Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 40:6
The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh [is] grass, and all the goodliness thereof [is] as the flower of the field:
6. The voice said, Cry ] Render (as before) Hark! one saying, Cry. “Cry” here evidently means “prophesy” as in Isa 40:2, ch. Isa 44:7, Isa 61:1 f.; Jer 7:27. Hence the response, and one said (R.V.) will naturally come from a prophet, the call being from the same quarter as in Isa 40:3. There is no need to suppose that an ideal person is meant, the most probable interpretation is that it is the prophet himself who replies to the voice. It is better, therefore, to change the vowels and read with LXX. and Vulg. “and I said”; in spite of the fact that the author usually keeps his own personality in the background. The other reading does not sufficiently express the distinction between the call and the answer; hence A.V. seems to refer both to the same speaker.
all flesh is grass ] The answer to the question, “What shall I cry?” Cf. ch. Isa 37:27; Job 8:12; Job 14:2; Psa 37:2; Psa 103:15, and esp. Psa 90:5 f. goodliness ] The Heb. word is nowhere else used in this sense. It signifies “lovingkindness” or “grace” (of God to men). The transition from the one meaning to the other is illustrated by the Greek , and there is no reason to suspect the text.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
6 8. The second voice proclaims the double truth: all earthly might is transitory, the word of God is eternal. Logically the section interrupts the connexion between Isa 40:5 and Isa 40:9, and is itself a prelude to Isa 40:12 ff. But to transpose Isa 40:6-11, as is done by the two commentators just named, is hardly advisable; logical sequence is not the principle on which the book is arranged.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The voice said – Or rather a voice. Isaiah represents himself here again as hearing a voice. The word the introduced in our translation, mars the sense, inasmuch as it leads to the supposition that it was the voice of the same person or crier referred to in Isa 40:3. But it is different. That was the voice of a crier or herald, proclaiming that a way was to be open in the desert. This is introduced for a different purpose. It is to proclaim distinctly that while everything else was fading and transitory, the promise of God was firm and secure. Isaiah therefore, represents himself as hearing a voice requiring the prophets (so the Chaldee) to make a proclamation. An inquiry was at once made, What should be the nature of the proclamation? The answer was, that all flesh was grass, etc. He had Isa 40:3-5 introduced a herald announcing that the way was to be prepared for their return. He now introduces another voice with a distinct message to the people, that God was faithful, and that his promises would not fail. A voice, a command is heard, requiring those whose duty it was, to make proclamation. The voice of God; the Spirit speaking to the prophets, commanded them to cry.
And he said – Lowth and Noyes read this, And I said. The Septuagint and the Vulgate read it also in this manner, in the first person. Two manuscripts examined by Kennicott also read it in the first person. Houbigant, Hensler, and Doderlin adopt this reading. But the authority is not sufficient to justify a change in the Hebrew text. The Syriac and Chaldee read it as it is in the present Hebrew text, in the third person. The sense is, that the person, or prophet to whom the command came to make proclamation, made answer, What shall be the nature of my proclamation? It is equivalent to saying, It was answered; or if Isaiah is the person to whom the voice is represented as coming, it means that he answered; and is, therefore, equivalent to the reading in the Septuagint and Vulgate, and adopted by Lowth. This is the probable supposition, that Isaiah represents himself as hearing the voice, and as expressing a willingness to make proclamation, but as waiting to know what he was to proclaim.
All flesh – This is the answer; or this is what he was to proclaim. The general design or scope of the answer was, that he was to proclaim that the promise of Yahweh was secure and firm Isa 40:8, and that therefore God would certainly come to deliver them. To make this more impressive by way of contrast, he states that all people are weak and feeble like the grass that is soon withered. The expression does not refer particularly to the Jews in Babylon, or to any single nation or class of people, but to all people, in all places, and at all times. All princes, nobles, and monarchs; all armies and magistrates are like grass, and will soon pass away. On the one hand, they would be unable to accomplish what was needful to be done in the deliverance of the people; and on the other, their oppressors had no power to continue their bondage, since they were like grass, and must soon pass away. But Yahweh was ever-enduring, and was able to fulfill all his purposes.
Is grass – It is as feeble, weak, and as easily consumed as the grass of the field. A similar sentiment is found in Psa 103:15-16 :
As for man, his days are as grass;
As a flower of the field so he flourisheth;
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone,
And the place thereof shall know it no more.
See also Jam 1:10-11. The passage in Isaiah is evidently quoted by Peter, 1Pe 1:24-25 : All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever; and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you – a passage which proves that Isaiah had reference to the times of the Messiah in the place before us.
And all the goodliness thereof – The word rendered goodliness ( chesed) denotes properly, kindness, love, goodwill, mercy, favor. Here it is evidently used in the sense of elegance, comeliness, beauty. The Septuagint renders it: doxa, and so does Peter 1Pe 1:24. Applied to grass, or to herbs, it denotes the flower, the beauty, the comeliness. Applied to man, it means that which makes him comely and vigorous – health, energy, beauty, talent, wisdom. His vigor is soon gone; his beauty fades; his wisdom ceases; and he falls, like the flower, to the dust. The idea is, that the plans of man must be temporary; that all that appears great in him must be like the flower of the field; but that Yahweh endures, and his plans reach from age to age, and will certainly be accomplished. This important truth was to be proclaimed, that the people might be induced not to trust in man, but put their confidence in the arm of God.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Isa 40:6-8
The voice said Cry.
And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass
The earthly transitory: the heavenly enduring
When we make a judgment of the objects of sense and of faith, the things that are seen claim the preference over the things that are not seen. The appearance which the world presents is seducing, that which religion exhibits is forbidding. The appearances are deceitful, and the judgment we form of them false.
I. THE VANITY OF THE THINGS OF THIS LIFE. Empty as is every thing in the world, and limited in its duration, it is one of the truths the most common and the least received.
1. The voice of reason teaches men that they have only a little while to live. If they will but reflect upon their constitution, they cannot but discover, both within and without, innumerable principles of their speedy dissolution.
2. This the Scripture teaches without ceasing: adapting its lessons to the importance of the awakening truth, no strong expressions are overlooked, no striking images escape the sacred writers.
3. Besides, our own experience proclaims to us the fact by the most indubitable proofs.
II. THE SOUNDNESS OF A CHRISTIANS HOPE IN FUTURITY. The future is as enlivening to the Christian as the past is humiliating to the man. Death, properly speaking, is only the lot of the wicked. The Christian, in the estimation of the Gospel, never dies; he falls asleep, he rests from his labours. (P. Huet.)
The fading and the abiding
I. ALL FLESH IS GRASS. The prophet describes man by this name of flesh, as that which strikingly sets forth his general state and ordinary habits. What is man? Is not the care of the flesh his grand concern?–the pampering the body, the gratifying its senses, or fulfilling the lusts thereof? Here and there, indeed, we meet with one who has broken its trammels;, whose soul, rising up on the wings of faith and love, seeks for happiness in God; but when we look at the world at large, we are compelled to say that it is a world whose aims, pleasures, pursuits, are earthly. Yet how vain are these pursuits! All flesh is grass; that is, like the grass it is liable to various casualties. If it abides to its utmost duration it soon withers and is gone. The blade when it has only just sprung above the ground may be trodden under foot, may be parched by the heat, cut off by the cold, or withered by the blight; may be plucked by the hand, or mowed down by the scythe; thus is it with man. No sooner does he appear in the world than some little casualty may at once deprive him of life. This is the state of all–for all flesh is as grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field: the wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more! But is there no difference? Surely there are some distinctions. Yes, there are, and as Archbishop Leighton observes, this difference is beautifully expressed by the inspired writer–the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. When we enter a field, it is not so much the common blade which attracts the eye. It is the flower–those various beautiful ornaments with which the creative power of God has adorned the face of the earth. So there are various external embellishments which distinguish some from the ordinary race of men. Every soul, indeed, is of inestimable value. Still, it must be confessed that there are properties which some possess which are more attractive–youth, beauty, honours, talent. But what are they all? But the flower of the grass. They partake of the fading nature of the plants from which they spring.
II. THE WORD OF GOD IS AS ABIDING AS HIMSELF; and this notwithstanding all the attempts that have been made, by wicked men instigated by evil spirits, to destroy it. This has been their constant aim, for the Word of God has been their constant dread.
1. It abides in its doctrines. These are not evanescent theories, like some of the dicta of the philosophers; they are eternal truths.
2. Its promises endure. Its sanctions also stand for ever; namely, the rewards and punishments which are there made known. Let those who are now surrounded with many temporal blessings regard them as flowers, which the goodness of God provides to sweeten their present path; still set not your hearts upon them; they are but short-lived gifts, fading flowers. There is but one flower that will never fade, The Rose of Sharon. (J. H.Stewart, M. A.)
The withering work of the Spirit
(with 1Pe 1:23-25):–Something more than the decay of our material flesh is intended here; the carnal mind, the flesh in another sense, was intended by the Holy Ghost when He bade His messenger proclaim those words. It does not seem to me that a mere expression of the mortality of our race was needed in this place by the context; it would hardly keep pace with the sublime revelations which surround it, and would in some measure be a digression from the subject in hand. The notion that we are here simply and alone reminded of our mortality does not square with the New Testament exposition of it in Peter. Look at the chapter in Isaiah with care. What is the subject of it? It is the Divine consolation of Zion. The Lord, to remove her sorrow, bids His prophets announce the coming of the long-expected Deliverer, the end and accomplishment of all her warfare, and the pardon of all her iniquity. Further, there is no sort of question that the prophet goes on to foretell the coming of John the Baptist as the harbinger of the Messiah. The object of the coming of the Baptist, and the mission of the Messiah whom he heralded, was the manifestation of Divine glory (verse 5). Well, what next? Was it needful to mention mans mortality in this connection? We think not. But there is much more appropriateness in the succeeding verses, if we see their deeper meaning. Do they not mean this? In order to make room for the display of the Divine glory in Christ Jesus and His children there would come a withering of all the glory wherein man boasts himself; the flesh should be seen in its true nature as corrupt and dying, and the grace of God alone should be exalted. This would be seen under the ministry of John the Baptist first, and should be the preparatory work of the Holy Ghost in mens hearts, in all time, in order that the glory of the Lord should be revealed and human pride be for ever confounded. The Spirit blows upon the flesh, and that which seemed vigorous becomes weak, that which was fair to look upon is smitten with decay. The withering before the sowing was very marvellously fulfilled in the preaching of John the Baptist. When our Lord Himself actually appeared, He came into a withered land whose glories had all departed. But I am coming to your own ]personal histories. In every one of us it must be fulfilled that all that is of the flesh m us, seeing it is but as grass, must be withered, and the comeliness thereof must be destroyed.
