Damascus was sacked and almost ruined. To this corresponds a first series of visions (chaps. 1-12). Its main features are a stern warning to Israel and Judah of troubles at hand from the Assyrian, mingled with prophecies of Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, the Rod from the stem of Jesse, in whom the Gentiles were to trust and Zion was to rejoice forever.

A second period of sixteen years reaches from the fourth year of Ahaz to the fourth of Hezekiah, when the siege of Samaria began. During its course Ephraim barely survived, and Judah was brought very low through the sin of Ahaz. The Assyrian went on confirming and extending his dominion in all the border lands, but had not resumed any direct aggression on the land of Israel. The Burdens on the Nations, a second series of visions, belong to this period, with a sequel in which warnings of judgment are followed by new messages of grace (chaps. 13-27). This series closes, like the first, with a full promise of the gathering of Israel (chaps. 11 : 11-16 ; 27 : 12, 13).

The third period reaches from the siege of Samaria to the overthrow of the Assyrian host. It is marked by the fall of Israel and the sore distress of Judah, followed by the speedy destruction of the Assyrian army. The visions begin with four woes on Israel and Judah, mingled with promises of a signal deliverance. They continue with a woe on the Assyrian spoiler, a message of judgment to all the nations, and a glorious prophecy of the good things to come (chaps. 28-35).

The later, or post-Assyrian prophecies, belong to the peaceful close of Hezekiah’s reign. Hence their order and succession is fixed by no historical changes, but by the nature of that future to which the predictions belong. The prophet, whose lips had so early been touched with heavenly fire, attains in his old age to a peaceful and lofty elevation, like that of Moses on Pisgah, whence his eye ranges far and wide over the landscape of ages to come (chaps. 40-66). Birks.

[For a detailed examination of the disruptive theories of the earlier Continental critics bearing upon the first thirty-five chapters of Isaiah, see the Introduction to Volume of Dr. J. Addison Alexander, on the “Earlier Prophecies,” pages 25-68.

The main question, touching the unity of authorship of the earlier and later prophecies, is treated more fully in the special introduction to chaps. 40-66, to which the reader’s attention is called. B.]

I : 1 THE vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

2. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the LORD hath spoken : I have nourished 3 and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, 4 and the ass his master’s crib : but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that deal corruptly : they have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are estranged 5 and gone backward. Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt more and more ? the whole 6 head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it ; but wounds, and bruises, and festering sores : they have not been 7 closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with oil. Your country is desolate ; your cities are burned with fire ; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as 8 overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a 9 lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah. 10 Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom ; give ear unto the law of our God, ye 11 people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD : I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight 12 not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before 13 me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; new moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies, 14 I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed 15 feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, 16 I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the 17 evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. 18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, 19 they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye 20 be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. 21 How is the faithful city become an harlot! she that was full of judgement! righteousness 22 lodged in her, but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water. 23 Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. 24 Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me 25 of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies: and I will turn my hand upon thee, 26 and thoroughly purge away thy dross, and will take away all thy tin: and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called 27 The city of righteousness, the faithful city. Zion shall be redeemed with judgement, and 28 her converts with righteousness. But the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners 29 shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that 30 ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no 31 water. And the strong shall be as tow, and his work as a spark; and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.

First Series of Visions, Chaps. 1-12.

THESE twelve chapters, though composed of an earlier portion (chaps. 2-6), in the reign of Uzziah, and of a later (chaps. 1, 7-12), in the reign of Ahaz, still form one connected whole, distinct in character from the burdens and woes that follow. They fall naturally into a sevenfold division: 1. The Preface or General Introduction (1:2-31); 2. The Earliest Prophecy (chaps. 2-4); 3. The Parable of the Vineyard (chap. 5); 4. The Prophet’s Call (chap. 6); 5. The Prophecy of Immanuel (chaps. 7-9:7); 6. The Warning of Assyrian Conquests (chap. 9:8 to chap. 10); 7. The Times of Messiah (chaps. 11, 12). Of these the second, third and fourth will belong to the last year of Uzziah; and the rest will be considerably later, in the second and third years of Ahaz. Birks.

Chap. 1. It is neither easy nor specially important to decide whether this chapter was written first in the order of time. Opinions are divided between this and the sixth. The latter refers either to the induction of Isaiah into the prophetic office, or to his reconsecration to it as a special anointing that he might be the better qualified to go to an obdurate people. Very probably this chapter may have been simply suggested by great judgments in the time of

Ahaz, following in consequence of previous great sins, and may then have been written as an introduction to the book. For it has the appearance of a general epitome of his prophetic messages—a brief summary view of the main points which they embrace. Here are the great sins of the people; the Lord’s call to them to repent, coupled with His promise to them of free pardon; the calamities sent upon them, either in chastisement to reclaim, or (this failing) in righteous retribution to destroy. These are the points made in this chapter. They are also the points made in general throughout the book. Hence this may be taken as a summary or chapter of contents, introductory in the sense of being a brief presentation of the subject-matter of the whole. This view of the chapter is now adopted by some of the best critics. Dr. Alexander says: “It is probable that this chapter exhibits a sequence of events or providential scheme which might be realized in more than one emergency; not so much a prediction as a prophetic lesson with respect to the effects which certain causes must infallibly produce. Such a discourse would be peculiarly appropriate as an introduction to the prophecies which follow.” This view, if accepted, practically disposes of our preliminary question of date, the chapter being written for an introduction, and yet not written first in order of time, but suggested by events in the reign of Ahaz, or possibly yet later. H. C.

The design of this chapter is to show the connection between the sins and sufferings of God’s people and the necessity of further judgments as means of purification and deliverance. The popular corruption is first exhibited as the effect of alienation from God, and as the cause of national calamities (verses 2-9). It is then exhibited as coexisting with punctilious exactness in religious duties, and as rendering them worthless (verses 10-20). It is finally exhibited in twofold contrast, first with a former state of things and then with one still future, to be brought about by the destruction of the wicked, and especially of wicked rulers (verses 21-31).

The first part of the chapter describes the sin and then the suffering of the people. The former is characterized as filial ingratitude, stupid inconsideration, habitual transgression, contempt of God, and alienation from Him (verses 2-4). The suffering is first represented by the figure of disease and wounds, and then in literal terms as the effect of an invasion, by which the nation was left desolate, and only saved by God’s regard for His elect from the total destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (verses 5-9). The second part is connected with the first by the double allusion to Sodom and Gomorrah with which one closes and the other opens. In this part the prophet shows the utter inefficacy of religious rites to counteract the natural effect of their iniquities, and then exhorts them to the use of the true remedy. Under the former head, addressing them as similar in character to Sodom and Gomorrah, he describes their sacrifices as abundant and exact, but not acceptable; their attendance at the Temple as punctual, and yet insulting; their bloodless offerings as abhorrent, and their holy days as wearisome and hateful on account of their iniquities; their very prayers as useless, because their hands were stained with blood (verses 10-15). As a necessary means of restoration to God’s favor, he exhorts them to forsake their evil courses and to exercise benevolence and justice, assuring them that God was willing to forgive them and restore the advantages which they had forfeited by sin, but at the same time resolved to punish the impenitent transgressor (verses 16-20). The transition from the second to the third part is abrupt, and introduced by a pathetic exclamation. In this part the prophet compares Israel as it is with what it has been and with what it shall be. In the former comparison, he employs two metaphors, each followed by a literal explanation of its meaning; that of a faithful wife become a harlot, and that of adulterated wine and silver, both expressive of a moral deterioration, with special reference to magistrates and rulers (verses 21-23). In the other comparison, the coming judgments are presented in the twofold aspect of purification and deliverance to the Church, and of destruction to its wicked members. The prophet sees the leading men of Israel destroyed, first as oppressors, to make room for righteous rulers and thus save the state; then as idolaters consumed by that in which they trusted for protection. A.

1. The first verse is plainly a common title of the whole book. This title implies the Divine authority of the whole book. It answers to the promise (Num. 12:6), “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision.” It implies, further, the unity of the whole work. These are no fragments, thrown fortuitously together. They form a gospel of the Old Testament, midway in time between Moses and Christ, between the first passover of the Exodus and the finished and all-perfect sacrifice of the Son of God.

2,3. The message of the prophet begins with an echo to the sublime appeal in the song of Moses, the parting voice of the law—“Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth” (De. 32:1). The subject of each appeal is the same. Moses predicts the perverseness and rebellion of Israel. Isaiah, the foremost of the prophets, opens his message by proclaiming that the warning given seven hundred years before by Moses is now fulfilled. The same witnesses, summoned before to give solemnity to the warning, must now attest its fulfilment. All angels above, and all men below, and all the visible works of God are to give ear with reverence, while Jehovah, the Lord of heaven and earth, pleads with His rebellious people. When the Creator speaks, all creatures are bound to give ear. Birks.

The Bible constantly and unfalteringly appeals to the analogy of the deepest and most familiar emotions of our own nature. It does not scruple to resort to the most naked anthropopathic images and expressions; either secure, according to the saying of Coleridge, that it could not be misconstrued amid such clear and copious assertions of the Divine spirituality, or else as careless, even though it were in some degree misunderstood, if it could but win us from our fears and our distrust. It is impossible to imagine anything more intensely pathetic than the daring imagery by which the prophets after represent God as chiding, upbraiding, threatening, and anon relentingly beseeching His perverse and ungrateful creatures. (See also Jer. 31:18-21; 32:36-40; Ezek. 16:3; Hos. 6:4; 7:13-16; 11:7, 8; 13:4-10, and a host of other passages.) Henry Rogers.

2. The relation in which the Lord delights to exhibit Himself to His people is that of a father to his children; and when they are disobedient and rebellious, He impresses upon us the enormity of their conduct, by reminding us of the sternest of life’s sorrows—a father’s grief at the unworthiness of his son. “I have nourished and brought up children,” He says, “and they have rebelled against Me.” He had not only nourished them—that is, nursed their infant and helpless years—but had watched over and sustained their growth—had “brought them up” to the strength and glory of manhood, and then—they rebelled against Him. There is a deep pathos in the suggestion here presented to the mind, of the solemn grief of a father over a rebellious and worthless son, on the one hand; and of the intensity of the son’s ingratitude in rebelling against the paternal hand, on the other. Kitto.—Essentially this very sin of cold ingratitude and rebellion against God’s authority, charged here upon Israel, lies at the door of all ungodly, unrepenting sinners in every age and in every land, with only the difference of greater guilt in the case of the more enlightened. For, who of us all hath not been nourished and brought up as a child by our great Father above? Whose life has not been crowned by His lovingkindness and tender mercies? H. C.

The highest and most natural conception of the universe is that which makes God the Father of His rational and spiritual creatures, which constitutes them a family, and which implies communication between Him and them as personal beings, He making known His will and character, and they obeying and adoring Him. If we believe that God made man with a rational and a religious nature—a child—capable of communion with Him, and of finding in Him only the highest source of happiness and means of moral perfection, then it would be exceedingly strange if God should not reveal Himself to him. Shall not a father speak to his own child? It is demonstrable, on the principles of reason, that if man had continued in a state of innocence, the highest progress and expansion and felicity of his nature could not have been attained except by communion with God. Man becomes assimilated to that with which he voluntarily holds communion. And since God is the fountain of all excellence, why should He not communicate Himself to an innocent creature whom He had made with faculties to know and love and enjoy Him? M. Hopkins.

What God desires by our training here is, that we become like to Him; that there be nurtured in us a power to discern between good and evil; that by giving our own voluntary consent to His appointments, and that by discovering in various and perplexing circumstances what is the right thing to do, we may have our own moral natures as enlightened, strengthened and fully developed every way as possible. The object of God in declaring His will to us is not to point out particular steps, but to bring our wills into conformity with His, so that whether we err in any particular step or no, we shall still be near to Him in intention. He does with us as we with children. We do not always at once relieve them from their little difficulties, but watch with interest the working of their own conscience regarding the matter, and will give them no sign till they themselves have decided. Dods.

3. No sooner had we got within the walls of Tiberias, than the drove began to disperse. Every ox knew perfectly well his owner, his house, and the way to it, nor did he get bewildered for a moment in the mazes of these narrow and crooked alleys. As for the asses, they walked straight to the door, and up to their master’s “crib.” I followed one company clear into their habitation, and saw each take his appropriate manger, and begin his evening meal of dry tilm. Isaiah says in all this they were wiser than their owners, who neither knew nor considered, but forsook the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel. Thomson.

Like the ox and the ass, Israel had a master, upon whom he was dependent, and to whom he owed obedience; but, unlike them, he did not recognize and would not serve his rightful sovereign and the author of his mercies. A.—The chosen people have become brutish, and debased themselves below the beasts of the field. Mere animal instinct is a safer guide than reason, perverted by pride and sensual vice. Contempt for God renders men more senseless than brutes themselves. Birks.

Narrow the prospects of man to this time-world, and it is impossible to escape the conclusions of the epicurean sensualist. If tomorrow we die, let us eat and drink to-day. If we die the sinner’s death, it becomes a matter of mere taste whether we shall live the sinner’s life or not. But if our existence is forever, then plainly that which is to be daily subdued and subordinated is the animal within us; that which is to be cherished is that which is likest God within us—which we have from Him, and which is the sole pledge of eternal being in the spirit-life. F. W. R.

Doth not consider. The want of thought about sin is one of the most radical hindrances to conversion, as it is one of the gravest causes of defective, barren piety. Out of this want of intelligent thoughtfulness grows the imperfect estimate and superficial feeling respecting the intrinsic nature and heinousness of sin which are found so largely in the world and in the Church. B.

4. They are gone backward.** Every step away from the Lord is really a step backward. It is like turning one’s face away from the sun, and walking toward darkness. There are two standards of life—this world’s and Christ’s; we may be making progress according to the former, and at the same time going backward according to the latter. Away from God is always downward, no matter if we be climbing among men. Getting nearer to God in heart, in life, is always getting onward; though in the world’s scale we may be descending. We need, therefore, to watch our hearts and our spiritual life when we are prospering in earthly ways. We need to beware lest, while we are going forward enthusiastically in men’s eyes, we may be going backward as God and angels see us. S. S. T.

5,6. The Divine medicines appear only to aggravate the disease. It is no spot on the surface, but a deep-seated infection, poisoning the springs of life. Their afflictions have been followed by deeper sin. “In the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord—this king Ahaz” (2 Chron. 28: 22). As it was with their king, so with the people. The furnace, in which wax and silver are melted or refined, only hardens clay. Birks.

6. Sin is deep in all the soul. The mind is enmity against God, so unsound that it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can be; and it is an affecting thought, that from the hour when he was born the unconverted sinner has hardly ever felt one right emotion Godward. There has never been one breath of free and cordial and filial devotion, never the pulse of spontaneous, unforced loyalty, never one hour of simple, genuine piety. The whole head is sick, the whole heart faint, and instead of tending toward self-cure, each day makes the earthcliness more intense, the carnality more complete. Hamilton.

The Lord takes none up but the forsaken, makes none healthy but the sick, gives sight to none but blind, brings none to life but the dead, sanctifies none but sinners and bestows wisdom upon none but the foolish. Luther.

9. A faithful remnant still survived. The covenant of God could not fail, and a holy seed was kept alive in the land. But it was small and feeble, and the general corruption rivalled the cities of the plain. Birks.

11-20. The prophets everywhere recognize and insist upon the distinction between the outward forms of the Old Testament and their inward spiritual meaning. Isaiah declares that it is not sacrifices and burnt offerings, oblations and incense, treading God’s courts, new moons and Sabbaths, feasts and assemblies, that God requires, but purity of heart and life, and obedience to His will. W. H. G.—Prophetism, while confirming the historical reality of all the institutions of the law, presented their spiritual bearing, without which it declared the observance of the letter to be not only meaningless, but an absolute perversion of their Divine purpose. Sacrifices were meaningless without brokenness of heart. Festivals and fasts and all rites were a perversion and abomination unless pervaded by the moral and spiritual element. A. E.—It is marvellous that the practical working of the theocracy, as reflected in its writings—the pervading and intensely ethical spirit that characterizes these, and that in respect to the heart not less than the outward conduct—should not alone have been sufficient to convince all of the fundamentally spiritual character of the theocratic constitution and its ordinances of service. If all was merely national, outward, ceremonial, in the framework of the polity, would it not be an inexplicable anomaly that the writings connected with it—its histories, songs, didactic and prophetic discourses—should all be so peculiarly ethical in their tone, and personal in their application? But it was morally impossible that the laws and ordinances of the theocracy could be of such a merely formal and outward character; the spiritual and holy nature of God forbade it; and from that nature everything took its determining and influential form. P. F.

11-15. The Jewish sacrifices did not evince God’s pleasure in suffering; they evinced God’s hatred of sin. They were not to supersede penitence and faith, but to deepen the conviction by a representation of the death which the offerer of the sacrifice had himself deserved.

There was nothing purifying about that. They were worthless except that they typified the Divine Victim on whom God laid the iniquity of us all. But, above all, we in these evangelical days, heirs of all the ages and of all the economies, should understand why God desires not our sacrifice. Why should He, when He looks upon His own? Christ hath died; then live, ye flocks of Kedar! The Redeemer of the world atones; then crumble, ye altars of mere external worship! The blood is on the mercy-seat; then it need be nowhere else. It need not be on the skirts of the garments, nor in the Temple, nor on the hands of the worshipper.

“That blood we take, that blood alone, Should make the covenant peace our own.”

Bring obedience to God’s commands, therefore, and believe Him. He likes that better than sacrifice. Hearken to His precepts. He prefers that to the fat of rams. Punshon.

The system of sacrifices and ceremonies was not in the centre of the Old Testament religion; it was altogether and utterly upon the outside. It lay within the sphere of the Old Testament religion; but it lay within that sphere only at a distance from the heart and centre of religion and religious life. The great teachers never treat the sacrificial and ritual system as belonging, in any central way, to the Old Testament religion. Read the teachings, read the sermons of the great religious preachers of Israel and Judah. Take the prophets and go through them carefully, and see what they say about religion. If they speak of the rites and ceremonies that were the ritual system of Israel, they do it only to show that they have no part whatever in the true religious life; or they do it simply to show that they stand on the outside of religious life, concerned in religious life only as outside things which religious men will attend to because they were asked of them as religious men by God. That is the most you can say the religious teachers of Israel have said about the system of sacrifices and rituals. There is not a single passage in the Old Testament in which any saint of God connects his sense of forgiveness of sin, his feeling of acceptance with God, the fact that he is accepted of God as a forgiven sinner, his sense of joy in the Divine presence, or his hope of being like God and with God in the future life, literally, figuratively or typically, with the system of sacrifices and rites set before us in the Pentateuch—not one passage. S. Burnham.

Sacrifice is still required of men, by the law of the Master; but it is now the sacrifice of confession, of repentance and restitution, where another has been injured; the sacrifice of whatever is lower in our nature to whatever is higher, of whatever is pleasing in our custom of life to the glory of God, in the welfare of others, or in our own noblest advancement; the sacrifice, always, of ease and inclination to the imperative claims of duty; the sacrifice of a supreme dedication of soul and life to Him from whom our life has come, and by whom the soul, in its marvellous powers, has been ordained. It is rooted, fundamentally, this Christian sacrifice, in the idea of sin, as a force which separates man from God; in the idea of God, who requires self-surrender on the part of His worshippers. It is not, therefore, a sacrifice to be accomplished by the hands, accomplished by another, in grove or glen or solemn Temple. It is to be accomplished within the heart, by each for himself; and the things devoted, the things destroyed, are the very things most natively precious—our passions, appetites and eager desires; the pride which forbids us to acknowledge wrong-doing; the love of enjoyment, which prompts us to use the world for our luxury; the desire for eminent position and power, which seems as native to aspiring spirits as the function of breathing to the lungs. In comparison with these sacrifices, moral, invisible, which have been made by millions uncounted since Jesus showed the Invisible Father to the homage of mankind, the offering of hecatombs of oxen and sheep were a trifling thing. That might involve a small loss of possessions; but this implies the destruction of the passion which insists on possession. That might simply intensify pride, where this overwhelms it; and all sensual desire, all purely secular and selfish ambition, might perfectly consist with external offerings most numerous and costly, even under the solemn Hebrew ritual. But that which the Lord asks, as the primal element in the worship of God, is a complete self-devotion to Him; the offerer and the victim being the same, the scene of the transcendent offering being the soul. R. S. S.

13. The calling of assemblies I cannot away with.** God speaks of the meetings of His people, the new moon, sacrifices and Sabbaths, as an offence unto Him. The “multitude” of them wearies, and He asks to what purpose are all these busy, frequent, yet empty services. Do not mistake services for service! If we are doing God’s work fervently, humbly, patiently, though obscurely, looking to Him alone, we, like our Master, will finish the work that He has given us to do.

Only as we abide in Christ can we be able to complete our work. Mere machinery and outward activity are of no account without this daily dwelling in and drawing from Him. Then our service and our services will be acceptable. T. Monod.

13-15. The unquestionable sense of the Hebrew is not merely that their solemn meetings were an iniquity, but that God cannot endure the solemn meeting when thus united with wickedness. When men come before God in worship, let their hands be clean of wickedness; let their hearts reverence and fear the Holy God. H. C.—No instituted service, no positive part of religion whatsoever, was ever acceptable when moral duties were neglected; nay, so far from this are they, that God rejects them with abhorrence and disdain. We see from this what was acceptable to God for itself and its own sake in the Jewish religion; and under the Gospel our Saviour prefers a moral duty before any gift (Matt. 5: 23, 24). Abp. Tillotson.—What God says here to the Jews for their overmultiplied fasts and uncommanded sacrifices, He will say to all who do anything that agrees not with His laws, however specious and plausible, however good and acceptable it may seem to them. God “cannot away with” anything but the performance of His own will. Bp. Beveridge.

Formalism does for the present time. It satisfies the man’s conscience; it satisfies his neighbors if he comes to church, if he lives creditably, if he attends the Holy Communion; if, in fact, he has the outside of a Christian. It does very well for this world; yes, but only for this world. G. Calthrop.—So of the moralist. All that can be said of him, all that he will say for himself, is that he has had it for his law to speak the truth, fulfil his promises, and deal fairly by his fellow-men. Still it is not, and has never been, his aim or object to do what is right to God; and that is a matter of much higher consequence, and more necessary to his real integrity. God is a person as truly as men are, more closely related to us than they, a better friend, one who has more feeling to be injured than they all, claims of right more sacred. What, then, does it signify that a man gives men their due, and will not give God His? Bushnell.

The external part of religion is, doubtless, of little value in comparison with the internal; but if there were no Sundays or holy days, no ministers, no churches or religious assemblies, no prayers or sacraments, no Scriptures read or sermons preached, how long would there be any religion left in the world; and who would desire to live in a world where there was none? Horne.

Most true it is that God has no pleasure in any mere formalities or observances. Inspiration, impulse, liberty, a service of freedom and gladness—this only is His delight. But in order to this, there must also be subjection to His rule, a systematic care, a prescribed obedience of duty, a holy drill of times patiently accepted. The way to find liberty is to come into the schooling of order and law, and let our will be harnessed in a punctual keeping of holy times. Ah! it is a greater thing than you imagine to stand fast in the order and system of a faithful life. Half the benefit you get in holy times, and punctualities, lies in the fact that for Christ’s sake you keep them. You cannot be too rigid in this matter. A loose way makes a loose man. Prove your fidelity by your painstaking, and it will be strange if you do not stand fast even though you stand alone—blessed and great honor this, to stand alone! Such a man has no dull time anywhere, his inspiration is full, his confidence sure, his peace the calm, deep flow of a river. Bushnell.

16. God will have nothing to do with uncleanness. “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings,” is the continual voice of God to the human soul. He will pity weakness; He will not be offended by ungainliness; He understands all the meaning of poverty—in all these directions we have nothing to fear; but when we hide uncleanness, or endeavor to make excuse for sin, all heaven burns against us with unquenchable anger. J. P.

The pardon of sin upon repentance is expressed in Scripture by cleansing and purifying, to denote that the outward cleansing of the flesh was designed to put men in mind of the inward purification from sin and unrighteousness. Jenkin.—What is this but the first word of the Gospel and first branch of the covenant, “Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins”? Wogan.

16,17. Six short precepts unfold the nature of this repentance. “Abstain at once from all acts of oppression and open injustice. Strive, with persevering effort, to attain habits of truth, justice, and kindness to your fellow-men. Be upright yourselves, and set your faces against the wrong-doing of others. Be upright as judges, zealous as advocates, in maintaining the cause of the helpless, whom the proud and selfish would trample in the dust.” Birks.

It is a sure sign of hypocrisy to be unrighteous and careless in civil dealings, how conscientious soever thou mayest seem to be in sacred duties. He that seems righteous toward men and is irreligious toward God is but an honest heathen; and he that seems religious toward God and is unrighteous toward men is but a dissembling Christian. To make conscience of one duty and not of another is to make true conscience of neither. The soul that ever had communion with God above comes down, like Moses out of the Mount, with both tables in his hands, the second as well as the first, the first as well as the second. Swinnock.

17. The negative exhortation is followed by a positive one. Ceasing to do evil was not enough, or rather was not possible, without beginning to do good. “Learn to do good,” implying that they never yet had known what it was. This general expression is explained by several specifications, showing how they were to do good. “Seek judgment”—i.e., justice; not in the abstract, but in act; not for yourselves, but for others; be not content with abstinence from wrong, but seek opportunities of doing justice, especially to those who cannot right themselves. “Redress wrong, judge the fatherless”—i.e., act as a judge for his benefit, or, more specifically, do him justice; “befriend the widow,” take her part, espouse her cause. Orphans and widows are continually spoken of in Scripture as special objects of Divine compassion, and as representing the whole class of helpless innocents. A.

A masterful man could do what he pleased in the heroic age of ancient Greece, till he met with one more masterful than himself. The widows’ and the orphans’ cries were then unheeded. Hebrew law abhorred this indifference to right. It threw a shield around the weak, the helpless, the unprotected. It defied the strongest to set its commands at naught. It warned him of a mightier than the mightiest, who regarded the tears of the oppressed, with full purpose of avenging their wrongs. Sime.

These verses, in their connection, express with great force the oft-recurring sentiment that God “will have mercy and not sacrifice”—i.e., mercy before and above sacrifice, and will never accept sacrifice or any of the mere forms of religious worship in place of the moral duties of justice and love to man, or as an atonement for their neglect or violation. H. C.—Active love is the criterion of judgment of the last day; let not this be ignored, though at the first hearing the word sounds strangely unbelieving. Even the righteous, to whom is addressed the “Come, ye blessed,” cannot restrain the question, “Lord, when saw we Thee hungry and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink?” Yet the Lord does not assert that to visit the poor and minister to the sick could obtain for us the kingdom of God as a just recompense; all the gold mines of earth do not conceal the price of heaven. He only points to the infallible characteristic which separates His people from such as merely confess Him with their lips, and places a life of love in the balance against one of selfishness solely, because the first shows more than anything else that we have passed from death unto life. Van O.

This world, our own little corner of it, wants sacrifice and labor, running feet and open hands, busy thoughts and gentle tongues—all for Christ and the honor of His Church. The world’s ways are not clean; there is too much oppression of the weak by the strong, of the fatherless and widow by cunning and power, of the nobler spirit in man by the meaner senses of him. There is too much cruelty in its habitations; too much darkness on its face; too much filth on its breast. Come and work for it. Its surface is rough, and wants much leveling down and casting up to make it smooth for the Messiah’s feet. Believe in Him, and for this end. Confess Him before men, to follow Him in these pathways among the multitude; worship Him in sincerity, that you may gain inward power and love and light and grace for this faithful witnessing from on high. Wait for Him, by watching at the gate, by working in the field. F. D. H.

To have all our faculties developed, all our affections raised and purified, and to employ them all in His service whom we love—this, after all, is the truest reward, the loftiest and most complete. And this is the reward that comes to us, not when we are seeking gain or craving reward, but when we are content to do good, hoping for nothing again. The River of Peace runs hard by the Path of Duty; but we shall never find the sweet cool waters while we look for them alone; we shall come on them when we least expect it, and while all our care is to keep the path. Cox.

18. The scarlet was regarded as the most fast or fixed of colors. Neither dew, nor rain, nor washing, nor long usage, could remove it. Hence it is used to represent the fixity or permanency of sins in the heart. No human means will wash them out. No effort of man, no external rite, no tears, nor sacrifices, nor prayers, are of themselves sufficient to take them away. They are deeply fixed in the heart, as the scarlet color was in the web of cloth, and an Almighty power is needful to remove them. The prophet means to say that, although they are thus fixed and immovable by any human means, yet that the mercy of God can take away all the stains. Kitto.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Reasoning with the Lord is very different from reasoning about the Lord. There is little gain in reasoning about the Lord, in reasoning about His existence, in reasoning about His attributes, in reasoning about His eternal and infinite purposes; for all these things are utterly beyond the extremest scope of human wisdom. But there is very great gain in reasoning with the Lord, in bringing to Him our troubles, our fears, our needs, and in applying to our case the teachings of His word, His providence, and His Spirit. In the contemplation of God, faith is worth vastly more than reason. H. C. T.

Frankness is due because God is ever frank with us. Frank in rebuke, frank in explanation, frank in forgiveness. He asks us to be frank with Him. “Come, now, let us reason together;” “Bring forth your strong reasons.” He therefore invites us to make a clean breast of our secret troubles and sins. This will ever bring blessing. The clearest and best-intentioned openness before man may be misconstrued, but never before God. J. W. B.

18-20. The beauty and force of these wonderful words are heightened by their connection. Though your crimes toward your fellow-beings have been bloody and most revolting, and your sacrifices at My altar have been unutterably loathsome; and though for every reason justice seems to demand your sudden and fearful destruction, yet if ye turn to become willing and obedient, ye shall be forgiven and blessed again most abundantly. As said through Jeremiah (31:34), “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more;” or through Micah (7:19), “Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” How inexpressibly wonderful! H. C.—Forgiveness! This is God’s first message to man. Forgiveness free and ample, sure and immediate, conscious and happy, eternal and irreversible. Forgiveness without reserve; forgiveness to the chief of sinners; forgiveness of all sins. In this forgiveness is, of course, wrapt up peace with God, peace of conscience, “the answer of a good conscience toward God,” the removal of the heavy burden that weighed the sinner down, of the dark cloud that overshadows all his life. H. Bonar.

There is not a case of transgression, magnify it as you may, which redeeming mercy cannot reach, nor a sin of a dye so deep as to neutralize the purifying efficacy of a Redeemer’s atonement. The unpardoned sinner carries his oppressive load of guilt upon the conscience, and at last sinks under its weight to a deep perdition, not because God could not or would not save him, but because he refuses to avail himself of the ample provision which a God of infinite wisdom and mercy has made for his relief. E. M.

When we forgive our child, what does it mean? Sometimes, not always, the remission of penalties, but always the remission of the worst penalty, the frown of the father’s face, the sense of displeasure weighing on the child’s heart, and the unimpeded flow of the parent’s love. So God’s pardon often leaves some of the natural consequences, which are the penalties of our sins, in order that we may hate and avoid the evil, but it brings the assurance that there is nothing in God’s heart toward the sinner but pure and perfect love. All the barriers to its flow are removed by God’s own act. None but God can do that. A. M.

Even Christ does not undo the wrong past, and make that which has been done as though it never had been done. It never can be made true that the thief did not once steal; but grace may so make over a marred life, that where the blemish was some special beauty may appear. “The oyster mends its shell with a pearl.” Where the ugly wound was there comes, with the healing, not a scar, but a pearl. So sins that we truly repent of become pearls in the character. It is the experience of all whose lives grow into Christ-like nobleness, that many of the golden lines of their later lives have been wrought out by their regrets and their repentings of wrong-doings. Even our mistakes and sins, if we leave them and find our way to Christ, will be transmuted into growth and upbuilding of character. “We can so deal with the past, that we can make it give up to us virtue and wisdom.” “We can make wrong the seed of right and righteousness; we can transmute error into wisdom; we can make sorrow bloom into a thousand forms, like fragrant flowers.” J. R. M.

The Bible is wonderful! It teaches man to acknowledge himself vile and even abominable, yet requires him, at the same time, to aspire to a resemblance of God. Were not things thus balanced, either such exaltation would inflate him with pride, or such debasement would drive him to despair. The incarnation discovers to man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy required. Pascal.

Where else but in this Divine word do we learn the dignity and elevation of humility before God; so that, lying at the footstool of Divine mercy, the contrite and broken heart does not feel degraded, but exalted? Where but here do we see man raised to communion with the Most High—yea, to union with the incarnate Son of God—and yet retain the spirit of lowliness, of self-condemnation, of utter dependence on Divine grace? It is this combination of the full revelation of our sin, disease, and misery, and of the abundant grace of God, which produces in us, in our inmost soul, the assured conviction of the Divine authority of Scripture, of God’s own voice speaking to us in this inspired word. Saphir.

20. This is the converse of the nineteenth verse, a threat corresponding to the promise. And if ye refuse to comply with My conditions, and rebel, continue to resist My authority, by the sword of the enemy shall ye be eaten. This is no human menace, but a sure prediction, for the mouth of Jehovah speaks, not man’s.

21. Here the prophet seems to pause for a reply, and on receiving no response to the promises and invitations of the foregoing context, bursts forth into a sudden exclamation at the change which Israel has undergone, which he then describes both in figurative and literal expressions (verses 21–23). In the verse before us he contrasts her former state, as the chaste bride of Jehovah, with her present pollution, the ancient home of justice with the present haunt of cruelty and violence. A.

Verse 23 indicates that her rulers were specially corrupt, rebellious against God in the matter of their official duties, confederate with thieves, encouraging their crime for a share of the plunder; accepting bribes for unjust decisions, and quite refusing to hear the cause of the fatherless and of the widow, who had no bribe to offer. Considering that, under the Jewish system, their judges were of the priests and the Levites, and likely, therefore, to represent the best piety of the times, these touches give an appalling view of the ungodliness of that age and of the fearful prevalence of depravity and crime. H. C.

24–27. The threefold title of God implies the solemn earnestness of the message. He who speaks is the governor of the world, unchangeable in His counsels, whose word cannot fail, mighty to subdue and destroy the proudest rebels. Since His lighter strokes have led to no repentance, His coming judgments shall be more severe; and only genuine faith and holiness will endure the visitation. But the effect shall be blessed and glorious. The harlot city shall be betrothed once more to the heavenly bridegroom with “lovingkindness and mercies” (Hos. 2: 19). Birks.

25. The purifier puts every vessel into the furnace, and Himself superintends the process; He allows nothing to be consumed but the dross, and this He will purge from them. They often object to His manner of dealing with them, but He says, “I will turn mine hand upon thee, I will purge thee in the furnace of thy dross, and will take away all thine alloy.” Jas. Smith.

30. The mention of trees and gardens, as places of idolatrous worship, suggests a beautiful comparison, under which the destruction of the idolaters is again set forth. They who choose trees and gardens, in preference to God’s appointed place of worship, shall themselves be like trees and gardens, but in the most alarming sense. For, in answer to the tacit question why they should be ashamed and confounded for their oaks and gardens, ye shall be like an oak or terebinth, fading in its leaf, and like a garden which has no water—a lively emblem, to an Oriental reader, of entire desolation.

31. A closing threat of sudden, total, instantaneous destruction to the Jewish idolaters, to be occasioned by the very things which they preferred to God, and in which they confided. And the strong, the mighty man, alluding no doubt to the unjust rulers of the previous context, shall become tow, an exceedingly inflammable substance, and his work, his idols, often spoken of in Scripture as the work of men’s hands, shall become a spark, the means and occasion of destruction to their worshippers, and they shall burn both of them together, and there shall be no one quenching or to quench them. A.

and other respects; in some cases poetry and prose are intermingled. In fine, this is a document covering the same ground with the volume of Jeremiah’s prophecies written by Baruch (Jer. 36: 9-32). If it cannot be proved to be the same document, at least this cannot be disproved. As it is, on the whole, the earliest paper in the series, the collector takes it as the beginning of his projected work. It is our present Jeremiah, chaps. 1-20.

Among the remaining larger papers he finds a connected narrative of the experiences of Jeremiah in connection with the downfall of Jerusalem, the narrative found in Jer. 37-44. It is carefully written and classical, quite different from the rough sketch in the first twenty chapters. As it contains the latest recorded facts in the personal history of Jeremiah, he lays it beside the rough sketch, to form the conclusion of that part of the proposed work.

Next he finds, perhaps already put together, and at all events marked by their contents as a group by themselves, certain poems, of different dates, concerning the nations; and groups these, after the narrative, as a new section of his work (Jer. 46-51). To this group of poems he prefixes the little poem concerning Baruch (Jer. 45), finding no better place for it elsewhere.

Among the remaining papers, he finds one that is peculiar, the one now constituting Jer. 52; it seems to be a study in the history of Israel, connected with the matters recorded in Kings concerning the building and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. As it has no affiliation with any other documents in his collection, he assigns to it its proper place as an appendix.

He now has remaining the fifteen prophecies contained in Jer. 21-36. Most of these are dated. Among them are poems, addresses, narratives and one epistle. Some of them deal with events already treated of in the rough sketch and the narrative; but as a whole, they belong between the two, and the collector disposes of them by placing them in that position, without the trouble to arrange them further. And at this point his work was arrested, leaving the book in the shape in which we find it. Presumably he intended to arrange these fifteen papers chronologically, and to revise the whole, but was somehow prevented from carrying out his intention. W. J. B.