which the guilty may become pardoned and be raised up to endless life and glory. Barnes. Out of this death of scorn and agony come fruits of magnificent reward; the knowledge of Him avails to justify many because He has borne their iniquities. He sees of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied. The salvation of a great multitude that no man can number is His everlasting glory! H. C.—The number of the saved is represented in Scripture as so exceedingly great that even Christ Himself at the last, with all His mighty love for sinners, is satisfied. All this immense multitude redeemed from among men owe all their salvation, all their happiness and glory, to one sacrifice only, one offering once offered, "the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." The blood of Jesus Christ it describes as so efficacious, so precious, that its virtue extends to all believing sinners in all ages of the world. C. Bradley.—Estimate the throngs who shall grace the Saviour's triumph when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, and behold the fulfilment of the inspired promise, "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied." Measure, if you can, the tides of joy which shall flow through the Redeemer's breast forever. B. B. E. 12. Poured out His soul unto death. It can never be forgotten, without a dismemberment of the living gospel, that Jesus Christ "laid down" His own life. No man had power to take it from Him. He offered it because it was for this purpose He came into the world. His death was as diverse from ours as His life was superior to ours. It was not an accident or fortune, but the completion of His priestly office. His self surrender to His foes was not suicide, but sacrifice. To say that He lived our complete exemplar is to tell but one half the story; He died as one who came "to make atonement for the sins of the people." It is not before the completion of that sacrificial work, as Paul says, but after it that "being reconciled to God by the death of His Son, we shall be saved by His life." Interior. Our dear Lord, when He died, died because He willed to do so. He was man, and therefore He could die; but He was not man in such fashion as that He must die. In His bodily frame was the possibility, not the necessity, of death. And that being so, the very fact of His death is the most signal proof that He is Lord of death as well as of life. He dies not because He must, He dies not because of faintness and pain and wounds. These and they who inflicted them had no power at all over Him. He chooses to die; and He wills it because He wills to fulfil the eternal purpose of Divine love, which is His purpose, and to bring life to the world. His hour of weakness was His hour of strength. They lifted Him on a cross, and it became a throne. In the moment when death seemed to conquer Him, He was really using it that He might abolish it. When He gave up the ghost, He showed Himself Lord of death as marvellously and as gloriously as when He burst its bands and rose from the grave. Thou didst overcome the sharpness of death when Thou didst willingly bow Thy head to it, and didst die, not because Thou must, but because Thou wouldest. A. M. It is a throne of honor to which our Saviour is raised; a throne of honor to which heaven and earth and hell do and must bow. The sun hides his awful head, the earth trembles, the rocks rend, the graves open and all the frame of nature doth homage to their Lord in this secret but Divine pomp of His crucifixion. And while ye think His feet and hands despicably fixed, behold, He is powerfully trampling upon hell and death and setting up trophies of His most glorious victory, and scattering everlasting crowns and sceptres unto all believers. Bp. H. At last it came, that hour so awful, when on the head of the only righteous One, the Lord made to meet the sins of us all; and beneath the first feeling of the burden His soul grew sorrowful even unto death. It was not merely that the prophet sealed His testimony with His blood, but the Priest became a Victim, and in order to earn His crown, the King of saints became the King of martyrs. He laid down His life for the sheep, He made His soul an offering, and to the types and shadows of a thousand years gave significance, and to every troubled conscience strong consolation, by shedding that blood, without which there could have been no remission, but which, now that it is shed, insures a cleansing from all and any sin. Come and see Him—see Him in our place, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities—see Him drinking our cup and paying our penalty—see Him in the death-grapple with our enemies, vanquishing the devil, but apparently carried captive by the grave—see Him disarming even this grim enemy, and ascending most glorious on high—see Him there, a Priest upon His throne, dispensing the dearly purchased pardons, the repentance and remission—see Him still the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, and hearken to the adoring hosts of heaven as they cry, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing!” Hamilton. The cross is the throne of the King. A sacrificial death is the true work of the Messiah of law, prophecy and psalm; and because He did not come down from the cross, therefore is He crowned with glory and honor in heaven, and rules over grateful and redeemed hearts on earth. The midday darkness was nature divinely draped in mourning over the sin of sins, the most tragic of deaths. It was a symbol of the eclipse of the Light of the world; but ere He died it passed, and the sun shone on His expiring head, in token that His death scattered the darkness and poured day on our sad night. The solemn silence was broken at last by that loud cry, the utterance of strangely blended consciousness of possession of God and abandonment by Him, the depths of which we can never fathom. But this we know, that our sins, not His, wove the veil which separated Him from His God. Such separation is the real death. Where cold analysis is out of place, reverent gratitude may draw near. Let us adore, for what we can understand speaks of a love which has taken the iniquity of us all on itself. Let us silently adore, for all words are weaker than that mystery of love. A. M.—Calvary is holy ground, and we must take the shoes from our feet. We can only admire and adore. There never was witnessed such a scene in the universe before—the infinite holiness and goodness of God sounded to their depths, the whole moral energy of the Godhead in action. Well might the angels stoop from their heights and desire to look into this mystery; well might there be silence, the silence of profound admiration, in heaven; well might the sun be darkened, the earth convulsed and the very dead startled, when moral elements were at work on a scale of infinite grandeur before which the earth, the sea and the sky, and all material things, dwindle into littleness as mirrors of the glory of God. Thornwell. Christ's Character and Sacrifice the only Moving Power with Men. Outside the character revealed in Christ, apart from His act of costly sacrifice, there is no power in all that God is or has done to stir the soul to its depths, to awaken true gratitude, to subdue and melt the heart to penitence and love. For these effects all that God has done beside has ever been in vain. The constant miracle of the circling hosts of heaven, of the procession of seasons and harvests upon the earth have wrought no transforming change in man's gazing soul. The sense of obligation that God has impressed upon man's conscience through the law proclaimed on Sinai, the actual, terrible judgments with which in all time He has visited individuals, nations and the race, and the abundant kindly providences that He has scattered along the path of men in every generation, have all utterly failed to influence the human heart to submission and trust, or to stay the broad tide of human corruption. Resisted, forgotten or unheeded all! Only Christ crucified, revealing God in sacrifice, has proved a power adequate to reach, impress, subdue the human heart. The infinite God, suffering for man, voluntarily substituting Himself a sacrifice that man might not suffer the just due of sin, revealing thus to man by the immensity of the sacrifice, as nought beside could reveal, the inherent greatness of the soul, the vastness of its guilt and the fearfulness of the consequences of that guilt unpardoned, unremoved; revealing, too, a measure of love exceeding all thought, this it is which constitutes Christ the power of God, and this is the only adequate power of God Himself, to move human hearts to grief and trust and love. It was the vision of the crucified Son of God that broke down the proud, self-righteous spirit of the persecuting Saul and transformed him into the humble, loving, fervent preacher of the cross. The same vision of God in sacrifice for man, realized by faith, has wrought with similar transforming power, alike upon the few great souls chosen of God in successive generations to lead in the mighty movements of His Spirit, and upon the many who, in narrower, unknown spheres, have lived the life of faith in the Son of God and gone to their reward. The finished record of every saintly life, whether written or unwritten, testifies to this power of the cross of Christ as the only power of God to salvation, the only power that has subdued the unloving, unrenewed heart to childlike trust and love. And the history of Christ's living ones to-day furnishes the same testimony, shows that the heart-melting, renewing power lies in the conviction wrought by the vision of the cross, the conviction of each uplooking soul, that Christ "loved me and gave Himself for me." B. Scriptural experience of sin, of its turpitude, of its guilt and of its power as an indwelling principle in our nature has never found moral equilibrium save in the sacrificial work of Christ. With every revival of religion, and in constant proportion to the depth and power of the prevalent religious experience, this doctrine of a blood-bought salvation has always been the more sharply emphasized in the prayers, the hymns and the expressed thoughts of God's people. The cross as the meeting-place of infinite justice and love, as the fountain of inexhaustible streams of life and righteousness effected by sacrificial blood, has been the inspiration of all the heroic living and doing of the distinctively Christian type which has appeared in the course of human history. A. A. Hodge. It is not easy to found a religion. It was not easy two thousand years ago, with Judaism and Greek philosophy and Roman law in possession of the world. But it was done. Jerusalem and Athens and the Eternal City surrendered. The cross and the open sepulchre mastered them. The barbaric nations were tamed into gentleness and loving loyalty, and upon the foundations of that ancient faith have been raised the walls of modern Christendom, dominant in Europe and America, and circling the globe with its missionary enterprise. The scorn of its foes has not withered its life nor have the unseemly contentions of its friends broken its power. How comes it? Because behind its creeds and sacraments, radiant and clear, rises the figure of the Christ of Bethlehem and Olivet, risen from the dead, regnant in the heavens, the incarnate Son of God. And upon the seas of modern controversy I see His pierced feet treading their wildness into eternal peace. Behrends. Starr King, one of the most eloquent champions of the Socinians, paid the following tribute to the doctrine of the vicarious atonement: "It is embodied by the holiest of memories, as it has been consecrated by the loftiest talent of Christendom. It fired the fierce eloquence of Tertullian in the early Church, and gushed in honeyed periods from the lips of Chrysostom; it enlisted the life-long zeal of Athanasius to keep it pure; the sublimity of it fired every power, and commanded all the resources of the mighty soul of Augustine; the learning of Jerome and the energy of Ambrose were committed to its defence; it was the text for the subtle eye and analytic thought of Aquinas; it was the pillar of Luther's soul, toiling for man; it was shapen into intellectual proportions and systematic symmetry by the iron logic of Calvin; it inspired the beautiful humility of Fenelon; fostered the devotion and self-sacrifice of Oberlin; flowed like molten metal into the rigid forms of Edwards's intellect, and kindled the deep and steady rapture of Wesley's heart. All the great enterprises of Christian history have been born from the influence, immediate or remote, which the vicarious theory of redemption has exercised upon the mind and heart of humanity." #### The Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The central miracle of Scripture and of all history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If there were not a single Gospel account of the fact, we should be compelled to believe it, on the testimony of the apostles in their preaching, and on the universal faith of the early and the persecuted Church. The preaching of the apostles, in the lifetime of eye-witnesses, was very largely of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and no one can explain that preaching, nor the existence, the growth under severe trials, the faith, the unity, the persistence through ages of the living Church, without admitting the literal reality of the original and central miracle of the Christian system. We could not account for the inscriptions in the earliest tombs, nor for the lofty strains of the earliest hymns, if the resurrection of Christ was a myth. The martyr-faith would have been simply impossible. Packard. The resurrection carried along with it a triple proof of the divinity of our Lord's mission. It was the fulfilment of a prophecy, as well as the working of a miracle; that miracle wrought, and that prophecy fulfilled, in answer to a solemn and confident appeal made beforehand by Christ to this event as the crowning testimony to His Messiahship. In His resurrection the seal of the Divine acceptance and approval was put upon that great work of service and of sacrifice, of atonement and of obedience in our room and stead, which Jesus finished on the cross. Hanna. With the resurrection stands or falls Christ's whole work for our redemption. If He died, like other men, then we have no proof that the cross was anything but a martyr's cross. His resurrection is the proof of His completed work of redemption. It is the proof—followed as it is by His ascension—that His death was not the tribute which for Himself He had to pay, but the ransom for us. His resurrection is the condition of His present activity. If He has not risen, He has not put away sin; and if He has not put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, none has, and it remains. We come back to the old dreary alternative: if Christ be not risen, your faith is vain, and our preaching is vain. Ye are yet in your sins, and they which have fallen asleep in Christ with unfulfilled hopes fixed upon a baseless vision—they of whom we hoped, through our tears, that they live with Him—they are perished. For, if He be not risen, there is no resurrection; and if He be not risen, there is no forgiveness; and if He be not risen, there is no Son of God; and the world is desolate, and the heaven is empty, and the grave is dark, and sin abides, and death is eternal. If Christ be dead, then that awful vision is true, "As I looked up into the immeasurable heavens for the Divine Eye, it froze me with an empty bottomless eye socket." There is nothing between us and darkness, dedespair, death, but that ancient message, "I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, by which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was raised the third day according to the Scriptures." Well, then, may we take up the ancient glad salutation, "The Lord is risen;" and turning from these thoughts of the disaster and despair that that awful supposition drags after it, fall back upon the sober certainty, and with the apostle break forth in triumph, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." A. M. Jesus Christ, risen from His grave—arrayed in His glorious manhood—is seated on the throne of heaven. He is the mid-point—the centre of the great empire of living souls. He is in communication, constant and intimate, with myriads of beings to whom, by His death, and by His triumph over death, and by His enduring and exhaustless life, He is made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Yes, to believe in the risen Jesus is to live beneath a sky which is indeed bright. This is to believe that He is alive forevermore, and that He has the keys of hell and of death. Liddon. I have been used for many years to study the history of other times and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us, that Christ died and rose again from the dead. T. Arnold. Made intercession for transgressors. The acceptance of His offering is made the basis of His heavenly intercession. It is this which is made the premise of that grand chapter in Hebrews when we are told that "now once in the end of the world hath He appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself;" and therefore He has entered "into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." It is not the cradle of Bethlehem, but the cross of Calvary which gives Him His standing as our Advocate before the throne. Interior.—When we are bid to consider the "High Priest of our profession," our thoughts are pointed back to the one great act by which Christ "hath offered one sacrifice for sins forever," and up to the continuous work which, with ever-ready sympathy and ever-prevalent intercession, He carries on in the heavens, presenting there His Eternal Sacrifice, preparing a place for us because He is there, and sending down on us the fulness of the gifts which are His that they may be ours. The central point of our meditation and of our faith in the work of Christ is His Sacrifice and Intercession. He has come forth from the Father—His messenger to men; He has gone to the Father—our priest and forerunner with God. By both offices He completes His merciful mediation—the Christ whom it is our life and blessedness to set ever before us is the Christ who, Son of God, lived that He might declare God to men; and, Son of Man, died, that He might reconcile men to God—and Son of God, and Son of Man, ever liveth that He may pour heaven's gifts upon earth, and at last lift earth's children to heaven. "Wherefore—consider Jesus Christ, our Apostle and High Priest." A. M. Contrarieties Central and Harmonized in Christ. Christ is called the Son of David, yet David calls Him Lord; He was understood to claim equality with the Father—as man He had not where to lay His head; He took part with flesh and blood, yet thought it not robbery to be equal with God; He took the form of a servant, yet His proper form was the form of God; He tabernacled in the flesh, yet came down from heaven; He said that He could of His ownself do nothing, yet He is said to be the Lord of all; His mother is called Mary, yet He is over all, God blessed forever; He was born under the law and fulfilled the law, and yet in His own name gave a new and more perfect law, and brought in a new and everlasting righteousness; He was received into heaven out of the sight of His disciples, yet He is still with them, with any two or three of them always, and even to the ends of the earth; He was found in fashion as a man—and yet is the image of the invisible God; He hid not His face from shame and spitting, though He be the very brightness of the Father's glory; He increased in stature, yet is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; He increased in wisdom, yet knew the Father even as the Father knew Him; He died at the mandate of a Roman governor, yet is the Prince of the kings of the earth; He could say, "The Father is greater than I," yet also say, "I and My Father are one—he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;" He said, in the time of His temptation, unto Satan, "It is written, 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve,'" yet He also declared that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father; and of Him it is asserted that every knee should bow to Him, and every tongue confess that He is God, to the glory of God the Father. Henry B. Smith. This chapter proves that the Redeemer died as an atoning sacrifice for men. He was not a mere martyr, and He did not come and live merely to set us an example. How could it be said of any martyr that he bore our griefs, that he was bruised for our iniquities, that our sins were made to rush and meet upon him, and that he bare the sin of many? And if the purpose of His coming was merely to teach us the will of God, or to set us an example, why is such a prominence here given to His sufferings in behalf of others? Scarcely an allusion is made to His example; while the chapter is replete with statements of His sufferings and sorrows in behalf of others. It would be impossible to state in more explicit language the truth that He died as a sacrifice for the sins of men; that He suffered to make proper expiation for the guilty. No confession of faith on earth, no creed, no symbol, no standard of doctrine, contains more explicit statements on the subject. And if the language here used does not demonstrate that the Redeemer was an atoning sacrifice, it is impossible to conceive how such a doctrine could be taught or conveyed to men. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 54:1 SING, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitation; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt spread abroad on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and the reproach of thy widowhood shalt thou remember no more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name: and the Holy One of Israel is thy redeemer; the God of the whole earth shall he be called. For the LORD hath called thee as a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even a wife of youth, when she is cast off, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In overflowing wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy pinnacles of rubies, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy border of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near thee. Behold, they may gather together, but not by me: whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall because of thee. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the fire of coals, and bringeth forth a weapon for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy. No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness which is of me, saith the LORD. Chap. 54. So soon as he has passed the hill of sorrow, his old rapturous emotions come upon him with twofold force, and no paean in his prophecy is more joyous than the 54th chapter. It rings like a marriage bell. The true title, indeed, of Isaiah's prophecy is a "song." It is the "Song of Songs, which is Isaiah's," and many of its notes are only a little lower than those which saluted the birth of Christ, or welcomed Him from the tomb, with the burden, "He is risen, He is risen, and shall die no more!" Gilfillan. This chapter stands in the closest relations of thought with the two that immediately precede it. Chap. 52 contemplates Zion, the ancient Church, as coming forth from her quasi captivity under the bonds of the Mosaic dispensation into the glorious freedom of the Christian age; the glad heralds of Gospel light announcing to her the coming of her Messiah; from which the prophet passes to speak somewhat fully of this "servant of the Lord" as winning immense and glorious reward by His sufferings and death. This reward lies in nations saved through His blood and by means of His revealed truth. Of course in this achievement of victory over the powers of sin and Satan, His people, "workers together with Him" and identified with Him in the deepest sympathy of their heart, must participate. Victory to Him is infinite joy to them. The gathering of His spoils (53:12) is the accumulation of converts within her tents and the filling of her solitudes with a teeming population. Upon this fact the chapter before us bears. After what has been said of the Messiah's triumph through suffering and of His seeing the travail of His soul, nothing could be more natural and legitimate than to pass next to consider the bearing of these achievements upon His Church and people. Hence the prophet rushes into the midst of this sublimely magnificent theme, calling on Zion to break forth into song; to enlarge her tents for these new accessions; and to open heart, hand and home to these new comers. He assures her that her Maker is her husband, remembers her with undying love, and after temporary absence and alienation returns to her with everlasting mercies; will rebuild her fallen walls with ineffable beauty and glory; will teach all her children righteousness, and will ensure her against the weapons of her foes. H. C. Instead of suffering from the loss of her national prerogatives, the Church shall be more glorious and productive than before (verse 1). Instead of being limited to a single nation, she shall be so extended as to take in all the nations of the earth (verses 2, 3). What seemed at first to be her forlorn and desolate condition shall be followed by a glorious change (verse 4). He who seemed once to be the God of the Jews only shall now be seen to be the God of the Gentiles also (verse 5). The abrogation of the old economy was like the repudiation of a wife, but its effects will show it to be rather a renewal of the conjugal relation (verse 6). The momentary rejection shall be followed by an everlasting reconciliation (verses 7, 8). The old economy, like Noah's flood, can never be repeated or renewed (verse 9). That was a temporary institution; this shall outlast the earth itself (verse 10). The old Jerusalem shall be forgotten in the splendor of the new (verses 11, 12). But this shall be a spiritual splendor springing from a constant Divine influence (verse 13). Hence it shall also be a holy and a safe state (verse 14). All the enemies of the Church shall either be destroyed or received into her bosom (verse 15). The warrior and his weapons are alike God's creatures and at His disposal (verse 16). In every contest, both of hand and tongue, the Church shall be triumphant, not in her own right or her own strength, but in that of Him who justifies, protects and saves her (verse 17). A. 1. Zion, thought of as a wife and mother, the accessions to her in numbers being accounted as her children, has long been barren—that is, during those ages of spiritual decline and dearth which preceded the coming of Christ. Now the era of domestic joy returns. More are the children of her who has been desolate than falls to the common lot of the married wife. The Gospel age is to be distinguished by Pentecostal ingatherings and immense accessions from the Gentile nations. H. C. ## 2. Enlarge the place of thy tent. The prophet announces the conversion of the Gentiles, in words addressed to the Jewish Church as the emblem of the Christian. The allusion here is to the tabernacle, and the image presented is an enlargement of the sacred tent to contain new crowds of worshippers; the stakes are to be driven deep and firm; the cords lengthened and tightened, that the sides of the tent may be able to support the pressure of the multitudes within it. (See Gen. 9: 27, where Noah foretells the admission of worshippers of Japhet's stock into the tent of Shem.) W. Lowth. 5. In each clause the first member points out the relation of Jehovah to His people, while the second proclaims one of His descriptive names. He is related to the Church as her Husband and Redeemer; He is known or shall be known to all mankind as the Lord of Hosts and as the God of the whole earth, which are not to be regarded as equivalent expressions. As the God of the Jewish institutions, the redeemer of a forfeited inheritance, was necessarily the next of kin, it is appropriately placed in opposition to the endearing name of husband; and as the title Lord of Hosts imports a universal sovereignty, it is no less exactly matched with the God of the whole earth. A.—The magnificent thoughts of this verse are clothed in the richest poetical conceptions and in the finest style of Hebrew parallelism. The God who made thee is thy Husband, and He is truly the Lord of Hosts, God of the celestial armies, bearing this name only because He sustains these relations, and therefore the name well expresses the precious reality. Then essentially the same thoughts are put in new phrase and figure. Thy Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, their very Saviour, their dearest Friend, to be particularly appropriated by them as their own Holy One. He is also truly "the God of the whole earth," and will evince Himself to be so by bringing the whole earth to know, accept, love and adore Him as their God. The Redeemer combined in Himself (God) most of the elements of a near and faithful friend, bound to make any possible sacrifices and efforts for the welfare of His brother. In this sense Jehovah appears here as the Redeemer as well as the Husband of His people. 6. The general sense of this verse is. The Lord hath called thee back into the relation of a wife again, after a temporary divorce, in which state thou wast forsaken and heartbroken. The first word, "for," indicates this logical connection; thy Maker surely is thy Husband, for He now invites thee to return into this relationship, despite of its suspension because of thy past sins. H. C. 7. For a small moment.** God does not keep His anger against His people forever; no, it is soon over; as He is slow to anger, so He is swift to show mercy. The afflictions of God's people, as they are light, so they are but for a moment, a cloud that presently blows over. How sweet the returns of mercy would be to them, when God should come and comfort them according to the time that He afflicted them. God called them into covenant with Himself, then when they were forsaken and grieved; He called them out of their afflictions, then when they were most pressing (verse 6). God's anger endures for a moment, but God will gather His people when they think themselves neglected; will gather them out of their dispersions, that they may return in a body to their own land; will gather them into His arms, to protect them, embrace them and bear them up; and will gather them at last to Himself. H. Sin disappears, as the mist before the sun, in the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus. The forgiveness of sins disperses the clouds of Divine wrath, even as the wind disperses the clouds of heaven. Caspars. 8. A thought so precious will bear to be reiterated and set forth in new and more resplendent light. This hiding of God's love is but temporary, only a transient outburst of displeasure, a sudden emotion which passed over in a moment; while on the other hand His mercy and His kindness are everlasting. It is only a duration indefinitely long that can suffice to unfold the depth of God's loving-kindness to His chosen Zion. The ages of earth's years and centuries are therefore assigned for her triumph and peace in the presence and glory of her Divine Redeemer and Husband. H. C. The wrath is little, but the mercies great; the wrath for a moment, but the kindness everlasting. See how one is set over against the other, that we may neither despond under our afflictions nor despair of relief. If He hide His face from His own children, and suspend the wonted tokens of His favor, it is but in a little wrath, and for a small moment; but He will "gather them with everlasting kindness" (Isa. 54: 7, 8). As sure as the light of the morning returns after the darkness of the night, so sure will joy and comfort return, in a short time, in due time, to the people of God; for the covenant of grace is as firm as the covenant of the day. This word has often been fulfilled to us in the letter; weeping has endured for a sight, but the grief has been soon over, and the grievance gone. As long as God's anger continues, so long the saint's weeping continues; but if that be but for a moment, the affliction is but for a moment, and when the light of God's countenance is restored, the affliction is easily pronounced light and momentary. H. When God hides His face from His child, yet still He is a Father, and His heart is toward His child; as Joseph, when he spake roughly to his brethren, and made them believe he would take them for spies; still his heart was full of love, and he was fain to go aside and weep; so God's bowels yearn to His children, when He seems to look strange. "In a little wrath I hid My face from thee, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee." Though God may have the look of an enemy, yet still He hath the heart of a father. Watson. When the morning stars sang together, the "sisters of sorrow" were visible in the distant perspective, as servitors of the same cause for which Christ died. They stood locked hand in hand with the angels of Gethsemane. Never did a good man bear a throb of pain to which the heart of Christ was not responsive. Never does a great affliction fall upon a trusting believer which is not recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life. Phelps. How needful, amid the trials of this earthly life, and how blessed is it to look off from the low plane and past the near horizon of earth and time, to the higher, wider heavens, with their juster standards, and clearer lights, and unsettling glories, that thus we may learn to judge aright of the events around us, and of the influences that are passing over us. Earthly trial, however sharp and however long, is not hopeless, or endless, or even aimless, if accepted as the appointment of a parental providence, and as training and metering us for rest in Jesus. And earthly splendors and lures grow tame and despicable, when, from the sidelights of Scripture, we learn to acknowledge what baits they often are and what fates they often work out. W. R. W. Faith listens to the testimony of Jesus. The Lord thy Redeemer speaks: "My deserting thee is of the shortest duration, a moment, the twinkling of an eye;" as no space of time compared to eternity. Then love vents itself and declares, "With everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee." The word of the Lord shall stand. His covenant is sure, His love unchangeable, His promises immutable. Hence the soul is excited to confidence, to assurance— yea, the fullest assurance of a God of truth, though all present appearances seem against it. Then hope dawns in the soul and love to Jesus is quickened. Holy shame and godly sorrow for past follies fill the heart, while the Comforter inwardly testifies of Jesus. His love, how infinite! His person, how precious! His promises, how reviving! His presence, how joyful! "Weeping may endure for a night" (of desertion), "but joy cometh in the morning" (of His presence). W. Mason. 9. The assurance of the preceding verse is now repeated in another form. There can no more be another such effusion of My wrath than there can be another deluge, here called the waters of Noah, just as we familiarly say "Noah's flood." The security in this case, as in that, is a Divine oath or solemn covenant, like that recorded in Gen. 8:21 and 9:11. The text mentions only one point of comparison between the two events—viz., that neither can occur again. The prophet does not say that God's displeasure with the Church is a flood which shall never be repeated, but that it shall never be repeated any more than the flood. A. This must not be pressed to the extreme of saying that God will nevermore find anything in His Church to excite His displeasure or to call forth His rebuke. The declaration should be explained within its own limitations—no such period of darkness, displeasure and rebuke as that of the age before Christ came. The change from that state of things to the Christian age brought back the presence of God with His people and renewed their spiritual marriage covenant—never to be severed again. Dr. Alexander well remarks: "That this is not a general promise of security is plain from the fact that the Church has always been subjected to vicissitudes and fluctuations. Nor is there any period in her history to which it can properly be applied in a specific sense, except the change of dispensations which was made once for all, and can never be repeated. That the Church shall never again be brought under the restrictive institutions of the ceremonial law is neither a matter of course nor a matter of indifference, but a glorious promise, altogether worthy of the solemn oath by which it is attested here." H. C. 10. The meaning is not that God's promise is as stable as the mountains, but that it is more so; they shall be removed, but it shall stand forever. A. God's favors to His people appear very constant, and His kindness everlasting; for it is formed into a covenant, here called a "covenant of peace," because it is founded in reconciliation and is inclusive of all good. This is as firm as the covenant of providence; it is "as the waters of Noah," as that promise which was made concerning the deluge, that there should never be the like again to disturb the course of summer and winter, seedtime and harvest (verse 9). God then contended with the world in great wrath, and for a full year, and yet at length returned in mercy, everlasting mercy; for He gave His word, which was as inviolable as His oath, that Noah's flood should never return, that He would never drown the world again. And God has ever since kept His word, though the world has been very provoking; and He will keep it to the end. And thus inviolable is the covenant of grace, "I have sworn that I would not be wroth with thee" as I have been, "and rebuke thee," as I have done. He will not be so angry with them as to cast them off and break His covenant with them. God's kindness shall never depart from His people, for whom He loves, He loves to the end; nor shall the covenant of His peace ever be removed, for He is the Lord that has mercy on His people. Therefore the covenant is immovable and inviolable, because it is built not on our merit, which is a mutable, uncertain thing, but on God's mercy, which is from everlasting to everlasting. H. The covenant of peace is not to be overthrown by trials, temptations or sins. So far from it, that these prove its stability and certainty. Every believer is at this moment in the very state in which God intended he should be, and in which it is best for him to be; and this, though afflictions, trials, deep desertions, yea, though sin and corruptions assail, and even overcome him. The great proof that he is a believer in such circumstances is, that he prays for faith and patience under the rod of affliction, hates his sins when they prevail against him, and longs for the light of God's countenance while he walks in darkness. Hill. The stately march of the grand English translation lends itself with wonderful beauty to the melody of Isaiah's words. But the thought that lies below them, sweeping as it does through the whole creation and parting all things into the transient material and the immortal Divine, is still greater than the music of the words. These are removed, this abides. And the thing in God which abides is that gentle tenderness, that strange love, mightier than all the powers of divinity besides, and permanent with the permanence of His changeless heart. There come out of these words thoughts of that Divine relationship to us which are meant to strengthen us in the contemplation of that which is perishable and amid the changing of all that is material. "My kindness"—what a revelation of God! It tells me that the infinite, undying, imperishable love of God is mine; older than the mountains, deeper than their roots in the great abyss, wider than the heavens and stronger than all my sins, is the love that grasps and keeps me and will not let me go, that lavishes its tenderness upon me, beseeches me and pleads with me, woos me, rebukes and corrects me, and that sent His Son to die for me. And then there is the consequence and outcome of that imperishable and unremovable loving-kindness: "My covenant of peace," or "the covenant of My peace." We are to think of this great, tender, changeless love of God, which underlies and towers above all things, which overlaps beyond them all and fills eternity, as being placed under a guarantee and being under a solemn obligation. God comes into a covenant with you and me, and His covenant is this: "I promise that My love shall never leave thee!" A. M. No, the covenant of God's peace with His people is an everlasting covenant. Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant. His loving-kindness reaches into the future. The covenant is a covenant of promise. Beautifully the prophet in the next verses puts this promise under the figure of a lovely palace, which shall be the dwelling-place of God's own. Vincent. 11. The figure now changes, from a wife restored to favor and blessed with children, to a city after storms and ruin rebuilt in magnificence and beauty. The apostle clearly applies it to "the Jerusalem above," the mother city of all true believers. But it is here viewed at an earlier period than in the visions of Apocalypse, while its foundations are being laid. Birks. 12. It is here promised in the particular instances of those things that shall be the beauty and honor of the Church, which are knowledge, holiness and love, the very image of God in which man was created, renewed and restored. And these are the sapphires and carbuncles, the precious and pleasant stones, with which the Gospel Temple shall be enriched and beautified, and these wrought by the power and efficacy of those doctrines which the apostle compares to gold, silver and precious stones, that are to be "built upon the foundation." H. 13. Dropping all figure and passing from poetic drapery to prosaic simplicity, the prophet gives here the very ideas; all Zion's children disciples of the Lord; the Divine Spirit teaching them of God, putting His laws unto their minds and writing them in their hearts, as said Jer. 31:34, and quoted by the writer to the Hebrews (8:11). The key to this passage is given by our Divine Lord Himself: It is written in the prophets, "and they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto Me" (John 6:45). When God by His Spirit teaches the sinner, He leads him at once to Jesus. H. C.—The promise is not one of occasional instruction, but of permanent connection with Jehovah, as His followers and partakers of His constant teaching. That the words are applicable to the highest teaching of which any rational being is susceptible—to wit, that of the Holy Spirit making known the Father and the Son, we have our Saviour's own authority for stating. (See John 6:44, and cf. Matt. 23:8; Heb. 8:11; 1 John 2:27.) Paul too describes believers as taught of God in relation to the duties of their calling (1 Thess. 4:9). Similar promises under the Old Testament are given in Jer. 31:34 and elsewhere. A. Notice the breadth of this prophetic declaration. It is not limited to her gifted prophets, nor to her ordained apostles, bishops, pastors and preachers, but is shared by all; "all her children shall be taught of the Lord." H. C.—Then the Church is all glorious when it is full of the knowledge of God, and that is promised here, "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord." The Church's children, being born of God, shall be taught of God; being His children by adoption, He will take care of their education. It is a promise of the Spirit of illumination. Our Saviour quotes it with application to Gospel grace, and makes it to have its accomplishment in all those that were brought to believe in Him (John 6:45), "It is written in the prophets, They shall be all taught of God;" whence He infers, that those, and those only, come to Him by faith that have heard and learned of the Father, that are "taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus" (Eph. 4:21). There shall be a plentiful effusion of the Spirit of grace upon Christians, to "teach them all things" (John 14:26). H. 14. Since the verse preceding traces piety in man to the teaching of God, so the idea here seems to be that God's righteous faithfulness secures and establishes man's righteous piety and life. The former includes the latter as the cause does its effect. H. C. 15. The promise of the preceding verse is here so modified as to provide for every possible contingency. If enemies should be assembled, it will not be by Divine command (cf. chaps. 10 : 5 ; 47 : 6), and they shall end by coming over to the side of those whom they assail. 16. The general meaning evidently is that God can certainly redeem His pledge, because all instruments and agents are alike at His disposal and under His control. He is not only the maker of the weapons of war, but the maker of their maker, as well as of the warrior who wields them. The pronoun in both clauses is emphatic. It is I (and not another) who created them. A. The account given here of the smith's process is, "that bloweth into the coal-fire, or fire of coals, and bringeth out by this means his tools for his work"—referring to the manufacture of his own implements. As the smith makes his tools with the aid of fire and hammer, so God can make and use His instruments with perfect wisdom and power. As God creates the smith who with the aid of fire makes his hammer, and with the aid of hammer makes the sword and the spear of war, and as God alone sustains him through all these processes, surely this same God can cut short all efforts to harm His Zion at any one of ten thousand points as may be His pleasure. 17. Neither weapons for violence nor tongue for accusation shall prosper against thee. The former covers war ; the latter, litigation. Such is the "inheritance of the servants of the Lord." The plural here looks beyond the one special "servant of the Lord" who appears (chaps. 52 : 13 and 53 : 11), to all His associated people who are identified with Himself in sympathy and labor for the common cause. The last clause seems to mean, "And this (or such) is their righteousness from Me," saith the Lord. Such is their piety and such its fruits of righteousness from My hand. H. C. Every tongue against thee. The idea is, that truth and victory in every strife of words should be on the side of the Church. To those who have watched the progress of discussions thus far on the subject of the true religion, it is needless to say that this has been triumphantly fulfilled. Argument, sophism, ridicule, have all been tried to overthrow the truth of the Christian religion. Appeals have been made to astronomy, geology, antiquities, history, and indeed to almost every department of science, and with the same want of success. Poetry has lent the charm of its numbers ; the grave historian has interwoven with the thread of his narrative covert attacks and insinuations against the Bible ; the earth has been explored to prove that "He who made the world and revealed its age to Moses was mistaken in its age ;" and the records of Oriental nations have been appealed to, but in all these contests ultimate victory has declared in favor of the Bible. And no matter from what quarter the attack has come, and no matter how much learning and talent have been evinced by the adversaries of the Bible, God has raised up defenders to meet these charges, and to turn the scales in favor of the cause of truth. Barnes. Righteousness which is of Me. We have no righteousness of our own ; yet, saith the Lord Jesus, the righteous one, "Their righteousness is of Me." We are made the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5 : 21). When we are taught this by the Spirit of truth, instead of looking into ourselves for righteousness, we cry out in the joy of faith, I have found it : "In the Lord have I righteousness" (Isa. 45 : 24). Then we have a living union with the Lord our righteousness, by faith ; being perfectly righteous in Him, we have righteous hopes, fears, desires, a righteous walk and righteous expectations ; for we know our salvation is of the Lord. The Spirit of truth does not leave us to the unrighteous notions of salvation on account of our own works, duties and performances, either in whole or in part ; but He shows us such matchless glory in our Lord's one everlasting righteousness, that we renounce all our own righteousness and all dependence on it for salvation. W. Mason. 55:1 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfeth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul 3 delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your soul shall live: and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. 4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and a nation that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. 6, 7 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my 10 thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth 11 seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it 12 shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the 13 trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. THE great central prophecy of the sufferings of Christ (chap. 53), and of the blessings to the Church through His death and resurrection (chap. 54), is here followed by an earnest call to receive the heavenly gift. Birks. This chapter is closely connected in sense with the preceding chapters. It flows from the doctrines stated in chap. 53, and is designed to state what would follow from the coming of the Messiah. It would result from that work that the most free and full invitations would be extended to all men to return to God and to obtain His favor. There would be such a fullness and richness in His work; there would be such ample provision made for the salvation of men, that the most liberal invitations could be extended to sinners. In common indeed with all the previous chapters (from chap. 40), we are to regard this as primarily addressed to the exiles in Babylon, and as designed to cheer them in their painful captivity by the prospect of what should yet occur under the Messiah who was to come. The main idea in the chapter, I conceive to be, that the effect of the work of the Redeemer would be to lay the foundation for a universal invitation to men to come and be saved. An invitation of the most unlimited nature may be offered. It may be offered to all classes of men. So ample would be the merits of His death (chap. 53); so full and universal the design of the atonement; so rich the provisions of mercy, that all might be invited to come, and all might come and partake of eternal life. To state this, I suppose to be the main design of this chapter. It may be regarded as comprising the following parts: 1. A universal invitation to come and embrace the provisions of mercy (verses 1-3). All were invited to come; even they who were the most poor and needy, who had no money, were invited to come as freely as to running waters and streams (verse 1). They were now regarded as spending their money and their labor for that which produced no permanent satisfaction—descriptive of the world in its vain efforts to find enjoyment (verse 2). If they would come to God they should live—live forever. He would make with them an eternal covenant (verse 4). 2. To encourage them to this, the assurance is presented that God had given the Messiah to be a leader of the people, and that under Him distant nations should embrace the truth and be saved (verses 4, 5). 3. In view of the fulness of the provisions of mercy, and of the fact that a great leader had been provided, all are encouraged to come and seek God (verses 6-13). This invitation is pressed on their attention by several considerations. Jehovah might now be found; His throne was accessible, and He was ready to pardon abundantly all sinners who were disposed to forsake the error of their way and to return to Him (verses 6, 7). God shows that His designs should not be prostrated. His plans were high above the plans of men, and His thoughts more elevated than theirs, and His counsels should stand. The rain descended on the earth and accomplished His great plans, and so it would be with His word. Nothing should fail. His promises would be fulfilled and His designs would take effect, and there was, therefore, every encouragement to come and partake of His favor and His grace (verses 8-11). There should be rich and abundant blessings attending their return to God, and universal rejoicing from their embracing the religion of the Redeemer, and becoming interested in His mercy and salvation (verses 12, 13). There is not to be found in the Bible a chapter more replete with rich invitations than this; nor perhaps is there anywhere to be found one of more exquisite beauty. To the end of the world it will stand as the fullest conceivable demonstration that God intended that the offers of salvation should be made to all men; and that He designs that His Gospel shall be successful on the earth, and shall accomplish the great plans which He had in view when He devised the scheme of redemption. While this precious chapter remains in the Book of God no sinner need despair of salvation. Barnes. This chapter, which breathes forth the very soul of Gospel invitation and entreaty, is logically connected with the two which precede it. The sufferings of Christ (chap. 53) making atonement for sin really provide this Gospel feast with its living waters—its wine, milk and bread of life—for the needy souls of men; while the joyful change that comes over Zion (chap. 54) breathes new life into her soul and rouses all her energies to enlarge her tent-room for new converts. Now all this presupposes that she addresses herself to the work of inviting and beseeching ruined men to come to her own crucified Saviour for mercy. Hence this chapter is suggestive to the Saviour's people of the work they have to do in filling up their tents and homes with the hungry who need the bread of life, "Go ye out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that My house may be filled." We may suppose also that the prophet's own soul is penetrated, filled and fired, with the glorious truths which he has been recording (chaps. 52-54), and now, seeing such provisions made for the salvation of lost men (chap. 53), and such gracious purposes of God revealed in respect to the enlargement of Zion by the conversion of vast nations (chap. 54), he cannot do less or otherwise than to break forth in these overflowings of entreaty and invitation. How the deep tides of his emotion surge and overflow under the power of this momentous and glorious truth—salvation enough—free for all! How he longs to see them come, in thronging hosts on hosts, to these abundant supplies of living bread and water! Hence he puts these words on record, both as the outgushings of his own heart and as suggestive to God's people of their mission to invite the perishing, and suggestive also to sinners themselves of the freeness and fulness of God's mercy and of His longing desire to see them returning, penitent, yet trustful, to His feet. H. C. 1. Ho every thirsty one, come ye to the waters; and he to whom there is no money, come ye, buy (food) and eat; and come, buy, without money and without price, wine and milk. The promises contained in the preceding chapters to the Church are now followed by a general invitation to partake of the blessings thus secured. Water, milk and wine are here combined to express the ideas of refreshment, nourishment and exhilaration. Under these figures are included, as Calvin well observes, all things essential to the spiritual life. A. Waters, to represent spiritual blessings, forgiveness of sins, peace with God and moral cleansing, appear elsewhere in Isaiah—e.g., chaps. 12:3; 44:3 and 35:6, 7. Feasting on food at once delicious and nourishing is only a slight modification of the same figure, as in chaps. 25:6; 62:8, 9 and 65:13. Our Lord resumes both these figures—that of water in John 4:14 and 7:37; that of feasting in various parables—e.g., Matt. 22:1-10 and Luke 14:15-24, and also in His representation of His own flesh as the bread of life (John 6:32-58). The central idea is, the best and most needful things for the body made the symbols of the best and most vital blessings for the soul. The abundance and freeness of the former represent the yet richer abundance and freeness of the latter. H. C. Food and money are objects which all men desire; the first a necessity of life; the second a means of comfort and luxury, and also of distinction and power. Both here are symbols of good or happiness, which is that for which men are always longing and striving; but they often mistake for food that which is not wholesome nor nourishing. Christ comes to us as the embodiment of all good; He is the bread from heaven; He is the fountain of living waters; He is the incorruptible treasure; He is the life everlasting. And all that He is He offers to all freely, without price. "These gratuitous blessings are contrasted with the costly and unprofitable labors of mankind to gain the same end in another way." Only one condition is annexed, and this arising from the nature of the case—the sense of need, the desire to possess, the willingness to seek. J. P. T. Where has there been a nobler flight of imagination than in the passage in which the prophet calls upon those who have no money to buy and eat, to buy wine and milk "without money and without price"? No other language could have made so startling the contrast between the poverty of the blessings which are bought with human wealth, and the riches of those which are bought without it, though not without lavishing freely the treasures of the heart and soul. Lon. Spectator. To a soul that flames with the consciousness of God and yearns for rest and peace, to the sense of sin, to the sense of sorrow, to the conscience never wholly stifled, to the desires after good never utterly eradicated and never slaked by aught besides itself, does this mighty word come. Not to this or that sort of man does it address itself, but to the common humanity which belongs to all, to the wants and sorrows and inward consciousness which belong to man as man. A. M. The freeness of the offered gift is implied by the strong terms of invitation, Ho, every one, come ye! Gratuitousness could not be more strongly expressed. It is here held forth and proclaimed with Divine earnestness, that he who comes to the salvation of the Gospel receives it without any offer of recompense or any worthiness on his own part. The fountain of life has indeed its price, a price which has been paid. It cost the agonies and death of the Son of God. J. W. A.