The Lord...Shall punish leviathan. Isaiah 27:1 The Church has formidable enemies The Church has many enemies, but commonly someone that is more formidable than the rest. So Sennacherib was in his day, and Nebuchadnezzar in his, and Antiochus in his. So Pharaoh had been formerly; and he is called "leviathan," and the "dragon" ( Psalm 74:14 ; Isaiah 51:9 ; Ezekiel 29:3 ). And the New Testament Church has had its leviathans; we read of a "great red dragon, ready to devour it" ( Revelation 12:3 ). Those malignant, persecuting powers are here compared to the leviathan in bulk and strength, and the mighty bustle they make in the world; to dragons, for their rage and fury; to serpents, piercing serpents, penetrating in their counsels, quick in their motions, that if they once get in their head, will soon wind in their whole body; "crossing like a bar," so the margin, standing in the way of all their neighbours and obstructing them; to crooked serpents, subtle sad insinuating, but perverse and mischievous. ( M. Henry . ) A vineyard of red wine. Isaiah 27:2, 3 The Church a vineyard of red wine The Church of God is here compared to a vineyard. The vine is a tender plant, needing continual care; and if the vineyard is not well fenced and guarded, the enemies of the vine are sure to get in and destroy it. The Church is called "a vineyard of red wine," because the red grape happened to be the best kind grown in Palestine; and, in like manner, God's Church is to Him the best of the best, the excellent of the earth, in whom is all His delight. But what is true of the whole Church is also true of every member; the same God who keeps the vineyard also protects every vine, nay, not only so, but His care extends to every little branch, to every-spreading leaf, and to every clinging tendril of that vine which He undertakes to keep night and day. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) The vineyard of red wine Homilist. In what day? The day of threatening and punishment of the wicked. The Church needs encouragement amid danger and darkness. And God gives it when required. I. WHAT SHE IS. A vineyard of red wine. A common figure of the Church. It is to intimate — 1. That members are separate from the world and enclosed around. 2. That they are cultivated and eared for. They differ from the world as flowers from weeds, a garden from a wilderness. 3. That they are owned. Believers are God's people, His chosen inheritance, His private property. 4. That they are profitable. A vineyard yields fruit, and so adds to the advantage of its owner. It is a vineyard of "red wine." A vineyard from which is extracted the richest juice. Everything of God's doing is not only perfect, but superior. Everything with which He supplies His people is the best. "Their peace passeth understanding." Their joy is "full of glory." II. WHAT SHE IS TO POSSESS. "I, the Lord, do keep it," etc. Here is — 1. Guardianship. The Keeper gives His whole attention to Its protection. How wise a guardian is God! "Lest any hurt it." His whole army of angels act as a guard with their flaming swords. 2. Provisions. "I will water it." The act of watering means all the necessary provision required for the nourishment of the vines and the production of fruit. The Holy Spirit is likened to the water of life, which Christ has promised to give freely to all who ask Him. There are also His ordinances and sacraments. 3. Vigilance. "Keep it constantly" — night and day. The great God slumbers not nor sleeps. His eye is ever on His people. No foe can elude His guardianship. ( Homilist. ) The Church as God's vineyard A. Roberts, M. A. What a contrast between the vineyard here spoken of and that whose history was given in the fifth chapter of this prophet. That was a favoured vineyard. Everything was done for it to promote its fruitfulness; but what sort of fruit did it produce? "God looked that it should bring forth grapes: and it brought forth wild grapes." What happened then? His indignation fell upon it. By that unfruitful vineyard was represented the Jewish people. But now turn and behold the other vineyard - that which is brought before us by my text. This vineyard is the real, spiritual Church of the Redeemer. I. THE DESCRIPTION GIVEN OF THIS VINEYARD. The spiritual Church of Jesus is "a vineyard of red wine." 1. By this "red wine" may be intended, perhaps in part, the faith of Christ's elect people. "Red wine" was in great esteem amongst ancient Jews, as appears in Proverbs 23:31 . 2. The Lord may call His Church "a vineyard of red wine," in reference to the love she bears to Him. 3. Christ's Church is a "vineyard of red wine," because she "abounds in all the fruits of righteousness." II. THE PRIVILEGE WHICH IT IS REPRESENTED AS ENJOYING. The vineyards of the Jews were carefully kept and cultivated. The vines in the country of the Jews appear to have needed constant watering. The Lord's spiritual vineyard needs perpetual watering from above. These natural vineyards in which the Jewish land abounded required, however, something more than cultivation. A chief part of the duty of the "keepers of the vineyard" was to protect the vines from depredation. And is the spiritual vineyard less exposed? ( A. Roberts, M. A. ) God's care for His vineyard a subject for song M. Jackson. To them who are ready to conclude that God hath forgotten to be gracious these words may prove a source of encouragement. They — I. REPRESENT THE PEOPLE OF GOD AS A VINEYARD. As God values His vineyard for the same reasons that men value their vineyards (because of its fruit), it behoves us to inquire what sort of fruit it is which makes His vineyard valuable to Him. All the asperities of disposition and all the want of spiritual excellence, which we may suppose are designed by wild grapes, must give place to "whatsoever things are true; whatsoever things are honest; whatsoever things are just; whatsoever things are pure; whatsoever things are lovely, and whatsoever things are of good report." "Love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance," must adorn and beautify your character. II. DESCRIBE GOD'S CARE FOR HIS VINEYARD. The care of God for His vineyard is manifested in two ways: by His unceasing attention to the culture and growth of these heavenly fruits, and by His unremitting vigilance in preserving it. The soil is not congenial with a plant of heavenly origin. For the heart of man is hard and unfruitful. The clime of this world is cold and variable: the atmosphere tainted with sin; and every wind of passion blights and withers the vine. If the sun of persecution and trouble smites it too often it is scorched. He, therefore, who has planted it for His own glory, and who is always glorified when it brings forth much fruit, watches over it, tends it with solicitude. There is not one moment when you who love and serve God cease to be the objects of His care, and of His renovating influence. III. A SUBJECT FOR SONG. This song implies, that the people of God have the knowledge and enjoyment of His care and protection. It is not the will of God that you who have repented, and are doing works meet for repentance; who have believed in Christ, and have a faith which worketh by love, should continue in doubt and uncertainty respecting your state. As the song should be appropriate to the occasion and suitable to the subject, the song which we are to sing is — 1. A song of adoring admiration. 2. Of joyful gratitude. 3. Of holy confidence. 4. Of deep humility.You are called upon to be humble because you have nothing that you have not received, but also because, after having received so much, and after being laid under obligations so many and so distinguishing, you make returns so inadequate and so unsuitable. ( M. Jackson. ) I, the Lord, do keep it. Isaiah 27:3 The Lord the Keeper of His people M. Villiers M. A. There is nothing to which we are naturally more prone, nothing more dangerous, nothing so difficult to eradicate as self-confidence. And yet there is nothing so delightful as to feel that we have not anything in ourselves in which we can be confident. For the moment we have arrived at that experience we are prepared to turn to Him without whom we can do nothing." I. IN WHAT SENSE THE LORD IS THE KEEPER OF HIS PEOPLE. 1. In one sense the Lord is the keeper of all; for "in Him all live, and move, and have their being." And the Apostle Paul ( 1 Timothy 4:10 ) speaks of Him as "the Saviour, or preserver, of all men, specially of those that believe." 2. He speaks of keeping them as a city from an enemy. 3. He speaks again of keeping them as a vineyard from foxes. In Song of Solomon 2:15 we read, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Those things which may appear gentle and innocent have a tendency to undermine the work of indwelling grace. 4. Again, the Lord speaks of keeping His people as the apple of His eye. 5. I might speak again of the fires of persecution, through which His people are called to pass. For here again the Lord is the Keeper of His people. 