Holy Bible

For behold the Lord...doth take away...the mighty man. - Isaiah 3:1-3 National leaders removed R. Macculloch. The Jewish nation, at this time, may be considered as represented by an old building, ready to fall into ruin, to prevent which many props had been added. These supports, on which it leaned, that were derived the authority, the prudence and fortitude of its leading men, God threatens to remove; in consequence of which the State should as certainly become ruinous as a decayed building, when the props on which it rested are taken away. ( R. Macculloch. ) The death of the renowned J. Cumming, D. D. There is a tendency to trust in the arm of flesh. It would be most wicked if we were ungrateful for our great deliverers, raised up by that God to whom the shield of the earth belongeth; but, at the same time, it must be sinful to trust in them as if they were the authors of all, and, therefore, deserved all the glory. 1. We need the admonition which precedes this text — "Cease ye from man (whether prince or senator, soldier or orator, counsellor or captain), whoso breath (whatever his strength or genius, talent or fame) is in his nostrils." 2. There is no such thing as chance; whether it be a hair which falls to the ground, or a sparrow that drops in its weary way across the field, or a prince smitten from his throne, or a dynasty broken — God is in them, giving, permitting, overruling, and sanctifying; it is not the shot or shell, the wave or wind, incident or accident, but God that "takes away," and those things which we suppose to have played the principal part, are merely servants sent out by God to lead the soldier from his duty in the field, to receive the crown of glory and war no more. 3. But not only is it the Lord, but He has right and jurisdiction to do so. He not only reigns, but He rules. Unsanctified interpositions of God are the darkest judgments; whilst therefore, we recognise His hand in giving, let us recognise His hand in taking away. A father and his child walk. They pick up a stone with a green substance, which appears worthless, and fit only to be cast away; but they apply the microscope, and this green substance on the stone he finds to be a magnificent though tiny forest. So it is with any fact that occurs. Man looks at it with his own eyes, sees it uninstructive; but when seen in the light of God's truth, he finds in it what is instructive and suggestive. 4. When God removes from a nation its props, pillars, and supports, He does so to lead that nation to see Himself more clearly and to lean on Him more entirely. 5. The Lord thus "takes away" in order to teach men impressively this lesson which man is very slow to learn — that death must come upon all. Death enters the cabinets of princes and statesmen, the camp of the hero, and the hut of the peasant, without paying the least respect to rank or royalty. ( J. Cumming, D. D. ) The death of statesmen J. Bennett, D. D. I. Learn from the death of a great statesman THE WEIGHT OF GOVERNMENT IN A FALLEN WORLD. For when we see the mightiest minds that our country has produced, a Fox, a Pitt, a Liverpool, a Canning, one after another taking the weight of government upon them, and dropping under its weight into the arms of death — can we avoid thinking of the mighty mass of care that has pressed them down? II. We are taught THE WEAKNESS OF THE SHOULDERS OF MORTAL MEN. However mighty his shoulders may be, he must be a bold man that would venture to take up a burden that has crushed so many: and yet there are many that will venture on it; for there are those who delight in danger, who sport with difficulties, and who delight in doing what no one else can do. And it is well for society that there are men of moral courage. If all preferred the comfort and quiet of domestic life, how could the affairs of government go on? Yet there are some burdens, the weight of which will crush any mind, for the sons of Anak are not omnipotent. And how knows any man how near he is to this point, when he shall be overwhelmed with his own duties, distracted with his own cares, become a prey to the very thing in which he delighted? III. THE UNCERTAINTY OF ALL HUMAN AFFAIRS. We need to be taught this with a strong hand, for this warm piece of moving clay that is bustling about the earth, ready to drop to pieces every moment, is so swollen with vanity that it would fain fancy it is made of adamant. Therefore God supplies us with strong reasons, at certain seasons, to teach us the contrary. IV. OUR ABSOLUTE DEPENDENCE ON THE SUPREME GOVERNOR. When we behold the profound counsellor and the mighty orator, and are entranced with their talents and execution, we grow idolatrous, and think these men are more than mortal, and that society could not go on without them; little thinking that He who made them as they are, to be employed as He pleases, and to be laid aside when He pleases, can raise others equally fitted as they are. ( Exodus 4:11 .) V. Another lesson which we should learn is, THE SACRED DUTY OF PRAYER FOR KINGS AND ALL IN AUTHORITY OVER US. We should make our supplications that councils may be assisted, that the cares of government may not overwhelm and destroy, that there may be a reasonable spirit prevalent in the public, so that it may be rendered less oppressive. VI. IN YOUR SUPPLICATIONS ESPECIALLY REMEMBER ZION, THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING GOD. The Church has been compared to a building, and the world to a scaffold placed around it in order to assist in rearing the edifice. VII. LEARN TO PREPARE FOR OUR OWN DEATH. ( J. Bennett, D. D. ) The death of the renowned excites special attention and interest J. A. Todd. In the humble cottage on some mountain slope, in some shaded valley or distant forest, or in the living wilderness of some great city, are the young and the old, the brave and the fair, passing away in unbroken procession to the dust of the sepulchre, and to the destinies of the life to come But the great world without does not regard it. Like the leaves of autumn that strew our pathway, they sink into the grave, and their death is crowded from recollection by the never-ending succession of new events. But when the tall and graceful trees of the forest — the monarchs whose heads towered above the general altitude — are brought down by some resistless blow, their fall is attended with a louder crash, and the earth itself trembles beneath the shock: so, when the men who walk upon the loftier heights of place and power, when those whose intellectual stature as they move along the paths of science, of history, of literature, and of art, renders them preeminent above the general mass, are laid prostrate by the stroke of death, the event impresses itself more vividly upon the minds of men, and calls out from its hidden springs in the heart a profounder sentiment of sorrow. ( J. A. Todd. ) The perils of greatness Bishop J. Taylor, D. D. Every state is set in the midst of danger, as all trees are set in the wind; but the tallest endure the greatest violence of the tempest. ( Bishop J. Taylor, D. D. ) I will give children to be their princes. Isaiah 3:4-8 Puerile government J. A. Alexander. Probably an abstract term used for a concrete — puerilities or childishnesses for childish persons. ( J. A. Alexander. ) Juvenile government a curse F. Delitzsch. If it is in itself generally a misfortune when the king of a country is a lad ( Ecclesiastes 10:16 ), it is doubly so when the princes or magnates surrounding end advising him are also youths or youngsters in the bad sense of the term...Varying humour, utterly unregulated and unrestrained, rules supreme. ( F. Delitzsch. ) A foolish ruler: Justinian II (of Constantinople Justinian II (of Constantinople) — The name of a triumphant lawgiver was dishonoured by the vices of a boy, who imitated his namesake only in the expensive luxury of building. His passions were strong; his understanding was feeble; and he was intoxicated with a foolish pride that his birth had given him the command of millions, of whom the smallest community would not have chosen him for their local magistrate. His favourite ministers were two beings the least susceptible of human sympathy, a eunuch and a monk; the one he abandoned the palace, to the other the finances; the former corrected the emperor's mother with a scourge, the latter suspended the insolvent tributaries, with their heads downward, over a slow and smoky fire. ( Gibbon s Rome. ) And the people shall be oppressed. Isaiah 3:5 Tyranny R. Macculloch. The dissolution of good order and political confusion. Oppression and pride everywhere prevail. ( R. Macculloch. ) State chaos J. Parker, D. D. There is a natural relation of classes. Whilst all that is purely mechanical and arbitrary is to be viewed with suspicion, yet there is a natural sequence in things; there is, indeed, what is called a fitness or harmony of things; and when society is rightly inspired the base man knows that he is base, and his baseness is his weakness, and his weakness defines his position; and the child knows himself to be but a child, and therefore he behaves himself with discretion, and is limited by circumstances which he cannot control. Once let the moral centre be lost, and then you have lost all arithmetical counting, all geometrical relationship, all figure and form and mechanism and security, and the foursquare is thrown out of its parallel, and that which was right is numbered with that which is forbidden, ( J. Parker, D. D. ) An evil spirit in the nation It is here threatened that God would send an evil spirit among them ( Judges 9:23 ), which would make them — 1. Injurious and unneighbourly one towards another. "The people shall be oppressed everyone by his neighbour," and their princes, being children, take no care to restrain the oppressors, or relieve the oppressed. Nor is it to any purpose to appeal to them. 2. Insolent and disorderly towards their superiors. It is as ill an omen to a people as can be, when the rising generation among them is generally untractable, rude, and ungovernable, when "the child behaves himself proudly against the ancient"; whereas he should "rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man" ( Leviticus 19:32 ). When young people are conceited and pert, and carry it scornfully towards their superiors, it is not only a reproach to themselves, but of ill consequence to the public; it slackens the reins of government, and weakens the hands that hold them. It is likewise ill with a people when persons of honour cannot support their authority, but are affronted by the base and beggarly; when judges are insulted by the mob, and their power set at defiance. ( M. Henry . ) A lamentable state of society Homo homini lupus — man becomes a wolf to man; jusque datum sceleri — wickedness receives the stamp of law; nec hospes ab hospite tutus — the guest and the host are in danger from each other. ( M. Henry . ) A man shall take hold of his brother. Isaiah 3:6, 7 Seeking to transfer rulership J. Parker, D. D. Here we have the law of primogeniture. By the law of the State it was right that the eldest son should take a certain definite and ruling position. But he was naked; he had not one rag with which to cover his nudity; and seeing one of his younger brethren with a coat on, with a garment on, he sprang upon him and said, By that coat I ask thee to take my place: thou hast at least so much, and I have nothing; come, be head of the family and be prince of the tribe. But the younger son scorned the proffered dignity. The moral base had gone, and therefore the mechanical dignity was of no account; the pedestal of righteousness had been struck away, and the statue of nominal dignity fell into the dust. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) "Let this ruin be under thy hand R. Macculloch. Or, according to a various reading, making a very good sense, "Take into thy hand our ruinous state." Endeavour, if possible, to retrieve our affairs, now in sad disorder, prognosticating our destruction as a people: deliver, if possible, from injustice and oppression, from foreign enemies and domestic troubles; and, in the prosecution of these great and important purposes, we will act as thy dutiful subjects. ( R. Macculloch. ) Government going a-begging Here — 1. It is taken for granted that there is no way of redressing all these grievances and bringing things into order again, but by good magistrates, that shall be invested with power by common consent, and shall exert that power for the good of the community. And it is probable this was in many places the true origin of government. Men found it necessary to unite in a subjection to one who was thought fit for such a trust, in order to the welfare and safety of them all, being aware that they must be either ruled or ruined. 2. The case is represented as very deplorable, and things come to a sad pass; for —(1) Children being their princes, every man will think himself fit to prescribe who shall be a magistrate, and will be for preferring his own relations.(2) Men will find themselves under a necessity even of forcing power into the hands of those that are thought to be fit for it. Nay, a man shall urge it upon his brother; whereas, commonly, men are not willing that their equals should be their superiors; witness the envy of Joseph's brethren. 3. It will be looked upon as ground sufficient for the preferring a man to be a ruler, that he hath clothing better than his neighbours; a very poor qualification to recommend a man to a place of trust in the government. It was a sign the country was much impoverished, when it was a rare thing to find a man that had good clothes, or that could afford to buy himself an alderman's gown, or a judge's robes; and that the people were very unthinking, when they had so much respect to a man in gay clothing with a gold ring ( James 2:2, 3 ), that for the sake thereof they would make him their ruler. It had been some sense to have said, Thou hast wisdom, integrity, experience, be thou our ruler; but it was a jest to say, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler. A poor, wise man, though in vile raiment, delivered a city ( Ecclesiastes 9:15 ). ( Matthew Henry . ) "I will not be an healer F. Delitzsch. "I do not want to be a surgeon" — he does not like to be a binder, namely, of the broken arms and legs and ribs of the ruined State ( Isaiah 30:26 ; Isaiah 50:6 ; Isaiah 61:1 ). ( F. Delitzsch. ) A reason for refusing rulership "In my house is neither bread nor clothing." If he saith true, it was a sign men's estates were sadly ruined; if he do not speak truth, it was a sign men's consciences were sadly debauched, when, to avoid the expense of an office, they would load themselves with the guilt of perjury. ( M. Henry . ) Clothing in the East R. Macculloch. It was customary in Eastern countries, where fashions did not vary as among us, to collect immense quantities of clothes and provisions, not only for the person's own use, and that of his family, but for presents upon proper occasions. This appears plainly, from the sacred writings, to have been the practice among the Jews. This, as a celebrated writer observes, explains the meaning of the excuse made by him that is desired to undertake the government. He alleges he hath not wherewithal to support the dignity of that station by such acts of liberality and hospitality as the law and custom required of persons in high rank. ( R. Macculloch. ) For Jerusalem is ruined. Isaiah 3:8 "Jerusalem is ruined!" -- forfeited privilege J. Parker, D. D. What a verse is the eighth! We cannot even now read it without quailing under the awful representation — "For Jerusalem is ruined." We thought Jerusalem never could be ruined: the mountains were round about her, and to the old psalmists those mountains signified the security of the righteous. Is beauty no protection? is ancient history of no account? will not the dead kings of Judah speak for her in the time of her trial? We cannot live upon our past, upon our forefathers, upon our vanished glories; morality must be as fresh as the dew of the morning; our righteousness must be as clear, personal, and definite as the action which we perform at the living moment. A man cannot lay up a character and fall back upon it if his present conduct is out of keeping with it; he himself takes the juice and sap out of the character which he once lived. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) "The eyes of His glory F. Delitzsch. The glory of God is that eternal manifestation of His holy nature in its splendour which man pictures to himself anthropomorphically, because he cannot conceive of anything more sublime than the human form. It is in this glorious form that Jehovah looks upon His people. In this is mirrored His condescending yet jealous love, His holy love, which breaks forth into wrath against all who requite His love with hate. ( F. Delitzsch. ) The fall of the Campanile at St. Mark's, Venice R. F. Horton, D. D. Latterly it had been ignobly used as an office for the State lotteries which are demoralising Italy. In cutting the wall for the purposes of that office, the whole building had been weakened. The event spoke as a parable whose meaning could not be missed. That great, stately tower, with its history of a thousand years, fell, because of the little lottery office which cut into it and weakened it. There is an application of the parable to our own national life. Is it possible that a great empire like ours can fall through the gambling habit — the lowest and meanest of the vices — insidiously spreading through all classes of the community? Is it possible to conceive that such a vice should so undermine the character of the people, that the stately structure, built by heroic men in the past, shall crash down in swift ruin at the end? ( R. F. Horton, D. D. ) Ruinous effect of sin C. Stanford. Its is just like what happens sometimes in a forest. In a calm day, when all else is silent, something crashes heavily through the branches, and we know a tree has fallen, No axe was lifted, no white lightning streamed, there was only a passing breeze. The wind that did but gently sway the little flower, shook down that towering tree, because long before the catastrophe, its vital progress had been disturbed, and millions of foul insects had entered it, which, leaving its bark untouched, and its boughs unshorn of their glory, had slowly, silently, withered its strong fibres and hollowed its core. ( C. Stanford. ) The shew of their countenance doth witness against them. Isaiah 3:9 Character revealed in the countenance F. Delitzsch. What is meant is the insolent look which their sinfulness is stamping upon their faces, without the self-condemnation which in others takes the form of dread to commit sin. ( F. Delitzsch. ) "Woe unto their soul 1. The condition of sinners is woeful and very deplorable. 2. It is the soul that is damaged and endangered by sin. Sinners may prosper in their outward estates, and yet there may be a woe to their souls. 