—The unspeakable gift was the result entirely of God's eternal, self-moving love. No mistake can be greater or more directly in the face of Scripture than that which fancies the love of God procured for sinners by the mediation of Christ. The very reverse was the truth. The atonement sprung from the love, not the love from the atonement. And as for the blessings of salvation, which are all conferred on the ground of the righteousness and atonement of Him who is Himself the great gift of Divine love, they are all freely offered and freely bestowed. The language of the entire Bible on this point is in harmony with that of Isaiah: "Ho, every one that thirsteth," etc. Wardlaw. It is nowhere said in the Bible that Christ so died for me in particular, as that by His simple dying, the benefits of His atonement are mine in possession. But it is everywhere said in the Bible that the benefits of His atonement are mine in offer. They are mine, if I will. Such terms as whosoever and all and any, and ho every one, bring the Gospel redemption specifically to my door; and there it stands for acceptance as mine in offer, and ready to become mine in possession, on my giving credit to the word of the testimony. The terms of the Gospel message are so constructed, that I have just as good a warrant for reckoning myself dead unto sin, as if, instead of the announcement that God had set forth Christ to be a propitiation for the sins of the world through faith in His blood, I had been the only sinner in the world; or I had been singled out by surname, and it was stated that God had set forth Christ a propitiation for me individually, through faith in His blood. Thomas Chalmers. God made us that He might love us. God has given us the capacity of loving Himself, and He has made it a law of our being that we must love Him if we are ever to be happy, that there is no happiness for us but in fulfilling that law of our being which requires us to love the living God. Yet how wonderfully little of this longing there is in our hearts, this thirst for God, the living God; and all the while God, looking down upon us in His infinite mercy, is longing for our hearts, the hearts of His children. We may say it with reverence that the heart of God is athirst for our love, and longs that our hearts should be athirst for Him. Bp. Maclagan. The thirst of the human soul after God is a great argument that there is a God to be thirsted for. Men would not thirst for that for which they have no affinity. The human soul longs for the sympathy of some being higher than, and yet like, itself. The presence of God can only be imagined as, in some sense, a human presence. The practical proof of the being of God—not of God as a mere power, but of God who has created man, and who loves him with the love of a Father, and desires a return of love for love—is to be found in the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ our Lord. Bp. Goodwin. There is in every man an unconscious and unsatisfied longing after God. That is the state of nature. No man is made to be satisfied from himself. For the stilling of our hearts, the strengthening and joy of our being, we need to go beyond ourselves. No man is independent, or carries within him the fountain from which he can draw; and if a man's life is to be strong and happy, he must get the foundation of his strength somewhere else than in his own soul. We are made to need not things, but living beings. Hearts want hearts. We need one Being who shall be all sufficient. We want one Being in whom shall be sphered all perfection, in whom shall abide all power and blessedness, beyond whom thought cannot pass, out of whose infinite circumference love does not need to wander, besides whose boundless treasures no other riches can be required, who is light for the understanding, power for the will, authority for the practical life, purpose for the efforts, motive for the doings, end and object for the feelings, home of the affections, who is all in all, and without whom is misery and death. Christ, the manifested God, is such a Being, for Christ is everything that a man can want. We are made to be restless until we possess perfect truth—there it is! infinite, unchangeable love—there it is! rest, purity, gladness, light in our souls—there they all are! Whatever form of human nature and character may be yours, whatever exigencies of life you may be lying under the pressure of—man or woman, adult or child, father or son, man of business or man of thought, struggling with difficulties or bright with joy—“out of His fulness,” and His only, all may “receive grace for grace.” A. M. True faith utterly forgets itself, and credits the assurance of God's free pardon. It looks away from its own worthiness and its own unworthiness, and hears God saying, “Ho!” “Come ye!” Come without money and without price! And it comes, without turning to the right hand or to the left. The question no longer is, What am I? but what is God? Is He true? Has He spoken? It sets to its seal, that God is true. It acquiesces in a righteousness already finished. So it saves. The doctrinal truth which lies at the basis of all is, that the procuring cause of our acceptance with God is not anything done by us, or in us, not any work, preparation, frame or feeling, but only the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. The trumpet sounds thus, from over the fresh fountain, “Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life, freely.” And the persuaded soul, now taught the great lesson of self-renunciation and self-forgetfulness, and swallowed up in admiration of the stupendous gift, falls into the open arms of dying Love. J. W. A. The one essential truth to accept about the Gospel is, that no money can buy our salvation, no suffering merit it, no repentance procure it, no holiness produce it. The utmost that our own moral action can do for us, and this too is by the grace of God, is to create and enlarge the receptive faculty in us. If we will not take salvation as a gift, we cannot have it at all. Bp. Thorold. 2. The gratuitous blessings offered by Messiah are contrasted with the costly and unprofitable labors of mankind to gain the same end in another way. It was not that they refused food, nor even that they were unwilling to buy it; but they mistook for it that which was not nourishing. A. All the pursuits of the world are “vanity and vexation of spirit.” The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. Nothing less than God's love, revealed in the cross of Christ, can meet the deep craving of the immortal soul. “Hearken diligently”—literally, “hearken, yea, hearken.” The word is repeated to express the urgency of the invitation and to enforce a double measure of attention. Birks. No man who feeds his heart and mind on anything short of God is really at rest in anything that he does or possesses. Occasional twinges of conscience, dim perceptions that after all they are walking in a vain show, glimpses of nobler possibilities, a vague unrest, an unwillingness to reflect and look the facts of their condition in the face—these are the conditions that attach to all godless life; and so there is no real fruit for the man's thirsty lips to feed upon. The smallest man is too large to be satisfied with anything short of infinity. A. M. If the question were put, Wherefore did God make man? who would not be ashamed to answer, He made him to eat and drink and take his pleasure, to gather up wealth for he knows not who; to use his inventions, that each one may become a talk and wonder to the rest; and then when he hath fetched a few turns upon the theatre, and entertained the eyes of beholders with a short scene of impertinences, descend, and never be heard of more? What, that he should come into the world furnished with such powers and endowments, for this! It were a like case, as if one should be clad in scarlet to go to plough, or curiously instructed in arts and sciences to tend swine. Hore. All the wealth and pleasure in the world will not make one meal's meat for a soul. Eternal truth and eternal good are the only food for a rational and immortal soul, the life of which consists in reconciliation and conformity to God, and in union and communion with Him, which the things of the world will not at all befriend. "They satisfy not," they yield not any solid comfort and content to the soul, nor enable it to say, "Now I have what I would have." Nay, they do not satisfy even the appetites of the body; the more men have, the more they would have. Rich people live by their money, poor people by their labor; but both mistake their truest interest while the one is trading, the other toiling for the world, both promising themselves satisfaction and happiness in it, but both miserably disappointed. God vouchsafes compassionately to reason with them: "Wherefore do you thus act against your own interest?" "Why do you suffer yourselves to be thus imposed upon?" Let us reason thus with ourselves, and let the result of these reasonings be, a holy resolution not to "labor for the meat that perishes, but for that which endures to everlasting life" (John 6: 27). Let all the disappointments we meet with in the world help to drive us to Christ, and to seek for satisfaction in Him only. This is the way to make that sure which will be made sure. H. There is no congruity between any outward thing and man's soul of such a kind as that satisfaction can come from its possession. There is no need for exaggeration. Worldly possessions have a good in them, they contribute to ease and grace in life, they save from carking cares and mean anxieties, they add many a comfort and many a source of culture. But, after all, a true, lofty life may be lived with a very small modicum. There is no proportion between wealth and happiness, nor between wealth and nobleness. The fairest life ever lived on earth was that of a poor man, and with all its beauty it moved within the limits of narrow resources. We need enough for the physical being to root itself in; we need no more. A. M. In what are you more ennobled than in the fact that you are related inherently to God; having a nature so high, wants so deep and vast, that only He can feed them, and not even He by any bestowment which does not include the bestowment of Himself. Would you willingly exterminate this want of your being, and so be rid eternally of this hunger? That would be to cease from being a man and to become a worm; and even that worm, remembering what it was, would be a worm gnawing itself with eternal regrets. No, this torment that you feel is the torment of your greatness. It compliments you more, even by its cravings and its shameful humiliations, than all most subtle flatteries and highest applause. Nay, there is nothing in which God Himself exalts you more than by His own expostulation when He says—"wherefore do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not; hearken diligently unto Me and eat ye that which is good. Incline your ear and come unto Me, hear and your soul shall live." Why should we humble ourselves to so many things that are ashes and call them bread; doubling our bodily pleasures in vices that take hold on hell; chasing after gains with cancerous appetite; torturing our invention to find some opiate of society, applause or show, that will quiet and content our unrest. All in vain. Oh, ye starving minds, hearken, for one hour, to this, and turn yourselves to it as your misery points you—God, God, God alone, is the true food. Ask it thus of God to give you the food that is convenient for you, and He gives you Himself. And that is bread, bread of life, bread of eternity. Take it for your true supply, and you hunger no more. H. Bushnell. If regard be had to the whole scope of our nature and necessities and to the true aim of life as deduced therefrom, nothing is more certain than that no man will get the satisfaction that his ruling passions promise him, by indulging them. It is very sure that the way never to get what you need and desire is always to do what you like. And that for very plain reasons. Because, for one thing, the object only satisfies for a time. Yesterday's food appeased our hunger for the day, but we wake hungry again. And the desires which are not so purely animal have the same characteristic of being stilled for the moment, and of waking more ravenous than ever. "He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again." Because, further, the desire grows and the object of it does not. The fierce longing increases, and of course the power of the thing that we pursue to satisfy it decreases in the same proportion. It is a fixed quantity; the appetite is indefinitely expansible. And so, the longer I go on feeding my desire, the more I long for the food; and the more I long for it, the less taste it has when I get it. It must be more strongly spiced to titilate a jaded palate. And there soon comes to be an end of the possibilities in that direction. Because, for another thing, after all, these desires are each but a fragment of whole nature, and when one is satisfied another is baying to be fed. A. M. Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss; he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as He promises; all His payments are made in pure gold. T. Brooks. We must thirst for salvation before we get it. It is sincerely and gratuitously offered, but if we do not want it we shall not be forced to take it. Thirst and drink, hunger and food, human dependence and Divine leadership, penitence and salvation, are as complementary as the lock and the key. Need will develop thirst, if we let it do so. If we will be saved, we shall be saved; not otherwise. We must realize the inadequacy of our low substitutes for salvation. A man would starve at a dinner-table if he insisted upon eating the wood, the china, the silver or the gold rather than those viands which were both provided and suitable for him. What countless thousands there are who prefer to buy stones instead of bread or who toil for a little unsatisfying wealth, pleasure, fame or power, rather than for that salvation which has cost the life of the Son of God! McPherson. 3. Incline your ear and come unto Me, hear and your soul shall live (or let it live), and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the sure mercies of David. This is obviously a repetition of the same offer in another form; which shows that the two preceding verses cannot have respect to literal food or bodily subsistence. Here again the use of the word soul necessarily suggests the thought of spiritual life. Neither of the animal life nor of the appetite could it be said that it should live. The text contains a solemn assurance that the promise made to David should be faithfully performed in its original import and intent. Hence the mercies of David are called sure—i.e., sure to be accomplished; or it might be rendered faithful, credible or trusted, without any material effect upon the meaning. A. The account of this covenant may be seen in 2 Sam. 7: 12-29 and 1 Chron. 17: 7-27; restated substantially in Ps. 89: 1-4, 19-37, and referred to 2 Sam. 23: 1-5. These passages show that in this covenant with David the chief points were: A great king in his line to whom God would sustain very special relations and who can be no other than the Messiah; a covenant affirmed repeatedly to be "everlasting," and embracing mercies that were sure as the faithfulness of Jehovah. David's own "last words" include this emphatic allusion to it: "He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure" (2 Sam. 23: 5). Hence the pertinence of these words of our prophet, "Even the sure mercies of David"—i.e., promised to David. H. C. 4. Lo, (as) a witness of nations I have given Him, a chief and commander of nations. The emphasis appears to be on nations, which is therefore repeated without change of form. The essential meaning is the same as that of chap. 49: 6—viz., that the Messiah was sent to be the Saviour not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. His relation to the latter is expressed by three terms. First He is a witness—i.e., a witness to the truth (John 18: 37) and a witness against sinners (Mal. 3: 5). The same office is ascribed to Christ in Rev. 1: 5; 3: 14. (Cf. 1 Tim. 6: 13.) The application of this verse to the Messiah, therefore, is entirely natural if taken by itself. 6. By a sudden apostrophe he turns from the Messiah to those whom He had come to save, and exhorts them to embrace this great salvation, to be reconciled with God. A similar exhortation, implying, like the present, that the day of grace is limited, occurs in Zeph. 2: 2. A. Seek ye the Lord. Seek to obtain the true knowledge of Him; seek reconciliation with Him; seek His pardoning mercy. This address is made to all in view of the coming and work of the Messiah. That work would be so full and ample that an invitation could be extended to all to seek after God and to return to Him. It is implied here: 1. That men are by nature ignorant of God, or unacquainted with Him—since they are directed to "seek" for Him. 2. That if men will obtain His favor it must be sought. No man becomes His friend without desiring it; no one who does not earnestly seek for it. 3. That the invitation to seek God should be made to all. In this passage it is unlimited (cf. verse 7). Where there are sinners, there the invitation is to be offered. 4. That the knowledge of God is of inestimable value. God would not command men to seek that which was worthless; He would not urge it with so much earnestness as is here manifested if it were not of inexpressible value. While He may be found. It is implied here that God may now be found. That the time will come when it will be impossible to obtain His favor. The leading thought is, that under the Messiah the offer of salvation will be made to men fully and freely. But the period will come when it will be withdrawn. If God forsakes men; if He wholly withdraws His Spirit; if they have committed the sin which hath never forgiveness, or if they neglect or despise the provisions of mercy and die in their sins, it will be too late, and mercy cannot be found. Barnes. Seek God whilst thou canst not see Him; for when thou seest Him, thou canst not find Him. Seek Him by hope, and thou shalt find Him by faith. In the day of grace He is invisible, but near; in the Day of Judgment He is visible, but far off. Gregory.—If we would not seek God in vain, let us seek Him in truth, often and constantly; let us not seek another thing instead of Him, nor for any other thing leave Him. Bernard.—God, that hath promised pardon to the penitent, hath not promised the respite of to-morrow to the impenitent. Gregory.—To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it, this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another till he is starved and destroyed. Tillotson.—There is, for men, a possible absence from God; not of God from men, but of men from God. So our speech feebly and falteringly shapes the truth. God may be near to us and we not near to Him. An unfelt presence is no life nor comfort. It is a silent form near us in the dark. To be indifferent, where trust and love should be, is absence; and that, remember, is no single deed—it is a state; God is not “found” in it, not “sought.” F. D. H.—Do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s time; pray while God hears; hear while God speaks; believe while God promises; obey while God commands. J. Mason. Self impelling, self-renovating power we have none; but the helm power we have, and if we use it rightly, it will put us in the range of all power, even the mighty power of God. Hence the great call of the Scripture salvation is, “come unto Me,” “come unto God;” because the coming unto God is the coming unto God’s operation, and the receiving of what His Divine power will work in the soul, when He is tempted in it. Hence also the call to renounce our own will, to renounce the world, to renounce eternally sin; because whoever lives in his own will—lives for the world as his end, lives apart from all homage to God—cannot be in God’s will, or come at all into God’s operation. In the same way there must be a clearing of a thousand particular and even smallest things that will steer off the soul from God. An old grudge adhered to steers it forever away from God. Any mode of profit, whose fairness or beneficence to men we distrust, but will not give up, will do the same. In the same way, the dread only of being singular, the going after popularity, the fear of men’s opinions, the cringing of the soul to men’s fashions—all these give over the helm of one’s life to others, that they may turn it where they will—always away, of course, and still away from God. Every such thing must of necessity be renounced or even denounced, as we hope to come into God’s operation or come unto God. When the helm is practically set, honestly gauged for God, God will be a perfectly open harbor to it, but how can it think of entering either this or any other harbor, when it is really steering itself away? H. Bushnell. If you seek first the kingdom, you shall find it. If you seek it second to any other interest, you shall not find it. God’s kingdom will bow itself down to no other. It will be a stepping-stone to no other. It came to find a place in the heart; to renew it; to possess the whole soul; and if it fail, it will return back to God and leave you behind. If you embrace the kingdom heartily, it will embrace you. If you neglect it, complain of none but yourself that you lose it. And the loss shall not be made good to you; for what shall you give in exchange for the lost kingdom of God; what give in exchange for your lost soul? R. T. 7. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the man of iniquity his thoughts, and let him return unto Jehovah, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon (literally, multiply to pardon).** This is a continuation of the foregoing call, and at the same time an explanation of the way in which it was to be obeyed. We are here taught that the seeking of Jehovah, and the calling upon Him just enjoined, involve an abandonment of sin and a return to righteousness of life. A. “Let the wicked forsake his way,” his evil course of life, and “his thoughts,” his purposes, wrong objects of pursuit, his selfish and sinful aims and plans of life; the two phrases being designed to include all that pertains both to the outer and the inner life of man. He must make his heart right and his outer life right also; not his heart only, but his life; not his life only, but his heart no less. The word rendered "thoughts" means not merely or primarily opinions, views of things; but the moral purposes, the chosen objects which one lives for; the preferences, determinations which control all his subordinate activities. The grand inducement named here to urge sinners to seek God thus is the assurance of God's mercy in His free and abundant pardon. H. C. Let them consider that they have to do with One who will not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax; that the heart of God is with them; that the darkness and death of Christ, now changed to the strength of intercession, are on their side, and all those heavenly promises which are Yea and Amen in Him, and which, as bright and as many as the stars in their courses, all fight for them. Let them think of Jacob's wrestling, of David's tears, of Paul's threefold prayer, of the woman of Canaan, of Christ Himself, who was always heard, and yet had to cry in agony; and let them be sure that if they continue to look to God they shall be lightened, and find there were good reasons for the cloud and darkness, even very abundant dews of God in them, to prepare them for coming sunshine. And if all these considerations fail, let them still take up this language, "Nay; but we will serve the Lord," "We cannot force from Him a sense of His favor, but we can humbly and perseveringly offer Him our service—not as a price, but as a humble tribute to Him, whose we are and whom we ought to serve. On this we are resolved, whatever be the issue, for this is just and right, and all His own." Ker. Observe, before pardon can be sealed, he must forsake not this sin, or that, but the whole law of sin. "Let the wicked forsake his way." He forsakes the way of sin that turns out of the whole road; in a word, thou must forsake the blindest path of all in sin's way, that which lies behind the hedge, as I may so say, in the thoughts of the heart, "and the unrighteous his thoughts;" or else thou knockest in vain at God's door for pardoning mercy, and therefore forsake all or none. Gurnall. Take away the Gospel, and where art thou? Were it possible for thee to repent and become a new man, what settles the connection between repentance and salvation but the Gospel promise? Will the violated law of works accept thy repentance instead of obedience? Doth it not expressly preclude any such expectation? Doth it give any ground to look for anything but death after sin? Thou must therefore fly to the Gospel or yield thyself lost. And know, it contains none but faithful and true sayings, that have more stability in them than the foundations of heaven and earth. Howe. Many sins do not prevent our pardon or conversion. God's free gift is "of many offences unto justification" (Rom. 5:16); and it is written in this verse 7, "He will multiply to pardon." For nearly these six thousand years God has been multiplying pardons, and yet free grace is not tired and grown weary. The creatures owe a great debt to justice, but we have an able surety. There is no want of mercy in the creditor, nor of sufficiency in the surety. Certainly, mercy is an ocean that is ever full and ever flowing. The saints carry loads of experiences with them to heaven. Free grace can show you large accounts, and a long bill cancelled by the blood of Christ! Manton. Impossible it is that He should reject any penitent sinner merely for the greatness of the sins he hath committed. It is the exaltation of His mercy (saith faith) that God hath in His eye when He promiseth pardon to poor sinners. Now, which exalts this most, to pardon little or great sinners? whose voice will be highest in the song of praise, thinkest thou? surely his to whom most is forgiven; and therefore God cannot but be most ready to pardon the greatest sinners when truly penitent. Gurnall.—I am a great sinner, sayest thou. I will in nowise cast out, says Christ. But I am an old sinner, sayest thou. I will in nowise cast out, says Christ. But I am a hard-hearted sinner, sayest thou. I will in nowise cast out, says Christ. But I have served Satan all my days, sayest thou. I will in nowise cast out, says Christ. But I have sinned against light, sayest thou. I will in nowise cast out, says Christ. But I have sinned against mercy, sayest thou. I will in nowise cast out, says Christ. But I have no good thing to bring with me, sayest thou. I will in nowise cast out, says Christ. Bunyan. If the soul is really in earnest in seeking God, there is a consciousness of two things in that soul. One is the consciousness of how far off that life is from God, and the other is the consciousness of how near it is. And the two together make the soul's salvation. If it did not seem so far away, the soul would think it easy to do that which is a great and profound thing to do. On the other hand, without the second consciousness there would come despair. Know the difficulty of salvation. Know the easiness of salvation. Know how far from God you are. Know how near to God you are. Keep all the fear of the Christian life. Keep all the hope of the Christian life. Struggle as if God was so far off that you would need all your strength to come to Him. Leap as if one single bound could carry you out of your wickedness into His righteousness and love. Phillips Brooks.—Open your whole nature to God, offer yourselves in the spirit of contrition and of a real, unquestioning faith to the occupancy of God, and the light will not more certainly break into the sky and fill the horizon with day, when the morning sun is risen. Ask, in one word, and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find. This now is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is not some new idea of the Gospel. It is an advance of the Divine love to recover lost ground and bring back guilty souls among men, to that which is the original, everlasting bliss and beauty of all the created intelligences of God. H. Bushnell. 8,9. The word "for" connects verse 8 with the latter part of verse 7, appending it to sustain the declaration, "God will have mercy;" "God will abundantly pardon." God's thoughts and ways are here put in contrast with man's in the special point of His rich mercy and readiness to forgive, with design to overcome the repelencies of unbelief and conscious guilt in the sinner's heart. H. C.—As if He had said, "You must forsake your evil ways and thoughts, and by so doing, you infallibly secure My favor; for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so far am I superior to you in mercy, not only in the rigor and extent of My requirements, but also in compassion for the guilty, in benevolent consideration even for the Gentiles, and in the constancy and firmness of My purposes when formed." A. 8. The contrast here is not between the holiness of God's ways and the unholiness of the thoughts and ways of sinners, but between the largeness of His ways of grace, the vastness of His thoughts of mercy, and the selfishness of the sinner, or the low conceptions of the penitent, when first he turns to God. Birks. As the heavens are high above the earth, so are the great thoughts of God in them above man's thoughts. The Son of God coming from heaven to die for man, the Spirit of God coming from heaven to live in man, to change man, the enemy of God, into His friend, His heir, and to do this for all who are but willing to make God's Son and Spirit welcome, these are thoughts which have a majesty and range so great and godlike that they show their origin. Ker. At the same time that this passage refers primarily to the subject of pardon, and should be interpreted as having a main reference to that, it is also true of the ways of God in general. His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not ours in regard to His moral government; to His actual administration; to His plans in the creation and government of the world. He has plans of accomplishing His purposes which are different from ours, and He secures our own welfare by schemes that cross our own. He disappoints our hopes; foils our expectations; crosses our designs; removes our property or our friends, and thwarts our purposes in life. He leads us in a path which we had not intended, and secures our ultimate happiness in modes which we should not have thought of, and which are contrary to all our designs and desires. It follows from this, that we should form our plans with submission to the higher purposes of God. Barnes. 10, 11. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and thither returneth not, but when it has watered the earth and made it bear and put forth and has given seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be, which goeth out of My mouth; it shall not return unto Me void (or without effect), but when it has done that which I desired, and successfully done that for which I sent it. This is a new comparison, suggested by the mention of the heavens and the earth in the preceding verse. The tenth and eleventh form a single sentence of unusual length in Hebrew composition. The one contains the comparison properly so called, the other makes the application. A. In addition to the grandeur and exalted magnitude of God's wonderful scheme of salvation, the prophet here sets before us, by another impressive figure, the absolute certainty of its success. The figure is drawn from the fixedness and invariable character of the laws and operations of material nature. Snow and rain descend from heaven, and water the earth, and promote vegetation; this is the uniform and inevitable result. Just so every declaration from the mouth of God must have complete accomplishment. He who maintained the order of material nature fulfils with like precision His own glorious designs in His scheme of grace. His word of salvation can no more fail to achieve the results which He has appointed for it, than natural causes can fail to bring to pass their own proper sequences. W. H. G. This assures us that the promises of God shall all have their full accomplishment in due time, and not one iota or tittle of them shall fail. These promises of mercy and grace shall have as real an effect upon the souls of believers, for their sanctification and comfort, as ever the rain had upon the earth, to make it fruitful. That according to the different errands on which the word is sent, it will have its different effects; if it be not a savor of life unto life, it will be a savor of death unto death; if it do not convince the conscience and soften the heart, it will sear the conscience and harden the heart; if it do not ripen for heaven, it will ripen for hell. (See chap. 6:9.) One way or other, it will take effect. H. "My Word that Goeth out of My Mouth." Diversified as are its several parts in topic and style—a diversity running through the whole scale of prose and poetry, argument and song, history and apocalypse, proverb and precept, dirge and carol—there is, nevertheless, such a unity in its contents, as itself to be an argument for its Divine origin, for collusion among writers living fifteen centuries apart is impossible. Proceeding from one mind, it relates to one theme: the redemption of the human race by the Incarnate Son of God. Assured that there is but one redemption, we are assured also that there is but one revelation. This is so rounded and completed and sufficient, that no other is necessary. It precludes, by its own claims, the expectation of any other disclosures, inasmuch as those already made are ample for our guidance in this life and our salvation in the life to come. The peculiarity of the volume is, that it is the only infallible rule of human faith and duty. W. Adams. The Scriptures are not only a revelation, but also the history of a revelation. They are primarily the records of the development and unfolding of the plans of God for the redemption of fallen mankind. These plans involved two great processes—viz., the preparation of salvation for man, and the preparation of man for salvation. Essentially, then, the Scriptures are the records of an educational process, in the development of which the grand and fundamental truths of the biblical religion, in their whole length, breadth and depth, were gradually unfolded through God's providential guidance and instruction of His people. There is a growth from small beginnings, an unfolding of germs, and a historical development. The biblical religion is not a "book religion" in this sense, that from the very outset the whole plan of God was set ideally before the people in the shape of abstract principles and propositions; but these principles and truths were developed and perfected in their fulness rather in connection with the historical growth of the kingdom of God on earth; not, indeed, in the naturalistic and naturalizing sense now current in some circles. In these we are told that the great principles of this religion are the spontaneous and native expression of the religious trend and tendency of the Semitic mind, which has by natural endowment the same pre-eminence in this sphere that the Greek mind had in philosophical and aesthetic thought, and the Roman in legal and administrative. No legitimate interpretation of the Christian Scriptures has yet been able to eliminate from the history of which they are the official documents the Divine factor as the sui generis element. No reasonable hypothesis can satisfactorily explain the deep truths of biblical teachings—no matter whether these truths are brought forth through the facts of God's special dealings with His people in shaping their destinies and fate, or whether they, through prophetic or apostolic inspiration, are given didactically as formulated propositions—unless on the assumption that their source and fountain-head is Divine. Indeed, the very fact that the stage of development at which the religious teachings in Israel had arrived at any particular period in their history was far in advance of their religious status and capacity, is evidence sufficient that it was not Israel that developed the fundamental principles of the biblical religion, but it was the latter which guided and directed the historical growth of the nation. It is just here, in the inversion of these facts, that we find the cardinal error of much of the neological biblical criticism of the day. Schodde. The book is given to us as a whole. It is declared emphatically that the holy men who wrote it were moved by the Holy Ghost. What right have we to modify this declaration, and say that the Holy Ghost moved some of them more than others, or more at one time than at another? The attempt to cut and carve the Bible according to our ideas of good, better and best seems to us very much like taking a living man and trying to show by dissection that some parts of his body are more important than others. Every part of the body is essential to its completeness and perfection. Every part of it was divinely planned. The whole is "fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth" (Eph. 4 : 16). Interior. For Christians it will be enough to know that our Lord Jesus Christ has set the seal of His infallible sanction on the whole of the Old Testament. He found the Hebrew canon just as we have it in our hands to-day, and He treated it as an authority which was above discussion—nay, more, He went out of His way, if we may reverently speak thus, to sanction not a few portions of it which our modern scepticism too eagerly rejects. When He would warn His hearers against the danger of spiritual relapse, He bade them remember Lot's wife. When He would point out how worldly engagements may blind the soul to a coming judgment, He reminds them how men ate, and drank, and married, and were given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. When He would put His finger on a fact in past Jewish history, which, by its admitted reality, would warrant belief in His own resurrection, He points to Jonah, three days and three nights in the whale's belly. When, standing on the Mount of Olives, with the holy city at His feet, He would quote a prophecy, the fulfilment of which would mark for His followers that its impending doom had at last arrived. He desires them to flee to the mountains, where they "shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place." Are we to suppose that, in these and other references to the Old Testament, our Lord was only using what are called ad hominem arguments, or talking down to the level of popular ignorance which He did not Himself share? Not to point out the inconsistency of this supposition with His character as a perfectly sincere religious teacher, it may be observed that, in the Sermon on the Mount, He carefully marks off those features of the popular Jewish religion which He rejects in a manner which makes it certain that, had He not Himself believed in the historic truth of the events and the persons to which He thus refers, He must have said so. But did He then share a popular belief which our higher knowledge has shown to be popular ignorance? and was He mistaken as to the worth of those Scriptures to which He so often and so confidently appealed? There are those who profess to bear the Christian name, and who do not shrink from saying as much as this; but they will find it difficult to persuade mankind that, if He could be mistaken on a matter of such strictly religious importance as this, He can be safely trusted about anything else. Yes, the trustworthiness of the Old Testament is, in fact, inseparable from the trustworthiness of the Lord Jesus Christ; and if we believe that He is the true Light of the world, we shall resolutely close our ears against any suggestions of the falsehood of those Hebrew Scriptures which have received the stamp of His Divine authority. Liddon. The Bible as an inspired record is an infallible and it is the final authority for faith and life. Its inspiration involves its infallibility. Interpreted, as all words must be, by its real spirit, it gives us truth without error. Light and life come from the ministry of the Word. Its hallowed sayings are our stay, when all other support fails; our rock amid the billows; the songs of our pilgrimage; the pledge of our final rest. Such implicit faith may be stigmatized as bibliolatry; but where else can we go to find the words of eternal life? Bibliolatry clings to the letter; spirituality in the letter finds the Spirit, and dares not disown the letter which guided to the Spirit. For the enduring wants of the soul, for the problems of sin, salvation and eternity, we find here an unwavering authority and rest in faith and joy upon the last assurance of the highest testimony, "Thus saith the Lord." And as it is an infallible, so is it a final authority. No man may add unto or take away from the words of this Book. "Here is the judge that ends the strife." Like its Divine Author, it has full oft been called before human tribunals, been reviled, spit upon, yea, buried, that it might rise again with new power, and bless even its persecutors. Of controversy, as history testifies, it has ever been the arbiter; of opposing systems, the invariable conqueror; every scheme of men has become wan and shrivelled at its touch. Beyond its revelations and its prophecies thought cannot reach; it contains the oldest of records as the most living of prophecies. New assailants, in the flush of self-consciousness, call it antiquated, and its antiquity is as that of God Himself. It is older than the stars and the earth, and awaits their dissolution, that all its revelations may be fulfilled. But it is also ever new, as well as ever old; the most progressive, as it is the most conservative of influences; the counterpart of the wisdom of God. All literature has drawn deep and precious draughts from its fountain; its Orient pearls are scattered through all lands; philosophy has there found the test of its errors and the lordliest of its truths. For four thousand years its words have been inspiration and life, comforting the downcast and breaking the oppressor's rod; pledging peace to the penitent, and opening to all the very gates of endless life; subduing with imperial might all other words; speaking with such tones of authority as you read in no other books; and in the very name of the Lord proclaiming a kingdom which has been ever advancing, yet never subdued. And thus like a living power, it has been doing a living and abiding work among the children of men, in every clime, in every language, and now wider than ever before are its words rehearsed. "Its lines have gone out through all the earth, and its words to the end of the world." H. B. Smith. Its spiritual unity is the witness of its Divine origin. Consisting of books, some of them the most ancient in the world, the rest due to an authorship extending over fourteen centuries, and written in several languages—each book when first written, whether historical, devotional, prophetic or doctrinal, as distinct in date and execution, and as independent a work as the histories of Thucydides or the poems of Homer or Sophocles, and by no means composed as an assigned portion of a collection to be subsequently organized into a canon or printed in a single convenient volume for the modern world—these writings, originating thus in widely distant ages and in so many and different authorships, do, nevertheless, when brought together, reveal a spiritual unity; constitute a progressive, but organic whole; agree during all these ages in setting forth one living and holy God, who is the same almighty lover of mankind and lover of righteousness, the same inexorable foe of obstinate vice, crime and sin alike under every dispensation; and manifestly record the slow development of one far-reaching purpose for reconciling men to God—for setting forth, throughout, one way to everlasting life, in the Christ of prophecy, in the Christ of history and the immortal ascended Christ of the Epistles and the Apocalypse. This is a phenomenon unique in literature, and inexplicable except by the truth that the Scriptures record a revelation given by One who saw the end from the beginning; by One Spirit, who took the exclusive work of conveying that revelation out of the hands of any single generation; so precluding the possibility of imposture at first or of conspiracy afterward. For it was impossible that the forgers or false prophets of sixty generations could agree in producing at last the complicated organism of the Old and New Testaments. Edward White. The faith of the Bible is as rigid and experimental in its character as the strictest science of the schools. It makes no arbitrary assumptions, rests on no disputed axioms, but upon the foundation of facts of the most impressive and varied character, it builds up, patiently and surely, its doctrines and its precepts; invites the most searching scrutiny into the testimonials which it adduces; and having by them established its first principles, gives not only for its fundamental axioms, but for its every inference and for each subsequent deduction the word of a God. Do the self-satisfied philosophers of this world tell us of the necessity of facts? We answer, the incarnation, the personal character, the crucifixion and resurrection of the Saviour are facts most fully proved, and standing alone, would be in themselves sufficient to prove the divinity of the revelation that is entwined about them, and of which they constitute the central supports, the chief and favorite theme. And every convert, ransomed by the power of this faith from the tyranny of evil habits, affords in himself a new fact, augmenting the mass of her evidences, and swelling her far-spreading and splendid "cloud of witnesses." W. R. Williams. Scripture does not accomplish its final, perfect end until it secures man's salvation. The essential, decisive test of its Divine efficiency is not its teaching function, but its saving function. It is a revelation of the supernatural, not the natural. Through its length and breadth and depth and height it is Christocentric, and the light which irradiates it from centre to circumference is "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." "For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." The history of Scripture in the experience of the world is in exact accordance with these claims, and fully sustains them. It does make wise to salvation. It is profitable for discipline in righteousness. In the spiritual life of humanity the words of Christ have proved themselves to be spirit and life. Christ as the Life is the Light of the world. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The voice of the written word is the voice of the personal word, and is therefore mighty and living. It speaks with the authority of law, which as Logos is enthroned eternally in the bosom of God. It finds an echo in the conscience. No one who obeys it is led astray, or lost. The wayfaring man who walks its paths of life and peace, though a fool, will not err therein. All who surrender their hearts and lives to its claims find life eternal, peace indestructible, a joy unspeakable and flooded with glory. L. J. Evans. Shall not return unto Me void. It is strictly and unquestionably true that God's word never returns to Him void. In every case it answers the purpose for which it has been sent forth; and it is impossible for any moral or intelligent being to come into contact with it without receiving some impression which will make him either worse or better than he was before. All the truths of God's word are in themselves eternal. They cannot be annihilated—they cannot be destroyed. Like the light that emanates from the sun, they may sometimes be obscured, or modified, or counteracted by other causes, and that to such an extent that their benignant influences may not be sensibly felt; but not a single truth falls on the ear and enters the heart that does not contribute to the formation of personal character. J. A. W. It is a great mistake to imagine the only advantage derived from hearing is the acquisition of new truths. There is a spiritual perception infinitely more important than the knowledge which is merely speculative. The latter is at most but a means to the former, and this perception is not confined to new propositions. It is frequently, nay more frequently, attached to truths already known; and when they are faithfully and affectionately exhibited, they are the principal means of calling into action and strengthening the habits of internal grace. Love, joy, humility, heavenly-mindedness, godly sorrow for sin and holy resolutions against it are not promoted so much by novel speculations as by placing in a just and affecting light the acknowledged truths of the Gospel, and thereby stirring up the mind by way of remembrance. While I am in this tabernacle, said Peter, I will not be negligent to put you in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and are established in the present truth. We appeal to the experience of every real Christian, whether the sweetest and most profitable seasons he has enjoyed have not been those in which he is conscious of having learned no new truth, strictly speaking, but was indulged with spiritual and transforming views of the plain, unquestionable discoveries of the Gospel. As the Word of God is the food of souls, so it corresponds to that character in this respect among others—that the strength and refreshment it imparts depend not upon its novelty, but upon the nutritious properties it possesses. It is a sickly appetite only which craves incessant variety. R. Hall. Our faith in the Holy Scriptures and in what they contain rests upon secure foundations. There are three broad and deeply laid bastions of evidence—the internal evidences of their divineness, the testimony of the Holy Spirit in our experiences, and their transforming power as shown in the history of our race. This last by itself is overwhelming to all objections. The wise and beneficent laws of every civilized power, the organization of society, the benign institutions, all the pure maxims of morals and the comfort and joy and hope bestowed on millions in all the ages, all these are from the Scriptures, which were bestowed on mankind when as yet there was none of them. To say that this book, the source of such beneficent power, is not Divine, would show a forfeiture of our faculties of comprehension. Interior. The Bible does not need defence so much as it needs proclamation. It defends itself wherever it is known. Deep in every soul there dwells forever a witness to the truth, whose clear eye and steady voice will see and respond to it wherever it is known. We do not need to implore men to believe the truth. We only need that they shall apprehend it, and then we may defy them to deny it. And thus the Bible of eternal truth needs no other argument for its support than itself clearly preached. Seelye. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ 56: 1 THUS saith the LORD, Keep ye judgement, and do righteousness: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that holdeth fast by it; that keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Neither let the stranger, that hath joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The LORD will surely separate me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus saith the LORD of the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and hold fast by my covenant: Unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than of sons and of daughters; I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. Also the strangers, that join themselves to the LORD, to minister unto him, and to love the name of the LORD, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath from profaning it, and holdeth fast by my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar: for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all peoples. The Lord God which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside his own that are gathered. 9, 10 All ye beasts of the field, come to devour, yea, all ye beasts in the forest. His watchmen are blind, they are all without knowledge; they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, the dogs are greedy, they can never have enough; and these are shepherds that cannot understand: they have all turned to their own way, each one to his gain, from every quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to-morrow shall be as this day, a day great beyond measure. Chap. 56. While the Church, with its essential institutions, is to continue unimpaired, the old distinctions, national and personal, are to be done away and the Jewish people robbed of that pre-eminence of which its rulers proved themselves unworthy. The day is coming when the righteousness of God is to be fully revealed, without the veils and shackles which had hitherto confined it (verse 1). For this great change the best preparation is fidelity to the spirit of the old economy (verse 2). No personal or national distinctions will be any longer recognized (verse 3). Connection with the Church will no longer be a matter of hereditary right (verses 4, 5). The Church shall be henceforth coextensive with the world (verses 6-8). But first, the carnal Israel must be abandoned to its enemies (verse 9). Its rulers are neither able nor worthy to deliver the people or themselves (verses 10-12). A. This chapter to verse 9 is evidently a continuation of the same general subject which is discussed in the previous chapters, and is closely connected with the great truths communicated in chap. 52: 13-15 and chap. 53, respecting the coming and work of the Messiah. The general design of the prophet seems to be to state the happy results which would follow His coming and His work. In chap. 54 he states that that work would render the establishment and perpetuity of the Church certain. In chap. 55 he states that the work of the Messiah would lay the foundation for the offer of the Gospel to all men, and that it should certainly be successful on the earth and finally triumph, and produce great and important changes. In this chapter (verses 1-9) the same idea is presented in another form, that no one would be excluded from the offer of salvation, and that strangers and foreigners should become connected, with equal privileges, with the people of God. At verse 9 a new subject is introduced—the invasion of the land of Judea by foreign armies and the consequent punishment of the wicked and idolatrous part of the nation. This subject is continued in the following chapter. The following analysis will present a view of the design and scope of this. 1. The kingdom of God was near. The great work of man's redemption to which the prophet referred would not be long delayed, and those who were expecting the coming of the Messiah should be holy (verse 1). 2. The blessedness of those who should be admitted to the privileges connected with the kingdom of God and the coming of the Messiah (verses 2-8). Who they would be: The man who kept the Sabbath (verses 2-4). The stranger and foreigner (verses 3-6). The eunuch (verses 3, 4). None should be excluded, whatever might be their rank in life or the estimation in which they were held among men. The blessedness of that state; the privileges of thus being admitted to the favor and friendship of God (verses 7, 8). They should be brought to His holy mountain; they should be made joyful in the house of prayer; their offerings should be accepted; these favors should be extended to all people (verses 7, 8). 3. A prophecy respecting the invasion of the land on account of the crimes of the nation. The invasion is represented under the image of wild beasts coming to devour (verse 9). The cause of this: The indolence and unfaithfulness of the watchmen (verse 10). Their selfishness, avarice and covetousness (verse 11). Their revelry and intemperance (verse 12). Barnes. 1. The doctrine of the passage is simply this, that they who enjoy extraordinary privileges or expect extraordinary favors are under corresponding obligations to do the will of God; and moreover that the nearer the manifestation of God's mercy, whether in time or in eternity, the louder the call to righteousness of life. These truths are of no restricted application, but may be applied wherever the relation of a church or chosen people can be recognized. A. 1,2. What is here required is: 1. That we be honest and just in all our dealings, "Keep ye judgment and do justice." Walk by rule and make conscience of what you say and do, that you do no wrong to any; render to all their dues exactly, and in exacting what is due to you keep up a court of equity in your own bosom, to moderate the rigors of the law. Be ruled by that golden rule, "Do as you would be done by." Magistrates must administer justice wisely and faithfully. This is required to evidence the sincerity of our faith and repentance and to open the way of mercy, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." God is true to us, let us be so to one another. 2. That we religiously observe the Sabbath day. We are not just if we rob God of His time. Sabbath sanctification is here put for all the duties of the first table, the fruits of our love to God; as justice and judgment for all those of the second table, the fruits of our love to our neighbor. The duty required is to keep the Sabbath; to keep it as a talent we are to trade with, as a treasure we are intrusted with, "Keep it holy, keep it safe, keep it with care and caution, keep it from polluting it; allow neither yourselves not others either to violate the holy rest or omit the holy work of that day." The encouragement we have to do this duty, "Blessed is he that doeth it." The way to have the blessing of God upon our employments all the week is to make conscience and make a business of Sabbath sanctifications; in doing so we shall be the better qualified to do judgment and justice. The more godliness, the more honesty (1 Tim. 2:2). 3. That we have nothing to do with sin, "Blessed is the man that keeps his hand from doing evil," any wrong to his neighbor, in body, goods or good name; or, more generally, anything that is displeasing to God and hurtful to his own soul. The best evidence of our having kept the Sabbath well will be a care to keep a good conscience all the week. H. An upright, holy, honest man not only worships God and keeps the Sabbath, but he is upright in the discharge of all the duties which he owes to his fellow-men. These two specifications are evidently designed to include all the influences of religion—the proper service and worship of God and an upright and holy life. Never, in fact, are they separated. Barnes. The Son of God and Son of Man is still widening out and building up for us His new kingdom on the earth—which wherever it really comes regenerates society and makes human life a new thing. Into that kingdom He sets the gate open. But though we may be in it there is this stern and solemn fact revealed there, that we are not of it and it is not in us unless we are growing every day into its in-most principle and law; unless we are getting liberated and purified by its charity from the selfishness and pride of that other kingdom which is closer to our senses, has a louder voice, and wears a handsomer outside; unless we are continually looking about us to see how we can be more just to those at our side, more helpful to those that seem to stand below us, reverencing more and more both God and man because we see both to be one in the glorified humanity of our Lord. F. D. H. 2. A reference to the primary and secondary ends of the Sabbatical institution and the belief involved in its observance. In the first place, it implied a recognition of Jehovah as the omnipotent creator of the universe (Ex. 20:11; 31:17); in the next place, as the sanctifier of His people, not in the technical or theological sense, but as denoting Him by whom they had been set apart as a peculiar people (Ex. 31:13; Ezek. 20:12); in the next place, as the Saviour of this chosen people from the bondage of Egypt (De. 5:15). Of these great truths the Sabbath was a weekly remembrancer, and its observance by the people a perpetual recognition and profession, besides the practical advantages accruing to the maintenance of a religious spirit by the weekly recurrence of a day of rest. A. Keeping the Sabbath sacred is put here in one clause, and in its parallel clause withholding the hand from every moral evil, as if the observance of the Sabbath were designed to comprehend or represent all religious observances, the entire external worship of God. This prominence given to the Sabbath must certainly imply that God holds its observance in specially high esteem, and that He intends it shall be a perpetual, and not a merely Jewish and transient institution. This high appreciation of the Sabbath and solemn purpose to make it perpetual rested on substantial grounds, the Sabbath being the grand public recognition of His creatorship; a sign and seal also of special covenant relation with Jehovah as the God of His people—"that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you" (Ex. 31:13). Moreover it had a vital utility as a reservation of time from other intruding and preventing avocations, for the unbroken study of God in His word and ordinances, and for His worship, both public and private. The Sabbath considered as "made for man" was the fruit of consummate wisdom and of true love to man's best interests. H. C. 3. The essential meaning of this verse is, that all external disabilities shall be abolished, whether personal or national. A.