6. He not only defends and preserves His people, but He keeps them refreshed in seasons of drought by continual and plentiful supplies of mercy and grace. So in the text He says, "I will water it every moment?" II. WHEN IS IT THAT HE KEEPS THEM? "By day and by night." He watches over them continually, in the bright day of prosperity and in the dark night of adversity. III. HOW IS IT THAT THE LORD KEEPS HIS PEOPLE? 1. By His angels ( Hebrews 1:14 ). 2. By His ministers; by their warning voice in public; or by that advice and reproof, and instruction which they give in private. 3. By His providential dispensations. 4. By His own omnipotent arm. His people are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." IV. WHAT WARRANT WE HAVE AS HIS PEOPLE TO EXPECT THAT THE LORD WILL BE OUR KEEPER. 1. The first plain proof of this is, that as His people we are not our own, but given to Christ. 2. Coupled with this, we may consider the faithfulness of Jesus ( 2 Thessalonians 3:3 ). 3. Connect with this, the consideration of the love of Jesus for His people. 4. Indeed, we have as believers the warrant of the Triune Jehovah for believing that the Lord will be our keeper. Bear in mind that, until the time when knowledge shall be increased, and faith and hope end in sight and enjoyment, we shall never be aware of the full extent of our obligations to Him as the Keeper of His people. Yet, while we thankfully lay hold of the comfort which this truth is calculated to give, let us remember that our own responsibility is not overthrown. On the contrary, it is increased. For though encouraged to trust in the Lord as our keeper, there is no excuse for neglect of duty on account of our own weakness; but rather encouragement to say with the apostle, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me." ( M. Villiers M. A. ) God's care of His vineyard God takes care — I. Of the SAFETY of this vineyard. "I, the Lord, do keep it." II. Of the FRUITFULNESS of this vineyard. "I will water it every moment," and yet it shall not be over watered. ( M. Henry . ) The keeper of the vineyard I. THE CONTINUAL KEEPING which the Lord promises to His vineyard. 1. Do I need keeping? 2. Can I not keep myself? 3. Do I enjoy this keeping? II. THE LORD'S CONTINUAL WATERING. 1. Do I need watering within as well as keeping without? Yes, for there is not a single grace I have that can live an hour without being divinely watered. Besides, the soil in which I am planted is very dry. Then, the atmosphere that is round about us does not naturally yield us any water. The means of grace, which are like clouds hovering over our heads, are often nothing but clouds. The beauty of the text seems to me to lie in the last two words: "I will water it every moment." 2. Have we all realised, as a matter of experience, that the Lord does water us every moment? ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) Kept and watered God is both a wall and a well to His people. ( C. H. Spurgeon ) God's vine needs keeping 1. There is the arch enemy; how he longs to lay the axe at the roots of God's vines! 2. There is a wild boar of the woods, that would fain tear us up by the roots; I mean, that wild boar of unbelief that is constantly prowling around us. How does it seek with its sharp tusks to bark our vines and fig trees! 3. Then, the vine is often subject to injury from various kinds of insects. We have the fly of pride. 4. Then, the vine is subject to the attacks of the little foxes that Solomon speaks of, — I mean, false doctrine and sceptical teaching. 5. Besides, when we have a few grapes that are beginning to ripen there are the birds that come and try to pick the fruit, — those dark-winged thoughts of worldliness and selfishness which come to us all. ( C. H. Spurgeon ) God the Keeper of His vineyard F. B. Meyer, B. A. A vineyard will engross the whole of a man's time — perhaps the time of many men. The nourishing of the soil, the pruning of the branches, the syringing of the leaves, the thinning of the grapes, the support of the heavy clusters — all demand constant and assiduous care. There is a tendency in all cultivated things to go back to their original type. However it may be made to agree with the modern ideas of development and evolution, it is nevertheless a fact that the fairest results of human skill are not in themselves permanent; but tend ever backward to the rudest and simplest forms of their species — the apple tree to the crab, the vine of Sorek to the wild vine of the hills. Therefore the keeper of the vineyard is ever engaged in fighting every tendency towards deterioration with unwavering patience. With similar care, but with much more tenderness, God is ever watching over us. With eager eyes He marks the slightest sign of deterioration — a hardening conscience; a deadening spirituality; a waning love. Any symptom of this sort fills Him with — if I may use the words — keen anxiety; and His gentle but skilful hand is at once at work to arrest the evil, restore the soul, and force it onward to new accessions of that Divine life which is our only true bliss and rest. Let us not carry the responsibility of our nurture. It is too much for us. Better far is it to devolve the care of our keeping on our faithful Creator. ( F. B. Meyer, B. A. ) God the great Preserver John Arrowsmith, D. D. It is not with God as it is with carpenters and shipwrights, who make houses for other men to dwell in, vessels for others to sail in, and therefore after they are made look after them no more; God, who made all things for Himself, looks after the preservation of all. ( John Arrowsmith, D. D. ) God's solicitude for His people Christian Endeavour. The tear water, constantly flowing over our eyes, removes the grit and dust that alight on them, impairing our power of vision. The eager mother shields her children from any polluting words or influences that might approach them from child companion or school fellow. The physician is eagerly solicitous that no germ of disease should enter an open wound, and lays his instruments in carbolic that they may carry no spore on their keen edge. And may we not count even more certainly on Him who says, "I, the Lord, do keep it," etc. ( Christian Endeavour. ) I will water it every moment. A refreshing promise In warm climates irrigation is essential to fertility; hence travellers see on all sides pools and watercourses, wheels and cisterns, and channels for the water to flow in. I. There is a great NECESSITY for the watering promised in the text. 1. This we might conclude from the promise itself, since there is not one superfluous word of promise in the whole Scriptures, but it becomes more evident when we reflect that all creature life is dependent upon the perpetual outgoing of Divine power. 2. Moreover, the truth is specially certain as touching the believer, for a multitude of agencies are at work to dry up the moisture of his soul. 3. Neither have we any other source of supply but the living God. "All my springs are in Thee." 4. Our need of Divine watering is clearly seen when we consider what drought, and barrenness, and death would come upon us if His hand were withdrawn. Without watering every moment the most faithful among us would be cast forth, and be only fit for the fire; every prophet would become a Balaam, every apostle a Judas, every disciple a Demas. II. THE MANNER in which the Lord promises to water His people — "I will water it every moment." 1. Our first thought is excited by the perpetual act — "every moment." Mercy knows no pause. Grace has no canonical hours, or rather all hours are alike canonical: yea, and all moments too. 2. The Lord's watering is a renewed act. He does not water us once in great abundance, and then leave us to live upon what He has already poured out. 3. A personal act. "I will water it." III. THE CERTAINTY that the Lord will water every plant that His own right hand hath planted. Here a vast number of arguments suggest themselves, but we wilt content ourselves with the one ground of confidence which is found in the Lord Himself and His previous deeds of love. Our souls need supplies so great as to drain rivers of grace, but the all-sufficient God is able to meet the largest demands of the innumerable company of His people, and He will meet them to His own honour and glory forever. Here, then, we see His truth, His power, and His all-sufficiency pledged to provide for His chosen, and we may be sure that the guarantee will stand. If we needed further confirmation we might well remember that the Lord has already watered His vineyard in a far more costly manner than it win ever need again. The Lord Jesus has watered it with a sweat of blood, and can it be supposed that He will leave it now? Hitherto the sacred promise has been fully kept, for we have been graciously preserved in spiritual life. Droughty times have befallen us, and yet our soul has not been suffered to famish; why, then, should we question the goodness of the Lord as to years to come! One thing is never to be forgotten — we are the Lord's. Therefore, if He do not water us, He will Himself be the loser. An owner of vine lands, if he should suffer them to be parched with the drought, would derive nothing from his estate; the vineyard would be dried up, but he himself would receive no clusters. With reverence be it spoken, our Lord Himself will never see of the travail of His soul in untended vines, nor in hearts unsanctified, nor in men whose graces droop and die for want of Divine refreshings. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) Fury is not in Me. Isaiah 27:4, 5 Liberty and discipline H. Bushnell, D. D. I. A BLESSED ABSENCE IN THE NATURE OF GOD. "Fury is not in Me." Fury seems to be uncontrolled and uncontrollable anger. A vessel in a storm, with its rudder gone or its screw broken, is passive in the power of winds and waves. A lion, who for hours has been disappointed of his prey, is passive under the dominion of his hunger. In both cases no influence, internal or external, is able to resist the onward course. And when a man is so in the hand of anger that no consideration from within or intercession from without can mollify him, when he is passive in its power, he is in a state of fury. But no such estate is possible to our God. His anger is always under control, and we have plentiful evidence that, in the height of His displeasure, He is accessible to intercession on behalf of His creatures. Nevertheless — II. THIS BLESSED ABSENCE IN THE NATURE OF GOD IS COMPATIBLE WITH CONTENTION WITH THE UNREPENTING. "Who would set the briars and thorns against Me in battle?" etc. Imagine a father and son at variance, the father being in the right and the son in the wrong, There are two ways of reconciliation: either the son must comply with the conditions of the father, or the father must lower his standard to the level of the son. But what a wrong would the father do to himself, his family, and society if he were to adopt this course. He ought not, will not. If the son resolves to fight it out, reconciliation is impossible. This is the relative position of God. and the ungodly man. God declares His conditions, "Let the wicked forsake his way," etc. Consider what is involved in the conditions of the ungodly. Nothing less than the inversion of the whole moral law. God says, "I am Jehovah, I change not." It is a blessed impossibility. But the unrepentant man ought, can, must! If not, the fire of goodness must be set against the briars of wickedness, a contest as hopeless, and of which the issue is as certain, as that of the devouring flame with briars and thorns. III. THE ABSENCE OF FURY IN GOD LEADS HIM TO PREFER PARDON TO PUNISHMENT, AND TO PROVIDE MEANS FOR THE FORMER. "Let him take hold of My strength," etc. Men, churches, and nations are lovers of peace in proportion as they are righteous ( Psalm 72:3 ). The preference of God for peace depends upon the very attribute of which the ungodly would rob Him — namely, His righteousness. What is God's strength? How take hold of it? When a man falls overboard at sea, the appointed means of rescue is the life belt which is thrown to him. Seizing that, he takes hold of the strength of the vessel to save him. When the man slayer, fleeing from the avenger of blood, entered the city of refuge, he took hold of God's appointed means of shelter. God's strength is His pardoning prerogative, exercised to us through Christ, the "arm," or "strength," of the Lord. ( H. Bushnell, D. D. ) Fury not in God T. Chalmers, D. D. I. FURY IS NOT IN GOD. But how can this be? Is not fury one manifestation of His essential attributes — do we not repeatedly read of His fury — of Jerusalem being full of the fury of the Lord — of God casting the fury of His wrath upon the world — of Him rendering His anger upon His enemies with fury — of Him accomplishing his fury upon Zion — of Him causing His fury to rest on the bloody and devoted city? We are not, therefore, to think that fury is banished altogether from God's administration. There are times and occasions when this fury is discharged upon the objects of it; and there must be other times and occasions when there is no fury in Him. Now, what is the occasion upon which He disclaims all fury in our text? He is inviting men to reconciliation; and He is assuring them that if they will only take hold of His strength they shall make peace with Him. Fury will be discharged on those who reject the invitation. But we cannot say that there is any exercise of fury in God at the time of giving the invitation. There is the most visible and direct contrary. This very process was all gone through at and before the destruction of Jerusalem. It rejected the warnings and invitations of the Saviour, and at length experienced His fury. But there was no fury at the time of His giving the invitations. The tone of our Saviour's voice when He uttered, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," was not the tone of a vindictive and irritated fury. There was compassion in it — a warning and pleading earnestness that they would mind the things which belong to their peace. Let us make the application to ourselves. II. GOD IS NOT WANTING TO GLORIFY HIMSELF BY THE DEATH OF SINNERS. When God says, "Who would set the thorns and the briars against Me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together," He speaks of the ease wherewith He could accomplish His wrath upon His enemies. They would perish before Him like the moth. Why set up, then, a contest so unequal as this? God is saying in the text that this is not what He is wanting. In the language of the next verse, He would rather that this enemy of His, not yet at peace with Him, and who may therefore be likened to a briar or a thorn, should take hold of His strength, that He may make peace with Him — and as the fruit of his so doing, He shall make peace with Him. Now tell me if this do not open up a most wonderful and a most inviting view of God? It is the real attitude in which He puts Himself forth to us in the gospel of His Son. What remains for you to do? God is willing to save you: are you willing to be saved? III. THE INVITATION. "Or let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me; and he shall make peace with Me." "Or" here is the same with "rather." Rather than that what is spoken of in the fourth verse should fall upon you. We have not far to seek for what is meant by this strength, for Isaiah himself speaks ( Isaiah 33:6 ) of the strength of salvation. 1. We read of a mighty strength that had to be put forth in the work of a sinner's justification. Just in proportion to the weight and magnitude of the obstacle was the greatness of that strength which the Saviour put forth in the mighty work of moving it away. A way of redemption has been found out in the unsearchable riches of Divine wisdom, and Christ is called the wisdom of God. But the same Christ is also called the power of God. 2. But there is also a strength put forth in the work of man's regeneration. 3. When you apply to a friend for some service, some relief from distress or difficulty, you may be said to lay hold of him; and when you place firm reliance both on his ability and willingness to do the service, you may well say that your hold is upon your friend — an expression which becomes all the more appropriate should he promise to do the needful good office, in which case your hold is not upon his power only, but upon his faithfulness. And it is even so with the promises of God in Christ Jesus — you have both a power and a promise to take hold of. ( T. Chalmers, D. D. ) Let him take hold of My strength. Isaiah 27:5 Taking hold of the Divine strength W. Horwood. I. THE INVITATION. "Let him take hold of My strength." This becomes an imperative duty — a duty universal in its application. II. THE REASON of this invitation — "that he may make peace with Me." 1. Observe how very unselfish it is, if we may so call it with reverence, on the part of God. It is not that He Himself may be benefited, but that the sinner might. 2. Consider, too, the cogency of this reason, resting as it does in that which all men most need, and most of us long for — "peace." 