Bible Commentaries

Prophetic Warnings

Isaiah 31:5). The image is clear and impressive. There lies the fair city, more a thought than a thing, a poem in architecture God's poetry set forth in types and letters of stone, and the Lord himself is as a thousand birds, curling, circling, watching, protecting his loved Zion. No figure is to be driven to its furthest issues; we are to take out of it that which is substantial in reason and in truth: and from this figure we extract the doctrine that God hovers about his people, cares for them, watches them, sometimes sends a raven, it may be, to help them when they come out of their dream-sleep, wondering in daze and bewilderment what the universe was made for, and what they themselves can do. Any image that brings God nearer to us is an image that the memory should treasure. Hang up the picture in the halls of your imagination, and look upon it when your heart is sore and faint. The Lord knows what the issue of trusting in Egyptian horses will be, and what the end of all idolatry will be.

"For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a sin" ( Isaiah 31:7).

There is to be a day of awakening, a day memorable for its religious penetration; men are to see that they have been making idols where they thought they were making deities. When men become ashamed of their religion, and pray that its very name may not be mentioned to them; when they seek out of their secret places idols of silver and idols of gold, and say, Throw them anywhere—but let it be out of sight! then has come to pass the realisation of divinest prophecy. Who would have all his old ideas named to him? Though they be innocent, yet they be so imperfect, so poor, so shallow, so wanting in insight and sagacity, their own thinker would not hear of them any more, but would say with somewhat of penitence and shamefacedness, but with no sense of guilt, When I was a child, I thought as a child: I am a man now, and I have seized a wider philosophy: spare me the recollection of infantile thinking. But a man may become ashamed of his religion; he may have to say in plain terms: I have been a fool herein, for I have been bowing the knee to gold and silver, and fame and influence and office and position, and now they cannot help me one whit: when I am ill they never call to see me, and if they did call their comfort would be cold and their touch would be death: where is the true God, the living Spirit—call it by what name you may—God—or Holy Ghost—or dying Christ—or truth, complete and eternal? Where is the true deity, that knows me and can come into my heart and make it warm with love, that can come into my barren spirit, and make it grow with trees that bloom and blossom and fructify for the soul's satisfaction? Preach to me the true gospel, that is as much a gospel in the darkness as in the light, in the winter as in the summer, the gospel that will sit up with me all night, see my last friend depart, and then say, Now they have all gone, let us talk it out in the music of absolute confidence. Do not be distressed about the living God. All the issue is mapped out. God himself is in no agitation; by right of eternity he is eternally calm. They who have the truth can wait until the lies all take fire, and burn themselves: meanwhile, all they have to do is to speak the truth, and deliver divine comfort to souls that want to be right; though they may have a thousand intellectual errors, still their supreme desire is to be right and good and true, and therein they shall conquer, though at the last their poor understanding be thickly sown with innumerable weeds. Herein is the mercy of God, that it recognises the supreme motive and purpose of life, and has an infinite charity for all intellectual aberration that is not inspired by moral obstinacy or moral selfishness.

Then the true king is predicted. We have had judgment upon judgment, great shocks of thunder; we have seen the horizon red as blood with the gathering storm, and we have heard God's voice breaking out into ten thousand tones severe and awful: it is time we had a little music, somewhat of benediction, a hint of tenderness; the sky is never so blue as after the storm, the tempest seems to have cleared all the atmosphere, and dear, sweet, beautiful heaven looks down upon us like a smile that wants to come all the way if it could, and cover our lips with love. Isaiah has been dispensing woes; he has not done with maledictions yet: but who can always be comminatory, denunciatory? Who can be severe all the day? The prophet breaks down in tenderness, but rises in intellectual majesty when he says—

"Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as an 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. And the eyes 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 to speak plainly" ( Isaiah 32:1-4.)

The war is now over: Asher has been crushed like a serpent, and this sweet voice is heard when the enemy has been driven out of the land—

"Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass" ( Isaiah 32:20).

What wondrous music, then, we have heard in all these prophecies! Yet, as we have just pointed out, the maledictions have not altogether ceased. The prophet resumes his threnody in the thirty-third chapter; there he mourns, and in the course of his deliverance he uses one of those ironical expressions which come upon us again and again in Holy Writ. In the fourteenth verse he talks about "the sinners in Zion." What a contradiction in terms! what a shock to the fancy! Zion! fair Zion, a dewdrop, a glittering star, a garden of beauty, a sweet flower, porcelain without a flaw, honey without wax—Zion! Then, "sinners in Zion"—sinners out of place; they spoil the situation; they are an evil blot in the fair landscape. Sinners in the wilderness, sinners in polluted cities, sinners in hell,—there you have a kind of music that has an accord and consonance of its own; but sinners in Zion! And the sinners in Zion are afraid—"fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites." Yesterday their faces were bright, and their voices glad, and their feasts were merry; but in the nighttime something has happened that has struck the whole horde with fear and shame and distress. Now the question comes—"Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" How often have preachers preached everlasting hell from these words! They have no relation whatever to the future life. We must keep to the meaning of the speakers and writers in Holy Writ, and not import into their words significations and dogmas of our own. The question is an awful one—"Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?"—when God comes to judge the city, when he comes to judge Assyria or Jerusalem, or any land. "Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?"—when God tries man by fire. The fire shall not only try every man's work, but shall try every man's self. Our quality must be tested by flame. From these words how easy to dilate upon the horrors of the lost, the agonies of the damned! But the words were local, and they constitute a question to which a noble reply was made. The question is in the fourteenth verse, the answer is in the fifteenth. Read the question—

"Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? 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 seeing evil; he shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure" ( Isaiah 33:14-16).

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful."— Isaiah 32:5.

There is a morality of names. When charity wishes to speak well of the vile person or the churl charity loses all its charm. It is no longer charity, it is no longer charity, it is falsehood. There will come a time when a name shall stand for character. It may be right for us to speak strong words concerning our fellow-men, even such words as "the vile persons" and "the churl." Woe unto us when we do not distinguish between light and darkness. The enlightened conscience is ever critical. It does not examine cases for the purpose of finding fault with them, or discovering fault in them, but when it does detect a fault it gives it conspicuousness and pronounces upon it in unequivocal language. Never let us forget the self-application of some texts. We should sometimes call ourselves vile persons; and some of us ought now and then to look in upon our own heart and call it churlish. Social criticism is of immense advantage, but even that advantage will be increased if it be preceded by self-criticism. How many of us would be dumb in judgment if we could only speak in the degree in which we know ourselves to be worthy of moral credit. Every man must search his own heart, and speak with the degree of authority which he finds there. It is one thing to read sentences out of a magisterial code and to pronounce those sentences against public or private offenders, and another to take all our judgments out of the record of our own hearts. How temperate we should often be; how oftentimes we should see that a man who has infirmities of a very obvious kind may even have more virtues than some of his judges can rightfully claim. "Judge not that ye be not judged." "Blessed are the merciful." Thus we have criticism forbidden and criticism encouraged. Preachers and leaders must speak out concerning the men who are offending that law of God without violating the law of the state. We should not only expel the drunkard, we should expel the covetous man. Not only should we denounce the debauchee, we should pursue the liar into his place of hiding and hold the light of God above his deceit. Judgment should begin at he house of God.