The other physical miracle of the rapid production of the Palma Christi, which God created to overshadow Jonah, was plainly supernatural in that extreme rapidity of growth, else in conformity with the ordinary character of that plant. "The קיקיון qı̂yqâyôn, as we read in the Hebrew, called kikeia (or, Elkeroa, in Syriac and Punic," says Jerome , "is a shrub with broad leaves like vine-leaves. It gives a very dense shade, supports itself on its own stem. It grows most abundantly in Palestine, especially in sandy spots. If you cast the seed into the ground, it is soon quickened, rises marvelously into a tree, and a few days what you had beheld an herb, you look up to, a shrub. The קיקיון qı̂yqâyôn, a miracle in its instantaneous existence, and an instance of the power of God in the protection given by this living shade, followed the course of its own nature."
It is a native of all North Africa, Arabia, Syria, India. In the valley of the Jordan it still grows to a "large size, and has the character," an eyewitness writes , "of a perennial tree, although usually described as a biennial plant." "It is of the size of a small fig tree. It has leaves like a plane, only larger, smoother, and darker." The name of the plant is of Egyptian origin, kiki; which Dioscorides and Galen identify with the croton ; Herodotus with the Silicyprion , which, in the form seselicyprion, Dioscorides mentions as a name given to the kiki or kroton; Pliny with the Ricinus also (the Latin name for the croton), our Palma Christi; Hebrews with the Arabic Elkeroa, which again is known to be the Ricinus. The growth and occasional perishing of the Palma Christi have both something analogous to the growth and decay related in Jonah. Its rapidity of growth is remarked by Jerome and Pliny, who says , "in Spain it shoots up rapidly, of the height of an olive, with hollow stem," and branches .
"All the species of the Ricinus shoot up quickly, and yield fruit within three months, and are so multipled from the seed shed, that, if left to themselves, they would occupy in short space the whole country." In Jamaica , "it grows with surprising rapidity to the height of 15 or 16 feet." Niebuhr says, "it has the appearance of a tree. Each branch of the kheroa has only one leaf, with 6, 7, or 8 indentures. This plant was near a stream which watered it adequately. At the end of October, 1765, it had, in 5 months, grown about 8 feet, and bore, at once, flowers and fruit, green and ripe." This rapidity of growth has only a sort of likeness to the miracle, which quickened in a way far above nature the powers implanted in nature. The destruction may have been altogether in the way of nature, except that it happened at that precise moment, when it was to be a lesson to Jonah . "On warm days, when a small rain falls, black caterpillars are generated in great numbers on this plant, which, in one night, so often and so suddenly cut off its leaves, that only their bare ribs remain, which I have often observed with much wonder, as though it were a copy of that destruction of old at Nineveh." The Ricinus of India and Assyria furnishes food to a different caterpillar from that of Amboyna , but the account illustrates the rapidity of the destruction.
The word "worm" is elsewhere also used collectively, not of a single worm only, Jon 4:7, , and of creatures which, in God's appointment, devour the vine. Deu 28:39. there is nothing in the text, implying that the creature was one which gnawed the stem rather than the leaves. The unique word, smote , is probably used, to correspond with the mention of the sun smiting Jon 4:8. on the head of Jonah.
These were miracles, like all the other miracles of Scripture, ways, in which God made Himself and His power known to us, showing Himself the Lord of that nature which men worshiped and worship, for the present conversion of a great people, for the conviction of Israel, a hidden prophecy of the future conversion of the pagan, and an example of repentance and its fruits to the end of time. They have no difficulty except to the rebelliousness of unbelief.
Other difficulties people have made for themselves. In a planked-roof booth such as ours, Joriah would not have needed the shadow of a plant. Obviously then, Jonah's booth, even if we knew not what it was, was not like our's. A German critic has chosen to treat this as an absurdity "Although Jonah makes himself a shady booth, he still further needs the overshadowing קיקיון qı̂yqâyôn." Jonah however, being an Israelite, made booths, such as Israel made them. Now we happen to know that the Jewish סכה sûkkâh, or booth, being formed of the interlaced branches of trees, did not exclude the sun. We know this from the rules in the Talmud as to the construction of the Succah or "tabernacle" for the Feast of Tabernacles. It lays down . "A סכה sûkkâh whose height is not 10 palms, and which has not three sides, and which has more sun than shade (i. e., more of whose floor is penetrated by light through the top of the Succah, than is left in shade), is profane."
And again , "Whoso spreadeth a linen cloth over the סכה sûkkâh, to protect him from the sun, it is profane." . "Whoso raiseth above it the vine or gourd or ivy, and so covers it, it is profane; but if the roof be larger than they, or if one cut them, they are lawful" . "With bundles of straw, and bundles of wood, and bundles of sticks, they do not cover it; and all these, if undone, are lawful" . "They cover it with planks according to Rabbi Jonah; and Rabbi Meir forbids; whoso putteth upon it one plank of four palms' breadth it is lawful, only he must not sleep under it." Yet all held that a plank thus broad was to overlap the booth, in which case it would not cover it. The principle of all these rules is, that the rude hut, in which they dwelt during the Feast of Tabernacles, was to be a shade, symbolizing God's overshadowing them in the wilderness; the סכה sûkkâh itself, not anything adscititious, was to be their shade; yet it was but an imperfect protection, and was indeed intended so to be, in order to symbolize their pilgrim-state.
Hence the contrivances among those who wished to be at case, to protect themselves; and hence the inconvenience which God turned into an instruction to Jonah. Even "the Arabs," Layard tells us in a Nineveh summer, "struck their black tents and lived in sheds, constructed of reeds and grass along the banks of the river." "The heats of summer made it impossible to live in a white tent." Layard's resource of a "recess, cut into the bank of the river where it rose perpendicularly from the water's edge, screening the front with reeds and boughs of trees, and covering the whole with similar materials," corresponds with the hut of Jonah, covered by the קיקיון qı̂yqâyôn.
No pagan scoffer, as far as we know, when he became acquainted with the history of Jonah, likened it to any pagan fable. This was reserved for so-called Christians. Some pagan mocked at it, as the philosophers of Mars' Hill mocked at the resurrection of Christ Act 17:32. "This sort of question" (about Jonah), said a pagan, who professed to be an inquirer, "I have observed to be met with broad mockery by the pagans" . They mocked, but they did not insult the history by likening it to any fable of their own. Jerome, who mentions incidentally that "Joppa is the place in which, to this day, rocks are pointed out in the shore, where Andromeda, being bound, was once on a time freed by the help of Perseus," does not seem aware that the fable could be brought into any connection with the history of Jonah. He urges on the pagan the inconsistency of believing their own fables, which besides their marvelousness were often immoral, and refusing to believe the miracles of Scripture histories; but the fable of Andromeda or of Hesione do not even occur to him in this respect . "I am not ignorant that to some it will seem incredible that a man could be preserved alive 3 days and nights in the fish's belly. These must be either believers or unbelievers. If believers, they must needs believe much greater things, how the three youths, cast into the burning fiery furnace, were in such sort unharmed, that not even the smell of fire touched their dress; how the sea retired, and stood on either side rigid like walls, to make a way for the people passing over; how the rage of lions, aggravated by hunger, looked, awestricken, on its prey, and touched it not, and many like things.
Or if they be unbelievers, let them read the 15 books of Ovid's metamorphoses, and all Greek and Latin story, and there they will see where the foulness of the fables precludes the holiness of a divine origin. These things they believe, and that to God all things are possible. Believing foul things, and defending them by alleging the unlimited power of God, they do not admit the same power as to things moral." In Alexandria and in the time of Cyril, the old pagan fables were tricked up again. He alludes then to Lycophron's version of the story of Hercules , in order, like Jerome, to point out the inconsistency of believing pagan fables and rejecting divine truth. "We," he says, "do not use their fables to confirm things divine, but we mention them to a good end, in answer to unbelievers, that their received histories too do not reject such relations."
The philosophers wished at once to defend their own fables and to attack the Gospel. Yet it was an unhappy argumentum ad hominem. Modern infidelity would find a likeness, where there is no shadow of it. The two pagan fables had this in common; that, in order to avert the anger of the gods, a virgin was exposed to be devoured by a sea monster, and delivered from death by a hero, who killed the monster and married the princess whom he delivered. This, as given by Cyril, was a form of the fable, long subsequent to Jonah. The original simple form of the story was this , "Apollo and Poseidon, wishing to make trial of the insolence of Laomedon, appearing in the likeness of men, promised for a consideration to fortify Pergamus. When they had fortified it, he did not pay them their hire. Wherefore Apollo sent a pestilence, and Poseidon a sea monster, cast on shore by the flood-tide, who made havoc of the men that were in the plain. The oracle said that they should be freed from these misfortunes, if Laomedon would set his daughter Hesione as food for the monster; he did so set her, binding her to the rocks near to the plain; Hercules, seeing her thus exposed, promised to save her, if he might have from Laomedon the horses, which Zeus had given in compensation for the rape of Ganymede. Laomedon saying that he would give them, he killed the monster and set Hesione free."
This simple story is repeated, with unimportant variations, by Diodorus Siculus , Hyginus, Orid, Valerius Flaccus. Even later, the younger Philostratus, depicting the story, has no other facts. An old icon represents the conflict in a way that is inconsistent with the later form of the story .
The story of Andromeda is told by Apollodorus , in part in the very same words. The Nereids were angered by Cassiope the mother of Andromeda, for boasting herself more beautiful than they. Then follows the same history, Poseidon sending a flood-tide and a sea monster; the same advice of the oracle; the setting Andromeda in chains, as food for the sea monster; Perseus' arrival, bargain with the father, the killing of the sea monster, the deliverance of Andromeda. Fable as all this is, it does not seem to have been meant to be fable. Pliny relates , "M. Scaurus, when AEdile, exhibited at Rome, among other marvels, the bones of the monster to which Andromeda was said to have been exposed, which bones were brought from Joppa, a city of Judaea, being 40 feet long, in height greater than the ribs of the Indian elephant, and the vertebrae a foot and a half thick." He describes Joppa as "seated on a hill, with a projecting rock, in which they show the traces of the chains of Andromeda" , Josephus says the same . Pausanias relates, "the country of the Hebrews near Joppa supplies water blood-red, very near the sea. The natives tell, that Perseus, when he had slain the monster to which the daughter of Cepheus was exposed, washed off the blood there." Mela, following perhaps his Greek authority , speaks in the present , "an illustrious trace of the preservation of Andromeda by Perseus, they show vast bones of a sea monster."
But, whether the authors of these fables meant them for matters of fact, or whether the fables had any symbolic meaning, they have not, in any form which they received until long after the time of Jonah, any connection with the Book of Jonah.
The history of Andromeda has in common with the Book of Jonah, only this, that, whereas Apollodorus and the ancients placed the scene of her history in AEthiopia, writers who lived some centuries after the time of Jonah removed it to Joppa, the seaport from where Jonah took ship. "There are some," says Strabo, speaking of his own day, "who transfer AEthiopia to our Phoenicia, and say that the matters of Andromeda took place at Joppa; and this, not out of ignorance of places, but rather in the form of a myth." The transfer, doubtless, took place in the 800 years which elapsed between Jonah and Strabo, and was occasioned perhaps by the special idolatry of the coast, the worship of Atargatis or Derceto. Pliny, at least, immediately after that statement about the chains of Andromeda at Joppa, subjoins , "The fabulous Ceto is worshiped there." Ceto is doubtless the same as "Derceto," of which Pliny uses the same epithet a little afterward . "There," at Hierapolis, "is worshiped the prodigious Atargatis, which the Greeks call Derceto." The Greeks appear (as their way was), on occasion of this worship of Ceto, to have transferred here their own story of Andromeda and the Cetos.
Ceto, i. e., Derceto, and Dagon were the corresponding male and female deities, under whose names the Philistines worshiped the power which God has implanted in nature to reproduce itself. Both were fish-forms, with human hands and face. Derceto or Atargatis was the Syriac Ter'to, whose worship at Hierapolis or Mabug bad a far-known infamy, the same altogether as that of Rhea or Cybele. The maritime situation of Philistia probably led them to adopt the fish as the symbol of prolific reproduction. In Holy Scripture we find chiefly the worship of the male god Dagon, literally "great fish." He had temples at Gaza, Jdg 16:23. and Ashdod, (Sa1 5:1; 1 Macc. 10:83; 11:4.) where all the lords of the Philistines assembled. Five other places are named from his worship, four near the sea coast, and one close to Joppa itself. Beth-dagon ("temple of Dagon") in the southwest part of Judah Jos 15:41. and so, near Philistia;
2) Another, in Asher also near the sea;
3) Caphar Dagon (village of Dagon) "a very large village between Jamnia and Diospolis." (Eusebius, Onom. sub v.)
4) Belt Dejan (Beth Dagon) about 6 miles N. W. of Ramlah (Robinson, Bibl. R. 2:232; see map) accordingly distinct from Caphar Dagon, and 4 1/2 hours from Joppa;
5) Another Beit Dejan, East of Nablus. (Ib. 282.))
But in later times the name of the goddess became more prominent, and, among the Greeks, exclusive. Atargatis or Detecto had, in the time of the Maccabees, a celebrated temple at Carnion, (2 Macc. 12:26.) i. e., Ashteroth Carnaim in Gilead, and, according to Pliny, at Joppa itself. This furnished an easy occasion to the Greeks to transfer there their story of the Cotes. The Greeks had populated Joppa (1 Macc. 10:75; 14:34), before Simon retook it from Antiochus. In Jonah's time, it was Phoenician. It was not colonized by Greeks until five centuries later. Since then Andromeda is a Greek story which they transferred to Joppa with themselves, the existence of the Greek story, at a later date, can be no evidence for "a Phoenician legend," of which the rationalists have dreamed, nor can it have any connection with Jonah who lived half a millennium before the Greeks came, 800 years before the story is mentioned in connection with Joppa.
With regard to the fables of Hercules, Diodorus Siculus thought that there was a basis of truth in them. The story of Hercules and Hesione, as alluded to by Homer and told by Apollodorus, looks like an account of the sea breaking in upon the land and wasting it; a human sacrifice on the point of being offered, and prevented by the removal of the evil through the building of a sea-wall. Gigantic works were commonly attributed to superior agency, good or evil. In Homer, the mention of the sea-wall is prominent . "He led the way to the lofty wall of mounded earth of the divine Hercules, which the Trojans and Minerva made for him, that, eluding the sea monster, he might escape, when he rushed at him from the beach toward the plain." In any case, a monster, which came up from the sea and wasted the land, is no fish; nor has the story of one who destroyed such a monster, any bearing on that of one whose life God preserved by a fish.
Nor is the likeness really mended by the later version of the story, originating in an Alexandrian after the Book of Jonah had been translated into Greek at Alexandria. The writer of the Cassandra, who lived at least five centuries after Jonah, represents Hercules as "a lion, the offspring of three nights, which aforetime the jagged-toothed dog of Triton lapped up in his jaws; and he, a living carver of his entrails, scorched by the steam of a cauldron on the fireless hearths, shed the bristles of his head upon the ground, the infanticide waster of my country."
In that form the story re-appears in a pagan philosopher and an Alexandrian father but, in both, as borrowed from the Alexandrian poet. Others, who were unacquainted with Lycophron, pagan
And Christian alike, knew nothing of it. One Christian writer, at the end of the 5th century , a Platonic philosopher, gives an account, distinct from any other, pagan or Christian, probably confused from both. In speaking of marvelous deliverances, he says ; "As Hercules too is sung" (i. e., in Greek poetry), "when his ship was broken, to have been swallowed up by a κητὸς kētos, and, having come within, was preserved." In the midst of the 11th century after our Lord, some writers on Greek fable, in order to get rid of the very offensive story of the conception of Hercules, interpreted the word of Lycophron which alludes to it, of his employing, in the destruction of the monster, three periods of 24 hours, called "nights" from the darkness in which he was enveloped. Truly, full often have those words of God been fulfilled, that Ti2 4:4. men shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. People, who refused to believe the history of Jonah, although attested by our Lord, considered AEneas Gazaeus, who lived about 13 centuries after Jonah, to be an authentic witness of an imaginary Phoenician tradition , 13 centuries before his own time; and that, simply on the ground that he has his name from Gaza; whereas he expressly refers, not to Phoenician tradition but to Greek poetry.
Such are the stories, which became a traditional argument among unbelieving critics to justify their disbelief in miracles accredited by our Lord. Flimsy spider-webs, which a critic of the same school brushes away as soon as he has found some other expedient, as flimsy, to serve his purpose! The majestic simplicity of Holy Scripture and its moral greatness stand out the more, in contrast with the unmeaning fables, with which men have dared, amid much self-applause, to compare it. A more earnest, but misled, mind, even while unhappily disbelieving the miracle of Jonah, held the comparison, on ground of "reason, ludicrous; but not the less frivolous and irreverent, as applied to Holy Scripture."
It was assumed by those who first wrote against the Book of Jonah, that the thanksgiving in it was later than Jonah, "a cento from the Psalms." They objected that it did not allude to the history of Jonah. One critic repeated after the other , that the Psalm was a "mere cento" of Psalms. However untrue, nothing was less doubted. A later critic felt that the Psalm must have been the thanksgiving of one delivered from great peril of life in the sea. "The images," he says , "are too definite, they relate too exclusively to such a situation, to admit of being understood vaguely of any great peril to life, as may Psalms 18 and Psa 42:1-11, (Which the writer may have had in his mind) or Psa 124:1-8." Another, to whom attention has been recently drawn, maintained the early date of the thanksgiving, and held that it contained so much of the first part of Jonah's history, that that history might be founded on the thanksgiving. This was one step backward toward the truth.
It is admitted that the thanksgiving is genuine, is Jonah's, and relates to a real deliverance of the real prophet. But the thanksgiving would not suggest the history Jonah thanks God for his deliverance from the depths of the sea, from which no man could be delivered, except by miracle.
He describes himself, not as struggling with the waves, but as sunk beneath them to the bottom of the sea, from where no other ever rose . Jonah does not tell God, how He had delivered him. Who does? He rehearses to God the hopeless peril, out of which He had delivered him. On this the soul dwells, for this is the ground of its thankfulness. The delivered soul loves to describe to God the death out of which it had been delivered. Jonah thanks God for one miracle; he gives no hint of the other, which, when he uttered the thanksgiving, was not yet completed. The thanksgiving bears witness to it miracle; but does not suggest its nature. The history supplies it.
It is instructive that the writer who, disbelieving the miracles in the book of Jonah, "restorers his history" by effacing them, has also to "restore the history "of the Saviour of the world, by omitting His testimony to them. But this is to subject the revelation of God to the variations of the mind of His creatures, believing what they like, disbelieving what they dislike.
Our Lord Himself attested that this miracle on Jonah was an image of His own entombment and Resurrection. He has compared the preaching of Jonah with His own. He compares it as a real history, as He does the coming of the Queen of Sheba to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Modern writers have lost sight of the principle, that men, as individuals, amid their infirmities and sins, are but types of man; in their history alone, their office, their sufferings, can they be images of their Redeemer. God portrayed doctrines of the Gospel in the ritual of the law. Of the offices of Christ and, at times, His history, he gave some faint outline in offices which He instituted, or persons whose history He guided. But they are types only, in that which is of God. Even that which was good in any was no type of His goodness; nay, the more what is human is recorded of them, the less they are types of Him. Abraham who acted much, is a type, not of Christ, but of the faithful.
Isaac, of whom little is recorded, except his sacrifice, becomes the type of Christ. Melchizedek, who comes forth once in that great loneliness, a King of Righteousness and of peace, a priest of God, refreshing the father of the faithful with the sacrificial bread and wine, is a type, the more, of Christ's everlasting priesthood, in that he stands alone, without father, without known descent, without known beginning or end, majestic in his one office, and then disappearing from our sight. Joseph was a type of our Lord, not in his chastity or his personal virtues but in his history; in that he was rejected by his brethren, sold at the price of a slave, yet, with kingly authority, received, supported, pardoned, gladdened, feasted, his brethren who had sold him. Even so the history of Jonah had two aspects. It is, at once, the history of his mission and of his own personal conduct in it.
These are quite distinct. The one is the history of God's doings in him and through him; the other is the account of his own soul, its rebellions, struggles, conviction. As a man, he is himself the penitent; as a prophet, he is the preacher of repentance. In what was human infirmity in him, he was a picture of his people, whose cause he espoused with too narrow a zeal. Zealous too for the honor of God, although not with God's all-enfolding love, willing that that honor should be vindicated in his own way, unwilling to be God's instrument on God's terms, yet silenced and subdued at last, he was the image and lesson to those who complained at Peter's mission to Cornelius, and who, only when they heard how God the Holy Spirit had come down upon Cornelius' household, "held their peace and glorified God, saying, then hath God to the Gentiles also granted repentance unto life. Act 11:18. what coinciding visions to Cornelius and Peter, what evident miracles of power and of grace, were needed after the Resurrection to convince the Jewish converts of that same truth, which God made known to and through Jonah! The conversion of the Gentiles and the saving of a remnant only of the Jews are so bound together in the prophets, that it may be that the repugnance of the Jewish converts was founded on an instinctive dread of the same sort which so moved Jonah. It was a superhuman love, through which S. Paul contemplated "their fall as the riches of the Gentiles" Rom 11:12.
On the other hand, that, in which Jonah was an image of our Lord, was very simple and distinct. It was where Jonah was passive, where nothing of his own was mingled. The storm, the casting over of Jonah, were the works of God's Providence; his preservation through the fish was a miracle of God's power; the conversion of the Ninevites was a manifold miracle of His grace. It might have pleased God to send to convert a pagan people one whom He had not so delivered; or to have subdued the will of the prophet whom He sent on some other mission. But now sign answers to sign, and mission shadows out mission. Jonah was first delivered from his three days' burial in that living tomb by a sort of resurrection, and then, whereas he had previously been a prophet to Israel, he thenceforth became a prophet to the pagan, whom, and not Israel, he converted, and, in their conversion, his, as it were, resurrection was operative.
The correspondence is there. We may lawfully dwell on subordinate details, how man was tempest-tost and buffeted by the angry waves of this perilous and bitter world; Christ, as one of us, gave His life for our lives, the storm at once was hushed, there is a deep calm of inward peace, and our haven was secured. But the great outstanding facts, which our Lord Himself has pointed out, are, that he who had heretofore been the prophet of Israel only, was, after a three days' burial, restored through miracle to life, and then the pagan were converted. Our Lord has set His seal upon the facts. They were to Israel a sacred enigma, a hidden prophecy, waiting for their explanation. They were a warning, how those on whom God then seemed not to have pity, might become the object of His pity, while they themselves were cast out. Now the marvelous correspondence is, even on the surface, a witness to the miracle. Centuries before our Lord came, there was the history of life preserved by miracle in death and out of death; and thereupon the history of pagan converted to God and accepted by Him. Is this, even a doubting mind might ask, accidental coincidence? or are it and the other like resemblances, the tracing of the finger of God, from whom is all harmony, Who blends in one all the gradations of His creation, all the lineaments of history, His natural and His moral world, the shadow of the law with the realities of the Gospel? How should such harmony exist, but for that harmonizing Hand, who "binds and blends in one" the morning and evening of His creation.
Bible
Jonah Chapter 1
Jonah 1:1
jon 1:1
Now the word of the Lord - , literally, "And, ..." This is the way in which the several inspired writers of the Old Testament mark that what it was given them to write was united onto those sacred books which God had given to others to write, and it formed with them one continuous whole. The word, "And," implies this. It would do so in any language, and it does so in Hebrew as much as in any other. As neither we, nor any other people, would, without any meaning, use the word, And, so neither did the Hebrews. It joins the four first books of Moses together; it carries on the history through Joshua, Judges, the Books of Samuel and of the Kings. After the captivity, Ezra and Nehemiah begin again where the histories before left off; the break of the captivity is bridged over; and Ezra, going back in mind to the history of God's people before the captivity, resumes the history, as if it had been of yesterday, "And in the first year of Cyrus." It joins in the story of the Book of Ruth before the captivity, and that of Esther afterward. At times, even prophets employ it, in using the narrative form of themselves, as Ezekiel, "and it was in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, and I was in the captivity by the river of Chebar, the heavens opened and I saw." If a prophet or historian wishes to detach his prophecy or his history, he does so; as Ezra probably began the Book of Chronicles anew from Adam, or as Daniel makes his prophecy a whole by itself. But then it is the more obvious that a Hebrew prophet or historian, when he does begin with the word, "And," has an object in so beginning; he uses an universal word of all languages in its uniform meaning in all language, to join things together.
And yet more precisely; this form, "and the word of the Lord came to - saying," occurs over and over again, stringing together the pearls of great price of God's revelations, and uniting this new revelation to all those which had preceded it. The word, "And," then joins on histories with histories, revelations with revelations, uniting in one the histories of God's works and words, and blending the books of Holy Scripture into one divine book.
But the form of words must have suggested to the Jews another thought, which is part of our thankfulness and of our being Act 11:18, "then to the Gentiles also hath God given repentance unto life." The words are the self-same familiar words with which some fresh revelation of God's will to His people had so often been announced. Now they are prefixed to God's message to the pagan, and so as to join on that message to all the other messages to Israel. Would then God deal thenceforth with the pagan as with the Jews? Would they have their prophets? Would they be included in the one family of God? The mission of Jonah in itself was an earnest that they would, for God. Who does nothing fitfully or capriciously, in that He had begun, gave an earnest that He would carry on what He had begun. And so thereafter, the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, were prophets to the nations also; Daniel was a prophet among them, to them as well as to their captives.
But the mission of Jonah might, so far, have been something exceptional. The enrolling his book, as an integral part of the Scriptures, joining on that prophecy to the other prophecies to Israel, was an earnest that they were to be parts of one system. But then it would be significant also, that the records of God's prophecies to the Jews, all embodied the accounts of their impenitence. Here is inserted among them an account of God's revelation to the pagan, and their repentance. "So many prophets had been sent, so many miracles performed, so often had captivity been foreannounced to them for the multitude of their sins. and they never repented. Not for the reign of one king did they cease from the worship of the calves; not one of the kings of the ten tribes departed from the sins of Jeroboam? Elijah, sent in the Word and Spirit of the Lord, had done many miracles, yet obtained no abandonment of the calves. His miracles effected this only, that the people knew that Baal was no god, and cried out, "the Lord He is the God." Elisha his disciple followed him, who asked for a double portion of the Spirit of Elijah, that he might work more miracles, to bring back the people.
He died, and, after his death as before it, the worship of the calves continued in Israel. The Lord marveled and was weary of Israel, knowing that if He sent to the pagan they would bear, as he saith to Ezekiel. To make trial of this, Jonah was chosen, of whom it is recorded in the Book of Kings that he prophesied the restoration of the border of Israel. When then he begins by saying, "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah," prefixing the word "And," he refers us back to those former things, in this meaning. The children have not hearkened to what the Lord commanded, sending to them by His servants the prophets, but have hardened their necks and given themselves up to do evil before the Lord and provoke Him to anger; "and" therefore "the word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh that great city, and preach unto her," that so Israel may be shewn, in comparison with the pagan, to be the more guilty, when the Ninevites should repent, the children of Israel persevered in unrepentance."
Jonah the son of Amittai - Both names occur here only in the Old Testament, Jonah signifies "Dove," Amittai, "the truth of God." Some of the names of the Hebrew prophets so suit in with their times, that they must either have been given them propheticly, or assumed by themselves, as a sort of watchword, analogous to the prophetic names, given to the sons of Hosea and Isaiah. Such were the names of Elijah and Elisha, "The Lord is my God," "my God is salvation." Such too seems to be that of Jonah. The "dove" is everywhere the symbol of "mourning love." The side of his character which Jonah records is that of his defect, his want of trust in God, and so his unloving zeal against those, who were to be the instruments of God against his people. His name perhaps preserves that character by which he willed to be known among his people, one who moaned or mourned over them.
Jonah 1:2
jon 1:2
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city - The Assyrian history, as far as it has yet been discovered, is very bare of events in regard to this period. We have as yet the names of three kings only for 150 years. But Assyria, as far as we know its history, was in its meridian. Just before the time of Jonah, perhaps ending in it, were the victorious reigns of Shalmanubar and Shamasiva; after him was that of Ivalush or Pul, the first aggressor upon Israel. It is clear that this was a time Of Assyrian greatness: since God calls it "that great city," not in relation to its extent only, but its power. A large weak city would not have been called a "great city unto God" Jon 3:3.
And cry against it - The substance of that cry is recorded afterward, but God told to Jonah now, what message he was to cry aloud to it. For Jonah relates afterward, how he expostulated now with God, and that his expostulation was founded on this, that God was so merciful that He would not fulfill the judgment which He threatened. Faith was strong in Jonah, while, like Apostles "the sons of thunder," before the Day of Pentecost, he knew not" what spirit he was of." Zeal for the people and, as he doubtless thought, for the glory of God, narrowed love in him. He did not, like Moses, pray Exo 32:32, "or else blot me also out of Thy book," or like Paul, desire even to be "an anathema from Christ" Rom 9:3 for his people's sake, so that there might be more to love his Lord. His zeal was directed, like that of the rebuked Apostles, against others, and so it too was rebuked. But his faith was strong. He shrank back from the office, as believing, not as doubting, the might of God. He thought nothing of preaching, amid that multitude of wild warriors, the stern message of God. He was willing, alone, to confront the violence of a city of 600,000, whose characteristic was violence. He was ready, at God's bidding, to enter what Nahum speaks of as a den of lions Nah 2:11-12; "The dwelling of the lions and the feeding-place of the young lions, where the lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses." He feared not the fierceness of their lion-nature, but God's tenderness, and lest that tenderness should be the destruction of his own people.
Their wickedness is come up before Me - So God said to Cain, Gen 4:10. "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground:" and of Sodom Gen 18:20 :21, "The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, because their sin is very grievous; the cry of it is come up unto Me." The "wickedness" is not the mere mass of human sin, of which it is said Jo1 5:19, "the whole world lieth in wickedness," but evil-doing toward others. This was the cause of the final sentence on Nineveh, with which Nahum closes his prophecy, "upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?" It bad been assigned as the ground of the judgment on Israel through Nineveh Hos 10:14-15. "So shall Bethel do unto you, on account of the wickedness of your wickedness." It was the ground of the destruction by the flood Gen 6:5. "God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth." God represents Himself, the Great Judge, as sitting on His Throne in heaven, Unseen but All-seeing, to whom the wickedness and oppressiveness of man against man "goes up," appealing for His sentence against the oppressor. The cause seems ofttimes long in pleading. God is long-suffering with the oppressor too, that if so be, he may repent. So would a greater good come to the oppressed also, if the wolf became a lamb. But meanwhile, " every iniquity has its own voice at the hidden judgment seat of God." Mercy itself calls for vengeance on the unmerciful.
Jonah 1:3
jon 1:3
But (And) Jonah rose up to flee ... from the presence of the Lord - literally "from being before the Lord." Jonah knew well, that man could not escape from the presence of God, whom he knew as the Self-existing One, He who alone is, the Maker of heaven, earth and sea. He did not "flee" then "from His presence," knowing well what David said Psa 139:7, Psa 139:9-10, "whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me." Jonah fled, not from God's presence, but from standing before him, as His servant and minister. He refused God's service, because, as he himself tells God afterward Jon 4:2, he knew what it would end in, and he misliked it.
So he acted, as people often do, who dislike God's commands. He set about removing himself as far as possible from being under the influence of God, and from the place where he "could" fulfill them. God commanded him to go to Nineveh, which lay northeast from his home; and he instantly set himself to flee to the then furthermost west. Holy Scripture sets the rebellion before us in its full nakedness. "The word of the Lord came unto Jonah, go to Nineveh, and Jonah rose up;" he did something instantly, as the consequence of God's command. He "rose up," not as other prophets, to obey, but to disobey; and that, not slowly nor irresolutely, but "to flee, from" standing "before the Lord." He renounced his office. So when our Lord came in the flesh, those who found what He said to be "hard sayings," went away from Him, "and walked no more with Him" Joh 6:66. So the rich "young man went away sorrowful Mat 19:22, for he had great possessions."
They were perhaps afraid of trusting themselves in His presence; or they were ashamed of staying there, and not doing what He said. So men, when God secretly calls them to prayer, go and immerse themselves in business; when, in solitude, He says to their souls something which they do not like, they escape His Voice in a throng. If He calls them to make sacrifices for His poor, they order themselves a new dress or some fresh sumptuousness or self-indulgence; if to celibacy, they engage themselves to marry immediately; or, contrariwise, if He calls them not to do a thing, they do it at once, to make an end of their struggle and their obedience; to put obedience out of their power; to enter themselves on a course of disobedience. Jonah, then, in this part of his history, is the image of those who, when God calls them, disobey His call, and how He deals with them, when he does not abandon them. He lets them have their way for a time, encompasses them with difficulties, so that they shall "flee back from God displeased to God appeased."
"The whole wisdom, the whole bliss, the whole of man lies in this, to learn what God wills him to do, in what state of life, calling, duties, profession, employment, He wills him to serve Him." God sent each one of us into the world, to fulfill his own definite duties, and, through His grace, to attain to our own perfection in and through fulfilling them. He did not create us at random, to pass through the world, doing whatever self-will or our own pleasure leads us to, but to fulfill His will. This will of His, if we obey His earlier calls, and seek Him by prayer, in obedience, self-subdual, humility, thoughtfulness, He makes known to each by His own secret drawings, and, in absence of these, at times by His Providence or human means. And then , "to follow Him is a token of predestination." It is to place ourselves in that order of things, that pathway to our eternal mansion, for which God created us, and which God created for us.
So Jesus says Joh 10:27-28, "My sheep hear My voice and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My Hand." In these ways, God has foreordained for us all the graces which we need; in these, we shall be free from all temptations which might be too hard for us, in which our own special weakness would be most exposed. Those ways, which people choose out of mere natural taste or fancy, are mostly those which expose them to the greatest peril of sin and damnation. For they choose them, just because such pursuits flatter most their own inclinations, and give scope to their natural strength and their moral weakness. So Jonah, disliking a duty, which God gave him to fulfill, separated himself from His service, forfeited his past calling, lost, as far as in him lay, his place among "the goodly fellowship of the prophets," and, but for God's overtaking grace, would have ended his days among the disobedient. As in Holy Scripture, David stands alone of saints, who had been after their calling, bloodstained; as the penitent robber stands alone converted in death; as Peter stands singly, recalled after denying his Lord; so Jonah stands, the one prophet, who, having obeyed and then rebelled, was constrained by the overpowering providence and love of God, to return and serve Him.
"Being a prophet, Jonah could not be ignorant of the mind of God, that, according to His great Wisdom and His unsearchable judgments and His untraceable and incomprehensible ways, He, through the threat, was providing for the Ninevites that they should not suffer the things threatened. To think that Jonah hoped to hide himself in the sea and elude by flight the great Eye of God, were altogether absurd and ignorant, which should not be believed, I say not of a prophet, but of no other sensible person who had any moderate knowledge of God and His supreme power. Jonah knew all this better than anyone, that, planning his flight, he changed his place, but did not flee God. For this could no man do, either by hiding himself in the bosom of the earth or depths of the sea or ascending (if possible) with wings into the air, or entering the lowest hell, or encircled with thick clouds, or taking any other counsel to secure his flight.
This, above all things and alone, can neither be escaped nor resisted, God. When He willeth to hold and grasp in His Hand, He overtaketh the swift, baffleth the intelligent, overthroweth the strong, boweth the lofty, tameth rashness, subdueth might. He who threatened to others the mighty Hand of God, was not himself ignorant of nor thought to flee, God. Let us not believe this. But since he saw the fall of Israel and perceived that the prophetic grace would pass over to the Gentiles, he withdrew himself from the office of preaching, and put off the command." "The prophet knoweth, the Holy Spirit teaching him, that the repentance of the Gentiles is the ruin of the Jews. A lover then of his country, he does not so much envy the deliverance of Nineveh, as will that his own country should not perish. - Seeing too that his fellow-prophets are sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to excite the people to repentance, and that Balaam the soothsayer too prophesied of the salvation of Israel, he grieveth that he alone is chosen to be sent to the Assyrians, the enemies of Israel, and to that greatest city of the enemies where was idolatry and ignorance of God. Yet more he feared lest they, on occasion of his preaching, being converted to repentance, Israel should be wholly forsaken. For he knew by the same Spirit whereby the preaching to the Gentiles was entrusted to him, that the house of Israel would then perish; and he feared that what was at one time to be, should take place in his own time." "The flight of the prophet may also be referred to that of man in general who, despising the commands of God, departed from Him and gave himself to the world, where subsequently, through the storms of ill and the wreck of the whole world raging against him, he was compelled to feel the presence of God, and to return to Him whom he had fled. Whence we understand, that those things also which men think for their good, when against the will of God, are turned to destruction; and help not only does not benefit those to whom it is given, but those too who give it, are alike crushed. As we read that Egypt was conquered by the Assyrians, because it helped Israel against the will of God. The ship is emperiled which had received the emperiled; a tempest arises in a calm; nothing is secure, when God is against us."
Tarshish - , named after one of the sons of Javan, Gen 10:4. was an ancient merchant city of Spain, once proverbial for its wealth (Psa 72:10. Strabo iii. 2. 14), which supplied Judaea with silver Jer 10:9, Tyre with "all manner of riches," with iron also, tin, lead. Eze 27:12, Eze 27:25. It was known to the Greeks and Romans, as (with a harder pronunciation) Tartessus; but in our first century, it had either ceased to be, or was known under some other name. Ships destined for a voyage, at that time, so long, and built for carrying merchandise, were naturally among the largest then constructed. "Ships of Tarshish" corresponded to the "East-Indiamen" which some of us remember. The breaking of "ships of Tarshish by the East Wind" Psa 48:7 is, on account of their size and general safety, instanced as a special token of the interposition of God.
And went down to Joppa - Joppa, now Jaffa (Haifa), was the one well-known port of Israel on the Mediterranean. There the cedars were brought from Lebanon for both the first and second temple Ch2 3:16; Ezr 2:7. Simon the Maccabee (1 Macc. 14:5) "took it again for a haven, and made an entrance to the isles of the sea." It was subsequently destroyed by the Romans, as a pirate-haven. (Josephus, B. J. iii. 9. 3, and Strabo xvi. 2. 28.) At a later time, all describe it as an unsafe haven. Perhaps the shore changed, since the rings, to which Andromeda was tabled to have been fastened, and which probably were once used to moor vessels, were high above the sea. Perhaps, like the Channel Islands, the navigation was safe to those who knew the coast, unsafe to others. To this port Jonah "went down" from his native country, the mountain district of Zabulon. Perhaps it was not at this time in the hands of Israel. At least, the sailors were pagan. He "went down," as the man who fell among the thieves, is said to "have gone down from Jerusalem to Jericho." Luk 10:30. He "went down" from the place which God honored by His presence and protection.
And he paid the fare thereof - Jonah describes circumstantially, how he took every step to his end. He went down, found a strongly built ship going where he wished, paid his fare, embarked. He seemed now to have done all. He had severed himself from the country where his office lay. He had no further step to take. Winds and waves would do the rest. He had but to be still. He went, only to be brought back again.
"Sin brings our soul into much senselessness. For as those overtaken by heaviness of head and drunkenness, are borne on simply and at random, and, be there pit or precipice or whatever else below them, they fall into it unawares; so too, they who fall into sin, intoxicated by their desire of the object, know not what they do, see nothing before them, present or future. Tell me, Fleest thou the Lord? Wait then a little, and thou shalt learn from the event, that thou canst not escape the hands of His servant, the sea. For as soon as he embarked, it too roused its waves and raised them up on high; and as a faithful servant, finding her fellow-slave stealing some of his master's property, ceases not from giving endless trouble to those who take him in, until she recover him, so too the sea, finding and recognizing her fellow-servant, harasses the sailors unceasingly, raging, roaring, not dragging them to a tribunal but threatening to sink the vessel with all its unless they restore to her, her fellow-servant."
"The sinner "arises," because, will he, nill he, toil he must. If he shrinks from the way of God, because it is hard, he may not yet be idle. There is the way of ambition, of covetousness, of pleasure, to be trodden, which certainly are far harder. 'We wearied ourselves (Wisdom 5:7),' say the wicked, 'in the way of wickedness and destruction, yea, we have gone through deserts where there lay no way; but the way of the Lord we have not known.' Jonah would not arise, to go to Nineveh at God's command; yet he must needs arise, to flee to Tarshish from before the presence of God. What good can he have who fleeth the Good? what light, who willingly forsaketh the Light? "He goes down to Joppa." Wherever thou turnest, if thou depart from the will of God, thou goest down. Whatever glory, riches, power, honors, thou gainest, thou risest not a whit; the more thou advancest, while turned from God, the deeper and deeper thou goest down. Yet all these things are not had, without paying the price. At a price and with toil, he obtains what he desires; he receives nothing gratis, but, at great price purchases to himself storms, griefs, peril. There arises a great tempest in the sea, when various contradictory passions arise in the heart of the sinner, which take from him all tranquility and joy. There is a tempest in the sea, when God sends strong and dangerous disease, whereby the frame is in peril of being broken. There is a tempest in the sea, when, thro' rivals or competitors for the same pleasures, or the injured, or the civil magistrate, his guilt is discovered, he is laden with infamy and odium, punished, withheld from his wonted pleasures. Psa 107:23-27. "They who go down to the sea of this world, and do business in mighty waters - their soul melteth away because of trouble; they reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and all their wisdom is swallowed up."
Jonah 1:4
jon 1:4
But (And) the Lord sent out - (literally 'cast along'). Jonah had done his all. Now God's part began. This He expresses by the word, "And." Jonah took "his" measures, "and" now God takes "His." He had let him have his way, as He often deals with those who rebel against Him. He lets them have their way up to a certain point. He waits, in the tranquility of His Almightiness, until they have completed their preparations; and then, when man has ended, He begins, that man may see the more that it is His doing . "He takes those who flee from Him in their flight, the wise in their counsels, sinners in their conceits and sins, and draws them back to Himself and compels them to return. Jonah thought to find rest in the sea, and lo! a tempest." Probably, God summoned back Jonah, as soon as he had completed all on his part, and sent the tempest, soon after he left the shore.
At least, such tempests often swept along that shore, and were known by their own special name, like the Euroclydon off Crete. Jonah too alone had gone down below deck to sleep, and, when the storm came, the mariners thought it possible to put back. Josephus says of that shore, "Joppa having by nature no haven, for it ends in a rough shore, mostly abrupt, but for a short space having projections, i. e., deep rocks and cliffs advancing into the sea, inclining on either side toward each other (where the traces of the chains of Andromeda yet shown accredit the antiquity of the fable,) and the north wind beating right on the shore, and dashing the high waves against the rocks which receive them, makes the station there a harborless sea. As those from Joppa were tossing here, a strong wind (called by those who sail here, the black north wind) falls upon them at daybreak, dashing straightway some of the ships against each other, some against the rocks, and some, forcing their way against the waves to the open sea, (for they fear the rocky shore ...) the breakers towering above them, sank."
The ship was like - (literally 'thought') To be broken Perhaps Jonah means by this very vivid image to exhibit the more his own dullness. He ascribes, as it were, to the ship a sense of its own danger, as she heaved and rolled and creaked and quivered under the weight of the storm which lay on her, and her masts groaned, and her yard-arms shivered. To the awakened conscience everything seems to have been alive to God's displeasure, except itself.
Jonah 1:5
jon 1:5
And cried, every man unto his God - They did what they could. "Not knowing the truth, they yet know of a Providence, and, amid religious error, know that there is an Object of reverence." In ignorance they had received one who offended God. And now God, "whom they ignorantly worshiped" Act 17:23, while they cried to the gods, who, they thought, disposed of them, heard them. They escaped with the loss of their wares, but God saved their lives and revealed Himself to them. God hears ignorant prayer, when ignorance is not willful and sin.