I. Turning, then, to THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CAUSING THE GOODLINESS OF THE FLESH TO FADE, let us–
1. Observe that the work of the Holy Spirit upon the soul of man in withering up that which is of the flesh is very unexpected. In our text even the speaker himself, though doubtless one taught of God, when he was bidden to cry, said, What shall I cry? Even he did not know that in order to the comforting of Gods people there must first be experienced a preliminary visitation. Many preachers of Gods Gospel have forgotten that the law is the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. They have sown on the unbroken fallow ground, and forgotten that the plough must break the clods. Preachers have laboured to make Christ precious to those who think themselves rich and increased in goods; and it has been labour in vain. It is our duty to preach Jesus Christ even to self-righteous sinners, but it is certain that Jesus Christ will never be accepted by them while they hold themselves in high esteem. Wherever there is a real work of grace in any soul, it begins with a pulling down: the Holy Ghost does not build on the old foundation. The convincing work of the Spirit, wherever it comes, is unexpected, and even to the child of God, in whom this process has still to go on, it is often startling. We begin again to build that which the Spirit of God has destroyed. Having begun in the Spirit, we act as if we would be made perfect in the flesh; and then, when our mistaken upbuilding has to be levelled with the earth, we are almost as astonished as we were when first the scales fell from our eyes.
2. Furthermore, this withering is after the usual order of the Divine operation. Observe, the method of creation. There seems to be every probability that this world has been fitted up and destroyed, refitted and then destroyed again, many times before the last arranging of it for the habitation of men. What was there in the beginning? Originally, nothing. There was no trace of anothers plan to interfere with the great Architect. The earth was, as the Hebrew puts it, Tohu and Bohu, disorder and confusion–in a word, chaos. So it is in the new creation. When the Lord new creates us, He borrows nothing from the old man, but makes all things new. Take another instance from the ways of God. When man has fallen, when did the Lord bring him the Gospel? The first whisper of the Gospel was, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, between thy seed and her seed. He shall bruise thy head. That whisper came to man shivering in the presence of his Maker, having nothing more to say by way of excuse; but standing guilty before the Lord. If you will pursue the meditation upon the acts of God with men, you will constantly see the same thing. God has given us a wonderful type of salvation in Noahs ark; but Noah was saved in that ark in connection with death; he himself, as it were, immured alive in a tomb, and all the world besides left to destruction. All other hope for Noah was gone, and then the ark rose upon the waters. Remember the redemption of the children of Israel out of Egypt: it occurred when they were in the saddest plight, and their cry went up to heaven by reason of their bondage. As in the backwoods of America before there can be tillage, the planting of cities, the arts of civilisation, and the transactions of commerce, the woodmans axe must hack and hew: the stately trees of centuries must fall: the roots must be burned, the old reign of nature disturbed,–even thus the Lord takes away the first, that He may establish the second. As it has been outwardly, we ought to expect that it would be within us.
3. We are taught in our text how universal this process is in its range over the hearts of all those upon whom the Spirit works. The withering is a withering of what? Of part of the flesh and some portion of its tendencies? Nay, All flesh is grass; and all the goodliness thereof–the very choice and pick of it–is as the flower of the field, and what happens to the grass? Does any of it live? The grass withereth, all of it. The flower, will not that abide? So fair a thing, has not that an immortality? No, it utterly falls away. So, wherever the Spirit of God breathes on the soul of man, there is a withering of everything that is of the flesh, and it is seen that to be carnally minded is death. Wherever the Spirit of God comes, our righteousness withers as our sinfulness. There is much more to be destroyed, and, among the rest, away must go our boasted power of resolution. Still the man will say, I believe I have, after all, within myself an enlightened conscience and an intelligence that will guide me aright. The light of nature I will use, and I do not doubt that if I wander somewhat I shall find my way back again. Ah, man! thy wisdom, which is the very flower of thy nature, what is it but folly, though thou knowest it not? When the withering wind of the Spirit moves over the carnal mind, it reveals the death of the flesh in all respects, especially in the matter of power towards that which is good. We then learn that word of our Lord, Without Me ye can do nothing.
4. Notice the completeness of this withering work within us. The grass, what does it do? Droop? nay, wither. The flower of the field: does it hang its head a little? No, according to Isaiah, it fades; and according to Peter, it falleth away. There is no reviving it with showers, it has come to its end. Even thus are the awakened led to see that in their flesh there dwelleth no good thing. What dying and withering work some of Gods servants have had in their souls! Look at John Bunyan, as he describes himself in his Grace Abounding! For how many months and even years was the Spirit engaged in writing death upon all that was the old Bunyan, in order that he might become by grace a new man fitted to track the pilgrims along their heavenly way. The old nature never does improve.
5. All this withering work in the soul is painful. As you read these verses, do they not strike you as having a very funereal tone? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth. This is mournful work, but it must be done. Those who experience much of it when they first come to Christ have great reason to be thankful. Persons who come to Christ with but comparatively little knowledge of their own depravity, have to learn it afterwards, and they remain for a long time babes in Christ, and are perplexed with matters that would not have troubled them if they had experienced a deeper work at first.
6. Although this is painful, it is inevitable. Why does the grass wither? Because it is a withering thing. Its root is ever in its grave, and it must die. How could it spring out of the earth, and be immortal? Every supposed good thing that grows out of your own self, is like yourself, mortal, and it must die. The seeds of corruption are in all the fruits of manhoods tree; let them be as fair to look upon as Edens clusters, they must decay.
7. This last word by way of comfort to any that are passing through the process we are describing. It gives me great joy when I hear that you unconverted ones are very miserable, for the miseries which the Holy Spirit works are always the prelude to happiness. It is the Spirits work to wither. Because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. What doth the Lord say? I kill. But what next? I make alive. He never makes any alive but those He kills.
II. THE IMPLANTATION. According to Peter, although the flesh withers, and the flower thereof falls away, yet in the children of God there is an unwithering something of another kind. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. The Word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you. The Gospel is of use to us because it is not of human origin. If it were of the flesh, all it could do for us would not land us beyond the flesh; but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is superhuman, Divine, and spiritual. If you believe a Gospel which you have thought out for yourself, or a philosophical Gospel which comes from the brain of man, it is of the flesh, and will wither, and you will die, and be lost through trusting in it. The only word that can bless you and be a seed in your soul must be the living and incorruptible Word of the eternal Spirit. Do you receive it? Then the Holy Spirit implants it in your soul. And what is the result of it? There comes a new life as the result of the indwelling of the living Word, and our being born again by it. A new life it is; not the old nature putting out its better parts; not the old Adam refining and purifying itself, and rising to something better. Wherever this new life comes through the Word, it is incorruptible, it lives for ever. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
The transitory and the durable
I. THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF ALL EARTHLY THINGS. Consider some of those things which constitute the goodliness and the glory of man, and see how they justify the assertion in the text.
1. Personal endowments of beauty and of form. We make our boast of beauty: of the sparkling eye, of comely features. Small is our cause for boast! That body which seemed to concentrate in it all that was beautiful, see it when wasted by accidents and by time, when blasted by the touch of death!
2. The text may be illustrated by adverting to the wisdom, as well as to the beauty and strength of man. Since the attention of man was first directed to the objects of nature, what an innumerable succession has there been of notions, of systems, of theories. And yet we look on these ill-digested systems as belonging only to days which are gone by, and as now utterly exploded. For the fact is, that all knowledge, except that which is derived from the Bible, is destined to pass away.
3. Advert to the transitory nature of those things which are the produce of the imagination and taste. Whatever the pencil of the painter has portrayed; whatever the chisel of the sculptor has wrought; whatever the skill of the architect has reared,–all these are destined shortly to be destroyed. This should convey a very forcible reproof to those who expend so large a portion of their time in the embellishments of life, in dress, and in furniture, and in equipages.
4. In reference to the possessions of men,–wealth and fortune, and their concomitants–grandeur, eminence, pomp, and luxury.
5. As strikingly is this illustrated by the emptiness of that shapeless thing,–that shadow of ashade called fame.
6. See it illustrated, also, as to dominion and power. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall–flourish and decay.
7. The world itself is an illustration of the sentiment.
II. THE DURABILITY OF THAT DISPENSATION WITH WHICH GOD HAS BEEN PLEASED TO BLESS THE WORLD. The Word of our God shall stand for ever. This sentiment is greatly illustrated, and abundantly confirmed, by–
1. The utter impotence of persecution.
2. The utter failure of the opposition of infidelity.
3. The blessed and delightful spread given to it in our day.
4. The dispensation of truth with which God has blessed the world is the dispensation of the Spirit. The Word of our God is a living word; it is not only a dispensation of words, addressed to the understanding and will, but a dispensation of the Spirit coming to the heart of man. (J. Bromley.)
