Prophecies Against Israel Isa 1:2 to Isa 12:6 contains a collection of prophecies against the nation of Israel. The phrase, “for all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still,” is repeated five times within this passage of Scripture (Isa 5:25; Isa 9:12; Isa 9:17; Isa 9:21; Isa 10:4).

Also found within this first major section of Isaiah are three prophecies of the Messiah’s birth. These prophecies reflect three characteristics of the Messiah. He will be born of a virgin as the Son of God dwelling with mankind (Isa 7:14-15). He will rule over Israel in the Davidic lineage (Isa 9:6-7). He will come from the seed of David and be anointed as was David (Isa 11:1-5).

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

The Inviting Comeliness of the Branch of Jehovah

v. 2. In that day, in the Messianic period preceding the end of the world, shall the Branch of the Lord, the great Son of David, the Messiah Himself, Isa 11:1; Isa 53:2; Zec 3:8, be beautiful and glorious, literally, “ornament and glory,” emphasizing these attributes as essential in the miraculous person of Christ, and the Fruit of the earth, the Savior Himself, product of the human race, growing up out of the house of David according to the counsel of God, shall be excellent and comely, literally, “splendor and brilliant glory,” for them that are escaped of Israel, included in the great deliverance which came through Jesus Christ.

v. 3. And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, the elect of the Lord, shall be called holy, consecrated to the Lord and serving Him in a holy life, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem, those who are appointed by God unto eternal life, Act 13:48, whether they be of Jews or Gentiles,

v. 4. when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, namely, the moral uncleanness and sinfulness which no amount of outward ornament can cover before His eyes, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem, the outstanding acts of wickedness and guilt, from the midst thereof by the Spirit of judgment and by the Spirit of burning, His Holy Spirit both rebuking the evil and destroying all wickedness by a thorough winnowing and sifting, for conversion is entirely and alone His work.

v. 5. And the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion and upon her assemblies, wherever there are congregations of believers, a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night, these being the vehicle and sign of the merciful presence of Jehovah in the midst of His people; for upon all the glory, in every place of glory where believers are assembled in His name, shall be a defense, a covering, or canopy, the Lord Himself, as the King of Grace, having His throne in every congregation and causing it, by the gifts of His mercy, to be a glory, a place where His glory shines forth.

v. 6. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, Christ Himself dwelling in their midst, and for a place of refuge and for a covert, where one may hide in safety, from storm and from rain; for Christ is the Protector of His Church against the manifold dangers with which it is surrounded. In this way the Branch of the Lord serves for glory to His elect, and the believers cheerfully trust themselves to His keeping.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

The existing division between Isa 3:1-26. and 4. is scarcely satisfactory. Isa 3:1 of Isa 4:1-6. belongs to the minatory portion of the section beginning with Isa 2:1 and terminating with Isa 4:6, and so stands connected in subject with Isa 3:1-26; which is wholly minatory; whereas the remainder of Isa 4:1-6. (Isa 4:2-6) is consolatory, consisting of a series of promises. Isa 4:1 is also for-really connected with Isa 3:1-26. by the vau conjunctive, while the absence of any such link at the opening of Isa 3:2 indicates the commencement of a new paragraph at that point.

Isa 4:1

Seven women shall take hold of one man. This verse has been well called a “companion picture to Isa 3:6, Isa 3:7.” As there, in the evil time of God’s judgment, the despairing men are represented as” taking hold” of a respectable man to make him their judge, so now the despairing women “take hold” of such a man and request him to allow them all to be regarded as his wives. There has been such a destructionmen are become so scarcethat no otherwise can women escape the shame and reproach of being unwedded and childless. Our own bread will we eat. They do not ask him to support them; they are able and willing to support themselves. To take away; rather, take thou awaythe imperative mood, not the infinitive. Our reproach. Children were regarded as such a blessing in the ancient times that to be childless was a misfortune and a subject of reproach. Hagar “despised” the barren Sarai (Gen 16:4). Her “adversary provoked Hannah sore, because the Lord had shut up her womb” (1Sa 1:6). Compare the lament of Antigone, who views it as a disgrace that she descends to the tomb unwed. Among the Jews childlessness was a special reproach, because it took away all possibility of the woman being in the line of the Messiah’s descent (comp. Isa 54:1-4).

Isa 4:2-6

As the present prophecy (Isaiah 2-4.), though in the main one of threatening and denunciation, opened with a picture that was encouraging and comforting (Isa 2:2-4), so new it terminates with a similar picture. The evangelical prophet, like the great apostle of the Gentiles, is unwilling that any one should be “swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.” He will not separate the mercies of God from his judgments.

Isa 4:2

In that day shall the branch of the Lord, etc. Some see in this passage merely a promise that in the Messianic times the produce of the soil would become more abundant than ever before, its harvests richer, and its fruitage more luxuriant. But in the light of later prophecy it is scarcely possible to shut up the meaning within such narrow limits. The “Branch” of Isaiah can hardly be isolated altogether in a sound exegesis from the “Branch” of Jeremiah (Jer 23:5; Jer 33:15) and of Zechariah (Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12). Now, the “Branch” of Zechariah is stated to be “a man” (Zec 6:12 : note that the word used for “Branch” is the same as Isaiah’s, viz. tsemakh), and the “Branch “of Jeremiah is a King (Jer 33:15). Moreover, Isaiah uses a nearly equivalent term (netser) in an admittedly Messianic sense. Although, therefore, there is some obscurity in the phrase, “Branch of Jehovah,” it would seem to be best to understand Isaiah as here intimating, what he elsewhere openly declares (Isa 11:1-5)viz. the coming of the Messiah in the latter days as the ornament and glory of his people. Be beautiful and glorious; rather, for beauty and glory; or, for ornament and glory; i.e. for the ornament and glorification of Israel. And the fruit of the earth. It is argued with reason that the two clauses of this verse are parallel, not antithetical, and that as we understand the one, so must we understand the other. If, then, the “Branch“ is the Messiah, so is “the fruit of the earth”-which may well be, since he was “the grain of wheat” which “fell into the ground and, lied, and so brought forth much fruit” (Joh 12:24). Excellent and comely; rather, for majesty and beauty (comp. Exo 28:2, Exo 28:40). Unto the escaped of Israel; i.e. “to those who shall have our-rived the great calamity, and become citizens of the restored Jerusalem.” Dr. Kay well remarks that “the prophecy was adequately fulfilled only in those who ‘saved themselves’ from the generation which rejected Christ. That remnant was the germ of the Catholic Church, made such by being incorporated into the true Vine” (‘Speaker’s Commentary,’ note at loc.).

Isa 4:3

He that is left he that remaineth. Equivalent to the “escaped“ of the preceding verse. Shall be called holy. Strikingly fulfilled in the filet that the early Christians were known as titter, “holy,” or , “those called to be holy,” in the first age (Act 9:13, Act 9:32, Act 9:41; Act 26:10; Rom 1:7; 1Co 1:2; 2Co 1:1; Eph 1:1; Php 1:1, etc.). Perhaps, however, more is meant than this. The early Christians not only were called, but were “holy.” Even Gibbon places the innocent lives of the early Christians among the causes of the conversion of the Roman empire. Every one that is written among the living. A register of the “living,” or “heirs of life,” is here assumed, as in Exo 32:32; Psa 69:28; Dan 12:1; Rev 13:8; Rev 21:27, etc. It is a “book,” however, out of which names may be “blotted” (Rev 3:5).

Isa 4:4

When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion (see Isa 3:16-24). Sin must not be merely repented of and pardoned; it must be put away. There could be no Jerusalem, in which all should be “called holy,” until the moral defilement of the daughters of Zion was swept away. Purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst (comp. Isa 1:15; Isa 59:3). It is possible, however, that the murder of infants in sacrifice to Moloch may be in the prophet’s mind. Ahaz “burnt his children in the fire after the abominations of the heathen” (2Ch 28:3). Manasseh did the same (2Ch 33:6): and the practice was probably widespread among the people long before Isaiah’s time (see Psa 106:38; Isa 57:5). By the spirit of burning; or, by a blast of burning; i.e. a fiery blast which shall destroy everything (comp. Isa 1:31).

Isa 4:5

Upon every dwelling-place (“over the whole habitation,” Revised Version). Mr. Cheyne translates “upon the whole site,” and takes the “site” to be especially the temple. Makon seems certainly never to be used for anything but “God’s dwelling-place” (Exo 15:17; 1Ki 8:13, 1Ki 8:39, etc.; 2Ch 6:2, 2Ch 6:30, etc.; Ezr 2:68; Psa 33:14; Psa 89:14; Psa 97:2; Psa 104:5; Isa 18:4; Dan 8:11). Perhaps, however, every dwelling-place of God, i.e. every Christian Church, is intended. On these, and on all Christian assemblies, there will rest a new presence of Godone which he will have “created;” recalling that of the pillar of fire and of cloud which rested in the wilderness on the Jewish tabernacle (Exo 33:9; Exo 40:34-38, etc.). A cloud and smoke by day. The “pillar of the cloud” is never said in the Pentateuch to have been one of” smoke;” but Sinai “smoked” when God descended on it (Exo 19:18; Exo 20:18), and the psalmist speaks of a “smoke” as issuing out of God’s nostrils (Psa 18:8). In the poetry of Isaiah,” smoke, no less than “cloud,” symbolizes God’s presence (see Isa 6:4). Upon all the glory shall be a defense; rather, as in the margin, a covering. Over all the glory of Zion, its purged temple and its purified assemblies, the presence of God shall rest like a canopy, protecting it.

Isa 4:6

And there shall be, etc.; rather, and it (i.e. “the canopy”) shall be a tabernacle, or bower, a shelter from the sun‘s heat by day, and from storm and rain both by day and night. The metaphors need no explanation.

HOMILETICS

Isa 4:2-6

The glories of the restored Church.

Three principal glories are here noted by the prophet as belonging to “that day”the day of judgment upon Judah and Jerusalem for their manifold sins, and of restoration and re-establishment of the mountain of God’s Church at the head of the mountains (Isa 2:2). These are

(1) the coming of Messiah in person for ornament and glory, for majesty and beauty, to be the admiration and delight of his people;

(2) the purity and holiness of the persons who constitute the restored Church; and

(3) the continuity of the presence of God with his Church from the time of its re-establishment, and the security consequent upon his protection. At all periods of its existence, the Church will do well to bear in mind that these are its special glories, and to make each a subject of frequent thought and meditation.

I. THE COMING OF MESSIAH TO FOUND HIS CHURCH LIES AT THE ROOT OF ALL. The glorious “Branch”the new shoot of the house of David (Isa 11:1)which sprang from the old stock, and grew up “like a tree planted by the water-side, which bringeth forth its fruit in due season, the leaf whereof shall not wither” (Psa 1:3), had first to come and to dwell with man, and to reveal himself, in his glory and majesty and beauty, as the perfect moral Being, the pattern Man, after whom all should shape their lives, before a holy Church, a Church of” saints,” could be set up on earth, or men could know in what true holiness and righteousness consisted. The “Branch” came, “beautiful and glorious, excellent and comely,” “the chiefest among ten thousand” (So Isa 5:10), “his eyes as the eyes of doves” (verse 12), “his lips dropping sweet-smelling myrrh” (verse13), “his countenance as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars, his mouth most sweet,” yea, he himself “altogether lovely” (verses 15, 16); and the earth saw what it had never seen beforeabsolutely perfect humanity. Nor was this the whole. He who set the perfect pattern made also the perfect atonement; “washed away the filth” of sin (Isa 4:4); “purified to himself a peculiar people” (Tit 2:14); made holiness possible to man, who was “very far gone from original righteousness,” corrupt, “sold under sin” (Rom 7:14). Thus the first glory fitly introduces the second.

II. THE HOLINESS OF THOSE WHO ARE TRUE MEMBERS OF HIS CHURCH, “Holiness becometh God’s house forever” (Psa 93:5); “Without holiness shall no man see the Lord” (Heb 12:14). Christians are holy by profession, by call, by obligation; if they will, by life and act. Not, indeed, holy in the highest sense; not as they ought to be; not “as he is holy” (1Pe 1:15); for “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1Jn 1:8). But still “holy“ in a real sense; ever striving to be holy, ever repenting, ever seeking and obtaining forgiveness, ever washed afresh in the blood of Christ, which “cleanseth from all sin” (1Jn 1:7). The unholy, who “persist in sin” without striving against it, are no true members of the Church of Christ, but false pretenders to membership, “strangers to Christ’s covenant, and aliens from his commonwealth” (Eph 2:12). The real Church is “holy,” as it is called in the Apostles’ Creed; deriving its holiness ever from him who is its Life, from whom it receives continually fresh supplies of grace, and fresh power to resist temptation. The holiness of the Church is thus dependent on the presence of God with it; and the second glory leads naturally to the consideration of the third.

III. THE CONTINUED PRESENCE OF GOD WITH HIS CHURCH, AND HIS CONTINUED PROTECTION OF IT. “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” is the most precious promise of the New Testament. Christ is with his Church

(1) in her sacred buildings, when common prayer is made (Mat 13:19) and sacraments are administered;

(2) in her synods, when doctrine is formulated and false teaching exposed and condemned (Mat 18:17); and

(3) in the secret chamber of each one of her members, when approach is made to the throne of grace, and confession poured forth or prayer offered to God through Christ. In this presence is the Church’s sole trust. Without it she would be powerless against the world, and against Satan. With it she may contemn all attacks. Satan can do her no harm, for “the gates of hell shall not prevail against her” (Mat 16:18). The world cannot hurt her, for he who is her Protector” has overcome the world” (Joh 16:33). Safe under his protection, nestling under the shadow of his wings, she is safe both by day and night; whether the scorching fire of persecution seeks her destruction, as in the early times, or whether, as now, the murky night of agnostic criticism closes around her and endeavors to affright her with its shadows.

HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON

Isa 4:2-6

Glimpse of future prosperity.

There will come a day when the cleansing fire will have run its course through the spiritual field, consuming the tares. The impurity of licentious luxury will have been washed away, the stain of blood effaced from Judah’s rulers (Isa 3:14; comp. Isa 1:25; Isa 6:13; Mat 3:11). Then, and then only, can the glorious day come in the vision of which the prophet exults.

I. NATIONAL CONDITIONS OF PROSPERITY. “The shoot of Jehovah will be for adornment and honor.” Erit germen Domini in magnificentia et gloria. The rich fertility of the land is compared to a new sprouting growth, caused by the creative energy of God. When the Spirit of God is felt to he operative in the life of a people, then, and then only, can its life be both strong and beautiful. See, again, this thought in Isa 28:5 : he will be as a “crown of glory and diadem of beauty” to the residue of his people. “Then shall he give the rain of thy seed, that thou shalt sow the ground withal; and bread of the increase of the earth, and it shall be fat and plenteous: in that day shall thy cattle feed in large pastures” (Isa 30:23). “In that day the mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth out of the house of Jehovah, and shall water the valley of Shittim” (Joe 3:18). “Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt They shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith Jehovah thy God” (Amo 9:13-15). “I will sow her unto me in the earth” (Hos 2:23). Glowing pictures! Israel’s golden age ever is in the future. And for all who “hope in God,” the “good old times,” the “Saturnian reign,” is coming again. Magnus ab integro sceclorum nascitur ordo. The hard oaks shall again sweat with the dewy honey; our sweetest dreams become a solid fact. “From me is thy fruit found” (Hos 14:8).

II. PERSOSAL CONDITIONS OF PROSPERITY. The one condition is personal holiness. “Every relict in Zion, and every one remaining in Jerusalem, will be called a saint; every one who has been written among the living in Jerusalem.” Profound thought! the holy man alone is the living man. Matter is death; spirit is exemption from the rule of matter. Holiness is victory over matterin its lower form, fleshly cleanliness; in its higher, the purity of self-consistent truth that will not mix with what is alien to itself.

III. VISIBLE GLORIES. Upon every home on Mount Zion, and every place of prayer, there will be the cloud by day, and the fume and splendor of flaming fire by night; over all the glory a protection. “Wherever there is true spiritual exaltation and majesty, there is around it a covering and protection which keeps the world away from it.” “There’s a divinity doth hedge a king.” We cannot constantly bear the splendor; we need the cool calm commonplaces of life to resort to when our eyes are wearied with the glare of highest truth. And we may find the “calm retreat, the silent shade” of religious life no less welcome than the mount of glory and of vision. From the storm and rain we may find a refuge in the “secret place of the Most High.”J.

HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON

Isa 4:1

Depopulation and its doctrine.

This passage belongs to the two concluding verses of the last chapter; but as it is the most striking of the three, we may allow it to be our starting-point in gleaning the thoughts which the whole scene suggests. These are

I. EXTREME DESOLATION WROUGHT IN THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF. GOD. The land is stripped by war of its male population (Isa 3:25); those who gather at the gates bewail the humiliation under which they smart, the privation to which they are reduced. “Her gates shall lament,” etc. (Isa 3:26). Jerusalem can no longer stand in her strength and honor; she is prostrate in weakness and in her shame; desolate, she sits upon the ground. Such is the havoc which war has made, that the virgin daughters of the land, instead of waiting modestly to be addressed, go out in numbers to find themselves husbands under any unnatural condition, so that the reproach of perpetual virginity and childlessness may be somehow removed (text). In the righteous rule of God, sin ends in utter desolation. It may be the history of the nation, as in this instance. Its stages are these: departure from the will and Word of God; luxury and corruption; effeminacy and weakness; strife and defeat; exile, poverty, loneliness, attempts to gratify hope and ambition by unnatural and pitiable methods. But this may be the experience of the individual. “Evil shall slay the wicked, and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate” (Psa 34:21). Sin is likely, if indeed it is not sure, to lead down to this sad estate. It manifests itself in folly and, through folly, conducts to loss, privation, loneliness, desolation. And the last scene of all is one like this of the text; it resorts to unnatural and wholly unsatisfactory means to fill its heart and restore its life.

II. A SIGNIFICANT PROVISION ORDERED IN THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD. The abnormal circumstance suggests the normal. In the absence of such a scourge as that of ward and for this our sin is entirely responsiblethere would be found to be a virtual equality in the number of the sexes. For nearly every son of man a daughter is born into the world. Surely this points to the Divine intention that man and wife should dwell together in bonds of conjugal affection. It places no stigma on single life, but it indicates the purpose of our kind Creator, that one human heart should comfort and sustain another, with reciprocated love and complementary succor, along the path of human life. It says to those who have ears to hear it that polygamy is not according to the Divine will; that the celibacy of a class, or order, or community is not of Divine appointment; that the home where one husband and one wife dwell in undisturbed and ever-deepening attachmentthe providing hand of the one clasping the dispensing hand of the otheris the realization of the Divine design.

III. AN HONORABLE INSTINCT PLANTED BY THE HAND OF GOD. Similar passages (Gen 30:23; 1Sa 1:6; Isa 54:1; Luk 1:25) suggest that the “reproach” which the women desired to have removed was that of childlessness rather than that of virginity. Jewish women, we know, earnestly desired to be mothers; they may have cherished the hope that of them the Messiah would be born. In any case it was an honorable ambition. The real reproach rests with those who wish to be childless that they may be saved the anxieties, responsibilities, and labors that devolve on the faithful mother. There cannot be a more desirable or excellent aspiration for the parent to indulge than that of so training her (his) children that they shall become men and women whom the Lord will love, and for whom the Church and nation will give thanks.C.

Isa 4:2-4

Restoration.

It is uncertain whether-there is a secondary allusion here to the coming of the Messiah; but it is certain that, in its primary sense, the passage refers to the condition of Judah after the return from exile. Treating it in this latter signification, we learn

I. THAT THE END OF DIVINE JUDGMENT IS HUMAN TRANSFORMATION. (Isa 4:4.) The Lord would “wash away the filth of the daughters of Zion by the spirit [or, ‘power’] of judgment.” It may be that the righteous Ruler, as such, is bound to make penalty follow sin, whatever may be the consequence to the individual transgressor. But it is clear that, in the exercise of his judicial function, God seeks moral and spiritual renovation. He desires that the nation (the man) which is humbled and afflicted, shall be purified by the fires through which it (he) is passing. In the midst of the flame the offender may hear the voice from above saying, “Put away thy sin; return unto me; enter a new path; live the better life of righteousness, purity, devotion”

II. THAT THE NEW AND BETTER LIFE WILL BE AN ESSENTIALLY HOLY ONE. (Isa 4:5.) “He that is left in Zion shall be called holy.” Whether by him “that is left in Zion” we are to understand those that were never carried into captivity, or those that have returned, is of no importance; the reference is to Jews who have undergone humiliation and suffering, and who have been cleansed and purified thereby. These shall be possessors of life in its excellency and reality”written among the living.” Before, existence was nothing but existence; enlarged and ennobled by “the spirit of judgment,” it has become Ire; and it “shall be called holy,” because it has become holy. After a genuine repentance (national or individual) there comes a profound and enduring sanctity of spirit and of life. Old sin is abhorred, strenuously striven against, sedulously shunned. New graces and virtues are carefully cultivated and daily illustrated (see 2Co 7:10, 2Co 7:11; Psa 51:7-11).

III. THAT THIS NEW LIFE WILL BE NOT ONLY ACCEPTABLE TO GOD, BUT EVEN ADMIRABLE IN HIS SIGHT. (Isa 4:4.) The “branch of the Lord” i.e. the outgrowth of piety from the fallen nation, shall be “beauty and glory;” the produce of the land (fruit of the earth), the worth which springs up from the restored nation, shall be excellency and ornamentation. The Holy One of Israel will not only accept the new national life thus presented to him; he wilt regard it with distinct, Divine satisfaction. And that which is pleasing in his sight will be attractive and excellent in the esteem of men. National and individual renovation is not only a thing which God accepts and acknowledges, worthy of our sanction; it is much more than that. It is beautiful, comely, even glorious. Here is:

1. Encouragement to the fallen. Let the nation, or the Church, or the individual soul which has fallen, which has felt the blow of the Divine hand, and which is understanding the Divine summons, rise and be renewed; there is a future before it of acceptable service, of beautiful and admirable excellency.

2. Inspiration for the devout worker. Let communities or let souls be reduced by sin and brought very low; let the judgment of God be heavy upon them; it is far from hopeless that they may rise again; from the fallen trunk may spring a living branch, beautiful to the sight and fruitful in every good word and work.C.

Isa 4:5, Isa 4:6

Divine protection.

In strong, poetic terms the prophet intimates

I. THAT GOD TAKES A DIVINE PLEASURE IN HIS PEOPLE. We know from other Scriptures that the Lord’s portion is his people (Exo 19:5; Deu 32:9; Psa 47:4). Here the people of God are spoken of as “the glory” of the Lord (Isa 4:5). There are aspects in which it must appear to us the extreme point of Divine condescension to use such terms of his redeemed ones. But there are other aspects in which we can see that they are not altogether inappropriate. God’s ancient people were, and his regenerated children are, the witnesses and instances of his glorious redemption. Redeemed from political or spiritual bondage, they rejoice in a blessed freedom; raised from dark depths of misery and despair, they sing the psalms of joy and hope; purged from vanity and folly, they walk in the ascending path of heavenly wisdom.

II. THAT GOD PROMISES HIS PEOPLE HIS DIVINE PROTECTION. “Upon all the glory shall be a defense.” As in the old desert days the tribes of Israel were led by the pillar of cloud by day and all the night by a pillar of fire, so shall the Divine Leader guide his people in the path which is still before them (Isa 4:5). From the burning heat and from the pelting storm there shall be found a covert for those who put their trust in him. God’s promised defense extends:

1. To his people in their various relationships; whether gathered in the family “dwelling-place,” or met in their sacred “assemblies,” or, we may add, whether journeying in that solitariness of spirit with which we must all. be familiar (Gal 6:5) along the path of life;that is, in their domestic, ecclesiastical, and individual relations.

2. To his people in the checkered experiences of their career. God will be their defense from

(1) the perils peculiar to prosperity (pride, selfishness, contemptuousness, worldliness, etc.)there shall be “a shadow in the daytime from the heat;” and

(2) the dangers incident to adversity (sullenness, rebelliousness, moroseness, despair, etc.)there shall be “a covert from storm and from rain.”

