Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Isaiah 62:6

I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, [which] shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence,

6. I have set walls ] Another translation might be: “I have appointed guardians of thy walls.” The verb for “set” means strictly “commission,” and the thing put in commission is expressed by the prep. rendered “upon.” On either view, the “walls” are the ruined walls of the actual city, rather than those of the ideal Zion of the future (cf. ch. Isa 49:16).

ye that make mention of the Lord ] Render with R.V. ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers. The words are to be joined with Isa 62:7.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

6, 7. Jehovah hears perpetually the voice of importunate intercession ascending for the ruined walls of Jerusalem. This is the thought poetically expressed in the two verses, but the details of the conception present several difficult questions. In the first place, Who are meant by the watchmen, or rather watchers? [The word differs from that used in Isa 56:10, Isa 52:8 (= “lookers out”) and means literally “keepers” or “guards” (Son 3:3; Son 5:7; Psa 127:1)]. ( a) Some hold that it is here a name for the company of prophets, but this view has really little in its favour. The function ascribed to the watchers is not strictly prophetic, and the word is nowhere else used of a prophet except in ch. Isa 21:11 f., where there is obviously a comparison of the prophet to a city watchman. ( b) Another, but less probable, opinion is that pious Israelites are meant. ( c) The best interpretation seems to be that of the Jewish exegetes, that the “watchers” are angelic beings, forming the invisible guard of the city. The representation, therefore, is purely ideal, and this fact has to be borne in mind in considering the second question, Who is the speaker in the first half of Isa 62:6? The prophet could not strictly be said to appoint either angelic or prophetic watchers; hence the prevalent opinion is that Jehovah is the speaker. On the other hand it seems to some unnatural that Jehovah should appoint those who are to remind Himself of His own promises, and it is certainly the prophet who speaks in the latter part of the verse. It might be held that the language is not too bold for the prophet to use of himself in describing a scene which belongs to the region of the spiritual imagination, just as other prophets do things in vision which exceed human authority (cf. Zec 11:7 ff.). Cheyne alone regards the three passages Isa 61:1 ff., Isa 62:1 ff., and Isa 62:6 f., as soliloquies of the ideal Servant of Jehovah, or rather of that ideal as reflected in the mind of a later disciple of the second Isaiah.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

I have set watchmen upon thy walls – (See the notes at Isa 21:6-11). The speaker here is undoubtedly Yahweh; and by watchmen he means those whom he had appointed to be the instructors of his people – the ministers of religion. The name watchmen is often given to them (Eze 3:17; Eze 33:7; see the notes at Isa 52:8; Isa 56:10).

Which shall never hold their peace – The watches in the East are to this day performed by a loud cry as they go their rounds. This is done frequently in order to mark the time, and also to show that they are awake to their duty. The watchmen in the camp of the caravans go their rounds, crying one after another, God is one; He is merciful; and often add, Take heed to yourselves – (Tavernier). The truth here taught is, that they who are appointed to be the ministers of religion should be ever watchful and unceasing in the discharge of their duty.

Ye that make mention of the Lord – Margin, That are the Lords remembrancers. These are evidently the words of the prophet addressing those who are watchmen, and urging them to do their duty, as he had said Isa 62:1 he was resolved to do his, Lowth renders this, O ye that proclaim the name of Yahweh. Noyes, O ye that praise Yahweh. But this does not express the sense of the original as well as the common version. The Hebrew word hamaz^ekiyriym, from zakar, to remember) means properly those bringing to remembrance, or causing to remember. It is a word frequently applied to the praise of God, or to the celebration of his worship Psa 20:7; Psa 38:1; Psa 45:17; Psa 70:1; Psa 102:12. In such instances the word does not mean that they who are engaged in his service cause Yahweh to remember, or bring things to his recollection which otherwise he would forget; but it means that they would keep up his remembrance among the people, or that they proclaimed his name in order that he might not be forgotten. This is the idea here. It is not merely that they were engaged in the worship of God; but it is, that they did this in order to keep up the remembrance of Yahweh among people. In this sense the ministers of religion are the remembrancers of the Lord.

Keep not silence – Hebrew, Let there be no silence to you. That is, be constantly employed in public prayer and praise.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Isa 62:6-7

I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem

The watchmans call

The prosperity of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, which teaches the Gentile world through Hebrew channels, depends on two conditions–watchfulness and prayer.

To the latter of these subjects this discourse will be devoted. Let us dwell on importunity in prayer. And give Him no rest.

I. THIS IS A CALL TO THE INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN, and to a particular duty. Personal devotion will largely relate to matters affecting the individual and the family, but it must not stop there. The Christian must not forget that he is a member of the great Catholic Church, and must bear its burdens on his spirit to God in prayer.

II. THE CHURCH ALSO MUST MEET ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS TO PRAY FOR A LARGER OUTPOURING OF THE HOLY GHOST.

III. BY A FEW CONSIDERATIONS WE WILL ENDEAVOUR TO ENFORCE THE DUTY.

1. One is the fact that God has promised to meet us on the ground of earnest and constant prayer.

2. The history of importunate prayer is full of marvels.

3. If we survey the situation of the Church, and call to mind the responsibility which rests upon it, our own souls would be moved to greater earnestness. Precious souls are perishing around us; the Cross of Calvary, the love of God, the traditions of the Church, conscience, humanity, the judgment, heaven, hell, beseech us to rescue the perishing. There is but one power that will make the Church of Christ equal to every task which the Master has set before it–earnest prayer.

4. Importunate prayer ends in praise. Jerusalem will be established, and will become the praise–the glory–of the earth.

5. Although prayer in all its aspects is the inheritance of every Christian, yet every Christian is not a watchman. Therefore a word to Church leaders will be in place. Let them look round and survey the state of the Church. (T. Davies, M. A.)

The saints importunity for Zions prosperity

It is a truth which holds good, both in Scripture and experience, that the care of Zion lies at the bottom of all Gods powerful actings among the sons of men. All that He is and does, in the methods of His common and extraordinary providence, is for the sake of His Church, which is the principal cause and interest; He has in the world.

I. WHAT ARE THOSE SHAKINGS TO WHICH THE CAUSE AND CHURCH OF CHRIST ARE EXPOSED IN THE EARTH?

1. There are shakings to which the cause of Christ is exposed, which arise from outward violence (Psa 2:2).

2. There are shakings which arise from inward decays A building will shake and totter and grow ruinous, without any outward violence, if the foundation is undermined ; or if the pins and fastenings, whereby it is held together, decay. This is the ease(l) When Gospel-truth is perverted or denied.

(2) When Gospel-holiness is neglected.

(3) When love is not cultivated.

II. WHEN MAY GOD BE SAID SO TO ESTABLISH HIS CHURCH AS TO MAKE IT A PRAISE IN THE EARTH? To make up this praise and renown there are four or five things. As–

1. Abundance of light and knowledge.

2. High degrees of holiness.

3. Abundance of peace (Psa 72:7).

4. A. multitude of converts.

5. A rich supply of all temporal good things.

Mens natures shall be changed; their corrupt lusts and passions shall be subdued; and all their riches, honour, and power shall be employed for the support of Christs cause and kingdom.

III. THE DUTY OF SUCH AS MAKE ANY PROFESSION OF CHRIST WITH REFERENCE TO THIS GREAT AND GLORIOUS DAY. Ye that make, etc.

1. This day of Zions establishment and praise should be uppermost in our thoughts. That which has no place in our thoughts and affections will have very little in our prayers. The Church of old deprecated this as an abominable sin; (Psa 137:5-6).

2. It should be continually in our prayers.

3. Prayer for Zions establishment must be with a holy importunity and constancy. It is not the work of one day, but of every day; the blessing prayed for has every other blessing and mercy in the bowels of 2:4. Zions friends are called to pray and work. The former branch of the verse commands action: I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem. It is hypocrisy to ask in private what you would not be glad to do in public. Your time, gifts, substance and lives are Gods. (J. Hill.)

Spiritual patriotism

We propose to put this illustration of Jewish patriotism into another frame. For in the New Testament Jerusalem stands metaphorically for the Church of Jesus Christ (Heb 12:22; Gal 9:26). The rebuilding of the Jewish capital will thus signify in Gospel speech the establishment of the Christian Church.

I. A CALL TO SPIRITUAL PATRIOTISM. All through the second part of Isaiah Jerusalem is idealized, for Jerusalem, as the city actually was, presented small occasions for felicitation. But the Jerusalem the Servant of the Lord saw was the worlds centre–the capital of all the nations! It was the city of the Great King, and while the power and glory of other nations lay in their armies, their wealth, their population, their culture, the glory of Jerusalem was her religion. Now, what Jerusalem was to the Servant of the Lord the Christian Church is to the Christian; he is a fellow-citizen with the saints, bound, therefore, to be a spiritual, patriot. Only the Christian Church is not limited to one nation. Above all, the Church is a spiritual metropolis among the world powers, a heavenly fatherland on earthly soil, an eternal State established amidst temporal surroundings. Thus the love of a Jew for Jerusalem comes to represent the solicitude of a Christian for the Church. The Jew never forgot his fatherland.

II. THE OUTCOME OF SPIRITUAL PATRIOTISM IN WATCHFULNESS AND PRAYER. Patriotism is hers set forth under two similes.

1. Spiritual patriots are to be sentinels. I have set watchmen upon thy walls,

2. Jerusalem. The godly life is ever a campaign, and spiritual men are men with an eye, as Carlyle phrases it. When others cry, Peace, peace, it is often their painful duty to be nonconformists to a general delusion and to sound an alarm. And how great a result may be produced by the faithfulness of even one man! On a dark night in December 1602, when the inhabitants of Geneva, lulled by peaceful professions, slept, but never dreamed of danger, a daring attempt known in history as the Escalade was made by their foes. The Savoyards scaled the walls, and would have admitted their comrades but for the discharge of the musket of one of the sentries. He fell a martyr, but the crack of his piece brought the citizens from their beds, and the city was saved, while Beza, then eighty years of age, returned to God public thanksgiving, announcing the 124 th Psalm for singing. There is work for our sentinels to-day.

3. But spiritual patriots are also the Lords remembrancers. The old State appointment is our illustration. In the Book of Esther the work of the remembrancer comes out in the chronicles which were read before the king on the occasion of his attack of insomnia; and the office, in a modified form, is known to us to-day in connection with our city councils. But there are elect souls who are the Lords remembrancers. It may be that not every Christian has leisure of heart for this full consecration, for these remembrancers are such as make the progress of Gods kingdom their prime solicitude. Eli could bear to hear of the ruin of his ,house in the death of his sons, but died on learning of the capture of Gods ark. This is the highest style of patriotism. General Wolfe, in shattered health, led the handful of English that took Quebec from the French. Stricken down just as victory was assured, yet stimulated by the cry, They run, he could just inquire who ran, and when told it was the French, forgetful of his own interests, he gasped, I die happy, and closed his eyes. Shall spiritual patriots show less devotion? It is theirs to exercise unbounded faith in the Divine the text lies in its emphasis of urgent and perpetual prayer. Take ye no rest, and give Him no rest. This is the Old Testament anticipation of the parable of the importunate widow. When a lady appealed to the great Protector for the release of her husband, Cromwell preserved a stolid demeanour so long as the wife confined herself to the proprieties of measured speech, but directly she burst into tears her plea was granted. Prayer is the wireless telegraphy which unites heaven and earth; if only each heart be a receiver it shall never lack a message from on high, and there is always a great receiver there in the heart of our God.

III. FOR THE TRIUMPH OF THIS SPIRITUAL PATRIOTISM THE SERVANT OF THE LORD. RENDERS HIMSELF RESPONSIBLE. The prayers of the Church and the purpose of Jesus Christ run in parallel lines when the prayer-spirit is deep and real; or better, our prayer and His purpose are two streams that run into one channel with united force. True prayer is not the attempt to wring benediction from an unwilling hand. God is not in danger of forgetting His pledges only His pledges can scarcely take effect in spiritual benediction till the Church is ready to claim her own. There are millions of money in Chancery with no one to claim it; there is boundless grace in God waiting to be appropriated by man. While our prayers co-operate with Gods purpose never may we forget that all real prayer has its origin in God: it is the Divine purpose struggling for expression in the human heart. This brings us to our point of rest. The Servant of the Lord has rendered Himself responsible for His Church. The proof lies in His Cross, in His intercession, in the wonderful providence by which His Church has been preserved from extinction all along the ages, notwithstanding that she has lived all the while in the midst of foes. While we leave the responsibility of final issues with our Lord, we may share the glory and the joy of being workers together with Him. How clearly this comes out this connection! For Zions sake, says He, will I not hold my peace. I have set watchmen upon thy walls or, they shall never hold their peace. I will not rest. Take ye no rest. The Christ-spirit is thus the Christian spirit; the work of Christ is continued by His Church. Now look at the magnificent result anticipated! The Church is to become Gods city of light (verse 1). The ideal is developed in the Revelation (Rev 21:23-24). Whatever light stands for, whether revelation, or brightness, or beauty, or safety, or purity, all these are to find their home and sphere in Christs Church. The Church of Christ is to be first a guiding light to men–but afterwards she is to be as a sunrise to the nations (Isa 9:2). For the Church is to be at once the expositor of Gods righteousness and the channel of Gods salvation. (J. T. Briscoe.)

No rest for God or His people

In its present position, Jerusalem is at once a witness for God and a type of man–a witness to Gods truth and justice, and a type of mans sin and sorrow. Prayer to God is enjoined as a means to secure the renovation and blessing of the temporal Jerusalem; and prayer is still one of the mightiest forces which can be brought to bear on the waste places and ruined magnificence of mans spiritual nature.

I. A CHARACTER WE MUST ENDEAVOUR TO DESERVE. The prophet describes Gods servants as those who make mention of the Lord, or, in other words, are the Lords rembrancers. Not that they had need to remind Him of their needs or His fulness, but that their business was to bring Him to the remembrance of those about them.

II. If we are thus to be the Lords remembrancers THERE IS A DANGER WE MUST SEEK TO AVOID. This is, the danger of keeping silence, of withholding our testimony, or giving it half-heartedly and in a perfunctory manner. There are not a few roads which end at this habitation of silence.

1. Doubt.

2. Despair, whether it be despair of ourselves or of others. Hopefulness is as necessary as faithfulness.

3. We shall keep silence if we grow weary in well-doing; if patience gives place to fretfulness, and love of ease cries out against the practice of self- denial; if the crown is longed for while the cross is shunned, and the reaping is desired while the sowing is neglected.

III. In connection with all this, THERE IS A DUTY WE MUST FAITHFULLY PERFORM. Give Him no rest. No rest for the servant, and no rest for the Master. Surely this means: Be earnest in supplication.

IV. A RESULT IN WHICH WE MUST STEADFASTLY BELIEVE. We are to be remembrancers and pleaders till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. That He will do these great things we are devoutly to believe; that He may do them we are earnestly to pray. The early verses of our chapter draw a picture already seen by the prophetic eye. Righteousness, bright as the light going forth with salvation, clear as the burning lamp. The new name given to betoken the new nature. The joy of wedding festivity celebrating the union of the once forsaken city- with her new-found Lord and King. Glowing picture this; yet to be fully realized in the capital of the Holy Land, and yet to be spiritually realized in the fulness of blessing which shall crown all faithful labour, and be the answer to every earnest prayer. (W. J. Mayers.)

The Lords rembrancers

(R.V.):–It is hardly possible not to linger a little over this curious appellation, the Lords remembrancers, given in the margin of the Authorised Version, and in the text of the Revised. Several interpretations of it have been suggested. The original word itself has both the ordinary meaning of one who reminds another, and a technical meaning 2Sa 20:24) akin to, though not identical with, that of the English word. By some it is applied to the angels, who are also supposed to be the watchmen upon the walls, referred to in the preceding clause. But such an explanation lifts the passage entirely out of the sphere of human privilege and duty, and introduces into it allusions to matters about which very little is known. There may be in it a special reference to prophets, whose functions would naturally include that of leading the people in their supplications to God, as well as that of warning them of danger and inciting them to effort. But there is no need to confine the term to officials of any kind. The entire New Testament is a sufficient authority for applying it to all true Christians. If, indeed, there be truth in the tradition, in Judaism itself it was recognized in part of the sacrificial ritual that every man could be and ought to be the Lords remembrancer. Psa 44:1-26. describes some of the marvellous things done by Jehovah for Israel in the past, and the forsaken and oppressed condition of Israel in the present; and one of its closing verses is said to have been regularly sung for long in the temple worship–the one in which Jehovahs rembrancers, after having reminded Him of their need and of His promised help, call upon Him: Awake, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? Arise, cast us not off for ever. John Hyrcanus is reputed to have abolished this custom, in spleen at the refusal of the Pharisees to let him reign in peace, or possibly, according to a more charitable conjecture, under the feeling that the idea of awakening and reminding Jehovah involves a defect of faith. The psalm, however, is entirely true to human nature. For when men are tempted to imagine themselves forsaken of God and begirt inextricably by perils, it is an immense stimulus and encouragement of faith to remind God of their needs and of His promises, of their present reliance upon Him, and even (for Scripture warrants it elsewhere) of the way in which His faithfulness and honour are concerned in their protection and deliverance. Jacob prayed in that way, when he trembled at the thought of his brothers probable rage, pleading Gods actual words of promise: O God of my fathers, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee:. . . Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother:. . . for (again) Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea. Two rembrancings, and between them a little prayer; and of course the result was that, when Esau came, instead of pouring his rough followers upon the struggling and indefensible caravan, he fell on his brothers neck and kissed him. David was surprised and almost staggered in unbelief at the prospect of greatness and renown which the prophet Nathan opened up to him, but he recovered and fed his faith by reminding Himself and his God of the promise, and prayed, Now, O Lord God, the word that Thou hast spoken concerning Thy,, servant and concerning his house, establish it for ever, and do as Thou hast said. In this very prophecy Israel first of all reminds Jehovah of what He has been wont to do, anti what needs to be done now: Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. The result is seen in vision at once: Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and so all the watchmen lift up their voices: Break forth unto joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord hath comforted His people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem: the Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. We shall never suffer much prolonged doubt as to our own establishment or the Churchs, if we will only duly remember and exercise our high vocation, to remind God of our perils and needs and of His promised grace and help. (R. W. Moss.)