Israels oppressors; Jehovahs promise
The words are of universal import; but the connection shows the sense in which they are here used by the prophet. Israels oppressors are mortal: the promise of Jehovah–such a promise, namely, as that contained in Isa 40:4-5 –remains sure. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)
The abiding Word
I. THE WEAK AND PERISHABLE NATURE OF THINGS OF EARTH. The word translated goodliness signifies excellency. Every sort of excellency. Is it external? Beauty of person, strength of frame, the influence which rank, title, wealth, power, family bestow? It is but as grass, the withering flower. Is it internal? The highest order of intellect, the finest imagination, the soundest judgment, most retentive memory? But the word is wider still. It takes in all moral excellency, truth, justice, benevolence, morality, and all the external decencies of that sort of religion which often is taken for the true religion of the heart, yet is not such. It embraces that in which we are so prone to confide, human power, our own wisdom; all are as grass, as separated from the Word of God, and the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. The wind of deep inward temptation, of sore trial, does but pass over it, and it is gone. If man deal with us, we find it sometimes a very solemn thing, how much more when God deals with us. When He comes in the convincing power of His Spirit, in the solemn hour of death, and in the thoughts of immediate appearance before Him, ah! how wither then the flowers that have seemed the fairest. But in the midst of all that fades and perishes and is not, there is, blessed be God, that which standeth for ever.
II. THE ABIDING CHARACTER OF THE WORD OF OUR GOD. This is true in whatever sense we take it. Is it the decree of God? (Isa 46:10.) Is it His written and revealing Word? (Isa 55:9-10.) Is it His law? Mat 5:18.) But by the Word here, is especially and pre-eminently meant the Gospel (1Pe 1:23-25). The Gospel stands upon the immutable perfections of God. There is not an attribute that does not uphold it. The Word of our God shall stand for ever. It shall stand amidst all the instability of the creature, amidst all the faithlessness of man, amidst all the unfaithfulness and unbelief of our own hearts. Is the grass to be despised, the flower to be scorned? Be thankful for them while you have them, admire that God who is in them, their chief Beauty, their only real Beauty. Be thankful, seek the right use of them by seeking to glorify God in them. Is it strength of body? strength of intellect? Use them for Him, and in His service. But remember, they fade as you behold, and wither as you use them. Hold them as perishable memorials of the imperishable God. How real are the blessings of the Gospel when realised in the soul! The righteousness of Christ. It stands, it is everlasting (Dan 9:24). Consolation is everlasting (2Th 2:16). Light, everlasting Isa 60:19). Love, everlasting (Jer 31:3). Life, eternal Rom 6:23). The blessings in the Gospel are durable riches, because the Gospel endureth. Why is it that there is so much instability among many that yet are true believers? They are not rooted and grounded in Christ. (J. H. Brans, M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 6. The voice said, Cry – “A voice saith Proclaim”] To understand rightly this passage is a matter of importance; for it seems designed to give us the true key to the remaining part of Isaiah’s prophecies, the general subject of which is the restoration of the people and Church of God. The prophet opens the subject with great clearness and elegance: he declares at once God’s command to his messengers, (his prophets, as the Chaldee rightly explains it,) to comfort his people in captivity, to impart to them the joyful tidings, that their punishment has now satisfied the Divine justice, and the time of reconciliation and favour is at hand. He then introduces a harbinger giving orders to prepare the way for God, leading his people from Babylon, as he did formerly from Egypt, through the wilderness, to remove all obstacles, and to clear the way for their passage. Thus far nothing more appears to be intended than a return from the Babylonish captivity; but the next words seem to intimate something much greater: –
“And the glory of JEHOVAH shall be revealed;
And all flesh shall see together the salvation of our God.”
He then introduces a voice commanding him to make a solemn proclamation. And what is the import of it? that the people – the flesh, is of a vain temporary nature; that all its glory fadeth, and is soon gone; but that the word of God endureth for ever. What is this, but a plain opposition of the flesh to the spirit; of the carnal Israel to the spiritual; of the temporary Mosaic economy to the eternal Christian dispensation? You may be ready to conclude, (the prophet may be disposed to say,) by this introduction to my discourse, that my commission is only to comfort you with a promise of the restoration of your religion and polity, of Jerusalem, of the temple, and its services and worship in all its ancient splendour. These are earthly, temporary, shadowy, fading things, which shall soon pass away, and be destroyed for ever; these are not worthy to engage your attention in comparison of the greater blessings, the spiritual redemption, the eternal inheritance, covered under the veil of the former, which I have it in charge to unfold unto you. The law has only a shadow of good things; the substance is the Gospel. I promise you a restoration of the former, which, however, is only for a time, and shall be done away, according to God’s original appointment: but under that image I give you a view of the latter, which shall never be done away, but shall endure for ever. This I take to be agreeable to St. Peter’s interpretation of this passage of the prophet, quoted by him, 1Pe 1:24-25: “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you.” This is the same word of the Lord of which Isaiah speaks, which hath now been preached unto you by the Gospel. The law and the Gospel are frequently opposed to one another by St. Paul, under the images of flesh and spirit: “Having begun in the spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” Ga 3:3. – L.
All the goodliness thereof – “All its glory”] For chasdo read chadu; the Septuagint and Vulgate, and 1Pe 1:24.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The voice said: God speaks unto his prophets or ministers.
He said, What shall I cry: the prophet desires to know Gods mind, and his message.
All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the prophet having foretold glorious and wonderful things which God had declared and determined to do, and suspecting that men would hardly believe them, he confirmeth their faith and the certainty of the thing in this and the two next verses, by representing to their minds the vast difference between the nature, and word, and work of men and of God. All that men are or have, yea, their highest accomplishments, are but like the grass or flower of the field weak and vanishing, soon nipped and brought to nothing; but Gods word is like himself, immutable and irresistible; and therefore as the mouth of the Lord, and not of man, hath spoken these things as was said, Isa 40:5, so doubt not but they shall be fulfilled.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
6. The voicethe same divineherald as in Isa 40:3.
heone of thoseministers or prophets (see on Isa40:1) whose duty it was, by direction of “the voice,”to “comfort the Lord’s afflicted people with the promises ofbrighter days.”
All flesh is grassTheconnection is, “All human things, however goodly, aretransitory: God’s promises alone steadfast” (Isa 40:8;Isa 40:15; Isa 40:17;Isa 40:23; Isa 40:24);this contrast was already suggested in Isa40:5, “All flesh . . . the mouth of the Lord.“1Pe 1:24; 1Pe 1:25applies this passage distinctly to the gospel word of Messiah(compare Joh 12:24; Jas 1:10).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The voice said, cry,…. Not the same voice as in
Isa 40:3, nor the voice of an angel, as Aben Ezra; but a voice from the Lord, as Jarchi; the voice of prophecy, says Kimchi; it is the Lord’s voice to the prophet, or rather to any and every Gospel minister, giving them an order to prophesy and preach, without which they cannot preach regularly and lawfully; it is the same as, “go, teach all nations”, c. preach the Gospel to every creature, c.
Mt 28:19:
and he said, what shall I cry? publish, proclaim, or preach? for a minister of the Gospel is to preach not out of his own heart, or of his own head, or what is of his own devising and framing, but what is agreeable to the mind of Christ, as revealed in his word he is to speak according to the oracles of God, the proportion and analogy of faith he is to inquire there, and of Christ, what he shall say. The Targum is,
“the voice of him that saith, prophesy; and he answered and said, what shall I prophesy?”
The reply is,
all flesh is grass; declare the frailty and mortality of men; which some think is mentioned, to increase the wonder of Christ’s incarnation, after prophesied of, as the forerunner of it is before; that Christ should condescend to take upon him such frail mortal flesh; that he should become flesh, and be manifested in it: or rather this is to be said, to put men in mind and to prepare them to think of another world, and how they shall appear before the judgment seat; seeing, if they have not a better righteousness than their own, and except they are born again, they shall neither see nor enter into the kingdom of heaven; which is one of the first things to be published in the Gospel ministry; as also how weak, impotent, and insufficient, men are, to that which is good, which may be meant by this phrase; being as weak as a spire of grass, not able to do any good actions, much less to fulfil the law, or to regenerate themselves, renew their hearts, or cleanse their natures: and this must be said, to abate the pride of men; to show the necessity of divine power in regeneration; to instruct men to seek for the grace of God, as to convert them, so to help and assist them in all they do; and to direct them to ascribe all they have, and are, to the grace of God; to this purpose the Apostle Peter quotes this passage, 1Pe 1:23. It may be applied to the ordinances of the legal dispensation, and all the privileges of it, which are said to be carnal; and trusting in them was trusting in the flesh, Php 3:4 Heb 9:10, these were weak and insufficient to justify, sanctify, and save, and were not to continue:
and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field; all the goodliness and glory of man; all that is excellent and valuable in him, or belonging to him, Or that is thought to be so, his riches, honours, strength, beauty, wisdom, and knowledge; yea, all his seeming holiness and righteousness; which are all fading and perishing, like a gay flower, which appears lovely for a while, and on a sudden falls off, or is cropped, or trampled upon; to which a flower of the field is more liable than that of the garden. This may be applied to the splendour of the legal dispensation, which is done away by a more excellent glory taking place, 2Co 3:10.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The prophet now hears a second voice, and then a third, entering into conversation with it. “Hark, one speaking, Cry! And he answers, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty as the flower of the field. Grass is withered, flower faded: for the breath of Jehovah has blown upon it. Surely grass is the people; grass withereth, flower fadeth: yet the word of our God will stand for ever.” A second voice celebrates the divine word of promise in the face of the approaching fulfilment, and appoints a preacher of its eternal duration. The verb is not ( et dixi , lxx, Vulg.), but ; so that the person asking the question is not the prophet himself, but an ideal person, whom he has before him in visionary objectiveness. The appointed theme of his proclamation is the perishable nature of all flesh (Isa 40:5 , here ), and, on the other hand, the imperishable nature of the word of God. Men living in the flesh are universally impotent, perishing, limited; God, on the contrary (Isa 31:3), is the omnipotent, eternal, all-determining; and like Himself, so is His word, which, regarded as the vehicle and utterance of His willing and thinking, is not something separate from Himself, and therefore is the same as He. Chasdo is the charm or gracefulness of the outward appearance (lxx; 1Pe 1:24, : see Schott on the passage, Jam 1:11, ). The comparison instituted with grass and flower recals Isa 37:27 and Job 8:12, and still more Psa 90:5-6, and Job 14:2. Isa 40:7 describes what happens to the grass and flower. The preterites, like the Greek aoristus gnomicus (cf., Isa 26:10), express a fact of experience sustained by innumerable examples: exaruit gramen , emarcuit flos ;
(Note: has munach here and in Isa 40:8 attached to the penultimate in all correct texts (hence m ilel , on account of the monosyllable which follows), and m ehteg on the tzere to sustain the lengthening.)