To lighten it of them - , literally "to lighten from against them, to lighten" what was so much "against them," what so oppressed them. "They thought that the ship was weighed down by its wonted lading, and they knew not that the whole weight was that of the fugitive prophet." "The sailors cast forth their wares," but the ship was not lightened. For the whole weight still remained, the body of the prophet, that heavy burden, not from the nature of the body, but from the burden of sin. For nothing is so onerous and heavy as sin and disobedience. Whence also Zechariah Zac 5:7 represented it under the image of lead. And David, describing its nature, said Psa 38:4, "my wickednesses are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me." And Christ cried aloud to those who lived in many sins, Mat 11:28. "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you."
Jonah was gone down - , probably before the beginning of the storm, not simply before the lightening of the vessel. He could hardly have fallen asleep "then." A pagan ship was a strange place for a prophet of God, not as a prophet, but as a fugitive; and so, probably, ashamed of what he had completed, he had withdrawn from sight and notice. He did not embolden himself in his sin, but shrank into himself. The conscience most commonly awakes, when the sin is done. It stands aghast as itself; but Satan, if he can, cuts off its retreat. Jonah had no retreat now, unless God had made one.
And was fast asleep - The journey to Joppa had been long and hurried; he had "fled." Sorrow and remorse completed what fatigue began. Perhaps he had given himself up to sleep, to dull his conscience. For it is said, "he lay down and was fast asleep." Grief produces sleep; from where it is said of the apostles in the night before the Lord's Passion, when Jesus "rose up from prayer and was come to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sorrow" Luk 22:45 . "Jonah slept heavily. Deep was the sleep, but it was not of pleasure but of grief; not of heartlessness, but of heavy-heartedness. For well-disposed servants soon feel their sins, as did he. For when the sin has been done, then he knows its frightfulness. For such is sin. When born, it awakens pangs in the soul which bare it, contrary to the law of our nature. For so soon as we are born, we end the travail-pangs; but sin, so soon as born, rends with pangs the thoughts which conceived it." Jonah was in a deep sleep, a sleep by which he was fast held and bound; a sleep as deep as that from which Sisera never woke. Had God allowed the ship to sink, the memory of Jonah would have been that of the fugitive prophet. As it is, his deep sleep stands as an image of the lethargy of sin . "This most deep sleep of Jonah signifies a man torpid and slumbering in error, to whom it sufficed not to flee from the face of God, but his mind, drowned in a stupor and not knowing the displeasure of God, lies asleep, steeped in security."
Jonah 1:6
jon 1:6
What meanest thou? - or rather, "what aileth thee?" (literally "what is to thee?") The shipmaster speaks of it (as it was) as a sort of disease, that he should be thus asleep in the common peril. "The shipmaster," charged, as he by office was, with the common weal of those on board, would, in the common peril, have one common prayer. It was the prophet's office to call the pagan to prayers and to calling upon God. God reproved the Scribes and Pharisees by the mouth of the children who "cried Hosanna" Mat 21:15; Jonah by the shipmaster; David by Abigail; Sa1 25:32-34; Naaman by his servants. Now too he reproves worldly priests by the devotion of laymen, sceptic intellect by the simplicity of faith.
If so be that God will think upon us - , (literally "for us") i. e., for good; as David says, Psa 40:17. "I am poor and needy, the Lord thinketh upon" (literally "for") "me." Their calling upon their own gods had failed them. Perhaps the shipmaster had seen something special about Jonah, his manner, or his prophet's garb. He does not only call Jonah's God, "thy" God, as Darius says to Daniel "thy God" Dan 6:20, but also "the God," acknowledging the God whom Jonah worshiped, to be "the God." It is not any pagan prayer which he asks Jonah to offer. It is the prayer of the creature in its need to God who can help; but knowing its own ill-desert, and the separation between itself and God, it knows not whether He will help it. So David says Psa 25:7, "Remember not the sins of my youth nor my transgressions; according to Thy mercy remember Thou me for Thy goodness' sake, O Lord."
"The shipmaster knew from experience, that it was no common storm, that the surges were an infliction borne down from God, and above human skill, and that there was no good in the master's skill. For the state of things needed another Master who ordereth the heavens, and craved the guidance from on high. So then they too left oars, sails, cables, gave their hands rest from rowing, and stretched them to heaven and called on God."
Jonah 1:7
jon 1:7
Come, and let us cast lots - Jonah too had probably prayed, and his prayers too were not heard. Probably, too, the storm had some unusual character about it, the suddenness with which it burst upon them, its violence, the quarter from where it came, its whirlwind force . "They knew the nature of the sea, and, as experienced sailors, were acquainted with the character of wind and storm, and had these waves been such as they had known before, they would never have sought by lot for the author of the threatened wreck, or, by a thing uncertain, sought to escape certain peril." God, who sent the storm to arrest Jonah and to cause him to be cast into the sea, provided that its character should set the mariners on divining, why it came. Even when working great miracles, God brings about, through man, all the forerunning events, all but the last act, in which He puts forth His might. As, in His people, he directed the lot to fall upon Achan or upon Jonathan, so here He overruled the lots of the pagan sailors to accomplish His end. " We must not, on this precedent, immediately trust in lots, or unite with this testimony that from the Acts of the Apostles, when Matthias was by lot elected to the apostolate, since the privileges of individuals cannot form a common law." "Lots," according to the ends for which they were cast, were for:
i) dividing;
ii) consulting;
iii) divining.
i) The lot for dividing is not wrong if not used,
1) "without any necessity, for this would be to tempt God:"
2) "if in case of necessity, not without reverence of God, as if Holy Scripture were used for an earthly end," as in determining any secular matter by opening the Bible:
3) for objects which ought to be decided otherwise, (as, an office ought to be given to the fittest:)
4) in dependence upon any other than God Pro 16:33. "The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing of it is the Lord's." So then they are lawful "in secular things which cannot otherwise be conveniently distributed," or when there is no apparent reason why, in any advantage or disadvantage, one should be preferred to another." Augustine even allows that, in a time of plague or persecution, the lot might be cast to decide who should remain to administer the sacraments to the people, lest, on the one side, all should be taken away, or, on the other, the Church be deserted.
ii.) The lot for consulting, i. e., to decide what one should do, is wrong, unless in a matter of mere indifference, or under inspiration of God, or in some extreme necessity where all human means fail.
iii.) The lot for divining, i. e., to learn truth, whether of things present or future, of which we can have no human knowledge, is wrong, except by direct inspiration of God. For it is either to tempt God who has not promised so to reveal things, or, against God, to seek superhuman knowledge by ways unsanctioned by Him. Satan may readily mix himself unknown in such inquiries, as in mesmerism. Forbidden ground is his own province.
God overruled the lot in the case of Jonah, as He did the sign which the Philistines sought . "He made the heifers take the way to Bethshemesh, that the Philistines might know that the plague came to them, not by chance, but from Hilmself" . "The fugitive (Jonah) was taken by lot, not by any virtue of the lots, especially the lots of pagan, but by the will of Him who guided the uncertain lots" "The lot betrayed the culprit. Yet not even thus did they cast him over; but, even while such a tumult and storm lay on them, they held, as it were, a court in the vessel, as though in entire peace, and allowed him a hearing and defense, and sifted everything accurately, as men who were to give account of their judgment. Hear them sifting all as in a court - The roaring sea accused him; the lot convicted and witnessed against him, yet not even thus did they pronounce against him - until the accused should be the accuser of his own sin. The sailors, uneducated, untaught, imitated the good order of courts. When the sea scarcely allowed them to breathe, whence such forethought about the prophet? By the disposal of God. For God by all this instructed the prophet to be humane and mild, all but saying aloud to him; 'Imitate these uninstructed sailors. They think not lightly of one soul, nor are unsparing as to one body, thine own. But thou, for thy part, gavest up a whole city with so many myriads. They, discovering thee to be the cause of the evils which befell them, did not even thus hurry to condemn thee. Thou, having nothing whereof to accuse the Ninevites, didst sink and destroy them. Thou, when I bade thee go and by thy preaching call them to repentance, obeyedst not; these, untaught, do all, compass all, in order to recover thee, already condemned, from punishment.'"
Jonah 1:8
jon 1:8
Tell us, for whose cause - Literally "for what to whom." It may be that they thought that Jonah had been guilty toward some other. The lot had pointed him out. The mariners, still fearing to do wrong, ask him thronged questions, to know why the anger of God followed him; "what" hast thou done "to whom?" "what thine occupation?" i. e., either his ordinary occupation, whether it was displeasing to God? or this particular business in which he was engaged, and for which he had come on board. Questions so thronged have been admired in human poetry, Jerome says. For it is true to nature. They think that some one of them will draw forth the answer which they wish. It may be that they thought that his country, or people, or parents, were under the displeasure of God. But perhaps, more naturally, they wished to "know all about him," as people say. These questions must have gone home to Jonah's conscience. "What is thy business?" The office of prophet which he had left. "Whence comest thou?" From standing before God, as His minister. "What thy country? of what people art thou?" The people of God, whom he had quitted for pagan; not to win them to God, as He commanded; but, not knowing what they did, to abet him in his flight.
What is thine occupation? - They should ask themselves, who have Jonah's office to speak in the name of God, and preach repentance . "What should be thy business, who hast consecrated thyself wholly to God, whom God has loaded with daily benefits? who approachest to Him as to a Friend? "What is thy business?" To live for God, to despise the things of earth, to behold the things of heaven," to lead others heavenward.
Jonah answers simply the central point to which all these questions tended:
Jonah 1:9
jon 1:9
I am an Hebrew - This was the name by which Israel was known to foreigners. It is used in the Old Testament, only when they are spoken of by foreigners, or speak of themselves to foreigners, or when the sacred writers mention them in contrast with foreigners . So Joseph spoke of his land Gen 40:15, and the Hebrew midwives Exo 1:19, and Moses' sister Exo 2:7, and God in His commission to Moses Exo 3:18; Exo 7:16; Exo 9:1 as to Pharaoh, and Moses in fulfilling it Exo 5:3. They had the name, as having passed the River Euphrates, "emigrants." The title might serve to remind themselves, that they were "strangers" and "pilgrims," Heb 11:13. whose fathers had left their home at God's command and for God , "passers by, through this world to death, and through death to immortality."
And I fear the Lord - , i. e., I am a worshiper of Him, most commonly, one who habitually stands in awe of Him, and so one who stands in awe of sin too. For none really fear God, none fear Him as sons, who do not fear Him in act. To be afraid of God is not to fear Him. To be afraid of God keeps men away from God; to fear God draws them to Him. Here, however, Jonah probably meant to tell them, that the Object of his fear and worship was the One Self-existing God, He who alone is, who made all things, in whose hands are all things. He had told them before, that he had fled "from being before Yahweh." They had not thought anything of this, for they thought of Yahweh, only as the God of the Jews. Now he adds, that He, Whose service he had thus forsaken, was "the God of heaven, Who made the sea and dry land," that sea, whose raging terrified them and threatened their lives. The title, "the God of heaven," asserts the doctrine of the creation of the heavens by God, and His supremacy.
Hence, Abraham uses it to his servant Gen 24:7, and Jonah to the pagan mariners, and Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar Dan 2:37, Dan 2:44; and Cyrus in acknowledging God in his proclamation Ch2 36:23; Ezr 1:2. After his example, it is used in the decrees of Darius Ezr 6:9-10 and Artaxerxes Ezr 7:12, Ezr 7:21, Ezr 7:23, and the returned exiles use it in giving account of their building the temple to the Governor Ezr 5:11-12. Perhaps, from the habit of contact with the pagan, it is used once by Daniel Dan 2:18 and by Nehemiah Neh 1:4-5; Neh 2:4, Neh 2:20. Melchizedek, not perhaps being acquainted with the special name, Yahweh, blessed Abraham in the name of "God, the Possessor" or "Creator of heaven and earth" Gen 14:19, i. e., of all that is. Jonah, by using it, at once taught the sailors that there is One Lord of all, and why this evil had fallen on them, because they had himself with them, the renegade servant of God. "When Jonah said this, he indeed feared God and repented of his sin. If he lost filial fear by fleeing and disobeying, he recovered it by repentance."
Jonah 1:10
jon 1:10
Then were the men exceedingly afraid - Before, they had feared the tempest and the loss of their lives. Now they feared God. They feared, not the creature but the Creator. They knew that what they had feared was the doing of His Almightiness. They felt how awesome a thing it was to be in His Hands. Such fear is the beginning of conversion, when people turn from dwelling on the distresses which surround them, to God who sent them.
Why hast thou done this? - They are words of amazement and wonder. Why hast thou not obeyed so great a God, and how thoughtest thou to escape the hand of the Creator ? "What is the mystery of thy flight? Why did one, who feared God and had revelations from God, flee, sooner than go to fulfill them? Why did the worshiper of the One true God depart from his God?" "A servant flee from his Lord, a son from his father, man from his God!" The inconsistency of believers is the marvel of the young Christian, the repulsion of those without, the hardening of the unbeliever. If people really believed in eternity, how could they be thus immersed in things of time? If they believed in hell, how could they so hurry there? If they believed that God died for them, how could they so requite Him? Faith without love, knowledge without obedience, conscious dependence and rebellion, to be favored by God yet to despise His favor, are the strangest marvels of this mysterious world.
All nature seems to cry out to and against the unfaithful Christian, "why hast thou done this?" And what a why it is! A scoffer has recently said so truthfully : "Avowed scepticism cannot do a tenth part of the injury to practical faith, that the constant spectacle of the huge mass of worldly unreal belief does." It is nothing strange, that the world or unsanctified intellect should reject the Gospel. It is a thing of course, unless it be converted. But, to know, to believe, and to DISOBEY! To disobey God, in the name of God. To propose to halve the living Gospel, as the woman who had killed her child Kg1 3:26, and to think that the poor quivering remnants would be the living Gospel anymore! As though the will of God might, like those lower forms of His animal creation, be divided endlessly, and, keep what fragments we will, it would still be a living whole, a vessel of His Spirit! Such unrealities and inconsistencies would be a sore trial of faith, had not Jesus, who (cf. Joh 2:25), "knew what is in man," forewarned us that it should be so. The scandals against the Gospel, so contrary to all human opinion, are only all the more a testimony to the divine knowledge of the Redeemer.
Jonah 1:11
jon 1:11
What shall we do unto thee? - They knew him to be a prophet; they ask him the mind of his God. The lots had marked out Jonah as the cause of the storm; Jonah had himself admitted it, and that the storm was for "his" cause, and came from "his" God . "Great was he who fled, greater He who required him. They dare not give him up; they cannot conceal him. They blame the fault; they confess their fear; they ask "him" the remedy, who was the author of the sin. If it was faulty to receive thee, what can we do, that God should not be angered? It is thine to direct; ours, to obey."
The sea wrought and was tempestuous - , literally "was going and whirling." It was not only increasingly tempestuous, but, like a thing alive and obeying its Master's will, it was holding on its course, its wild waves tossing themselves, and marching on like battalions, marshalled, arrayed for the end for which they were sent, pursuing and demanding the runaway slave of God . "It was going, as it was bidden; it was going to avenge its Lord; it was going, pursuing the fugitive prophet. It was swelling every moment, and, as though the sailors were too tardy, was rising in yet greater surges, shewing that the vengeance of the Creator admitted not of delay."
Jonah 1:12
jon 1:12
Take me up, and cast me into the sea - Neither might Jonah have said this, nor might the sailors have obeyed it, without the command of God. Jonah might will alone to perish, who had alone offended; but, without the command of God, the Giver of life, neither Jonah nor the sailors might dispose of the life of Jonah. But God willed that Jonah should be cast into the sea - where he had gone for refuge - that (Wisdom 11:16) wherewithal he had "sinned, by the same also he might be punished" as a man; and, as a prophet, that he might, in his three days' burial, prefigure Him who, after His Resurrection, should convert, not Nineveh, but the world, the cry of whose wickedness went up to God.
For I know that for my sake - o "In that he says, "I know," he marks that he had a revelation; in that he says, "this great storm," he marks the need which lay on those who cast him into the sea."
Jonah 1:13
jon 1:13
The men rowed hard - , literally "dug." The word, like our "plowed the main," describes the great efforts which they made. Amid the violence of the storm, they had furled their sails. These were worse than useless. The wind was off shore, since by rowing alpine they hoped to get back to it. They put their oars well and firmly in the sea, and turned up the water, as men turn up earth by digging. But in vain! God willed it not. The sea went on its way, as before. In the description of the deluge, it is repeated Gen 7:17-18, "the waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth; the waters increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters." The waters raged and swelled, drowned the whole world, yet only bore up the ark, as a steed bears its rider: man was still, the waters obeyed. In this tempest, on the contrary, man strove, but, instead of the peace of the ark, the burden is, the violence of the tempest; "the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them" . "The prophet had pronounced sentence against himself, but they would not lay hands upon him, striving hard to get back to land, and escape the risk of bloodshed, willing to lose life rather than cause its loss. O what a change was there. The people who had served God, said, Crucify Him, Crucify Him! These are bidden to put to death; the sea rageth; the tempest commandeth; and they are careless its to their own safety, while anxious about another's."
Jonah 1:14
jon 1:14
Wherefore (And) they cried unto the Lord - "They cried" no more "each man to his god," but to the one God, whom Jonah had made known to them; and to Him they cried with an earnest submissive, cry, repeating the words of beseeching, as men, do in great earnestness; "we beseech Thee, O Lord, let us not, we beseech Thee, perish for the life of this man" (i. e., as a penalty for taking it, as it is said, Sa2 14:7. "we will slay him for the life of his brother," and, Deu 19:21. "life for life.") They seem to have known what is said, Gen 9:5-6. "your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made He man" , "Do not these words of the sailors seem to us to be the confession of Pilate, who washed his hands, and said, 'I am clean from the blood of this Man?' The Gentiles would not that Christ should perish; they protest that His Blood is innocent."
And lay not upon us innocent blood - innocent as to them, although, as to this thing, guilty before God, and yet, as to God also, more innocent, they would think, than they. For, strange as this was, one disobedience, their whole life, they now knew, was disobedience to God; His life was but one act in a life of obedience. If God so punishes one sin of the holy Pe1 4:18, "where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?" Terrible to the awakened conscience are God's chastenings on some (as it seems) single offence of those whom He loves.
For Thou, Lord, (Who knowest the hearts of all men,) hast done, as it pleased Thee - Wonderful, concise, confession of faith in these new converts! Psalmists said it, Psa 135:6; Psa 115:3. "Whatsoever God willeth, that doeth He in heaven and in earth, in the sea and in all deep places." But these had but just known God, and they resolve the whole mystery of man's agency and God's Providence into the three simple words , as (Thou) "willedst" (Thou) "didst." "That we took him aboard, that the storm ariseth, that the winds rage, that the billows lift themselves, that the fugitive is betrayed by the lot, that he points out what is to be done, it is of Thy will, O Lord" . "The tempest itself speaketh, that 'Thou, Lord, hast done as Thou willedst.' Thy will is fulfilled by our hands." "Observe the counsel of God, that, of his own will, not by violence or by necessity, should he be cast into the sea. For the casting of Jonah into the sea signified the entrance of Christ into the bitterness of the Passion, which He took upon Himself of His own will, not of necessity. Isa 53:7. "He was offered up, and He willingly submitted Himself." And as those who sailed with Jonah were delivered, so the faithful in the Passion of Christ. Joh 18:8-9. "If ye seek Me, let these go their way, that the saying might be fulfilled which" Jesus spake, 'Of them which Thou gavest Me, I have lost none. '"
Jonah 1:15
jon 1:15
They took up Jonah - o "He does not say, 'laid hold on him', nor 'came upon him' but 'lifted' him; as it were, bearing him with respect and honor, they cast him into the sea, not resisting, but yielding himself to their will."
The sea ceased (literally "stood") from his raging - Ordinarily, the waves still swell, when the wind has ceased. The sea, when it had received Jonah, was hushed at once, to show that God alone raised and quelled it. It "stood" still, like a servant, when it had accomplished its mission. God, who at all times saith to it Job 38:11, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed," now unseen, as afterward in the flesh Mat 8:26, "rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm" . "If we consider the errors of the world before the Passion of Christ, and the conflicting blasts of diverse doctrines, and the vessel, and the whole race of man, i. e., the creature of the Lord, imperiled, and, after His Passion, the tranquility of faith and the peace of the world and the security of all things and the conversion to God, we shall see how, after Jonah was cast in, the sea stood from its raging" . "Jonah, in the sea, a fugitive, shipwrecked, dead, sayeth the tempest-tossed vessel; he sayeth the pagan, aforetime tossed to and fro by the error of the world into divers opinions. And Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Joel, who prophesied at the same time, could not amend the people in Judaea; whence it appeared that the breakers could not be calmed, save by the death of (Him typified by) the fugitive."
Jonah 1:16
jon 1:16
And the men feared the Lord with a great fear - because, from the tranquility of the sea and the ceasing of the tempest, they saw that the prophet's words were true. This great miracle completed the conversion of the mariners. God had removed all human cause of fear; and yet, in the same words as before, he says, "they feared a great fear;" but he adds, "the Lord." It was the great fear, with which even the disciples of Jesus feared, when they saw the miracles which He did, which made even Peter say, Luk 5:8. "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Events full of wonder had thronged upon them; things beyond nature, and contrary to nature; tidings which betokened His presence, Who had all things in His hands. They had seen "wind and storm fulfilling His word" Psa 148:8, and, forerunners of the fishermen of Galilee, knowing full well from their own experience that this was above nature, they felt a great awe of God. So He commanded His people, "Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God Deu 6:13, for thy good always" Deu 6:24.
And offered a sacrifice - Doubtless, as it was a large decked vessel and bound on a long voyage, they had live creatures on board, which they could offer in sacrifice. But this was not enough for their thankfulness; "they vowed vows." They promised that they would do thereafter what they could not do then ; "that they would never depart from Him whom they had begun to worship." This was true love, not to be content with aught which they could do, but to stretch forward in thought to an abiding and enlarged obedience, as God should enable them. And so they were doubtless enrolled among the people of God, firstfruits from among the pagan, won to God Who overrules all things, through the disobedience and repentance of His prophet. Perhaps, they were the first preachers among the pagan, and their account of their own wonderful deliverance prepared the way for Jonah's mission to Nineveh.
Jonah 1:17
jon 1:17
Now the Lord had (literally "And the Lord") prepared - Jonah (as appears from his thanksgiving) was not swallowed at once, but sank to the bottom of the sea, God preserving him in life there by miracle, as he did in the fish's belly. Then, when the seaweed was twined around his head, and he seemed to be already buried until the sea should give up her dead, "God prepared the fish to swallow Jonah" . "God could as easily have kept Jonah alive in the sea as in the fish's belly, but, in order to prefigure the burial of the Lord, He willed him to be within the fish whose belly was as a grave." Jonah, does not say what fish it was; and our Lord too used a name, signifying only one of the very largest fish. Yet it was no greater miracle to create a fish which should swallow Jonah, than to preserve him alive when swallowed . "The infant is buried, as it were, in the womb of its mother; it cannot breathe, and yet, thus too, it liveth and is preserved, wonderfully nurtured by the will of God." He who preserves the embryo in its living grave can maintain the life of man as easily without the outward air as with it.
The same Divine Will preserves in being the whole creation, or creates it. The same will of God keeps us in life by breathing this outward air, which preserved Jonah without it. How long will men think of God, as if He were man, of the Creator as if He were a creature, as though creation were but one intricate piece of machinery, which is to go on, ringing its regular changes until it shall be worn out, and God were shut up, as a sort of mainspring within it, who might be allowed to be a primal Force, to set it in motion, but must not be allowed to vary what He has once made? "We must admit of the agency of God," say these men when they would not in name be atheists, "once in the beginning of things, but must allow of His interference as sparingly as may be." Most wise arrangement of the creature, if it were indeed the god of its God! Most considerate provision for the non-interference of its Maker, if it could but secure that He would not interfere with it for ever! Acute physical philosophy, which, by its omnipotent word, would undo the acts of God! Heartless, senseless, sightless world, which exists in God, is upheld by God, whose every breath is an effluence of God's love, and which yet sees Him not, thanks Him not, thinks it a greater thing to hold its own frail existence from some imagined law, than to be the object of the tender personal care of the Infinite God who is Love! Poor hoodwinked souls, which would extinguish for themselves the Light of the world, in order that it may not eclipse the rushlight of their own theory!
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish - The time that Jonah was in the fish's belly was a hidden prophecy. Jonah does not explain nor point it. He tells the fact, as Scripture is accustomed to do so. Then he singles out one, the turning point in it. Doubtless in those three days and nights of darkness, Jonah (like him who after his conversion became Paul), meditated much, repented much, sorrowed much, for the love of God, that he had ever offended God, purposed future obedience, adored God with wondering awe for His judgment and mercy. It was a narrow home, in which Jonah, by miracle, was not consumed; by miracle, breathed; by miracle, retained his senses in that fetid place. Jonah doubtless, repented, marveled, adored, loved God. But, of all, God has singled out this one point, how, out of such a place, Jonah thanked God. As He delivered Paul and Silas from the prison, when they prayed with a loud voice to Him, so when Jonah, by inspiration of His Spirit, thanked Him, He delivered him.
To thank God, only in order to obtain fresh gifts from Him, would be but a refined, hypocritical form of selfishness. Such a formal act would not be thanks at all. We thank God, because we love Him, because He is so infinitely good, and so good to us, unworthy. Thanklessness shuts the door to His personal mercies to us, because it makes them the occasion of fresh sins of our's. Thankfulness sets God's essential goodness free (so to speak) to be good to us. He can do what He delights in doing, be good to us, without our making His Goodness a source of harm to us. Thanking Him through His grace, we become fit vessels for larger graces . "Blessed he who, at every gift of grace, returns to Him in whom is all fullness of graces; to whom when we show ourselves not ungrateful for gifts received, we make room in ourselves for grace, and become meet for receiving yet more." But Jonah's was that special character of thankfulness, which thanks God in the midst of calamities from which there was no human exit; and God set His seal on this sort of thankfulness, by annexing this deliverance, which has consecrated Jonah as an image of our Lord, to his wonderful act of thanksgiving.
Bible
Jonah Chapter 2
Jonah 2:1
jon 2:1
Then - ("And") Jonah prayed, i. e., when the three days and nights were passed, he uttered this devotion. The word "prayed" includes thanksgiving, not petition only. It is said of Hannah that she "prayed" Sa1 2:1; but her canticle is all one thanksgiving without a single petition. In this thanksgiving Jonah says how his prayers had been heard, but prays no more. God had delivered him from the sea, and be thanks God, in the fish's belly, as undisturbed as in a Church or an oratory, secure that God, who had done so much, would fulfill the rest. He called God, "his" God, who had in so many ways shown Himself to be His, by His revelations, by His inspirations, by His chastisements, and now by His mercy . "From these words, 'Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly,' we perceive that, after he felt himself safe in the fish's belly, he despaired not of God's mercy."
Jonah 2:2
jon 2:2
I cried by reason of mine affliction - , or, "out of affliction" which came "to me." So the Psalmist thanked God in the same words, though in a different order ; "To the Lord in trouble to me I called, and He heard me." He "called," and God heard and answered , "He does not say, I "call," but I "called"; he does not pray for the future, but gives thanks for the past." Strange cause of thankfulness this would seem to most faith, to be alive in such a grave; to abide there hour after hour, and day after day, in one unchanging darkness, carried to and fro helplessly, with no known escape from his fetid prison, except to death! Yet spiritual light shone on that depth of darkness. The voracious creature, which never opened his mouth save to destroy life, had swallowed him, to save it . "What looked like death, became safe-keeping," and so the prophet who had fled to avoid doing the will of God and to do his own, now willed to be carried about, he knew not where, at the will; as it seemed, of the huge animal in which he lay, but in truth, where God directed it, and he gave thanks. God had heard him. The first token of God's mercy was the earnest of the whole. God was dealing with him, was looking on him. It was enough.
Out of the belly of hell cried I. - The deep waters were as a grave, and he was counted "among the dead" Psa 88:4. Death seemed so certain that it was all one as if he were in the womb of hell, not to be reborn to life until the last Day. So David said Psa 18:5, "The bands of death compassed me round about;" and Psa 30:3, "Thou hast drawn my life out of hell." The waters choked his speech; but he cried with a loud cry to God Who knew the heart. "I cried; Thou heardest." The words vary only by a kindred letter . The real heart's cry to God according to the mind of God and His hearing are one, whether, for man's good, He seem at the time to hear or no.
"Not of the voice but of the heart is God the Hearer, as He is the Seer. Do the ears of God wait for sound? How then could the prayer of Jonah from the inmost belly of the whale, through the bowels of so great a creature, out of the very bottomless depths, through so great a mass of waters, make its way to heaven?" "Loud crying to God is not with the voice but with the heart. Many, silent with their lips, have cried aloud with their heart; many, noisy with their lips, could, with heart turned away, obtain nothing. If then thou criest, cry within, where God heareth." "Jonah cried aloud to God out of the fish's belly, out of the deep of the sea, out of the depths of disobedience; and his prayer reached to God, Who rescued him from the waves, brought him forth out of the vast creature, absolved him from the guilt. Let the sinner too cry aloud, whom, departing from God, the storm of desires overwhelmed, the malignant Enemy devoured, the waves of this present world sucked under! Let him own that he is in the depth, that so his prayer may reach to God."
Jonah 2:3
jon 2:3
For Thou hadst ("didst") cast me into the deep - Jonah continues to describe the extremity of peril, from which God had already delivered him. Sweet is the memory of perils past. For they speak of God's Fatherly care. Sweet is it, to the prophet to tell God of His mercies; but this is sweet only to the holy, for God's mercy convicts the careless of ingratitude. Jonah then tells God, how He had cast him vehemently forth into the "eddying depth," where, when Pharaoh's army "sank like a stone" (Exo 15:5, add Exo 15:10), they never rose, and that, "in the heart" or center "of the seas," from where no strong swimmer could escape to shore. "The floods" or "flood," (literally "river,") the sea with its currents, "surrounded" him, encompassing him on all sides; and, above, tossed its multitudinous waves, passing over him, like an army trampling one prostrate underfoot. Jonah remembered well the temple psalms, and, using their words, united himself with those other worshipers who sang them, and taught us how to speak them to God. The sons of Korah Psa 42:7. had poured out to God in these self-same words the sorrows which oppressed them. The rolling billows and the breakers , which, as they burst upon the rocks, shiver the vessel and crush man, are, he says to God, "Thine," fulfilling Thy will on me.
Jonah 2:4
jon 2:4
I am cast out of Thy sight - , literally, "from before Thine eyes." Jonah had willfully withdrawn from standing in God's presence. Now God had taken him at his word, and, as it seemed, cast him out of it. David had said in his haste, "I am cut off." Jonah substitutes the stronger word, "I am cast forth," driven forth, expelled, like the "mire and dirt" Isa 57:20 which the waves drive along, or like the waves themselves in their restless motion Isa 57:20, or the pagan (the word is the same) whom God had driven out before Israel (Exo 34:11, and the Piel often), or as Adam from Paradise Gen 3:24.
Yet (Only) I will look again - He was, as it were, a castaway, cast out of God's sight, unheeded by Him, his prayers unheard; the storm unabated, until he was cast forth. He could no longer look with the physical eye even toward the land where God showed the marvels of His mercy, and the temple where God was worshiped continually. Yet what he could not do in the body, he would do in his soul. This was his only resource. "If I am cast away, this one thing will I do, I will still look to God." Magnificent faith! Humanly speaking, all hope was gone, for, when that huge vessel could scarcely live in the sea, how should a man? When God had given it no rest, while it contained Jonah, how should tie will that Jonah should escape? Nay, God had hidden His Face from him; yet he did this one, this only thing only this, "once more, still I will add to look to God." Thitherward would he look, so long as his mind yet remained in him.
If his soul parted from him, it should go forth from him in that gaze. God gave him no hope, save that He preserved him alive. For he seemed to himself forsaken of God. Wonderful pattern of faith which gains strength even from God's seeming desertion! "I am cast vehemently forth from before Thine eyes; yet this one thing will I do; mine eyes shrill be unto Thee, O Lord." The Israelites, as we see from Solomon's dedication prayer, "prayed toward the temple," (Kg1 8:29-30, Kg1 8:35 ff) where God had set His Name and shown His glory, where were the sacrifices which foreshadowed the great atonement. Thitherward they looked in prayer, as Christians, of old, prayed toward the East, the seat of our ancient Paradise. where our Lord "shall appear unto them that look for Him, a second time unto salvation." Heb 9:28. Toward that temple then he would yet look with fixed eye for help, where God, Who fills heaven and earth, showed Himself to sinners reconciled.
Jonah 2:5
jon 2:5
The waters compassed me about even to the soul - Words which to others were figures of distress (Psa 69:2. See the introduction to Jonah), "the waters have come even to the soul," were to Jonah realities. Sunk in the deep seas, the water strove to penetrate at every opening. To draw breath, which sustains life, to him would have been death. There was but a breath between him and death. "The deep encompassed me," encircling, meeting him wherever he turned, holding him imprisoned on every side, so that there was no escape, and, if there otherwise had been, he was bound motionless, "the weed was wrapped around my head, like a grave-band." "The weed" was the well known seaweed, which, even near the surface of the sea where man can struggle, twines round him, a peril even to the strong swimmer, entangling him often the more, the more he struggles to extricate himself from it. But to one below, powerless to struggle, it was as his winding sheet.
Jonah 2:6
jon 2:6
I went down to the bottoms, (literally "the cuttings off") of the mountains - , the "roots" as the Chaldee and we call them, the hidden rocks, which the mountains push out, as it were, into the sea, and in which they end. Such hidden rocks extend along the whole length of that coast. These were his dungeon walls; "the earth, her bars," those long submarine reefs of rock, his prison bars, "were around" him "forever:" the seaweeds were his chains: and, even thus, when things were at their uttermost, "Thou hast brought up my life from corruption," to which his body would have fallen a prey, had not God sent the fish to deliver him. The deliverance for which be thanks God is altogether past: "Thou broughtest me up." He calls "the" Lord, "my" God, because, being the God of all, He was especially his God, for whom He had done things of such marvelous love. God loves each soul which He has made with the same infinite love with which He loves all. Whence Paul says of Jesus Gal 2:20, "Who loved me and gave Himself for me." He loves each, with the same undivided love, as if he had created none besides; and He allows each to say, "My God," as if the Infinite God belonged wholly to each. So would He teach us the oneness of Union between the soul which God loves and which admits His love, and Himself.
Jonah 2:7
jon 2:7
When my sold fainted - , literally "was covered, within me," was dizzied, overwhelmed. The word is used of actual faintness from heat, Jon 4:8. thirst, Amo 8:13. exhaustion, Isa 51:20. when a film comes over the eyes, and the brain is, as it were, mantled over. The soul of the pious never is so full of God, as when all things else fade from him. Jonah could not but have remembered God in the tempest; when the lots were east; when he adjudged himself to be east forth. But when it came to the utmost, then he says, "I remembered the Lord," as though, in the intense thought of God then, all his former thought of God had been forgetfulness. So it is in every strong act of faith, of love, of prayer; its former state seems unworthy of the name of faith, love, prayer. It believes, loves, prays, as though all before had been forgetfulness.
And my prayer came in unto Thee - No sooner had he so prayed, than God heard. Jonah had thought himself cast out of His sight; but his prayer entered in there. "His holy temple" is doubtless His actual temple, toward which he prayed. God, Who is wholly everywhere but the whole of Him nowhere, was as much in the temple as in heaven; and He had manifested Himself to Israel in their degree in the temple, as to the blessed saints and angels in heaven.
Jonah 2:8
jon 2:8
They that observe lying vanities - , i. e., (by the force of the Hebrew form , that diligently watch, pay deference to, court, sue, "vanities of vanities," vain things, which prove themselves vain at last, failing the hopes which trust in them. Such were actual idols, in which men openly professed that they trusted Such are all things in which men trust, out of God. One is not more vain than another. All have this common principle of vanity, that people look, out of God, to that which has its only existence or permanence from God. It is then one general maxim, including all people's idols, idols of the flesh, idols of intellect, idols of ambition, idols of pride, idols of self and self-will. People "observe" them, as gods, watch them, hang upon them, never lose sight of them, guard them as though they could keep them. But what are they? "lying vanities," breath and wind, which none can grasp or detain, vanishing like air into air.
And what do they who so "observe" them? All alike "forsake their own mercy;" i. e., God, "Whose property is, always to have mercy," and who would be mercy to them, if they would. So David calls God, "my mercy." Psa 144:2. Abraham's servant and Naomi praise God, that He "hath not forsaken His mercy" Gen 24:27; Rut 2:20. Jonah does not, in this, exclude himself. His own idol had been his false love for his country, that he would not have his people go into captivity, when God would; would not have Nineveh preserved, the enemy of his country; and by leaving his office, he left his God, "forsook" his "own mercy." See how God speaks of Himself, as wholly belonging to them, who are His. He calls Himself "their own mercy" . He saith not, "they who" do "vanities," (for Ecc 1:2. 'vanity of vanities, and all things are vanity') lest he should seem to condemn all, and to deny mercy to the whole human race; but "they who observe, guard vanities," or lies; "they," into the affections of whose hearts those "vanities" have entered; who not only "do vanities," but who "guard" them, as loving them, deeming that they have found a treasure - These "forsake their own mercy." Although mercy be offended (and under mercy we may understand God Himself, for God is Psa 145:8, "gracious and full of compassion; slow to anger and of great mercy,") yet he doth not "forsake," doth not abhor, "those who guard vanities," but awaiteth that they should return: these contrariwise, of their own will, "forsake mercy" standing and offering itself."
Jonah 2:9
jon 2:9
But (And) with the voice of thanksgiving will I (would I fain) sacrifice unto Thee; what I have vowed, I would pay - He does not say, I will, for it did not depend upon him. Without a further miracle of God, he could do nothing. But he says, that he would nevermore forsake God. The law appointed sacrifices of thanksgiving; Lev 7:12-15. these he would offer, not in act only, but with words of praise. He would "pay what he had vowed," and chiefly himself, his life which God had given back to him, the obedience of his remaining life, in all things. For (Ecclesiasticus 35:1) "he that keepeth the law bringeth offerings enough; he that taketh heed to the commandments offereth a peace-offering." Jonah neglects neither the outward nor the inward part, neither the body nor the soul of the commandment.
Salvation is of (literally to) the Lord - It is wholly His; all belongs to Him, so that none can share in bestowing it; none can have any hope, save from Him. He uses an intensive form, as though he would say, strong "mighty salvation" . God seems often to wait for the full resignation of the soul, all its powers and will to Him. Then He can show mercy healthfully, when the soul is wholly surrendered to Him. So, on this full confession, Jonah is restored, The prophet's prayer ends almost in promising the same as the mariners. They "made vows;" Jonah says, "I will pay that I have vowed." Devoted service in the creature is one and the same, although diverse in degree; and so, that Israel might not despise the pagan, he tacitly likens the act of the new pagan converts and that of the prophet.
Jonah 2:10
jon 2:10
And the Lord spake unto the fish - Psa 148:8. Wind and storm fulfill His word. The irrational creatures have wills. God had commanded the prophet, and he disobeyed. God, in some way, commanded the fish. He laid His will upon it, and the fish immediately obeyed; a pattern to the prophet when He released him. "God's will, that anything should be completed, is law and fulfillment and hath the power of law. Not that Almighty God commanded the fish, as He does us or the holy angels, uttering in its mind what is to be done, or inserting into the heart the knowledge of what He chooseth. But if He be said to command irrational animals or elements or any part of the creation, this signifieth the law and command of His will. For all things yield to His will, and the mode of their obedience is to us altogether ineffable, but known to Him." "Jonah," says Chrysostom, "fled the land, and fled not the displeasure of God. He fled the land, and brought a tempest on the sea: and not only himself gained no good from flight, but brought into extreme peril those also who took him on board. When he sailed, seated in the vessel, with sailors and pilot and all the tackling, he was in the most extreme peril: when, sunk in the sea, the sin punished and laid aside, he entered that vast vessel, the fish's belly, he enjoyed great fearlessness; that thou mayest learn that, as no ship availeth to one living in sin, so when freed from sin, neither sea destroyeth, nor beasts consume. The waves received him, and choked him not; the vast fish received him and destroyed him not; but both the huge animal and the clement gave back their deposit safe to God, and by all things the prophet learned to be mild and tender, not to be more cruel than the untaught mariners or wild waves or animals.
For the sailors did not give him up at first, but after manifold constraint; and the sea and the wild animal guarded him with much benevolence, God disposing all these things. He returned then, preached, threatened, persuaded, saved, awed, amended, stablished, through that one first preaching. For he needed not many days, nor continuous exhortation; but, speaking these words he brought all to repentance. Wherefore God did not lead him straight from the vessel to the city; but the sailors gave him over to the sea, the sea to the vast fish, the fish to God, God to the Ninevites, and through this long circuit brought back the fugitive; that He might instruct all, that it is impossible to escape the hands of God. For come where a man may, dragging sin after him, he will undergo countless troubles. Though man be not there, nature itself on all sides will oppose him with great vehemence."
"Since the elect too at times strive to be sharp-witted, it is well to bring forward another wise man, and show how the craft of mortal man is comprehended in the Inward Counsels. For Jonah wished to exercise a prudent sharpness of wit, when, being sent to preach repentance to the Ninevites, in that he feared that, if the Gentiles were chosen, Judaea would be forsaken, he refused to discharge the office of preaching. He sought a ship, chose to flee to Tarshish; but immediately a tempest arises, the lot is cast, to know for whose fault the sea was troubled. Jonah is taken in his fault, plunged in the deep, swallowed by the fish, and carried by the vast beast thither whither he set at naught the command to go. See how the tempest found God's runaway, the lot binds him, the sea receives him, the beast encloses him, and, because he sets himself against obeying his Maker, he is carried a culprit by his prison house to the place whither he had been sent.
When God commanded, man would not minister the prophecy; when God enjoined, the beast cast forth the prophet. The Lord then "taketh the wise in their own craftiness," when He bringeth back to the service of His own will, that whereby man's will contradicts Him." "Jonah, fleeing from the perils of preaching and salvation of souls, fell into peril of his own life. When, in the ship, he took on himself the peril of all, he saved both himself and the ship. He fled as a man; he exposed himself to peril, as a prophet" . "Let them think so, who are sent by God or by a superior to preach to heretics or to pagan. When God calleth to an office or condition whose object it is to live for the salvation of others, He gives grace and means necessary or expedient to this end. For so the sweet and careful ordering of His Providence requireth. Greater peril awaiteth us from God our Judge, if we flee His calling as did Jonah, if we use not the talents entrusted to us to do His will and to His glory. We know the parable of the servant who buried the talent, and was condemned by the Lord."
And it vomited out Jonah - Unwilling, but constrained, it cast him forth as a burden to it . "From the lowest depths of death, Life came forth victorious." "He is swallowed by the fish, but is not consumed; and then calls upon God, and (marvel!) on the third day is given back with Christ." "What it prefigured, that that vast animal on the third day gave back alive the prophet which it had swallowed, no need to ask of us, since Christ explained it. As then Jonah passed from the ship into the fish's belly, so Christ from the wood into the tomb or the depth of death. And as he for those imperiled in the tempest, so Christ for those tempest-tossed in this world. And as Jonah was first enjoined to preach to the Ninevites, but the preaching of Jonah did not reach them before the fish cast him forth, so prophecy was sent beforehand to the Gentiles, but did not reach them until after the resurrection of Christ" . "Jonah prophesied of Christ, not so much in words as by a suffering of his own; yet more openly than if he had proclaimed by speech His Death and Resurrection. For why was he received into the fish's belly, and given back the third day, except to signify that Christ would on the third day return from the deep of hell?"