III. THAT THESE DIVINE PROMISES ARE CONDITIONAL ON OUR CONTINUED OBEDIENCE AND BELIEVING PRAYER. God speaks peace unto his people, “but let them not turn again to folly” (Psa 85:8; see Eze 33:13). The Divine promise proved good in this particular instance just so long and so far as the conditions which were implied were faithfully observed. God’s promises are “exceeding great and precious,” and we may “live thereby,” if we will. But we must not fail

(1) to walk in the way of his commandments, nor

(2) to plead his Word in expectant prayer; if we do, we shall fail to enjoy in its fullness the defense of the “almighty arms.”C.

HOMILIES BY R. TUCK

Isa 4:1

Immortality in a continued race.

“Take thou away our reproach.” This verse has been much misconceived. Its figures are Eastern, and their interpretation depends on our knowledge of the condition and sentiments of Eastern women. It is simply a forcible description of the calamities brought upon a nation by continued war. The men were to fall by the sword; and the slaughter was to be so great that the number of women should far exceed the number of men who should survive. Now, to be unmarried and childless is an occasion of the greatest reproach in the East; from the Jewish standpoint this was not only a great sorrow, but a great shame, implying, as was then thought, some sin of which it was the chastisement. And there was a yet deeper sentiment concerning childlessness which needs to be taken into account. Immortality was, in those older days, thought of as a family rather than a personal privilege. A man lived on, lived again, in his descendants. LaRuge says, “In its most ancient parts the Old Testament knows no other genuine life than that on this earth, and thus no other continuation of living after death than by means of children. To be childless was, then, the same as being deprived of continuance after death. It corresponded to the being damned of the New Testament.” In their distress and wretchedness the young women who had minced and flirted through Jerusalem with their gay clothing and fine trinkets, contrary to their natural modesty, would become suitors to the men, and under the hardest conditions seek the name and credit of wedlock, to be free from the reproach that would otherwise be their portion. Kimchi, the Jewish commentator, says this happened in the days of Ahaz, when Pekah, the son of Remaliah, slew in Judaea one hundred and twenty thousand men in one day. The widows which were left were so numerous that the prophet said, “Their widows are increased to me above the sand of the seas” (Jer 15:8). The idea that man’s immortality is the continuance of the race has been revived and set attractively before the people in modern poetry and literature; and though it is only a small piece of the truth concern-inn man’s future, a mere beginning in the revelation of man’s immortality, we need not hesitate to recognize it as a partial truth, and to set before ourselves those views of the responsibility of our present lives which it suggests. We know that “life and immortality” for the individual have been “brought to light by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ,” and in this failer and higher and more satisfying revelation we heartily rejoice; but still we may learn something by occupying for a moment the older standpoint.

I. THE IMMORTALITY OF A NATION IS ITS PERMANENCY AS A FREE PEOPLE. This is illustrated by the anxiety of Eastern kings to secure heirs to their thrones and continuance to their dynasties. Divine judgments cut off kingly races, as that of Saul, Omri, etc. Divine promises assured that David’s and Solomon’s kingdoms should endure forever. Nations, as such, have no immortality in a future state.

II. THE IMMORTALITY OF A GENERATION IS ITS REPRODUCTION IN SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS. “One generation passeth, and another cometh,” and in a very true sense the next generation is the old one restored, under somewhat varying conditions. The genius of a generation is immortal only in the generations that follow it.

III. THE IMMORTALITY OF A MAN IS THE FAMILY HE STARTS. This explains the ambition to “found a family,” which is not merely man’s monument, but the man himself living again, and living on through the ages. He puts his personal impress upon his children, and the children’s children keep alive the idiosyncrasy of the parent. Illustrate from the Abrahamic race, which is, in a sense, the immortality of Abraham.

IV. THE PRACTICAL BEARING OF SUCH A VIEW OF IMMORTALITY. It fills with seriousness the position of all parents. “What manner of persons ought they to be,” if they are thus to be perpetuated? A nation must be righteous if it is to be worth continuing. A generation must be physically and morally healthy, if its impress on the coming generations is to be a blessing. The father, the mother, must bear pure, true, worthy characters if their family is to be an honor. He who seeks an immortality in his race is bound to see to it that he only perpetuates goodness, integrity, truth, faith, and all things that are noble. From this lower position the preacher may easily advance to argue how much more solemn life has become for us now that nobler views of the future are revealed by him who came forth out of the eternal mysteries, and has passed again within them, that we might henceforth read our earth-lives in the light of that sublime personal immortality which he has disclosed.R.T.

Isa 4:2

The Divine and human Messiah.

This verse has been explained as a promise merely of the renewed fertility of the earth in God’s day of restorings. That explanation is not, however, deep enough. It does not recognize how characteristic it was of the ancient prophets to refer to local and historical circumstances while their minds soared away to those Messianic pictures, which local incidents only suggested. The constant thought of the prophets was the ideal age and ideal person of Messiah, anti we are right in detecting the expression of that thought everywhere, This verse may be regarded as introducing the person by whom the Church is to be delivered and saved; and the terms employed appear to bear an intimation of his Divine and human natures. The figure of the” Branch” suggests his divinity (comp. Jer 23:5; Jer 33:15; Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12). The figure “fruit of the earth “suggests his humanity. That this may have been the thought of the prophet is indicated by the adjectives which are used. “Beautiful and glorious” are adjectives of admiration applied to Messiah, regarded as the “Branch.” “Excellent and comely” are adjectives of appreciation and relation to us, and are applied to him regarded as the “fruit of the earth.”

I. THE DIVINE MESSIAH CAN BE A SUFFICIENT REVEALER OF GOD. Illustrate from the way in which our Lord constantly urged that he only spoke the words given him by the Father, and only did the works of the Father.

II. THE HUMAN MESSIAH CAN BE IN SYMPATHY WITH MEN. Illustrate the “High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” In view of the troubles and distresses which Isaiah pictures, and which Messiah is to rectify, it is evident that he must he divinely strong if he is to master, heal, recover, cleanse, and bring on restored blessings; and it is equally evident that he must be human, to sympathize with and come helpfully near to those whom he would bless and save.R.T.

Isa 4:3

The roll of the living.

“Every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem.” For the figure of “Jehovah’s book,” or the “book of life,” see Exo 32:32; Psa 56:8; Psa 69:28; Mal 3:16; Dan 12:1; Php 4:3; Rev 13:8; Rev 21:27. Matthew Henry says, “Those that are kept alive in killing, dying times were written for life in the book of Divine providence; and shall we not suppose those who are rescued from a greater death to be such as were written in the Lamb’s book of life?” We have a further description of them, which really explains their being on the roll; they are “called holy.” Now, God never calls people what they are not. In olden times names were always significant, and expressed the personality to which they were applied; thus Jacob was called Israel, because he was a “prince.” We have, then, two answering views of the godly man. Here he is “holy;” in heaven his name is in the “book of the living.” Following this out in a meditative way, we dwell on

I. THE BELIEVER‘S PRESENT CHARACTER. In some sense he is “holy,” for God calls him “holy.” Illustrate the following senses in which we may be called “holy,” even while we tarry amidst the human frailties:

1. Holy, as separated from self-service and the world’s service.

2. Holy, as consecrated to God’s service.

3. Holy, as called to pursue holiness.

4. Holy, as in some measure actually holy.

5. Holy, as standing, in the holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

II. THE BELIEVER‘S ETERNAL SECURITY. Name is among the living ones. Illustrate:

1. The necessary permanence of all goodness. Evil can die; good can never die. Eternal life is in everything and every one who is good.

2. God rewards holiness with immortality. That is the “crown of life.” Upon all goodness God’s special favor and protection rests.

3. The holy are the natural citizens of the heavenly, which is the secure eternal home. How, then, can our names be written in the book of life? Illustrate

(1) the way of regeneration;

(2) the way of consecration;

(3) the way of sanctification.

If, through grace, we are numbered among the holy here, then one day the great voice will speak to us out of the heavenly and say, “He that is holy, let him be holy still.”R.T.

Isa 4:4

Christ’s purified Church.

We are often addressing the truths revealed in Christ Jesus to the individual, but perhaps we unduly neglect their bearings on the Church as a whole which Christ has founded in the earth; those relations in which Christ himself stands to the Church, as the kingdom over which he is now actually ruling. It would be well for us distinctly to apprehend this truth, that the gospel only completes its work when, having renewed the individuals, it has also brought them into a fellowship of love and service one with another. The revelation which is made in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is a revelation of our common sonship to God, and so of our common brotherhood one with the other. We can only reach to feel or to keel) the fall joy of our sonship through realizing and living out day by day our brotherhood. The best brothers are the best sons,

I. SOME DESCRIPTIONS OF CHRIST‘S CHURCH are given us in the passage now before us. The Church is composed of those who are “escaped of Israel;” those, that is, who have come out from the world, and are separate; who have escaped through the rescuings of Divine mercy; who have been “plucked as brands from the burning.” The bond uniting them together, and securing upon them the Divine blessing, is no personal peculiarity, no extraordinary goodness or attainment of their own. It is not that they, differing from all others, have been without sin, but that the Lord has redeemed them from sin; the mark of the Lord’s rescue must be upon them all. They are the left ones, the preserved ones, the escaped ones, the monuments of Divine mercy. But the description should keep us from a serious mistake. They are not merely delivered ones; they are escaped ones, that word conveying the idea that their own energy has been put forth, their own will was in the escape. The hand of the angel was indeed upon them, but they also themselves hasted forth, and fled from the spiritual Sodom.

II. The text describes the CHARACTER OF CHRIST‘S CHURCH. “Shall be called holy.” The name thus put upon the Church is that of its most necessary and distinguishing quality. The term does not imply that each member has attained this holiness, but that each one has it in his heart as his great aim, and makes it, in his daily life, his great pursuit. “God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.” We are “called to be saints,” and the central idea of holiness is not absolute purity, but separation from sin, and unto God; separation from the world, from self-seeking, self-indulgence, self-serving, from all forms and features of evil; and separation unto everything that is righteous and lovely and of good report. This, then, is to be the one distinction of the members of Christ’s Churchthe one thing which they are to maintain by their union together; their consecration unto God to the doing of his will; the choosing of what he will approve; the following whithersoever he may lead. The man who thus, in heart and life, is set on God, is in his measure a holy man, a saint. The Church which, in its collected life and labor, is thus set on God, is also in its measure a holy Church, made up of “saints and faithful brethren in Christ Jesus.” The members of Christ’s Church may properly be described as “a peculiar people.” Not odd, but peculiar; as an angel from heaven would be if he dwelt among men; peculiar, as Christ was when he went to and fro among the people of Judaea. Nowadays we too often find the Church striving to rub away all the marks of her peculiarity. The question asked by those who have been “called to be saints” isHow near may we go towards the world? To what extent may we yield to its enticements? What of common earthly luxury and self-indulgence may we have without absolutely imperiling our eternal safety? While the Church asks such questions even in secret, and by its conduct and spirit rather than by its language, it is proved to be fallenand fallingfrom the Divine standard. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.”R.T.

Isa 4:4-6

Christ’s gracious dealings with his Church.

In this passage they are presented under three forms:

(1) as cleansings,

(2) as guidings,

(3) as preservings.

I. CHRIST IS EVER WORKING WITH A VIEW TO THE CLEANSING AND PURIFYING OF HIS CHURCH, so that it might be presented at last “a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” That work of cleansing demands more constant watchful-fullness, care, and toil than we are wont to imagine. It requires that the Church, as a Church, shall pass again and again under Divine chastenings. We recognize how much the Lord does for us, as individuals, by the perplexities and disappointments and sorrows of our lives, but we do not so readily or so fully admit that such experiences are also needed for our Churches. Uninterrupted prosperities as surely imperil the life of the Christian Church as of the Christian man. Indulgences in sin hurt Churches. The neglect of Church duties, the spirit of idle contentment, growing tendency to self-satisfaction, disregard of holy living, and the encroachments of the worldly spirit, all hurt and spoil the Church. Under the influence of such things the light of the Church will as surely wax dim as the candle in a foul atmosphere; the witness of the Church will become fainter than a whisper; the unity of the Church will be broken up, and its work will lie about it untouched, The descriptions of the seven Churches of Asia given in the Book of Revelation accurately present the conditions into which Churches still fall. Losing their first love. Yielding to the enticements of the world. Weakened by false doctrine. Deadened by the evil influence of unworthy members. Proud of outward prosperities. Lukewarm in Christian service. Surely the hope of the Church lies in thisChrist is willing to be in the midst of her in the power of his cleansing, correcting, and restoring grace, and he is actually dealing with her as a spirit of purifying. He is ever washing away the fast-gathering “filth of the daughters of Jerusalem, and the blood of her sins from the midst thereof.” In accomplishing this work of cleansing, it may sometimes be needful that our Lord should deal severely. The operations of his grace will sometimes appear as a “spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning.”

II. OUR LORD ALSO DEALS WITH HIS CHURCH WITH A VIEW TO ITS GUIDANCE AND INSTRUCTION. He would have his people grow in grace and wisdom and knowledge, reaching ever further into the mysteries of revealed truth, and making ever holier and wiser expressions of their renewed spirit in all the spheres of their life and activity. Journeying through the wilderness of this world, through the wilderness of truths, and through the wilderness of Christian duties Christ is ever near now, as he was in the olden days to wandering Israel. Then a cloud-pillar, looking dark against the bright sky by day, and flashing out like flame against the dark sky by night, kept Israel in mind of its ever-present Guide. [Now, without the help of such outward symbols, in inward manifestations to trustful hearts, Christ reveals his presence as our Shepherd, leading us on, now into scenes of conflict, now up paths that are rough and stony, and sometimes into “the green pastures, and beside the still waters.” The power of a Church to hold fast the” truth once delivered unto the saints, “and yet to receive whatever new forms of truth God may be pleased to unfold from his Word, lies in this presence of Christ with his Church, as a Teacher and Guide, as a “spirit of judgment.”

III. CHRIST DEALS WITH HIS CHURCH WITH A VIEW TO ITS PRESERVATION AND ITS DEFENCE. He not only cleanses and teaches, he also keeps. “Upon all her glory shall be a defense.” We may lovingly submit to all his chastenings and corrections, for over all the glory of his cleansing shall be his defense. It shall never be destructive. We shall be kept through it all. We may wait on all Divine teachings, and go forth to all Christian duties; perils may be round about us, but over all the glory of his guiding there shall be a defense. God shall keep us safely. His “mountains are round about Jerusalem from henceforth, and even forevermore.” He does not mean by his dealings to remove the candlestick out of his place, only to make the flame burn clearer and brighter. He is but keeping it safe until the great time of removals, when it may take its place, and shine forever among the lamps of the heavenly sanctuary.R.T.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Isa 4:1. And in that day We have in this verse the consequence of the preceding evil. The prophet declares, that the war and captivity shall make such a prodigious scarcity in the male sex, that seven women shall be glad to apply to a single man for protection, preservation, and marriage: and importune him, though contrary to the natural modesty of their sex, to consent to take away their reproach; for not barrenness only, but a single state also, was reckoned opprobrious among the Jews. See Psa 78:63. The emphasis and gradation of this verse are strong and remarkable. From the history of the times, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, we learn, that the sword and the Babylonish captivity had very much thinned Judaea of men. See 2Ch 36:17 and Vitringa.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

B.The judgment upon the godless women

Isa 3:16 to Isa 4:1

16Moreover the Lord saith,

Because the daughters of Zion are haughty,
And walk with stretched forth necks
And 1wanton eyes,

Walking and 2mincing as they go,

And making a tinkling with their feet:

17Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab

The crown of the head of the daughters of Zion,
And the Lord will 3discover their secret parts.

18In that day the Lord will take away

The bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet,

And their 4cauls, and their round tires like the moon,

19The 5chains, and the bracelets, and the 6mufflers,

20The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands,

And the 7tablets, and the earrings,

21The rings, and nose jewels,

22The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles,

And the wimples, and the crisping pins,

23The glasses, and the fine linen,

And the hoods, and the veils.

24And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell, there shall be stink;

And instead of a girdle, a rent;
And instead of well set hair, baldness;
And instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth;

And burning, instead of beauty.

25Thy men shall fall by the sword,

And thy 8mighty in the war.

26And her gates shall lament and mourn;

And she being9 10desolate shall sit upon the ground.

Isa 4:1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying,

We will eat our own bread,
And wear our own apparel:
Only 11let us be called by thy name,

12To take away our reproach.

[For the different renderings of the commentator see the comment itself. On the importance of them see J. A. As note on Isa 3:18 below.Tr.]

Exegetical And Critical

1. This section, too, has for its subject an event that cannot possibly coincide with the last judgment to which 2, refers. For that great day, the last of all, will not have to do with a mere sinking down from the heights of luxury and pride to the plane of poverty; it will not treat of the exchange of a girdle for a rope, of a mantle for a sack, nor of a defeat in war, nor of mournful sitting on the ruins of the city; there will be nothing said of wives wanting nothing beside the prop of a man. For in that day all will be over; the old world generally shall be out and out destroyed in order to make room for a new. Thus this section, too, makes the impression of being some declaration, meant originally to serve some special object, but inserted here in order to complete the grand picture of the future in this particular aspect. The Prophet had occasion once, and this may likely have been in the days of Uzziah or Jotham, to declare himself against the irruption of pomp of dress and luxury. This declaration, or at least a part of it, he pieces in here to his comprehensive prophecy of judgment. And he may do this. For whenever this denunciation against the arrogance of woman may have been fulfilled, such fulfilment always constitutes a part of the great whole of judgment which is to be completed with the judgment of the last day. The Prophet assumes in the prophecy that stands at the head (Isa 2:2-4), that Israel itself, too, must be subjected to a judgment. For only by a great process of refining can the mountain of Jehovah rise to the height which, according to Isa 2:2, it must attain, and only when Zion itself is full of the Spirit of God can it become the embodied ideal for all nations. How this refining is to take place in every respect and at different times is described in what follows up to Isa 4:1. In this description the Prophet makes use also of older utterances, which were perhaps too short to appear independently, and that might more suitably be joined in just here than elsewhere. Thus there was a section of this sort that referred to the men, Isa 3:1 sqq.; so now, too, we have one that has the women for a theme. The connecting formula, and Jehovah said, favors the view that this is a joined on piece. It would be quite superfluous if the discourse proceeded from one mould. Comp. on this the comment on Isa 3:16. The order of thought is as follows: The luxurious pride of the women, too, shall be humbled (Isa 3:16-17). In the day that this shall happen all their splendid garments shall be taken from them (Isa 3:18-23) and replaced by wretched ones to correspond (Isa 3:24). Their husbands, too, they shall lose in a brief space (Isa 3:25), lamenting and desolated, they shall sit in the gates (Isa 3:26); yea, their want shall be so great that seven women shall attach themselves to one man, without demanding support from him, only thereby to escape the misfortune of being unmarried (Isa 4:1).

[On Isa 3:16 sqq. The Prophet here resumes the thread which had been dropped or broken at the close of Isa 3:12, and recurs to the undue predominance of female influence, but particularly to the prevalent excess of female luxury, not only as sinful in itself but as a chief cause of the violence and social disorder previously mentioned, and therefore to be punished by disease, widowhood, and shameful exposure. These two verses (16, 17), like the sixth and seventh, form one continued sentence. And Jehovah said (in addition to what goes before, as if beginning a new section of the prophecy), because the daughters of Zion (the women of Jerusalem, with special reference to those connected with the leading men, etc.)J. A. A.

On Isa 3:18. As in other cases where a variety of detached particulars are enumerated simply by their names it is now very difficult to identify some of them. This is the less to be regretted, as the main design of the enumeration was to show the prevalent extravagance in dress, an effect not wholly dependent on an exact interpretation of the several items. The interest of the passage in its details is not exegetical but arch-ological.J. A. A.

On Isa 3:26. The gates of Ziou are said to mourn, by a rhetorical substitution of the place of action for the agent, or because a place filled with cries seems itself to utter them. She is described, not as lying, but as sitting on the ground. So on one of Vespasians coins, a woman is represented in a sitting posture, leaning against a palm-tree, with the legend Juda Capta.J. A. A.]

2. Moreover the Lordsecret parts.

Isa 3:16-17. The formula and the Lord saith occurs in Isaiah on the whole, relatively not often. It occurs in all thirty-two times; of these, sixteen times in the historical chapters 3639, where it indicates the actual exchange of words in conversation. Beside that, it is only employed where the Lord appears actually speaking, and speaks of Himself in the first person (comp. Isa 23:12; Isa 29:13; Isa 49:3; Isa 49:6; Isa 63:8). But in our passage Jehovah is immediately spoken of again in the third person. The Lord will smite, the Lord will uncover Isa 3:17. Moreover, in what follows, the Lord Is not introduced again as speaker. It is thus seen that by this formula what follows is only marked as Gods word so far as its contents are concerned, and not formally so. But as this is self-evident, it is further plain, that the formula is meant to serve as a transition, a link, a means of uniting. We recognize, therefore, in it a sign that here is a piece of an address, already on hand, that has been skilfully strung on here. As in Isa 2:11 it was said that all lofty looks shall be humbled and all haughtiness of men be bowed down, so the Prophet here with entire justice declares that also feminine arrogance must expect its share in this judgment. Are proud, etc., stands, therefore, in direct relation with the entire section Isa 2:6-17. What is said there in general of riches (Isa 3:7), of arrogance and haughtiness (Isa 3:11-12; Isa 3:17) of works of splendour (Isa 3:16), has its special application to the proud display of the women. But our passage stands in still closer connection with supportress Isa 3:1. We showed there that this expression points to the second half of this chapter where the women are spoken of. That these, too, are called supports, staffs, refers evidently to the fact that women, even in the commonwealth of Israel, played a considerable part. Let it be remembered that the Book of Kings expressly names the mother of each king. Individual women are designated as enjoying political influence in a high degree; Deborah (Judges 4); Bathsheba (1 Kings 1); Jezebel (1Ki 16:31 sqq.); Athaliah (2 Kings 11). We are expressly informed that Solomons wives had a bad influence over him (1Ki 11:3 sqq.). As long as a regular king ruled there must be a womans court household. If there were none such. then there would be surely no king. How closely kingdom and harem hung together, may be seen from the fact that the possession of the harem obtained as a sign that the royal dignity had been received. Therefore Absalom lay publicly with the coucubines of his father (2Sa 16:21). David, too, inherited the wives of Saul, and this is related in a connection (2Sa 12:8) that leads us to conclude that the fact must have been important to the recognition of Davids succession to the throne being a rightful one. Adonijah, after Davids death, begs for the hand of Abishag the Shunamite, and we see from Solomons reply that he regarded this request as an attempt to use the possession of the concubine as a step to the throne (1Ki 2:22). Comp. Michaelis,Mos. Recht, I. p. 207. Saalschuets,Das Mos. Recht, p. 85. According to this the harem was, in some measure, a political institution, an attribute of royalty as such, and in so far in a special sense a support of the life of the state. Yet if Isaiah here has especially in mind the royal ladies, that does not exclude the other noble and proud women from a share in his reproachs.