consequently the which follows is not hypothetical (granting that), but explanatory of the reason, viz., “because ruach Jehovah hath blown upon it,” i.e., the “breath” of God the Creator, which pervades the creation, generating life, sustaining life, and destroying life, and whose most characteristic elementary manifestation is the wind. Every breath of wind is a drawing of the breath of the whole life of nature, the active indwelling principle of whose existence is the ruach of God. A fresh v. ought to commence now with . The clause is genuine, and thoroughly in Isaiah’s style, notwithstanding the lxx, which Gesenius and Hitzig follow. is not equivalent to a comparative (Ewald, 105, a), but is assuring, as in Isa 45:15; Isa 49:4; Isa 53:4; and haam (the people) refers to men generally, as in Isa 42:5. The order of thought is in the form of a triolet. The explanation of the striking simile commences with ‘ akhen (surely); and then in the repetition of the words, “grass withereth, flower fadeth,” the men are intended, resemble the grass and the flower. Surely grass is the human race; such grass withereth and such flower fadeth, but the word of our God (Jehovah, the God of His people and of sacred history) yaqum l e olam , i.e., it rises up without withering or fading, and endures for ever, fulfilling and verifying itself through all times. This general truth refers, in the preset instance, to the word of promise uttered by the voice in the desert. If the word of God generally has an eternal duration, more especially is this the case with the word of the parousia of God the Redeemer, the word in which all the words of God are yea and amen. The imperishable nature of this word, however, has for its dark foil the perishable nature of all flesh, and all the beauty thereof. The oppressors of Israel are mortal, and their chesed with which they impose and bribe is perishable; but the word of God, with which Israel can console itself, preserves the fields, and ensures it a glorious end to its history. Thus the seal, which the first crier set upon the promise of Jehovah’s speedy coming, is inviolable; and the comfort which the prophets of God are to bring to His people, who have now been suffering so long, is infallibly sure.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
Vs. 6-8: ALL FLESH CONTRASTED WITH THE WORD
1. This passage powerfully illustrates the folly of trusting in one’s self – that is, in the flesh.
a. Death is inevitable – a divine appointment for sinners, (Eze 18:4; Rom 6:23; Heb 9:27).
b. As a result of sin “all flesh” (of beast, fish, fowl, reptile and man) is under condemnation; it must perish. Its goodliness is like the flower of the field: it withers, fades and returns to dust, (Job 14:2; Psa 102:11; Psa 90:10).
c. For some, the inevitability of death destroys all hope; if the desired blessing cannot be obtained in this life they consider all to be LOST!
2. Yet, what beautiful assurance springs forth from verse 8: “but the word of God shall stand forever”: (Isa 55:11; Isa 59:21; Mat 5:18). Death, which now appears to be triumphant, cannot annul or defeat the purpose of God; the dead SHALL RISE! (1Pe 1:24-25; Psa 103:15-19; Psa 9:13-14). And life (eternal life) goes on triumphantly!
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
6. The voice said, Cry. He now describes a different “voice” from that of which he formerly spoke; for hitherto he had spoken about the “voice” of the prophets, but now he means the “voice” of God himself commanding the prophets to cry. Although the voice of the prophets is also the voice of God, whose instruments they are, (for they do not speak of themselves,) (2Pe 1:20,) yet this distinction is necessary, that we may know when the Lord commands, and when the prophets and ministers execute his commandments. There is also a beautiful comparison between the two “voices,” that we may receive with as much reverence what the prophets utter as if God himself thundered from heaven; for they speak only by his mouth, and repeat as ambassadors what he has commissioned them to declare. Besides, this preface gives notice that the Prophet is about to speak of something highly important; for, although he everywhere testifies that he faithfully delivers from hand to hand what he has received from God, yet, in order to obtain closer attention, he states that the voice of God has expressly enjoined the mode of speaking which he shall employ. Such is also the import of the word Cry, as if he had said that he must proclaim this commandment in a clear and loud voice, that it may make the deeper impression.
And I said, What shall I cry? The addition of this question has great weight; for the Prophet means that he does not break forth at random, and boast of what he appeared to have heard in a confused manner; but that he received clear and undoubted instruction, after having waited for it with composure. Besides, from the fact itself we may learn that there is nothing here that is superfluous, because two chief points of heavenly doctrine were to be briefly handled; that, although man is smoke and vanity, and all his excellence is deceitful and fading, yet believers have the best reason for glorying, because they seek salvation not from themselves; and that, although they are strangers on the earth, (Heb 11:13,) yet they possess heavenly happiness, because God unites himself to them by his word; for by renouncing ourselves we are led to desire the grace of God. The Prophet knew, indeed, what he ought to say; but by this question he intended to make a stronger impression on their minds, in order to shew that he and all the other servants of God are constrained by necessity to utter this sentiment, and that they cannot begin to teach in any other manner, though they should put a hundred questions and inquiries; as indeed they will gain nothing by choosing to adopt any other method.
As to the word Cry, I have no objection to view it as denoting both boldness and clearness; because prophets ought not to mutter in an obscure manner, but to pronounce their message with a distinct voice, and to utter boldly and with open mouth whatever they have been commanded to declare. Let every one, therefore, who is called to this office constantly remember and believe, that he ought to meet difficulties of every sort with unshaken boldness, such as was always manifested both by prophets and by apostles.
“
Wo to me,” says Paul, “if I do not preach the gospel; for necessity is laid on me.” (1Co 9:16.)
All flesh is grass. First, it ought to be observed, that he does not speak merely of the frailty of human life, but extends the discourse farther, so as to reduce to nothing all the excellence which men think that they possess. David indeed compares this life to grass, (Psa 103:15,) because it is fading and transitory; but the context shews that the Prophet does not speak only of the outward man, but includes the gifts of the mind, of which men are exceedingly proud, such as prudence, courage, acuteness, judgment, skill in the transactions of business, in which they think that they excel other animals; and this is more fully expressed by that which immediately follows —
All the grace of it. Some translate חסדו (chasdo) “his glory;” others, “his kindness;” but I have preferred the word “grace,” by which I mean everything that procures honor and esteem to men. Yet a passive signification may also be admitted; as if the Prophet had said, that all that is excellent and worthy of applause among men is the absolute kindness of God. Thus David calls God “the God of his kindness,” (Psa 59:10,) because he acknowledges him to be the author of all blessings, and ascribes it to his grace that he has obtained them so largely and abundantly. It is indeed certain that חסד (chesed) here denotes all that is naturally most highly valued among men, and that the Prophet condemns it for vanity, because there is an implied contrast between the ordinary nature of mankind and the grace of regeneration.
Some commentators refer this to the Assyrians, as if the Prophet, by extenuating their power and wealth, and industry and exertions, or rather by treating these as they had no existence, freed the minds of the Jews from terror. They bring out the meaning in this manner, “If you are terrified at the strength of men, remember that they are flesh, which quickly gives way through its own weakness. But their error is soon afterwards refuted by the context, in which the Prophet expressly applies it to the Jews themselves. We ought carefully to observe that man, with his faculties, on account of which he is accustomed to value himself so highly, is wholly compared to a flower. All men are fully convinced of the frailty of human life, and on this subject heathen writers have argued at great length; but it is far more difficult to root out the confidence which men entertain through a false opinion of their wisdom; for, if they imagine that they have either knowledge or industry beyond others, they think that they have a right to glory in them. But he shews that in man there is nothing so excellent as not to fade quickly and perish.
As the flower of the field. The Prophet seems, as if in mockery, to add a sort of correction; for a flower is something more than grass. It is, therefore, an acknowledgment, that, although men have some shining qualities, like flowers in the fields, yet the beauty and lustre quickly vanish and pass away, so that it is useless for them to flatter or applaud themselves on account of this idle and deceitful splendor.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT
(Autumn Sermons.)
Isa. 40:6-8. All flesh is grass, &c. [1315]
[1315] The very affecting images of Scripture which compare the short-lived existence of man to the decay of the vegetable creation are scarcely understood in this country. The verlure is perpetual in England. It is difficult to discover a time when it can be said, The grass withereth. But let a traveller visit the beautiful plain of Smyrna, or any other part of the East, in the month of May, and revisit it toward the end of June, and he will perceive the force and beauty of these allusions. In May, an appearance of fresh verdure and of rich luxuriance everywhere meets the eye; the face of Nature is adorned with a carpet of flowers and herbage of the most elegant kind. But a month or six weeks subsequently, how changed is the entire scene! The beauty is gone, the grass is withered, the flower is faded; a brown and dusty desert has taken the place of a delicious garden. It is, doubtless, to this rapid transformation of Nature that the Scriptures compare the fate of man.Hartley: Researches in Greece, p. 237.
We are witnessing one of the last phases of that wonderful life which Nature unfolds before us each year with ever-new beauty. To most men it is a sad phase. Why? Not because we are entering upon the rugged season of the year. They know that the discomforts of winter are transient; and winter brings its own pleasures. The feeling finds its source in that intuitive faculty in man which enables him to interpret the spiritual significance in Nature, and which tells him that in the withering and falling leaf, decomposing and resolving itself into its first elements,in the dry and flowerless stalk and the harsh brown grass, he sees the type of his own mortality (P. D. 248, 2222).
The decay of autumn suggesting the thought of decay in human life, suggests also very forcibly the thought of immortality. Never does the longing to live for ever so take possession of my soul as when all about me is telling me that life is transitory. When life is fullest and most satisfying, death is most unwelcome; and when decay and death draw nigh, we long with quickened desire for life.