Irenaeus looks upon the history of Jonah as the imaging of man's own history . "As He allowed Jonah to be swallowed by the whale, not that he should perish altogether, but that, being vomited forth, he might the more be subdued to God, and the more glorify God Who had given him such unlooked for deliverance, and bring those Ninevites to solid repentance, converting them to the Lord Who would free them from death, terrified by that sign which befell Jonah (as Scripture says of them, 'They turned every man from his evil way, etc. ...') so from the beginning, God allowed man to be swallowed up by that vast Cetos who was the author of the transgression, not that he should altogether perish but preparing a way of salvation, which, as foresignified by the word in Jonah, was formed for those who had the like faith as to the Lord as Jonah, and with him confessed, "I fear the Lord, etc." that so man, receiving from God unlooked for salvation, might rise from the dead and glorify God, etc. ... This was the longsuffering of God, that man might pass through all, and acknowledge his ways; then, coming to the resurrection and knowing by trial from what he had been delivered, might be forever thankful to God, and, having received from Him the gift of incorruption, might love Him more (for he to whom much is forgiven, loveth much) and know himself, that he is mortal and weak, and understand the Lord, that He is in such wise Mighty and Immortal, that to the mortal He can give immortality and to the things of time eternity."
Bible
Jonah Chapter 3
Jonah 3:1
jon 3:1
And the word of the Lord came a second time to Jonah - o "Jonah, delivered from the whale, doubtless went up to Jerusalem to pay his vows and thank God there. Perhaps he hoped that God would be content with this his punishment and repentance, and that He would not again send him to Nineveh." Anyway, he was in some settled home, perhaps again at Gath-hepher. For God bids him, "Arise, go" . "But one who is on his way, is not bidden to arise and go." God may have allowed an interval to elapse, in order that the tidings of so great a miracle might spread far and wide. But Jonah does not supply any of these incidents . He does not speak of himself , but only of his mission, as God taught him.
Jonah 3:2
jon 3:2
Arise, go to Nineveh that great city, and preach (or cry) unto it - God says to Jonah the self-same words which He had said before; only perhaps He gives him an intimation of His purpose of mercy, in that he says no more, "cry against her," but "cry unto her." He might "cry against" one doomed to destruction; to "cry unto her," seems to imply that she had some interest in, and so some hope from, this cry. "The preaching that I bid thee." This is the only notice which Jonah relates that God took of his disobedience, in that He charged him to obey exactly what He commanded . "He does not say to him, why didst thou not what I commanded?" He had rebuked him in deed; He amended him and upbraided him not . "The rebuke of that shipwreck and the swallowing by the fish sufficed, so that he who had not felt the Lord commanding, might understand Him, delivering."
Jonah might have seemed unworthy to be again inspired by God. But "whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth;" whom He chasteneth, He loveth . "The hard discipline, the severity and length of the scourge, were the earnests of a great trust and a high destination." He knew him to be changed into another man, and, by one of His most special favors, gives him that same trust which he had before deserted . "As Christ, when risen, commended His sheep to Peter, wiser now and more fervent, so to Jonah risen He commends the conversion of Nineveh. For so did Christ risen bring about the conversion of the pagan, by sending His Apostles, each into large provinces, as Jonah was sent alone to a large city" . "He bids him declare not only the sentence of God, but in the same words; not to consider his own estimation or the ears of his hearers, nor to mingle soothing with severe words, and convey the message ingeniously, but with all freedom and severity to declare openly what was commanded him. This plainness, though, may be less acceptable to people or princes, is ofttimes more useful, always more approved by God. Nothing should be more sacred to the preacher of God's word, than truth and simplicity and inviolable sanctity in delivering it. Now alas, all this is changed into vain show at the will of the multitude and the breath of popular favor."
Jonah 3:3
jon 3:3
And Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh - , ready to obey, as before to disobey. Before, when God said those same words, "he arose and fled;" now, "he arose and went." True conversion shows the same energy in serving God, as the unconverted had before shown in serving self or error. Saul's spirit of fire, which persecuted Christ, gleamed in Paul like lightning through the world, to win souls to Him.
Nineveh was an exceeding great city - literally "great to God," i. e., what would not only appear great to man who admires things of no account, but what, being really great, is so in the judgment of God who cannot be deceived. God did account it great, Who says to Jonah, "Should not I spare Nineveh that great city, which hath more than six score thousand that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?" It is a different idiom from that, when Scripture speaks of "the mountains of God, the cedars of God." For of these it speaks, as having their firmness or their beauty from God as their Author.
Of three days' journey - , i. e., 60 miles in circumference. It was a great city. Jonah speaks of its greatness, under a name which he would only have used of real greatness. Varied accounts agree in ascribing this size to Nineveh . An Eastern city enclosing often, as did Babylon, ground under tillage, the only marvel is, that such a space was enclosed by walls. Yet this too is no marvel, when we know from inscriptions, what masses of human strength the great empires of old had at their command, or of the more than threescore pyramids of Egypt . In population it was far inferior to our metropolis, of which, as of the suburbs of Rome of old , "one would hesitate to say, where the city ended, where it began. The suburban parts are so joined on to the city itself and give the spectator the idea of boundless length."
An Eastern would the more naturally think of the circumference of a city, because of the broad places, similar to the boulevards of Paris, which encircles it, so that people could walk around it, within it . "The buildings," it is related of Babylon, "are not brought close to the walls, but are at about the distance of an acre from them. And not even the whole city did they occupy with houses; 80 furlongs are inhabited, and not even all these continuously, I suppose because it seemed safer to live scattered in several places. The rest they sow and till, that, if any foreign force threaten them, the besieged may be supplied with food from the soil of the city itself." Not Babylon alone was spoken of, of old, as "having the circumference of a nation rather than of a city."
Jonah 3:4
jon 3:4
And Jonah began to enter the city a day's journey - Perhaps the day's journey enabled him to traverse the city from end to end, with his one brief, deep cry of woe; "Yet forty days and Nineveh overthrown." He prophesied an utter overthrow, a turning it upside down. He does not speak of it as to happen at a time beyond those days. The close of the forty days and the destruction were to be one. He does not say strictly, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown," but, "Yet forty days and Nineveh overthrown." The last of those forty days was, ere its sun was set, to see Nineveh as a "thing overthrown." Jonah knew from the first God's purpose of mercy to Nineveh; he had a further hint of it in the altered commission which he had received. It is perhaps hinted in the word "Yet" . "If God had meant unconditionally to overthrow them, He would have overthrown them without notice. 'Yet,' always denotes some long-suffering of God." But, taught by that severe discipline, he discharges his office strictly.
He cries, what God had commanded him to cry out, without reserve or exception. The sentence, as are all God's threatenings until the last, was conditional. But God does not say this. That sentence was now within forty days of its completion; yet even thus it was remitted. Wonderful encouragement, when one Lent sufficed to save some 600,000 souls from perishing! Yet the first visitation of the cholera was checked in its progress in England, upon one day's national fast and humiliation; and we have seen how general prayer has often-times at once opened or closed the heavens as we needed. "A few years ago," relates Augustine, "when Arcadias was Emperor at Constantinople (what I say, some have heard, some of our people were present there,) did not God, willing to terrify the city, and, by terrifying, to amend, convert, cleanse, change it, reveal to a faithful servant of His (a soldier, it is said), that the city should perish by fire from heaven, and warned him to tell the Bishop! It was told. The Bishop despised it not, but addressed the people. The city turned to the mourning of penitence, as that Nineveh of old. Yet lest men should think that he who said this, deceived or was deceived, the day which God had threatened, came. When all were intently expecting the issue with great fears, at the beginning of night as the world was being darkened, a fiery cloud was seen from the East, small at first then, as it approached the city, gradually enlarging, until it hung terribly over the whole city.
All fled to the Church; the place did not hold the people. But after that great tribulation, when God had accredited His word, the cloud began to diminish and at last disappeared. The people, freed from fear for a while, again heard that they must migrate, because the whole city should be destroyed on the next sabbath. The whole people left the city with the Emperor; no one remained in his house. That multitude, having one some miles, when gathered in one spot to pour forth prayer to God, suddenly saw a great smoke, and sent forth a loud cry to God." The city was saved. "What shall we say?" adds Augustine. "Was this the anger of God, or rather His mercy? Who doubts that the most merciful Father willed by terrifying to convert, not to punish by destroying? As the hand is lifted up to strike, and is recalled in pity, when he who was to be struck is terrified, so was it done to that city." Will any of God's warnings "now" move our great Babylon to repentance, that it be not ruined?
Jonah 3:5
jon 3:5
And the people of Nineveh believed God; - strictly, "believed in God." To "believe in God" expresses more heart-belief, than to "believe God" in itself need convey. To believe God is to believe what God says, to be true; "to believe in" or "on God" expresses not belief only, but that belief resting in God, trusting itself and all its concerns with Him. It combines hope and trust with faith, and love too, since, without love, there cannot be trust. They believed then the preaching of Jonah, and that He, in Whose Name Jonah spake, had all power in heaven and earth. But they believed further in His unknown mercies; they cast themselves upon the goodness of the hitherto "unknown God." Yet they believed in Him, as the Supreme God, "the" object of awe, the God אלהים 'ĕlohı̂ym Jon 3:5, Jon 3:8, האלהים ha'ĕlohı̂ym Jon 3:9, although they knew Him not, as He Is , the Self-Existent One. Jonah does not say how they were thus persuaded.
God the Holy Spirit relates the wonders of God's Omnipotence as common everyday things. They are no marvels to Him Who performed them. "He commanded and they were done." He spake with power to the hearts which He had made, and they were turned to Him. Any human means are secondary, utterly powerless, except in "His" hands Who Alone doth all things through whomsoever He doth them. Our Lord tells us that "Jonah" himself "was a sign unto the Ninevites" . Whether then the mariners spread the history, or howsoever the Ninevites knew the personal history of Jonah, he, in his own person and in what befell him, was a sign to them. They believed that God, Who avenged "his" disobedience, would avenge their's. They believed perhaps, that God must have some great mercy in store for them, Who not only sent His prophet so far from his own land to "them" who had never owned, never worshiped Him, but had done such mighty wonders to subdue His prophet's resistance and to make him go to them.
And proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth - It was not then a repentance in word only, but in deed. A fast was at that time entire abstinence from all food until evening; the haircloth was a harsh garment, irritating and afflictive to the body. They who did so, were (as we may still see from the Assyrian sculptures) men of pampered and luxurious habits, uniting sensuality and fierceness. Yet this they did at once, and as it seems, for the 40 days. They "proclaimed a fast." They did not wait for the supreme authority. Time was urgent, and they would lose none of it. In this imminent peril of God's displeasure, they acted as men would in a conflagration. People do not wait for orders to put out a fire, if they can, or to prevent it from spreading. Whoever they were who proclaimed it, whether those in inferior authority, each in his neighborhood, or whether it spread from man to man, as the tidings spread, it was done at once. It seems to have been done by acclamation, as it were, one common cry out of the one common terror. For it is said of them, as one succession of acts, "the men of Nineveh believed in God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from their great to their little," every age, sex, condition . "Worthy of admiration is that exceeding celerity and diligence in taking counsel, which, although in the same city with the king, perceived that they must provide for the common and imminent calamity, not waiting to ascertain laboriously the king's pleasure." In a city, 60 miles in circumference, some time must needs be lost, before the king could be approached; and we know, in some measure, the forms required in approaching Eastern monarchs of old.
Jonah 3:6
jon 3:6
For word came - , rather, "And the matter came," i. e., the "whole account," as we say. "The word, word," throughout Holy Scripture, as in so many languages stands for that which is reported of. "The whole account," namely, how this stranger, in strange austere attire, had come, what had happened to him before he came, how he preached, how the people had believed him, what they had done, as had just been related, "came to the king." The form of words implies that what Jonah relates in this verse took place after what had been mentioned before. People are slow to carry to sovereigns matters of distress, in which they cannot help. This was no matter of peril from man, in which the counsel or energy of the king could be of use. Anyhow it came to him last. But when it came to him, he disdained not to follow the example of those below him. He was not jealous of his prerogative, or that his advice had not been had; but, in the common peril, acted as his subjects had, and humbled himself as they did. Yet this king was the king of Nineveh, the king, whose name was dreaded far and wide, whose will none who disputed, prospered . "He who was accounted and was the greatest of the kings of the earth, was not held back by any thought of his own splendor, greatness or dignity, from fleeing as a suppliant to the mercy of God, and inciting others by his example to the same earnesthess." The kings of Assyria were religious, according to their light. They ascribed all their victories to their god, Asshur . When the king came to hear of One who had a might such as he had not seen, he believed in Him.
And he arose from his throne - He lost no time; he heard, "and he arose" . "It denotes great earnestness, haste, diligence." "And he laid his robe from him." This was the large costly upper garment, so called from its amplitude It is the name of the goodly Babylonian garment Jos 7:21 which Achan coveted. As worn by kings, it was the most magnificent part of their dress, and a special part of their state. Kings were buried as they lived, in splendid apparel; and rich adornments were buried with them. The king of Nineveh dreads no charge of precipitancy nor man's judgment . "He exchanges purple, gold, gems for the simple rough and sordid sackcloth, and his throne for the most abject ashes, the humblest thing he could do, fulfilling a deeper degree of humility than is related of the people."
Strange credulity, had Jonah's message not been true; strange madness of unbelief which does not repent when a Greater than Jonah cries Mat 4:17, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Strange garb for the king, in the eyes of a luxurious age; acceptable in His who said Mat 11:21, "if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes" . "Many wish to repent, yet so as not to part with their luxuries or the vanity of their dress, like the Greek who said he would 'like to be a philosopher, yet in a few things, not altogether.' To whom we may answer, 'delicate food and costly dress agree not with penitence; and that is no great grief which never comes to light'" . "It was a marvelous thing, that purple was outvied by sackcloth. Sackcloth availed, what the purple robe availed not. What the diadem accomplished not, the ashes accomplished. Seest thou, I said not groundlessly that we should fear, not fasting but drunkenness and satiety? For drunkenness and satiety shook the city through and through, and were about to overthrow it; when it was reeling and about to fall, fasting stablished it" . "The king had conquered enemies by valor; he conquered God by humility. Wise king, who, for the saving of his people, owns himself a sinner rather than a king. He forgets that he is a king, fearing God, the King of all; he remembereth not his own power, coming to own the power of the Godhead. Marvelous! While he remembereth not that he is a king of men, he beginneth to be a king of righteousness. The prince, becoming religious, lost not his empire but changed it. Before, he held the princedom of military discipline; now, he obtained the princedom in heavenly disciplines."
Jonah 3:7
jon 3:7
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh; - literally, "And he cried and said, etc." The cry or proclamation of the king corresponded with the cry of Jonah. Where the prophet's cry, calling to repentance, had reached, the proclamation of the king followed, obeying. "By the decree of the king and his nobles." This is a hint of the political state of Nineveh, beyond what we have elsewhere. It was not then an absolute monarchy. At least, the king strengthened his command by that of his nobles, as Darius the Mede sealed the den of lions, into which Daniel was cast, with the signet of his lords as well as his own Dan 6:17, "that the purpose might not be changed concerning him."
Let neither man nor beast ... - o "Are brutes too then to fast, horses and mules to be clothed with sackcloth? Yes, he says. For as, when a rich man dies, his relatives clothe not only the men and maidservants, but the horses too with sackcloth, and, giving them to the grooms, bid that they should follow to the tomb, in token of the greatness of the calamity and inviting all to sympathy, so also when that city was about to perish, they clad the brute natures in sackcloth, and put them under the yoke of fasting. The irrational animals cannot, through words, learn the anger of God; let them learn through hunger, that the infliction is from God: for if, he says, the city should be overthrown, it would be one grave of us the inhabitants and of them also." It was no arbitrary nor wanton nor careless act of the king of Nineveh to make the mute animals share in the common fast. It proceeded probably from an indistinct consciousness that God cared for them also, and, that "they" were not guilty. So the Psalmist looked on God's care of His creatures as a fresh ground for man's trust in Him Psa 36:6-7, "O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast: How excellent is Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings." As our Lord teaches that God's care of the sparrows is a pledge to man of God's minute unceasing care for him, so the Ninevites felt truly that the cry of the poor brutes would be heard by God. And God confirmed that judgment, when He told Jonah of the "much cattle ," as a ground for having pity on Nineveh. The moanings and lowings of the animals, their voices of distress, pierce man's heart too, and must have added to his sense of the common misery. Ignorance or pride of human nature alone could think that man's sorrow is not aided by these objects of sense. Nature was truer in the king of Nineveh.
Jonah 3:8
jon 3:8
Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth - The gorgeous caparisons of horses, mules and camels was part of Eastern magnificence. Who knows not how man's pride is fed by the sleekness of his stud, their "well-appointed" trappings? Man, in his luxury and pride, would have everything reflect his glory, and minister to pomp. Self-humiliation would have everything reflect its lowliness. Sorrow would have everything answer to its sorrow. People think it strange that the horses at Nineveh were covered with sackcloth, and forget how, at the funerals of the rich, black horses are chosen and are clothed with black velvet.
And cry unto God mightily - , "with might which conquereth judgment." A faint prayer does not express a strong desire, nor obtain what it does not strongly ask for, as having only half a heart.
And let them turn, every man from his evil way - Isa 59:6. "See what removed that inevitable wrath. Did fasting and sackcloth alone? No, but the change of the whole life. How does this appear? From the prophet's word itself. For he who spake of the wrath of God and of their fast, himself mentions the reconciliation and its cause. "And God saw their works." What works? that they fasted? that they put on sackcloth? He passes by these, and says, "that every one turned from his evil ways, and God repented of the evil which He had said that He would do unto them." Seest thou, that not the fast plucked them from the peril, but the change of life made God propitious to these pagan. I say this, not that we should dishonor, but that we may honor fasting. For the honor of a fast is not in abstinence from food, but in avoidance of sin. So that tie who limiteth fasting to the abstinence from food only, he it is, who above all dishonoreth it. Fastest thou? Show it me by its works. 'What works?' askest thou? if you see a poor man, have mercy; if an enemy, be reconciled; if a friend doing well, envy him not; if a beautiful woman, pass on. Let not the mouth alone fast; let eyes too, and hearing and feet, and hands, and all the members of our bodies. Let the hands fast, clean from rapine and avarice! let the feet fast, holding back from going to unlawful sights! let the eyes fast, learning never to thrust themselves on beautiful objects, nor to look curiously on others' beauty, for the food of the eye is gazing. Let the ear too fast, for the fast of the ears is not to hear detractions and calumnies. Let the mouth too fast from foul words and reproaches. For what boots it, to abstain from birds and fish, while we bite and devour our brethren? The detractor preys on his brother's flesh."
He says, each from his evil way, because, in the general mass of corruption, each man has his own special heart's sin. All were to return, but by forsaking, each, one by one, his own habitual, favorite sin.
And from the violence - "Violence" is singled out as the special sin of Nineveh, out "of all their evil way;" as the angel saith, Mar 16:7. "tell His diciples and Peter." This was the giant, Goliath-sin. When this should be effaced, the rest would give way, as the Philistines fled, when their champion was fallen to the earth dead. "That is in their hands," literally "in their palms" , the hollow of their hand. The hands being the instruments alike of using violence and of grasping its fruits, the violence cleaves to them in both ways, in its guilt and in its gains. So Job and David say, Job 16:17; Ch1 12:17. "while there was no violence in my hands;" and Isaiah, "the work of wickedness is in their hands." Repentance and restitution clear the hands from the guilt of the violence: restitution, which gives back what was wronged; repentance, which, for love of God, hates and quits the sins, of which it repents. "Keep the winning, keep the sinning. The fruits of sin are temporal gain, eternal loss. We cannot keep the gain and escape the loss. Whoever keeps the gain of sin, loves it in its fruits, and will have them, all of them. The Hebrews had a saying , "Whoso hath stolen a beam, and used it in building a great tower, must pull down the whole tower and restore the beam to its owner," i. e., restitution must be made at any cost. "He," they say , "who confesses a sin and does not restore the thing stolen, is like one who holds a reptile in his hands, who, if he were washed with all the water in the world, would never be purified, until he cast it out of his hands; when he has done this, the first sprinkling cleanses him."
Jonah 3:9
jon 3:9
Who can tell if God will turn and repent? - The Ninevites use the same form of words, which God suggested by Joel to Judah. Perhaps He would thereby indicate that He had Himself put it into their mouths. "In uncertainty they repented, and obtained certain mercy" . "It is therefore left uncertain, that men, being doubtful of their salvation, may repent the more vehemently and the more draw down on themselves the mercy of God" . "Most certain are the promises of God, whereby He has promised pardon to the penitent. And yet the sinner may well be uncertain whether he have obtained that penitence which makes him the object of those promises, not a servile repentance for fear of punishment, but true contrition out of the love of God." And so by this uncertainty, while, with the fear of hell, there is mingled the fear of the loss of God, the fear of that loss, which in itself involves some love, is, by His grace, turned into a contrite love, as the terrified soul thinks "Who" He is, whom it had all but lost, whom, it knows not whether it may not lose. In the case of the Ninevites, the remission of the temporal and eternal punishment was bound up in one, since the only punishment which God had threatened was temporal, and if this was forgiven, that forgiveness was a token that His displeasure had ceased.
"They know not the issue, yet they neglect not repentance. They are unacquainted with the method of the lovingkindness of God, and they are changed amid uncertainty. They had no other Ninevites to look to, who had repented and been saved. They had not read the prophets nor heard the patriarchs, nor benefited by counsel, nor partaken of instruction, nor had they persuaded themselves that they should altogether propitiate God by repentance. For the threat did not contain this. But they doubted and hesitated about this, and yet repented with all carefulness. What account then shall we give, when these, who had no good hopes held out to them as to the issue, gave evidence of such a change, and thou, who mayest be of good cheer as to God's love for men, and hast many times received many pledges of His care, and hast heard the prophets and Apostles, and hast been instructed by the events themselves, strivest not to attain the same measure of virtue as they?
Great then was the virtue too of these people, but much greater the lovingkindness of God; and this you may see from the very greatness of the threat. For on this ground did He not add to the sentence, 'but if ye repent, I will spare,' that, casting among them the sentence unconditioned, He might increase the fear, and, increasing the fear, might impel them the more speedily to repentance." "That fear was the parent of salvation; the threat removed the peril; the sentence of overthrow stayed the overthrow. New and marvelous issue! The sentence threatening death was the parent of life. Contrary to secular judgment, the sentence lost its force, when passed. In secular courts, the passing of the sentence gives it validity. Contrariwise with God, the pronouncing of the sentence made it invalid. For had it not been pronounced, the sinners had not heard it: had they not heard it, they would not have repented, would not have averted the chastisement, would not have enjoyed that marvelous deliverance. They fled not the city, as we do now (from the earthquake), but, remaining, established it. It was a snare, and they made it a wall; a quicksand and precipice, and they made it a tower of safety."
"Was Nineveh destroyed? Quite the contrary. It arose and became more glorious, and all this intervening time has not effaced its glory, and we all yet celebrate it and marvel at it, that thenceforth it has become a most safe harbor to all who sin, not allowing them to sink into despair, but calling all to repentance, both by what it did and by what it gained from the Providence of God, persuading us never to despair of our salvation, but living the best we can, and setting before us a good hope, to be of good cheer that the end will anyhow be good" . "What was Nineveh? "They ate, they drank; they bought, they sold; they planted, they builded;" they gave themselves up to perjuries, lies, drunkenness, enormities, corruptions. This was Nineveh. Look at Nineveh now. They mourn, they grieve, are saddened, in sackcloth and ashes, in fastings and prayers. Where is that Nineveh? It is overthrown."
Jonah 3:10
jon 3:10
And God saw their works - o "He did not then first see them; He did not then first see their sackcloth when they covered themselves with it. He had seen them long before He sent the prophet there, while Israel was slaying the prophets who announced to them the captivity which hung over them. He knew certainly, that if He were to send the prophets far off to the Gentiles with such an announcement, they would hear and repent." God saw them, looked upon them, approved them, accepted the Ninevites not for time only, but, as many as persevered, for eternity. It was no common repentance. It was the penitence, which our Lord sets forth as the pattern of true repentance before His coming Mat 12:41. "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater than Jonah is here."
They believed in the one God, before unknown to them; they humbled themselves; they were not ashamed to repent publicly; they used great strictness with themselves; but, what Scripture chiefly dwells upon, their repentance was not only in profession, in belief, in outward act, but in the fruit of genuine works of repentance, a changed life out of a changed heart. "God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way." Their whole way and course of life was evil; they broke off, not the one or other sin only, but all "their" whole "evil way" . "The Ninevites, when about to perish, appoint them a first; in their bodies they chasten their souls with the scourge of humility; they put on hair-cloth for raiment, for ointment they sprinkle themselves with ashes; and, prostrate on the ground, they lick the dust. They publish their guilt with groans and lay open their secret misdeeds. Every age and sex alike applies itself to offices of mourning; all ornament was laid aside; food was refused to the suckling, and the age, as yet unstained by sins of its own, bare the weight of those of others; the mute animals lacked their own food. One cry of unlike natures was heard along the city walls; along all the houses echoed the piteous lament of the mourners; the earth bore the groans of the penitents; heaven itself echoed with their voice. That was fulfilled (Ecclesiasticus 35:17); The prayer of the humble pierceth the clouds." "The Ninevites were converted to the fear of God, and laying aside the evil of their former life, betook themselves through repentance to virtue and righteousness, with a course of penitence so faithful, that they changed the sentence already pronounced on them by God." "As soon as prayer took possession of them, it both made them righteous, and immediately corrected the city which had been habituated to live with profligacy and wickedness and lawlessness. More powerful was prayer than the long usage of sin. It filled that city with heavenly laws, and brought along with it temperance, lovingkindness, gentleness and care of the poor. For without these it cannot abide to dwell in the soul. Had any then entered Nineveh, who knew it well before, he would not have known the city; so suddenly had it sprung back from life most foul to godliness."
And God repented of the evil - This was no real change in God; rather, the object of His threatening was, that He might not do what He threatened. God's threatenings are conditional, "unless they repent," as are His promises, "if they endure to the end" Mat 10:22. God said afterward by Jeremiah, Jer 18:7-8. At what "instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concern ing a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull down and to destroy it, if that nation, against whom I had pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them."
"As God is unchangeable in nature, so is He unchangeable in will. For no one can turn back His thoughts. For though some seem to have turned back His thoughts by their deprecations, yet this was His inward thought, that they should be able by their deprecations to turn back His sentence, and that they should receive from Him whereby to avail with Him. When then outwardly His sentence seemeth to be changed, inwardly His counsel is unchanged, because He inwardly ordereth each thing unchangeably, whatsoever is done outwardly with change." "It is said that He repented, because He changed that which He seemed about to do, to destroy them. In God all things are disposed and fixed, nor doth He anything out of any sudden counsel, which He knew not in all eternity that He should do; but, amid the movements of His creature in time, which He governeth marvelously, He, not moved in time, as by a sudden will, is said to do what He disposed by well-ordered causes in the immutability of His most secret counsel whereby things which come to knowledge, each in its time, He both doth when they are present, and already did when they were future." "God is subject to no dolor of repentance, nor is He deceived in anything, so as to wish to correct wherein He erred. But as man, when he repenteth willeth to change what he has done, so when thou hearest that God repenteth, look for the change. God, although He calleth it 'repenting,' doth it otherwise than thou. Thou doest it, because thou hast erred; He, because He avengeth or freeth. He changed the kingdom of Saul when He "repented."
And in the very place, where Scripture saith, "He repenteth," it is said a little after, "He is not a man that He should repent." When then He changes His works through His unchangeable counsels, He is said to repent, on account of the change, not of the counsel, but of the act." Augustine thinks that God, by using this language of Himself, which all would feel to be inadequate to His Majesty, meant to teach us that all language is inadequate to His Excellences. "We say these things of God, because we do not find anything better to say. I say, 'God is just,' because in man's words I find nothing' better, for He is beyond justice. It is said in Scripture, "God is just and loveth justice." But in Scripture it is said, that "God repenteth," 'God is ignorant.' Who would not start back at this? Yet to that end Scripture condescendeth healthfully to those words from which thou shrinkest, that thou shouldest not think that what thou deemest great is said worthily of Him. If thou ask, 'what then is said worthily of God? one may perhaps answer, that 'He is just.' Another more gifted would say, that this word too is surpassed by His Excellence, and that this too is said, not worthily of Him, although suitably according to man's capacity: so that, when he would prove out of Scripture that it is written, "God is just," he may be answered rightly, that the same Scriptures say that "God repenteth;" so, that, as he does not take that in its ordinary meaning, as men are accustomed to repent, so also when He is said to be just, this does not correspond to His supereminence, although Scripture said this also well, that, through these words such as they are, we may be brought to that which is unutterable." "Why predictest Thou," asks Chrysostom, "the terrible things which Thou art about to do? That I may not do what I predict. Wherefore also He threatened hell, that He may not bring to hell. Let words terrify you that ye may be freed from the auguish of deeds." "Men threaten punishment and inflict it. Not so God; but contrariwise, He both predicts and delays, and terrifies with words, and leaves nothing undone, that He may not bring what He threatens. So He did with the Ninevites. He bends His bow, and brandishes His sword, and prepares His spear, and inflicts not the blow. Were not the prophet's words bow and spear and sharp sword, when he said, "yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed?" But He discharged not the shaft, for it was prepared, not to be shot, but to be laid up."
"When we read in the Scriptures or hear in Churches the word of God, what do we hear but Christ? "And behold a greater than Jonas is here." If they repented at the cry of one unknown servant, of what punishment shall not we be worthy, if, when the Lord preacheth, whom we have known through so many benefits heaped upon us, we repent not? To them one day sufficed; to us shall so many months and years not suffice? To them the overthrow of the city was preached, and 40 days were granted for repentance: to us eternal torments are threatened, and we have not half an hour's life certain."
And He did it not - God willed rather that His prophecy should seem to fail, than that repentance should fail of its fruit. But it did not indeed fail, for the condition lay expressed in the threat. "Prophecy," says Aquinas in reference to these cases, "cannot contain anything untrue." For "prophecy is a certain knowledge impressed on the understanding of the prophets by revelation of God, by means of certain teaching. But truth of knowledge is the same in the Teacher and the taught, because the knowledge of the learner is a likeness of the knowledge of the Teacher. And in this way, Jerome saith that 'prophecy is a sort of sign of divine foreknowledge.' The truth then of the prophetic knowledge and utterance must be the same as that of the divine knowledge, in which there can be no error. But although in the Divine Intellect, the two-fold knowledge (of things as they are in themselves, and as they are in their causes,) is always united, it is not always united in the prophetic revelation, because the impression made by the Agent is not always adequate to His power. Whence, sometimes, the prophetic revelation is a sort of impressed likeness of the Divine Foreknowledge, as it beholds the future contingent things in themselves, and these always take place as they are prophesied: as, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive."
But sometimes the prophetic revelation is an impressed likeness of Divine Foreknowledge, as it knows the order of causes to effects; and then at times the event is other than is foretold, and yet there is nothing untrue in the prophecy. For the meaning of the prophecy is, that the disposition of the inferior causes, whether in nature or in human acts, is such, that such an effect would follow" (as in regard to Hezekiah and Nineveh), "which order of the cause to the effect is sometimes hindered by other things supervening. "The will of God," he says again, "being the first, universal Cause, does not exclude intermediate causes, by virtue of which certain effects are produced. And since all intermediate causes are not adequate to the power of the First Cause, there are many things in the power, knowledge, and will of God, which are not contained in the order of the inferior causes, as the resurrection of Lazarus. Whence one, looking to the inferior causes, might say, 'Lazarus will not rise again:' whereas, looking to the First Divine Cause, he could say, 'Lazarus will rise again.' And each of these God willeth, namely, that a thing should take place according to the inferior cause: which shall not take place, according to the superior cause, and conversely. So that God sometimes pronounces that a thing shall be, as far as it is contained in the order of inferior causes (as according to the disposition of nature or deserts), which yet doth not take place, because it is otherwise in the superior Divine Cause. As when He foretold Hezekiah Isa 38:1, "Set thy house in order, for thou, shalt die and not live;" which yet did not take place, because from eternity it was otherwise in the knowledge and will of God which is unchangeable. Whence Gregory saith , 'though God changeth the thing, His counsel He doth not change.' When then He saith, "I will repent," Jer 18:8. it is understood as said metaphorically, for men, when they fulfill not what they threatened, seem to repent."
Bible
Jonah Chapter 4
Jonah 4:1
jon 4:1
And Jonah was displeased exceedingly - It was an untempered zeal. The prophet himself records it as such, and how he was reproved for it. He would, like many of us, govern God's world better than God Himself. Short-sighted and presumptuous! Yet not more short-sighted than those who, in fact, quarrel with God's Providence, the existence of evil, the baffling of good, "the prison walls of obstacles and trials," in what we would do for God's glory. What is all discontent, but anger with God? The marvel is that the rebel was a prophet ! "What he desired was not unjust in itself, that the Ninevites should be punished for their past sins, and that the sentence of God pronounced against them should not be recalled, although they repented. For so the judge hangs the robber for theft, however he repent." He sinned, in that he disputed with God. Let him cast the first stone, who never rejoiced at any overthrow of the enemies of his country, nor was glad, in a common warfare, that they lost as many soldiers as we. As if God had not instruments enough at His will! Or as if He needed the Assyrians to punish Israel, or the one nation, whose armies are the terror of Europe, to punish us, so that if they should perish, Israel should therefore have escaped, though it persevered in sin, or we!
And he was very angry - , or, may be, "very grieved." The word expresses also the emotion of burning grief, as when Samuel was grieved at the rejection of Saul, or David at "the breach upon Uzzah" Sa2 6:8; Ch1 13:11. Either way, he was displeased with what God did. Yet so Samuel and David took God's doings to heart; but Samuel and David were grieved at God's judgments; Jonah, at what to the Ninevites was mercy, only in regard to his own people it seemed to involve judgment. Scripture says that he was displeased, because the Ninevites were spared; but not, why this displeased him. It has been thought, that it was jealousy for God's glory among the pagan, as though the Ninevites would think that God in whose Name he spake had no certain knowledge of things to come; and so that his fault was mistrust in God's wisdom or power to vindicate His own honor. But it seems more likely, that it was a mistaken patriotism, which idolized the well being of his own and God's people, and desired that its enemy, the appointed instrument of its chastisement, should be itself destroyed. Scripture being silent about it, we cannot know certainly. Jonah, under God's inspiration, relates that God pronounced him wrong. Having incurred God's reproof, he was careless about men's judgment, and left his own character open to the harsh judgments of people; teaching us a holy indifference to man's opinion, and, in our ignorance, carefulness not to judge unkindly.
Jonah 4:2
jon 4:2
And he prayed unto the Lord - Jonah, at least, did not murmur or complain of God. He complained to God of Himself. He expostulates with Him. Shortsighted indeed and too wedded to his own will! Yet his will was the well-being of the people whose prophet God had made him. He tells God, that this it was, which he had all along dreaded. He softens it, as well as he can, by his word, "I pray Thee," which expresses deprecation anti-submissiveness. Still he does not hesitate to tell God that this was the cause of his first rebellion! Perilous to the soul, to speak without penitence of former sin; yet it is to God that he speaks and so God, in His wonderful condescension, makes him teach himself.
I knew that Thou art a gracious God - He repeats to God to the letter His own words by Joel Joe 2:13. God had so revealed Himself anew to Judah. He had, doubtless, on some repentance which Judah had shown, turned away the evil from them. And now by sending him as a preacher of repentance, He implied that He would do the same to the enemies of his country. God confirms this by the whole sequel. Thenceforth then Israel knew, that to the pagan also God was intensely, infinitely full of gracious and yearning love nay (as the form rather implies. ) mastered (so to speak) by the might and intensity of His gracious love, "slow to anger" and delaying it, "great in loving tenderness," and abounding in it; and that toward them also, when the evil is about to be inflicted, or has been partially or wholly inflicted, He will repent of it and replace it with good, on the first turning of the soul or the nation to God.
Jonah 4:3
jon 4:3
Therefore now, O Lord, take I beseech Thee my life from me - He had rather die, than see the evil which was to come upon his country. Impatient though he was, he still cast himself upon God. By asking of God to end his life, he, at least, committed himself to the sovereign disposal of God . "Seeing that the Gentiles are, in a manner, entering in, and that those words are being fulfilled, Deu 32:21. "They have moved Me to jealousy with" that which is "not God, and I will move them to jealousy with" those which are "not a people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation," he despairs of the salvation of Israel, and is convulsed with great sorrow, which bursts out into words and sets forth the causes of grief, saying in a manner, 'Am I alone chosen out of so many prophets, to announce destruction to my people through the salvation of others?' He grieved not, as some think, that the multitude of nations is saved, but that Israel perishes. Whence our Lord also wept over Jerusalem. The Apostles first preached to Israel. Paul wishes to become an anathema for his Rom 9:3-5. brethren who are Israelites, whose is the adoption and the glory and the covenant, and the giving of the law and the service of God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came." Jonah had discharged his office faithfully now. He had done what God commanded; God had done by him what He willed. Now, then, he prayed to be discharged. So Augustine in his last illness prayed that he might die, before the Vandals brought suffering and devastation on his country .
Jonah 4:4
jon 4:4
And the Lord said, Doest thou well to be angry? - o God, being appealed to, answers the appeal. So does He often in prayer, by some secret voice, answer the inquirer. There is right anger against the sin. Moses' anger was right, when he broke the tables. Exo 32:19. God secretly suggests to Jonah that his anger was not right, as our Lord instructed Luk 9:55. James and John that "theirs" was not. The question relates to the quality, not to the greatness of his anger. It was not the vehemence of his passionate desire for Israel, which God reproves, but that it was turned against the Ninevites . "What the Lord says to Jonah, he says to all, who in their office of the cure of souls are angry. They must, as to this same anger, be recalled into themselves, to regard the cause or object of their anger, and weigh warily and attentively whether they "do well to be angry." For if they are angry, not with men but with the sins of men, if they hate and persecute, not men, but the vices of men, they are rightly angry, their zeal is good. But if they are angry, not with sins but with men, if they hate, not vices but men, they are angered amiss, their zeal is bad. This then which was said to one, is to be watchfully looked to and decided by all, 'Doest thou well to be angry? '"
Jonah 4:5
jon 4:5
So Jonah went out of the city - o, The form of the words implies (as in the English Version), that this took place after Jonah was convinced that God would spare Nineveh; and since there is no intimation that he knew it by revelation, then it was probably after the 40 days . "The days being now past, after which it was time that the things foretold should be accomplished, and His anger as yet taking no effect, Jonah understood that God had pity on Nineveh. Still he does not give up all hope, and thinks that a respite of the evil has been granted them on their willingness to repent, but that some effect of His displeasure would come, since the pains of their repentance bad not equalled their offences. So thinking in himself apparently, he departs from the city, and waits to see what will become of them." "He expected" apparently "that it would either fall by an earthquake, or be burned with fire, like Sodom" . "Jonah, in that he built him a tabernale and sat over against Nineveh, awaiting what should happen to it, wore a different, foresignifying character. For he prefigured the carnal people of Israel. For these too were sad at the salvation of the Ninevites, i. e., the redemption and deliverance of the Gentiles. Whence Christ came to call, not the righteous but sinners to repentance. But the over-shadowing gourd over his head was the promises of the Old Testament or those offices in which, as the apostle says, there was a shadow of good things to come, protecting them in the land of promise from temporal evils; all which are now emptied and faded. And now that people, having lost the temple at Jerusalem and the priesthood and sacrifice (all which was a shadow of that which was to come) in its captive dispersion, is scorched by a vehement heat of tribulation, as Jonah by the heat of the sun, and grieves greatly; and yet the salvation of the pagan and the penitent is accounted of more moment than its grief, and the shadow which it loved."
Jonah 4:6
jon 4:6
And the Lord God prepared a gourd - , (a palm-christ, English margin, rightly.) . "God again commanded the gourd, as he did the whale, willing only that this should be. Forthwith it springs up beautiful and full of flower, and straightway was a roof to the whole booth, and anoints him so to speak with joy, with its deep shade. The prophet rejoices at it exceedingly, as being a great and thankworthy thing. See now herein too the simplicity of his mind. For he was grieved exceedingly, because what he had prophesied came not to pass; he rejoiced exceedingly for a plant. A blameless mind is lightly moved to gladness or sorrow. You will see this in children. For as people who are not strong, easily fall, if someone gives them no very strong push, but touches them as it were with a lighter hand, so too the guileless mind is easily carried away by anything which delights or grieves it." Little as the shelter of the palm-christ was in itself, Jonah must have looked upon its sudden growth, as a fruit of God's goodness toward him, (as it was) and then perhaps went on to think (as people do) that this favor of God showed that He meant, in the end, to grant him what his heart was set upon. Those of impulsive temperaments are ever interpreting the acts of God's Providence, as bearing on what they strongly desire. Or again, they argue, 'God throws this or that in our way; therefore He means us not to relinquish it for His sake, but to have it.' By this sudden miraculous shelter against the burning Assyrian sun, which God provided for Jonah, He favored his waiting on there. So Jonah may have thought, interpreting rightly that God willed him to stay; wrongly, why He so willed. Jonah was to wait, not to see what he desired, but to receive, and be the channel of the instruction which God meant to convey to him and through him.
Jonah 4:7
jon 4:7
When the morning rose - , i. e., in the earliest dawn, before the actual sunrise. For one day Jonah enjoyed the refreshment of the palm-christ. In early dawn, it still promised the shadow; just ere it was most needed, at God's command, it withered.
Jonah 4:8
jon 4:8
God prepared a vehement - o (The English margin following the Chaldee, "silent," i. e., "sultry").
East wind - The winds in the East, blowing over the sand-deserts, intensely increase the distress of the heat. A sojourner describes on two occasions an Assyrian summer . "The change to summer had been as rapid as that which ushered in the spring. The verdure of the plain had perished almost in a day. Hot winds, coming from the desert, had burned up and carried away the shrubs. The heat was now almost intolerable. Violent whirl-winds occasionally swept over the face of the country." "The spring was now fast passing away; the heat became daily greater; the grain was cut; and the plains and hills put on their summer clothing of dull parched yellow. "The pasture is withered, the herbage faileth; the green grass is not." It was the season too of the Sherghis, or burning winds from the south, which occasionally swept over the face of the country, driving in their short-lived fury everything before them.
We all went below (ground) soon after the sun had risen, and remained there (in the tunnels) without again seeking the open air until it was far down in the Western horizon." The "Sherghi" must be rather the East wind, Sherki, whence Sirocco. At Sulimania in Kurdistan (about 2 12 degrees east of Nineveh, and 34 of a degree south) "the so much dreaded Sherki seems to blow from any quarter, from east to northeast. It is greatly feared for its violence and relaxing qualities," "hot, stormy and singularly relaxing and dispiriting." Suffocating heat is a characteristic of these vehement winds. Morier relates at Bushire ; He continues, "Again from the 23rd to the 25th, the wind blew violently from the southeast accompanied by a most suffocating heat, and continued to blow with the same strength until the next day at noon, when it suddenly veered round to the northwest with a violence equal to what it had blown from the opposite point." And again (p. 97) "When there was a perfect calm, partial and strong currents of air would arise and form whirlwinds which produced high columns of sand all over the plain. They are looked upon as the sign of great heat. Their strength was very various. Frequently they threw down our tents."
Burckhardt, when professedly lessening the general impression as to these winds says, "The worst effect (of the Semoum "a violent southest wind") is that it dries up the water in the skins, and so far endangers the traveler's safety. In one morning 13 of the contents of a full water skin was evaporated. I always observed the whole atmosphere appear as it in a state of combustion; the dust and sand are carried high into the air, which assumes a reddish or blueish or yellowish tint, according to the nature and color of the ground from which the dust arises. The Semoum is not always accompanied by whirlwinds: in its less violent degree it will blow for hours with little force, although with oppressive heat; when the whirlwind raises the dust, it then increases several degrees in heat. In the Semoum at Esne, the thermometer mounted to 121 degrees in the shade, but the air seldom remains longer than a quarter of an hour in that state or longer than the whirlwind lasts.