—The son of the stranger is any foreigner not of Jewish birth. If he is willing to join himself as a proselyte to God's people, let him not say or think that he and his class are walled out from communion and fellowship in the Church. The door of admission is to be set fully open and every middle wall of partition is to come down. H. C. Two descriptions of persons are mentioned in this verse, strangers and eunuchs, who, looking to the economy of the Old Testament, might expect they should have an inferior share in the kingdom of Christ. Vitringa.—God declares here, that the Gentile should be accepted, under the Gospel dispensation (the partition wall being broken down), equally with the Jew; and that the times were now coming when the inward endowments of the soul be sufficient to give persons a title to the communion of saints, and their names be written in the book of life, a more lasting remembrance than posterity could entitle them to. W. Lowth. 4,5. What it is that God delights in may be learned from chaps. 66 : 4 ; Jer. 9 : 24 ; Hos. 6 : 6. By holding fast my covenant is meant adhering to His compact with me, which includes obedience to the precepts and faith in the promises. The promise is not merely one of free access to the material sanctuary, but of a home in the household or family of God, an image of perpetual occurrence in the Psalms of David. A beautiful coincidence and partial fulfilment of the promise is pointed out by J. D. Michaelis, in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch whose conversion is recorded in the eighth of Acts, and whose memory is far more honored in the Church than it could have been by a long line of illustrious descendants. A. 7. Our Saviour quotes a part of the last clause, not in reference to its main sense, but to what is incidentally mentioned—viz., its being called a house of prayer. This part of the sentence was applicable to the material temple while it lasted ; but the whole prediction could be verified only after its destruction, when the house of God even upon earth ceased to be a limited locality, and became coextensive with the Church in its enlargement and diffusion. The form of expression is derived, however, from the ceremonies of the old economy, and worship is described by names familiar to the writer and his original readers. (Cf. Hos. 14 : 3 ; Heb. 13 : 13 ; John 4 : 21-23.) A.—“ My holy mountain,” “ My house of prayer,” “ burnt offerings and sacrifices upon mine altar ;” all come from the Jewish age. Yet their real significance belongs to the Gospel age and pledges to Gentiles as to Jews equal privileges of acceptable worship and of filial relationship to God. The prophecy anticipates that great truth which broke in slowly upon the dark minds of the Christian brotherhood soon after the day of the great Pentecost, “ Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons ; but in every nation, he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him” (Acts 10 : 34, 35). H. C. It is not an enlargement, but a transformation of the Jewish dispensation which is here anticipated ; not a conversion to Israel, but to Israel’s God ; not a merging of all nations into Israel, but a breaking down of separating walls ; not a universal synagogue, but a universal Church, in which all that had been national, preparatory, symbolic, typical, would merge into the spiritual reality of fulfilment. But what is this prophecy from the Book of Isaiah other than a prediction of the words of Christ concerning those other sheep of His, not of the Jewish fold, whom He must bring, and who should hear His voice, that so there might be one flock and one Shepherd—words which He consecrated by His latest prayer. A. E. Make them joyful in My house of prayer. They who truly love and fear God above all things find more joy and comfort in His house than anywhere else ; the whole work of the place is delightful to them, the Spirit of God co-operating with them in it, and God never failing to perform His promise here made to those who come to His house duly prepared, and keep their minds intent upon Him and the duties there performed. Bp. Beveridge. God has ever ordained to man a set place for his regular, stated periods of worship. Neither groves nor hill-tops were God’s first temples. Even in the patriarchal ages, among the nomadic generations, the few true worshippers of Jehovah performed their worship before the narrow altar of stones, the erection of their own hands, builded unto the Lord in some selected spot, which altar was set up once only in each place where they sojourned. One of the first commands of God to Israel, after their separation as His people, was, “ Let them make Me a sanctuary,” a place where I may dwell ! First the tabernacle, and afterward the Temple in Jerusalem. This was called God’s holy dwelling—His house. For centuries and generations this was His holy dwelling-place. Under the better spiritual dispensation the single place hallowed by God’s special presence became many. His dwelling-place God ever since has made, wherever, in lowly or costly structure, devout hearts congregate to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Every such house solemnly set apart to His worship, every such house where God Himself is present—and only so long as He is present—is God’s house. And God’s house is pre-eminently the house of prayer—that is, of communion with God, in thankful adoration and praise, in supplication, in the believing reception of truth and promise, and in the participation of sacramental provision and privilege. B. 8. He who gathers the outcasts of Israel to Himself will also gather the outcast Gentiles as well. Would He not herein signify His special pleasure in gathering outcast ones—those who are ostracized by the pride or selfishness of man, but are for that reason only the more welcome to the compassionate sympathy of the Infinite Father ? H. C. All may come; all may have the assurance that their offering will be acceptable. The whole world lies on a level before God in regard to its origin, for God "has made of one blood all the nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth" (Acts 18: 26). The whole race is on a level in regard to moral character, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the whole race is on a level in regard to redemption, for the same Saviour died for all; there is the same Spirit to sanctify all; the same heaven is offered to all; and the same eternal and most blessed God is ready to admit all to His favor, and to confer on all everlasting life. What thanks do we owe to the God of grace for the blessings of the eternal Gospel; and how deeply anxious should we be that the offers of salvation should in fact be made known to all men! The wide world may be saved, and there is not one of the human race so degraded in human estimation by rank, or color, or ignorance who may not be admitted to the same heaven with Abraham and the prophets, and whose prayers and praises would not be as acceptable to God as those of the most magnificent monarch who ever wore a crown. Come the day then when all nations shall hear the glad tidings of salvation; and when the offers of eternal redemption shall be made to all the dwellers on the earth. Barnes. 9. We have here simply one of those alternations and transitions which are not only frequent in this book, but one of its characteristics, and indeed essential to the writer's purpose of exhibiting God's dealing with His Church both in wrath and mercy. From the foregoing promises of growth, He now reverts to intervening judgments and their causes. A.—This abrupt change of subject, from Gospel promise made to outcasts, foreigners and men deemed unclean, to the announcement of devouring ruin upon a class whose watchmen are blind and whose shepherds are ignorant, sensual and selfish, can be accounted for only upon the supposition that the prophet has a mission to two classes who are morally the antipodes of each other; the one class honestly fearing and seeking God; the other, apostate, judicially blinded, and near the point of being rejected of God as incorrigible. These two classes constituted the nominally Jewish community at the Saviour's advent. H. C. 10. "Watchman" is another term for "shepherd," referring here to the religious teachers of the Lord's people—scribes, Pharisees, doctors of the law, and at an earlier age the false prophets and corrupt priests. They are blind, mentally and spiritually—a fact to which Isaiah repeatedly refers. H. C.—They feed not the flock, but fleece it. They are every one looking to his own way, minding his own private interests, and have no regard at all to the public welfare; it was Paul's complaint of the watchmen in his time (Phil. 2: 21), "All seek their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ's." Every one is for propagating his own opinion, advancing his own party, raising his own family and having everything to his own mind, while the common concerns of the public are wretchedly neglected and postponed. They look every one to his gain from his quarter, from his end or part of the work, they are for gain from every quarter. H. 11,12. The description drops the figure of the dog after the first clause, and speaks of the same religious leaders as themselves shepherds who are void of just understanding; supremely selfish; fearfully, disgustingly sensual; given to strong drink, and spending the live-long night and even the next day in the long-protracted debaucheries of beastly intoxication. H. C. 12. They were secure and confident of the continuance of their prosperity and ease; they said, "To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant; we shall have as much to spend upon our lusts to-morrow as we have today." They had no thought at all of their own frailty and mortality, though they were shortening their days and hastening their deaths by their excesses. They had no dread of the judgments of God, though they were daily provoking Him and making themselves liable to His wrath and curse. They never considered the uncertainty of all the delights and enjoyments of sense, how they perish in the using and pass away with the lusts of them. They resolved to continue in this wicked course whatever their consciences said to the contrary, to be as merry to-morrow as they are today. "But boast not thyself of to-morrow, when perhaps this night thy soul shall be required of thee." H. Whoever may order our lives for us, it is very certain that the ordering of them is not left in our hands. If it were, our emotions would be more simple, our conditions more stable and more constant; we should abide in prosperity, our joy would be unmixed with grief. As it is, we live in a constant flux of change. We know not what a day may bring forth. Almost all we know of to-morrow is that it will not be as to-day; it may be more abundant, but its abundance is just as likely to be burdensome and painful to us as it is to be helpful and invigorating. To-day we may be clothed in garments of heaviness, to-morrow we may exchange them for the robes of mirth. To-day we try with trembling lips to frame some words of comfort for those who mourn an irreparable loss; to-morrow our lips run over with laughter and utter good wishes for those who sit at the very climax of joy and hope. Cox. We are prone to look at the future as if it all were within our power. We plan for earthly happiness, as if our own purpose were omnipotent. And even sore experience does not teach us that our arm reaches but a little distance and that we are subject to a governing power, which employs us as the potter does the clay. Of the majority of the schemes and enterprises which engage the solicitude of the busy world, it may be said, they include no thought of providence. The worldly mind and even the Christian mind under wrong influences continues its way as if self-sufficient. "To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant." J. W. A. These words may be used so as to make them the utterance of a sober certainty which will not be put to shame. When we turn our hope away from earth to God and fill the future with the light of His presence and the certainty of His truth, the mists and doubts roll away, the future is as certain as the past, and hope as assured of its facts as memory. For we have an unchanging and inexhaustible God, and He is the true guarantee of the future for us. Today's health may be to-morrow's sickness, today's happy companionship of love to-morrow's aching solitude of heart; but to-day's God will be to-morrow's God, to-day's Christ will be to-morrow's Christ. . . . Then let each new day find in us a deeper love, a more perfect consecration and more joyful service, and so in all the beauties of the Christian soul and in all the blessings of the Christian life "to-morrow shall be as this day and much more abundant." . . . That will be the sublimest application of this text when, dying, we can calmly be sure that though to-day be on this side and to-morrow on the other bank of the black river, there will be no break in the continuity, but only an infinite growth in our life, and heaven's to-morrow shall be as earth's to-day, and much more abundant. A. M. 57:1 THE righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. 2 He entereth into peace; they rest in their beds, each one that walketh in his uprightness. 3 But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore. 4 Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, and draw out 5 the tongue? are ye not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood, ye that inflame yourselves among the oaks, under every green tree; that slay the children in the valleys, under 6 the clefts of the rocks? Among the smooth stones of the valley is thy portion; they, they are thy lot: even to them hast thou poured a drink offering, thou hast offered an oblation. 7 Shall I be appeased for these things? Upon a high and lofty mountain hast thou set thy 8 bed: thither also wentest thou up to offer sacrifice. And behind the doors and the posts hast thou set up thy memorial: for thou hast discovered thyself to another than me, and art gone up; thou hast enlarged thy bed, and made thee a covenant with them; thou lovedst 9 their bed where thou sawest it. And thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send thine ambassadors far off, and didst debase thyself even 10 unto hell. Thou wast wearied with the length of thy way; yet saidst thou not, There is no 11 hope: thou didst find a quickening of thy strength; therefore thou wast not faint. And of whom hast thou been afraid and in fear, that thou liest, and hast not remembered me, nor laid it to thy heart? have not I held my peace even of long time, and thou fearest me not? 12, 13 I will declare thy righteousness; and as for thy works, they shall not profit thee. When thou criest, let them which thou hast gathered deliver thee; but the wind shall take them, a breath shall carry them all away: but he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain. And he shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block out of the way of my people. 15. For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to 16 revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the 17 souls which I have made. For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and smote him, 18. I hid my face and was wroth: and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to 19 his mourners. I create the fruit of the lips: Peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him 20 that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea; 21 for it cannot rest, and its waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. Chap. 57. This chapter is evidently closely connected in sense with chap. 56:9-12. In the closing part of the last chapter the prophet had said that the land of Israel would be invaded by foreign armies represented under the image of ravening beasts come to devour. One of the causes of this he had also stated—to wit: the general licentiousness, avarice and intemperance of the rulers of the nation. The same general subject is pursued in this chapter. The prophet states specifically the sins of the nation at large—evidently as a reason why the calamities of the foreign invasion were coming upon them. It is probable that the chapter has primary reference to the times of Manasseh. It was a time of persecution and blood. The righteous were put to death; the public service of God was profaned and desecrated; and the evils of idolatry were seen and felt, under the royal patronage, throughout the land. Yet notwithstanding this, the nation was stupid and insensible. They were not affected as they should have been by the fact that the righteous were cut off by persecution, and that idolatry was patronized throughout the land. A few, like the prophets, felt, and deeply felt. Their hearts were desponding, and their spirits drooped. To encourage them, and to rebuke the mass of the stupid and guilty nation, was the design of this chapter. Barnes. The case of the corrupt portion of God's ancient people is the theme through the greater part of this chapter, which therefore stands in close connection with verses 9-12 of the chapter previous. From the judgments which fall on the wicked the righteous are removed by a peaceful death and go to their rest (verses 1, 2); wicked men contemning the righteous, are themselves really worthy of contempt (verses 3, 4); their idolatry is put in literal terms (verses 5, 6); and then in figurative (verses 7-9). They had persisted in their sin the more fearlessly because God had been extremely forbearing (verses 10-12); but judgments must come and test the value of their helpers (verse 13). The trustful in God shall find help in Him through His great condescension and mercy (verses 13-19); but only unrest and sorrow will be the lot of the wicked (verses 20, 21). H. C. 1. See the blessedness of the righteous: they are "taken away from the evil." The Lord doeth this for them because He loves them. The words to come are not in the original. They are taken from all present evil. They are taken from an evil nature: this is the grief and burden of their righteous souls from day to day; but the death of the body shall quite destroy the body of sin and death; they shall drop this body, and wing their way to endless glory. They are taken from the evil of sin: though this did not reign over them, yet it raged in them; though they were not under its dominion, yet it warred in their members and made them cry out, Oh, wretched! Sin brought death into the world: death shall be the grave of sin: the righteous is not taken away in his sins, but from the evil of them. They are taken from that evil of evils, unbelief. From all the evil of this present world, from all pains, trials and afflictions, of whatever kind, we shall be forever delivered. This is the negative blessedness of the righteous. Who shall describe their positive happiness? It hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive what the Lord hath prepared for them who love Him: this we must die fully to know. O love the Lord, all ye His saints. William Mason. 2. This seems to be added as a kind of afterthought, to limit what immediately precedes, and preclude its application to all the dead without distinction. The peace and rest here meant are those of the body in the grave and of the soul in heaven; the former being frequently referred to as a kind of pledge and adumbration of the latter. A.—Walked in uprightness. This is literally; “the man walking straightforward,” in the moral sense. The passage shows conclusively that the prophets of Isaiah’s age knew of an after life of blessedness for the righteous, but for the righteous only. H. C. Let all people “mark the perfect man and behold the upright,” take notice that “the end of that man is peace.” They that walk in their uprightness while they live shall enter into peace when they die. A peaceful death has concluded the troublesome life of many a good man; and all is well that thus ends everlastingly well. H.—It is true that the dying saint “goes in peace.” He has calmness in his dying, as well as peace in his grave. He leaves the world in peace. He forgives all who have injured him; prays for all who have persecuted him; and peacefully and calmly dies. He lies in a peaceful grave—often represented in the Scriptures as a place of repose, where the righteous “sleep” in the hope of being awakened in the morning of the resurrection. He enters into the rest of heaven—the world of perfect and eternal repose. No persecution comes there; no trial awaits him there; no calamity shall meet him there. Thus in all respects the righteous leave the world in peace; and thus death ceases to be a calamity, and this most dreaded of all evils is turned into the highest blessing. Barnes. We ought not to think of those whom we have loved and lost as if they had gone, carrying with them declining powers, and still bearing the marks of this inevitable law of stagnation and then of decay, under which they groaned here. Think of them rather as having, if they sleep in Jesus, reversed all this, as having carried with them, indeed, all the gifts of matured experience and ripened wisdom which the slow years brings, but likewise as having left behind all the weariness of accomplished aims, the monotony of a formed character, the rigidity of limbs that have ceased to grow. Think of them as receiving again from the hands of Christ much of which they were robbed by the lapse of years. Think of them as then crowned with loving-kindness and satisfied with good, so that their youth is renewed like the eagle’s. Think of them as again joyjoyous, with the joy of beginning a career, which has no term but the sum of all perfection in the likeness of the infinite God. They rise like the song-bird, aspiring to the heavens, circling round, and ever higher, which “singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singeth”—up and up through the steadfast blue to the sun! They shall lose the marks of age as they grow in eternity, and they who have stood before the throne the longest shall be likest Him who sat in the sepulchre young with immortal strength, radiant with unwithering beauty. A. M. 3,4. The speaker turns suddenly to accost the wicked. The English version fails to do full justice to the force of this transition. The Hebrew reads literally, “And you—draw ye near hither;” the word “you” being made emphatic. Are not ye yourselves far more contemptible than those you contemn? To show this yet more clearly, he proceeds to describe their idolatrous habits, than which nothing could be more worthy of contempt. H. C. 5-8. The minute description of idolatry given in this passage is exceedingly perplexing to those writers who fix the date of composition at the period of the exile. Hendewerk makes one concession really valuable—viz., that the efforts of Gesenius and Hitzig to reconcile the terms of the description with the state of things during the captivity are wholly abortive. A perfect solution of the difficulty is afforded by our own hypothesis, that the prophet, from the whole field of vision spread before him, singles out the most revolting traits and images by which he could present in its true aspect the guilt and madness of apostasy from God. A. 9. A reference to efforts to secure foreign alliances. These alliances were closely related to idolatry both because they involved apostasy from the true God to other nations and to their idol gods for help, and because they naturally opened the door for introducing among themselves the gods of other nations. H. C. 10. Thou hast tried all ways to save thyself from the evils that threaten thee: with what pains didst thou court the favor of foreign princes! and to no purpose; yet thou didst not refrain: “thou hast found the life of thine hand”—that is, thou hast made a shift by these methods to support thyself for the present, therefore thou hast felt no remorse. Bp. Wilson. Either by the aid which they had obtained from foreign alliances, or by the gratification experienced in the service of idols, they had found so much to uphold them that they had not been in utter despair, and had not been led to seek God. And the passage may teach the general truth, that notwithstanding all the trials and disappointments of life, still worldly souls find so much comfort in the ways of sin that they are not utterly prostrated and overwhelmed in despair. They still find the "life of their hand in them." If a plan fails they repeat it, or they try another. In the pursuits of ambition, of wealth and of fashion, notwithstanding all the expense and irksomeness, and disappointment, and care, they find a kind of pleasure which sustains them, and enough success to prompt them to renewed efforts and to keep them from returning to God. They wander from object to object; they become weary in the pursuit, yet they do not abandon it; they still cling to hope though often repulsed—and though the world gives them no permanent comfort—though wealth, and ambition, and gayety, and vice all fail in imparting the happiness which they sought, yet they do not give it up in despair. They still feel that it is to be found in some other way than by the disagreeable necessity of returning to God, and they wander from object to object, and from land to land, and become exhausted in the pursuit, and are worn down by age, and still are not ready to say, "There is no hope, we give it up in despair, and we will now seek happiness in God." The world is still pursued with just as little success, with increased exhaustion, with continually augmenting evidence that it cannot meet and satisfy the desires of the undying soul, and with just as much reluctance to seek permanent bliss in God. Barnes. 11. Have not I held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not?**—that is, And therefore thou fearest me not? Sinners take encouragement to continue in sin from God's patience and long-suffering. W. Lowth. 12. This language seems ironical, inasmuch as her righteousness was only outrageous iniquity. The sentiment is, Thy righteousness, such as it is, I will set plainly before thee, a righteousness that shall profit thee nothing, but shall only bring a curse upon thy guilty head. 13. When thou criest out in the panic of appalling fear, then let thy foreign gods, troops and all other helpers whatsoever rush to thy help. All will be in vain, for the wind shall bear them all away, yea a breath (vanity) shall take them. They fly like chaff before the whirlwind. But mark the contrast. He who puts his trust in Me shall have Canaan for his inheritance and My holy mountain for his home and possession. These expressions bear a wealth of precious meaning. Consider how the pilgrim travellers, forty years in the wilderness, learned the significance of possessing the land of promise, and how it became to them an image of the heavenly country. H. C. Trust in Me shall possess. Trust in a Divine person, not only for the forgiveness of sins, but for every good that He bestows and man needs; not in His grace alone, but as well in His providence; in the end and also in the way thither; in the Divine constitution and order of things; in that fatherly care of God which comprehends all our wants and ways—this is our rest and strength, through which we may have such hold of the universe as to make "all things" ours. O. E. Daggett. 14. The idea is, that the obstacles should be removed from the path of those who put their trust in God. The language is derived from the return from the exile, as if persons should go before them, and should cry, "Cast ye up," etc.; or as if the cry of the people all along their journey should be, "Remove the obstacles to their return." This cry is often heard before the coming of a distinguished prince or conqueror in the East. The Rev. Joseph Wolf stated in a lecture in Philadelphia (September 18th, 1837), that on entering Jerusalem from the west, in the direction of Gaza, the road for a considerable distance from Jerusalem was so full of stones that it was impracticable to ride, and those who were entering the city were obliged to dismount. When the Pacha (Ibrahim, son of Mohammed Ali) approached Jerusalem, it was customary for a considerable number of laborers to go before him and remove the stones from the way. This was done amid a constant cry, "Cast up, cast up the way. Remove the stones, remove the stones." And on a placard or standard it was written, "The Pacha is coming," and everywhere the cry was heard, "The Pacha is coming, cast up the way; remove the stones." Barnes. This prophecy, in design as well as fact, is perfectly unlimited to any one event or period, yet perfectly defined as a description of God's mode of dealing with His Church and with those who, although in it, are not of it. A.—The sentiment is, There shall be a call to clear the way for the true people of God to come out from among the wicked before Divine judgments shall crush and exterminate them. Prophetically its outlook may be to that sifting process which severed the true Israel from the false before the final destruction of the nation by the Romans. Or, with a less specific application it may teach in general that God's true children are forewarned and will be providentially aided to come out from among the incorrigibly wicked before they meet their fearful doom. H. C. 15. Here the light and hope of the Gospel dawns once more amid the threatenings. Mercy and grace to the humble and contrite forms the message in the first beatitudes, and the great law of Gospel promise. Birks. You need not hesitate to trust the promise which is involved in this command, for the High and Holy One has made the following solemn declaration. The same two epithets are joined in chap. 6 : 1, which is regarded by the modern critics as the oldest extant composition of the genuine Isaiah. A.—These are indeed sublime conceptions of the glorious God making eternity His dwelling place; exalted high above all creatures; rejoicing in the name “Holy” as best expressing His infinite purity and never sullied excellence; but representing Him, though so high and holy, as yet condescending to dwell with the contrite and the lowly of earth for the special purpose of reviving their spirit and comforting their heart. His people may trust Him none the less because He is the High and Exalted One, inhabiting eternity, rejoicing in the name “Holy,” for, though so high, and withal so pure, yet He dwells with the humble and lowly none the less for this, but rather the more surely and the more graciously. H. C. Eternity, magnificent as it is, never was without an Inhabitant. Eternity means nothing by itself. It merely expresses the existence of the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth it. We make a fanciful distinction between eternity and time—there is no real distinction. We are in eternity at this moment. That has begun to be with us which never began with God. Our only measure of time is by the succession of ideas. It is not so with God. There is no succession of ideas with Him. Every possible idea is present with Him now. It was present with Him ten thousand years ago. God’s dwelling-place is that eternity which has neither past nor future, but one vast, immeasurable present. There is a second measure given us of God in this verse. It is in respect of space. He dwelleth in the high and lofty place. He dwelleth, moreover, in the most insignificant place—even the heart of man. And the idea by which the prophet would here exhibit to us the greatness of God is that of His eternal omnipresence. It is difficult to say which conception carries with it the greatest exaltation—that of boundless space or that of unbounded time. If every other trace of Deity has been expunged by the fall, these two, at least, defy destruction—the thought of eternal time and the thought of immeasurable space. The third measure which is given us of God respects His character. His name is Holy. The chief idea which this would convey to us is separation from evil. Brethren, there is a time drawing near when those of us who shall stand at His right hand, purified from all evil taint, shall be able to comprehend absolutely what is meant by the holiness of God. At present, with hearts cleaving down to earth, and tossed by a thousand gusts of unholy passion, we can only form a dim conception relatively of that which it implies. None but the pure can understand purity. The chief knowledge which we have of God’s holiness comes from our acquaintance with unholiness. We know what impurity is—God is not that. We know what injustice is—God is not that. We know what restlessness, and guilt, and passion are, and deceitfulness, and pride, and waywardness—all these we know. God is none of these. And this is our chief acquaintance with His character. We know what God is not. We scarcely can be rightly said to know—that is, to feel, what God is. And therefore this is implied in the very name of holiness. Holiness in the Jewish sense means simply separateness. From all that is wrong, and mean, and base, our God is forever separate. F. W. Robertson. “The High and Lofty One dwells with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit;” and the end of His dwelling there is to “revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones;” by His sweet influences the lowly to exalt and the bruised to heal. True Christians are His “temples,” and He “dwells and walks in them.” They have worshipping and adoring thoughts of Him, and keep up in their hearts sacrifices of prayer and praise, which render their souls fitter temples to Him than even His awful palace in the olden Church. And, then, His “exceeding great and precious promises,” received by faith, make them “partakers of the Divine nature;” not, indeed, of the substance of God, the Divine nature itself, but of “a Divine nature,” a nature like God’s, the Divine “image and likeness” recovered. Specially doth Christ “abide in them.” A precious Saviour, He “dwells in their hearts by faith.” By faith, their hearts sweetly entertain this friend and brother of their souls. By faith, they “put on Christ,” with all the fruits of believing, till they stand “conformed to His image,” dressed both in a robe of righteousness, which He has externally wrought for them, and in a garment of holiness, which they have inwardly caught from among His shining graces. He is, moreover, "in them, the hope of glory." Their inmost thoughts, affections and desires do so centre in Him, that they cannot doubt of ultimately sharing with Him the glory to which He is exalted. J. S. Stone. The soul of man was meant for all that it is capable of being. And its highest end is to be yielded up to God, that His will may work in it and through it. In a word, it is to be holy as He is holy; it is to be His consecrated, His living temple—His sacred name inscribed on its portal—all the wealth of time and probation a willing sacrifice upon its altar. And how consonant and accordant is this with the majesty of God and the blessedness of man! A living temple! A human spirit within which the Eternal Spirit condescending will deign to dwell! Gillett. Nothing in external worship is dear to Him, where the heart is foreign and alien to Him. There is no place so satisfactory for Him to rest in as the heart of His intelligent creatures; a mind penetrated with a sense of sin, touched with gratitude, glowing with love and prostrating itself in the deepest humiliation before Him, this is the place of his rest, and He bows the heaven itself and comes down to take possession of such a temple as is furnished by the heart of that man. R. Hall. "I dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit." There is this distinction between what is great in God and what is great in man. To be independent of everything in the universe is God's glory, and to be independent is man's shame. All that God has, He has from Himself—all that man has, he has from God. And the moment man cuts himself off from God, that moment he cuts himself off from grandeur. In two things the greatness of man consists. One is to have God so dwelling in us as to impart His character to us; and the other is to have God so dwelling in us that we recognize His presence, and know that we are His and He is ours. They are two things perfectly distinct. To have God in us, this is salvation; to know that God is in us, this is assurance. F. W. R. Christ discloses a second universe in the soul, with its depths of infinite yearning and heights of capability, and shows the greatness that is in man, by touching human nature with the Divine which is in Himself. The man who, with unscaled eyes and humble heart, enters this new world, perceives a growing grandeur worthy of all that God has done or can do for it—a world that goes forward not to death, but life, and that even now floods all the stars with a purer, tenderer light than the astronomer's tube can reveal. The character of God rises more conspicuously Divine—love softening greatness, and greatness commending love. "The High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, and that dwells in the high and holy place, dwelleth with Him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Ker. Nothing of more serious import can possibly be expressed than what is here declared to us, that no communion between the Holy One and the proud man can ever find a place, but only with the sinner truly penitent. The higher our heart raises itself, the farther He draws back; the deeper our soul abases itself, the lower the hand of mercy is silently stretched forth toward us. Never have we less to fear than when we sink ourselves; never more to hope than when we begin to despair of all save One. "First, when you have really become nothing, can God make anything of you:" the paradox of Luther remains always true and beautiful, but not so beautiful as this passage from Isaiah. He who in such a passage does not hear the voice of God Himself is deaf in spiritual matters. And he who through God's grace not merely receives it, but with trembling hand grasps it as the firm staff of his own support, ever gives thanks anew for it, clings fast to it, pressing forward to the heights which undoubtedly he shall at last attain, though it may well be—only through the depths. Van O. 16. The great mercy and compassion of God toward His people are manifested especially in His corrective discipline. He is constrained to "contend" with them in stern displeasure, rebuking them for their iniquity; yet even then His great compassion sets the shortest limit possible. "He will not contend forever," "for He knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust." He takes it into account that no human soul can long endure under His rebuke. H. C. We are not to despair because we have faltered and failed; nor need we write bitter things against ourselves; we are just what others are—erring children of a fallen race. Hence, instead of despairing, repining or hating ourselves, we should patiently endeavor to correct our faults, amend our ways and doings, and above all we should commit the keeping of our souls unto God in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator. However much we may despise ourselves, we are dear to the heart of God; and He who has bought us with His blood has not paid the wondrous price of our redemption to lose us without a struggle or abandon us because of frailties and infirmities. Let us turn our hearts to Him, and content ourselves to lie low at His feet and passive in His hands, that we may be made vessels unto honor, fitted for the Master's use. Anon. 17. The sentiments of the verse are that covetousness is a sin often fearfully prevalent; always most provoking to God; a sin for which He often chastises men, and yet one which His best efforts fail to cure. H. C. 18. God takes away a little comfort, that He may make room in the soul for a greater degree of comfort. This, the prophet Isaiah sweetly shows: "I have seen his ways, and will heal him; I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him, and to his mourners." Bear up sweetly, O precious soul! thy storm shall end in a calm, and thy dark night in a sunshiny day. Thy mourning shall be turned into rejoicing, and the waters of consolation shall be sweeter and higher in thy soul than ever. The mercy is surely thine, but the time of giving it is the Lord's. T. Brooks. No human heart, however wounded, continues always to bleed. Some gracious vegetation creeps over the wildest ruin. The roughest edges are smoothed by time. Vitality asserts itself; other interests have a right to be entertained, and are entertained. The recuperative powers come into play, and the pang departs and poignancy is softened. The nightly guest, Sorrow, slips away, and ere we know, another sits in her place. Some of us try to fight against that merciful process, and seem to think that it is a merit to continue, by half artificial means, the first moment of pain, and that it is treason to some dear remembrances to let life have its way, and to-day have its rights. That is to set ourselves against the dealings of God, and to refuse to forgive Him for what His love has done for us. But another thought seems to me to be even more beautiful—viz., the transformation of the evil, sorrow itself, into the radiant form of joy. A prince comes to a poor man's hovel, is hospitably received in the darkness, and, being received and welcomed, in the morning slips off the rags and appears as he is. Sorrow is Joy disguised. If it be accepted, if the will submit, if the heart let itself be untwined, that its tendrils may be coiled closer round the heart of God, then the transformation is sure to come, and joy will dawn on those who have done rightly—that is, submissively and thankfully—by their sorrows. It will not be a joy like what the world calls joy—loud-voiced, boisterous, ringing with idiot laughter; but it will be pure, and deep, and sacred, and permanent. A white lily is better than a flaunting peony, and the joy into which sorrow accepted turns is pure and refining and good. All our troubles, big and little, may be converted into gladnesses if we accept them as God meant them. A. M. Nothing doth so establish the mind amid the rollings and turbulency of present things as both a look above them and a look beyond them; above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled; and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end to which by that hand they shall be brought. Leighton. 19. I create the fruit of the lips. "The sacrifice of praise," saith Paul (Heb. 13:15), "is the fruit of the lips." God creates this fruit of the lips by giving new subject and cause of thanksgiving by His mercies conferred on those among His people who acknowledge and bewail their transgressions, and return to Him. The great subject of thanksgiving is peace; reconciliation and pardon offered to them that are nigh, and to them that are afar off; not only to the Jew, but also to the Gentile, as Paul more than once applies those terms (Eph. 2:13, 17; see also Acts 2:39). Bp. Lowth.—The connection of thought in our passage is that His wayward people when brought to repentance by His corrective discipline, so as to be truly broken and humbled in spirit, will have their mouths filled with praise and will be blessed with double peace, both the Gentile afar off and the Jew who is near. "Peace" comprehends all spiritual blessings. H. C. Serenity and pure-heartedness are the kind of peace that has most of heaven. It is better than religious rapture. The rapture that comes from pardoned guilt is like the fire-rocket that streams and blazes through the black sky, making everything brilliant for a moment, and forcing men to look at it; the peace of him that has lived near to God is like the quiet, steady lustre of the lighthouse lamp, startling no one, very easily mistaken for a common light, but never quenched; ever to be found when wanted, casting the same mild ray through the long night across the maddest billows that curl their crests around the rock on which it stands. This is the kind of peace enjoyed by him that is near. F. W. R. The "peace of God" to which the apostle refers with a kind of rapturous confidence is not simply an expression of the soul's relations to the Divine judgment, as justified by the blood of the cross, nor yet is it that harmony of spirit that binds the company of believers together in holy love; but beyond these, yet not excluding them, it is the inward state of the soul renewed by grace, in which the Divine Comforter has taken up His abode, Himself the Author and perpetual source of the soul's deep and quiet confidence in God—a state of mind which, though well known to the conscious subject of it, surpasses human thought in respect to its cause and its sure support. And yet so surely is this peace maintained and defended against all assaults, that the whole spiritual nature—the heart and mind—are kept inviolate, so long as the soul abides in Christ Jesus. And as this result is accomplished in Him, both the peace itself and the accompanying security are His perpetual gifts. We abide in Him, being kept by His gracious power; and in Him is all fulness of grace. So long as the soul's interests are given up to Christ, they are safe beyond all liability to fall, or to be spoiled by the adversary. The Shepherd keeps His own, He leads them in green pastures, and beside the still waters; and none can perish that do not wander from the flock. D. Curry. 20,21. While the souls of the righteous rest in deep repose, trusting in their God forever, the wicked have no true peace at all. Forever restive, never satisfied with either themselves or God; grasping after good they cannot attain, they are forcibly and fitly compared to the restless sea. H. C.—When we can once stay our minds on God, we are quiet; but when we must bring God to our mind, and must have God go our pace, or come at our time and work in our way (none of which He will do, what ado soever we make to have it so), oh, how restless and troubled are we, even like the troubled sea when it cannot rest! Caryl. Leave the passions unsubdued, and they turn the soul into a tiger's cage, and man grows up a self-willed, capricious, tyrannic being, uncomfortable himself and uncomfortable to everybody else, always in trouble, and practically an Ishmael, domineering or impetuous, a tyrant or a criminal. Let the individual be left to his appetites, let him be indulged in having whatever he craves, and he will always be governed by his impulses and his thirst for pleasure, till nothing will satisfy him; content will be impossible. He will be uneasy, restless, wretched. Gillett. It is only when these passions are subdued that there can be calmness of spirit; and these are effectually subdued only under the influence of religion. Men may learn in some degree to control them by the influence of philosophy; or a pride of character and respect to their station and reputation may enable them in some degree to restrain them, but they are like the smothered fires of the volcano or like the momentary calm of the ocean that a gust of wind may soon lash into foam. To restrain them is not to subdue them; for no man can tell how soon he may be excited by anger or how soon the smothered fires of lust may burn. Barnes. The passion, the desires, the impulses that lead us to do wrong things, are like a crew that mutiny, and take for a moment the wheel from the steersman and the command from the captain, but then, having driven the ship on the rocks, the mutineers get intoxicated and lie down and sleep. Passion fulfils itself, and expires. The desire is satisfied, and it turns into a loathing. The tempter draws us to him, and then unveils the horrid face that lies beneath the mask. When the deed is done and cannot be undone, then comes satiety; then comes the reaction of the fierce excitement, the hot blood begins to flow more slowly; then rises up in the heart conscience; then rises up in majesty in the soul reason; then flashes and flares before the eye the vivid picture of the consequences. His enemy has found the sinner. A. M. Cannot rest. This impossibility of rest arises partly from the soul's own majesty. God made the spirit of man like the ocean in its vastness. It is its own magnificence that makes it intensely miserable. Man's soul rocks and billows itself with an eternity beneath it. It is that which makes human suffering a thing of grandeur, because every pang that contracts a human brow and every quiver that distorts a pale lip are only indications of what may merge into the unresting doom of infinite wail. When God put man in possession of a self, and made that self immortal, He only made him master of a tremendous heritage of woe. Partly, again, this impossibility of rest comes from the soul's power of being acted upon by heavenly influences and by earthly ones together. The sea rests not because of the attraction of the heavenly bodies, which keep it in an endless ebb and flow—drawn toward the earth and drawn toward the sky alternately, and obeying neither impulse solely, it cannot rest. Know we nothing of this in our own bosoms? There is a tide of feeling which ebbs alternately to heaven and earth. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." We are conscious, surely, of high instincts that tell of God; conscious, besides, of grovelling propensities that drag us down to earth—low wants and lofty longings. So long as these hold man's soul alternately, is rest possible? Nay, one force must overcome the other before that can be. The love of God must master the world's attraction, or if not, then the soul is "like the troubled sea when it cannot rest." Partly, once more, the impossibility of rest arises from outward circumstances. There are winds that sweep along the ocean's surface and fret it into agitation. A small gust raises a single wave on the surface of the water, and before that wave has passed over a thousand miles it has become a swell which may swamp a navy. Something like this man has to make him restless. Besides his own inborn passions, there are circumstances from without in this world to fret and agitate and discompose his spirit—small trials of temper that make up much of the weariness of life; reverses of fortune; all that men call annoyances and sorrows. And then we lay the blame on these and ask, "How could the man have been otherwise than as he is? He is disappointed, miserable; well, but the circumstances of his earlier years, faulty education, others' neglect, made him so." The man who has not peace in himself cannot get peace from circumstances. Place him where you will, he carries an unquiet heart along with him. Can you keep the ocean from the wind? Can you bid the gust and the hurricane be still, and not play their wild game over the face of the waters? Can you save man from circumstances? Nay. We are here to control the circumstances in which we are placed, and transmute them, and get good and spirituality out of them. It certainly may be true that a man is made restless and miserable by circumstances. It certainly may be that the ocean is ploughed into billows by the tempest blasts, but all that they did was to lash the ocean and show that it was yielding water and not firm rock. All that circumstances have done when they make a man restless is just this, to show that he is not incorporated with the Rock of Ages. F. W. Robertson. It is a certain truth, what this prophet had said before (chap. 48:22), and here repeats (verse 21), "There is no peace to the wicked," no reconciliation to God, nor can they be upon good terms with Him while they go on still in their trespasses; no quietness or satisfaction in their own mind, no real good, no peace in death, because no hope. "My God hath said it," and all the world cannot unsay it, That there is no peace to those that allow themselves in any sin. What have they to do with peace? H. The world's peace is the indulgence of the heart as if it were in a state of health—"Let nature have her way;" Christ's peace is the healing of a disordered heart. It does not consist in giving the rein to desires, but in mastering them. It consists in placing the whole soul under the discipline of the cross, and "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." We are "sick to death," sick of our own selfishness and our own unregenerated hearts; and we are here in this world to be cured. These are our only two hopes of rest. The world's peace comes by adding fuel to the fever; Christ's peace comes by curing it. And there is not a man in this congregation who is not resting his faith and his expectation of rest on one of these promises or the other. There is not one who has immersed himself in business, and there is not one who has hidden himself, like Adam, in the trees of this world's garden of enjoyment who does not hope to find in his own way the rest which his spirit needs. Through the path of guilt or through the path of restlessness we are all seeking rest. In life's retirement or in life's bustle it is the same pursuit in different forms. Seek on we must, till we win or miss forever. F. W. R. I am a very strong believer in the punishment of certain kinds of actions, not only in the present, but in all the future a man can have, be it long or short. Therefore in hell; for I suppose that all men with a clear sense of right and wrong (and I am not sure that any others deserve such punishment) have now and then "descended into hell" and stopped there quite long enough to know what infinite punishment means. And if a genuine, not merely subjective immortality awaits us, I conceive that, without some such change as that depicted in the fifteenth chapter of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, immortality must be eternal misery. The faith of Swift's Struldbrugs seems to me not more horrible than that of a mind imprisoned forever within the flammantia mania of inextinguishable memories. Huxley.—Professor Huxley does well to emphasize the awfulness of inextinguishable memories. And yet who shall say the remorse which is the fruit of the memories of evil deeds may not be the punishment held in reserve for the impenitent and perverse; and if so who shall declare it to be unjust? For remorse, born as it is of the memories, carries with it a sense of wilful, deliberate, perverse wickedness which is irremediable. We recall the lines printed in the London Spectator some years ago, and which arrested attention at the time. We give two stanzas: I sat alone with my conscience in a place where time had ceased, And we talked of my former living in the land where the years increased. The ghosts of forgotten actions came floating before my sight, And things that I thought were dead things were alive with a terrible might; The vision of all my past life was an awful thing to face Alone with my conscience, sitting in that silently solemn place. And now alone with my conscience, in the place where the years increase, I try to recall that future in the land where time will cease; And I know of the future judgment, how dreadful so-e'er it be, That to sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me. Christian at Work. It is somewhat surprising that the "higher criticism" has not detected in this repetition a marginal gloss or the assimilating hand of some redactor. But even Hitzig zealously contends, without an adversary, that the verse is genuine both here and in chap. 48:22, and that its studied repetition proves the unity and chronological arrangement of the whole book. The only wonder is that in a hundred cases more or less analogous the same kind of reasoning is rejected as beneath refutation. This verse, according to the theory of Rückert, Hitzig and Hävernick, closes the second great division of the later prophecies. A. 58:1 CRY aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people 2 their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways; as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of 3 their God, they ask of me righteous ordinances, they delight to draw near unto God. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find your own pleasure, and 4 exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and contention, and to smite with the fist 5 of wickedness: ye fast not this day so as to make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and 6 an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye 7 break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that 8 thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; 9 the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of 10 thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedly; and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in darkness, 11 and thine obscurity be as the noonday: and the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in dry places, and make strong thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered 12 garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach. The restorer of paths to dwell in. 13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, and the holy of the LORD honourable; and shalt honour it, not 14 doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth; and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. Chap. 58. Self-righteous formalism is one main evil which grew up among the Jewish people along with open idolatry, and survived it in the times after the return from Babylon. Direct idol worship then almost wholly disappeared. But the other evil, more subtle in its nature, though present from the first, became conspicuous under the second Temple, and reached its height when our Lord began His ministry. After rejecting the Gospel, it hardened into the Talmudical rabbinism of later times. In the visible Church of Christ the succession has been almost the same. The open prevalence of saint and image worship has been followed by a wide prevalence of various forms of lifeless orthodoxy, or zealotry, near akin to the Pharisaism of the Jews in the days of Isaiah. In this chapter we have a distinct warning against this second great evil in the Jewish and Christian churches. Birks. The design of this chapter is to reprove the Jews for a vain dependence on the performance of the outward forms of religion. The nation is represented as diligent in the performance of the external rites of their religion, and as expecting to avert the Divine judgments by the performance of those rites. They are represented as filled with amazement, that though they were thus diligent and faithful, yet they had no tokens of the Divine approbation, but were left as if forsaken by God. The main scope of the chapter is to show the reason why their religious services met with no tokens of the Divine acceptance, and the way in which they might obtain His favor, and the blessings which would follow the proper performance of their duties. Barnes. This is a chapter on hypocrites, the special type or class being those who combine the apparently self-denying formalities of religion with the most self-indulgent and heartless oppression of their fellow-creatures. Since the Jewish nation as a whole professed to be the people of God, apostates in heart would often be hypocrites, keeping up the forms of religion after they had utterly lost its spirit, and indeed making special account of its forms as a means of obtaining God's favor—a cover to their sin and an indulgence for its more safe and free commission. Against such hypocrites, the stern rebukes of this chapter are thundered forth. The prophet is commanded to proclaim aloud to this class of people their sins; to set before them the very spirit of their ceremonial religion and of their oppressive life; to show them what religious worship is and what sort of life pleases God; and to promise them that, living so, their blessings should be unbounded. 1. Earnestness and not vociferation is the spirit of this direction to the prophet. As applied to preachers of the Gospel, this distinction is sensible, and should not be lost sight of. Effectiveness should be studied. H. C.—Gospel ministers should not only be like dials on watches, or mile-stones upon the road, but like clocks and larums, to sound the alarm to sinners. Aaron wore bells as well as pomegranates, and the prophets were divinely commanded to lift up their voice like a trumpet. A sleeping sentinel may be the loss of a city. Bp. II. 2. This verse describes them as professing to seek God and even as pretending to inquire after justice and righteousness—the very principles which they most of all outraged and trampled under foot in their oppressive ways of life. H. C.