There are two elements in all things earthlythe transitory and the permanent. Nature has a real life which survives when she sheds what have been the visible tokens of her life. The things which seem most alive in Nature are the leaves, the flowers, and the fruits; but these are the things that perish soonest. The real life lies deeperhidden from human eyes; and that endures. It is so with man. There is somewhat that is real and abiding; there is somewhat that is only temporarythe foliage in which the real expresses itself to-day, and which it will cast aside to-morrow. And so we find the sacred poet thinking upon the transitoriness of life, reassuring himself with the thought that there is nevertheless somewhat that is real and abiding. All flesh is grass, &c.
There are lives which all of us can live which will have more than a transitory significance; deeds within the power of us all which will be immortal; things which may be acquired by us which neither time nor accident can wrest from us.
I. Our good deeds will live for ever. Our acts of kindness, generosity, helpfulness are immortal because they are Divine. There is a threefold immortality
1. Acts that lessen lifes burdensomeness and diminish the temptations to sin have far-reaching consequences to others. By these personal ministries, often humble and obscure, we are shaping immortal lives. Our good deeds will live in other souls (P. D. 1006, 2302, 2443, 3205).
2. You cannot do another good without doing yourself good in the deed; you are building your own character, and that will show your work upon it unto eternity (H. E. I. 720; P. D. 3609).
3. Our good deeds become immortal by their life in the thought of God (Heb. 6:10; Act. 10:31; H. E. I. 451, 1726; P. D. 2012).
II. Our pure affections will live for ever (P. D. 7492351).
The leaves fall and mingle with the sod, the flower droops and withers, and earth ere long will lie sepulchred beneath the snow; but in the providence of God the spring will come, and earth will wake to a fresh and radiant life. And so, also, when our earthly plans are broken, our accumulations scattered, and our bodies crumble into dust, the soul with all its fulness of love and all its trophies of service shall live on in the immortality of God.George P. Gilman.
Gods comparisons are striking, His contrasts sharp. Could the perishability of creation and the imperishability of its uncreated Author be put more vividly before our eyes than by likening the one to a worn-out garment, ready to drop apart, while the other stands out untouched by time, and with years that have no end? (Psa. 102:26-27). In this passage from ancient prophecy, how the fleeting is made a background on which to set the fixed! Over against Natures decaying growth are put Revelations verities that eternally abide. The grass withereth, &c.
I. We have symbolised a changing world. While the decay of vegetation which the season brings needs not be, and ought not to be, a ghastly or gloomy thing [1318] it is a symbol of change, a reminder of the evanescence of all material objects and concerns. Look around, and you will observe that all things are changing, most of them rapidly (H. E. I. 49754989; P. D. 408, 2536, 3336). Turn where you will, you note the restlessness of men. New partners, new parties, new experiments, new diversions. Why are all things around us thus full of change?
1. Partly because that capricious thing the human will underlies all finite activities, and will not let us remain quiet. Its fickleness it is that keeps public and private life disturbed [1321] A changing world! Can it be otherwise with such a vacillating element under it? Can you build a vessel that will not pitch or lurch, when beneath it there is that which pitches and lurches all the while? A changing world indeed. Changing in its loves and hates, in its wishes and its wills, in its hopes and fears, in its purposes and plans. Changing like withering grass and fading flower.
2. But this evanescence is not entirely an outgrowth of human weakness; part of it is the outworking of a Divine design. The fluctuations of earth are its heavenly discipline. God uses it to rid the world of evils, as He uses thunders and lightnings to shake out of the air deadly diseases hanging there. Even for the individual a quiet, undisturbed life is rarely Gods plan. The soul is apt to grow hard, and selfish, and narrow, unless over-turnings and ups and downs shake it loose from earthly good and gain (Psa. 55:19; Jer. 48:11; H. E. I. 39974014). To prevent this, changes keep us shaken up. Gods merciful hand is in the commotion (H. E. I. 110, 111).
[1318] There is a kind of autumn sermonising or moralising that is more vapoury than truthful, and more sentimental than pious. Much of the doleful talk about the blighting and blasting of the fair and the beautiful, in the field and forest and on the lawn, is foolishness. The blanched leaf fluttering from the tree is spoken of pityingly as though overtaken by some untimely fate, as though some destroying influence had cut short its life. But as a matter of fact, we know that the falling of the leaf was as natural as the unfolding of the leaf. Winter or no winter, frost or no frost, it would have faded or fallen, because that was the Creators plan concerning it. He meant from the beginning that it should last only so long. Study its structure, and you will see that its work was done. When, therefore, the landscape spreads around the emblems of a frail and dying world, instead of taking on a plaintive tone, it would be wiser cheerfully to say, The summer has finished its appointed task, and when the set time comes, may my own be finished just as well!Vassar.
[1321] I was running over again recently the career of that hapless Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. Who that has once read it can forget the tragic history? For a brief space she was the idol of her realm. Then her enthusiastic subjects offered to take the horses from the royal carriage and draw it with their own hands down the streets of her gay capital. How terrible the transition when, a little later, along those same avenues they dragged the widowed sovereign to execution, rending the air with curses that ceased only when the bloody head was held up in sight.Vassar.
II. Note now the stability with which this inconstancy is contrasted. Turn from the changing world and consider the unchanging Word. The Word of our God standeth for ever (Mat. 24:35; 1Pe. 1:24-25).
1. There is this immutability about the facts which Scripture states. Every little while infidelity with blare of trumpets announces some fresh discovery of science hostile to revelation, and at each disclosure some timid believers are almost ready to concede that the Bible has gotten its deathblow. Children that we are to be scared by shadows! Why, Sir Charles Lyell tells us that in 1806 the French Institute numbered more than eighty geological theories that struck against the inspired record, and not one of those theories survives to-day (H. E. I. 539, 636, 642645).
2. There is the same permanence about the predictions of this Word [1324]
3. There is the same perpetuity about the principles or doctrines of this Word. At times the enemy comes in so like a flood that it seems as if all the old landmarks were swept away. But the old verities remain unchanged. Divine holiness, justice, and supreme dominion; human accountability to a righteous law; human sinfulness, and pardon through a crucified Saviour; the necessity of repentance and regeneration through the renewing and sanctifying Spirit; a reckoning day when right shall be crowned and wrong crushed, and the drama of history close amid praisesnot one of these Bible truths has been abrogated or annulled by all mens sneers or jeers. Providence is not a myth. Christ is not an amiable enthusiast. Heaven is not a dream, nor is hell a fiction.
4. This Word is permanent in its fruits. The Word of our God is first of all sometimes heard with the ear, then sometimes accepted by the understanding, then sometimes received into the soul, and then sometimes manifested in the life of the believer. Where so grasped and held, it is a principle of undecaying power. The work that begins with the saving entrance of the Word goes on for ever. Not only does the truth so embraced by the heart perpetually produce fruit in the individual, but in the community it keeps yielding fruit year after year.Thomas E. Vassar.
[1324] Prophecy is only pre-written history Much of it has not yet come to pass, yet Christian trust no more doubts that what is pledged is coming than the man of the world doubts that winter is on its way. Why should we doubt it? Look back and see how predictions once made have turned into realisations on the right hand and the left. Hear the cry of the bittern as it sails amidst the flooded palaces of Babylon; listen to the song of the fisherman spreading his net where Tyre once sat a proud ocean-queen; catch the wail of the Jew downtrodden in the city of his fathers, and without a country anywhere that he can call his own, and then ask whether other promises or other threatenings of the Divine Word are not as likely to be fulfilled.Vassar.
THE STORY AND MORAL OF A BLADE OF GRASS
Isa. 40:6-8. All flesh is grass, &c.
I. THE STORY OF THE BLADE OF GRASS.
The tender beauty of these words is not confined to the fact that their leading thoughtthe transitoriness of human lifeis full of pathos. There is a plaintive music in them; the refraingrass withers, flowers fadegoes singing through the brain, quickening the tender grace of days that are dead. Imagination stirs and works; we see the broad pleasant field bathed in sunlight, and then the fierce hot blast sweep across it. Who does not feel at times that that is a true picture of human life? But these words take new force as we connect them with the circumstances in and for which they were spoken. The prophets main duty hitherto had been to denounce the judgments of God on the sins of Israel. He is now carried on to the distant time when the Jews will start on their return to their native land. He is to speak comfortably to them. As he broods over the visionHark, a crier! Another message of comfort (Isa. 40:3-5). There is once more silence in the prophets heart. But, Hark, a voice. It is the Divine Voice saying Cry!i.e., Proclaim. The herald turns and asks, What shall I cry? The Voice replies, All flesh is grass, &c. The great heathen world was transient.
Comfortable words for the Jews. But they must not forget that their life on earth is brief; that they can only endure as they fashion themselves on the Word of God: This people is grass.
II. THE MORAL OF THE STORY.
The blade of grass reminds us that human life soon withers, that human fortune often withers even before the man dies. James particularises the general lesson (Jas. 1:10-11). He also reminds us that some men wither even while they retain the full vigour of life and their good fortune abides. The rich man withers in his ways; and therefore, argues the Apostle, he should rejoice when his riches use their wings and fly away. Why? Because trial is good for every man (James
1. Isa. 40:2; Isa. 40:4-12). Great reverses of fortune are among the severest tests of character. This truth is based on a true, on a Christian view of human life.
