Isaiah 48

48:1 HEAR ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah; which swear by the name of the LORD, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness. For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel; the LORD of hosts is his name. I have declared the former things from of old; yea, they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them: suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; therefore I have declared it to thee from of old; before it came to pass I shewed it thee: lest thou shouldst say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, and my molten image, hath commanded them. Thou hast heard it; behold all this; and ye, will ye not declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, which thou hast not known. They are created now, and not from of old; and before this day thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldst say, Behold, I knew them. Yea, thou heardest not; yea, thou knewest not; yea, from of old thine ear was not opened: for I knew that thou didst deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb. For my name’s sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off. Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, for mine own sake, will I do it; for how should my name be profaned? and my glory will I not give to another. Hearken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel my called: I am he; I am the first, I also am the last. Yea, mine hand hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spread out the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together. Assemble yourselves, all ye, and hear; which among them hath declared these things? The LORD hath loved him: he shall perform his pleasure on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the Chaldeans. I, even I, have spoken; yea, I have called him: I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous. Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; from the beginning I have not spoken in secret; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord God hath sent me, and his spirit. Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD thy God, which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldst go. Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: thy seed also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the grains thereof: his name should not be cut off nor destroyed from before me. Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans; with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth: say ye, The LORD hath redeemed his servant Jacob. And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out. There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked.

Chap. 48. The first cycle of the later prophecies, after announcing the victories of Cyrus and the fall of Babylon, closes in this chapter with a fresh voice of rebuke and encouragement to Israel. The wisdom of God, revealed in the fulfilment of the “former things,” was to prepare them for “new things,” or those times of Messiah, of which fuller predictions are now to follow. The chapter has two equal divisions, each opening with a call to listen to the voice of God. The first is mainly rebuke, the second encouragement. The former, again, applies chiefly to the times from Isaiah till the Return, and the latter from the Return to the coming of Messiah; while the whole makes a transition from the days of the prophecy to the times of the New Testament. Birks.

From his digression with respect to the causes and effects of the catastrophe of Babylon, the prophet now returns to his more general themes, and winds up the first great division (chaps. 40-48) of the later prophecies by a reiteration of the same truths and arguments which run through the previous portion of it, with some variations and additions. Although Israel is God’s chosen and peculiar people, he is in himself unworthy of the honor and unfaithful to the trust (verses 1, 2). Former predictions had been uttered expressly to prevent his ascribing the event to other gods (verses 3-5). For the same reason new predictions will be uttered now of events which have never been distinctly foretold (verses 6-8). God’s continued favor to His people has no reference to merit upon their part, but is the fruit of His own sovereign mercy and intended to promote His own designs (verses 9-11). He again asserts His own exclusive deity, as proved by the creation of the world, by the prediction of events still future, and especially by the raising up of Cyrus, as a promised instrument to execute His purpose (verses 12-16). The sufferings of Israel are the fruit of his own sin, his prosperity and glory of God’s sovereign grace (verses 17-19). The first part closes as it opened with a promise of deliverance from exile, accompanied, in this case, by a solemn limitation of the promise to its proper objects (verses 20-22).

It is evident that these are the same elements which enter into all the later prophecies thus far, and that these elements are here combined in very much the usual proportions, although not in precisely the same shape and order. The most novel feature of this chapter is the fulness with which one principal design of prophecy and the connection between Israel’s sufferings and his sins, are stated. A.

The moral aim of the chapter is obvious. Its bearings are naturally wholesome. In Isaiah’s time and onward to the coming of Christ there was painful occasion for such an expose of the imperfect piety of God’s professed people. It was needful in order to put their sins distinctly before their own eyes; to impress them with the fact that God saw those sins and estimated their guilt perfectly; to induce repentance; to keep them humble; to prevent their being elated with their distinguished honor as God’s chosen people; to make them feel that this distinction was not due to their merit, but to the fact that God had purposes of glorious mercy for our race and chose them as His instruments in His sovereignty for His higher ends and not at all because of their good deserts. Remarkably the points brought forward and made to bear upon the chosen people, contemplated thus as very defective in their piety, are to a great extent the same which have been most prominent in the previous chapters—e.g., the existence, perfections and creatorship of God; His foreknowledge as evinced repeatedly in prophecy; His wonderful providence in raising up Cyrus, and His great mercies toward His people.