—The main feature is a pretended eagerness to learn the commands and will of God, as shown in ceremonial details, and still a neglect of the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. Birks. A hypocrite has no true and real delight in the service of God or in His truth, but it is true at the same time that there may be a great deal of professed interest in the ways of God. There may be a great deal of busy and bustling solicitude about the order of religious services. There may be a great deal of pleasure in theological discussion; in the metaphysics of theology; in the defence of what is deemed orthodoxy. There may be a great deal of pleasure in the mere music of devotion. There may be pleasure in the pleasant voice of a preacher, and in his eloquence and the power of his arguments. And there may be a great deal of pleasure in the triumphs of party; the advancement of the denomination to which we are attached; the conversion of men not from sin, but from a side opposite to us, and not to holiness and to God, but to our party and denomination. True delight in religion is in religion itself; in the service of God as such, and because it is holy. It is not mere pleasure in creeds, and liturgies, and theological discussions, and in the triumph of our cause, nor even in the triumph of Christianity as a mere party measure; but it is delight in God as He is, in His holy service, and in His truth. Barnes. 3. Their fasting was wholly an external thing, an affliction of the body and not a humbling of the soul. God's answer is, In the very days of your fasting, ye are as oppressive and exacting as ever. Ye seek your own selfish pleasures on these days in which ye profess to be so religious toward Me. In God's view their days of fasting should have been days of humiliation for those monstrous sins. But they meant no such thing. They only hoped to make these days a substitute for the duties of justice and kindness; an atonement for the sins of injustice and oppression—a substitution which God unutterably abhorred! . . . Ye will not, by such fasting as this, make your prayer reach heaven. Fasting like yours on these days will not carry your voice up to the pure throne above. H. C. The idea seems to be that they were at that time rigid and oppressive in exacting all that was due to them; they relaxed nothing of their griping demands of those who were under them; they remitted nothing, they forgave nothing. There was no kindness shown to the poor; to the laboring classes; to those who were in their employ; to those who were indebted to them; to those who had injured or offended them. Alas, how often is this still true! Men may be most diligent in the external duties of religion; most abundant in fasting and in prayer, and at the same time most rigorous and unyielding in demanding all that is due to them. Like Shylock—another Jew like those in the time of Isaiah—they may demand "the pound of flesh," at the same time that they may be most formal, punctual, precise and bigoted in the performance of the external duties of religion. The sentiment taught here is, that if we desire to keep a fast that shall be acceptable to God, it must be such as shall make us kind, mild, benignant; such as shall have the effect to cause us to unbind heavy burdens from the poor, and to lead us to relax the rigidity of the claims which would be oppressive on those who are subject to us. (See verse 6.) Barnes. 5. The second member of the first clause is not part of the contemptuous description of a mere external fast, but belongs to the definition of a true one, as a time for men to practise self-humiliation. He does not ask whether the fast which he chooses is a day for a man to afflict himself, implying that it is not, which would be destructive of the very essence of a fast; but he asks whether the fast which he has chosen as a time for men to humble and afflict themselves is such as this—i.e., a mere external self-abasement. A.—Is my fast day like this of yours—mine, the day of my choice, being a day for a man to afflict and humble his soul and not his body merely? Is this the same thing as bowing down the head like a bulrush, and making one's bed of sackcloth and ashes? Will ye account the latter to be a real fast and a day acceptable to God? H. C. The bowing of the head refers to the affected seriousness, the sanctimoniousness of a hypocrite when fasting—a man without real feeling who puts on an air of affected solemnity and "appears to others to fast." Against that the Saviour warned His disciples, and directed them when they fasted to do it in their ordinary dress and to maintain an aspect of cheerfulness. The hypocrites in the time of Isaiah seemed to suppose that the object was gained if they assumed this affected seriousness. Nothing more injures the cause of true religion than sanctimoniousness, affected seriousness, gloom, reserve, coldness and the conduct and deportment which, whether right or wrong, will be construed by those around us into gloom and misanthropy. Be it not forgotten that the seriousness which religion produces is always consistent with cheerfulness, and is always accompanied by benevolence. Barnes. 6. The terms are so selected as to be descriptive of oppression universally; to make which still more evident, the prophet adds a general command or exhortation, Ye shall break every yoke. A.—This is God's idea of a fast for oppressors—viz., a day for them to loosen bands wickedly imposed. This condemnation of oppression is very broad—"break every yoke." No matter by what law, whether municipal, or merely social or even parental, any of our fellow-creatures fall in any measure under our power, let us see to it that our hand upon them becomes not a yoke; our authority not a crushing bondage. H. C. When God saith, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice" (Hos. 6:6), the meaning is, that mercy is to be preferred before sacrifice. Just thus the prophet speaks of fasting here, as a thing, in itself, of little or no use to show how much mercy is to be preferred, without which fasting will not avail anything. W. Lowth. What God desires in you and me is not certain forms, services, emotions, the saying of prayers and the like; it is a renewal of the whole nature—of the inner and the outer man. Away with the thought that haunts so many, that the work of Christ is some cunningly devised plan for enabling men to get to heaven without righteousness. It is rather the divinely simple and yet marvellously successful plan for making men, not merely by imputation or proxy, but in themselves and in fact, holy, pure, godlike and fit for heaven. J. Ogle. Life is a vineyard. Its business is a task. We are set down in a field white already to harvest. Humanity has wrongs to be righted, and oppressions to be lifted off. Bargains are to be made immaculate. Lusts are to be quenched. Selfishness is to be softened. In a word, faith is to bear fruit a hundredfold, and piety to lead a moral life. Otherwise, the whole head of faith is sick, and the whole heart of piety is faint. This every-day, familiar, working religion, the religion of little things, is Christianity. F. D. H. 7. The Scriptures throughout both the Old Testament and the New give great and deserved prominence to these duties of broad, deep, practical sympathy with the suffering and the friendless. (See Isa. 32:6; Job 31:16-32; Ezek. 18:7, 8; Prov. 22:9; Ps. 112:9; Matt. 25:35, 36; Rom. 12:13; Heb. 13:2, 3, and James 2:15, 16.) H. C. The blessed God is the most benevolent because He is the best of beings; and this is one test of the reality of our religion: if it has made us new creatures, it has made us humane; if it has made us partakers of the Divine nature, it has made us kind and communicative; if it has made us Christlike, it has made us like one who went about continually doing good. And for this softness of feeling, for this susceptibility to human suffering, I know not of any substitute, for I know nothing which will prove a man to be godly, if you can prove him still to be selfish. But if humanity is a grace of God's Spirit, if in its truest, widest sense it is a Heaven-implanted principle, it none the less needs careful culture. Not only does it need to be wisely regulated, but more harm than good is done by its largesses, precipitate and promiscuous; but it needs to be constantly refreshed and fostered, lest it die away. Hamilton. We owe other people service. Service goes with loving. We cannot love truly and not serve. Love without serving is but an empty sentiment, a poor mockery. God so loved the world that He gave. Love always gives. The world is very full of sorrow and trial, and we cannot live among our fellow-men and be true without sharing their loads. If we are happy, we must hold the lamp of our happiness so that its beams will fall upon the shadowed heart. If we have no burden, it is our duty to put our shoulders under the load of others. Selfishness must die, or else our own heart's life must be frozen within us. We soon learn that we cannot live for ourselves and be Christians; that the blessings that are given to us are really for other people; and that we are only God's ministers to carry them in Christ's name to those for whom they were intended. J. R. Miller. We are under the obligation of love, as interpreted by the Eternal Son of God in His voluntary sacrifice for man's redemption. He came to give His life a ransom for many. The law that the strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak is no mere temporary enactment, imposed for disciplinary ends; it has its origin in the essential life of God, and its most impressive illustration in the ministry and mediation of Jesus Christ. Love must be both intelligent and righteous. It does not bear the infirmities of the weak simply for the sake of bearing them. It summons us to please our neighbors only for their good to edification. It is not every wish that we are to gratify. It is not every weakness that we are to condone. We are to seek our neighbor's upbuilding in all that is good. We are so to bear his infirmities that he may shortly be able to walk alone, and be helpful to others. The principle of love is justified to the reason by the high doctrine, appearing in the very first pages of the Bible, articulate in all its subsequent utterances, most impressively illustrated in the incarnation, and solemnly sealed in the resurrection from the dead and the ascension into glory: that man, though framed in body of the dust of earth, is the heir of eternity and the child of God. Sadly has he fallen, but he is not beyond rescue. He cannot be what he ought to be, and what he may be, until the grace of Christ has renewed and sanctified him; and therefore love impels to any sacrifice and endeavor that may place this grace within his reach. Behrends. Even kindness may be overdone when it leads to over-helping. We need to guard against meddling with God's discipline, softening the experience that He means to be hard, sheltering our friend from the wind that He intends to blow chillingly. All summer does not make a good zone to live in; we need autumn and winter to temper the heat and keep vegetation from luxuriant overgrowth. The best thing we can do for others is not always to take their load or do their duty for them. "Our friends," says Emerson, "are those who make us do what we can." Says another writer: "Our real friend is not the man or woman who smooths over our difficulties, throws a cloak over our failings, stands between us and the penalties which our mistakes have brought upon us; but the man or woman who makes us understand ourselves and helps us to better things." Too often our friendship is short-sighted in this regard, and most hurtful to those we fervently desire to aid. We should never indulge or encourage weakness in others when we can in any way stimulate it into strength. We should never do anything for another which we can inspire him to do for himself. Much parental affection errs at this point. Children are sometimes sheltered when it were better if they faced the storm. They are saved from toil and exertion when toil and exertion are God's ordained means of grace for them, of which parents rob them in their over-tenderness. Even in the sacredness of sorrow we should never forget that our mission to others is not merely to weep with them, but to help them to be victorious, to receive their sorrow as a messenger from God, and to bear themselves as God's children under it. Instead, therefore, of mere emotional condolence with our friends in their times of grief, we should seek to present to them the strong comforts of Divine love, and to inspire them to the bearing of their sorrow in faith and hope and love. So all personal helpfulness should be wise and thoughtful. It should never tend to pamper weakness, to encourage dependence, to make people timid, to debilitate madness and womanliness. We must take care that our helping does not dwarf any life which we ought rather to stimulate to noble and beautiful growth. God never makes such mistakes as this. He never fails us in need; but He loves us too well and is too wise to relieve us of weights which we need to make our growth healthful and vigorous. We should learn from God, and should help as He helps, without ever overhelping. J. R. M. We are certainly not wrong if, with God's Bible in our hands, we urge that the religion that is revived shall revive with it honesty, fair dealing, veracity, chastity, plain living and faithful work; shall bring on a new epoch of duty—courageous, clean-handed, sweet-hearted duty, irreproachable and incorruptible—fearing God and keeping His commandments. F. D. H. —Isaiah and his brother prophets were holier, and heavenlier, and richer in the works of love, upon an anticipated Christ, than we are in a Christ already our crucified example. These men of God knew no divorce between belief and love; between living perpetually in the presence of a benevolent Lord and imitating His benevolence to their fellow-creatures! W. A. B. Manifestly for the purpose of giving the highest possible force and solemnity to that sense of obligation which impels the Christian to abound in every good work, the ostensible proof of religious sincerity, to be adduced in the momentous procedures of the last judgment, is made to consist in the fact of a life of beneficence. Those, and those only, shall inherit the prepared blessedness who shall be found to have nourished, and clothed, and visited the Lord in His representatives—the poor. The "cursed" are those who have grudged the cost of mercy. I. Taylor. Experience demonstrates that the heart which responds to the cries of a world perishing through lack of knowledge is the heart which most readily thrills at the cry of bodily want; that those who care most for the souls of the heathen are among the most active agents of patriotic and local charities; that genuine Christian charity, while it leaves no object unattempted on account of its vastness, overlooks none on account of its minuteness. In this respect, it copies the example of Him who, in His way to the cross to save a world, often stood still to give health to the sick, and to wipe away the tears of the mourner; sowing at each step the seeds of those various institutions of mercy which are still springing up in His Church. Harris.—Remember that your stewardship here is not for long. Use carefully and lovingly the things that God has given you. And when it comes time for you to depart, may there be many hearts here that shall be orphaned by your going, and many waiting hearts there that shall be gladdened by your coming. C. H. P. Our Lord has done more than to remove all limitations from the law of neighborly service. He has also introduced a new measure and motive for its obedience. "A new commandment," He said, "I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye love one another." Christ's love for us is to be the measure and the motive of our love for our fellow-men. Here we have the ultimate test by which we may judge the quality of our neighborly regard. The old law said, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself;" Christ changes the rule by saying, "Love your neighbor as I love you." And therein is at least a sixfold command. You are to love your neighbor rationally, because he is a man for whom Christ died. You are to love him impartially, seeing that Christ is the friend of sinners. You are to love him passionately, your inmost heart on fire with holy affection. You are to love him patiently, imitating Him who is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. You are to love him righteously, intent on making him an heir of holiness, because Christ came to save men from their sins. And as all holiness is based on a keen sense of personal responsibility, it follows that you can love your neighbor righteously only as you wake in him the sense of personal energy, and urge him to the cultivation of a vigorous, rounded, Christian manhood. The very best thing you can do for the extirpation of pauperism, of ignorance, of intemperance, lust and crime, is so to multiply your missionary agencies that the Gospel of Christian manhood shall be brought to every man's door. Pure hearts will make clear heads, and strong hands, and temperate men and women; and under the silent ministry of holiness the world's tyrannies and miseries would speedily disappear. Behrends. 8. By a mixture of metaphors, which does not in the least obscure the sense, this healing is here said to sprout or germinate, a figure employed elsewhere to denote the sudden, rapid and spontaneous growth or rise of anything. In the last clause a third distinct figure is employed to express the same idea—viz., that of a march like the journey through the wilderness, with the pillar of cloud, as the symbol of God's presence, going before and after. A. These blessings follow obedience. Those who will observe God's fast days and bring their life up to the spirit of them will have this reward. "Light breaking forth as the morning" is a strong and exquisitely beautiful figure for happiness after misery. The last half of the verse alludes to the symbols of God's presence in the wilderness, the pillar of cloud and of fire; God before and God behind their moving hosts. "Thy righteousness" going before may best be taken as thy righteous God, ever gracious to thee, will march before thee; corresponding to "the glory of God," the Shechinah, the symbol of His presence, going behind. The sentiment is, God shall be on every side of thee, thy never-failing, ever-present Guide and Protector. H. C. There is a special and familiar presence of God with those who walk uprightly, both in the night of their sorrow and in the day of their joy. Yet we do not always in the same way perceive that presence so as to enjoy it. God never leaves us, but we sometimes think He has done so. Yes, the glory of the Lord is above us and beneath us, on the right hand and on the left, without us and within us. We depart not from it, though it is behind us; we are going ever into the glorious light, for it is before us, too. The Lord shall be a wall of fire around about us, and the glory in the midst. Spurgeon. 9. This answer to prayer is in contrast with the praying spoken of in verse 4. H. C. 10. We must not only give alms according as the necessities of the poor require, but must give freely and cheerfully, and from a principle of charity; we must "draw out our soul to the hungry" (verse 10), not only draw out the money, and reach forth the hand, but do this from the heart, heartily, and without grudging; from a principle of compassion, and with a tender affection to such as we see to be in misery; let the heart go along with the gift, for God loves a cheerful giver, and so does a poor man too. When our Lord Jesus healed and fed the multitude, it was as having compassion on them. H. 11. There is in the last clause a climax. Not content with the image of a well-watered garden, he substitutes that of the stream, or rather of the spring itself. The general idea is a favorite with Isaiah. The exodus from Egypt had already made these images familiar and appropriate to any great deliverance. 12. The first clause agrees exactly with the work assigned to Israel in chaps. 42:14 and 57:11—viz., that of reclaiming the apostate nations, and building the wastes of a desolated world. A.—Thou shalt have the good things of earth; a restored community; the traces of desolation obliterated; prosperity smiling over the whole face of the land. H. C. 13. The mere outward observance was of no avail, unless the institution were regarded with reverence, as of God; nay more, with complacency, as in itself delightful. To call it a delight, is to acknowledge it as such. The second clause may be best explained by a paraphrase: "If thou wilt give to the Sabbath the name of a delight, and to the holy day or ordinance of Jehovah that of honorable." But mere acknowledgment is not enough—it must not only be admitted to deserve honor, but in fact receive it. Hence he adds, and if thou wilt honor it thyself, by not doing, literally, away from doing, so as not to do. Here again, to find one's pleasure on the Sabbath is more natural than to find one's business. Doing thy own ways, although not a usual combination, is rendered intelligible by the constant use of way in Hebrew to denote a course of conduct. Speaking speech or talking talk is by some regarded as equivalent to speaking vanity in verse 9. A. "The holy day of the Lord." God's own title of the Sabbath. His people are to account it a delight, and honorable; in contrast both to the weariness of a formal, heartless observance, and to open, careless profanation. The same message, which exalts moral duties in contrast to mere ceremonies, also exalts Sabbath keeping as the crown of true morality. In the fifth commandment religion stoops into the sphere of social morality, and in the fourth, morality rises into the sphere of religious faith. Birks. God claims the day as His, and as a holy day on that account. While all time is His, and while He requires all time to be profitably and usefully employed, He calls the Sabbath peculiarly His own—a day which is to be observed with reference to Himself and which is to be regarded as belonging to Him. To take the hours of that day, therefore, for our pleasure, or for business which is not a work necessary or merciful, is to rob God of that which He claims as His own. The idea is, here, that we are to do the things which God requires, and to consult His pleasure and His will in the observance. It is remarkable that the thing here adverted to is the very way in which the Sabbath is commonly violated. It is not extensively a day of business—for the propriety of a periodical cessation from toil is so obvious that men will have such days recurring at moderate intervals. Barnes. Every one who permits his mind to dwell on secular affairs, and makes them his chief subjects of conversation on Sunday, is bringing in the cares and labors of the week to the exclusion of those higher thoughts and nobler aspirations that ought to fill the sacred hours. The ban was laid upon man's work, not as a privation, but that men might be free to turn their attention wholly to God's work; and this purpose of Sunday is frustrated if we occupy our time with worldly thoughts and words. To accomplish its Divine purpose, the sanctification of Sunday must be complete. Not the hands and feet only, but the mind and the tongue and all the powers, whether physical or mental, must be turned from the things of the world, and consecrated in an especial manner to God. G. H. Hubbard. 14. Everything must be done that puts an honor on the day and is expressive of our high thoughts of it; we must call it a "delight," not a "task and a burden;" we must delight ourselves in it, in the restraints it lays upon us and the services it obliges us to; we must be in our element when we are worshipping God and in communion with Him. We must not only count it a delight, but call it so, must openly profess the complacency we take in the day, and the duties of it; we must call it so to God, in thanksgiving for it, and earnest desire of His grace to enable us to do the work of the day in its day, because we delight in it; we must call it so to others. If we thus "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," we shall have the comfort of it; the work will be its own wages. "If we call the Sabbath a delight, then shall we delight ourselves in the Lord;" He will more and more manifest Himself to us as the delightful Subject of our thoughts and meditations, and the delightful Object of our best affections. The more pleasure we take in serving God, the more pleasure we shall find in it. If we go about duty with cheerfulness, we shall go from it with satisfaction, and shall have reason to say, "It is good to be here, good to draw near to God." H. The delight or pleasure which God's people have in Him is a direct and necessary consequence of the proper observance of the Sabbath. It is on that day, set apart by His own authority for His own service, that He chooses to meet with His people and to commune with them and bless them; and no one ever properly observed the Sabbath who did not find as a consequence that He had augmented pleasure in the existence, the character and the service of Jehovah. In no place in the Bible is there a more full account of the proper mode of keeping that holy day. We are to refrain from ordinary travelling and employments; we are not to engage in doing our own pleasure; we are to regard it with delight, and to esteem it a day worthy to be honored; and we are to show honor to it by not performing our own ordinary works or pursuing pleasure. This was the way in which the day was to be observed in the time of Isaiah, and in this way it may be and should be observed now. In this description there occurs nothing of peculiar Jewish ceremony, and nothing which indicates that it is not to be observed in this manner at all times. Under the Gospel, assuredly, it is as easy and as proper to celebrate the Sabbath in this way as it was in the times of Isaiah; and God doubtless intended that the Sabbath should be perpetually observed in this manner. . . . It is as true now as it was then that they who observe the Sabbath in a proper manner find a pleasure and happiness in the Lord—in His existence, perfections, promises, law and in communion with Him—which is to be found nowhere else. Of this fact there are abundant witnesses now in every Christian Church, and they will continue to be multiplied in every coming age. And it is as true that the proper observance of the Sabbath contributes to the prosperity and safety of a nation now as it ever did among the Jewish people. It is not merely from the fact that God promises to protect and bless the people who keep His holy day—though this is of more value to a nation than all its armies and fleets and fortifications; but it is that there is in the institution itself much that tends to the welfare and prosperity of a country. It is the time when worldliness is broken in upon by a periodical season of rest, and when the thoughts are left free to contemplate higher and purer objects. It is a time when more instruction is imparted and received on moral and religious subjects than on all the other days of the week put together. The public worship of God tends to elevate the soul, to enlarge the intellect and to purify the heart. No institution has ever been originated that has contributed so much to elevate the common mind; to diffuse order, peace, neatness, decency, among men, and thus to perpetuate and extend all that is valuable in society, as the Sabbath. Any one may be convinced of this who will be at the pains to compare a neighborhood, a village or a city where the Sabbath is not observed with one where it is; and the difference in morals, honesty, intelligence, decency, order and comfort will convince him at once that society owes more to the Sabbath than to any single institution besides, and that in no way possible can one-seventh portion of the time be so well employed as in the manner contemplated by the Christian day of rest. Barnes. The promise to those who obey is, that they should “have a place and a name in God’s house better than of sons and daughters” (Isa. 66: 5). They should “ride upon the high places of the earth, and be fed with the heritage of Jacob.” If the people of Israel would “diligently hearken” to obey in this particular, then there would ever be “kings and princes to sit upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the city shall remain forever.” But if, on the other hand, they refuse to hearken, then the Lord Himself would “kindle a fire in the gates thereof, which shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched” (Jer. 17: 25, 27). Now, unless the nature of God has changed, or Israel has ceased to be a typical people, or the necessity for this law has passed, then His dealings with His ancient people, and the desolation which, in pursuance of His threatenings, He has visited upon them and their city, once “the joy of the whole earth,” but now an astonishment and a proverb, “must and will ever stand as a prophecy and pledge of His dealings toward every other nation and people upon the face of the earth. We have two remarkable instances of the fulfilment of promised blessings in connection with national fidelity. The first is the Chinese. That people are proverbial for their respect to parents and those in authority; and in them has been literally fulfilled the promise connected with the fifth commandment of living—“long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee;” for no nation can boast of a greater antiquity or longer existence. The other example is that of the British people, who have shown greater reverence for the sabbatical law than any other nation, and in whom has been fulfilled that other promise of outward prosperity and blessing in connection with the fourth commandment, of “riding upon the high places of the earth,” and being “fed with the heritage of Jacob their father;” for her sails whiten every sea, and upon her vast dominions “the sun never sets.” Unless revelation be a farce, and the entire Scriptures a forgery, the nation that honors its God in the observance of this law shall in turn be honored and blessed of Him; whereas the nation that dishonors Him by forsaking His law shall be lightly esteemed of Him, and shall only bring judgments upon themselves, and bind a similar, if not even greater curse upon their prosperity. Stacy. The Sabbath is no circumscribed Jewish institution. It belongs to God’s Church of all ages. It stands here imbedded in the picture of the Messianic Church, just as it stands imbedded in the Decalogue, which also was given, not to the Jewish Church, but to the universal Church of God. The details of the passage show that it is God’s day (“My holy day”), in which man is to withdraw from his accustomed works, pleasures and ways to find his delight in holy thoughts, words and actions, a day ordained in the mercy and love of God to prevent man from being carnalized by his earthly occupations. The Sabbath is ever a vital element in true piety. As the Sabbath is neglected, religion loses its purity and power. Disregard of the Sabbath is a sure sign of a low state of religious life. Crosby. Even the Jewish Sabbath developed into a highly spiritual ordinance; as witness Isaiah 58; it became more spiritual as the ages passed on and as revelation grew; it included more and more of worship. What the Sabbath of Isaiah was to the Sabbath of the wilderness, the Sabbath of "the prophets" to the Sabbath of "the law"—i.e., the Pentateuch, such is the Sabbath of Christianity to the best Sabbath of Judaism. Let the Sabbath law be expounded by the light of our Saviour's teachings and actions and pre-eminently of that Divine maxim, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath;" let the true spirit and principle of the commandment be attained to and put into practice, and the Sabbath and the Lord's Day will be found to coincide. J. H. Rigg. When the old land-bound Sabbath of Israel passed into the world-wide Lord's Day, it girdled the earth with universal brotherhood in the Lord. In whatever strange land, of whatever strange tongue, the believer now joins in that day's worshipping assembly, the sense of brotherhood glows within him. Over all the world, from the western skirts of the Pacific, around with the sun to its starting-point, that day, dotting the whole globe with gatherings in the name of our Lord, busied alike in prayer, and praise, and promise in His name, makes a testimony to the unity and brotherhood of Christian faith, which no man can gainsay. Grey. How is a wandering, fallen and depraved world to be recalled to God without that day which celebrates the works, and word, and grace of God—that day which recognizes His authority over man—that day which proclaims man's intellectual and accountable nature, his future, his eternal hopes? The Sabbath interposes a space between total irreligion and the conscience of man; it puts in the claims of God upon the human heart. Nor is the temporal welfare of mankind less concerned than their spiritual, in the observation of the Lord's Day. Man was created for six days' work, not for seven; his faculties cannot bear an unremitted strain. Children, and servants, and the laboring classes of mankind (by far the more numerous and the most liable to be oppressed) require—what this institution gives—a day of repose, of refreshment, of religious recollection and peace. The whole world rests and is still, that God may speak, that conscience may resume her sway, that the exhausted body and mind may recruit their powers, and be fitted for a more vigorous effort. The utmost productive labor of man is in the proportion of rest and exertion ordained by his merciful Creator. The best prevention of disease, the prolongation of human life itself, depends on the like alternation of toil and repose. The springs of pleasure are thus augmented and purified. The satiety, the sameness, the weariness, the uniformity of human life, is broken; and a blessed, hallowed period for religion is interposed. The interval between these seasons is neither so distant as to be ineffectual to its end nor so near as to injure the real interests of our worldly callings; but, like everything else in God's revelation, unites the prosperity of the soul with the highest welfare of the body and concerns of man. How great, then, is the importance of every one's falling in with the designs of this institution! Bp. Wilson. With every generation of our history the rush of activities becomes more absorbing and more strenuous, and the danger of ceasing to be men in becoming mere workers grows upon us. Societary circulation is swifter; invention brings man closer to man, and multiplies the demands on our time and thought, while seeming only to increase our comforts. The outward look on life leaves us less time for the upward look on God. The "things seen and temporal" increase in number and interest, till we need an effort to get our gaze turned to the things unseen and eternal. So the need of the day of rest grows instead of diminishing, and experience forces men to see the uses of Sunday even for lower ends than these. We need it that man and beast may not be worn out by "the pace that kills." We need it that men may preserve their mental sanity and retain their fitness for the best work they are capable of. But, after all, we need it most to keep us in that living relation to God which is needed to keep us men. "The Sabbath was made for man"—for our humanity. It was made to lift us off the animal level, and bring out in us all that belongs to the superior nature. It was made to keep us in human liberty and to save us from a bestial bondage to toil. It was made to keep us in that likeness to God, which was the starting-point in our creation, and is the goal of our development. R. E. Thompson. Rest is God's gift to us; worship is our offering to God; service is our ministry to man in the name of the Master. The day in which we are refreshed by rest and uplifted by worship is the day when we go forth armed with rare and heavenly powers, to carry tidings of God's love to those who know Him not, or "to serve the hidden life of the brethren." The mighty Victor gains marvellous triumphs on the day of His rising power; but He gains them all through the faithful service of the loyal and bold-hearted. Accessions to the kingdom are tenfold—yes, a hundredfold—on these days of the Son of Man. Even the revelation of the good done and the souls saved on one Sabbath would no doubt astonish and overwhelm even the most sanguine Christian. An invisible army of "wage-workers" are reaping down untold harvests for God. "He that reapeth receiveth wages." Great spiritual forces attend upon every act of service done for God to our fellow-men. S. S. T. There is not a message which the Sabbath brings, not a thought to which its proper use gives birth, not a feeling which it cherishes, but helps in the sanctification of the home life and in purifying the sources of domestic virtue. Without the Sabbath the family could hardly realize its unity in the fullest extent, and the roof-tree, ceasing to be love's sanctuary, would become but the lodging-house of individuals ignorant of the highest happiness. With the Sabbath the home stands or falls. For the defence of the fireside its sacred hours of worship and rest must be kept inviolate. Anon. Effect on the individual Christian's life. The Christian man, desirous of loving God with all the affection of his heart, with all the rational intelligence of his mind, with all the devotion of his life, with all the energy of his strength, in the love taught him under the fourth law, will yield himself up gratefully and religiously to obey all duly ordered positive laws of the Church of God. The Sunday and its sacred observance will be to him the centre, and furnish, so to speak, the form of his own way of life, and that of all his family and dependents. He will regard it every time it returns as God's holy day of rest, the weekly commemoration of the primeval rest of God and of all the signal mercies of the elder covenant. Knowing himself to be of the true Israel of God, he will not forget the blessings connected by God Himself with the sabbatical institution, vouchsafed to his fathers in the faith. He will celebrate it weekly as the feast of the Lord's resurrection, and all the blessings of that resurrection; as the feast of the Holy Ghost the Giver of peace and rest in the Church, as the weekly antepast of that glorious and unending rest in the presence of God which still remaineth for the people of God. It will be to him a day of rest, peace, prayer, praise and holy joy; no mournful and austere time, but, on the contrary, a thankful, happy time. He will remember his Lord's injunction not to forbid or refuse works of necessity or mercy on that day. He will gratefully shut up the records of the cares, the interests and the occupations of the week, and give that holy day to God; not discharging himself of his duties of worship by an attendance in God's house or holding himself at liberty to make his own convenience or inclination the rule of obedience; but faithfully, dutifully and completely sanctifying that day to rest, worship and the thought of God and heaven. And the other days, the train of Sunday, will borrow of its light; each having its own sacred, special commemoration belonging to it, and each reflecting some of the brightness of the Sunday just preceding and catching more and more from that which follows. Bp. Moberly. 59:1 BEHOLD, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear 2 heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, 3 and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutter- 4 eth wickedness. None sueth in righteousness, and none pleadeth in truth: they trust in 5 vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. They hatch basi- lisks' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which 6 is crushed breaketh out into a viper. Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of 7 violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their paths. 8 The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgement in their goings: they have 9 made them crooked paths; whosoever goeth therein doth not know peace. Therefore is judgement far from us, neither doth righteousness overtake us: we look for light, but be- 10 hold darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity. We grope for the wall like the blind, yea, we grope as they that have no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the twilight; 11 among them that are lusty we are as dead men. We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgement, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us. 12 For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us: for our 13 transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them: in transgressing and denying the LORD, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and 14 revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. And judgement is turned away backward, and righteousness standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and 15 uprightness cannot enter. Yea, truth is lacking; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgement. 16 And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore 17 his own arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it upheld him. And he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put 18 on garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloke. According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies; to 19 the islands he will repay recompence. So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun: for he shall come as a rushing stream, which 20 the breath of the LORD driveth. And a redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that 21 turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD. And as for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD: my spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever. Chap. 59. This chapter is closely connected in sense with the preceding, and is designed to illustrate the same general sentiment—that the reason why the religious services of the nation were not accepted, their prayers answered and the nation delivered from calamity, was their hypocrisy and their other sins. The previous chapter contained a bold and energetic reproof of their false and hollow services, and of their expectation of the Divine favor when they were observing only external rites without repentance, and even when they continued to practise oppression and cruelty. This beaubeautiful chapter states more in detail their sins and the consequences of their transgressions. The following analysis of the chapter will show its design and scope at a single view. 1. It was not because Jehovah was unable to save them that they were exposed to such judgments and visited with such calamities (verse 4). They were, therefore, not to blame Him. This general principle is stated in order to prevent what commonly occurs when men suffer much—a disposition to throw the blame on God. 2. It was for their sins that they were exposed to these judgments (verses 2-8). The prophet proceeds to specify those sins in detail, with a view to bring them to conviction and to repentance. In this statement he goes over the leading offences of the nation, specifying them particularly, and showing that they deserved all that they had suffered. 3. After this statement of the prevalent sins of the nation, the prophet introduces the people as making confession that it was for these and similar sins that they were exposed to the Divine displeasure. Identifying Himself with the people, He enumerates the calamities to which they were exposed as a consequence of the sins which prevailed (verses 9-14). They were in darkness, they waited in vain for light; they stumbled at noonday; they vented their sorrows like the roaring of bears or the plaintive cry of the dove, but all in vain. They felt that their transgressions were multiplied and that they deserved the Divine displeasure, and therefore they were subjected to these severe calamities. 4. Jehovah is represented as seeing this state of deep guilt—a state where there was deep conviction of that guilt and a readiness to make confession—and as wondering that there was no intercessor, and as Himself interposing to bring deliverance and salvation (verses 15-18). It was the earnest wish of Jehovah that there should be deliverance, and in order to effect that He Himself procured it. The characteristics of Him who should come to accomplish these purposes were righteousness, salvation, vengeance and zeal (verse 17). He would come to take recompense on His foes and to reward the wicked according to their deeds (verse 18). 5. The effect of this would be that the name of Jehovah would be feared from the rising to the setting sun. Jehovah would erect a barrier against the enemy when He should come in like a flood; and the Redeemer should come to Zion to effect deliverance for those who should truly repent (verses 19, 20). 6. A covenant would be established between God and those who would turn away from transgressions (verse 21). The nature of that covenant was, that its blessings would be perpetual. The spirit which God would give and the words which He would put into their mouths would abide with them and their posterity forever. "As this chapter," says Lowth, "is remarkable for the beauty, strength and variety of the images with which it abounds, so it is peculiarly distinguished by the eloquence of the composition and the exact construction of the sentences. From the first verse to the two last it falls regularly into stanzas of four lines." The chapter has evidently a primary reference to the character of the nation in the times of Isaiah. But the chapter evidently also looks forward to future times; and the close of it is so manifestly applicable to the times of the Messiah that it is impossible not to apply it to Him. Barnes. The general apostasy of the covenant people developing itself in extreme immorality, at length arouses the long-slumbering jealousy and justice of their God. He awakes to retrieve His honor and sustain His cause by extraordinary effusions of His Spirit, reclaiming some of His ancient people; gathering to Himself and to them the Gentile nations and making His word and His Spirit permanently effective for the interests of truth and salvation. The Jews perish, not because the Lord's arm lacks power to save or His car the quick perception of the cry of prayer, but because their sins have virtually sundered their relations to Him as His people, and have forbidden Him to hear or save them in their distress. With a striking variety in his style, the prophet describes the sins of the people, first in direct address to them (verses 2, 3); then by speaking of them (verses 4-8); and finally He classes Himself with them as a common sufferer in the general calamity (verses 9-13). The prophet cannot speak of the great facts of the Gospel age—e.g., the Messiah's coming, the effusions of the Spirit and the calling of the Gentiles, without occasionally taking notice of the ancient covenant people to show why they were in the main excluded from participation in those magnificent changes and unparalleled blessings. In this chapter the notice of the covenant people gives prominence to their extreme and incorrigible degeneracy, in view of which the Lord, as one despairing of any help for His cause from them, rallies His energies for a new effort, relieves Himself by visiting them with deserved retribution, and puts new life into His kingdom by the effusions of His Spirit to purify the converted remnant of the Jews and to impress the fear of His name and the power of His truth upon the Gentiles. H. C. They have fallen so low that no one seems disposed to attempt a reformation, or to think of recovery as possible. The worst feature of their condition is, that they do not appear to know to what a depth they are sunk in degradation. Jehovah Himself, by a strong figure of speech, is represented as wondering that no one attempts relief or intercession. Yet, because of this, His compassion is the more deeply stirred; and though their sins would justify Him in leaving them to destruction, He will provide a Redeemer and renew His covenant of salvation. It may be needful first to show His displeasure at sin by the judgments of His hand; and these, like an overwhelming flood, or a river swept along by a mighty wind, shall cause the nations from east to west to fear the name of the Lord. Thus was it before the coming of Christ. The wants and woes, the struggles and strifes of humanity had created a yearning for a Deliverer, had prepared the way for the Redeemer promised to Zion. The grace of God triumphs over the sins of men and turns deserved judgments into agencies of moral reformation. The very helplessness to which mankind had reduced themselves by sin was the plea for the humiliation and sacrifice of the Son of God for their recovery. J. P. T. 1. The prophet merely pauses for a moment to exonerate His master from all blame before continuing his accusation of the people. He solemnly affirms that the rejection of God's ancient people was the fruit of their own sin, and not to be imputed either to unfaithfulness on His part or to want of strength or wisdom to protect them. A. 2. That God did not save His ancient people at the time referred to was due to no such cause, but only to their sins, which interposed a vast moral distance between Himself and them and practically turned His face away so that He could not hear. H. C.—Their sins had caused Jehovah to hide or turn away His face from their prayers from an unwillingness to hear them when they were so deeply immersed in sin. Thus the LXX: "On account of your sins He has turned away His face from you so that He will not have mercy." It is universally true that indulgence in sin causes God to turn away His face and to withhold mercy and compassion. He cannot pardon those who indulge in transgression and who are unwilling to abandon the ways of sin. Barnes. If our prayers be not answered and the salvation we wait for be not wrought for us, it is not because God is weary of hearing prayer, but because we are weary of praying; not because His ear is heavy when we speak to Him, but because our ears are heavy when He speaks to us. Sin hides His face from us (which denotes great displeasure), it provokes Him in anger to withdraw His gracious presence, to suspend the tokens of His favor and the ininstances of His help; He hides His face, as refusing to be seen or spoken with. H. The two statements that forgiveness is the communication of the love of God unhindered by man's sin, and that forgiveness is the removal of the punishment of sin, are really but two ways of saying the same thing. If we rightly understand what is the death of death, what is the consequence of transgression, how it comes and in what sense it is that every man, by every sinful act, carries a coal to the hellfire that may have to consume him—if we understand that the real misery and punishment is what the old prophet proclaimed it to be—"Your sins have separated between you and your God," then we shall understand how the two representations coincide and flow together and how the real penalty passes away where the love is welcomed and received. A. M. 3. The general charge of great sin must now be substantiated. For the greater force, the prophet represents every physical organ of their body—hands, fingers, lips and tongue—as actively engaged in sinning, as if to show that every power of their being was pressed to its utmost capacity of wrong-doing. H. C. 4-8. The wider meaning of the whole description is evident from Paul's combining parts of it with phrases drawn from several Psalms remarkably resembling it, in proof of the depravity of human nature (Rom. 3: 15-17). 7. The first clause expresses not a mere disposition, but an eager proclivity to wrong. The word translated thoughts has here and elsewhere the specific sense of purposes, contrivances, devices. Their paths are the paths in which their feet run to evil and make haste to shed innocent blood. The two nouns combined in the last clause strictly denote desolation and crushing—i.e., utter ruin. A. 9-13. In the passage beginning here, embracing at least verses 9-13, the prophet classes himself with the sinning people, either from his sympathy with them under these great public calamities or as one actually suffering under them in common with the whole people. The former is the more probable supposition. This use of the first person plural therefore avails nothing toward proving that the writer was not the original Isaiah, but was some second or pseudo-Isaiah who lived near the close of the exile at Babylon. For (1) there is nothing in the passage to prove, but much to disprove the theory that this chapter was written near the close of the exile, and describes the state of morals at that time; and (2) it is entirely legitimate for a prophet whose heart sympathizes warmly with the fortunes of his people to conceive and speak of himself as suffering with them, though the time be far remote. Cases under this law abound in the prophecies. (See Isa. 15:5; 16:11 and 21:2, 4, 10) Besides, the use of the third person, "they," in verses 4-8 in this same connection will just as much prove that the writer was not living then and there, as the use of the first person in verses 9-13 proves that he was. H. C. 9,10. That is a deceptive notion which attributes the want of unction in prayer to an arbitrary, or even inexplicable, withdrawing of God from the soul. Aside from the operation of physical causes, where is the warrant, in reason or revelation, for ascribing joylessness in prayer to any other cause than some wrong in the soul itself? What says an old prophet? "Behold, the Lord's ear is not heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God. Your sins have hid His face from you. Therefore, we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noon, lay as in the night; we are in desolate places, as dead men." Could words describe more truthfully or explain more philosophically that phenomenon of religious experience which we call the "hiding of God's countenance?" Phelps. 13. The original of verse 13 is a model of compact and forcible description which can scarcely be transferred to our language. This approximates to it, They are sinning and lying against the Lord and turning away from after our God; speaking of oppression and revolt. H. C. 14. The verse contains a further confession of the evil of their course of life, and among other things they acknowledged that they had been unjust and oppressive in their legal decisions. They had been influenced by partiality and by bribes; they had condemned the innocent, they had acquitted the guilty. Judgment had thus been turned back by their sins when it seemed to be approaching and entering the city. And justice standeth afar off. This is a beautiful figure. Justice is represented as standing at a distance from the city. Deterred by their sins, it would not enter. They prevented its approach, and it was unknown among them. For truth is fallen in the street. Or rather perhaps in the gate—the place of concourse and the place where justice was administered. Barnes. 14,15. The passage affirms that truth and justice were utterly prostrate in the courts. Verse 15 thus: "And so truth is missing (not to be found), and whoever abstains from wrongdoing subjects himself to violence and spoil"—a state of society in which might makes right and the innocent and non-resistant become the prey and plunder of ruffians. Of course the Lord saw this, and it was grievous in His eyes that there was no justice there. The picture delineates with historic fidelity the religious and mostly the moral state of the scribes and Pharisees, the leading civil and religious influences among the Jews, shortly before their destruction by the Romans. This degeneracy had been in progress for several generations, and during the life of Christ on earth was far advanced toward the condition described here. It was ancient Judaism, effete, palsied of its moral power, perverted to the extreme of formality and self-righteousness, and therefore solemnly abandoned of God, and given up to be superseded by the Gospel system. This is the point of transition described in the passage now before us. H. C. The passage before us had a primary reference to the Jews and to the prevalence of iniquity in the Jewish nation which rendered the Divine interposition proper. But it is language also that will quite as appropriately describe the moral condition of the world as laying the foundation for the necessity of the Divine interposition by the Messiah. Indeed the following verses undoubtedly refer to Him. No one, it is believed, can attentively read the passage and doubt this. The mind of the prophet is fixed upon the depravity of the Jewish nation. Everywhere iniquity prevailed. The hands, the tongue, the eyes, the feet, the fingers, were all polluted. The whole nation was sunk in moral corruption; and this was but a partial description of what was occurring everywhere on the earth. In such a state of things in the Jewish nation and in the whole world the question could not but arise whether no deliverer could be found? Was this state of things to continue forever? Was there no way of pardon—no way by which deserved and impending wrath could be diverted? From this melancholy view, therefore, the prophet turns to Him who was to be the great Deliverer, and the remainder of the chapter is occupied with a most beautiful description of the Redeemer and of the effect of His coming. The sentiment of the whole passage is, that the deep and extended depravity of man was the foundation of the necessity of the Divine interposition in securing salvation, and that in view of the guilt of men God provided one who was a glorious deliverer, and who was to come to Zion as the Redeemer. Barnes. 16. What was wanting was not merely a qualified man, but any man whatever, to maintain the cause of Israel and Jehovah. A like absolute expression is employed in 2 K. 14 : 26, where it is said that Jehovah saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter and that there was no helper for Israel, not merely no sufficient one, but none at all. The desperate nature of the case is then described in terms still stronger, and only applicable to Jehovah by the boldest figure. A. 16, 17. "Man" in the sense of a whole man, a hero, and "intercessor" in the sense of one who intervenes for help are equivalent expressions, meaning that God saw no helper and no help for this state of things, and therefore aroused Himself to the needful work. "His own arm saved" (i.e., His cause and people) "for Himself." His sense of right and love of justice sustained His energy and fired His soul for vigorous action. Verse 17 should begin, "And so, or consequently, He put on righteousness," etc., girding Himself with His armor as a hero for the battle. The sentiment is that His regard for His earthly kingdom and people, His love of justice and righteousness, arouse His soul to special retribution. He will therefore bring vengeance upon His enemies and deliverance to His friends. It is supposable that the first two clauses which name righteousness and salvation refer to His deliverance of His friends, and the other two to vengeance on His enemies. H. C. The whole figure here is that drawn from a warrior or a conqueror; a hero prepared alike for defence and for offence. The idea is, that He would be able to defend and vindicate His people, and to carry an aggressive warfare against His enemies. But it was not to be a warfare literally of blood and carnage. It was to be such as would be accomplished by righteousness, and zeal, and a desire to secure salvation. The triumph of righteousness was the great object still; the conquests of the Redeemer were to be those of truth. Barnes. Because they have no strength of their own nor any active men that will set to it in good earnest to redress the grievances either of their iniquities or of their calamities, therefore "His own arm shall bring salvation to Him," to His people, or to Him whom He would raise up to be the Deliverer, Christ, the Power of God and Arm of the Lord, that Man of His right hand, whom He made strong for Himself. H.