Watchers

Not watchmen (lit. lookers out) as in Isa 52:8; Isa 56:10, but as in Isa 21:11; Son 5:7, lit. keepers, those who guard the city, especially dining the night. (Prof. S. R. Driver, D. D.)

Three kinds of ministers

The ministers of the temple of truth, it has been said, are of three kinds: first, those stationed at the gate of the temple to constrain the passers-by to come in; secondly, those whose function is to accompany inside all who have been persuaded to enter, and display and explain to them the treasures and secrets of the place; and, thirdly, those whose duty is to patrol round the temple, keeping watch and ward and defending the shrine from the attacks of enemies. We are only speaking very roughly if we say that the first of these three functions is that of the
Preacher, the second that of the Teacher, and the third that of the
Controversialist. (J. Stalker, D. D.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 6. Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence] The faithful, and in particular the priests and Levites, are exhorted by the prophet to beseech God with unremitted importunity (compare Lu 18:1, c.) to hasten the redemption of Sion. The image in this place is taken from the temple service in which there was appointed a constant watch, day and night, by the Levites: and among them this seems to have belonged particularly to the singers, see 1Ch 9:33. Now the watches in the east, even to this day, are performed by a loud cry from time to time of the watchmen, to mark the time, and that very frequently, and in order to show that they themselves are constantly attentive to their duty. Hence the watchmen are said by the prophet, Isa 52:8, to lift up their voice; and here they are commanded, not to keep silence; and the greatest reproach to them is, that they are dumb dogs; they cannot bark; dreamers; sluggards, loving to slumber, Isa 56:10. “The watchmen in the camp of the caravans go their rounds crying one after another, ‘God is one, he is merciful:’ and often add, ‘Take heed to yourselves.'” TAVERNIER, Voyage de Perse, Liv. i. chap. x. The hundred and thirty-fourth Psalm gives us an example of the temple watch. The whole Psalm is nothing more than the alternate cry of two different divisions of the watch. The first watch addresses the second, reminding them of their duty; the second answers by a solemn blessing. The address and the answer seem both to be a set form, which each division proclaimed, or sung aloud, at stated intervals, to notify the time of the night: –

FIRST CHORUS

“Come on now, bless ye JEHOVAH, all ye servants of JEHOVAH;

Ye that stand in the house of JEHOVAH in the nights;

Lift up your hands towards the sanctuary,

And bless ye JEHOVAH.”

SECOND CHORUS

“JEHOVAH bless thee out of Sion;

He that made heaven and earth.”

“Ye who stand in the place of the watch, in the house of the sanctuary of the Lord; and ye praise through the nights;” – says the Chaldee paraphrase on the second line. And this explains what is here particularly meant by proclaiming, or making remembrance of, the name of JEHOVAH: the form, which the watch made use of on these occasions, was always a short sentence, expressing some pious sentiment, of which JEHOVAH was the subject; and it is remarkable, that the custom in the east in this respect also still continues the very same; as appears by the example above given from Tavernier.

And this observation leads to the explanation of an obscure passage in the Prophet Malachi, Mal 2:12.

“JEHOVAH will cut off the man that doeth this;

The watchman and the answerer, from the tabernacles of Jacob;

And him that presenteth an offering to JEHOVAH God of hosts.”

er veoneh, the master and the scholar, says our translation, after the Vulgate: the son and the grandson, says the Syriac and Chaldee, as little to the purpose: Arias Montanus has given it vigilantem et respondentem, “the watchman and the answerer;” that is, the Levite and “him that presenteth an offering to JEHOVAH,” that is, the priest. – L. Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence. Is not this clause an address to the ministers of Christ, to continue in supplication for the conversion of the Jewish people? Kimchi seems to think that the watchmen are the interceding angels!

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Watchmen; understand by these, either,

1. Angels, as they are called, Dan 4:13,23. Or

2. Magistrates: see Isa 56:10, or rather,

3. Ministers. When once the church shall be restored again, God will undertake for its safety and protection, partly by magistracy, and partly by ministry, whom he here by a metaphorical allegory calls watchmen; but the next words seem principally to intimate spiritual watchmen, thy spiritual safety, Heb 13:17, and said to be upon the walls, as being thence able to espy dangers at the greater distance, Son 1:7.

Which shall never hold their peace day nor night; there shall be a most vigilant and industrious ministry, their constancy being intimated by day and night, either in praying, or teaching, Or warning, this being their office.

That make mention, i.e. are his servants. To make mention of one is, according to the Hebrew phrase, to be servant to him of whom we make mention, Isa 26:13. And here especially are meant his servants in ordinary, his remembrancers; either such as put God in mind of his promise, like such officers that great men have about them on purpose to mind them of the public affairs; or such as make the Lord to be remembered, putting his people in mind of him.

Keep not silence: this seems to be the charge that he gives to his watchmen, that they never prove remiss or negligent.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

6. IIsaiah speaking in theperson of the Messiah.

watchmen upon . . .wallsimage from the watches set upon a city’s wall to look outfor the approach of a messenger with good tidings (Isa 52:7;Isa 52:8); the good tidings ofthe return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, prefiguring the returnfrom the present dispersion (compare Isa 21:6-11;Isa 56:10; Eze 3:17;Eze 33:7). The watches in theEast are announced by a loud cry to mark the vigilance of thewatchmen.

ye that . . . mention . . .LordHebrew, “ye that are the Lord’sremembrancers”; God’s servants who by their prayers “putGod in remembrance” of His promises (Isa43:26); we are required to remind God, as if God could,which He cannot, forget His promises (Psa 119:49;Jer 14:21).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem,…. Not angels, as Jarchi; nor kings, as Kimchi; nor princes and civil magistrates, as others; nor the mourners in Zion, as Aben Ezra; but ministers of the Gospel; as the prophets of the Old Testament are called watch men, Isa 21:11, so ministers of the New,

Isa 52:8 who are to watch in all things over themselves, and for the souls of men; for their good, and to guard them against that which is evil, pernicious, and dangerous, both in principle and practice, 2Ti 4:5. The allusion is to watchmen on the walls of cities, whose business is to keep their place and stand, and not move from it; to look out diligently, and descry an enemy, or any approaching danger, and give notice of it; and to defend the outworks of the city, and repel the enemy; all which requires courage, constancy, vigilance, and sobriety. The church is a city, and a walled one; God himself is a wall about her; salvation by Christ is as walls and bulwarks to her; and ministers of the Gospel are set for the defence of her: this is an ordinance and appointment of God; these watchmen are not of men’s setting, nor do they take this office to themselves; but are placed in it by the Lord, who makes them able ministers, qualifies them for watchmen, and enables them to perform their work; and which is an instance of the love of God to his church, and of his care of it:

which shall never hold their peace day nor night; as the living creatures in Re 4:8, which are an emblem of Gospel ministers; who are always to be employed, and to be continually praying or preaching; the two principal branches of their ministry, Ac 6:4, they are not to be silent, but either praying in private or in public for direction and assistance in their meditations; for supply of the gifts and graces of the Spirit in their ministration, and for success in their work; and that all blessings of grace might descend on those to whom they minister: or else preaching the Gospel; being constant in season, and out of season; frequently inculcating the doctrines of Christ; constantly affirming these things; ever informing, instructing, and exhorting the people. It was Austin’s wish that death might find him either praying or preaching:

ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence; some take this to be an address to the same persons; and they may be described as such that make mention of the Lord in their ministrations; of the grace and love of God the Father; of the person, office, and grace of Christ; and of the operations of the Spirit: or, “as the remembrancers of the Lord” i, as it may be rendered; that put men in mind of the Lord; of what he has done for them, and is unto them; of the doctrines of the Gospel respecting him, and of their duty to him, and to one another, and to all men; and who put the Lord in mind of his promises to his people, and prophecies concerning them, to fulfil them: but I rather think another set of men are meant, even members of churches, as distinct from ministers; who make mention of the Lord to one another, in private conference with each other; of his gracious dealings with them, and favours bestowed upon them; and who make mention of him in their prayers to him, and praises of him; and who should not keep silence, but pray without ceasing, even always, and not faint, Lu 18:1.

i “qui Deo estis a memoriis”, Gataker; “qui facitis ut alii reminiscantur Domini”, Forerius.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Watchmen stationed upon the walls of Zion (says the third strophe) do not forsake Jehovah till He has fulfilled all His promise. “Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, have I stationed watchmen; all the day and all the night continually they are not silent. O ye who remember Jehovah, leave yourselves no rest! And give Him no rest, till He raise up, and till He set Jerusalem for a praise in the earth.” As the phrase hiphqd al signifies to make a person an overseer (president) over anything, it seems as though we ought to render the sentence before us, “I have set watchmen over thy walls.” But hiphqd by itself may also mean “to appoint” (2Ki 25:23), and therefore may indicate the place of appointment (lxx , upon thy walls: ). Those who are stationed upon the walls are no doubt keepers of the walls; not, however, as persons whose exclusive duty it is to keep the walls, but as those who have committed to them the guarding of the city both within and without (Son 5:7). The appointment of such watchmen presupposes the existence of the city, which is thus to be watched from the walls. It is therefore inadmissible to think of the walls of Jerusalem as still lying in ruins, as the majority of commentators have done, and to understand by the watchmen pious Israelites, who pray for their restoration, or (according to b. Menachoth 87 a; cf., Zec 1:12) angelic intercessors. The walls intended are those of the city, which, though once destroyed, is actually imperishable (Isa 49:16) and has now been raised up again. And who else could the watchmen stationed upon the walls really be, but prophets who are called tsophm (e.g., Isa 52:8), and whose calling, according to Ezek 33, is that of watchmen? And if prophets are meant, who else can the person appointing them be but Jehovah Himself? The idea that the author of these prophecies is speaking of himself, as having appointed the shom e rm , must therefore be rejected. Jehovah gives to the restored Jerusalem faithful prophets, whom He stations upon the walls of the city, that they may see far and wide, and be heard afar off. And from those walls does their warning cry on behalf of the holy city committed to their care ascent day and night to Jehovah, and their testimony go round about to the world. For after Jerusalem has been restored and re-peopled, the further end to be attained is this, that Jehovah should build up the newly founded city within ( c onen the consequence of banah , Num 21:27, and asah , Isa 45:18; Deu 32:6; cf., Isa 54:14 and Psa 87:5), and help it to attain the central post of honour in relation to those without, which He has destined for it. Such prophets of the times succeeding the captivity ( n e bh’m ‘acharonm ; cf., Zec 1:4) were Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Haggai stands upon the walls of Jerusalem, and proclaims the glory of the second temple as surpassing that of the first. Zechariah points from Joshua and Zerubbabel onwards to the sprout of Jehovah, who is priest and prince in one person, and builds the true temple of God. Malachi predicts the coming of the Lord to His temple, and the rising of the Sun of righteousness. Under the eyes of these prophets the city of God rose up again, and they stand upon its pinnacles, and look thence into the glorious future that awaits it, and hasten its approach through the word of their testimony. Such prophets, who carry the good of their people day and night upon their anxious praying hearts, does Jehovah give to the Jerusalem after the captivity, which is one in the prophet’s view with the Jerusalem of the last days; and in so lively a manner does the prophet here call them up before his own mind, that he exclaims to them, “Ye who remind Jehovah, to finish gloriously the gracious work which He has begun,” give yourselves to rest ( domi from damah = damam , to grow dumb, i.e., to cease speaking or working, in distinction from c hashah , to be silent, i.e., not to speak or work), and allow Him no rest till He puts Jerusalem in the right state, and so glorifies it, that it shall be recognised and extolled as glorious over all the earth. Prophecy here sees the final glory of the church as one that gradually unfolds itself, and that not without human instrumentality. The prophets of the last times, with their zeal in prayer, and in the exercise of their calling as witnesses, form a striking contrast to the blind, dumb, indolent, sleepy hirelings of the prophet’s own time (Isa 56:10).

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

The Prosperity of the Church.

B. C. 706.

      6 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence,   7 And give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.   8 The LORD hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies; and the sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine, for the which thou hast laboured:   9 But they that have gathered it shall eat it, and praise the LORD; and they that have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness.

      Two things are here promised to Jerusalem:–

      I. Plenty of the means of grace–abundance of good preaching and good praying (Isa 62:6; Isa 62:7), and this shows the method God takes when he designs mercy for a people; he first brings them to their duty and pours out a spirit of prayer upon them, and then brings salvation to them. Provision is made,

      1. That ministers may do their duty as watchmen. It is here spoken of as a token for good, as a step towards further mercy and an earnest of it, that, in order to what he designed for them, he would set watchmen on their walls who should never hold their peace. Note, (1.) Ministers are watchmen on the church’s walls, for it is as a city besieged, whose concern it is to have sentinels on the walls, to take notice and give notice of the motions of the enemy. It is necessary that, as watchmen, they be wakeful, and faithful, and willing to endure hardness. (2.) They are concerned to stand upon their guard day and night; they must never be off their watch as long as those for whose souls they watch are not out of danger. (3.) They must never hold their peace; they must take all opportunities to give warning to sinners, in season, out of season, and must never betray the cause of Christ by a treacherous or cowardly silence. They must never hold their peace at the throne of grace; they must pray, and not faint, as Moses lifted up his hands and kept them steady, till Israel had obtained the victory over Amalek, Exo 17:10; Exo 17:12.

      2. That people may do their duty. As those that make mention of the Lord, let not them keep silence neither, let not them think it enough that their watchmen pray for them, but let them pray for themselves; all will be little enough to meet the approaching mercy with due solemnity. Note, (1.) It is the character of God’s professing people that they make mention of the Lord, and continue to do so even in bad times, when the land is termed forsaken and desolate. They are the Lord’s remembrancers (so the margin reads it); they remember the Lord themselves and put one another in mind of him. (2.) God’s professing people must be a praying people, must be public-spirited in prayer, must wrestle with God in prayer, and continue to do so: “Keep not silence; never grow remiss in the duty nor weary of it.” Give him no rest–alluding to an importunate beggar, to the widow that with her continual coming wearied the judge into a compliance. God said to Moses, Let me alone (Exod. xxxii. 10), and Jacob to Christ, I will not let thee go except thou bless me, Gen. xxxii. 26. (3.) God is so far from being displeased with our pressing importunity, as men commonly are, that he invites and encourages it; he bids us to cry after him; he is not like those disciples who discouraged a petitioner, Matt. xv. 23. He bids us make pressing applications at the throne of grace, and give him no rest,Luk 11:5; Luk 11:8. He suffers himself not only to be reasoned with, but to be wrestled with. (4.) The public welfare or prosperity of God’s Jerusalem is that which we should be most importunate for at the throne of grace; we should pray for the good of the church. [1.] That it may be safe, that he would establish it, that the interests of the church may be firm, may be settled for the present and secured to posterity. [2.] That it may be great, may be a praise in the earth, that it may be praised, and God may be praised for it. When gospel truths are cleared and vindicated, when gospel ordinances are duly administered in their purity and power, when the church becomes eminent for holiness and love, then Jerusalem is a praise in the earth, then it is in reputation. (5.) We must persevere in our prayers for mercy to the church till the mercy come; we must do as the prophet’s servant did, go yet seven times, till the promising cloud appear, 1 Kings xviii. 44. (6.) It is a good sign that God is coming towards a people in ways of mercy when he pours out a spirit of prayer upon them and stirs them up to be fervent and constant in their intercessions.

      II. Plenty of all other good things, v. 8. This follows upon the former; when the people praise God, when all the people praise him, then shall the earth yield her increase (Psa 67:5; Psa 67:6), and outward prosperity, crowning its piety, shall help to make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Observe,

      1. The great distress they had been in, and the losses they had sustained. Their corn had been meat for their enemies, which they hoped would be meat for themselves and their families. Here was a double grievance, that they themselves wanted that which was necessary to the support of life and were in danger of perishing for want of it, and that their enemies were strengthened by it, had their camp victualled with it, and so were the better able to do them a mischief. God is said to give their corn to their enemies, because he not only permitted it, but ordered it, to be the just punishment both of their abuse of plenty and of their symbolizing with strangers, ch. i. 7. The wine which they had laboured for, and which in their affliction they needed for the relief of those among them that were of a heavy heart, strangers drank it, to gratify their lusts with; this sore judgment was threatened for their sins, Lev 26:16; Deu 28:33. See how uncertain our creature-comforts are, and how much it is our wisdom to labour for that meat which we can never be robbed of.

      2. The great fulness and satisfaction they should now be restored to (v. 9): Those that have gathered it shall eat it, and praise the Lord. See here, (1.) God’s mercy in giving plenty, and peace to enjoy it,–that the earth yields her increase, that there are hands to be employed in gathering it in, and that they are not taken off by plague and sickness, or otherwise employed in war,–that strangers and enemies do not come and gather it for themselves, or take it from us when we have gathered it,–that we eat the labour of our hands and the bread is not eaten out of our mouths,–and especially that we have opportunity and a heart to honour God with it, and that his courts are open to us and we are not restrained from attending on him in them. (2.) Our duty in the enjoyment of this mercy. We must gather what God gives, with care and industry; we must eat it freely and cheerfully, not bury the gifts of God’s bounty, but make use of them. We must, when we have eaten and are full, bless the Lord, and give him thanks for his bounty to us; and we must serve him with our abundance, use it in works of piety and charity, eat it and drink it in the courts of his holiness, where the altar, the priest, and the poor must all have their share. The greatest comfort that a good man has in his meat and drink is that it furnishes him with a meat-offering and a drink-offering for the Lord his God (Joel ii. 14); the greatest comfort that he has in an estate is that it gives him an opportunity of honouring God and doing good. This wine is to be drunk in the courts of God’s holiness, and therefore moderately and with sobriety, as before the Lord.