3. Regard also the sublimity of this reason — peace with "God." III. THE POSITIVE ASSURANCE, or the certainty of the promise. "And he shall make peace with Me." Nothing shall prevent it. Comply with the conditions, and then all is certain. Even the greatest enemies to God among men are permitted to make peace with Him. ( W. Horwood. ) Man, seizing the strength of Omnipotence Homilist. Some substitute the word "protection" for "strength" here, and suppose the words refer to the horns of the altar which fugitives often laid hold of as an asylum. But the refuge of safety for any moral intelligence is nothing without God's strength. For an insignificant creature like man to lay hold upon the strength of Omnipotence seems at first not only an absurd, but a blasphemous thought, and yet the thought is not without support in the Word of God. What meaneth the expression, "Let Me alone, Moses," etc.? I. It is POSSIBLE for man to lay hold on the strength of Omnipotence. In what does the real strength of a moral intelligence consist? Not in material bulk or muscle, if he has them; but in the leading disposition of his heart. This is the soul of strength, the sap in the oak, the steam in the engine, the vis in the muscle. He that can take hold of this in a man takes hold of his strength. Vanity is the leading disposition in some men; and if you would take hold of their strength you must flatter them. By adulation you will grasp them body and soul. Greed is the leading disposition in others. Avarice controls them, works their thoughts, and concentrates their energies. Minister to this greed and you will take hold of their strength, you will have them in your hands. Philanthropy is, thank God, the leading disposition of others. Present to them the claims of down-trodden slaves, of broken-hearted widows and starving orphans, and you will take hold of their strength. Now, the leading disposition of God, if I may so say, is benevolence. He not only loves, but is love. He, therefore, who appeals to His compassion takes hold of His strength. See how Omnipotence halted as Abraham prayed. See how in Christ it stood still on the road when two blind beggars said, "Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy upon me." Thus let the poor sinner go stricken in penitence and appeal in all his misery to the Great Father, and he will take hold of His strength. II. It is NECESSARY for man to lay hold on the strength of Omnipotence. The only hope of sinful, dying man is to appeal to God's compassion. "If My people which are called by My name shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin." "Ye shall seek Me and find Me when ye search for Me with all your heart." Elijah prayed, and God unsealed the heavens for him. Stephen prayed, and the Father drew the curtains of the invisible world and revealed to him the Son of God in all His glory. ( Homilist. ) Seizing the strength of the Almighty Homilist. How can a man take hold on the strength of God? The following facts may give meaning to the phrase. I. The pleading of the PROMISE OF ONE WHO IS FAITHFUL will take hold of his strength. If a man of incorruptible truthfulness were to make me a promise, and I pleaded the fulfilment of that promise, should I not, in a very emphatic sense, "take hold of his strength" in pleading it before him? I should seize not his mere limbs or any particular faculty, but himself, his inflexible sense of truthfulness. II. The pleading of a RIGHT CLAIM TO ONE WHO IS RIGHTEOUS will take hold of his strength. If you have a righteous claim upon a righteous man you lay hold of him by urging it. You do not want law with such a man to enforce your obligation. He yields it by the necessity of his nature. There are claims which all moral beings who are commanded to love God with their hearts, souls, and strength have upon Him. III. The pleading of MISERY TO ONE THAT IS LOVING will take hold of his strength. Thus the cry of a babe will take hold of the strength of a father, though he be the commander of armies, or the monarch of mighty peoples. By suffering and sorrow you can take hold of the most noble men on earth, and the most noble are the most loving. ( Homilist. ) Strength taken hold of Homilist. Coriolanus was a mighty man. He is thus described by Shakespeare: "The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes. When he walks he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a corset with his eye, talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in his state as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity, and a heaven to throne in." And yet his mother and wife, by appealing to the love in his nature, took hold of his strength; and hence we hear him exclaim, "Ladies, you deserve to have a temple built you. All the swords in Italy and her confederate arms could not have made this peace." ( Homilist. ) He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root. Isaiah 27:6 The future prosperity of the Church the effects of Divine influence R. Jack. I. IN RESPECT OF NUMBER. Under the ancient dispensation, the spiritual Israel were comparatively few. But at the commencement of the Christian dispensation the wall of partition was broken down, and the boundaries of the Church were greatly enlarged. II. IN RESPECT OF SPIRITUAL VIGOUR. Others remain in a state of spiritual death. But concerning them "that come of Jacob," it is here asserted that they shall take root. III. IN RESPECT OF BEAUTY. Christ Himself, "the branch of the Lord, is beautiful and glorious" ( Isaiah 4:2 ); and believers in Christ are made comely through His comeliness put upon them ( Ezekiel 16:14 ). IV. IN RESPECT OF FRUITFULNESS. Believers are denominated in Scripture, "trees of righteousness," to intimate that they should "bring forth fruit unto God." They abound "in every good word and work." V. IN RESPECT OF JOY. It is when the dews of heaven "drop upon the pastures of the wilderness" that it is said, "the little hills rejoice on every side." The abundant joy of New Testament times, especially of the times referred to in the passage before us, is often spoken of in Scripture. VI. IN RESPECT OF STABILITY. It is here promised that the Lord "shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root" The vicissitudes which take place in human affairs teach us the vanity of the world, and th

Benson Commentary Isaiah 27:1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. Isaiah 27:1 . In that day, &c. — This verse, which Bishop Lowth considers as being connected with the last two verses of the preceding chapter, is translated by him as follows: “In that day shall Jehovah punish with his sword; his well-tempered, and great, and strong sword; Leviathan the rigid serpent, and Leviathan the winding serpent: and shall slay the monster that is in the sea.” And he observes, “The animals here mentioned seem to be, the crocodile, rigid, by the stiffness of the back-bone, so that he cannot readily turn himself when he pursues his prey; hence the easiest way of escaping from him is by making frequent and short turnings: the serpent, or dragon, flexible and winding, which coils himself up in a circular form; the sea-monster, or the whale. These are used allegorically, without doubt, for great potentates, enemies and persecutors of the people of God; but to specify the particular persons or states designed by the prophet under these images, is a matter of great difficulty.” Vitringa, who considers the prophecy contained in verse 19 of the preceding chapter, as referring to the deliverance granted to the Jews under the Maccabees, thinks that by the first two of these creatures, the piercing, or rigid serpent, and the crooked, or winding serpent, “the kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria are meant, as they existed after the times of Alexander the Great; and by the whale, the kingdom of Arabia, and the other neighbouring nations, which were adversaries to the people of God; or that by these three animals are to be understood the persecutors and adversaries of the church, who should exist successively in the world, and be destroyed by the divine judgments.” But whether this be the right interpretation of the allegory is much to be questioned. Isaiah 27:2 In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine. Isaiah 27:2-3 . In that day — When these powerful enemies shall be destroyed. Sing ye unto her — Hebrew, ??? ?? , answer ye her, or say ye to her, namely, to the church of God. A vineyard of red wine — “Behold a vineyard,” or, “Thou art a vineyard of red wine,” that is, of the choicest and best wine, which in those parts was red, as appears both from the Scriptures and from heathen authors. I the Lord do keep it, &c. — I will protect my church from all her enemies, and supply her with my ordinances, word, and Spirit, with all necessary means and helps. “The import of these two verses,” says Lowth, “is, that when the enemies of God’s people are destroyed, among other songs and thanksgivings, this acknowledgment shall be made to the praise of God, and of the church which he protects, that as she is fruitful in all good works, so God continually watches over her, and defends her from danger.” Isaiah 27:3 I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. Isaiah 27:4 Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together. Isaiah 27:4-5 . Fury is not in me — Namely, against my vineyard or my people; I have been displeased with them, and have chastized them, but I am not implacable toward them, and resolved utterly to destroy them, as their enemies are. Who would set the briers and thorns against me, &c. — Yet if any hypocrite in the church, false professor, or wilful sinner, shall offer to contend with me, he shall feel the effects of my fury. Or, more largely, thus: “Though fury doth not belong to me, and vengeance be called my strange work, ( Isaiah 28:21 ,) yet if the briers and thorns, that is, the wicked and incorrigible, bid defiance to me, they will find I shall soon destroy and consume them like fire.” Or let him take hold of my strength, &c. — Rather, let