—The Divine man commenced and finished the mightiest work of the universe alone. He was aided by no human arm. Not even a single, whole-hearted encouragement cheered him along His path. He suffered and died for a world of sinners in profound solitude. A being thus situated and thus acting has a soul to pity where no pity is wanted and a compassion to exercise toward the most abandoned of men that awakens no thankfulness or praise. Sympathy reaches a height of grandeur, when forgotten and unappreciated it toils and travails for the eternal good of a world. Reid. All barriers were broken down in Him, the atoning sacrifice, the mediating Lord—all barriers between man and man, between man and God, between earth and heaven. No barriers of race could destroy the unity of the humanity He had deigned to take, not as a mutable vesture, but as another nature; no barriers of past sin could divide the most guilty who believed in Him from God and from purity; no impenetrable, brazen gates of Hades could separate, really, the dead and the living, since the seen and the unseen were alike His kingdom. Where any wall of partition had stood He stood, and said, "I am the Door." Where the gates of exclusion stood, He stands, with the compassionate countenance to welcome and the irresistible, pierced hands to bless and to unite. Anon. 18. The only satisfactory solution is the one afforded by the hypothesis that the salvation here intended is salvation in the highest sense from sin and all its consequences, and that by Israel and the isles (or Gentiles) we are to understand the Church or people of God and the world considered as its enemies and His. 19. And they shall fear from the west the name of Jehovah, and from the rising of the sun His glory; for it shall come like a straitened stream, the spirit of Jehovah raising a banner in it. The name and glory of Jehovah are here not only parallels, but synonyms, as we learn from other places where the two terms are jointly or severally used to signify the manifested excellence or glorious presence of Jehovah. (See above, chaps. 30 : 27 ; 35 : 2 ; 40 : 5 ; 42 : 11.) On the whole, the meaning of the verse appears to be, that the ends of the earth shall see and fear the name and glory of Jehovah; because when He approaches as their enemy, it will be like an overflowing stream (chaps. 8 : 7, 8 ; 28 : 15), in which His spirit bears aloft the banner or the signal of victory. A.—They shall see His hand in judgment on His enemies and in salvation to His people. They of the west and they of the east will alike behold these demonstrations of God. All people of the remotest lands are embraced under these two of the cardinal quarters of the globe. The Spirit and the word of the living God will constitute the moving forces which are to subdue the nations to the love and the fear of His name. 20. The salvation of those from Jacob who could be brought (by wise means) to accept of Christ was first in the order of time in the Gospel work, an object dear to the Messiah's heart. The Christian reader will notice with interest that Paul (Rom. 11 : 26) associates this prophecy with a glorious era when "the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in" (i.e., to the Gospel communion), and "So, all Israel shall be saved." H. C. 21. Israel is here, as in many other parts of this great prophecy, regarded not merely as a receiver, but as a dispenser of the truth, an office with which, as we have seen, the body is invested in connection with the head and in perpetual subordination to Him. Israel, as well as the Messiah, and in due dependence on Him, was to be the light of the Gentiles, the reclaimer of apostate nations; and in this high mission and vocation was to be sustained and prospered by the never-failing presence of the Holy Spirit, as the author and the finisher of all revelation. (See above, chaps. 42 : 1-7 ; 44 : 3 ; 49 : 1-9 ; 51 : 16 ; 54 : 3 ; 56 : 6-8 ; 58 : 12. And compare Jer. 31 : 31 ; Joel 2 : 28 ; Ezek. 36 : 27 ; 39 : 29.) A. The Spirit of God shall come to us, to be our sanctifier. In the Redeemer there was a new covenant made with us, a covenant of promises; and this is the great and comprehensive promise of that covenant, that God will give and continue His word and Spirit to His Church and people throughout all generations. The Spirit that was upon Christ shall always continue in the hearts of the faithful; there shall be some in every age on whom He shall work and in whom He shall dwell, and thus the "Comforter shall abide with the Church forforver" (John 14 : 16). The word of Christ shall always continue in the mouths of the faithful; there shall be some in every age who, "believing with the heart unto righteousness, shall with the tongue make confession unto salvation." The word shall never depart out of the mouth of the Church, for there shall still be a seed to speak Christ's holy language and profess His holy religion. The Spirit and the word go together, and by them the Church is kept up. For the word in the mouths of our ministers, nay, the word in our own mouths, will not profit us unless the Spirit work with the word, and give us an understanding. But the Spirit does His work by the word and in concurrence with it; and whatever is pretended to be a dictate of the Spirit must be tried by the Scriptures. On these foundations the Church is built, stands firm and shall stand forever, Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. H. My words shall not depart out of the mouth of thy seed nor of thy seed's seed. It is the great law by which religion and virtue are spread and perpetuated in the world that God is faithful to this covenant, and that He blesses the efforts of His friends in endeavoring to train up generations for His service. Christian parents should repose on this promise of a faithful God. They may and should believe that it is His design to perpetuate religion in the families of those who truly serve and obey Him. They should be faithful in imparting religious truth; faithful in prayer; faithful in a meek, holy, pure and benevolent example; they should so live that their children may safely tread in their footsteps; they should look to God for His blessing on their efforts, and their efforts will not be in vain. They shall see their children walk in the ways of virtue; and when they die, they may leave the world with unwavering confidence that God will not suffer His faithfulness to fail; that He will not break His covenant nor alter the thing that is gone out of His lips. Barnes. 60 : 1 ARISE, shine ; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. 2 For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples : but the LORD 3 shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And nations shall come to thy 4 light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see : they all gather themselves together, they come to thee : thy sons shall come from far, and 5 thy daughters shall be carried in the arms. Then thou shalt see and be lightened, and thine heart shall tremble and be enlarged ; because the abundance of the sea shall be turned unto 6 thee, the wealth of the nations shall come unto thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah ; they all shall come from Sheba : they shall bring 7 gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praises of the LORD. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee : they 8 shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory. Who 9 are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows ? Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, for the name of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he 10 hath glorified thee. And strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister 11 unto thee : for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Thy gates also shall be open continually ; they shall not be shut day nor night ; that men may 12 bring unto thee the wealth of the nations, and their kings led with them. For that nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish ; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. 13 The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together ; 14 to beautify the place of my sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious. And the sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee ; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet ; and they shall call thee The city of 15 the LORD, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man passed through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many 16 generations. Thou shalt also suck the milk of the nations, and shalt suck the breast of kings : and thou shalt know that I the LORD am thy saviour, and thy redeemer, the Mighty 17 One of Jacob. For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron : I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteous- 18 ness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation nor destruction within thy 19 borders ; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by day ; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee : but the 20 LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself : for the LORD shall be thine everlasting 21 light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land for ever ; the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that 22 I may be glorified. The little one shall become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation : I the LORD will hasten it in its time. Chap. 60. In this chapter there is commenced a most glowing and beautiful description of the "golden age" under the Messiah. The description is continued to the close of chap. 62. The future glory of the Church is displayed under the most splendid colors and with every variety of imagery. It is designed to set forth the glory of that time when the Gentiles shall be gathered into the Church, and when the whole world shall become tributary to the Messiah and be illuminated with the light of Christian truth. The main design of the chapter is to foretell the conversion of the Gentiles or the heathen world and the happy and peaceful times which shall exist when that has occurred. In doing this, the powers of the inspired prophet seem to have been taxed to the utmost to convey a just view of the glory of the scene. That it refers to the time of the Messiah no one can doubt who reads it. In accordance with the usual mode in Isaiah, the prophet throws himself into the midst of the future scene (verse 1), and the events are described as passing in vision before his eyes. He sees the light as already shining; the glory of Jehovah as actually arisen upon the Church; he sees the Gentiles flocking to the Redeemer and pressing into the Church as clouds, and he sees them bringing their most valued and precious objects and laying them at the feet of the Messiah. The whole world is made tributary to the Church; and the whole world smiles in peace and glory under the influence of the Gospel of peace. Barnes. This magnificent hymn of triumph, following close upon the lamentation of the prophet over the rejection of Israel, is like the accelerated movement of a symphony after the plaintive measure of the andante, when, as in the rapids above Niagara, all the waves of sound leap and rush together, crested with spray, flashing with light, glittering with rainbows, as they whirl toward the tumultuous, deafening plunge of the finale. Yet as, through all the modulations of the symphony, the theme is ever the same; so through the varying keys of this grand, prophetic poem runs the theme of redemption by Christ, from the burst of wonder over the child Immanuel, through the humiliation of the Man of sorrows, the anguish of the crucified Saviour, on to His triumph and glory in His Church. To that glory the prophet summons the true Israel—the spiritual Zion, the Church of living souls. The presence of Christ is her illumination and joy; and, through the brightness of her shining, the nations are gathered to her seat, until her heart throbs and swells with wonder and exultation. J. P. T. The previous chapter has fully opened the way so that the next scene in the prophetic panorama will legitimately be, The duties and the glories of the Gospel age. The powers of sin have seemed to reach their maximum; Satan has done his worst; he has fearfully poisoned and paralyzed (morally) even the covenant people of God; but by so doing he has called out the justice and judgment of the Almighty and aroused the Omnipotent arm to retrieve the cause of truth and righteousness. The Church's extremity is God's opportunity; the conflict deepens; God's word and Spirit are to be matched against the whole array of the powers of darkness, and the prophetic eye is thrown afar down the vista of time to sweep the field of battle and tell the ultimate result. Beyond all question, this is the starting point from which this chapter begins. The Redeemer has come to Zion (chap. 59:20); her own Messiah appears; Judaism, long since decayed and waxed old, retires, to give place to a new form of religious organization and to new modes of Christian life. The Spirit and the word (59:21)—agencies simple, yet through the power of God, most mighty—are now commissioned for the field. The last thought of the previous chapter is that these agencies—the working forces of the Almighty—are to have this field to the end of time—that is to say, till the victories of the Messiah are complete and the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord, or in the phrase of Isaiah, till men "shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (11:9). Now therefore with most beautiful fitness the Lord through the prophet calls upon His people, His spiritual Zion, to "arise and shine" in the light of Gospel truth already breaking forth as the very face of God upon her (verses 1, 2); for Gentiles are coming to walk in this light and to be blessed therein (verse 3); let her lift up her eyes and behold their thronging hosts, her own new-born sons and daughters (verse 4). Her heart throbs under almost overpowering emotions (verse 5); Gentile converts come with their wealth and their full hearts from Arabia on the south (verses 6, 7), and from the isles of the west (verses 8-10); by these forces of treasure and of willing hands, her walls arise (verse 10); her gates stand open continually for new accessions (verse 11), and no nation can safely withhold its contributions (verse 12); the glories of Lebanon adorn her city (verse 13); her enemies humbly acknowledge her the chosen of God (verse 14); Zion, honored and enriched by the nations, becomes surpassingly glorious (verses 15, 16); old things give place to things new and brighter (verse 17); violence and wrong are felt and feared no more (verse 18); God Himself becomes her abiding light and glory (verses 19, 20); her people all righteous and God glorifying Himself in them, crown the magnificent panorama of this wonderful vision of Gospel victories and triumphs. This unparalleled description needs no aid of commentator to make its general significance clear, its beauties apparent, its sublimity and grandeur most thoroughly thrilling and inspiring. If the reader will carefully consider and apply the scope of the context so as to see in this chapter an outline of the ultimate results of Gospel truth made mighty in human souls by the Spirit of God; and if, furthermore, he will bear in mind that the seer whose prophetic vision swept this august field and grasped these ultimate results was a Jew, of Hebrew thought, imagination and surroundings; who must therefore, by a simple law of necessity, think of and see the future Zion only as the Zion of his own time remade, extended, readorned and still the rallying centre for the nations of the earth, proselyted to her altar and to her Temple shrines, the significance of the whole will be readily seen. As to the time of fulfilment, none can say more than that it began with the Christian age, and will be complete when and only when the Gospel shall have had free course in all lands, and the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God. When the state of the world comes up to this description, men will know it, and can say with no faltering of doubt, "There hath failed not aught of any good thing which the Lord hath spoken unto the house of Israel; all is come to pass" (Josh. 21: 45). Till then there will be work for the toiling hand; prayer for the waiting but trustful heart; and the inspirations of hope, as when Christians work toward an end which they know lies fixed irreversibly in the purposes of the Holy One of Israel, awaiting fulfilment in its time. H. C. 1. Other benefits may be magnified above their just proportions; but no words can come up to the real dignity of these; and therefore the most magnificent descriptions, borrowed from objects familiar to our senses, do not adorn or exalt, but only speak of them in the most respectful manner that our capacities admit. Stanhope.—Light is the usual emblem of happiness and darkness of affliction; Jerusalem is bid to arise and give light to all about her, to communicate to others part of the honor and lustre which she had received from God, the true "Sun of Righteousness" (Mal. 4: 2). W. Lowth. 2. The perfection of the glory promised to the Church is not to arise from its contrast with the darkness of the world around it, but from the diffusion of its light until that darkness disappears. The prophet here reverts for a moment to the previous condition of the world, in order to describe with more effect the glorious change to be produced. He is not therefore to be understood as saying that Zion shall be glorious because while the nations are in darkness she is to enjoy exclusive light, but because the light imparted to her first shall draw the nations to her. 4. In this, as in the parallel passages, there is, by a strange coincidence, no word or phrase implying restoration or return, but the image evidently is that of enlargement and accession; the children thus brought to Zion being not those whom she had lost, but such as she had never before known, as is evident from chap. 49: 21. 5. All agree that it describes a great and joyful change to be produced by the accession of the Gentiles to the Church or chosen people, and the effect of this enlargement on the latter. The most natural interpretation of the verse is that which makes it a promise of indefinite enlargement, comprehending both the persons and the riches of the nations. To the assumption that commercial intercourse and navigation are here represented under forms and names derived from the Old Testament history, I am so far from objecting, that I wish to apply it to the whole prediction, and to use precisely the same liberty in understanding what is said of Zion and her sons, as in understanding what is said of Tarshish and her ships. Here, as in so many former instances, the writer does not even accidentally use any term explicitly denoting restoration or return, but only such as are appropriate to mere accession and increase ab extra. A. The reformation was heralded and helped by a wonderful succession of inventions and discoveries, which have changed the whole face of the world and the whole order of society. Printing, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope and the discovery of America would, in any case, have made revolutions, electrifying the Church into a new career; but impressed as they were at once into the service of Protestantism, they became doubly rousing and revolutionary. Commerce and the mechanic arts, though not begotten of Protestantism, were soon adopted by it, baptized at its altars, and made to fight its battles for the dominion of the world. We have only to take the world as we find it, busy, rich, rampant as it is, and subdue it, as we subdue ourselves, to Christ. We may be assured that the baptism of a better consecration is in store for us, when, on every sea, the keels of a Christian commerce shall go and come, and every land shall ring with Christian toil, and every fortune that is piled by Christian hands shall rise as a Christian temple, and every form of fraud, injustice and oppression shall melt like icebergs drifting in a summer sea. R. D. H. 6. The praises of Jehovah as good news. This form of expression is adopted in order to convey the full force of the Hebrew verb, which does not mean simply to announce or even to announce with joy, but to announce glad tidings. Retaining this sense here, the word would seem to signify not the direct praise of God, but the announcement of the fact that others praised Him, and the messengers would be described as bringing to Jerusalem the news of the conversion of their people. They are here, according to Isaiah's practice, represented by a group of ancestral names. Ephah was the eldest son of Midian (Gen. 25:4), who was himself the son of Abraham by Keturah (Gen. 25:2) and the brother of Jokshan, the father of Sheba (Gen. 25:1-4). The first two represent Northern and Central Arabia, the third Arabia Felix. 7. To the traders of Arabia, with their caravans and precious wares, he now adds her shepherds, with their countless flocks. Ezekiel also speaks of Tyre as trading with Arabia and all the chiefs of Kedar in lambs and rams and goats (Ezek. 27:21). These are here described as gathered in one vast flock to Jerusalem, or rather for her—i.e., for her use or service, which agrees best with what follows, and with the usage of the Hebrew preposition. They are then, by a bold and striking figure, represented as offering themselves, which is first expressed by the general term serve or minister, and then more unequivocally by declaring that they shall themselves ascend the altar. A. The whole description throughout this chapter is figurative. Isaiah in vision sees far in the future the glorious diffusion of the Gospel among the nations of the earth and its wonderful fruits in the complete and unreserved consecration of wealth and of soul to the service and worship of God. But to give the idea of worshipping God, the forms must be Jewish, and Gentiles must come up for worship to the Temple at Jerusalem. Hence also the nations named are not those which are now most prominent in the heathen world, but are precisely those which were prominent then. Arabia on the south and east and the islands on the great west (verse 9) would be first and most naturally thought of by a Jew of Isaiah's time as needing conversion. On the same principle of interpretation, we cannot assume that the Temple at Jerusalem will be the great central object in this glorious Gospel age. We cannot take in its literal sense what is said here of the flocks of Kedar and of the rams of Nebaioth, coming up with acceptance upon God's altar. For Temple and altar have alike gone down and passed away, as to their literal form, and nothing remains of them save their spiritual significance as indicating the pure, earnest, self-sacrificing worship and service of God. H. C. 8. Fly as a cloud and as doves to their windows. It is a fine conception of Vitringa, that the ships expressly mentioned in the next verse are here described in their first appearance at a distance resembling with their outspread sails and rapid course a fleecy cloud driven by the wind, and a flight of doves returning to their young. Both comparisons are elsewhere used as here to indicate rapidity of motion. A. Morier, in his "Second Journey," p. 140, has well illustrated this passage. "In the environs of the city" (Ispahan), says he, "to the westward, near Zainderood, are many pigeon houses, erected at a distance from habitations. They are large, round towers, rather broader at the bottom than the top, crowned by conical spiracles, through which the pigeons descend. Their interior resembles a honey-comb, pierced with a thousand holes, each of which forms a snug retreat for a nest. The extraordinary flights of pigeons which I have seen upon one of these buildings, afford perhaps a good illustration of Isa. 60:8. Their great numbers and the compactness of their mass literally looked like a cloud at a distance and obscured the sun in their passage." This has already in part at least been fulfilled. The rapid conversions in the time of the apostles, the accessions to the Church from the Gentiles, accorded with this prediction. In numerous revivals of religion also has there been a fulfilment of it; and we are yet to anticipate a far more striking and glorious completion of it in the conversion of the heathen world to the Christian faith. Barnes. I have seen in Egypt dovecots rising, gallery upon gallery, so that thousands of pigeons could flock together to their shelter; and when, at evening, they came flying to their windows, the air was thick as with a cloud. Even so, while neighboring countries shall yield their tributes of flocks and merchandise, the fleets of the ocean, dense as clouds, swift as doves, shall come freighted with treasures from distant lands. And so spontaneous and universal shall be the homage of the nations to Zion, that the abundance shall require no precautions for its safety. Her gates shall stand wide open the livelong night; her very enemies shall serve her; her old oppressors shall bow at her feet. Such a consummation may well find utterance in such a song. J. P. T. 9. A virtual though not a formal answer to the question in the one before it. As if He had said, Wonder not that these are seen approaching, for the whole world is only awaiting My command to bring thy sons, etc. A. In this great work of winning the world, commerce, it seems, is to take a conspicuous part. While "the isles" wait for Christ, "the ships of Tarshish" are to be "first" in bringing the sons of Zion from far, with their silver and their gold as an offering unto "the name of the Lord their God," and as consecrated means in the hands of Him who hath steadfastly purposed to "glorify the house of His glory." Among all the means used in converting the human race to Christ, commerce, no doubt, is to be one of the most important. Three fifths of the earth's surface are covered with waters, while the remaining fifths lie in the shape of two vast continents, and of innumerable isles—the abodes of men, and the depositories of those treasures which God has given for the use of men. Between these the great deep is a broad highway, and commerce, with her ships, the only system of intercommunication. Without commerce, neither science nor art, neither civilization nor religion, could spread beyond the boundaries of the land of their birth. All other agencies, not purely spiritual, are, when left to themselves, local. Commerce has the only created arm that can reach round the globe. This, then, is the grand agent which God has prepared for Himself, and which He purposes to use in the work of gathering in the nations to Christ, and in collecting the gold and silver, the redundant means, which that work demands. J. S. Stone. 11. So great is the pressure upon her of these throngs of returning converts, that her gates must needs stand open day and night. The last clause assigns the reason—to bring in unto thee the masses of the Gentiles, their kings also being led in. The word translated "forces" is naturally a war term, and may mean either the armies or the wealth and military stores which are the sinews of war. The thought probably includes both the people themselves and their wealth, cattle and gold with them. H. C.—Upon this verse, perhaps combined with Zech. 14:7, is founded that beautiful and grand description, the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night there (Rev. 21:25). A. 12. This stands related to the previous verse as the penalty for not doing what is there required. All kings and all people must come to Christ to serve Him in His Zion, or must perish. The grand crisis hour has come. Whoever yields to the truth and Spirit of God will receive Jesus as Lord and King, and join His people heartily in true homage, love and service to Him; but whoever among all the nations of the earth will not bow to Christ must perish utterly. This law of God's moral kingdom takes effect even now in its own way, and more and more palpably as the Lord's converting agencies become more powerful. Hence in those latter days of their final, transcendent power this law must obtain universally and none escape its decisive, resistless sway. H. C. No nation can flourish and long continue that does not obey the law of God, or where the true religion does not prevail and the worship of the true God is not maintained. History is full of affecting illustrations of this. The kingdoms of Babylon, Assyria, Macedonia and Egypt, the Roman Empire and all the ancient monarchies and republics, soon fell to ruin because they had not the salutary restraints of the true religion, and because they lacked the protection of the true God. It is a maxim of universal truth that the nation which does not admit the influence of the laws and the government of God must be destroyed. No empire is strong enough to wage successful war with the great Jehovah; and sooner or later, notwithstanding all that human policy can do, corruption, sensuality, luxury, pride and far-spreading vice will expose a nation to the displeasure of God and bring down the heavy arm of His vengeance. Barnes. Why have the names of Chaldea, Assyria and Egypt been starred upon the catalogue of nations? Children still continue to be born, and lullabies may still be heard upon the banks of the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Nile. Why, since the people are living, have the nations died? One verdict will answer for them all; one verdict and one epitaph. To say all in a single word, they died of immorality; and immorality is suicide. Seldom do nations die in any other way than by suicide. Nations that are bad may be employed by providence, as every nation has been employed in its turn; but the service rendered, not being a voluntary service, brings no honor to the instrument. Egypt, Assyria and Babylon stood simply upon their own moral character; and when this, by steady decline, had reached a certain point of baseness, they collapsed and fell. R. D. Hitchcock. The nation that does not come up to the ideas of God for national life will sooner or later, empire, republic, monarchy or what, it matters not, disappear from the map of the world. No form of government will save it, or political wisdom, if it gets in the way of the march of the kingdom of heaven and the purpose of God. S. Burnham. 13. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee.** This expression denotes that all the cedars and other choice trees of Lebanon should contribute to the rebuilding and beautifying of God's Temple, which implies, in a spiritual sense, that everything should tend to adorn and render perfect the Church, which is called the house and building of God (1 Tim. 3 : 15 ; 1 Cor. 3 : 9). W. Lowth.—Many a Lebanon on earth, many a beauty of nature, has its own glory, wherein the glory of God in days to come will shine out once more, that a requital may follow for its long abuse through sin ; and that the beautiful creation, not having been made in vain, may receive at length its due honor. Stier. 14. The Jerusalem or Zion of this passage is perfectly appropriate to the New Jerusalem, the Christian Church, not as it was, or is, or will be at any period of its history exclusively, but viewed in reference to the whole course of that history, and in contrast with the many disadvantages and hardships of the old economy. 16. All interpreters agree with the Targum in applying this verse to the influx of wealth and power and whatever else the kings and nations of the earth can contribute to the progress of the true religion. The figure is derived from De. 33 : 19, they shall suck the abundance of the seas. A.—The figures in the first clause need not be mistaken. She shall draw abundantly from the resources of all the Gentile nations and their kings ; shall be enriched by their wealth and labors, and built up by their consecration to her interests. (See the same sentiment, chaps. 49 : 23 ; 61 : 6 and 66 : 12.) In her own joyful experience Zion shall know that Jehovah is her Saviour ; that her own Messiah is the Almighty God. H. C. 17. For brass I will bring gold. This commences the description of the happy state of those times when the Gentiles should be led to embrace the true religion, and when the wealth of the world should be consecrated to the service of the true God. Barnes.—Dropping the figure, the sense will be that the piety of the Church will be of a type far more pure and true than in her former ages, less alloyed with human corruptions. Doubtless also it is implied here that her resulting morality is indefinitely purer, for God is wont to estimate piety by the morality which results from it. The last clause shows that the thought is upon public morality ; her officers, magistrates, will not be iniquitous and oppressive, as they were in the days of the old prophets, but will ensure peace and righteousness ; or in this strong language, will be peace and will be righteousness. H. C. 18. Though waves may dash against them, and hosts, like overflowing billows, may come, yet God shall be the strength and the security of those walls, and they shall be for the safety of the people. And whenever those citizens have occasion to go forth in the presence of an enemy, it shall be with the voice of joy and of praise. Not only do the walls protect them, but they are joyful within them ; and from the open gates no sound of lamentation or repining is heard, no effort to sue for terms of peace, no begging of terms with an encircling enemy, but the voice of praise and of joy ever rings forth ; so that the walls are salvation and the gates are praise. The two ideas, it seems to me, that occur to every mind are these : that the Christian Church is a place of safety and a place of joy. M. Simpson. 19. And thy God thy glory. The honor of the Church shall be that it has the true God for its protector. Its joys shall be found, not in the beauty of created things, but in the glory of the Divine perfections, and in the laws and plans of the Almighty. The glory of the Church is its great head. His name, His attributes, His laws, His protecting care, constitute her main glory. It is an honor to the Church to have such a God and Redeemer ; an honor to share His favor and to be under His ever-watchful care. The glory of the Church is not her wealth, her numbers, her influence, nor the rank and talent of her ministers and members ; it is the character of her sovereign Lord, and in His perfections it is right that she should exult and rejoice. Barnes. 19,20. Raising to its sublimest height the common Hebrew figure which represents calamity as darkness and prosperity as light, the prophet here sees such light and glory as no earthly sun and moon could produce. Hence the sun and the moon fade out as our stars are wont to do when the sun arises, and now God alone becomes the great Sun in the heavens of His Zion, irradiating her city by day and by night, for really there is no night there. The reader will note in this chapter the twofold use of light as a figure ; first, to represent moral truth—its source and its power ; and, secondly, its results in the blessedness of the people thus enlightened. First, Christ rises with His Gospel as a light upon Zion, and through her instrumentality, upon the Gentile nations; and then the blessed fruits of this light are represented as a glorious and perpetual day, of which God Himself is the sun that never sets. H. C. The Christian Church is not the conqueror of the Jewish polity, but the heir and successor. The new covenant has been developed out of the old. There was no break when Christ came, but a fulfilment and a completion. And so the promises were handed down in the Christian line, among which these from the latter part of Isaiah, relating to the stability of the ancient Church, are not the least remarkable. They declare that God is an everlasting light to His people, that their permanence is like the permanence of the creation of God. Woolsey. There are no phrases on which the sacred writers delight so constantly to dwell, when they would express the excellencies of God, as those derived from the external light. It is (as it were) consecrated into being the material representative and index of God in His inanimate creation; and the Christian, who loves to hallow everything that is seen and heard and felt by associations of spiritual truth, is permitted to find in that which reveals all else, a faint revelation of that ineffable Supreme whom "no man hath seen or can see." "Jehovah"—cries the great prophet, rapt in vision of the future Church—"shall be to thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory!" W. A. B. By the religion which brings us to God, we have the assurance of spheres of life beyond the present, whose glories as yet we cannot measure. It cannot be for less than such a transcendent effect that this religion has come from realms above our mortal sight! It cannot be for less than that, that such unspeakable powers are in it! The same supreme Person who has made His word the soul of history, who has been, as He claimed to be, "the Light of the world," declared that in the Father's house are many mansions, and that they who have followed Him here in spirit shall there at length behold His face, partake His glory. It seems to me to glorify life, it seems to me to banish the shadow of gloom from death, to feel that that majestic figure—of Brother, Teacher, Friend, Redeemer—which towers supremely over the centuries, which made the earth sublime by its advent, which seemed in ascending to unite it to the heavens, has equal place in worlds to come! that we may trust His imperative word; that we may serve His kingly cause; that we may see the illumined universe, for us as for Him, a house of victory and of peace! that we may stand, by and by, with Him, amid the light as yet unreached, and say, each one: "I believed in Thy religion! I saw its triumphs in the earth; I felt its power in my heart; I rose to God in love upon it; I foreknew by it what now I find—eternal life!" Then all these wonders of the past shall lose themselves in vaster wonders still to come; and saint and seer shall be our fellows in that immortal consummation! R. S. S. Thy mourning ended. Zion is not always to sit upon the ground and mourn in dust. The day of her redemption draweth nigh. Her prayer shall at length be heard, and God will come down for her deliverance. He will raise up hosts of faithful laborers to help us do this work. He will open wide and ripened fields for them to reap and garner. "The Lord shall make bare His holy arm, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God." Then will be realized the vision of the revelator in the apocalypse. That mighty angel, having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, shall take His great commission from the throne, commence His flight in the midst of heaven, and bend His way and bear His message to every nation and kindred and tongue and people. Zion shall become an eternal excellency, the joy of many generations. Her sun shall no more go down, neither shall her moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be her everlasting light, and the days of her mourning shall be ended. Such shall be the eventual harvest of all our trials, hopes and tears. Our work is great in its object—great in its difficulties, and great also in its promised results. E. Thurston. 21. In the plainest literal language we have here the elementary ideas of the whole chapter, the secret of this wonderful prosperity in Zion and this unsullied glory and universal joy. All lies in two facts, the "people all righteous" and God, the glorious author of this stupendous moral transformation. His honor is involved in this grand moral enterprise, and He will never desist, will never deem the work done till the truth and Spirit of the Lord have won these sublime immortal victories over the powers of human depravity and of the prince of darkness. H. C. 21. That I may be glorified.** We best glorify Him when we grow most like Him; and we then act most for His glory when a true spirit of sanctity, justice and meekness runs through all our actions; when we so live as becomes those that converse with the great mind and wisdom of the whole world; with that Being from whence all good flows, and in which there is no spot, stain or shadow of evil; and so, being captivated and overcome by the sense of Divine loveliness and goodness, endeavor to be like Him and to conform ourselves as much as may be to Him. As God's seeking His own glory in respect of us is most properly the flowing forth of His goodness upon us, so our seeking the glory of God is most properly our endeavoring a participation of His goodness, and an earnest, incessant pursuing after the Divine perfection. When God becomes so great in our eyes and all created things so little, that we reckon nothing as worthy of our aims and ambition but a serious participation of the Divine nature and the exercise of Divine virtues—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness and the like; when the soul, beholding the infinite beauty and loveliness of the divinity, and then looking down and beholding all created perfection mantled over with darkness, is ravished into love and admiration of that never-setting brightness, and endeavors after the greatest resemblance of God, in justice, love and goodness; when conversing with Him by a secret feeling of the virtue, sweetness and power of His goodness we endeavor to assimilate ourselves to Him—then we may be said to glorify Him indeed J. Smith. 22. Under this Divine religion, whatever has in itself truth and righteousness and is carried forward according to God's mind, has assurance of outgrowth and multiplication in time to come. "A little one shall become a thousand"—or as the Hebrew runs—"the littlest of all," the superlatively insignificant, this shall become mighty and increase in power, even with the power of God. History has shown this to be true. Compare the weakness of England at the beginning of the Elizabethan age with Spain, strong, grasping, aggressive. Not so now. The scale has turned. So far as a people express in their life the principles of Christianity, in that measure they are strong. What a shining, golden harvest for the long hereafter was sown by our Colonial fathers two hundred and forty years ago! Rightly founded, they believed that these colonies would grow to great commonwealths. A little one did become a thousand and a small one a great nation. So is it with every institution planted in the fear and love of God, with an aim to advance His glory and man's good. Its life and increase are assured, for it becomes God's work and enlists God's aid. So, notably, the growth of the missionary enterprise. The latter was almost unknown a century ago. It began in the "reveries" of men or the dreams of Christian women, who began by collecting small amounts and consecrating them to Christ. Now modern missions are a power, immense, world-embracing. They emphatically illustrate the grace of Christ, present and dominant in the world. So it is with every endeavor. That which has the element of righteousness in it God will care for. It has a vast future before it. R. S. S. I the Lord will hasten it in its time. I will do it in the proper time (LXX). The sense is, that this would be done at the proper time, called in Gal. 4:4 "the fulness of time." There were preparations to be made before it could be accomplished. The nations, under the Divine arrangement, were to be put into a proper position to receive the Messiah. He was not to come until the experiment had been fairly made to show how weak and feeble man was without a revelation—to show that philosophy, and learning, and the policy of statesmen could do nothing effectual for the salvation of men. He was not to come until the world should be at peace, and until there would be facilities for the rapid propagation of religion in all lands. Nor until all that had been said in prophecy should be fulfilled, until all the circumstances should combine which had been foretold as favorable to the introduction of the reign of the Messiah. But when that period should arrive, when the world should be in a proper state to receive the new system, then the Lord would "hasten" it. There would be no unnecessary delay; none which the circumstances of the case did not call for. So it will be in the universal spread of the Gospel referred to in this chapter. When the world shall be moulded into a proper state to welcome the Gospel, when the nations are prepared to receive it, and welcome it, and profit by it, then the universal propagation shall be hastened, and a nation shall be born in a day. Then truth shall be diffused like the spreading light of the morning, and the world shall be brought under the saving power of the Gospel. Meantime for the coming of that day we should pray and labor. By the diffusion of truth; by schools; by the spread of the Bible; by preaching; by the translation of the word of God into every language; by establishing the press in all the strong points of pagan influence; by placing missionaries in all the holds of power in the heathen world, and by training up many to enter into the harvest, the Christian world should prepare for the universal conversion of the world to God. In due time it shall be hastened, and "He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry" (Heb. 10 : 37). Barnes. It is well known, by the instrumentality of how incompetent persons, a few fishermen of no authority, address or education, and in how short a compass of time, this great revolution, the greatest that ever was in the religious world, was effected. In about forty years the Gospel was preached in almost every region of the world then known; this speedy propagation of it could never have been effected by persons so unequal to the task, had not the same Divine Spirit who foretold it assisted them in it, according to the promise here given, "I the Lord will hasten it in its time." Bp. Newton. God is hastening the time when not only the doctrine of popular liberty, but the greater and inclusive doctrine of a Divine redemption, enunciated through a purely taught Gospel, shall become the open faith of mankind. And for the furtherance of this blessed result how wondrous the work of God's providence, wrought through these later years in compacting the nations of the world, in multiplying the facilities for their mutual intercourse, and in the transmission of thought in common to all. Into how few centres is He concentrating political power, and into what close relations and sympathies is He bringing all the nations! By the setting of voicing wires beneath the pathway of all the seas and oceans, not only the doings of men in every nation, the transactions of government and commerce, are instantly known in every other, but what is of vaster moment far, the world itself becomes a great whispering gallery for the interchange of thought and opinion among its varied peoples. And for what purpose are these facilities of intercourse, this exchange of thought, to what end this binding of the nations together, this making the world one, save that predicted by the prophet concerning the time of the approaching end, "that many should run to and fro, and knowledge, the knowledge of a Redeeming God," shall be increased; "that that knowledge of the Lord may cover the earth as the waters the sea;" nay more, that all flesh may glory in the coming of the Lord, and all nations accept His sovereign sway! B. This wonderful, towering prophecy is embosomed on each side, before and after—flanked we might say—with promises of the Spirit. Immediately before it we read, "This is My covenant with them, saith the Lord; My Spirit that is upon thee, and My words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever." Then opens chap. 60, with an implied and most emphatic therefore: Therefore, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come; and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee," etc. At the other end of this majestic prophecy we read: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good things to the meek," etc.—of which you will remember that Jesus said at Capernaum (Luke 4 : 17-22): "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." The Spirit of God upon Jesus and upon His people, their crowning glory, the high tower of their strength—such is the strain of Old Testament prophecy. H. C. 61:1 THE spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and aliens shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the priests of the LORD: men shall call you the ministers of our God: ye shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves. For your shame ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess double: everlasting joy shall be unto them. For I the LORD love judgement, I hate robbery with iniquity; and I will give them their recompence in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. And their seed shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples: all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the LORD hath blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with a garland, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. Chap. 61. After describing the new condition of the Church, he again introduces the great Personage by whom the change is to be brought about. His mission and its objects are described by Himself in verses 1-3. Its grand result shall be the restoration of a ruined world (verse 4). The Church, as a mediator between God and the revolted nations, shall enjoy their service and support (verses 5, 6). The shame of God's people shall be changed to honor (verse 7). His righteousness is pledged to this effect (verse 8). The Church, once restricted to a single nation, shall be recognized and honored among all (verse 9). He triumphs in the prospect of the universal spread of truth and righteousness (verses 10, 11). A. The Messiah Himself appears, indicating His special mission (verses 1-3); the fruit of His labors upon human well-being (verse 4); the accession of new laborers to Zion and their work (verses 5, 6); the stupendous changes wrought in Zion in her transition from the Mosaic to the Christian age (verse 7); the grounds or reasons why Jehovah has wrought this change and will make it permanent (verse 8); how the Gospel will vindicate its worth and glory before the nations (verse 9); the Messiah rejoicing in the magnificent results of His mission and in the omnipotence of God pledged to insure them (verses 10, 11). Compared with chap. 60, which treats mainly of the results of Gospel truth in the better days of the Christian age, this chapter falls back somewhat to treat more fully of the causes of these results; of the manner in which the Messiah becomes a light to the nations; of His condescension and compassion in ministering to the humble, the lowly, the sin-bound and the heart-broken; but soon the course of thought glides insensibly into the same channel, the workings and results of the Gospel system. H. C. 1-3. These opening words were chosen by our Lord at Nazareth for the solemn introduction of His public ministry (Luke 4:16, 17). He opened the Book of Isaiah, found this passage, read the first six clauses, and then added: "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." That Messiah Himself speaks in these words rests on His own Divine authority. But it results no less plainly from the context. No mere prophet could appoint and give to all Zion's mourners the oil of joy and the garment of praise, or assume the title in verse 8, "I Jehovah love judgment." Says Cocceius, "He, in whom these characters are found, is He of whom Isaiah speaks." Our Lord claimed to be the great Prophet, as attested by His mighty miracles (verses 21, 23), to whom this promise refers. Not only is He this Anointed One, but His work of mercy, in preaching glad tidings to the poor, was then actually begun. Birks. The reasons for supposing the speaker to be the Messiah are entirely conclusive. For He and He only is the Head of this entire Gospel mission and work which leads the thought in this context and is the great subject of the preceding chapter. He is the Redeemer who comes to Zion (59 : 20), and upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests and abides, as well as upon His people also through Him (59 : 21). This allusion to the Spirit of the Lord in the close of chap. 59 has special value in this argument because the passage lies in the context, and indicates the course of thought. Then moreover, the same view is amply supported by previous Messianic prophecies in which the baptism of the Messiah with the Spirit of God is made prominent—e.g., chaps. 11 : 2-5 and 42 : 1. These considerations are abundantly sufficient; yet let it still be said that further support comes from those prophecies which represent the Lord as giving His messiah a message of truth to deliver, words to proclaim to His people, as here stated—e.g., Isa. 42 : 6, 7, "I the Lord will give thee for a light to the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison. Also 49 : 2 ; 50 : 4 ; 51 : 16. H. C.—It is matter of certainty that, in the judgment of the ancient Jewish Church, the person spoken of in all these passages was the Messiah; so that, in applying to Himself that particular passage in Isaiah, Jesus not only advanced the claim, but He must have been perfectly understood by those present to advance the claim, to be the Messiah of the Jewish prophets. And of all that had been spoken concerning Him by the prophet Isaiah, there is not a passage to be found that could more fitly have been appropriated by Jesus than the one He read at that opening stage of His career, as it describes Him in respect to the whole reach and compass of His Divine commission, with all its restorative energies and beneficent results. We see as well the wisdom of the selection as the justness of the application. It is also to be noted, that the appropriation by our Lord of the passage in this sixty-first chapter of Isaiah gives the virtual sanction of His authority to the applications elsewhere made of other passages in the same prophetic discourse to Gospel times—such as Matt. 12 : 18-21 ; Acts 8 : 32-35 ; 13 : 47 ; Rom. 10 : 21 ; 1 Pet. 2 : 23-25, where portions of Isa. 42, 49, 53 are so applied. P. Fairbairn. Christ joined two disciples as they walked to Emmaus, "and beginning at Moses and all the prophets He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." He claimed that He was in every part of the Old Testament. Touch those venerable records where you will, with the finger of faith, and you are thrilled by the presence of Christ. He is the Word. He is incarnated in the Bible as truly as He was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Every part of the Bible is necessary to the complete revelation of the Divine Redeemer, as every member and organ of that human body was to the Word made flesh. Interior. The Divine Christ belongs not exclusively or especially to the past. He is at this moment all that He was eighteen centuries ago—all that He has been to our fathers—all that He will be to our children. He is the Divine and infallible Teacher, the Healer and Pardoner of sin, the Source of all graces, the Conqueror of Satan and of death—now, as of old, and as in years to come. He is ever the same. Liddon. The living, life-giving Christ! That is our sole and sufficient theme. A life disloyal to Him is the fundamental heresy. The constraint of His sweet and awful love is the essential orthodoxy. Christ, the Sacrifice for sinners; Christ, the Teacher of the ignorant; Christ, the King of faithful souls; the Emancipator of moral slaves; the Consoler of the sorrowing; the sure Hope of the dying; the Guide of the baffled children of God; the Heaven of glorified multitudes innumerable on high; my Christ, your Christ, humanity's Christ; He alone is the truth, the life, the bond and the test of the true Church of God. McPherson. In Christ's devotional spirit, in His holiness, in His exertions to promote the Divine glory, in His tenderness for immortal souls, in His zeal to do those around Him good, in His self-denying perseverance, in His tender charity, His generous love, His meekness, His patience, His forgiveness of injuries—in these and all other moral excellences of His character, He stands before us for our study, or admiration, or imitation. Though we cannot work miracles like Him, we may imitate His acts of mercy, His prodigies of benevolence; though we cannot prophesy, we may yet proclaim His truth and make known His salvation; though we cannot forgive sins, we may yet pardon affronts and injuries; though we cannot die as atoning sacrifices for the sins of those around us, we may yet make many sacrifices for their sakes; and we may imitate His patience, His meekness, and suffer what befalls us for His sake, in the spirit in which He suffered. R. Hall. It is indeed true, as a saint who knew Christianity from the life, once said in his heart-winning way, "One might well consent to be branded and broken on the wheel, merely for the idea of such a character as Christ's; and if any one should be able to mock and deride, he must be insane. Every man, whose heart is in the right state, will lie in the dust, and rejoice, and adore." It is true; even as a bare idea, the spiritual image of Jesus which the Bible holds out to us is the most dignified and the most precious which is known to our race. It is the most sublime idea to which, in the province of morality and religion, the human mind has been raised. Let it be a fable, it is still the most noble truth which has been either received or communicated by the human mind, and preponderates, even as a fable, over a thousand verities of ordinary experience. But it is not a fable; it is not a bare idea; for the man who was able to produce, from his own invention, such a character, such a pattern, must himself have possessed this greatness of soul, if we deny that he observed it in another. We must transfer the spiritual and moral greatness of Jesus to His biographer if we deny it to Himself. If we glance at the greatest characters which have been exquisitely portrayed to us by the creative power and art of the most gifted poets, do we find in these characters anything like that which is developed in Jesus? And these plain, uncultivated, Jewish evangelists, they forsooth desired to invent such a character! they forsooth were able to invent it! How far, as an unaided man, did each of these writers of Memorabilia stand below Xenophon and Plato; and yet how high, in its silent majesty, stands the simple image of Jesus, which the unlettered evangelists present, above the character that is given to the wisest Greeks by the two masters of language and rhetoric! Ullmann. 