      3. The solemn ratification of this promise: The Lord has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, that he will do this for his people. God confirms it by an oath, that his people, who trust in him and his word, may have strong consolation,Heb 6:17; Heb 6:18. And, since he can swear by no greater, he swears by himself, sometimes by his being (As I live, Ezek. xxxiii. 11), sometimes by his holiness (Ps. lxxxix. 35), here by his power, his right hand (which was lifted up in swearing, Deut. xxxii. 40), and his arm of power; for it is a great satisfaction to those who build their hopes on God’s promise to be sure that what he has promised he is able to perform, Rom. iv. 21. To assure us of this he has sworn by his strength, pawning the reputation of his omnipotence upon it; if he do not do it, let it be said, It was because he could not, which the Egyptians shall never say (Num. xiv. 16) nor any other. It is the comfort of God’s people that his power is engaged for them, his right hand, where the Mediator sits.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

Vs. 6-9: WATCHMEN AND JOY IN ZION

1. Here the Lord declares that He has set watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem – men who are concerned for her prosperity – guarding and protecting her welfare, (vs. 6-7; Isa 52:8; Eze 3:17; Eze 33:7).

a. Not only will they be alert for dangers from without; they will also remind the Lord of His promises concerning the Holy City, (VS. 6; Isa 43:26; comp. Psa 74:2; Jer 14:21; La 5:1, 20-21).

b. Nor are they to keep silent (comp. Mat 15:21-28; Luk 18:1-8) until He has established Jerusalem, and made her a praise in the earth, (vs. 7; Isa 60:18; Jer 33:8-9; Zep 3:19-20; comp. Psalms 122; Psalms 6).

2. Having made an oath-bound promise to restore Jerusalem, the very character of the Lord is at stake, (vs. 8a; comp. Isa 45:23; Isa 54:9-10; Heb 6:13); “right hand” and “strong arm” suggest the power and authority with which He acts.

3. The promise of the Lord obviously refers to the restoration and lasting stability of His people in Zion – resulting in their prosperity and perpetual thanksgiving, (vs. 8b-9).

a. No longer will the fruit of their labors be consumed by aliens and enemies, (vs. 8b; contr. Deu 28:33; Deu 28:51).

b. The Lord’s people will enjoy the fruit of their labors – praising Him in the courts of His sanctuary, (vs. 9; Isa 65:13; Isa 65:21-23).

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

6. On thy walls. As the Prophet intended to describe the perfect happiness of the kingdom of Christ, so he makes an assemblage of all that belongs to the prosperous condition of any country or city. To other advantages he adds guards and a garrison; because the greatest abundance of all good things would be of little avail, if we were not safe from enemies; and therefore he declares that the Lord will not only supply the Church with all that is necessary, but will also appoint faithful guards to ward off enemies and robbers, that he may thus be recognised, both within and without, as the author of a happy life.

Who shall not be, silent. By “being silent,” he means “being at rest;” as if he had said, “They will be continually on the watch, so as to foresee at a great distance the dangers that threaten them.”

Ye who are mindful of Jehovah. He next explains who these guards are, namely, those who “shall be mindful of the Lord,” that is, shall celebrate the memory of his name. Although among the guards we might, without impropriety, reckon the angels, (Psa 91:11; Heb 1:14,) to whom we know that this office is assigned, yet because they willingly and cheerfully watch over the safety of the Church, and do not need to be spurred on by exhortations, the Prophet addresses his discourse to other watchmen.

The word which he employs is of doubtful meaning. (169) Sometimes it signifies “to remember,” and sometimes “to bring to remembrance;” and neither of those significations will be inappropriate. But I think that he simply means that these guards will be God’s ministers to celebrate his name. Some render it “Making known the Lord;” but that is unnatural, and suddenly breaks off the Prophet’s meaning; and such commentators do not attend to the comparison of the guards of a city, which the Prophet employs.

Although the Prophet intends simply to teach that the Church will be safe from all dangers, because she has God to watch over her safety, yet we ought always to consider what is the nature of Christ’s kingdom; for it is not defended by the weapons of war or by arms, but, being spiritual, is protected by spiritual arms and guards. The Lord will therefore have his ministers, whose agency he will employ for defending the Church by the sword of the word, that she may be kept safe; not by earthly guards, but by God’s secret and spiritual power; and the Prophet explains himself by saying, “Ye who are mindful of the Lord.” Although this statement relates to all the godly, who are commanded to celebrate the name of God in all places, as far as lies in their power, yet it is chiefly addressed to the priests, who, discharging a public office, should hold out an example to others, and devote themselves with all their heart to the praises of God.

During the whole day and the whole night. Here pastors are reminded of their duty; for it is not enough to feed the Lord’s flock, if they do not likewise defend it from the attacks of robbers and wolves. “Night and day,” therefore, they must guard and keep watch, if they wish to perform their duty in a proper manner.

Keep not silence. The Lord forbids them to be silent; for he wishes them to be diligent and attentive; and in this he shews how great is the care which he takes about the safety of the Church. This passage testifies that it is a remarkable kindness of God, when we have faithful pastors who take care of us; for we are exposed to dangers of every kind, and lie open to the snares of Satan, if the Lord do not protect us by his guards; and therefore we ought always to pray that he would surround us with those guards which he sees that we need.

(169) “ המזכירים (hammazkirim) admits of three interpretations, all consistent with Isaiah’s usage. In Isa 36:3, it seems to mean an official recorder or historiographer. In Isa 66:3, it means one burning incense as a memorial oblation. Hence אזכרה, (uzkarah,) the name used in the Law of Moses to denote such an offering. (See Lev 2:2; Num 5:26.) In Isa 43:26, the verb means to remind God of something which he seems to have forgotten; and as this is an appropriate description of importunate intercession, it is here entitled to the preference.” — Alexander.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

THE HEAVENLY WORKERS AND THE EARTHLY WATCHERS

Isa. 62:1; Isa. 62:6-7. For Zions sake will I not hold My peace. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, &c.

Two expository remarks.

1. The speaker is the personal Messiah (Isa. 61:1).

The remarkable parallelism in the expressions selected as the text should be noticed: I will not hold My peace; the watchmen shall never hold their peace. And His command to them is literally: Ye that remind Jehovahno rest (or silence) to you! and give not rest to Him. Christ, the Church, and God are all represented as unceasingly occupied in the one great work of establishing Zion as the centre of light, salvation, and righteousness for the whole world. Consider these three perpetual activities

I. THE GLORIFIED CHRIST IS CONSTANTLY WORKING FOR HIS CHURCH. The greatness of Christs work in the past may lead us to forget the true importance of what He evermore does. His present life is presented in Scripture under two contrasted and harmonious aspectsas being rest, and as continuous activity in the midst of rest [1761]

[1761] His session on the throne proclaims the full accomplishment of all the purposes of His earthly ministry. It points backwards to the forces lodged in the worlds history by Christs finished work,the basis of all our hopes; it points to a future as the goal of all these hopes. But while He rests as from a perfected work, He also rests not day nor night. The right hand of God is significant of the operative energy of the Divine nature; sitting there is equivalent to possessing and wielding that measureless power. The Evangelist who uses the expression says they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them. The words at the beginning of Actsall which Jesus began both to do and teachsuggest the same thought. The whole history of that book is shaped by this conviction. The Lord adds to the Church daily; His name works miracles, &c. Not the Acts of the Apostles, but the Acts of the Lord in and by His servants is the accurate title of this book. Stephen beheld his Lord standingas if risen with intent to helpon the right hand of God. John in Patmos saw Him who holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, and walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. The text speaks of a continuous forthputting of power: I will not rest. His power is in exercise as the inspiration of good men, using them as His weapons, and the axe must not boast itself against Him that heweth. He orders providences, and shapes the course of the world for the Church (1Ch. 16:21-22). The word of this Master is never Go, but Come. There is besides, the wonderful truth of His continuous intercession for us. His work on earth is ever present to the Divine mind as the ground of our acceptance and the channel of our blessing (Joh. 17:24).Dr. Maclaren.

II. CHRISTS SERVANTS ON EARTH DERIVE FROM HIM A LIKE PERPETUAL ACTIVITY FOR THE SAME OBJECT (Isa. 62:7). Note a twofold form of occupation devolving on these Christ-sent servants. They are watchmen, and they are also Gods remembrancers. The former metaphor is commonly applied in the Old Testament to the prophetic office, but in accordance with the genius of the New Testament, as expressed on Pentecost, should be extended to the whole mass of Christian people.

1. Our voices should ever be heard on earth. With faith in Christ come responsibilities. We are watchmen. Let us ponder the pattern.

2. Our voices should ever be heard in heaven. Faith is a mute appeal to Gods faithful love; and, beyond that, our prayers come up for a memorial before God. They remind God. The prayer that prevails is a reflected promise. These two forms of action ought to be inseparable. Prayerless work will soon slacken, and never bear fruit; idle prayer is worse than idle.

3. The power for both is derived from Christ. He sets the watchmen; He commands the remembrancers. And our pattern is His manner of discharging them, and the condition of receiving the power is to abide in Him.

III. THE CONSTANT ACTIVITY OF THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST WILL SECURE THE CONSTANT OPERATION OF GODS POWER. Give Him no rest. Bold words. The prophet believes that those who remind God can stir up the strength of the Lord. Practically, God reaches His endthe establishment of Zion, through the Church. The great reservoir is always full; but the bore of the pipe and the power of the pumping-engine determine the rate at which the stream flows from it (Mat. 13:58). We may have as much of God as we want, as much as we can hold, far more than we deserve. An awful responsibility lies on us. With what grand confidence may the weakest go to his task.

STIMULATING LESSONS.

1. Look at the energy around us. Do we work as hard for God as the world does for itself.
2. Look at the energy beneath us. If we are sitting drowsy by our camp fires, the enemy is on the alert. It is no time for Gods sentinels to nod.

3. Look at the energy above us. On the throne of the universe is the immortal Power who slumbereth not. Before the altar of the heavens is the Priest of the world. Round Him stand perfected spirits, who rest not day and night. Do we work for God as He and all that are with Him do? Alas! have we not been like the three Apostles sleeping, even while the Lord was wrestling with the tempter in Gethsemane. Let us lift up our cry to God: Awake, awake (Isa. 51:9); and the answer shall be an echo of the prayer turned into a command (Isa. 52:1).A. Maclaren, D.D.: Sermons, Second Series, pp. 1938.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

2. NEW NOURISHMENT

TEXT: Isa. 62:6-9

6

I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that are Jehovahs remembrancers, take ye no rest.

7

and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

8

Jehovah hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy grain to be food for thine enemies; and foreigners shall not drink thy new wine, for which thou hast labored:

9

but they that have garnered it shall eat it, and praise Jehovah; and they that have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.

QUERIES

a.

What is a remembrancer?

b.

Why bring up the subject of grain and wine?

PARAPHRASE

I will set sentries all around you, O City of Righteousness and Peace; they will be constantly vigilant crying out warnings and directions. I will also establish intercessors within you, Zion, and instruct them that they are to continually offer supplications and intercessions and prayers of thanksgiving for your establishment throughout the earth. Jehovah has sworn by His own Self, the most powerful oath there is, saying, I will not permit your enemies to plunder you and take away from you what is rightfully yours anymore. What is yours by right of inheritance you shall have and enjoy because you shall be forever in My presence.

COMMENTS

Isa. 62:6-7 PROTECTION: Watchmen were sentinels standing watch upon the tops of walls and in watch-towers of ancient cities to cry out warning at the approach of the enemy. The term is also used figuratively to denote men especially commissioned by God to preach and proclaim the Law of God to His people (cf. Eze. 3:17; Eze. 33:1-9; Isa. 56:10, etc.). God promises that the watchmen in New Zion will be alert, constant and adept. They will not be like the watchmen of Isaiahs day, satiated, filled with wine, loving to lie down and slumber (Isa. 56:10). The watchmen of New Zion will declare the whole counsel of God, night and day, with tears (cf. Act. 20:17-35). Shepherds of the flock will be always on guard protecting against grievous wolves (false teachers and false doctrines). Faithful ministers of the gospel and elders and teachers of the church are her watchmen. They can never afford the false luxury of holding their peace for Zions enemy, like a roaring lion, seeks whom he may devour. Not only shall Zion have faithful watchmen, she shall also have persistent remembrancers. The Hebrew word hammazkirim is literally, those who remind. The idea is that New Zion will have those who are constant in prayer, supplicating God on her behalf. Jesus taught constant, persistent prayer as a characteristic of the citizen of the messianic kingdom (cf. Luk. 11:5-14; Luk. 18:1-8). The point of Jesus parables is not that we can wear God down until He gives in because we have prayed so long and so eloquently, but that if an exasperated friend or a grouchy old judge will answer the pleading of someone in need, how much more will our Father who is really anxious to help, answer us speedily?! The first century church was in constant prayer because its leaders (apostles, elders, evangelists) were men of constant prayer (1Th. 5:16-18).

The main thing to be remembered and that which is to be kept constantly before God in prayer is the establishment of New Jerusalem as a praise in the earthevangelism. Jesus instructed His disciples to pray for laborers for the harvest (cf. Mat. 9:37-38; Luk. 10:21; Joh. 4:35, etc.). Going into all the world to make disciples was our Lords parting words to the church (Mat. 28:18-20; Luk. 24:44-53; Act. 1:8). Prayer for the evangelization of the world must be constantly upon the heart and lips of New Zion.

Isa. 62:8-9 PROVISION: Jehovah has allowed Jerusalems enemies to plunder the land. Specifically Assyria and Babylon invaded Palestine and looted harvest field and city shops. Even the Temple was ravaged by Babylon and its vessels carried off. Israels inheritance was wrested from her. But it shall not be so with New Zion. Her inheritance is incorruptible and eternalone that does not fade away (1Pe. 1:3-5). Nothing in the seen or unseen world can separate New Zion from her inheritance (Rom. 8:31-39). Ancient Zions glory was transient but New Zions is eternal (cf. 2Co. 4:16 to 2Co. 5:5). Once again Isaiah puts New Zions future glory in terminology comprehensible to ancient Zion (agricultural terms).

New Zion will enjoy the constant presence of the Lord. She eats and drinks at the Lords Table. She has been invited to a feast (see Isa. 25:6-12 and Special Study, RSVP, Come To the Feast).

QUIZ

1.

Who are the watchmen in New Zion?

2.

What is their function?

3.

What should New Zion be constantly in prayer for?

4.

Why can New Zions inheritance not be plundered?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(6) I have set watchmen upon thy walls . . .The watchmen have been differently interpreted as (1) angelic guardians and (2) prophets. Zec. 1:12, and Dan. 10:16-21 may be alleged in favour of (1), but on the whole, (2) seems preferable. The prophets of the return from exile, Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi, may be thought of as representative examples of such watchmen, as also are the prophets of the Christian Church, which takes partly, at least, the position of the new Jerusalem.

Ye that make mention . . .Better, ye that are the remembrancers. They are to remind Jehovah of His promises day and night, that He may hasten their fulfilment, never resting till the future Jerusalem is in very deed a praise in the earth. (Comp. Zec. 1:12.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

6, 7. Watchmen This alludes to the practice of stationing on city walls men who served as criers when news good or bad was to be announced. As applied to the spiritual Jerusalem or Zion, they mean instructors of the people priests and prophets, ministers of the true religion. Eze 3:17; Eze 33:7.

Never hold their peace Constant warning and instruction was their duty.

Make mention of the Lord The Lord’s reminders as watchmen of Israel’s highest interests were enjoined to fail not in diligence and fidelity.

Give him no rest Literally, no silence. “Ye that are set as Jehovah’s reminders give to yourselves no rest, no silence, in your assigned work; and give him (Jehovah) no rest, no silence, till he establish the newly restored Jerusalem, his holy Zion.

A praise in the earth Or, a permanent spiritual power for the salvation of the world.

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

Isaiah Calls On His Followers To Be Watchmen And Preparers of the Way ( Isa 62:6-12 ).

These words probably to be seen as the words of Isaiah, although they could till be the words of the Anointed One. Both Isaiah and the Anointed One would seek to inspire God’s people to pray.

The Appointment of Watchmen ( Isa 62:6-9 ).

Isa 62:6

‘I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem,

They will never hold their peace day nor night,

You who are Yahweh’s remembrancers,

Take for yourselves no rest,

And give him no rest until he establish,

And until he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

Isaiah calls on the true people of God to constant intercession. He has set them as watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, perhaps literally. But ‘watchmen’ could also be translated ‘guardians’. Either way they are to pray without ceasing (1Th 5:17; Luk 18:7-8). (A by-product to this would therefore be the assumption that the walls of Jerusalem are still standing, but Isaiah is not necessarily speaking literally). And they are to intercede unceasingly day and night until it is turned into the true city of God which brings praise to the earth.

This is in fact the basis of the Lord’s Prayer. May your name be hallowed (by the bringing about of Your purposes – Eze 36:23), may your Kingly Rule come, may Your will be done. This should be the daily burden of the churches.

In this last section of Isaiah, from the coming of the Redeemer to Zion in Isa 59:20 onwards, the people of God are regularly thought of in terms of Zion/Jerusalem. Thus the city is acting as a depiction of God’s people in their association with their God as present among them and reigning over them. It represents ‘those who turn from transgression in Jacob’ (Isa 59:12) who are now wrapped up in God. God’s concern is not that an earthly city become famous, but that what is depicted in terms of it, His glorious presence and His powerful reign, and the conjunction with Him of the whole true people of God as His priests and servants, should bring praise throughout the earth.

Note on the Use of Israel and Zion.

Both ‘Israel’ (Isa 1:3), and ‘the daughters of Zion’ (Isa 1:8), were introduced to us in chapter 1 as indicating the nominal people of God in the sad state that they were in, with Israel as the epitome of disobedience, while Zion itself was the harlot city (Isa 1:21) which was yet destined to be redeemed and filled with converts (Isa 1:26-27). A third alternative name is ‘Jacob’ (Isa 2:5). The names ‘Israel’ (and ‘Jacob’) necessarily connected them with their forefathers, but Zion is primarily the name in connection with the need for transformation. The idea of redemption is clearly connected with both, although with regard to ‘Israel’ only in 41-49. Outside those chapters it largely applies to Zion/Jerusalem (Isa 51:11; Isa 52:3; Isa 52:9; Isa 59:20; Isa 60:16) or is used without appellation.