3. Whatever evil befalls sinners, it is of their own procuring ( Jeremiah 2:19 ). ( M. Henry . ) Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him. Isaiah 3:10, 11 Retribution of the righteous and the wicked J. Bartlett. In this passage the Sovereign of the universe proclaims to all the subjects of His moral government the great sanctions of His law. Two powerful principles of action in our nature are addressed, namely, hope and fear. By the one we are allured to love and pursue that which is right; by the other, we are restrained from that which is wrong. The combined influence of both of these principles is, in most cases, necessary to the production and security of human virtue. God has established a natural and intimate connection between virtue and happiness, and between sin and misery, and in consequence of this connection, it must necessarily happen that it. will be, on the whole, well with the righteous and ill with the wicked. I. Let us inquire what confirmation this doctrine receives from what we know of the present constitution of things, and from what we find to be THE USUAL COURSE OF GOD'S MORAL GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD, If we consult the structure and operations of our own souls, we shall find many striking intimations of this doctrine there. The Author of our nature has made us rational, free, moral, and accountable beings. For the direction and government of our conduct, He has implanted within us a principle, which we call conscience, which distinguishes actions as good or bad, and which always urges us to perform the one and to avoid the other. He has, moreover, enforced the authority of this principle, by annexing present pleasure to obedience to its dictates, and present pain to a violation of them. The passions of hope and fear ever attend on conscience; the one to encourage and reward faithful adherence to its commands; the other to restrain and punish a wilful transgression of them. Now, all this takes place in consequence of that moral constitution which God has given us, and of that intimate connection which He Himself has established between virtue and happiness and between sin and misery. So long, therefore, as the moral constitution of our nature continues the same, and so long as God continues to be the same infinitely wise, holy, and good Being, so long must it necessarily happen that, on the whole, it will be well with the righteous and ill with the wicked. II. This doctrine receives additional confirmation from THE UNIVERSAL CONSENT OF MANKIND. In consequence of that moral nature which God has given us, by which we cannot but approve that which we know to be right, and condemn that which we know to be wrong, all men are agreed that vice (as far as they know it to be such) should be restrained and punished, and that virtue should be encouraged and rewarded. Hence, in all governments, laws are enacted against wickedness and for the protection and encouragement of the righteous. III. A further confirmation of this doctrine is derived from what appear to be THE PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH GOD'S PRESENT MORAL GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD IS CONDUCTED. We find that, in most cases, present good is connected by Him with virtuous dispositions and habits; and present evil, with sinful tempers and practices. And although this connection is not always so intimate and inseparable, as that punishment immediately follows transgression, and reward instantly attends obedience, yet the natural retributions or effects of virtue and vice are exhibited with sufficient frequency, to show us in what light God regards them. With certain vices, we find that God has connected terrible physical evils, as their proper consequences. Intemperance, in most instances, induces disease, excruciating pains and premature death. It impairs the mind, and is generally attended with the loss of property, and invariably with the loss of reputation. With some other of the vices of sensuality are connected the most loathsome and destructive maladies, in the endurance of which the victim suffers a dreadful retribution. And with regard to other vices, it not unfrequently happens that the events of providence are so ordered in reference to the perpetrators of them that the wicked man becomes miserable, notwithstanding all his worldly possessions and honours, and all that he has can give him neither joy not quietude. On the contrary, God has connected with temperance and industry, health, cheerfulness, and competency. To the godly there is the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. This promise we see fulfilled, in part, in the general esteem and love in which the virtuous are held, and in the usual prosperity of their affairs. If they have not abundance, they have a competency; or, if they are abridged in that respect, they have friends and a contented mind. Besides, the events of providence are, in general, so ordered with regard to them, that they find "all things working together for their good." Upon these principles does the course of God's moral government of mankind appear now to be conducted. And from what is now known of the principles of His government, we may confidently infer that, during the whole of man's continuance in being, it will always be well with the righteous and ill with the wicked. ( J. Bartlett. ) Objections to God's moral government J. Bartlett. 1. "Good and evil are often so promiscuously distributed in the present life, that we cannot with certainty infer what are the principles upon which God's government of mankind is conducted. The fraudulent and wicked are frequently prosperous and rich and flattered, while the righteous are often poor, neglected, oppressed, and despised." This is frequently the fact, and were the present the only state in which mankind were to exist, and were worldly riches and honours the only and the proper reward of virtue, and were they, in themselves, that real good which mankind fancy them to be, then, this fact alone would render this whole doctrine suspicious, and the arguments adduced in support of it inconclusive. But it must first be proved that the present is the only state in which mankind are to exist; a position, which few will pretend to sustain, and against which innumerable arguments array themselves, suggested by the structure and operations of our own minds; the desires and hopes which are ever springing up within us; by our capacity of knowledge, goodness, and happiness, which here are only imperfectly attained, and also by that very unequal distribution of good and evil, in the present life, which has been objected to. 2. It is objected that "the miseries attending upon wickedness in this world are punishment enough for the vicious, and therefore they will be exempted from further suffering hereafter." It is true that, in the present life, there is much misery attending upon wickedness; but this furnishes not the least ground for the supposition that misery will ever cease to be connected with sin, as its natural and necessary consequence. On the contrary, it affords a very strong proof that this connection will ever exist, and that so long as men are wicked, so long will they be miserable. It is agreeable to the nature of things that it should be so. In the natural world, we find that fruit corresponds to the nature of the tree that bears it; the grain that is reaped to the seed that was sown. 3. It is inconsistent with the Divine mercy that the wicked should ever experience any more suffering than what they endure in this world." It savours not a little of presumption for creatures of such limited, weak, and erring minds as ours to undertake to decide, with regard to the various measures of the Divine government, what is and what is not consistent with God's mercy. No one thinks to arraign the Divine government for connecting with sin, in the present life, distress of mind, disgrace, and suffering. And were our stay on earth prolonged to millions of years it would still be thought just and right, and entirely consistent with the mercy of God, that the same evils should attend the wicked, and the same good should attend the righteous. It is an error, common to many, that they look upon the evils which attend upon sin in this life, as a punishment vindictively appointed by God, to be endured by the transgressor, as a penalty for having violated His law, and that after he has endured it, he has paid the price of his transgression; the sin for which he has suffered is expiated. and therefore he thinks it would be unjust that he should be subjected to any more suffering, although his disposition be not changed in the least. There is hardly a sentiment that can be named, more injurious in its influence than this, where it is fully entertained. This error proceeds from misapprehension of the design of God in connecting evil with sin. The miseries which are consequent upon sin are not appointed vindictively, as a punishment; but benevolently, as preventives of it. Our Maker has kindly placed at the entrance of every path of vice, pain, disgrace, and suffering, to deter us from entering therein; or if we have entered, to make us retrace our steps. Every onward step we take in a sinful course, these evils assail us. ( J. Bartlett. ) The righteous and the wicked, their reward and their woe W. Mudge, M. A. "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." Plainly do we see this exemplified in the history of God's once favoured people, the Jews. I. THE REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 1. We must, before we contemplate their reward, inquire who are meant by the righteous. The Bible elsewhere tells us, "There is none righteous, no, not one." All our powers and faculties are represented as disordered and depraved. After the Holy Spirit has convinced anyone of sin, humbled his heart, and won his affections to Christ, that man is "accounted righteous" — "righteousness is imputed unto him also," as it was unto faithful Abraham. And "as a refiner's fire" will the Holy Spirit gradually purify all those powers and faculties of the now justified sinner that were once prostituted to the debasing service of the flesh, the world, and Satan. 2. And now we are prepared to notice his reward. We cannot, indeed, imagine that an infinitely glorious Creator can ever become obligated to reward a creature's faith and service: nevertheless, there is a "reward of grace."(1) It shall be well with him in life. Is he young? He shall, in the Spirit of adoption, and through a Saviour's mediation, cry unto the eternal God, "My Father, Thou art the guide of my youth." Is he engaged in the necessary cares and businesses of the world? He shall be "kept in the hour of temptation." Is he "small and of no reputation"? Angels shall minister unto him. Is he poor? "God hath chosen the poor of this world"; riches of grace below, and riches of glory in reversion, far outweigh in excellence and value every earthly good whatever. Is he "in sorrow, need, pain, sickness, or any other adversity"? "The high and lofty One" will "make for him all his bed in his sickness."(2) It shall be well with him also in death. That which to nature is commonly terrible and affrighting, is to the regenerate man — if not always desirable, at least, often so, and never otherwise than safe and happy.