1. This verse strikes the key-note of the chapter in respect to the point of view in which God’s people are contemplated. They are insincere and untruthful in their religious professions. H. C.—When Isaiah wrote these later visions, the ten tribes had been wholly carried away. These men of Judah made mention of God’s name in vows, oaths, prayers and sacrifices, but not in truth or righteousness, for their services were heartless and insincere. Birks.

3. In chaps. 40-48 we find the greatest emphasis laid upon the circumstances that the deliverance of Israel from the Babylonian captivity had been long predicted by prophecy, and that the prophet foretells the appearance of Cyrus before it takes place. These chapters maintain also that the prediction of such particular events is a proof that the God of Israel is the true God, while on the other hand they assert that the vanity of the heathen gods is manifested by their inability to foretell anything. When it is said (42:9), “New things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them,” the idea of pure prediction could hardly be more precisely expressed. The unbelief of the people is here represented as without excuse, for the very reason that the predictions of the prophets were authenticated by their fulfilment. Oehler.

4,5. The special reasons assigned here for the mission of the prophets and for the messages they bore reveal a degree of apostasy that is startling. Because the people were morally hardened so that their neck was an iron sinew (stiff-necked), and their brow unyielding as brass; and lest, if God had not predicted the events beforehand, they would have attributed them to their idol gods. H. C.

“Thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass” is the language which God uses to set forth the tremendous strength and determined obduracy of the soul’s protracted resistance against Him. In the compass of the Scriptures and of human thought no metaphors stronger or more striking can be found—the neck one consolidated iron sinew, which will not yield to any force, the brow brass, impenetrable to any weapon. By these bold figures God exhibits the utter hardness and unsubmissiveness of the long disobedient heart, its utter invulnerableness to the sword of His own Spirit. And we only need look at the number and the might of the influences exerted by God Himself, which the long resisting spirit actually withstands, to see that these figures are not in the least overdrawn. Begirt with all the motives which time and eternity, heaven, earth and hell can bind around him—motives that combine the urgency of all the goodness, the mercies and the judgments of God, that reach into eternity and compass all the joys of the redeemed and all the woes of the doomed, and added to these the power of conscience and the strivings of the Holy Ghost, the hardened sinner, with neck of iron and brazen brow, defiantly withstands all; nay, in the strength of a will long practiced and indurated in evil doing boldly grapples with and breaks them all asunder! B.

6,7. These prophecies are brought out now and not of old, yet before thou hadst heard anything of these events, lest if it had been otherwise, thou wouldest have said, I knew that myself. God must needs make the evidence of His prescience in prophecy and of His hand in fulfilling it very conclusive, even resistless, or those hardened and idol-worshipping men will deny Him the honor of it and claim it for their gods, or insist that their own sagacity had already seen it. A dark view, indeed, of their perverseness and moral blindness!

8. The Lord knew they would only pervert and abuse the light He should give them, and therefore He gave them light only in small amount. Hence these hardened, perverse men received far less light from prophecy than they otherwise would, because the Lord knew they would not make a good use of it. H. C.

9-11. The deliverance of God’s people out of their captivity in Babylon was a thing upon many accounts so improbable that there was need of line upon line for the encouragement of the faith and hope of God’s people concerning it. Two things were discouraging to them: their own unworthiness that God should do it for them and the many difficulties in the thing itself; now, in these verses, both these discouragements are removed, for here is a reason why God would do it for them, though they were unworthy; not for their sake, be it known to them, but “for His name’s sake, for His own sake.”

10. Though He does not find them meet for His favor, He will make them so. And this accounts for His bringing them into the trouble, and continuing them in it so long as He did; it was not to cut them off, but to do them good; it was to refine them, but not as silver, not so thoroughly as men refine their silver, which they continue in the furnace till all the dross is separated from it; if God should take that course with them, they would be always in the furnace, for they are all dross, and as such might justly be put away as reprobate silver

(Jer. 6:30). He therefore takes them as they are, refined in part only, and not thoroughly. “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction, I have made thee a choice one by the good which the affliction has done thee, and then designed thee for great things.” Many have been brought home to God as chosen vessels and a good work of grace been begun in them in the furnace of affliction. Affliction is no bar to God’s choice, but subservient to His purpose. H.

A strain of theocratic sovereignty runs through all the teachings of the book on the origin of sorrow. Sorrow never happens; it is inflicted. It never springs up in a night; it is foreordained. God cared enough for the sufferer to think of him, to individualize him from the uncounted millions of the universe, to plan the outline of his destiny and to select and arrange his appointed discipline; and this long before he was born. Every one of us is enclosed in a golden network of eternal and benignant decrees. Phelps.

