Isaiah 28

Son, Jesus Christ. This great Gospel trumpet does not give an uncertain sound; but it proclaims a free, full and finished salvation by Christ, to the glory of God, yea and amen. W. Mason.

28:1 Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley of them that are overcome with 2 wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one; as a tempest of hall, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters overflowing, shall he cast down to the earth with the 3 hand. The crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden under foot: 4 and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the firstripe fig before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is 5 yet in his hand he eateth it up. In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, 6 and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people: and for a spirit of judgement to him that sitteth in judgement, and for strength to them that turn back the battle at the 7 gate. But these also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are gone astray; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are gone astray through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgement. 8, 9 For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. Whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to understand the message? them that are 10 weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts? For it is precept upon precept, pre- 11 cept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little. Nay, but by 12 men of strange lips and with another tongue will he speak to this people: to whom he said, This is the rest, give ye rest to him that is weary; and this is the refreshing: yet they would 13 not hear. Therefore shall the word of the LORD be unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little; that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. 14 Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in 15 Jerusalem: Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us; for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: 16 therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone of sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. 17 And I will make judgement the line, and righteousness the plummet: and the hail shall 18 sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; 19 when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. As often as it passeth through, it shall take you; for morning by morning shall it pass through. 20 by day and by night: and it shall be nought but terror to understand the message. For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it; and the covering narrower than 21 that he can wrap himself in it. For the LORD shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon; that he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to 22 pass his act, his strange act. Now therefore be ye not scorners, lest your bands be made strong: for a consummation, and that determined, have I heard from the Lord, the LORD of hosts, upon the whole earth.

23,24. Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow 25 continually to sow? doth he continually open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and put in the wheat in rows and the barley in the appointed place and the spelt in the bor- 26, 27 der thereof? For his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him. For the fitches are not threshed with a sharp threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon 28 the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. Bread corn is ground; for he will not ever be threshing it: and though the wheel of his cart and 29 his horses scatter it, he doth not grind it. This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom.

AFTER the burdens on the Gentile nations, and their sequel, the prophecy returns more directly to the chosen people. Four successive woes are denounced on Samaria, Jerusalem and on all those in Israel who resorted to Egypt for help, instead of resting in faith on the promise of God. These are followed by another prediction of the times of Messiah, a direct woe on the Assyrian, a more general warning of judgment on the heathen, and a closing prophecy of Messiah’s coming, and the full redemption of Israel.

The first woe (chap. 28) announces the fall of Samaria as near at hand. Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, here called the proud crown or garland of the drunkards of Ephraim, was built by Omri, and became a place of great wealth and luxury under the following kings. It was besieged by Benhadad (2 K. 6, 7) and reduced to great extremity, but signally delivered. After a three years’ siege it was taken by Shalmaneser or Sargon, and reduced to a heap of ruins (Mic. 1:6). This event followed very soon after the present prophecy, which was probably just at the opening of Hezekiah’s reign. It afterward revived, and was restored by Herod the Great, who gave it the name Sebaste in honor of Augustus Caesar; and this name, slightly varied, is retained by a small village which still occupies its site.

The warning passes on, as before, from Ephraim to Judah, and denounces the sensual blindness and pride of the rulers, when the judgment of God, after lighting on Israel, was just ready to visit the southern kingdom. The scourge of the Assyrian armies would soon pass over to Judah, and all their false hopes of deliverance from Egypt would perish. But the promise of Messiah would secure the preservation of a faithful remnant; and the holy discipline of God, however severe, would issue in a harvest of righteousness and praise. The last verses unfold this truth in a striking parable, drawn from the various processes of natural husbandry.

