Isaiah 32
Butler5. These “flying birds,” being feminine, are the mother birds hovering round their young to protect them. As such flying birds do, so will the Lord defend His nestlings, however weak they may be in themselves. Our Saviour has nearly the same figure, “How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens” (Matt. 23:37). “Passing over” is the word made sacred in Hebrew history and literature on that eventful night when Egypt’s first-born fell, but the destroyer “passed over” the thresholds on which the blood of sprinkling had fallen. So under the shield of atoning blood and Divine mercy Israel is now safe. God will pass over her in a sense analogous to that ancient passing over. H. C.
7. Trust in idols and reliance upon human helpers are here, and often elsewhere, put together, as identical in principle, and closely connected in the experience of ancient Israel. A.
8,9. All the main features of the coming judgment are here given. The enemies would be overthrown by the sword of no mighty captain or numerous army, but by the direct visitation of the Lord of hosts. Their king would seek his safety by inglorious flight. The survivors, panic-struck and dismayed, would many of them be made captive; and those become a spoil and prey to others, who exacted tribute before. The crestfallen monarch would not pause in his flight till he reached Nineveh, his stronghold, “the dwelling-place of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions” (Nah. 2:11). His princes would also be terrified at the display of God’s mighty power. Jerusalem would prove to be indeed an Ariel, a fireplace of God, where His presence would be like a fiery furnace, to consume and destroy the mighty oppressors of His people, and put out their name for ever and ever. Birks.
32: 1 BEHOLD, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgement. 2 And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as 3 rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And the eyes 4 of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready 5 to speak plainly. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be 6 bountiful. For the vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise profaneness, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry, 7 and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the meek with lying words, even when the needy speak- 8 eth right. But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and in liberal things shall he continue.
9. Rise up, ye women that are at ease, and hear my voice; ye careless daughters, give ear 10 unto my speech. For days beyond a year shall ye be troubled, ye careless women: for the 11 vintage shall fail, the ingathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. 12, 13 They shall smite upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the 14 joyous city: for the palace shall be forsaken; the populous city shall be deserted; the hill 15 and the watch-tower shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks; until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and 16 the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgement shall dwell in the wilderness, and
17 righteousness shall abide in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; 18 and the effect of righteousness quietness and confidence for ever. And my people shall abide 19 in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. But it shall hail, 20 in the downfall of the forest; and the city shall be utterly laid low. Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth the feet of the ox and the ass.
Chap. 32. In this chapter the first eight verses constitute one distinct portion; the remaining twelve verses another. In the first part a new state of things appears, morally and politically—a king reigning for the ends of righteousness; the moral perceptions of the people quickened and corrected; their sentiments also brought back to truth and righteousness. The choice of construction lies between the theory of a general statement with no special, exclusive reference to any one king, and the theory of a primary reference to Hezekiah and a secondary one to the Messiah—the former in his character as a great moral reformer being considered as a sort of representative of the latter. I incline to this last-mentioned view. The second part (verses 9–20) makes a special call to the careless women of Jerusalem; predicts grievous calamities which shall continue until a precious effusion of God’s spirit shall bring the people back to God and righteousness. Then prosperity shall ensue.
1. The scenes now before the prophet stand in close relation with the recent past. The king and people have ceased to trust in Egypt; the blindness and unbelief which turned their eye of hope from God to Egypt have passed away, and better moral vision has taken its place; Divine judgments have been sanctified to the people; and not least, the signal overthrow of the Assyrian host has made solemn impressions of the power, the faithfulness and the loving care of God for His Zion. Now the good Hezekiah appears, ruling for the interests and ends of righteousness and calling the people back to the pure worship of their God. Hence this new scene has in its foreground the good Hezekiah and shows how he reigns—viz., for the purpose of promoting intrinsic righteousness; a righteous heart and life as toward both their fellow-men and their God. The recent history of the nation and the points brought forward in the three next preceding chapters accord well with the interpretation which applies this verse primarily to Hezekiah. This general accord becomes an argument at once legitimate and strong for its reference in its primary sense to him.