such a one return to me, and make his peace with me, by unfeigned repentance and living faith, and he shall make peace with me — For I am always ready to receive returning sinners, and to pardon the truly penitent, who have recourse to me for mercy and salvation. Isaiah 27:5 Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me. Isaiah 27:6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. Isaiah 27:6 . He shall cause them of Jacob to take root — To be firmly settled in their possessions. The words may be rendered, In times to come he shall cause Jacob to take root. Israel shall blossom and bud — Shall revive and flourish. The metaphor of a vine is still pursued, and these expressions signify the increase of the Jewish people, after their return from their captivity in Babylon. And fill the face of the world with fruit — Their posterity shall be so numerous that their own land shall not be sufficient for them, but they shall be forced to seek habitations in other countries, and shall replenish them with people. This prediction was indeed fulfilled after the captivity; for the Jews filled all Judea and Syria, and were spread over all the Roman empire, as appears, not only from their own histories, but from the books of the New Testament. See note on Isaiah 26:15 . But, perhaps, this is chiefly intended to be understood of the spiritual seed of Jacob, or of believers, who are often called God’s Israel, as Romans 9:6 , and elsewhere. Isaiah 27:7 Hath he smitten him, as he smote those that smote him? or is he slain according to the slaughter of them that are slain by him? Isaiah 27:7 . Hath he smitten him — Namely, Jacob; as he smote those that smote him? — The question implies a denial. He hath not so smitten him. He hath not dealt so severely with his people as he hath with their enemies, whom he hath utterly destroyed. Or is he slain as those slain by him — Namely, those slain by God on the behalf of Israel? The meaning is, God had never permitted the Jews to be smitten to their entire destruction, as he had their enemies, but had always taken care to preserve a remnant. Isaiah 27:8 In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind. Isaiah 27:8 . In measure when it shooteth forth — Rather, In measure when thou sendest it forth, as ?????? ?????? , may be properly rendered. The words seem to be addressed by the prophet to God, and to signify that God would observe a measure in punishing the Jewish people, and not go beyond a certain degree; and that he then would send them forth again, namely, from captivity: from which God, after they had suffered sufficient correction, would deliver them by a singular providence. Thou wilt debate, or contend with it — God is said to debate or contend with men, when he executes his judgments upon them. But ?????? may be rendered, Thou wilt contend for it, that is, undertake its cause and defend it. This is still spoken of God’s singular protection of the Jews, when they returned from Babylon. He stayeth his rough wind — He mitigates the severity of the judgment; in the day of the east wind — In the time when he sendeth forth his east wind, that is, very grievous and destructive calamities. The cast wind, being a dry, blasting wind, and the most violent and destructive of all others in those parts of the world, is frequently put, in the Scriptures, for the calamities of war, and such like wasting judgments: see Jeremiah 4:11-12 ; Ezekiel 17:10 ; and Ezekiel 19:12 ; Hosea 13:15 . Here it seems to be mentioned with a reference to the shooting forth of the branches of the vine, spoken of in the foregoing words, that wind being very prejudicial to tender shoots. Isaiah 27:9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up. Isaiah 27:9 . By this therefore — By this manner of God’s dealing with his people; shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged — Hebrew, ???? , expiated, or forgiven: that is, by these chastisements Jacob shall be brought to true repentance, and in consequence thereof shall be pardoned. And this is all the fruit — The effect designed to be produced, by these severe corrections; to take away his sin — Not to destroy the sinner, as others are often destroyed by the calamities brought upon them, but only to take away the guilt and power of his sins; when he, &c. — Which sin of Jacob shall be taken away, and the punishment thereof removed, when he shall give such an evidence of the reality of his repentance as to destroy all the objects, instruments, means, and signs of idolatry out of the land; when he maketh the stones of the altar — Namely, the idolatrous altar, or altars, as chalk-stones — That is, broken into small pieces, and reduced to powder and dust. Possibly he may say, the altar, with respect to that particular altar which Ahaz had set up in the place of God’s altar; and this prophecy might be delivered in Ahaz’s time, while that altar stood and was used. He seems to allude to Moses’s showing his detestation of idolatry, by taking the golden calf, burning it, and grinding it to powder: and he intimates that when their repentance should be sincere, it would discover itself in a similar way. It must be observed, that of all sins, which are of a heinous nature, the Jews, till they were carried into captivity, were most inclined to idolatry, and for that sin especially, most of God’s judgments, which they had hitherto suffered, had been inflicted upon them. But of that most unreasonable and wicked inclination they were in a great measure cured by that severe punishment, the seventy years captivity in Babylon. The groves and images shall not stand up — Shall be thrown down with contempt and indignation. Isaiah 27:10 Yet the defenced city shall be desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof. Isaiah 27:10-11 . Yet, &c. — Before this glorious promise, concerning the removal of Israel’s sin and calamity, shall be fulfilled, a dreadful and desolating judgment shall come upon them. The defenced city shall be desolate — Jerusalem, and the rest of the defenced cities of the land, the singular number being put for the plural; and the habitation forsaken — The most inhabited and populous parts of the country; or, as ??? properly signifies, their pleasant habitation, whether in the city or country; left like a wilderness — Which was the case in the time of the Babylonish captivity. There shall the calf feed — The calf is put for all sorts of cattle, which, it is foretold, should securely feed there, because there should be no man left to disturb or annoy them; and consume the branches thereof — Of their pleasant habitation; of the young trees that grow up in that desolated country. When the boughs thereof are withered — As they will be when they are thus gnawed and cropped by cattle; they shall be broken off — That there may be no hopes of their recovery. The women come, &c. — He mentions women, because the men would be destroyed. For it is a people of no understanding — They neither know me, nor themselves; neither my word, nor my works: they know not the things which concern their peace, but blindly and wilfully go on in sin. Therefore he that made them — Both as they are creatures, and as they are his people; for this also is expressed by making, or forming; will not have mercy on them — So as to save them from this dreadful calamity and ruin, which they bring on themselves. Thus he overthrows their false and presumptuous conceit, that God would never destroy the work of his own hands, nor the seed of Abraham his friend. Isaiah 27:11 When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off: the women come, and set them on fire: for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will shew them no favour. Isaiah 27:12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. Isaiah 27:12-13 . It shall come to pass, &c., that the Lord shall beat off — Or, beat out: which is not meant in the way of punishment, but as an act of mercy, as is evident from the following clause of this, and of the next verse: the sense is, He shall sever, and take from among the nations, and gather together, like thrashed corn into the garner; from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt — All the Israelites that are scattered in those parts. It is a metaphor taken from thrashing, or beating out and separating the pure grain from the chaff. And ye shall be gathered one by one — Which signifies God’s exact and singular care of them. And in that day the great trumpet shall be blown — God shall summon them, as it were, by the sound of trumpet, namely, by an eminent call, or act of his providence on their behalf. He alludes to the custom of calling the Israelites together with trumpets: of which see Numbers 10:2-3 . And they shall come which were in the land of Assyria — Into which the ten tribes had been carried captive; and the outcasts in the land of Egypt — Where many of the Jews were, as is manifest, both from the Scriptures and from other authors. This prediction had its first accomplishment in the restoration of the Jews from Babylon, to whom many