In regard to this it will be noted that the most extreme language used in order to depict the sinfulness and degradation of the nominal people of God is applied to them as related to ‘Zion’ (Isa 1:21; Isa 3:16-17; Isa 4:4). Israel are disobedient, Zion is degraded.

With regard to the use of the terms from Chapter 40 onwards it can surely not be without significance and intention that after its continual use chapter by chapter, once the Servant has been stated to be the true ‘Israel’ in Isa 49:1-6, committed to the restoring of wayward Israel, the use of ‘Israel as a direct designation ceases (it is almost solely afterwards used as a genitive and never as a direct designation of His people). Having been previously used in abundance, and in every chapter from 40-49, it is replaced by centring everything on Zion (Isa 49:14; Isa 51:3; Isa 51:11; Isa 51:16; Isa 52:1-2; Isa 52:7-8 etc), or sometimes Jacob.

Part of the reason for this is the close connection of ‘Israel’ with ‘the Servant’. Israel are the seed of Abraham, and the Servant is the fulfilment of the promises made to Abraham. Once therefore ‘Israel’ has come to represent the Servant as one man (Isa 49:3) the name Israel as a designation for the many is dropped. Another reason is that redemption from degradation fits in better with the idea of Zion.

Against the background of the whole of heaven and earth it is now ‘Zion’ which epitomises Israel/Judah who are represented by it as ‘My people’ (Isa 51:16). Interestingly from chapter Isa 52:13 onwards, when the Servant suffers for His people, until mention of His return as Redeemer ( Isa 59:20), no designation is used, the people simply being connected with Jacob (Isa 58:1; Isa 58:14). They are ‘the barren one’ (Isa 54:1). Then from Isa 59:20 onwards, on the coming of the Redeemer, Zion is central, for Zion points to the everlasting future. It is destined to be the heavenly city, the everlasting city (Isa 60:19-21). In the thought of Isaiah Zion is to be Yahweh’s city, in which He makes known His presence among His people (Isa 24:23; Isa 26:1-4; Isa 2:2-4; Isa 4:2-6), in contrast with the world city (Isa 24:10; Isa 24:12; Isa 26:5-6), the city of idolatry (Isa 47:8-13). But Zion is nowhere directly called ‘the Servant’. It represents the sinful city which becomes the dwellingplace of Yahweh among His redeemed people, and incorporates those redeemed people, thus fulfilling the witnessing task of the Servant.

End of Note.

‘You who are Yahweh’s remembrancers.’ These ‘remembrancers’, those who call on God to remember His promises, and who remind God of the state of His people and of the world, are, in a similar way to the Anointed One (Isa 62:1), to take no rest until God’s purposes are brought about and He is honoured through His true people.

Note the true purpose of prayer and its emphasis, and the requirement for continuance in it. When Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer the first part was concentrated on such intercession, that God’s name be hallowed (sanctified) through the bringing about of His purposes (compare Eze 36:23), that God’s Kingly Rule might come and that His will might be done on earth, as in Heaven. That was His concentration. He was one of Yahweh’s remembrancers.

He stressed indeed that prayer for our general lifestyle was not necessary because our Father knew of our daily needs. And this emphasis was carried on into the rest of the New Testament. How different His emphasis from many a prayer list today. God graciously allows our prayers but they are often a sign of our immaturity in faith.

So God’s true people are called on to be Remembrancers, to be watchmen for God, and to cry to God day and night for the final bringing about of His purposes.

Isa 62:8

‘Yahweh has sworn by his right hand,

And by the arm of his strength,

Surely I will no more give your corn,

To be food for your enemies,

And strangers will not drink your wine,

For which you have laboured,

But those who have garnered it will eat it,

And praise Yahweh,

And those who have gathered it will drink it,

In the courts of my sanctuary.’

There is no more heartbreaking situation than to have laboured and then to find the fruits of that labour unfairly wrested from us by another. But the world is a place of greed and selfishness, and there are always those who will strive to obtain what is not theirs. It was the constant experience of small nations. None experienced this more than Judah in Isaiah’s time as Assyria again and again entered the territory of Judah in predatory raids, preparatory to the invasion that resulted in the investment of Jerusalem, and no doubt similar raids also came later, partly through Babylon, prior to Manasseh’s submission.

However, that will not be so in God’s new world. There selfishness and greed will have been done away. Predatory enemies will have ceased. Each person will enjoy the fruits of his life and activity in the presence of God. It will be Paradise restored. The symbolic nature of the promises is brought out in that all consumption of wine is to be in the courts of His sanctuary. This could not be literal. The thought was rather that wherever they were they would drink it as in the presence and conscious awareness of their Protector, just as those who ate would praise Yahweh. For they would live in the presence of God.

The Call To Readiness And The Certainty of Fulfilment ( Isa 62:10-12 ).

Isaiah finishes this section from Isa 61:1 onwards with a call to respond to God’s initiative. His people are to prepare the way, ready for God to act.

Isa 62:10

‘Go through, go through the gates,

Prepare the way of the people,

Cast up, cast up the highway, gather out the stones,

Lift up a banner for the peoples.’

While the work of salvation is all of God it is the privilege of His people to have their part to play in it. They are to prepare the way for Him to act. Thus they are not to sit in their Jerusalem but are to go outside the gates and prepare the way for the return to God of those who are scattered. Zion is to make a way back to Zion. They are to build up the highway, remove stumblingblocks, and raise a banner calling the people to come. Theirs is the work of evangelism. The double repetition stresses the urgency of the task. Note the active participation required. They are to put great effort into making the way for people as easy as possible by every means at their command.

But the requirement is not literal. The preparation is to be spiritual preparation. If God’s people are to come to Him the way must be prepared.

Isa 62:11-12

‘Behold Yahweh has proclaimed to the end of the earth,

“Say to the daughter of Zion,

Behold your salvation comes.”,

Behold his reward is with him,

And his recompense before him,

And they will call them the holy people,

The redeemed of Yahweh,

And you will be called Sought Out,

A city not forsaken.’

Note God’s call to the end of the earth. The scattered exiles around the world, ‘the daughter of Zion’, are to be informed (by whom we are not told. Possibly Isaiah sent messengers to leaders of communities) that the time of Yahweh’s deliverance is coming. Note the threefold repetition of ‘behold’. It is a startling event. They are to ‘behold’ Yahweh’s proclamation. They are to ‘behold’ the coming Deliverer and His deliverance. And they are to ‘behold’ what blessings the Deliverer has obtained in His people.

‘Behold your salvation comes.’ This salvation is a ‘He’. The One Who comes is the author of their salvation and its mediator. He is the One Who bore their transgressions and offered Himself a guilt offering on their behalf (Isa 53:1-12). He is the One Who makes them to be accounted righteous (Isa 53:11). He is the One Who saves by His mighty arm (Isa 59:17; Isa 62:8)

His call is worldwide. All God’s people are to be stirred. The Saviour is coming to receive His reward and recompense, and those who respond will thus become the holy people, the redeemed of Yahweh. Then they will seek out Zion, which will be called Sought Out, the city not forsaken. Pictured in terms of one huge return from exile of a believing people, something which as far as we know only marginally occurred after the Exile, and never since, we have rather a picture of what would be the result of the coming of Salvation in Jesus, and the spread of the Gospel, with those responding coming to the heavenly equivalent of Zion, the truly free Zion (Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22), and there being made holy as the redeemed of Yahweh. They will have come home to Zion (Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Isa 62:6-7. I have set watchmen, &c. As much as to say, “since God, by the peculiar blessing of his providence, hath placed watchmen upon the walls of Jerusalem, who shall constantly watch for its safety; therefore do you, who are intrusted with this office, perform your parts diligently, and intercede continually with him, that he would graciously fulfil the magnificent promises which he hath made to his church.” The word shomrim, rendered watchmen, signifies properly those priests and Levites who kept watch day and night about the temple, and is from them applied to the spiritual watch-men and ministers of the Christian church. See Vitringa.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

DISCOURSE: 1010
DUTY OF INTERCEDING FOR THE CHURCH

Isa 62:6-7. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night; ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence; and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

IT is melancholy to reflect, that notwithstanding God has given a revelation of himself to man above three thousand years, there is not a sixth part of mankind that has ever so much as heard of salvation through a crucified Redeemer. And, of those who are called Christians, a very small portion indeed has any vital union with Christ, or experimental knowledge of his love. In this view, even the Church itself may be termed Forsaken and Desolate. But it will not be always thus. There is a period fixed in the Divine counsels, when the Jewish Church, being enlarged by vast accessions from every quarter of the globe, shall be called Hephzi-bah, and Beulah; seeing that the Lord will delight in her, and regard her as his Bride [Note: ver. 4, 5.].

To the hastening forward of that blessed time we all may contribute, and all ought to contribute to the utmost of our power. How we may be instrumental to the glorious work, we are told in the words before us: in considering which we shall shew,

I.

What should be the great object of our solicitude

As having immortal souls, we are all concerned in the first place to seek salvation for ourselves. But our anxiety should extend to the Jewish Church, and to the whole world: we should desire not only to prosper in our own souls, but to see Jerusalem, even the Church of the living God, prospering also, so as to be a praise in the earth. In a word, our desire should be,

1.

That the light of the Gospel should be universally diffused

[In the Gospel is contained the brightest discovery of all the Divine perfections as united and harmonizing in the work of Redemption: it is an exhibition of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ
Now, in comparison of this, the works of creation have no glory, by reason of the glory that excelleth: the sun itself is darkness when compared with the Sun of Righteousness that hath arisen on the world with healing in his wings
And where, but in the Church, is this glory seen? Not one ray of it shines in the whole world besides
The Church then is a praise in the earth, in proportion as this light shines forth in the earth: But alas! at present the greatest part of the world is under an eclipse. We hope, however, that in due time every intervening object will be removed; and that the light now rapidly spreading over the horizon, will extend its beams to regions that are yet lying in darkness and the shadow of death; and that it will shine, in its meridan splendour, not successively, but at once, on every portion of the habitable globe.
How greatly is this to be desired! If the light of civilization be esteemed a blessing, how much more must the light of Salvation be so; especially when, with that, the glory of God and of all his infinite perfections is displayed! ]

2.

That the efficacy of the Gospel should be universally experienced

[In two views especially is the efficacy of the Gospel seen, namely, in comforting, and sanctifying all who embrace it. To what unspeakable comfort it raises an afflicted soul, is declared at large by the Prophet Isaiah [Note: Isa 61:1-3.]; as its sanctifying power is by the Prophet Jeremiah [Note: Jer 33:6-8.]: and in both views it is for a name of joy, a praise, and an honour, before all the nations of the earth [Note: Jer 33:9.]. Its effect is uniformly to change a wilderness into a fertile garden [Note: Isa 35:1-2; Isa 51:3.]; and to fill with the choicest shrubs the ground that was covered only with briers and thorns [Note: Isa 55:13.]. Conceive this change effected in any place, What honour must accrue to that which causes the change, and what blessedness to the place where such a change is seen! Would not such a spot be as Goshen in the midst of Egypt? Such then is the Church, wherever the Gospel comes in its power; and such will the Church be in the whole earth, when once it shall have attained its destined extent and eminence. And is not this an object to be desired by all? Truly, if we have one spark of love to our fellow-creatures, or of zeal for God, we should look forward to that event as the consummation and completion of all our wishes.]

That object, then, being so desirable, let us consider,

II.

In what way we should all endeavour to promote it

All may be instrumental in helping it forward:

1.

Ministers

[They are watchmen set on the walls of Jerusalem, and are commanded not to hold their peace day nor night. In this expression there may possibly be a reference to those under the law, who ministered in the sanctuary by night as well as by day [Note: Psa 134:1.]. Whether their not holding their peace, refers to any public addresses, which, under the Gospel, are to be made from day to day by those who sustain the office of the ministry, we do not certainly know: but we are sure that it comprehends at least, if it do not exclusively relate to, the great work of intercession; in which ministers ought exceedingly to abound. Whatever personal efforts they may make, they can do no good, if God himself do not interpose to make their work effectual: Paul may plant, and Apollos water; but God alone can give the increase. Ministers must pray, yea, must continue instant in prayer night and day, if they would be successful in their ministrations [Note: Compare Act 20:31. with 1Th 3:10 and 2Ti 1:3.].]

2.

People of every description

[All who make mention of the Lord are bidden to intercede for the Church of God. But in the marginal translation those words are rendered All the Lords Remembrancers. This is the character which we are all to bear: God says, Put me in remembrance [Note: Isa 43:26.]. We are to remind him of all his gracious promises, just as Jacob did [Note: Gen 32:12.], and, like Jacob, to wrestle with him till we prevail: yea, in the confidence of success we should say, like him, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me [Note: Gen 32:24-26.]. This is frequently inculcated in the New Testament: the example of the Canaanitish woman, and the parable of the importunate widow, are intended to shew us, that we should pray and not faint, and that God will hear those who pray day and night unto him, though he bear long with them [Note: Mat 15:22-28 and Luk 18:1-8.].

Now, though we are not to imagine that there is any reluctance in God to bless his Church, yet we are to persevere in prayer exactly as if we hoped to prevail by dint of importunity; yea, we are to give God himself no rest, till he arise and execute the desired work. In this way the lowest Christian in the world may render more service to the Church of God, than either ministers or princes can in any other way: a human arm, however active or powerful, can put forth only a small measure of strength; but prayer can call Omnipotence to its aid, and effect whatever is necessary for the Churchs welfare. Whilst the success of Elijah remains written for our instruction [Note: Jam 5:16-18.], no man has any right to ask, What can such a weak creature as I effect for the Church of God?]

This subject affords ample matter,
1.

For reproof

[How little have any of us considered the duty, and the efficacy of intercession! Instead of praying day and night for the conversion of the Jews, and the enlargement of the Christian Church, many of us find it difficult even to pray for ourselves: and are well content that God should rest, and that the world, both of Jews and Gentiles, should perish in their sins, provided that we oursulves may be excused the trouble of exertion, and finally escape the wrath of God. Who amongst us does not blush at a review of his conduct in relation to this matter? Who, instead of fulfilling his duty as Gods Remembrancer, does not himself need a remembrancer to remind him of his duty? Let this matter be duly considered amongst us; and let us no longer, like Jonah, be indulging in sleep, when a whole world of sinners is calling for our utmost exertions [Note: Jon 1:5-6.].]

2.

For encouragement

[The first verse of this chapter deserves particular attention: it is spoken by the same person that speaks in our text: it is Christ himself, or, at least, the prophet in his name, who says, For Zions sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalems sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. Now here is the very point which we ought supremely to desire, the conversion of the Jews, and the consequent conversion of the whole world; this is the true import of that expression, Jerusalem being upraise in the earth Does God then fix his eye upon this glorious object? and shall not we? Is he constantly intent upon it? and shall not we? Is he determined in his own mind to take no rest till he has accomplished it? and shall not we be encouraged to pray to him respecting it? If he were averse to it, we might despair of ever prevailing upon him to change his mind: but when we know how entirely his own mind is bent upon it, and that he is ordering every thing both in providence and grace with a view to it, we may well besiege the throne of grace, to remind him of his promises. Let us take courage then, and plead, if peradventure we may hasten forward the glorious day, and see, if not in the world at large, yet at least in our own immediate circle, Jerusalem to be indeed a praise in the earth.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

Here we see, in whose appointment ministers are, and what ought to distinguish the earnestness of their labours. What can be more blessed, and what service so honourable, as to be always engaged in speaking from God to the people, and bearing the people, in the arms of faith and prayer, before God?

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

Isa 62:6 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, [which] shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence,

Ver. 6. I have set watchmen upon thy walls, ] i.e., Angels, say some, who are called “watchers,”; Dan 4:13 ; Dan 4:33 See Trapp on “ Dan 4:13 “ See Trapp on “ Dan 4:33 “ prophets and pastors, say others, who are as “watchmen upon the walls,” to admonish thee by their preaching, and to preserve thee by their prayers to God. Isa 21:11 Eze 13:17 ; Eze 31:7

Which shall never hold their peace. ] Never but be either praying or preaching. as Act 6:4 Deu 33:10 Augustine desired that death might find him aut precantem nut proedicantem. Of Paul’s incessance, see Act 20:31 1Th 3:10 .

Ye that make mention of the Lord. ] Or, Ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, that jogged him as it were, and remind him of his people’s necessities and miseries. The kings of Israel, Persia, and of other nations, had their Mazkirim, or remembrancers, to mind them of those matters that concerned the weal public, and to these he here alludeth. All the saints are such like officers, and must be active.

Keep not silence. ] Be still sueing and soliciting.

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

Isaiah

THE HEAVENLY WORKERS AND THE EARTHLY WATCHERS

Isa 62:1 , Isa 62:6 – Isa 62:7 .

Two remarks of an expository nature will prepare the way for the consideration of these words. The first is that the speaker is the personal Messiah. The second half of Isaiah’s prophecies forms one great whole, which might be called The Book of the Servant of the Lord. One majestic figure stands forth on its pages with ever-growing clearness of outline and form. The language in which He is described fluctuates at first between the collective Israel and the one Person who is to be all that the nation had failed to attain. But even near the beginning of the prophecy we read of ‘My servant whom I uphold,’ whose voice is to be low and soft, and whose meek persistence is not to fail till He have ‘set judgment in the earth.’ And as we advance the reference to the nation becomes less and less possible, and the recognition of the person more and more imperative. At first the music of the prophetic song seems to move uncertainly amid sweet sounds, from which the true theme by degrees emerges, and thenceforward recurs over and over again with deeper, louder harmonies clustering about it, till it swells into the grandeur of the choral close.