In the imperfect with vav. consec. is not necessarily to be construed as aorist. The word is . The root even does not again occur in all the Old Testament. The Aramaic may be most suitable to compare here, which means intueri, conspicari. The Piel then may have the meaning blinking, winking: stands in the accusat., like . There is indeed a that means to color, to paint, whence also, the Chald., Abarbanel and others express this idea (Luther: with painted faces). But the custom of painting the eye-brows black is so universal a custom or the Orient, that it has been justly objected, Isaiah would hardly have spoken out against it. Moreover the rest of the reproachful expressions relate to bodily gestures. Buxtorfin Lex. Chald., Talm, et Rabb., p. 1542 cites the talmudic dictum: Non creavit deus mulierum ex capite Adami, ne caput suum nimium ornaret and efferret; negue ex oculo, ne esset, oculis omnia observans.Hitzig, justly cites Plaut. Aulul. I. 1, Isaiah 2 : circumspectatrix cum oculis tuis emissiciis, although this is spoken of an old tramp with thievish propensities. Also (from which Toppler, Tripler, Child) is . . The tripping short steps are the necessary consequences of the step-chains which were fastened by means of a ring (, Isa 3:18, again only in Pro 7:22) surrounding the leg above the ankle joint. The little chains themselves were called Isa 3:20. The verb , which occurs only here, is denominative. According to the context the meaning can be nothing else than; rattling the rings to make a noise, to clink. Comp. HerzogsR. Encycl. VII. p. 731. As chastisement for such arrogance the daughters of Zion shall be punished with disgraceful disorders. Their proud head shall become scurfy, covered with scabs, thus loathsomely unclean (Lev 13:2; Lev 13:6-8; Lev 14:56). , (which, written with , occurs here only), is according to some a denominative from ,, scab. scurf (vid. Lev 13:14) Still it is possible means, to make flow, suppurate, and thus deprive of the hair, and that, so derived, means the fluid scab or scurf. Comp., at Isa 37:30. Their shame, to whose impure pleasure those luxurious gestures were meant to minister, shall be disgracefully exposed (Isa 47:3; Jer 13:22; Jer 13:26; Eze 16:37, etc.). The singular (from , , pat-ere) occurs only here; the plural 1Ki 7:50 of the cardo femina from an obvious resemblance. (from which and loca nuda (Isa 19:7) which does not occur in the Kal, means nudum esse, hence Piel to make bare, (in Isaiah again only Isa 22:6); Hiphil, (because what has been hitherto concealed, when it is laid bare, is at the same time poured out) effundere, (Isa 53:12), Niphal, effundi (Isa 32:15).

Without excluding the literal rendering of Isa 3:17, we may still construe the language first in an inexact sense and generalize it. In the day of judgment loathsome uncleanness shall take the place of the splendor of Zions daughters; disgrace and shame the place of their prond display. The Prophet has in this expressed something in general which he proceeds to specify in what follows. Feminine interest revolves chiefly around two poles: the decking out of the body and the surrender of the body to the husband; therefore about dress and husbands. Therefore the disgrace of the daughters of Zion in what follows is portrayed in these two respects. And first it is shown of what they shall be deprived in the way of dress (Isa 3:18-23), and what shall be given them instead (Isa 3:24).

3. In that dayinstead of beauty.

Isa 3:18-24 In that day, refers back immediately to Isa 3:17. But we showed above that not the day of the last judgment is meant here, but only a prelude to it, which, of course, however, combines with the last judgment to make a unity of divine world-judgment. In that day, then, the Lord will take away the adornment (). All that follows is summed up-under this word. The word is found often in both parts of Isa 4:2; Isa 10:12; Isa 13:19; Isa 44:13; Isa 52:1; Isa 62:3; Isa 63:14, etc.). Concerning the comp., at Isa 3:16. Concerning the there are two views held. From Schroeder down a number of expositors (Rosenmueller, Winer, Ewald, Knobel, Drechsler) have taken the word for a kindred form of the Arabic schumeisa (diminutive of schems, the sun), the letters m and b being interchanged, as is common between these two kindred letters: Schroeder proves, besides, from Theoph,hist. pl. IX. 4 and Plin. H. N. XII. 14, to have been a name of the sun among the Arabians. The meaning then would be little suns i.e., a metallic ornament shaped like a sun. That would suit very well to the following , crescents, as generally to the words that precede and follow, all of which designate metal ornaments. In as much as in the following list occur several expressions borrowed from the Arabic (comp. Drechsler on Isa 2:6), and this word in Hebrew is ., and even the root does not again occur, so that word and thing both appear to be of foreign origin, I prefer this view. The other view takes in the sense of and (Aram,) plectere, to braid, and therefore, for opus reticulatum (LXX ) network. hair net: (Delitzsch, ribbons for the forehead worn underneath the hair net, and braided of gold or silver thread: Buxtorf, Lex. Chald., p. 2315, Ornamentum, etc., a peculiar ribbon ornament, extending in front from one ear to the other). The are lunul, , moonshaped, or rather half-moon shaped decorations. They are mentioned Jdg 8:21; Jdg 8:26 as neck ornaments of camels. That they had a moon shape appears from this, that sahro in the Syriac, schahr in the Arabic mean the moon. Here, too, therefore word and thing are certainly of foreign origin. is a diminutive ending, comp. ; Ewald 167, a. (Jdg 8:26) from to drop (comp. Exo 30:34, dropping resin, and Job 36:27) are a drop shaped ornament, as they were likely worn as pendants from the ears (ear drops). (. ,) from torquere, to twist, is torques, a collar, chain, not for the neck, however, but an armlet, bracelet, as is to be seen from the dialects. Onkelos,e.g., translates, Gen 24:22; Gen 24:30; Gen 24:47, the Hebrew word (the proper word for bracelet for the arm) by . Comp., too, and chainsExod. Isa 28:14; Isa 28:22. (. ) from to tremble, wave, are veils, and that, as appears, of a costly kind: viz.Herzog,R. Encycl. VII. p. 728. are diadems, tiar., that are also elsewhere named as part of the head ornament of the priesthood (Exo 39:28; Eze 44:18), or of the dress of a bridegroom (Isa 61:10). What part of the head covering or what sort, is not clear. from , to march, pace, on account of the etymology seems most naturally to mean the step chains (comp. on , Isa 3:16). But 2Sa 5:24 and 1Ch 14:15, where the word occurs, it seems to mean the stepping, walking along; and Num 31:50; 2Sa 1:10 designates arm bands, arm clasps, as one sees clearly in 2Sa 1:10 from the . Hence many expositors, both old and new, (among the last, Ewald), translate arm clasps. And yet it is only that has this meaning. The circumstance that occurs twice in the sense of walking along is no obstacle to its meaning step-chainlets. For the abstract word could easily be taken in a concrete sense; the walking in the sense of the instrument of walking. from to bind) are, according to Jer 2:32, comp. Isa 49:18, mentioned as pieces of a brides outfit. But whether the girdle is meant or bandages (perhaps the breastband, LXX. in Jer 2:32) is uncertain. are smelling bottles. For often stands for receptacle, place of storage generally (comp. Exo 26:29; Job 8:17; Eze 41:9, and for the very common use of this word in Aram, and Rabb. language, see Buxtorf, Lex. p. 301 sqq.). , however is breath, scent (comp. Niphal respirare, to breathe out, Exo 23:12; Exo 31:17. . fragrant wood, Pro 27:9; and the original passage Gen 1:20; Gen 1:30; Job 41:13). The expression occurs only here (comp. Isa 3:3; Isa 26:16) are instruments of magic, amulets. from , imprimere, is the ring, generally, and especially the signet ring. Comp. Gen 41:42; Exo 25:12; Exo 25:14, and many places beside in Exodus. are the nose rings which are in use in the East to the present day. Comp. Pro 11:22; Eze 16:12; WinerR. W. B. the word, nose-ring.

So far the prophet has named articles of embellishment made of metal. In what follows he chiefly enumerates articles of clothing proper.The , according to Zec 3:4, are such as are the opposite of filthy garments, therefore stately, splendid clothes. According to the fundamental meaning (, extrahere, exuere) they are clothes that one takes off at home, comp. . The expression appears to be one of general meaning, and occurs only here, and in the passage cited from Zech. (properly covers, from operire) are mentioned only here. The word in Arabic signifies the second tunic, broader, longer and provided with sleeves, that corresponds to the Roman stola, the garment peculiar to women. from expandere (Isa 48:13) is the great wide over all, shawl (Rth 3:15, the only place beside that the word occurs). is found beside only 2Ki 5:23, from which place it is seen that it means a bag or pocket that may serve to carry money., according to LXX. would be , i.e., Lacedmonian gauze dresses that expose the body more than cover it. But , Isa 8:1, is the smooth, polished tablet. Such served for mirrors, as the ancients knew nothing of glass mirrors. Travellers assure us that such mirrors in the form of small plates set in a ring are worn to this day. Comp. Herzog,R. Encycl. XIV., p. 666. are , i.e., garments of fine India linen. It is debated whether undergarments, such as shirts, are meant, or some sort of light thing to throw over one. The word is found again Jdg 14:12 sq.; Pro 31:24. (from , tegere, velare) are the head-band, turban. The word bands, turbans, occurs Isa 62:3; Job 29:14; Zec 3:5. (from spread, spread under, spread out, Isa 45:1; Psa 144:2; 1Ki 6:32) is the wide veil that covered over the rest of the clothes (Arab, rida ridat) Son 5:7.But not only shall all adornment, Isa 3:18, be taken away, they shall also be replaced by worse things. Instead of , balsam, (product of the balsam bush, vid.Exo 30:23; Eze 27:22; 1Ki 10:10) shall be given. This latter word is only found again Isa 5:24, where, however, it is written , which has no effect on the meaning. The root , diffluere is used of the flowing of matter from a wound; e. g.Psa 38:6. seems therefore rather to mean matter than the dry decay. In place of (apron, Gen 3:7; girdle, Isa 32:11; 1Ki 2:5) shall be a rope, . The word is . . There is conflict regarding the meaning. Some derive it from percutere, to strike (Isa 10:34; Isa 17:6) and take it in the sense of vulnus (so the Chald. and the most of the Jewish expositors). But this meaning does not well suit the context. It is better to derive it from =circuire, gyrare, circle, gyrate (see Isa 29:1; Hiphil ). would be, then, feminine of or =turning around, i. e., that resulting from twisting. Delitzsch derives it from , contorquere, but this does not occur in biblical idiom, which uses only , to contract, congeal.

Instead of the artistically curled hair, shall baldness be given. (. .,) in apposition with is synonymous with Exo 25:18; Exo 25:31; Exo 25:36; Jer 10:5, opus tornatile, twisted, turned work. Baldness, compare 2Ki 2:23; for women it is doubly disgraceful. And instead of a splendid mantle, shall be given a girding of sackcloth. , . ., is of uncertain derivation and meaning. Expositors waver between the derivation from amplum esse, with affix (like from ) and that from distance, festival joy, and between the meanings fascia pectoralis (Vulg.) and broad mantle; yet the grammatical and hermeneutical grounds for the latter overbalance. , too, is . . Girding with sackcloth, as is known, is often mentioned as sign of the deepest mourning and humiliation: Gen 37:34, Isa 15:3; Isa 22:12; Jer 6:26, &c.

The conclusion of this list of mournful exchanges is made by the phrase: Branding for beauty. The words are strange. They appear disjointed and unsymmetrical. For , and, is wanting which connects all the preceding members, and thus this small member of the sentence stands independent, and by its inversion (the thing given stands first) in contrast with all that goes before. It appears to me as if the prophet recalled a passage of the law wherein a number of exchanges or recompenses are defined by means of the preposition instead of. Such a passage is Exo 21:23-25. Among these specifications occurs, burning for burning. . The Prophet, however, was not speaking of jus talionis, therefore the idem per idem or idem pro eodem, like for like, did not suit his purpose. He speaks of the recompense that threatened the daughters of Zion. Among the things to be taken from them he had not mentioned beauty, the direct gift of nature, which to women is of the greatest price. He had to this point spoken only of productions of art. Now as beauty is (in Isa. again only Isa 33:17), he might easily happen to think of as a suitable rhyme for it. However, itself does not rhyme, but a word of kindred root, properly its simple masculine form, , which appears only to have been used in the contracted form (comp. , , ,). Thus too the inversion explains itself. For as we find the words, they most resemble the passages in Exod.; much more than if they read instead of beauty burning. or is . . Its root is to burn, and means, like , and like the Arabic kej, the branded mark, . If even it cannot be proved that it was customary to mark captives by branding them, that does not affect the matter. It was also not customary to offer them pus instead of balsam. Such traits of poetic speech must not be pressed. Enough if the thought in itself affords a suitable meaning. I think, therefore, the established meaning brand mark, which indicates a strong contrast with beauty, is not to be departed from, and we need not with Knobel understand scratchings.

4. The womenour reproach.

Isa 3:25 to Isa 4:1 But the misery of the daughters of Zion is not yet exhausted. Worse things yet must happen to them. They shall be robbed, too, of the men. From the singular suffix, it is seen that the Prophet Isa 3:25 now addresses Zion itself, thus not the daughters of Zion, Isa 3:16, but daughter of Zion. The loss of splendid garments is not to be understood as if only articles of luxury would be taken from the women of Zion. It is seen from Isa 3:25 that the blow is to be universal, falling upon all. Therefore all shall suffer under it: but the rich and noble most of all. The loss of the men however, shall concern all in equal measure. For this reason the Prophet no longer addresses the daughters, but the daughter of Zion. does not appear to involve the notion of strength, manhood. For it is wont to stand where inferiority, lowness are predicated of the subject man. , people of number, a few, Gen 34:30, and often. Deu 26:5; Deu 28:62. Psa 26:4; Job 22:15. Isa 5:13 : and Isa 41:14 stands directly parallel with worm Jacob. It stands then as the antithesis of the troops, and designates not the manhood with emphasis, but only masculine individuals (people). (a word of frequent occurrence in Isa 11:2; Isa 28:6; Isa 63:15, &c.) only here stands in a concrete meaning=troops. For Jer 49:35 there is no reason for taking it in any other than the usual abstract sense, strength.

And her gates, etc. Isa 3:26. , to sigh, groan, occurs only here and Isa 19:8, where, too, it stands with . The latter word is in general more frequent, and common, too, in Isaiah: 24:4, 7; Isa 33:9; Isa 66:10. Most expositors translate; and her gates groan and lament. With that gate, is personified and used by metonymy for the assemblies in the gate, which is grammatically allowable. But I would make three objections: 1) It is surprising that we do not read, then, , gate. For is only the door opening (hence so often , door of the gate, Jos 20:4; Jdg 9:35; Jdg 9:44 : 2Sa 10:8; Jer 1:15; Jer 19:2; Pro 1:21, etc.), while stands for gate in its emphatic, and also its comprehensive meaning. 2) Does it not seem strange in this exposition, that the discourse suddenly turns from the women to speak of the totality of the people? For the gates do not represent the women alone, but the entire people; whence Drechsler justly calls attention to the fact that this exposition occasions something fluctuating in the connection of ideas. 3) , times without number, stands as acc. localis to the question where? or whither? without a preposition, vid. Lexicon and Concordances. It comes very natural therefore to translate; and they (the women) groan and sigh at her gates. There they await, and there they receive the mournful intelligence. The suffix in relates naturally to Zion addressed in the verse before.

The following words are obscure. can be nothing else than Niph. perf. 3 pers. fem., from purum esse. Niphal often occurs in the sense of culpa vacuum, immunem esse, which gives no sense here. Purificari here can only mean swept out, cleared up, emptied, desolated. In this sense the word does not again occur; only Zec 5:3, may in some degree be compared. Hofmann (Schriftbeweis II. 2, p. 503) translates: on the bareness, off on the bare ground sits she. But is neither participial nor nominal form. If now we translate: and she was emptied, desolated, on the ground she sits,we must first remark concerning the construction, that Drechsler is right in connecting the two verbs so that the first contains an adverbial qualification of the second. Sitting on the ground is the posture of those mourning: Isa 47:1; Job 2:13; Lam 2:10. The subject of as well as of is Zion, to which also the suffixes in Isa 3:25-26, refer. Therefore if the widows of Zion weep at the gates, Zion itself appears desolate and lies on the ground. Yet I confess that this exposition is not entirely satisfactory, although it fits the existing text. Perhaps the text is corrupt in .

At all events, according to Isa 3:25, a great scarcity of men exists. For the Hebrew woman that was the greatest misfortune. For in its most ancient parts the Old Testament knows no other genuine life than that on this earth, and thus no other continuation of living after death than by means of children. To be childless was, then, the same as being deprived of continuance after death. It corresponded to the being damned of the New Testament. Physical reasons, therefore, were not all that made marriage appear as a pressing necessity. It is now said here that seven women (notice the sacred number) shall lay hold of one man and, renouncing all claim of support and clothing, beg only the right to be called his wives.Only let thy name, etc.As the temple was called the house that bears the name of Jehovah, without however the temple being called Jehovah Himself, so, among the Hebrews, the wives were not called by the same name as their husbands, which would be to transfer modern customs to the ancients; but the name of the husband was named on her, when she was called this or that mans wife. Comp. Sarai, Abrams wife, Gen 12:17, Rachel, Jacobs wife, Gen 46:19. Gesenius quotes the beautiful parallel from Lucan, Pharsal. II. 342, which was first adduced by Grotius.

da tantum nomen inane

Connubii, Liceat tumulo scripsisse: Catonis
Marcia * * * * * * *

Give only the empty name of marriage. Let my monument be inscribed: Catos Marcia.

with the meaning auferre, demere, bear away, like Isa 16:10; Isa 57:1. As a parallel expression comp., too Zec 8:23. The division of chapters is evidently incorrect here. That the words seven women, etc., were carried over to chap. 4, as Vitringa remarks, happened because it was supposed that the seven women represented the seven graces of the Holy Spirit (Isa 11:1-2), thus Jerome and Cyrilor the believing women under the one man or Christ, the Branch, Isa 3:2.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. On Isa 2:2. Domus Dei, etc. The house of God is built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, who, themselves, too, are mountains, quasi imitators of Christ. (They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, Psa 125:1) Whence, also, upon one of the mountains Christ founded the Church and said: Thou art Peter, etc., Mat 16:18. Jerome.We can understand Jerusalem by the mountain of God, for we see how the believing run thither, and how those that have accepted the testimony come thither and seize the blessing that proceeds thence. But we may also by the house of God understand the churches spread over land and sea, as we believe St. Paul, who says, we are the house of God, Heb 3:6. And so we may recognize the truth of the prophecy. For the Church of God stands shining forth, and the nations, forsaking wickedness that has long had dominion over them, hasten to her and are enlightened by her. Theodoret.Ecclesia est, etc. The church is a mountain exalted and established above all other mountains, but in spirit. For if you regard the external look of the church from the beginning of the world, then in New Testament times, you will see it oppressed, contemned, and in despair. Yet, notwithstanding, in that contempt it is exalted above all mountains. For all kingdoms and all dominions that have ever been in the world have perished. The church alone endures and triumphs over heresies, tyrants, Satan, sin, death and hell, and that by the word only, by this despised and feeble speech alone. Moreover it is a great comfort that the bodily place, whence first the spiritual kingdom should arise, was so expressly predicted, that consciences are assured of that being the true word, that began first to be preached in that corner of Judea, that it may be for us a mount Zion, or rule for judging of all religions and all doctrines. The Turkish Alcoran did not begin in Ziontherefore it is wicked doctrine. The various Popish rites, laws, traditions began not in Ziontherefore they are wicked, and the very doctrines of devils. So we may hold ourselves upright against all other religions, and comfort our hearts with this being the only true religion which we profess. Therefore, too, in two psalms, Psalms 2, 110, mount Zion is expressly signified: I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion; likewise: The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion. Luther.

2. On Isa 2:2. Luther makes emphatic, as something pertaining to the wonderful nature of this kingdom, that other kingdoms are established and administered by force and arms. But here, because the mountain is lifted up, the nation shall flow (fluent), i.e., they shall come voluntarily, attracted by the virtues of the church. For what is there sweeter or lovelier than the preaching of the gospel? Whereas Moses frightens weak souls away. Thus the prophet by the word fluent, flow, has inlaid a silent description of the kingdom of Christ, which Christ gives more amply when He says: Mat 11:12, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force, i.e. they are not compelled, but they compel themselves. Morever rivers do not flow up mountains, but down them; but here is such an unheard-of thing in the kingdom of Christ.Starke.

3. Luther remarks on and shall say: come, etc. Here thou seest the worship, works and efforts and sacrifices of Christians. For they do only the one work, that they go to hear and to learn. All the rest of the members must serve their neighbors. These two, ears and heart, must serve God only. For the kingdom rests on the word alone. Sectaries and heretics, when they have heard the gospel once, instantly become masters, and pervert the Prophets word, in that they say: Come let us go up that we may teach him his way and walk in our paths. They despise, therefore, the word as a familiar thing and seek new disputations by which they may display their spirit and commend themselves to the crowd. But Christians know that the words of the Holy Ghost can never be perfectly learned as long as we are in the flesh. For Christianity does not consist in knowing, but in the disposition. This disposition can never perfectly believe the word on account of the weakness of the sinful flesh. Hence they ever remain disciples and ruminate the word, in order that the heart, from time to time, may flame up anew. It is all over with us if we do not continue in the constant use of the word, in order to oppose it to Satan in temptation (Matthew 4). For immediately after sinning ensues an evil conscience, that can be raised up by nothing but the word. Others that forsake the word sink gradually from one sin into another, until they are ruined. Therefore Christianity must be held to consist in hearing the word, and those that are overcome by temptations, whether of the heart or body, may know that their hearts are empty of the word.

4. Vitringa remarks on the words, Out of Zion goes forth the law, Isa 5:3. If strife springs up among the disciples concerning doctrine or discipline, one must return to the pattern of the doctrine and discipline of the school at Jerusalem. For shall go forth, stands here only as in Luk 2:1, There went forth a decree from Csar Augustus. In this sense, too, Paul says, 1Co 14:36, What? came the word of God out from you? The word of God did not go forth from Corinth, Athens, Rome, Ephesus, but from Jerusalem, a fact that bishops assembled in Antioch opposed to Julius I. (Sozom. hist. eccl. III. 8, the orientals acknowledged that the Church of Rome was entitled to universal honoralthough those who first propagated a knowledge of Christian doctrine in that city came from the East). Cyril took in the false sense of , has forsaken Zion. When the Lord opened the understandings of the disciples at Emmaus, to understand the Scriptures and see in the events they had experienced the fulfilment of what was written concerning Him in the law, Prophets and Psalms, He cannot have forgotten the present passage. Of this we may be the more assured since the words: Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. Luk 24:46-47, point clearly to Isa 2:2-3 of our passage. Therefore too, Justin Martyr Apol. i. (commonly ii.), 49, says: But where the prophetic spirit predicts the future, he says: from Zion shall go forth the law, etc. And that this finally came to pass in fact, you may credibly assure yourselves. For from Jerusalem have men gone forth into the world, twelve in number, and these were unlearned, that knew not how to speak. But by the might of God they have proclaimed to all mankind that they were sent by Christ in order to teach all the word of God.

Zion is contrasted here with Mount Sinai, whence the law came, which in the Old Testament was the foundation of all true doctrine: But in the New Testament Mount Zion or Jerusalem has the privilege to announce that now a more perfect law would be given and a new Covenant of God with men would be established. Thus Zion and Jerusalem are, so to speak, the nursery and the mother of all churches and congregations of the New Testament.Starke.

5. Frster remarks on the end of Isa 2:3, that the gospel is the sceptre of Jesus Christ, according to Psa 110:2; Psa 45:7 (the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre). For by the word Christ rules His church (Rom 10:14 sqq.).

6. On Isa 2:4. Pax optima rerum. Foerster. The same author finds this prophecy fulfilled by Christ, who is our peace, who has made of both one, and broken down the partition that was between, in that by His flesh He took away the enmity (Eph 2:14). Foerster, moreover, combats the Anabaptists, who would prove from this passage that waging war is not permitted to Christians. For our passage speaks only against the privata Christianorum discordia. But waging war belongs to the publicum magistratus officium. Waging war, therefore, is not forbidden, if only the war is a just one. To be such, however, there must appear according to Thomas, part. 2 th. qust. 40. 1) auctoritatis principis, 2) causa justa, 3) intentio bellantium justa, or ut allii efferunt: 1) jurisdictio indicentis, 2) offensio patientis, 3) intentio finem (?) convenientis.