(3) It shall be well with him in eternity. II. THE WOE OF THE WICKED. I. And, as before we inquired, Who were meant by the righteous? so here we must ask, Whom are we to understand by the wicked? Although, in a general way, people allow themselves to be sinners, yet even whilst making this admission, there is evidently no consciousness of sin, no apprehension of its adequate desert, no sorrow for it, no hatred to it. 2. Their woe. Here the woe of the wicked is called their "reward"; and a reward it is: for while "eternal life" is bestowed as a "gift through Jesus Christ," upon the righteous, the "woe" of the wicked is paid to them as "wages" earned.(1) It shall be ill with the wicked in life. The wicked may, as the Scripture says, "bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst"; but "the anger of the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this Book shall lie upon him." The life of the wicked is one "woeful day," nor is there a period of it, however marked either by prosperous or adverse circumstances, wherein it is not "ill" with him.(2) And can it be otherwise in death? "I am not afraid to die," says many a careless man: "I heartily wish you were so," is the mental answer of the pious minister. The stupid insensibility of the unhumbled, unawakened sinner, even death itself can scarcely appall. The same self-delusion prevails in the expiring moments as marked the days of life and vigour.(3) It shall be ill with the wicked forever. ( W. Mudge, M. A. ) Cheering words and solemn warnings The Book of God speaks but little of upper and lower classes; it says but little concerning the various ranks into which civil and political institutions have divided the race of man; but from its first page to its last it is taken up with this grand division, the righteous and the wicked. The line of nature and the line of grace run on the same as ever; the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent contend with each other still. A crimson line runs between the righteous and the wicked, the line of atoning sacrifice; faith crosses that line, but nothing else can. There is a sharp line of division between the righteous and the wicked, as clear as that which divides death from life. There are no "betweenites"; no amphibious dwellers i

Benson Commentary Isaiah 3:1 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, Isaiah 3:1 . For, &c. — The prophet, having in the preceding chapter declared, in general terms, the terror of the day of the Lord, now descends to a more particular explication, and special confirmation of what he had advanced concerning it. Behold — Look upon what follows to be as certain as if it were already accomplished; the Lord doth take away, &c., the stay and the staff — All their supports, of what kind soever; all the things they trust to, and look for help and relief from; the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water — Bread is commonly called the staff of life: see Leviticus 26:26 ; Ezekiel 14:13 . But by bread and water here are meant all kinds of aliment, whereby the body is supported. This judgment seems to relate especially to the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, when bread and water were both very scarce: see Jeremiah 14:1-6 ; Jeremiah 37:21 ; Jeremiah 38:9 . Isaiah 3:2 The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, Isaiah 3:2-3 . The mighty man, &c. — Strong and valiant men. The judge — The civil magistrates; and the prophet — Either strictly so called, the want of whom is matter of grief, ( Psalm 74:9 ,) or more largely taken, so as to include all skilful and faithful teachers; and the prudent — Whose wisdom and conduct were necessary to preserve them from ruin; and the ancient — Whose wisdom was increased by long experience. This likewise relates to the same times, particularly to Jehoiachin’s captivity, when all the men of note were carried away captive with him, 2 Kings 24:14 . The captain of fifty — There shall not be a man left able to command fifty soldiers, much less such as could command hundreds or thousands, who yet were necessary; and the honourable man — Men of high birth, place, power, and reputation; and the counsellor — Wise and learned statesmen; and the cunning artificer — Who could make either ornaments for times of peace, or instruments for war, whom therefore conquerors were wont to take away from those nations whom they subdued, 1 Samuel 13:19-20 ; 2 Kings 24:14 ; and the eloquent orator — Hebrew, ???? ???? , literally, the skilful of charm, or the skilful charmer, or enchanter; whereby he understands either, 1st, Charmers, whom he threatens God would take away, not as if such persons were blessings to a people, or the removing of them a curse, but only because they made great use of them, and trusted to them. And so he signifies that God would remove all the grounds of their confidence, both right and wrong, and make their case desperate. Thus, for the same reason, God threatens the Israelites, ( Hosea 3:4 ,) that they should be, as without a sacrifice, so without an image and teraphim. Or, he may mean, 2d, Such as could persuade powerfully, and, as it were, charm people, by their eloquence, and induce them to do those things which were necessary for their safety; for the expression may be taken in a good sense, as ??? , divination, is Proverbs 16:10 . Accordingly, Bishop Lowth translates it, the powerful in persuasion. Isaiah 3:3 The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counseller, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. Isaiah 3:4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. Isaiah 3:4-5 . And I will give children to be their princes — Either, 1st, Children in age, whose minority corrupt ministers of state commonly abuse, to the producing of much evil: or, 2d, In understanding and experience. When all the eminent persons, mentioned Isaiah 3:2-3 , were removed, the necessary consequence must be, that persons of no qualifications for government must succeed in their places. This also was fully accomplished in the succession of weak and wicked princes, from the death of Josiah to the destruction of the city and temple. And the people shall be oppressed — By the command or permission of such childish rulers. The child shall behave himself proudly, &c. — The child in understanding, or the young and inexperienced; and the base against the honourable — “The usual effects,” says Lowth, “of a weak and unsettled government, where faction grows too hard for justice, and seditious men become so bold as openly to insult those that are in authority.” Isaiah 3:5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable. Isaiah 3:6 When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying , Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand: Isaiah 3:6-8 . A man shall take hold of his brother — Of his relation, friend, or neighbour. To take hold of another implies entreating his assistance; see Isaiah 4:1 ; Zechariah 8:23 ; saying, Thou hast clothing — We are utterly undone, and have neither food nor raiment; but thou hast something left to support the dignity, which we offer to thee; be thou our ruler — And we will be subject to thee. It is taken for granted that there would be no way of redressing all these grievances, and bringing things into order again, but by good magistrates, who should be invested with power by common consent, and exert that power for the good of the community; and let this ruin be under thy hand — Namely, to heal it. In that day he shall swear — To show that he was resolved. Hebrew, he shall lift up, namely, his hand, which was the usual gesture in swearing; I will not be a healer — A repairer of the ruins of the state; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing — I have not sufficient provisions, either of food or raiment, for my own family; much less, as you falsely suppose, for the discharge of so high a trust. For Jerusalem is ruined — The case is desperate, and past relief: it will be to no purpose to attempt affording any; because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord — They have broken the law of God in word and deed, and that in contempt of his authority and defiance of his justice. Their tongue was against the Lord, for they contradicted his prophets, and their doings were against him, for they acted as they spoke; to provoke the eyes of his glory — Of his glorious majesty, whom they ought to reverence and adore; the all-seeing eyes of Him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, unless with abhorrence. Isaiah 3:7 In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people. Isaiah 3:8 For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory. Isaiah 3:9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves. Isaiah 3:9 . The show of their countenance — Their pride, wantonness, and impiety, manifestly show themselves in their very looks and whole behaviour, and will be swift witnesses against them, both before God and men. They declare their sin as Sodom — They commit it publicly, casting off all fear of God, and reverence to men; and they glory in it. They hide it not — As men do, who have any remains of modesty or ingenuity. They have rewarded evil to themselves — That is, procured a fit recompense for their wickedness, even utter ruin; or, they have done evil, &c. They cannot blame God, but themselves: their destruction is wholly from themselves. The word ???? , rendered show, in the first clause of the verse, not occurring elsewhere in the Bible, is of rather uncertain signification. Bishop Lowth renders it, steadfastness; and Dr. Waterland, impudence. The former translates the whole verse thus: “The steadfastness of their countenance witnesseth against them: for their sin, like Sodom, they publish, they hide it not: wo to their souls! for upon themselves have they brought down evil.” Isaiah 3:10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him : for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Isaiah 3:10-11 . Say ye to the righteous — O ye priests and Levites, in your sermons and exhortations to the people; that it shall be well with him — Even when it is ill with the wicked, and with the nation in general; for they shall eat the fruit of their doings — God will be their safeguard and portion in the common calamity; therefore let them not fear, but let them