The most disagreeable effect of the Semoum upon man is, that it stops perspiration, dries up the palate, and produces great restlessness." Travels in Nubia, pp. 204-205.) "A gale of wind blew from the Southward and Eastward with such violence, that three of our largest tents were leveled with the ground. The wind brought with it such hot currents of air, that we thought it might be the precursor of the "Samoun" described by Chardin, but upon inquiry, we found that the autumn was generally the season for that wind. The "Sam" wind commits great ravages in this district. It blows at night from about midnight to sunrise, comes in a hot blast, and is afterward succeeded by a cold one. About 6 years ago, there was a "sam" during the summer months which so totally burned up all the grain, then near its maturity, that no animal would eat a blade of it, nor touch any of its grain."
The sun beat upon the head of Jonah - o. "Few European travelers can brave the perpendicular rays of an Assyrian sun. Even the well-seasoned Arab seeks the shade during the day, and journeys by night, unless driven forth at noontide by necessity, or the love of war."
He wished in himself to die - (literally he asked as to his soul, to die). He prayed for death. It was still the same dependence upon God, even in his self-will. He did not complain, but prayed God to end his life here. When men are already vexed in soul by deep inward griefs, a little thing often oversets patience. Jonah's hopes had been revived by the mercy of the palm-christ; they perished with it. Perhaps he had before him the thought of his great predecessor, Elijah, how he too wished to die, when it seemed that his mission was fruitless. They differed in love. Elijah's preaching, miracles, toil, sufferings, seemed to him, not only to be in vain, but (as they must, if in vain), to add to the guilt of his people. God corrected him too, by showing him his own short-sightedness, that he knew not of "the seven thousand who had not bowed their knees unto Baal," who were, in part, doubtless, "the travail of his soul." Jonah's mission to his people seemed also to be fruitless; his hopes for their well-being were at an end; the temporal mercies of which he had been the prophet, were exhausted; Nineveh was spared; his last hope was gone; the future scourge of his people was maintained in might. The soul shrinks into itself at the sight of the impending visitation of its country. But Elijah's zeal was "for" his people only and the glory of God in it, and so it was pure love. Jonah's was directed "against" the Ninevites, and so had to be purified.
Jonah 4:9
jon 4:9
Doest thou well to be angry? - o "See again how Almighty God, out of His boundless lovingkindness, with the yearning tenderness of a father, almost disporteth with the guileless souls of the saints! The palm-christ shades him: the prophet rejoices in it exceedingly. Then, in God's Providence, the caterpillar attacks it, the burning East wind smites it, showing at the same time how very necessary the relief of its shade, that the prophet might be the more grieved, when deprived of such a good. He asketh him skillfully, was he very grieved? and that for a shrub? He confesseth, and this becometh the defense for God, the Lover of mankind."
I do well to be angry, unto death - o "Vehement anger leadeth men to long and love to die, especially if thwarted and unable to remove the hindrance which angers them. For then vehement anger begetteth vehement sorrow, grief, despondency." We have each, his own palm-christ; and our palm-christ has its own worm . "In Jonah, who mourned when he had discharged his office, we see those who, in what they seem to do for God, either do not seek the glory of God, but some end of their own, or at least, think that glory to lie where it does not. For he who seeketh the glory of God, and not his own Phi 2:21. things, but those of Jesus Christ, ought to will what God hath willed and done. If he wills aught else, he declares plainly that he sought himself, not God, or himself more than God. Jonah sought the glory of God wherein it was not, in the fulfillment of a prophecy of woe. And choosing to be led by his own judgment, not by God's, whereas he ought to have joyed exceedingly, that so many thousands, being "dead, were alive again," being "lost, were found," he, when "there was joy in heaven among the angels of God over" so many repenting sinners, was "afflicted with a great affliction" and was angry.
This ever befalls those who wish "that" to take place, not what is best and most pleasing to God, but what they think most useful to themselves. Whence we see our very great and common error, who think our peace and tranquility to lie in the fulfillment of our own will, whereas this will and judgment of our own is the cause of all our trouble. So then Jonah prays and tacitly blames God, and would not so much excuse as approve that, his former flight, to "Him Whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity." And since all inordinate affection is a punishment to itself, and he who departeth from the order of God hath no stability, he is in such anguish, because what he wills, will not be, that he longs to die. For it cannot but be that "his" life, who measures everything by his own will and mind, and who followeth not God as his Guide but rather willeth to be the guide of the Divine Will, should be from time to time troubled with great sorrow.
But since "the merciful and gracious Lord" hath pity on our infirmity and gently admonisheth us within, when He sees us at variance with Him, He forsakes not Jonah in that hot grief, but lovingly blames him. How restless such men are, we see from Jonah. The "palm-christ" grows over his head, and "he was exceeding glad of the palm-christ." Any labor or discomfort they bear very ill, and being accustomed to endure nothing and follow their own will, they are tormented and cannot bear it, as Jonah did not the sun. If anything, however slight, happen to lighten their grief, they are immoderately glad. Soon gladdened, soon grieved, like children. They have not learned to bear anything moderately. What marvel then that their joy is soon turned into sorrow? They are joyed over a palm-christ, which soon greeneth, soon drieth, quickly falls to the ground and is trampled upon. Such are the things of this world, which, while possessed, seem great and lasting; when suddenly lost, men see how vain and passing they are, and that hope is to be placed, not in them but in their Creator, who is Unchangeable. It is then a great dispensation of God toward us, when those things in which we took special pleasure are taken away. Nothing can man have so pleasing, green, and, in appearance, so lasting, which has not its own worm prepared by God, whereby, in the dawn, it may be smitten and die. The change of human will or envy disturbs court favor; manifold accidents, wealth; the varying opinion of the people or of the great, honors; disease, danger, poverty, infamy, pleasure. Jonah's palm-christ had one worm; our's have many; if others were lacking, there is the restlessness of man's own thoughts, whose food is restlessness."
Jonah 4:10
jon 4:10
Thou hadst pity on the palm-christ - In the feeling of our common mortality, the soul cannot but yearn over decay. Even a drooping flower is sad to look on, so beautiful, so frail. It belongs to this passing world, where nothing lovely abides, all things beautiful hasten to cease to be. The natural God-implanted feeling is the germ of the spiritual.
Jonah 4:11
jon 4:11
Should I not spare? - literally "have pity" and so "spare." God waives for the time the fact of the repentance of Nineveh, and speaks of those on whom man must have pity, those who never had any share in its guilt, the 120,000 children of Nineveh, "I who, in the weakness of infancy, knew not which hand, "the right" or "the left," is the stronger and fitter for every use." He who would have spared Sodom "for ten's sake," might well be thought to spare Nineveh for the 120,000's sake, in whom the inborn corruption had not developed into the malice of willful sin. If these 120,000 were the children under three years old, they were 15 (as is calculated) of the whole population of Nineveh. If of the 600,000 of Nineveh all were guilty, who by reason of age could be, above 15 were innocent of actual sin.
To Jonah, whose eye was evil to Nineveh for his people's sake, God says, as it were , "Let the "spirit" which "is willing" say to the "flesh" which "is weak," Thou grievest for the palm-christ, that is, thine own kindred, the Jewish people; and shall not I spare Nineveh that great city, shall not I provide for the salvation of the Gentiles in the whole world, who are in ignorance and error? For there are many thousands among the Gentiles, who go after Co1 12:2. mute idols even as they are led: not out of malice but out of ignorance, who would without doubt correct their ways, if they had the knowledge of the truth, if they were shewn the difference "between their right hand and their left," i. e., between the truth of God and the lie of men." But, beyond the immediate teaching to Jonah, God lays down a principle of His dealings at all times, that, in His visitations of nations, He Psa 68:5, "the Father of the fatherless and judge of the widows," takes special account of those who are of no account in man's sight, and defers the impending judgment, not for the sake of the wisdom of the wise or the courage of the brave, but for the helpless, weak, and, as yet, innocent as to actual sin. How much more may we think that He regards those with pity who have on them not only the recent uneffaced traces of their Maker's Hands, but have been reborn in the Image of Christ His Only Begotten Son! The infants clothed with Christ Gal 3:27 must be a special treasure of the Church in the Eyes of God.
"How much greater the mercy of God than that even of a holy man; how far better to flee to the judgment-seat of God than to the tribunal of man. Had Jonah been judge in the cause of the Ninevites, he would have passed on them all, although penitent, the sentence of death for their past guilt, because God had passed it before their repentance. So David said to God Sa2 24:14; "Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man." Whence the Church professes to God, that mercy is the characteristic of His power ; 'O God, who shewest Thy Almighty power most chiefly in shewing mercy and pity, mercifully grant unto us such a measure of Thy grace, that we, running the way of Thy commandments, may obtain Thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of Thy heavenly treasure. '"
"Again, God here teaches Jonah and us all to conform ourselves in all things to the Divine Will, that, when He commandeth any work, we should immediately begin and continue it with alacrity and courage; when He bids us cease from it, or deprives it of its fruit and effect, we should immediately tranquilly cease, and patiently allow our work and toil to lack its end and fruit. For what is our aim, save to do the will of God, and in all things to confirm ourselves to it? But now the will of God is, that thou shouldest resign, yea destroy, the work thou hast begun. Acquiesce then in it. Else thou servest not the will of God, but thine own fancy and cupidity. And herein consists the perfection of the holy soul, that, in all acts and events, adverse or prosperous, it should with full resignation resign itself most humbly and entirely to God, and acquiesce, happen what will, yea, and rejoice that the will of God is fulfilled in this thing, and say with holy Job, "The Lord gave, The Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord" Ignatius had so transferred his own will into the will of God, that the said, 'If perchance the society, which I have begun and furthered with such toil, should be dissolved or perish, after passing half an hour in prayer, I should, by God's help, have no trouble from this thing, than which none sadder could befall me.' The saints let themselves be turned this way and that, round and round, by the will of God, as a horse by its rider."
Joshua Introduction
Joshua
jos 0:0
Introduction to Joshua
1. This book like several others of the historical books of Scripture derives its name from its contents. It takes up the history of the chosen people at the death of Moses, and continues it in a systematic and orderly narrative, through the leadership and government of his successor. It records (almost exclusively) the acts of Joshua in fulfillment of the commission laid upon him from God by the hand of Moses (compare Deu 31:7-8), and terminates with Joshua's death and burial.
The contents group themselves into two divisions of nearly equal length. The conquest of the land is described in twelve chapters, and then in twelve other chapters the subsequent partition of it together with Joshua's last acts and words.
The victories of Joshua described in the former of these portions were accompanied by repeated and stupendous interferences of God. This miraculous element has led some commentators to treat the book as altogether unhistorical. But it must not be forgotten that the miracles of the Book of Joshua do not stand alone. They grow, as it were, naturally out of the divine interpositions on behalf of Israel in the days of Moses, and are but the close of a series of extraordinary providences began in Egypt, and described in Exodus and the books following. No less do they stand intimately associated with the future history and development of the Jewish Church and nation, and even with the wider and more remote issues of God's counsels as manifested, or to be manifested, in the Christian Church to the end of all things. Thus, the conquest of Canaan by Joshua has other and vastly grander significances than its mere dimensions as a fact in history seem at first sight to suggest.
It is not to be regarded simply as the invasion of a little district about as large as three average English counties by a tribe of nomads from the Arabian deserts. It was also the accomplishment by God of a purpose revealed of old; it was an essential element in the plan ordained by Him for the preservation among men of His Law, Will, and Word; it was designed to foreshadow in many important particulars His future dealings with mankind at large. But for the special help of God, the Israelites could not have effected the conquest at all, for they were hardly superior to the Canaanites in numbers, and were destitute of chariots and horses, and of all the more elaborate equipments for war, above all of the appliances requisite for reducing the cities (compare Num 13:28; Deu 1:28; Deu 9:1) in which Canaan abounded. God's promise was, however, pledged to their forefathers to give them this land; whatever then might be necessary to give effect to this promise it belonged to His faithfulness to accord; and the Book of Joshua consequently is an essential sequel to the Pentateuch as declaring the thorough fulfillment by God of the covenant made by Him through Moses with Israel, and thus as illustrating His inviolable faithfuless.
But important as the theocratical and theological characteristics of the Book of Joshua are, both in themselves and as (so to say) vindicating the miraculous elements of the narrative, we must nevertheless not lose sight of the internal evidences of common and historical fact which it presents.
The invasion of Canaan by Joshua was evidently a carefully and skillfully conducted enterprise. An army marching upon Canaan from the south would find its path intercepted by range after range of heights, each, in the days of Moses and Joshua, bristling with towns and fortresses. The progress of such an army could be but slow, and at every step would be met by better organized resistance from an increasing number of enemies. When Israel, after 40 years' expiation of the revolt at Kadesh, again arose at the command of God to resume the long deferred enterprise on Canaan, the host was conducted round the whole southeast corner of the land and directed upon its comparatively defenseless eastern flank above the Dead Sea. The whole of the strong military positions and fenced cities in the "south country" and the "hill country" of what was subsequently the territory of Judah were thus taken in reverse and rendered comparatively useless.
It is probable, too, that the southern Canaanites in particular were at this time greatly weakened by the invasions of Thotmes III, who had taken Gaza, apparently not many years previously, and no doubt had overrun the whole adjoining district (see the note at Jos 13:3). No less able were the measures adopted by Joshua to execute the plan thus judiciously laid down. The passage of the Jordan, by the special help of God, at a time of year when his enemies no doubt deemed the river to be an almost insurmountable obstacle to his advance (see the note at Jos 3:15): the seizing Gilgal, to serve as his foothold in the land: the capture and destruction of Jericho: the fall of Ai: these events enabled him to throw the forces of Israel like a wedge through the very midst of the land almost to the western sea, and in its most vulnerable part, between the fastnesses of Judah on the south and the mountain district of Ephraim on the north. The Amorites on Joshua's left, cut off from the Hittites on his right by his whole army interposing between the two, were overpowered before Gibeon. The whole south was reduced into at least temporary subjection before the larger multitudes of the north could be mustered. These in their turn shared the fate of their brethren in the south; Joshua broke their vast host to pieces on the shores of Lake Merom.
In these campaigns of Joshua it is impossible not to see the traces of strategical skill no less conspicuously than that presence of immediate and divine suggestion and succor which the narrative asserts.
2. The leading trait in the character of Joshua is courage - the courage of the warrior: this must have been already remarkable at the time of the Exodus Exo 17:9. Subsequently, Joshua appears as in constant attendance on Moses Exo 24:13; Exo 32:1; Exo 33:11; he without doubt acquired on Sinai, and in the precincts of the sanctuary, that unswerving faithfulness of service and unshaken confidence in God which marked his after career. He was naturally selected as one of the twelve "rulers" sent by Moses Num 13:2 to explore the land before the invasion of it was undertaken; and the bold and truthful report brought back by him and Caleb Num 14:7-9, was no less characteristic than was his undaunted bearing before the incensed people Num 14:10. These qualities pointed him out as the fitting captain over the Lord's people, who should overthrow their enemies before them and put them in possession of the promised inheritance. Accordingly, at the express command of God, he was solemnly appointed to that office and duty by Moses before his death Num 27:16-23; Deu 31:23.
Joshua was not a prophet (Ecclesiasticus 46:1; compare Num 27:21), but a divinely-inspired leader. After the great and peculiar work of his life was accomplished, he no longer held the same exclusive place at the head of Israel as before. In making the arrangements for settling the people in their homes, and establishing the theocracy on the lines laid down in the law of Moses, he acted in conjunction with Eleazar, the high priest: and with the heads of the tribes (compare Jos 14:1; Jos 17:4; Jos 21:1). This was but natural. The armies had done their work and were dispersed, or were ready to disperse, to their several inheritances; and the military authority of their general was consequently at an end. The latter years of his life were probably passed in retirement at Timnath-serah, whence, he would seem to have emerged in extreme old age to meet the princes and the people in the great gathering at Shechem Josh. 23-24, and to employ once more and finally his authority as the last survivor but one of a mighty generation, and as the hero of Israel's greatest triumphs, in order to engage his people more firmly and closely in their rightful allegiance to God.
The courage which was the leading feature in the character of Joshua was very distinctly and directly built upon faith Jos 1:5-6. Joshua obeyed God's call unhesitatingly and to the end, but it was because he trusted wholly in the promise which accompanied it. Hence, along with his soldierly qualities, were found others seldom present in the same man. He combined justice as a magistrate with gentleness as a man Jos 7:19; spirit as a ruler, with temper and discretion in dealing with the arrogant and exacting Jos 17:14; diligence and equity in disposing of the fruits of victory with a complete unselfishness as regarded himself Jos 19:49-51. Perhaps conspicuous above all was his humility. From first to last his valor and his victories are referred to God as their giver. Of his own personal work in the achievements of his life there is in his last addresses scarcely one word.
3. The chronological dates presented in this book are few:
a. Comparing Jos 4:19 and Jos 5:6, if the date of the Exodus be assumed to be 1490 B.C., that of the invasion of Canaan will be 1450 B.C.
b. The duration of Joshua's wars with the Canaanites is spoken of loosely in Jos 11:18 as "a long time." The words of Caleb (Jos 14:7, Jos 14:10 : compare Num 13:17) - who was thirty-eight years old when he passed through the Red Sea, and seventy-eight when he passed through Jordan - help us to assign a period of seven years (in round numbers) for the campaigns of Joshua.
c. The duration of Joshua's rule, and consequently the number of years covered by the record of this book, is far more uncertain. He died when he was 110 Jos 24:29. If (compare Exo 33:11) we suppose him to have been about the same age as Caleb, he will have been about 78 years old when he invaded Canaan, and have been at the head of Israel not much less than thirty-two years altogether after the death of Moses, surviving about twenty-five years after his retirement to Timnath-serah (compare Jos 23:1). Josephus, however, states that Joshua's rule after the death of Moses lasted for twenty-five years, and that he had previously been forty years associated with him. This would fix Joshua's age at the time of the Exodus at forty-five. On the whole, nothing more precise seems attainable now than this: that Joshua governed Israel from twenty-five to thirty years after the death of Moses, and that about the like number of years contains the events recorded in the book which bears his name.
4. No sufficient evidence exists to enable us with certainty to name the author. That he was one of "the elders that overlived Joshua" Jos 24:31 is probable, for the book appears to have been written by one coeval with the events recorded, and, indeed, an eye-witness of them. The spirit of the narrative in the former or historical portion of the book, and the graphic yet spontaneous rendering of details, which it everywhere presents, bespeak one who saw what he describes. And the topographical information which abounds in the latter portion of the book is of such a nature, and is presented in such a form, as strongly to suggest the use of written, and apparently contemporary documents. Some parts of this information are minute and accurate (e. g. Josh. 15), other statements are far less definite and complete. No doubt some of these imperfections are due to disorder in the text, or to clauses having dropped out of it, but others are mainly due to the fact that the writer's knowledge was itself imperfect. These very anomalies of the writer's most valuable description of Palestine, inconvenient as they often are, seem thus to be attributable to the early date of his information. His documents were written while Israel was still a stranger in the land of his inheritance, and in parts of it still a foreign invader.
The hand of a writer contemporaneous with the events is indicated in several expressions, e. g. in Jos 5:6-7; Jos 6:25; Jos 10:2, a notice which plainly borrows its terms from the state of things in Canaan at the time of the invasion; and in the record of ancient Canaanite names of cities, though disused after the Israelites occupied them, Jos 14:15; Jos 15:9, Jos 15:15, Jos 15:49, Jos 15:60.
The book cannot, in its present form at least, be ascribed to Joshua himself. The account of his death and that of Eleazar, with the few supplementary verses at the end of the book, might have been attached by another hand, as a conclusion to the historical work of Joshua, just as a like addition was made to the work of Moses. But there are up and down the book a number of historical notices, which point to a date clearly beyond the death of Joshua (compare Jos 15:13-20 and Jdg 1:1-15; 15:63, and Jdg 1:8; Jdg 15:13-19 and Judg. 18).
For these reasons the opinion of the rabbis and many moderns which names Joshua as himself the sole writer of this book, must apparently be abandoned. The evidence internal and external renders it likely that the book was composed partly from personal observation and inquiry, partly out of pre-existing and authentic documents, within a few years after the death of Joshua, and probably from materials furnished in part by Joshua himself.
5. The book of Joshua is a work complete in itself, with an organic unity and peculiar characteristics. This appears:
(1) From the definiteness of the writer's purpose, and the thoroughness with which he executes it. He proposes to narrate the conquest of Canaan, and to present that conquest as a proof of God's fidelity to his covenant. But the writer does not limit himself to the achievements of Joshua. Such additions to the main body of his story, which belongs to the lifetime and leadership of Joshua, as are contained in Josh. 13 and Josh. 15 are to be explained only by a reference to the writer's distinct and special aim.
(2) from the tokens of connection and method apparent throughout. Not only does the first part, which records the wars Josh. 1-12, evidently lead up to the second part Josh. 13-24, which describes the partition of the territory when subdued, but the contents of each part taken singly are given in proper and chronological order, each transaction growing out of the one preceding.
(3) from the style and phraseology. These are marked by distinctive features, whether the book be compared with the Pentateuch or with the other and later historical books. The difference of style, words, and treatment in the historical chapters, as contrasted with the topographical chapters is only what might be expected from the diverse nature of the subjects, and from the self-evident fact that in much of the latter part of his task the author was working from pre-existing documents.
Certain discrepancies alleged to exist in the book do not seriously impair its unity and independence. The difficulties, e. g. in the account of the capture of Ai Josh. 8 arise solely out of the numbers, and are far more probably due to a mistake in the numerals (see the note at Jos 8:3), which is by no means of infrequent occurrence, than to the presence in the narrative of two or three different versions of the events which the final editor omitted to harmonize.
The contradiction said to exist between some passages which speak of the land as completely subdued by Joshua, and of the Canaanites as utterly extirpated (Jos 11:16-17, Jos 11:23; Jos 12:7-8 etc.), and others which allude to "very much land," as still in possession of the native inhabitants (Jos 13:1; Jos 17:14 ff; Jos 23:5, etc.), is to be explained partly by the theocratic view which the writer takes of his theme; a view which leads him to regard the conquest as complete when it was so "ex parte Dei," and when all was done that was needed to enable the Israelites to realize fully the promises (compare Jos 21:43-45); partly also by the fact that territory was undoubtedly overrun by Joshua at the first onset, which was afterward recovered by the Canaanites, and only again and finally wrested from them at a subsequent, sometimes a long subsequent, date. That the early campaigns of Joshua were in the nature of sudden raids, overpowering for the moment, but not effectually subduing the country, has probably much truth in it.
Thus then, the Book of Joshua, though based upon pre-existing materials of various kinds, and sometimes incorporating them, appears to be a separate and complete work produced as a whole from one original hand. Its relation to the Pentateuch is that of an independent treatise by a distinct author, who resumes a theme of which the first great and important portion had been finished by a predecessor. The Pentateuch is not to be looked upon as principally a historical work. It is the statute book of the theocracy, and contains only such historical matter as illustrates the origin and import of God's covenant with Israel. Joshua records how the temporal promises of that covenant were accomplished; and describes how the basis was laid for the future development of the nation, under the special superintendence of God, by its settlement in Canaan. Thus, regarded, this book is no more an appendage to the Pentateuch than the books of Judges and Samuel are an appendage to it.
There is, assuredly, an intimate connection among these writings throughout, a connection which is expressly indicated by the connective conjunctions used in the beginning of each book (see the note at Jdg 1:1). This is due to the fact that the several authors were moved to write by one and the same Spirit, and that their one purpose in successive ages was to record the dealings of God with their nation. Hence, they have selected whatever declares or illustrates the divine call of Israel; God's methods in educating that people for its functions in His world; the preparations made through the chequered history of Israel for future issues bearing on the salvation of all mankind. We find at one time periods of considerable length, and events of great importance to secular history cursorily alluded to, while other occurrences, often of a biographical character, are dwelt upon with anxious minuteness, because of their theocratic bearings. Accordingly, the name "Earlier prophets," given to this and the following books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings by the Jewish Church which has handed them down to us as canonical, is appropriate. They were written by inspired men, and treat their subject from the prophetical point of view.
The Book of Joshua is repeatedly cited or referred to in the New Testament: compare Act 7:45; Heb 3:5; Heb 4:8; Heb 11:30-31; Jam 2:25.
6. The land of Canaan was given as a free gift by God to the Israelites - they took possession of it because He bade them do so - and He no less bade them annihilate the Canaanite nations without mercy?
The question then occurs in unbroken force, all palliative explanations being disallowed: Is this merciless treatment of the Canaanites consistent with the attributes of the Deity, especially as those attributes are illustrated for us in the New Testament?
The destruction of the Canaanites is always presented in Scripture as a judgment of God sent on them because of their wickedness. They had not only fallen into total apostasy from God, but into forms of idolatry of the most degrading kind. Their false religion cannot be regarded as a mere error of judgment; cruelty the most atrocious, and unnatural crimes the most defiling were part and parcel of its observances. Moreover, they had proved themselves to be incorrigible. They had had not only the general warning of the deluge, as had other nations of the earth, but the special one of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah in the very midst of them. They had had also the example and instruction of Abraham and the patriarchs living for ages among them. Even after the miraculous providence of God had brought the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Jordan, and even when the sword was as it were hanging over their necks, it was but in one or two isolated cases that signs of repentance and recollection of God were manifested (compare Jos 2:1; Jos 9:24). God had forborne for ages in vain (compare Gen 15:16); in the days of Joshua the time for mercy had passed, and that of judgment had come. It is impossible to acknowledge God as the moral Governor of the earth, and not to admit that it may be right or even necessary for Him to remove such nations. The fact, therefore, that God is described as having not only permitted, but even enjoined and caused the extirpation of the Canaanite nations, depraved as they were, is not inconsistent with His moral attributes. People, as was long ago pointed out by Dr. Butler ('Anal.' ii. 3), have no right to either life or property, but what arises solely from the grant of God. When this grant is revoked they cease to have any right at all in either. And in the case before us the forfeiture decreed by God was merited, and the execution of it was therefore righteous.
God chose to inflict His righteous judgment by the hands of the Israelites, and expressly commissioned them to be His executioners. If it be objected that this is to represent God as sanctioning cruelty, the answer is obvious: it is no sanction of cruelty to direct a lawful sentence to be carried out by human agents (compare Num 31:3). Nor would obedience to God's command in this matter make the Israelites brutal and bloodthirsty. The behavior of the Israelites, on many occasions, proves that they shrank from a terrible duty of this sort when laid on them by God, and did it only so far as they were compelled to do it. .
The slaughter of the Canaanites served various important purposes besides the mere removal of them from the face of the earth. To make and keep the Jewish people as much as possible isolated, was a marked and vital principle of the Old Testament dispensation. No more effectual means could have been adopted for inspiring God's people with an abhorrence for Canaanite sins, to which they were not a little prone, than to make them the ministers of divine vengeance for those sins.
They learned by experiment that God would certainly root out those who fell away in apostasy from Him. They were warned also that if they fell into the sins of the Canaanites they would themselves be the victims of those same judgments of which they had been the reluctant executioners (compare e. g. Deu 28:25). And the whole was so ordered as to exhibit a type, fearful no doubt yet salutary, of what must be the fate of the impenitent and obdurate in the upshot of God's righteous government.
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Micah Introduction
Micah
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Introduction to Micah
"Micah," or "Micaiah," this Morasthite, was so called, probably, in order to distinguish him from his great predecessor, Micaiah, son of Imlah, in the reign of Ahab. His name was spoken in its fuller form, by the elders of the land whose words Jeremiah has preserved. And in that fuller form his name is known, where the Greek and Latin translations of the Scriptures are used. By the Syrians, and by the Jews he is still called "Micah," as by us. The fullest and original form is "Micaiahu," "who is like the Lord?" In this fullest form, it is the name of one of the Levites sent by Jehoshaphat to teach the people Ch2 17:7, as also of the mother of King Asa Ch2 13:2 (the same name serving sometimes both for men and women). Then, according to the habit of abridging names, in all countries, and especially those of which the proper name of the Lord is a part, it is diversely abridged into "Micaihu," "Micahu" , whence Micah is readily formed, on the same rule as "Micaiah" itself from "Micaiahu." The forms are all found indifferently. The idolatrous Levite in the time of the Judges , are both called in the same chapter "Micaihu" and "Micah"; the father of one of Josiah's officers is called "Micaiah" in the Book of Kings Kg2 22:12, and "Micah" in the Book of Chronicles Ch2 34:20.
The prophet's name, like those of Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, was significant. We know that Joshua's name was changed for a set purpose Num 13:16. The rest seem to have been given in God's Providence, or taken by the prophets, in order to enunciate truths concerning God, opposed to the idolatries or self-dependence of the people. But the name of "Micah" or "Micaiah," (as "the elders of the land" Jer 26:17-18 called him on a solemn occasion, some 120 years afterward) contained more than teaching. It was cast into the form of a challenge. "Who is like the Lord?" The form of words had been impressed upon Israel by the song of Moses after the deliverance at the Red Sea Exo 15:11. In the days of Elijah and that first Micaiah, the strife between God and man, the true prophet and the false prophet, had been ended at the battle of Ramoth-Gilead; it ceased for a time, in the reigns of Jehu and his successors, because, in consequence of his partial obedience, God, by Elisha and Jonah, promised them good: it was again resumed, as the promise to Jehu was expiring, and God's prophets had anew to proclaim a message of woe. "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" Kg1 21:20, and "I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil" Kg1 22:8, Kg1 22:18, Ahab's words as to Elijah and Micaiah, were the types of the subsequent contradiction of the false prophets to Hosea and Amos, which closed only with the destruction of Samaria. Now, in the time of the later Micaiah, were the first dawnings of the same strife in Judah, which hastened and brought about the destruction of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, which re-appeared after the Captivity Neh 6:14, and was the immediate cause of the second destruction under the Romans. Micah, as he dwells on the meaning of names generally, so, doubtless, it is in allusion to his own name, that, at the close of his prophecy, he ushers in his announcement of God's incomparable mercy with the words Mic 7:18, "Who is a God like unto Thee?" Before him, whatever disobedience there was to God's law in Judah, there was no systematic, organized, opposition to His prophets.
There is no token of it in Joel. From the times of Micah it is never missing. We find it in each prophet (however brief the remains of some are), who prophesied directly to Judah, not in Isaiah only, but in Habakkuk Hab 1:5; Hab 2:1 and Zephaniah Zep 1:12. It deepened, as it hastened toward its decision. The nearer God's judgments were at hand, the more obstinately the false prophets denied that they would come. The system of false prophecy, which rose to its height in the time of Jeremiah, which met and thwarted him at every step (see Jer 5:13, Jer 5:31; Jer 6:13-17; Jer 8:10-12; Jer 14:13-16; Jer 20:1-6; Jer 23:9 ff; Jer 26:7-8, Jer 26:11; Jer 27:14-18; 28; Jer 29:8-9, Jer 29:21-32), and deceived those who wished to be deceived, was dawning in the time of Micah. False prophecy arose in Judah from the selfsame cause whence it had arisen in Israel, because Judah's deepening corruption drew down the prophecies of God's displeasure, which it was popular to disbelieve. False prophecy was a gainful occupation. The false prophets had men's wishes on their side. They had the people with them. "My people love to have it so" Jer 5:31, said God. They forbade Micah to prophesy Mic 2:6; prophesied peace Mic 3:5, when God foretold evil; prophesied for gain Mic 3:11, and proclaimed war in the Name of God (see the note at Mic 3:5) against those who fed them not.
Micah was called at such a time. His name which he himself explains, was no chance name. To the Hebrews, to whom names were so much more significant, parts of the living language, it recalled the name of his great predecessor - his standing alone against all the prophets of Ahab, his prophecy, his suffering, his evidenced truth. The truth of prophecy was set upon the issue of the battle before Ramoth-Gilead. In the presence of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, as well as of Ahab, the 400 prophets of Ashtaroth had promised to Ahab the prize he longed for. One solitary, discriminating voice was heard amid that clamorous multitude, forewarning Ahab that he would perish, his people would be scattered. On the one side, was that loud triumphant chorus of "all the prophets, Go up to Ramoth-Gilead, and prosper; for the Lord shall deliver it into the king's hand" Kg1 22:12. On the other, one solemn voice, exhibiting before them that sad spectacle which the morrow's sun should witness, "I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd, and the Lord said, these have no master, let them return every man to his house in peace" Kg1 22:17.
Micaiah was struck, imprisoned, and, apparently, ended his ministry, appealing from that small audience of the armies of Israel and Judah to the whole world, which has ever since looked back upon that strife with interest and awe; "Hear ye peoples, each one of them Kg1 22:28. God, who guided the archer shooting at a venture Kg1 22:34, fulfilled the words which He had put into the prophet's mouth. God's words had found Ahab, although disguised. Jehoshaphat, the imperiled Kg1 22:30-33, returned home, to relate the issue. The conflict between God's truth and idol falsehood was doubtless long remembered in Judah. And now when the strife had penetrated into Judah, to be ended some 170 years afterward in the destruction of Jerusalem, another Micaiah arose, his name the old watchword, "Who is like the Lord?" He prefixed to his prophecy that same summons to the whole world to behold the issue of the conflict, which God had once accredited and, in that issue, had given an earnest of the victory of His truth, there thenceforth and forever.
The prophet was born a villager, in Moresheth Gath, "a village" , Jerome says; ("a little village" , in Jerome's own days), "East of Eleutheropolis," where what was " formerly his grave," was "now a church." Since it was his birthplace and his burial-place, it was probably his home also. In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, "the elders of the land" Jer 26:17-18 speak of him with this same title, "the Morasthite." He lingers, in his prophecy, among the towns of the maritime plain (the Shephelah) where his birthplace lay. Among the ten places in that neighborhood Mic 1:11-15, which he selects for warning and for example of the universal captivity, is his native village, "the home he loved." But the chief scene of his ministry was Jerusalem. He names it in the beginning of his prophecy, as the place where the idolatries, and, with the idolatries, all the other sins of Judah were concentrated.
The two capitals, Samaria and Jerusalem, were the chief objects of the word of God to him, because the corruption of each kingdom streamed forth from them. The sins which he rebukes are chiefly those of the capital. Extreme oppression Mic 3:2-3; Mic 2:2, violence among the rich Mic 6:12, bribing among judges, priests, prophets (Mic 3:11; judges and priests, Mic 7:3); building up the capital even by cost of life, or actual bloodshed (Mic 3:10; bloodshed also, Mic 7:2); spoilation Mic 2:8; expulsion of the powerless, women and children from their homes Mic 2:9; covetousness Mic 2:2; cheating in dealings Mic 6:10-11; pride Mic 2:3. These, of course, may be manifoldly repeated in lesser places of resort and of judgment. But it is "Zion and Jerusalem" which are so built up with blood (Mic 3:10; bloodshed also, Mic 7:2); Zion and Jerusalem, which are, on that ground, to be "plowed as a field" Mic 3:12; it is "the city" to which "the Lord's voice crieth" Mic 6:9; whose "rich men are full of violence" Mic 6:12; it is the "daughter of Zion" Mic 4:10, which is to "go forth out of the city and go to Babylon." Especially, they are the heads and princes of the people Mic 3:1, Mic 3:9, Mic 3:11; Mic 6:12; Mic 7:3, whom he upbraids for perversion of justice and for oppression. Even the good kings of Judah seem to have been powerless to restrain the general corruption.
Micah, according to the title which he prefixed to his prophecy, was called to his prophetic function somewhat later than Isaiah. His ministry began later, and ended earlier. For Uzziah, in whose reign Isaiah began to prophesy, was dead before Micah was called to his office; and Micah probably was called away early in the reign of Hezekiah, whereas some of the chief public acts of Isaiah's ministry fell in the 17th and 18th years of the reign of Hezekiah. Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, had doubtless been withdrawn to their rest. Hosea alone, in "grey-haired might," was still protesting in vain against the deepening corruptions of Israel (to the north).
The contents of Micah's prophecy and his relation to Isaiah agree with the inscription. His prophecy has indications of the times of Jotham, perhaps also of those of Ahaz. We know historically that one signal prophecy, was uttered in the reign of Hezekiah.
It is now accepted by almost everyone that the great prophecy (three verses of which Isaiah prefixed to Isa. 2) was originally delivered by Micah. But it appears from the context in Isaiah, that Isaiah delivered the prophecy in his second chapter, in the reign of Jotham. Other language of Micah also belongs to that same reign. No one now thinks that Micah adopted that great prophecy from Isaiah. The prophecy, as it stands in Micah, is in close connection with what precedes it. He had said, "the mountain of the house shall be as the high places of the forest" Mic 3:12; he subjoins instantly God's reversal of that sentence, "in the latter days." "And in the last days it shall be that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established on the top of the mountains, and peoples shall flow unto it" Mic 4:1. He had said, "Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps;" he adds immediately, in reversal of this, "the law shall go forth frown Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" Mic 4:2. The two sentences are joined as closely as they can be; "Zion, shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house shall become high places of a forest; and it shall be, in the last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be (abidingly) established on the top of the mountains." Every reader would understand, that the elevation intended, was spiritual, not physical. They could not fail to understand the metaphor; or imagine that the Mount Zion, on part of which, (Mount Moriah,) "the house of the Lord" stood, should be physically placed on other hills. But the contrast is marked. The premise is the sequel of the woe; the abiding condition is the reversal of the sentence of its desolation. Even the words allude, the one to the other.
In Isaiah, there is no such connection. After the first chapter and its summary of rebuke, warning, threatening, and final weal or woe resting on each class, Isaiah begins his prophecy anew with a fresh title; "The word that Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem" Isa 2:1; and to this he prefixes three verses from Micah's prophecy. He separates it in a marked way from the preceding summary, and yet connects it with some other prophecy by the word, "And" Isa 2:2. He himself marks that it is not in its original place here. So then, in the prophet Micah, the close connection with the foregoing marks that it is in its original place; Isaiah marked purposely that in his prophecy it is not.
But Isaiah's prophecy belongs to a time of prosperity; such as Judah had not, after the reign of Jotham. It was a time of great war-like strength, diffused through the whole land. The land was full Isa 2:7, Isa 2:11, without end, of gold, silver, chariots, horses, of lofty looks and haughtiness. The images which follow Isa 2:12-21 are shadows of the Day of Judgment, and extend beyond Judah; but the sins rebuked are the sins of strength and might, self-confidence, oppression, manifold female luxury and bravery Isa 3:16, Isa 3:23. Isaiah prophesies that God would take away their strength Isa 3:1-3. They still had it then. At that time, Judah did not trust in God or in foreign alliances, but only in themselves. Yet, from the time of Ahaz, trust in foreign help infected them to the end. Even Hezekiah, when he received the messengers of Merodach-baladan Isa 39:1-8, fell into the snare; and Josiah probably lost his life as a vassal of Assyria Kg2 23:29; Ch2 35:20-22. This union of inherent strength and unconcernedness about foreign aid is an adequate test of days prior to Ahaz.
But since Isaiah prefixed to a prophecy in the days of Jotham this great prophecy of Micah, then Micah's prophecy must have been already current. To those same days of strength it belongs, that Micah could prophesy as a gift, the cutting off Mic 5:10-11, Mic 5:14 of "horses and chariots," the destruction "of cities" and "strong towers," all, in which Judah trusted instead of God. The prophecy is a counterpart of Isaiah's. Isaiah prophesied a day of Judgment, in which all these things would be removed; Micah foretold that their removal would be a mercy to those who trust in Christ.
On the other hand, the utter dislocation of society, the bursting of all the most sacred bands which bind man to man together, described in his last chapter Isa 7:5-6, perhaps belong most to the miserable decay in the reign of Ahaz. The idolatry spoken of also belongs probably to the time of Ahaz. In Jotham's time Kg2 15:35, "the people sacrificed and burned incense still in the high places;" yet, under a king so highly praised Kg2 15:34; Ch2 27:2, Ch2 27:6, these are not likely to have been in Jerusalem. But Micah, in the very head of his prophecy, speaks of Jerusalem Mic 1:5 as the center of the idolatries of Judah. The allusion also to child-sacrifices belongs to the time of Ahaz, who sacrificed sons of his own Kg2 16:3; Ch2 28:3, and whose sacrifice others probably imitated. The mention of the special idolatry of the time, "the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab" Mic 6:16, belong to the same reign, it being recorded of Ahaz especially, "he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and made also molten images for Baalim" Ch2 28:2; the special sin of the house of Ahab. That charactor too which he describes, that, amid all that idolatry, practical irreligion, and wickedness, they "leant upon the Lord, and said, Is not the Lord among us? None evil can come upon us" Mic 3:11; Mic 6:6; was just the character of Ahaz. Not until the end of his reign was he so embittered by God's chastisements, that he closed His temple Ch2 28:22-24.
Up to that time, even after he had copied the Brazen Altar at Damascus, he still kept up a divided allegiance to God. Urijah, the high Priest, at the king's command, offered the sacrifices for the king and the people, while Ahaz used "the brazen altar, to enquire by" Kg2 16:15. This was just the half-service which God by Micah rejects. It is the old history of man's half-service, faith without love, which provides that what it believes but loves not should be done for it, and itself enacts what it prefers. Urijah was to offer the lawful sacrifices for the king and the people; Ahaz was to obtain knowledge of the future, such as he wished in his own way, a lying future, by lying acts.
Micah renewed under Hezekiah the prophecy of the utter destruction of Jerusalem, which he had pronounced under Jotham. The prophets did not heed repeating themselves. Eloquent as they were, they are the more eloquent because eloquence was not their object. Even our Lord Jesus, with divine wisdom, and the more, probably, because He had divine wisdom, repeated in His teaching the same words. Those words sank the deeper, because they were repeated so often. So Micah repeated doubtless oftentimes those words, which he first uttered in the days of Jotham; "Zion shall be plowed like a field and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." Often, perhaps during those 30 years or so, he repeated them in vain. At the last, they brought about a great repentance, and delayed, it may be for 136 years, the destruction which he was constrained to foretell. Early in the days of Jehoiakim, about 120 years afterward, in the public assembly when Jeremiah was on trial for his life, "the elder's of the land said explicitly, that the great conversion at the beginning of the reign of Hezekiah, nay, of that king himself, was wrought by the teaching of Micah." "Then rose up, says Jeremiah, certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the assembly of the people, saying, Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house, as the high places of the forest. Did Hezekiah king of Judah, and all Judah, put him at all to death? Did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented Him of the evil which He had pronounced against them?" Jer 26:17-19.
It may have been that single prophecy which Micah so delivered; some have thought that it was his whole book. Jeremiah, at God's command, at one time uttered single prophecies; at another, the summary of all his prophecies. This only is certain, that the prophecy, whether these words alone or the book containing them, was delivered to all Judah, and that God moved the people through them to repentance.
The words, as they occur in Jeremiah, are the same, and in the same order, as they stand in Micah. Only in Jeremiah the common plural termination is substituted for the rarer and poetic form used by Micah. The elders, then, who quoted them, probably knew them, not from tradition, but from the written book of the prophet Micah. But those elders speak of Micah, as exercising his prophetic function in the days of Hezekiah. They do not say, "he prophesied," which might have been a single act; but "he was prophesying,"נבא היה hâyâh nâbâ', a form of speaking which is only used of an abiding, habitual, action. They say also, "he was habitually prophesying, and he said," i. e., as we should say, "in the course of his prophesying in the days of Hezekiah, he said." Still it was "to all the people of Judah" that he said it. The elders say so, and lay stress upon it by repeating it. "Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death?" It must have been then on some of the great festivals, when "all Judah" was gathered together, that Micah so spoke to them.