Chap. 28. This prophecy, as appears from its opening verses, belongs to the earlier years of the reign of Hezekiah. The final siege of Samaria, ending in the destruction of the city, which is here represented as imminent, lasted from the fourth to the sixth year of Hezekiah (2 K. 18:9, 10). Shortly before that siege began the prophet depicts the judgment that shall overwhelm the northern kingdom in their drunken revelry and carnal security (verses 1-6). He then turns to Judah, who are given up to the same sins (verses 7, 8), and who scoffingly repel the admonitions and warnings of the prophet (verses 9, 10), and tells them that, since they refuse to hear God’s message of peace and safety, He would speak to them by foreign invaders, to their fall and ruin (verses 11-13). Refusing the sure ground of dependence which God had established in Zion, their trust was in a refuge of lies, which would fail them in their extremity (verses 14-18). W. H. G.—Their impious contempt of God and self-reliance shall but hasten their destruction. All who do not build upon the sure foundation laid in Zion must inevitably perish as the enemies of Israel were destroyed of old (verses 14-22). The delay of judgment no more proves that it will never come, than the patience of the husbandman and his preparatory labors prove that he expects no harvest; and the difference of God’s dealings with different men is no more inconsistent with His general purposes of wrath or mercy than the husbandman’s treatment of the different grains is inconsistent with his general purpose of securing and enjoying them (verses 23-29).

1. Here, as in chap. 9:9, 21; 11:13, we are to understand by Ephraim the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, by the drunkards of Ephraim its vicious population, and by the lofty crown the city of Samaria, so called as the chief town and the royal residence, but also with allusion to its local situation on an insulated hill overlooking a rich plain or valley. Wine, smitten or wine-stricken is a strong description of the intellectual and moral effects of drunkenness. Gill’s lively paraphrase is: smitten, beaten, knocked down with it as with a hammer, and laid prostrate on the ground, where they lie fixed to it, not able to get up. A.—The luxurious self-indulgence of the inhabitants of Samaria and their drinking to intoxication, a vice that infected even the women (Amos 4:1), are severely reproved by both Hosea (Hos. 4:11; 7:5) and Amos (Amos 6:4-6). That which awakens the displeasure of God and stirs the indignation of the prophet is both the criminality of these excesses in themselves and the moral insensibility which accompanied them and resulted from them. W. H. G.

Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim. This may be more exactly translated, “The crown of the pride of Ephraim’s drunkards”—that is, Samaria—for her people were both drunken with wine and intoxicated with pride. The frequent references in this chapter to the garlands or crowns of flowers worn by the drunkards reveals, when carefully examined by the light of profane history, an awful and systematic indulgence in excess of wine. The use of chaplets at festive entertainments sprang up at an early period in Egypt, whence, no doubt, the Israelites derived it; but it reached its climax in Greece. It was part of a deliberate intention to drink to excess and to mitigate the effects of intoxication. The wreaths were bound tightly round the head, and were composed of various flowers and shrubs, which were supposed to carry off the fumes of wine, such as roses, violets, myrtle and ivy. In later times the custom spread to Rome; but the old Romans before the empire had some regard for decency, and revellers who appeared with their garlands in public were punished with imprisonment. The descriptions which have come down to us of the orgies of the Dionysia, when all the votaries of Bacchus wore ivy wreaths, present a hideous picture. It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

The fading flower; the firstripe fig. Samaria, that crown of the drunkard’s pride, notwithstanding its glorious beauty, shall wither as a fading flower from the reveller’s chaplet. There is much in the natural configuration of Samaria and its neighborhood which adds force to the poetic language of the prophet. The site of Herod’s Samaria, which, there is little doubt, occupies the exact position of the city of Omri, crowns a gently rising circular hill, from the base of which a wide, grassy plain sweeps in a perfect amphitheatre, encircled by a loftier mountain range. There is but one break in the mountain wall, and that reveals a view of the wide plain of Sharon and the sea beyond. The ruins which crown the central hill suggest the idea of a ruined crown, the bare columns representing the bare stems and stalks from which every flower and leaf has been stripped. Again, the “fat valleys” (or, literally, “the valleys of oil”) still deserve the epithet, studded, as all of them are, with rich and ancient olive yards straggling in every direction. Again, this fading flower is to be “as the hasty fruit before the summer,” or, as the Revised Version more accurately renders it, “as the firstripe fig before the summer,” which is easily seen, and is at once gathered and eaten by the passer-by. Tristram.

2. The mighty and strong one of the Lord, or appointed by Him for the work of judgment, is the king of Assyria, Shalmaneser or Sargon, who completed the overthrow. He is described (as in chap. 10) as the tool or instrument to execute the warnings of God. He would soon pluck this proud and beautiful garland from the head of the drunkards of Ephraim, and cast it down to the earth with His hand, as a fierce tempest or flood sweeps everything away before it.