commit themselves, and their all, to his protection, and resign themselves up to his disposal. They shall either be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger, or shall have divine supports and comforts, which shall abound in proportion as trials and troubles abound. “This is an admirable sentence to support the souls of the pious, amidst all the calamities of this life. God will not forsake those who truly love and serve him. This, reason teaches us; this, the experience of all times confirms; and it is the constant and comfortable doctrine of the word of God. The event must and will be happy to the good man.” Wo unto the wicked, &c. — These heavy judgments are designed against them, and shall certainly find them out, though here they be mixed with the righteous. As happiness, either in this world or the next, is, by the divine determination, the certain consequence of righteousness, so the contrary is the certain consequence of wickedness. Isaiah 3:11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him : for the reward of his hands shall be given him. Isaiah 3:12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12 . As for my people — In this and the following verses, says Dr. Dodd, “the prophet describes the incapacity and weakness, the ignorance and corruption, the oppression and cruelty of the priests and rulers of the people; such as we learn from history they were before the Babylonish captivity.” Children are their oppressors — Persons young in years, of little experience, and who have not due consideration, but, following the impulse of their passions, without regard to any thing else, have the power in their hands, which they use at their pleasure, of exacting tribute of the people; and women rule over them — Weak and effeminate rulers. Or, perhaps he speaks of the wives and concubines of their kings and great men, who, by their arts, gaining an ascendency over their husbands, induced them to act as they desired, though frequently to the people’s prejudice, and in a manner contrary to all the laws. Thus it was in the reign of Jehoram, king of Judah, whose wife Athaliah, a cruel and weak woman, occasioned great disorders in the state; see 2 Chronicles chap. 21. and 22.; and thus undoubtedly it frequently happened after the time Isaiah uttered this prophecy. They who lead thee — Thy rulers, civil and ecclesiastical, whose duty it is to show thee the right way; or, as ??????? , may be properly rendered, they that bless thee; that is, thy false prophets, who flatter thee, and speak, peace to thee; cause thee to err — From the way of truth and duty, from the way of safety and prosperity. Instead of leading thee to repentance and reformation, they encourage thee to go on in sin and rebellion against him, on whom thou art dependant for all things. Those teachers are indeed impostors, that pronounce a people safe and happy who continue in sin; for it is contrary to the very nature of things, that any people can be happy who are contemners of the divine laws. Their punishment may be delayed, but it is not therefore remitted; and every step they take in such a way is a step toward misery and ruin. And destroy the way of thy paths — Keep thee from the knowledge or practice of those paths which lead to safety and happiness, and mislead thee into evil courses, by their wicked counsels or examples. Isaiah 3:13 The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people. Isaiah 3:13-15 . The Lord standeth up to plead — He will shortly and certainly stand up as a judge to inquire into the cause, and to give sentence; and standeth to judge the people — To call the wicked into judgment, and to denounce upon them as they deserve; or to defend and deliver his own people, judging for them, as this phrase often means. Will enter into judgment with the ancients — The princes or rulers, as it is explained in the next clause, often called elders, because they were commonly chosen from those that were advanced in years. For ye have eaten up the vineyard — Destroyed, instead of preserving and dressing it, as you should have done. The church and commonwealth of Israel is often called God’s vineyard, and here the vineyard, by way of eminence, intrusted to the care of these rulers. The spoil of the poor is in your houses — The goods which you have violently taken away from them. What mean ye that ye beat my people? — What warrant have ye for it? How durst you presume to do it? and grind the faces of the poor — A strong metaphor to denote grievous oppression; but it is exceeded by the Prophet Micah 3:1-3 . Isaiah 3:14 The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. Isaiah 3:15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts. Isaiah 3:16 Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Isaiah 3:16 . Moreover, the Lord saith — After God had reproved the rulers of the Jews for their iniquity, injustice, and rapacity in spoiling the people, “he draws an argument of the same kind from the pride and luxury of the noble matrons and virgins, whose ornaments, collected from the spoils of the people, were borne proudly and insolently by them; upon whom therefore he denounces judgments; for of these two parts consists this last period of his reproving discourse: urging, 1st, In this verse the crimes of luxury and wanton haughtiness; denouncing, 2d, The punishment with which God would pursue these crimes, Isaiah 3:17 to chap. 4:1:” see Vitringa and Dodd. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty — Proud and disdainful; and walk with stretched-forth necks — Affecting stateliness, ( Psalm 75:5 ,) and endeavouring to appear tall; and wanton eyes — Hebrew, ??????? , falsifying their eyes; that is, falsely setting off their eyes with paint, as Bishop Lowth translates it, observing that he takes it to be the true meaning and literal rendering of the word; walking and mincing as they go — Taking petty tripping steps in their walking, that they may appear the younger; making a tinkling with their feet — Dr. Waterland renders this clause, and with chains, or shackles, upon their feet. The prophet is thought, by some learned men, to “allude to a custom among the eastern ladies of wearing on their legs large hollow rings, or circles, with little rings hanging round them; the cavities of these rings being filled with small flints, which caused them to sound like bells on the least motion.” Bishop Lowth translates the last two clauses, “Mincing their steps as they go, and with their feet lightly tripping along.” Isaiah 3:17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts. Isaiah 3:17 . Therefore the Lord will smite, &c. — Will humble the head of the daughters of Zion; and Jehovah will expose their nakedness. Thus Bishop Lowth renders the verse, observing, that “it was the barbarous custom of the conquerors of those times to strip their captives naked, and to make them travel in that condition, exposed to the inclemency of the weather; and, which was worst of all, to the intolerable heat of the sun. But this, to the women, was the height of cruelty and indignity; and especially to such as those here described, who had indulged themselves in all manner of delicacies of living, and all the superfluities of ornamental dress; and even whose faces had hardly ever been exposed to the sight of man. This is always mentioned as the hardest part of the lot of captives. Nahum, denouncing the fate of Nineveh, paints it in very strong colours,” Nahum 3:5-6 . Isaiah 3:18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet , and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, Isaiah 3:18 . In that day the Lord, &c. — “Punishment, which, though slow, always follows vice, is here denounced upon the luxurious and proud women: first, taking away, not only the ornaments, wherewith they set off their beauty, but also their garments, which were of necessary use, to Isaiah 3:24 ; secondly, deprivation of their husbands and children, Isaiah 3:25-26 ; thirdly, the consequence hereof, by which this loss might be repaired, Isaiah 4:1 ” see Vitringa. Will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments, &c. — It is justly observed by a learned commentator here, that the words which describe the women’s ornaments in this and the following verses are of very doubtful signification; the modes of every age and country varying so often, that the succeeding fashion makes the former to be quickly forgotten, and the words that express it to become obscure, or even unintelligible. Probably a hundred years hence the names of some of the ornaments that are now in use in our own land will be as little understood as some of those here named. It is judged unnecessary and improper, therefore, to trouble the reader here with the different interpretations which learned men have given of them. It is agreed by all, that they were ornaments used by the women in Judea at that time, and that they were made the means of increasing their pride and other vices, and therefore were displeasing to God. And it is of no concern exactly to understand the differences of them. Instead therefore of spending time on this barren subject, we shall content ourselves with laying before the reader Bishop Lowth’s translation of the Hebrew terms used to express them, with some occasional observations which he has made on some of the articles. In that day will the Lord take away from them the ornaments of the feet-rings, and the net-works, and the crescents, Isaiah 3:18 . The pendents, and the bracelets, and the thin veils, Isaiah 3:19 . The tires, and the fetters, and the zones, and the perfume-boxes, and the amulets, Isaiah 3:20 . The rings, and the jewels of the nostril, Isaiah 3:21 . Many commentators explain this of jewels, or strings of pearl, hanging from the forehead, and reaching to the upper part of the nose. But it appears from many passages of Holy Scripture, that the phrase is to be literally and properly understood of nose-jewels, rings set with jewels, hanging from the nostrils, as ear-rings from the ears, by holes bored to receive them. Ezekiel, enumerating the common ornaments of women of the first rank, has not omitted this particular, and is to be understood in the