1. The original, translated "to preach good tidings," is the word which has occurred repeatedly in the sense of preaching the Gospel—e.g., 40:9; 41:27 and 52:7. "Binding up," applied to the broken in heart, carries out the figure and refers to the consolation and peace of an humble trust in God, which naturally heals the wounded spirit. (Cf. chap. 57:15, 18, 19.) Liberty to the captive draws its figure and terms from the day of Jubilee which gave freedom to all Hebrew bondmen. Both this "liberty to the captive" and "the opening of the prison to the bound" must be referred to spiritual bondage, the slavery in which sin and Satan hold their victims, and from which Christ sets them free. H. C. The Gospel of Christ, the Word Incarnate of God, entering into our life is indeed good tidings—good tidings to the poor—as reaching down to the lowest depths where humanity still lingers, and growing with man's growth to the utmost bounds of his possible attainments, reaching and growing without limit, for if it could be shown that any human powers lie without the range of its benediction; that any form of man's distress and perplexity are inaccessible to its consolation; that any parts of nature or history are in conflict with its premises, then I should feel compelled to write against this also the sentence of dreariness and desolation, and look for another. But the Gospel of Christ is subject to no such condemnation. It shows us that the Divine is the foundation of the human and (most overwhelming wonder) that the human is the fulfilment of the Divine. It turns our thoughts from what we can do to what God has done and is doing. It discloses in the idea of creation a splendor which communicates its light to all created things. It pierces to the depths of misery, and brings back even from their darkness a promise of hope. It transfigures all personal suffering by the thought of a fellowship with God in Christ. It is a new, an eternal commandment in which all things, our utmost hopes and efforts, are shown to be of Him, and through Him, and unto Him. From the foreign mission field, and from the home mission field, the same story comes, that the vision of life has been brightened, the work of life has been quickened, the wounds of sin have been healed by the old—and ever new—tidings of Jesus and the resurrection, and above all that this Gospel has been found to be a Gospel powerful to transform the nature and the circumstances of men. Bp. Westcott. The effects of the work of Christ are even to the unbeliever indisputable and historical. It expelled cruelty; it curbed passion; it branded suicide; it punished and repressed an execrable infanticide; it drove the shameless impurities of heathendom into a congenial darkness. There was hardly a class whose wrongs it did not remedy. It rescued the gladiator; it freed the slave; it protected the captive; it nursed the sick; it sheltered the orphan; it elevated the woman; it shrouded as with a halo of sacred innocence the tender years of the child. In every region of life its ameliorating influence was felt. It changed pity from a vice into a virtue. It elevated poverty from a curse into a beatitude. It ennobled labor from a vulgarity into a dignity and a duty. It sanctified marriage. It revealed for the first time the angelic beauty of a Purity of which men had despaired and of a Meekness at which they had utterly scoffed. It created the very conception of charity, and broadened the limits of its obligation from the narrow circle of a neighborhood to the widest horizons of the race. And while it thus evolved the idea of Humanity as a common brotherhood, even where its tidings were not believed—all over the world, wherever its tidings were believed, it cleansed the life, and elevated the soul of each individual man. Farrar. It was before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the academy, and the pride of the portico, and the fasces of the lictors, and the swords of thirty legions were humbled in the dust. Macaulay. 2. It was not to announce a period well known before, but to proclaim that such a year of mercy, a great antitype of the year of jubilee, was now begun. Here our Lord paused at the opening of His message, and only added much later the warning of "the days of vengeance" (Luke 21: 20-24), when this mercy had been despised. Birks. "The acceptable year of the Lord," when "liberty was proclaimed to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound," evidently refers to the jubilee; but in the prophetic sense, it means the Gospel state and dispensation, which proclaims spiritual liberty from the bondage of sin and Satan, and the liberty of returning to our own possession, even the heavenly inheritance, to which, having incurred a forfeiture by sin, we had lost all right and claim. J. T. Bannister. 2,3. He was to be a Comforter, and so He is, as Preacher, Healer and Deliverer; He is sent to "comfort all who mourn," and who, mourning, seek to Him and not to the world for comfort. Christ not only provides comfort for them, and proclaims it, but He applies it to them; He does by His Spirit comfort them. There is enough in Him to "comfort all who mourn," whatever their sore or sorrow is; but this comfort is sure to them who "mourn in Zion." To these Christ has appointed by His Gospel and will give by His Spirit those consolations which will not only support them under their sorrows, but turn them into songs of praise. H. 3. Beauty for ashes, etc. A description of the change of habit and appearance that should take place in proportion to the change of circumstances. While they were mourners, they used to put ashes on their heads; now they were to wear a crown or diadem; for the word rendered here "beauty" signifies an ornament proper to the head, and is so translated (Ezek. 24: 17). W. Lowth. That the efficacy of Sorrow for the great work of self-abasement is mighty scarcely requires a statement. Affliction is the very voice of God speaking to the heart of man its nothingness. Sermons may fail, but sorrow is more eloquent than sermons. It is not the Gospel, but it is the herald of the Gospel; it is the very "voice of Him that crieth" in the vast "wilderness" of the desolated heart, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in this desert a highway for our God!" Surrounded by all earthly comforts, we may not comprehend the message, "Comfort ye!" But when around us lie shattered the hopes and dreams of that fleeting prosperity, when we walk among ruins, ourselves a ruin, then God's time is near, His hand is busy in that chaos, the "broken heart" is there which He has promised not to spurn, and His Spirit (which works by means and times and seasons) is even now about to weave of the dark substance of that grief the "garment of praise" of which His prophet has spoken—the adorning meet for the everlasting kingdom! W. A. B. Trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord. He was to be a Planter, for the Church is God's husbandry. Therefore He will do all this for His people, will cure their wounds, release them out of bondage and comfort them in their sorrows, "that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord," that they may be such, and be acknowledged to be such; that they may be ornaments to God's vineyard, and may be "fruitful in the fruits of righteousness," as the branches of "God's planting" (chap. 60: 21). All that Christ does for us is to make us God's people, and some way serviceable to Him as "living trees," planted in the "house of the Lord" and "flourishing in the courts of our God;" and all this "that He may be glorified;" that we may be brought to glorify Him by a sincere devotion and an exemplary conversation; for "herein is our Father glorified, that we bring forth much fruit;" and that others also may take occasion from God's favor shining on His people, and His grace shining in them, to praise Him; and that He might be forever "glorified in His saints." H. The Christian is entered on the catalogue of the Lord's vineyard as a tree of righteousness, and is expected to bring forth much fruit. If his growth in grace is small and his fruitage unto holiness is meagre, he is little better than the barren fig tree that was a cumberer of the ground. He disappoints the hopes and grieves the heart of the husbandman. The condition of fruitfulness is very simple and is clearly stated by our Saviour. "He that abideth in Me and I in him." As long as the union is kept up between the branch and the vine the branch bears abundantly. It derives all that it needs from the vine. It has not to do, but only to cling and to receive. The new life comes by faith. But it is a faith that quickens and that leads to intense activity. When the warm rain visits the roots of a healthy vine, and the sap rises and pushes out in all the branches, those branches begin to unfold leaf buds and fruit buds. The life that they receive manifests itself in growth. One who knew not the secret of that growth would think that the branch itself was working the wonders that are revealed. And so it is in spiritual growth. The Christian by his union with Christ is quickened. He puts forth new graces of the Spirit and new activities in the Divine life as the result of that quickening. His faith in Christ works by love. That is its nature, and unless he represses the normal action he must bring forth much fruit. Interior. Looking over the scope of these first three verses, it may well excite our admiration that the sublimely glorious results of chap. 60 are effected by agencies and methods so mild and gentle, so condescending and compassionate, so fraught with loving-kindness and matchless mercy. 4. "They" in this verse are those stable Christians, spoken of above as "trees of righteousness." What they shall do has been already expressed under the same and similar figures in chaps. 49:8; 54:3 and 58:12. The idea is, they repair the wastes and desolations of sin wrought during the ages in which Satan has had sway. The figure conceives of these desolations as external—i.e., ruined villages; burned cities; fields wasted by war, or impoverished by slave culture; but the underlying sense is rather of those usages in society, those habitudes of thought, those immoral, depraved maxims and sentiments which shut out God, and pervert man's moral convictions and thus make the souls of men desolate. H. C. Godliness develops such graces of the spirit as love, faith, meekness and humility. It produces the fruits of righteousness. It feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits those who are sick and in prison; and all this it does not for reward, or applause, but solely to glorify God who has planted it in the warm, mellow soil of His grace, watered it with the influences of His Spirit, and set the sun of righteousness in the firmament of redemption to shine upon it. Babb. 6. The persons addressed here, "Ye" who are to be "priests of the Lord," comprise all God's true-hearted Gospel laborers, whether Jew or Gentile, and with special reference to those who do the work of the Gospel ministry. They are to be amply sustained by their Christian brethren. They are to fill a sphere analogous to that of the ancient priests, and, like them, must live at and of the Temple. (See Paul's doctrine, Rom 15:27; 1 Cor. 9:11 and Gal. 6:6.) That they shall "cat the riches of the Gentiles," may also mean that God in His providence brings the resources of wealth, industry and art into the service of His Zion, transferring from unconsecrated commerce and perhaps from ungodly hands the resources and powers of art and of Christian civilization, to the use of His Gospel kingdom. H. C. The essential idea here and in Rom. 15:27 is that the Church, the chosen people, or the Israel of God, is charged with the duty of communicating spiritual things to those without, and entitled, in return to an increase of outward strength from those who thus become incorporated with it. But it is not merely in this lower sense that the people of God are in the law (Ex. 19:20) and the Gospel (1 Pet. 1:3), as well as in the prophets, represented as the ministers and priests of God. Not only as instructors and reclaimers of the unbelieving world do they enjoy this sacred dignity, but also as the only representatives of their Great High Priest, in Him and through Him possessing free access to the fountain of salvation and the throne of grace (Heb. 4:14-16). In this respect, as in every other which concerns the method of salvation and access to God, there is no distinction of Jew and Gentile any more than of Greek and barbarian, male and female, bond and free; but all are Christ's, and Christ is God's, and all alike are priests and ministers of God. A. The world does not read the Bible nor come to church. All it learns about Christ and the Christian life it must learn from those who bear Christ's name and represent Him. If all church-members lived truly consecrated lives, loyal to Christ in business, in pleasure, in all things, it is impossible to estimate what the saving power of the Church would be in example alone. . . . There is a silent, personal influence that goes out from every one, and this influence is always leaving results and impressions wherever it touches. You cannot live a day and not touch some other life. Our influence depends upon what we are more than upon what we do. It is by living a beautiful life that we bless the world. We need not underestimate holy activities. Good deeds must characterize every true life. But if the life itself is noble, beautiful, holy, Christ-like, one that is itself a benediction, an inspiration, the worth of the influence is many times multiplied. . . . We get the largest measure of good for ourselves from what we do when our first aim is to do good to another. If you would get the best from any good thing, receive it from God, and then hasten to minister it in Christ's name to others. The richest blessing comes not in the receiving, but in the giving and doing. J. R. M. 7. When the riches of the Gentiles pass over into the hands of Zion in the sense of the verse previous, then instead of Zion's former shame, she shall have double; instead of confusion, being ashamed and confounded because of her relative weakness, she now has a joyous portion, a lot in which she may well exult, so that in their land they shall have double strength and glory, and it is to them an everlasting joy. H. C. 8. An enunciation of the general truth, that the Divine justice renders absolutely necessary the destruction of His obstinate enemies, and the deliverance of His people from oppression. (Cf. 2 Thess. 1 : 6-8.) A.—If men do not do justice, He loves to do judgment Himself in righting them that suffer wrong, and punishing them that do it. God pleads His people's injured cause not only because He is jealous for them, but because He is jealous for justice. To illustrate this, it is added, that He "hates robbery for burnt offering;" He hates injustice even in His own people, that honor Him with what they have in their burnt offerings. It is a truth much to the honor of God, that ritual services will never atone for the violation of moral precepts, nor will it justify any man's robbery to say, "It was for burnt offerings;" or "Corban—it is a gift." Behold, "to obey is better than sacrifice, to do justly and love mercy better than thousands of rams;" nay, that robbery is most hateful to God which is covered with this pretence, for it makes the righteous God to be the patron of unrighteousness. H. 9. The meaning is not merely that all seeing them shall acknowledge that they are a seed, etc., but that all seeing them shall recognize them by recognizing the effects and evidences of the Divine blessing. The true application of the verse is to the Israel of God in its diffusion among all the nations of the earth, who shall be constrained by what they see of their spirit, character and conduct to acknowledge that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed. The glorious fulfilment of this promise in its original and proper sense may be seen already in the influence exerted by the eloquent example of the missionary on the most ignorant and corrupted heathen. A. 10. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. Those that rejoice in God have cause to rejoice greatly, and we need not fear running into an extreme in the greatness of our joy, when we make God the "gladness of our joy." The first Gospel song begins like this, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour" (Luke 1 : 46, 47). There is just matter for this joy, for salvation and righteousness are wrought out and brought in, and the Church is clothed with them. H. 11. The glory of the promise is its universality, in which the fulfilment will no doubt be coextensive with the prophecy itself. A.—The Lord has ordained that righteousness and praise shall spring up with a vigorous and sure growth before all the nations, even as the warm bosom of the earth pushes forward the seed planted therein to germination, growth and fruitage. The Gospel is to be an effective and glorious moral power for the regeneration of society and of human hearts in all the ends of the earth! In this the Messiah rejoices with exceeding great joy. This universal victory of truth and righteousness is the "joy set before Him" (as this prophecy plainly shows), "for which He endured the cross, despising the shame." H. C. 62:1 For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth. 2 And the nations shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory : and thou shalt be called by 3 a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name. Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty 4 in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken ; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate : but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah : for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall 5 be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee : and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. 6 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem ; they shall never hold their peace day 7 nor night : ye that are the LORD's remembrancers, take ye no rest, and give him no rest, 8 till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The LORD hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat 9 for thine enemies ; and strangers shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou hast laboured : but they that have garnered it shall eat it, and praise the LORD ; and they that have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary. 10 Go through, go through the gates ; prepare ye the way of the people ; cast up, cast up the 11 high way ; gather out the stones ; lift up an ensign for the peoples. Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation 12 cometh ; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompence before him. And they shall call them The holy people, The redeemed of the LORD : and thou shalt be called Sought out, A city not forsaken. Chap. 62. The words of the great Deliverer are continued from the foregoing chapter. He will not rest until the glorious change in the condition of His people is accomplished (verse 1). They shall be recognized by kings and nations as the people of Jehovah (verses 2, 3). She who seemed to be forsaken is still His spouse (verses 4, 5). The Church is required to watch and pray for the fulfilment of the promise (verses 6, 7). God has sworn to protect her and supply her wants (verses 8, 9). Instead of a single nation, all the nations of the earth shall flow unto her (verse 10). The good news of salvation shall no longer be confined, but universally diffused (verse 11). The glory of the Church is the redemption of the world (verse 12). A.—The Messiah is still the speaker, expressing His untiring zeal and unflagging interest in this promised glorious enlargement of Zion. He will never rest till it be fully accomplished (verse 1) ; what it shall be in its fulness ; how it shall affect the honor and glory of the true Church ; the accession of the Gentiles ; the love felt for the cause of God and of truth—stand forth under various figures (verses 2–5). So also how the Messiah commissions His spiritual watchmen (verses 6, 7) ; what the Lord hath solemnly sworn as to the future protection and safety of His people (verses 8, 9) ; a command to Gentile nations to prepare to come into Zion and the proclamation to this effect, going forth to the ends of the earth (verses 10, 11). United with the former Zion, they become known everywhere as the holy people, the Lord's redeemed, a city never more forsaken (verse 12). This division of chapters should not interrupt the flow of thought, for originally these chapters (61 and 62) were one continuous discourse. The division was made not by Isaiah, but at a period long subsequent, and only for more convenient reference to its various parts. H. C. 1. The glorified Christ is constantly working for His Church. We are too apt to regard our Lord's real work as all lying in the past, and, from the very greatness of our estimate of what He has done, to forget the true importance of what He evermore does. "Christ that died" is the central object of trust and contemplation for devout souls—and that often to the partial hiding of Christ that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. But Scripture proclaims the full accomplishment of all the purposes of His earthly ministry ; it emphasizes the triumphant completion of His redeeming work by His death; it proclaims the majesty of His nature, which returns to the glory which He had with the Father before the world was; it shows to the world, as on some coronation day, their King on His throne, girded with power and holding the far-reaching sceptre of the universe; it prophesies for men, in spite of all present sin and degradation, a share in the dominion which manhood has in Christ attained, for though we see not yet all things put under Him, we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor. It prophesies, too, His final victory over all that sets itself in unavailing antagonism to His love. A. M. 2. What this new name indicates the passage proceeds shortly to show (see verse 4). That this new name comes from God indicates that He Himself gives her these qualities and relations. 3. Thou shalt be an object of superb and glorious beauty, enjoying the infinite protection and love of thy God. The crown, especially the royal diadem, is the highest earthly type of whatever is splendid, gorgeous, glorious. The Church is such in God's hand. Her being such a crown in the hand of her God may signify perhaps that her beauty is His handiwork—her righteousness, the fruit of His spiritual creation; and yet the most obvious and prominent suggestion is rather that she is there in the beauty and glory which He gives her, enjoying His unfailing protection and undying love. H. C. 4. "No more shalt thou be called Azubah (Forsaken), and thy land shall no more be called Shemamah (Desolate); but thou shalt be called Hephzibah (my delight is in her), and thy land Beulah (Married), for Jehovah delights in thee, and thy land shall be married." The joyful change of condition is further expressed in the prophet's favorite manner, by significant names. It is probable that they were all familiar to the Jews as female names in real life. This we know to have been the case with two of them: the mother of Jehoshaphat was named Azubah (1 K. 22 : 42), and the mother of Manasseh Hephzibah (2 K. 21 : 1). It is better, therefore, to retain the Hebrew forms, in order to give them an air of reality as proper names, and at the same time to render them intelligible by translation. A. "As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." No enraptured bridegroom ever had love to his loved one so warm, and strong, and pure as that of the lover and seeker of souls to the souls He loves, and finds, and marries, and "leads" home, rejoicing. That nothing and no one may come between Him and them, He asserts strongly, jealously, the husband's right—"He that hath the bride is the bridegroom"—claims each recovered one as engaged, and forever affianced to Himself, names the name of each with a lover's tenderness, and "leads" them through these earthly scenes toward "the King's palace." Raleigh. 6,7. The promise is a general one, or rather the command that those who are constituted guardians of the Church should be importunate in prayer to God on her behalf. A.—They shall never hold their peace, even as the Messiah declares of Himself (verse 1), "I will not hold My peace;" "I will not rest," until Zion's righteousness shall go forth as brightness. This is therefore essentially His command to His Gospel ministers to imbue their souls with His quenchless spirit of zeal, love and labor, and to prosecute their work as He does His. "Ye that make mention of the Lord" is literally, "Ye that remind the Lord," or call things to His remembrance. The sense I take to be, remind the Lord of His promises; plead them with importunate prayer; bring up the case of Zion with unceasing supplication. H. C. The Lord, who has declared His own purpose of unwearied action for Zion, here associates with Himself the watchmen whom He appoints and endows for functions in some measure resembling His own, and exercised with constancy derived from Him. "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night." On the promise follows, as ever, a command (for all Divine gifts involve the responsibility of their use, and it is not His wont either to bestow without requiring, or to require before bestowing), "Ye that remind Jehovah, keep not silence." There is distinctly traceable here a reference to a twofold form of occupation devolving on these Christ-sent servants. They are watchmen, and they are also God's remembrancers. In the one capacity, as in the other, their voices are to be always heard. The former metaphor is common in the Old Testament, as a designation of the prophetic office, but, in accordance with the genius of the New Testament, as expressed on Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out on the lowly as well as on the high, on the young as on the old, and all prophesied, may be fairly extended to designate not some select few, but the whole mass of Christian people. The watchman's office falls to be done by all who see the coming peril, and have a tongue to echo it forth. The remembrancer's priestly office belongs to every member of Christ's priestly kingdom, the lowest and least of whom has the privilege of unrestrained entry into God's presence-chamber, and the power of blessing the world by faithful prayer. The gifts then here promised, and the duties that flow from them, are not the prerogatives or the tasks of any class or order, but the heritage and the burden of the Lord to every member of His Church. Christ sets the watchmen; He commands the remembrancers. From Him flows the power, from His good Spirit comes the desire, to proclaim the message. That message is the story of His life and death. But for what He does and is we should have nothing to say; but for His gift we should have no power to say it; but for His influence we should have no will to say it. By His example, by His gifts, by the motive of His love, our resting, working Lord says to each of us, "Ye that remind God, keep not silence." Let us answer, "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest." A. M. A strange word of encouragement to importunity, Give Him no rest; suffer Him not to be in quiet till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. A few such suitors in these times were worth thousands such as we are. Our prayers stick in our breasts, scarce come forth, much less do they go up and ascend with that piercing force that would open up the way for deliverances to come down. Leighton. 8,9. Under images drawn from her ancient history, the Lord predicts her future purity and prosperity. 10. As we have seen, the course of thought here is of prayer and labor for the extension and purity of Zion, for the conversion of the Gentiles and the glory of Christ's kingdom in this world. The Messiah has given the strongest expressions of His devotion to this work, and has summoned His watchmen to the same pure and unceasing devotion. Now in harmony with this line of thought, this verse exhorts the whole Church to take away every obstacle to the return of Gentile converts into Zion. "Go forth from your city gates; prepare the highway; elevate it well; clear out the stones; and then raise aloft the Gospel banner toward which those Gentile hosts may direct their steps as they come to Zion." H. C.—This is a prediction of the increase of the Church or chosen people by the accession of the Gentiles. The gates are then the gates of the ideal Zion or Jerusalem, the passage is an inward not an outward passage, and the exhortation of the text is one to all concerned, or all who have the opportunity to take away obstructions and facilitate their entrance. A. Cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones. Not only do modern ways prove the need of such preparation, but modern customs show how, when, and why it is done. When Ibrahim Pasha proposed to visit certain places on Lebanon, the emeers and sheikhs sent forth a general proclamation, somewhat in the style of Isaiah's exhortation, to all the inhabitants, to assemble along the proposed route, and prepare the way before him. The same was done in 1845, on a grand scale, when the present Sultan visited Brusa. The stones were gathered out, crooked places straightened, and rough ones made level and smooth. The exhortation to gather out the stones is peculiarly appropriate. These farmers do the exact reverse—gather up the stones from their fields, and cast them into the highway, and it is this barbarous custom which in many places renders the paths so uncomfortable, and even dangerous. W. M. Thomson. 11. The Lord sends forth His proclamation to the end of the world because it is to be a matter of profound interest to all Gentile nations that God is announcing to His Zion the coming of her Saviour, who moreover comes not in vain, but with success made sure. His reward is always in hand, so certain is it made by Divine covenant and promise. "Work" has here also the sense of reward of his work, the expected and desired result. H. C. 11,12. It shall be proclaimed to the captives, that they are set at liberty, and may go if they please; it shall be proclaimed to their neighbors, to all about them, "to the end of the world," that God has pleaded Zion's just, injured, and despised cause. Let it be said to Zion, for her comfort, "Behold thy salvation comes," thy Saviour, who brings salvation; He will bring such a work, such a reward, in this salvation, as shall be admired by all; a reward of comfort and peace with Him; but a work of humiliation and reformation before Him, to prepare His people for that recompense of their sufferings; and then, with reference to each, it follows, they shall be called "the holy people" and "the redeemed of the Lord; the work before Him," which shall be wrought in them and upon them, shall denominate them a holy people, cured of their inclination to idolatry, and consecrated to God only; and the reward with Him, the deliverance wrought for them, shall denominate them "redeemed of the Lord," so redeemed as none but God could redeem them; and redeemed to be His, their bonds loosed, that they might be His servants. H. 12. The holy people.** Holiness involves the reference of life and self to God, consecration to and service of Him. It is not a mere equivalent of purity, but distinctly carries the higher reference. The obedience is not to a law, but to a Lord. The perfection does not consist in conformity to an ideal standard, but in likeness and devotion to God. A. M.—Holiness is conformity to the character of God. To have fellowship with Him in His characteristic feelings and principles; to love what He loves; to hate what He hates; to desire what He promises; to rejoice in His will in all things, even when it crosses our own will; to learn to say from the bottom of the heart, even in the agony of conflict, "Not my will, but Thine be done"—this is to be holy; and every nearer approach to this is an advance in holiness. E. Bayley. 63:1 Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in right-2 coussness, mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like 3 him that treadeth in the winefat? I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the peoples there was no man with me: yea, I trod them in mine anger, and trampled them in my fury; 4 and their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my raiment. For 5 the day of vengeance was in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: there-6 fore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; and my fury, it upheld me. And I trod down the peoples in mine anger, and made them drunk in my fury, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth. 7 I will make mention of the lovingkindnesses of the LORD, and the praises of the LORD, according to all that the LORD hath bestowed on us; and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which he hath bestowed on them according to his mer-8 cies, and according to the multitude of his lovingkindnesses. For he said, Surely, 9 they are my people, children that will not deal falsely: so he was their saviour. In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days 10 of old. But they rebelled, and grieved his holy spirit: therefore he was turned to be 11 their enemy, and himself fought against them. Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people, saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the 12 shepherds of his flock? where is he that put his holy spirit in the midst of them? that caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses? that divided the water before 13 them, to make himself an everlasting name? that led them through the depths, as an horse 14 in the wilderness, that they stumbled not? As the cattle that go down into the valley, the spirit of the LORD caused them to rest: so didst thou lead thy people, to make thyself a 15 glorious name. Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy mighty acts? the yearning of thy bowels and 16 thy compassions are restrained toward me. For thou art our father, though Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel doth not acknowledge us: thou, O LORD, art our father; our 17 redeemer from everlasting is thy name. O LORD, why dost thou make us to err from thy ways, and hardenest our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of 18 thine inheritance. Thy holy people possessed it but a little while: our adversaries have 19 trodden down thy sanctuary. We are become as they over whom thou never barest rule; 64:1 as they that were not called by thy name. Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that 2 thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence; as when fire kindleth the brushwood, and the fire causeth the waters to boil: to make thy name 3 known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence! When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at 4 thy presence. For from of old men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath 5 the eye seen a God beside thee, which worketh for him that waiteth for him. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways: behold, thou wast wroth, and we sinned: in them have we been of long time, and shall we be saved? 6 For we are all become as one that is unclean, and all our righteousnesses are as a polluted 7 garment: and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for 8 thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us by means of our iniquities. But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work 9 of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, 10 look, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion 11 is become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned with fire; and all our pleasant things are laid waste. 12 Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O LORD? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore? Chap. 63. This chapter and the following relate to the same general subject, and should not be separated. The subject with which they are introduced is the destruction of the enemies of God, and this is followed by tender expressions of confidence in Jehovah, and by earnest supplications on the part of His people that He would interpose in their behalf. Barnes. Amid the glowing descriptions of Zion's purity, enlargement, and triumph, through which the prophet has borne us in the four chapters next preceding this, there have been brief intimations of hostile powers and of God's visitations of retribution upon them—e.g., chaps. 59: 18, 60: 12. Here in verses 1-6 this subject is resumed for a more distinct and full presentation. Remarkably this passage is the counterpart of chap. 34, in the earlier prophecies. Here as there, Edom is the representative of the malignant, determined enemies of Zion. Here as there, the Divine Avenger and Redeemer of Zion goes forth in the might of His strength, and the blood of the slain fills the foreground of the picture—here, staining all His raiment; there, making His sword drunk with blood, and washing the mountain sides with torrents of gore. This description is the more brief, as might be expected in a case of renewed mention. With verse 7 a new subject is commenced which fills the remaining portion of this chapter and also chap. 64. The prophet sees the true Zion as she stood historically during the age immediately preceding the first advent of Christ, struggling up through scenes of blended affliction and sin, under an almost crushing sense of ill-desert and unworthiness, grasping the promises of God in faith and prayer, and gathering strength from His past mercies. Hence it abounds with most earnest expostulations, importunate pleadings, and precious allusions to God's manifestations of mercy in former ages. H. C. The influx of the Gentiles into Zion having been described in the preceding verses, the destruction of her enemies is now sublimely represented as a sanguinary triumph of Jehovah or the Messiah (verses 1-6). The prophet then supposes the catastrophe already past, and takes a retrospective view of God's compassions toward His people, and of their unfaithfulness during the old economy (verses 7-14). He then assumes the tone of earnest supplication, such as might have been offered by the believing Jews when all seemed lost in the destruction of their commonwealth and temple (verses 15-19). A. 1. The prophet is singing of the victorious Messiah. He, that majestic figure that haunts all Hebrew history—He it is that comes up from Edom (which stands here to represent the sum of all the foes of Israel) with stained garments that show the terribleness of the struggle, and with step and face that manifest the completeness of His victory. It is the triumph of the Messiah that is being sung. This brings it, as you see, close to us. This Hebrew Messiah has come, and is more than the Hebrew Messiah: He is the Christian's Christ, He is our Saviour. See how the old vision is elevated once more to a yet larger application. The victory of Christ, the destruction of evil by good, the conquest over the devil by the Son of God, at cost, with pain, so that as He comes forth His robes are red with blood; the redemption of menkind from sin by the Divine and human Saviour—this is the largest and completest meaning of the ancient vision. Bp. Brooks. Who is this that cometh? The prophet asks the question; the personage who responds may best be regarded as the Messiah Himself. The prominence given to His person in chaps. 59: 20, 21; 60: 1-3; 61: 1-3, 10, 11, and 62: 1, 6, 11, makes this construction almost necessary. The course of thought and the logic of the context demand it. Then it is entirely in harmony with the spirit of other Messianic prophecies—e.g., Ps. 2 and 110; and with the doctrine of the New Testament—e.g., Matt. 28: 18, and its numerous parallel passages; also with Rev. 19: 11-21. In this prophetic vision the scenes of slaughter are recently past and the Great Redeemer and Avenger of His people is seen returning from the fearful carnage—His garments scarlet-dyed, blood-stained; Himself marching in triumph as a conqueror returning with renewed consciousness of power from a victorious conflict with His foes. The prophet cries, Who is this, so glorious in His apparel, so majestic in His mien? The answer reveals Him, “I that speak in righteousness,” saying only with truth and doing only in justice—doing in the way of just retribution all that I have threatened for deliverance to My people and for destruction to My incorrigible foes. “Mighty to save” gives prominence to the idea that these judgments on Edom were demanded by the interests of salvation to His people. H. C. The prophet wonders at an object which presents itself. This object is a Conqueror returning bloody from battle: of whom, by way of dialogue, and in answer to the questions, who He is, and why so habited, an account is given; representing a mighty victory, obtained with much blood and slaughter, won by the powerful but single arm of this mighty Warrior; by which a total rout was given to His adversaries at a time when, if He had not interposed, no other was disposed, no other able, to have quelled the outrage and havoc which they were making. His stained garments demonstrate the sharpness of the engagement, as His mien and manner of approach denote the invincible greatness of His strength. In this description we have represented the hardships and the success of that combat with the enemies of our souls, by which Christ brought salvation to mankind; vanquishing sin and death, wresting the prey out of the hands of Satan, and, as the apostle expresses it, “having spoiled principalities and powers, triumphing over them in His cross.” Dean Stanhope. It is Christ that is thus magnificently described, returning to His capital, from the land of the enemy, after His passion. Bp. Horne.—His “coming from Edom” is His rising from the dead; His return “from Bozrah” His coming back, having vanquished hell: Idumea standing for the kingdom of darkness and death, and Bozrah (the strong city of Edom) for the seat of the prince of darkness; agreeably to the custom, so familiar with the prophets, of putting the sworn enemies of the commonwealth of Israel to express the mortal and immortal enemies of the souls of God’s people. Bp. Andrews. The Christ depicted by rationalism is a pure creation of modern imagination, an ideal and unreal personage, wholly unlike the majestic being, whom prophets foretold, to whom the evangelists bore witness, who was preached of the apostles, received up into glory, and has ever since borne unequalled sway in the history of the Church and the nations. The fiction is with the modern critics; the fact is found in the old and ever-living faith. Such an abstract ideal of human excellence, such a cold and chaste purity of unearthly perfection, such a spiritual mystic, full of contemplation and revery, such a mere moral teacher, ministering only as a man, in pity and love, to other men’s natural necessities and social well-being, is not the real, living Christ, who has drawn men unto Him; is not the Divine Man, who has renovated the human conscience, and elevated the religious consciousness of the race, and been the heart and life of the spiritual conflicts and the spiritual life of mankind for eighteen hundred years. But the attributes and qualities, which rationalism denies and disowns, are the very ones which have given Christ His rule over man’s heart and history. It is Christ the Son of God, Christ the Lamb of God, Christ the resurrection and the life, the Christ who conquered Satan and brake the bands of death, and came in righteousness, mighty to save, the Christ in whom man has found the present Deity. He, and He only is it, whom the human heart and conscience have exalted to a spiritual throne, to be the Lord and Arbiter of man’s eternal destiny. The Christ of rationalism is an unhistoric figment; the Christ of history is the Incarnate God. The Christ of rationalism cannot meet the demands of man’s religious nature and needs. It leaves the whole problem of sin unsolved; is gives no assurance of forgiveness; it gives us only a God afar off, and not a God near to all the wants and necessities of the human soul. And, not looking to the past, if we were now to interrogate human consciousness as to its real religious wants and its present beliefs, it would still answer as of old, that it finds these met in a Christ, who blends the natural and the supernatural, the Divine and the human, an incarnate Deity who came to redeem a fallen race. The Christ of the Bible and the Christ of the historic Church is the very Christ whom man now craves; and He is still a living presence in every living and believing soul. H. B. Smith. Mighty to save. We cannot go to Him too often, nor ask of Him too much. We have no sin but He has a pardon for it; no weakness but He has strength for it; no cankering care but He has relief for it; no grievous sorrow but He has comfort for it; no bleeding heart-wound but He has balm to soothe and a bandage to bind it up. It is impossible for us to expect too much from His generosity, or trust too implicitly to the bounties of His providence and the aids of His Spirit. It is equally easy for God to supply our greatest as our smallest wants, to carry our heaviest as our lightest burden. In the most desperate cases of sinners and in the darkest circumstances of saints, "when all power is gone" and there seems no outget or deliverance, God is mighty to save. T. Guthrie. 2. It is a slight but effective stroke in this fine picture, that the first verse seems to speak of the stranger as still at a distance, whereas in the second he has come so near as to be addressed directly. A. 3. The Orientals crushed their grapes for wine with the foot, thus staining their garments with the red juice of the grape. This furnishes the figure here. H. C.—The most satisfactory solution of the second sentence seems to be that these words are added to convey the idea that all the nations were on the adverse side, none on that of the conqueror. The sense will then be not that they refused to join in trampling others, but simply that they were among the trampled. As if he had said, I trod the press alone, and all the nations, without exception, were trodden in it. By all the nations we are of course to understand all but God's people. While the impossibility of applying the expression to our Saviour's sufferings cannot be too strongly stated, there is no need of denying that the figure may be happily accommodated in the way suggested; as many expressions of the Old Testament may be applied to different objects with good effect, provided we are careful to avoid confounding such accommodations with the strict and primary import of the passage. A. The expression "I have trodden the wine-press alone" is commonly applied to Christ in the loneliness of His agony in Gethsemane, and in His desertion through the scenes of His trial and crucifixion. And there could not be a more vivid picture of the soltariness of the Saviour in His sufferings—when "of the people there was none with Him;" when, as He lay upon the ground in His bloody sweat, His disciples were sleeping within sound of His groaning; when, as the traitor seized Him, "all the disciples forsook Him, and fled;" and Peter mustered courage to follow Him afar off, only to deny Him at the last. Yet the connection shows that it is not the Redeemer in His sorrows, but in His triumphs, who is here depicted. He is coming from Edom, the typical enemy of Israel, where by His unaided strength He has visited judgment and destruction upon the foes of His Church. It is the same picture which is repeated in Rev. 19: 13, of the "Word of God clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, who treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." Yet love and mercy ever predominate over judgments. His judgments upon the obdurate illustrate His grace to the penitent; and often, as with Israel of old, judgments recall His people to their dependence upon His grace. The Saviour identifies Himself with His flock. He makes their affliction His own, and will make them partakers in His triumph and joy. J. P. T. 4. This figurative statement of the text in its broadest meaning furnishes the key to the grand tragedy of human history. Though having special reference to Moab and Edom, the eminent foes of Israel, yet the great fact it declares has been, in substance, enacted among all nations, in all ages of time until now. Of nation after nation the true record of history is written before in the word of the prophet, that He has "trodden them in the wine-press of His wrath," of people after people that were, but are not; that He "has put down their strength to the earth." Among the empires destroyed before His first coming, and the nations that have perished since, has Christ the Avenger been enacting judgments in behalf of His redeemed. All His judgments have been in the earth that its inhabitants might learn His righteousness and accept His redemption. So has it been in the whole past, in substance the day of God's vengeance has been in order that the year of His redeemed might be brought on. So it is to-day, so will it be to the end of the period in which He enacts judgments against nations in the flesh. There is no grander truth than this for our conception, none besides this which solves effectually the sore problem of God's tragic providences in man's history. For this declares that His judgments in every age and upon every scale have been in the interest of His redemptive purpose and plan. B. Through Oriental caste and despotism, the license of the Greek democracy, the iron, imperial power of Rome, the perilous luxury of monarchies and the aristocracy, passive obedience to kings and hierarchies, has the race made its suffering course toward the blessings of representative government and religious liberty. Through the conflicts of race with race, of the sons of Shem with the sons of Japheth, of Asiatic with European prowess, of the Latin with the German stock, of the Celt with the Saxon, have we fought our way to the knowledge of the Christian principle that the race is one and a brotherhood, and that freedom shall yet be given unto all. Each of the greatest battles of the race has been a step in the progress of human rights. H. B. Smith. 5. Fury here takes the place of righteousness in chap. 59 : 16, not as a synonym, but as an equivalent. God's wrath is but the executioner and agent of His justice. Upon either He might therefore be described as exclusively relying. A.—The meaning is that Jesus Messiah is equal by Himself alone to the exigencies of righteous retribution upon the guilty nations of men. His people never need fear any failure in the resources of His power, whether to save themselves or to destroy His unrepentant foes. 6. "Make them drunk in My fury" is the conception of the wine-cup of the Lord's indignation which He passes round for guilty nations to drink, to madden them for self-destruction. In Jer. 25 : 15-31 this conception is fully expanded. It appears frequently and with great pertinence and force in other prophets. 1-6. This passage proves that Christ is mighty to save His people by destroying their enemies. From this the inference is entirely legitimate that He is mighty to save them in every possible relation—against every sort of foe. The former, however, is the thing here affirmed. The latter comes from it by inference only. 7. The portion that follows, to the end of chap. 64, treats of Zion's sins and sufferings; her struggles of faith and prayer, and her reminiscences of God's mercies, called up to revive her spiritual strength. Remarkably the passage begins with this view of past mercies. The verb, "I will mention," is the same which occurred in chap. 62 : 6, "Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence;" and means either to recall to one's own mind or to remind another. 9. The phrase, "The angel of His presence" leads the mind to that uncreated angel whose presence was guaranteed to Moses in behalf of Israel and was manifested in the pillar of cloud and of fire throughout their journeyings in the wilderness. (See Ex. 23 : 20-23.) He was God's very presence. God was present in him, for this must be the legitimate sense of the phrase, "My name is in him." This same angel is identified with the presence of Jehovah, and with Jehovah Himself (Ex. 33 : 12-23 ; 34 : 5-9) ; and also at the bush (Ex. 3 : 2, 4-6). A careful examination of these and kindred passages in the Old Testament, coupled with New Testament allusions to them, will show most fully that the great Personage who revealed Himself in the Old Testament ages, sometimes under the name, "The angel of the Lord," and often simply as "the Lord," was no other than the Messiah Himself, the Son of God, "the brightness of the Father's glory," the great Revealer of God to man, and the supreme head of the Church under the old economy no less truly though less palpably than under the new. It was He who saved them ; who also bare them all the days of old as a tender mother carries in her arms her infant babe. H. C. Even Hitzig admits the identity of the angel of Jehovah's presence with Jehovah Himself, but explains it away by making angel an abstract term, not denoting in any case a person, but the manifestation of Jehovah's presence at a certain time and place. Hendewerk, on the other hand, alleges that the angel is always represented as a personality distinct from Jehovah Himself. By blending these concessions from two writers of the same great school, we obtain a striking testimony, if not to the absolute truth, to the scriptural correctness of the old Christian doctrine, as expounded with consummate force and clearness by Vitringa in his comment on this passage—viz., the doctrine that the angel of God's presence, who is mentioned in the passages already cited, and from time to time in other books of the Old Testament (Gen. 28 : 13 ; 31 : 11 ; 48 : 16 ; Ex. 3 : 2 ; Josh. 5 : 14 ; Judges 13 : 6 ; Hos. 12 : 5 ; Zech. 3 : 1 ; Mal. 3 : 1 ; Ps. 34 : 8), was that Divine Person who is represented in the New as the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His person (Heb. 1:3), the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15), in whose face the glory of God shines (2 Cor. 4:6), and in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9). A. In Mal. 3:1 it is plain that "the Messenger, or Angel of the covenant," the covenant of grace, was no other than Christ; and as allusion is made to the same Person in all the other passages before mentioned, and in the words of Isaiah in the text, it follows that He who appeared to Moses, He who was seen by Manoah, He who was spoken of by Zechariah, He whom Isaiah describes as saving and redeeming Israel, must also be Christ. In the language of the prophet, Christ is styled "the Angel of God's presence;" but mark the authority and dignity of His person; sometimes He is called "Wonderful;" sometimes "the Lord;" sometimes He is said to have "the name of God in Him;" and sometimes He is styled "God." He, therefore, to whom such appellations are given, can be no created being; he must be the Eternal Son of God; he must be "the Word of God," by whom God speaks to mankind; He must be the same that "was in the beginning with God, and was God;" the same "by whom all things were created;" the same who was made man, the same who redeemed us, the same who ever liveth to make intercession for us. Bp. Huntingford. Let us not overlook the fact that God does not sit aloft in remote and inaccessible seclusion from our human trials. They are more real to God than they are to us. No being in the universe feels the woes of human life so deeply as He feels them. Not one pang of suffering rasps any human nerve which God does not appropriate as if it were His own. This is the working of infinite sympathies in the heart of a loving Creator. "In all their affliction He was afflicted." The true value of any human life consists in identifying it with the life of God. In such supreme alliance, no man can be unhappy. And no man can be happy without it. Life without God is not worth living. All that afflicts men here is one dull, dead weight of woe, unless it is lifted and upborne by God. Phelps. In all our afflictions He is afflicted. Having had experience in our outward and inward sufferings, Christ knows and compassionates our case. The sweetness and worth of all these our passions and sensibilities are in Him as God-man, and therefore He is touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and is moved to intercede for us, with a perpetual memory of what we are and what we need. H. H.—We would pray better and more, and with vaster confidence, if we would in our supplications pray as though we thought God's Son was going to take our suit and plead it before the Father, not because He wants to have us gratified simply, but because He is one of us, one in us, and His pulse beats with ours, and our distresses are His distresses. C. H. P. Of one thing every child of God may be sure, in the hour of His suffering or of His sorrow, and that is that He is not Himself more deeply interested in His present trial than His Saviour is interested in that trial in His behalf. Nothing comes to pass, in the experience of a believer, that the Saviour is not fully familiar with; nor does the Saviour ever fail to be touched with the feeling of all the infirmities of His every follower with which He is thus familiar. Here is a source of cheer in every sorest need. S. S. T. His extraordinary sensibility to human feeling became operative at once as sympathy, was at once translated into action. All was felt which human feeling felt, and then all was sympathized with actively, till at last, upon the cross, all the sorrows of the world were taken in to Himself and borne in the activity of voluntary suffering, that they might be forever, in the end, lifted off the heart of mankind. It is there, when intense sensibility to the want, and woe, and sin of men had led Him to absolute self-sacrifice through sympathy—there, in that bowed head and broken Manhood—that we realize at last, in the radiance of love which eye hath not seen, the King in His perfect beauty. S. A. Brooke. Such occult emanations of compassion from the heart of our Lord are going into all the homes of sorrow where believing men and women suffer. They are vibrating on the air invisibly the world over. They bring the afflicted into a very sacred alliance. What they suffer Christ suffers. For this He became a Man of Sorrows. Do we long in our desolateness for human fellowship? Our Redeemer is a suffering man. Do we faint for the want of a more than human strength? Our Redeemer is the Son of God. Our very commonest and most homely griefs He lifts up into the embrace of His divinest sympathies, and invests them with the glory of His atoning pains. This is a faithful saying, that in some way we know not how, if we suffer we shall also reign with Him. Phelps. The lessons only which have cost us pain, which we have learned in struggle, which have been born out of anguish of heart, will heal and really bless others. It is when we have passed through the bitterness of temptation, wrestling with evil and sore beset, victorious only through the grace of Christ, that we are ready to be helpers of others in temptation. It is only when we have known sorrow, when the chords of our love have been swept by it, and when we have been comforted and helped to endure, that we are fitted to become comforters of others in sorrow. J. R. Miller. In His love and in His pity He redeemed them. No lost soul shall murmur hereafter that the tender loving-kindness of God has not willed to save it. No saint in glory shall pretend that aught in him has been accepted and crowned save the infinite merit, the priceless gifts of his Redeemer. The dying love of Jesus embraces the race, and yet it concentrates itself with direct—as it seems to us—with exclusive intensity upon each separate soul. He dies for all, and yet He dies for each; as if each soul were the solitary object of His incarnation and of His death. Beneath the cross we may each of us legitimately fix our soul's eye on the great Sufferer, and we may say with His apostle, "He loved me and gave Himself for me." Liddon. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but should have eternal life." The little child who has learned his earliest lessons of what Father and Son, loving and giving, trust and life mean, by the sweet experiences of his own father's home and his mother's love, can grasp these blessed words. They carry the deepest mysteries which will still gleam before us unfathomed in all their profundity, unappropriated in all their blessedness, when millennia have passed since we stood in the inner shrine of heaven. Wonderful the word which blesses the child, which transcends the angel before the throne! A. M. 10. His Holy Spirit.