The scope of God in the afflictions of His people is not their hurt, but good; it is not to destroy them for their sin, but to destroy sin in them; it is not to withdraw Himself from them, but to draw them nearer to Himself. All the hurt that the Lord intends us by any affliction is but to get out our dross—to bring us from those things that will undo and ruin us forever. And how great an argument of the goodness of God is it that He designeth the evils which we suffer in these dying bodies to heal the evils and help on the good of our immortal souls! That’s all the hurt that the Lord means us. And the Lord’s heart is so much in this design (the return of those He afflicts from their iniquity) that He seems confident of it that when they are in affliction surely they will return. Take heed you be not found disappointing Him of His purpose. Caryl.

Neither our toils nor our tribulations enter into the price of our redemption; but they are essential elements in our growth in Christian character. For the present they do not “seem to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward they yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” God’s end in all that He lays upon us is “our profit that we may be partakers of His holiness.” To many God’s afflictive providences are stumbling-blocks. Why does He afflict? Why demand self denial and cross-bearing of all? Why lay the rod of chastisement upon His best-loved ones? Why press the cup of bitterness persistently to the lips of His dearest ones? The answer is given in the figure of the fine gold which has been purified in fire. “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction” is God’s own explanation of the life history of many of His most eminent disciples. W. E. Moore.

The unaccountable severities of human experience—the woes of broken health and grim depression; the agonies by which human bodies or human hearts are wrenched for whole years; the wrongs of orphanage or feebleness; pestilence, fire, flood, tempest and famine—how can a good God launch His bolts on men, we ask, in severities like these? And the sufferers themselves sometimes wonder, even in their faith, how it is that if God is a Father, He can let fall on His children such hail storms of inevitable, unmitigated disaster. No, suffering mortal! a truce to all such complainings. These are only God’s merciful indirections, fomentations of trouble and sorrow that He is applying, to soften the rugged and hard will in you. These pains are only switches to turn you off from the track of His coming retributions. If your great, proud nature could be won to the real greatness of character by a tenderer treatment, do you not see, from all God’s gentle methods of dealing with mankind, that He would gladly soften your troubles? And if diamonds are not polished by soap or oil, or even by any other stone, but only by their own fine dust, why should you complain that God is tempering you to your good only by such throes and lacerations and wastings of life as are necessary? Bushnell.

Grace in the saints is often as fire hid in the embers, affliction is the bellows to blow it up into a flame. The Lord makes the house of bondage a friend to our grace; now faith and patience act their part; the darkness of the night cannot hinder the brightness of a star; so the more the diamond is cut, the more it sparkles; and the more God afflicts us, the more our graces cast a sparkling lustre. Watson.

Every child of God is led, instructed by the Spirit; and is also corrected, “the sufferings of this present world” thus prepare for “the glory which shall be revealed in us.” That is a very spiritual prayer, “Take me, break me, make me.” Sometimes God cannot make us until He first breaks us. I saw a golden cup made of old gold coins; they had lost the original image and superscription, and had been put into the melting pot and wrought into a new and beautiful vessel. Sometimes God takes sinners from whom His image and supersuperscription have been worn off in a world of sin; He takes them and breaks them in pieces and melts them and then makes out of them a vessel unto honor. Peter speaks of the “trial of faith,” “much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire,” “that it might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” A goldsmith makes a chalice for a king’s table. He first refines the metal till all the dross is out of it, and then he stamps it approved; that is praise; then he moulds it for the noble ends to which it is destined; that is honor; then he takes the graving tool and polishing instrument, covers it with ornamental inscriptions and devices, and sets it round with gems until it flashes back the many colors of the rainbow; that is glory. So the Lord puts you into His crucible, refines away your dross, and marks you with His approval; that is praise or approbation. Then He shapes you into a vessel for holy uses; that is honor. Then He grinds you on the wheel of affliction, and finishes you with His polishing instrument until you reflect the glorious likeness of His dear son, and that is glory. Pierson.