7. On Isa 2:4. Jerome regarded the time of Augustus, after his victory at Actium, as the fulfilling of this prophecy. Others, as Cocceius, refer the words, they shall turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, to the time of Constantine the Great; and the words nation shall not lift up sword against nation to the period of the restoration of religious peace in Germany,finally the words: they shall no more learn war, to a future time that is to be hoped for. Such interpretations are, however, just as one-sided as those that look only for a spiritual fulfilment of prophecy. For how is an inward fulfilment of this promise of peace to be thought of which would not have the outward effects as its consequence? Or how is an outward fulfilment, especially such as would deserve the name, conceivable without the basis of the inward? Or must this peaceful time be looked for only in heaven? Why then does the promise stand here? It is a matter of course that there is peace in heaven: for where there is no peace there can be no heaven. The promise has sense only if its fulfilment is to be looked for on earth. The fulfilment will take place when the first three petitions of the Lords prayer are fulfilled, i.e. when Gods name shall be held holy by us as it in itself is holy, when the kingdom of God is come to everything, without and within, and rules alone over all, when the will of God is done on earth as in heaven. Christendom makes this prayer quite as much with the consciousness that it cannot remain unfulfilled, as with the consciousness that it must find its fulfilment on earth. For, if referred to heaven, these petitions are without meaning. Therefore there is a time of universal inward and outward peace to be looked for on earth. It is not every days evening, i.e. one must await the event, and our earth, without the least saltus in cogitando, can yet experience a state of things that shall be related to the present, as the present to the period of trilobites and saurians. If one could only keep himself free from the tyranny of the present moment! But our entire, great public, that has made itself at home in Philistia, lives in the sweet confidence that there is no world beside that of which we take notice on the surface of the earth, nor ever was one, nor ever will be.

8. On Isa 2:4. Poets reverse the figure to portray the transition from peaceful to warlike conditions. Thus Virgil, Georg. I. 2:506 sq.:

Non ullus aratro
Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis.
Et curv rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.

Aeneide VII. 2:635 sq.:

Vomeris huc et falcis honos, huc omnis aratri
Cessit amor; recoquunt patrios fornacibus enses.

Ovid, Fast. I. 2:697 sqq.:

Bella diu tenuere viros. Erat aptior ensis
Vomere, cedebat taurus arator equo.
Sarcula cessabant, versique in pila ligones.
Factaque de rastri pondere cassia erat.

9. On Isa 2:5. As Isaiah puts the glorious prophecy of his fellow prophet Micah at the head, he illuminates the future with a splendid, shining, comforting light. Once this light is set up, it of itself suggests comparisons. The questions arise: how does the present stand related to that shining future? What difference obtains? What must happen for that condition of holiness and glory to be brought about? The Christian Church, too, and even each individual Christian must put himself in the light of that prophetic statement. On the one hand that will humiliate us, for we must confess with the motto of Charles V.: nondum! And long still will we need to cry: Watchman what of the night (Isa 21:11)? On the other hand the Prophets word will also spur us up and cheer us. For what stronger impulse can be imagined than the certainty that one does not contend in vain, but may hope for a reward more glorious than all that ever came into a mans heart? (Isa 64:4; 1Co 2:9).

In the time of the second temple, in the evenings of the first days of the feast of Tabernacles, great candelabras were lighted in the forecourt of the temple, each having four golden branches, and their light was so strong that it was nearly as light as day in Jerusalem. That might be for Jerusalem a symbol of that let us walk in the light of the Lord. But Jerusalem rejoiced in this light, and carried on all sorts of pastime, yet it was not able to learn to know itself in this light, and by this self-knowledge to come to true repentance and conversion.

10. On Isa 2:8, their land is full of idols. Not only images and pictures are idols, but every notion concerning God that the godless heart forms out of itself without the authority of the Scripture. The notion that the Mass is effective ex opere operato, is an idol. The notion that works are demanded for justification with God, is an idol. The notion that God takes delight in fasts, peculiar clothes, a special order of life, is an idol. God wills not that we should set up out of our own thoughts a fashion of worshipping Him; but He says: In all places where I record My name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee, Exo 20:24Luther.

11. On Isa 2:9-21. When men have brought an idol into existence, that is just to their mind, whether it be an idolum manu factum, or an idolum mente excogitatum, there they are all wonder, all worship. Great is Diana of the Ephesians. Then the idol has a time of great prosperity and glory. But sooner or later there comes a time when the judgment of God overtakes the idol and its servants. God suffers sin to become ripe like men let a conspiracy, like they let fruit ripen. But when the right time comes then He steps forth in such a fashion that they creep into mouse-holes to hide themselves, if it were possible, from the lightning of His eye and His hand. Where then are the turned-up noses, the big mouths, the impudent tongues? Thus it has often happened since the world began. But this being brought to confession shall happen in the highest degree to the puffed-up world at that day when they shall see that one whom they pierced, and whom they thought they might despise as the crucified One, coming in His glory to judge the world. Then they shall have anguish and sorrow, then shall they lament and faint away with apprehension of the things that draw nigh. But those that believed on the Lord in His holiness, shall then lift up their heads for that their redemption draws nigh. At that time, indeed, shall the Lord alone be high, and before Him shall bow the knees of all in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and all tongues must confess that Christ is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

12. On Isa 2:22. Of what do men not make idols! The great industrial expositions of modern times often fill me with dismay, when I have seen how men carry on an actual idolatrous worship with these products of human science and art, as if that all were not, in the end, Gods work, too, but human genius were alone the creator of these wonders of civilization. How wickedly this so-called worship of genius demeans itself ! How loathsome is the still more common cultus of power, mammon and the belly!

13. On Isa 3:1 sqq. Causa , etc. The saving cause of the commonwealth is the possession of men of the sort here mentioned, which Plato also knew, and Cicero from Plato, each of whom judge, commonwealths would be blessed if philosophers, i.e., wise and adept men were to administer them.Foerster. The same writer cites among the causes why the loss of such men is ruinous, the changes that thence ensue. All changes in the commonwealth are hurtful. Xenoph. Hellen. Isaiah 2 : . Aristot. Metaph. Isaiah 2 : .

14. On Isa 3:1. The stay of bread, etc. Vitringa cites Horat. Satir. L. II., 3 5:153 sq.:

Deficient inopem ven te, ni cibus atque
Ingens accedit stomacho fultura ruenti.

And on Isa 3:2 sq. he cites Cicero, who, De Nat. Deorum III., calls these prsidia humana, firmamenta reipublic. On Isa 3:6 sq. the same author cites the following passage from Livy (26 chap. 6): Cum fame ferroque (Capuani) urgerentur, nec ulla spes superesset iis, qui nati in spem honorum erant, honores detrectantibus, Lesius querendo desertam et proditam a primoribus Capuam summum magistratum ultimus omnium Campanorum cepit! On Isa 3:9 he quotes Seneca: De vita beata, chap. xii.: Itaque quod unum habebant in peccatis bonum perdunt peccandi verecundiam. Laudant enim ea, quibus erubescant, et vitio gloriantur.

15. On Isa 3:4; Isa 3:12. Foerster remarks: Pueri, etc. Boys are of two sorts. Some are so in respect to age, others in respect to moral qualifications. So, too, on the contrary there is an old age of two sorts: For honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the true gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is the true old age. Wis 4:8-9. Examples of young and therefore foolish kings of Israel are Rehoboam (the young fool gambled away ten whole tribes at one bet 1 Kings 12). Ahaz, who was twenty years of age when he began to reign (2Ki 16:2). Manasseh who was twelve years (2Ki 21:1,) and Amon who was twenty-two years (2Ki 21:19).

16. On Isa 3:7. Foerster remarks: Nemo se, etc. Let no one intrude himself into office, especially when he knows he is not fit for it, and then cites: Seek not of the Lord pre-eminence, neither of the king the seat of honor. Justify not thyself before the Lord; and boast not of thy wisdom before the king. Seek not to be judge, being not able to take away iniquity. Sir 7:4-6.Wen aber Gott schickt, den macht er auch geschickt.

17. On Isa 3:8. Their tongue and their doings are against the Lord. Duplici modo, etc. God may be honored by us in two outward ways: by word and deed, just as in the same way others come short; to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. Judges 15.Vitringa.

18. On Isa 3:9. They hide not their sin. Secunda post, etc. The next plank after shipwreck, and solace of miseries is to hide ones impiety.Jerome.

19. On Isa 3:10. Now He comforts the pious as in Psalms 2. His anger will soon kindle, but it shall be well with all that trust in Him. So Abraham, so Lot was delivered; so the apostles and the remnant of Judah when Jerusalem was besieged. For the Lord helps the righteous (Psa 37:17; Psa 37:39).Luther.

20. On Isa 3:13-14.

Judicabit judices judex generalis,
Neque quidquam proderit dignitas papalis,
Sive sit episcopus, sive cardinalis,
Reus condemnabitur, nec dicetur qualis.

Rhythmi vulgo noti, quoted byFoerster.

21. On Isa 3:16 sq. Usus vestium, etc. Clothes have a four-fold use: 1) they are the badge of guilt, or souvenir of the fall (Gen 3:7; Gen 3:10; Gen 3:21); 2) they should be coverings against the weather; 3) they may be ornaments for the body, (Pro 31:22; Pro 31:25); 4) they may serve as a mark of rank (2Sa 13:18).The abuse of clothes is three-fold; 1) in regard to the material, they may be costlier or more splendid than ones wealth or rank admits of; 2) in respect of form, they may betray buffoonery and levity; 3) in respect to their object, they may be worn more for the display of luxury and pride than for protection and modest adornment.Foerster.

22. On Isa 4:2. Germen Jehovae est nomen Messi mysticum, a nemine intellectum, quam qui tenet mysterium Patris et Christi. Idem valet quod filius propago Patris naturalis, in quo patris sui imago et gloria perfectissime splendet, Jessaiae in seqq. (Isa 9:5) ,, filius, Joanni , , processio Patris naturais. Est hic eruditi cujusdam viri elegans observatio, quae eodem tendit, quam non licet intactam praetermittere. Comparat ille inter se nomina Messi (Jer 23:5) et in hoc loco. Cum autem prior appellatio absque dubitatione innuat, Messiam fore filium Davidis, docet posteriorem non posse aliud significare quam filium Jehovae, quod nomen Christi Jesu est , omni alio nomine excellentius. Addit non minus docte, personam, quae hic germen Jehovae dicitur, deinceps a propheta nostro appellari Jehovam (Isa 28:5).Vitringa. This exposition, which is retained by most Christian and orthodox commentators, ignores too much the fundamental meaning of the word , Branch. It is, nevertheless, not incorrect so far as the broader meaning includes the narrower concentrically. If Branch of Jehovah signifies all that is the personal offshoot of God, then, of course, that one must be included who is such in the highest and most perfect sense, and in so far the passage Isa 28:5 does not conflict with exposition given by us above.

[J. A. Alexander joins with Vitringa and Hengstenberg in regarding the fruit of the earth, as referring to the same subject as the branch of the Lord, viz.: the Messiah; and thus, while the latter term signifies the divine nature of the Messiah, the former signifies His human origin and nature; or if we translate land instead of earth, it points to his Jewish human origin. Thus appears an exact correspondence to the two parts of Pauls description, Rom 1:3-4, and to the two titles used in the New Testament in reference to Christs two natures, Son of God and Son of Man.Tr.].

23. On Isa 4:3-4. Great storms and upheavals, therefore, are needful, in order to make the fulfilment of this prophecy possible. There must first come the breath of God from above, and the flame of God from beneath over the earth, and the human race must first be tossed and sifted. The earth and mankind must first be cleansed by great judgments from all the leaven of evil. [J. A. Alexander, with Luther, Calvin, Ewald, maintains concerning the word Spirit in Isa 4:4, that the safest and most satisfactory interpretation is that which understands by it a personal spirit, or as Luther expresses it, the Spirit who shall judge and burn.Tr.]. What survives these judgments is the remnant of which Isaiah speaks. This shall be holy. In it alone shall the Lord live and rule. This remnant is one with the new humanity which in every part, both as respects body and soul, will represent the image of Christ the second Adam. This remnant, at the same time, comprehends those whose names are written in the book of life. What sort of a divine book this may be, with what sort of corporal, heavenly reality, of course we know not. For Himself God needs no book. Yet if we compare the statements of the Revelation of John regarding the way in which the last judgment shall be held, with certain other New Testament passages, I think we obtain some explanation. We read Mat 19:28, that on the day of the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, the twelve apostles, too, shall sit on twelve thrones to judge the generations of Israel. And 1Co 5:2, we read that the saints shall judge the world. But, Rev 20:11, we find again the great white throne, whereon sits the great Judge of the living and the dead, after that, just before (Rev 4:4), it was said: And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them. Afterwards it reads (Rev4:12): And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And (Rev 4:15). And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. From this description there seems to me to result that the books necessarily are meant for those who are, by the Supreme Judge charged with the judgment of particular ones. To this end they need, in the first place, many books that contain the works of individuals. God has a book-keeping for the life of every man. This divine record will be produced to every single one at the day of judgment. Is he a Jew? by one of the twelve Apostles. Is he a heathen? by some other saint. No man shall be able to remonstrate against this account for it will carry the evidence of truth in itself, and in the consciences of those to be judged. Should such a protest occur, the arraigned will be referred to the book of life. This is only one. For it contains only names. After this manner will the separation be accomplished, spoken of in Mat 25:32 sq. For those whose names are found in the book of life go to the right side; the rest to the left. Then the great Judge Himself takes up the Word in the manner described in Mat 25:34 sqq., and calls the righteous to Himself, that they may inherit the kingdom that is prepared for them. But the wicked He repulses from Him into everlasting fire, that is prepared for the devil and his angels, in regard to which the account of the judgment in Matthew 25, as far as the end is concerned, harmonizes entirely with Rev 20:15.

24. On Isa 4:5-6. The pillar of fire and cloud belongs to the miraculous graces by which the founding of the Old Testament kingdom of God was glorified just as the New Testament kingdom was by the signs that Jesus did, and by the charismata of the Apostolic time. But that appearance was quite appropriate to the state of developed revelation of that time. This had not reached the New Testament level, and not even the prophetic elevation that was possible under the Old Testament, but only the legal in which the divine stands outwardly opposed to the human. God is present among His people, but still in the most outward way; He does not walk in a human way among men; there is, too, no inward leading of the congregation by the Holy Spirit, but an outward conducting by a visible heavenly appearance. And, for these revelations to the whole people, God makes use entirely of nature, and, when it concerns His personal manifestation, of the elements. He does so, not merely in distinction from the patriarchal theophanies, , but, particularly in contrast with heathenism, in order to accustom the Israelitish consciousness from the first not to deify the visible world, but to penetrate through it to the living, holy God, who has all the elements of nature at command as the medium of His revelation.Auberlen.

As at the close of Johns Revelation (chaps. 21, 22) we see the manifestation of the Godhead to humanity return to its beginning (Genesis 2, 3, 4), in as much as that end restores just that with which the beginning began, i.e. the dwelling of God with men, so, too, we see in Isa 4:5-6, a special manifestation of the (relative) beginning time recur again in the end time; the pillar of fire and cloud. But what in the beginning was an outward and therefore enigmatical and unenduring appearance, shall at last be a necessary and abiding factor of the mutual relation between God and mankind, that shall be established for ever in its full glory. There shall come a time wherein Israel shall expand to humanity and humanity receive power to become Israel, wherein, therefore, the entire humanity shall be Israel. Then is the tabernacle of God with men no more a pitiful tent, made of mats, but the holy congregation is itself the living abode of God; and the gracious presence of Almighty God, whose glory compares with the old pillar of fire and cloud, like the new, eternal house of God, with the old perishable tabernacle, is then itself the light and defence of His house.

25. On Isa 4:5-6. But give diligence to learn this, that the Prophet calls to mind, that Christ alone is destined to be the defence and shade of those that suffer from heat and rain. Fasten your eyes upon Him, hang upon Him as ye are exhorted to do by the divine voice, Him shall ye hear! Whoever hearkens to another, whoever looks to any other flesh than this, it is all over with him. For He alone shelters us from the heat, that comes from contemplating the majesty (i.e. from the terror that Gods holiness and righteousness inspire), He alone covers us from the rain and the power of Satan. This shade affords us a coolness, so that the dread of wrath gives way. For wrath cannot be there where thou seest the Son of God given to death for thee, that thou mightest live. Therefore I commend to you that name of Christ, wherewith the Prophet adorns Him, that He is a tabernacle for shade against the heat, a refuge and place of concealment from rain and tempest.Luther.With some modification, we may apply here the comprehensive turn Foerster gives to our passage: 1) The dwelling of Mount Zion is the church; 2) the heat is the flaming wrath of God, and the heat of temptation (1Pe 4:12; Sir 2:4-5); 3) tempest and rain are the punishments of sins, or rather the inward and outward trials (Psalms 2.; Isa 57:20); 4) the defence or the pillar of cloud and fire is Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 10).

26. On Isa 5:1-7. This parable has a brother in the New Testament that looks very much like it. I might say: the head is almost the same. For the beginning of that New Testament parable (Mat 21:33; Mar 12:1), A man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a wine-fat and built a tower, is manifestly imitated after our passage. But here it is the vineyard that is bad, while there, in the New Testament, the husbandmen are good for nothing. Here the Lord appears as at once owner and cultivator of the vineyard; there the owner and cultivators are distinguished. This arises from the fact that the Lord Jesus apparently had in His mind the chiefs of the people, the high-priests and elders (Mat 21:23-24). From this it is manifest that here as there the vineyard is the nation. In Isaiah, however, the vineyard, that is to say the vine itself is accused. The whole people is represented as having equally gone to destruction. In the Synoptists, on the other hand, it is the chiefs and leaders that come between the Lord and His vineyard, and would exclude Him from His property, in order to be able to obtain it wholly for themselves, and divide it amongst them. Therefore there it is more the wicked greed of power and gain in the great that is reproved; here the common falling away of the whole nation.

27. Isa 5:8. Here the Prophet denounces the rich, the aristocracy, and capital. Thus he takes the part of the poor and lowly. That grasping of the rich and noble, which they display sometimes like beasts of prey, at other times gratify in a more crafty and legal fashion, the Prophet rebukes here in the sharpest manner. Gods work is opposed to every sin, and ever stands on the side of those that suffer oppression, no matter what may be their rank. God is no respecter of persons (Deu 10:17 sq.).

28. Isa 5:11-17. The morning hour, the hour when light triumphs over darkness, ought to be consecrated to works of light, as it is said: Aurora Musis amica, , (Hesiod. . . . 540) Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund. It was, says Foerster, a laudable custom among the Persians, that the chamberlains entering in to their kings early in the morning, cried out with a loud voice: Arise, O king, attend to business, as Mesoromastes commands. On the other hand, they that be drunken are drunken in the night, 1Th 5:7 sq. So much the worse, then, when men do the works of night even in the early hour, and dare to abuse the light. Plenus venter despumat in libidines, says Augustine. In vino (Eph 5:18). Corpus, opes, animam luxu Germania perdit. Melancthon. On Isa 5:15 Foerster cites the expression of Augustin: God would not suffer any evil to be done in the world unless some good might thence be elicited.

29. Isa 5:18. Cords of vanity are false prejudices and erroneous conclusions. For example: no one is without sin, not even the holiest; God does not take notice of small sins; he that is among wolves must howl with them; a man cannot get along in the world with a scrupulous, tender conscience; the Lord is merciful, the flesh is weak, etc. By such like a man draws sin to him, binds his conscience fast, and resists the good motions of preventing grace. Thick cart-ropes signify a high degree of wickedness, the coarsest and most revolting prejudices. For example: God has no concern about human affairs; godliness delivers no one from misery and makes no one blessed; the threatenings of the prophets are not to be feared; there is no divine providence, no heaven, no hell (Deu 29:17-19). Out of such a man twists and knots a stout rope, with which he draws to him manifest blasphemy, entangles himself in it, so that often he cannot get loose, but is sold as a servant under sin (Rom 6:16; 1Ki 21:20; 1Ki 21:25). Starke.

30. Isa 5:19. The wicked mock at the patience and long-suffering of God, as if He did not see or care for their godless existence, but forgot them, and cast them out of mind (Psa 10:11), so that the threatened punishment would be omitted. They would say: there has been much threatening, but nothing will come of it; if God is in earnest, let Him, etc.; we dont mind threats; let God come on if He will! Comp. Isa 22:12-13; Isa 28:21-22; Amo 5:18; Jer 5:12; Jer 8:11; Jer 17:15; Eze 12:21 sqq. Starke.

31. Isa 5:20. To make darkness of light, means to smother in oneself the fundamental truths that may be proved from the light of nature, and the correct conclusions inferred from them, but especially revealed truths that concern religion, and to pronounce them in others to be prejudices and errors. Bitter and sweet have reference to constitution, how it is known and experienced. To make sweet of bitter means, to recommend as sweet, pleasant and useful, what is bad and belongs to darkness, and is in fact bitter and distasteful, after one himself believes he possesses in the greatest evil the highest good. Starke.

32. Isa 5:21. Quotquot mortales etc. As many as, taking counsel of flesh, pursue salvation with confidence of any sort of merit of their own or external privilege, a thing to which human nature is much inclined, oppose their own device to the wisdom of God, and, according to the prophet, are called wise in their own eyes (Isa 28:15; Isa 30:1-2; Jer 8:8-9; Jer 9:23 sq.; Jer 18:18). Vitringa.

33. Isa 5:26 sqq. The Prophet here expresses in a general way the thought that the Lord will call distant nations to execute judgment on Jerusalem, without having in mind any particular nation. Vitringa quotes a remarkable passage from the excerpts of John Antiochenus in Valesius (p. 816), where it is said, that immediately after Titus had taken Jerusalem, ambassadors from all the neighboring nations came to him to salute him as victor and present him crowns of honor. Titus refused these crowns, saying that it was not he that had effected these things, but that they were done by God in the display of His wrath, and who had prospered his hands. Comp. also the address of Titus to his soldiers after the taking of Jerusalem in Joseph. B. Jud. VII. 19.

HOMILETICAL HINTS

1. Isa 2:6-11. Idolatry. 1) What occasions it (alienation from God, Isa 2:6 a); 2) The different kinds: a. a coarse kind (Isa 2:6 b, Isa 2:8), b. a more refined kind (Isa 2:7); 3) Its present appearance (great honor of the idols and of their worshippers, Isa 2:9); 4) Its fate at last (deepest humiliation before the revelation of the majesty of God of all that do not give glory to Him (Isa 2:10; Isa 2:18).

2. Isa 2:12-22. The false and the true eminence. 1) False eminence is that which at first appears high, but at last turns out to be low (to this belongs impersonal as well as supersensuous creatures, which at present appear as the highest in the world, but at last, in the day of the Lord of Hosts, shall turn out to be nothing); 2) The real eminence is that which at first is inconspicuous and inferior, but which at last turns out to be the highest, in fact the only high one.

3. Isa 3:1-9. Sin is the destruction of a people. 1) What is sin? Resisting the Lord: a. with the tongue, b. with deeds, c. with the interior being (Isa 3:8-9); 2) In what does the destruction consist (or the fall according to Isa 3:8 a)? a. in the loss of every thing that constitutes the necessary and sure support of the commonwealth (Isa 3:1-3); b. in insecure and weak props rising up (Isa 3:4); c. in the condition that follows of being without a Master (Isa 3:5); d. in the impossibility of finding any person that will take the governance of such a ruinous state (Isa 3:6-7).

4. Isa 3:4. Insurrection is forbidden by God in express words, who says to Moses that which is altogether just thou shalt follow, Deu 16:20. Why may not God permit an intolerable and often unjust authority to rule a land for the same reason that He suffers children to have bad and unjust parents, and the wife a hard and intolerable husband, whose violence they cannot resist? Is it not expressly said by the Prophet I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them? I gave thee a king in mine anger, and took him away in my wrath, Hos 13:11. Tholuck.

5. Isa 3:10-13. Let us learn to distinguish between false and real comfort. 1) False comfort deals in illusion: the real deals in truth; 2) The false produces a present effect; the real a lasting one; 3) The false injures the one comforted; the real is health to him. Harms.

6. Isa 4:2-6. The holiness of Gods Church on earth that is to be looked for in the future. 1) Its preliminary: the judgment of cleansing and purifying (Isa 4:4); 2) What is requisite to becoming a partaker? a. belonging to the remnant (Isa 4:2-3); b. being written in the book of life (Isa 4:3); 3) The surety of its permanence: the gracious presence of the Lord (Isa 4:5-6).

7. Isa 5:21. The ruin of trusting in ones own Wisdom 1) Those that have such confidence set themselves above God, which is: a. the greatest wickedness, b. the greatest folly; 2) They challenge the Divine Majesty to maintain its right (Isa 5:24).

Footnotes:

[1]Heb. deceiving with their eyes.