** This form of expression assumes that God sends forth the Holy Spirit as a distinct personality, and causes Him to dwell within the people. To this we find allusion in Neh. 9:20, "Thou gavest also thy Good Spirit to instruct them;" and in Hag. 2:5, "According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my Spirit remaineth among you; fear not." Stephen had his eye on the same great fact when (Acts 7:51) he charged it upon the hardened Jews of his time; "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye." H. C. The Holy Spirit may be so vexed by opposition, so quenched in His influences by godless indifference, that He will recognize the sinner as hopelessly corrupt and desperately beyond recovery—his spiritual disease incurable. With such recognition He probably abandons the soul forever. As we can only be saved by the Holy Ghost, men are as ruined when He departs as if they had committed the unpardonable sin. His departure never takes place while salvation is a possibility. When the Holy Spirit departs from a soul, it ripens for perdition. As well may the Ethiopian attempt to change the color of his skin as for a man to dream of salvation when deserted by the Holy Spirit. Isaiah refers to such desperate resistance to His office-work as transforms God into man's enemy. He says of the Israelites: "They rebelled and vexed His Holy Spirit: therefore He was turned to be their enemy, and He fought against them." David speaks of God as "giving men up to their own lusts," and permitting them to "walk in the way of their own counsels." Leech. 12,13. These verses continue the thoughtful questions which the people propose to their own hearts as they think of the God of their fathers, the fountain of former mercies. "Who marched them through the deeps; as a horse in the wilderness, so they will not stumble." The prophet seems to see them moving forward; compares their advance to that of a horse marching sure-footed along the desert, and predicts with all confidence, "he will not stumble!" Under God's guiding hand, all obstructions will be removed, and their course being wisely directed, they will not fail. 14. Following the tenses closely, the course of thought in this verse may be expressed thus: "As beasts (tame animals of the flock or the herd) will go down into the valley for their repose; so the Spirit of the Lord will give him (Israel) rest"—i.e., under His protection. "So, in this way, thou hast in all past ages led Thy people to make for Thyself a glorious name." This last clause generalizes the facts of the nation's history, showing especially that God had wrought among them and for them to the end of glorifying His own name. To "give Israel rest" is the usual phrase for locating them in Canaan after a whole generation of unrest in the wilderness. (See De. 12:9, 10; Ps. 95:11.) H. C. 15,19. An earnest supplication in view of the condition of Israel. The arguments are very beautiful and various for His interposition. 1. An appeal to Jehovah in view of His former mercies (verse 15). 2. An argument from the fact that He was their Father, though they should be disowned and despised by all others (verse 16). 3. Earnest intercession from the fact that His enemies had trodden down the sanctuary, and that those who never acknowledged Him ruled in the land that He had given to His own people (verses 17-19). 4. An earnest pleading with God in view of the inestimable value of the favors which He conferred—the fact that the world could confer nothing to be compared with His favor (chap. 64: 1-5). 5. An argument derived from the general prevalence of irreligion among the people (verses 6, 7). 6. Affectionate pleading from the fact that they were His people (verses 8, 9). 7. Argument from the fact that the holy city was waste; the temple in ruins; that the holy and beautiful house where their fathers worshipped had been burned up with fire (verses 10-12). Barnes. 15. Look (down) from heaven and see from Thy dwelling-place of holiness and beauty! Where is Thy zeal and Thy might (or mighty deeds)? The sounding of Thy bowels and Thy mercies toward me have withdrawn themselves. The foregoing description of God's ancient favors is now made the ground of an importunate appeal for new ones. The unusual word for dwelling-place is borrowed from the prayer of Solomon. A.—An earnest appeal to God to look compassionately upon their woeful state, tenderly (not reproachfully) asking where His former interest in their behalf is now, and where those sublime manifestations of His power; and intimating that the outflow of His warm sympathies for them has been checked, restrained. H. C. 16. The true sense of the verse, as it appears to me, is that the Church or chosen people, although once, for temporary reasons, coextensive and coincident with a single race, is not essentially a national organization, but a spiritual body. Its father is not Abraham or Israel, but Jehovah, who is and always has been its Redeemer, who has borne that name from everlasting; or as Hitzig understands the last clause, He is our Redeemer, whose name is from everlasting. According to this explanation, this verse explicitly asserts what is implied and indirectly taught throughout these prophecies, in reference to the true design and mission of the Church, and its relation to Jehovah, to the world and to the single race with which of old it seemed to be identified. The strong terms of this verse are of course to be comparatively understood not as implying that the Church will ever have occasion to repudiate its historical relation to the patriarchs, or cease to include among its members many of their natural descendants, but simply as denying all continued or perpetual pre-eminence to Israel as a race, and exalting the common relation of believers to their great Head as paramount to all connection with particular progenitors—the very doctrine so repeatedly and emphatically taught in the New Testament. A. Thou art our Father. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, and though we should be disowned by all others, we will still believe that Thou dost sustain the relation of a Father. Though they were suffering and though they saw no human aid, yet their confidence was unwavering that He had still tender compassion toward them. God had often manifested for them a kind paternal care, and they believed that He had still the same regard for them. Barnes. He made us, and is our Father by creation; He preserves us, and is our Father by His providential care; He has in His mercy taken us into His family, and is therefore our Father by adoption; He has redeemed us by His infinite love, and delivered us from the yoke of our sins and from bondage to Satan, and is our Father by that act of redemption. Maldonatus and Dion. Carthusianus. This, instead of being less true than earthly relationship, is the one relationship which, when a man enters into, he ceases to be homeless and a wanderer, a fugitive and vagabond upon the face of the earth and from the face of God—ceases to be a mere withered leaf borne helpless on the wind, whose origin none cares to trace, and whose destiny none turns to see; he has found his place in the universe, he has found a hold and a hope, and however in himself unstable, weak, and incapable, he rests enduringly in the unchangeable Father. He has been outside, thinking the world a strange, cold, barren, friendless and unsatisfying place; he has wandered about, not seeing, "through the thick cloud," and still less dreaming that One was seeing and caring for him, and now he finds he has a Father, One to love, One to serve, One to glorify, One to worship. Dods. "How is God connected with me? How is He affected toward me?" are questions of infinite interest to a rational being. The answer of Christ to these questions is simple and explicit, conveyed in a single word of profound significance and of surpassing tenderness—the word Father. To man this term belongs emphatically, and it is one of the wealthiest in human language; and men can have no difficulty in comprehending all its meaning. The relation it indicates has no such interpretation among other intelligent creatures as it finds in this world. There is no fatherhood or childhood among angels, no derivation of being from one to the other. Only men on earth are connected together in this extraordinary sense; and from the imperfect type existing among themselves they at least are able to rise to the supreme reality in God. The human spirit is the offspring, the immediate and direct offspring of the ever-living Spirit. It is capable of bearing, and does bear, and it is the only thing that bears or is capable of bearing a resemblance to God. When we have said that God created the heavens, the earth and all material things, we have exhausted all of which the subject admits. But it is not simply true that He created minds also; He is the Father of minds and of nothing else. This peculiar relation of God to man is beautifully suggestive of authority, the very highest form of which known in this world is the parental. God is a King, but He is a Father-King; His subjects are His own children, and His government of them, in its essential spirit, in all its laws and its acts, is strictly and only parental. He is wise, He is righteous, He is just, His holy purpose shall stand, He must and will do all that is necessary for the good of the entire universe. But paternal love is the element in which God lives and reigns; it is the moving force in the spiritual universe; infinite desire to produce happiness, to fill creation with the largest possible amount of enduring joy. J. Young. Our Redeemer. The "Kinsman-Redeemer" would be the nearest rendering of the original term (God), but even this fails adequately to convey the deep significance of the Hebrew. A more exact definition would be "a person related by blood, who by right of consanguinity lays claim to and redeems a person or thing, vindicates the rights involved or avenges the wrong sustained" (Glass). But it is in its spiritual aspect that it was made the subject of so much solicitude in the law, and the very name assumed so frequently in the prophets as a designation of the Divine Redeemer, and the relation which as such He sustained toward His people. D. Macdonald. 17. The Scriptures use strong language concerning that providential agency of God which permits temptation to occur and to have force enough to tempt men into sin. They speak of God as doing Himself what He suffers to be done by other agencies than His own. H. C. 18. It cannot be proved that this whole passage has respect to the Jews in their present dispersion: first, because the sufferings of the Church in after ages are frequently presented under figures drawn from the peculiar institutions of the old economy; and secondly, because the early history of Israel is as much the early history of the Christian Church as of the Jewish nation, so that we have as much right as the Jews to lament the profanation of the Holy Land, and more cause to pray for its recovery by Christendom, than they for its restoration to themselves. A. Chap. 64. This chapter continues and completes the course of thought which commences with chap. 63:7. This portion is prayer throughout, blending intercession with confession of sin. The prophet expresses sentiments, feelings, prayers, adapted to the case of the true Church, the few found faithful among the many faithless, in the age next before the coming of their Messiah. They see the Jewish nation as such about to be disowned of God as His people and doomed to ruin; and their trembling hearts cry out, "Must the real Zion perish too? Will not our own redeeming Father interpose to save?" H. C. This chapter, like the one before it, from which it is in fact inseparable, has respect to the critical or turning point between the old and new dispensations, and presents it just as it might naturally have appeared to the believing Jews—i.e., the first Christian converts, at that juncture. The strongest confidence is expressed in the Divine power, founded upon former experience (verses 1-3). The two great facts of Israel's rejection as a nation, and the continued existence of the Church, are brought together in verse 4. The unworthiness of Israel is acknowledged still more fully (verses 5, 6). The sovereign authority of God is humbly recognized (verse 7). His favor is earnestly implored (verse 8). The external prerogatives of Israel are lost (verse 9). But will God for that cause cast off the true Israel, His own Church or people? (verse 10). A. 1. In the Hebrew Bibles this verse stands at the close of the previous chapter. The division in our English version is better. Still better than either would be no division at all between these chapters. The course of thought is unbroken. H. C.—The passionate apostrophe in this verse, far from being injured or obscured, is rendered more expressive by its close connection with the previous complaints and lamentations. The idea now suggested is, that weary of complaint the people or the prophet speaking for them suddenly appeals to God directly with an ardent wish that He would deal with them as in days of old. The remaining words are a poetical description of Jehovah's interposition or the manifestation of His presence, under figures drawn perhaps from the account of His epiphany on Sinai. A. That the mountains might flow down at Thy presence. The idea here is, that the presence of Jehovah would be like an intense burning heat, so that the lofty mountains would melt and flow away. It is a most sublime description of His majesty, and is one that is several times employed in the Bible. Thus in relation to His appearance on Mount Sinai, in the song of Deborah (Judg. 5 : 4, 5) : The earth trembled and the heavens dropped, The clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before Jehovah, Even Sinai from before Jehovah, the God of Israel. So Ps. 97 : 5 : The hills melted like wax at the presence of Jehovah, At the presence of Jehovah [the God] of the whole earth. So also in Micah 1 : 3, 4 : And will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth, And the mountains shall be molten under Him, As wax before the fire, And as the waters pour down a precipice. —Barnes. Since the judgment of the flood God has withdrawn into heaven in order henceforth to reveal Himself from thence in judgment and blessing. It cannot, however, remain so. All human aspiration henceforth unites in the sigh : "Oh, that Thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down." The end toward which history now strives is that God shall again make His abode among men. "The Shechinah," says an old Midrash, "abode originally here below ; after Adam's fall it withdrew ever deeper and deeper into heaven, and with Abraham began its gradual return." We know wherein this return of God to man culminated. Viewed from this elevation the post-diluvian history of redemption appears as a road, now ascending and now descending, which on the whole leads ever higher, and in the end reaches the summit. Delitzsch. 3. The plea is, that God had appeared wonderfully for His people formerly and "Thou hast," therefore "Thou wilt," is good arguing at the throne of grace. They plead what He had done for His people Israel in particular when He brought them out of Egypt. H. 4. The more easy and natural translation is : "From of old men have not heard, nor have they perceived through the ear, nor hath the eye seen a God besides Thee who will do so for one waiting upon Him." The sense is, "No other God has been heard of or seen since the world began who will do such things for His waiting people ; none who has such power to do ; none who has such a heart to do ; none who has shown Himself in fact so mighty to save." This thought comes in here, inspiring confidence in regard to the prayer just offered. Paul (1 Cor. 2 : 9) uses a part of the language of this verse to express the fact that certain great truths of the Gospel had remained unknown, a mystery, until Christ's coming. H. C. Men have not heard nor seen what God has prepared for those that wait for Him. Observe the character of God's people ; they are such as wait for Him in the way of duty, wait for the salvation He has promised and designed for them. Observe where the happiness of this people is bound up ; it is "what God has prepared for them," what He has designed for them in His counsel, and is in His providence and grace preparing for them, and preparing them for ; what He has "done" or "will" do ; so it may be read. It is all that goodness which God has "laid up for them that fear Him" and "wrought for them that trust in Him." 5. "Thou meetest him that rejoices, and works righteousness ; meetest him with that good which Thou hast prepared for him" (verse 4), "and dost not forget those that remember Thee in Thy ways." We are here told what we may expect from God, if we thus attend Him in the way of duty : "Thou meetest him." This speaks the friendship, fellowship, and familiarity to which God admits them ; He meets them, to converse with them, to manifest Himself to them and to receive their addresses. It denotes likewise His freeness and forwardness in doing them good ; He will "prevent them with the blessings of His goodness," will "rejoice to do good" to them that "rejoice in working righteousness," and wait to be gracious to those that wait for Him. He meets His penitent people with a pardon, as the father of the prodigal met his returning son. He meets His praying people with an answer of peace, while they are yet speaking (chap. 65 : 24). H. 6,7. Again the prophet, speaking for the faithful few, confesses and deplores the prevailing wickedness of the nation. Almost literally, their sins had been a tornado to sweep the nation away. The most fatal fact in their condition was that no men of prayerful interceding spirit remained. There was no one who roused himself up to take strong hold upon God in prayer. H. C. 6. "As filthy rags." The works of the flesh and of Pharisaic pride are here meant, not those fruits of the Spirit which are "an odor of a sweet smell, acceptable to God through Christ." So Vitringa well remarks: "This saying, against the scope of the prophet, is often applied by unskilful interpreters to the acts of the faithful through the grace of the Spirit, because of some adherent imperfection, and even in public prayer they most absurdly obtrude this upon God. It is far otherwise. The acts of the regenerate, done in faith through the Spirit, are sacrifices well-pleasing to God. How have those who so interpret destroyed the true aspect of Christianity! The utmost humility becomes us before God, and to renounce our own strength is deserving; but the work of God in us ought to receive its own due praise." Birks. A Chinese convert once said: "How can a man trust in his own righteousness? It is like seeking shelter in his own shadow; we may stoop to the very ground, and the lower we bend we still find that our shadow is beneath us. But if a man flee to the shadow of a great rock or a wide-spreading tree, he will find shelter from the noonday sun. That rock, that tree is Christ." Medhurst. Thou canst never pay God, nor discharge the least of thy debts forever. Thou canst not possibly do it by any duties or services in this life; for whatsoever thou dost is either required or not required. If it be not required, it will be so far from being a satisfaction for thy sins that it will be an addition to them, and a piece of will-worship, which will meet with that sad greeting at the last day, "Who hath required these things at your hands?" If it be required, it is no more than thou owest to God before, and if thou hadst never sinned wert obliged to pay it. Bp. Hopkins, 1690.—His special work, the work of redemption and sanctification of our race through the Son of His love, presupposes nothing less than that humanity in itself must be considered as hopelessly lost; and whoever, therefore, thinks that his own virtue can wholly or partially save him, declares, in other words, God's work to be superfluous. "If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal. 2 : 21). Thus we become on all sides not merely disposed, but constrained, to set our seal to the humbling declaration of Paul; and nowhere can we find an outlet save in the direction of Golgotha. How mournfully foolish, then, the pride which exalts itself on account of its own works and merits. Van O. Fade as a leaf. The human race is a tree of life, rooting itself far back in the life of God. We are all leaves of this tree of life, and "we all do fade as a leaf." The race remains like the tree, the generations die like leaves. The earth is one mighty sepulchre. The city and the cemetery, the village and the graveyard, grow populous together. . . . Leaves fade because it is the nature and law of their being to fade. It is their true destiny to give place to other generations, to fall and render back their substance to the soil for the enriching of the tree. The leaf, having served the tree in its life, serves it with all it has to bestow in its death; and this reveals the real purpose and value of its existence. This also is the law of human life. God has given us our individual existence that we may add something to the welfare and progress of the human race; and our only real right to life is derived from the fact that we are of some use, that our life really does add something to the welfare of the world. Only by a life devoted to the good of the world can our personal welfare be attained. A leaf that does not serve the tree, as leaves were made to do, the tree will not nourish, the rains will not refresh, the sun will wither and destroy. So God has made our real welfare and value dependent upon that spirit and life by which we may be most useful to others. . . . The leaf dies an honorable death. It has served a great and good purpose in its life, and its monument is the strong and majestic tree, whose branches spread themselves over its grave like priestly hands extended in benediction. It has left behind an increase of vitality and strength to the tree. The color of death in the leaf is the color of sunset, all red and golden, and it is hard to tell whether the tree is more beautiful in the greenness of its life or in the gold and crimson of its dying leaves. A selfish, sinful life leads to a death uncolored with pleasant memories and glorified hopes. Only the Christian fades as the leaf, leaving good behind to all with whom he has lived, and dying naturally, gently, happily, in the glorious light of hope. W. R. Brooks. The fading leaf is not the symbol of death, but of life at its heights of power and fulness of promise. The coloring of autumn leaves is of the same nature as the coloring of fruit. In the latter it indicates the perfection of the seeds. It is the work of perfection. All noble vitality is rich in tone—not raw, but ripe. No relation is more intimate and Divine than that which exists between the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty, and this is best exemplified by the leaf fading at the culminating moment, when the brightest tints and richest coloring express the ripest life. In the widely golden splendor of the autumn days old age itself seems a benediction. How inspiring and beautiful is a Christian old age! Before its wonderful state of ripeness, out of which at any moment the flower of immortality may break, we linger with loving reverence. They come to their last hour like the leaf, like the mellow fruit which gather into themselves the entire life of the tree, all the dew and the sunshine of summer, and giving up to heaven the priceless wealth of hues, thence derived, at last bend and then break the branch from which they hang. So it is not death that makes it fade, but excess of life; life pressing up from a lower to a higher plane. It is the passing shadow between faith and sight, hope and fruition, transient and transparent as the last filmy, fleecy cloud that veils for a moment the full splendors of the sunrise. G. W. Miller. 7. "There is none that stirs up himself to take hold of God." To pray is to "take hold of God," by faith to take hold of the promises and the declarations God has made of His good will to us, and to plead them with Him; to take hold of Him as of one who is about to depart from us, earnestly begging of Him not to leave us; or of one that is departed, soliciting his return; to take hold of Him as he that wrestles takes hold of him he wrestles with; for the seed of Jacob wrestle with Him, and so prevail. But when we "take hold on God," it is as the boatman with his hook takes hold on the shore, as if he would pull the shore to him, but really it is to pull himself to the shore; so we pray, not to bring God to our mind, but to bring ourselves to His. Those that would take hold of God in prayer, so as to prevail with Him, must stir up themselves to do it; all that is within us must be employed in the duty (and all little enough), our thoughts fixed and our affections flaming. In order hereunto, all that is within us must be engaged and summoned into the service. H. 8. Instead of relying upon any supposed merits of their own, they appeal to their very dependence upon God as a reason why He should have mercy on them. A.—Here, as in chap. 63:16, "Our Father" looks rather to His spiritual than to His physical creatorship, recognizing God not so much as the Author of our physical being as the Saviour of our souls from sin by His regenerating grace and by His spiritual power generally. That we are as clay and the Lord God our potter, illustrates in figure the same great truth, God's effective and indispensable agency in every conversion and in all the spiritual life that ever exists in fallen human souls. Elsewhere—e.g., Isa. 29:16 and 45:9, this figure of the potter and his clay is used to set forth the perverseness of human guilt and folly in denying God's creatorship and man's consequent moral responsibility to his Maker; while in Jer. 18:6 and Rom. 9:20, 21, the same figure illustrates a like spirit in man toward God contemplated as the providential Ruler and Disposer of the destinies of nations. In the passage before us, the special point is, God working in man morally and spiritually toward and unto his regeneration and salvation. These precious relations of spiritual children are used here as a ground of plea with God for sustaining mercy. H. C. Though Thou hast corrected us, yet Thou hast not cast us off; foolish and careless as we are, poor and despised, and trampled upon as we are by our enemies, yet still "Thou art our Father;" to Thee therefore we return in our repentance, as the prodigal arose and came to his father; to Thee we apply ourselves by prayer; from whom should we expect relief and succor but from our Father? It is the wrath of a Father that we are under, who will be reconciled, and not "keep His anger forever." H.—How will God perform the part of a Father? In allowing us full leave to come to Him in all our necessities (Gal. 4:6). In supplying all our wants (Matt. 6:26). In pitying our miseries (Ps. 103:13). In disciplining and treating us with much indulgence, and wisdom, and care (Heb. 12:10). In providing able guardians for us (Heb. 1:14). In laying up an inheritance for us (Luke 12:32). T. Manton. 9. This is the application of the argument presented in the foregoing verse, the actual prayer founded on the fact there stated. A.—"Neither remember iniquity forever against us." They do not expressly pray for the removal of the judgment they were under; as to that they refer themselves to God. They pray that God would be reconciled to them, and then they can be easy whether the affliction be continued or removed: "Be not wroth to extremity, but let Thine anger be mitigated by the clemency and compassion of a Father." They pray that they may not be dealt with according to the desert of their sin; "Neither remember iniquity forever." Such is the evil of sin, that it deserves to be remembered forever; and this is that which they deprecate, that consequence of sin, which is forever. H. 12. Wilt Thou for these (things) restrain Thyself, oh Jehovah, wilt Thou keep silence and afflict us to extremity? This is simply another application of the argument by way of an importunate appeal to the Divine compassions. Self-restraint and silence, as applied to God, are common figures for inaction and apparent indifference to the interests and especially the sufferings of His people. The question is not whether God will remain silent in spite of what His people suffered, but whether the loss of their external advantages will induce Him to forsake them. The question, as in many other cases, implies a negation of the strongest kind. The destruction of the old theocracy was God's own act, and was designed to bring the Church under a new and far more glorious dispensation. How the loss of a national organization and pre-eminence was to be made good is fully stated in the following chapter. A. Thus closes this chapter of great tenderness and beauty. It is a model of affectionate and earnest entreaty for the Divine interposition in the day of calamity. With such tender and affectionate earnestness may we learn to plead with God! Thus may all His people learn to approach Him as a Father; thus feel that they have the inestimable privilege in the times of trial of making known their wants to the High and Holy One. Thus when calamity presses on us; when as individuals or as families we are afflicted; or when our country or the Church is suffering under long trials, may we go to God and humbly confess our sins, and urge His promises, and take hold of His strength, and plead with Him to interpose. Thus pleading, He will hear us; thus presenting our cause, He will interpose to save us. Barnes. 65:1 I AM inquired of by them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought 2 me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name. I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that 3 is not good, after their own thoughts; a people that provoketh me to my face continually, 4 sacrificing in gardens, and burning incense upon bricks; which sit among the graves, and lodge in the secret places; which eat swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their 5 vessels; which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me, for I am holier than thou: these 6 are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day. Behold, it is written before me: I 7 will not keep silence, but will recompense, yea, I will recompense into their bosom, your own iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together, saith the LORD, which have burned incense upon the mountains, and blasphemed me upon the hills: therefore will I first measure their work into their bosom. 8 Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all. 9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: 10 and my chosen shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there. And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor a place for herds to lie down in, for my people that 11 have sought me. But ye that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare 12 a table for Fortune, and that fill up mingled wine unto Destiny; I will destine you to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter: because when I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear; but ye did that which was evil in mine eyes, and chose that wherein I delighted not. 13 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry: behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty: behold, my servants shall rejoice, 14 but ye shall be ashamed: behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for 15 sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit. And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen, and the Lord God shall slay thee; and he shall call his servants by 16 another name: so that he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former 17 troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes. For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into 18 mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jeru- 19 salem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. 20. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old, and the sinner being an hundred years old shall 21 be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vine- 22 yards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people, and my 23 chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for calamity; for they are the seed of the blessed of the LORD, and their offspring with 24 them. And it shall come to pass that, before they call, I will answer; and while they are 25 yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD. Chap. 65. The great enigma of Israel's simultaneous loss and gain is solved by a prediction of the calling of the Gentiles (verse 1). This is connected with the obstinate unfaithfulness of the chosen people (verse 2). They are represented under the two main aspects of their character at different periods, as gross idolaters and as pharisaical bigots (verses 3-5). Their casting off was not occasioned by the sins of one generation, but of many (verses 6, 7). But even in this rejected race there was a chosen remnant, in whom the promises shall be fulfilled (verses 8-10). He then reverts to the idolatrous Jews, and threatens them with condign punishment (verses 11, 12). The fate of the unbelieving carnal Israel is compared with that of the true spiritual Israel (verses 13-16). The Gospel economy is described as a new creation (verse 17). Its blessings are described under glowing figures borrowed from the old dispensation (verses 18, 19). Premature death shall be no longer known (verse 20). Possession and enjoyment shall no longer be precarious (verses 21-23). Their very desires shall be anticipated (verse 24). All animosities and noxious influences shall cease forever (verse 25). A. 1-7. The apostle Paul (an expositor we may depend upon) has given us the true sense of these verses, and told us what was the event they pointed at and were fulfilled in—viz., the calling in of the Gentiles and the rejection of the Jews by the preaching of the Gospel. And he observes, that herein "Esaias is very bold," not only in foretelling a thing so improbable ever to be brought about, but in foretelling it to the Jews, who would take it as a gross affront to their nation, and therein Moses' words would be made good (De. 32:21), "I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people." II. 1. An obvious and natural application may be made to the Gentiles generally, whose vocation is repeatedly predicted in this book, and might be here used with powerful effect in proof that the rejection of the Jews was the result of their own obstinate perverseness, not of God's unfaithfulness or want of power. This is precisely Paul's interpretation of the passage in Rom. 10:20, 21, where he does not, as in many other cases, merely borrow the expressions of the prophet, but formally interprets them, applying this verse to the Gentiles and then adding, "but to Israel (or of Israel) he saith" what follows in the next verse. The same intention to expound the prophet's language is clear from the apostle's mention of Isaiah's boldness in thus shocking the most cherished prepossessions of the Jews. A. Paul quotes both this verse and the next (Rom. 10:20, 21) as predicting the conversion of the Gentiles and the long-suffering patience of God toward the unbelieving Jews. Since the reference of this verse to the Gentiles at the opening of the Christian age admits of no doubt, it becomes a landmark to guide in the interpretation of the whole chapter, and indeed of the previous context also. This fact precludes the theory which applies this portion of Isaiah to the exile at Babylon and the restoration from it; and also that theory which applies these chapters to some supposed restoration of the Jews yet future. H. C. 2. Spreading out the hands is the gesture of earnest expostulation, and "all the day" refers to the long series of prophetic warnings, crowned by the voice of the Lord and His apostles. Birks.—In the later prophets, and especially in Jeremiah, great stress is laid upon the reiterated and long-protracted efforts of the Lord to reclaim His sinning people. (See Jer. 7: 24-28; 25: 3-7; 26: 5; 29: 17-19 and 44: 4, 5.) Such persistent entreaty may well be expressed by stretching out the hand imploringly all the day. The "thoughts" which they walked after were their plans and devices, their chosen courses of sin. 3. Provoking God to His face seems to mean, with daring and reckless impiety, insulting Him in His very presence. It is remarkable that precisely the same Hebrew words appear in the first of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt have no other gods before My face;" in My presence; brought up before Me to insult Me to My very face. The people here spoken of were flagrantly violating this first command. H. C. 5. The great end which the prophet had in view was to describe the unbelieving Jews as abominable in the sight of God. His manner of expressing this idea is poetical, by means of figures drawn from various periods of their history, without intending to exhibit either of these periods exclusively. To a Hebrew writer what could be more natural than to express the idea of religious corruption by describing its subjects as idolaters, diviners, eaters of swine's flesh, worshippers of outward forms and self-righteous hypocrites. Of such the text declares God's abhorrence. Smoke and fire may be taken as natural concomitants and parallel figures, as if He had said, against whom My wrath smokes and burns continually. A. 6,7. The language here indicates that the national guilt of several successive generations was at length visited upon one. "I will recompense into their bosom" (i.e., the last and the doomed one of the series) "your iniquities and the iniquities of your fathers together"—the latter phrase, "your fathers," probably including more than one generation. This accords precisely with the view given of this very case by our Divine Lord (Matt. 23: 32, 35, 36), "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers" (i.e., the measure of their guilt), "that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias whom ye slew between the Temple and the altar; verily, I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation." Thus the "former works" of that guilty nation were measured back into the bosom of the one most guilty generation, last in the series. H. C. 8-10. This is expounded by Paul (Rom. 11: 1-5), where when, upon occasion of the rejection of the Jews, it is asked, "Hath God then cast away His people?" He answers, No; for "at this time there is a remnant according to the election of grace." This prophecy has reference to that distinguished remnant. When that hypocritical nation is to be destroyed, God will separate and secure to Himself some from among them; some of the Jews shall be brought to embrace the Christian faith, shall be added to the Church, and so be saved. And our Saviour has told us, that "for the sake of these elect" the days of the destruction of the Jews should be shortened, and a stop put to the desolation, which otherwise would have proceeded to that degree that "no flesh should be saved" (Matt. 24: 22). 8. When a vine is so blasted and withered that there seems to be no sap or life in it, and therefore the dresser of the vineyard is inclined to pluck it up or cut it down, yet if ever so little of the juice of the grape, fit to make new wine, be found, though but in one cluster, a stander-by interposes and says, "Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it;" there is life in the root and hope that yet it may become good for something. Good men are blessings to the places where they live; and sometimes God spares whole cities and nations for the sake of a few such in them. H. As when one cluster, well ripened, juicy and good for wine, appears among many bad, and one says, Do not destroy that, for a blessing is in it; so God will spare the little remnant of faithful ones, and not make an utter destruction of the Jewish nation. In precise fulfilment of this prediction, the little band of Jewish disciples, warned by their Divine Master (Matt. 24: 15, 16), escaped to the mountains beyond the Jordan, and fell not with the fated city. In general it may be said, all the Jews who turned to God were saved; the rest perished in vast numbers. 9,10. This passage most clearly refers to the great events that clustered about the change from the Mosaic to the Christian dispensation, the extreme guilt of the Jewish nation as a whole and their destruction, coupled with the salvation of the penitent and believing portion —the last point being the subject of remark here. Then furthermore, it is entirely legitimate and fully sustained by prophetic usage to explain these verses as the common Jewish costume by which the prophets speak in figures drawn from their own people and times. H. C. 10. A repetition of the promise in the foregoing verse, rendered more specific by the mention of one kind of prosperity—viz., that connected with the raising of cattle, and of certain places where it should be specially enjoyed—viz., the valley of Achor and the plain of Sharon. Two reasons have been given for the mention of these places, one derived from their position, the other from their quality. As the valley of Achor was near Jericho and Jordan, and the plain of Sharon on the Mediterranean, between Joppa and Cesarea, some suppose that they are here combined to signify the whole breadth of the land, from east to west. And as Sharon was proverbial for its verdure and fertility (see above, chaps. 33 : 9 ; 35 : 2), it is inferred by some that Achor was so likewise, which they think is the more probable because Hosea says that the valley of Achor shall be a door of hope (Hos. 2 : 17). For these or other reasons Sharon and Achor are here mentioned, in Isaiah's characteristic manner, as samples of the whole land, or its pastures, just as flocks and herds are used as images of industry and wealth, derived from the habits of the patriarchal age. A. 11-16. Here the different states of the godly and wicked, of the Jews that believed, and of those that still persisted in unbelief, are set the one over against the other, as life and death, good and evil, the blessing and the curse. H. 11. This is only a description of the object of address; the address itself is contained in the next verse. There is perfect unanimity upon the only point of exegetical importance—viz., that the passage is descriptive of idolatrous worship; for even those who apply it directly to convivial indulgences connect the latter with religious institutions. This being settled, the details still doubtful can be interesting only to the philologist and antiquarian. A. 12. The great sin, represented under the conception of idolatry, seems to be brought out in literal phrase in the last clause of verse 12, "When I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear." No calls from God availed toward reclaiming them to Himself. Their depravity baffled every moral endeavor to save them. H. C. 13,14. These verses merely carry out the general threatening of the one preceding, in a series of poetical antitheses, where hunger, thirst, disgrace and anguish take the place of sword and slaughter, and determine these to be emblematic terms. The passage is a solemn prediction of happiness to the believing and of misery to the unbelieving Jews. The latter are directly addressed, the former designated as My servants. A.—Still addressing the ungodly portion of the Jews and speaking of the pious portion as His servants and His chosen, the Lord draws the contrast between them. Most remarkably was this fulfilled when the day of retribution came upon the guilty nation, and the Roman arms, coupled with their own mad infatuation, made Jerusalem a city of horrors. Never were greater calamities poured forth on any doomed city. But precisely then there was great joy in those communities where the Gospel was shedding forth its blessings and men were turning to the Lord. H. C. God's servants shall want nothing that is good for them. Heaven's happiness will be to them an everlasting feast; they shall be filled with that which now they hunger and thirst after. But those who set their hearts upon the world, and place their happiness in that, shall be hungry and thirsty, always empty, always craving; for it is not bread, it surfeits but it satisfies not. In communion with God, and dependence upon Him, there is full satisfaction, but in sinful pursuits there is nothing but disappointment. God's servants shall rejoice and sing for joy of heart; they have constant cause for joy, and there is nothing that may be an occasion of grief to them but they have an allay sufficient for it. As far as faith is in act and exercise they have a heart to rejoice, and their joy is their strength. They shall rejoice in their hope, because it shall not make them ashamed. Heaven will be a world of everlasting joy to all that are now sowing in tears. H. 13. How many Beholds are here! Every Behold is not only a call to the careless to consider, but also a declaration from heaven that thus it shall be at last with all impenitent sinners. That is, when others sing in heaven, they shall sorrow and howl in hell! Wherefore let me advise that you be not afraid of, but rather covet a broken heart and contrite spirit. I say, covet it now, now the white flag is hung out, now the golden sceptre of grace is held forth to you. And take this notice, that this is not the first time that I have given you this advice. Bunyan. 15. According to the usage of the prophecies, the promise of another name imports a different character and state, and in this sense the promise has been fully verified. But in addition to this general fulfilment, which no one calls in question, it is matter of history that the Jewish commonwealth or nation is destroyed; that the name of Jew has been for centuries a by-word and a formula of execration, and that they who have succeeded to the spiritual honors of this once favored race, although they claim historical identity therewith, have never borne its name, but another, which from its very nature could have no existence until Christ had come, and which in the common parlance of the Christian world is treated as the opposite of Jew. Now all this must be set aside as mere fortuitous coincidence, or it must be accounted for precisely in the same way that we all account for similar coincidences between the history of Christ and the Old Testament in minor points, where all admit that the direct sense of the prophecy is more extensive. A.—The children of the covenant shall no longer be called Jews, but Christians; and to them, under that name, all the promises and privileges of the new covenant shall be secured. This other name shall be an honorable name; it shall not be confined to one nation, but with it men shall “bless themselves in the earth,” all the world over. God shall have servants out of all nations, that shall all be dignified with this new name. H. 16. This verse is doubly important because of its close logical relation to the verse that follows and to its peculiarly interesting statements. The reader will therefore take special note that verses 15, 16 bring us into the very centre and heart of the Christian system, Christ giving His name to His people to wear (“Christian”), and then His own name also to offer prayer in and to bless themselves by; and further, this name is said to be identical, at least in significance, with that of the “God of truth.” Then the special point in which Christ proves Himself true is the certainty of pardon to the penitent. He is surely a God of truth because He has fully put away all the former sins of His people, and has hidden them forever from His eye. Now comparing this Gospel system with the distinctive features of the Mosaic, and much more still, with the historic life of the Jewish nation (viewed morally), the contrast is very great. It opens to view a new spiritual world. This is precisely what the Lord through His prophet proceeds to say. 17. “For, behold,” I make a wondrous change. I contemplate nothing less, I do nothing less than what might be called, building a new world. The words, “for, behold,” resume and restate the main facts of the previous verse in a more broad and general form, and call special attention. The next verse is God’s own explanation of what He means by creating new heavens and earth. The last clause in verse 17 affirms that the new will so entirely eclipse and supersede the old as to expel it from thought and memory. H. C.—The verse is a promise or prediction of entire change in the existing state of things, the precise nature of the change and of the means by which it shall be brought about forming no part of the revelation here. That the words are not inapplicable to a revolution of a moral and spiritual nature, we may learn from Paul’s analogous description of the change wrought in conversion (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15), and from Peter’s application of this very passage. Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness (2 Pet. 3:13). That the words have such a meaning even here is rendered probable by the last clause, the oblivion of the former state of things being much more naturally connected with moral and spiritual changes than with one of a material nature. A. The establishment of the Christian Church and religion is what is more obviously and primarily pointed at in the expression, “new heavens and new earth;” and it is only to their more hidden and fullest meaning that Peter (referring to this and other passages of Isaiah) applies them as above. This creation of new heavens and earth began at the time when the Gospel of Christ began its progress; is to be completed at that other time, when it shall please God (the Creator) to render it perfect, in the consummation of all things. The beginning and end are here blended together. Vitrings. 18,19. The spiritual sense of the new heavens and earth is supported not only by verses 15, 16, but by the scope of the whole chapter, which unquestionably treats of the great moral and spiritual changes attendant upon the first advent of the Messiah—viz., the calling of the Gentiles; the conversion to Christ of a remnant of the Jews and the utter apostasy and ruin of the remaining masses, coupled with the glories of the new Zion as a world of spiritual life, light and joy. We may go back yet farther and maintain that the one great central theme throughout these later prophecies of Isaiah (chaps. 40-66) is essentially the same; those great events and truths which cluster round the transition from the Mosaic to the Christian economy, involving a prophetic outlook onward upon the grand comprehensive results of the latter period. Hence in harmony with this great purpose and drift of these later prophecies, these declarations, "I am creating new heavens and a new earth," should certainly be construed to refer to this same stupendous spiritual and moral change and not to any supposed material change to take place after the close of the Gospel age and of the present earthly state. Still further, precisely this figure of new heavens and earth to represent the new features of the Christian age has occurred already in this portion of Isaiah (chap. 51 : 16). Giving to His people new revelations of His truth and new demonstrations of His spiritual protection are legitimate preliminary agencies for introducing the Christian dispensation, but can have no possible relevance as preliminary agencies for building a new material universe. Giving His people truth to preach, and bidding them go out into all the world and preach it, saying to them, "Lo, I am with you alway to the end of the world," were in fact precisely the Christian agencies with which Jesus Christ inaugurated His Gospel kingdom. Hence we must identify the new heavens and new earth with the Gospel dispensation. With this view accords the language of Paul (2 Cor. 5 : 17), "If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation (Greek); old things are passed away; behold all things are become new." Here essentially the same figure, a new creation, is applied to the spiritual change wrought in every individual conversion which Isaiah applies to the new forms of spiritual power in which the Gospel age pre-eminently surpasses the Mosaic. H. C. 18. But be ye glad and rejoice forever. It is not to be momentary happiness, like a bright morning soon overcast with clouds. It is to be perpetual, everlasting. The joy of God's people is to endure forever; and they shall have ceaseless cause of praise and thanksgiving. I create Jerusalem a rejoicing. A source of rejoicing, or a place of rejoicing. And her people a joy. In themselves joyful, a source of joy to all others. The idea is, that the Church would be a place of the highest happiness; and that they who were redeemed should have occasion of perpetual joy. Religion is not gloom; and they who are redeemed are not redeemed to be sad. Barnes. 19. There is an implication of Divine authority in the promise that weeping shall no more be heard in her. There is something very beautiful in the association of ideas here expressed. God shall rejoice in His people, and they shall rejoice with Him. They shall no longer know what grief is, because He shall cease to grieve over them; their former distresses shall be forgotten by them and forever hidden from His eyes. 20. The most natural meaning is the one preferred by most modern writers. Premature death, and even death in a moderate old age, shall be unknown; he who dies a hundred years old shall be considered either as dying in childhood or as cut off by a special malediction. The whole is a highly poetical description of longevity, to be explained precisely like the promise of new heavens and a new earth in verse 17. 21,22. This is a promise of security and permanent enjoyment, clothed in expressions drawn from the promises and threatenings of the Mosaic law. By the age of a tree is generally understood the great age which some species are said to attain, such as the oak, the banyan, etc. The essential idea is that of permanent continuance, and the figures here used to express it make it still more probable that in the whole foregoing context the predictions are to be figuratively understood. A. 23. "They are themselves the seed of the blessed of the Lord," and there is a blessing entailed upon them by descent from their ancestors, which their offspring with them shall partake of, and shall be, as well as they, "the seed of the blessed of the Lord." God will make their children that rise up comforts to them; they shall have the joy of "seeing them walk in the truth." He will make the times that come after comfortable to their children; as they shall be good, so it shall be well with them. H.—Their offspring with them. The children of believing parents stand, by virtue of that fact, in a special relation to God. God is the God of families, as well as of individuals. He clothes parents with their authority; He requires families to worship Him; He has made special promises to families which believe and obey Him, and "pours out His fury upon the families which call not on His name." These promises, coupled with these conditions, are of the nature of a covenant, so that we can properly say that Christian families, as such, are in covenant with God. T. P. Stevenson. After an experience of more than forty years in contact with saints and sinners of almost all conceivable grades and classes, and with the home life of cultured and illiterate alike, we have come to the settled conviction that there is no sustained and fervent piety to be found prevailing in homes destitute of family worship; and that parents who fail to provide for their young the legacy of holy influence and pungent memory generated at the family altar rob their children of blessing and send them out into the world impoverished beyond all power of recompense, even though in all other respects the parental example and influence be of the loftiest and purest type. The family altar is an ordinance of God, essential to Christian thrift, and neglect of it invariably works irreparable and deplorable mischief. W. W. Faris. Let every father so deport himself toward his children, winning their respect, their reverence and their loving obedience, that as they grow to an appreciation of the Divine Being, the sweetest of His names to them, the one conveying to them the fullest meaning of all that is pure and good and true shall be—Father. Interior. 24. A more precise translation of this verse is, "And it shall be that they shall not yet have called, and I will answer; they shall be yet speaking, and I will hear." The passage is designed to put in strong form God's infinite readiness to hear prayer, and the peculiarly intimate and endearing relations existing between Himself and His praying people. They have only to make their wants known; while they are yet speaking He hears and the thing is done. H. C.—A strong expression of God's readiness to hear and answer prayer, not a mere promise that it shall be heard (like that in Jer. 29:12; Zech. 13:9), but an assurance that it shall be granted before it is heard. The nearest parallel is Matt. 6:8, where our Lord Himself says, Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him. (Cf. chaps. 30:19; 58:9; Ps. 145:18, 19.) A.—When His people shall come to live very near to Him and to walk softly before Him, on terms of true Christian intimacy and in the warmth of sanctified affection, prayer will be with them as their breath, and God's answer will be the quick response of a loving Father's heart. H. C. Before they call I will answer. Their desires shall be anticipated. God will see their wants, and will impart to them the blessings which they need. He will not wait to be applied to for the blessing. How many such blessings do all His people receive at the hand of God! How ready is He to anticipate our wants! How watchful is He of our necessities; and how rich His benevolence in providing for us! Even the most faithful and prayerful of His people receive numerous favors and comforts at His hand for which they have not directly asked Him. The prayer for the supply of our daily food, "Give us this day our daily bread," God had anticipated, and had prepared the means of answering it long before in the abundant harvest. Had He waited until the prayer was offered, it could not have been answered without a miracle. Ever watchful, He anticipates our necessities, and in His providence and grace lays the foundation for granting favors long before we ask Him. Barnes. Why ask, if God has promised? Asking shows faith. Asking is the acceptance on our part of what God offers. Ask and ye shall receive; ask not and ye shall not receive. Find a promise for what you want, and then bring it boldly to God. If you have no plain promise, ask humbly, submissively and modestly, leaving altogether to His wise love the things about which you are uncertain. J. R. M. Let none of you hold His prayer cheap; He to whom we pray holdeth it not cheap. Ere it is gone forth out of our mouth, He has it written in His book. One of two things we may without doubt hope, that He will either give us what we ask, or what He knoweth to be more useful to us. For we know not what to ask for as we ought, but He hath pity on our ignorance. He graciously receiveth prayer, but He giveth not either what is not altogether good for us, or what need not be given us yet. But the prayer will not be without fruit. Bernard. The abounding promise is true absolutely in the spiritual realm, where fuller knowledge of God, a more Christ-like character and more blessed communion with Him, wait for all who desire them and seek them in God's way. The keys of that treasure-house are put into our hands, and we may take as much as we will; and the wider we open our desires, the larger will be the gifts which He pours into our laps. "Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss," not joining effort and perseverance with prayer. A. M. 25. The promise of a happy change is wound up in the most appropriate manner by repeating the earlier prophecy in chap. 11:6-9, that all hurtful influences shall forever cease in the holy hill or Church of God. A.—Thus the whole book is knit together by many secret links, and reveals, from first to last, the unity of design which marks the whole. Birks. 