of the Israelites from Assyria were joined, and returned with them; and to whom many from Egypt, and other parts, came and united themselves, and having rebuilt the city and temple, worshipped the Lord, as is here said, in his holy mountain at Jerusalem. But this prophecy has manifestly a further aspect, and foretels the restoration of the Jews in the latter times; when, the gospel trumpet having been blown, and the fulness of the Gentiles brought in, the Jews shall be gathered from their several dispersions, united to God’s church, numbered among his true worshippers, and probably reinstated in their own land. Isaiah 27:13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Isaiah 27:1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. CHAPTER XXIX GOD’S POOR DATE UNCERTAIN Isaiah 25:1-12 ; Isaiah 26:1-21 ; Isaiah 27:1-13 WE have seen that no more than the faintest gleam of historical reflection brightens the obscurity of chapter 24, and that the disaster which lowers there is upon too world-wide a scale to be forced within the conditions of any single period in the fortunes of Israel. In chapters 25-27, which may naturally be held to be a continuation of chapter 24, the historical allusions are more numerous. Indeed, it might be said they are too numerous, for they contradict one another to the perplexity of the most acute critics. They imply historical circumstances for the prophecy both before and after the exile. On the one hand, the blame of idolatry in Judah, { Isaiah 27:9 } the mention of Assyria and Egypt, { Isaiah 27:12-13 } and the absence of the name of Babylon are indicative of a pre-exilic date. Arguments from style are always precarious: but it is striking that some critics, who deny that chapters 24-27 can have come as a whole from Isaiah’s time, profess to see his hand in certain passages. Then, secondly, through these verses which point to a pre-exilic date there are woven, almost inextricably, phrases of actual exile: expressions of the sense of living on a level and in contact with the heathen; { Isaiah 26:9-10 } a request to God’s people to withdraw from the midst of a heathen public to the privacy of their chambers (chapters 20, 21); prayers and promises of deliverance from the oppressor ( passim ); hopes of the establishment of Zion, and of the repopulation of the Holy Land. And, thirdly, some verses imply that the speaker has already returned to Zion itself: he says more than once, "in this mountain"; there are hymns celebrating a deliverance actually achieved, as God "has done a marvel. For Thou hast made a citadel into a heap, a fortified city into a ruin, a castle of strangers to be no city, not to be built again." Such phrases do not read as if the prophet were creating for the lips of his people a psalm of triumph against a far future deliverance; they have in them the ring of what has already happened. This bare statement of the allusions of the prophecy will give the ordinary reader some idea of the difficulties of Biblical criticism. What is to be made of a prophecy uttering the catchwords and breathing the experience of three distinct periods? One solution of the difficulty may be that we have here the composition of a Jew already returned from exile to a desecrated sanctuary and depopulated land, who has woven through his original utterances of complaint and hope the experience of earlier oppressions and deliverances, using even the names of earlier tyrants. In his immediate past a great city that oppressed the Jews has fallen, though, if this is Babylon, it is strange that he nowhere names it. But his intention is rather religious than historical; he seeks to give a general representation of the attitude of the world to the people of God, and of the judgment which God brings on the world. This view of the composition is supported by either of two possible interpretations of that difficult verse, Isaiah 27:10 : "In that day Jehovah with His sword, the hard and the great and the strong, shall perform visitation upon Leviathan, Serpent Elusive, and upon Leviathan, Serpent Tortuous; and He shall slay the Dragon that is in the sea." Cheyne treats these monsters as mythic personifications of the clouds, the darkness, and the powers of the air, so that the verse means that, just as Jehovah is supreme in the physical world, He shall be in the moral. But it is more probable that the two Leviathans mean Assyria and Babylon-the "Elusive" one, Assyria on the swift-shooting Tigris: the "Tortuous" one, Babylon on the winding Euphrates-while "the Dragon that is in the sea" or "the west" is Egypt. But if the prophet speaks of a victory over Israel’s three great enemies all at once, that means that he is talking universally or ideally: and this impression is further heightened by the mythic names he gives them. Such arguments, along with the undoubted post-exilic fragments in the prophecy, point to a late date, so that even a very conservative critic, who is satisfied that Isaiah is the author, admits that "the possibility of exilic authorship does not allow itself to be denied." If this character which we attribute to the prophecy be correct- viz. , that it is a summary or ideal account of the attitude of the alien world to Israel, and of the judgment God has ready for the world-then, though itself be exilic, its place in the Book of Isaiah is intelligible. Chapters 24-27 fitly crown the long list of Isaiah’s oracles upon the foreign nations: they finally formulate the purposes of God towards the nations and towards Israel, whom the nations have oppressed. Our opinions must not be final or dogmatic about this matter of authorship; the obscurities are not nearly cleared up. But if it be ultimately found certain that this prophecy, which lies in the heart of the Book of Isaiah, is not by Isaiah himself, that need neither startle nor unsettle us. No doctrinal question is stirred by such a discovery, not even that of the accuracy of the Scriptures. For that a book is entitled by Isaiah’s name does not necessarily mean that it is all by Isaiah: and we shall feel still less compelled to believe that these chapters are his when we find other chapters called by his name while these are not said to be by him. In truth there is a difficulty here, only because it is supposed that a book entitled by Isaiah’s name must necessarily contain nothing but what is Isaiah’s own. Tradition may have come to say so; but the Scripture itself, bearing as it does unmistakable marks of another age than Isaiah’s, tells us that tradition is wrong: and the testimony of Scripture is surely to be preferred, especially when it betrays, as we have seen, sufficient reasons why a prophecy, though not Isaiah’s, was attached to his genuine and undoubted oracles. In any case, however, as even the conservative critic whom we have quoted admits, "for the religious value" of the prophecy "the question" of the authorship "is thoroughly irrelevant." We shall perceive this at once as we now turn to see what is the religious value of our prophecy. Chapters 25-27 stand in the front rank of evangelical prophecy. In their experience of religion, their characterizations of God’s people, their expressions of faith, their missionary hopes and hopes of immortality, they are very rich and edifying. Perhaps their most signal feature is their designation of the people of God. In this collection of prayers and hymns the people of God are not regarded as a political body. They are only once called the nation and spoken of in connection with a territory. Only twice are they named with the national names of Israel and Jacob. { Isaiah 27:6 ; Isaiah 27:9 ; Isaiah 27:12 } We miss Isaiah’s promised king, his pictures of righteous government, his emphasis upon social justice and purity, his interest in the foreign politics of his State, his hopes of national grandeur and agricultural felicity. In these chapters God’s people are described by adjectives signifying spiritual qualities. Their nationality is no more pleaded, only their suffering estate and their hunger and thirst after God. The ideals that are presented for the future are neither political nor social, but ecclesiastical. We saw how closely Isaiah’s prophesying was connected with the history of his time. The people of this prophecy seem to have done with history, and to be interested only in worship. And along with the assurance of the continued establishment of Zion as the centre for a secure and holy people, filling a secure and fertile land, -with which, as we have seen, the undoubted visions of Isaiah content themselves, while silent as to the fate of the individuals who drop from this future through death, -we have the most abrupt and thrilling hopes expressed for the resurrection of these latter to share in the glory of the redeemed and restored community. Among the names applied to God’s people there are three which were destined to play an enormous part in the history of religion. In the English version these appear as two "poor and needy"; but in the original they are three. In Isaiah 25:4 : "Thou hast been a