As to the effects of sorrow upon human character there can be no ground for dispute or question. Some natures are elevated, purified and ennobled by sorrow; others are shrivelled, warped and embittered. In some, sorrow arouses and deepens the sympathies, broadens the charity and softens and purifies the whole nature. All the graces of the spirit seem to take deep and abiding root in the heart thus softened, and as some of the most wonderful and beautiful flowers burst into full bloom only in the night, so do these graces bloom and dispense their fragrance in the darkness of affliction; convincing us that, as in the case of night-blooming plants, some wonderful Divine impulse is behind these manifestations, the result of some secret communication of the Divine power and life. On the other hand it is equally apparent that “the sorrow of this world worketh death.” All those sorrows that come from the disappointment of worldly ambitions, from inability or unwillingness to exercise self-denial or to submit patiently to the inevitable crosses of life, from failure to curb the temper and the tongue, from envy and strife and self-seeking, from crushed vanity and unattainable worldly desires, all these constitute the sorrow of the world. It finds no alleviation in anything that the Gospel has to offer; it knows nothing of the comfort that the resigned and submissive heart receives from the Divine Comforter. It has none of the supporting, inspiring, strengthening elements that the Christian heart alone can know. And so we see that sorrow, according as it is received, is either “a saviour of life unto life, or of death unto death.” Interior.

11. The terms are comprehensive and contain a statement of the general doctrine, as the sum of the whole argument, that what Jehovah does for His own people is in truth done not for any merit upon their part, but to protect His own Divine honor. A.

12. His regard for the glory of His name moved Him to appeal yet again to their moral sense. Let My people, called mercifully to be My own, listen to My voice, declaring that I am God alone. This fact bore directly and powerfully against their propensity to idols. It was also an impressive fact, apart from its relations to idol worship. No truths are more vital to piety than the existence and perfections of the one glorious God.

13. The last clause reads literally, “I am calling them; they stand up together.” Hence it should naturally refer, not to the original creation of the heavenly bodies, but to God’s present control over them. They obey His orders as His willing servants. He calls; they stand forth promptly to do His bidding. God’s agency is no less active and essential in sustaining every star and planet in its sphere than in their original creation. H. C.

Some scientists say that the evolution of worlds by merely natural forces and laws is a matter of established science; that inasmuch as the nebular hypothesis will fully account for everything we find in the heavens without calling in the aid of the supernatural, it is unphilosophical and unreasonable to go outside of nature for its explanation. The testimony of Sir John Herschel, by far the most accomplished of English astronomers since Newton, to the insufficiency of the nebular hypothesis to account for the heavenly bodies, has been greatly strengthened by more recent researches. In fact, the hypothesis, so far as it proposes to explain the heavens without a Deity, has become so burdened with difficulties and insuperables that it no longer deserves serious consideration. On the other hand, the only competing cosmogony, the theistic, while perfectly sufficient and, a priori, at least as credible as any, is greatly the simplest, the surest, the safest, the sublimest, the most salutary and the most in accordance with the convictions and traditions of mankind, especially of the most enlightened and moral part of mankind. In each of these respects it has almost infinitely the advantage over its competitor; and according to the maxims and practice of philosophy in other things, such an aggregate superiority as this ought to cause theism to be promptly accepted and fully rested on as the true explanation of nature. Burr.

15. The word “I,” thrice repeated, makes God’s agency in calling forth Cyrus trebly emphatic. The Lord first called him by name; then brought him forth in His providence, and gave him complete success.

16. Christ appears here as the author and fountain of prophecy; “I have not spoken in secret from the beginning.” Also as the God of universal providence; “from the time that it was, there am I”—i.e., from the time that these prophecies respecting the restoration by means of Cyrus began to be fulfilled, I was there, actively energizing in providence to fulfil My purposes. Now I have a special mission to My people. “The Lord God hath sent me with His Spirit”—filling Me with the Spirit, and thus anointing and endowing Me for My work. That the Son of God, the promised Messiah, is the author and fountain of prophecy, inspiring and directing the prophets of the ancient dispensation, follows naturally from the New Testament doctrine that He is “head over all things to the Church” (Eph. 1:22). Being the Divine regent who rules this world for the interests of His spiritual kingdom, He must of course supervise and control all His servants employed in this kingdom of light and truth. He commissioned the prophets of the Old Testament no less distinctly than the apostles of the New. They were not only prophets of Christ, but prophets speaking for Christ—inspired and sent by Him. Furthermore, that Jesus Christ is the God of universal providence is also taught plainly and abundantly in the New Testament. It is most wise and safe to adopt the construction which is most obvious, natural and easy, provided also that the sense which it brings out is true, and yet more especially, if it be a leading truth, fully taught and made prominent in the Scriptures. All these conditions are met in the construction above, and therefore give it the preference greatly over any and all others. H. C.—The Spirit of God is here spoken of as a person distinct from the Father and the Son, and having a Divine authority to send prophets. Whom God sends, the Spirit sends. Those whom God commissions for any service, the Spirit in some measure qualifies for it; and those may speak boldly and must be heard obediently whom God and His Spirit send. As that which the prophet says to the same purport with this (chap. 61 : 1) is applied to Christ (Luke 4 : 21), so may this be ; the Lord God sent Him, and He had the Spirit without measure. H.