3,4. The figures in the first verse are here carried further. The proud crown or garland of the drunkards, when the spoiler has torn it from their brows, and cast it on the ground, will be trodden under his feet. Samaria, the glorious beauty or ornament of Ephraim, would be indeed like a fading flower, a wreath withering away; and also like the early fig, which drops when the tree is shaken, and which he who sees it no sooner sets his eyes upon than he devours it with greedy haste. Birks.

5,6. But storms sweep the air clear, and everything will not go down before this one. The flower fadeth, but there is a chaplet of beauty which men may wreathe round their heads, which shall bloom forever. All sensuous enjoyment has its limits in time, as well as in nobleness and exquisiteness; but when it is all done with, the beauty and festal ornament which truly crowns humanity shall smell sweet and blossom. The prophecy had regard simply to the issue of the historical disaster to which it pointed, and meant that, after the storm of Assyrian conquest, there would still be, for the servants of God, the residue of the people, both in Israel and in Judah, a fuller possession of the blessings which descend on the men who make God their portion. But the principle involved is forever true. The sweeping away of the perishable does draw true hearts nearer to God. So the two halves of this prophecy give us eternal truths as to the certain destruction awaiting the joys of sense and the permanence of the beauty and strength which belong to those who take God for their portion. Drunkenness seems to have been a national sin in Israel; for Micah rebukes it as vehemently as Isaiah, and it is a clear bit of Christian duty in America and England to-day to “set the trumpet to thy mouth” and show the people this sin.

But the lessons of the prophecy are wider than the specific form of evil denounced. All setting of affection and seeking of satisfaction in that which, in all the pride of its beauty, is “a fading flower,” is madness and sin. Into every life thus turned to the perishable will come the crash of the destroying storm, the mutterings of which might reach the ears of the feasters, if they were not drunk with the fumes of their deceiving delights. Only one kind of life has its roots in that which abides, and is safe from tempest and change. Amaranthine flowers bloom only in heaven, and must be brought thence if they are to garland earthly foreheads. If we take God for ours, then whatever tempests may howl, and whatever fragile though fragrant joys may be swept away, we shall find in Him all that the world fails to give to its votaries. He is “a crown of glory” and “a diadem of beauty.” Our humanity is never so fair as when it is made beautiful by the possession of Him. All which sense vainly seeks in earth, faith finds in God. Nor only beauty, but “a spirit of judgment,” in its narrower sense and in its widest, is breathed into those to whom God is “the master light of all their seeing;” and, yet more, He is strength to all who have to fight. Thus the close union of trustful souls with God, the actual inspiration of these, and the perfecting of their nature from communion with God, are taught us in the great words, which tell how beauty, justice and strength are all given in the gift of Jehovah Himself to His people.

7. 8. The prophet turns to Judah, and charges them with the same disgusting debauchery. His language is vehement in its loathing, and describes the filthy orgies of those who should have been the guides of the people with almost painful realism. A. M.

That even these men, the nominal prophets and priests of Judah, should reel and stagger ger through wine; blunder and err themselves and mislead others through strong drink; that their shameless intoxication should foul their very tables, so as to leave no place undefiled—this is truly a dark picture! It must be that in those days wine-drinking made men drunk. H. C.

Intemperance is the most ghastly and God-defying and man-depraying crime of our age. It is a sin which associates every manner of sin with it. It is an evil for the measurement of which arithmetic gives us no figures, and speech no descriptive terms. It debauches the conscience of the nation. It pollutes the blood of the people with diseases unnamable in decent society. It blasts the brow of youth with a deadly mildew; bends the back of manhood to the burdens of poverty, and blots out the star of hope by the blaze of the fires of hell. And for the extermination of this extortionate enemy of all righteousness there is one, and but one, remedy. And that is, the cordial agreement of those who realize its awfulness, in methods for destroying it. Withrow.

The drinker has no shadow of excuse for his course. He does everything in spite of everything. Every inducement of healthy mind and body is against it. But the foolish hardness and perversity of a devil’s nature drives from step to step, until habits, environment, everything, have been revolutionized, and the man is another self. Then he may not stop. Then he may not be accountable. But he is responsible for the foolishness and hardness that has brought him into the place he now stands. God pity the drunkard; but what pity for the self who made the drunkard, and recklessly and ruthlessly ruined the man that might have been. Here in these ranks is many a Cain, whose punishment is greater than he can bear; many a sunken hulk who only knows what he once was; many who could bear witness to the truth of the proverb: “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” F. S. Arnold.