[2]Or, tripping nicely.

[3]Heb. make naked.

[4]Or, networks.

[5]Or, sweet balls.

[6]Or, spangled ornaments.

[7]Heb. houses of the soul.

[8]Heb. might.

[9]Or, emptied.

[10]Heb. cleansed.

[11]Heb. let thy name be called upon us.

[12]Or, Take thou away.

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

This is a most blessed, though short chapter; containing in its bosom some precious views, and precious promises concerning Jesus, and the blessedness of his salvation, amidst the sins, and sorrows; and distresses, which arise out of the fallen state of our nature.

Isa 4:1

The day here spoken of, is, no doubt, meant to refer to the gospel day. And the beauty of what is here said, will be very striking, if we spiritually consider it. By the law of Moses, if a man married more wives than one, he was obliged to keep the first in food and raiment, Exo 21:10 . But the indulgence of corrupt passions always did, and always will bring with it punishment. What our blessed Lord said, concerning the putting away of a wife, may be equally applied to the taking more than one. It is for the hardness of men’s hearts, such things are produced, Mat 19:7-8 . But, dropping the consideration of the subject, as referring to natural causes, we shall have a lovely view of this verse, if we read it in a spiritual sense. Jesus is the husband of his church, which he calls his fair one, his spouse, his beloved! And, as the church at large is made up of innumerable souls, what is here spoken of seven women, means a certain number, put for an indefinite number, to intimate many. Now in that day of gospel grace, when Jesus and his great salvation are revealed to the soul, every poor awakened sinner that hears and knows the joyful sound, shall come to lay hold of Jesus, praying to be called by his name. The eating their own bread, and wearing their own apparel, is in allusion to the law of Moses, before referred to. And precious souls, in their first coming to Christ, are all tinctured with an idea of their doing somewhat to recommend them. Hence the first question, of the jailor at Philippi: what must I do to be saved? Act 16:30 . Longer acquaintance with themselves, and with the Lord Jesus, humbles the soul with such confidences. It is blessed to perceive Jesus in this sweet scripture. I need not add how effectually and fully the reproaches of sinners are taken off, when brought into a state of oneness and union with Christ; when married to him, and he to them. Oh! the blessedness of calling him the Lord our righteousness; and living under him as the husband, the Ishi of his people, clothed with his justifying garment of complete salvation. See Jer 23:6 ; Hos 2:16-20 ; Jer 3:14 ; Isa 54:5 , etc.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

The “Branch”

Isa 4

This verse should be part of the preceding chapter, the very climax, indeed, of the ruin which Zion has brought upon herself. Read chap. Isa 3:25-26 : “Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.” Then follows:

“And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach” ( Isa 4:1 ).

In this verse the course of nature is inverted. This is the ruin which sin always works. The picture is that of a country desolated by war, and when the census comes to be taken it is found that there are seven women to one man. The men are murdered, the strong have been taken away, the mighty men have gone down in the shock of war. In this depopulation see what sin is always doing in every city and in every land. If we are afraid of the word “sin,” substitute for it the word wrongdoing, unrighteousness, injustice, any term that does not bring with it some distinctive religious impression, and still the melancholy fact remains the same he who does wrong ruins whatever he touches. Sin kills the mightiest not in the obvious sense of taking away the life of the body, but in the subtle and spiritual sense of perverting the mind, unbalancing the judgment, loosening moral integrity, creating in the interior nature carelessness regarding moral distinctions and moral judgments. This is not a theological view, or a theological prejudice; all this would be true were there no Bible, no church, no preacher, in the ordinary or conventional sense of the term. Who ever assails order assails security; who ever permits himself to think an ungenerous thought aims a blow at the very foundations of genuine, trustful, co-operative fellowship; who ever speaks one cruel, unjust, hostile word is an enemy of the commonwealth. The punishment of sin is not of a superstitious or theological kind. We are not to suppose that God’s judgments are intellectual, metaphysical, spiritual only, and that some men are ranked as heretics, or sceptics, or doubters, or deniers, and there the matter ends. Sin is not only the enemy of God; sin is the enemy of society. A man cannot violate the laws of health and yet be healthy; call it a spirit, a genius, a divine superintendence of things call it what you please, yet there is the law, steady, solemn, inexorable, that the man who insults the spirit of health is made to feel his blasphemy in his own body. So throughout the whole scale: business is afflicted, social security is overturned, everything blooming, beautiful, sweet, which we designate by the name of health goes down in the tremendous judgment. In the instance of the text we have simply the effect of war. War takes away from society the men of might, of strength, the stay of the family, those who ought to be the glory and the hope and confidence of society. What is true of war is true of every form of evil. There is not an imp in all the devil’s service that does not trail after him manifold proof of evil and cruelty. It is important to recognise this, and apply it broadly and fearlessly, lest men should think that sin is something which lives within the church, or is in some sense a church term, or a theological puzzle, or a metaphysical difficulty, with which ordinary society has nothing to do; whereas sin is a term which gathers up into itself all lawbreaking, all dishonour of righteousness, all errors, mistakes, infirmities, that tend towards debasement of character and insecurity of life. Sin does not find its punishment in hell only; every day it creates its own perdition, and burns its own victims. Until we realise this in all its fulness we shall be quite unable to grapple with the difficulties of society, and to understand the mystery of suffering and the infinite penalty of wrongdoing.

But a light breaks upon the horizon: music is heard in the distance, the prophet turns from the depopulated land to behold a thing of beauty:

“In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel” ( Isa 4:2 ).

We cannot pass over this word “branch” without wondering whether it is any allusion to the coming One who was Prince of peace, who was to fill the earth with righteousness, and people it with a seed that should call him blessed, in whose breath there should be no heat of war, yet whose very gospel is a sword unsheathed against every form of iniquity and evil. We must not force interpretations, nor import them; yet we must be faithful to organic history; we are entitled to bring the future to bear upon the past and the present when we know what that future is. In this instance we do know that there came One who was beautiful with all the freshness and rich with all the fruitfulness of heaven’s paradise. If this is a reference to Christ, critics are agreed that it is the first personal reference to the Messiah which Isaiah has yet given. We should halt at first allusions; we should be amazed at first miracles. If we are foolish enough to allow ourselves to grow into a familiarity which turns a miracle into a commonplace, we ought at all events on the first showing of the miracle to display some sign of wonder and interest.

How will Isaiah bring forth the Messiah to human view under what imagery? Isaiah is a man of majestic mind, the first politician in the land, the greatest statesman of his day; he deals with kingdom and empire and destiny with right royal faculty: how will he disclose the Messianic reign? Granted that the critics are right, and that the comparison of Scripture with Scripture will establish the identity of the Messiah with this prophecy, see how beautiful it is! The Messiah shall come under the image of a “Branch.” Mark the fitness of that figure here. We have been passing through a land desolated by divine judgment; not one green thing has been left; the lava of holy wrath has spread sterility all along the line of its devouring and blighting course what so beautiful as that a “branch” should appear in this wilderness of lava? What an imagination was that which, looking at the desolation on the one hand, pointed to a branch on the other a branch, so to say, overgrowing the walls of heaven, and letting itself down within the view of human kind! Blessed are they who can turn away from the desert and look at the garden. This benediction holds good all through the circle of life. Let us dwell no longer upon the sterility, the barrenness, the ruin, consequent on judgment divine, but look at this green branch. It means so much. What does it mean? It means a word that is to be found within this very verse “the fruit of the earth.” The branch means fruitfulness, plenteousness of food, a challenge to hunger, an offer of hospitality. Mark also the fitness of the figure in this relation: war had taken away the father and the brother and the strong man of every name and degree, and left the land in a state of destitution: now a branch is seen. Fruitfulness is the idea of the branch; the leaves of it are for the healing of the nation. If this does refer to the Messiah, surely no more fitting and beautiful image could have been selected even by inspired fancy. A “branch,” then the fountains of life and energy are not dried up. It takes the whole summer to make one little daisy. We are apt to suppose that the tiny flowers are all thrown in, and did not require any astronomic action for their production. There is not a violet hidden in the green hedgerow that did not require all the solar system as gathered up in this earth to produce it. If we say that one swallow does not make a summer, it nevertheless takes the summer to make one swallow. Show a little green leaf, and you show a whole summer of heaven; that is the meaning of it, rightly and broadly interpreted. He is but a literalist who says, This is only one little leaf, and there is an end of it. There is no end of the least leaf that gleams greenly and beautifully in the sun; it means that summer is at hand; it means that the great water-system and fire-system of the universe is still in regular action; the little green messenger comes ahead of the advancing host. Blessed is he who has an eye for the interpretation of signs, significances, for all things that hold in themselves something larger than themselves. Then a branch is promised: that is to say, fruitfulness, beauty, sufficiency, energy, summer. This is what the Son of God came to be and to do to fill the earth with fruitfulness, to drive away the ghastly, all-devouring famine, and to feed the world with the fruit of heaven.

Still the light glows on the whole horizon. The prophet sees a new Jerusalem:

“And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem” ( Isa 4:3 ).

How full of suggestion is every word in this pregnant verse! “He that is left in Zion.” We thought nothing had been left there. That is our mistake always. God knows what men are left, what lives are hidden, what influences have been overlooked or uncalculated. God has never yet left the world without a nucleus of heaven: he has drowned the world, but left a seed to build an altar; he has burned the Gomorrahs of the world, but he has allowed the faithful to escape, and to become the beginning of a new progeny. There is always a remnant, the one left, the true heart, the faithful among the faithless found If this is the genius of history, we cannot escape its broadest religious interpretations. There are miracles of providence if there are none in nature. When we have denied that the sea was ever quieted, or the dead were ever raised, or the lame were made to leap and praise God because of reconstruction, we have not got rid of the greater miracles of providence, the marvels of history, the things we never saw, and never created, and never dreamed; the mysterious subtle action and interaction of life upon life these phenomena will remain to make men wonder, and to make some men pray. There may be a nucleus left in the individual man. That is the most tenderly encouraging thought so far as we are concerned. What if the man himself be not wholly left without God? There may be an occasional tear that has in it all the meaning of summer’s first little leaf; there may be a shock of surprise, which shows that even yet the man’s soul is not dead; there may be an occasional turning to holy memory, to ancient vows, and a sighing after the fellowships which once made life glad: these things being interpreted signify that there is a nucleus left in the man, a little germ, a point where God himself can begin: “Quench not the Spirit.” Even an occasional appearance at church may mean much; even a desire that the child may become a better man than you are may be a proof that God’s ministry has not yet done operating in your heart, and importuning you for the sacrifice of your love.

“Every one that is written among the living.” This is an idea which runs through the whole Bible the idea of a book, a register, a life-record, with names written one after the other. Moses knew of that book, and wanted all the people’s names to be written in it; and once he was so eager that the registration should be complete, that he could have offered that his own name should not be on the record rather than that the whole people should be lost. In the Apocalypse there is a book, and another book called the Book of Life, and they that are written therein shall have a right to enter the gates of the city; and between these there is the testimony of the blessed Christ. “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” How almost impossible it is for God to obliterate names written in that book! Let every man ask, Is my name there? The names are written as with blood; they are not inscribed with earth’s fading ink, they are written with blood shed in sacrifice. O mystery of love, O mystery that appals, that closes the eyes because of its brightness, a brightness intolerable! What is it to have the name written elsewhere if it be not written in the Book of Life? All other books will perish in the flame; only the writing of God will survive. In that register the humblest man may have a place; in that record the obscurest life may be regarded with all the amplitude which characterises anxious love, Pitiable is the life of him whose name is written everywhere but in the life-book! He is the victim of death; he has chosen a perishable fame. Choose you this day whom ye will serve where your record shall be made, where your names shall be found, and let every heart say, Lord, write my name who may, do thou write it, and give me pledge and proof in my own heart that my name is written in the books which cannot be burned.

But before this, and concurrently with this, there must be washing and cleansing even “by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning,” say, by the breath of judgment, the great, mighty, disinfecting whirlwind of God to take away all trace of putrescence and pestilence. Some cleansing must be by fire. Aye, the fire will destroy; and some must be destroyed before they can be recreated. God’s ministers are many, mighty as the wind, ardent as fire, all-expanding as the generous wind that feeds the whole globe with life, and intense, penetrating, unsparing as a burning fire. “Our God is a consuming fire.” He will consume only the dross, the wickedness, the evil: no speck of gold will he destroy; he will save all that can be saved. When Jesus comes to add up the result of his ministry he will say, I have lost none but the son of waste: he would not come within the circle of my love; he is wasted, for he was the son of waste.

The prophet sees the bright day for Jerusalem, for Zion, for the whole land, for all peoples; he sees

“A shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain” ( Isa 4:6 ).

That is the right architecture. Asked of what architecture is your building, and it will be a poor answer if it do not include a shadow, a place of refuge, a covert from storm and rain. This is the meaning of God’s house in the world; this is what is intended when it is said the tabernacle of God is with men upon the earth. What is that tabernacle? Precisely what it is described to be in this verse a shadow from the heat, a place of refuge, a covert from storm and from rain: the poor man’s house, the helpless man’s asylum, the retreat to which all may repair who are suffering the burden and the discipline of life. Open wide its gates; never close them; write on the portals of the house, This is my Father’s house, where there is bread enough and to spare. A church that falls short of this ideal is no church of the living God. However large and handsome, however associated with pomp and circumstance, it is no house of God if broken hearts cannot come to it, and be so comforted by song, and holy reading, and tender prayer, and noble exposition of words divine, as to return to the world’s fight whole, strong, resolute, hopeful. If any man, poorest of the sons of men, should come into the church and hear the preacher say one word in defence of unrighteousness, that man has a right to declare that the only proper motto for that house is “Ichabod;” if any man shall speak for the rich as against the poor in God’s house he defiles the altar; if any man should be severe upon the errors and mistakes of the poor, and should treat with a light hand the criminalities of the rich, he is a liar in the sight of God. The house of Christ should be a home, a refuge, a covert, a shadow from the great heat; and men should go up with joy saying, There if nowhere else we shall find all we want. In that day the house of God will be the centre of life, the very focus of truest pleasure, satisfaction, joy. This is the Bible idea of the tabernacle, the temple, the synagogue, the church that it should be a place of refuge, and a covert from storm and from rain.

If any severe word is spoken in the sanctuary, it should be so spoken as that the soul shall recognise it as involving a wise and necessary discipline. There should be no harshness in the severity; it should be so solemn, so dignified, so just, as to commend itself, and to prove that any other tone would be out of place in the earnest expostulation. But after the severity will come the gospel, the promise, the great evangelical welcome, the holy, tender, brotherly, most human appeal, saying, Come, let us hasten to the altar, the house of God, for under its roof dwells the Spirit itself; and as for its table it is spread with viands needful to the sustenance of manhood. There in our Father’s house we shall have protection, security, inspiration, sentiment that will make us glad, but sentiment that shall develop itself into inspiration, that shall face the world with a stern courage and an irrepressible and triumphant hope. When men sneer at others for going to church, the sneer implies an ignorance of what the church really is. That the church has been debased, or ill-used, or perverted, or narrowed in some way so as to be other than what God meant it to be, may be true enough; but in that house every living man, black and white, has a right to be, and the poorest should be, as much at home as the richest; and it should be the joy of the rich to make the poor man feel that here his poverty is no crime. Let this be our ideal of God’s house, and the house will prove its necessity by its utility. Let the house be put to the largest uses, and the sanctuary will need no defence in words; men will go away from it saying, We cannot do without it; it is needful to complete the circle of life. There are other houses, but they are very small; there are other tables, but our hunger is greater than the provision; there are other opportunities of enjoyment, but the enjoyment is partial or superficial: only in God’s house do we hear a music that reaches the soul, listen to voices that make even our poverty a blessing, and see a light above the brightness of the sun.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XI

THE BOOK OF ISAIAH PART 3

Isa 1:1-5:30

There are three things suggested by the word, “vision,” in the title, viz:

1. Being a vision, it will frequently speak of events, that are yet future, as if they had already occurred, e.g., Isa 3:8 ; Isa 5:13 .

2. What is seen in vision must be subject to the laws of the perspective. To illustrate: One who views a series of mountains from a distance may see a number of peaks, which are many miles apart, as one object. Thus in the fulfilment of prophecy, there may be a primary fulfilment and a long distance from that, the larger fulfilment. But they appear to the eye of the prophet as one fulfilment because they are in line with each other. A notable instance of this is seen in the case of the anti-Christs. Antiochus Epiphanes, the first one, was followed by the papacy; then after him comes the World Secular Ruler; and last comes the man of sin, who fills out the outline of all the ones who have preceded him.

3. It is, as a whole, one vision. It consists, indeed, of various parts, but from the outset they present the same vision. Though the visions are greatly diversified in size, form, coloring, and other details, they are in essential character only one vision.

This vision was “concerning Judah and Jerusalem” and yet it embraces a vast variety of nations and countries. There is a primary reference here to Judah versus Israel, but in the scriptural sense, all this prophecy is “concerning Judah and Jerusalem,” i.e., the people and city of God. Other nations and countries are spoken of only as they are related to Judah and Jerusalem, or at any rate to the people of God symbolized in those names. The first chapter is the preface to the whole book, whose standpoint is the covenant as set forth in Lev 26 and Deuteronomy 28-32, being especially modeled on Deu 32 , the song of Moses, and consists of “The Great Arraignment,” divided into four well-marked messages, in each of which Jehovah is introduced as himself speaking directly to his people. The divisions are as follows: Isa_1:2-9; 10-17; 18-23; 24-31.

The first message (Isa 1:2-9 ) opens with an invocation to heaven and earth to hear Jehovah’s indictment against his people, and it contains (1) a charge of rebellion against their nourishing father; (2) a charge of brutish ignorance, indifference, and ingratitude, such as the ox and the ass would not have shown their owners; (3) a charge of corruption and estrangement from Jehovah; (4) a charge of unyielding stubbornness which rendered the chastisement of Jehovah ineffective though stroke upon stroke had fallen upon them until there was not place found on the body for another stroke; (5) a penalty of desolation of their land and the captivity of the people; (6) a hope of an elected remnant who would be purified by the coming affliction upon the nation.

In this paragraph we have a picture of severe chastisements, not of the depravity of human nature, though sin in Israel has, of course, led Jehovah to chastise his rebellious son. In Isa 1:9 we have mention of the remnant left by Jehovah. This is the first mention of it and gives us the key to the hope of Israel in this dark hour, a favorite doctrine with Isaiah and Paul.

The second message of the first chapter (Isa 1:10-17 ) contains the charge of formality without spirituality in their religion. They are compared to Sodom and Gomorrah though they abound in their ritualistic service. After showing his utter contempt for this formality without spirituality, Jehovah exhorts them to return to him. The ceremonial is not condemned here, except as it was divorced from the spiritual. The prophet insists that ritual and sacrifice must be subordinated to faith and obedience. This is in harmony with the teaching of Hos 6:5-6 ; Mic 6:6-8 ; and Jer 7:4 ; Jer 7:21 ff., et al. In Isa 1:13 here we have the mingling of wickedness with worship which is an abomination. A real reformation is twofold: (1) cease to do evil; (2) learn to do well. Human activity Isa 1:17 emphasized in Isa 1:16-17 , while divine grace is set forth ia Isa 1:18 .

The third message of this chapter (Isa 1:18-23 ) is a message of” offered mercy and grace, with an appeal to their reason and an assurance of cleansing from the deepest pollution of sin. There is a back reference here to the promises and threatenings of the Mosaic covenant (Lev 26 ; Deu 30 ) in which life and death were set before them with an exhortation to choose. There is also a renewed charge here contained in the sad description of the moral degradation of Zion (Isa 1:21-23 ) in which Jerusalem is called a harlot and her wickedness is described as abominable.

The fourth message in this chapter (Isa 1:24-31 ) is a message of judgment on the ungodly. This judgment is both punitive and corrective. God avenges himself on his enemies and at the same time purifies his people, especially the holy remnant, and restores them to their former condition of love and favor. But the utter destruction of transgressors and sinners is positively affirmed, the sinner and his work being consumed. Sin is a fire that consumes the sinner. Therefore sin is suicidal. Isa 1:9 is quoted by Paul in Rom 9:29 and is there used by him to prove his proposition that, though Israel was in number like the sands of the sea, only a remnant should be saved. The remnant of the election of grace is both an Old Testament and a New Testament doctrine, as applied to the Jews.

Someone has called Isaiah 2-5 “the true and the false glory of Israel.” In chapter I the prominent idea is Justice coming to the help of rejected mercy, and pouring out vengeance on the sinful; in Isaiah 2-5 the idea is one of mercy, by means of justice, triumphing in the restoration of holiness. The characteristic in chapter I is its stern denunciations of the Sinaitic law, while the reference to Psa 72 is subordinate; the characteristic of Isaiah 2-5 is that, though the menaces of the law are still heard in them, it is only after the clearest assurance has been given that the prophecies of 2Sa 7 and Psa 72 shall be realized.

That Isaiah 2-5 belong to the time of Uzziah, is the natural inference from Isa 1:1 and Isa 6:1 . The contents of the chapters are such as to thoroughly confirm this obvious view. They refer to a period of prosperity (Isa 2:6-16 ) and luxury (Isa 3:16-23 ); when there was great attention to military preparations (Isa 2:7 ; Isa 2:15 ; Isa 3:2 ) and commerce (v. 16), and great reliance on human power (v. 22). Above all, it is only by remembering how, “when Uzziah was strong, his heart was lifted up” (2Ch 26:16 ), and he invaded the holy place, that we can fully appreciate the emphatic assertion of God’s incomparable exaltation and inviolable sanctity which prevails throughout this section.

In Isa 2:1 we have the title to Isaiah 2-5 and it shows that the message is for Judah and not for Israel. In this sense it means the same as in 1:1. The main body of Isa 2 (Isa 2:7-22 ) is an expansion of Isa 1:31 , “the strong one shall be as tow.” Isa 2:2-4 are intensely messianic and give an assurance that, amidst the wreck of Solomon’s kingdom and earthly Zion, as herein described, the promise made to David shall stand firm. It is the promise of this scripture that a time shall come when controversies shall not be settled by war; they shall be settled by arbitration, and the arbiter is the glorious One of the prophecy, and the principles of arbitration will be his word, the law that goes forth from his mouth. Cf. Mic 4:1-5 . We may never know whether it is Isaiah or Micah that is borrowing, or whether both alike quote from some earlier prophet. This glorious and far-reaching prediction has not yet been completely fulfilled. This is the first messianic prophecy of Isaiah, the pre-eminently evangelical prophet.

But what is meant here by “the latter days”? I cite only two scriptures, which tell us exactly what is meant. John, in his first letter says, “this is the last day,” or the last time, that is, the times of the gospel are “the latter days.” The prophet, Joel, says, “It shall come to pass in the last days,” or the latter days, “That God will pour out his Spirit,” and we know from the New Testament that this was fulfilled in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost after the resurrection of our Lord. It is settled by these words of God that “the latter days” in the Old Testament prophecies are the gospel days of the New Testament. Let us remember that the gospel days are the last days. There is no age to succeed the gospel age. Whatever of good is to be accomplished in this world is to be accomplished in the gospel days, and by the means of the gospel. All this universal peace arbitration, knowledge of the Lord and his kingdom come by means of this same gospel.

I shall not cite the scriptures to prove it, but it is clearly established by the New Testament that the “mountain of the Lord’s house” here is the visible, not invisible, church of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he established himself, empowered it through the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and it is through the instrumentality of that church that the great things of this prophecy are to be brought about. This passage distinctly says, “Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Our Saviour came, established his church, and then said, “Go into all the world, etc.” and “Ye shall preach the gospel to all nations beginning at Jerusalem.” The instrument then, by which these things are to be accomplished is just the gospel which we preach and which people hear and by which they are saved.

It is here prophesied that the nations shall be impressed with the visibility of the Lord’s house, the church, and shall say, “Come, ye, and let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.” They shall be enlightened by the light of the church, which being full of the Holy Spirit shall catch the eye of the nations and attract them. Then will they gay, “Come and let us go up to the house of the Lord.” The purpose of all this shall be that he may teach them. The church is God’s school and God himself is the teacher) and they are taught the principles of arbitration.