Probably, shortly afterward, in those first years of Hezekiah, Micah's function on earth closed. For, at the outset and in the summary of his prophecy, not incidentally, he speaks of the destruction of Samaria, which took place in the 4th year of Hezekiah, as still to come; and however practical or partial idolatry continued, such idolatry as he throughout describes, did not exist after the reformation by Hezekiah. This conversion, then, of the king and of some considerable part of Judah was probably the closing harvest of his life, after a long seed-time of tears. So God allowed His servant Micah to "depart in peace." The reformation itself, at least in its fullness, took place after the kingdom of Samaria had come to an end, since Hezekiah's messengers could, unhindered, invite all Israel to join in his great Passover. Probably, then, Micah lived to see the first dawnings only of the first reformation which God wrought by his words.
At the commencement, then, of Hezekiah's reign he collected the substance of what God had taught by him, re-casting it, so to speak, and retaining of his spoken prophecy so much as God willed to remain for us. As it stands, it belongs to that early time of Hezekiah's reign, in which the sins of Ahaz still lived on. Corruption of manners had been hereditary. In Jotham's reign too, it is said expressly, in contrast with himself, "the people were still doing corruptly" Ch2 27:2. Idolatry had, under Ahaz, received a fanatic impulse from the king, who, at last, set himself to close the worship of God Ch2 28:22-25; Ch2 29:7. The strength of Jotham's reign was gone; the yearning for its restoration led to the wrong and destructive policy, against which Isaiah had to contend. Of this Micah says, such should not be the strength of the future kingdom of God. Idolatry and oppression lived on; against these, the inheritance of those former reigns, the sole remainder of Jotham's might or Ahaz' policy, the breach of the law of love of God and man, Micah concentrated his written prophecy.
This book also has remarkable symmetry. Each of its three divisions is a whole, beginning with upbraiding for sin, threatening God's judgments, and ending with promises of future mercy Christ. The two later divisions begin again with that same characteristic, "Hear ye" Mic. 3-7, with which Micah had opened the whole. The three divisions are also connected, as well by lesser references of the later to the former, as also by the advance of the prophecy. Judah could not be trusted now with any simple declaration of God's future mercy. They supposed themselves, impenitent as they were and with no purpose of repentance, to be the objects of God's care, and secure from evil. Unmixed promise of good would but foment this irreligious apathy. Hence, on the promises at the end of the first portion, "and their king shall pass before them and the Lord at the head of them" Mic 2:12, he turns abruptly, "And I said, Hear, I pray you, Is it not for you to know judgement?" Mic 3:1. The promise had been to "Jacob and the remnant of Israel" Mic 2:12. He renews his summons to the "heads of Jacob" Mic 3:1 and the "princes of the house of Israel." In like way, the last section, opening with that wonderful pleading of God with His people, follows upon that unbroken declaration of God's mercies, which itself issues out of the promised Birth at Bethlehem.
There is also a sort of progress in the promises of the three parts . In the first, it is of deliverance generally, in language taken from that first deliverance from Egypt. The second is objective, the Birth of the Redeemer, the conversion of the Gentiles, the restoration of the Jews, the establishment and nature of His kingdom. The third is mainly subjective man's repentance, waiting upon God, and God's forgiveness of his sins.
Throughout, the metropolis is chiefly addressed, as the main seat of present evil and as the center of the future blessings; where the reign of the long-promised Ruler should be Mic 4:2, Mic 4:7-8; whence the revelation of God should go forth to the heathen Mic 4:1-2; whither the scattered and dispersed people should be gathered Mic 4:6-7; Mic 7:11-12.
Throughout the prophecy also, Micah upbraids the same class of sins, wrong dealing of man to man, oppression of the poor by the rich. Throughout, their future captivity and dispersion are either predicted , or assumed as the basis of the prediction of good Mic 2:12-13; Mic 4:6-7, Mic 4:10; Mic 7:11-12, Mic 7:15. Throughout, we see the contemporary of the prophet Isaiah. Beside that great prediction, which Isaiah inserted verbally from Micah, we see them, as it were, side by side, in that city of God's visitation and of His mercy, prophesying the same respite, the same place of captivity and deliverance from it, the same ulterior mercies in Christ. : "The more to establish the faith, God willed that Isaiah and Micah should speak together, as with one mouth, and use such agreement as might the more convict all rebels."
Assyria was then the monarchy of the world; yet both prophets promise deliverance from it Isa 10:24-34; Isa 14:25; Isa 30:31; Isa 31:8-9; Isa 37:6-7, Isa 37:21-35; Mic 5:5-6; both foretell the captivity in the then subordinate Babylon Isa 39:6; Mic 4:10; both, the deliverance from it Isa 48:20; Mic 4:10. Both speak in the like way of the gathering together of God's people from lands (Isa 11:11 following; Mic 7:12), to some of which they were not yet dispersed. Isaiah prophesied the Virgin-Birth of Immanuel Isa 7:14; Micah, the Birth at Bethlehem of Him "Whose goings fourth have been of old, from everlasting" (Mic 5:2 English (Mic 5:1 in Hebrew)). Both speak in the like way of the reverence for the Gentiles thereafter for her , by reason of the presence of her God. Even, in outward manner, Micah, representing himself, as one who "went mourning and wailing, stripped and naked" (Mic 1:8, see note), is a sort of forerunner of the symbolic acts of Isaiah (Isa 20:2-3).
Micah had this also common with Isaiah, that he has a predominance of comfort. He is brief in upbraiding Mic 1:5; Mic 2:1-2, Mic 2:9-11, indignant in casting back the pleas of the false prophets Mic 2:7, Mic 2:11; Mic 3:5-7, concise in his threatenings of woe Mic 2:3, Mic 2:10; Mic 3:4, Mic 3:12; Mic 6:13-16; Mic 7:4, Mic 7:13, save where he lingers mournfully over the desolation Mic 1:10-16; Mic 2:4-5, large and flowing in his descriptions of mercy to come Mic 4:1-13; Mic 5:1-15; Mic 7:7-20. He sees and pronounces the coming punishment, as absolutely certain; he does not call to repentance to avert it; he knows that ultimately it will not be averted; he sees it irrespectively of time, and says that it will be. Time is an accident to the link of cause and effect. Sin consummated would be the cause; punishment, the effect. He spoke to those who knew that God pardoned on repentance, who had lately had before them that marvelous instance in Nineveh. He dashes to the ground their false security, by reason of their descent from Jacob Mic 2:7, of God's Presence among them in the Temple Mic 3:11; the multitude of their offerings amid the multitude of their sins Mic 6:6-7.
He rejects in God's name, their false, outward, impenitent, penitence; and thereby the more implies that He would accept a true repentance. They knew this, and were, for a time, scared into penitence. But in his book, as God willed it to remain, he is rather the prophet of God's dealings, than the direct preacher of repentance to individuals. Yet he is the more an evangelic preacher, in that he speaks of repentance, only as the gift of God. He does not ignore that man must accept the grace of God; but, as Isaiah foretells of the days of the Gospel, "the idols He shall utterly abolish" Isa 2:18, so Micah first foretells that God would abolish all wherein man relied out of God, all wherein he prided himself Mic 5:9-10, every form of idolatry Mic 5:11-13, and subsequently describes the future evangelic repentance, submission to, and waiting upon God and His righteousness Mic 7:8-9; and God's free plenary forgiveness Mic 7:18-19.
Micah's rapid unprepared transitions from each of his main themes to another, from upbraiding to threatening, from threatening to mercy and then back again to upbraiding, is probably a part of that same vivid perception of the connection of sin, chastisement, forgiveness, in the will and mind of God. He sees them and speaks of them in the natural sequence in which they were exhibited to him. He connects most commonly the sin with the punishment by the one word, therefore (not Mic 1:6; Mic 6:13; but Mic 1:14; Mic 2:3, Mic 2:5; Mic 3:6, Mic 3:12), because it was an object with him to shew the connection. The mercies to come he subjoins either suddenly without any conjunction Mic 2:12; Mic 4:13, or with the simple and. An English reader loses some of the force of this simplicity by the paraphrase, which, for the simple copula, substitutes the inference or contrast, "therefore, then, but, notwithstanding" , which lie in the subjects themselves.
An English reader might have been puzzled, at first sight, by the monotonous simplicity of the, and, and, joining together the mention of events, which stand, either as the contrast or the consequence of those which precede them. The English version accordingly has consulted for the reader or hearer, by drawing out for him the contrast or consequence which lay beneath the surface. But this gain of clearness involved giving up so far the majestic simplicity of the Prophet, who at times speaks of things as they lay in the Divine Mind, and as, one by one, they would be unfolded to man, without explaining the relation in which they stood to one another. Micah knew that surfferings were, in God's purpose, travail-pains. And so, immediately after the denunciation of punishment, he adds so calmly, "And in the last days it shall be;" "And thou, Bethlehem Ephratah" (Mic 4:1; Mic 5:2 (Mic 5:1 in Hebrew); add Mic 7:7). Or in the midst of his descriptions of mercies, he speaks of the intervening troubles, as the way to them. "Now why dost thou cry aloud? - pangs have taken thee, as a woman in travail - be in pain - thou shalt go even unto Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered" Mic 4:9 : or, "Therefore will He give thee up until the time, ..." (Mic 5:3 (Mic 5:2 in Hebrew)), i. e., because He has these good things in store for thee, "He will give thee up, until the time" comes.
With this great simplicity Micah unites great vividness and energy. Thus in predicting punishment, he uses the form of command, bidding them, as it were, execute it on themselves; "Arise, depart" (Mic 2:10; add Mic 1:11, Mic 1:13; Mic 4:10): as, in the Great Day, our Lord shall say, "Depart, ye cursed." And since God does in us or by us what He commands to be done, he uses the imperative to Zion, alike as to her victories over God's enemies Mic 4:13, or her state of anxious fear (Mic 5:1 (4:14 in Hebrew)).
To that same vividness belong his rapid changes of person or gender; his sudden questions Mic 1:5; Mic 2:7; Mic 3:1; Mic 4:9; Mic 6:3, Mic 6:6, Mic 6:10-11; Mic 7:18; his unmarked dialogues. The changes of person and gender occur in all Hebrew poetry; all have their emphasis. He addresses the people or place as a whole (feminine), then all the individuals in her (Mic 1:11, twice); or turns away and speaks of it ; or contrariwise, having spoken of the whole in the third person, he turns round and drives the warning home to individuals Mic 2:3. The variations in the last verse of Mic. 6 are unexampled for rapidity even in Hebrew.
And yet the flow of his words is smooth and measured. Without departing from the conciseness of Hebrew poetry, his cadence, for the most part, is of the more prolonged sort, as far as any can be called prolonged, when all is so concise. In some 8 verses, out of 104, he is markedly brief, where conciseness corresponds with his subject, as in an abrupt appeal as to their sins (Mic 3:10 ((5 words); Mic 6:11 (6 words)), or an energetic announcement of judgment (Mic 5:8; and Mic 7:13 (7 words)) or of mercy (Mic 7:11 (7 words); Mic 7:15 (5 words)), or in that remarkable prophecy of both (Mic 5:13 Hebrew (5 Words); Mic 5:10 (6 words); Mic 5:11 (7 words)), how God would, in mercy, cut off all grounds of human trust. Else, whereas in Nahum and Habakkuk, not quite 13, and in the eleven last Chapters of Hosea much less than 13, of the verses contain more than 13 words , in Micah above 37 (as, in Joel, nearly 37) exceed that number .
His description of the destruction of the cities or villages of Judah corresponds in vividness to Isaiah's ideal march of Sennacherib Isa 10:28-32. The flame of war spreads from place to place; but Micah relieves the sameness of the description of misery by every variety which language allows. He speaks of them in his own person (see Mic 1:8, note; Mic 1:10, note), or to them; he describes the calamity in past Mic 1:9-12 or in future Mic 1:8, or by use of the imperative Mic 1:11, Mic 1:13, Mic 1:16. The verbal allusions are crowded together in a way unexampled elsewhere. Moderns have spoken of them, as not after their taste, or have apologized for them. The mighty prophet, who wrought a repentance greater than his great contemporary Isaiah, knew well what would impress the people to whom he spoke. The Hebrew names had definite meanings. We can well imagine how, as name after name passed from the prophet's mouth, connected with some note of woe, all around awaited anxiously, to know upon what place the fire of the Prophet's word would next fall; and as at last it had fallen upon little and mighty round about Jerusalem, the names of the places would ring in their ears as heralds of the coming woe; they would be like so many monuments, inscribed beforehand with the titles of departed greatness, reminding Jerusalem itself of its portion of the prophecy, that "evil should come from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem" Isa 1:12.
Wonderful must have been his lightning-flash of indignation, as, when the false prophet or the people had forbidden God's word to be spoken, he burst upon them, "Thou, called house of Jacob, shortened is God's Spirit?" Mic 2:7. "Or these His doings?" And then follow the plaintive descriptions of the wrongs done to the poor, the peaceful Mic 2:8-9, the mothers of his people and their little ones. And then again the instantaneous dismissal, "Arise and depart." Mic 2:10. But, therewith, wonderful also is his tenderness. Burning as are his denunciations against the oppressions of the rich Mic 2:1-2; Mic 3:1-3, Mic 3:9-11; Mic 6:10-12; Mic 7:2-3, (words less vehement will not pierce hearts of stone) there is an under-current of tenderness. His rebukes evince not indignation only against sin, but a tender sympathy with the sufferers Mic 1:8-9; Mic 2:1-2; Mic 7:5-6. He is afflicted in the afflictions which he has to denounce. He yearns for his people Mic 1:8-10, Mic 1:16; Mic 4:9-10; nay, until our Lord's coming, there is scarcely an expression of such yearning longing: he hungers and thirsts for their good Mic 7:1.
God's individual care of His people, and of each soul in it, had, since David's time Psa 23:1-6 and even since Jacob Gen 49:24, been likened to the care of the shepherd for each single sheep. The Psalm of Asaph Psa 74:1; Psa 78:52; Psa 79:13; Psa 80:1 must have familiarized the people to the image, as relating to themselves as a whole, and David's deep Psalm had united it with God's tender care of His own in, and over, death. Yet the predominance of this image in Micah is a part of the tenderness of the prophet. He adopts it, as expressing, more than any other natural image, the helplessness of the creature, the tender individual care of the Creator. He forestalls our Lord's words, "I am the good shepherd," in his description of the Messiah, gathering "the remnant of Israel together, as the sheep of Bozrah" Mic 2:12; His people are as a flock, "lame and despised" Mic 4:6, whom God would assemble; His royal seat, "the tower of the flock" Mic 4:8; the Ruler of Israel should "stand" unresting, "and feed them" (Mic 5:4. (English 3 Hebrew)); those whom He should employ against the enemies of His people, are shepherds" (Mic 5:5, (Mic 5:4 in Hebrew)), under Him, the true shepherd. He sums up his prayer for his people to God as their Shepherd; "Feed Thy people with Thy rod, the flock of Thine heritage" Mic 7:14.
Directly, he was a Prophet for Judah only. At the beginning of his book, he condemns the idolatries of both capitals, as the central sin of the two kingdoms. The destruction of Samaria he pronounces at once, as future, absolutely certain, abiding Mic 1:6-7. There he leaves her, declares her "wound incurable," and passes immediately to Judah, to whom, he says, that wound should pass, whom that same enemy should reach. Mic 1:9. Thereafter, he mentions incidentally the infection of Israel's sin spreading to Judah Mic 1:13. Elsewhere, after that first sentence on Samaria, the names of Jacob (which he had given to the ten tribes Mic 1:5) and Israel are appropriated to the kingdom of Judah : Judah is mentioned no more, only her capital; even her kings are called "the kings of Israel" Mic 1:14. The ten tribes are only included in the general restoration of the whole . The future remnant of the two tribes, to be restored after the captivity of Babylon, are called by themselves "the remnant of Jacob" (Mic 5:7-8, (Mic 5:8-9 in Hebrew)): the Messiah to be born at Bethlehem is foretold as "the ruler in Israel" (Mic 5:2 (Mic 5:1 in Hebrew)): the ten tribes are called "the remnant of His brethren," who were to "return to the children of Israel" (Mic 5:3 (Mic 5:2 in Hebrew)), i. e., Judah.
This the more illustrates the genuineness of the inscription. A later hand would have been unlikely to have mentioned either Samaria or those earlier kings of Judah. Each part of the title corresponds to something in the prophecy; the name "Micah" is alluded to at its close; his birthplace, "the Morasthite," at its beginning; the indications of those earlier reigns lie there, although not on its surface. The mention of the two capitals, followed by the immediate sentence on Samaria, and then by the fuller expansion of the sins and punishment of Jerusalem, culminating in its sentence Mic 3:12, in Micah, corresponds to the brief mention of the punishment of Judah in Amos the prophet of Israel, and then the fuller expansion of the sins and punishments of Israel. Further, the capitals, as the fountains of idolatry, are the primary object of God's displeasure. They are both specially denounced in the course of the prophecy; their special overthrow is foretold Mic 1:6, Mic 1:9, Mic 1:12; Mic 3:10-12; Mic 4:10. The title corresponds with the contents of the prophecy, yet the objections of modern critics shew that the correspondence does not lie on the surface.
The taunt of the false priest Amaziah to Amos may in itself suggest that; prophets at Jerusalem did prophesy against Samaria. Amaziah, anyhow, thought it natural that they should. Both Isaiah and Micah, while exercising their office at Jerusalem, had regard also to Samaria. Divided as Israel and Judah were, Israel was not yet cut off. Israel and Judah were still, together, the one people of God. The prophets in each had a care for the other.
Micah joins himself on to the men of God before him, as Isaiah at the time, and Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ezekiel, subsequently, employed words or thoughts of Micah . Micah alludes to the history, the laws, the promises, the threatenings of the Pentateuch; and that in such wise, that it is plain that he had, not traditional laws or traditional history, but the Pentateuch itself before him . Nor were those books before himself only. His book implies not an acquaintance only, but a familiar acquaintance with it on the part of the people. The title, "the land of Nimrod" (Mic 5:6, (Mic 5:5 in Hebrew) from Gen 10:8-12), "the house of bondage" , for Egypt, the allusions to the miraculous deliverance from Egypt (see the note at Mic 2:13; Mic 6:4; Mic 7:15), the history of Balaam; the whole summary of the mercies of God from the Exodus to Gilgal (see the note at Mic 6:4-5) the faithfulness pledged to Abraham and Jacob (see the note at Mic 7:20), would be unintelligible without the knowledge of the Pentateuch. Even single expressions are taken from the Pentateuch.
Especially, the whole sixth chapter is grounded upon it. Thence is the appeal to inanimate nature to hear the controversy; thence the mercies alleged on God's part; the offerings on man's part to atone to God (except the one dreadful superstition of Ahaz) are from the law; the answer on God's part is almost verbally from the law; the sins upbraided are sins forbidden in the law; the penalties pronounced are also those of the law. There are two allusions also to the history of Joshua (see the note at Mic 2:4; Mic 6:5), to David's elegy over Saul and Jonathan Mic 1:10, and, as before said, to the history of Micaiah son of Imlah in the Book of Kings. Single expressions are also taken from the Psalms , and the Proverbs . In the descriptions of the peace of the kingdom of Christ Mic 4:3; Joe 3:10, he appears purposely to have reversed God's description of the animosity of the nations against God's people. He has also two characteristic expressions of Amos. Perhaps, in the image of the darkness which should come on the false prophets Mic 3:6; Amo 8:9, he applied anew the image of Amos, adding the ideas of spiritual darkness and perplexity to that of calamity.
The light and shadows of the prophetic life fell deeply on the soul of Micah. The captivity of Judah too had been foretold before him. Moses had foretold the end from the beginning, had set before them the captivity and the dispersion, as a punishment which the sins of the people would certainly bring upon them. Hosea presupposed it ; Amos foretold that Jerusalem, like the cities of its heathen enemies, should be burned with fire Mic 2:5. Micah had to declare its lasting desolation Mic 3:12. Even when God wrought repentance through him, he knew that it was but for a time; for he foresaw and foretold that the deliverance would be, not in Jerusalem, but at Babylon Mic 4:10, in captivity. His prophecy sank so deep, that, above a century afterward, just when it was about to have its fulfillment, it was the prophecy which was remembered. But the sufferings of time disappeared in the light of eternal truth. Above seven centuries rolled by, and Micah re-appears as the herald, not now of sorrow but of salvation. Wise men from afar, in the nobility of their simple belief, asked, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" A king, jealous for his temporal empire, gathered all those learned in Holy Scripture, and echoed the question. The answer was given, unhesitatingly, as a well-known truth of God, in the words of Micah. "For thus it is written in the Prophet." Glorious peerage of the two contemporary prophets of Judah. Ere Jesus was born, the Angel announced the birth of the Virgin's Son, "God with us," in the words of Isaiah. When He was born, He was pointed out as the Object of worship to the first converts from the heathen, on the authority of God, through Micah.
Bible
Micah Chapter 1
Micah 1:1
mic 1:1
The word of the Lord that came to Micah ... which he saw - No two of the prophets authenticate their prophecy in exactly the same way. They, one and all, have the same simple statement to make, that this which they say is from God, and through them. A later hand, had it added the titles, would have formed all upon one model. The title was an essential part of the prophetic book, as indicating to the people afterward, that it was not written after the event. It was a witness, not to the prophet whose name it bears, but to God. The prophet bare witness to God, that what he delivered came from Him. The event bare witness to the prophet, that he said this truly, in that he knew what God alone could know - futurity. Micah blends in one the facts, that he related in words given him by God, what he had seen spread before him in prophetic vision. His prophecy was, in one, "the word of the Lord which came to him," and "a sight which he saw."
Micah omits all mention of his father. His great predecessor was known as Micaiah son of Imlah. Micah, a villager, would be known only by the name of his native village. So Nahum names himself "the Elkoshite;" Jonah is related to be a native "of Gath-hepher;" Elijah, the Tishbite, a sojourner in the despised Gilead Kg1 17:1; Elisha, of Abelmeholah; Jeremiah, of Anathoth; forerunners of Him, and taught by His Spirit who willed to be born at Bethlehem, and, since this, although too little to be counted "among the thousands of Judah," was yet a royal city and was to be the birthplace of the Christ, was known only as Jesus of Nazareth, "the Nazarene." No prophet speaks of himself, or is spoken of, as born at Jerusalem, "the holy city." They speak of themselves with titles of lowliness, not of greatness.
Micah dates his prophetic office from kings of Judah only, as the only kings of the line appointed by God. Kings of Israel are mentioned in addition, only by prophets of Israel. He names Samaria first, because, its iniquity being most nearly full, its punishment was the nearest.
Micah 1:2
mic 1:2
Hear, all ye people - Literally, "hear, ye peoples, all of them." Some 140, or 150 years had flowed by, since Micaiah, son of Imlah, had closed his prophecy in these words. And now they burst out anew. From age to age the word of God holds its course, ever receiving new fulfillments, never dying out, until the end shall come. The signal fulfillment of the prophecy, to which the former Micalah had called attention in these words, was an earnest of the fulfillment of this present message of God.
Hearken, O earth, and all that therein is - The "peoples" or "nations" are never Judah and Israel only: the earth and the fullness thereof is the well-known title of the whole earth and all its inhabitants. Moses Deu 32:1, Asaph Psa 50:7, Isaiah Isa 1:2, call heaven and earth as witnesses against God's people. Jeremiah, Jer 6:19 as Micah here, summons the nations and the earth. The contest between good and evil, sin and holiness, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, everwhere, but most chiefly where God's Presence is nearest, is "a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men" Co1 4:9. The nations are witnesses of God against His own people, so that these should not say, that it was for want of faithfulness or justice or power Exo 32:12; Num 14:16; Jos 7:8-9, but in His righteous judgment, that He cast off whom He had chosen. So shall the Day of Judgment "reveal His righteousness" Rom 2:5. "Hearken, O earth." The lifeless earth Psa 114:7; Psa 97:5 trembles "at the Presence of God," and so reproaches the dullness of man. By it he summons man to listen with great reverence to the Voice of God.
And let the Lord God be witness against you - Not in words, but in deeds ye shall know, that I speak not of myself but God in me, when, what I declare, He shall by His Presence fulfill. But the nations are appealed to, not merely because the judgments of God on Israel should be made known to them by the prophets. He had not yet spoken of Israel or Judah, whereas he had spoken to the nations; "hear, ye peoples." It seems then most likely that here too he is speaking to them. Every judgment is an earnest, a forerunner, a part, of the final judgment and an example of its principles. It is but "the last great link in the chain," which unites God's dealings in time with eternity. God's judgments on one imply a judgment on all. His judgments in time imply a Judgment beyond time. Each sinner feels in his own heart response to God's visible judgments on another. Each sinful nation may read its own doom in the sentence on each other nation.
God judges each according to his own measure of light and grace, accepted or refused. The pagan shall be judged by "the law written in their heart" Rom 2:12-15; the Jew, by the law of Moses and the light of the prophets; Christians, by the law of Christ. "The word," Christ saith, "that I have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last Day" Joh 12:48. God Himself foretold, that the pagan should know the ground of His judgments against His people. "All nations shall say, wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers which He made with them, when He brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, ..." Deu 29:24-25. But in that the pagan knew why God so punished His people, they came so far to know the mind of God; and God, who at no time "left Himself without witness" Act 14:17, bore fresh "witness" to them, and, so far us they neglected it, against them. A Jew, wherever he is seen throughout the world, is a witness to the world of God's judgments against sin.
Dionysius: "Christ, the faithful Witness, shall witness against those who do ill, for those who do well."
The Lord from His holy temple - Either that at Jerusalem, where God shewed and revealed Himself, or Heaven of which it was the image. As David says, "The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord's throne is in heaven" Psa 11:4; and contrasts His dwelling in heaven and His coming down upon earth. "He bowed the heavens also and came down" Psa 18:9; and Isaiah, in like words, "Behold, the Lord cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity" Isa 26:21.
Micah 1:3
mic 1:3
For, behold, the Lord comth forth - that is, (as we now say,) "is coming forth." Each day of judgment, and the last also, are ever drawing nigh, noiselessly as the nightfall, but unceasingly. "Out of His Place." Dionysius: "God is hidden from us, except when He sheweth Himself by His Wisdom or Power of Justice or Grace, as Isaiah saith, 'Verily, Thou art a God who hidest Thyself' Isa 45:15." He seemeth to be absent, when He doth not visibly work either in the heart within, or in judgments without; to the ungodly and unbelieving He is absent, "far above out of their sight" Psa 10:5, when He does not avenge their scoffs, their sins, their irreverence. Again He seemeth to go forth, when His Power is felt. Dionysius: "Whence it is said, 'Bow Thy heavens, O Lord, and come down' Psa 144:5; Isa 64:1; and the Lord saith of Sodom, 'I will go down now and see, whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me' Gen 18:21. Or, the Place of the Infinite God is God Himself. For the Infinite sustaineth Itself, nor doth anything out of Itself contain It. God dwelleth also in light unapproachable Ti1 6:16. When then Almighty God doth not manifest Himself, He abideth, as it were, in 'His own Place.' When He manifests His Power or Wisdom or Justice by their effects, He is said 'to go forth out of His Place,' that is, out of His hiddenness. Again, since the Nature of God is Goodness, it is proper and co-natural to Him, to be propitious, have mercy and spare. In this way, the Place of God is His mercy. When then He passeth from the sweetness of pity to the rigor of equity, and, on account of our sins, sheweth Himself severe (which is, as it were, alien from Him) He goeth forth out of His Place." Jerome: "For He who is gentle and gracious, and whose Nature it is to have mercy, is constrained, on your account, to take the seeming of hardness, which is not His."
He comes invisibly now, in that it is He who punisheth, through whatever power or will of man He useth; He shews forth His Holiness through the punishment of unholiness. But the words, which are image-language now, shall be most exactly fulfilled in the end, when, in the Person of our Lord, He shall come visibly to judge the world. Jerome, Theoph.: "In the Day of Judgment, Christ 'shall come down,' according to that Nature which He took, 'from His Place,' the highest heavens, and shall cast down the proud things of this world."
And will come down - Not by change of place, or in Himself, but as felt in the punishment of sin; and tread upon the high places of the earth; to bring down the pride of those (see Amo 4:13; Job 9:8) who "being lifted up in their own conceit and lofty, sinning through pride and proud through sin, were yet created out of earth. For why is earth and ashes proud?" (Ecclesiasticus 10:9). What seems mightiest and most firm, is unto God less than is to man the dust under his feet. The high places were also the special scenes of an unceasing idolatry. "God treadeth in the good and humble, in that He dwelleth, walketh, feasteth in their hearts Co2 6:16; Rev 3:20. But He treadeth upon the proud and the evil, in that He casteth them down, despiseth, condemneth them."
Micah 1:4
mic 1:4
And the mountains shall be molten under Him - It has been thought that this is imagery, taken from volcanic eruptions ; but, although there is a very remarkable volcanic district just outside of Gilead, it is not thought to have been active at times so late as these; nor were the people to whom the words were said, familiar with it. Fire, the real agent at the end of the world, is, meanwhile, the symbol of God's anger, as being the most terrible of His instruments of destruction: whence God revealed Himself as a consuming fire Deu 4:24, and at this same time said by Isaiah; "For behold, the Lord will come with fire ... to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire" Isa 66:15.
And the valleys shall be cleft as wax before the fire - It seems natural that the mountains should be cleft; but the valleys , so low already! This speaks of a yet deeper dissolution; of lower depths beyond our sight or knowledge, into the very heart of the earth. Sanch.: "This should they fear, who will to be so low; who, so far from lifting themselves to heavenly things, pour out their affections on things of earth, meditate on and love earthly things, and forgetful of the heavenly, choose to fix their eyes on earth. These the wide gaping of the earth which they loved, shall swallow: to them the cleft valleys shall open an everlasting sepulchre, and, having received them, shall never part with them."
Highest and lowest, first and last, shall perish before Him. The pride of the highest, kings and princes, priests and judges, shall sink and melt away beneath the weight and Majesty of His glory; the hardness of the lowest, which would not open itself to Him, shall be cleft in twain before Him.
As wax before the fire - (See Psa 97:5), melting away before Him by whom they were not softened, vanishing into nothingness. Metals melt, changing their form only; wax, so as to cease to be.
As the waters poured down - (As a stream or cataract, so the word means .)
A steep place - Down to the very edge, it is borne along, one strong, smooth, unbroken current; then, at once, it seems to gather its strength, for one great effort. But to what end? To fall, with the greater force, headlong, scattered in spray, foam and froth; dissipated, at times, into vapor, or reeling in giddy eddies, never to return. In Judea, where the autumn rains set in with great vehemence, the waters must have been often seen pouring in their little tumultuous brooklets down the mountain side , hastening to disappear, and disappearing the faster, the more vehemently they rolled along . Both images exhibit the inward emptiness of sinners, man's utter helplessness before God. They need no outward impulse to their destruction. Jerome: "Wax endureth not the nearness of the fire, and the waters are carried headlong. So all of the ungodly, when the Lord cometh, shall be dissolved and disappear." At the end of the world, they shall be gathered into bundles, and cast away.
Micah 1:5
mic 1:5
For the transgression of Jacob is all this - Not for any change of purpose in God; nor, again, as the effect of man's lust of conquest. None could have any power against God's people, unless it had been given him by God. Those mighty monarchies of old existed but as God's instruments, especially toward His own people. God said at this time of Assyria Isa 10:5, Asshur rod of Mine anger, and the staff in his hand is Mine indignation; and Isa 37:26, Now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defensed cities into ruinous heaps. Each scourge of God chastised just those nations, which God willed him to chasten; but the especial object for which each was raised up was his mission against that people, in whom God most showed His mercies and His judgments Isa 10:6. I will send him against an ungodly nation and against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge.
Jacob and Israel, in this place, comprise alike the ten tribes and the two. They still bare the name of their father, who, wrestling with the Angel, became a prince with God, whom they forgat. The name of Jacob then, as of Christian now, stamped as deserters, those who did not the deeds of their father. "What, (rather who) is the transgression of Jacob?" Who is its cause? In whom does it lie? Is it not Samaria? The metropolis must, in its own nature, be the source of good or evil to the land. It is the heart whose pulses beat throughout the whole system. As the seat of power, the residence of justice or injustice, the place of counsel, the concentration of wealth, which all the most influential of the land visit for their several occasions, its manners penetrate in a degree the utmost corners of the land. Corrupted, it becomes a focus of corruption. The blood passes through it, not to be purified, but to be diseased. Samaria, being founded on apostasy, owing its being to rebellion against God, the home of that policy which set up a rival system of worship to His forbidden by Him, became a fountain of evil, whence the stream of ungodliness overflowed the land. It became the impersonation of the people's sin, "the heart and the head of the body of sin."
And what - Literally, who (מי) always relates to a personal object, and apparent exceptions may be reduced to this. So Ae. Kim. Tanch. Pococke.
Are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem? - Jerusalem God had formed to be a center of unity in holiness; the tribes of the Lord were to go up there to the testimony of Israel; there was the unceasing worship of God, the morning and evening sacrifice; the Feasts, the memorials of past miraculous mercies, the foreshadowings of redemption. But there too Satan placed his throne. Ahaz brought thither that most hateful idolatry, the burning children to Moloch in the valley of the son of Hinnom Ch2 28:3. There Ch2 28:24, he made him altars in every corner of Jerusalem. Thence, he extended the idolatry to all Judah Ch2 28:25. And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers. Hezekiah, in his reformation, with all Israel Ch2 31:1, went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces and bowed down the statues of Asherah, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, as much as out of Ephraim and Manasseh. Nay, by a perverse interchange, Ahaz took the Brazen Altar, consecrated to God, for his own divinations, and assigned to the worship of God the altar copied from the idol-altar at Damascus, whose fashion pleased his taste Kg2 16:10-16.
Since God and mammon cannot be served together, Jerusalem was become one great idol-temple, in which Judah brought its sin into the very face of God and of His worship. The Holy City had itself become sin, and the fountain of unholiness. The one temple of God was the single protest against the idolatries which encompased and besieged it; the incense went up to God, morning and evening, from it; from every head of every street of the city Eze 16:31; Ch2 28:24, and (since Ahaz had brought in the worship of Baalim Ch2 28:2, and the rites of idolatry continued the same,) from the roofs of all their houses Jer 32:29, went up the incense to Baal; a worship which, denying the Unity, denied the Being of God.
Micah 1:6
mic 1:6
Therefore - (literally, "And") I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard Jerome: "The order of the sin was the order or the punishment." Samaria's sins were the earliest, the most obstinate, the most unbroken, bound up with its being as a state. On it then God's judgments should first fall. It was a crown of pride Isa 28:1, resting on the head of the rich valleys, out of which it rose. Its soil is still rich . "The whole is now cultivated in terraces" , "to the summits" . Probably, since the sides of hills, open to the sun, were chosen for vineyards, it had been a vineyard, before Shemer sold it to Omri Kg1 16:24. What it had been, that it was again to be. Its inhabitants cast forth, its houses and gorgeous palaces were to become heaps of stones, gathered out Isa 5:2 to make way for cultivation, or to become the fences of the vegetation, which should succeed to man.
There is scarce a sadder natural sight than the fragments of human habitation, tokens of man's labor or his luxury, amid the rich beauty of nature when man himself is gone. For they are tracks of sin and punishment, man's rebellion and God's judgment, man's unworthiness of the good natural gifts of God. A century or two ago, travelers "speak of the ground (the site of Samaria) as strewed with masses of ruins." Now these too are gone. : "The stones of the temples and palaces of Samaria have been carefully removed from the rich soil, thrown together in heaps, built up in the rude walls of terraces, and rolled down into the valley below." : "About midway of the ascent, the hill is surrounded by a narrow terrace of woodland like a belt. Higher up too are the marks of slighter terraces, once occupied perhaps by the streets of the ancient city." Terrace-cultivation has succeeded to the terraced streets once thronged by the busy, luxurious, sinful, population.
And I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley - Of which it was the crest, and which it now proudly surveyed. God Himself would cause it to be poured down (he uses the word which he had just used of the vehemence of the cataract Mic 1:4). : "The whole face of this part of the hill suggests the idea that the, buildings of the ancient city had been thrown down from the brow of the hill. Ascending to the top, we went round the whole summit, and found marks of the same process everywhere."
And I will discover the foundations thereof - The desolation is entire; not one stone left upon another. Yet the very words of threatening contain hope. It was to be not a heap only, but the plantings of a vineyard. The heaps betoken ruin; the vineyard, fruitfulness cared for by God. Destroyed, as what it was, and turned upside down, as a vineyard by the share, it should become again what God made it and willed it to be. It should again become a rich valley, but in outward desolation. Its splendid palaces, its idol temples, its houses of joy, should be but heaps and ruins, which are cleared away out of a vineyard, as only choking it. It was built in rebellion and schism, loose and not held together, like a heap of stones, having no cement of love, rent and torn in itself, having been torn both from God and His worship. It could be remade only by being wholly unmade. Then should they who believed be branches grafted in Him who said, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches" Joh 15:5.
Micah 1:7
mic 1:7
And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces - Its idols in whom she trusts, so far from protecting her, shall themselves go into captivity, broken up for the gold and silver whereof they were made. The wars of the Assyrians being religious wars , the idolatry of Assyria destroyed the idolatry and idols of Israel.
And all the hires thereof shall be burned with fire - All forsaking of God being spiritual fornication from Him who made His creatures for Himself, the hires are all which man would gain by that desertion of his God, employed in man's contact with his idols, whether as bribing his idols to give him what are the gifts of God, or as himself bribed by them. For there is no pure service, save that of the love of God. God alone can be loved purely, for Himself; offerings to Him alone are the creature's pure homage to the Creator, going out of itself, not looking back to itself, not seeking itself, but stretching forth to Him and seeking Him for Himself. Whatever man gives to or hopes from his idols, man himself is alike his object in both. The hire then is, alike what he gives to his idols, the gold whereof he makes his Baal , the offerings which the pagan used to lay up in their temples, and what, as he thought, he himself received back. For he gave only earthly things, in order to receive back things of earth. He hired their service to him, and his earthly gains were his hire. It is a strong mockery in the mouth of God, that they had these things from their idols. He speaks to them after their thoughts. Yet it is true that, although God overrules all, man does receive from Satan Mat 4:9, the god of this world Co2 4:4, all which he gains amiss. It is the price for which he sells his soul and profanes himself. Yet herein were the pagan more religious than the Christian worldling. The pagan did offer an ignorant service to they knew not what. Our idolatry of mammon, as being less abstract, is more evident self-worship, a more visible ignoring and so a more open dethroning of God, a worship of a material prosperity, of which we seem ourselves to be the authors, and to which we habitually immolate the souls of men, so habitually that we have ceased to be conscious of it.
And all the idols thereof will I lay desolate - Literally, "make a desolation." They, now thronged by their worshipers, should be deserted; their place and temple, a waste. He thrice repeats all; all her graven images, all her hires, all her idols; all should be destroyed. He subjoins a threefold destruction which should overtake them; so that, while the Assyrian broke and carried off the more precious, or burned what could be burned, and, what could not be burned, nor was worth transporting, should be left desolate, all should come to an end. He sets the whole the more vividly before the mind; exhibiting to us so many separate pictures of the mode of destruction.
For from the hire of a harlot she gathered them, and to the hire of a harlot they shall return - Jerome: "The wealth and manifold provision which (as she thought) were gained by fornication with her idols, shall go to another harlot, Nineveh; so that, as they went a whoring in their own land, they should go to another land of idols and fornication, the Assyrians." They Rom 1:23 turned their glory into shame, changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man; and so it should turn to them into shame. It sprung out of their shame, and should turn to it again. "Ill got, ill spent." Evil gain, cursed in its origin, has the curse of God upon it, and makes its gainer a curse, and ends accursedly. "Make not ill gains," says even a pagan. (H. 354. L), "ill gains are equal to losses;" and another , "Unlawful sweetness a most bitter end awaiteth."
Probably, the most literal sense is not to be excluded. The degrading idolatrous custom, related of Babylon and Cyprus , still continued among the Babylonians at the date of the book of Baruch (Baruch 6:43), and to the Christian era . Augustine speaks of it as having existed among the Phoenicians, and Theodoret says that it was still practiced by some in Syria. The existence of the idolatrous custom is presupposed by the prohibition by Moses Deu 23:18; and, in the time of Hosea self-desecration was an idolatrous rite in Israel . In the day of Judgment, when the foundation of those who build their house upon the sand, shall be laid bare, the riches which they gained unlawfully shall be burned up; all the idols, which they set up instead of God , "the vain thoughts, and useless fancies, and hurtful forms and images which they picture in their mind, defiling it, and hindering it from the steadfast contemplation of divine things, will be punished. They were the hire of the soul which went astray from God, and they who conceived them will, with them, become the prey again of that infernal host which is unceasingly turned from God."
Micah 1:8
mic 1:8
Therefore I will - Therefore I would
Wail - (properly, beat, that is, on the breast).
And howl - "Let me alone," he would say, "that I may vent my sorrow in all ways of expressing sorrow, beating on the breast and wailing, using all acts and sounds of grief." It is as we would say, "Let me mourn on," a mourning inexhaustible, because the woe too and the cause of grief was unceasing. The prophet becomes in words, probably in acts too, an image of his people, doing as they should do hereafter. He mourns, because and as they would have to mourn, bearing chastisement, bereft of all outward comeliness, an example also of repentance, since what he did were the chief outward tokens of mourning.
I will (would) go stripped - despoiled .
And naked - He explains the acts, that they represented no mere voluntary mourning. Not only would he, representing them, go bared of all garments of beauty, as we say "half-naked" but despoiled also, the proper term of those plundered and stripped by an enemy. He speaks of his doing, what we know that Isaiah did, by God's command, representing in act what his people should thereafter do. : "Wouldest thou that I should weep, thou must thyself grieve the first." Micah doubtless went about, not speaking only of grief, but grieving, in the habit of one mourning and bereft of all. He prolongs in these words the voice of wailing, choosing unaccustomed forms of words, to carry on the sound of grief.
I will make a wailing like the dragons - (jackals).
And mourning as the owls - (ostriches). The cry of both, as heard at night, is very piteous. Both are doleful creatures, dwelling in desert and lonely places. "The jackals make a lamentable howling noise, so that travelers unacquainted with them would think that a company of people, women or children, were howling, one to another."
"Its howl," says an Arabic natural historian , "is like the crying of an infant." "We heard them," says another , "through the night, wandering around the villages, with a continual, prolonged, mournful cry." The ostrich, forsaking its young Job 39:16, is an image of bereavement. Jerome: "As the ostrich forgets her eggs and leaves them as though they were not her's, to be trampled by the feet of wild beasts, so too shall I go childless, spoiled and naked." Its screech is spoken of by travelers as "fearful, aftrighting." : "During the lonesome part of the night they often make a doleful and piteous noise. I have often heard them groan, as if they were in the greatest agonies."
Dionysius: "I will grieve from the heart over those who perish, mourning for the hardness of the ungodly, as the Apostle had Rom 9:1 great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart for his brethren, the impenitent and unbelieving Jews. Again he saith, "who is weak and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?" Co2 11:29. For by how much the soul is nobler than the body, and by how much eternal damnation is heavier than any temporal punishment, so much more vehemently should we grieve and weep for the peril and perpetual damnation of souls, than for bodily sickness or any temporal evil."
Micah 1:9
mic 1:9
For her - Samaria's
Wound - o, (literally, her wounds, or strokes, (the word is used especially of those inflicted by God, (Lev 26:21; Num 11:33; Deu 28:59, Deu 28:61, etc.) each, one by one,) is incurable The idiom is used of inflictions on the body politic (Nahum 3 ult.; Jer 30:12, Jer 30:15) or the mind , for which there is no remedy. The wounds were very sick, or incurable, not in themselves or on God's part, but on Israel's. The day of grace passes away at last, when man has so steeled himself against grace, as to be morally dead, having deadened himself to all capacity of repentance.