We may not fear riches for ourselves, but do we not fear them for our neighbour? Do we not fear poverty for ourselves and for our friends? A Christian teacher cannot bid us grieve over any reverse by which our character is tested, matured, perfected. In the Christian view of life, character is of supreme importance; circumstances are of value only as they serve to form and strengthen and purify it. The wealth and the poverty will soon pass, but the character will remain, and will decide our destiny. If you say, Surely it is very hard to rejoice, to be honestly and sincerely glad when loss and pain come upon us! what can any man reply but, Yes, surely it is very hard, so hard that we shall never do it, except as we possess ourselves of Christs spirit. Heaven is very high; how are we to reach it save by climbing? The rich man is often like a blade of grass, withering beneath the scorching sun, so that the flower falls off, and its graceful beauty perishes. The sun of prosperity shines upon him with a too-fervent heat; all the beauty and nobility of his character fades under it. He withers away in his ways, in the multitude of his schemes and pursuits. His fortune grows, but the man diesdies before his timedies before he ceases to breathe and traffic.
Is not that a true picture, and a sad one? We must all needs die; and, in some of its aspects, even that fact is sad enough. But it is sadder still that many should be as grass which wilfully exposes itself to a heat it might escape, and withers and dies while the field is still green and fragrant.
CONCLUSION.The warning comes home to us in this age; for our whole life is so intense, that it is almost impossible to make leisure for thought, or for those religious exercises on which our spiritual health depends. We are literally withering away in our ways. We all need to take the warning which speaks to us as unto meni.e., as to spiritual and immortal creatures, sons of God, and heirs of eternity. If we would not have the world crush us, we must resolutely set ourselves to be in the world as Christ was in the world.Samuel Cox, D.D.: Biblical Exposition, pp. 432441.
THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE
Isa. 40:6. The voice said, Cry, &c.
One wonders that there should be so sublime and startling a machinery for the delivery to us of so common-place a truth. Here is a voice from the firmament. An invisible agency is brought to bear, as though for the announcement of something altogether new and unexpected (cf. Job. 4:15-17). But truths which we never think of disputing may be practically those which we are most in the habit of forgetting. The voice, the apparition, is not needed to impart new truth, but it is needed to impress old truth; what we want is not an increase of knowledge, but the gaining influence for knowledge already possessed.
I. It is of the first moment that this commonplace announcement should be pressed by all possible means on our attention, because no other announcement could be better adapted for the promotion and growth of the graces of the Gospel. It is undoubtedly the presumed or the imagined distance of judgment which encourages men to persist in their sins (Ecc. 8:11). There is a sort of unacknowledged idea that what is protracted and indefinite will never take effect; or it is imagined that life will yet afford numerous opportunities. To overthrow this sinners theory, and substitute for it the persuasion that in the midst of life he is in deathpractically to overthrow itwould be to compel him to make provision for the coming eternity, on the threshold of which he may at any moment be standing, and concerning which he is apprised by daily spectacles of mortality. And the effect thus wrought on the unconverted would not be without its parallel in the righteous, on whom we cannot charge the habitual disregard of the dread things of the future. The feeling that the day of death is not near is at work in both. He would say, when inclined to loiter and be slothful in his great work as a candidate for eternity, Dare I lose a day, when perhaps but few hours are left; when life is the alone season in which to gain a lofty place in the future kingdom of Christ, and life may be already contracted to a span, so that what I grasp not now may be for ever out of reach? What shall I say? saith a voice from the firmament; the answer of the righteous man should be, Oh! cry so as to make me feel that all flesh is grass; and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field.
II. A supernatural authority is needed to gain any practical hold for a truth which is so readily and universally acknowledged. We do not require a voice from heaven to make us know that such and such substances are poisonous, when all experience testifies that they are. And are not our churchyards filled with the old and the young?
The Heavenly Voice bade a solemn proclamation to be made of the frailty of life; as though it were ascertained that observation and meditation would never bring it home to man; as though truth must be delivered with all the force and convincingness of a new revelation, ere there were likelihood of its gaining any practical hold.
And if it be a thing for revelation, and therefore for prayer, all meditations amongst the tombs will be practically of no worth, except as they bring men to their knees.
It is most important to remember that there is no inherent power in truth to work effectually on the soul. The power is in truth only as applied by the Spirit of God. We must not substitute the Gospel for the Saviour. A voice saith, Cry! Your anxiety must be that the thing criedcried so as to come as a revelation from Godmay be our own constant exposure to death (H. E. I. 15571566).
CONCLUSION.Let this be part of your daily prayer to Almighty God (Psa. 39:4). What we need is the being brought to feel old truth, rather than the being brought to recognise new. Oh! cry, cry earnestly, that God will proclaim so as to make you practically and permanently feel this simple, well-known truthAll flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.Henry Melvill, B.D.: Golden Lectures, 1851, pp. 733740.
I. ISAIAHS MESSAGE. All flesh is grass. I also have the same message to publish to my hearers to-day. These words suggest
1. Our earthly origin. The earth is the mother of us all. Every kind of grass has its roots in her, and the most beautiful flower is not ashamed to own its mother. But many conceited people, especially if they have risen in society, are ready to forget the lowliness of their origin. Their parents and the friends of their childhood they would gladly disown. What mean and ignoble vanity!
2. Our constant dependence upon the earth for our sustenance.
3. Our equality. Some flowers are fairer than others, yet they are made of the same matter. One may be in better soil than another, more sheltered by nature or mans device from the blasting north wind, and more open to the sunlight, but it is the same in substance. When we look round on society, we see men widely different in appearance from each other. How varied have been the circumstances of their birth, education, employment, opportunities, &c.! Yet they are all brethren. A common lot awaits them all (H. E. I. 1536, 1537; P. D. 677).
4. Our frailty and the uncertainly of our life. As the flower of the field. Not the garden flower, defended from storms and intruders by the gardeners devices, but as the flower of the field! It opens with beauty in the morning and drinks in the warm rays of the sun; but there is no certainty that a burning tempest will not beat upon it or a beast trample it down before noon. Thus it is with us all. Confidently as the young reckon on seeing many years of happiness, there is but a step between us and death (H. E. I. 15391546; P. D. 705, 2225).
II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PROPHET WAS TO DELIVER HIS MESSAGE. Cry! Be stirring, earnest, urgent. Not that he who can cry the loudest is the best preacher. But the command suggests
1. That there is danger. A vehement call is an indication of peril. There is danger to the sinnernot to his property, nor even to his body, but to his soul!
2. That the people do not see their danger. How true this is! How many are like a man sleeping soundly on the beach while the tide is rapidly surrounding him! Such are some of you. Wonder not, then, that we cry to you.
3. That the people and their danger are coming nearer to each other each moment. Many, like men working in a hayfield when a thunderstorm is gathering, postpone their escape to the last moment, and often find that the danger was nearer to them than they thought.
4. That the danger to which the people are exposed is very great.
5. That the people are unwilling to hear.
Life and Works of the late Rev. David Rees, of Lanelly, pp. 8794.
THE IMPERISHABLENESS OF THE GOSPEL
Isa. 40:8. But the Word of our God shall stand for ever.
A word is a spoken thought. God has spoken His thoughts to man. The record of what He has said is contained in the volume of inspired Scripture. The text affirms that it shall stand for ever. It is appropriated and applied to the Gospel by Peter (1Pe. 1:24-25), who quotes this entire passage. The prophets general affirmation respecting Gods Word is applied to the Gospel in particular. It is imperishable. The grass withers. It is fresh and green when growing on the ground. In due time the mower cuts it down, and, lacking the supply of new life, it withers in the sun. The flower is beautiful in the garden. You cannot carry it away exactly as you plucked it. You have cut it off from the sources of its life; and, however carefully you keep it, in a few days it will begin to fade away. Man grows into health and vigour. He is cut down by an invisible hand in the midst of his life-work; or he accomplishes his life-work, and then sinks into decay and forgetfulness. All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. But while the grass withers, and the flower fades, and man dies, the Word of our God stands for ever. Our theme, therefore, is the imperishableness of the Gospel.
I. IT IS IMPREGNABLE IN ITS EVIDENCE.
The assaults of infidelity have been unable to overthrow it. Its historical records receive confirmation from advancing knowledge. Its prophecies have been historically fulfilled in the most remarkable way. Its miracles are abiding evidence of Divine power brought to bear on the confirmation of its truth. Its moral teaching is exactly adapted to mans moral nature, and presents the loftiest ideal of possible humanity. Its conception of the great central figure, the Lord Jesus Christ, can only be accounted for by its truth. Its distinguishing doctrines are characterised by their clear perception of mans ruined condition, and their provision of what is necessary to his spiritual interest. Its continuance and gradual advancement in the world is a fulfilment of its own prediction, and a perpetual proof that God is with it. The grass has withered season by season; the flowers have faded one by one; the generations of men have followed each other to the land of forgetfulness; but it remains. The attacks upon it, made with fresh vigour and from new points of view, have left ita fortress often attempted, but never captured. As the sea flows up and threatens to overwhelm the land day after day, but retires again to its place, so the periodical assaults of infidelity retire like their predecessors, and leave the Gospel as it was (H. E. I. 24182427, 2451, 11651168).
II. IT IS UNCHANGEABLE IN ITS NATURE.
Notwithstanding the dangers around it, the Gospel continues the same. Human history flows on, like a stream with many variations and windings. Empires rise and fall. Cities grow to magnificence, and decline. Customs and habits change. Opinions become popular or drop into disuse. Physical science as taught in one age is entirely different from physical science as taught in another. Manufacturing processes give way to invention and improvement. New facts are discovered; new truths deduced from them. Human thought is in continual flux. Yet the facts remain. The crust of the earth and the substances it contains are the same. Change is not in the objects studied, but in the knowledge of the student. The same sun shines, the same atmosphere floats around the earth from the beginning; only both are better known. And God is the same, and the Gospel is the same. Different views may be held of some critical questions; more may be known now than formerly of the localities, the history, the customs referred to in Scripture. But Scripture remains. No criticism has expunged any important doctrine. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. The same way of salvation, the same invitation to the sinful and weary. The Gospel of Paul and Peter and John is the Gospel still. The faithful saying is still true and worthy of all acceptation. The justification by faith which Luther sounded over Europe is the way in which sinners are justified to-day. The need of regeneration with which Whitefield and Wesley awoke the slumbers of England still exists. Men may throw off or modify their opinions of many things, but the essential nature of the Gospel cannot be changed. It is Gods final word respecting mens salvation. It must stand for ever.