17-19. After severe rebuke there is here a wonderful utterance of Divine compassion toward rebellious Israel. It finds its echo in those later words of the same Divine Person, tabernacling in mortal flesh, “O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace” (Luke 19 : 42). The Son of God, in every age, is the Redeemer, Teacher, Guide and Shepherd of Israel. Birks.

17. God by the prophet sends them a gracious message for their support and comfort under their affliction. The preface to this message is both awful and encouraging. “Thus saith Jehovah,” the eternal God, thy Redeemer, that has often been so, that has engaged to be so, and will be faithful to the engagement, for He is “the Holy One,” that cannot deceive, “the Holy One of Israel,” that will not deceive them. The same words that introduce the law and give authority to that introduce the promise and give validity to that—“I am the Lord thy God,” whom thou mayest depend upon as in relation to thee and in covenant with thee. “I am thy God that teaches thee to profit,” teaches thee such things as are profitable for thee, things that belong to thy peace. By this God shows Himself to be a God in covenant with us, by His teaching us (Heb. 8 : 10, 11), and none teaches like Him, for He gives an understanding. Whom God redeems, He teaches ; whom He designs to deliver out of their afflictions, He first teaches to profit by their afflictions, makes them partakers of His holiness ; for that is the “profit for which He chastens us” (Heb. 12 : 10). He leads them to the way and in the way by which they should go ; He not only enlightens their eyes, but directs their steps ; by His grace He leads them in the way of duty, by His providence He leads them in the way of deliverance. Happy they that are under such a guidance ! H.

We are not governed as the stars. God desires and seeks our joyful acquiescence. We are made willing in the day of His power, but it is without violating our personal freedom. The discipline may be stern through which the providence and grace of God brings us into harmony with Himself, but when the conflict is over it ends forever, and we will bless the hand that wrought out the work in us. T. A. Nelson.

My life is not what I would have chosen. I often long for quiet, for reading and for thought. It seems to me to be a very paradise to be able to read, to think, go deep into things, gather the glorious riches of intellectual culture. God has forbidden it in His providence. I must spend hours in receiving people who wish to speak to me about all manner of trifles ; must reply to letters about nothing ; must engage in public work on everything ; employ my life on what seems uncongenial, vanishing, temporary, waste. Yet God knows me better than I know myself. He knows my gifts, my powers, my failings and my weaknesses ; what I can do and what not do. So I desire to be led, and not to lead ; to follow Him. And I am quite sure that He has thus enabled me to do a great deal more in ways which seemed to me almost a waste of life, in advancing His kingdom than I would have done any other way. I am sure of that. Norman McLeod.

Believe me, I speak it deliberately and with full conviction ; I have enjoyed many of the comforts of life, none of which I wish to esteem lightly ; often have I been charmed with the beauties of nature, and refreshed with her bountiful gifts. I have spent many an hour in sweet meditation and in reading the most valuable productions of the wisest men. I have often been delighted with the conversation of ingenious, sensible and exalted characters ; my eyes have been powerfully attracted by the finest productions of human art, and my ears by enchanting melodies. I have found pleasure when calling into activity the powers of my own mind ; when residing in my own native land or travelling through foreign parts ; when surrounded by large and splendid companies—still more when moving in the small endearing circle of my own family ; yet, to speak the truth before God, who is my Judge, I must confess I know not any joy that is so dear to me, that so fully satisfies the inmost desires of my mind, that so enlivens, refines and elevates my whole nature, as that which I derive from religion, from faith in God ; as one who not only is the parent of men, but has condescended, as a brother, to clothe Himself with our nature. Nothing affords me greater delight than a solid hope that I partake of His favors and rely on His never-failing support and protection. He who has been so often my hope, my refuge, my confidence, when I stood upon the brink of an abyss where I could not move one step forward ; He who, in answer to my prayer, has helped me when every prospect of help vanished ; that God who has safely conducted me, not merely through flowery paths, but likewise across precipices and burning sands—may this God be thy God, thy comfort, as He has been mine! Lavater.