The two unanswerable arguments against the drinking usages are these: An alcoholic beverage endangers me if I tamper with it; it endangers my fellow-man if I offer it to him. My Bible teaches me to let it alone for the sake of the “weak” and those who stumble. Ah, those stumblers! How many wrecks the word reveals! How many tombs it opens, whose charitable turf hides out of sight what surviving kindred would love to hide from memory! For Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the easily tempted, who will hide behind our example, let us who call ourselves Christians put away this bottled devil, which conceals damnation under its ruby glow. This subject of self-surrender for Jesus’ sake is as wide as the domain of Christian duty. To live for Christ is the sweetest and holiest life we can live; to live for self is the most wretched. Every cross is turned into a crown, every burden becomes a blessing, every sacrifice becomes sacred and sublime the moment that our Lord and Redeemer writes on it “For My sake.” Cuyler.

9-13. The scoffers mentioned below (verse 14) are here introduced as uttering their sententious speeches; they treat God’s method of dealing with them and warning them by His prophets with contempt and derision. What, say they, doth He treat us as mere infants just weaned? doth He teach us like little children, perpetually inculcating the same elementary lessons, the mere rudiments of knowledge; precept after precept, line after line, here and there, by little and little? imitating at the same time, and ridiculing (in verse 10) the concise prophetic manner. God, by His prophet (verses 11-13), retorts upon them with great severity their own contemptuous mockery, turning it to a sense quite different from what they intended. Yes, saith He, it shall be in fact as you say; ye shall be taught by a strange tongue and a stammering lip; in a strange country; ye shall be carried into captivity by a people whose language shall be unintelligible to you, and which ye shall be forced to learn like children. And My dealing with you shall be according to your own words; it shall be command upon command for your punishment; it shall be line upon line, stretched over you to mark your destruction (cf. 2 K. 21 : 13); it shall come upon you at different times and by different degrees; till the judgments, with which from time to time I have threatened you, shall have their full accomplishment. A. C.

9,10. The loose livers of all generations talk in the same fashion about the stern morality which rebukes their vice. They call it weak, commonplace, fit for children, and they pretend that they despise it. They are much too enlightened for such antiquated teaching. Old women and children may take it in; but men of the world, who have seen life and know what is what, are not to be fooled so. “What will this babbler say?” was asked by the wise men of Athens, who were but repeating the scoffs of the prophets and priests of Jerusalem, and the same jeers are bitter in the mouths of many a profligate man to-day. It is the fate of all strict morality to be accounted childish by the people whom it inconveniently condemns. A. M.

12. It enhanced their guilt that God had kindly promised them rest and refreshing, the best of blessings, but they would not hear. Omitting the words in italics, we may translate thus: “These are the men to whom God had said, This is the rest; give rest to the weary; this is the refreshing; but they would not hear.” The Lord had plainly indicated that simple obedience to Himself, right-doing, would insure them rest and peace. He had exhorted them to lead all the people in this good way. They would neither walk in it themselves nor lead others. H. C.

13. The Old Testament is full of various and gracious repetition. God allowed for Israel’s slowness to receive and their slackness to retain instruction. So He gave them line upon line and precept upon precept. This principle of God runs through all His works and through all His training of His people. On this principle alone man’s moral culture and spiritual advancement can be attained. D. F.