same manner, Ezekiel 16:11-12 ; see also Genesis 24:47 , and Proverbs 11:22 . Isaiah 3:19 The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, Isaiah 3:20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, Isaiah 3:21 The rings, and nose jewels, Isaiah 3:22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, Isaiah 3:22-24 . The embroidered robes, and the tunics, and the cloaks, and the little purses, Isaiah 3:22 . The transparent garments — A kind of silken dress, transparent like gauze; worn only by the most delicate women, and such as dressed themselves, as Sallust observes, “elegantius quam necesse esset probis,” more elegantly than was necessary for modest women. This sort of garments was afterward in use among the Greeks. And the fine linen vests; and the turbans, and the mantles, Isaiah 3:23 . And there shall be, instead of perfume, a putrid ulcer — A principal part of the delicacy of the Asiatic ladies consists in the use of baths, and of the richest oils and perfumes; an attention to which is, in some degree, necessary in those hot countries. Frequent mention (as we have seen) is made of the rich ointments of the spouse in the Song of Solomon; and the preparation for Esther’s being introduced to King Ahasuerus was a course of bathing and perfuming for a whole year; six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odours, Esther 2:12 . A diseased and loathsome habit of body, instead of a beautiful skin, softened and made agreeable with all that art could devise, and all that nature, so prodigal, in those countries, of the richest perfumes, could supply, must have been a punishment the most severe and the most mortifying to the delicacy of these haughty daughters of Zion. And, instead of well-girt raiment, rags; and, instead of high- dressed hair, baldness; and, instead of a zone, a girdle of sackcloth: a sun-burnt skin, instead of beauty, Isaiah 3:24 . Isaiah 3:23 The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails. Isaiah 3:24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty. Isaiah 3:25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. Isaiah 3:25-26 . Thy men shall fall, &c. — We have in these verses the second evil; the desolation and widowhood of the matrons and virgins: see Lamentations 2:21-22 . But we must observe, that the prophet here does not address the women themselves, but Zion, which frequently is spoken of and represented in the character of a woman. Her gates shall lament — The gates of Zion, which, by a figure, are said to lament, to imply the great desolation of the place, that there would be no people to go out and come in by them, or to meet together there as they used to do. And she, being desolate — Bereaved of her children; Hebrew, ???? , emptied, or cleansed, that is, deprived of all that she had held dear, and delighted in; shall sit upon the ground — In the posture of a mourner, bewailing her sad calamity. Sitting on the ground, the reader will observe, was a posture denoting deep distress: see on Job 2:13 . The Prophet Jeremiah has noticed it, in the first place, among many indications of sorrow, in an elegant description of this same state of distress of his country, Lamentations 2:8-10 . Thus also the psalmist, By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. For, undoubtedly, Isaiah in this prophecy had in his view, at least first and immediately, the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the dissolution of the Jewish state under the captivity of Babylon. His prediction, however, received a second, and still more awful accomplishment, in the destruction of that city and nation by the Romans. And, what is remarkable, in a medal coined by Vespasian’s order, Jerusalem is represented, according to the picture drawn of her here by the prophet, as lamenting that calamity, under the emblem of a woman sitting on the ground in a melancholy and mournful posture. Isaiah 3:26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Isaiah 3:1 For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, CHAPTER II THE THREE JERUSALEMS 740-735 B.C. Isaiah 2:1-22 ; Isaiah 3:1-26 ; Isaiah 4:1-6 AFTER the general introduction, in chapter 1, to the prophecies of Isaiah, there comes another portion of the book, of greater length, but nearly as distinct as the first. It covers four chapters, the second to the sixth, all of them dating from the same earliest period of Isaiah’s ministry, before 735 B.C. They deal with exactly the same subjects, but they differ greatly inform. One section (chapters 2-4.) consists of a number of short utterances-evidently not all spoken at the same time, for they conflict with one another-a series of consecutive prophecies, that probably represent the stages of conviction through which Isaiah passed in his prophetic apprenticeship; a second section (chapter 5) is a careful and artistic restatement, in parable and oration, of the truths he has thus attained; while a third section (chapter 6) is narrative, probably written subsequently to the first two, but describing an inspiration and official call, which must have preceded them both. The more one examines chapters 2-6., and finds that they but express the same truths in different forms, the more one is confirmed in some such view of them as this, which, it is believed, the following exposition will justify. chapters 5 and 6 are twin appendices to the long summary in 2-4: chapter 5 a public vindication and enforcement of the results of that summary, chapter 6 a private vindication to the prophet’s heart of the very same truths, by a return to the secret moment of their original inspiration. We may assign 735 B.C., just before or just after the accession of Ahaz, as the date of the latest of these prophecies. The following is their historical setting. For more than half a century the kingdom of Judah, under two powerful and righteous monarchs, had enjoyed the greatest prosperity. Uzziah strengthened the borders, extended the supremacy and vastly increased the resources of his little State, which, it is well to remember, was in its own size not larger than three average Scottish counties. He won back for Judah the port of Elah on the Red Sea, built a navy, and restored the commerce with the far East, which Solomon began. He overcame, in battle or by the mere terror of his name, the neighbouring nations-the Philistines that dwelt in cities, and the wandering tribes of desert Arabs. The Ammonites brought him gifts. With the wealth, which the East by tribute or by commerce poured into his little principality, Uzziah fortified his borders and his capital, undertook large works of husbandry and irrigation, organised a powerful standing army, and supplied it with a siege artillery capable of slinging arrows and stones. "His name spread far abroad, for he was marvellously helped till he was strong." His son Jotham (740-735 B.C.) continued his father s policy with nearly all his father’s success. He built cities and castles, quelled a rebellion among his tributaries, and caused their riches to flow faster still into Jerusalem. But while Jotham bequeathed to his country a sure defence and great wealth, and to his people a strong spirit and prestige among the nations, he left another bequest, which robbed these of their value-the son who succeeded him. In 735 Jotham died and Ahaz became king. He was very young, and stepped to the throne from the hareem. He brought to the direction of the government the petulant will of a spoiled child, the mind of an intriguing and superstitious, woman. It was-when the national policy felt the paralysis consequent on these that Isaiah published at least the later part of the prophecies now marked off as chapters 2-4 of his book. "My people," he cries-"my people! children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah had been born into the flourishing nation while Uzziah was king. The great events of that monarch’s reign were his education, the still grander hopes they prompted the passion of his virgin fancy. He must have absorbed as the very temper of his youth this national consciousness which swelled so proudly in Judah under Uzziah. But the accession of such a king as Ahaz, while it was sure to let loose the passions and follies fostered by a period of rapid increase in luxury, could not fail to afford to Judah’s enemies the long-deferred opportunity of attacking her. It was an hour both of the manifestation of sin and of the judgment of sin-an hour in which, while the majesty of Judah, sustained through two great reigns, was about to disappear in the follies of a third, the majesty of Judah’s God should become more conspicuous than ever. Of this Isaiah had been privately conscious, as we shall see, for five years. "In the year that king Uzziah died," (740), the young Jew "saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up." Startled into prophetic consciousness by the awful contrast between an earthly majesty that had so long fascinated men, but now sank into a leper’s grave, and the heavenly, which rose sovereign and everlasting above it, Isaiah had gone on to receive conviction of his people’s sin and certain punishment. With the accession of Ahaz, five years later, his own political experience was so far developed as to permit of his expressing in their exact historical effects the awful principles of which he had received foreboding when Uzziah died. What we find in chapters 2-4 is a record of the struggle of his mind towards this expression; it is the summary, as we have already said, of Isaiah’s apprenticeship. "The word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem." We do not know anything of Isaiah’s family or of the details of his upbringing. He was a member of some family of Jerusalem, and in intimate relations with the Court. It has been believed that he was of royal blood, but it matters little whether this be true or not. A spirit so wise and masterful as his did not need social rank to fit it for that intimacy with princes which has doubtless suggested the legend of his royal descent. What does matter is Isaiah’s citizenship in Jerusalem, for this colours all his prophecy. More than Athens to Demosthenes, Rome to Juvenal, Florence to Dante, is