In the chapter before our text we read, ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.’ Throughout the remainder of the prophecy, with the exception of one section which contains the prayer of the desolate Israel, this same person continues to speak; and who he is was taught in the synagogue of Nazareth. Whilst the preceding chapter, then, brings in Christ as proclaiming the great work of deliverance for which He is anointed of God, the following chapter presents Him as ‘treading the wine-press alone,’ which is a symbol of the future judgment by the glorified Saviour. Between these two prophecies of the earthly life and of the still future judicial energy, this chapter of our text lies, referring, as I take it, to the period between these two-that is, to all the ages of the Church’s development on earth. For these Christ here promises His continual activity, and His continual bestowment of grace to His servants who watch the walls of His Jerusalem.

The second point to be noticed is the remarkable parallelism in the expressions selected as the text: ‘I will not hold My peace’; the watchmen ‘shall never hold their peace .’ And His command to them is literally, ‘Ye that remind Jehovah-no rest or silence to you, and give not rest to Him.’

So we have here Christ, the Church, and God all represented as unceasingly occupied in the one great work of establishing ‘Zion’ as the centre of light, salvation, and righteousness for the whole world. The consideration of these three perpetual activities may open for us some great truths and stimulating lessons.

I. First, then, The glorified Christ is constantly working for His Church.

We are too apt to regard our Lord’s real work as all lying in the past, and, from the very greatness of our estimate of what He has done, to forget the true importance of what He evermore does. ‘Christ that died’ is the central object of trust and contemplation for devout souls-and that often to the partial hiding of Christ that is ‘risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.’ But Scripture sets forth the present glorious life of our ascended Lord under two contrasted and harmonious aspects-as being rest, and as being continuous activity in the midst of rest. He was ‘received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.’ In that session on the throne manifold and mighty truths are expressed. It proclaims the full accomplishment of all the purposes of His earthly ministry; it emphasises the triumphant completion of His redeeming work by His death; it proclaims the majesty of His nature, which returns to the ‘glory which He had with the Father before the world was’; it shows to the world, as on some coronation day, its King on His throne, girded with power and holding the far-reaching sceptre of the universe; it prophesies for men, in spite of all present sin and degradation, a share in the dominion which manhood has in Christ attained, for though we see not yet all things put under Him, we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour. It prophesies, too, His final victory over all that sets itself in unavailing antagonism to His love. It points us backward to an historical fact as the basis of all our hopes for ourselves and for our fellows, giving us the assurance that the world’s deliverance will come from the slow operation of the forces already lodged in its history by Christ’s finished work. It points us forwards to a future as the goal of all these hopes, giving us that confidence of victory which He has who, having kindled the fire on earth, henceforward sits at God’s right hand, waiting in the calm and sublime patience of conscious omnipotence and clear foreknowledge ‘until His enemies become His footstool.’

But whilst on the one side Christ rests as from a perfected work which needs no addition nor repetition, on the other He ‘rests not day nor night.’ And this aspect of His present state is as distinctly set forth in Scripture as that is. Indeed the words already quoted as embodying the former phase contain the latter also. For is not ‘the right hand of God’ the operative energy of the divine nature? And is not ‘sitting at the right hand of God’ equivalent to possessing and wielding that unwearied, measureless power? Are there not blended together in this pregnant phrase the ideas of profoundest calm and of intensest action, that being expressed by the attitude, and this by the locality? Therefore does the evangelist who uses the expression expand it into words which wonderfully close his gospel, with the same representation of Christ’s swift and constant activity as he had been all along pointing out as characterising His life on earth. ‘They went forth,’ says he, ‘and preached everywhere’-so far the contrast between the Lord seated in the heavens and His wandering servants fighting on earth is sharp and almost harsh. But the next words tone it down, and weave the two apparently discordant halves of the picture into a whole: ‘the Lord working with them.’ Yes! in all His rest He is full of work, in all their toils He shares, in all their journeys His presence goes beside them. Whatever they do is His deed, and the help that is done upon the earth He doeth it all Himself.

Is not this blessed conviction of Christ’s continuous operation in and for His Church that which underlies, as has often been pointed out, the language of the introduction to the Acts of the Apostles, where mention is made of the former treatise that told ‘all which Jesus began both to do and teach’? The gospel records the beginning, the Book of the Acts the continuance; it is one biography in two volumes. Being yet present with them He spoke and acted. Being exalted He ‘speaketh from heaven,’ and from the throne carries on the endless series of His works of power and healing. The whole history is shaped by the same conviction. Everywhere ‘the Lord’ is the true actor, the source of all the life which is in the Church, the arranger of all the providences which affect its progress. The Lord adds to the Church daily. His name works miracles. To the Lord believers are added. His angel, His Spirit, bring messages to His servants. He appears to Paul, and speaks to Ananias. The Gentiles turn to the Lord because the hand of the Lord is with the preachers. The Lord calls Paul to carry the gospel to Macedonia. The Lord opens the heart of Lydia, and so throughout. Not ‘the Acts of the Apostles,’ but ‘the Acts of the Lord in and by His servants,’ is the accurate title of this book. The vision which flashed angel radiance on the face, and beamed with divine comfort into the heart, of Stephen, was a momentary revelation of an abiding reality, and completes the representation of the Saviour throned beside Almighty power. He beheld his Lord, not seated, as if careless or resting, while His servant’s need was so sore, but as if risen with intent to help, and ready to defend-’ standing on the right hand of God.’

And when once again the heavens opened to the rapt eyes of John in Patmos, the Lord whom he beheld was not only revealed as glorified in the lustre of the inaccessible light, but as actively sustaining and guiding the human reflectors of it. He ‘holdeth the seven stars in His right hand,’ and ‘ walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.’

Not otherwise does my text represent the present relation of Christ to His Church. It speaks of a continuous forth-putting of power, which it is, perhaps, not over-fanciful to regard as dimly set forth here in a twofold form-namely, work and word. At all events, that division stands out clearly on the pages of the New Testament, which ever holds forth the double truth of our Lord’s constant action on, in, through, and for His Zion, and of our High Priest’s constant intercession.

‘I will not rest.’ Through all the ages His power is in exercise. He inspires in good men all their wisdom, and every grace of life and character. He uses them as His weapons in the contest of His love with the world’s hatred; but the hand that forged, and tempered, and sharpened the blade is that which smites with it; and the axe must not boast itself against him that heweth. He, the Lord of lords, orders providences, and shapes the course of the world for that Church which is His witness: ‘Yea, He reproved kings for their sake, saying, Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm.’ The ancient legend which told how, on many a well-fought field, the ranks of Rome discerned through the battle-dust the gleaming weapons and white steeds of the Great Twin Brethren far in front of the solid legions, is true in loftier sense in our Holy War. We may still see the vision which the leader of Israel saw of old, the man with the drawn sword in his hand, and hear the majestic word, ‘As Captain of the Lord’s host am I now come.’ The Word of God, with vesture dipped in blood, with eyes alit with His flaming love, with the many crowns of unlimited sovereignty upon His head, rides at the head of the armies of heaven; ‘and in righteousness doth He judge and make war.’ For the single soul struggling with daily tasks and petty cares, His help is near and real, as for the widest work of the collective whole. He sends none of us tasks in which He has no share. The word of this Master is never ‘Go,’ but ‘Come.’ He unites Himself with all our sorrows, with all our efforts. ‘The Lord also working with them’ is a description of all the labours of Christian men, be they great or small.

Nor is this all. There still remains the wonderful truth of His continuous intercession for us. In its widest meaning that word expresses the whole of the manifold ways by which Christ undertakes and maintains our cause. But the narrower signification of prayer on our behalf is applicable, and is in Scripture applied, to our Lord. As on earth, the climax of all His intercourse with His disciples was that deep yet simple prayer which forms the Holy of Holies of John’s Gospel, so in heaven His loftiest office for us is set forth under the figure of His intercession. Before the Throne stands the slain Lamb, and therefore do the elders in the outer circle bring acceptable praises. Within the veil stands the Priest, with the names of the tribes blazing on the breastplate and on the shoulders of His robes, near the seat of love, near the arm of power. And whatever difficulty may surround that idea of Christ’s priestly intercession, this at all events is implied in it, that the mighty work which He accomplished on earth is ever present to the divine mind as the ground of our acceptance and the channel of our blessings; and this further, that the utterance of Christ’s will is ever in harmony with the divine purpose. Therefore His prayer has in it a strange tone of majesty, and, if we may so say, of command, as of one who knows that He is ever heard: ‘ I will that they whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.’

The instinct of the Church has, from of old, laid hold of an event in His earthly life to shadow forth this great truth, and has bid us see a pledge and a symbol of it in that scene on the Lake of Galilee: the disciples toiling in the sudden storm, the poor little barque tossing on the waters tinged by the wan moon, the spray dashing over the wearied rowers. They seem alone, but up yonder, in some hidden cleft of the hills, their Master looks down on all the weltering storm, and lifts His voice in prayer. Then when the need is sorest, and the hope least, He comes across the waves, making their surges His pavement, and using all opposition as the means of His approach, and His presence brings calmness, and immediately they are at the land.

So we have not only to look back to the Cross, but up to the Throne. From the Cross we hear a voice, ‘It is finished.’ From the Throne a voice, ‘For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.’

II. Secondly, Christ’s servants on earth derive from Him a like perpetual activity for the same object.

The Lord, who in the former portion of these verses declares His own purpose of unwearied action for Zion, associates with Himself in the latter portion the watchmen, whom He appoints and endows for functions in some measure resembling His own, and exercised with constancy derived from Him. ‘I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night.’ On the promise follows, as ever, a command for all divine gifts involve the responsibility of their use, and it is not His wont either to bestow without requiring, or to require before bestowing, ‘Ye that remind Jehovah, keep not silence.’

There is distinctly traceable before a reference to a two-fold form of occupation devolving on these Christ-sent servants. They are watchmen, and they are also God’s remembrancers. In the one capacity as in the other, their voices are to be always heard. The former metaphor is common in the Old Testament, as a designation of the prophetic office, but, in the accordance with the genius of the New Testament, as expressed on Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out on the lowly as well as on the high, on the young as on the old, and all prophesied, it may be fairly extended to designated not to some selected few, but the whole mass of Christian people. The watchman’s office falls to be done by all who see the coming peril, and have a tongue to echo it forth. The remembrancer’s priestly office belongs to every member of Christ’s priestly kingdom, the lowest and least of whom has the privilege of unrestrained entry into God’s presence-chamber, and the power of blessing the world by faithful prayer. What should we think of a citizen in a beleaguered city, who saw enemy mounting the very ramparts, and gave no alarm because that was the sentry’s business? In such extremity every man is a soldier, and women and children can at least keep watch and raise shrill cries of warning. The gifts, then, here promised, and the duties that flow from them, are not the prerogatives or the tasks of any class or order, but the heritage and the burden of the Lord to every member of His Church.

Our voices should ever be heard on earth. A solemn message is committed to us, by the very fact of our belief in Jesus Christ and His work. With that faith come responsibilities of which no Christian can denude himself. To warn the wicked man to turn from His wickedness; to blow the trumpet when we see the sword coming; to catch ever gleaming on the horizon, like the spears of an army through the dust of the march, the outriders and advance-guard of the coming of Him whose coming is life or death to all, and to lift up our voices with strength and say, ‘Behold your God’; to peal into the ears of men, sunken in earthliness and dreaming of safety, the cry which may startle and save; to ring out in glad tones to all who wearily ask, ‘Watchman, what of the night? will the night soon pass?’ the answer which the slow dawning east has breathed into our else stony lips, ‘The morning cometh’; to proclaim Christ, who came once to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, who comes ever, through the ages, to bless and uphold the righteousness which He loves and to destroy the iniquity which He hates, who will come at the last to judge the world-this is the never-ending task of the watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem. The New Testament calls it ‘preaching,’ proclaiming as a herald does. And both metaphors carry one common lesson of the manner in which the work should be done. With clear loud voice, with earnestness and decision, with faithfulness and self-oblivion, forgetting himself in his message, must the herald sound out the will of his King, the largess of his Lord. And the watchman who stands on his watch-tower whole nights, and sees foemen creeping through the gloom, or fire bursting out among the straw-roofed cottages within the walls, shouts with all his might the short, sharp alarm, that wakes the sleepers to whom slumber were death. Let us ponder the pattern.

Our voices should ever be heard in heaven. They who trust God remind Him of His promises by their very faith; it is a mute appeal to His faithful love, which He cannot but answer. And, beyond that, their prayers come up for a memorial before God, and have as real an effect in furthering Christ’s kingdom on earth as is exercised by their entreaties and proclamations to men.

How distinctly these words of our text define the region within which our prayers should ever move, and the limits which bound their efficacy! They remind God. Then the truest prayer is that which bases itself on God’s uttered will, and the desires which are born of our own fancies or heated enthusiasms have no power with Him. The prayer that prevails is a reflected promise. Our office in prayer is but to receive on our hearts the bright rays of His word, and to flash them back from the polished surface to the heaven from whence they came.

These two forms of action ought to be inseparable. Each, if genuine, will drive us to the other, for who could fling himself into the watchman’s work, with all its solemn consequences, knowing how weak his voice was, and how deaf the ears that should hear, unless he could bring God’s might to his help? and who could honestly remind God of His promises and forget his own responsibilities? Prayerless work will soon slacken, and never bear fruit; idle prayer is worse than idle. You cannot part them if you would. How much of the busy occupation which is called ‘Christian work’ is detected to be spurious by this simple test! How much so-called prayer is reduced by it to mere noise, no better than the blaring trumpet or the hollow drum!

The power for both is derived from Christ. He sets the watchmen; He commands the remembrancers. From Him flows the power, from His good Spirit comes the desire, to proclaim the message. That message is the story of His life and death. But for what He does and is we should have nothing to say; but for His gift we should have no power to say it; but for His influence we should have no will to say it. He commands and fits us to be intercessors, for His mighty work brings us near to God; He opens for us access with confidence to God. He inspires our prayers. He ‘hath made us priests to God.’

And, as the Christian power of discharging these twofold duties is drawn from Christ, so our pattern is His manner of discharging them, and the condition of receiving the power is to abide in Him. He proposes Himself as our Example. He calls us to no labours which He has not Himself shared, nor to any earnestness or continuance in prayer which He has not Himself shown forth. This Master works in front of His men. The farmer that goes first among all the sowers, and heads the line of reapers in the yellowing harvest-field, may well have diligent servants. Our Master ‘went forth, weeping, bearing precious seed,’ and has left it in our hands to sow in all furrows. Our Master is the Lord of the harvest, and has borne the heat of the day before His servants. Look at the amount of work, actual hard work, compressed into these three short years of His ministry. Take the records of the words He spake on that last day of His public teaching, and see what unwearied toil they represent. Ponder upon that life till you catch the spirit which breathed through it all, and, like Him, embrace gladly the welcome necessity of labour for God, under the sense of a vocation conferred upon you, and of the short space within which your service must be condensed. ‘I must work the work of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.’

Christ asks no romantic impossibilities from us, but He does ask a continuous, systematic discharge of the duties which depend on our relation to the world, and on our relation to Him. Let it be our life’s work to show forth His praise; let the very atmosphere in which we move and have our being be prayer. Let two great currents set ever through our days, which two, like the great movements in the ocean of the air, are but the upper and under halves of the one movement-that beneath with constant energy of desire rushing in from the cold poles to be warmed and expanded at the tropics, where the all-moving sun pours his directest rays; that above charged with rich gifts from the Lord of light, glowing with heat drawn from Him, and made diffusive by His touch, spreading itself out beneficent and life-bringing into all colder lands, swathing the world in soft, warm folds, and turning the polar ice into sweet waters.

In the tabernacle of Israel stood two great emblems of the functions of God’s people, which embodied these two sides of the Christian life. Day by day, there ascended from the altar of incense the sweet odour, which symbolised the fragrance of prayer as it wreathes itself upwards to the heavens. Night by night, as darkness fell on the desert and the camp, there shone through the gloom the hospitable light of the great golden candlestick with its seven lamps, whose steady rays outburned the stars that paled with the morning. Side by side they proclaimed to Israel its destiny to be the light of the world, to be a kingdom of priests.

The offices and the honour have passed over to us, and we shall fall beneath our obligations unless we let our light shine constantly before men, and let our voice rise like a fountain night and day’ before God- even as He did who, when every man went to his own house, went alone to the Mount of Olives, and in the morning, when every man returned to his daily task, went into the Temple and taught. By His example, by His gifts, by the motive of His love, our resting, working Lord says to each of us, ‘Ye that remind God, keep not silence.’ Let us answer, ‘For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.’

III. Finally, The constant activity of the servants of Christ will secure the constant operation of God’s power.

‘ Give Him no rest’: let there be no cessation to Him. These are bold words, which many people would not have been slow to rebuke if they had been anywhere else than in the Bible. Those who remind God are not to suffer Him to be still. The prophet believes that they can regulate the flow of divine energy, can stir up the strength of the Lord.

It is easy to puzzle ourselves with insoluble questions about the co-operation of God’s power and man’s; but practically, is it not true that God reaches His end, of the establishment of Zion, through the Church? He has not barely willed that the world should be saved, nor barely that it should be saved through Christ, nor barely that it should be saved through the knowledge of Christ; but His will is that the world shall be saved, by faith in the person and work of Christ, proclaimed as a gospel by men who believe it. And, as a matter of fact, is it not true that the energy with which God’s power in the gospel manifests itself depends on the zeal and activity and prayerfulness of the Church? The great reservoir is always full-full to the brim; however much may be drawn from it, the water sinks not a hairsbreadth; but the bore of the pipe and the power of the pumping-engine determine the rate at which the stream flows from it. ‘He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.’ The obstruction of indifference dammed back the water of life. The city perishes for thirst if the long line of aqueduct that strides across the plain towards the home of the mountain torrents be ruinous, broken down, choked with rubbish.