The first part of this verse refers to the method in which God had taught them—i.e., in successive yet brief messages pressed assiduously. The latter part gives the results. Since they would not hear, their end was ruin. The terms used to describe it correspond to those in chap. 24 : 17, 18, the figures being a stone to stumble over and thus fall and be broken, and a pit to fall into. H. C.—Come what may, God is not mocked—that is, He will let no task be shirked in His school; and if men will not learn His lessons of eternal wisdom otherwise, He will certainly beat them into them by His judgments. And He will do this the more severely the more men have set them at naught. It is just because the natural man is so slow to receive them, that the Divine judgments have so much to do. Hupfeld.—If we will not be guided by His eye and voice, we shall be governed by whip and bridle. Our choice is either to hearken to the Divine call, which is loving and gentle, and invites to deep repose springing from faith, or to have to hear the voice of the taskmasters. The monotony of despised moral and religious teaching shall give place to a more terrible monotony, even that of continuous judgments. “The mills of God grind slowly.” Bit by bit, with gradual steps, with dismal persistence, like the slow drops on the rock, the judgments of God trickle out on the mocking heart. It takes a long time for a child to learn a pageful when he gets his lesson a sentence at a time. So slowly do His chastisements fall on men who have despised the continuous messages of His love. The word of the Lord, which was laughed at when it clothed itself in a prophet’s speech, will be heard in more formidable shape when it is wrapped in the long-drawn-out miseries of years of bondage. The warning is as needful for us as for these drunken priests and scornful rulers. The principle embodied is true in this day as it was then, and we too have to choose between serving God in gladness, hearkening to the voice of His word, and so finding rest to our souls, and serving the world, the flesh, and the devil, and so experiencing the perpetual dropping of the fiery rain of His judgments. A. M.

14,15. These scornful men must be the sensual, debased, drunken priests and prophets who were before us in verses 7, 8; who also scoffed at and repelled the assiduous labors of the true prophets in verses 9, 10. If it be asked how intelligent men can reach such hardihood of scepticism in defiance of their own reason, conscience, and experience, the answer is simply, under the power of sin. They love sinning; they have chosen it as their portion, and hence they must make lies their refuge. They are driven into falsehood as their only relief from the perpetual goadings of conscience. Errors and delusions become welcome to wicked men as a necessity of their moral nature and sinful state. They can have no peace without the help of lies and delusions. The passage before us puts these great moral facts in the philosophy of sinning in a light at once bold, clear and terribly truthful! H. C.

Erroneous opinions are criminal, because they falsify the Divine character and destroy the moral influence of the Divine law; because they are always voluntary, the result of criminal negligence to obtain correct knowledge, or of a criminal resistance of evidence, or perversion of the understanding through the depravity of the heart; and because the belief of error is always associated with moral and criminal affections. It is never a mere act of the understanding; the heart decides, and is never neutral. If a truth be rejected, it is also hated; if an error be embraced, it is also loved. It is because men have no pleasure in the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness, that they are given over to believe a lie; and are punished, for believing it, with everlasting destruction. The propagation of error is criminal, of course, because it is destructive to the souls of men; annihilating the influence of the Divine moral government, and the means by which God is accustomed to renew the soul. Lyman Beecher.

16. Thus saith the Lord.** They are truly the Lord’s words. It is the veritable language of the Infinite speaking through media to the finite mind, even as one unseen human soul speaks to another human soul, through the outward undulations of the air. And yet we do not mar the thought of the Infinite by any such conception. All things, in their imageless ideas, lie in that ineffable mind. But when God puts them forth in the forms of time and space—i.e., actually thinks them and utters them, then one mode is as outward—i.e., to Deity, as finite, as much necessitated to some form of sense, or sense conception, or sense imagery, as another. T. Lewis.

Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone. To the words of the scoffers are now opposed the words of God Himself. Because you say thus and thus, therefore the Lord says in reply what follows. You trust for safety in your own delusions; on the contrary, I lay a sure foundation, and no other can be laid. This foundation is the Messiah, to whom it is repeatedly and explicitly applied in the New Testament (Rom. 9:33; 10:11; 1 Pet. 2:6). A.

The course of thought here is admirable. The stone which wicked men stumble over and the lies under which they hide for refuge combine to suggest the better things which God provides for those who love and obey Him. He will lay in Zion a stone far other than that—a far more sure foundation, tried, proved and precious; whoever believeth shall not have occasion to flee in haste and perturbation. Beyond a doubt this corner and foundation stone is the Messiah, the sinner’s real friend and refuge. So Peter believed and taught (1 Pet. 2:6-8). There is special pertinence in specifying those who believe as blessed in the Saviour. They are contrasted with the sceptical who make lies their refuge. There must always be essential scepticism underlying those bold, scornful attitudes of sinning mind. H. C.