stronghold to the poor and a stronghold to the needy," poor renders a Hebrew word, " dal, " literally wavering, tottering, infirm, then slender or lean, then poor in fortune and estate; needy literally renders the Hebrew " ‘ebhyon, " Latin egenus . In Isaiah 26:6 : "the foot of the poor and the steps of the needy," needy, renders " dal ," while poor renders " ani ," a passive form - forced, afflicted, oppressed, then wretched, whether under persecution, poverty, loneliness, or exile, and so tamed, mild, meek. These three words, in their root ideas of infirmity, need, and positive affliction, cover among them every aspect of physical poverty and distress. Let us see how they came also to be the expression of the highest moral and evangelical virtues. If there is one thing which distinguishes the people of the revelation from other historical nations, it is the evidence afforded by their dictionaries of the power to transmute the most afflicting experiences of life into virtuous disposition and effectual desire for God. We see this most clearly if we contrast the Hebrews’ use of their words for poor with that of the first language which was employed to translate these words-the Greek in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. In the Greek temper there was a noble pity for the unfortunate; the earliest Greeks regarded beggars as the peculiar proteges of Heaven. Greek philosophy developed a capacity for enriching the soul in misfortune; Stoicism gave imperishable proof of how bravely a man could hold poverty and pain to be things indifferent, and how much gain from such indifference he could bring to his soul. But in the vulgar opinion of Greece penury and sickness were always disgraceful; and Greek dictionaries mark the degradation of terms, which at first merely noted physical disadvantage, into epithets of contempt or hopelessness. It is very striking that it was not till they were employed to translate the Old Testament ideas of poverty that the Greek. words for "poor" and "lowly" came to bear an honourable significance. And in the case of the Stoic, who endured poverty or pain with such indifference, was it not just this indifference that prevented him from discovering in his tribulations the rich evangelical experience which, as we shall see, fell to the quick conscience and sensitive nerves of the Hebrew? Let us see how this conscience was developed. In the East poverty scarcely ever means physical disadvantage alone: in its train there follow higher disabilities. A poor Eastern cannot be certain of fair play in the courts of the land. He is very often a wronged man, with a fire of righteous anger burning in his breast. Again, and more important, misfortune is to the quick religious instinct of the Oriental a sign of God’s estrangement. With us misfortune is so often only the cruelty, sometimes real, sometimes imagined, of the rich; the unemployed vents his wrath at the capitalist, the tramp shakes his fist after the carriage on the highway. In the East they do not forget to curse the rich, but they remember as well to humble themselves beneath the hand of God. With an unfortunate Oriental the conviction is supreme, God is angry with me; I have lost His favour. His soul eagerly longs for God. A poor man in the East has, therefore, not only a hunger for food: he has the hotter hunger for justice, the deeper hunger for God. Poverty in itself, without extraneous teaching, develops nobler appetites. The physical, becomes the moral, pauper; poor in substance, he grows poor in spirit. It was by developing, with the aid of God’s Spirit, this quick conscience and this deep desire for God, which in the East are the very soul of physical poverty, that the Jews advanced to that sense of evangelical poverty of heart, blessed by Jesus in the first of His Beatitudes as the possession of the kingdom of heaven. Till the Exile, however, the poor were only a portion of the people. In the Exile the whole nation became poor, and henceforth "God’s poor might become synonymous with God’s people." This was the time when the words received their spiritual baptism. Israel felt the physical curse of poverty to its extreme of famine. The pains, privations, and terrors, which the glib tongues of our comfortable middle classes, as they sing the psalms of Israel, roll off so easily for symbols of their own spiritual experience, were felt by the captive Hebrews in all their concrete physical effects. The noble and the saintly, the gentle and the cultured, priest, soldier and citizen, woman, youth and child, were torn from home and estate, were deprived of civil standing, were imprisoned, fettered, flogged, and starved to death. We learn something of what it must have been from the words which Jeremiah addressed to Baruch, a youth of good family and fine culture: "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not, for, behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, saith the Lord; only thy life will I give unto thee for a prey in all places whither thou goest." Imagine a whole nation plunged into poverty of this degree-not born into it having known no better things, nor stunted into it with sensibility and the power of expression sapped out of them, but plunged into it, with the unimpaired culture, conscience, and memories of the flower of the people. When God’s own hand sent fresh from Himself a poet’s soul into "the clay biggin"’ of an Ayrshire ploughman, what a revelation we received of the distress, the discipline, and the graces of poverty! But in the Jewish nation as it passed into exile there were a score of hearts with as unimpaired an appetite for life as Robert Burns; and, worse than he, they went to feel its pangs away from home. Genius, conscience, and pride drank to the dregs in a foreign land the bitter cup of the poor. The Psalms and Lamentations show us how they bore their poison. A Greek Stoic might sneer at the complaint and sobbing, the self-abasement so strangely mixed with fierce cries for vengeance. But the Jew had within him the conscience that will not allow a man to be a Stoic. He never forgot that it was for his sin he suffered, and therefore to him suffering could not be a thing indifferent. With this, his native hunger for justice reached in captivity a famine pitch; his sense, of guilt was equalled by as sincere an indignation at the tyrant who held him in his brutal grasp. The feeling of estrangement from God increased to a degree that only the exile of a Jew could excite: the longing for God’s house and the worship lawful only there; the longing for the relief which only the sacrifices of the Temple could bestow; the longing for God’s own presence and the light of His face. "My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth after Thee, in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is, as I have looked upon Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory. For Thy lovingkindness is better than life!" "Thy lovingkindness is better than life!"-is the secret of it all. There is that which excites a deeper hunger in the soul than the hunger for life, and for the food and money that give life. This spiritual poverty is most richly bred in physical penury, it is strong enough to displace what feeds it. The physical poverty of Israel which had awakened these other hungers of the soul-hunger for forgiveness, hunger for justice, hunger for God-was absorbed by them; and when Israel came out of exile, "to be poor" meant, not so much to be indigent in this world’s substance as to feel the need of pardon, the absence of righteousness, the want of God. It is at this time, as we have seen, that Isaiah 24:1-23 ; Isaiah 25:1-12 ; Isaiah 26:1-21 ; Isaiah 27:1-13 was written; and it is in the temper of this time that the three Hebrew words for "poor" and "needy" are used in chapters 25 and 26. The returned exiles were still politically dependent and abjectly poor. Their discipline therefore continued, and did not allow them to forget their new lessons. In fact, they developed the results of these further, till in this prophecy we find no fewer than five different aspects of spiritual poverty. 