God is always the same-equally near, equally strong, equally gracious. But our possession of His grace, and the impartation of His grace through us to others, vary, because our faith, our earnestness, our desires, vary. True, these no doubt are also His gifts and His working, and nothing that we say now touches in the least on the great truth that God is the sole originator of all good in man; but while believing that, as no less sure in itself than blessed in its message of confidence and consolation to us, we also have to remember, ‘If any man open the door, I will come in to him.’ We may have as much of God as we want, as much as we can hold, far more than we deserve. And if ever the victorious power of His Church seems to be almost paling to defeat, and His servants to be working no deliverance upon the earth, the cause is not to be found in Him who is ‘without variableness,’ nor in His gifts, which are ‘without repentance,’ but solely in us, who let go our hold of the Eternal Might. No ebb withdraws the waters of that great ocean; and if sometimes there be sand and ooze where once the flashing flood brought life and motion, it is because careless warders have shut the sea-gates.

An awful responsibility lies on us. We can resist and refuse, or we can open our hearts and draw into ourselves His strength. We can bring into operation those energies which act through faithful men faithfully proclaiming the faithful saying; or we can limit the Holy One of Israel. ‘Why could not we cast him out?’ ‘Because of your unbelief.’

With what grand confidence, then, may the weakest of us go to his task. We have a right to feel that in all our labour God works with us; that, in all our words for Him, it is not we that speak, but the Spirit of our Father that speaks in us; that if humbly and prayerfully, with self-distrust and resolute effort to crucify our own intrusive individuality, we wait for Him to enshrine Himself within us, strength will come to us, drawn from the deep fountains of God, and we too shall be able to say, ‘Not I, but the grace of God in me.’

How this sublime confidence should tell on our characters, destroying all self-confidence, repressing all pride, calming all impatience, brightening all despondency, and ever stirring us anew to deeds worthy of the ‘exceeding greatness of the power which worketh in us’-I can only suggest.

On all sides motives for strenuous toil press in upon us-chiefly those great examples which we have now been contemplating. But, besides these, there are other forms of activity which may point the same lesson. Look at the energy around us. We live in a busy time. Life goes swiftly in all regions. Men seem to be burning away faster than ever before, in an atmosphere of pure oxygen. Do we work as hard for God as the world does for itself? Look at the energy beneath us: how evil in every form is active; how lies and half-truths propagate themselves quick as the blight on a rose-tree; how profligacy, and crime, and all the devil’s angels are busy on his errands. If we are sitting drowsy by our camp-fires, the enemy is on the alert. You can hear the tramp of their legions and the rumble of their artillery through the night as they march to their posts on the field. It is no time for God’s sentinels to nod. If they sleep, the adversary does not, but glides in the congenial darkness, sowing his baleful tares. Do we work as hard for God as the emissaries of evil do for their master? Look at the energy above us. On the throne of the universe is the immortal Power who slumbereth not nor sleepeth. Before the altar of the heavens is the Priest of the world, the Lord of His Church, ‘who ever liveth to make intercession for us.’ Round Him stand perfected spirits, the watchmen on the walls of the New Jerusalem, who ‘rest not day and night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’ From His presence come, filling the air with the rustle of their swift wings and the light of their flame-faces, the ministering spirits who evermore ‘do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word.’ And we, Christian brethren, where are we in all this magnificent concurrence of activity, for purposes which ought to be dear to our hearts as they are to the heart of God? Do we work for Him as He and all that are with Him do? Is His will done by us on earth, as it is heaven?

Alas! alas! have we not all been like those three apostles whose eyes were heavy with sleep even while the Lord was wrestling with the tempter under the gnarled olives in the pale moonlight of Gethsemane? Let us arouse ourselves from our sloth. Let us lift up our cry to God: ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, as in the ancient days in the generations of old’; and the answer shall sound from the heavens to us as it did to the prophet, an echo of his prayer turned into a command, ‘Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Isa 62:6-9

6On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;

All day and all night they will never keep silent.

You who remind the LORD, take no rest for yourselves;

7And give Him no rest until He establishes

And makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

8The LORD has sworn by His right hand and by His strong arm,

I will never again give your grain as food for your enemies;

Nor will foreigners drink your new wine for which you have labored.

9But those who garner it will eat it and praise the LORD;

And those who gather it will drink it in the courts of My sanctuary.

Isa 62:6 This refers to prophets (cf. Isa 52:8; Isa 56:10 [negated]; Jer 6:17; Eze 3:17; Eze 33:7), although the rabbis see it referring to angels (cf. Zec 1:12-17).

Isa 62:6-7 You who remind the LORD. . .give Him no rest until He establishes. . .Jerusalem This may refer to the theological truth that God has limited Himself to the prayers of His children (cf. Jas 4:2). It is not overcoming the reluctance of an apathetic Deity, but it is the intercessory ministry of the people of God claiming the promises of God (see Special Topic in Vol. 11A, at Isa 37:21-24).

The VERBS appointed and remind are both Hiphils.

Isa 62:8 The LORD has sworn by His right hand and by His strong arm This is an anthropomorphic phrase (see Special Topic: God Described As Human (anthropomorphism) ). God does not have a body. He is Spirit (cf. Joh 4:24), yet He swears by His own ability to act! YHWH is a God who has, will, and does act in individual lives, as well as nations.

God’s oath is a significant promise (cf. Isa 54:9; Heb 6:13-20; Heb 7:20-28). It reminds us of

1. the power of God’s word, Isa 55:11; Isa 66:2 d

2. the trustworthy character of God, Isa 45:22-23

God has an eternal redemptive plan for all humans made in His image and likeness (cf. Act 2:23; Act 3:18; Act 4:28; 1Pe 1:20, see Special Topic: YHWH’s Eternal Redemptive Plan ). The Suffering Servant Song of Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12 is the mechanism for universal redemption (cf. Rom 5:12-21). The fellowship of Eden will be restored for those who repent and believe in God’s Messiah.

enemies. . .foreigners This refers to the invasion of Palestine by foreigners. It is a direct reference to the blessing versus cursing action of Lev 26:16 and Deu 28:30-33. Israel broke the Covenant. Israel suffered the consequences. YHWH promises a future day when the blessings will be a reality.

Isa 62:9 will drink it in the courts of My sanctuary This refers to the fellowship meal between God and His covenant partner (cf. Deu 12:18). These people are back in the land and the temple is restored.

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

day nor night. Hebrew all the day and all the night.

ye that make mention of = ye that remind.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Isa 62:6-9

Isa 62:6-9

“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night: ye that are Jehovah’s remembrancers, take ye no rest, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Jehovah hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give thy grain to be food for thine enemies; and foreigners shall not drink thy new wine … for which thou hast labored: but they that have garnered it shall eat it, and praise Jehovah; and they that have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.”

The marvelous protection promised here was directed to the nation of Israel upon their return from Babylon, and they have an ultimate application to God’s people of all ages in the Church of the Redeemer. The great tragedy, as far as the Old Israel is concerned is that they appear to have accepted these glorious promises as inevitably applying to themselves without any regard whatever to the kind of lives they lived. The passage of the Old Testament that Israel seemed never to have believed, or even to have heard of it, is in Jer 18:7-10, where it is revealed that “all of God’s promises” are contingent, absolutely, upon faithful human obedience to the will of God. The “faith only” Protestants of our own generation need to heed the warning that Israel ignored.

“Watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem …” (Isa 62:6). Dummelow believed these to be, “Angelic beings who report to Jehovah what happens on earth, and who intercede for mercy to Zion.” The problem we find with this view is that it contradicts the New Testament picture of the one intercessor for men, Christ, certainly not a corps of angels! It is much more likely that Jehovah is here speaking of the spiritual Jerusalem, not the old Jerusalem at all. The walls of this New Jerusalem are called “Salvation” and “Praise,” as in Isa 26:1; Isa 49:16; Isa 60:18. In which case, “The watchmen are not Old Testament priests, prophets, or angels, as thought by some; but they are the apostles and prophets of the New Testament, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, whose work is the perfecting of the saints (Eph 4:11-12).”

It is significant that the watchmen are commanded to pray to God day and night and to keep on praying until God indeed accomplishes all of the wonderful promises he has given to his people. Why does God need to be solicited to do that which he has already promised to do? Even in the New Testament we find the example of the importunate widow commended to us by Christ himself, because of her constant petitioning of the unjust judge. We do not pretend to know the answer to this problem. We do know, however, that it is the will of God that his servants pray without ceasing (that is, regularly and faithfully); and therefore, we are certain that such commandments have been given by God for the benefit of his human children.

Isa 62:6-7 PROTECTION: Watchmen were sentinels standing watch upon the tops of walls and in watch-towers of ancient cities to cry out warning at the approach of the enemy. The term is also used figuratively to denote men especially commissioned by God to preach and proclaim the Law of God to His people (cf. Eze 3:17; Eze 33:1-9; Isa 56:10, etc.). God promises that the watchmen in New Zion will be alert, constant and adept. They will not be like the watchmen of Isaiahs day, satiated, filled with wine, loving to lie down and slumber (Isa 56:10). The watchmen of New Zion will declare the whole counsel of God, night and day, with tears (cf. Act 20:17-35). Shepherds of the flock will be always on guard protecting against grievous wolves (false teachers and false doctrines). Faithful ministers of the gospel and elders and teachers of the church are her watchmen. They can never afford the false luxury of holding their peace for Zions enemy, like a roaring lion, seeks whom he may devour. Not only shall Zion have faithful watchmen, she shall also have persistent remembrancers. The Hebrew word hammazkirim is literally, those who remind. The idea is that New Zion will have those who are constant in prayer, supplicating God on her behalf. Jesus taught constant, persistent prayer as a characteristic of the citizen of the messianic kingdom (cf. Luk 11:5-14; Luk 18:1-8). The point of Jesus parables is not that we can wear God down until He gives in because we have prayed so long and so eloquently, but that if an exasperated friend or a grouchy old judge will answer the pleading of someone in need, how much more will our Father who is really anxious to help, answer us speedily?! The first century church was in constant prayer because its leaders (apostles, elders, evangelists) were men of constant prayer (1Th 5:16-18).

The main thing to be remembered and that which is to be kept constantly before God in prayer is the establishment of New Jerusalem as a praise in the earth-evangelism. Jesus instructed His disciples to pray for laborers for the harvest (cf. Mat 9:37-38; Luk 10:21; Joh 4:35, etc.). Going into all the world to make disciples was our Lords parting words to the church (Mat 28:18-20; Luk 24:44-53; Act 1:8). Prayer for the evangelization of the world must be constantly upon the heart and lips of New Zion.

Isa 62:8-9 PROVISION: Jehovah has allowed Jerusalems enemies to plunder the land. Specifically Assyria and Babylon invaded Palestine and looted harvest field and city shops. Even the Temple was ravaged by Babylon and its vessels carried off. Israels inheritance was wrested from her. But it shall not be so with New Zion. Her inheritance is incorruptible and eternal-one that does not fade away (1Pe 1:3-5). Nothing in the seen or unseen world can separate New Zion from her inheritance (Rom 8:31-39). Ancient Zions glory was transient but New Zions is eternal (cf. 2Co 4:16 to 2Co 5:5). Once again Isaiah puts New Zions future glory in terminology comprehensible to ancient Zion (agricultural terms).

New Zion will enjoy the constant presence of the Lord. She eats and drinks at the Lords Table. She has been invited to a feast (see Isa 25:6-12 and Special Study, RSVP, Come To the Feast).

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Lords Remembrancers

Ye that are the Lords remembrancers, take ye no rest, and give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.Isa 62:6-7.

The second half of Isaiahs prophecies forms one great whole, which might be called The Book of the Servant of the Lord. One majestic figure stands forth on its pages with ever-growing clearness of outline and form. The language in which He is described fluctuates at first between the collective Israel and the one Person who is to be all that the nation had failed to attain. But even near the beginning of the prophecy we read of My servant whom I uphold, whose voice is to be low and soft, and whose meek persistence is not to fail till He have set judgment in the earth. And as we advance the reference to the nation becomes less and less possible, and the recognition of the person more and more imperative. At first the music of the prophetic song seems to move uncertainly amid sweet sounds, from which the true theme by degrees emerges, and thenceforward recurs over and over again with deeper, louder harmonies clustering about it, till it swells into the grandeur of the choral close.

In the chapter before our text we read, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. Throughout the remainder of the prophecy, with the exception of one section which contains the prayer of the desolate Israel, this same person continues to speak; and who he is was taught in the synagogue of Nazareth. Whilst the preceding chapter, then, brings in Christ as proclaiming the great work of deliverance for which He is anointed of God, the following chapter presents Him as treading the winepress alone, which is a symbol of the future judgment by the glorified Saviour. Between these two prophecies of the earthly life and of the still future judicial energy, this chapter of our text, lies, referring, as I take it, to the period between these twothat is, to all the ages of the Churchs development on earth. For these Christ here promises His continual activity, and His continual bestowment of grace to His servants who watch the walls of His Jerusalem.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, 2nd series, p. 19.]

I

The Lords Remembrancers

Ye that are the Lords remembrancers.

It is hardly possible not to linger a little over this curious appellation, The Lords remembrancers, given in the margin of the Authorized Version and in the text of the Revised. Several interpretations of it have been suggested. The original word itself has both the ordinary meaning of one who reminds another, and a technical meaning (2Sa 20:24) akin to, though not identical with, that of the English word. By some it is applied to the angels, who are also supposed to be the watchmen upon the walls, referred to in the preceding clause. But such an explanation lifts the passage entirely out of the sphere of human privilege and duty, and introduces into it allusions to matters about which very little is known. There may be in it a special reference to prophets, whose functions would naturally include that of leading the people in their supplications to God, as well as that of warning them of danger and inciting them to effort. But there is no need to confine the term to officials of any kind. The entire New Testament is a sufficient authority for applying it to all true Christians.

If indeed there be truth in the tradition, in Judaism itself it was recognised in part of the sacrificial ritual that every man could be and ought to be the Lords remembrancer. The forty-fourth Psalm describes some of the marvellous things done by Jehovah for Israel in the past, and the forsaken and oppressed condition of Israel in the present; and one of its closing verses is said to have been regularly sung for long in the Temple worshipthe one in which Jehovahs remembrancers, after having reminded Him of their need and of His promised help, call upon Him: Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? Arise, cast us not off for ever. John Hyrcanus is reported to have abolished that custom, in spleen at the refusal of the Pharisees to let him reign in peace; or, possibly, according to a more charitable conjecture, under the feeling that the idea of awakening and reminding Jehovah involves a defect of faith. The psalm, however, is entirely true to human nature. For when men are tempted to imagine themselves forsaken of God and begirt inextricably by perils, it is an immense stimulus and encouragement of faith to remind God of their needs and of His promises, of their present reliance upon Him, and even (for Scripture warrants it elsewhere) of the way in which His faithfulness and honour are concerned in their protection and deliverance.1 [Note: R. W. Moss, The Discipline of the Soul, p. 160.]

The remembrancers priestly office belongs to every member of Christs priestly kingdom, the lowest and least of whom has the privilege of unrestrained entry into Gods presence-chamber and the power of blessing the world by faithful prayer. What should we think of a citizen in a beleagured city, who saw the enemy mounting the very ramparts, and gave no alarm because that was the sentrys business? In such extremity every man is a soldier, and women and children can at least keep watch and raise shrill shouts of warning. The gifts then here promised, and the duties that flow from them, are not the prerogatives or the tasks of any class or order, but the heritage and the burden of the Lord to every member of the Church.

1. How distinctly these words of our text define the region within which our prayers should ever move, and the limits which bound their efficacy! They remind God. Then the truest prayer is that which bases itself on Gods uttered will, and the desires which are born of our own fancies or heated enthusiasms have no power with Him. The prayer that prevails is a reflected promise. Our office in prayer is but to receive on our hearts the bright rays of His word, and to flash them back from the polished surface to the heaven from whence they came.

It is said that Philip of Macedon, lest he should be unduly exalted by his earthly greatness, or puffed up by the adulation of his subjects, instructed certain of his officers every morning as he woke to whisper in his ear, Remember, sire, you are but a man. They were his remembrancers, keeping in his mind what he knew well but chose to be reminded of continually.

2. This quaint word, remembrancer, leads you to expect to see some old guild in curious and ancient form. Let us look at them at work. And it is a testimony to the antiquity of this wonderful guild, with its strange power coming down from the distant past, that we must begin with Abraham. A guilty city is lying beneath the ban of God; but one of the Lords remembrancers comes forward, and he says, If fifty righteous be found here; if forty righteousif thirty righteousif twentyif ten? I will not destroy it for tens sake. Or, again, a battle is raging in the plain; but above the battle on the hill another of the Lords remembrancers holds up his handsand when Moses held up his hand Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hand Amalek prevailed. Or there is a plague among the people; they are dying by thousands. Another of the Lords remembrancers puts on incense, and runs in betweenexactly what the word intercede meansruns in between the living and the dead; and the plague is stayed. I ask you, as thinking men and women, would it be possible to explain these passages in any other way than this, that the Lords remembrancers have power put into their hands to move the hands which move the universe?1 [Note: A. F. W. Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, p. 82.]

Jacob prayed in that way, when he trembled at the thought of his brothers possible rage, pleading Gods actual words of promise: O God of my fathers, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother for (again) thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea. Two remembrancings, and between them a little prayer; and of course the result was that, when Esau came, instead of pouring his rough followers upon the struggling and indefensible caravan, he fell on his brothers neck and kissed him. David was surprised and almost staggered in unbelief at the prospect of greatness and renown which the prophet Nathan opened up to him, but he recovered and fed his faith by reminding himself and his God of the promise, and prayed, Now, O Lord God, the word that thou hast spoken concerning thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it for ever, and do as thou hast said. In this very prophecy Israel first of all reminds Jehovah of what He has been wont to do, and what needs to be done now: Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. The result is seen in vision at once: Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and so all the watchmen lift up their voices: Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord hath comforted His people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem: the Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.1 [Note: R. W. Moss, The Discipline of the Soul, p. 161.]