III. IT IS IMMORTAL IN ITS INFLUENCE.
It stands for ever, not only in the written book, but in the living soul. When believed, it enters the soul as a living force. It completely changes the currents of life. Its influence pervades everything. It touches and turns into gold everything in the mans nature. It removes fear, brings consolation, sanctifies the heart and life. Being born again.
And when they pass to the better land, it does not cease to live in them. They carry it with them into heaven. It was Christ in them the hope of glory. They are now glorified together with Him. Christ will never be effaced from their memories. The love of Christ which was felt below is perfected above. The praise of Christ, which was expressed in many a thankful strain, is the celestial song which embodies their living recollections of the Gospel (Rev. 5:9). The Word of God will stand for ever in the thoughts and affections of ransomed souls.
Nor can it, as a vital power in human breasts, pass from the earth. One generation passeth away and another cometh. The spiritual succession will be maintained to the end of time. Flowers drop their seed before they die, so that from them other flowers may spring. Every Christian desires to leave representatives behind him. Every Christian is an agent; parents, friends, Sabbath-school teachers, ministers. Thus the Gospel lives.
Christians! how great the privilege of an interest in the everlasting Gospel! It nourishes your faith. It rests your soul. It brings daily comfort and strength. It sustains your dearest hopes when all earthly things fade.
See that you discharge your duties to the Gospel.
1. Obey it as the practical expression of your faith.
2. Disseminate it.
3. Believe in its perpetuity and triumph. Away with the drivel about the decay of its influence.
O sinner, consider the bearing of this on you. You are perishable. So is all around. The imperishable you neglect. Once more it invites. It will survive when you, as to this world, have perished. It is the winning side. At present you are on the losing side. It is preached that it may win you.J. Rawlinson.
THE CHURCHS MISSION
Isa. 40:9. O Zion, that bringest good tidings! &c.
It is freely asserted that the influence of the Church of Christ is now extremely small. We have been made familiar with statements like these: The pulpit has lost its power; the Church has lost its hold upon the people; multitudes are hopelessly alienated from the public services of religion. Consider
I. The Churchs place and function in the world. What have men a right to expect from her? The text represents the Church as a bearer of good tidings to men.
1. She is exhorted to get up on a high mountain where she will be conspicuous to all, and from which her voice shall reach over Judahs hills, along her vales, and to all her villages and towns.
2. To be courageous and energetic, full of faith, and action, and earnestness in fulfilling her work.
3. She is told what her message ought to be: Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
II. So long as the Church is faithful to her mission as the bearer of glad tidings about God, she will be prosperous and powerful. She is in the world not only to hold fast the truth, but also to hold it forth. She is to echo Gods message in human language and with human tenderness. Do not many churches fail in this respect? Some churches are turned into concert-halls, some into homes of priestcraft, some into theological arenas or intellectual gymnasia, and others into places where feeble platitudes about sin and grace, and faith and future happiness abound (H. E. I. 11841186).
III. How much the world needs to hear the good tidings which have been intrusted to the Church of Christ.
1. One great and growing evil, threatening us with infinite peril, is the cleaving of society into two great classesthe rich and the poor. While forces like these drive different classes apart, what is there to draw them together? Higher secular education does not do it. Politics will not do it. Communism or Socialism has tried to do it, but has failed, and must ever fail. It fights against inevitable inequalities. Men, divided from one another in various ways, must be brought under one roof before God (Pro. 22:2).
2. What a terrible fact sin is in human life! Where it does not transgress the decencies of society, what a disturbing, depressing, enfeebling fact it is in our existence! The Church has here a noble field of influence. She ought to have glad tidings for hearts burdened with transgression, or gnawed by remorse, or wearied in the conflict with impurity, or depressed by the sense of helplessness.
3. What terrible facts suffering and sorrow are in human life! The Churchs message to the suffering and sorrowful is an infinitely tender and precious one. These should go forth from her courts relieved and comforted. Her Lord and Master was a great suffererwas made perfect through suffering. Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
4. What a terrible fact death is in human life! Where, how, when, shall we die? From whom can we learn anything of death? Science can explain the chemistry of our decay, can talk wisely about the conservation of energy; but we want something more. Philosophy has loved to speak of death; the Epicurean saying, Let us eat, &c.; the Stoic, Death is universal and inevitable; let us meet it bravely and with dignity. But we are only shocked and chilled. Poetry has sought to throw a charm around death; but even poetry cannot satisfy our yearning. It is reserved for the Church to justify her title as the bringer of good tidings by unfolding to men her God-given revelations concerning death. To her it has been given to take the sting from death, the triumph from the grave. She provides a Guide who never fails in the valley of the shadow of death. Pointing to One who hung upon the cross, lay in the grave, and rose through the clouds to heaven, she can say to all, Behold your God! (Isa. 43:2-3).William Young, B.A.: Christian World Pulpit, xx. pp. 330332.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(6) The voice said, Cry.Literally, A voice saith, Cry. The questioner (and one said) is probably the prophet himself, asking what he is to proclaim. The truth which he is to enforce thus solemnly is the ever-recurring contrast between the transitoriness of man and the eternity of God and of His word, taking that term in its highest and widest sense. Two points of interest may be noted: (1) that this is another parallelism with Job (Job. 14:2); (2) the naturalness of the thought in one who, like Isaiah, was looking back, as Moses looked (Psa. 90:5-6) in extreme old age upon the generations whom he had survived, and forward to the fall of mighty monarchies one after another. The marginal references show how dominant the thought is in the mind of Isaiah. Isaiah himself had uttered it in Isa. 2:22.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
6-8. Cry Isaiah again hears a voice crying. Not the same voice. That was the herald’s cry. This one belongs to another subject.
He said , v’amar, is the true pointing of the text, according to the best authorities, though Lowth, Noyes, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and a few Hebrew manuscripts read, And I said, and this apparently helps the sense of what follows. But it is, too, apparent, on the other hand, that it is the prophet who is here hearing, and the voice seems to be that of God, or of an ideal person in behalf of God, to the prophet, because when the latter asks, What shall I cry? the answer is such as to exalt the divine Word above all that is conceivable of man. The answer is, therefore, the theme of the entire passage. He is commanded to proclaim the perishable nature of man and of all flesh, and the imperishable nature of the word of God. Why such a proclamation? Possibly for preparing the way in men’s minds to see the absolute nothingness of idols (as shown in chapters following) when compared with the infinite exaltation of the almighty God. But more probably, and more directly, to assure the confidence of men in the reliability of God’s word of promise that Zion, or the believing ones in exile, shall surely have the deliverance promised.
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth Grass is “all flesh,” or man in the abstract. Then these predicates of man show him in infinite contrast with God. Man is impotent, limited, perishing: the blast of God’s breath upon man is his destruction. Whatever such an infinite One says, therefore, can never fail. His promise of consolation and comfort is sure. This is clearly the sense to Isa 40:9. See Psa 10:15; Isa 1:10-11; 1Pe 1:24-25.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Isa 40:6-8. The voice said, Cry The beginning of the kingdom of God is presented to the prophet’s view in extatic vision, together with its progress through various scenes, one succeeding the other. The prophet had now heard two voices of harbingers or forerunners. A third succeeds, which is finely introduced. He hears a voice, which commands with authority a new herald or preacher to promulgate something. The preacher inquires, ready to obey this high authority, what he is to promulgate: then the first voice explains the argument of the discourse, which is resolved into a proposition concerning the flesh, as grass, and its grace or goodliness, as the flower of the field; and an exposition of the proposition, wherein its sense and meaning are declared, Isa 40:7-8. We may suppose this the voice of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and first preachers of the Gospel. A plain comparison is made between the flesh, Isa 40:6 and the word of God, Isa 40:8.; the contrary attributes whereof are marked out. And there seems no doubt that the prophet, by the flesh, intends whatever men have depended upon in external things for their justification, which are vain, and will fail them; all human wisdom, works, and merits, availing nothing in this respect before God; so that no flesh can glory in his presence, 1Co 1:29. But the word of the Gospel, delivering the true doctrine of salvation, will never fail mankind. The prophet may farther mean, when he calls the people grass, to mark out the weakness and vanity of those external ceremonies and carnal privileges wherein the Jewish people place their confidence. There are many passages in the Scripture wherein flesh is thus understood. See Gal 3:3; Gal 4:23-29; Gal 6:12. Php 3:4. We may just observe, respecting the scope of this whole period, that it teaches us the true nature of the kingdom of Christ, and the new oeconomy; that it is a spiritual oeconomy; a spiritual and heavenly kingdom, very unlike the ancient oeconomy, carnal, perishing, fading: that there is nothing in this kingdom and oeconomy to please the flesh; that all things are internal, solid, true, and everlasting; that faith alone reigns here, fruitful in righteousness and good works. Instead of the people in the 7th verse, it should be read, this people, namely, the Jews. Vitringa understands the clause, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it, as expressive of the power of the Holy Spirit, joined with the word of the Gospel, which should change the minds of men, should bring them to the faith, and from carnal make them spiritual. See Act 2:2. Rom 15:19.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 921
THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE GOSPEL
Isa 40:6-8. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it; surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
GOD doeth according to his own will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth. When his time was come for the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, in vain did Pharaoh labour to retain them. Thus the prophet was inspired to declare the redemption of the Jews from Babylon, and the still greater redemption of the world from sin and Satan, in despite of all endeavours which might be used to thwart the divine purpose. This seems to be the immediate scope of the words before us. But they may also be taken as a general declaration respecting the instability of every thing human, and the immutability of Gods word.
I.
The instability of every thing human
The comparison of man to grass is very frequent in the Scriptures; and it affords a just description of,
1.