1. We have already seen how strong the sense of sin is in chapter 24. This poverty of peace is not so fully expressed in the following chapters, and indeed seems crowded out by the sense of the "iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth" and the desire for their judgment. { Isaiah 26:21 } 2. The feeling of the poverty of justice is very strong in this prophecy. But it is to be satisfied; in part it has been satisfied. { Isaiah 25:1-4 } "A strong city," probably Babylon, has fallen. "Moab shall be trodden down in his place, even as straw is trodden down in the water of the dunghill." The complete judgment is to come when the Lord shall destroy the two "Leviathans" and the great "Dragon of the west". { Isaiah 27:1 } It is followed by the restoration of Israel to the state in which Isaiah { Isaiah 5:1 } sang so sweetly of her. "‘A pleasant vineyard, sing ye of her. I, Jehovah, her Keeper, moment by moment do I water her; lest any make a raid upon her, night and day will I keep her." The Hebrew text then reads. "Fury is not in Me"; but probably the Septuagint version has preserved the original meaning: "I have no walls." If this be correct, then Jehovah is describing the present state of Jerusalem, the fulfilment of Isaiah’s threat, Isaiah 5:6 : "Walls I have not; let there but be briers and thorns before me! With war will I stride against them; I will burn them together." But then there breaks the softer alternative of the reconciliation of Judah’s enemies: "Or else let him seize hold of My strength; let him make peace with Me-peace let him make with Me." In such a peace Israel shall spread, and his fulness become the riches of the Gentiles. "In that by-and-bye Jacob shall take root, Israel blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." Perhaps the wildest cries that rose from Israel’s famine of justice were those which found expression in chapter 34. This chapter is so largely a repetition of feelings we have already met with elsewhere in the Book of Isaiah, that it is necessary now only to mention its original features. The subject is, as in chapter 13, the Lord’s judgment upon all the nations; and as chapter 13 singled out Babylon for special doom, so chapter 34, singles out Edom. The reason of this distinction will be very plain to the reader of the Old Testament. From the day the twins struggled in their mother Rebekah’s womb, Israel and Edom were at either open war or burned towards each other with a hate which was the more intense for wanting opportunities of gratification. It is an Eastern edition of the worst chapters in the history of England and Ireland. No bloodier massacres stained Jewish hands than those which attended their invasions of Edom, and Jewish psalms of vengeance are never more flagrant than when they touch the name of the children of Esau. The only gentle utterance of the Old Testament upon Israel’s hereditary foe is a comfortless enigma. Isaiah’s "Oracle for Dumah," { Isaiah 22:11 f.} shows that even that large-hearted prophet, in face of his people’s age-long resentment at Edom’s total want of appreciation of Israel’s spiritual superiority, could offer Edom, though for the moment submissive and inquiring, nothing but a sad, ambiguous answer. Edom and Israel, each after his fashion, exulted in the other’s misfortunes: Israel by bitter satire when Edom’s impregnable mountain-range was treacherously seized and overrun by his allies; { Obadiah 1:4-9 } Edom, with the harassing, pillaging habits of a highland tribe, hanging on to the skirts of Judah’s great enemies, and cutting off Jewish fugitives, or selling them into slavery, or malignantly completing the ruin of Jerusalem’s walls after her overthrow by the Chaldeans. { Obadiah 1:10-14 ; Ezekiel 35:10-15 } In "the quarrel of Zion" with the nations of the world Edom had taken the wrong side, -his profane, earthy nature incapable of understanding his brother’s spiritual claims, and therefore envious of him, with the brutal malice of ignorance, and spitefully glad to assist in disappointing such claims. This is what we must remember when we read the indignant verses of chapter 34. Israel, conscious of his spiritual calling in the world, felt bitter resentment that his own brother should be so vulgarly hostile to his attempts to carry it out. It is not our wish to defend the temper of Israel towards Edom. The silence of Christ before the Edomite Herod and his men of war has taught the spiritual servants of God what is their proper attitude towards the malignant and obscene treatment of their claims by vulgar men. But at least let us remember that chapter 34, for all its fierceness, is inspired by Israel’s conviction of a spiritual destiny and service for God, and by the natural resentment that his own kith and kin should be doing their best to render these futile. That a famine of bread makes its victims delirious does not tempt us to doubt the genuineness of their need and suffering. As little ought we to doubt or to ignore the reality or the purity of those spiritual convictions, the prolonged starvation of which bred in Israel such feverish hate against his twin-brother Esau. Chapter 34, with all its proud prophecy of judgment, is. therefore, also a symptom of that aspect of Israel’s poverty of heart, which we have called a hunger for the Divine justice. 3. POVERTY OF THE EXILE. But as fair flowers bloom upon rough stalks, so from Israel’s stern challenges of justice there break sweet prayers for home. Chapter 34, the effusion of vengeance on Edom, is followed by chapter 35, the going forth of hope to the return from exile and the establishment of the ransomed of the Lord in Zion. Chapter 35 opens with a prospect beyond the return, but after the first two verses addresses itself to the people still in a foreign captivity, speaking of their salvation ( Isaiah 35:3-4 ), of the miracles that will take place in themselves ( Isaiah 35:5-6 ) and in the desert between them and their home ( Isaiah 35:6-7 ), of the highway which God shall build, evident and secure ( Isaiah 35:8-9 ), and of the final arrival in Zion ( Isaiah 35:10 ). In that march the usual disappointments and illusions of desert life shall disappear. The "mirage shall become a pool"; and the clump of vegetation which afar off the hasty traveller bails for a sign of water, but which on his approach he discovers to be the withered grass of a jackal’s lair, shall indeed be reeds and rushes, standing green in fresh water. Out of this exuberant fertility there emerges in the prophet’s thoughts a great highway, on which the poetry of the chapter gathers and reaches its climax. Have we of this nineteenth century, with our more rapid means of passage, not forgotten the poetry of the road? Are we able to appreciate either the intrinsic usefulness or the gracious symbolism of the king’s highway? How can we know it as the Bible-writers or our forefathers knew it when they made the road the main line of their allegories and parables of life? Let us listen to these verses as they strike the three great notes in the music of the road: "And a highway shall be there, and a way; yea, the Way of Holiness shall it be called, for the unclean shall not pass over it": that is what is to distinguish this road from all other roads. But here is what it is as being a road. First, it shall be unmistakably plain: "The wayfaring man, yea fools, shall not err therein." Second, it shall be perfectly secure. "No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon; they shall not be met with there." Third, it shall bring to a safe arrival and ensure a complete overtaking: "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall overtake gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 4. So Israel was to come home. But to Israel home meant the Temple, and the Temple meant God. The poverty of the exile was, in the essence of it, poverty of God, poverty of love. The prayers which express this are very beautiful, -that trail like wounded animals to the feet of their master, and look up in His face with large eyes of pain. "And they shall say in that day, Lo, this is our God: we have waited for Him, that He should save us; this is the Lord: we have waited for Him; we will rejoice and be glad in His salvation . . . . Yea, in the way of Thy ordinances, O Lord, have we waited for Thee; to Thy name and to Thy Memorial was the desire of our soul. With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, by my spirit within me do I seek Thee with dawn". { Isaiah 25:9 ; Isaiah 26:8 } An Arctic explorer was once asked, whether during eight months of slow starvation which he and his comrades endured they suffered much from the pangs of hunger. No, he answered, we lost them in the sense of abandonment in the feeling that our countrymen had forgotten us and were not coming to the rescue. It was not till we were rescued and looked in human faces that we felt how hungry we were. So is it ever with God’s poor. They forget all other need, as Israel did, in their need of God. Their outward poverty is only the weeds of their heart’s widowhood. "But Jehovah of hosts shall make to all the peoples in this mountain a banquet of fat things, a banquet of wines on the lees, fat things bemarrowed, wines on the lees refined." We need only note here-for it will come up for detailed treatment in connection with the second half of Isaiah-that the centre of Israel’s restored life is to be the Temple, not, as in Isaiah’s day, the king; that her dispersed are to gather from all parts of the world at the sound of the Temple trumpet: and that her national life is to consist in worship. {cf. Isaiah 27:13 } These then were four aspects of Israel’s poverty of heart: a hunger for pardon, a hunger for justice, a hunger for home, and a hunger for God. For the returning Jews these wants were satisfied only to reveal a deeper poverty still, the complaint and comfort of which we must reserve to another chapter. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.