The arbiter of the nations, as here described, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the daysman betwixt the nations. He and the principles of his gospel alone can bring about such a state of things that “there shall be war no more.” The result of this arbitration will be universal peace (Isa 2:4 ). This shall be a glorious consummation when will be settled by arbitration controversies of every kind whether between nations or individuals, and righteousness shall prevail throughout the whole world. God’s means of preparation of the nation for the great future, as just shown in the messianic prophecy, are his judgments. These only can prepare the nation for this great future (Isa 2:5-4:1 ), the items of which are (1) the sins to be visited and (2) the classes of objects to be visited by these judgments. The sins to be visited by these judgments (Isa 2:5-9 ) are soothsaying, heathen alliances, luxury, militarism, and idolatry.

The objects against which these judgments are to be brought (Isa 2:10-4:1 ) are everything proud and lofty:

1. Inanimate things that minister to pride, such as cedars and oaks, mountains, military defenses, ships and idols (2:1021).

2. Men, especially the ruling classes (Isa 2:22-3:15 ). In Isa 3:4 we have a picture of weak, foolish rulers. Cf. Isa 3:12 . The ruling classes were especially to blame for the growing sin and corruption of Judah. They were “grinding the face of the poor.”

3. Women, for pride and wantonness (Isa 3:16-4:1 ). Here let us recall the indictment of the cruel, carousing women by Amos (Amo 4:1-3 ), and the words of Hosea about the prevalence of social impurity in his day (Hos 4:2 ; Hos 4:13-14 ). Isaiah dumps out the entire wardrobe of the luxurious sinner of the capital city. What a pity that wicked Paris should set the fashions for Christian women!

After this blast of judgments then follow the messianic prosperity, purity, and protection (Isa 4:2-6 ), a beautiful picture on a very dark background. Here we have the first mention of the’ key word, “Branch,” in “the Branch of the Lord.”

The subject of Isa 5 is the vineyard and its lessons, and the three essential things to note are: (1) the disappointing vineyard and its identification; (2) a series of woes announced; and (3) the coming army.

The prophet shows great skill here in securing attention by reciting a bit of a love song and then gliding gradually into his burning message to a sinful people. The description of this vineyard in the text is vivid and lifelike, showing the pains taken by the owner in preparing, tending, and guarding it. The great pains thus taken enhanced the expectation and, therefore, the disappointment. So, in despair and disgust he destroyed the vineyard and made its place desolate.

The prophet identifies the vineyard with Israel and Judah which had their beginnings, as a nation, with Abraham, and from the day of its planting it was under the special care of Jehovah. He always gave it the most desired spot in which to dwell, both in Egypt and in Canaan, but it never did live up to its opportunities and more, it never did yield the fruits of justice and righteousness, but instead, oppression and a cry. These general terms give way to the particular in the woes that follow. There are six distinct woes pronounced (Isa 5:8-23 ) against sinners in this paragraph, as follows:

1. Woe unto the land monopolies. This is a picture of what may be observed in many parts of the world today. Monopolies lead to loneliness and desolation. God is against the land shark. For a description of conditions, similar to Isaiah’s, in England, gee Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, in which are found these lines: Ill fares the land, to hastening his a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 2. Woe unto the drunken revelers. This is a vivid picture of wine with its accompaniments and results. People inflamed with strong drink relish a kind of music which is not very religious. These musical instruments are all right but they were put to the wrong use. Intoxicating drinks not only pervert the instruments of the Lord, but they make their subjects disregard the works and rights of Jehovah. In Isa 5:13 we see the effect of spiritual ignorance, which is captivity, perhaps the Babylonian captivity, or it may refer to Israel’s captivity already begun. Sheol in Isa 5:14 refers to the place of the departed, the underworld in which the “shades” rested. Here the picture is that of the increasing multitudes in the spirit world because of their disobedience here and God’s destruction of them, after which their land becomes the pasture for the flocks of foreign nomads.

3. Woe unto the defiant unbelievers. This is a picture of the harness of sin, and awful effect produced on those who follow its course. They are harnessed by it and rush madly on in their defying of the Holy One of Israel.

4. Woe unto the perverters of moral distinction, calling evil good, and good evil, putting darkness for light, and light for darkness. Their moral sense is so blunted that they cannot make moral distinctions, as Paul says in Hebrews, “not having their senses exercised to distinguish between good and evil.”

5. Woe unto the conceited men, perhaps their politicians. They are often so wise that they cannot be instructed, but they can tell us how to run any kind of business, from the farm to the most intricate machinery of the government. They may have never had any experience in the subject which they teach, yet they can tell those who have spent their lives in such service just how to run every part of the business down to the minutest detail. But they are really “wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.”

6. Woe unto drunken officers, who justify the wicked for a bribe and pervert justice. When one is once allowed to look in upon our courts of justice (?) he can imagine that Isaiah was writing in the age in which we live. He goes on to show the just punishment that they were destined to receive because of their rejection of the law of Jehovah and because they despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

The conditions herein set forth (Isa 5:25-30 ) reach beyond those of the Assyrian invasion and find a larger fulfilment in the carrying away of Judah by the Chaldeans. Here Jehovah is represented as giving the signal and the call to the nations to assemble for the invasion of Judah and Israel, which may apply either to the Assyrians or to the Chaldeans and, perhaps, to both. Then the prophet describes the speed with which they come and do their destructive work, which may apply to the march of the Assyrians against Samaria and the Chaldeans against Jerusalem. (For minute details of description see the text.) The prophet closes his description of this invading army (or armies) and their destructive work, with Israel in the deepest gloom, which was fulfilled in three instances: (1) the capture of Samaria by the Assyrians; (2) the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans; (3) the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Perhaps all three of these events are in the perspective of the prophet’s vision, which constitute the dark picture and disappointing gloom with which he closes chapter 5 and section I of his book.

Isa 6 gives us Isaiah’s encouraging vision of Jehovah. The preceding section closed in the deepest gloom; the light of prophecy only made the darkness more fearful. Already the heir of David’s throne, Uzziah, had been “humbled” by God’s stroke, “cut away” as a withered branch, excluded from the house of the Lord, and continued till death “unhealed of his plague.” The prophet had delivered his message faithfully, but being only a man, he was conscious of the failure of his message, and therefore, at such a time he needed the comforting revelation of Jehovah, just such as the vision of Isa 6 affords. Thus Jehovah, as he comforted Abraham, Jacob, Moses Joshua, Elijah, the twelve, Paul, and John, in their darkest hours by a vision of himself, so here he comforts Isaiah in his gloom of despondency.

A brief outline of Isa 6 is as follows:

1. The heavenly vision, a vision of the Lord, his throne, his train, the seraphim with six wings each and saying, “Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts.” These creatures are God’s attendants and the six wings represent the speed with which they fly in carrying out his behests, but when in divine presence four of them were used for another purpose. One pair veiled the seraph’s face from the intolerable effulgence of divine glory; another pair veiled his feet, soiled in various ministrations, which were not meet for the all-pure presence.

2. The sense of unworthiness produced by the vision and the symbolic cleansing which encouraged him in his mission. Here the prophet acts very much as Job and John did when they saw his holiness, crying out, “unclean.” This is a most natural result from the contrast between relative and absolute holiness. Job maintained his integrity until he saw the Lord and then he was ready to say, “I abhor myself and repent.” So John fell at the feet of the glorious Son of God as one dead, and Peter said, “Depart; I am a sinful man.” With these examples before us we may conclude that he who boasts of his holiness advertises thereby his guilty distance from God.

3. The offer for service, which naturally follows such a preparation as Isaiah had just received. This, too, is an expression of renewed courage, in the face of such a dark prospect.

4. The message and its effect. He was to preach with the understanding that his message would not be received and that the hearer, because of this message, would pass under the judicial blindness. This passage is quoted by our Lord (Mat 13:14-15 ) to show the same condition in his day and that the responsibility for this condition did not rest upon the prophet or the preacher but that it was the natural result of an inexorable law, viz: that the effect of the message on the hearer of it depends altogether upon the attitude of the hearer toward the message. Them that reject, it hardens and them that accept, it gives life. Thus it has ever been with subjects of gospel address, but the message must be delivered whether it proves a savor of life unto life or of death unto death.

5. The terrible judgments to follow. Here the prophet asks, “How long is to continue this judicial blindness?” and the answer comes back, “Until cities are laid waste, etc.” This includes their captivity in Babylon, their rejection of the Saviour and consequent dispersion, and will continue until the Jews return and embrace the Messiah whom they now reject until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.

6. The final hope expressed. This is the hope of the “remnant,” “the holy seed.” This was Isaiah’s hope of Israel in his day; it was Christ’s hope of Israel in his day; it was Paul’s hope of Israel in his day, and is it not our hope of Israel in our day? “The remnant according to the election of grace.”

QUESTIONS

1. What three things are suggested by the word, “vision,” in the title?

2. How do you explain the fact that this vision was “concerning Judah and Jerusalem” and yet it embraces a vast variety of nations and countries?

3. What relation does Isa 1 sustain to the whole book, what it standpoint, after what is it modeled, and of what does it consist?

4. What are the contents of the first message?

5. What expressions in this paragraph are worthy of note and what is their application?

6. What is the second message of Isa 1 (Isa 1:10-17 )?

7. What is the third message of this chapter (Isa 1:18-23 ), what the back reference here and what the renewed charge?

8. What is the fourth message in this chapter (Isa 1:24-31 ) and what in particular, the hope here held out to Judah?

9. What is the New Testament quotation from this chapter and what use is there made of it?

10. What is the nature of the contents of Isaiah 2-5 and what the relation of this section to Isa 1 ?

11. To what period of time does the section (Isaiah 2-5) belong and what the proof?

12. What is the title to this section and what does it include?

13. What is the close relation of Isaiah 1-2?

14. What is the assurance found in the introduction (Isa 1:2-4 ) and how does this passage compare with Micah’s prophecy on the same point?

15. What is meant here by “the latter days”?

16. What is meant by “the mountain of the Lord’s house”?

17. What means shall be used by the church in accomplishing these results?

18. What spirit of inquiry is here awakened?

19. To what purpose shall all this be?

20. Who is to be the arbiter of the nations, as here described?

21. What is the result of this arbitration?

22. What God’s means of preparation of the nation for the great future, as just shown in the messianic prophecy, and what, in general the items of judgment?

23. What are the sins to be visited by these judgments (Isa 2:5-9 )?

24. What are the objects against which these judgments are to be brought (Isa 2:10-4:1 )?

25. What shall follow these judgments on God’s people (Isa 4:2-6 )?

26. What is the subject of Isa 5 and what the three main points in it?

27. Describe the disappointing vineyard.

28. Identify this vineyard and show its parallels in history.

29. Itemize the woes that follow (Isa 5:8-23 ) and note the points of interest in each case.

30. What is the coming army as predicted in Isa 5:25-30 and what the parallels of this prophecy and its fulfilment?

31. What is the subject of Isa 6 and what its relation to the section (Isaiah 2-5) and what its bearing on the condition of Judah at this time?

32. Give a brief outline of Isa 6 and the application of each point.

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

XXVII

THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST IN ISAIAH

The relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy is that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. To him give all the prophets witness. All the scriptures, the law, the prophets, and the psalms, testify of him. And we are fools, and slow of heart to credit adequate testimony when we distrust any part of the inspired evidence.

Of the ancient prophets Isaiah was perhaps the most notable witness of the coming Messiah. An orderly combination of his many messianic utterances amounts to more than a mere sketch, indeed, rather to a series of almost life-sized portraits. As a striking background for these successive portraits the prophet discloses the world’s need of a Saviour, and across this horrible background of gloom the prophet sketches in startling strokes of light the image of a coming Redeemer.

In Isa 2:2-4 we have the first picture of him in Isaiah, that of the effect of his work, rather than of the Messiah himself. This is the establishment of the mountain of the Lord’s house on the top of the mountains, the coming of the nations to it and the resultant millennial glory.

In Isa 4:2-6 is another gleam from the messianic age in which the person of the Messiah comes more into view in the figure of a branch of Jehovah, beautiful and glorious. In sketching the effects of his work here the prophet adds a few strokes of millennial glory as a consummation of his ministry.

In Isa 7:14 he delineates him as a little child born of a virgin, whose coming is the light of the world. He is outlined on the canvas in lowest humanity and highest divinity, “God with us.” In this incarnation he is the seed of the woman and not of the man.

The prophet sees him as a child upon whom the government shall rest and whose name is “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa 9:6 ). This passage shows the divinity of Christ and the universal peace he is to bring to the world. In these names we have the divine wisdom, the divine power, the divine fatherhood, and the divine peace.

In Isa 11:1-9 the prophet sees the Messiah as a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, i.e., of lowly origin, but possessing the Holy Spirit without measure who equips him for his work, and his administration wrought with skill and justice, the result of which is the introduction of universal and perfect peace. Here the child is presented as a teacher. And such a teacher! On him rests the seven spirits of God. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord. He judges not according to appearances and reproves not according to rumors. With righteousness he judges the poor and reproves with equality in behalf of the meek. His words smite a guilty world like thunderbolts and his very breath slays iniquity. Righteousness and faithfulness are his girdle. He uplifts an infallible standard of morals.

In Isa 40:3-8 appears John the Baptist, whom Isaiah saw as a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for the coming King.

In Isa 11:2 ; Isa 42:1 ; Isa 61:1-3 the prophet saw the Messiah as a worker in the power of the Spirit, in whom he was anointed at his baptism. This was the beginning of his ministry which was wrought through the power of the Holy Spirit. At no time in his ministry did our Lord claim that he wrought except in the power of the Holy Spirit who was given to him without measure.

In Isa 35:1-10 the Messiah is described as a miracle worker. In his presence the desert blossoms as a rose and springs burst out of dry ground. The banks of the Jordan rejoice. The lame man leaps like a hart, the dumb sing and the blind behold visions. The New Testament abounds in illustrations of fulfilment. These signs Christ presented to John the Baptist as his messianic credentials (Mat 11:1-4 ).

The passage (Isa 42:1-4 ) gives us a flashlight on the character of the Messiah. In the New Testament it is expressly applied to Christ whom the prophet sees as the meek and lowly Saviour, dealing gently with the blacksliding child of his grace. In Isa 22:22 we have him presented as bearing the key of the house of David, with full power to open and shut. This refers to his authority over all things in heaven and upon earth. By this authority he gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter one for the Jews and the other for the Gentiles who used one on the day of Pentecost and the other at the house of Cornelius, declaring in each case the terms of entrance into the kingdom of God. This authority of the Messiah is referred to again in Revelation:

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying. Fear not: I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Rev 7:17

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphis write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and none shall shut, and shutteth and none openeth. Rev 3:7

In Isa 32:1-8 we have a great messianic passage portraying the work of Christ as a king ruling in righteousness, in whom men find a hiding place from the wind and the tempest. He is a stream in a dry place and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

In Isa 28:14-18 the Messiah is presented to w as a foundation stone in a threefold idea:

1. A tried foundation stone. This is the work of the master mason and indicates the preparation of the atone for its particular function.

2. An elect or precious foundation stone. This indicates that the stone was selected and appointed. It was not self-appointed but divinely appointed and is therefore safe.

3. A cornerstone, or sure foundation stone. Here it is a foundation of salvation, as presented in Mat 16:18 . It is Christ the Rock, and not Peter. See Paul’s foundation in 1 Corinthians:

According to the grace of God which was given unto me; as a wise masterbuilder I laid a foundation; and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1Co 3:10-11 .

In Isa 49:1-6 he is presented as a polished shaft, kept close in the quiver. The idea is that he is a mighty sword. In Revelation, Christ is presented to John as having a sharp, twoedged sword proceeding out of his mouth.

In Isa 50:2 ; Isa 52:9 f.; Isa 59:16-21 ; Isa 62:11 we have the idea of the salvation of Jehovah. The idea is that salvation originated with God and that man in his impotency could neither devise the plan of salvation nor aid in securing it. These passages are expressions of the pity with which God looks down on a lost world. The redemption, or salvation, here means both temporal and spiritual salvation salvation from enemies and salvation from sin.

In Isa 9:1 f. we have him presented as a great light to the people of Zebulun and Naphtali. In Isa 49:6 we have him presented as a light to the Gentiles and salvation to the end of the earth: “Yea, he saith, It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”

In Isa 8:14-15 Isaiah presents him as a stone of stumbling: “And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble thereon, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.”

The prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection are found in Isa 50:4-9 ; Isa 52:13-53:12 . In this we have the vision of him giving his “back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.” We see a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His visage is so marred it startled all nations. He is a vicarious sacrifice. The chastisement of the peace of others is on him. The iniquity of others is put on him. It pleases the Father to bruise him until he has poured out his soul unto death as an offering for sin.

The teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews is his teaching concerning the “holy remnant,” a favorite expression of the prophet. See Isa 1:9 ; Isa 10:20-22 ; Isa 11:11 ; Isa 11:16 ; Isa 37:4 ; Isa 37:31-32 ; Isa 46:3 . This coincides with Paul’s teaching in Romans 9-11.

In Isa 32:15 we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit: “Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest,” and in Isa 44:3 : “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”

In Isa 11:10 he is said to be the ensign of the nations: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples unto him shall the nations seek; and his resting place shall be glorious.”

Isa 19:18-25 ; Isa 54:1-3 ; Isa 60:1-22 teach the enlargement of the church. The great invitation and promise are found in Isa 55 .

The Messiah in judgments is found in Isa 63:1-6 . Here we behold an avenger. He comes up out of Edom with dyed garments from Bozra. All his raiment is stained with the blood of his enemies whom he has trampled in his vengeance as grapes are crushed in the winevat and the restoration of the Jews is set forth in Isa 11:11-12 ; Isa 60:9-15 ; Isa 66:20 . Under the prophet’s graphic pencil or glowing brush we behold the establishment and growth of his kingdom unlike all other kingdoms, a kingdom within men, a kingdom whose principles are justice, righteousness, and equity and whose graces are faith, hope, love, and joy, an undying and ever-growing kingdom. Its prevalence is like the rising waters of Noah’s flood; “And the waters prevailed and increased mightily upon the earth. And the water prevailed mightily, mightily upon the earth; and all the high mountains, that are under the whole heavens, were covered.”

So this kingdom grows under the brush of the prophetic limner until its shores are illimitable. War ceases. Gannenta rolled in the blood of battle become fuel for fire. Conflagration is quenched. Famine outlawed. Pestilence banished. None are left to molest or make afraid. Peace flows like a river. The wolf dwells with the lamb. The leopard lies down with the kid. The calf and the young lion walk forth together and a little child is leading them. The cow and the bear feed in one pasture and their young ones are bedfellows. The sucking child safely plays over the hole of the asp, and weaned children put their hands in the adder’s den. In all the holy realms none hurt nor destroy, because the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the fathomless ocean is full of water. Rapturous vision! Sublime and ineffable consummation! Was it only a dream?

In many passages the prophet turns in the gleams from the millennial age, but one of the clearest and best on the millennium, which is in line with the preceding paragraph, Isa 11:6-9 : “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together: and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea.”

The prophet’s vision of the destruction of death is given in Isa 25:8 : “He hath swallowed up death for ever; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of his people will he take away from all the earth: for Jehovah hath spoken it,” and in Isa 26:19 : “Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead.”

The clearest outlines of the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained” are to be found in Isa 25:8 , and in two passages in chapter Isa 66 : Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn over her; that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream: and ye shall suck thereof; ye shall be borne upon the side, and shall be dandled upon the knees, as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And ye shall see it, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like the tender grass: and the hands of Jehovah shall be known toward his servants ; and he will have indignation against his enemies. Isa 66:10-14

For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make shall remain before me, saith Jehovah, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. Isa 66:22-23

QUESTIONS

1. What is the relation between the New Testament Christ and prophecy?

2. What can you say of Isaiah as a witness of the Messiah?

3. What can you say of Isaiah’s pictures of the Messiah and their background?

4. Following in the order of Christ’s manifestation, what is the first picture of him in Isaiah?

5. What is the second messianic glimpse in Isaiah?

6. What is Isaiah’s picture of the incarnation?

7. What is Isaiah’s picture of the divine child?

8. What is Isaiah’s vision of his descent, his relation to the Holy Spirit, his administration of justice, and the results of his reign?

9. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah’s herald?

10. What is the prophet’s vision of his anointing?

11. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a miracle worker?

12. What is the prophet’s vision of the character of the Messiah?

13. What is the prophet’s vision of him as the key bearer?

14. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a king and a hiding place?

15. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah as a foundation stone?

16. What is the prophet’s vision of him as a polished shaft?

17. In what passages do we find the idea of the salvation of Jehovah, and what the significance of the idea?

18. What is Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah as a light?

19. Where does Isaiah present him as a stone of stumbling?

20. What is the prophet’s vision of his maltreatment and rejection?

21. What is the teaching of Isaiah on the election of the Jews?

22. Where do we find Isaiah’s teaching on the pouring out of the Holy Spirit?

23. Where is he said to be the ensign of the nations?

24. What passages teach the enlargement of the church?

25. Where is the great invitation and promise?

26. Where is the Messiah in judgment?

27. What passages show the restoration of the Jews?

28. What is the prophet’s vision of the Messiah’s kingdom?

29. What is the prophet’s vision of the millennium?

30. What is the prophet’s vision of the destruction of death?

31. What is the prophet’s vision of “Paradise Regained?”

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Isa 4:1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

Ver. 1. And in that day, ] sc., That day of desolation. Isa 3:26

Seven women, ] i.e., Many women. See the like Zec 8:23 . The women had been grievously threatened, Isa 3:16-24 the men also for their sakes, Isa 3:25-26 and yet the prophet hath not done with them. So heinous is sin in either sex.

Shall take hold of one man. ] Who themselves were wont to be sued unto by many men; and perhaps were not content with their own husbands when they had them alive, but were sick of a pleurisy.

We will eat our own bread, &c. ] Whereas the husband giveth to his wife food, raiment, and due benevolence: these would crave the last only, which yet they could not do neither in this sort but by laying aside woman-like modesty.

Only let us be called by thy name. ] As wives used to be by their husbands’ names, both among the Jews and other nations, as Mary Cleophas, Mary Zebedee, &c. Solomon’s wife was after his name called Shulamite; Son 6:13 and the Roman ladies were wont to say to their husbands, Ubi tu Caius, ibi ego Caia. Where you are Gaius there I am Gaia.

To take away our reproach. ] Of want of husbands and children. See Psa 78:63 Jdg 11:36-37 Jer 30:17 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Isaiah Chapter 4: 2-6

But this time of tribulation, everywhere in scripture connected with the Jews in the last days, before they are delivered, is followed by an outshining of beauty and glory, and abundant mercy for the saved and holy remnant. “In that day shall the Branch of Jehovah be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel” (v. 2). The Branch is a favourite and frequent figure for the Messiah, as the reader of Jeremiah and Zechariah will recognize. He will be there in His beauty and glory, and all will be in unison for the escaped of Israel. However many the slain, this one Man will be the restorer of all breaches, and holiness will be a reality, and not a mere name, in Jerusalem. Yet it is not by the gospel of grace as now, but expressly “by the spirit of judgement and by the spirit of burning.” “And it shall come to pass, [that] he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, [even] every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem; when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgement, and by the spirit of burning” (vv. 3, 4). The translation of J. D. Michaelis is “by the righteous zeal of the tribunals and by a destructive wind.” Rationalism sinks yet lower than superstition. The truth alone preserves the dignity of the divine word. It is not the church but Israel which is in question, and her purification by judgement, when the manifested presence of Jehovah will follow, and be her security no less than her glory.

Vitringa’s application of the spirit of judgement and that of destruction to the Holy Spirit guiding the ruler and ministers of the church in discrimination, is the old source of endless error – the turning aside of Jewish scripture to an essentially Christian object. It is manifestly the day of righteous judgement on earth, and especially in its metropolis, Jerusalem, though one deny not for a moment the action of the Spirit to be here meant, but in judicial power. First purity is effected, then glory shines brightly on Zion. “And Jehovah will create over every dwelling place of mount Zion, and over her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flame of fire by night; for over all the glory [shall be] a canopy. And there shall be a booth (or tabernacle) for a shadow in the day-time from the heat, and for a refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain” (vv. 6, 6). Even as the cloudy pillar once covered the tabernacle of the divine presence, so Jehovah will create on every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and on her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flame of fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a canopy.