For it is come unto - (quite up to) Judah; he, (the enemy,) is come (literally, hath reached, touched,) to (quite up to) the gate of my people, even to (quite up to) Jerusalem Jerome: "The same sin, yea, the same punishment for sin, which overthrew Samaria, shall even come unto, quite up to Judah. Then the prophet suddenly changes the gender, and, as Scripture so often does, speaks of the one agent, the center and impersonation of the coming evil, as sweeping on over Judah, quite up to the gate of his people, quite up to Jerusalem. He does not say here, whether Jerusalem would be taken; and so, it seems likely that he speaks of a calamity short of excision. Of Israel's wounds only he here says, that they are incurable; he describes the wasting of even lesser places near or beyond Jerusalem, the flight of their inhabitants. Of the capital itself he is silent, except that the enemy reached, touched, struck against it, quite up to it. Probably, then, he is here describing the first visitation of God, when Kg2 18:13 Sennacherib came up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them, but Jerusalem was spared. God's judgments come step by step, leaving time for repentance. The same enemy, although not the same king, came against Jerusalem who had wasted Samaria. Samaria was probably as strong as Jerusalem. Hezekiah prayed; God heard, the Assyrian army perished by miracle; Jerusalem was respited for 124 years.
Micah 1:10
mic 1:10
Tell it not in Gath - Gath had probably now ceased to be; at least, to be of any account . It shows how David's elegy lived in the hearts of Judah, that his words are used as a proverb, (just as we do now, in whose ears it is yearly read), when, as with us, its original application was probably lost. True, Gath, reduced itself, might rejoice the more maliciously over the sufferings of Judah. But David mentions it as a chief seat of Philistine strength ; now its strength was gone.
The blaspheming of the enemies of God is the sorest part of His chastisements. Whence David prays "let not mine enemies exult over me" Psa 25:2; and the sons of Korah, "With a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me, while they say daily unto me, where is thy God?" Psa 42:10; and Ethan; "Thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice. Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servant" Psa 89:42, Psa 89:50 - wherewith Thine enemies have reproached, O Lord, wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of Thine anointed. It is hard to part with home, with country, to see all desolate, which one ever loved. But far, far above all, is it, if, in the disgrace and desolation, God's honor seems to be injured. The Jewish people was then God's only home on earth. If it could be extinguished, who remained to honor Him? Victories over them seemed to their pagan neighbors to be victories over Him. He seemed to be dishonored without, because they had first dishonored Him within. Sore is it to the Christian, to see God's cause hindered, His kingdom narrowed, the empire of infidelity advanced. Sorer in one way, because he knows the price of souls, for whom Jesus died. But the world is now the Church's home. "The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee!" Then, it was girt in within a few miles of territory, and sad indeed it must have been to the prophet, to see this too hemmed in. Tell it not in Gath, to the sons of those who, of old, defied God.
Weep not at all - (Literally, weeping, weep not). Weeping is the stillest expression of grief. We speak of "weeping in silence." Yet this also was too visible a token of grief. Their weeping would be the joy and laughter of God's enemies.
In the house of Aphrah - (probably, In Beth-leaphrah) roll thyself in the dust (Better, as the text, I roll myself in dust). The prophet chose unusual names, such as would associate themselves with the meanings which he wished to convey, so that thence forth the name itself might recall the prophecy. As if we were to say, "In Ashe I roll myself in ashes." - There was an Aphrah near Jerusalem . It is more likely that Micah should refer to this, than to the Ophrah in Benjamin Jos 18:23; Sa1 13:17. He showed them, in his own person, how they should mourn, retired out of sight and hidden, as it were, in the dust. Jer. Rup.: "Whatever grief your heart may have, let your face have no tears; go not forth, but, in the house of dust, sprinkle thyself with the ashes of its ruins."
All the places thenceforth spoken of were in Judah, whose sorrow and desolation are repeated in all. It is one varied history of sorrow: The names of her cities, whether in themselves called from some gifts of God, as Shaphir, (beautiful; we have Fairford, Fairfield, Fairburn, Fairlight,) or contrariwise from some defect, Maroth, Bitterness (probably from brackish water) Achzib, lying, (doubtless from a winter-torrent which in summer failed) suggest, either in contrast or by themselves, some note of evil and woe. It is Judah's history in all, given in different traits; her "beauty" turned into shame; herself free neither to go forth nor to "abide;" looking for good and finding evil; the strong (Lachish) strong only to flee; like a brook that fails and deceives; her inheritance (Mareshah) inherited; herself, taking refuge in dens and caves of the earth, yet even there found, and bereft of her glory. Whence, in the end, without naming Judah, the prophet sums up her sorrows with one call to mourning.
Micah 1:11
mic 1:11
Pass ye away - (literally, Pass thou (fem.) away to or for yourselves), disregarded by God and despised by man) pass the bounds of your land into captivity.
Thou inhabitant of Shaphir, having thy shame naked - better, in nakedness, and shame. Shaphir (fair) was a village in Judah, between Eleutheropolis and Ashkelon (Onomasticon). There are still, in the Shephelah, two villages called Sawafir . It, once fair, should now go forth in the disgrace and dishonor with which captives were led away.
The inhabitants of Zaanan came not forth - Zaanan (abounding in flocks) was probably the same as Zenan of Judah, which lay in the Shephelah . It, which formerly went forth in pastoral gladness with the multitude of its flocks, shall now shrink into itself for fear.
The mourning of Beth-Ezel - (literally, house of root, firmly rooted) shall take from you its standings It too cannot help itself, much less be a stay to others. They who have been accustomed to go forth in fullness, shall not go forth then, and they who abide, strong though they be, shall not furnish an abiding place. Neither in going out nor in remaining, shall anything be secure then.
Micah 1:12
mic 1:12
For the inhabitant of Maroth - (bitterness) waited carefully for good She waited carefully for the good which God gives, not for the Good which God is. She looked, longed for, good, as men do; but therewith her longing ended. She longed for it, amid her own evil, which brought God's judgments upon her. Maroth is mentioned here only in Holy Scripture, and has not been identified. It too was probably selected for its meaning. The inhabitant of bitternesses, she, to whom bitternesses, or, it may be, rebellions, were as the home in which she dwelt, which ever encircled her, in which she reposed, wherein she spent her life, waited for good! Strange contradiction! yet a contradiction, which the whole un-Christian world is continually en acting; nay, from which Christians have often to be awakened, to look for good to themselves, nay, to pray for temporal good, while living in bitternesses, bitter ways, displeasing to God. The words are calculated to be a religious proverb. "Living in sin," as we say, dwelling in bitternesses, she looked for good! Bitternesses! for it is Jer 2:19 an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not in thee.
But evil came down from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem - It came, like the sulphur and fire which God rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah, but as yet to the gate of Jerusalem, not upon itself. : "Evil came down upon them from the Lord, that is, I was grieved, I chastened, I brought the Assyrian upon them, and from My anger came this affliction upon them. But it was removed, My Hand prevailing and marvelously rescuing those who worshiped My Majesty. For the trouble shall come to the gate. But we know that Rabshakeh, with many horsemen, came to Jerusalem and all-but touched the gates. But he took it not. For in one night the Assyrian was consumed." The two for's are seemingly coordinate, and assign the reasons of the foreannounced evils, Mic 1:3-11 on man's part and on God's part. On man's part, in that he looked for what could not so come, good: on God's part, in that evil, which alone could be looked for, which, amid man's evil, could alone be good for man, came from Him. Losing the true Good, man lost all other good, and dwelling in the bitterness of sin and provocation, he dwelt indeed in bitterness of trouble.
Micah 1:13
mic 1:13
O thou inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot to the swift beast - (steed.) Lachish was always a strong city, as its name probably denoted, (probably "compact." It was one of the royal cities of the Amorites, and its king one of the five, who went out to battle with Joshua Jos 10:3. It lay in the low country, Shephelah, of Judah Jos 15:33, Jos 15:39, between Adoraim and Azekah Ch2 11:9, Ch2 11:7 Roman miles south of Eleutheropolis (Onomasticon), and so, probably, close to the hill-country, although on the plain; partaking perhaps of the advantages of both. Rehoboam fortified it. Amaziah fled to it from the conspiracy at Jerusalem Kg2 14:19, as a place of strength. It, with Azekah, alone remained, when Nebuchadnezzar had taken the rest, just before the capture of Jerusalem Jer 34:7. When Sennacherib took all the defensed cities of Judah, it seems to have been his last and proudest conquest, for from it he sent his contemptuous message to Hezekiah Isa 36:1-2.
The whole power of the great king seems to have been called forth to take this stronghold. The Assyrian bas-reliefs, the record of the conquests of Sennacherib, if (as the accompanying inscription is deciphered), they represent the taking of Lachish, exhibit it as "a city of great extent and importance, defended by double walls with battlements and towers, and by fortified riggings. In no other sculptures were so many armed warriors drawn up in array against a besieged city. Against the fortifications had been thrown up as many as ten banks or mounts compactly built - and seven battering-rams had already been rolled up against the walls." Its situation, on the extremity probably of the plain, fitted it for a depot of cavalry. The swift steeds, to which it was bidden to bind the chariot, are mentioned as part of the magnificence of Solomon, as distinct from his ordinary horses (Kg1 4:28, English (Kg1 5:8 in Hebrew)). They were used by the posts of the king of Persia Est 8:10, Est 8:14.
They were doubtless part of the strength of the kings of Judah, the cavalry in which their statesmen trusted, instead of God. Now, its swift horses in which it prided itself should avail but to flee. Probably, it is an ideal picture. Lachish is bidden to bind its chariots to horses of the utmost speed, which should carry them far away, if their strength were equal to their swiftness. It had great need; for it was subjected under Sennacherib to the consequences of Assyrian conquest. If the Assyrian accounts relate to its capture, impalement and flaying alive were among the tortures of the captive-people; and awfully did Sennacherib, in his pride, avenge the sins against God whom he disbelieved.
She is the beginning of the sin to the daughter of Zion - Jerome: "She was at the gate through which the transgressions of Israel flooded Judah." How she came first to apostatise and to be the infectress of Judah, Scripture does not tell us . She scarcely bordered on Philistia; Jerusalem lay between her and Israel. But the course of sin follows no geographical lines. It was the greater sin to Lachish that she, locally so far removed from Israel's sin, was the first to import into Judah the idolatries of Israel. Scripture does not say, what seduced Lachish herself, whether the pride of military strength, or her importance, or commercial intercourse, for her swift steeds; with Egypt, the common parent of Israel's and her sin. Scripture does not give the genealogy of her sin, but stamps her as the heresiarch of Judah. We know the fact from this place only, that she, apparently so removed from the occasion of sin, became, like the propagators of heresy, the authoress of evil, the cause of countless loss of souls. Beginning of sin to - , what a world of evil lies in the three words!
Micah 1:14
mic 1:14
Therefore shalt thou give - (bridal) presents to Moresheth Gath Therefore! since Judah had so become a partaker of Israel's sins, she had broken the covenant, whereby God had given her the land of the pagan, and she should part with it to aliens. The bridal presents, literally the dismissals, were the dowry Kg1 9:16 with which the father sent away Jdg 12:9 his daughter, to belong to another, her lord or husband, never more to return. Moresheth, (literally, inheritance,) the inheritance which God gave her, was to be parted with; she was to be laden with gifts to the enemy. Judah should part with her, and her own treasure also.
The houses of Achzib shall be a lie - Achzib, so called probably from a winter brook, achzab, was to become what its name imported, a resource which should fail just in the time of need, as the winter brooks in the drought of summer. "Wilt Thou be unto me as a failing brook, waters which are not sure?" Jer 15:18. This Achzib, which is recounted between Keilah and Mareshah Jos 15:44, was probably one of, the oldest towns of Palestine being mentioned in the history of the Patriarch Judah. After having survived about 1,000 years, it should, in time of need, fail. The kings of Israel are here the kings of Judah. When this prophecy was to be accomplished, the ten tribes would have ceased to have any political existence, the remnant in their own lanai would have no head to look to, except the line of David, whose good kings had a care for them. Micah then, having prophesied the utter destruction of Samaria, speaks in accordance with the state of things which he foresaw and foretold.
Micah 1:15
mic 1:15
Yet will I bring an heir - (the heir, him whom God had appointed to be the heir, Sennacherib) unto thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah Mareshah, (as the original form of its name denotes, lay on the summit of a hill. "Its ruins only were still seen," in the time of Eusebius and Jerome, "in the second mile from Eleutheropolis" (Onomasticon). : "Foundations still remain on the south-eastern part of the remarkable Tell, south of Beth-Jibrin." Rehoboam fortified it also Ch2 11:8. Zerah the Aethiopian had come to (Ch2 14:9 ff) it, probably to besiege it, when Asa met him, and God smote the AEthiopians before him, in the valley of Zephathah thereat. In the wars of the Maccabees, it was in the hands of the Edomites . Its capture and that of Adora are mentioned as the last act of the war, before the Edomites submitted to John Hyrcanus, and were incorporated in Israel. It was a powerful city , when the Parthians took it. As Micah writes the name, it looked nearer to the word "inheritance." Mareshah (inheritance) shall yet have the heir of God's appointment, the enemy. It shall not inherit the land, as promised to the faithful, but shall itself be inherited, its people dispossessed. While it, (and so also the soul now) held fast to God, they were the heritage of the Lord, by His gifts and grace; when, of their own free-will, those, once God's heritage, become slaves of sin, they passed and still pass, against their will, into the possession of another master, the Assyrian or Satan.
He (that is, the heir, the enemy) shall come unto Adullam, the glory of Israel - . that is, he who shall dispossess Mareshah, shall come quite unto Adullam, where, as in a place of safety, the glory of Israel, all in which she gloried, should be laid up. Adullum was a very ancient city, being mentioned in the history of the patriarch Judah Gen 38:1, Gen 38:12, Gen 38:20, a royal city Jos 12:15. It too lay in the Shephelah Jos 15:35; it was said to be 10 (Eusebius) or 12 (Jerome) miles East of Eleutheropolis; but for this, there seems to be scarcely place in the Shephelah. It was one of the 15 cities fortified by Rehoboam Ch2 11:7; one of the 16 towns, in which (with their dependent villages) Judah settled after the captivity Neh 11:30. It contained the whole army of Judas Maccabaeus (1 Macc. 12:38).
Like Lachish, it had probably the double advantages of the neighborhood of the hills and of the plain, seated perhaps at the roots of the hills, since near it doubtless was the large cave of Adullam named from it. The line of caves, fit for human habitation, which extended from Eleutheropolis to Petra , began westward of it. : "The valley which runs up from Eleutheropolis Eastward, is full of large caves; some would hold thousands of men. They are very extensive, and some of them had evidently been inhabited." : "The outer chamber of one cavern was 270 feet long by 126 wide; and behind this were recesses and galleries, probably leading to other chambers which we could not explore. The massive roof was supported by misshaped pieces of the native limestone left for that purpose, and at some places was domed quite through to the surface, admitting both light and air by the roof." The name of Adullam suggested the memory of that cave, the refuge of the Patriarch David, the first of their line of kings, in extreme isolation and peril of his life. There, the refuge now of the remaining glory of Israel, its wealth, its trust, its boast - the foe should come. And so there only remained one common dirge for all.
Micah 1:16
mic 1:16
Make thee bald, poll - (literally, shear thee for thy delicate children Some special ways of cutting the hair were forbidden to the Israelites, as being idolatrous customs, such as the rounding the hair in front, cutting it away from the temples , or between the eyes Deu 14:1. All shearing of the hair was not forbidden ; indeed to the Nazarite it was commanded, at the close of his vow. The removal of that chief ornament of the countenance wasa natural expression of grief, which revolts at all personal appearance. It belonged, not to idolatry, but to nature . "Thy delicate children." The change was the more bitter for those tended and brought up delicately. Moses from the first spoke of special miseries which should fall on the tender and very delicate. "Enlarge thy baldness;" outdo in grief what others do; for the cause of thy grief is more than that of others. The point of comparison in the Eagle might either be the actual baldness of the head, or its moulting. If it were the baldness of the head, the word translated eagle Unless nesher be the golden Eagle there is no Hebrew name for it, whereas it is still a bird of Palestine, and smaller eagles are mentioned in the same verse, Lev 11:13; namely, the ossifrage, פרס, and the black eagle, עזניה, so called from its strength, like the valeria, of which Pliny says, "the melanaetos or valeria, least in size, remarkable for strength, blackish in color." x. 3. The same lint of unclean birds contains also the vulture, דיה, Deu 14:13, (as it must be, being a gregarious bird, Isa 34:15) in its different species Deu 14:13 the gier-eagle, (that is, Geyer) (vulture) eagle gypaetos, or vultur percnopterus, (Hasselquist, Forskal, Shaw, Bruce in Savigny p. 77.) partaking of the character of both, (רהם Lev 11:18; Deu 14:17 together with the falcon (דאה Lev 11:14 and hawk, with its subordinate species, (למינהו נץ) Lev 11:18; Deu 14:15.), although mostly used of the Eagle itself, might here comprehend the Vulture . For entire baldness is so marked a feature in the vulture, whereas the "bald-headed Eagle" was probably not a bird of Palestine . On the other hand, David, who lived so long among the rocks of Palestine, and Isaiah seem to have known of effects of moulting upon the Eagle in producing, (although in a less degree than in other birds,) a temporary diminution of strength, which have not in modern times been commonly observed.
For David says, "Thou shalt renew, like the eagle, thy youth, which speaks of fresh strength after temporary weakness" Psa 103:5; and Isaiah, "They that trust in the Lord shall put forth fresh strength; they shall put forth pinion-feathers like eagles" Isa 40:31, comparing the fresh strength which should succeed to that which was gone, to the eagle's recovering its strong pinion-feathers. Bochart however says unhesitatingly , "At the beginning of spring, the rapacious birds are subject to shedding of their feathers which we call moulting." If this be so, the comparison is yet more vivid, For the baldness of the vulture belongs to its matured strength, and could only be an external likeness. The moulting of the eagle involves some degree of weakness, with which he compares Judah's mournful and weak condition amid the loss of their children, gone into captivity .
Thus closes the first general portion of the prophecy. The people had east aside its own Glory, God; now its sons, its pride and its trust, shall go away from it.
Lap.: "The eagle, laying aside its old feathers and taking new, is a symbol of penitence and of the penitents who lay aside their former evil habits, and become other and new men. True, but rare form of penitence!" Gregory the Great thus applies this to the siege of Rome by the Lombards. : "That happened to her which we know to have been foretold of Judea by the prophet, enlarge thy baldness like the eagle. For baldness befalls man in the head only, but the eagle in its whole body; for, when it is very old, its feathers and pinions fall from all its body. She lost her feathers, who lost her people. Her pinions too fell out, with which she was accustomed to fly to the prey; for all her mighty men, through whom she plundered others, perished. But this which we speak of, the breaking to pieces of the city of Rome, we know has been done in all the cities of the world. Some were desolated by pestilence, others devoured by the sword, others racked by famine, others swallowed by earthquakes. Despise we them with our whole heart, at least, when brought to nought; at least with the end of the world, let us end our eagerness after the world. Follow we, wherein we can, the deeds of the good." One whose commentaries Jerome had read, thus applies this verse to the whole human race. "O soul of man! O city, once the mother of saints, which wast formerly in Paradise, and didst enjoy the delights of different trees, and wast adorned most beautifully, now being east down from thy place aloft, and brought down unto Babylon, and come into a place of captivity, and having lost thy glory, make thee bald and take the habit of a penitent; and thou who didst fly aloft like an eagle, mourn thy sons, thy offspring, which from thee is led captive."
Bible
Micah Chapter 2
Micah 2:1
mic 2:1
The prophet had declared that evil should come down on Samaria and Jerusalem for their sins. He had pronounced them sinners against God; he now speaks of their hard unlovingness toward man, as our Blessed Lord in the Gospel speaks of sins against Himself in His members, as the ground of the condemnation of the wicked. The time of warning is past. He speaks as in the person of the Judge, declaring the righteous judgments of God, pronouncing sentence on the hardened, but blessing on those who follow Christ. The sins thus visited were done with a high hand; first, with forethought:
Woe - All woe, woe from God ; "the woe of temporal captivity; and, unless ye repent, the woe of eternal damnation, hangeth over you." Woe to them that devise iniquity. They devise it , "they are not led into it by others, but invent it out of their own hearts." They plot and forecast and fulfill it even in thought, before it comes to act. And work evil upon their beds. Thoughts and imaginations of evil are works of the soul Psa 58:2. "Upon their beds" (see Psa 36:4), which ought to be the place of holy thought, and of communing with their own hearts and with God Psa 4:4. Stillness must be filled with thought, good or bad; if not with good, then with bad. The chamber, if not the sanctuary of holy thoughts, is filled with unholy purposes and imaginations. Man's last and first thoughts, if not of good, are especially of vanity and evil. The Psalmist says, "Lord, have I not remembered Thee in my bed, and thought upon Thee when I was waking?" Psa 63:6. These men thought of sin on their bed, and did it on waking. When the morning is light, literally in the light of the morning, that is, instantly, shamelessly, not shrinking from the light of day, not ignorantly, but knowingly, deliberately, in full light. Nor again through infirmity, but in the wantonness of might, because it is in the power of their hand , as, of old, God said, "This they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do" Gen 11:6. Rup.: "Impiously mighty, and mighty in impiety."
Lap.: See the need of the daily prayer, "Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin;" and "Almighty God, who hast brought us to the beginning of this day, defend us in the same by Thy mighty power, that we may fall into no sin, etc." The illusions of the night, if such be permitted, have no power against the prayer of the morning.
Micah 2:2
mic 2:2
And they covet fields and take them by violence - (rend them away) and houses, and take them away Still, first they sin in heart, then in act. And yet, with them, to covet and to rob, to desire and to take, are the same. They were prompt, instantaneous, without a scruple, in violence. So soon as they coveted, they took. Desired, acquired! Coveted, robbed! "They saw, they coveted, they took," had been their past history. They did violence, not to one only, but, touched with no mercy, to whole families, their little ones also; they oppressed a man and his house. They spoiled pot goods only, but life, a man and his inheritance; destroying him by false accusations or violence and seizing upon his inheritance . Thus, Ahab first coveted Naboth's vineyard, then, through Jezebel, slew him; and , "they who devoured widow's houses, did at the last plot by night against Him of whom they said, Come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be our's; and in the morning, they practiced it, leading Him away to Pilate." : "Who of us desires not the villas of this world, forgetful of the possessions of Paradise? You see men join field to field, and fence to fence. Whole places suffice not to the tiny frame of one man." : "Such is the fire of concupiscence, raging within, that, as those seized by burning fevers cannot rest, no bed suffices them, so no houses or fields content these. Yet no more than seven feet of earth will suffice them soon . Death only owns, how small the frame of man."
Micah 2:3
mic 2:3
Such had been their habitual doings. They had done all this, he says, as one continuous act, up to that time. They were habitually devisers of iniquity, doers of evil. It was ever-renewed. By night they sinned in heart and thought; by day, in act. And so he speaks of it in the present. They do it. But, although renewed in fresh acts, it was one unbroken course of acting. And so he also uses the form, in which the Hebrews spoke of uninterrupted habits, They have coveted, they have robbed, they have taken. Now came God's part.
Therefore, thus saith the Lord - Since they oppress whole families, behold I will set Myself against this whole family ; since they devise iniquity, behold I too, Myself, by Myself, in My own Person, am devising. Very awful is it, that Almighty God sets His own Infinite Wisdom against the devices of man and employs it fittingly to punish. "I am devising no common punishment, but one to bow them down without escape; "an evil from which" - He turns suddenly to them, "ye shall not remove your necks, neither shall ye go haughtily." Ribera: "Pride then was the source of that boundless covetousness," since it was pride which was to be bowed down in punishment. The punishment is proportioned to the sin. They had done all this in pride; they should have the liberty and self-will wherein they had wantoned, tamed or taken from them. Like animals with a heavy yoke upon them, they should live in disgraced slavery.
The ten tribes were never able to withdraw their necks from the yoke. From the two tribes God removed it after the 70 years. But the same sins against the love of God and man brought on the same punishment. Our Lord again spake the woe against their covetousness Luk 16:13-14; Luk 11:39; Mat 23:14, Mat 23:23, Mat 23:25; Mar 12:40. It still shut them out from the service of God, or from receiving Him, their Redeemer. They still spoiled the goods Heb 10:34 of their brethren. In the last dreadful siege , "there were insatiable longings for plunder, searching-out of the houses of the rich; murder of men and insults of women were enacted as sports; they drank down what they had spoiled, with blood." And so the prophecy was for the third time fulfilled. They who withdraw from Christ's easy yoke of obedience shall not remove from the yoke of punishment; they who, through pride, will not bow down their necks, but make them stiff, shall be bent low, that they go not upright or haughtily anymore Isa 2:11. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that Day. For it is an evil time. Perhaps he gives a more special meaning to the words of Amos Amo 5:13, that a time of moral evil will be, or will end in, a time, full of evil, that is, of sorest calamity.
Micah 2:4
mic 2:4
In that day shall one take up a parable against you - The mashal or likeness may, in itself, be any speech in which one thing is likened to another:
1) "figured speech,"
2) "proverb," and, since such proverbs were often sharp sayings against others,
3) "taunting figurative speech."
But of the person himself it is always said, he "is made, becomes a proverb" Deu 28:37; Kg1 9:7; Ch2 7:20; Psa 44:15; Psa 69:12; Jer 24:9; Eze 14:8. To take up or utter such a speech against one, is, elsewhere, followed by the speech itself; "Thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say, ..." Isa 14:4. "Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and say, ..." Hab 2:6. Although then the name of the Jews has passed into a proverb of reproach (Jerome, loc. cit.), this is not contained here. The parable here must be the same as the doleful lamentation, or dirge, which follows. No mockery is more cutting or fiendish, than to repeat in jest words by which one bemoans himself. The dirge which Israel should use of themselves in sorrow, the enemy shall take up in derision, as Satan does doubtless the self-condemnation of the damned. Ribera: "Men do any evil, undergo any peril, to avoid shame. God brings before us that deepest and eternal shame," the shame and everlasting contempt, in presence of Himself and angels and devils and the good Psa 52:6-7; Isa 66:24, that we may avoid shame by avoiding evil.
And lament with a doleful lamentation - The words in Hebrew are varied inflections of a word imitating the sounds of woe. It is the voice of woe in all languages, because the voice of nature. Shall wail a wail of woe, It is the funeral dirge over the dead Jer 31:15, or of the living doomed to die Eze 32:18; it is sometimes the measured mourning of those employed to call forth sorrow Amo 5:16; Jer 9:17, Jer 9:19, or mourning generally Sa1 7:2; Jer 9:18. Among such elegies, are still Zion-songs, (elegies over the ruin of Zion,) and mournings for the dead. The word woe is thrice repeated in Hebrew, in different forms, according to that solemn way, in which the extremest good or evil is spoken of; the threefold blessing, morning and evening, with the thrice-repeated name of God Num 6:24-26, impressing upon them the mystery which developed itself, as the divinity of the Messiah and the personal agency of the Holy Spirit were unfolded to them. The dirge which follows is purposely in abrupt brief words, as those in trouble speak, with scarce breath for utterance. First, in two words, with perhaps a softened inflection, they express the utterness of their desolation. Then, in a threefold sentence, each clause consisting of three short words, they say what God had done, but name Him not, because they are angry with Him. God's chastisements irritate those whom they do not subdue .
The portion of my people He changeth;
How removeth He (it) as to me!
To a rebel our fields He divideth.
They act the patriot. They, the rich, mourn over "the portion of my people" (they say) which they had themselves despoiled: they speak, (as men do,) as if things were what they ought to be: they hold to the theory and ignore the facts. As if, because God had divided it to His people, therefore it so remained! as if, because the poor were in theory and by God's law provided for, they were so in fact! Then they are enraged at God's dealings. He removeth the portion as to me; and to whom giveth He our fields?
"To a rebel!" the Assyrian, or the Chaldee. They had deprived the poor of their portion of "the Lord's land" . And now they marvel that God resumes the possession of His own, and requires from them, not the fourfold Exo 22:1; Sa2 12:6; Luk 19:8 only of their spoil, but His whole heritage. Well might Assyrian or Chaldee, as they did, jeer at the word, renegade. They had not forsaken their gods; - but Israel, what was its whole history but a turning back? "Hath a nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? But My people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit" Jer 2:11.
Such was the meaning in their lips. The word "divideth" had the more bitterness, because it was the reversal of that first "division" at the entrance into Canaan. Then, with the use of this same word Num 26:53, Num 26:55-56; Jos 13:7; Jos 14:5; Jos 18:2, Jos 18:5, Jos 18:10; Jos 19:51, the division of the land of the pagan was appointed to them. Ezekiel, in his great symbolic vision, afterward prophesied the restoration of Israel, with the use of this same term Eze 47:21. Joel spoke of the parting of their land, under this same term, as a sin of the pagan (Joel 4:2, (Joe 3:3 in English)). Now, they say, God "divideth our fields," not to us, but to the pagan, whose lands He gave us. It was a change of act: in impenitence, they think it a change of purpose or will. But what lies in that, we be "utterly despoiled?" Despoiled of everything; of what they felt, temporal things; and of what they did not feel, spiritual things.
Despoiled of the land of promise, the good things of this life, but also of the Presence of God in His Temple, the grace of the Lord, the image of God and everlasting glory. "Their portion" was changed, as to themselves and with others. As to themselvcs, riches, honor, pleasure, their own land, were changed into want, disgrace, suffering, captivity; and yet more bitter was it to see others gain what they by their own fault had forfeited. As time went on, and their transgression deepened, the exchange of the portion of that former people of God became more complete. The casting-off of the Jews was the grafting-in of the Gentiles Act 13:46. Seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo! we turn to the Gentiles. And so they who were "no people" Rom 10:19, became the people of God, and they who were His people, became, for the time, "not My people" Hos 1:9 : and "the adoption of sons, and the glory, and the covenants, and the lawgiving, and the service of God, and the promises" Rom 9:4-5, came to us Gentiles, since to us Christ Himself our God blessed forever came, and made us His.
How hath He removed - The words do not say what He removed. They thought of His gifts, the words include Himself. They say "How?" in amazement. The change is so great and bitter, it cannot be said. Time, yea eternity cannot utter it. "He hath divided our fields." The land was but the outward symbol of the inward heritage. Unjust gain, kept back, is restored with usury Pro 1:19; it taketh away the life of the owners thereof. The vineyard whereof the Jews said, the inheritance shall be ours, was taken from them and given to others, even to Christians. So now is that awful change begun, when Christians, leaving God, their only unchanging Good, turn to earthly vanities, and, for the grace of God which He withdraws, have these only for their fleeting portion, until it shall be finally exchanged in the Day of Judgment Luk 16:25. Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.
Israel defended himself in impenitence and self-righteousness. He was already the Pharisee. The doom of such was hopeless. The prophet breaks in with a renewed, "Therefore." He had already prophesied that they should lose the lands which they had unjustly gotten, the land which they had profaned. He had described it in their own impenitent words. Now on the impenitence he pronounces the judgment which impenitence entails, that they should not be restored
Micah 2:5
mic 2:5
Therefore thou shalt have none that shall east a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord - Thou, in the first instance, is the impenitent Jew of that day. God had promised by Hosea to restore Judah; shortly after, the prophet himself foretells it Mic 2:12. Now he forewarns these and such as these, that they would have no portion in it. They had "neither part nor lot in this matter" Act 8:21. They, the not-Israel then, were the images and ensamples of the not-Israel afterward, those who seem to be God's people and are not; members of the body, not of the soul of the Church; who have a sort of faith, but have not love. Such was afterward the Israel after the flesh, which was broken off, while the true Israel was restored, passing out of themselves into Christ. Such, at the end, shall be those, who, being admitted by Christ into "their portion," renounce the world in word not in deed. Such shall have "no portion forever "in the congregation of the Lord." For "nothing defiled shall enter there, nor whatsoever worketh abomination or a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life" Rev 21:27.
The ground of their condemnation is their resistance to light and known truth. These not only "entered not in" Luk 11:52, themselves, but, being hinderers of God's word, them that were entering in, they hindered.
Micah 2:6
mic 2:6
Prophesy ye not, say they to them that prophesy; they shall not prophesy to them, that they shall not take shame - The words are very emphatic in Hebrew, from their briefness, "Prophesy not; they shall indeed prophesy; they shall not prophesy to these; shame shall not depart." The people, the false prophets, the politicians, forbade God and Micah to prophesy; "Prophesy not." God, by Micah recites their prohibition to themselves, and forewarns them of the consequences.
Prophesy ye not - , literally drop not. Amaziah and the God-opposing party had already given an ungodly meaning to the word . "Drop not," "distill not," thus unceasingly, these same words, ever warning, ever telling of "lamentation and mourning and woe Eze 2:10; prophesying not good concerning us, but evil" Kg1 22:18. So their descendants commanded the Apostles Act 4:18; Act 5:40 not to speak at all or to teach in the Name of Jesus Act 5:28. Did we not straitly command you, that ye should not teach in this Name? Act 6:13. This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. God answers; They shall certainly prophesy. The Hebrew word is emphatic. The prophets had their commission from God, and Him they must obey, whether Israel Eze 2:5, Eze 2:7 would hear or whether they would forbear. So must Micah and Isaiah Isa 28:9-14, Isa 28:22 now, or Jeremiah Jer 1:7, Jer 1:17; Jer 26:10-15, Ezekiel, and the rest afterward. "They shall not prophesy to these."
He does not say only, "They shall not prophesy to them," but, to these; that is, they shall prophesy to others who would receive their words: God's word would not be stayed; they who would hearken shall never be deprived of their portion; but to these who despise, "they shall not prophesy." It shall be all one, as though they did not prophesy; the soft rain shall not bedew them. The barn-floor shall be dry, while the fleece is moist Jdg 6:37. So God says by Isaiah; "I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it" Isa 5:6. The dew of God's word shall be transferred to others. But so shame (literally shames manifold shame,) shall not depart, but shall rest upon them forever. God would have turned away the shame from them; but they, despising His warnings, drew it to themselves. It was the natural fruit of their doings; it was in its natural home with them. God spoke to them, that they might be freed from it. They silenced His prophets; deafened themselves to His words; so it departed not. So our Lord says Joh 9:41, Now ye say, we see; therefore your sin remaineth; and John the Immerser Joh 3:36, The wrath of God abideth on him. It hath not now first to come. It is not some new thing to be avoided, turned aside. The sinner has but to remain as he is; the shame encompasseth him already; and only departeth not. The wrath of God is already upon him, and abideth on him.
Micah 2:7
mic 2:7
O thou that art named the house of Jacob - As Isaiah says, "Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel - which make mention of the God of Israel, not in truth, nor in righteousness. For they call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel" Isa 48:1. They boasted of what convicted them of faithlessness. They relied on being what in spirit they had ceased to be, what in deeds they denied, children of a believing forefather. It is the same temper which we see more at large in their descendants; "We be Abraham's seed and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest Thou, ye shall be made free?" Joh 8:33 "Abraham is our Father" Joh 8:39. It is the same which John the Immerser and our Lord and Paul reproved. "Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father" Mat 3:9. "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham" Joh 8:39-40. "Now ye seek to kill Me, a Man that hath told you the truth - This did not Abraham" Rom 2:17-28.
He is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. - Behold thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law and makest thy boast of God, and knowest His Will and approvest the things that are more excellent" - etc. The prophet answers the unexpressed objections of those who forbade to prophesy evil. "Such could not be of God," these said; "for God was pledged by His promises to the house of Jacob. It would imply change in God, if He were to cast off those whom He had chosen." Micah answers; "not God is changed, but you." God's promise was to Jacob, not to those who were but named Jacob, who called themselves after the name of their father, but did not his deeds. "The Spirit of the Lord was not straitened", so that He was less longsuffering than heretofore. These, which He threatened and of which they complained, were not His doings, not what He of His own Nature did, not what He loved to do, not His, as the Author or Cause of them, but theirs.
God is Good, but to those who can receive good, "the upright in heart" Psa 73:1. God is only Loving unto Israel. He is all Love; nothing but Love: all His ways are Love; but it follows, unto what Israel, the true Israel, the pure of heart Psa 25:10. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth; but to whom? unto such as keep His covenant and His testimonies Psa 103:17; Luk 1:50. The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting; but hate them that fear Him. they becoming evil, His good became to them evil. Light, wholesome and gladdening to the healthful, hurts weak eyes. That which is straight cannot suit or fit with the crooked. Amend your crookedness, and God's ways will be straight to you. Do not My words do good? He doth speak good words and comfortable words Zac 1:13. They are not only good, but do good Luk 4:32. His Word is with power. Still it is with those who "walk uprightly;" whether those who forsake not, or those who return the way of righteousness. God flattereth deceiveth not, promiseth not what He not do. He cannot "speak peace where there is no peace" Jer 6:14. As He saith, "Behold the and severity of God; on them which but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness" Rom 11:22. God Himself could not make a heaven for the proud or envious. Heaven would be to them a hell.
Micah 2:8
mic 2:8
Even of late - (Literally, yesterday.) Jerome: "He imputeth not past sins, but those recent and, as it were, of yesterday." "My people is risen up vehemently". God upbraideth them tenderly by the title, "Mine own people," as John complaineth, "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not" Joh 1:11. God became not their enemy, but they arose as one man, - "is risen up," the whole of it, as His. In Him they might have had peace and joy and assured gladness, but they arose in rebellion against Him, requiting Him evil for good, (as bad Christians do to Christ,) and brought war upon their own heads. This they did by their sins against their brethren. Casting off the love of man, they alienated themselves from the love of God.
Ye pull off (strip off violently) the robe with the garment - Literally, "over against the cloak." The שׂלמה s'almâh is the large enveloping cloak, which was worn loosely over the other dress, and served by night for a covering Deu 22:17. Eder, translated "robe," is probably not any one garment, but the remaining dress, the comely, becoming , array of the person. These they stripped violently off from persons, peaceable, unoffending, off their guard, "passing by securely, men averse from war" and strife. These they stripped of their raiment by day, leaving them half-naked, and of their covering for the night. So making war against God's peaceful people, they, as it were, made war against God.
Micah 2:9
mic 2:9
The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses - (literally, from her pleasant house,) each from her home. These were probably the widows of those whom they had stripped. Since the houses were their's, they were widows; and so their spoilers were at war with those whom God had committed to their special love, whom He had declared the objects of His own tender care, "the widows and the fatherless." The widows they "drove vehemently forth", as having no portion in the inheritance which God had given them, as God had driven out their enemies before them, each "from her pleasant house," the home where she had lived with her husband and children in delight and joy.
From (off) their (young) children have ye taken away My glory - Primarily, the glory, comeliness, was the fitting apparel which God had given them (as Hos 2:11), and laid upon them , and which these oppressors stripped off from them. But it includes all the gifts of God, wherewith God would array them. Instead of the holy home of parental care, the children grew up in want and neglect, away from all the ordinances of God, it may be, in a strange land. "For ever." They never repented, never made restitution; but so they incurred the special woe of those who ill-used the unprotected, the widow, and the fatherless. The words "forever" anticipate the punishment. The punishment is according to the sin. They never ceased their oppression. They, with the generation who should come after them, should be deprived of God's "glory," and cast out of His land forever.
Micah 2:10
mic 2:10
Arise ye and depart - Go your way, as being cast out of God's care and land. It matters not where they went. "For this is not your rest." As ye have done, so shall it be done unto you. As ye cast out the widow and the fatherless, so shall ye be cast out; as ye gave no rest to those "averse from war," so shall ye have none Rev 13:10. "He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword." The land was given to them as a temporary rest, a symbol and earnest of the everlasting rest to the obedient. So Moses spake, "ye are not as yet come to the rest and the inheritance which the Lord your God giveth you. But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the Lord your God giveth you to inherit, and when He giveth you rest from your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety ..." (Deu 12:9-10, add Kg1 8:56). And Joshua, "Remember the word which Moses commanded you, saying, The Lord your God giveth you rest" Jos 1:13. But the Psalmist had warned them, that, if they hardened their hearts like their forefathers, they too would "not enter into His rest" Psa 95:11.
Because it is polluted - (Literally, because of its pollution ) by idolatry, by violence, by uncleanness. So Moses (using the same word) says, "the land is defiled" by the abominations of the pagan; and warns them, "that the land spue you not out, when you defile it, as it spued out the nations which were before you." Ezekiel speaks of that "defilement" Eze 36:17, as the ground why God expelled Israel. "It shall destroy you, even with a sore (literally sharp) destruction" (Eze 36:18, add Jer 2:7). . It is a sore thing to abuse the creatures of God to sin, and it is unfit that we should use what we have abused. Hence, Holy Scripture speaks, as though even the inanimate creation took part with God, "made subject to vanity, not willingly," and could not endure those who employed it against His Will.
The words, "Arise, depart, ye, for this is not your rest," became a sort of sacred proverb, spoken anew to the soul, whenever it would find rest out of God. : "We are bidden to think of no rest for ourselves in any things of the world; but, as it were, arising from the dead, to stretch upwards, and walk after the Lord our God, and say, 'My soul cleaveth hard after Thee.' This if we neglect, and will not hear Him who saith, 'Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light,' we shall indeed slumber, but shall be deceived and shall not find rest; for where Christ enlighteneth not the risen soul, what seemeth to be rest, is trouble." All rest is wearisome which is not in Thee, O our God.
Micah 2:11
mic 2:11
If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood - Literally, "in spirit" (not My Spirit) "and falsehood," that is, in a lying spirit; such as they, whose woe Ezekiel pronounces Eze 13:3, "Woe unto the foolish prophets who walk after their own spirit and what they have not seen Eze 13:2, Eze 13:17; prophets out of their own hearts, who prophesied a vision of falsehood, and a destruction and nothingness; prophesied falsehood; yea, prophets of the deceit of their hearts." These, like the true prophets, "walked in spirit;" as Isaiah speaks of "walking in righteousness" Isa 33:15. Their habitual converse was m a spirit, but of falsehood. If such an one do lie, saying, "I will prophesy unto thee of wine and strong drink." Man's conscience must needs have some plea in speaking falsely of God. The false prophets had to please the rich men, to embolden them in their self-indulgence, to tell them that God would not punish. They doubtless spoke of God's temporal promises to His people, the land "flowing with milk and honey." His promises of abundant harvest and vintage, and assured them, that God would not withdraw these, that He was not so precise about His law. Micah tells them in plain words, what it all came to; it was a prophesying of "wine and strong drink."
He shall even be the prophet of this people - Literally "and shall be bedewing this people." He uses the same words, which scorners of Israel and Judah employed in forbidding to prophesy. They said, "drop not;" forbidding God's word as a wearisome dropping. It wore away their patience, not their hearts of stone. He tells them, who might speak to them without wearying, of whose words they would never tire, who might do habitually what they forbade to God, - one who, in the Name of God, set them at ease in their sensual indulgences. This is the secret of the success of everything opposed to God and Christ. Man wants a God. God has made it a necessity of our nature to crave after Him. Spiritual, like natural, hunger, debarred from or loathing wholesome food, must be stilled, stifled, with what will appease its gnawings. Our natural intellect longs for Him; for it cannot understand itself without Him. Our restlessness longs for Him; to rest upon.
Our helplessness longs for Him, to escape from the unbearable pressure of our unknown futurity. Our imagination craves for Him; for, being made for the Infinite, it cannot be content with the finite. Aching affections long for Him; for no creature can soothe them. Our dissatisfied conscience longs for Him, to teach it and make it one with itself. But man does not want to be responsible, nor to owe duty; still less to be liable to penalties for disobeying. The Christian, not the natural man, longs that his whole being should tend to God. The natural man wishes to be well-rid of what sets him ill at ease, not to belong to God. And the horrible subtlety of false teaching, in each age or country, is to meet its own favorite requirements, without calling for self-sacrifice or self-oblation, to give it a god such as it would have, such as might content it. : "The people willeth to be deceived, be it deceived," is a true proverb. "Men turn away their ears from the truth" Ti2 4:4 which they dislike; and so are turned unto fables which they like. They who "receive not the love of the truth, - believe a lie" Th2 2:11-12. If men "will not retain God in their knowledge, God giveth them over to an undistinguishing mind" Rom 1:28. They who would not receive our Lord, coming in His Father's Name, have ever since, as He said, "received them who came in their own" Joh 5:43. Men teach their teachers how they wish to be mistaught, and receive the echo of their wishes as the Voice of God.