2. In its primary sense this must mean, Behold, how one good man may become a great moral power for the protection of the wronged and for the comfort and happiness of a whole people. The figures to represent this are plain as well as beautiful; a shelter from fierce wind; a covert from storm; or like rivers over a dry desert; or the shadow of a great rock in a land where men become weary with toil, heat and thirst, and find no shade of leaf or dell—naught but a great rock to cast a shadow for their shelter from the sun. These are lively emblems of the rich, exhaustless blessings that have come to our lost race through the one great man Jesus, in whom the Divine Messiah became incarnate. How distinctly the prophet had this in view it may not be possible for us to determine. The fulness and wealth of his figures seem to favor this reference, and yet more does the allusion (verse 15) to the “pouring out of the spirit” as the special agent and cause of this great moral renovation and its consequent fruits of righteousness and peace. H. C.
2. Not more beautiful and suggestive than logical are the thoughts as the spirit of inspiration has given them utterance. “And a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Refuge, refreshment, repose, or deliverance, life, peace, is the order of the spirit. Christ, the Divine Man, is the peace or repose of the believing soul. Birks.—In these words, so full of encouragement and hope, the prophet seems again to point to the coming of Christ—the theme which was the undertone of his entire prophecy. Although he may have had a primary reference to the good king Hezekiah, in whose reign justice, peace and the reviving of pure religion succeeded the oppression, turbulence and idolatry of the reign of Ahaz, yet the full glory of the restoration here depicted could be realized only under the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah. How perfect the sense of rest, security and refreshment indicated in these promises! The images are all borrowed from the climate of Palestine, where the traveller may be suddenly overtaken by a scorching wind or a violent tempest, or find himself under the blaze of noon, remote from water or shade. How welcome the sight of a shelter, the sound of a gurgling brook, even the shadow of a rock in which one may rest till the heat is over! Christ is that covert of defence, that fountain of refreshment, that rock of shelter and shade. In Him we find refuge from calamity, solace for grief and loss, supply for inward want, rest from care. And while He gives to us personally this spiritual rest and comfort, the working of His principles tends to a condition of outward peace and safety. Therefore should we sow in hope, and wait for His blessed appearing. J. P. T.
The only reference of these words which gives full weight to their wealth of blessing is to regard them as a prophecy of the man—Christ Jesus; hiding in whom we are safe, “coming” to whom we “never thirst,” guarded and blessed by whom no weariness can befall us, and dwelling in whom this weary world shall be full of refreshment and peace! I do not need to point out the exquisite beauty of the imagery or the pathos and peace that breathe in the majestic rhythm of the words. There is something more than poetical beauty or rhetorical amplification of a single thought in those three clauses. The “hiding-place” and “covert” refer to one class of wants; the “river of water in a dry place” to yet another; and “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land” to yet a third. And though they be tinged and dyed in Eastern imagery, the realities of life in Western lands and in all ages give them a deeper beauty than that of lovely imagery, and are the best keys to understanding their meaning. The three classes of promises have correlative with them three phases of man’s condition, three diverse aspects of his need and misery. The “covert” and the “hiding-place” imply tempest and storm and danger; the “river of water” implies drought and thirst; “the shadow of a great rock” implies lassitude and languor, fatigue and weariness. The view of life that arises from the combination of all three bears upon its front the signature of truth in the very fact that it is a sad view. For notwithstanding all that we may say concerning the beauty and the blessedness scattered broadcast round about us, notwithstanding that we believe, and hold as for our lives the “happy faith that all which we behold is full of blessing,” it needs but a very short experience of this life, and but a superficial examination of our own histories and our own hearts, in order to come to the conclusion that the world is full of strange and terrible sadness, that every life has dark tracts and long stretches of sombre tint, and that no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light and flings no shadow on the canvas. There is no depth in a Chinese picture because there is no shade. It is the wrinkles and marks of tear and wear that make the expression in a man’s portrait. “Life’s sternest painter is the best.” The gloomy thoughts which are charged against Scripture are the true thoughts about man, and the world as man has made it. Not, indeed, that life needs to be so, but that by reason of our own evil and departure from God there have come in as a disturbing element the retributive consequences of our own godlessness, and these have made danger where else were safety, thirst were else were rivers of water, and weariness and lassitude where else were strength and bounding hope! But there is a man, our brother, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, who can be to single souls the adequate object of their perfect trust, the abiding home of their deepest love, the unfailing supply for their profoundest wants. There is one man, whom it is wise and blessed to look to as the exclusive source of all our peace, the absolute Ruler of all our lives. There is a man in whom we find all that we have vainly sought in men. There is a man who can be to all ages and to the whole race their refuge, their satisfaction, their rest. “It behooved Him to be made in all points like unto His brethren,” that His succor might be ever near and His sympathy sure. The man Christ Jesus, who, being man, is God manifest in the flesh, exercises in one and the same act the offices of Divine pity and human compassion, of Divine and human guardianship, of Divine and human love.