18. God had taught them well, pointing out the way of life and blessedness! Oh, had they only hearkened and obeyed! The language expresses the strongest desire for this, and most clearly implies God’s care and love for His people. If Israel had honestly obeyed, then had her peace, in the sense of prosperity and happiness, been as a river. H. C.—The ideas suggested by the figure of a river are abundance, perpetuity and freshness, to which the waves of the sea add those of vastness, depth and continual succession. A.

Oh, that thou hadst. These words would be sad from the lips of man, but coming from God they are inexpressibly touching and solemn. They are the cry of a wounded heart. They tell not of the wrath of justice, but of the sorrows of love. There is indeed mystery, as there must be, whenever we have to do with the Infinite; but that very mystery makes the complaint all the more affecting and impressive. “Oh, that thou hadst!” Anon.—There is to each of us an ideal life that is a bright, pure, perfect course along which we might go from earth into heaven. And this ideal life is the life; the others that come in place of it are usurpers and pretenders. This expression shows that it is no matter of indifference with God how men live. It shows that God feels this matter to pain and intensity, to sorrow and regret, to yearning love and great longing. Raleigh.

Peace as a river. There shall be a tide of peace, a wide and deep stream of it, passing into his soul. It shall pervade his soul, reaching every faculty and thought and feeling in it. His understanding, his affections, his will, his whole mind, shall be at rest, and in the end perfectly at rest. The waters shall be deep as well as broad. Thus this prophet speaks elsewhere of the “perfect peace” of the believer; and David, of his “great peace.” “The peace of God,” we read, “passeth all understanding.” It not only exceeds our comprehension in its nature, we can set no bounds to its extent. There is an abundance of peace for us, for there is God’s own peace for us, that which reigns over and keeps tranquil His own mighty mind. C. Bradley.

Bodily repose, however sweet and salutary, is but the feeble type of that truer “rest which remaineth for the people of God,” a rest sweeter than sleep, deeper than death, and more pure in its unselfish calmness than the heaven which sentiment or poetry has pictured. When doubt and disbelief are gone, when the object of life is found in Christ, when God becomes the sure portion and sweetest joy of the heart and the spirit within us, hitherto, it may be, groping bewildered amid earthly hopes and pleasures, like one in the dark for the friendly hand, feels itself at last embraced in the sure grasp of strong and changeless love—then is the true rest of man, the stillness of the weary spirit in the everlasting arms. It is not the occasional refreshment, but the ever-flowing current of the inner life: “Thy peace shall be as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” Even amid the outer toil and distraction of the world, it is “the peace of God which keepeth the heart and mind.” Nor does death, which disunites and disturbs all else, for a moment interrupt its continuity; for the rest of the soul in Christ is identical with the rest of heaven—“the rest which remaineth for the people of God.” Caird.

20. The message closes with a direct command to the exiles of Israel to set out joyfully on their way to Zion. This exhortation puts the keystone on all the previous promises of deliverance. And here too the visions enter on a new stage. Cyrus, Babylon and the Chaldeans are never mentioned again. The message travels onward to the times of Messiah. The former things are seen, in spirit, as fulfilled; and the new things begin their course, all centring in the person and work of the promised Immanuel, the Messiah of God.

21,22. The returning exiles, while they celebrate their recent redemption, are to call to mind the wonders wrought for their fathers in the days of old. The whole series of mercies, from the Exodus onward, are thus summed up in one song of triumphant praise. The God of Israel was the same through every age, the unfailing Friend and Deliverer of His people. His earlier mercies might be varied in their form, but their substance would be the same in every successive age. He opens evermore “streams in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” But these blessings belong to the faithful alone. The wicked are like the troubled sea, restless and devoid of peace, a gift which belongs only to the true Israel of God. Birks.

22. This verse was intended to restrict the operation of the foregoing promises to true believers, or the genuine Israel; as if He had said, All this will God accomplish for His people, but not for the wicked among them. The grand conclusion to which all tends is, that God is all and man nothing; that even the chosen people must be sufferers, because they are sinners; that peculiar favor confers no immunity to sin or exemption from responsibility, but that even in the Israel of God and the enjoyment of the most extraordinary privileges, it still remains forever true that “there is no peace to the wicked.” A.—God will do good both surely and abundantly to all those who humbly and obediently seek Him; but there shall be no peace to the wicked forevermore! How desolate to have no peace, at all, forever! H. C.