Micah 2:12
mic 2:12
I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel - God's mercy on the penitent and believing being the end of all His threatenings, the mention of it often bursts in abruptly. Christ is ever the Hope as the End of prophecy, ever before the prophets' mind. The earthquake and fire precede the still small voice of peace in Him. What seems then sudden to us, is connected in truth. The prophet had said Mic 2:10, where was not their rest and how they should be cast forth; he saith at once how they should be gathered to their everlasting rest. He had said, what promises of the false prophets would not be fulfille Mic 2:11. But, despair being the most deadly enemy of the soul, he does not take away their false hopes, without shewing them the true mercies in store for them. Jerome: "Think not," he would say, "that I am only a prophet of ill. The captivity foretold will indeed now come, and God's mercies will also come, although not in the way, which these speak of."
The false prophets spoke of worldly abundance ministering to sensuality, and of unbroken security. He tells of God's mercies, but after chastisement, to "the remnant of Israel." But the restoration is complete, far beyond their then condition. He had foretold the desolation of Samaria Mic 1:6, the captivity of Judah Mic 1:16; Mic 2:4; he foretells the restoration of all Jacob, as one. The images are partly taken (as is the prophet's custom) from that first deliverance from Egypt . Then, as the image of the future growth under persecution, God multiplied His people exceedingly Exo 1:12; then "the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way" Exo 13:21; then God "brought them up" "out of the house of bondage" (see below, Mic 6:4).
But their future prison-house was to be no land of Goshen. It was to be a captivity and a dispersion at once, as Hosea had already foretold . So he speaks of them emphatically, as a great throng, "assembling I will assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; gathering I will gather the remnant of Israel." The word, which is used of the gathering of a flock or its lambs Isa 40:11; Isa 13:14, became, from Moses' prophecy (Deu 30:3-4, see Neh 1:9), a received word of the gathering of Israel from the dispersion of the captivity (see below, Mic 4:6; Psa 106:47; Psa 107:3; Isa 11:12; Isa 43:5; Isa 54:7; Isa 56:8; Zep 3:19-20; Jer 23:3; Jer 29:14; Jer 31:8, Jer 31:10; Jer 32:37; Eze 11:17; Eze 20:34, Eze 20:41; Eze 28:25; Eze 34:13; Eze 37:21; Eze 38:8; Eze 39:27; Zac 10:10). The return of the Jews from Babylon was but a faint shadow of the fulfillment. For, ample as were the terms of the decrees of Cyrus Ezr 1:2-4 and Artaxerxes Ezr 7:13, and widely as that of Cyrus was diffused Ezr 1:1, the restoration was essentially that of Judah, that is, Judah, Benjamin and Levi : the towns, whose inhabitants returned, were those of Judah and Benjamin Ezra 2; Neh. 7; the towns, to which they returned, were of the two tribes.
It was not a gathering of "all Jacob;" and of the three tribes who returned, there were but few gathered, and they had not even an earthly king, nor any visible Presence of God. The words began to he fulfilled in the "many Act 21:20 tens of thousands" who believed at our Lord's first Coming; and "all Jacob," that is, all who were Israelites indeed, "the remnant" according to the election of grace Rom 11:5, were gathered within the one fold of the Church, under One Shepherd. It shall be fully fulfilled, when, in the end, "the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in and all Israel shall be saved" Rom 11:25-26. "All Jacob" is the same as "the remnant of Israel," the true Israel which remains when the false severed itself off; all the seed-corn, when the chaff was winnowed away. So then, whereas they were now scattered, then, God saith, "I will put them together (in one fold) as the sheep of Bozrah," which abounded in sheep Isa 34:6, and was also a strong city of Edom ; denoting how believers should be fenced within the Church, as by a strong wall, against which the powers of darkness should not prevail, and the wolf should howl around the fold, yet be unable to enter it, and Edom and the pagan should become part of the inheritance of Christ . "As a flock in the midst of their fold," at rest , "like sheep, still and subject to their shepherd's voice. So shall these, having one faith and One Spirit, in meekness and simplicity, obey the one rule of truth. Nor shall it be a small number;" for the place where they shall be gathered shall be too narrow to contain them, as is said in Isaiah; "Give place to me, that I may dwell" Isa 49:20.
They shall make great noise - (it is the same word as our hum, "the hum of men,") by reason of the multitude of men He explains his image, as does Ezekiel Eze 34:31, "And ye are My flock, the flock of My pasture; men are ye; I, your God, saith the Lord God: and Eze 36:38, As a flock of holy things, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be full of a flock of men and they shall know that I am the Lord." So many shall they be, that throughout the whole world they shall make a great and public sound in praising God, filling Heaven and the green pastures of Paradise with a mighty hum of praise;" as John saw "a great multitude which no man could number" Rev 7:9, "with one united voice praising the Good Shepherd, who smoothed for them all rugged places, and evened them by His Own Steps, Himself the Guide of their way and the Gate of Paradise, as He saith, 'I am the Door;' through whom bursting through and going before, being also the Door of the way, the flock of believers shall break through It. But this Shepherd is their Lord and King" . Not their King only, but the Lord God; so that this, too, bears witness that Christ is God.
Micah 2:13
mic 2:13
The Breaker is come up - (gone up) before them; they have broken up (Broken through) and have passed the gate, and have gone forth The image is not of conquest, but of deliverance. They "break through," not to enter in but to "pass through the gate and go forth." The wall of the city is ordinarily broken through, in order to make an entrance Psa 80:13; Psa 89:41; Isa 5:5; Neh 2:13, or to secure to a conqueror the power of entering in Pro 25:28; Kg2 14:13; Ch2 25:23; Ch2 26:6 at any time, or by age and decay Ch2 32:5. But here the object is expressed, to go forth. Plainly then, they were confined before, as in a prison; and the gate of the prison was burst open, to set them free. It is then the same image as when God says by Isaiah; "I will say to the North, give up; and to the South, Hold not back" Isa 43:6, or, "Go ye forth of Babylon, Say ye, the Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob" Isa 48:20; or, with the same reminiscence of God's visible leading of His people out of Egypt "Depart ye, depart ye; for ye shall not go out with haste, nor yet by flight, for the Lord God shall go before you, and the God of Israel will be your reward;" or as Hosea describes their restoration (Hos 1:11, (Hos 2:2, Hebrew)); "Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one Head, and they shall go up out of the land". Elsewhere, in Isaiah, the spiritual meaning of the deliverance from the prison is more distinctly brought out, as the work of our Redeemer. "I will give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house" Isa 42:6-7; and, "the Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound" Isa 61:1.
From this passage, the "Breaker-through" was one of the titles of the Christ, known to the Jews , as One who should be "from below and from above" also; and from it they believed that "captives should come up from Gehenna, and the Sheehinah," or the Presence of God, "at their head." : "He then, who shall break the way, the King and Lord who shall go up before them, shall be the Good Shepherd, who puts them together in the fold. And this He doth when, as He saith, 'He putieth forth His own sheep, and He goeth before them, and the sheep follow Him, for they know His Voice' Joh 10:4. How doth He go befree them but by suffering for them, leaving them an example of suffering, and opening the entrance of Paradise? The Good Shepherd goeth up to time Cross Joh 10:15; Joh 12:32, and is lifted up from the earth, laying down His Life for His sheep, to draw all men unto Him. He goeth up, trampling on death by His resurrection; He goeth up above the heaven of heavens, and sitteth on the Right Hand of the Father, opening the way before them, so that the flock, in their lowliness, may arrive where the Shepherd went before in His Majesty. And when He thus breaketh through and openeth the road, they also 'break through and pass through the gate and go out by it,' by that Gate, namely, whereof the Psalmist saith, 'This is the Gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter into It' Psa 118:20.
What other is this Gate than that same Passion of Christ, beside which there is no gate, no way whereby any can enter into life? Through that open portal, which the lance of the soldier made in His Side when crucified, and 'there came thereout Blood and Water, they shall pass and go through,' even as the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, which divided before them, when Pharaoh, his chariots and horsemen, were drowned.'" Dionysius: "He will be in their hearts, and will teach and lead them; He will shew them the way of Salvation, 'guiding their feet into the way of peace' Luk 1:79, and they shall pass through the strait and narrow gate which leadeth unto life; of which it is written, 'Enter ye in at the strait gate; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. And their King shall pass before them' Mat 7:13-14, as He did, of old, in the figure of the cloud, of which Moses said, 'If Thy Presence go not, carry us not up hence; and wherein shall it be known that I have found grace in Thy sight, I and Thy people, is it not in that Thou goest up with us?' Exo 33:15-16, and as He then did when He passed out of this world to the Father." "And the Lord on (that is, at) the head of them," as of His army.
Rup.: "For the Lord is His Name, and He is the Head, they the members; He the King, they the people; He the Shepherd, they the sheep of His pasture. And of this passing through He spake, 'By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture' Joh 10:9. For a man entereth in, when, receiving the faith, he becomes a sheep of this Shepherd, and goeth out, when he closeth this present life, and then findeth the pastures of unfading, everlasting life" ; "passing from this pilgrimage to his home, from faith to sight, from labor to reward." Again, as describing the Christian's life here, it speaks of progress. Jerome: "Whoso shall have entered in, must not remain in the state wherein he entered, but must go forth into the pasture; so that, in entering in should be the beginning, in going forth and finding pasture, the perfecting of graces. He who entereth in, is contained within the bounds of the world; he who goeth forth, goes, as it were, beyond all created things, and, counting as nothing all things seen, shall find pasture above the Heavens, and shall feed upon the Word of God, and say, "The Lord is my Shepherd" Psa 23:1, (and feedeth me,) I can lack nothing.
But this going forth can only be through Christ; as it followeth, 'and the Lord at the head of them.'" Nor, again, is this in itself easy, or done for us without any effort of our own. All is of Christ. The words express the closeness of the relation between the Head and the members; and what He, our King and Lord, doth, they do, because He who did it for them, doth it in them. The same words are used of both, shewing that what they do, they do by virtue of His Might, treading in His steps, walking where He has made the way plain, and by His Spirit. What they do, they do, as belonging to Him. He "breaketh through," or, rather, in all is "the Breaker-through." They, having broken through, pass on, because He "passeth before them." He will Isa 45:2 break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron. He "breaketh through" whatever would hold us back or oppose us, all might of sin and death and Satan, as Moses opened the Red Sea, for "a way for the ransomed to pass over" Isa 51:10; and so He saith, "I will go before thee, I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron, and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places" Isa 45:2-3.
So then Christians, following Him, the Captain of their salvation, strengthened by His grace, must burst the bars of the flesh and of the world, the chains and bonds of evil passions and habits, force themselves through the narrow way and narrow gate, do violence to themselves Ti2 2:3, endure hardness, as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. The title of our Lord, the Breaker-through, and the saying, "they break through," together express the same as the New Testament doth in regard to our being partakers of the sufferings of Christ Rom 8:17. Joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together Ti2 2:11-12. If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him Pe1 4:1. Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh - arm yourselves likewise with the same mind.
The words may include also the removal of the souls of the just, who had believed in Christ before His Coming, into Heaven after His Resurrection, and will be fully completed when, in the end, He shall cause His faithful servants, in body and soul, to enter into the joy of their Lord.
Bible
Micah Chapter 3
Micah 3:1
mic 3:1
And I said - God's love for us is the great incitement, constrainer, vivifier of His creature's love. Micah had just spoken of God's love of Israel; how He would gather them into one fold under One Shepherd, guard them, lead them, remove all difficulties before them, be Himself their Head and enable them to follow Him. He turns then to them. These are God's doings; this, God has in store for you hereafter. Even when mercy itself shall require chastisement, He doth not cast off forever. The desolation is but the forerunner of future mercy. What then do ye? The prophet appeals to them, class by class. There was one general corruption of every order of men, through whom Judah could be preserved, princes Mic 3:1-4, prophets Mic 3:5-7, priests Mic 3:11. The salt had lost its savor; wherewith could it be seasoned? whereby could the decaying mass of the people be kept from entire corruption?
Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel - He arraigns them by the same name, under which He had first promised mercy. He had first promised mercy to all Jacob and the remnant of Israel. So now he upraids the "heads of Jacob, and the princes of the house of Israel," lest they should deceive themselves. At the same time he recalls them to the deeds of their father. Judah had succeeded to the birthright, forfeited by Reuben, Simeon and Levi; and in Judah all the promises of the Messiah were laid up. But he was not like the three great patriarchs, the father of the faithful (Abraham), or the meek Isaac, or the much-tried Jacob. The name then had not the reminiscences, or force of appeal, contained in the titles, seed of Abraham, or Isaac, or Israel.
Is it not for you to know judgment? - It is a great increase of guilt, when persons neglect or pervert what it is their special duty and office to guard; as when teachers corrupt doctrine, or preachers give in to a low standard of morals, or judges pervert judgment. The "princes" here spoken or are so named from judging, "deciding" causes. They are the same its the "rulers," whom Isaiah at the same time upbraids, as being, from their sins, rulers of Sodom , whose hands were full of blood Isa 1:15. They who do not right, in time cease, in great measure, to know it. As God withdraws His grace, the mind is darkened and can no longer see it. So it is said of Eli's sons, they were sons of Belial, they knew not the Lord Sa1 2:12; and, Into a malicious soul Wisdom shall not enter, nor dwell in a body that is subject unto sin (Wisd. 1:4). Such , "attain not to know the judgments of God which are a great deep: and the depth of His justice the evil mind findeth not." But if men will not "know judgment" by doing it, they shall by suffering it.
Micah 3:2
mic 3:2
Who hate the good and love the evil - that is, they hate, for its own sake, that which is good, and love that which is evil. The prophet is not here speaking of their "hating good" men, or "loving evil" men, but of their hating goodness and loving wickedness . : "It is sin not to love good; what guilt to hate it! it is faulty, not to flee from evil, what ungodliness to love it!" Man, at first, loves and admires the good, even while he cloth it not; he hates the evil, even while he does it, or as soon as he has done it. But man cannot bear to he at strife with his conscience, and so he ends it, by excusing himself and telling lies to himself. And then, he hates the truth or good with a bitter hatred, because it disturbs the darkness of the false peace with which he would envelop himself. At first, men love only the pleasure connected with the evil; then they make whom they can, evil, because goodness is a reproach to them: in the end, they love evil for its own sake Rom 1:32. pagan morality too distinguished between the incontinent and the unprincipled , the man who sinned under force of temptation, and the man who had lost the sense of right and wrong Joh 3:20. "Everyone that doeth evil, hateth the light. Whoso longeth for things unlawful, hateth the righteousness which rebuketh and punisheth" .
Who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones - He had described the Good Shepherd; now, in contrast, he describes those who ought to be "shepherds of the people," to feed, guard, direct them, but who were their butchers; who did not shear them, but flayed them; who fed on them, not fed them. He heaps up their guilt, act by act. First they flay, that is, take away their outer goods; then they break their bones in pieces, the most solid parts, on which the whole frame of their body depends, to get at the very marrow of their life, and so feed themselves upon them. And not unlike, though still more fearfully, do they sin, who first remove the skin, as it were, or outward tender fences of God's graces; (such as is modesty, in regard to inward purity; outward demeanor, of inward virtue; outward forms, of inward devotion;) and so break the strong bones of the sterner virtues, which hold the whole soul together; and with them the whole flesh, or softer graces, becomes one shapeless mass, shred to pieces and consumed. So Ezekiel says; "Woe to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves; should not the shepherds feed the flock? Ye eat the fat and ye clothe you, with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened ..." (Eze 34:2-4, add Eze 34:5-10).
Micah 3:4
mic 3:4
Then shall they cry unto the Lord - "Then." The prophet looks on to the Day of the Lord, which is always before his mind. So the Psalmist, speaking of a time or place not expressed, says, "There were they in great fear" Psa 53:5. He sees it, points to it, as seeing what those to whom he spoke, saw not, and the more awfully, because he saw, with superhuman (certain) vision, what was "hidden from their eyes." The then was not then, "in the time of grace," but when the Day of grace should be over, and the Day of Judgment should be come. So of that day, when judgment should set in, God says in Jeremiah, "Behold I will bring evil upon them which they shall not be able to go forth of, and they will cry unto Me, and I will not hearken unto them" Jer 11:11. And David, "They cried and there was none to save; unto the Lord, and He answered them not" Psa 18:41. And Solomon; "Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he shall cry himself and shall not be heard" Pro 21:13. And James, "He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy" Jam 2:13. The prayer is never too late, until judgment comes ; the day of grace is over, when the time of judgment has arrived. "They shall cry unto the Lord, and shall not be heard, because they too did not hear those who asked them, and the Lord shall turn His Face from them, because they too turned their face from those who prayed them."
He will even hide His Face - He will not look in mercy on those who would not receive His look of grace. Your sins, He says by Isaiah, "have hid His face from you, that He heareth not." O what will that turning away of the Face be, on which hangs eternity!
As - There is a proportion between the sin and the punishment . As I have done, so God hath requited me. "They have behaved themselves ill in their doings. literally have made their deeds evil." The word rendered doings is almost always used in a bad sense, mighty deeds, and so deeds with a high hand. Not ignorantly or negligently, nor through human frailty, but with set purpose they applied themselves, not to amend but to corrupt their doings, and make them worse. God called to them by all His prophets, make good your doings Jer 35:15; and they, reversing it, used diligence to make their doings evil. Jerome: "All this they shall suffer, because they were not rulers, but tyrants; not Prefects, but lions; not masters of disciples, but wolves of sheep; and they sated themselves with flesh and were fattened, and, as sacrifices for the slaughter, were made ready for the punishment of the Lord. Thus far against evil rulers; then he turns to the false prophets and evil teachers, who by flatteries subvert the people of God, promising them the knowledge of His word."
Micah 3:5
mic 3:5
The prophets that make My people err - Flattering them in their sins and rebellions, promising that they shall go unpunished, that God is not so strict, will not put in force the judgments tie threatens. So Isaiah saith Isa 3:12; O my? people, they which lead thee, mislead thee; and (Isa 9:16, (Isa 9:15 in Hebrew)), the leaders of this people are its misleaders, and they that are led of them are destroyed. And Jeremiah, "The prophets have seen for thee vanity and folly; and they have not discovered thine iniquity to turn away thy captivity, and have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment" Lam 2:14. No error is hopeless, save what is taught in the Name of God.
That bite with their mouths - The word is used of no other biting than the biting of serpents. They were doing real, secret evil "while they cry, that is, proclaim peace;" they bit, as serpents, treacherously, deadlily. They fed, not so much on the gifts, for which they hired themselves to Eze 13:10 speak peace when there was no peace, as on the souls of the givers. So God says by Ezekiel, "Will ye pollute Me among My people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls live that should not live, by your lying to My people that hear your lies? Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life - therefore ye shall see no more vanity nor divine divinations" Eze 19:1-14, 22-23. It was with a show of peace that Joab slew Abner and Amasa, and with a kiss of peace Judas betrayed our Lord.
And he that putteth not into their mouths, they prepare war against him - Literally, and (that is, immediately; it was all one; bribes refused, war proclaimed,) "they sanctify war against him." Like those of whom Joel prophesied , they proclaim war against him in the Name of God, by the authority of God which they had taken to themselves, speaking in His Name who had not sent them. So when our Lord fed the multitude, they would take Him by force and make Him a king; when their hopes were gone and they saw that His Kingdom was not of this world, they said, Crucify him, crucify Him. Much more the Pharisees, who, because He rebuked their covetousness, their devouring widows' houses, their extortion and excess, their making their proselytes more children of hell than themselves, said, Thou blasphemest. So, when the masters of the possessed damsel whom Paul freed Act 16:19-21, saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they accused him, that he exceedingly troubled their city, teaching customs not lawful to be received.
So Christians were persecuted by the pagan as "hating the human race," because they would not partake of their sins; as "atheists," because they worshiped not their gods; as "disloyal" and "public enemies," because they joined not in unholy festivals; as "unprofitable," because they neglected things not profitable but harmful. So men are now called "illiberal," who will not make free with the truth of God; "intolerant," who will not allow that all faith is matter of opinion, and that there is no certain truth; "precise," "censorious," who will not connive at sin, or allow the levity which plays, mothlike, around it and jests at it. The Church and the Gospel are against the world, and so the world which they condemn must be against them; and such is the force of truth and holiness, that it must carry on the war against them in their own name.
Micah 3:6
mic 3:6
Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision - In the presence of God's extreme judgments, even deceivers are at length still; silenced at last by the common misery, if not by awe. The false prophets had promised peace, light, brightness, prosperity; the night of trouble, anguish, darkness, fear, shall Come upon them. So shall they no more dare to speak in the Name of God, while He was by His judgments speaking the contrary in a way which all must hear. They abused God's gifts and long-suffering against Himself: they could misinterpret His long-suffering into favor, and they did it: their visions of the future were but the reflections of the present and its continuance; they thought that because God was enduring, He was indifferent, and they took His government out of His Hands, and said, that what He appeared to be now, He would ever be. They had no other light, no other foresight. When then the darkness of temporal calamity enveloped them, it shrouded in one common darkness of night all present brightness and all sight of the future.
Rup.: "After Caiaphas had in heart spoken falsehood and a prophecy of blood, although God overruled it to truth which he meant not, all grace of prophecy departed Mat 11:13. The law and the prophets prophesied until John. "The Sun of Righteousness went down over them," inwardly and outwardly, withdrawing the brightness of His Providence and the inward light of grace." So Christ Himself forewarned; "Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you" Joh 12:35. And so it has remained ever since Co2 3:15. The veil has been on their hearts. The light is in all the world, but they see it not; it arose to lighten the Gentiles, but they walk on still in darkness. As opposed to holiness, truth, knowledge, divine enlightening of the mind, bright gladness, contrariwise darkness is falsehood, sin, error, blindness of soul, ignorance of divine things, and sorrow. In all these ways, did the Sun go down "over them," so that the darkness weighed heavily upon them. So too the inventors of heresies pretend to see and to enter into the mysteries of Christ, yet find darkness instead of light, lose even what they think they see, fail even of what truth they seem most to hold; and they shall be in night and darkness, being cast into outer darkness Co1 8:12; sinning against the brethren, and wounding the weak conscience of those for whom Christ died.
Micah 3:7
mic 3:7
They shall cover their lips - Literally, the hair of the upper lip . This was an action enjoined on lepers Lev 13:45, and a token of mourning Eze 24:17, Eze 24:22; a token then of sorrow and uncleanness. With their lips they had lied, and now they should cover their lips, as men dumb and ashamed. "For there is no answer of God," as these deceivers had pretended to have. When all things shall come contrary to what they had promised, it shall be clear that God did not send them. And having plainly no answer of God, they shall not dare to feign one then. Jerome: "Then not even the devils shall receive power to deceive them by their craft. The oracles shall be dumb; the unclean spirit shall not dare to delude." Dionysius: "All this is spoken against those who, in the Church of Christ, flatter the rich, or speak as menpleasers, out of avarice, ambition, or any like longing for temporal good, to whom that of Isaiah Isa 3:12 fitteth; the leaders of this people (they who profess to lead them aright) mislead them, and they that are led of them are destroyed."
Micah 3:8
mic 3:8
And truly I - (Literally, contrariwise I,) that is, whereas they shall be void and no word in them, "I am full of (or filled with) power by the Spirit of the Lord and of judgment and might." The false prophets, walked after their own spirit, Eze 13:3. Their only power or influence was from without, from favoring circumstances, from adapting themselves to the great or to the people, going along with the tide, and impelling persons whither they wished to go. The power of the true prophet was inherent, and that by gift of "the Spirit of the Lord". And so, while adverse circumstances silenced the false prophets, they called forth the more the energy of the true, whose power was from Him in whose Hands the world is. The adverse circumstances to the false prophets were God's judgments; to the true, they were man's refractoriness, rebellion, oppressiveness. Now was the time of the false prophets; now, at a distance, they could foretell hardily, because they could not yet be convicted of untruth. When trouble came, they went into the inner chamber to hide Kg1 22:25 themselves. Micah, amid the wild tumult of the people Psa 65:7, was fearless, upborne by Him who controls, stills, or looses it, to do His Sovereign Will.
I am filled with power - So our Lord bade His Apostles, "Tarry ye, until ye be endued with power from on high" Luk 24:49 : "ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you" Act 1:8; and "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" Act 2:4. The three gifts, "power, judgment, might," are the fruits of the One Spirit of God, through whom the prophet was filled with them. Of these, "power" is always strength residing in the person, whether it be the "power" (Exo 15:6; Exo 32:11; Num 14:17, etc.) or "might of wisdom" Job 36:5 of Almighty God Himself, or "power" which He imparts Deu 8:18; Jdg 16:5, Jdg 16:9, Jdg 16:19 or implants . But it is always power lodged in the person, to be put forth by him. Here, as in John the Immerser Luk 1:17 or the Apostles Luk 24:49, it is divine power, given through God the Holy Spirit, to accomplish that for which he was sent, as Paul was endued with might Co2 10:5, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. It is just that, which is so wanting to human words, which is so characteristic of the word of God, "power."
"Judgment" is, from its form, not so much discernment in the human being, as "the thing judged," pronounced by God, the righteous judgment of God, and righteous judgment in man conformably therewith (as in Pro 1:3; Isa 1:21; Isa 5:7). It was what, he goes on to say, the great men of his people abhorred Mic 3:9, equity. With this he was filled. This was the substance of his message, right judgment to be enacted by them, to which he was to exhort them, or which, on their refusal, was to be pronounced upon them in the Name of God the Judge of all, and to be executed upon them. "Might" is courage or boldness to deliver the message of God, not awed or hindered by any adversaries. It is that holy courage, of which Paul speaks, "that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds, that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak" Eph 6:19-20. So too, after the Apostles had been "straitly threatened that they should speak no more in the Name of Jesus, all, having prayed, were filled with the Holy Spirit, and spake the word of God with boldness" Act 4:18, Act 4:31. Dionysius: "Whoso is so strengthened and arrayed, uttereth fiery words, Whereby hearers' hearts are moved and changed. But whoso speaketh of his own mind, doth good neither to himself nor others."
So then, of the three gifts, "power" expresses the divine might lodged in him; "judgment," the substance of what he had to deliver; "might or courage," the strength to deliver it in face of human power, persecution, ridicule, death.
Lap.: "These gifts the prophets know are not their own, but are from the Spirit of God, and are by Him inspired into them. Such was the spirit of Elijah, unconquered, energetic, fiery, of whom it is said, 'Then stood up Elias as fire, and his word burned like a lamp' (Ecclus. 48:1). Such was Isaiah, 'Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew My people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins' Isa 58:1. Such was Jeremiah; 'Therefore I am full of the fury of the Lord; I am weary of holding in. I have set thee for a trier among My people, a strong fort; and thou shalt know and try their ways' Jer 6:11, Jer 6:27. Such was John Baptist, who said, 'O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?' Mat 3:7. Such was Paul, who, when he Act 24:25 reasoned of temperance, righteousness and judgment to come, made Felix tremble, though unbelieving and ungodly. Such were the Apostles, who, when they had received the Holy Spirit Psa 48:8, broke, with a mighty breath, ships and kings of Tarshish. Such will be Elias and Enoch at the end of the world, striving against antichrist, of whom it is said Rev 11:5, if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies."
Micah 3:9
mic 3:9
Hear this, I pray you - The prophet discharges upon them that "judgment" whereof, by the Spirit of God, he was full, and which they "abhorred; judgment" against their perversion of judgment. He rebukes the same classes as before "the heads and judges" Mic 3:1, yet still more sternly. They abhorred judgment, he says, as a thing loathsome and abominable, such as men cannot bear even to look upon; they not only dealt wrongly, but they "perverted, distorted, all equity:" "that so there should not remain even some slight justice in the city" . "All equity;" all of every sort, right, rectitude, uprightness, straight-forwardness, whatever was right by natural conscience or by God's law, they distorted, like the sophists making the worse appear the better cause. Naked violence crushes the individual; perversion of equity destroys the fountain-head of justice. The prophet turns from them in these words, as one who could not bear to look upon their misdeeds, and who would not speak to them; "they pervert;" building; "her heads, her priests, her prophets;" as Elisha, but for the presence of Jehoshaphat, would not look on Jehoram, nor see him Kg2 3:14. He first turns and speaks of them, as one man, as if they were all one in evil;
Micah 3:10
mic 3:10
They build up - (literally, building, sing.) Zion with blood This may be taken literally on both sides, that, the rich built their palaces, "with wealth gotten by bloodshed , by rapine of the poor, by slaughter of the saints," as Ezekiel says, 'her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain' Eze 22:27. Or by blood he may mean that they indirectly took away life, in that, through wrong judgments, extortion, usury, fraud, oppression, reducing wages or detaining them, they took away what was necessary to support life. So it is said; 'The bread of the needy is their life, he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him, and he that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder' (Ecclus. 34:21, 22). Or it may be, that as David prayed to God, 'Build Thou the walls of Jerusalem, asking Him thereby to maintain or increase its well-being' Psa 51:18, so these men thought to promote the temporal prosperity of Jerusalem by doings which were unjust, oppressive, crushing to their inferiors.
So Solomon, in His degenerate days, made the yoke upon his people and his service grievious Kg1 12:4. So ambitious monarchs by large standing-armies or filling their exchequers drain the life-blood of their people. The physical condition and stature of the poorer population in much of France was lowered permanently by the conscriptions under the first Emperor. In our wealthy nation, the term poverty describes a condition of other days. We have had to coin a new name to designate the misery, offspring of our material prosperity. From our wealthy towns, (as from those of Flanders,) ascends to heaven against us , "the cry of 'pauperism' that is, the cry of distress, arrived at a condition of system and of power, and, by an unexpected curse, issuing from the very development of wealth. The political economy of unbelief has been crushed by facts on all the theaters of human activity and industry."
Truly we "build up Zion with blood," when we cheapen luxuries and comforts at the price of souls, use Christian toil like brute strength, tempt men to dishonesty and women to other sin, to eke out the scanty wages which alone our selfish thirst for cheapness allows, heedless of every thing save of our individual gratification, or the commercial prosperity, which we have made our god. Most awfully was "Zion built with blood," when the Jews shed the innocent Blood, that Joh 11:48 the Romans might not take away their place and nation. But since He has said, "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it not unto Me" Mat 25:45, and, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Act 9:4, when Saul was persecuting Christ's members, then, in this waste of lives and of souls, we are not only wasting the Price of His Blood in ourselves and others, but are slaying Christ anew, and that, from the same motives as those who crucified Him Co1 8:12. When ye sin (against the members, ye sin against Christ. Our commercial greatness is the Price of His Blood Mat 27:6. In the judgments on the Jews, we may read our own national future; in the woe on those through whom the weak brother perishes for whom Christ died Co1 8:11, we, if we partake or connive at it, may read our own.
Micah 3:11
mic 3:11
The heads thereof judge for reward - Every class was corrupted. One sin, the root of all evil Ti1 6:10, covetousness, entered into all they did. It, not God, was their one end, and so their God. Her heads, the secular authority who Act 23:3 sat to judge according to the law, judged, contrary to the law, "for rewards." They sat as the representatives of the Majesty of God, in whose Name they judged, whose righteous Judgment and correcting Providence law exhibits and executes, and they profaned it. "To judge for rewards" was in itself sin, forbidden by the law Exo 23:8; Deu 16:19. To refuse justice, unless paid for it, was unjust, degrading to justice. The second sin followed hard upon it, to judge unjustly, absolving the guilty, condemning the innocent, justifying the oppressor, legalizing wrong.
And her priests teach for hire - The Lord was the portion and inheritance Num 18:20; Deu 18:2 of the priest. He had his sustenance assigned him by God, and, therewith, the duty to (Lev 10:10-11, add Deu 17:10-11; Deu 33:10; Hag 2:11 ff) put difference between holy and unholy, and between clean and unclean, and to teach all the statutes, which God had commanded. Their lips were to keep knowledge Mal 2:7. This then, which they were bound to give, they sold. But "whereas it is said to the holy, "Freely ye have received, freely give" Mat 10:8, these, producing the answer of God upon the receipt of money, sold the grace of the Lord for a covetous price." Probably too, their sin co-operated with and strengthened the sin of the judges. Authorized interpreters of the law, they, to please the wealthy, probably misinterpreted the law. For wicked judges would not have given a price for a righteous interpretation of the law.
The civil authorities were entrusted by God with power to execute the law; the priests were entrusted by Him with the knowledge to expound it. Both employed in its perversion that which God gave them for its maintenance. The princes obtained by bribery the misjudgment of the priests and enforced it; the priests justified the injustice of the Princes. So Arian Bishops, themselves hirelings , by false expositions of Scripture, countenanced Arian Emperors in the oppression of the faithful . "They propped up the heresy by human patronage;" the Emperors "bestowed on" them their "reign of irreligion." The Arian Emperors tried to efface the Council of Nice by councils of Arian Bishops . Emperors perverted their power, the Bishops their knowledge.
Not publicly only but privately doubtless also, these priests taught falsely for hire, lulling the consciences of those who wished to deceive themselves as to what God forbade, and to obtain from His priests answers in His Name, which might explain away His law in favor of laxity or sin. So people now try to get ill-advised to do against God's will what they are bent on doing; only they get ill-advised for nothing. One who receives money for giving an irresponsible opinion, places himself in proximate peril of giving the answer which will please those who pay him . "It is Simony to teach and preach the doctrine of Christ and His Gospel, or to give answers to quiet the conscience, for money. For the immediate object of these two acts, is the calling forth of faith, hope, charity, penitence, and other supernatural acts, and the reception of the consolation of the Holy Spirit; and this is, among Christians, their only value. Whence they are accounted things sacred and supernatural; for their immediate end is to things supernatural; and they are done by man, as he is an instrument of the Holy Spirit."
Jerome: "Thou art permitted, O Priest, to live Co1 9:13, not to luxuriate, from the altar Co1 9:9. The mouth of the ox which treadeth out the corn is not muzzled. Yet the Apostle Co1 9:18 abused not the liberty, but Ti1 6:8 having food and raiment, was therewith content Th1 2:6; Th2 3:8; laboring night and clay, that he might not be chargeable to anybody. And in his Epistles he calls God to witness that he Th1 2:10 lived holily and without avarice in the Gospel of Christ. He asserts this too, not of himself alone but of his disciples, that he had sent no one who would either ask or receive anything from the Churches Co2 12:17-18. But if in the gifts of those who sent, the grace Co2 8:6-7 of God, he gathers not for himself but for the Rom 15:26 poor saints at Jerusalem. But these poor saints were they who of the Jews first believed in Christ, and, being cast out by parents, kinsmen, connections, had lost their possessions and all their goods, the priests of the temple and the people destroying them.
Let such poor receive. But if on plea of the poor, a few houses are enriched, and we eat in gold, glass and china, let us either with our wealth change our habit, or let not the habit of poverty seek the riches of Senators. What avails the habit of poverty, while a whole crowd of poor longs for the contents of our purse? Wherefore, for our sake who are such, "who build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem by iniquity, who judge for gifts, give answers for rewards, divine for money," and thereon, claiming to ourselves a fictitious sanctity, say, Evil will not come upon us, hear we the sentence of the Lord which follows. Sion and Jerusalem and the mountain of the temple, that is, the temple of Christ, shall, in the consummation and the end, when "love shall wax cold" Mat 24:12 and the faith shall be rare, "be plowed as a field and became heaps as the high places of a forest" Luk 18:8; so that, where once were ample houses and countless heaps of corn, there should only be a poor cottage, keeping up the show of fruit which has no refreshment for the soul."
The three places, Zion, Jerusalem, the Temple, describe the whole city in its political and religious aspects. Locally, Mount Zion, which occupies the southwest, "had upon it the Upper city," and "was by much the loftier, and length-ways the straighter." Jerusalem, as contrasted with Zion, represented the lower city , "supported" on the East by Mount Acra, and including the valley of Tyropoeon. South of Mount Acra and lower than it, at the South Eastern corner of the city, lay Mount Moriah or the Mount of the Lord's House, separated at this time from Mount Acra by a deep ravine, which was filled up by the Asmonaean princes, who lowered Mount Acra. It was joined to the northeast corner of Mount Zion by the causeway of Solomon across the Tyropoeon. The whole city then in all its parts was to be desolated.
And her prophets divine for money - The word rendered , "divine," is always used in a bad sense. These prophets then were false prophets, "her prophets" and not God's, which "divined," in reality or appearance, giving the answer which their employers, the rich men, wanted, as if it were an answer from God . Yet they also "judge for rewards," who look rather to the earthly than to the spiritual good; "they teach for hire," who seek in the first place the things of this world, instead of teaching for the glory of God and the good of souls, and regarding earthly things in the second place only, as the support of life.
And say, Is not the Lord among us? - And after all this, not understanding their sin, as though by their guilt they purchased the love of God, they said in their impenitence, that they were judges, prophets, priests, of God. They do all this, and yet "lean on the Lord;" they stay and trust, not in themselves, but in God; good in itself, had not they been evil! "And say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can (shall) come upon us." So Jeremiah says, "Trust ye not in lying words saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord are these" Jer 7:4. Sanch.: "He called them lying words, as being ofttimes repeated by the false prophets, to entice the credulous people to a false security" against the threatenings of God. As though God could not forsake His own people, nor cast away Zion which He had chosen for an habitation for Himself, nor profane His own holy place! Yet it was true that God "was among them," in the midst of them, as our Lord was among the Jews, though they knew Him not.
Yet if not in the midst of His people so as to hallow, God is in the midst of them to punish. But what else do we than these Jews did, if we lean on the Apostolic line, the possession of Holy Scripture, Sacraments, pure doctrine, without setting ourselves to gain to God the souls of our pagan population? or what else is it for a soul to trust in having been made a member of Christ, or in any gifts of God, unless it be bringing forth fruit with patience? : "Learn we too hence, that all trust in the Merits of Christ is vain, so long as any willfully persist in sin." John H. Mich: "Know we, that God will be in us also, if we have not faith alone, nor on this account rest, as it were, on Him, but if to faith there be added also the excelling in good works. For faith without works is dead. But when with the riches of faith works concur, then will God indeed be with us, and will strengthen us mightily, and account us friends, and gladden us as His true sons, and free us from all evil."
Micah 3:12
mic 3:12
Therefore shall Zion for your sake - for your sake shall Zion
Be plowed as a field - They thought to be its builders; they were its destroyers. They imagined to advance or secure its temporal prosperity by bloods; they (as men ever do first or last,) ruined it. Zion might have stood, but for these its acute, far-sighted politicians, who scorned the warnings of the prophets, as well-meant ignorance of the world or of the necessities of the state. They taught, perhaps they thought, that "for Zion's sake" they, (act as they might,) were secure. Practical Antinomians! God says, that, "for their sake," Zion, defiled by their deeds, should be destroyed. The fulfillment of the prophecy was delayed by the repentance under Hezekiah. Did he not, the elders ask Jer 26:19, fear the Lord and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented Him of the evil which He had pronounced against them? But the prophecy remained, like that of Jonah against Nineveh, and, when man undid and in act repented of his repentanee, it found its fulfillment.
Jerusalem shall become heaps - (Literally, of ruins) and "the mountain of the house," Mount Moriah, on which the house of God stood, "as the high places of the forest," literally "as high places of a forest." It should return wholly to what it had been, before Abraham offered up the typical sacrifice of his son, a wild and desolate place covered with tangled thickets Gen 22:13.
The prophecy had a first fulfillment at its first capture by Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah mourns over it; "Because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate, foxes walk" Lam 5:18 (habitually upon it. Nehemiah said, "Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste" Neh 2:17; and Sanballat mocked at the attempts to rebuild it, as a thing impossible; "Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of dust, and these too, burned?" (Neh 4:2, (3:34, Hebrew)), and the builders complained; "The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed (literally, sinketh under them), and there is much dust, and we are not able to build the wall" (Neh 4:10, (Neh 4:4, Hebrew)). In the desolation under Antiochus again it is related; "they saw the sanctuary desolate, and the altar profaned, and the gates burned up, and shrubs growing in the courts, as in a forest or in one of the mountains" (1 Macc. 4:38). When, by the shedding of the Blood of the Lord, they "filled up the measure of their fathers" Mat 23:32, and called the curse upon themselves, "His Blood be upon us and upon our children" Mat 27:25, destruction came upon them to the uttermost.
With the exception of three towers, left to exhibit the greatness of Roman prowess in destroying such and so strong a city, they , "so levelled to the ground the whole circuit of the city, that to a stranger it presented no token of ever having been inhabited." He "effaced the rest of the city," says the Jewish historian, himself an eyewitness . The elder Pliny soon after, 77 a.d., speaks of it, as a city which had been and was not . "Where was Jerusalem, far the most renowned city, not of Judaea only, but of the East" , a funeral pile."
With this corresponds Jerome's statement , "relics of the city remained for fifty years until the Emperor Hadrian." Still it was in utter ruins . The toleration of the Jewish school at Jamnia the more illustrates the desolation of Jerusalem where there was none. The Talmud relates how R. Akiba smiled when others wept at seeing a fox coming out of the Holy of holies. This prophecy of Micah being fulfilled, he looked the more for the prophecy of good things to come, connected therewith. Not Jerusalem only, but well-nigh all Judaea was desolated by that war, in which a million and a half perished , beside all who were sold as slaves. "Their country to which you would expell them, is destroyed, and there is no place to receive them," was Titus' expostulation to the Antiochenes, who desired to be rid of the Jews their fellow-citizens.
A pagan historian relates how, before the destruction by Hadrian , "many wolves and hyenas entered their cities howling." Titus however having left above 6,000 Roman soldiers on the spot, a civil population was required to minister to their needs. The Christians who, following our Lord's warning, had fled to Pella , returned to Jerusalem , and continued there until the second destruction by Hadrian, under fifteen successive Bishops . Some few Jews had been left there ; some very probably returned, since we hear of no prohibition from the Romans, until after the fanatic revolt under Barcocheba. But the fact that when toward the close of Trajan's reign they burst out simultaneously, in one wild frenzy , upon the surrounding pagan, all along the coast of Africa, Libya, Cyrene, Egypt, the Thebais, Mesopotamia, Cyprus , there was no insurrection in Judaea, implies that there were no great numbers of Jews there.
Judaea, aforetime the center of rebellion, contributed nothing to that wide national insurrection, in which the carnage was so terrible, as though it had been one convulsive effort of the Jews to root out their enemies . Even in the subsequent war under Hadrian, Orosius speaks of them, as "laying waste the province of Palestine, once their own," as though they had gained possession of it from without, not by insurrection within it. The Jews assert that in the time of Joshua Ben Chananiah (under Trajan) "the kingdom of wickedness decreed that the temple should be rebuilt" . If this was so, the massacres toward the end of Trajan's reign altered the policy of the Empire. Apparently the Emperors attempted to extinguish the Jewish, as, at other times, the Christian faith. A pagan Author mentions the prohibition of circumcision .
The Jerusalem Talmud speaks of many who for fear became uncircumcised, and renewed the symbol of their faith "when Bar Cozibah got the better, so as to reign 2 12 years among them." The Jews add, that the prohibition extended to the keeping of the sabbath and the reading of the law . Hadrian's city, Aelia, was doubtless intended, not only for a strong position, but also to efface the memory of Jerusalem by the Roman and pagan city which was to replace it. Christians, when persecuted, suffered; Jews rebelled. The recognition of Barcocheba, who gave himself out as the Messiah , by Akibah and "all the wise (Jews) of his generation" , made the war national.