3. Is this some privilege which men used to have, but which they have now lost? Read the New Testament and see. We are become kings and priests to God, or, as it should be, a kingdom of priests. If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and God shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. Do we look out upon the harvest of the world and see very few labourers going into the harvest? What are we to do? Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest. Is it not certain that if those words have any meaning, quite apart from the help we give others by speaking to them, by giving them help in their hour of need, there is a Divine power put into our hands to bring to them help by our intercession? Did the early Christians believe this? Were they the Lords remembrancers? Peter is in prison, and the Christian cause has thus received a terrible blow. What do they do? The Lords remembrancers get together, and prayer is made continually in the Church unto God for him. Peter is free. Paul is in prison. To what does he look? He says, I beseech you that ye strive continuously in your prayers for me. And from that day to this mothers plead for their sons, priests plead for their people, and people plead for their priests. The Lords remembrancers have given Him no rest, and taken no rest until He establish, until He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.2 [Note: A. F. W. Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, p. 83.]

Does not the efficacy of intercessory prayer rest on the same principle of moral government as the efficacy of vicarious suffering? Does it not assume that, in dealing with one moral being, God may properly take into account the action of other moral beings, associated with that one, and interested in his welfare?1 [Note: A. Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, p. 262.]

There were two working men some years ago who were disputing in their workshop. One, who was a little man and without much brain power, was standing up for the Christian cause; the other was a clever, able workman, who kept challenging him to come into any room or any hall, and he would prove the falsity of the Christian faith. The little one, who was not clever, simply said this, I cannot argue with you, brother, but I shall never cease to pray for you, that some day you may see things as I do. Years passed by, and that man who scoffed at the Christian faith is a communicant of the Church of England. He was with me last night, and is this afternoon in this cathedral, and if I were to call him up here he would tell you that he now searches the streets where he used to work to find that man to whose never-ceasing prayers he attributes his conversion, in order to give him the happiness of knowing that his year-long prayer has been heard.2 [Note: A. F. W. Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, p. 84.]

II

Taking No Rest

Take ye no rest (marg. Keep not silence).

Simply to call God to remembrance does not exhaust the human conditions of our own perfecting and of the Churchs progress and strength. Two other conditions are singled out to emphasise their necessity: Take ye no rest, and give him no restunresting activity on our part, and ceaselessness of prayer: those together are the means of moving the mighty will of Jehovah, the double-edged sword whose wielding is fatal to all the powers of evil.

The words Take ye no rest or Keep not silence are an encouragement against weariness in well-doing, against the creeping paralysis of doubt, and against the bitter ineffectiveness of despondency. They are an encouragement to earnestness both in worship and in work.

1. Weariness.We shall keep silence if we grow weary in well-doing; if patience gives place to fretfulness, and love of ease cries out against the practice of self-denial; if the crown is longed for while the cross is shunned, and the reaping is desired while the sowing is neglected. But I trust we shall not thus belie our character. Shame, indeed, if the Lords remembrancers are themselves reminded in vain. Shame, indeed, if in keeping silence we make it easier for other voices to be heard. Shame, indeed, if we prove ourselves sluggards and not sons, hirelings and not true servants. But I am persuaded better things of you, and things which accompany salvation.

There is a legend of a monk, called Brother Francis, whose duty it was to carry the water to be used in the monastery from St. Marys well. The way was long, the work was toilsome, and Francis was discontented; though only God knew how unwilling his daily service was. One evening, when he had been brooding sullenly over his hard lot and wishing he might never be forced to do the work again, the Abbot began unexpectedly to praise him. He was told that his zeal and patience in bringing fresh water several times a day would be rewarded by God; but that he looked very weary, so the work would now be given into the hands of Brother Paul. Brother Francis, confused and ashamed, accepted the Abbots blessing; but with envious glance he watched his successor as he carried the water from the distant spring, day after day.

And rest from toil seemed unto him a sore and bitter thing,

A penance, lacking penance graceno sweetness, but all sting.

And pondering sadly, half in wrath, and half repentingly,

He had a vision, and he saw an Angel from on high

Who, hour by hour, with Brother Paul, walked all the weary day,

And every footstep reckoned up along the sunny way,

And seemed to joy when labour grew; yea, seemed full glad indeed,

As more and more of water fresh the thirsty Brethren need.1 [Note: Dora Farncomb, The Vision of His Face, p. 99.]

2. Doubt.Nothing so effectually seals the lips of testimony, stops the note of praise, and hushes the voice of prayer. A cheerful trust in God is necessary in those who seek to bring Him to the remembrance of others. If faith is the hand which lays hold of Christ, so is it the voice which speaks of Him. Weave truth with trust is an old motto we may lay to heart. Possessed of the accent of conviction, there will be no keeping silence, but afflicted with the lock-jaw of doubt there will be great failure of Christian duty and great forfeiture of Christian privilege. Only the faithful heart can speak of and for the faithful God. A grain of sand in the metal will mar the music of the bell, and the presence of doubt in the worker will effectually mar the certain sound of the message expected to be clearly and constantly delivered.

Who but has seen

Once in his life, when youth and health ran high,

The fair, clear face of truth

Grow dark to his eye?

Who but has known

Cold mists of doubt and icy questionings

Creep round him like a nightmare, blotting out

The sight of better things?

A hopeless hour,

When all the voices of the soul are dumb,

When oer the tossing seas

No light may come,

When God and right

Are gone, and seated on the empty throne

Are dull philosophies and words of wind,

Making His praise their own.

Better than this,

The burning sins of youth, the old mans greed,

Than thus to live inane;

To sit and read,

And with blind brain

Daily to treasure up a deadly doubt,

And live a life from which the light has fled,

And faiths pure fire gone out.1 [Note: Sir Lewis Morris.]

3. Despair.Despair also ministers to silence, whether it be despair of ourselves or of others. Hopefulness is as necessary as faithfulness. Our Saviour is our great example here. He often seemed to fail in His efforts to teach the disciples and gather the multitudes, but He never despaired. The hardness of mens hearts would have silenced a testimony less Divine. To repel Him was but to give Him strength for a renewal of loves attack. It will be hard to keep silence when we indulge in hopes concerning the children; and of whom may we hope more fondly and freely?

It is often disheartening work. We seem like the poor widow who was not heard; we seem like the man to whom the selfish friend would not open the door. The stream of intercession trickles on, and no one seems to heed and no one seems to care. But if these things are true of which we have spoken, something does happen. Just as you dam up a stream in order to accumulate the water power, and for a long time the stream trickles on and the valley underneath remains dry and desolate; but when you look out later you find the brown things have become green again, and the dead things alive, and you wonder what it means; and you find that it means this: that the great tide of water has burst its bonds at last and is off down that valley on a work of blessingso it is with the stream of intercession. It trickles on all the time; the power risesslowly risesand some day men will look out upon the world, and they will see dry souls freshened with grace, and they will see heathen lands converted, and they will wonder what it means: but we shall know that the great tide of prayer has burst its bonds at last and is off down the valley on its work of blessing.

Man may be

And do the thing he wishes, if he keeps

That one thought dominant through night and day,

And knows his strength is limitless, because

Its fountain-head is God.1 [Note: E. W. Wilcox, New Thought Common Sense, p. 238.]

4. Earnest endeavour.The phrase Take ye no rest may be taken in its widest sense as an appeal for hopeful and confident perseverance in every kind of Christian work. There are tendencies in most mens hearts, which make such an appeal very necessary even in an age of evangelism. Disappointment with the visible results of work or with the apparent effects of self-discipline, the length of the interval which separates the harvest from the seed-time, the perfecting of the spirit from the remote moment of its conversion,these things are sometimes apt to produce within us a degree of hesitation, often almost of suspicion, concerning religious prospects and forces, that is fatal to anything like persistent enthusiasm. And yet persistent enthusiasm, the having our spirits continually swayed or filled with the Spirit of God, is precisely that which is essential to the increase of our own strength against sin, and to the Churchs triumph. That, accordingly, is the prophets first advice, Take ye no rest, which is equivalent to saying, Never yield to despondency whatever the temptation, but remember the grace of God, and go steadily on day by day, smiting at every kind of evil within or without, entertaining no fears, giving no quarter to sin, never resting until the battle is over and the victory finally won.

We see the immense influence placed within our reach in daily life in making the life of others happy or miserable. Take that sick boy lying there down in East London. Who is it that has placed flowers by his side? Who is it to whose visit he is looking forward every minute? Who is it who has been to read to him so punctually day after day, to teach him to draw, and to help him to get through the long hours of his sickness? It is some woman who, for the love of Christ and His little ones, has given up her beautiful home in the country, and, unnoticed and unknown, spends day after day in ministering to another for whom Christ died. He has caught from her her faith; he believes now that Christ can save him because in a true sense she has saved him. If he stood on his individual base he would have died and despaired, but through his sister he lives and hopes. Oh! the band of the Lords ministering helpers. With shining garments, to the eyes of God, they move about the world. What should we do without them?1 [Note: Bishop Ingram.]

The den they enter grows a shrine;

The gloomy sash an oriel burns;

Their cup of water warms like wine;

Their speech is filled from heavenly urns.

About their brow to me appears

An aureole, traced in tendrest light

The rainbow hue of smiles through tears,

In dying eyes, by them made bright.

Of souls that shivered on the brink

Of that chill ford, repassd no more,

And in their mercy found the pledge,

And sweetness of the farther shore.2 [Note: Lowell.]

III

Giving No Rest

And give him no rest (marg. silence).

Give Him no rest: Let there be no cessation to Him. These are bold words, which many people would not have been slow to rebuke, if they had been anywhere else than in the Bible. Those who remind God are not to suffer Him to be still. The prophet believes that they can regulate the flow of Divine energy, can stir up the strength of the Lord.

It is significant how few men there are, whatever the variety or thinness of their creed, who have not something good to say concerning what they call prayer. To its beneficial effects the witness is almost uniform. When a philosophy falsely so called denounces it as unreasonable, it will often confess it to be instinctive. That prayer elevates in some way and enriches the moral nature of the worshipper, is one of the conclusions that seem to be taken for granted almost everywhere, though an attempt is sometimes made to neutralise the admission by pleas of superstition or of illusion. Every Christian knows that it does infinitely more for him than that. All through the Bible God is represented as yielding to its importunity, and every sincere disciple is familiar with experiences, in which in response to his pleading God has come down to his aid. Jehovah in His righteous anger said to Moses, Let me alone, that I may consume this people; but when Moses prayed, reminding God of His promise to the patriarchs, the record isThe Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people. Let me go, for the day breaketh, said the mysterious man with whom Jacob wrestled at the ford Jabbok; and because Jacob would not let him go, he soon prevailed. It is the same still. To pray with that kind of resolved importunity that will not be divertedto give God no rest until He opens His hand and pours down the influence of strength of grace we need: neither in heaven nor upon earth has that resource ever yet been found to fail.

How have I knelt with arms of my aspiring

Lifted all night in irresponsive air,

Dazed and amazed with overmuch desiring,

Blank with the utter agony of prayer!1 [Note: F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul, p. 13.]

1. This prayer is intercessory prayer. Deeper than the need of men and women, deeper than the need of money, is the Churchs need to-day of the forgotten secret of prevailing intercessory prayer. Nothing short of this will suffice for the missionary enterprises of the day. Take ye no rest, and give Him no rest. Far be it from us by that to imply that we love the imperilled world more than our Father does. We sometimes tremble lest in our supplications and in our representations to God, when we kneel at His Throne together or by ourselves, we should seem to imply that there are difficulties in this business which we have fathomed but which He has not foreseen. In our grievous disappointments, when our trusted standard-bearers fall, when the work of a lifetime seems, as it were, wasted, we are apt to speak to God as if really His ways were too inscrutable for us and intended to daunt us. God forgive us if we have murmured at this, which is sometimes chastisement of our half-hearted service, or murmur at the long waiting of faithful men and women for tangible results, or at the vastness of the work which we seem to have attempted in vain.

God help us all the more to lift the whole round world, with all its freight of infinite destiny, in the arms of our faith and cast it at His feet. But we must not be afraid to tell Him that we have at length learned the lesson of the colossal magnitude of the stupendous difficulties and the deep mysteries of our task. Our Lord would have us thus learn the lesson which He taught at Gethsemane, and amid inhuman insults and cruelties of His dying hour. It is by prayer for missions, when it is deep and sincere, it is by prayer for missions more than anything else, I believeone can speak only of what one knows oneselfit is by prayer for missions that we become partakers of the sufferings of Christ, and can understand a little of the travail of His soul.

A man may say, I can quite understand the good of praying for oneself; I can quite see that, according to Gods will, these gifts of grace are to be worked by prayer like the gifts of God in nature; but where is the evidence that there is the slightest good in praying for others? He might even take this linehe might say, It is presumtuous for me to imagine that I can affect the destiny of another soul! It is against what I read of the struggle for existence by each individual in nature. It is unfair, for what is to happen to those for whom no one prays? And where is the evidence that intercession for others does any good at all?

In answer to the first question, with regard to the struggle of the individual for existence, if you have read Professor Drummonds Ascent of Man you will have apprehended something which is a great relief to the nightmare which settles down upon the mind if one looks upon nature as a mere scene of bloodshed. I know there are menI see men herewho have come up lately from Oxford, and I believe that at Oxford, as much as in the great centres of our population, one of the things which drive men to scepticism is believing that nature is entirely cruel. Where, they say, is the evidence of a good, benevolent God, in the midst of such a scene of unrelieved bloodshed? Read Professor Drummonds book, and you will find that side by side with the struggle for existence there is going on perpetually in nature the struggle for the life of othersthat the lioness who might crush her cub will die for it, that the parent bird wears itself out in getting food for its young, and that the creativethe marvellously creativepower of a mothers love is not confined to the human species. And when, secondly, we turn to the objection that intercession is unfair, and look frankly at the facts of nature, we find that the unfairness is the other way. No one can visit a childrens hospital without seeing in the most touching form that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. Some people seem to imagine that that saying in the Bible is an arbitrary command imposing an arbitrary punishment on the human race; but one hour spent in that childrens hospital will show that it simply states a fact of human nature.1 [Note: Bishop Ingram.]

What can be more beautiful than the picture which his biographer gives of George Herbert and his daily prayers? You will remember how he describes Herbert reading the prayers in the tiny church of Bemerton, close to Salisbury, and how the poorer people of the parish did so love and reverence Mr. Herbert that they would let the plough rest when Mr. Herberts Saints Bell rang to prayers, that they might also offer their devotions to God with him, and then would return back to their plough.

Go, says the saintly Bishop Ken, go to the house of prayer, though you go alone; and there, as you are Gods remembrancers, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

2. We are thus encouraged both to work and to pray, both to take no rest, and to give Him no rest. Activity and prayer, each unceasingthat is the irresistible combination which the prophet recommends and urges: to pray (some one says) as if God had to do everything, and to work as if everything depended upon ourselves. The certain result will be our own perfecting in the praiseful confession of others whilst the Church also becomes strong and a praise in the earth. We know, consequently, what to do in experiences that frequently recur. When we discover anew our own spiritual feebleness, there is no need to waste in depression and complaint any energy that may remain; the feebleness should be attributed at once to its right causethat we take too much rest, or that we give God too much. On our knees, as Gods remembrancers, we should remind Him of His word, He that is feeble among you shall be as David; and it will not be long before greater strength than Davids takes possession of us. Or when the Church seems to be shorn of its power, making no headway and winning no praise, the reason is again because we Christians do not pray enough or do not work enough. It is a magnificent prospectourselves established so that all men confess our consistency and acknowledge our influence for good; the Church a praise in the earth, everywhere triumphing over sin, with great crowds of men continuously streaming up to pay their homage to its Lord. Until that crowning consummation is reached, we must ourselves take no rest and give Him no rest.

These two forms of action ought to be inseparable. Each, if genuine, will drive us to the other, for who could fling himself into the watchmans work, with all its solemn consequences, knowing how weak his voice was, and how deaf the ears that should hear, unless he could bring Gods might to his help? And who could honestly remind God of His promises and forget his own responsibilities? Prayerless work will soon slacken, and never bear fruit; idle prayer is worse than idle. You cannot part them if you would. How much of the busy occupation which is called Christian work is detected to be spurious by this simple test! How much so-called prayer is reduced by it to mere noise, no better than the blaring trumpet or the hollow drum!

In the tabernacle of Israel stood two great emblems of the functions of Gods people, which embodied these two sides of the Christian life. Day by day there ascended from the altar of incense the sweet odour, which symbolised the fragrance of prayer as it wreathes itself upwards to the heavens. Night by night, as darkness fell on the desert and the camp, there shone through the gloom the hospitable light of the great golden candlestick with its seven lamps, whose steady rays outburned the stars that paled with the morning. Side by side they proclaimed to Israel its destiny to be the light of the world, to be a kingdom of priests.

The offices and the honour have passed over to us, and we shall fall beneath our obligations unless we let the light shine constantly before men, and let our voice rise like a fountain night and day before Godeven as He did who, when every man went to his own house, went alone to the Mount of Olives, and in the morning, when every man returned to his daily task, went into the Temple and taught. By His example, by His gifts, by the motive of His love, our resting, working Lord says to each of us, Ye that remind God, keep not silence. Let us answer, For Zions sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalems sake I will not rest.

3. And what is the encouragement? It is found in the first verse of this chapter: I will not rest. Through all the ages His power is in exercise. He inspires in good men all their wisdom, and every grace of life and character. He uses them as His weapons in the contest of His love with the worlds hatred; but the hand that forged, and tempered, and sharpened the blade is that which smites with it; and the axe must not boast itself against him that heweth. He, the Lord of lords, orders providences, and shapes the course of the world for that Church which is His witness: Yea, he reproved kings for their sake, saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. The ancient legend which told how, on many a well-fought field, the ranks of Rome discerned through the battle-dust the gleaming weapons and white steeds of the Great Twin Brethren far in front of the solid legions, is true in loftier sense in our Holy War. We may still see the vision which the leader of Israel saw of old, the man with the drawn sword in his hand, and hear the majestic word, As captain of the Lords host am I now come. The Word of God, with vesture dipped in blood, with eyes alit with His flaming love, with the many crowns of unlimited sovereignty upon His head, rides at the head of the armies of heaven; and in righteousness doth he judge and make war. For the single soul struggling with daily tasks and petty cares, His help is ever near and real, as for the widest work of the collective whole. He sends none of us tasks in which He has no share. The word of this Master is never Go, but Come. He unites Himself with all our sorrows, with all our efforts. The Lord also working with them, is a description of all the labours of Christian men, be they great or small.