The attempt to refer to the gospel these revelations of coming glory for Israel, after purging trial, involves in the highest degree a distortion of scripture. During the present dispensation they are enemies for our sakes, as regards the gospel; while, as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers (Rom 11:28 ). When that day comes, the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in, and so all Israel shall be saved. It is a total change from this day of grace to judgement-day for the living when Christ reigns, whatever the mercy of God to the rescued out of Israel and the nations. “In that day shall there be one Jehovah and His name one.” Then shall be the deliverance, not the destruction, of the still groaning creation. “All the land shall be turned as a plain from Geba to Rimmon, south of Jerusalem: and it shall be lifted up and inhabited in her place, from Benjamin’s gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king’s winepresses” (Zec 14:9 , Zec 14:10 ). It is not the past nor the present neither is it the eternal state, but the millennium. It is an epoch of glory when Jehovah will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn and the wine and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel. Divine judgement shall have washed away the guilt of Zion, and the glory shall return both more blessedly than at the first and for ever. What can contrast more with our day of suffering grace, absent as we are from the Lord?

Manifestly the figures employed do not suit heaven but the earth, especially the land and people of Israel; which again demonstrates that it is no question here of eternity when all distinctions of land and race are passed away. To apply so bright a description to the refuge provided for some in Pella, when the storm of wrath overtook the guilty people, is wholly misleading, as well as beneath the language used. So it is wide of the mark to look at the history of the apostolic church as the fulfilment of the prophecy in the gifts of the Spirit, and in the judgements on open persecutors. It is really a vision of future divine glory for Israel on the earth, after judgements, under the Messiah, when we shall reign (not on, but) “over” it, as it should be in Rev 5:10 . Thus only does all scripture fall into its due place without violence to any. Eph 1:10-12 and Col 1:20 lay the dogmatic foundation for this immense and blessed expectation, as Rev 21:9 et seqq. give us the glorious vision prophetically.

Let us now listen to one of the best of the so-called spiritualising, but really allegorising, school on this chapter. “It is commonly agreed that this prediction has been only partially fulfilled, and that its complete fulfilment is to be expected, not in the literal Mount Zion, or Jerusalem, but in those various assemblies or societies of true believers, which now possess in common the privileges once exclusively enjoyed by the Holy City and the chosen race of which it was the centre and metropolis” (Dr. J. A. Alexander’s Comm. on Isaiah, i. 122).

One essential contrast overthrows this assumption. Israel was divinely severed from the Gentiles by the partition-wall. For the church it is gone absolutely: we are one body in Christ. In that day Israel is a blessing to the nations; yet are they distinct, and never joined in one body but the contrary. We are now united to Christ in heaven, where such distinctions are unsuited. On the earth, even when Christ reigns over it, they reappear. It is the kingdom, in the beginning of Isa 2 , with the undisguised exaltation of the chosen people, yet the nations blessed and subject to Jehovah’s reign in Zion. So Isa 4 . shows the Branch Who alone produces in Israel such excellent fruit, after His judgement has purged the guilty. The intervening part of Isa 2 and all Isa 3 unveils the evil and ruin of Zion publicly and privately. Judgement begins at God’s house. What will it be for Christendom still more favoured? The New Testament answers definitely without confounding the professing church with Israel, though we may and ought to use the principle in every case possible. The most ordinary creeds acknowledge that the Lord Jesus will come to judge the quick, as well as the dead. None but open infidels would deny the judgement of the dead. Few alas! really believe in the judgement of the living. Yet it is of this the Lord so often warned, as in Mat 24:25 , Mar 13 , Luk 17 as well as 21, which Christendom relegates to the end of the world; whereas it will be at the end of this age, after which will come the future good age, the blessed era on which the Psalms and the Prophets dwell with delight and joyful anticipation. Of this our chapter is a witness, as also is the beginning of Isa 2 , while its latter part speaks of the humiliation of man and the overthrow of evil under Jehovah’s hand when ushering in His day.

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 4:1

1For seven women will take hold of one man in that day, saying, We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach!

Isa 4:1-4 The JPSOA translation divides the text into two poetic sections and one prose.

1. Isa 4:1-3

2. Isa 4:4

3. Isa 4:5-6 as prose

Most other versions take Isa 4:1 with Isa 3:16 to Isa 4:1. They also do not structure these verses as poetry. The NKJV has Isa 4:2 and NJB has Isa 4:2-6 as one long poetic context (JB had poetic division at Isa 4:2-6), but most of the others as prose. This should show us how difficult it is to know when a text is elevated prose or poetry and also where the natural/subject breaks occur. Be careful of modern chapter and verse divisions! They are not an inspired guide!

Isa 4:1 This verse seems to link with Isa 3:6 (different VERBS, Isa 3:6, BDB 1074 and Isa 4:1, BDB 304, but both mean to grasp firmly). It may surely link to the Messianic age (i.e., Isa 4:2, Branch, see Special Topic: Jesus the Nazarene ). Hebrew poetry is difficult to lock down. It is often a play on words and similar actions.

seven women Seven is the number for perfection in Jewish thought relating to Genesis 1. Therefore, this , like Isa 3:25-26, refers to all inhabitants of Jerusalem/Judah. See Special Topic: Symbolic Numbers in Scripture .

take hold This VERB (BDB 304, KB 302, Hiphil PERFECT) denotes someone taking a firm grip on another person or some object (i.e., Deu 22:25; Deu 25:11; 1Sa 15:27; 2Sa 1:11; 1Ki 1:50; 2Ki 2:12; 2Ki 4:27; Pro 7:13; Pro 26:17; Zec 8:23).

let us be called by your name The name was a symbol of the person and his characteristics. The purpose of this action is revealed in the next phrase, take away our reproach (BDB 62, KB 74, Qal IMPERFECT). Who can do this?

1. the righteous of Isa 3:10

2. the Messianic Branch of Isa 4:2-6

take away our reproach This NOUN (BDB 357) may refer to

1. a symbol of their sin and rebellion against YHWH

2. their widowhood with no children because all the men were killed in battle (NASB Study Bible, p. 965, NIDOTTE, vol. 2, p. 75)

Isa 54:4 fits both options because widowhood could refer to being divorced (i.e., legal metaphor) by YHWH.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

And. The Figure of speech Polysyndeton (App-6) links this verse on to the preceding chapter.

in that day. Not emphatic, or at the beginning of the verse.

the Branch: i.e. Messiah. So the Chaldee paraphrase has it. Hebrew. zemach. Not the same word as in Isa 11:1. See the Structure of “the Four Gospels” preceding the Structure of MATTHEW; and note the application of this expression to the Gospel of JOHN and the notes there. Used there to connect the four Titles of Messiah: MATTHEW: the King (Zec 9:9 with Jer 23:5, Jer 23:6). MARK: the Servant (Isa 42:1 with Zec 3:8). LUKE: the MAN (Zec 6:12). JOHN: JEHOVAH (Isa 40:9, Isa 40:10, with Isa 4:2).

of the LORD = Jehovah’s Branch: i.e. Messiah. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.

be = become. beautiful and glorious = for honour and for glory.

the earth = the land.

escaped of Israel: i.e. those who will have escaped destruction in the great tribulation. These could not be the “Church”, for they are of “Israel”; and the blessings are the temporal blessings promised in Isa 30:23, &c. Eze 34:29. Joe 2:23-25. Amo 9:11-15, &c.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 4

Now Isaiah looks on through the Lord to the future.

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and we will wear our own clothes; only let us be called by your name, to take away our reproach ( Isa 4:1 ).

It was a reproach to a woman in those days, of course, not to bear a child. But there will be a shortage of men, so seven women will take hold of one man and say, “Hey, we’ll take care of ourselves. We’ll provide our own food and everything else, but we want you to take away our reproach and give your name really to our child.”

But in that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful ( Isa 4:2 )

The branch of the Lord, of course, is one of the terms by which Christ is described, the branch of Jehovah. He is called, actually, the branch of David, and Jehovah’s servant, the Branch, in Zechariah and the term branch is used many times in reference to Jesus Christ.

In that day shall the branch of the LORD be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. And the LORD will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defense. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from the storm and from the rain ( Isa 4:2-6 ).

So going ahead again from the darkness of the impending judgment and the long period of time in which the Gentiles shall rule to the day of the Lord when He shall once again rule, and Israel and Jerusalem shall be blessed in the center of God’s righteous reign upon the earth. “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Isa 4:1-6

Isa 4:1-6

“And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name; take thou away our reproach.

“In that day shall the branch of Jehovah be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy, even everyone that is written among the living in Jerusalem. When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of justice, and by the spirit of burning. And Jehovah will create over the whole habitation of mount Zion, and over her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flame of fire by night; for over all the glory shall be spread a covering. And there shall be a pavilion for a shade in the day-time from the heat, and for a refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain.”

Isa 4:1 is joined to Isaiah 3 in most versions of the Bible, because it is further prophecy of the ruin of the chosen people. What is meant is that at the time of fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, men shall be so scarce, having been slain in war, that seven women desiring to have children to take away their reproach would offer to eat their own bread and provide their own clothing, if only the available man would have children by them and thus take their reproach away. Every Jewish woman considered childlessness the most terrible earthly reproach.

“The general tenor of this chapter, in its context, is that salvation lies on the far side of judgment. Israel’s glory must be that of new growth after destruction, and of holiness after a fiery cleansing, and of God’s `Shekinah’ – His manifested presence, as in the Exodus days.

Isa 4:5 here recalls the days during Israel’s wilderness wanderings when the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night were constant witnesses of the presence and power of God to protect his people.

Isa 4:2 in this chapter mentions “the Branch of Jehovah,” using exactly the same word that is found in Jer 23:5; Jer 33:15; Zec 3:8; and Zec 6:12, where in every instance the plain reference is to the Messiah; and it is our firm conviction that there is no reason to drop the capital letter and downgrade this reference to the fertility of the land or to anything else. We are aware, of course, of the radically conflicting views of commentators on this; and we shall note each position.

Kidner has this:

“Branch is a misleading term for `the shoot of new growth’ which is paralleled by `the fruit of the land.’ The point is that Israel must be reborn: from her roots a new crop must spring up when judgment has removed all her present glory and all but a few survivors. It is the renewed community that is in mind at this point; later, it will emerge that One Man will be this new growth.

We acknowledge that many commentators follow this line, thus editing out of the sacred Old Testament another plain reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is what is wrong with the viewpoint: (1) We do not allow that Kidner, or any other scholar, has the right to belittle the words of the sacred prophets as “misleading.” It is the inaccurate opinion of alleged scholars that is misleading. (2) The Branch is here represented as springing up out of the ground, whereas, Isaiah noted this Branch was to be a “Branch of Jehovah,” not a branch of the roots in the Old Israel, nor a branch out of the ground, but a “Branch of Jehovah!” Furthermore, in all the history of the human family, who else? pray tell, was ever a legitimate “Branch of Jehovah” except the Lord Jesus Christ? (3) Also, note the ridiculous postulation here that “Israel is to be reborn from her roots!” Contrast that impossible proposition with the statement of Jesus Christ that men must be born “from above” (Joh 3:3 ASV).

We are delighted that Gleason L. Archer has properly discerned the true meaning of the word “Branch” in Isa 4:2 –

“`The Branch of Jehovah’ (American Standard Version) refers to Christ himself, as the descendant of the promised line of David. The same word, literally sprout is used with reference to Messiah in Jer 23:5; Jer 33:15; Zec 3:8; and Zec 6:12…Note that the ultimate prosperity is promised only to the escaped of Israel, although the nation as a whole must be rejected for disobedience. Only those who have been sanctified by the new birth, and inwardly transformed to mirror forth Christ’s holiness will be enrolled as citizens in the spiritual Jerusalem.

That this is indeed the true meaning of the passage is indicated in what immediately follows in Isaiah 5, where it is revealed that the Old Israel, the vineyard of the Lord, is no true vine at all, but a corrupt or degenerate vine, carrying the simple meaning that no “sprout” from that evil vine could be the Branch spoken of here. All of this becomes crystal clear in the light of Jesus’ teaching in Joh 15:1 ff. Jesus alone is the “true vine,” the new sprout, not off the old vine, but from God Himself as given to men in the person of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

There is also a contrast in this short chapter (Isaiah 4) between the “filth of the daughters of Zion” and the glorious beauty that shall pertain to the glorified remnant of Israel in the new kingdom of Messiah.

Isa 4:2 THE MESSIAH: In that day, is a flashback to chapter Isa 2:2, . . . in the latter days. Israel and Judah have been punished Isa 2:6 to Isa 4:1; a remnant has escaped; out of that remnant another day (far in the future) a better day, has come. This branch has to be The Branch, The Messiah (Cf. Jer 23:5; Jer 33:15; Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12) if the context is to be taken into account. The Branch, Jesus Christ, is to come and demonstrate the true beauty and glory of Israel. The fruit of the land probably refers to the Messiahs humanity having its connection to the nation of Israel (Cf. Numbers 13 for the land of Canaan, which God gave to Israel). The writer of Hebrews probably had this prophecy in mind when he wrote, For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah . . . (Heb 7:14). Edward J. Young points to four reasons the fruit of the land refers to the Messiah: (a) The parallelism between branch and fruit (Cf. Joh 12:24); (b) In many passages of Scripture there is reference to the fruitfulness of the Messianic age; (c) The text provides no contrast between fruitfulness and barrenness; (d) Only when the phrase fruit of the land refers to the Messiah is there a satisfactory connection with what follows. It might be, however, that the fruit of the land is the product of the Branch, and not the Branch Himself. In this case it would be the redeemed community, the church, Christians.

Isa 4:3 MESSIANIC PEOPLE: In those latter days the people who have escaped the wrath of God and have had their names recorded in Gods book of life will have done so because they have been washed and cleansed (Isa 4:4). An important parallel to this whole context is the passage in Joe 2:28 to Joe 3:3 where practically the same figurative language is used to describe the Messianic age. Those left in Zion will be truly called holy in contrast with those of Jerusalem of Isaiahs day who were claiming to be holy but were filthy. The apostle Paul leaves no doubt that the Zion of prophecy is the New Testament church (Cf. Heb 12:22 ff).

Isa 4:4 THE MESSIANIC CLEANSING: The Lord Himself will take action to cleanse Zion of the filth of sin such as the women of Jerusalem were guilty. The only point at which God could have brought about cleansing, in any ultimate sense, through perfect justice was at the cross of Christ (Cf. Rom 3:21-26). God punished mans sins in Christ and was perfectly just in keeping His word of judgment upon sin, while at the same time He was perfectly merciful in imputing to man the righteousness of Christ (Cf. 2Co 5:14-21). Zechariah proclaims this great cleansing (Zec 12:10 to Zec 13:9). This spirit of burning is portrayed in Malachi as taking place when the Messiah came to purge the sons of Levi (Cf. Mal 3:1-4). All this cleansing began to take place when Jesus came and offered Himself as both the divine agent to satisfy Gods demands and the divine power to meet mans needs for purification. It is still taking place through the work of the Holy Spirit as His message of conviction (John 16) is preached and men respond in faith. But it will find its consummation in Gods great and final Day of Judgment and Salvation.

Isa 4:5-6 THE MESSIANIC PRESENCE: It is significant that the word create is from the same Hebrew word, bara, used in Genesis 1! That which is to come to pass will be brought into being exclusively by the personal and direct power of God. When the future glory of Zion comes, God is going to create a new Jerusalem (Cf. Isa 65:17-25; Isa 66:22-23, etc.). The cloud and the flaming fire are figures borrowed from the wilderness wandering of the covenant people. They depict Divine guidance, protection and access to Gods presence. Over the whole redeemed community of the new Zion God is going to spread a canopy. Just as over the Jewish wedding ceremony there was a protective canopy, so here there will also be one to protect Gods bride, the church. There will also be a booth (pavilion) for refreshing shelter and rest and a refuge from the storms. The booth was a small, protective structure, such as was used by Israel in the wilderness at the Feast of Booths. The covert is a hiding place. There are so many New Testament figures brought to our mind here-Jesus speaks of the man who builds his house upon the rock for protection from the storms; our life is said to be hid with Christ in God, etc.

It is reassuring to listen to these sweet words of hope from the prophet squarely in the midst of his thundering of the judgment? of God upon sin. It reminds us that the message of God is always two-fold; judgment upon sin, but salvation for faith and repentance.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

In all human history there has been a close connection between corrupt rulers and frivolous and polluted womanhood. Fierce is the prophet’s denunciation of such. Their wantonness and their luxury are to be ended. They are to be visited by physical diction, and the sweeping out of all the things associated with their corrupt and luxurious life, and by the death of men.

The appeal ends with another description of the days following the judgment. They are to be characterized by material prosperity issuing from moral purity, and by the mighty protection of Jehovah.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Vanity and Selfish Luxury Condemned

Isa 3:13-26; Isa 4:1-6

This paragraph opens with the majestic figure of Jehovah Himself, who arises to judge the misrulers and plead the cause of the poor. The prophet enumerates the trinkets of the women of Israel, who had given themselves up to luxury and corruption. Woman is the priestess and prophetess of the home and religion, and when she forsakes the level of spiritual influence for that of physical adornment, the salt has lost its savor and the whole commonwealth suffers. The manhood of a land is lost, morally and spiritually when woman falls from her high estate; and there could be no hope for Jerusalem until the divine fire had consumed the filth of her daughters, and the oppressive selfishness of her sons. Then once more each home in Jerusalem would have the same blessed signs of the divine presence as had once been granted to the Tabernacle-the shadowing cloud by day and the gleam of the Shekinah-fire by night. Let us claim these for our homes also!

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Isa 4:2-5

I. Notice, first, the preparation for the promise. In the earlier verses of this chapter two things are presented as antecedent to the gifts of blessing-that is, the coming of the Divine Saviour, and His discipline for holiness within His Church.

II. The promise itself. There is: (1) The presence of God with His Church. (2) The presence of God for counsel. This was the primary purpose for which the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire were given. For guidance in the perplexities of life, God’s presence is promised in the churches of today. (3) The presence of God for defence. Many a time lyers-in-wait have attacked the Church, and empires have undertaken to destroy her, and have called up the secret resources of power for her overthrow, and yet she lives; while the names of her oppressors are forgotten or remembered only with accusation and with shame; and it must be so as long as God lives to protect and bless the Church that He has chosen and redeemed.

W. Morley Punshon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 372.

References: Isa 5:1.-T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 289; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xi., p. 272; H. Thompson, Concionalia: Outlines for Parochial Use, 2nd series, p. 5; F. Delitzsch, Expositor, 3rd series, vol. iii., p. 60.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

And in: Isa 2:11, Isa 2:17, Isa 10:20, Isa 17:7, Luk 21:22

seven: Isa 3:25, Isa 3:26, Isa 13:12

We will eat: 2Th 3:12

let us be called by thy name: Heb. let thy name be called upon us

to take away: or, take thou away

reproach: Gen 30:23, 1Sa 1:6, Luk 1:25

Reciprocal: Gen 19:31 – to come Gen 31:7 – ten times 2Sa 6:23 – Michal Job 19:5 – plead Psa 78:63 – maidens Isa 3:6 – a man Jer 9:20 – hear Jer 15:8 – widows Eze 38:14 – in that Zec 8:23 – take

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Isa 4:1. In that day Of which he has hitherto been speaking, chap. 2. and 3., and still continues to speak; in that calamitous time; seven women shall take hold on one man The war and captivity shall make such a prodigious scarcity in the male sex, that seven women shall be glad to apply to a single man for protection, preservation, and marriage: and shall importune him, though contrary to the natural modesty of their sex, to consent to take away their reproach For not barrenness only, but a single state also was reckoned opprobrious among the Jews. And in spite of the natural suggestions of jealousy, they will each be content with a share only of the rights of marriage in common with several others; and that on hard conditions, renouncing the legal demands of the wife on the husband, (see Exo 21:10,) and begging only the name and credit of wedlock, to be freed from the reproach of celibacy. See Vitringa and Bishop Lowth.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Isa 4:1. Seven womenlet us be called by thy name. After a hundred and twenty thousand of Ahazs army had been slaughtered in one day, men were scarce. Critics generally refer this to the Babylonian captivity; but the custom is now common in India. Women of years and decency will send a present to a great man, and ask to be called by his name, and be his wives at a distance; and though they never see him, yet they are accounted as married.

Isa 4:2. Branch. Christ is here compared to a fruitful branch, which should be as a shadow from the sun. So he is called in several other places. Isa 11:1. Jer 23:5. Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12. Cambyses, father of Cyrus, dreamed that a branch grew from the bosom of Mandana, his daughter-in-law, which overshadowed all Asia. Our antiquaries are agreed that the misletoe, a plant which grows on the oak, but mostly on the appletree, was a healing plant for all diseases. The druids cut it off at the time of sacrifice, and thus gave a symbol to the world, that the Messiah should be cut off for the healing of the nations. In the Gothic gospels our Saviour is often called Hland, or the Healer.

Isa 4:3. He that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy. Such is the current language of prophecy, to comfort the people after their return from Babylon. These are the overflowing and cheering promises of God to his faithful people. He will purify them as silver, Mal 3:2-3 : he will be round about Zion as a wall of fire. Zec 2:5.

Isa 4:5. On every dwellingplace of mount Zion. One text best explains another. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellingplaces of Jacob. Psa 87:2. These dwellings were the synagogues; there the Lord would meet with his people, and there his angels would assemble. In the christian sanctuary he will for ever dwell, and will overshadow his people with a cloud.

Isa 4:6. A covert from the storm, such as shepherds have for retreats. The church has always been a sure refuge in the time of trouble, where the sinner finds righteousness, and eternal life.

REFLECTIONS.

In the preseding portrait we have seen Jerusalem reduced to the lowest state of distress. Where now shall the faithful look, but to the Messiah of JEHOVAH, as the Chaldee paraphrase reads. But here we have to refute those Socinians, or infidel commentators, who kiss the Lord Christ by magnifying his personal virtues, but in heart seem wishful to blot out his name from under heaven. They contend that this Branch is Ezra, or Nehemiah, because the prophecy speaks of the return of the Jews from Babylon. These were but faint and transient shadows; and why should they be called the branch of the Lord, contrary to the Chaldee? And why should Isaiah hope in man, rather than in the Lord, and magnify man as God on earth? The Branch is assuredly the Christ of God, as the scriptures attest; and the fruit of the earth seems more likely to be the accession of gentile nations to the church of God. Isa 11:1. Jer 23:5; Jer 33:15. Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12. And what a beautiful and glorious Branch is the Lord. He flourishes with eternal verdure and bloom. He is the tree of life in the paradise of God, and nourishes his people with the health of eternal life.

In the days when the Messiah shall flourish, they of spiritual Israel, of whom Israel carnal was a figure, shall on escaping the bondage of sin, have their names enrolled in the book of life. This, in the language of the new testament, everywhere implies, the being born of God, and quickened to a life of faith and holiness.

In that age Zion shall be washed by regeneration from the filth of all her sins; and the spirit of judgment and of burning, or Gods visitations on the church and the nations, shall redeem and purge the earth of blood, which implies the cessation of all war and wickedness, as foretold in the second chapter.

In the days of the Messiah we are farther informed, that the Lord would create upon every dwellingplace of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies a cloud, &c. This shows that the glory of the Hebrew sanctuary should be transferred to the christian church for ever. Thus the glory dwelt in Christs humanity, Joh 1:14; and rested on the church from the day of pentecost. Hence the tabernacles of God are with men, even with the gentiles; and he will dwell with them for ever. How glorious then is every christian assembly, for the shekinah is assuredly there. How glorious is the soul of every saint; for the Father, Son, and Spirit have promised there to abide. Now, when he says, I create on mount Zion, &c. it means that the glory of the church shall be altogether supernatural; it shall be a glory upon her from the Lord. And as there was a covering in the ancient tabernacle to defend it from the weather; so the glory of the christian Zion shall be defended from sin by a most sacred code of discipline, and from the world by an invisible arm. Clouds of angels shall attend the worship of the church, and shall be to her a covering by day, and a pillar of fire by night. The gates of hell shall never prevail against her, unless it be for a moment, for the exercise of her faith.