“And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought.”
The dreams of weary hearts that have longed for an impossible perfection are all below the reality. The fact surpasses all expectation. It is more than all prophecies, it is more than all hopes, it is more than all praise. It is God’s unspeakable gift. Well might an angel voice proclaim the mystery of love, “Unto you is born a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” The ancient promise of our text is a history now. A man has been and is all these things for us. A. M.
3,4. The main feature of these promises is the perfecting of faculties, previously defective and imperfect. Eyes that were dim shall see clearly, listless ears shall hearken, the rash and hasty become thoughtful, and understand knowledge; and tongues that stammered before shall utter clearly the praises of God. Birks.
4. It seems more natural to understand the bodily defects here mentioned as denoting others of an intellectual and spiritual nature, neglect and ignorance of spiritual matters. The minds of men shall begin to be directed to religious truth, and delivered from ignorance and error in relation to it.
5. When men’s eyes are thus opened, they will no longer confound the essential distinctions of moral character, because they will no longer be deceived by mere appearances. Things will then be called by their right names. The fool (in the emphatic scriptural sense, the wicked man) will no longer be called noble (men will no longer attach ideas of dignity and greatness to the name or person of presumptuous sinners), and the churl (or niggard) will no more be spoken of as liberal. A.
6. This verse endorses the correct moral sentiments of which he had just spoken, declaring that they are in accordance with facts and righteousness. The vile person ought to be no more called liberal “for” he will speak villainy, etc. The extreme inhumanities here adduced are manifestly thought of as outrages against God, and practically as involving the worst forms of error as to Him and as to the duties we owe Him.
7. The “churl” (a man both niggardly and covetous) should by no means be called “bountiful”—i.e., liberal, generous, for his means of enriching himself (“his instruments”) will be bad. He will devise crafty schemes to destroy the poor with lying words (overreaching, defrauding, getting the advantage unjustly) even when the poor man has justice on his side—i.e., as said here, when his speaking (statements) are all right (in Heb. “judgment”). They that will be rich fall into this ruinous temptation to overestimate their own claims, and underestimate or even quite disregard the claims and rights of others, and especially of those who are defenceless against their aggressions.
8. On the other hand, the really liberal, noble-hearted man will approve himself by his deeds. He will devise not “wicked devices,” but “liberal things,” and upon these he will stand in the sense of persevering in them and building up himself upon them. Hence, as the conclusion of this special subject, that is a blessed state of society in which men are estimated according to what they truly are and the name they bear in common parlance witnesses truly to the character of their deeds. When every man’s reputation and name shall be as his heart and life, virtue will have its due honor and vice its merited disgrace.
One that is truly liberal, and deserves the honor of being called so, makes it his business to do good to everybody, according as his sphere is. Observe, 1. The care he takes and the contrivances he has to do good. He devises liberal things; as much as the churl or niggard projects how to save and lay up what he has for himself only, so much the good, charitable man projects how to use and lay out what he has in the best manner for the good of others. Charity must be directed by wisdom, and liberal things done prudently and with device, that the good intention of them may be answered, that it may not be charity misplaced. The liberal man, when he has done all the liberal things that are in his own power, devises liberal things for others to do according to their power, and puts them upon doing them. 2. The comfort he takes and the advantage he has in doing good; by liberal things he shall stand or be established. The providence of God will reward him for his liberality with a settled prosperity and an established reputation. The grace of God will give him abundance of satisfaction and confirmed peace in his own bosom; what disquiets others shall not disturb him; his heart is fixed. This is the recompense of charity (Ps. 112 : 5, 6). H.