Our temporal comforts
[The grass in the early spring adorns and beautifies the face of nature; but, when parched by a burning sun or an eastern blast, it soon withers and decays: in the same manner the beauty and strength of youth are soon turned to weakness and deformity: the affluence and honour of the rich are quickly changed to degradation and want: and all our goodly fabrics of case and happiness are soon demolished. St. James illustrates this truth by the very comparison in the text [Note: Jam 1:9-11.]: and as Job experienced it in the days of old, so in every age may numerous instances be found of such vicissitudes.]
2.
Our spiritual comforts
[God is pleased to give rich consolation to his people: and, while they enjoy it, their faces are made, as it were, to shine, as the face of Moses did, when he descended from the holy mount. But these comforts are often of short continuance. When Peter thought of building tabernacles to protract his happiness, a cloud immediately overshadowed him, and he was called down to renew his conflicts with the world [Note: Mar 9:5; Mar 9:7; Mar 9:14.]. When David fancied his mountain so strong that he should never be moved, God hid his face from him and he was troubled [Note: Psa 30:7.]. Thus it is also with all the people of God; whose manifold changes in this respect may well be compared with the diversified scenes of nature under the influence of kindly showers, or malignant winds [Note: Psa 102:2-4.].]
3.
Our very life itself
[In the midst of health we promise ourselves years to come: but, when God withdraws our breath, we instantly return to our native dust. Some look more gay and possess more goodliness than others; but they are only as the flower of the field, which cannot survive the grass, and not unfrequently falls before it. In this view the inspired writers describe our state [Note: Job 14:1-2. Psa 90:3-6. Psa 103:15-16.]; and both observation and experience attest the truth of their representations: we must all confess, in the language of the text, Surely, the people is grass.]
But while every thing human is thus frail and transient, we have a firm foundation whereon to stand, namely,
II.
The immutability of Gods blessed word
The word of God here spoken of, may be understood as relating to Christ, who is often called by this name, and whose immutability is mentioned by the Psalmist in this very view [Note: Psa 102:11-12; Psa 102:26-27.]. But St. Peter informs us that the prophet spake of the Gospel-salvation [Note: 1Pe 1:24-25.]. Now
This word contains the most important and comfortable truths
[There is no want, which it is not able to supply, no disorder, for which it does not prescribe a remedy. It proclaims health to the sick, sight to the blind, liberty to the captives, and life to the dead. So extensive are its invitations and promises, that there is not a human being excluded from its provisions, nor is there any limit to the blessings which it will impart. It assures us, that sins of a crimson die may become white as snow; that the most heavy-laden soul may obtain rest; and that none, who come to Jesus, shall on any account be cast out [Note: Isa 1:18. Mat 11:28. Joh 6:37.].]
Nor is it a small excellence in these truths, that they are as immutable as God himself
[How vain were the attempts of men and devils to stop the progress of the Gospel, and to make void the declarations of God respecting it! Equally vain shall be every endeavour to invalidate the promises which he has made to the believing penitent. Has he said, that all manner of sin shall be forgiven; that he will cleanse us from all our filthiness and from all our idols; and that, where he has begun the good work, he will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ? We may rest assured that he will fulfil his word: for he is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man that he should repent. But it may be said, Though God changeth not, yet we change, and therefore may forfeit our interest in the promises. True; if God should leave us, we not only may, but most undoubtedly shall, both fall and perish. But God has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee; so that we may adopt the confident declaration of St. Paul, I know in whom I have believed, that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him. We must be strong in faith, giving glory to God. Then, though difficulties may arise, and appear for a while wholly insurmountable, they shall surely be overcome; Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and we shall see the salvation of God.]
We may learn from hence,
1.
The folly of seeking our rest in earthly things
[The injunction given to the prophet to cry, and to proclaim aloud that all flesh is grass, and the frequent repetition of this comparison, are strong intimations of the extreme vanity of every thing here below. And who amongst us has not found that the enjoyments he fondly anticipated, have either eluded his grasp, or deceived his expectation? Whatever then be our comforts in life, let us not set our hearts upon them, but so use the world as not abusing it, knowing that the fashion thereof passeth away.]
2.
The wisdom of embracing the Gospel-salvation
[They who trust in the word of God are sure of never being disappointed. However high their expectations are raised, they shall never be ashamed. The stronger their faith, the more abiding will be their comfort. Besides, their enjoyments, instead of cloying, will become more and more delightful; and, instead of bringing with them many inseparable ills, will produce nothing but good to their souls. But that which most of all must endear the Gospel to them is, that their happiness will then be consummated, when they, whose comforts were of an earthly nature, will want even a drop of water to cool their tongue. Let the word of God then be precious to our souls. Let Christ, as revealed in it, be the object of our faith, and hope, and love. Let us embrace the promises, assured that they shall all be fulfilled; and let us tremble at the threatening, knowing that they shall all be executed. Thus shall we be proof against the temptations of the world, and shall possess an eternity of glory, when the lovers of this present world will lie down in everlasting burnings.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
In these verses of the Prophet’s sermon, he draws a striking contrast between the fading, dying purposes of man, and the incorruptible and never-ending counsels of God! And the Apostle Peter makes a beautiful comment upon it, 1Pe 1:23-25 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Isa 40:6 The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh [is] grass, and all the goodliness thereof [is] as the flower of the field:
Ver. 6. The voice. ] Or, A voice – sc., in vision.
What shall I cry? All flesh is grass.
All flesh is grass.
And all the goodliness thereof.
As the flower of the field.
“ Esse, fuisse, fore, tria florida sunt sine flore:
Nam simul omne perit, quod fuit, est, et erit. ”
The voice = A voice. This is a second “voice”: the voice of Jehovah.
is grass. Figure of speech Metaphor, by which the assertion is boldly made that one thing is another (i.e. represents it). It differs from the Figure of speech Simile in the next clause, which asserts that one thing only resembles another.
goodliness = grace, or loveliness.
is as. Figure of speech Simile.
Cry: Isa 40:3, Isa 12:6, Isa 58:1, Isa 61:1, Isa 61:2, Jer 2:2, Jer 31:6, Hos 5:8
All flesh: Isa 37:27, Job 14:2, Psa 90:5, Psa 90:6, Psa 92:7, Psa 102:11, Psa 103:15, Psa 103:16, Jam 1:10, Jam 1:11, 1Pe 1:24
Reciprocal: Deu 4:12 – only ye heard a voice Deu 5:26 – all flesh 2Ki 19:26 – they were 1Ch 29:15 – our days Job 7:6 – swifter Isa 51:12 – man which Isa 64:6 – we all Jon 4:7 – it withered Mic 6:9 – Lord’s Zec 1:14 – Cry Mat 6:30 – clothe Mat 21:20 – How Luk 12:28 – which Joh 7:37 – and cried 1Co 7:29 – that both 1Jo 2:17 – the world Rev 14:7 – with
Isa 40:6-8. The voice said, Cry Rather, A voice; for it is not the voice last mentioned, which cried in the wilderness, that is intended, but the voice of God, who (Isa 40:1) said, Comfort my people. Having, with a view to comfort them, commissioned his prophet to foretel glorious and wonderful things, which he was determined to do for them, he here commands him to assure them of the certainty of these things, by representing the vast difference between the nature, word, and work of men, and those of God. All that men are or have, yea, their highest accomplishments, are but like the grass, or flower of the field, weak and vanishing, soon nipped and brought to nothing: but Gods word is like himself, immutable and irresistible: and, therefore, as the mouth of the Lord, and not of man, had spoken this, as was said Isa 40:5, so they ought not to doubt but it would be fulfilled in due time. The passage first refers to the deliverance from Babylon, and imports both that the power of man, if it should set itself to oppose that deliverance, was not to be feared, for it should be as grass before the word, that is, before the purpose and promise of the Lord; should soon wither and come to nothing; and if it should favour, and endeavour to promote the deliverance, it was not to be confided in, for it was still but as grass, compared with the Lords word, the only firm foundation for men to build their hopes upon. The words are still more applicable to the salvation of the gospel, the salvation from the power of Satan, sin, and death: with respect either to the preventing or effecting this, the wisdom, or power, or merit of man, is but as grass, or a flower of the grass; weak, and frail, and fading, and neither to be trusted in nor feared. When God is about to work deliverance for his people, he will have them to be taken off from depending upon creatures which would fail their expectation; for he will not allow any creature to be a rival with him for the confidence and hope of his people. As it is his word only that shall stand for ever, so on that word only must our faith stand. St. Peter applies this passage to the salvation effected for Gods spiritual Israel, and by this word of our God which shall stand for ever, he understands that word of the gospel which is preached to us, and by which we are regenerated and purified. See 1Pe 1:23-25. The grass withereth, &c., because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it Rather, the wind of the Lord, as is with equal propriety translated, and undoubtedly here signifies; which Bishop Lowth justly observes, is a Hebraism, meaning no more than a strong wind; adding, It is well known, that a hot wind in the East at once destroys every green thing. See note on Psa 103:16. Surely, the people is grass Or, this people, as may be properly rendered, namely, the Jews no less than the Gentiles. But the word of our God shall stand for ever Whatsoever God hath said shall infallibly be verified, and come to pass. And particularly the glad tidings of salvation by Christ, published in the ministry of the gospel, and received by true faith, shall be confirmed and established, and be a solid foundation for the confidence and hope of the people of God to rest on in all ages.
40:6 The {i} voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh [is] grass, and all its {k} beauty [is] as the flower of the field:
(i) The voice of God which spoke to the prophet Isaiah.
(k) Meaning, all man’s wisdom and natural powers, Jas 1:10, 1Pe 1:24 .
Human inability 40:6-8
The third stanza stresses the opposite of the second one, namely, the inability of humans to deliver themselves.
The same voice continued to call out (cf. Isa 40:3). This time a messenger asked what to call, and the voice instructed him. He was to announce the brevity of human life, comparing it to the grass that quickly turns brown in Palestine and to the wildflowers that only last a few weeks (cf. 1Pe 1:24). Israel’s oppressors were no stronger or more reliable than grass. Their loveliness (Heb. hesed, constancy) was ephemeral.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)