The wicked, as a matter of sober truth and verity, have no permanent and substantial peace and joy. They have none in the act of wickedness. Sin produces no permanent joy. It may be attended with gratification of bad passions, but in the act of sinning, as such, there can be no substantial happiness. They have no solid, substantial, elevated peace in the business or the pleasures of life. This world can furnish no such joys as are derived from communion with God, and the hope of a life to come. Pleasures “pall upon the sense,” riches take wings; disappointment meets them in the way; and the highest earthly and sensual pleasure leaves a sad sense of want—a feeling that there is something in the capacities and wants of the undying mind which has not been met and filled. They have no peace of conscience; no deep and abiding conviction that they are right. They are often troubled in their conscience; and there is nothing which this world can furnish which will give peace to a bosom that is agitated with a sense of the guilt of sin. They have no peace on a death-bed. There may be stupidity, callousness, insensibility, freedom from much pain or alarm. But that is not peace any more than sterility is fruitfulness, or than death is life, or than the frost of winter is the verdure of spring. And there is often in these circumstances the reverse of peace. There is not only no positive peace, but there is the opposite. There is often disappointment, care, anxiety, distress, an awakened conscience, deep alarm and the awful apprehension of eternal wrath. There is no situation in life or death where the sinner can certainly calculate on peace, or where he will be sure to find it. There is every probability that his mind will be often filled with alarm, and that his death-bed will be one of despair. And there is no peace to the wicked beyond the grave. A sinner CAN have no peace at the judgment bar of God; he CAN have no peace in hell. In all the future world there is no place where he can find repose; and whatever this life may be, even if it be a life of prosperity and external comfort, yet to him there will be no prosperity in the future world, and no external or internal peace there. Barnes.

To do wrong is the surest way to bring suffering; no wrong deed ever failed to bring it. Those sins which are followed by no palpable pain are yet terribly avenged, even in this life. They abridge our capacity of happiness, impair our relish for innocent pleasure and increase our sensibility to suffering. They spoil us of the armor of a pure conscience and of trust in God, without which we are naked amid hosts of foes, and are vulnerable by all the changes of life. Thus, to do wrong is to inflict the surest injury on our own peace. No enemy can do us equal harm with what we do ourselves whenever and however we violate any moral or religious obligation. Channing.—The soul in its deepest degradation will still cry for its God. It will not, it cannot, be at rest without Him. Man was made for happiness, holiness, God; not for misery, sin, self. Reid.

The sentence which Christ passes upon them that will not come to Him is simply, “Depart from Me.” If men will not labor to enter into rest, there is no alternative before them but perpetual unrest, lasting as long as they last; and this is itself “the fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” for this is the natural state of evil spirits apart from artificial and temporary disguises. R. Winterbotham.

Punishment is not the effect of the mere arbitrary will and appointment of God, but arises from the very nature of law. If there be a law, there must be penalties attached to it. And hence it is that the justice and truth of God are concerned in putting these penalties into execution. God is just, and His justice requires that He should render to every man according to his works. God is true, and His truth requires that His threatenings as well as His promises should be fulfilled. God being the moral Ruler and Governor of His intelligent creatures, the punishment due to the transgression of His law is the necessary effect of the Divine righteousness, justice and truth. P. J. Gloag.

If you deny the truth as a dogma, you cannot deny the existing facts. Virtue, piety and benevolence constitute heaven, here. Vice, blasphemy and malevolence constitute hell, here. Physical and sanitary cleanliness are necessary to physical life and comfort. Moral and spiritual cleanliness are necessary to the highest pleasure. The one stairway leads down to the sewers—the other leads up to the stars. There is no escaping these truths, and there is

no avoiding the two conditions to which they point in the future, if there be any future. There is no way of escaping these truths but by making man a mere animal—and not many are willing to confess that they are mere animals. We are not content to wait for heaven till after death when we may enjoy it largely now. We do not need to go to Dante for descriptions of the goal of sin when we can see it in the slums. There is the pure mother amid her little ones trying to lead them in the way of that wisdom which is pleasantness and whose paths are peace. That is heaven. There is that painted creature on the street, brass in her eyes, alcohol on her breath, blasphemy and moral putridity on her lips, a magazine of foul spiritual and physical infection. That is hell. If you reject the doctrine, what do you propose to do with the fact? Interior.