The church so honoured with the divine presence, shall be a shadow for the saints, a refuge for sinners, and a covert in the day of trouble. See Isa 28:16; Isa 32:2.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Isa 3:16 to Isa 4:1. The Luxurious Ladies of Jerusalem and their Doom.As Amos attacked the women of Samaria for their luxury, made possible through the oppression of the poor (Amo 4:1), so Isaiah assails the luxury and haughtiness of the women. These West-end ladies, disdainful and affected, walking with short mincing steps, ogling the men with wanton glances, tinkling with their step-chains and making a clanging sound as they struck their ankle-rings together, will be smitten with leprous scab in their scalps, and be stripped bare of their finery. They will then offer a hideous contrast to their present magnificencefor perfume the stench of scabs, the rope of captivity for the girdle, baldness of mourning (Isa 22:12) for their elaborate coiffure, sackcloth for costly apparel, branding that will ruin their beauty. The ravages of war will be so terrible that the women will outnumber the men by seven to one. Their pride will be so abased that seven will entreat one man to marry them, while they offer to maintain themselves, that the disgrace of being unwedded may be removed. The list of articles of dress, jewelry, and toilet is perhaps not Isaiahs. It is not in his manner to give long prosaic lists of this kind; he mentions enough to bring the picture vividly before the readers eye without wearying him with details. If omitted, Isa 3:17 and Isa 3:24 are brought into connexion.

Isa 3:16. Zion: in the narrower sense, the quarter of Jerusalem where the palace stood.mincing: the ankle-chains (Isa 3:20) which connected the anklets (Isa 3:18) forced them to take short steps (Num 31:50). They exaggerated their feminine characteristics.

Isa 3:18-23. For the unprofitable details the larger commentaries must be consulted. The rendering perfume boxes (Isa 3:20) is that generally accepted; BDB says the meaning is evident from the context. The literal meaning is houses of soul. Since souls are sometimes placed for safe-keeping in an amulet, J. G. Frazer takes the trinkets mentioned here to have been soul boxes, safes in which the souls of the owners are kept for greater security (Balder the Beautiful, ii, 155; Anthropological Essays Presented to E. B. Tylor, pp. 148ff.).

Isa 3:25 f. The curious transition from the women of Jerusalem to Jerusalem itself under the figure of a woman suggests that this may be a later insertion, unless some lines have fallen out

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

4:1 And in that day {a} seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only {b} let us be called by thy name, to take away our {c} reproach.

(a) When God will executes this vengeance there will not be one man found to be the head to many women, and they contrary to womanly shamefacedness will seek men, and offer themselves under any condition.

(b) He our husband and let us be called your wives.

(c) For so they thought it to be without a head and husband.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

This verse brings to a high point the horrors that were to come. War has always resulted in the decimation of the male population. For example, approximately one million French, one million German, and half a million English male soldiers died in World War I. So many men would die in Israel that women would be desperate for male companionship and support. They would be willing to humiliate themselves to escape the reproach of being unmarried and childless. Long gone is the hope to gain a man through seduction of the eyes (cf. Isa 3:16). Now even begging and pleading would be ineffective. Women providing their own food and clothing is the reverse of God’s intention in marriage (cf. Exo 21:10). Likewise, women taking men’s places and leading them, as Eve led Adam (Genesis 3), illustrates a desperate situation.

"Here is the final end of our desire to avoid dependence. We will become dependent in the most degrading and disadvantageous ways." [Note: Oswalt, p. 143.]

All this will happen on "that day" (Isa 3:7; Isa 3:18; Isa 4:1), namely, when God judges His people for trusting in other human beings-and themselves-rather than Him. Many of the judgments prophesied in this section took place during the Babylonian Captivity, and during the Assyrian Captivity of the Northern Kingdom, but "that day" also anticipates Tribulation times.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

2

CHAPTER II

THE THREE JERUSALEMS

740-735 B.C.

Isa 2:1-22; Isa 3:1-26; Isa 4:1-6

AFTER the general introduction, in chapter 1, to the prophecies of Isaiah, there comes another portion of the book, of greater length, but nearly as distinct as the first. It covers four chapters, the second to the sixth, all of them dating from the same earliest period of Isaiahs ministry, before 735 B.C. They deal with exactly the same subjects, but they differ greatly inform. One section (chapters 2-4.) consists of a number of short utterances-evidently not all spoken at the same time, for they conflict with one another-a series of consecutive prophecies, that probably represent the stages of conviction through which Isaiah passed in his prophetic apprenticeship; a second section (chapter 5) is a careful and artistic restatement, in parable and oration, of the truths he has thus attained; while a third section (chapter 6) is narrative, probably written subsequently to the first two, but describing an inspiration and official call, which must have preceded them both. The more one examines chapters 2-6., and finds that they but express the same truths in different forms, the more one is confirmed in some such view of them as this, which, it is believed, the following exposition will justify. chapters 5 and 6 are twin appendices to the long summary in 2-4: chapter 5 a public vindication and enforcement of the results of that summary, chapter 6 a private vindication to the prophets heart of the very same truths, by a return to the secret moment of their original inspiration. We may assign 735 B.C., just before or just after the accession of Ahaz, as the date of the latest of these prophecies. The following is their historical setting.

For more than half a century the kingdom of Judah, under two powerful and righteous monarchs, had enjoyed the greatest prosperity. Uzziah strengthened the borders, extended the supremacy and vastly increased the resources of his little State, which, it is well to remember, was in its own size not larger than three average Scottish counties. He won back for Judah the port of Elah on the Red Sea, built a navy, and restored the commerce with the far East, which Solomon began. He overcame, in battle or by the mere terror of his name, the neighbouring nations-the Philistines that dwelt in cities, and the wandering tribes of desert Arabs. The Ammonites brought him gifts. With the wealth, which the East by tribute or by commerce poured into his little principality, Uzziah fortified his borders and his capital, undertook large works of husbandry and irrigation, organised a powerful standing army, and supplied it with a siege artillery capable of slinging arrows and stones. “His name spread far abroad, for he was marvellously helped till he was strong.” His son Jotham (740-735 B.C.) continued his father s policy with nearly all his fathers success. He built cities and castles, quelled a rebellion among his tributaries, and caused their riches to flow faster still into Jerusalem. But while Jotham bequeathed to his country a sure defence and great wealth, and to his people a strong spirit and prestige among the nations, he left another bequest, which robbed these of their value-the son who succeeded him. In 735 Jotham died and Ahaz became king. He was very young, and stepped to the throne from the hareem. He brought to the direction of the government the petulant will of a spoiled child, the mind of an intriguing and superstitious, woman. It was-when the national policy felt the paralysis consequent on these that Isaiah published at least the later part of the prophecies now marked off as chapters 2-4 of his book. “My people,” he cries-“my people! children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”

Isaiah had been born into the flourishing nation while Uzziah was king. The great events of that monarchs reign were his education, the still grander hopes they prompted the passion of his virgin fancy. He must have absorbed as the very temper of his youth this national consciousness which swelled so proudly in Judah under Uzziah. But the accession of such a king as Ahaz, while it was sure to let loose the passions and follies fostered by a period of rapid increase in luxury, could not fail to afford to Judahs enemies the long-deferred opportunity of attacking her. It was an hour both of the manifestation of sin and of the judgment of sin-an hour in which, while the majesty of Judah, sustained through two great reigns, was about to disappear in the follies of a third, the majesty of Judahs God should become more conspicuous than ever. Of this Isaiah had been privately conscious, as we shall see, for five years. “In the year that king Uzziah died,” (740), the young Jew “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.” Startled into prophetic consciousness by the awful contrast between an earthly majesty that had so long fascinated men, but now sank into a lepers grave, and the heavenly, which rose sovereign and everlasting above it, Isaiah had gone on to receive conviction of his peoples sin and certain punishment. With the accession of Ahaz, five years later, his own political experience was so far developed as to permit of his expressing in their exact historical effects the awful principles of which he had received foreboding when Uzziah died. What we find in chapters 2-4 is a record of the struggle of his mind towards this expression; it is the summary, as we have already said, of Isaiahs apprenticeship.

“The word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” We do not know anything of Isaiahs family or of the details of his upbringing. He was a member of some family of Jerusalem, and in intimate relations with the Court. It has been believed that he was of royal blood, but it matters little whether this be true or not. A spirit so wise and masterful as his did not need social rank to fit it for that intimacy with princes which has doubtless suggested the legend of his royal descent. What does matter is Isaiahs citizenship in Jerusalem, for this colours all his prophecy. More than Athens to Demosthenes, Rome to Juvenal, Florence to Dante, is Jerusalem to Isaiah. She is his immediate and ultimate regard, the centre and return of all his thoughts, the hinge of the history of his time, the one thing worth preserving amidst its disasters, the summit of those brilliant hopes with which he fills the future. He has traced for us the main features of her position and some of the lines of her construction, many of the great figures of her streets, the fashions of her women, the arrival of embassies, the effect of rumours. He has painted her aspect in triumph, in siege, in famine, and in earthquake; war filling her valleys with chariots, and again nature rolling tides of fruitfulness up to her gates; her moods of worship and panic and profligacy-till we see them all as clearly as the shadow following the sunshine, and the breeze the breeze, across the cornfields of our own summers.

If he takes wider observation of mankind, Jerusalem is his watch-tower. It is for her defence he battles through fifty years of statesmanship, and all his prophecy may be said to travail in anguish for her new birth. He was never away from her walls, but not even the psalms of the captives by the rivers of Babylon, with the desire of exile upon them, exhibit more beauty and pathos than the lamentations which Isaiah poured upon Jerusalems sufferings or the visions in which he described her future solemnity and peace.

It is not with surprise, therefore, that we find the first prophecies of Isaiah directed upon his mother city: “The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” There is little about Judah in these chapters: the country forms but a fringe to the capital.

Before we look into the subject of the prophecy, however, a short digression is necessary on the manner in which it is presented to us. It is not a reasoned composition or argument we have here; it is a vision, it is the word which Isaiah saw. The expression is vague, often abused and in need of defining. Vision is not employed here to express any magical display before the eyes of the prophet of the very words which he was to speak to the people, or any communication to his thoughts by dream or ecstasy. They are higher qualities of “vision” which these chapters unfold. There is, first of all, the power of forming an ideal, of seeing and describing a thing in the fulfilment of all the promise that is in it. But these prophecies are much more remarkable for two other powers of inward vision, to which we give the names of insight and intuition-insight into human character, intuition of Divine principles-“clear knowledge of what man is and how God will act”-a keen discrimination of the present state of affairs in Judah, and unreasoned conviction of moral truth and the Divine will. The original meaning of the Hebrew word saw, which is used in the title to this series, is to cleave, or split; then to see into, to see through, to get down beneath the surface of things and discover their real nature. And what characterises the bulk of these visions is penetrativeness, the keenness of a man who will not be deceived by an outward show that he delights to hold up to our scorn, but who has a conscience for the inner worth of things and for their future consequences. To lay stress on the moral meaning of the prophets vision is not to grudge, but to emphasise its inspiration by God.

Of that inspiration Isaiah was himself assured. It was Gods Spirit that enabled him to see thus keenly; for he saw things keenly, net only as men count moral keenness, but as God Himself sees them, in their value in His sight and in their attractiveness for His love and pity. In this prophecy there occurs a striking expression “the eyes of the glory of God.” It was the vision of the Almighty Searcher and Judge, burning through mans pretence, with which the prophet felt himself endowed. This then was the second element in his vision-to penetrate mens hearts as God Himself penetrated them, and constantly, without squint or blur, to see right from wrong in their eternal difference. And the third element is the intuition of Gods will, the perception of what line of action He will take. This last, of course, forms the distinct prerogative of Hebrew prophecy, that power of vision which is its climax; the moral situation being clear, to see then how God will act upon it.

Under these three powers of vision Jerusalem, the prophets city, is presented to us-Jerusalem in three lights, really three Jerusalems. First, there is flashed out {Isa 2:2-5} a vision of the ideal city, Jerusalem idealised and glorified. Then comes {Isa 2:6 – Isa 4:1} a very realistic picture, a picture of the actual Jerusalem. And lastly at the close of the prophecy {Isa 4:2-6} we have a vision of Jerusalem as she shall be after God has taken her in hand-very different indeed from the ideal with which the prophet began. Here are three successive motives or phases of prophecy, which, as we have said, in all probability summarise the early ministry of Isaiah, and present him to us first, as the idealist or visionary; second, as the realist or critic; and, third, as the prophet proper or revealer of Gods actual will.

I. THE IDEALIST

{Isa 2:1-5}

All men who have shown our race how great things are possible have had their inspiration in dreaming of the impossible. Reformers, who at death were content to have lived for the moving forward but one inch of some of their fellow-men, began by believing themselves able to lift the whole world at once. Isaiah was no exception to this human fashion. His first vision was that of a Utopia, and his first belief that his countrymen would immediately realise it. He lifts up to us a very grand picture of a vast commonwealth centred in Jerusalem. Some think he borrowed it from an older prophet; Micah has it also; it may have been the ideal of the age. But, at any rate, if we are not to take Isa 2:5 in scorn, Isaiah accepted this as his own. “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lords house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.” The prophets own Jerusalem shall be the light of the world, the school and temple of the earth, the seat of the judgment of the Lord, when He shall reign over the nations, and all mankind shall dwell in peace beneath Him. It is a glorious destiny, and as its light shines from the far-off horizon, the latter days, in which the prophet sees it, what wonder that he is possessed and cries aloud, “O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord!” It seems to the young prophets hopeful heart as if at once that ideal would be realised, as if by his own word he could lift his people to its fulfilment.

But that is impossible, and Isaiah perceives so as soon as he turns from the far-off horizon to the city at his feet, as soon as he leaves tomorrow alone and deals with today. The next verses of the chapter-from Isa 2:6 onwards-stand in strong contrast to those which have described Israels ideal. There Zion is full of the law and Jerusalem of the word of the Lord, the one religion flowing over from this centre upon the world. Here into the actual Jerusalem they have brought all sorts of foreign worship and heathen prophets; “they are replenished from the East, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and strike hands with the children of strangers.” There all nations come to worship at Jerusalem; here her thought and faith are scattered over the idolatries of all nations. The ideal Jerusalem is full of spiritual blessings; the actual, of the spoils of trade. There the swords are beat into ploughshares and the. spears into pruning-hooks; here are vast and novel armaments, horses and chariots. There the Lord alone is worshipped; here the city is crowded with idols. The real Jerusalem could not possibly be more different from the ideal, nor its inhabitants as they are from what the prophet had confidently called on them to be.

II. THE REALIST

{Isa 2:6 – Isa 4:1}

Therefore Isaiahs attitude and tone suddenly change. The visionary becomes a realist, the enthusiast a cynic, the seer of the glorious city of God the prophet of Gods judgment. The recoil is absolute in style, temper, and thought, down to the very figures of speech which he uses. Before, Isaiah had seen, as it were, a lifting process at work, “Jerusalem in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills.” Now he beholds nothing but depression. “For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and haughty, upon all that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.” Nothing in the great civilisation, which he had formerly glorified, is worth preserving. The high towers, fenced walls, ships of Tarshish, treasures and armour must all perish; even the hills lifted by his imagination shall be bowed down, and “the Lord alone be exalted in that day.” This recoil reaches its extreme in the last verse of the chapter. The prophet, who had believed so much in man as to think possible an immediate commonwealth of nations, believes in man now so little that he does not hold him worth preserving: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?”

Attached to this general denunciation are some satiric descriptions, in the third chapter, of the anarchy to which society in Jerusalem is fast being reduced under its childish and effeminate king. The scorn of these passages is scathing; “the eyes of the glory of God” burn through every rank, fashion, and ornament in the town. King and court are not spared; the elders and princes are rigorously denounced. But by far the most striking effort of the prophets boldness is his prediction of the overthrow of Jerusalem itself (Isa 3:8). What it cost Isaiah to utter and the people to hear we can only partly measure. To his own passionate patriotism it must have felt like treason, to the blind optimism of the popular religion it doubtless appeared the rankest heresy-to aver that the holy city, inviolate and almost unthreatened since the day David brought to her the ark of the Lord, and destined by the voice of her prophets, including Isaiah himself, to be established upon the tops of the mountains, was now to fall into ruin. But Isaiahs conscience overcomes his sense of consistency, and he who has just proclaimed the eternal glory of Jerusalem is provoked by his knowledge of her citizens sins to recall his words and intimate her destruction. It may have been that Isaiah was partly emboldened to so novel a threat, by his knowledge of the preparations which Syria and Israel were already making for the invasion of Judah. The prospect of Jerusalem, as the centre of a vast empire subject to Jehovah, however natural it was under a successful ruler like Uzziah, became, of course, unreal when every one of Uzziahs and Jothams tributaries had risen in revolt against their successor, Ahaz. But of these outward movements Isaiah tells us nothing. He is wholly engrossed with Judahs sin. It is his growing acquaintance with the corruption of his fellow countrymen that has turned his back on the ideal city of his opening ministry, and changed him into a prophet of Jerusalems ruin. “Their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of His glory.” Judge, prophet, and elder, all the upper ranks and useful guides of the people, must perish. It is a sign of the degradation to which society shall be reduced, when Isaiah with keen sarcasm pictures the despairing people choosing a certain man to be their ruler because he alone has a coat to his back! {Isa 3:6}

With increased scorn Isaiah turns lastly upon the women of Jerusalem, {Isa 3:16-26; Isa 4:1-2} and here perhaps the change which has passed over him since his opening prophecy is most striking. One likes to think of how the citizens of Jerusalem took this alteration in their prophets temper. We know how popular so optimist a prophecy as that of the mountain of the Lords house must have been, and can imagine how men and women loved the young face, bright with a far-off light, and the dream of an ideal that had no quarrel with the present. “But what a change is this that has come over him, who speaks not of tomorrow, but of today, who has brought his gaze from those distant horizons to our streets, who stares every man in the face, {Isa 3:9} and makes the women feel that no pin and trimming, no ring and bracelet, escape his notice! Our loved prophet has become an impudent scorner!” Ah, men and women of Jerusalem, beware of those eyes! “The glory of God” is burning in them; they see you through and through, and they tell us that all your armour and the “show of your countenance,” and your foreign fashions are as nothing, for there are corrupt hearts below. This is your judgment, that “instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness, and instead of a girdle a rope, and instead of well-set hair baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth, and branding instead of beauty. Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall be desolate and sit upon the ground!”

This was the climax of the prophets judgment. If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot. If the women are corrupt the state is moribund.

III. THE PROPHET OF THE LORD

{Isa 4:2-6}

IS there, then, no hope for Jerusalem? Yes, but not where the prophet sought it at first, in herself, and not in the way he offered it-by the mere presentation of an ideal. There is hope, there is more-there is certain salvation in the Lord, but it only comes after judgment. Contrast that opening picture of the new Jerusalem with this closing one, and we shall find their difference to lie in two things. There the city is more prominent than the Lord, here the Lord is more prominent than the city; there no word of judgment, here judgment sternly emphasised as the indispensable way towards the blessed future. A more vivid sense of the Person of Jehovah Himself, a deep conviction of the necessity of chastisement: these are what Isaiah has gained during his early ministry, without losing hope or heart for the future. The bliss shall come only when the Lord shall “have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.” It is a corollary of all this that the participants of that future shall be many fewer than in the first vision of the prophet. The process of judgment must weed men out, and in place of all nations coming to Jerusalem, to share its peace and glory, the prophet can speak now only of Israel-and only of a remnant of Israel. “The escaped of Israel, the left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem.” This is a great change in Isaiahs ideal, from the supremacy of Israel over all nations to the bare survival of a remnant of his people.

Is there not in this threefold vision a parallel and example for our own civilisation and our thoughts about it? All work and wisdom begin in dreams. We must see our Utopias before we start to build our stone and lime cities.

“It takes a soul

To move a body; it takes a high-souled man

To move the masses even to a cleaner stye;

It takes the ideal to blow an inch inside

The dust of the actual.”

But the light of our ideals dawns upon us only to show how poor by nature are the mortals who are called to accomplish them. The ideal rises still as to Isaiah only to exhibit the poverty of the real. When we lift our eyes from the hills of vision, and rest them on our fellow-men, hope and enthusiasm die out of us. Isaiahs disappointment is that of every one who brings down his gaze from the clouds to the streets. Be our ideal ever so desirable, be we ever so persuaded of its facility, the moment we attempt to apply it we shall be undeceived. Society cannot be regenerated all at once. There is an expression which Isaiah emphasises in his moment of cynicism: “The show of their countenance doth witness against them.” It tells us that when he called his countrymen to turn to the light he lifted upon them he saw nothing but the exhibition of their sin made plain. When we bring light to a cavern whose inhabitants have lost their eyes by the darkness, the light does not make them see; we have to give them eyes again. Even so no vision or theory of a perfect state-the mistake which all young reformers make- can regenerate society. It will only reveal social corruption, and sicken the heart of the reformer himself. For the possession of a great ideal does not mean, as so many fondly imagine, work accomplished; it means work revealed-work revealed so vast, often so impossible, that faith and hope die down, and the enthusiast of yesterday becomes the cynic of tomorrow. “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted?” In this despair, through which every worker for God and man must pass, many a warm heart has grown cold, many an intellect become paralysed. There is but one way of escape, and that is Isaiahs. It is to believe in God Himself; it is to believe that He is at work, that His purposes to man are saving purposes, and that with Him there is an inexhaustible source of mercy and virtue. So from the blackest pessimism shall arise new hope and faith, as from beneath Isaiahs darkest verses that glorious passage suddenly bursts like uncontrollable spring from the very feet of winter. “For that day shall the spring of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.” This is all it is possible to say. There must be a future for man, because God loves him, and God reigns. That future can be reached only through judgment, because God is righteous.

To put it another way: All of us who live to work for our fellow-men or who hope to lift them higher by our word begin with our own visions of a great future. These visions, though our youth lends to them an original generosity and enthusiasm, are, like Isaiahs, largely borrowed. The progressive instincts of the age into which we are born and the mellow skies of prosperity combine with our own ardour to make our ideal one of splendour. Persuaded of its facility, we turn to real life to apply it. A few years pass. We not only find mankind too stubborn to be forced into our moulds, but we gradually become aware of Another Moulder at work upon our subject, and we stand aside in awe to watch His operations. Human desires and national ideals are not always fulfilled; philosophic theories are discredited by the evolution of fact. Uzziah does not reign for ever; the sceptre falls to Ahaz: progress is checked, and the summer of prosperity draws to an end. Under duller skies ungilded judgment comes to view, cruel and inexorable, crushing even the peaks on which we built our future, yet purifying men and giving earnest of a better future, too. And so life, that mocked the control of our puny fingers, bends groaning to the weight of an Almighty Hand. God also, we perceive as we face facts honestly, has His ideal for men; and though He works so slowly towards His end that our restless eyes are too impatient to follow His order, He yet reveals all that shall be to the humbled heart and the soul emptied of its own visions. Awed and chastened, we look back from His Presence to our old ideals. We are still able to recognise their grandeur and generous hope for men. But we see now how utterly unconnected they are with the present-castles in the air, with no ladders to them from the earth. And even if they were accessible, still to our eyes, purged by gazing on Gods own ways, they would no more appear desirable. Look back on Isaiahs early ideal from the light of his second vision of the future. For all its grandeur, that picture of Jerusalem is not wholly attractive. Is there not much national arrogance in it? Is it not just the imperfectly idealised reflection of an age of material prosperity such as that of Uzziahs was? Pride is in it, a false optimism, the highest good to be reached without moral conflict. But here is the language of pity, rescue with difficulty, rest only after sore struggle and stripping, salvation by the bare arm of God. So do our imaginations for our own future or for that of the race always contrast with what He Himself has in store for us, promised freely out of His great grace to our unworthy hearts, yet granted in the end only to those who pass towards it through discipline, tribulation, and fire.

This, then, was Isaiahs apprenticeship, and its net result was to leave him with the remnant for his ideal: the remnant and Jerusalem secured as its rallying-point.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary