A child is born. No sleeper waked at His coming; but only they who watched through the night had intelligence of His advent. The earth that night did not shake; the heaven that night did not tremble. Only a few childlike souls, who then kept vigil at His birth, trembled; yet their trembling was a trembling for joy. “The eternal light enters,” says the poet, “and gives the world a new splendor; it shines clearly at midnight, and makes us children of the light. He whom the whole circumference of the world could not embrace lies in the womb of Mary. He who alone sustains the universe has become a little infant.” He who came the first time to save sinners will come the second time to judge them; He who came the first time to bear our sins will come the second time to condemn them. Now we are enjoying the day of comfort, when the Lord does not appear in the tempest but in the soft, gentle sound; oh, then let our hearts be touched by this soft, gentle sound! Let us kneel down at the manger, let us worship with the pious shepherds, let us strew myrrh with the kings from the East. Tholuck.

A Son is given. Where did this Man, so fair, so radiant, so human and yet so superhuman, so universal and yet so individual, where did He come from? and where did the Gospel, which flows from Him, and which has done such things in the world as it has done, where did it come from? “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?” If it be true that Jesus Christ is either mistakenly represented in the gospels, or that He made enthusiastic claims which cannot be verified, and if it be true that the faith in a Resurrection, on which Christianity is suspended, and which produced such fruits as we know have been produced, is a delusion; then the noblest lives that ever were lived in the world have found their impulse in a falsehood or a dream; and the richest clusters that ever have yielded wine for the cup have grown upon a thorn. If like produces like, you cannot account for Christ and Christianity by anything short of the belief in His Divine mission. This Man, when He claimed to be God’s Son and the world’s Saviour, was no brain-sick enthusiast; and the results show that the Gospel which His followers proclaim rests upon no lie. A. M.

Wonderful. In the announcement of His advent and in the records of His life there is a history which rises above all histories. Christ can no more be classified with mankind than His miracles can be reduced to ordinary events. His whole life attests the truth that He is from above, and that He CAME to save the lost. Christianity is, in this view, “an historically superhuman movement in the world, that is visibly entered into it and organized to be an institution in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the central figure; He is the unfailing power; and with Him the entire fabric either stands or falls.” Christ was Himself a revelation of God. “He was the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person;” He was “God manifest in the flesh.” Humble as He was among men, He willed to be a king, and His ministerial work was one continued proclamation of His absolute and unrivalled sway; and when that ministry on earth had terminated, He encouraged His disciples by the declaration, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,” and by the thrilling promise, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” As we study His character and His claims, we are constrained to acknowledge the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy: “And His name shall be called Wonderful;” and “we discover, as did the first Christians, beneath and beyond all that meets the eye of sense and the eye of conscience, the eternal Person of our Lord Himself. It is not the miracles, but the Maker; not the character, but the living subject; not the teaching, but the Master; not even the death or the resurrection, but He who died and rose again; upon whom Christian thought, Christian love, Christian resolution, ultimately rest." To Him alone believers on earth, like the ransomed in glory, turn as “all their salvation and all their desire.” W. Fraser.

Wonderful, Counsellor. There is one centre in which all elements of wonder in the Bible are found united—Jesus Christ. He is the keystone of its arch, and it falls or stands with Him. He is more; He is the firmament that holds all its stars and its brightness. But for Him there would have been no Bible, and if we read it without Him it has no coherence and no guiding thought. All the struggling aspirations of the ancient church converge to Him as rays to a focus, and all the great forces of truth and goodness now in the world emerge from Him, whether they know it or not. Isaiah declares His name to be “Wonderful,” “Counsellor,” and Paul assures us that “in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” If the claims of Jesus Christ are to be maintained, as they must and will be, it is not by lessening, but by enlarging them. We must hold that there is nothing good or true or pure among men but in some way it has its source in Him, for “He is the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Ker.

In Christ, the man Christ Jesus, the Son of God, there lie the thoughts for all our knowledge, the master principles of all our conceptions, the light of all our seeing; in Him, His person, His deeds, His utterances, His relations to men, His relation to God, there is the formative basis of everything that is worth thinking about and knowing in regard to every subject which does not belong to the mere material life of man. All philosophy, all ethics, all reasonable history of humanity, the principles of all the communities into which men shall aggregate themselves, light upon the nature of man’s spirit, light upon the relations of man to God, the hopes that burn bright with immortality in the midst of the darkness of the grave, and if there be any other theme above the level of the beasts that perish and the wants that are like theirs, they are all to be found in Him—in whom, by no hyperbole, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So in Christ, to be unfolded through slow generations in accordance with human experience and wants, is all that men can know or need to know concerning God and themselves, and the relations of both, their duties, their hopes, their fears, and their love. . . . What we have to do is simply to yield up our understandings, our wills, our hearts, our consciences, and all the activities of our lives to Him; to be commanded, to be cleansed, to be enlightened, to be filled with His love, to be conformed to His likeness, for the voice that spoke from the heavens speaks to us yet—“This is My beloved Son, hear ye Him!” A. M.

He is Wonderful, Counsellor. Justly is He called Wonderful, for He is both God and man. His love is the wonder of angels and glorified saints; in His birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension, He was wonderful. A constant series of wonders attended Him, and without controversy, great was the mystery of godliness concerning Him. He is the Counsellor, for He was intimately acquainted with the counsels of God from eternity, and He gives counsel to the children of men, in which He consults our welfare. It is by Him that God has given us counsel (Ps. 16:7; Rev. 3:18). He is made of God to us wisdom. H.—He spoke of His own authority: “Verily, I say unto you.” Other teachers explained the law; He is a lawgiver. Others drew more or less pure waters from cisterns; He is in Himself a well of water, from which all may draw. He does not argue; He affirms. He seeks no support from others’ teachings; He alone is sufficient for us. He not only speaks the truth, which needs no other confirmation than His own lips, but He is the truth. We may canvass other men’s teachings and distinguish their insight from their errors; we have but to accept His. The world outgrows all others; it can only grow up toward the fulness of His. Us and all the ages He teaches with authority, and the guarantee for the truth of His teaching is Himself. “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” No other man has a right to say that to me. But Christ dominates the race, and the strong Son of God is the world’s teacher. A. M.

The mighty God. Enshrined in the light that centres the infinitude of the invisible God, sat One from eternity, in the Divine nature and essence, who was “the express image of His person.” “He was God,” and “in the form of God.” Whatever that form was, it was that, and that alone, that made angelic and other worship possible. To that form, as the empty space began to fill with worlds and their inhabitants, all faces turned, all worship ascended, all prayer arose. From that “form” went forth the words that called everything into being, that gave it shape and purpose, that gave it law and order. “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”

We have been taught to call that “form of God” “THE SON,” and to speak of Him as “begotten of the Father” from the poverty of human language and the feebleness of human intellect to express or grasp “the deep things of God.” It was language that might have risen spontaneously to an archangel’s lips if brought suddenly and for the first time since His creation into the presence of the Visible in the bosom of the Invisible, of the Comprehensible on the throne of the Infinite, of the Approachable where he had expected the Inaccessible. “He is the Son in the bosom of the Eternal Father.” But there was no priority of existence or inequality of power to give birth to the term of relationship. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In the Old Testament ages the Son revealed Himself in human form to man, whom He had created in His own “image and likeness.” His name was “Jehovah,” and under that name He was and still is the only Divine object of worship to the Hebrew tribes. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” and the New Testament era began. “In Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” In His sinless humanity, as in a temple, the Father and blessed Spirit stood enshrined; and the manifestations of the Divine Unity—the Three-One God in Christ—became the central truth of Christianity. “Let all the angels of God worship Him” was the decree attendant on His birth. “Let every knee bow to Him” was the decree that accompanied His ascension. . . . His is the “new name” that unites the past with the present, that breaks down “the wall of partition” between the Hebrew worshipper of Jehovah and the Christian worshipper of Christ, that makes both one in adoration of the Incarnate Son. “We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,” in Him “who was, and is, and is to come.” “He is the Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.” In Him is realized for us the unity of the Godhead, the embodiment of all we seek to worship, “the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end—the Almighty.” It is to God, our reconciling Father in Christ, that we pray—God, looking at us through human eyes; listening to us through human ears; speaking to us in human language and by human lips; and wiping from our cheeks the tears of sorrow with gentle human hands—to “God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses.” Nearer than this we may not go; higher than this we cannot soar. Robt. Balgarnie.

My confidence in the flawless completeness of His human character lives or dies with my belief that He is the Eternal Word, God manifest in the flesh. Certainly we shall never truly grasp the blessed meaning of His life on earth until we look upon it all as the revelation of God. The tears of Christ are the pity of God. The gentleness of Jesus is the long-suffering of God. The tenderness of Jesus is the love of God. “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;” and all that life so beautiful but so anomalous as to be all but incredible, when we think of it as only the life of a man, glows with a yet fairer beauty, and corresponds with the nature which it expresses, when we think of it as being the declaration to us by the Divine Son of the Divine Father—our loftiest, clearest and authentic revelation of God. A. M.

By the whole tenor of revelation, the character of the Messiah is stamped as truly Divine. Who is the substance of all the testimonies of the word of God? The Messiah. Of whom do the history, the miracles, the types, and the prophecies of the Old Testament testify? Of the Messiah. To whom does the whole substance of the New Testament point? To the Messiah. In whom do all the lines of revelation concentrate? In the Messiah. To whom do all the ordinances of worship, both of the Old Testament and the New, direct the observer? To the Messiah. The doctrines of the Bible teach us His character and His works; its precepts take their sanction from His authority; its emblems adumbrate His glory. The heavens and the earth, in their creation, are a figure of His greater work. The object of the Bible is to reveal the Messiah; and in Him the Father, whom no man hath seen or can see, is revealed. Our only discovery of the full character of God is made by Jesus Christ. Haldane.

The relation of the Son to the Father involves more than communion—namely, unity. But if we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall understand that the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the communion the manifestation, so far as it can be manifested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words which shine like stars—starlike in that their height above us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and in that they are points of radiance partially disclosing, and separated by abysses of unlighted infinitude—tell us that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there was communion, for “the Word was with God,” and there was unity, for “the Word was God.” And in the records of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity loftily utters itself in the unfathomable declaration, “I and My Father are one;” while the consciousness of communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which He leaves to Himself, “The Father has not left Me alone, for I do always the things that please Him.”

The resurrection was the transition from the state of humiliation and limitation; and by it Jesus enters, in His manhood, on the possession of that “glory which He had with the Father” from eternity. In these mighty words, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,” He stretches out the hand that had been pierced with the nails, and shows us that it holds the “unlimited sceptre which His almighty Father has bequeathed Him.” It had been His from everlasting, but now His humanity is crowned, and the resurrection is the first step in the glorification of the body of His humiliation. The man Jesus rules the universe. Whatever unknown orders of being and forms of power may fill the heavens, He is their king. Whatever rebellious or unconscious forces may storm on earth, He controls them. There is no power but of God, and all God’s power belongs to the Man who died and rose again. The kingdoms of nature, of providence, of grace, and of glory, are His. Thus, deep and broad and firm He lays the foundations for our trust, peace, obedience and hope. If all power be His, none can be against His friends. If He has all power, we need not fear, though we have all weakness. A. M.

As we study, with spiritual eyes, into the Saviour’s divinity, one after another new points of light, new traits of love, new features of blended majesty and tenderness, gleam out upon our gratitude. We have only to look to find. The heart’s matchless telescope is simple, childlike faith. And every spot of common life where Providence plants our feet is an observatory—if we will but stand in it looking upward, devoutly upward—lofty enough for the whole sweep of that condescending heaven. F. D. H.

Everlasting Father. Father of eternity, because it is He that gives substance and body to the conception of infinite duration. Duration implies something that endures. Now God is the Being who, having neither beginning of days nor end of years, gives to us the concerte meaning of the abstract statement. And to ascribe this attribute to the Messiah, to Him who is to be born as a child, is exactly in line with the rest of the marvellous prediction, and gives increased emphasis and meaning to the startling collocation of human qualities and divine in the future ruler of Israel. Born in time and seated on the throne of David, he is yet the Everlasting One, whose goings forth have been from of old, even from the days of eternity. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end, just because of His existence there has been no beginning. Whatever be the meaning of the phrase, the English translation should be “Father of eternity” in accordance with the ancient Arabic and the modern (Dr. Van Dyck’s), the Syriac, ancient and modern, the Chaldee Paraphrase, the French of Martin and the Dutch of the States Bible. Chambers.

He is called by Isaiah the Prince of Peace. “Of the increase of His government and peace there is said to be no end.” A little after, His reign is described by the most pacific emblems that imagination could furnish, by “the wolf dwelling with the lamb, and the leopard lying down with the kid.” His work of righteousness is peace, and He makes with mankind the covenant of peace. He Himself tells His disciples that “in Him they were to have peace;” and it is the legacy He bequeaths them. “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you.” The sacred writers continue the same language in the New Testament. “The kingdom of God is joy and peace.” His Gospel is called “the Gospel of peace.” Bp. Porteus.

The title Prince of Peace was indeed appropriate. How quiet and serene He was when tempests of passion were blowing and beating around and upon Him! How like a lamb He appeared in the midst of fierce and wolfish spirits! When His disciples proposed that fire from heaven should consume the Samaritans for their disrespect to their Lord, He rebuked their impatient tempers with the assurance that they were mistaking the design of His mission, which was not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He was smitten He did not smite. When He was unjustly slain by wicked hands, no violence was in His hand, and no reproach in His mouth, but a dying prayer that His murderers might be forgiven. He illustrated, in His life and death, His own teachings, “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you.” Was He not the Prince of Peace? Those, therefore, who follow Him must follow peace; they must cherish a meek and quiet spirit. R. T.

7. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end. The government or power thus to be enlarged is of course that of the child, who is described as born and given in the foregoing verse. A striking parallel is furnished by the prophecy in Micah 5:3. There, as here, a king is promised who should be the son of David, and should reign over all the earth in peace and righteousness forever. It is there expressed, and here implied, that this king should reunite the divided house of Israel, although this is but a small part of the increase promised, which includes the calling of the Gentiles also. The reign here predicted was to be not only peaceful, but in every respect prosperous. And this prosperity, like the reign of which it is predicted, is to have no limit, either temporal or local. It is to be both universal and eternal. There is nothing to preclude the very widest explanation of the terms employed. The endless increase of power and prosperity on the throne of David means of course that the Prince whose reign was to be thus powerful and prosperous would be a descendant of David. This is indeed a repetition and explanation of a promise given to David (2 Sam. 7:11-16; 1 K. 8:25) and repeatedly referred to by him (2 Sam. 23:1-5; Ps. 2, 45, 72, 89, 132). Hence the Messiah is not only called the branch or Son of David (2 Sam. 7:12, 13; Jer. 23:5; 33:15), but David himself (Jer. 30:9; Ezek. 34:23, 24; 37:24; Hos. 3:5). The two reigns are identified, not merely on account of an external resemblance or a typical relation, but because the one was really a restoration or continuation of the other. Both kings were heads of the same body, the one a temporal head, the other spiritual; the one temporary, the other eternal. The Jewish nation, as a spiritual body, is really continued in the Christian Church. The subject of the prophecy is the reign of the Messiah; the effect predicted, its stability and increase; the means to be employed, judgment and justice; the efficient cause, the zeal of Jehovah. Grotius distinguishes between judgment and justice, as denoting righteous government on one hand, and righteous subjection to it on the other. The justice spoken of is that of the Messiah and His subjects. All the acts of His administration will be righteous, and the effect of this upon His people will be righteousness on their part, and this prevalence of righteousness will naturally generate the increase and stability here promised. A.

Such is the tone of many other prophecies of the Messiah’s reign. (See Ps. 2, 22, 72 and 110.) Isaiah elsewhere expands the same views of the magnificence, glory, purity, righteousness and peace of the Messiah’s reign. (See chaps. 11, 49 and 60.) All these thoughts are grand and glorious. A reign so purely just, so benign, excluding from earth so entirely those great national sins which have been its curse for ages; a reign destined to endure so long, evermore fraught with blessings to the filling of earth’s cup; what can be more magnificent; what can more completely fill out the answer to the divinely prescribed prayer, “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”? H. C.

There is no other influence in the world like that of living personality, and in Christ this is Divine. Amid the philosophic questionings and disputes of the ages there arises this unearthly figure, “the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!” Even the enemies of the cross feel His strange presence in the world. Less and less does candid unbelief know what to think of Jesus. Some of the most eloquent tributes to His unearthly purity have been given by writers who have beheld Him with wonder, though not accepting His salvation. History has made Him its moral centre; the calendar of the nations begins with Him, and the date of His birth is the festival of the civilized world. Most of the sceptics of our time owe whatever is best in them to the culture of the Christian faith, and the most successful apologists for the false religions of the East are those who, as a result of early training, clothe them in a Christian nomenclature, and ennoble them with conceptions borrowed from the New Testament, and of which their own authors never dreamed. Ellinwood.

His life is connected with the whole structure of human history—with the life of man from the beginning, and with the life of man unto the end. It is He who was born at Bethlehem; Himself in the lowliest penury, yet signal-stars and angelic choruses heralding and gracing His advent. It is He who was promised to the fallen pair in Eden, the seed of the woman who was to bruise the serpent’s head. It is He who was foretold as about to dwell in the tents of Shem, enlarging them above the glory of Japhet. It is He concerning whom it was said to Abraham, beneath the numberless stars of the eastern heavens, “In Him shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” It is He of whom the patriarch Jacob did speak, when, like the dying swan, he broke into one and only strain of prophetic song: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, until the Shiloh, the Peacemaker, shall come, whom all the nations should obey.” He it is concerning whom Balaam, the seer of Edom, with most reluctant testimony was compelled to predict as the Star and the Ruler who should come forth from Jacob. The same of whom Moses spake as the prophet whom the Lord God should raise up unto whom the world should hearken. It is He of whom David wrote in the Psalms, calling Him Lord, and King, the Son of God, the Christ, the anointed one, and the priest—now waking the echoes of the Mount of Olives, as with jubilant songs he described the splendors of His imperial reign and the glories of His triumphant and universal dominion—and now again, with plaintive measure, as with all minuteness he rehearsed His humiliations and sufferings, His betrayal by a false friend, the parting of His garments by lot, the piercing of His hands and feet, the pouring out of His soul like water, the entombment of His body, and its resurrection while yet uncorrupted by decay. It is He of whom Isaiah spake, as with lips touched with fire from heaven, and wrote with a pen dipped in the glories of the skies, as the Deliverer, the Saviour, the Redeemer, the tried and sure corner-stone, Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, the renovator of the world, the isles waiting for His law; a child to be born, yet bearing the name of the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father. It is He of whom Ezekiel wrote, by the river Chebar, as the glory of God, by whom the earth was to be made to shine. It is He of whom Daniel spake, as the Prince, the Messiah, who was to be cut off, but not for Himself, that He might make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness. Amos the herdsman foretold His coming as a Deliverer, and Micah rejoiced in His advent. Zechariah describes His royal Priesthood; Haggai anticipates His footsteps as the glory of the second Temple, the Lord our righteousness; and Malachi, prolonging the notes of this whole choir of prophecy, bids the world believe that the Messenger of the covenant is nigh at hand, and the Sun of Righteousness is soon to rise upon the benighted earth.

All the pregnant and germinant prophecies of Scripture relate to Him. The long procession of the centuries had been pointing to Him.

His precursors summon the world to make ready for His approach. When He was born, there was heard a company of angels chanting in the sky: “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to man.” When He spake unto men, He claimed to be the very being whom prophecy had promised, and Nature obeyed Him as her Lord. He challenged the faith of the world, when He styled Himself the way, the truth, and the life, predicting His own lifting up upon the cross as the appointed method of drawing all men unto Himself. Plainly, the historic events which occurred in and about Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago were not unanticipated accidents. The life of Christ was a prepared and foretold certainty. A cheering fact is this with which to begin—the assured conviction that it was God’s intention to redeem and restore our fallen race. W. Adams.

An individual once trod on the earth who by moral omnipotence alone controlled other times and founded an eternity of His own: one who, soft-blooming and easily drawn as a sunflower, burning and attracting as a sun, still in His mild form moved and turned Himself and nations and centuries together toward the all-enlightening primal sun; it is that still spirit which we call Jesus Christ. The power by which this wonderful life of Jesus fed itself was wholly of the spiritual world. He lived in communion with the highest conceptions of virtue; He lived in intimacy with the infinite Father, or at least, as the unbeliever must admit, with a God who to Him was a reality; He had a deep theory of human nature in the ruin of its spiritual capacity, which, joined with His deeper love, moved Him to what He regarded as a life for man’s redemption. And the result of His spiritual life and thinking has been the alteration of the world—changes which no laws, nor wars, nor arts could have effected. And by what instruments has He worked so mightily on human hearts and characters? By spiritual ones, by the feeling of guilt, the longing for purity and peace of soul, by offering pardon and the promises of life-giving assistance to the contrite, by a life and example of united love and holiness, by unveiling God and the soul’s unending life. Such are the means by which He has set up His throne over mankind, pushing His sway beyond souls into everything which pertains to man. T. D. W.

Fifty-five generations have passed away, and there is no name which exercises such an influence in the world to-day as the name of Him who was lifted up on the cross. It is associated with the most advanced civilization; with the best and most enduring literature; with the noblest forms of art; with the broadest systems of education; with the most gigantic enterprises of commerce; with the purest and most extended institutions of philanthropy; with the most refined and healthful social progress; and, in fine, with every element of dignity, prosperity and power among the nations of the earth. Ebenezer P. Rogers.—He said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” And they have not. Children learn them from mothers’ lips. Strong men are made strong wholly by them. The afflicted find in them sole and sufficient comfort. They are rehearsed in the ears of the dying. They are said in hope and triumph by the open grave. Do what you will with His biography—travesty it with Strauss, dislocate it with Renan, use all the power of learning, genius, wit, sarcasm, malice to distort or dwarf its central figure—you cannot, by any possibility, bring Jesus Christ down to the level of ordinary humanity, into line with the men of His generation, or even into line with the great men of all times. He still has a name above every name, and you cannot take it away. His is the only character in history which has no secular parallax, which looks as great in the nineteenth century as in the first. A. P. Peabody.—If we look upon Him as Divine, if we believe that the power of God was resident in Him, then we should have a right to see an influence that never wanes, a voice that never stills, a fulfilment of all prophecies, an utter change in the fashion of the world’s politics, science and its philosophy. And this is exactly what has occurred. Anon.

“The argument from prophecy” goes deeper than any isolated passages of the Old Testament. There was a Divine Life in that ancient history. Christ embodied His spirit and power in that progressive movement before He was incarnate in the manger. He was a Life in the ancient world, as well as a Hope, a veritable presence in history, and not simply a power overhanging it. He it was that rolled the cycles and progressions of history with His impulsion. Every tendency toward clearer light or better living was the earthly garment with which He clothed Himself. All those sequences of God’s providence, which seem to be so contrary in direction to every human tendency, betray the presence of a supernatural force—His presence from behind. Though event after event and life after life seem natural enough when looked at one by one, yet in a comprehensive survey they seem to be linked together as the orderly progression of some Divine design, and all facing on toward some far-off Divine result. This coherent and slowly evolving plan was the way in which Christ embodied Himself in the ages of preparation. This history, as the letters are put together, spells the adorable name of the Messiah. Van Slyke.

The history of the world would be the strangest of all riddles were it not the history of redemption. Nothing but the preparation for Christ’s coming can explain the events before the incarnation, and nothing but a movement toward the final triumph of His kingdom can explain the history since He came. The events of all the ages find their light and law in Him. They centre in Him, and circle around Him. Like Moses and Elias in the transfiguration, they appear in His glory, and speak to Him of His decease. There is no other law of history than this, for there is no other philosophy of history which can expound the facts of history. J. H. Seeley.

From Him as its foundation, its leader, and its life, a new kingdom of heaven rises into existence, comes forth out of the mists and concealments and sensuous coverings of the Mosaic economy, arrayed in robes of love and compassion and faith and truth, breathing only glory to God, peace on earth, and good will to men. This, O fallen man, is our Christ, the Christ of prophecy, the Christ of history; the living, reigning Christ whom we adore as divine, whom we love as the incarnation of all perfection, whom we believe in as the saviour of our souls from the power and penalty of sin. By His side, standing in childlike confidence, the law has no curse, death no sting, the grave no victory. Our life, hidden in His life and deriving from it new life, is purified, exalted, strengthened, comforted, protected and made victorious over all the powers of the world and the devil. In Him is the sacrifice for sin and the way of pardon and peace; in Him is the power which will make the weak strong for the ascent up the narrow way of life; in Him is light on all the dark scenes of time, light to scatter the gloom and darkness of the grave, light opening to us the secrets of immortality. Looking on Him in faith, I find all I want to elevate, purify, enlighten and save. In Him the mighty promises are all yea and amen. He is the captain of our salvation, leading us to glory. No wonder the four and twenty elders praise; no wonder the saints on the sea of glass ascribe dominion and power and glory to Him; no wonder heaven rings with the praises of the

Lamb in the midst of the throne; no wonder martyrs and confessors have trusted Him and rejoiced in Him amid the fires; no wonder His people in their sorrow and trials look to Him for comfort and joy; no wonder sin-convicted souls, turning from the world, cry to Him for salvation; no wonder poor penitents love Him who is the end of the law for righteousness. Here, O Christian, is your prophet, priest and king. Here, O sinner, burdened, tossed and uneasy, full of sad anticipations, is thy cure, thy comfort, thy Saviour! S. W. Fisher.

Jesus! How does the very word overflow with sweetness and light and love and life; filling the air with odors, like precious ointment poured forth; irradiating the mind with a glory of truths in which no fear can live, soothing the wounds of the heart with a balm that turns the sharpest anguish into delicious peace, shedding through the soul a cordial of immortal strength. Jesus! the answer to all our doubts, the spring of all our courage, the earnest of all our hopes, the charm omnipotent against all our foes, the remedy for all our weakness, the supply of all our wants, the fulness of all our desires. Jesus! at the mention of whose name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Jesus! our power—Jesus! our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption—Jesus! our elder brother, our blessed Lord and Redeemer. Thy name is the most transporting theme of the Church, as they sing going up from the valley of tears to their home on the mount of God; Thy name shall ever be the richest chord in the harmony of heaven, where the angels and the redeemed unite their exulting, adoring songs around the throne of God. Jesus! Thou only canst interpret Thy own name, and Thou hast done it by Thy works on earth, and Thy glory at the right hand of the Father. Bethune.

Estimates from Other Sources.

Byron, in view of the faultless life of the Redeemer: “If ever man was God, or God man, Jesus Christ was both.” Rousseau: “Can it be possible that the personage whose history the gospel contains should be a mere man? What sublimity in His maxims! What profound wisdom in His discourses! If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.” Fichte, the noblest representative of recent pantheistic speculation in Germany, bore Christ the highest testimony it was possible for one man to bear another, making Him the propounder of his philosophy. Goethe, the universal genius of modern Germany, speaking of Christ, says,

“He is the Divine Man—the Holy One.” Said Theodore Parker, in one of his most rigid discourses against evangelical religion, “Try Christ as we try other teachers: how soon their pupils, though humble men, go beyond them! Eighteen centuries have passed; but what man or sect has mastered His thought? He pours out to the world a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as God.” And then, after arguing for some length that, though the Bible itself were destroyed, its great precepts would live, he falls into this strain: “But we should lose (O irreparable loss!) the example of that character, so beautiful, so divine, that no human genius could have conceived, as none, after all the progress and refinement of eighteen centuries, seems fully to have comprehended, its lustrous life.” L. T. T.

It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, natures, temperaments and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. Lecky.

Speaking of those who deny the Trinity, James Martineau (in the prime of life) says: “I am constrained to say, that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with their heroes, sects or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavorably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed. In philosophy I have had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text-books, and the authors in chief favor with them. In biblical interpretation, I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham. In devotional literature and religious thought, I find nothing of ours that does not pale before Augustine, Tauler and Pascal. And in the poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley, or of Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor and cold. That I find myself in

For “Admissions of Sceptics,” see Vol. I., N. T., p. 599. B.

9:8, 9 THE Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in pride and in stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen, but we will build with hewn stone; the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. Therefore the LORD shall set up on high against him the adversaries of Rezin, and shall stir up his enemies; the Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

13. Yet the people hath not turned unto him that smote them, neither have they sought the LORD of hosts. Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm-branch and rush, in one day. The ancient and the honorable man, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For they that lead this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall not rejoice over their young men, neither shall he have compassion on their fatherless and widows; for every one is profane and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

18. For wickedness burneth as the fire; it devoureth the briers and thorns; yea, it kindleth in the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in thick clouds of smoke. Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land burnt up: the people also are as the fuel of fire; no man spareth his brother. And one shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim: and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

10:1 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers that write perverseness: to turn aside the needy from judgement, and to take away the right of the poor of my people, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory? They shall only bow down under the prisoners, and shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

5,6. Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in whose hand is mine indignation! I will send him against a profane nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few. For he saith, Are not my princes all of them kings? Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand hath found the kingdoms of the idols, whose graven images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria; shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?

12. Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed his whole work upon mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks. For he hath said, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and I have brought down as a valiant man them that sit on

14 thrones: and my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the peoples; and as one gathereth eggs that are forsaken, have I gathered all the earth: and there was none that moved the wing, or that opened the mouth, or chirped. Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if a rod should shake them that lift it up, or as if a staff should lift up him that is not wood.

16. Therefore shall the Lord, the LORD of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory there shall be kindled a burning like the burning of fire. And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briars in one day. And he shall consume the glory of his forest, and of his fruitful field, both soul and body: and it shall be as when a standardbearer fainteth. And the remnant of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them.

20. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and they that are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them shall return: a consumption is determined, overflowing with righteousness. For a consummation, and that determined, shall the Lord, the LORD of hosts, make in the midst of all the earth.

24. Therefore thus saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, O my people that dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian: though he smite thee with the rod, and lift up his staff against thee, after the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger, in their destruction. And the LORD of hosts shall stir up against him a scourge, as in the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and his rod shall be over the sea, and he shall lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall depart from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

28. He is come to Alath, he is passed through Migron; at Michmash he layeth up his baggage: they are gone over the pass; they have taken up their lodging at Geba: Ramah trembleth; Gibeah of Saul is fled. Cry aloud with thy voice, O daughter of Gallim! hearken, O Laishah! O thou poor Anathoth! Madmenah is a futile; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. This very day shall he halt at Nob: he shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.

33. Behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, shall lop the boughs with terror: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the lofty shall be brought low. And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one.

8. HAVING** repeatedly interchanged the three great subjects of this prophecy—the deliverance of Judah from the power of Syria and Israel, its subsequent punishment by means of the Assyrians, and the reign of the Messiah, for whose sake the kingdom was to be preserved—the prophet passes here abruptly from the last to the first, and again predicts the punishment of Ephraim. He reverts to this event, which had already been repeatedly foretold, for the purpose of declaring that the blows would be repeated as often and as long as might be needed for the absolute fulfilment of God’s threatenings. He begins by showing that Israel had already been sufficiently forewarned. The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it came down into Israel. The word which God had uttered against Israel had reached them as a message from Him, as a revelation, so that there could be no doubt as to its authority and genuineness. The two names of the patriarch are here used as equivalents, denoting his descendants, and especially the larger part, the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, to which the national name Israel is wont to be distinctively applied.

10. The very words of the self-confident Ephraimites are now recorded. Instead of being warned and instructed by what they had already suffered, they presumptuously look for greater prosperity than ever. Bricks are fallen, and hewn stone will we build; sycamores are felled, and cedars will we substitute. The Oriental bricks are unburnt, so that most of their brick structures are as little durable as mud walls. The sycamore is durable, but too light and spongy to be used in solid building. The latter is accordingly contrasted with the cedar, and the former with hewn stone, the two most highly valued building materials. A.

12. “The adversaries of Rezin” were the Assyrians. They had already proved a formidable foe to Syria. With them the Lord would combine the old enemies of Israel, the Syrians on the north and the Philistines on the south and west; and then together they should devour Israel as with mouth wide open, to swallow her up. But as these sore national inflictions did not turn the people to God, so His anger did not turn away, but His hand remained still outstretched for yet other and sorer inflictions. So after each successive stroke, God is wont to pause and take note of the moral effect, if any, that He may by all means arrest the process of chastisement at the earliest moment when once the results of penitence and humiliation are secured. H. C.

13. The people has not turned to Him that smote them, and Jehovah of Hosts they have not sought. Sin is described in Scripture as departure from God. Repentance, therefore, is returning to Him. To seek God, in the idiom of Scripture, is to pray to Him (Isa. 55:6), to consult Him (Isa. 8:19), to resort to Him for help (Isa. 31:1), to hold communion with Him (Amos 5:4, 5). Hence it is sometimes descriptive of a godly life in general (Ps. 14:2). So here it includes repentance, conversion, and new obedience. A.

13-16. Because the people would not turn to Him who smote them to heal and to restore, therefore He will cut off from Israel in one day the greatest and the least; the highest in society and the lowest; and by implication, all the intermediate classes also. The extremes are so described as to enhance the moral force of the threatening. None are too venerable in age or wisdom to be punished. The other extreme, being lowest by reason of their meanness in crime, can by no means be passed over. The head and the tail of the animal furnish the first figure; the palm-branch, lofty and magnificent, on the one hand, and the bulrush, sending up its slender stalk from foul marshes, on the other, supply the second. Applying the first figure, he makes the elders, men usually much respected, the head, but the prophet who teaches lies, the tail. This is of course the false prophet who pretends to bring messages from the Lord, but brings only lies. His meanness, hypocrisy and falsehood earn for him richly the disgrace and the curse which are here indicated.

17. Hypocrisy, bold evil-doing and outspoken impiety combine to show that the people are morally rotten—fearfully apostate from God in their whole heart and life. After the judgments pertaining to this series, the Lord waited only till He saw there was no returning to a better life, and then resumed His inflictions. H. C.

19. The figure of a general conflagration is continued in this verse, and then exchanged for a literal description of the miseries produced by civil war. In the wrath of Jehovah of Hosts, the land is darkened with the smoke—or heated by the flame—and the people is like food (or fuel) of fire—one another (literally, man his brother) they do not spare. A.

It is the heavy burden of this song (verses 12, 17, 21), “For all this, His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” They do nothing to turn away His anger; they do not repent and reform, do not humble themselves and pray; none answer God’s calls nor comply with the designs of His providences, but they are hardened and secure. His anger therefore continues to burn against them and “His hand is stretched out still.” The reason why the judgments of God are prolonged is because the point is not gained, sinners are not brought to repentance by them; “the people turn not to Him that smites them,” and therefore He continues to smite them; for when God judges He will overcome; and the proudest, stoutest sinner shall either bend or break. H.

19-21. An awful picture is this, indeed, of the way in which the kingdom of Israel fell! An interregnum of nine years, a time doubtless of fearful anarchy, immediately preceded the reign of their last king Hoshea. It was then, probably, that this vial of judgment was poured out. Not only did the leading tribes in this northern kingdom arm against each other, Ephraim against Manasseh and Manasseh against Ephraim; but whenever this strife might subside, they both assaulted Judah. Of this Pekah was himself an instance. He had scarcely reached the throne by means of conspiracy and regicide, when he turned his arms against Judah. Remarkably, of the five last kings of Israel, four were usurpers, reaching the throne by conspiracy! This is a forcible comment on the statements made here in our text. H. C.

Chap. 10. The first four verses close the series of sins described and judgments threatened in the case of the kingdom of Israel. The remaining verses (5-34) treat of the Assyrian king, his pride, his ambitious aspirations, his advance to attack Jerusalem, and his utter destruction. This prophecy suggested that recorded in chap. 11, the magnificent results of which gave occasion to the song of praise in chap. 12. Taken together in their natural connection, this series of prophecies is exquisitely grand and precious. H. C.

The prophet first completes his description of the prevalent iniquity, with special reference to injustice and oppression, as a punishment of which he threatens death and deportation by the hands of the Assyrians (verses 1-4). He then turns to the Assyrians themselves, God’s chosen instruments, whom He had commissioned against Israel, to punish and degrade it, but whose own views were directed to universal conquest, to illustrate which the Assyrian himself is introduced as boasting of his tributary princes and his rapid conquests, which had met with no resistance from the people or their gods, and threatening Judah with a like fate, unaware of the destruction which awaits himself, imputing his success to his own strength and wisdom, and glorying, though a mere created instrument, over his maker and his mover (verses 5-15). His approaching doom is then described under the figure of a forest suddenly and almost totally consumed by fire (verses 16-19). This succession of events is to have the effect of curing the propensity to trust in man rather than God, at least among the elect remnant who survive; for though the ancient promises of great increase shall certainly be verified, only a remnant shall escape God’s righteous judgments (verses 20-23). To these the prophet now addresses words of strong encouragement, with a renewed prediction of a judgment on Assyria similar to that on Midian at Oreb and on Egypt at the Red Sea, which is then described, in the most vivid manner, by an exhibition of the enemy’s approach, from post to post, until he stands before Jerusalem, and then, with a resumption of the metaphor before used, his destruction is described as the prostration of a forest—trees and thickets—by a mighty axe (verses 24-34). It is commonly agreed that the close of the chapter relates chiefly, if not wholly, to the destruction of Sennacherib’s army, recorded in chap. 37:36.

The division of the chapters is in this part of the book peculiarly unfortunate; the first part of the ninth (verses 1-7) containing the conclusion of the eighth, and the first part of the tenth (verses 1-4) the conclusion of the ninth.

1-4. In these four verses, as in the different divisions of the ninth chapter, there is an accusation followed by a threatening of punishment. The sin denounced in the first two verses is that of oppression and injustice. The punishment threatened is desolation by a foreign foe, and its effect, captivity and death.

Woe unto them that decree decrees of injustice, and that write oppression which they have prescribed. A.—Wickedness is doubly aggravated when framed into law, because its mischief is made to fall on the poor and unprotected classes; because it affords a temptation to cruel, heartless men to oppress, providing for them the means of doing so with impunity; and because its mischiefs are more permanent. H. C.

3. The wicked rulers are themselves addressed, and warned of an approaching crisis, when they must be deprived of all that they now glory in. And (though you are now powerful and rich) what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the ruin (which) shall come from far? The questions imply negation, as if he had said, “You can do nothing to protect yourselves.”

5. The Assyrian is now distinctly brought into view as the instrument which God would use in punishing His people. But instead of simply executing this task, the Assyrians would seek their own ends and exceed their commission, and for this they must themselves be punished. The prophet begins, therefore, with a woe against them. Woe unto Asshur (the Assyrian or Assyria itself), the rod of My anger, and the staff in their (the Assyrians’) hand is My indignation—i.e., its instrument. A.

7,8. Such a commission from God, however, is far from the thoughts of the Assyrian king. He will ascribe the whole series of his conquests to his own prowess and wisdom alone. Carehemish and Calno on the Euphrates and Tigris, Arpad and Hamath on the Orontes, Damascus and Samaria on the route southward toward Jerusalem, would fall in succession, and some had already fallen. His pride would grow with every victory. Each past conquest would be viewed as a pledge of further triumphs. Birks.

The Assyrian committed crime in his invasion; yet he thereby worked out the results which God intended. In the commission of his crime he was perfectly free and perfectly accountable; yet this crime was not only foreseen, but, as we observe, predicted by the Almighty. God was not the author of the sin, though the sin occurred providentially; and, foreseeing this, God recognizes His accountability, and denounces punishment (verse 12), “Wherefore it shall come to pass that when the Lord hath performed His whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks.”

If we do not recognize this intervention of Providence in regard to the free acts of creatures, we can never interpret those judgments of God which are wrought by wicked men. Even the free actions of the most wicked man are so governed that his way is not in himself, but in God. J. W. A.

10,11. The Assyrian king boasted that he had subdued idol gods mightier than those worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem; could he not therefore with the greatest ease subdue their inferior gods? At this time he had subjected Samaria and her gods; would he not do the same to Jerusalem and to her gods? H. C.

12. To the boastful speech of the Assyrian succeeds a prediction of his fate. Although he would be suffered to proceed still further in the work of subjugation, till he reached the very verge of Zion and the portals of Jerusalem, God had determined that the work should go no further, but be there cut short by the infliction of a signal vengeance on the selfishness and pride of the invader. By the destruction of Sennacherib’s army, God may be said to have cut short the work of that invader, or to have cut short His own work by accomplishing His purpose of destruction, or to have cut short His own work of punishing His people by relieving them from danger.

15. In all this the Assyrian was but an instrument in God’s hand, and his proud self-confidence is therefore as absurd as if an axe, or a saw, or a rod, or a staff should exalt itself above the person wielding it.

16-19. The Assyrian overthrow is now foretold under the figure of a vast forest conflagration. It would come direct from God Himself, and be terrible and complete. Not only the rank and file of His soldiers, but the mighty and the noble would perish. Birks.

17. The “light of Israel” is the living God, as the revealer of truth and author of blessings. Note also the tacit antithesis between the relations of Jehovah to Israel, and to His enemies; to the former a light in the sense of a joy and a fountain of blessings; to the latter a light in the sense of a consuming fire. H. C.—The inner essential connection of wrath with the Divine holiness is made especially clear by this passage: “The Light of Israel becomes a fire, and His Holy One a flame, which burns and consumes His thorns and briars.” Because wrath is a manifestation of Divine holiness, the occasion of its outburst does not lie in a capricious Divine humor or natural malignity, as the gods of the heathen fall into a passion, but wholly in the person smitten by it. If man denies and rejects the testimony of the holy God which was given to him, justice must be executed upon him in his resistance to God’s will, which alone is in the right, by his being reduced to his own nothingness. Breach of the covenant, and the malignant interference with the aim of the covenant, are the offences that chiefly kindle the Divine wrath. O.

20. The name of the prophet’s son, Shear-jashub, “a remnant shall return,” after being a sign and wonder in Israel more than forty years, will at length be fulfilled. After the great Assyrian overthrow, this remnant will cleave to the Lord with true repentance and living faith. Judgments, in which multitudes will be consumed, are decreed and sure; but not less certainly this remnant will be spared, and will return, in faith and humility, to the God of Israel. And, however numerous the people may be, it will be a remnant only; while sore vengeance will light on all the apostates throughout the land of promise. Birks.

21. The remnant spared through these fearful judgments now return penitently to their God. The words are the same which had become memorable in the name of Isaiah’s son, Shear-jashub, a remnant shall return. Their significance was exceedingly precious. In the progress of the Lord’s discipline and judgment upon His people, there will be some points where they are brought low and reduced to a very few. Yet then, this promise ever abiding, will be their comfort and hope. A remnant will survive and will return to the mighty God.

22,23. In Rom. 9: 27, 28 Paul quotes this passage in an argument to show the Jews that a large portion of their nation were then doomed to be rejected and destroyed for their unbelief, and that the way would thus be opened for bringing Gentile nations into the Christian Church. The latter point was then incidental, and not embraced originally in the words of Isaiah. The judgments which cut off myriads of the unbelieving Jews were a remarkable fulfilment of the general doctrine of this passage. It has been fulfilled often. H. C.

24. In verse 19, having declared the fate impending over the Assyrian, the prophet turned aside to describe the effect of their destruction on the remnant of Israel, and now resumes the thread of his discourse as if there had been no interruption. Therefore (since this is soon to be the fate of the Assyrians) be not afraid, oh My people inhabiting Zion, of Asshur (or the Assyrian). A.

26. Such are God’s judgments on Assyria. Two historical cases set forth their fearfulness

—the slaughter of Midian before Gideon’s small but chosen band, and the perishing of Egypt’s hosts in the Red Sea. The rock of Oreb is specially named because two kings of Midian fell there, as Sennacherib was to fall in his idol temple after his return home from the ruin of his vast army. H. C.

28. From the time of the Assyrian’s overthrow the prophet now reverts to that of his invasion, which he describes in the most vivid manner by rapidly enumerating the main points of his march from the frontier of Judah to the gates of Jerusalem. The language is precisely that of an eye-witness describing at the moment what he actually sees. He is come to Aiath—he is passed to Migron—to Michmash he intrusts his baggage. Although the form Aiath nowhere else occurs, it is commonly supposed to be the same with Ai, the ancient royal city of the Canaanites, destroyed by Joshua (Josh. 8 : 1), and afterward rebuilt (Ezra 2 : 28). Michmash is still in existence under the almost unchanged name of Mukhmas, to the northeast of Jeba, on the slope of a steep valley. The place is now desolate, but exhibits signs of former strength, foundations of hewn stone and prostrate columns (see Vol. III., p. 289). Thus far he has described what the Assyrians themselves do : they cross the line at Ajath—pass through Migron—leave their baggage at Michmash—lodge at Geba. Now he describes what the places themselves do : Ramah trembles—Gibeah of Saul flees. Ramah was a city of Benjamin, near Gibeah, but farther from Jerusalem. It is still in existence as Er-ram, about half a mile nearly due west of Jeba, but hidden from it by intervening heights. It is two hours north of Jerusalem, on the eastern side of the road to Nablus. Ramah trembles (or is afraid) at the enemy’s approach, a strong and beautiful personification, or the place may be simply put for its inhabitants, as in the Targum. The trembling and flight of these towns is naturally represented as occurring while the enemy was resting at Geba. It may imply either that ramah was not in the direct line of the march, but within sight and hearing of it, or, on the contrary, that it was the next place to be reached, and trembling in apprehension of it. A still stronger metaphor is used as to the next place. Gibeah of Saul—so called because it was his birthplace and residence, and to distinguish it from others of the same name—is fled. There is here a rapid but marked climax. While Ramah trembles, Gibeah flees.

30. To terror and flight he now adds an audible expression of distress, representing one place as crying, another as listening, and, according to some writers, a third as responding. At the same time he exchanges the language of description for that of direct personal address.

32. This verse conducts him to the last stage of his progress, to a point so near the holy city that he may defy it thence. Yet to-day in Nob (he is) to stand (and there) will he shake his hand (a gesture of menace and defiance) against the mountain of the house (or daughter) of Zion (i.e., Mount Zion itself, the hill of Jerusalem. Nob was a sacerdotal city of Benjamin near Anathoth (Neh. 11 : 32), and, according to the Talmud and Jerome, within sight of Jerusalem. A.

33,34. The picture of the forced march is complete. But now the scene suddenly changes. The middle steps of the campaign are omitted, and the prophet describes the catastrophe. The proud king vaunted that he had put down princes like a mighty hero ; and by one far mightier than himself he must be suddenly brought low, by the destroying angel of God. Birks —In bold, poetic imagery these verses give the final catastrophe ; the wondrous and thrilling fact that just when the great Assyrian army lay within sight of the temple spires, then “the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand men, and when they arose in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses” (Isa. 37 : 36). Such was the slaughter on that one awful night ! The prophet, conceiving of this Assyrian host as a forest of towering cedars of Lebanon, sees the Lord Jehovah of hosts come down with His great iron death-weapon to lop the boughs terribly, to hew down the loftiest cedars and lay low the proudest—cutting down all the thick undergrowth with His iron blade, and causing Lebanon with all its glory to fall before His mighty arm. Whether we suppose angelic agency or not, here is the great and dreadful God sweeping down the myriad hosts of Assyria before His uplifted arm. But yesterday, they were moving on proudly, even as Lebanon lifts up her lofty head and glories in her cedars ; today their camp is strewn with corses of the fallen dead, for this proud king had hurled defiance at the city and temple of the Lord, and He had taken up the challenge and hurled back His shafts of death into that Assyrian camp ! The work is done, and the city and people of the great God are safe ! H. C.