Let it not be supposed that liberality is confined to the giving of money for the doing of good. A fair and open demeanor; a candid consideration of the rights and feelings of others; a relaxation or a waiving of our own rights when the pursuing of them is likely to be injurious; an avoidance of all captiousness and contention; a scorning to take advantage, and a willingness that others should be benefited as well as ourselves—these are some of the ways in which true liberality will manifest itself. Ferguson.
“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” That saying takes heaven’s point of view in regard to what makes true blessedness. The world says the exact opposite, because the world is based on self-regard. God is Himself the great example of the higher truth, because God is love. He is “the giving God,” therefore He is “the blessed God.” Love ever delights to bestow. In the measure in which we drink in Christ’s spirit we shall know the blessedness which filled His heart, and find in imparting a purer joy than in acquiring. Unless we have begun to know and feel this, what token do we show of being Christ’s? A. M.
Giving is the nobler part of man, the side of him that lies highest and nearest to God. We of the present generation enjoy abundant opportunity for the exercise of this grace, if this grace live in our hearts. The heathen are in great need; their need is better known and their locality more easily reached than in former times. At home, too, the harvest is great and ripe, and ready to perish; it lies, moreover, close to the reaper’s hand. Those who count it blessed to do and give may be very happy in our day, for the sources of their enjoyment are accessible and full. Arnot.
There is no necessary antagonism between material and spiritual wealth. Both come from God. Moses brought down from Sinai this message to the Hebrews. “Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for He it is who giveth the power to get wealth.” That message is not obsolete. It is a message for the men of all lands and ages. It is right to pray for temporal prosperity. But we cannot pray for it so as to be heard and answered unless we ask also for the true riches, the faith that will enable us to use our gold and silver aright, to lay up treasures in heaven by employing them for the good of our fellow-men and for the glory of God. The man who, in the midst of his abundance, can look up with a grateful heart and say, “All things are of Thee,” and who, trusting that the giver will help him to keep and to use aright what he has given, lives and gives as a steward of the Lord, that man can enjoy his wealth here. It is worth more to him now a “hundredfold” than the wealth which is selfishly sought and hoarded. And when the earth and all that is therein is burned up, he will have durable riches in heaven. Babb.
The unvarying law of God which attaches an obligation to every opportunity and places a duty over against every right extends to the use of wealth, as well as to the use of the other powers which are under the control of a man’s will. Wealth is power. The possession of wealth gives a man potential power of service. By this ability to serve which wealth confers, its owner is bound actually to serve the best interests of his fellow-men. And for the unselfish use of all his powers, every man must give an account to the God who has taught us that no man liveth to himself alone. M. E. Gates.
Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. Use that which is so generally abused that men shall praise and bless you. The possessors of wealth should feel themselves called of God to become the benefactors of the race, to lay plans and create institutions that shall become fountains of widespread and permanent good. He who uses his wealth in this way, making it the instrument of an intelligent beneficence, will not grind the faces of the poor nor defraud the laborer of his hire. The Church and the world will always need the gifts of the poor, and we are warned not to despise the widow’s mite; but there are and there will continue to be demands for alleviating suffering and increasing general comfort, that can be met only as the prospered few hear in them the voice of God. Wealth has its opportunity and use; and when it shall be rightly used everywhere and by all, the poorest will have occasion for thanksgiving. Behrends.
9-20. Long desolations are here foretold, to cease only by a large outpouring of the spirit of God. The women of Israel are first addressed, as sharing largely in the sin of the people. The address is not to be confined to Jerusalem and Judah alone. The warning is general, and reaches from Isaiah’s days till the wasting is complete. Birks.
13-15. Though the immediate bearing of these words is, in all probability, upon the state and prospects of the Jewish people, yet by parity of reasoning it may be extended much farther, and may be considered as assigning the reason why the nations of the earth continue in so wretched a state, with respect to things spiritual and divine, as that which they now exhibit; and they may be considered as directing our expectations and regulating our confidence respecting the final termination of this state of things, teaching that it will come to an end, that a great and beneficial change will take place, but not till the Spirit be poured out from on high. Then, and not till then, will “the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.” R. Hall.
The contrasts are most impressive. The palace, once the scene of feasting and merriment, is forsaken and lonely. The peopled city, once filled with the hum and murmur of thronging multitudes, is a deserted solitude. Fortress and tower, once garrisoned by the strength of the land, are to be dens for the beasts of the field. The careless mirth of luxurious women is to be replaced by the joy of wild asses, that rove carelessly amid deserted ruins. These desolations, caused by national sin, will cease only when true repentance has followed the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Then the wilderness will become a planted field, like the vineyard and oliveyard, and the planted field like the forest of Lebanon, with its glorious clothing of lofty pines and stately cedars. The barren will become beautiful, and the beautiful majestic and sublime. Such a pentecostal blessing still awaits the land of promise at the final recovery and ingathering of Israel. Birks.
15. It can scarcely be doubted that this allusion to the Spirit has a somewhat special reference to that great effusion with which the gospel age opened. Yet this should not be pressed so as to exclude other cases of like sort. The passage rather teaches the general doctrine that moral degeneracy brings upon men physical desolation and that both the degeneracy and the desolation will continue according to the laws of human nature and of society, until God’s Spirit is poured out from on high. The recuperative power which redeems society and recalls men to penitence and a new life is not in themselves, nor in God’s judgments alone, but really in the Spirit of God. Hence the Jewish nation continued impenitent and unreclaimed through the wicked reign of Ahaz, and onward until the effusions of God’s Spirit in the times of Hezekiah. On a yet broader scale, the nation, save at few exceptional periods, declined in its moral tone during the ages until their Messiah came, and yet more rapidly during His earthly life and public ministry until the Spirit was gloriously shed forth on the day of Pentecost; then blessed life came up upon that death, and a precious remnant were redeemed. H. C.
The truth of Christ taught and preached, accompanied by the Spirit of Christ, is the agency of the world’s renovation. It is this that is to change the whole moral and spiritual condition of this disordered and suffering world, the means by which the conquests of this new kingdom are to be achieved, its government established over the life, its principles implanted in the heart, and the millennial blessings of its beneficent reign bestowed on universal man. Gospel truth is the instrumental means, and the Holy Spirit, who is so emphatically termed in the New Testament “the Spirit of Christ,” is the quickening and efficient power. Loraine.
The native character of man is an odious character; it has no moral beauty until it is transformed by the power of God. The more immediate effects of that transformation are beautiful to look upon, though they present but the faint lineaments of the veriest babe in Christ. Its first emotions of love, its first beamings of hope, its first lispings of prayer, its first notes of praise, how beautiful and heavenly they are! We are told that “there is joy among the angels of God when one sinner repenteth.” A beautiful sight it is when, though he treads the straight and narrow way alone, he enters upon the path of life. There are thoughts of wisdom in his bosom, and there are transparent emotions and heaven-imparted purposes of devotedness to God, which are in sympathy with angels. It is a renovated mind which he possesses, one that “is come to excellent ornaments,” and one that will be recognized and honored in the day “when the Lord of hosts shall make up His jewels.” And when such instances of moral transformation are multiplied and simultaneous, as they often are when the Spirit is poured from on high, what scenes of beauty does the eye rest upon! How much more beautiful than dewy landscape or blushing morn when “the desert thus blossoms as the rose, and the wilderness becomes as the garden of the Lord.” H. B. Smith.
16,17. Whether men’s external circumstances correspond to a wilderness or to a fruitful field, the fruits of the Spirit of God in their souls will be judgment and righteousness. How little those fruits of the Spirit are dependent on earthly conditions, on the trivial circumstances of wealth and prosperity, affliction or poverty, all experience and observation testify. In verse 17 “righteousness” must be taken in a broad sense, involving primarily a just government, but including also righteousness in all the relations and transactions of life—righteousness between man and man; righteousness in the family as well as in general society; and radically righteousness toward God, the fear of His name and reverence for His law. The fruit of such righteousness is forcibly said to be “peace;” and since the last clause is strictly parallel, its fruit is also “quietness and assurance forever.” Being at peace with God as well as with each other, men who are thoroughly, religiously righteous, repose sweetly in God and rest in the assurance of His love forever. H. C.
17. “Inward peace” follows upon the indwelling of righteousness (verse 16). Those in whom that work is wrought shall experience this blessed product of it. It is itself peace, and the effect of it “quietness and assurance forever,” a holy serenity and security of mind, by which the soul enjoys itself and its God, and it is not in the power of this world to disturb it in those enjoyments. Peace and quietness and everlasting assurance may be expected, and shall be found, in the way and work of righteousness. True satisfaction is to be had only in true religion, and there it is to be had without fail. H.—The peace which is found in the Christian’s heart grows out of something else which God has put into the Christian’s heart. It is the fruit of that grace and holiness, the result of those pure and heavenly dispositions, which are wrought within him by the Holy Ghost. Holiness is the root of happiness. It contains within itself the germ, the elements and materials, of it. Hence the Lord says, “The work of righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.” C. Bradley.
As there is but one atonement by which guilty sinners are pardoned, so there is but one righteousness, even Christ’s perfect righteousness, by which alone unrighteous sinners are made righteous in God’s sight. He accepts no other. His law is honored by no other. The Scriptures reveal no other. Faith receives no other. The Spirit bears witness to no other. Sinners have no other to stand in before God, and enjoy peace with Him. But possessing this righteousness by faith, we enjoy a peace which passeth all understanding. There are many things from a sinful nature, Satan and the law, to disquiet our minds daily. But the blessed effect of Jesus’ righteousness is quietness to the conscience. This comforting thought, my Father hath accepted me through the righteousness which my glorious Redeemer wrought out for me, quiets my mind. I am satisfied. I can seek no better. I dare trust in no other. W. Mason.
Peace is sure; peace with God, peace in my own tranquil and righteous heart, peace for a world from out of which sin shall be scourged; peace is sure because righteousness is ours, since it is Christ’s. And for ourselves, if we want—and who does not want?—to “be found of Him in peace, without spot, blameless,” let us see to it that we “are found, not having our own righteousness, but that which is of God through faith.” Christ is King of Peace only to those to whom He has become, through their humble trust, the King of Righteousness. Anon.
The Christian, “being justified by faith,” he has first “peace with God;” then he “joys in God by whom he has received the atonement;” and then he enters into that “great peace” which they have “who love God’s law.” Taught to long and pray and labor for conformity to His holy precepts, he finds that “the fruit of righteousness is peace, and the effect thereof quietness and assurance forever.” And this is the Christian’s peace. It has as its basis forgiving mercy; it is connected with a discovery of this mercy; it proceeds from a conviction of a real and peculiar interest in it; it is established and enlarged and sweetened by that purification of the mind, which is the work of the Holy Ghost. Bradley.
18. And my people shall abide in a home of peace, in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places. There is something tranquillizing in the very sound of this delightful promise, which, as usual, is limited to God’s own people, implying either that all should have become such, or that those who had not should be still perturbed and restless. A.
20. Taken figuratively, as the exigencies of the context require, the prophet declares the blessedness of those who, however disturbed society may be, or however much the nation may rock under hail-storms and bewail its fallen cities, yet press on with unwearied assiduity, doing what good they can, sowing seed unto salvation beside all waters and pushing every fit agency wisely and without faltering. The spirit of the verse suggests these words of the psalmist: “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Ps. 126: 6). In Christ’s gospel kingdom there will be such faithful workers. The words that affirm their blessedness of course assume their existence and their faithful work. H. C.