So, says the prophet, shall be laid—and so, add apostles, has been laid—in the coming of Christ into the world, the enduring foundation on which the whole system of truth and of salvation for mankind is to arise. The solid corner of all is set in that unique constitution of His being, in which are hidden supremest wonders of power and glory. Because He is not, in their conception, a man like themselves, imperfect and finite, though of a rare religious genius; because He is not an angel, merely, bidden of God to mask His brightness beneath the figure and face of man, but not able really to assume our nature or partake our experience; because He is, as they behold Him, the Son of man, yet also truly the Son of God—whom neither chance, nor force, nor time, can strike with change; in whom eternal perfections are combined with a tender and suffering sympathy for our need—therefore do His messengers command that this Lord be trusted forever by those who seek for their salvation; therefore do they show Him the source and the support of that Divine life which through Him is revealed, to all the world, in all the ages. The mystery of Incarnation, which they recognize in Him, becomes the essential and unchangeable foundation on which is established whatever they afterward require or declare. R. S. S.

The plan of salvation was drawn in the eternal counsel. It is founded in the love of the Father; effected by the obedience and sufferings of His Son. Hence what was contrived in infinite wisdom above is laid as a sure foundation in the Church below, by the love and power of the Spirit, the Comforter. It is His peculiar office to lay this foundation in Zion, and to manifest and make known to the prophets and apostles, teachers and saints, that Jesus is the only foundation; as a stone for strength; a tried stone, approved of by the Father, and by His children in all ages; a precious corner-stone; the ornament and beauty, as well as strength and security, of the whole Church. Precious is Christ in all His offices to them that believe: a sure foundation; sure to all the seed; certain to all the purposes of their salvation. And, as the Lord the Spirit lays this foundation in the Church in the truth of doctrine, so also in the faith and experience of all redeemed souls. What the word speaks of Jesus, that we prove and find Him to be. This is our mercy. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” He shall possess such serenity and composure of mind that he shall not be frightened, in times of distress and calamity, to quit his confidence; not be ashamed of his hope in the Lord. He will, by faith, patiently wait and quietly hope for the fulfilment of every promise. Sin and Satan shall not overcome him. In the awful hour of death he shall not be confounded, because his heart standeth fast, believing in the Lord. And when Jesus, his Friend, appears, he shall stand forth with boldness; and shall find an abundant entrance into the presence of God and the Lamb, to live, and love, and reign in glory forever and ever. W. Mason

Jesus Christ is something to each of us. For you who have heard His name ever since you were children, your relation to Him settles your condition and your prospects, and moulds your character. Either He is for you the tried Corner-stone, the sure Foundation, on which whosoever builds will not be confounded, or He is a stone of stumbling, against which whosoever stumbles will be broken, and which will crush to powder whomsoever it falls upon. “This Child is set for the rise” or for the fall of all who hear His name; He leaves no man at the level at which He found him, but either lifts him up nearer to God and purity and joy, or sinks him into an ever-descending pit of darkening separation from all these. A. M.

17. Another thing God will do also. He will institute a process of simple and stern justice toward those guilty sinners who will not have salvation in His Son. The first clause does not mean that God will apply His measuring line to justice in the abstract, but that He will measure out and award to each sinner his doom in strict justice. He will use justice for His measuring line and judgment for His plumb line. The figure of a builder is still before the mind from the verse previous. The last clause portends those visitations of Divine justice which shall tear down and sweep away the refuges of the guilty. It shall avail them nothing that they think themselves securely sheltered. What will they do when the shelter itself shall be swept away in the dreadful storm!

18,19. God sought patiently and with assiduity long unwearied to impress a just sense of these truths upon their minds. Every other means failing, He comes at length to these appalling judgments as His last resort. H. C.

20. That in which they thought to shelter themselves proves insufficient to answer the intention: “The covering is narrower than that a man can wrap himself in it.” Those that do not build upon Christ as their foundation, but rest in a righteousness of their own, will prove in the end thus to have deceived themselves; they can never be easy, safe or warm; the bed is too short, the covering too narrow. H.

21. Judgment is God’s strange work, because His especial delight is in mercy. It is even His “strange task,” because He doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men. Dirks.—God, more tender than the indulgent mother, and more merciful than the pitiful judge, is willingly unwilling that any sinner should die. He punisheth no man as he is a man, but as he is a sinful man. He loves him, yet turns him over to justice. It is God’s work to punish, but it is withal His “strange work,”

His strange and foreign act, not “His good will and pleasure,” His nature and property being to have mercy on all men. Spencer.