66: 1 THUS saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: what manner of house will ye build unto me? and what place shall be my rest? For all these things hath mine hand made, and so all these things came to be, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word. He that killeth an ox is as he that slayeth a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as he that breaketh a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as he that offereth swine's blood; he that burneth frankincense, as he that blesseth an idol: yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations; I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear; but they did that which was evil in mine eyes, and chose that wherein I delighted not. 5 Hear the word of the LORD, ye that tremble at his word: Your brethren that hate you, that cast you out for my name's sake, have said, Let the LORD be glorified, that we may see your joy; but they shall be ashamed. A voice of tumult from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the LORD that rendereth recompence to his enemies. Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? shall a nation be brought forth at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the LORD: shall I that cause to bring forth shut the womb? saith thy God. 10 Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn over her: that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream, and ye shall suck thereof; ye shall be borne upon the side, and shall be dandled upon the knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And ye shall see it, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like the tender grass: and the hand of the LORD shall be known toward his servants, and he will have indignation against his enemies. For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and his chariots shall be like the whirlwind; to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire will the LORD plead, and by his sword, with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many. They that sanctify themselves and purify themselves to go unto the gardens, behind one in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse; they shall come to an end together, saith the LORD. For I know their works and their thoughts: the time cometh, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and shall see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send such as escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations. And they shall bring all your brethren out of all the nations for an offering unto the LORD, upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the LORD, as the children of Israel bring their offering in a clean vessel into the house of the LORD. And of them also will I take for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD. And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh. Chap. 66. This chapter winds up the prophetic discourse with an express prediction of the change of dispensations, and a description of the difference between them. Jehovah will no longer dwell in temples made with hands (verse 1). Every sincere and humble heart shall be His residence (verse 2). The ancient sacrifices, though divinely instituted, will henceforth be as hateful as the rites of idolatry (verse 3). They who still cling to the abrogated ritual will be fearfully but righteously requited (verse 4). The true Israel cast out by these deluded sinners shall erelong be glorified, and the carnal Israel fearfully rewarded (verses 5, 6). The ancient Zion may already be seen travailing with a new and glorious dispensation (verses 7-9). They who mourned for her seeming desolation now rejoice in her abundance and her honor (verses 10-14). At the same time the carnal Israel shall be destroyed, as apostates and idolaters (verses 14-17). The place which they once occupied shall now be filled by the elect from all nations (verse 18). To gather these, a remnant of the ancient Israel shall go forth among the Gentiles (verse 19). They shall come from every quarter and by every method of conveyance (verse 20). They shall be admitted to the sacerdotal honors of the chosen people (verse 21). This new dispensation is not to be temporary, like the one before it, but shall last forever (verse 22). While the spiritual Israel is thus replenished from all nations, the apostate Israel shall perish by a lingering decay (verses 23, 24). A. As to its course of thought, this concluding chapter is remarkably in harmony with the general scope of the later prophecies (chaps. 40-66), and especially so with the portion (chaps. 49-65), all its topics clustering round the transition point from the Mosaic to the Christian dispensation as their natural centre. Here is the temple made with hands, giving place to the spiritual temple—every living Christian's heart (verses 1, 2); ritual sacrifices no longer required, but henceforth abominable (verse 3); retribution upon men who choose their own ways of worship and of life, and not God's (verses 3, 4); the believing and humble remnant of the ancient people, scorned and outcast by their brethren, but beloved of God (verse 5); retribution upon their enemies (verse 6). The true Zion, almost without travail pains, gives birth to the Gospel Church and the new glories of Christ's kingdom (verses 7-9); in which all Zion's true friends may well rejoice exceedingly, for her consolations in the accession of the Gentiles will be great and enduring (verses 10-14). The Lord's hand uplifted to bless Zion reveals itself also in judgment on her foes (verses 15-17). Again the prophet recurs to the spread of the Gospel far abroad and to the new constitution of the Gospel kingdom (verses 18-23), but closes (verse 24) with the hopeless doom of God's persistent enemies. H. C. 1. Thus saith the Lord.** The same weighty preface is used once more, as in 65:8, 13, and still earlier (43:14, 16; 44:6, 24; 45:1, 11, 14; 48:17; 49:7, 8, 22; 50:1; 56:1), to introduce this crown and topstone of the whole. The prophecy began (1:10-15) by denouncing the sin of formal worship, with especial reference to the time of Ahaz. And here a similar warning and reproof is repeated at the very close. Through all the intervening centuries this has been the one grand snare and temptation of the Jewish people. Birks. The question asks not so much for its locality as for its quality. What house, what temple worthy of My infinite greatness and glory, can ye ever build for Me? The original justifies this sense and the scope of thought in the passage requires it. All critics agree that the language disapproves the work of building a temple for the great God. This is the natural import of the question, and is confirmed by the context in which God first declares that instead of dwelling any more in earthly temples, He dwells with the humble, contrite heart (verse 2), and in which (verse 3) He expresses His abhorrence henceforth of animal sacrifices, without which there would be no earthly temple. It is remarkable that the prophetic eye, resting upon the covenant people at the era of Messiah's advent and earthly life, saw them rebuilding His earthly temple. It was the great religious enterprise of that age. At the date when our Lord entered upon His public ministry, it had been forty-six years in building (John 2:19, 20). H. C. It may be asked why this truth did not forbid the erection of the Temple at first, as well as its gorgeous reconstruction in the time of Christ. The answer is, that it was necessary for a temporary purpose, but when this temporary purpose was accomplished it became not only useless, but unlawful. Henceforth the worship was to be a spiritual worship, the Church universally diffused, and the material sanctuary no longer an earthly residence for God, but a convenient place of meeting for His people. A. 2. Understanding by "all those things" the heavens and the earth—i.e., the created universe, the Lord in this verse declares, My hand made them all, and so, consequently, they came into being. They all owe their existence wholly and exclusively to My creative hand. In the sublime language of the Psalmist, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. For He spake, and it was; He commanded, and it stood fast" (Ps. 33 : 6, 9). Yet though I have built this beautiful earth, and those more grandly magnificent heavens, and though no earthly temple, however vast in its proportions and however gorgeous in its adornments, is worthy to be My abode; yet to this man will I look with special regard, even to him who is truly humble, contrite of heart for sin, solicitous to know My word and do My will. H. C. 3. Each ceremonial sacrifice is here identified with some kindred act, most impure and hateful under the Levitical law. (Cf. Ex. 13 : 13.) The sin of their formalism is shown to be increased by the eager zeal with which they pursued these self-righteous and unprofitable services. Birks. The text discloses the general doctrine that sacrifice is hateful in the sight of God if offered in a wicked spirit, but with a special reference to those who still adhered to the old sacrifices after the great sacrifice for sin was come and had been offered once for all. Thus understood this verse extends to sacrifices that which the foregoing verses said of the Temple, after the change of dispensations. A.—The form of statement strongly implies the utter discontinuance of the entire sacrificial system. It goes down together with the material temple, both having done their work; each having its inherent liabilities to evil; each therefore is promptly set aside when in the fulness of time the world was ripe for the better dispensation. 4. Their persistent adherence to the Mosaic ritual and their scornful rejection of a spiritual (not carnal) Messiah and of His Gospel, had not been done ignorantly, and without ample light as to God's will, for through long ages God had called them by His prophets and they would not hear. H. C.—God will make their sin their punishment; they shall be hurried into ruin by their own delusions. God will "bring their fears upon them," will bring upon them that which shall be a terror to them, that which they themselves have been afraid of, and thought to escape by sinful shifts. Unbelieving hearts and unpurified, unpacified consciences need no more to make them miserable than to have "their own fears brought" upon them. H. 5. Last clause, read "but it is they that shall be put to shame." Am. Com. These wicked Jews appear now as persecutors of the few out of their nation who had espoused the name of Christ. The latter are adaddressed, "Ye that reverence God's word; your brethren [of the Jews] who have hated you" (the New Testament shows how bitterly) "and have cast you out" (of their synagogues and communion) "for My name's sake, have said" (as men who assume to be very religious and to have God on their side in these malignant persecutions); "God will be glorified." They claimed to think that in persecuting the followers of Christ they were doing God service and promoting His glory. This description of the bigoted, persecuting Jews of the early Christian age is wonderfully true to history. 6. The meaning here is that God is heard going forth from His city and Temple to visit fearful retribution on the guilty Jews, His enemies. It can scarcely be doubted that the passage refers specially to the Roman armies, sent of God in His providence to destroy the doomed city and people. H. C. 7-9. A figure for the whole eventful crisis of the change of dispensations, and the consequent change in the condition of the Church. This indestructible ideal person, when she might have seemed to be reduced to nothing by the defection of the natural Israel, is vastly and suddenly augmented by the introduction of the Gentiles, a succession of events which is here most appropriately represented as the birth of a male child without the pains of childbirth. A.—This passage corresponds substantially in thought with chap. 49 : 18-23, saying that Zion there is assumed to be the joyful mother of countless hosts of Gentile children; while here, the whole ingathering of the Gospel age, the entire results of preaching the Gospel to the wide world, are thought of collectively as one male child. Hath the like been ever heard of before—a nation born with one birth-pang? for ere Zion had travailed, she brought forth her children! Yet this is only what should be expected from the glorious God! Would He not most assuredly finish what He had begun, and carry through to a full and sublime success what His own wisdom and love had planned and predicted? 10,11. Jerusalem is now a happy mother rejoicing that a son is born to her, a birth which really means a nation (verse 8), a new and world including Zion. 12. Her peace in the sense of spiritual prosperity shall be with the deep and mighty flow of a great river, this Hebrew word being used for the largest class of rivers. The "flowing stream" should rather be overflowing; one which in its freshets breaks over all its banks. The conversion and ingathering of the Gentiles will be on no stinted scale, but with mighty sweep and magnificent results. The incoming Gentiles seem here to be incorporated into the Zion family and welcomed to this prolific and rejoicing mother of nations. 13. The Hebrew reads, "As a man" (nor merely as "one") "whom His mother comforteth;" as if the Divine speaker would honor the idea of a mother comforting her son even in his mature years, and of a son enjoying such comfort none the less for his years of manhood. H. C.—The in Jerusalem suggests the only means by which these blessings are to be secured—viz., a union of affection and of interest with the Israel of God, to whom alone they are promised. A. "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." What a depth is there in that love which God chooses as an image of His own! and yet the love of a mother's heart is but a drop from that illimitable ocean into which our sins, though great as mountains, once cast are lost forever—buried out of sight. I believe that His love as far exceeds a mother's, when it is deepest and strongest, as does the strength of His almighty arm that of the infant which hangs helpless on her breast. Guthrie. "As one whom his mother comforteth, so the Lord comforteth His people." It is in the dark and boisterous night of sorrow or apprehension that the Saviour reveals Himself nigh. And one of the first things He does is to explain the subject-matter of the grief—to show its real nature and amount. "It is but a light affliction. It lasts but for a moment. It is a false alarm. It is only the rain-drift on the window—wait till the day dawns and shadows flee away. Wait till morning, and you will see the whole extent of it." And then the next thing that He does is to teach some useful lesson. And during those quiet hours, when the heart is soft, the Saviour's lessons sink deep. And last of all, besides consolation under the trial and peaceful fruits that follow it, by this comforting visit, the Saviour unspeakably endears Himself to that soul. Paul and Silas never knew Christ so well, nor loved Him so much, as after that night which He and they passed together in the Macedonian prison. And the souls on which the Lord Jesus has taken the deepest hold are those whose great tribulations have thrown them most frequently and most entirely into His own society. Hamilton. We should never see the glorious Divine promises nor realize the precious joys and hopes of Christian faith if the shadow of sorrow never deepened about us. The child never fully understands the sweetness and gentleness of the mother's love until the child is sick or suffering; and we can never experience the blessedness of being drawn close to God's heart and comforted by Him, "as one whom his mother comforteth," if we do not have pain or grief. So it is a blessed thing to mourn, just to have God comfort us. H. C. T. 14. The last half of the verse puts in vivid contrast the revelations of God's power for salvation to His friends and destruction upon His enemies. "The hand of the Lord made known" for good is a revelation of His power to save. The last clause should be translated, "But He is indignant toward His enemies," the original word being a verb and not a noun. At this point the discourse turns to speak of God's indignation against the wicked and its fruits in righteous retribution. H. C. 15-24. These verses, like the pillar of cloud and fire, have a dark side toward the enemies of God's kingdom and all that are rebels against His crown and a bright side toward His faithful loyal subjects. H. 15. The whole verse represents Jehovah, considered in relation to His enemies, as a consuming fire (De. 4:24; Heb. 12:29; cf. 2 Thess. 1:8). 16. A clue to the primary application of the verse is afforded by our Saviour's words in Matt. 24:22, where in speaking of the speedy destruction of Jerusalem He says that excepting the elect no flesh should be saved—i.e., no portion of the Jewish race but those who were ordained to everlasting life through faith in Him. This application of Isaiah's prophecy agrees exactly with the view already taken of the whole preceding context as relating to that great decisive crisis in the history of the Church and of the world, the dissolution of the old economy and the inauguration of the new. According to this view of the passage, what is here said of fire, sword and slaughter was fulfilled not only as a figurative prophecy of general destruction, but in its strictest sense in the terrific carnage which attended the extinction of the Jewish state, and of which, more emphatically than of any other event outwardly resembling it, it might be said that many were the slain of Jehovah. A. 17. The class primarily described here must be identical with those who appear in chap. 65:3, 4—i.e., the unbelieving, apostate Jews, whose wickedness is described in terms borrowed from the odious idol worship of the prophet's own time. It will be noticed that these descriptions have in common the following leading points—viz., the sacrificing in gardens; the eating of swine's flesh and of things abominable. H. C. 18. As we have seen that the crimes described in the foregoing verses are not those of the heathen, but of the apostate Jews, whose deeds and thoughts must therefore be intended in the first clause, the explanation most in harmony with this immediate context, as well as with the whole drift of the prophecy thus far, is that which makes the verse before us a distinct prediction of the calling of the Gentiles, both to witness the infliction of God's vengeance on the Jews, and to supply their places in His Church or chosen people. It is perhaps to the language of this prophecy that Christ Himself alludes in Matt. 24 : 31. (Cf. also John 5 : 25.) 19. The whole may be paraphrased as follows: Such being their character, I will cast them off and gather the nations to take their place; for which end I will send forth the survivors of the nation, the elect for whose sake these days shall be shortened when all besides them perish, to declare My glory in the regions where My name has never yet been heard. Thus understood, the passage is exactly descriptive of the preaching of the Gospel at the beginning of the new dispensation. All the first preachers were escaped Jews, plucked as brands from the burning, saved from that perverse generation (Acts 2 : 40). The sign will then denote the whole miraculous display of Divine power, in bringing the old dispensation to a close and introducing the new, including the destruction of the unbelieving Jews on the one hand, and on the other all those signs and wonders and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost (Heb. 2 : 4), which Paul calls the signs of an apostle (2 Cor. 12 : 12), and which Christ Himself had promised should follow them that believed (Mark 16 : 17). All these were signs placed among them—i.e., among the Jews, to the greater condemnation of the unbelievers, and to the salvation of such as should be saved. A. This verse stands distinguished among Hebrew prophecies in that it drops or rather oversteps the usual restraints of the Jewish costume, and speaks of Christian missionary labors in New Testament and Gospel terms. Christ's servants really "go abroad into all the world to preach the Gospel to every creature!" The nations designated here are named as specimens, and signify the actual extent to which the Gospel should be preached. Tarshish carries the mind to Southwestern Europe; Pul and Lud to Africa, where Lud is manifestly located by Jeremiah (46 : 9); Tubal to Northern Asia (Ezek. 27 : 13; 32 : 26; 38 : 2, 3 and 39 : 1). Javan is the Hebrew word for Greece. The "isles afar off"—all the distant countries beyond sea. In general, all those who had never before "heard My fame;" a term which probably means here, as in chap. 53 : 1, the Gospel message, even as "My glory" refers specially to the manifestations of Divine mercy in the Gospel of salvation. H. C. 20. The survivors sent forth to the nations are described as bringing back the converts to the true religion as an offering to Jehovah. Their return for this purpose is described as easy, swift and even splendid, all the choicest methods of conveyance used in ancient times being here combined to express that idea. A. The ingathering of Gentile converts is put here naturally in Jewish costume. Under that ancient system, proselytes must needs come up to Jerusalem to worship, and indeed must come there to espouse the name of Jehovah and be formally inducted into the Jewish Church. This prophecy pertains to the Christian age. A prophet, writing for the people of his own times, must use terms intelligible to them. The spirit of this prophecy authorizes us to substitute for horses and dromedaries rail-cars and steamships, and also to assume that the transportation will be outward rather than inward; missionaries going forth into all the world, and not the nations themselves coming in to some great central Jerusalem. H. C. 21. The most natural interpretation seems to be as follows: The mass of the Jewish people was to be cast off from all connection with the Church; but the elect who should escape were to be sent among the nations and to bring them for an offering to Jehovah, as the priests and Levites offered the oblation at Jerusalem. But this agency was not to be confined to the Jews who were first entrusted with it; not only of them, but also of the Gentiles themselves, priest and Levites should be chosen to offer this oblation—i.e., to complete the vocation of the Gentiles. Should the context be supposed to require a still more general meaning, it may be that the sacerdotal mediation of the ancient Israel between Jehovah and the other nations, which was symbolized by the Levitical and Aaronic priesthood, was to cease with the necessity that brought it into being, and to leave the Divine presence as accessible to one race as another. A. 22. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I am making (or about to make), are standing (or about to stand) before me, saith Jehovah, so shall stand your name and your seed. The promise is addressed to Israel as a church, from which the natural descendants of Jacob for the most part have been cut off, and the object of this verse is to assure the Church that notwithstanding this excision it should still continue to exist, not only as a church, but as the Church, the identical body which was clothed in the forms of the old dispensation and which still survives when they are worn out and rejected. The grand error incident to a change of dispensations was the very one which has perverted and obscured the meaning of these prophecies, the error of confounding the two Israels whom Paul so carefully distinguishes, and of supposing that the promises given to the Church when externally identified with one race are continued to that race even after their excision from the Church. It was to counteract this very error that the verse before us was recorded, in which God's people, comprehending a remnant of the natural Israel and a vast accession from the Gentiles, are assured that God regards them as His own chosen people, not a new one, but the same that was of old, and that the very object of the great revolution here and elsewhere represented as a new creation was to secure their perpetuity and constant recognition as His people. Since then He creates new heavens and a new earth for this very purpose, that purpose cannot be defeated while these heavens and that earth endure. A.—These "new heavens and earth" can be no other than those which are described more fully (chap. 65: 17-25)—i.e., the new religious constitution; the Christian, Messianic age. As this is to be permanent, so shall Christians themselves as a race, a "seed," a constant succession of fathers and sons, generation after generation, remain before God. H. C. 23. The new moons and the Sabbaths are mentioned, because, under the law, though the yearly feasts were to be celebrated at Jerusalem, yet the new moons and the Sabbaths were religiously observed all the country over in the "schools of the prophets" first, and afterward "in the synagogues" (2 K. 4: 23; Amos 8: 5; Acts 15: 21), according to the model of which Christian assemblies seem to be performed. Where the Lord's day is weekly sanctified, and the Lord's supper monthly celebrated, and both duly attended on, there this promise is fulfilled, there the Christian new moons and Sabbaths are observed. See here, that God is to be worshipped in solemn assemblies, that it is the duty of all, as they have opportunity, to wait upon God in those assemblies. H. And from one Sabbath to another. There can be no permanent worship of God and no permanent religion on earth without a Sabbath; and hence it was, that while the observance of the feasts of tabernacles, and of the passover, and of the new moons made a part of the Hebrew ritual—enjoined by the ceremonial law—the law respecting the Sabbaths was incorporated with the Ten Commandments as of moral and perpetual obligation; and it will be literally true that all the race shall yet be brought to worship God on the return of that holy day. It was instituted in Paradise; and as one design of the plan of redemption is to bring man back to the state in which he was in Paradise, so one effect of the true religion everywhere will be and is, to make men reverence the Sabbath of the Lord. Every successful effort to propagate the true religion is a successful effort to extend the practice of observing that holy day; and just as certain as it is that Christianity will be spread around the world, so certain will it be that the holy Sabbath will be observed in all lands. Barnes. 23,24. The whole prophecy closes with a solemn contrast between the blessings to the righteous and the shame and misery of the rebellious and profane. Earth, redeemed from the curse, will become the scene of holy and perpetual worship. The destruction of the sinners, that solemn contrast in a scene where righteousness and peace are to prevail, shall only deepen in upon "all flesh" the impression of God's holiness and majesty. In some mysterious way the sentence on the profane shall be visible to the Jews and Gentiles who have been spared, the blissful and holy inhabitants of "the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." The words of this last verse are borrowed by our Lord to announce the irreversible doom of the unfaithful. Birks. 24. "Going forth" is going out from the city of Jerusalem to gain a full and nearer view of the great valley of Hinnom, where the slain of the Lord that were "many" (verse 16) were piled in mountain masses, the worms feeding on their carcasses and the fires perpetually burning, yet never utterly consuming them. They are objects of abhorrence to all flesh, impressing a wholesome fear (so the word implies) of the life they lived as leading to and ending in such a death, and a wholesome horror of their sins as richly deserving a doom so fearful. It cannot be doubted that this verse alludes to Tophet as described in this prophet (chap. 30: 33) and yet more fully (Jer. 7: 30-34 and 19 : 6-15). To these views of Tophet, the valley of Hinnom, our Lord alludes (Mark 9 : 44, 46, 48), drawing from it the very terms in which He describes the scenes of the future punishment of the wicked. So it comes to pass naturally and legitimately that the judgments of God on guilty nations in the present world furnish not only the great principles which underlie all punishment of the wicked, but also the very terms which designate their place of torment, and the illustrations which represent the horrors of their doom. H. C. The grand theme of these prophecies, as we have seen, is the relation of God's people to Himself and to the world, and in the latter stages of its history, to that race with which it was once outwardly identical. The great catastrophe with which the vision closes is the change of dispensations, comprehending the final abolition of the ceremonial law and its concomitants, the introduction of a spiritual worship and the consequent diffusion of the Church, its vast enlargement by the introduction of all Gentile converts to complete equality of privilege and honor with the believing Jews, and the excision of the unbelieving Jews from all connection with the Church or chosen people, which they once imagined to have no existence independent of themselves. The contrast between these two bodies, the rejected Jews and their believing brethren forming one great mass with the believing Gentiles, is continued to the end, and presented for the last time in these two concluding verses, where the whole is condensed into a single vivid spectacle, of which the central figure is Jerusalem and its walls the dividing line between the two contrasted objects. Within is the true Israel, without the false. Within, a great congregation, even "all flesh," come from the east and the west, and the north and the south, while the natural children of the kingdom are cast out (Matt. 8 : 12). The end of the former is left to be imagined or inferred from other prophecies, but that of the latter is described or suggested in a way more terrible than all description. In the valley of the son of Hinnom, under the very brow of Zion and Moriah, where the children were once sacrificed to Moloch, and where purifying fires were afterward kept ever burning, the apostate Israel is finally exhibited, no longer living, but committed to the flames of Tophet. To render our conception more intense the worm is added to the flame, and both are represented as undying. That the contrast hitherto maintained may not be forgotten even in this closing scene, the men within the walls may be seen by the light of those funereal fires coming forth and gazing at the ghastly scene, not with delight, as some interpreters pretend, but, as the text expressly says, with horror. Thus the verse becomes descriptive of the final doom of the ungodly, without any deviation from its proper sense, or any supposition of a mere allusion or accommodation in the use of the same figures by our Lord Himself in reference to future torments. All that is requisite to reconcile and even to identify the two descriptions is the consideration that the state of ruin here described is final and continuous, however it may be divided, in the case of individuals, between the present life and that which is to come. Hell is of both worlds, so that in the same essential sense although in different degrees it may be said both of him who is still living, but accursed, and of him who perished centuries ago, that his worm dieth not and his fire is not quenched. A. #### The Doctrine of Eternal Judgment. The importance of the doctrine of eternal judgment may be inferred from the prominent place it holds in the messages of God from first to last. It is involved in the first promise and warning in Paradise; it marks the close of Isaiah's message of glorious hope and Gospel promise. It forms the close of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and of the prophecies of Daniel, Hosea and Micah, of Zechariah and Haggai. It gives their tone to the closing sentences of the Sermon on the Mount, and forms the main topic of two of the chief discourses of Christ in the Gospels, and of the Second Epistle of Peter and that of Jude, and it is revealed with especial prominence from first to last in the visions of the apocalypse. Next to the glorious revelation of God Himself and the great work of redemption, it forms the third main feature in the whole scheme of revelation. The revealed message of Scripture on judgment to come includes as a main feature, that from the days of Paradise to the return of Christ, the whole human race has been placed under an economy of redeeming love. "That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself;" that every child of man is called upon to repent and turn to God, invited and earnestly entreated to accept the offered gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus; that there is no fatal secret decree of reprobation by which any are positively shut out from a share in the blessing; that the invitations of God are sincere, earnest and real, and not in pretence only, as unbelieving hearts are prone to suspect, is assured by a threefold pledge of Divine love. First, the oath and promise of God the Father, "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his way and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways." Again, by the tears and lamentation of the Incarnate Son over guilty Jerusalem, "when He came near and beheld the city and wept over it, O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes!" And thirdly and lastly, by the parting message and invitation of the Holy and Eternal Spirit. "The Spirit and the Bride say Come; and let him that heareth say Come; and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." This invitation of Divine love, most clearly revealed in the Gospel, is also given, though more dimly, in that goodness of God shown in all His works, by which He "leadeth men to repentance," and the apostle assures us that even while He suffered the nations to walk in their own ways, "He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness;" and His judgment on all we are further assured will be according to the light they have received. Birks. Remorse is the natural vengeance of sin upon a sinner. It is legitimate; it is just. We are never wronged in the vengeance of remorse. God has not wronged us in making us susceptible of such suffering; conscience does not wrong us in inflicting it; the holy universe does not wrong us in approving it. Phelps.—The conscious knowledge of having done wrong; of having had a spirit from God, pure with high aspirations, and of having dulled its delicacy and degraded its desires; of having quenched a light brighter than the sun's; of having done to another an injury that through time and through eternity never can be undone; the knowledge that every chance of excellence and every opportunity of good has been lost forever—this is the maddening remorse; this is wrath to come. F. W. Robertson. None of the fathers had a deeper sense of the Divine love than Chrysostom, "the preacher of mercy," yet none asserted more emphatically the awful doctrine of eternal perdition. In his fifth homily he speaks of the bonds that are not loosed; in the eleventh, of the endless darkness, the deathless punishments; and in the twenty-third we read, "The penalties then to be inflicted are not such as to come to an end and be concluded, but the punishment is eternal. For as the punishments of this world are concluded with the present life, so those of the next world continue perpetually." And further on in the same homily, he insists that after death the most vehement regrets are vain, as in the case of the rich man in the parable, whose lamentations were fruitless because he had neglected the time in which he ought to have secured the Divine mercy. W. Bright. "What else shall God do with guilt but punish it?" Shall He give repentance and then forgive? But that is the very thing He has been offering from the first. Never will man or devil see the moment when he cannot repent if he would. But that is the very thing from which the incorrigible sinner recoils. He will have none of that. Repentance means submission. Better hell than that. Such is the relentless choice of the doomed one. Doomed because self-doomed. Doomed by the fearful omnipotence of his own free-will. Nothing else which it is in God's power to offer does he spurn from him with such concentration of obdurate and vindictive resolve. His whole being revolts from it with the intensity, at last, of ages of accumulated and malign passion. Such is sin; once chosen and implanted and indurated in the very nature of man, by a life of abused probation, in which the grace of God has been scorned and the blood of Christ outraged. Once more, then, the question comes back unanswered: "What else shall God do with it?" Through all eternity, that is the question which infinite benevolence will ask of an awe-struck yet satisfied and adoring universe: "What else shall God do with it?" Phelps. This is the consummation of the series of bright visions that passed before the mind of Isaiah. This is an appropriate termination of this succession of wonderful revelations. Where could it more appropriately terminate than in the consummation of all things—in the final triumph of the true religion, and in the complete and final destruction of all the enemies of God? The vision stretches on to the judgment, and is closed by a contemplation of those scenes which commence there, but which never end. The Church is triumphant. Its conflicts cease. Its foes are slain. Its Redeemer is revealed; and its everlasting happiness is founded on a basis which can never be shaken. Barnes. So ends this wonderful prophetic scene. The kingdom of Messiah triumphant; His foes prostrate to rise no more. The nations gathered by missionary labor come home to the bosom of Zion, and rejoice in her consolations; but God's enemies, balked in every endeavor and meeting their doom of utter discomfiture, are shut up to shame and everlasting contempt—the objects of wholesome abhorrence, impressing on all beholders a salutary fear and dread of sin, and thus conducing to augment the moral forces which will forever sustain the throne of God and preserve His reverent worshippers in unswerving and ever-growing allegiance, homage and love. Such are the grand, momentous results of the Gospel scheme in our world—a world fearfully cursed indeed by sin, but more gloriously saved by grace—saved by the Son of God made incarnate to suffer and die, yet raised again to live and reign sublimely victorious in the latter end. H. C. JEREMIAH, who is the principal prophet in the second or Babylonian period of prophecy, lived in the reigns of Josiah, Shallum, Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah. His long career began in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah (B.C. 629), and continued till the eleventh year of Zedekiah (B.C. 586), when Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 1: 2, 3), though he continued to prophesy even after that event. He is described as "the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth," a town not three miles distant from Jerusalem. His personal history is closely united with that of the times in which he lived. After the destruction of Jerusalem, he continued for a time in the city; but he was afterward carried, against his will, into Egypt, along with his faithful friend and amanuensis, Baruch. There, in the city of Tahpanhes, we have the last clear glimpses of the prophet's life. After this all is uncertain. P. S. Historical Sketch of the Period. It was not long before Jeremiah was born that the life and work of the great Isaiah came to an end; the apostasy and subsequent repentance of Manasseh, in whose reign Isaiah was murdered, must have been still fresh in the memory of men in the early years of Jeremiah. King Esarhaddon of Nineveh avenged the great disaster of Sennacherib, his father, before Jerusalem in the days of Isaiah when Hezekiah reigned, by taking the holy city and by leading captive her king, Hezekiah's son Manasseh, to Babylon. Manasseh was subsequently released, and consented as a vassal king to Nineveh to hold Judah. Assurbanipal succeeded Esarhaddon, his father, B.C. 668. The Ninevite king resided principally in Babylon, which was already showing signs of dissatisfaction with the Ninevite rule. He was evidently a strong sovereign, and completely broke the Egyptian power by dividing Egypt into twelve petty kingdoms. During his reign Judah remained a tributary to Nineveh. In the seventeenth year of the reign of this Assurbanipal, king of Nineveh, Psametichus restored the broken unity of Egypt, and once more united the whole land. Egypt now, for a season, disputed the sovereignty of the Eastern world with Nineveh. When this restoration of Egypt to the position of a great power took place, Manasseh was in the twenty-fourth year of his reign, and from this time gradually grew up that strong inclination in Judah to court the friendship of Egypt, which eventually proved its ruin. Politically, the great work of Jeremiah's life was to combat this fatal policy. Manasseh was succeeded by Amon, and Amon by the good king Josiah. During Josiah's reign Jeremiah exercised great influence. This prince lost his life fighting against Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo. Four years after its victory at Megiddo, the Egyptian power was totally destroyed at Carchemish by a new power which had lately risen on the ruins of the old Ninevite dominion. The power of Nineveh had been for some time declining, partly owing to a great invasion of Scythians, partly to the discontent of Babylon—a discontent which ended in Babylon asserting its independence. The Eastern world, two years after the battle of Megiddo, in which Josiah lost his life, was astonished at learning that Nineveh, so long the Queen City of the East, had fallen before the armies of Cyaxares the Mede and Nabopolassar, king of the recently freed Babylon. The ruin of Nineveh was complete. Two years later the son of Nabopolassar, the famous Nebuchadnezzar, broke the Egyptian power at Carchemish. The great Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar was temporarily stayed in his career of conquest by his father's death and the need of his presence at Babylon in order to consolidate his power. Egypt and her vassal States became now subject to Babylon. Among these latter was Judah and her king, Jehoiakim, who succeeded Josiah. After three years Jehoiakim rebelled against the authority of Babylon; Nebuchadnezzar in person took the field against his rebellious vassal. Jerusalem was invested and soon fell. Her king was put to death, and a few months later Jehoiachin—who succeeded his father in the sovereignty—was, with the flower of the people, carried captive to Babylon. A remnant was left in Judah, and Zedekiah reigned as their king. Again Egypt became their snare. Something like a revival of the Egyptian power had taken place under Pharaoh Hophra; the Jews left under King Zedekiah in Judah, turning against their mighty Babylonian master, sought to strengthen themselves by an alliance with Egypt, against the advice of Jeremiah, who had remained with Zedekiah in Judah. The Chaldean vengeance did not tarry long; again was Jerusalem besieged, again captured. Then the Temple was burned, the king was blinded, the best of the poor remnant of the people left by Nebuchadnezzar were carried into Babylonia. Gedaliah, a friend of Jeremiah, was appointed governor of the now desolate and almost deserted land. Gedaliah was shortly after murdered by some self-styled patriot Jews, who, after their deed of blood, fled, carrying Jeremiah, an unwilling captive, with them to the city of Tahpanhes, in Egypt. Here we lose sight of the aged and desolate prophet. Spence. The life of Jeremiah as prophet, and that of Josiah as king, ran parallel eighteen years, when Josiah fell at Megiddo in battle with Pharaoh Necho of Egypt. We may well suppose that this was the first great sorrow of the prophet's life. He mourned for his fallen king as one mourneth for a dear and honored personal friend and for a great public benefactor. (See 2 Chron. 35: 25.) How much he knew beforehand of the graceless sons of this good king who would be candidates for the vacant throne does not appear. He had abundant and sad occasion to know them in future years. While Josiah lived, Jeremiah does not appear at all in the history as given in the books of Kings and Chronicles, nor does his own book of prophecies show him to have been prominent during Josiah's life. Only a small portion of his recorded prophecies bear date in the reign of Josiah—viz., chap. 1, and another message beginning chap. 3: 6, and ending perhaps with the sixth chapter. There can be no doubt, however, that he sympathized deeply with this great reformation, which commenced vigorously just one year before his call as a prophet, and which seems to have culminated in a very extraordinary passover five years later (2 Chron. 35: 1-19). It was everything in this reformation to press the conscience of the people with the great and solid truths of religion, and to urge them to thorough self-searching and to radical repentance of all sins of the heart as well as of the life. In this line of effort, we shall see that the messages sent of the Lord by Jeremiah during this period were admirably well adapted for effect, and if duly heeded, would have been most wholesome in their influence. After the death of Josiah, our prophet soon began to have new experiences. Previously he had been amply protected in his person and powerfully sustained by the king and his court. Subsequently there came a new order of things. Four kings fill the period between Josiah's death (n.c. 611) and the fall of the kingdom (n.c. 588). Three of them were sons of Josiah, and one his grandson; but not one of them bears any other record than that of "doing evil in the sight of the Lord." Of the four sons of Josiah, the eldest, Johanan, probably died either before or with his father. He does not appear later. His third son, Jehoahaz, was put on the throne first, and by the people, probably because he stood higher in their esteem than Jehoiakim, the second in age. He represented the Chaldean party, following the policy of his father, who fell in an attempt to withstand the Egyptian king, then on his march against the Chaldeans. Pharaoh Necho, returning from his northern expedition, deposed the young king of Judah after a reign of but three months, and took him captive to Egypt, where he died. Necho placed his elder brother, Jehoiakim, on the throne, where he reigned eleven years—one of the meanest and wickedest kings that ever disgraced that throne. A very considerable portion of Jeremiah's prophecies fall within this reign—many of them about his fourth year, when the first serious invasion by the Chaldean forces occurred and the first large deportation of captives. Jehoiakim represented the Egyptian party; was always averse to Jeremiah's exhortations from the Lord to yield to the Chaldean power, and hence stood opposed to the prophet on political as well as religious grounds. Consequently he permitted and even instigated a rancorous persecution against Jeremiah, from which the latter more than once barely escaped with his life. This was the prophet's time of sternest trial. After a reign of eleven years, Jehoiakim was taken in chains to Babylon, and his son Jehoiachin (otherwise called Jeconiah and Coniah) was enthroned in his stead. Three months of wicked misrule and of treachery against the Chaldean king ended his reign, and he went a prisoner to Babylon, where he was imprisoned at least thirty-seven years. After him came Zedekiah, yet another and the youngest son of the good Josiah, but doing only evil against the Lord throughout his reign of eleven years. He was weak as well as wicked, and perhaps the less wicked in the sight of God for his weakness. He would have protected Jeremiah more if he had dared, or if he had been manly enough to assert his rights as king. He lived to see the great city seized by the Chaldeans, the nation ruined, and his sons slain. His own eyes were then put out and himself taken in chains to Babylon, to die dishonored there. Jeremiah delivered to him many messages from the Lord; suffered severe persecution during his reign; made earnest but unavailing efforts to withstand the growing corruption of both court and people, and to induce repentance toward God, or at least quiet submission to the inevitable and divinely ordained supremacy of the Chaldeans, but was baffled in every endeavor. Such is the disheartening story of Jeremiah's labors and protests during these twenty-three years from the death of Josiah to the utter overthrow of the city and kingdom. Within his public life fall the dates of Zephaniah and Habakkuk; the former within the reign of Josiah; the latter apparently in the first years of Jehoiakim, shortly before the first invasion from the fierce and terrible Chaldeans. Jeremiah survived the fall of the city and kingdom. His sympathies went with the better part of the people into their exile in Babylon, but he neither accompanied nor followed them in person. Twice he wrote them in a very encouraging and friendly strain, but either through his own convictions of duty, or through the special direction of the Lord, he cast in his lot with the poor remnant who remained a short time in the land, and ultimately, against his earnest protest, went to Egypt to perish there. Nebuchadnezzar befriended him in a most decided manner, and if he had gone to Babylon, his lot would apparently have been as pleasant as that of a captive with his captive brethren well could be; but Jeremiah manifestly sought not his own, but the things of his great Master. Hence, in the footsteps of the greater "Man of sorrows," he followed the remnant who had no shepherd and no heart to heed one, and filled out his remaining days among an ungrateful, disobedient, and unappreciative people. Beyond this exile to Egypt and these thankless labors to call back to God the lowest, weakest, and wickedest portion of the Jewish people, we hear of him no more. There are some lessons of great interest and value to be found in the life and spirit of this prophet. It is God's way to raise up His own instruments and adapt them for the work He gives them to do. Jeremiah was an illustration of this Divine policy. We note how He yielded to the pressure of God's hand upon him (2:7, 9); how step by step he moved on into peril and darkness thickening fearfully in his path; how "he endured as seeing Him who is invisible;" how he never so quailed before his enemies as to withhold one of the stern words God gave him to say; how we rarely hear the slightest murmur from his lips; how when human frailty seemed too much for present grace, the Lord kindly gave more grace; how he filled out the very last days of a prophetic life, which overran forty years, with suffering, daring, witnessing, beseeching, and weeping—almost evermore—with apparently fruitless endeavor, and with no consolations known to us save those of a clear conscience and an approving God. His heart never became misanthropic—never had the least touch of the malign element. He never ceased to love with the love of sympathy and pity the wickedest and vilest of those whose sins the Lord sent him to denounce. There is a wonderful record for us in those tears! Would to God that all His ministering servants kept their own spirit in a sympathy with Christ's as near, warm, and effective as did this prophet of Anathoth! H. C. In the time of Isaiah two courses were open for Israel. Either to let itself go down the steep descent which opened under its feet, or to strengthen its hold upon the tableland above. A century and a half later, in the time of Jeremiah, this alternative was no longer open. Israel had already descended far down the fatal slope, and was on the point of falling over the precipice. The people were giving themselves up to idolatry with an ardor akin to madness. Never has this strange worship better deserved the name of "possession on a great scale," which has been bestowed upon it with so much reason. All the divinities of the East, Baal, Astarte, Moloch, Thammuz, seem to have agreed to meet in Jerusalem; the Temple had become a pantheon. The three last kings were among the very worst that the little State ever had. Under Jehoiakim, the Chaldean conqueror, Nebuchadnezzar, appears for the first time in the Holy Land, and Judah becomes tributary to him. A little later, Jehoiachin, his successor, is himself taken captive with the best part of his people. Finally, under Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar strikes the last blow; Jerusalem is destroyed, together with the Temple. Such are the circumstances in the midst of which Jeremiah was called to exercise the prophetic ministry. Never was heavier burden laid upon the shoulders of mortal man. A man of tender, loving, yielding, deeply impressible spirit, Jeremiah intensely loved his country. He would have given all he had to see Judah flourishing, Jerusalem prosperous; and, lo, we see him compelled by his destiny to announce to his fellow-citizens nothing but misfortune. His office was like that of the minister obliged to accompany a criminal to the scaffold. He induces Israel and its king to submit to the decree of the Divine justice. He depicts the uselessness, danger and sin of resistance. At the sound of these strange words his hearers spring upon him with indignation and rage; they accuse him of connivance with the enemies of his country. King Jehoiakim tears up the collection of his first discourses, and throws the shreds into the fire. The fiery patriots seize the prophet, and throw him to the bottom of a well without water. He passes whole days and nights in this horrible prison. But what are his physical sufferings compared with the moral torment he endures in seeing himself treated as the enemy of his country—he who lives and suffers only for love of her? Can one be surprised, if now and then sinking under the burden, he is tempted, like Job, to curse the day of his birth? But these are only transitory moments of weakness. Soon faith regains the ascendant, and with the same courage with which he had dared to preach to his people submission to the foreign conqueror, he now endeavors to animate them once more with hope, and boldly proclaims the deliverance that shall come. One day, while the Chaldean army still holds Jerusalem in siege, Jeremiah buys, by a legal act, for himself and his descendants, the field on which the army of the Chaldeans is encamped, thus giving to Israel, at the very moment when he announced its coming destruction, a public pledge of his belief in its future restoration. Another time he announces that after seventy years, when Israel shall have expiated all the Sabbaths and all the sabbatical years they had profaned, this people shall return from the strange land and re-enter the land of their fathers. Nay more, he sees the justice of God, now so merciless to them and under whose blows he had counselled them to bow down, ready soon to rise up in favor of the guilty but repentant nation and to pronounce its absolution. And in the strength of this courageous faith, he is not afraid to give to the Messiah that name which defies all present misfortunes: the Lord our Righteousness. This is because, upon the ruins of the old covenant, henceforth broken through the faithlessness of Israel, Jeremiah sees another arising, founded upon a higher contract, more excellent both in its nature and its duration than that of Sinai. Here is the culminating point not only of the prophecy of Jeremiah, but of that of the whole Old Testament; the marvellous prediction of the abolition of that very covenant to which the prophecy itself belongs, and of the coming in of a totally different order of things, resting upon a new basis (Jer. 31: 31-34). We do not think history contains another instance of a religion which, while claiming to be Divine, yet proclaims its own insufficiency, and announces a new one which will bestow upon humanity more excellent gifts. This is that miracle of self-abnegation which is repeated later on in time, in the personal relation of John the Baptist to Jesus Christ. The renewing of hearts by the Holy Spirit—that renewal which is the fruit of the forgiveness of sins and the spring of an obedience free and filial, which the law never had the power to produce—this is the basis of the new covenant, announced by Jeremiah, which should one day be established between Jehovah and mankind. These foundations, so distinctly indicated six centuries beforehand, were really laid in the two days, Good Friday and Pentecost; they are these—reconciliation through the blood of the Lamb and renewal of the heart by the Holy Spirit. Here we discover in the prophet an intuition, the purest and most spiritual, of the kingdom of God upon earth. Here we see the noble hopes with which God sustained him and the whole nation at the moment when they were witnessing the downfall of the visible theocracy. Accordingly, when, after a long siege, the enemy effected an entrance into Jerusalem, Jeremiah was able to contemplate with resignation the destruction of the city which he loved, the burning of the Temple in which he had so often officiated as a priest. The conqueror treated him with respect; he gave him the choice of either accompanying him to Babylon or remaining in the land of his fathers. Jeremiah had no hesitation in preferring his own desolated country to the splendor of the foreign capital. It was at this time, no doubt, that he composed those fine elegies which are collected in the Book of Lamentations. Then, faithful to the last to his thankless mission, he followed without delay the remainder of his people into Egypt, whither, after the assassination of the Chaldean governor, the remnant of the Israelites fled for shelter from the vengeance which they feared. According to Jewish tradition, Jeremiah perished in Egypt, a victim to the hatred drawn down upon him by the warnings which he was never weary of uttering to these senseless people. Succeeding ages have done justice to Jeremiah. The more his contemporaries humiliated and ill-treated him, the more has posterity exalted and glorified him, to such a degree that in the time of Jesus, as we see in the New Testament, he was known by the name simply of the prophet. And this was but right. If the picture which he has drawn of the new covenant is the culminating point of prophecy, is not his own personal fate the most complete type of that of the Messiah? Is not his conflict with the excited patriots and false prophets of his time the prelude to that of Jesus with those Pharisees and zealots who over-excited the carnal hopes of Israel, and were preparing for them the most terrible of delusions? Jeremiah is certainly, more than any other before John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Man of Sorrows. God as the Righteous One—that is the dominant idea of his ministry. To bow beneath the hand of God when He chastises, and then to wait upon Him as alone having power to absolve the nation on their repentance—this, indeed, was the very message which Israel needed at the time when Jeremiah was given to them as their counsellor and their guide. We have just seen with what unconquerable fidelity this naturally gentle and tender heart succeeded in fulfilling this office; God, when He called him, had “touched his mouth with His hand.” Godet. Jeremiah’s mission was to interpret and to immortalize in literature the failure of the experiment of a visible, genuine, holy empire. It was Jeremiah’s to feel all the sublimity and glory of the legislation of Moses, of the conquests of Joshua, of the constitutions of Samuel, of the royalty of David, and Solomon, and Josiah, and then to see all this overwhelmed in darkness because the Jewish people were basely false to themselves and to their God. Jeremiah’s life work was to pass through and to understand and to feel the saddest and most shameful of all earthly tragedies before that of Calvary—viz., the fall of the Jewish kingdom and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. It was his function to preserve for us these dreadful experiences in all their minutiae of guilt and ignominy. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/