Nor is this all. There still remains the wonderful truth of His continuous intercession for us. In its widest meaning that word expresses the whole of the manifold ways by which Christ undertakes and maintains our cause. But the narrower signification of prayer on our behalf is applicable, and is in Scripture applied, to our Lord. As on earth the climax of all His intercourse with His disciples was that deep and yet simple prayer which forms the Holy of Holies of Johns Gospel, so in heaven His loftiest office for us is set forth under the figure of His intercession. Before the Throne stands the slain Lamb, and therefore do the elders in the outer circle bring acceptable praises. Within the veil stands the Priest, with the names of the tribes blazing on the breastplate, and on the shoulders of His robes, near the seat of love, near the arm of power. And whatever difficulty may surround that idea of Christs priestly intercession, this at all events is implied in it, that the mighty work which He accomplished on earth is ever present to the Divine mind as the ground of our acceptance and the channel of our blessings; and this further, that the utterance of Christs will is ever in harmony with the Divine purpose. Therefore His prayer has in it a strange tone of majesty, and, if we may say so, of command, as of one who knows that He is ever heard: I will that they whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.

The instinct of the Church has, from of old, laid hold of an event in His early life to shadow forth this great truth, and has bid us see a pledge and a symbol of it in that scene on the Lake of Galilee: the disciples toiling in the sudden storm, the poor little barque tossing on the waters tinged by the wan moon, the spray dashing over the wearied rowers. They seem alone, but up yonder, in some hidden cleft of the hills, their Master looks down on all the weltering storm, and lifts His voice in prayer. Then when the need is sorest, and the hope least, He comes across the waves, making their surges His pavement, and using all opposition as the means of His approach, and His presence brings calmness, and immediately they are at land.

So we have not only to look back to the Cross, but up to the Throne. From the Cross we hear a voice, It is finished. From the Throne a voice, For Zions sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalems sake I will not rest.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, Pauls Prayers, p. 27.]

IV

The Establishing Of The Church

Till He establish Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, the city of God, of necessity represents the people of God, first of all as an organised whole, and then in the separate individuals that constitute the whole. The chapter accordingly sets before us, as one of the objects towards which God is working, an established Church, the object of universal praise. The word established is the prophets, and must not be taken in the sense in which it is used in a standing ecclesiastical dispute. Concerning that dispute, indeed, neither the prophet nor Scripture anywhere has much directly to say, and certainly here the meaning does not go beyond the ordinary idea of making the Church steadfast, firm, strong. To a large extent it answers that description already, notwithstanding the doubt and hesitancy or the cynical rejoicing of those who cannot see through the controversial smoke that envelops it. It has been compared to a great lighthouse, directing men to safety, played about by storm and foam, whose misty quiverings seem at times to make it quiver, yet standing immovable upon its foundation of rock, and surviving unharmed the malice of all the elements.

If ever the victorious power of His Church seems to be almost paling to defeat, and His servants to be working no deliverance upon the earth, the cause is not to be found in Him, who is without variableness, nor in His gifts, which are without repentance, but solely in us, who let go our hold of the eternal might. No ebb withdraws the waters of that great ocean; and if sometimes there be sand and ooze where once the flashing flood brought life and motion, it is because careless warders have shut the sea gates.

The hindrances in the way of the establishing of the Church are chiefly uncertainty of revelation, and the worldly and selfish forces which disregard the claims of God.

1. We are told that in some Christian creeds there are points where the creed conflicts with reason, and where the supremacy of reason must be maintained; that no support can be found for the prescribed moral usages either in the fundamental principles of human nature or in an adequate authority outside of it; that some of the ceremonials of religion are destitute of dignity, inwardness, art, and have ceased to be in any way the expression or the product of life. The verdict of impossibility is at times pronounced over the contents of the Bible in the name of physical science, or its arrangement and inspiration are assailed in the name of historical criticism. All this certainly does not at first sight and upon the surface look like establishment. On the contrary, by some men it is held to be a proof of failure, whilst others regard it with suspicion as an evidence at least of weakness, and are tempted to turn from passages of this kind with the exulting or the sad conclusion, that both the Scriptures and the religion to which they minister are moribund and decaying, that little further advantage from them in regard to morals or to human well-being can reasonably be expected.

But that conclusion is too hasty, unwarranted by the experience of the past, inconsistent with principles that never consent to be ignored, and with manifest tendencies in the drift of human thought and opinion. For if the extreme supernaturalism of our fathers is gradually becoming a little discredited, and the number is decreasing of those who are prepared to exalt the merely unintelligible into the miraculous, the testimony of consciousness on the other hand is in all probability accepted to-day more widely, and invested with a higher authority, than at any previous period. It is a shifting and redisposition of the evidences of faith and moralsdisturbing to the most reverent minds, and dangerous to some; but it is a shifting which promises to make the foundation in human thought of religion and of the moral sentiments more solid and unassailable than ever. Similarly with the appearance of weakness which the Bible is supposed to be taking on amidst the processes of historical criticism through which it is passing. Not only is it a distinct advantage to the thoughtful disciple to have sometimes to breast the bracing air of opposition, and to join in the fight of faith where all are striving for what they honestly believe to be true, but there is really no need to regard these modern investigations, at least as they are pursued in most cases in this country, with suspicion either of unfriendliness or of danger. The man who of all scholars of the land is perhaps the most completely in sympathy with them, and most deeply committed to their methods and results, writes that there is a message from God to man in every part of the Bible, and that the condition of discovering the message is that the reason be stimulated to its highest activity by spiritual influences.

2. Again, many are loudly telling us that Christianity is a myth, and others that it is only one among many religions which are leading humanity on to a distant goal; that science and Western civilisation are to do the work that the Churches once did. And we are told that the value of the human soul is a vanishing quantity, and that God is a human emotion, and immortal life a dream. And without accepting these meanings from the sunless gulfs of doubt as the real truth of things, many people are flagging in their enthusiasm for the conversion of the world because of them; they become paralysed and heart-sick, and they relax effort. It is in prayer, in living union with Christ, that all this pessimism vanishes like a nightmare, and we start to the post of duty again. You cannot fight the atmosphere; no, but you can rise above it.

Then thro the mid complaint of my confession,

Then thro the pang and passion of my prayer,

Leaps with a start the shock of his possession,

Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is there.

Scarcely I catch the words of his revealing,

Hardly I hear him, dimly understand,

Only the Power that is within me pealing

Lives on my lips and beckons to my hand.

Whoso hath felt the Spirit of the Highest

Cannot confound nor doubt him nor deny:

Yea with one voice, O world, tho thou deniest,

Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.1 [Note: F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul, p. 49.]

V

Making The Church A Praise

And till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

The promise that Jerusalem will be made a praise in the earth, prophet after prophet repeats, sometimes calling to his aid every kind of beautiful imagery, and sometimes pointing to the cause of the praise in the presence of the Holy One of Israel. Zephaniah, for instance, a prophet of royal descent, the traditions of whose house were full alike of suffering and of privilege, closes his short prophecy with a vivid bit of dramatisation. First of all, he addresses his fellow-citizens: In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. The Lord thy God is in the midst of thee, a mighty one who will save: he will rejoice over thee with joy. And then his own voice ceases, in order that the One whose every tone is authority may be heard: At that time will I bring you in, and at that time will I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all the peoples of the earth. It is much the same with Isaiah himself. As the earth bringeth forth her bud (he says), and as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. The earth in all the glories of her luxuriant herbage, every plant and every tree breaking forth into the promise of fruitfulness, all nature putting on her garments of beauty and powerthat, he says, is a symbol of what God will make the Church in the world to be.

1. Christ.That promise holds good still; and its growing fulfilment may be traced in the ever-growing disposition to exhaust all praise upon Him who is the Churchs Head and Lord, the source of its strength and the centre of its worship. In every age since He died, He has been praised in proportion as He has been known; and in the records of no race that has heard of Him, with one certain and another doubtful exception, is any other name more highly honoured. Even that exceptional race is moderating at present the expression of its hatred, and beginning to confess with hesitation the human ascendancy of the Nazarene. By all the world beside He has been singled out for unexampled praise. To the best men of old He was the mirror of every grace and virtue. One of the most lauded philosophies has abstracted His qualities from His personality, and now bids the world worship their impersonal generalisation. And whatever other direction is being taken by human thought within the Church or in its immediate borders, it is, at least, taxing all its resources in order to pour increased praise upon the Saviour.

2. The Church.It is true that the Church itself is not equally praised, but that is as a rule because its practice does not follow the example or come up to the standard of its Lord. As the days pass, the Spirit of Christ will ever more completely sway it, and determine its relations with the world; and thus its vitality and religious force will vindicate themselves; its critics will join the swelling ranks of worshippers, and it will become a praise in the earth.

3. The Christian.If all this is to be done for the Church, it must be that it will be done for each of the Christians who compose it. Accordingly, every follower of Christ has a right to regard this passage as a promise of God to establish him, to make him strong in discipleship, faith, power against sinto make him a praise in the earth. At the present time there is probably no Christian worthy the name, who is not constantly discovering, and often groaning in secret almost hopelessly over the discovery, how weak and unestablished he is. Temptation, however small, has but to assail us subtly or suddenly, and we become an easy prey. When we begin to search our own spirits, and try to find out what we really are, a conclusion that is not satisfactory or pleasant is forced upon us. Self, not crucified and slain, but even exacting in its demands for indulgence; ill-tempered, irritable, resentful, vindictive; able sometimes to turn out poor work without compunction; conscious of sinfulness, which we treat with alternating indifference and remorse, but to be rid of which we make few serious and prolonged efforts; sometimes not caring much even to keep the surface of our lives correct, still less to sweep out of our hearts the rout of foul passions, or to silence the strife of low motivesthat, or something like that, is the account we are disposed to give of ourselves in some of our moods; and anything like the final mastery of sin, or unwavering firmness in our allegiance to Christ, is apt to seem for ever impossible. Yet that it is impossible, the whole Bible and all godly experience testify.

That man will find sin obstinate, inveterate, indwelling, slow to confess itself beaten, is precisely in accordance with the implication of Scripture, which proceeds to repeat and urge the assurance that the grace of God will secure for man victory in the end. Establishment so firm that we need neither yield to temptation nor waver in faith, but may find ourselves strong enough to stand erect amidst the play upon us of all evil influences, and to hold our own against every foe; the rock felt to be steady beneath our feet, the favour of God compassing us as a shield, and the shelter of His wings above; life spent day after day in ever closer, quieter, more dutiful fellowship with Him, and from that fellowship power streaming into every faculty, until the entire manner of living becomes an irresistible testimony to the grace of God, a restraint upon evil, a theme of praise to all the earth,that is the hope concerning ourselves which the Bible warrants our cherishing.1 [Note: R. W. Moss, The Discipline of the Soul, p. 158.]

Our lives ought to be like the mirror of a reflecting telescope. The astronomer does not look directly up into the sky when he wants to watch the heavenly bodies, but down into the mirror, on which their reflection is cast. And so our little low lives down here upon the earth should so give back the starry bodies and infinitudes above us, that some dim eyes, which peradventure could not gaze into the violet abysses with their lustrous points, may behold them reflected in the beauty of our life.

I remember hearing an old friend, long ago, speaking (in no uncharitable strain) of a neighbour, say, I am sure he is a Christian, but he is a rather disagreeable one. He meant, I gathered, that this person took no pains at all to adorn the doctrine. He worshipped God in Christ; he recognised his own sinfulness and need; he trusted his Saviour for pardon, and strove in His name to lead a pure and honest life. But it never occurred to himat least it did not seem to do sothat part of his duty to his Lord was to learn at His feet the kindliness, the gentleness, the sympathy, the considerateness, which win and are attractive for Him. Let us see to it that we are not classed, by fair criticism, among the disagreeable Christians.1 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, Thoughts for the Sundays of the Year, p. 29.]

The Lords Remembrancers

Literature

Davies (T.), Sermons, ii. 154.

Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 239.

Jerdan (C.), For the Lambs of the Flock, 103.

Ingram (A. F. W.), Banners of the Christian Faith, 76.

Maclaren (A.), Sermons, 2nd Ser., 19.

Moss (R. W.), The Discipline of the Soul, 153.

Murray (A.), The Ministry of Intercession, 31, 169.

Randolph (B. W.), The Threshold of the Sanctuary, 99.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxvii., No. 2189.

Christian World Pulpit, xvi. 276 (Mayers); liii. 58 (Cobb); lvi. 181 (Briscoe); lxv. 292 (Hartley).

Church Pulpit Year Book, vi. 24.

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

set watchmen: Isa 52:8, Isa 56:10, 2Ch 8:14, Son 3:3, Son 5:7, Jer 6:17, Eze 3:17-21, Eze 33:2-9, 1Co 12:28, Eph 4:11, Eph 4:12, Heb 13:17

which: Isa 62:1, Psa 134:1, Psa 134:2, Rev 4:6-8

make mention of the Lord: or, are the Lord’s remembrancers, Isa 43:26, Gen 32:12, Num 14:17-19, Psa 74:2, Psa 74:18, Act 10:4, Act 10:31

keep: Gen 32:26, Mat 15:22-27, Luk 11:5-13, Luk 18:1-8, Luk 18:39, 1Th 5:17, Rev 6:10

Reciprocal: Exo 28:12 – for a memorial Deu 9:14 – Let me 1Sa 7:8 – Cease 1Ki 4:3 – recorder 1Ki 19:14 – I have been 2Ki 9:17 – a watchman 1Ch 16:4 – to record Psa 51:18 – Do Psa 88:1 – I have Psa 119:49 – Remember Psa 127:1 – the watchman Psa 137:5 – I forget Isa 21:6 – Go Isa 21:8 – I stand Jer 31:6 – a day Lam 3:50 – General Eze 33:7 – I have Dan 9:20 – for Hos 9:8 – watchman Hab 2:1 – tower Act 12:5 – prayer was made without ceasing 2Co 1:11 – helping Eph 1:16 – making 2Ti 4:5 – watch Rev 3:2 – watchful Rev 4:8 – and they Rev 14:15 – crying

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Isa 62:6-7. I have set watchmen, &c. The word , thus rendered, signifies properly those priests and Levites who kept watch day and night about the temple, and is from them applied to the spiritual watchmen and ministers of the Christian Church. They are said to be set upon the walls of the spiritual Jerusalem, in allusion to sentinels placed upon the walls of besieged cities, from whence they have an extensive prospect, that they may observe and give notice of the motions of the enemy. Which shall never hold their peace day nor night There shall be a vigilant, faithful, and diligent ministry, willing to endure hardships, and constant in their work of teaching and warning the people, or of interceding for them, which constancy is intimated here by day and night. Ye that make mention of the Lord That is, that are his servants, and acknowledge your relation to him as such: see Isa 26:13. Here especially are meant his servants in ordinary, his remembrancers, as the word may be properly translated, either such as put God in remembrance of his promises, or such as make the Lord to be remembered, putting his people in mind of him. Keep not silence As if he had said, Since God, by his peculiar goodness and care of his church, hath appointed watchmen to be placed upon its walls, that they may constantly watch for its safety, therefore do you, who are intrusted with this office, perform your parts diligently, and intercede continually with him, that he would graciously fulfil the magnificent promises which he has made to it. In the command here given, not to keep silence, Bishop Lowth thinks there is an allusion to the manner in which watches are kept in the East. Even to this day, says he, they are performed by a loud cry, from time to time, of the watchmen, to mark the time, and that very frequently, and in order to show that they themselves are constantly attentive to their duty. The watchmen in the camp of the caravans go their rounds, crying, one after another,

God is one, he is merciful, and often add, Take heed to yourselves. Tavern. Voyage, de Perse, lib. 1. chap. 10. And give him no rest Persevere, and be importunate in your supplications. Observe, reader, fervency and importunity in prayer are very acceptable to God, as implying the sincere and earnest desire of the person praying for the blessings which he asks: see Luk 11:5-10; and Luk 18:1-7. Till he establish, &c. Till he so settle his church on sure foundations, and enlarge its borders, that it shall become a blessing to all nations, and all nations shall praise him for it, Psa 67:3-4; or that it may be praised, and become renowned and famous in the eyes of the whole world.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Isa 62:6 f. Yahweh has appointed heavenly beings as an invisible guard of Jerusalem: their duty ever to sound in His ears, till its fulfilment, His promise to make her a renown in the earth.

Isa 62:8 f. Yahweh has pledged His omnipotence that no longer shall marauders plunder the fields and vineyards of His people, but, protected from invasion, they shall enjoy their produce and celebrate in the Temple the feasts of ingathering.

Isa 62:10-11 a. Anticipating the glad return to Zion from the Dispersion, the prophet bids the inhabitants go forth and make ready the road for the entry of the exiles, banking up the causeway and clearing it of stones, and raising a standard to which they may flock, for Yahweh has sent forth a world-wide proclamation to her exiled sons.

Isa 62:11 b Isa 62:12. Say ye: does not introduce the proclamation, as the English seems to suggest, but a new exhortation parallel to Go through.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

62:6 I have set {h} watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, [which] shall never hold their peace day nor night: {i} ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence,

(h) Prophets, pastors and ministers.

(i) He exhorts the ministers never to cease to call on God by prayer for the deliverance of his Church and to teach others to do the same.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

The Lord revealed that He had appointed watchmen, whose job it was to remind Him of His promises to Israel, so that He would not forget them (cf. Isa 36:3; 2Sa 8:16; 1Ki 4:3; Luk 2:36-38). Obviously the Lord does not forget His promises, but this assurance, in the language of the common practice of the day, underscored the fact that He would not forget. The watchmen in view may be angels and or human intercessors (cf. Ezekiel 33; Dan 4:13; Luk 11:5-10; Luk 18:1-8).

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