Vengeance is one way in which God works, but it is not His usual one. The showers of mercy fall constantly, and become an ocean, while the angry and desolating storms are few; and He seems forced by our sins to send them, rather than by the promptings of His nature; and we find His reluctance to it thus expressed by His prophet: “The Lord shall rise up as in Mount Perazim, He shall be wroth as in the Valley of Gibeon, that He may do His work, His strange work, and bring to pass His act, His strange act.” “In this you observe,” as one has well remarked, “the work of wrath is a strange work, and the act of punishment a strange act. God strikes, but the striking might almost be declared foreign to His nature; it is necessary to the vindication of His attributes, but can hardly be said to be congenial with them. There is much in this to encourage the penitent, but not the presumptuous. God may be loth to punish, but nevertheless He will punish; and I am only impressed with a greater sense of the tremendousness of Divine wrath when I find that bringing it into act is an effort even to the Omnipotent. How weighty must that be which God Himself has difficulty in raising!” R. T.

23-29. This parable, which (as many of our Saviour’s parables) is borrowed from the husbandman’s calling, is ushered in with a solemn preface demanding attention, “He that has ears to hear, let him hear, hear and understand” (verse 23). H.—Men remember what they heed and regard. The wise man in the Book of Proverbs says, “Attend to my sayings; keep them in the midst of thine heart”—i.e., in a place where nothing can come to take them away. The memory may be called the chest or ark of Divine truths, and we should try and carefully retain them there. Isaiah says, “Hearken and hear my speech.” Now, hearkening denotes reverence and seriousness, as it is said, “The ears of them that hear shall hearken.” Reverence, then, and seriousness in the admission of the word are helps to us in the retaining of it. Truths are lost by inattention. T. Manton.

These lessons drawn from the processes of agriculture are in two parts; the first (verses 24-26) represents that the husbandman does not plough and harrow all the year, forever, as his only business, and without reference to seed-sowing and harvests. On the contrary, he always has his eye on the outcome, and shapes his ploughing to his desired results. God teaches him to do so; hence God must have wisdom sufficient to order His own processes of breaking up human hearts by discipline and judgment—processes somewhat analogous to the work of the plough and the harrow. (See Hosea 10:11-13.) The second part of the comparison (verses 27-29) is of the same general character. The husbandman threshes out his seed with instruments adapted to the grains in hand. The very fine seeds and stalks of the fitches and cummin (both garden vegetables used as condiments) he does not grind to atoms by driving over them his huge threshing wain. But he does use this heavy instrument in threshing his wheat [bread-corn], but he does not thresh this forever. There is a limit to the bruising which is useful for either the grain or the straw. As this huge threshing wain is often a symbol for stern and crushing afflictions, it must obviously be so applied here. God chastens in wisdom, evermore adapting His agencies to the case in hand. In the severest inflictions of His rod He goes the length of wisdom—no farther. Therefore “be ye not mockers” lest ye compel the Almighty to make your punishment indefinitely more rigorous and crushing. Remember, God seeks your reformation, and shapes His discipline to your case. Therefore do not compel Him to a degree of rigor which can be only painful to Him; only ruinous to yourself. H. C.

“Does the ploughman plough all day” and “break the clods” of his ground, that it may receive the seed, and does not God by His ministers break up the fallow ground? Does not the ploughman, when the ground is fitted for the seed, cast in the seed in its proper soil? He does so, and so the great God sows His word by the hand of His ministers (Matt. 13:19), who are to divide the word of truth, and give every one their portion. Whatever the soil of the heart is, there is some seed or other in the word proper for it. And as the word of God, so the rod of God is thus wisely made use of. Afflictions are God’s threshing instruments, designed to loosen us from the world, to part between us and our chaff, and to prepare us for use. And as to these, God will make use of them as there is occasion: but He will proportion them to our strength, they shall be no heavier than there is need. If the rod and the staff will answer the end, He will not make use of His cart-wheel and His horsemen. And where these are necessary, as for the bruising of the bread-corn (which will not otherwise be got clean from the straw), yet He will not be ever

threshing it, will not always chide, but His anger shall endure but for a moment; nor will He “crush under His feet the prisoners of the

earth.” And herein we must acknowledge Him “wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom.” H.