Jerusalem to Isaiah. She is his immediate and ultimate regard, the centre and return of all his thoughts, the hinge of the history of his time, the one thing worth preserving amidst its disasters, the summit of those brilliant hopes with which he fills the future. He has traced for us the main features of her position and some of the lines of her construction, many of the great figures of her streets, the fashions of her women, the arrival of embassies, the effect of rumours. He has painted her aspect in triumph, in siege, in famine, and in earthquake; war filling her valleys with chariots, and again nature rolling tides of fruitfulness up to her gates; her moods of worship and panic and profligacy-till we see them all as clearly as the shadow following the sunshine, and the breeze the breeze, across the cornfields of our own summers. If he takes wider observation of mankind, Jerusalem is his watch-tower. It is for her defence he battles through fifty years of statesmanship, and all his prophecy may be said to travail in anguish for her new birth. He was never away from her walls, but not even the psalms of the captives by the rivers of Babylon, with the desire of exile upon them, exhibit more beauty and pathos than the lamentations which Isaiah poured upon Jerusalem’s sufferings or the visions in which he described her future solemnity and peace. It is not with surprise, therefore, that we find the first prophecies of Isaiah directed upon his mother city: "The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem." There is little about Judah in these chapters: the country forms but a fringe to the capital. Before we look into the subject of the prophecy, however, a short digression is necessary on the manner in which it is presented to us. It is not a reasoned composition or argument we have here; it is a vision, it is the word which Isaiah saw. The expression is vague, often abused and in need of defining. Vision is not employed here to express any magical display before the eyes of the prophet of the very words which he was to speak to the people, or any communication to his thoughts by dream or ecstasy. They are higher qualities of "vision" which these chapters unfold. There is, first of all, the power of forming an ideal, of seeing and describing a thing in the fulfilment of all the promise that is in it. But these prophecies are much more remarkable for two other powers of inward vision, to which we give the names of insight and intuition-insight into human character, intuition of Divine principles-"clear knowledge of what man is and how God will act"-a keen discrimination of the present state of affairs in Judah, and unreasoned conviction of moral truth and the Divine will. The original meaning of the Hebrew word saw, which is used in the title to this series, is to cleave, or split; then to see into, to see through, to get down beneath the surface of things and discover their real nature. And what characterises the bulk of these visions is penetrativeness, the keenness of a man who will not be deceived by an outward show that he delights to hold up to our scorn, but who has a conscience for the inner worth of things and for their future consequences. To lay stress on the moral meaning of the prophet’s vision is not to grudge, but to emphasise its inspiration by God. Of that inspiration Isaiah was himself assured. It was God’s Spirit that enabled him to see thus keenly; for he saw things keenly, net only as men count moral keenness, but as God Himself sees them, in their value in His sight and in their attractiveness for His love and pity. In this prophecy there occurs a striking expression "the eyes of the glory of God." It was the vision of the Almighty Searcher and Judge, burning through man’s pretence, with which the prophet felt himself endowed. This then was the second element in his vision-to penetrate men’s hearts as God Himself penetrated them, and constantly, without squint or blur, to see right from wrong in their eternal difference. And the third element is the intuition of God’s will, the perception of what line of action He will take. This last, of course, forms the distinct prerogative of Hebrew prophecy, that power of vision which is its climax; the moral situation being clear, to see then how God will act upon it. Under these three powers of vision Jerusalem, the prophet’s city, is presented to us-Jerusalem in three lights, really three Jerusalems. First, there is flashed out { Isaiah 2:2-5 } a vision of the ideal city, Jerusalem idealised and glorified. Then comes { Isaiah 2:6 - Isaiah 4:1 } a very realistic picture, a picture of the actual Jerusalem. And lastly at the close of the prophecy { Isaiah 4:2-6 } we have a vision of Jerusalem as she shall be after God has taken her in hand-very different indeed from the ideal with which the prophet began. Here are three successive motives or phases of prophecy, which, as we have said, in all probability summarise the early ministry of Isaiah, and present him to us first, as the idealist or visionary; second, as the realist or critic; and, third, as the prophet proper or revealer of God’s actual will. I. THE IDEALIST { Isaiah 2:1-5 } All men who have shown our race how great things are possible have had their inspiration in dreaming of the impossible. Reformers, who at death were content to have lived for the moving forward but one inch of some of their fellow-men, began by believing themselves able to lift the whole world at once. Isaiah was no exception to this human fashion. His first vision was that of a Utopia, and his first belief that his countrymen would immediately realise it. He lifts up to us a very grand picture of a vast commonwealth centred in Jerusalem. Some think he borrowed it from an older prophet; Micah has it also; it may have been the ideal of the age. But, at any rate, if we are not to take Isaiah 2:5 in scorn, Isaiah accepted this as his own. "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it." The prophet’s own Jerusalem shall be the light of the world, the school and temple of the earth, the seat of the judgment of the Lord, when He shall reign over the nations, and all mankind shall dwell in peace beneath Him. It is a glorious destiny, and as its light shines from the far-off horizon, the latter days, in which the prophet sees it, what wonder that he is possessed and cries aloud, "O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord!" It seems to the young prophet’s hopeful heart as if at once that ideal would be realised, as if by his own word he could lift his people to its fulfilment. But that is impossible, and Isaiah perceives so as soon as he turns from the far-off horizon to the city at his feet, as soon as he leaves tomorrow alone and deals with today. The next verses of the chapter-from Isaiah 2:6 onwards-stand in strong contrast to those which have described Israel’s ideal. There Zion is full of the law and Jerusalem of the word of the Lord, the one religion flowing over from this centre upon the world. Here into the actual Jerusalem they have brought all sorts of foreign worship and heathen prophets; "they are replenished from the East, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and strike hands with the children of strangers." There all nations come to worship at Jerusalem; here her thought and faith are scattered over the idolatries of all nations. The ideal Jerusalem is full of spiritual blessings; the actual, of the spoils of trade. There the swords are beat into ploughshares and the. spears into pruning-hooks; here are vast and novel armaments, horses and chariots. There the Lord alone is worshipped; here the city is crowded with idols. The real Jerusalem could not possibly be more different from the ideal, nor its inhabitants as they are from what the prophet had confidently called on them to be. II. THE REALIST { Isaiah 2:6 - Isaiah 4:1 } Therefore Isaiah’s attitude and tone suddenly change. The visionary becomes a realist, the enthusiast a cynic, the seer of the glorious city of God the prophet of God’s judgment. The recoil is absolute in style, temper, and thought, down to the very figures of speech which he uses. Before, Isaiah had seen, as it were, a lifting process at work, "Jerusalem in the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills." Now he beholds nothing but depression. "For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and haughty, upon all that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." Nothing in the great civilisation, which he had formerly glorified, is worth preserving. The high towers, fenced walls, ships of Tarshish, treasures and armour must all perish; even the hills lifted by his imagination shall be bowed down, and "the Lord alone be exalted in that day." This recoil reaches its extreme in the last verse of the chapter. The prophet, who had believed so much in man as to think possible an immediate commonwealth of nations, believes in man now so little that he does not hold him worth preserving: "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?" Attached to this general denunciation are some satiric descriptions, in the third chapter, of the anarchy to which society in Jerusalem is fast being reduced under its childish and effeminate king. The scorn of these passages is scathing; "the eyes of the glory of God" burn through every rank, fashion, and ornament in the town. King and court are not spared; the elders and princes are rigorously denounced. But by far the most striking effort of the prophet’s boldness is his prediction of the overthrow of Jerusalem itself ( Isaiah 3:8 ). What it cost Isaiah to utter and the people to hear we can only partly measure. To his own passionate patriotism it must have felt like treason, to the blind optimism of the popular religion it doubtless appeared the rankest heresy-to aver that the holy city, inviolate and almost unthreatened since the day David brought to her the ark of the Lord, and destined by the voice of her prophets, including Isaiah himself, to be established upon the tops of the mountains, was now to fall into ruin. But Isaiah’s conscience overcomes his sense of consistency, and he who has just proclaimed the eternal glory of Jerusalem is provoked by his knowledge of her citizens’ sins to recall his words and intimate her destruction. It may have been that Isaiah was partly emboldened to so novel a threat, by his knowledge of the preparations which Syria and Israel were already making for the invasion of Judah. The prospect of Jerusalem, as the centre of a vast empire subject to Jehovah, however natural it was under a successful ruler like Uzziah, became, of course, unreal when every one of Uzziah’s and Jotham’s tributaries had risen in revolt against their successor, Ahaz. But of these outward movements Isaiah tells us nothing. He is wholly engrossed with Judah’s sin. It is his growing acquaintance with the corruption of his fellow countrymen that has turned his back on the ideal city of his opening ministry, and changed him into a prophet of Jerusalem’s ruin. "Their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of His glory." Judge, prophet, and elder, all the upper ranks and useful guides of the people, must perish. It is a sign of the degradation to which society shall be reduced, when Isaiah with keen sarcasm pictures the despairing people choosing a certain man to be their ruler because he alone has a coat to his back! { Isaiah 3:6 } With increased scorn Isaiah turns lastly upon the women of Jerusalem, { Isaiah 3:16-26 ; Isaiah 4:1-2 } and here perhaps the change which has passed over him since his opening prophecy is most striking. One likes to think of how the citizens of Jerusalem took this alteration in their prophet’s temper. We know how popular so optimist a prophecy as that of the mountain of the Lord’s house must have been, and can imagine how men and women loved the young face, bright with a far-off light, and the dream of an ideal that had no quarrel with the present. "But what a change is this that has come over him, who speaks not of tomorrow, but of today, who has brought his gaze from those distant horizons to our streets, who stares every man in the face, { Isaiah 3:9 } and makes the women feel that no pin and trimming, no ring and bracelet, escape his notice! Our loved prophet has become an impudent scorner!" Ah, men and women of Jerusalem, beware of those eyes! "The glory of God" is burning in them; they see you through and through, and they tell us that all your armour and the "show of your countenance," and your foreign fashions are as nothing, for there are corrupt hearts below. This is your judgment, that "instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness, and instead of a girdle a rope, and instead of well-set hair baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth, and branding instead of beauty. Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she shall be desolate and sit upon the ground!" This was the climax of the prophet’s judgment. If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot. If the women are corrupt the state is moribund. III. THE PROPHET OF THE LORD { Isaiah 4:2-6 } IS there, then, no hope for Jerusalem? Yes, but not where the prophet sought it at first, in herself, and not in the way he offered it-by the mere presentation of an ideal. There is hope, there is more-there is certain salvation in the Lord, but it only comes after judgment. Contrast that opening picture of the new Jerusalem with this closing one, and we shall find their difference to lie in two things. There the city is more prominent than the Lord, here the Lord is more prominent than the city; there no word of judgment, here judgment sternly emphasised as the indispensable way towards the blessed future. A more vivid sense of the Person of Jehovah Himself, a deep conviction of the necessity of chastisement: these are what Isaiah has gained during his early ministry, without losing hope or heart for the future. The bliss shall come only when the Lord shall "have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning." It is a corollary of all this that the participants of that future shall be many fewer than in the first vision of the prophet. The process of judgment must weed men out, and in place of all nations coming to Jerusalem, to share its peace and glory, the prophet can speak now only of Israel-and only of a remnant of Israel. "The escaped of Israel, the left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem." This is a great change in Isaiah’s ideal, from the supremacy of Israel over all nations to the bare survival of a remnant of his people. Is there not in this threefold vision a parallel and example for our own civilisation and our thoughts about it? All work and wisdom begin in dreams. We must see our Utopias before we start to build our stone and lime cities. "It takes a soul To move a body; it takes a high-souled man To move the masses even to a cleaner stye; It takes the ideal to blow an inch inside The dust of the actual." But the light of our ideals dawns upon us only to show how poor by nature are the mortals who are called to accomplish them. The ideal rises still as to Isaiah only to exhibit the poverty of the real. When we lift our eyes from the hills of vision, and rest them on our fellow-men, hope and enthusiasm die out of us. Isaiah’s disappointment is that of every one who brings down his gaze from the clouds to the streets. Be our ideal ever so desirable, be we ever so persuaded of its facility, the moment we attempt to apply it we shall be undeceived. Society cannot be regenerated all at once. There is an expression which Isaiah emphasises in his moment of cynicism: "The show of their countenance doth witness against them." It tells us that when he called his countrymen to turn to the light he lifted upon them he saw nothing but the exhibition of their sin made plain. When we bring light to a cavern whose inhabitants have lost their eyes by the darkness, the light does not make them see; we have to give them eyes again. Even so no vision or theory of a perfect state-the mistake which all young reformers make- can regenerate society. It will only reveal social corruption, and sicken the heart of the reformer himself. For the possession of a great ideal does not mean, as so many fondly imagine, work accomplished; it means work revealed-work revealed so vast, often so impossible, that faith and hope die down, and the enthusiast of yesterday becomes the cynic of tomorrow. "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted?" In this despair, through which every worker for God and man must pass, many a warm heart has grown cold, many an intellect become paralysed. There is but one way of escape, and that is Isaiah’s. It is to believe in God Himself; it is to believe that He is at work, that His purposes to man are saving purposes, and that with Him there is an inexhaustible source of mercy and virtue. So from the blackest pessimism shall arise new hope and faith, as from beneath Isaiah’s darkest verses that glorious passage suddenly bursts like uncontrollable spring from the very feet of winter. "For that day shall the spring of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel." This is all it is possible to say. There must be a future for man, because God loves him, and God reigns. That future can be reached only through judgment, because God is righteous. To put it another way: All of us who live to work for our fellow-men or who hope to lift them higher by our word begin with our own visions of a great future. These visions, though our youth lends to them an original generosity and enthusiasm, are, like Isaiah’s, largely borrowed. The progressive instincts of the age into which we are born and the mellow skies of prosperity combine with our own ardour to make our ideal one of splendour. Persuaded of its facility, we turn to real life to apply it. A few years pass. We not only find mankind too stubborn to be forced into our moulds, but we gradually become aware of Another Moulder at work upon our subject, and we stand aside in awe to watch His operations. Human desires and national ideals are not always fulfilled; philosophic theories are discredited by the evolution of fact. Uzziah does not reign for ever; the sceptre falls to Ahaz: progress is checked, and the summer of prosperity draws to an end. Under duller skies ungilded judgment comes to view, cruel and inexorable, crushing even the peaks on which we built our future, yet purifying men and giving earnest of a better future, too. And so life, that mocked the control of our puny fingers, bends groaning to the weight of an Almighty Hand. God also, we perceive as we face facts honestly, has His ideal for men; and though He works so slowly towards His end that our restless eyes are too impatient to follow His order, He yet reveals all that shall be to the humbled heart and the soul emptied of its own visions. Awed and chastened, we look back from His Presence to our old ideals. We are still able to recognise their grandeur and generous hope for men. But we see now how utterly unconnected they are with the present-castles in the air, with no ladders to them from the earth. And even if they were accessible, still to our eyes, purged by gazing on God’s own ways, they would no more appear desirable. Look back on Isaiah’s early ideal from the light of his second vision of the future. For all its grandeur, that picture of Jerusalem is not wholly attractive. Is there not much national arrogance in it? Is it not just the imperfectly idealised reflection of an age of material prosperity such as that of Uzziah’s was? Pride is in it, a false optimism, the highest good to be reached without moral conflict. But here is the language of pity, rescue with difficulty, rest only after sore struggle and stripping, salvation by the bare arm of God. So do our imaginations for our own future or for that of the race always contrast with what He Himself has in store for us, promised freely out of His great grace to our unworthy hearts, yet granted in the end only to those who pass towards it through discipline, tribulation, and fire. This, then, was Isaiah’s apprenticeship, and its net result was to leave him with the remnant for his ideal: the remnant and Jerusalem secured as its rallying-point. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.