Palestine was the chief seat of the war, but not its source. The Jews throughout the Roman world were in arms against their conquerors ; and the number of fortresses and villages which they got possession of, and which were destroyed by the Romans , shows that their successes were far beyond Judaea. Their measures in Judaea attest the desolate condition of the country. They fortified, not towns, but "the advantageous positions of the country, strengthened them with mines and walls, that, if defeated, they might have places of refuge, and communication among themselves underground unperceived."
For two years, (as appears from the coins struck by Barcocheba They had possession of Jerusalem. It was essential to his claim to be a temporal Messiah. They proposed, at least, to "rebuild their temple" and restore their polity." But they could not fortify Jerusalem. Its siege is just named ; but the one place which obstinately resisted the Romans was a strong city near Jerusalem , known before only as a deeply indented mountain tract, Bether . Probably, it was one of the strong positions, fortified in haste, at the beginning of the war .
The Jews fulfilled our Lord's words, "I am come in My Father's Name and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive" Joh 5:43. Their first destruction was the punishment of their Deicide, the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ; their second they brought upon themselves by accepting a false Christ, a robber and juggler . "580,000 are said to have perished in battle" , besides "an incalculable number by famine and fire, so that all Judaea was made well-nigh a desert." The Jews say that "no olives remained in Palestine." Hadrian "destroyed it," making it "an utter desolation" and "effacing all remains of it." "We read" , says Jerome (in Joe 1:4), "the expedition of Aelius Hadrianus against the Jews, who so destroyed Jerusalem and its walls, as, from the fragments and ashes of the city to build a city, named from himself, Aelia." At this time there appears to have been a formal act, whereby the Romans marked the legal annihilation of cities; an act esteemed, at this time, one of most extreme severity . When a city was to be built, its compass was marked with a plow; the Romans, where they willed to unmake a city, did, on rare occasions, turn up its soil with the plow. Hence, the saying , "A city with a plow is built, with a plow overthrown." The city so plowed forfeited all civil rights ; it was counted to have ceased to be.
The symbolical act under Hadrian appears to have been directed against both the civil and religious existence of their city, since the revolts of the Jews were mixed up with their religious hopes. The Jews relate that both the city generally, and the Temple, were plowed. The plowing of the city was the last of those mournful memories, which made the month Ab a time of sorrow. But the plowing of the temple is also especially recorded. Jerome says , "In this (the 5th Month) was the Temple at Jerusalem burnt and destroyed, both by Nebuchadnezzar, and many years afterward by Titus and Vespasian; the city Bether, whither thousands of Jews had fled, was taken; the Temple was plowed, as an insult to the conquered race, by Titus Annius Rufus." The Gemara says , "When Turnus, (or it may be "when Tyrant) Rutus plowed the porch," (of the temple) Perhaps Hadrian meant thus to declare the desecration of the site of the Temple, and so to make way for the further desecration by his temple of Jupiter. He would declare the worship of God at an end.
The horrible desecration of placing the temple of Ashtaroth over the Holy Sepulchre was probably a part of the same policy, to make the Holy City utterly pagan. The "Capitoline" was part of its new name in honor of the Jupiter of the Roman Capitol. Hadrian intended, not to rebuild Jerusalem, but to build a new city under his own name . "The city being thus bared of the Jewish nation, and its old inhabitants having been utterly destroyed, and an alien race settled there, the Roman city which afterward arose, having changed its name, is called Aelia in honor of the Emperor Aelius Hadrianus." It was a Roman colony , with Roman temples, Roman amphitheaters.
Idolatry was stamped on its coins . Hadrian excluded from it, on the North, almost the whole of Bezetha or the new city, which Agrippa had enclosed by his wall, and, on the South, more than half of Mount Zion , which was left, as Micah foretold, to be plowed as a field. The Jews themselves were prohibited from entering the Holy Land , so that the pagan Celsus says , "they have neither a clod nor a hearth left." Aelia, then, being a new city, Jerusalem was spoken of, as having ceased to be. The Roman magistrates, even in Palestine, did not know the name . Christians too used the name Aelia and that, in solemn documents, as the Dr. of Nice .
In the 4th century the city was still called Aelia by the Christians , and, on the first Mohammedan coin in the 7th century, it still bore that name. A series of writers speak of the desolation of Jerusalem. In the next century Origen addresses a Jew , "If going to the earthly city, Jerusalem, thou shalt find it overthrown, reduced to dust and ashes, weep not, as ye now do." : "From that (Hadrian's) time until now, the extremest desolation having taken possession of the place, their once renowned hill of Zion - now no wise differing from the rest of the country, is cultivated by Romans, so that we ourselves have with our own eyes observed the place plowed by oxen and sown all over. And Jerusalem, being inhabited by aliens, has to this day the stones gathered out of it, all the inhabitants, in our own times too, gathering up the stones out of its ruins for their private or public and common buildings. You may observe with your own eyes the mournful sight, how the stones from the Temple itself and from the Holy of holies have been taken for the idol-temples and to build amphitheaters." : "Their once holy place has now come to such a state, as in no way to fall short of the overthrow of Sodom." Hilary, who had been banished into the East, says , "The Royal city of David, taken by the Babylonians and overthrown, held not its queenly dignity under the rule of its lords; but, taken afterward and burnt by the Romans, it now is not."
Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop of the new town, and delivering his catechetical lectures in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, pointed out to his hearers the fulfillment of prophecy ; "The place (Zion) is now filled with gardens of cucumbers." "If they (the Jews) plead the captivity," says Athanasius , "and say that on that ground Jerusalem is not." "The whole world, over which they are scattered," says Gregory of Nazianzum , "is one monument of their calamity, their worship closed, and the soil of Jerusalem itself scarcely known."
It is apparently part of the gradual and increasing fulfillment of God's word, that the plowing of the city and of the site of the Temple, and the continued cultivation of so large a portion of Zion, are recorded in the last visitation when its iniquity was full. It still remains plowed as a field. : "At the time I visited this sacred ground, one part of it supported a crop of barley, another was undergoing the labor of the plow, and the soil, turned up, consisted of stone and lime filled with earth, such as is usually met with in the foundations of ruined cities. It is nearly a mile in circumference." : "On the southeast Zion slopes down, in a series of cultivated terraces, sharply though not abruptly, to the sites of the Kings' gardens. Here and around to the south the whole declivities are sprinkled with olive trees, which grow luxuriantly among the narrow slips of corn." Not Christians only, but Jews also have seen herein the fulfillment upon themselves of Micah's words, spoken now "26 centuries ago."
Bible
Micah Chapter 4
Micah 4:1
mic 4:1
But (And) in the last days it shall come to pass - God's promises, goodness, truth, fail not. He withdraws His Presence from those who receive Him not, only to give Himself to those who will receive Him. Mercy is the sequel and end of chastisement. Micah then joins on this great prophecy of future mercy to the preceding woe, as its issue in the order of God's Will. "And it shall be." He fixes the mind to some great thing which shall come to pass; "it shall be." Then follows, in marked reference to the preceding privations, a superabundance of mercy. For "the mountain of the house," which should be as a forest and which was left unto them desolate, there is "the mountain of the Lord's house established;" for the heap of dust and the plowed field, there is the flowing-in of the Gentiles; for the night and darkness, that there shall be no vision, there is the fullness of revelation; for corrupt judgment, teaching, divining, a law from God Himself going forth through the world; for the building of Jerusalem with blood, one universal peace.
In the last days - Literally, the end of the days, that is, of those days which are in the thoughts of the speaker. Politically, there are many beginnings and many endings; as many endings as there are beginnings, since all human polity begins, only to end, and to be displaced in its turn by some new beginning, which too runs its course, only to end. Religiously, there are but two consummations. All time, since man fell, is divided into two halves, the looking forward to Christ to come in humility; the looking forward to His coming in glory. These are the two events on which man's history turns. To that former people the whole period of Christ's kingdom was one future, the fullness of all their own shadows, types, sacrifices, services, prophecies, longing, being. The "end of their days" was the beginning of the new Day of Christ: the coming of His Day was necessarily the close of the former days, the period of the dispensation which prepared for it.
The prophets then by the words, "the end of the days," always mean the times of the Gospel . "The end of the days" is the close of all which went before, the last dispensation, after which there shall be no other. Yet this too hast "last days" of its own, which shall close God's kingdom of grace and shall issue in the Second Coming of Christ; as the end of those former days, which closed the times of "the law," issued in His First Coming. We are then at once living in the last times, and looking on to a last time still to come. In the one way Peter speaks Eph 1:20 of the last times, or the end of the times , in which Christ was manifested for us, in contrast with the foundations of the world, before which He was foreordained.
And Paul contrasts God's Heb 1:1 speaking to the fathers in the prophets, and at the end of these days speaking to us in the Son; and of our Lord coming Heb 9:26 at the end, consummation, of the times , to put away sins by the sacrifice of Himself; and says that the things which befell the Jews Co1 10:11 were written for our admonition, unto whom the ends of the times (that is, of those of the former people of whom he had been speaking) are come; and John speaks of this as Jo1 2:18 the last time. In the other way, they contrast the last days, not with the times before them but with their own, and then plainly they are a last and distant part of this their own last time .
The Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith ; In the last days perilous times shall come : There shall come at the end of the days scoffers : They told you that there should be mockers in the last time. The Jews distributed all time between "this world" and "the coming world" , including under "the coming world" the time of grace under the Messiah's reign, and the future glory. To us the names have shifted, since this present world Mat 13:40; Eph 1:21; Tit 2:12 is to us the kingdom of Christ, and there remains nothing further on this earth to look to, beyond what God has already given us. Our future then, placed as we are between the two Comings of our Lord, is, of necessity, beyond this world .
The mountain of the house of the Lord shall be - abidingly
Established - He does not say merely, "it shall be established." Kingdoms may be established at one time, and then come to an end. He says, "it shall be a thing established" . His saying is expanded by Daniel; "In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall not be destroyed forever, and it shall abide forever" Dan 2:44. The house of the Lord was the center of His worship, the token of His Presence, the pledge of His revelations and of His abiding acceptance, protection, favor. All these were to be increased and continuous. The image is one familiar to us in the Hebrew Scriptures. People were said to go up to it, as to a place of dignity.
In the Psalm on the carrying of the Ark thither, the hill of God is compared to the many-topped mountains of Basan Psa 68:16-17, (the Hermon-peaks which bound Basan,) and so declared to be greater than they, as being the object of God's choice. The mountain where God was worshiped rose above the mountains of idolatry. Ezekiel, varying the image, speaks of the Gospel as an overshadowing cedar Eze 17:22-23, planted by God upon an high mountain and an eminent, in the mountain of the height of Israel, under which should dwell all fowl of every wing; and, in his vision of the Temple, he sees this, the image of the Christian Church Eze 40:2, upon a very high mountain. Our Lord speaks of His Apostles and the Church in them, as Mat 5:14 a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. The seat of God's worship was to be seen far and wide; nothing was to obscure it. It, now lower than the surrounding hills, was then to be as on the summit of them. Human elevation, the more exalted it is, the more unstable is it. Divine greatness alone is at once solid and exalted. The new kingdom of God was at once to be "exalted above the hills," and "established on the top of the mountains;" "exalted," at once, above everything human, and yet "established," strong as the mountains on which it rested, and unassailable, unconquerable, seated secure aloft, between heaven, whence it came and to which it tends, and earth, on which it just tests in the sublime serenity of its majesty.
The image sets forth the supereminence of the Lord's House above all things earthly. It does not define wherein that greatness consists. The flowing in of the nations is a fruit of it Mic 4:1-2. The immediate object of their coming is explained to be, to learn to know and to do the will of God Mic 4:2. But the new revelation does not form all its greatness. That greatness is from the Presence of God, revealing and evermore teaching His Will, ruling, judging, rebuking, peacemaking Mic 4:3-4. Dionysius: "The 'mountain of the Lord's House' was then 'exalted above the hills' by the bodily Presence of Christ, when He, in the Temple built on that mountain, spake, preached, worked so many miracles; as, on the same ground, Haggai says, 'the glory of this latter house shall be greater than the glory of the former' Hag 2:9." Lap.: "This 'mountain,' the church of Christ, transcends all laws, schools, doctrines, religions, Synagogues of Jews and Philosophers, which seemed to rise aloft among men, like mountain-tops, yea, whatever under the sun is sublime and lofty, it will overpass, trample on, subdue to itself."
Even Jews have seen the meaning of this figure. Their oldest mystical book explains it. Zohar, f. 93: "'And it shall be in the last days,' when namely the Lord shall visit the daughter of Jacob, then shall 'the mountain of the house of the Lord be firmly established, that is, the Jerusalem which is above, which shall stand firmly in its place, that it may shine by the light which is above. (For no light can retain its existence, except through the light from above.) For in that time shall the light from above shine sevenfold more than before; according to that, Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun; and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His people and healeth the stroke of their wound" Isa 30:26. Another, of the dry literal school, says (Aben Ezra), "It is well known that the house of the Temple is not high. The meaning then is, that its fame shall go forth far, and there shall return to it from all quarters persons with offerings, so that it shall be, as if it were on the top of all hills, so that all the inhabitants of the earth should see it."
Some interpret "the mountain" to be Christ, who is called the Rock Co1 10:4-6, on the confession of whom, God-Man, "the house of the Lord," that is, the Church is built , the precious Cornerstone Isa 28:16; Pe1 2:6; Eph 2:20, which is laid, beside which no foundation can be laid Co1 3:11; "the great mountain," of which Daniel Dan 2:35 prophesied. It is "firmly established," so that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church, being built thereon; "exalted above hills and mountains", that is above all beside, greater or smaller, which has any eminence; for He in truth is Phi 2:9 highly exalted and hath a Name above every name, being Eph 1:20-23 at the Right Hand of God in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come; and all things are under His Feet. And this for us, in that He, the Same, is the Head over all things to the Church which is His Body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. Rup.: "He is God and Man, King and Priest, King of kings, and a Priest abiding forever. Since then His Majesty reacheth to the Right Hand of God, neither mountains nor hills, Angels nor holy men, reach thereto; for "to which of the Angels said God at any time, Sit thou on My Right Hand?" Heb 1:13.
Cyril: "Aloft then is the Church of God raised, both in that its Head is in heaven and the Lord of all, and that, on earth, it is not like the Temple, in one small people, but "set on a hill that it cannot be hid" Mat 5:14, or remain unseen even to those tar from it. Its doctrine too and life are far above the wisdom of this world, showing in them nothing of earth, but are above; its wisdom is the knowledge and love of God and of His Son Jesus Christ, and its life is bid with Christ in God, in those who are justified in Him and hallowed by His Spirit." In Him, it is lifted above all things, and with the eyes of the mind beholdeth (as far as may be) the glory of God, soaring on high toward Him who is the Author of all being, and, filled with divine light, it owneth Him the Maker of all.
And people (peoples, nations) shall flow unto (literally upon) it - A mighty tide should set in to the Gospel. The word is used only figuratively) is appropriated to the streaming in of multitudes, such as of old poured into Babylon, the merchant-empress of the world Jer 51:44. It is used of the distant nations who should throng in one continuous stream into the Gospel, or of Israel streaming together from the four corners of the world . So, Isaiah foretells, "Thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that they may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought" (Isa 60:11, add Rev 21:25-26). These were to flow upon it, perhaps so as to cover it, expressing both the multitude and density of the throng of nations, how full the Church should be, as the swollen river spreads itself over the whole champaign country, and the surging flood-tide climbs up the face of the rock which hounds it. The flood once covered the highest mountains to destroy life; this flood should pour in for the saving of life. Lap.: "It is a miracle, if waters ascend from a valley and flow to a mountain. So is it a miracle that earthly nations should ascend to the church, whose doctrine and life are lofty, arduous, sublime. This the grace of Christ effecteth, mighty and lofty, as being sent from heaven. As then waters, conducted from the fountains by pipes into a valley, in that valley bound up and rise nearly to their original height, so these waters of heavenly grace, brought down into valleys, that is, the hearts of men, make them to bound up with them into heaven and enter upon and embrace a heavenly life."
Micah 4:2
mic 4:2
And many nations shall come - Isaiah Isa 2:2 added the world all to Micah's prophecy. So our Lord said, "This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations" Mat 24:14; and the elect are to be gathered out "of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues" Rev 7:9. All nations shall flow into it. The all might be many or few. Both prophets say that those all should be many. Judah probably knew already of many. The history of Genesis gave them a wide-expanding knowledge of the enlargement of mankind alter the flood, in Europe, Asia, Africa, as they then existed in their nations. The sons of Japhet had already spread over the whole coast of our Western sea, and far North; the Cimmerians , or Cwmry, Scandinavians , Carpathians , (probably Celts,) Armenians ; (including the kindred Phrygians,) Scythians , Medes, Ionians , Aeolians , Iberians , Cypriotes , Dardani , Tybarenes , Moschi , and the Turseni , or perhaps the Thracians. On the East, the sons of Shem had spread in Elam, Asshur, Arrapachitis ; they occupied the intervening tract of Aram; in the northwest they reached to Lydia. Southward the sons of Joktan were in Arabia. Micah's hearers knew how, of the sons of Ham, Cush had spread far to the southeast and south from Babylonia to Aethiopia; Egypt they remembered too well, and, beyond it, they knew of the far-scattered tribes of the Libyans, who extended along the coast of Africa. Phoenician trade filled up this great outline.
They themselves had, in Solomon's time, traded with India ; about this time, we know that they were acquainted with the furthest East, China . Such was the sight before the human mind of the prophet; such the extent of the nations whom his people knew of.
Some were the deadly enemies of his people; some were to be its conquerors. He knew that the the ten tribes were to be abidingly wanderers among the nations , despised by them ; "a people, the strangers and sojourners of the whole world" . He knew many of those nations to be sunk in idolatry, viciousness; proud, contemptuous, lawless; he saw them fixed in their idolatries. "All people will walk every one in the name of his god." But he saw what eye of man could not see, what the will of man could not accomplish, that He, whom now Judah alone partially worshiped, would turn the hearts of His creatures to Himself, to seek Him, not in their own ways, but as He should reveal Himself at Jerusalem. Micah tells them distinctly, that those who should believe would be a great multitude from many nations. In like way Isaiah expresses the great multitude of those for whom Christ should atone Isa 53:12. He bare the sin of many Isa 53:11. By knowledge of Him shall My righteous Servant make many righteous. And our Lord Himself says Mat 20:28; The Son of man came to give His life a ransom for many (Mat 26:28, add Rom 5:15). This is my Blood - which is shed for many for the remission of sins. In Micah's time not one people, scarcely some poor fragments of the Jewish people, went up to worship God at Zion, to call to remembrance His benefits, to learn of Him. Those who should thereafter worship Him, should be many nations.
And say - Exhorting one another, in fervor and mutual love, as Andrew exhorted his brother Simon, and Philip Nathanael, and the woman of Samaria those of her city, to come to Christ: and so all since, who have been won by Him, by word or example, by preaching or by deed, in public or in private, bear along with them others to seek Him whom they themselves have found.
Let us go up - leaving the lowness and earthliness of their former conversation, and mounting upward on high where Christ is, desiring righteousness, and athirst to know His ways.
To the house of the God of Jacob - They shall seek Him as Jacob sought Him, , "who left his father's house and removed into another land, was a man of heavy toils and served for hire, but obtained special help from God, and, undistinguished as he was, became most glorious. So too the Church, leaving all pagan wisdom, and having its conversation in Heaven, and therefore persecuted and enduring many hardships, enjoys now glory with God."
And He - , that is, the God of Jacob of whom he had just spoken, shall teach us of His ways They do not go to God, because they know Him, but that they may know Him. They are drawn by a mighty impulse toward Him. Howsoever attracted, they come, not making bargains with God, (as some now would,) what they should be taught, that He should reveal to them nothing transcending reason, nothing exceeding or contradicting their notions of God; they do not come with reserves, that God should not take away this or that error, or should not disclose anything of His incomprehensibleness. They come in holy simplicity, to learn whatever He will condescend to tell them; in holy confidence, that He, the Infallible Truth, will teach them infallibly. They say, "of His ways." For all learning is by degrees, and all which all creatures could learn in all eternity falls infinitely short of His truth and Holiness. Nay, in all eternity the highest creature which He has made and which He has admitted most deeply into the secrets of His Wisdom will be as infinitely removed as ever from the full knowledge of His Wisdom and His Love. For what is finite, enlarged, expanded, accumulated to the utmost degree possible, remains finite still.
It has no proportion to the Infinite. But even here, all growth in grace implies growth in knowledge. The more we love God, the more we know of Him; and with increased knowledge of Him come higher perceptions of worship, praise, thanksgiving, of the character of faith, hope, charity, of our outward and inward acts and relations to God, the unboundedness of God's love to us and the manifoldness of the ways of pleasing Him, which, in His love, He has given us. Since then the whole Christian life is a growth in grace, and even Paul Phi 3:13-14, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth to those which are before, pressed toward the mark for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, then Paul too was ever learning, in intensity, what he knew certainly by revelation, of His ways. Again, as each blade of grass is said to differ from another, so, and much more, each soul of man which God has created for Himself. No one ever saw or could imagine two human beings, in whom the grace of God had unfolded itself in exactly the same way.
Each saint will have his distinct beauty around the throne. But then each will have learnt "of His ways," in a different proportion or degree. His greatest saints, yea His Apostles, have been pre-eminent, the one in one grace, another in another. John the Immerser came as a pattern of repentance and contempt of self; John the Evangelist stood out pre-eminent in deep tender burning personal love; Paul was known for his zeal to spread the knowledge of Christ Crucified; Mary Magdelene was famous for her loving penitence. Even the Blessed Virgin herself, under inspiration, seems, in part, to speak of her lowly lowness , as that which God specially regarded in her, when He made her the Mother of God. Eternity only will set forth the fullness of the two words "He will teach us of His ways." For eternity will shew, how in all Co1 12:11 worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will; and how the countless multitude of the redeemed have corresponded to His gifts and drawings. : "The way of the life to God-ward is one, in that it looketh to one end, to please God; but there are many tracks along it, as there are many modes of life;" and each several grace is a part of the way to God.
And we will walk in His paths - o: "By believing, hoping, loving, well-doing, and bearing patiently all trouble." Rup.: "For it sufficeth not to believe, unless we act as He commandeth, and strive to enter on His ways, the strait and narrow path which leadeth unto life. He Himself then, when He had said, "Go, teach all nations," baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, added, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" Mat 28:19-20. They say too, "we will walk," that is, go on from strength to strength, not stand still after having labored for a while to do His Will, but hold on to all His ways and to Himself who is the Way, until they appear before the Lord in Zion.
For the law - (literally, law,) shall go forth from Zion These are the prophet's words, declaring why the nations should so flock to Zion. For he says, "shall go forth," but the nations were not gathered to Zion, until the Gospel was already gone forth. He speaks of it as law simply, not the Jewish law as such, but a rule of life Man's better nature is ill at ease, being out of harmony with God. It cannot be otherwise. Having been made in His likeness, it must be distressed by its unlikeness; having been made by Him for Himself, it must be restless without Him. What they indistinctly longed for, what drew them, was the hope to be conformed by Him to Him. The sight of superhuman holiness, life, love, endurance, ever won and wins those without to the Gospel or the church. Our Lord Himself gives it, as the substance of prophecy Luk 24:47, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem. The image may be that of a stream, issuing forth from Jerusalem and watering the whole world. Theodoret: "The law of the Gospel and the word of the Apostles, beginning from Jerusalem, as from a fountain, ran through the whole world, watering those who approached with faith." But in that it "went forth," it may be meant, that it left those from among whom it "went forth," and Cyril, "Zion was indeed desolate of the law and Jerusalem bared of the divine word." Jerome: "The word of God passed from Jerusalem to the Gentiles." Rup.: "For the shadow was done away, and the types ceased, and sacrifices were abolished, and everything of Moses was, in the letter, brought to a close."
He does not say here, through whom God would so teach, but he does speak of a direct teaching of God. He does not say only, "God will give us a law," or "will make a revelation of Himself." He speaks of a Personal, direct, continuous act of teaching by God, carried on upon earth, whether the teacher be our Lord's word spoken once on earth, which does "not pass away" Mat 24:35, or God the Holy Spirit, as teaching in the Church and in the hearts which receive Him. The words which follow speak of a personal reign, as these speak of personal teaching.
Micah 4:3
mic 4:3
And He shall judge among many people and rebuke strong nations afar off - Hitherto, they had walked each in their own ways Isa 53:6; now, they sought to be taught in the ways of God. Before, they had been lords of the world; now they should own a Judge higher than themselves. They were no common, but mighty nations, such as had heretofore been the oppressors of Israel. They were to be many, and those mighty, nations. He should , "not only command, but "rebuke," not weak or petty nations only, but mighty, and those not only near but afar." Mohammed had moral strength through what he stole from the law and the Gospel, and by his owning Christ as the Word of God. He was a heretic, rather than a pagan. Fearful scourge as he was, and as his successors have been, all is now decayed, and no mighty nation is left upon earth, which does not profess the Name of Christ.
He shall rebuke them - For it was an office of the Holy Ghost "to reprove the world as to its sin, the righteousness of Christ, the judgment of the prince of this world" Joh 16:8-11. The Gospel conquered the world, not by compromises or concordants, but by convicting it. It alone could "rebuke" with power; for it was, like its Author, all-holy. It could rebuke with efficacy; for it was the word of Him who knew what is in man. It could rebuke with awe; for it knew the secrets of eternal Judgment. It could rebuke winningly; for it knew "the love of Christ which passeth knowledge" Eph 3:19. Its martyrs suffered and rebuked their judges; and the world was amazed at the impotence of power and the might of suffering. It rebuked the enthroned idolatry of centuries; it set in rebellion by its rebukes every sinful passion of man, and it subdued them. Tyrants, whom no human power could reach, trembled before its censures. Then only is it powerless, if its corrupted or timid or paralyzed ministers forfeit in themselves the power of rebuke.
And they shall beat their spears into plowshares - "All things are made new in Christ." As the inward disquiet of evil men makes them restless, and vents itself toward others in envy, hatred, maliciousness, wrong, so the inward peace whereof He saith, My peace I give unto you, shall, wherever it reacheth, spread out abroad and, by the power of grace, bring to "all nations unity, peace, and concord." All, being brought under the one empire of Christ, shall be in harmony, one with the other. As far as in it lies, the Gospel is a Gospel of peace, and makes peace. Christians, as far as they obey Christ, are at peace, both in themselves and with one another. And this is what is here prophesied. The peace follows from His rule. Where He judges and rebukes, there even the mighty "beat their swords into plowshares." The universal peace, amid which our Lord was born in the flesh, the first which there had been since the foundation of the Roman empire, was, in God's Providence, a fruit of His kingdom.
It was no chance coincidence, since nothing is by chance. God willed that they should be contemporaneous. It was fitting that the world should be still, when its Lord, the Prince of peace, was born in it. That outward cessation of public strife, though but for a brief time, was an image how His peace spread backward as well as forward, and of the peace which through Him, our Peace, was dawning on the world. : "First, according to the letter, before That Child was born to us, "on whose shoulder the government is" Isa. 1, the whole world was full of blood; people fought against people, kings against kings, nations against nations. Lastly, the Roman state itself was torn by civil wars, in whose battles all kingdoms shed blood. But after that, at the time of the Empire of Christ, Rome gained an undivided empire, the world was laid open to the journeys of Apostles, and the gates of cities were open to them, and, for the preaching of the One God, one single empire was formed.
It may too be understood as an image, that, on receiving the faith of Christ, anger and unrestrained revilings were laid aside, so that each putteth his hand to the plow and looketh not back, and, breaking in pieces the shafts of contumelies, seeketh to reap spiritual fruit, so that, others laboriing, we enter into their labors; and of us it is said, "They shall come with joy, bringing their sheaves" Psa 126:6. Now no one fighteth; for we read "Blessed are the peacemakers" Mat 5:9; no one learneth to "strive, to the subverting of the hearers" Ti2 2:14. And every one shall rest under his vine, so as to press out that "Wine which gladdeneth the heart of man" Psa 104:15, under that "Vine," whereof the "Father is the Husbandman" Joh 15:1; and under his fig tree, gathering the sweet "fruits of the Holy Spirit love, joy, peace, and the rest" Gal 5:22.
The fathers had indeed a joy, which we have not, that wars were not between Christians; for although "just wars are lawful," war cannot be on both sides just; very few wars have not, on both sides, what is against the spirit of the Gospel. For, except where there is exceeding wickedness on one side, or peril of further evil, the words of our Lord would hold good, in public as in private, "I say unto you, that ye resist not evil" Mat 5:39.
This prophecy then is fulfilled:
(1) in the character of the Gospel. Ribera: "The law of the Gospel worketh and preserveth peace. For it plucketh up altogether the roots of all war, avarice, ambition, injustice, wrath. Then, it teacheth to bear injuries, and, so far from requiting them, willeth that we be prepared to receive fresh wrongs. He saith, "If anyone smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also ..." Mat 5:39-42. "I say unto you, Love your enemies ..." Mat 5:44-48. For neither did the old law give these counsels, nor did it explain so clearly the precept implied in them, nor had it that wonderful and most efficacious example of the and love of Christ, nor did it supply whereby peace could be preserved; whereas now the first fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness."
(2) The prophecy has been fulfilled within and without, among individuals or bodies of men, in body or mind, in temper or in deed, as far as the Gospel has prevailed. "The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one mind" Act 4:32; one, through One indwelling Spirit; one, though a great multitude, through one bond of love. : "See how these Christians love one another;" "see how ready they are to die for one another," was, in the third century, a pagan proverb as to Christian love. : "They love one another, almost before they know one another." : "Their first lawgiver has persuaded them that they are all brethren." "We (which grieves you,)" the Christian answered , "so love one another, because we know not how to hate. We call ourselves 'brethren' which you take ill, as men who have one Father, God, and are sharers in one faith, in one hope, coheirs."
For centuries too, there was, for the most part, public peace of Christians among themselves. Christian soldiers fought only, as constrained by the civil law, or against Barbarian invaders, to defend life, wife, children, not for ambition, anger, or pride. Christians could then appeal, in fulfillment of the prophecy, to this outward, the fruit of the inward, peace. "We," says an early martyr, , "who formerly stained ourselves with mutual slaughter, not only do not wage war with foes, but even, in order not to lie and deceive those who consume us, willingly professing Christ, meet death." "From the coming of the Lord," says another martyr, . "the New Testament, reconciling unto peace, and a life-giving law, went forth into all lands. If then another law and word, going forth from Jerusalem, produced such peace among the nations which received it, and thereby reproved much people of want of wisdom, then it would follow that the prophets spake of some other. But if the law of liberty, that is, the law of God preached by the Apostles, which went forth out of Jerusalem to all the world, worked such a transformation, that swords and spears of war He wrought into plow-shares and pruning-hooks, instruments of peace, and now men know not how to fight, but, when smitten, yield the other cheek, then the prophets spake of no other, but of Him who brought it to pass." "Even from this," says Tertullian , "you may know that Christ was promised, not as one mighty in war, but as a peace-bringer. Either deny that these things were prophesied, since they are plain to see; or, since they are written, deny that they are fulfilled. But if thou mayest deny neither, thou must own that they are fulfilled in Him, of whom they are prophesied." "Of old" , says Athanasius, "Greeks and Barbarians, being idolaters, warred with one another, and were fierce toward those akin. For through their implacable warfare no one might pass land or sea, unarmed. Their whole life was passed in arms; the sword was to them for staff and stay. They worshiped idols, sacrificed to demons, and yet from their reverence for idols they could gain no help to correct their minds. But when they passed into the school of Christ, then, of a truth, pricked in mind, they wondrously laid aside their savage slaughters, and now think no more of things of war; for now all peace and friendship are alone their mind's delight. who then did this, who blended in peace those who hated one another, save the Beloved Son of the Father, the common Saviour of all, Christ Jesus, who, through His love, endured all things for our salvation?
For of old too, the peace which should hold sway from Him was prophesied, "they shall beat their swords into plowshares." Nor is this incredible, since now too, the Barbarians with innate savageness, while they yet sacrifice to their idols, are mad with one another, and cannot for one hour part with their swords. But when they have received the teaching of Christ, immediately forever they turn to husbandry; and, in lieu of arming their hands with swords, stretch them out to prayer. And altogether, instead of warring with one another, they arm themselves against the devil and demons, warring against them with modesty and virtue of soul. This is a token of the Godhead of the Saviour. For what men could not learn among idols, this they have learned from Him. Christ's disciples, having no war with one another, array themselves against demons by their life and deeds of virtue, chase them and mock their captain the devil, chaste in youth, enduring in temptation, strong in toils, tranquil when insulted, unconcerned when despoiled."
And yet later, Chrysostom says , "Before the Coming of Christ, all men armed themselves and no one was exempt from this service, and cities fought with cities, and everywhere were men trained to war. But now most of the world is in peace; all engage in mechanical art or agriculture or commerce, and few are employed in military service for all. And of this too the occasion would cease, if we acted as we ought and did not need to be reminded by afflictions." : "After the Sun of righteousness dawned, so far are all cities and nations from living in such perils, that they know not even how to take in hand any affairs of war. - Or if there be still any war, it is far off at the extremity of the Roman Empire, not in each city and country, as heretofore. For then, in any one nation, there were countless seditions and multiform wars. But now the whole earth which the sun surveys from the Tigris to the British isles, and therewith Lybia too and Egypt and Palestine, yea, all beneath the Roman rule, - ye know how all enjoy complete security, and learn of war only by hearsay."
Cyril (on Isa. 2 and here) and Theodoret (on Isa. 2 and here) carry on this account into the fifth century after our Lord's Coming. Christians then during those four centuries could point to a present fulfillment of prophecy, when we, for our sins, can only speak of the past Isa 59:1-2. The Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save: neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear; but our iniquities have separated between us, and our God, and our sins have hid His Face from us, that He will not hear. Those first Christians could urge against the Jews the fulfillment of their prophecies herein, where the Jews can now urge upon us their seeming non-fulfillment; : "In the time of King Messiah, after the wars of Gog and Magog, there shall be peace and tranquillity in all the world, and the sons of men shall have no need of weapons, but these promises were not fulfilled."
The prophecy is fulfilled, in that the Gospel is a Gospel of peace and makes peace. Christians, as far as they obey Christ, are at peace both in themselves and with one another. The promises of God are perfect on His part: He is faithful to them. But He so wills to be freely loved by His intelligent creatures whom He formed for His love, that He does not force our free-agency. We can fall short of His promises, if we will. To those only who will it, the Gospel brings peace, stilling the passions, quelling disputes, banishing contentions, removing errors, calming concupiscence, soothing and repressing anger, in individuals, nations, the Church; giving oneness of belief, harmony of soul, contentment with our own, love of others as ourselves; so that whatever is contrary to this has its origin in something which is not of Christ nor of His Gospel.
Micah 4:4
mic 4:4
But - And
They shall sit every man, under his vine and under his fig-tree - Palestine was a home of the vine and the fig-tree. Vineyards were a common property, possessed by all but the very poor , or even by them Neh 5:4; Jer 39:10. The land was "a land of bread and vineyards" Kg2 18:32. The vine was the emblem of the people, in Psalmists and prophets (Psa 80:8 ff; Isa 3:14; Isa 5:1 ff; Isa 27:2; Jer 2:21; Jer 12:10; Eze 15:1-8; Eze 17:5-10; Eze 19:10; Hos 10:1). The bunch of grapes or the vine-leaf appear as characteristic emblems on Jewish coins , chiefly in the times of their revolts under Vespasian and Hadrian . The fig is also mentioned as part of the characteristic fruitfulness of Palestine Deu 8:8.
It too was an universal property Kg2 18:32. Both formed natural arbors; the fig had its name probably from its length, the vine from the arch made by its drooping boughs. Both formed, in those hot countries, a grateful shade. The vine, rising with its single stem, was spread over trellis-work or by props, so as to enclose a considerable space . Even in Italy, a single vine shaded a portico . In Palestine it grew by the walls of the house Psa 128:3.
Rabbis relate how their forefathers sat and studied under the fig-tree , as Nathanael was doubtless meditating or praying under one, when Jesus, being God, saw him Joh 1:48. It exhibits a picture of domestic peace, each family gathered in harmony and rest under the protection of God, each content with what they have, neither coveting another's, nor disturbed in their own. Wine is explained in Holy Scripture to be an emblem of gladness, and the fig of sweetness . Cyril: "For exceeding sweet is the word of the Saviour, and it knoweth how to gladden man's heart; sweet also and full of joy is the hope of the future, wherewith we are enriched in Christ.
Such had been Israel's lot in the peaceful days of Solomon Kg1 4:25, the peace of whose times had already been made the image of the Gospel Ps. 72; the coming of the Queen of the South from the uttermost parts of the earth, to hear the wisdom of Solomon Mat 12:42, had made her kingdom to be selected as an emblem of those who should fall down before Christ and serve Him Psa 60:12 :10-11. Lap.: "Such is that most quiet fearlessness which the law of Christ bringeth, as being the law of charity, peace, and concord."
And none shall make them afraid - o: "Neither man, nor devil; for the Lord hath given us power to "tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and said, nothing shall by any means hurt you" Luk 10:19, and bade us, "fear not them which kill the body" Mat 10:28. Witness the might which He gave to His Apostles and Martyrs.
For the mouth of the Lord of Host hath spoken it - The prophets often add this, when what they say, seems, for its greatness, past belief Yet it will be, because He hath spoken it, "the Lord" who changeth not, "the Lord of Hosts," to whose commands all creatures are subject, whose word is truth with whom to speak is to do.
Micah 4:5
mic 4:5
For all people well walk, every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God - Hitherto unsteadfastness had been the very characteristic sin of Israel. It was , "constant only in its inconstancy," ever "falling away like their forefathers, starting aside like a broken bow" Psa 78:57. The pagan persevered in their worship, because it was evil or had evil in it, not checking but feeding their passions. Israel did not persevere in his, because it required him to deny himself things unlawful. "Hath a nation changed their gods which are yet no gods? But My people have changed their glow for that which doth not profit" Jer 2:11. Henceforth, the prophet professeth for his people, the true Israel, that he will be as steadfast in good, as the pagan in evil; so our Lord sets forth "the children of this world in their generation" Luk 16:8, as an example of wisdom to the children of light.
Cyril: "They who are eager to go up into the mountain of the Lord, and wish to learn thoroughly His ways, promise a ready obedience, and receive in themselves the glories of the life in Christ, and undertake with their whole strength to be earnest in all holiness. 'For let every one,' he saith, 'in every country and city go the way himself chooseth, and pass his life, as to him seemeth good; but our care is Christ, and His laws we will make our straight path; we will walk along with Him; and that not for this life only, present or past, but yet more for what is beyond' Ti2 2:11-12; Rom 8:17; Rev 3:4. It is a faithful saying. For they who now suffer with Him, shall walk with Him forever, and with Him be glorified, and with Him reign. But they make Christ their care, who prefer nothing to His love, who cease from the vain distractions of the world, and seek rather righteousness and what is pleasing unto Him, and to excell in virtue. Such an one was the divine Paul; for he writeth, "I am crucified with Christ; and now no longer I live, but Christ liveth in me" Gal 2:20; and again, "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified" Co1 2:2.
To "walk" is so uniformly in Holy Scripture used of a person's moral or religious "ways" . p. 378, and above on Mic 2:11, p. 35. So again to walk with God, Gen 5:22 or before God, Gen 17:1 or contrary to God, Lev 26:21.) (as we say), that the prophet here too is doubtless speaking of the opposite religious ways of the pagan and of the future people of God. The "name" was often, in Hebrew, expressive of the character; and, in regard to God Himself, that Name which He vouchsafed to give to Himself , expressed His Self-existence, and, as a result, His Unchangeableness and His Faithfulness. The names, by which it was foretold that Christ should be called, express both His Deity and attributes ; the human Name, which He bare and vouchsafes to bear yet, was significant of His office for us, Saviour Mat 1:21.
To praise "the Name of the Lord" then, is to praise Him in that character or relation which He has revealed to us. : "He 'walketh in the Name of the Lord,' who ordereth every act and motion worthily of the vocation wherewith he is called, and, "whether he eateth or drinketh, doth all to the glory of God. Co1 10:31" this promise hath its own reward; for it is "forever and ever." They who "walk in the Name of the Lord," shall "walk before Him in, the land of the living, forever and ever" Psa 116:9. Such walk on, with quickened steps, lingering not, "in the Name of the Lord our God," that is, doing all things in His Name, as His great Name requires, conformed to the holiness and all other qualities which His Name expresseth. "For ever and ever, literally forever and yet, or, more strictly still, for that which is hidden and yet," which is the utmost thought of eternity we can come to. Time indeed has no relation to eternity; for time, being God's creature, is infinite. Still, practically to us, our nearest conception of eternity, is existence, on and on and on, an endless, unchanging, ever-prolonged future, lost in distance and hidden from us, and then, and yet, an ever-to-come yet, which shalt never come to an end. Well then may we not faint, as tho' it were long to toil or to do without this or that, since the part of our way which lies amid toils and weariness is so short, and will soon be at an end; what lies beyond, in joy, is infinite in infinite joy, ever full and still ever a yet to come.
The prophet says, "we will walk;" , "uniting himself in longing, hope, faith, to the sons of the New Testament, that is, Christians, as his brethren, re-born by the grace of the same Christ;" , "ministers of the Old, heirs of the New Testament, because they loved through that same faith whereby we love; believing in the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection of Christ yet to be, as we believe in it, having been."
Micah 4:6
mic 4:6
In that day - that is, in that day of Christ and of His Gospel, of grace and salvation, the last days of which he had been speaking. Hitherto he had prophesied the glory of Zion, chiefly through the coming-in of the Gentiles. Now he adds, how the Jews should, with them, be gathered by grace into the one fold, in that long last day of the Gospel, at the beginning, in the course of it, and completely at the end Rom 11:26.
Her that halteth - The prophet resumes the image of the scattered flock, under which he had before Mic 2:12-13 foretold their restoration. This was no hope of his own, but His word who cannot fail. The course of events, upon which he is entering, would be, at times, for their greatness and their difficulty, past human belief. So he adds straightway, at the outset, "saith the Lord." To "halt" is used of bodily lameness Gen 32:32, and that, of a flock, worn out by its wanderings Zep 3:19. It is used also of moral halting Psa 35:15; Psa 38:18, such as had been a chief sin of Israel, serving partly God, partly Baal ; God, with a service of fear, Baal with a service of that counterfeit of love, sensuality. So it was sick, both in body and soul, and driven out also, and afflicted.
Micah 4:7
mic 4:7
And her that was cast off a strong nation - The prophecy, that there should be a remnant, was depressing. Yet what a remnant should it be! A remnant, which should multiply like the stars of heaven or the sand on the sea-shore. Israel had never been "a strong nation," as a kingdom of this world. At its best estate, under David, it had subdued the petty nations around it, who were confederated to destroy it. It had never competed with the powers of this world, East or West, Egypt or Nineveh, although God had at times marvelously saved it from being swallowed up by them. Now, the remnant of Judah, which itself was but a remnant of the undivided people, was to become "a strong nation." So Isaiah prophesied, "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation" Isa 60:22. Plainly not in temporal greatness, both because human strength was not, and could not be, its characteristic, and because the prophet had been speaking of spiritual restoration.
: "'Strong' are they, whom neither torture nor allurements can separate from the love of Christ." "Strong are they, who are strong against themselves." Strong were they who said,
"We ought to obey God rather than men Act 5:29, and, "who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us" Rom 8:35, Rom 8:37. God does not only restore in the Gospel; He multiplies exceedingly. Rup.: "I will so clothe her with the spirit of might, that, as she shall be fruitful in number, so shall she be glorious in victories, so that of her it shall be said, "who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?" Sol 6:10. For, not to name those, whose whole life is one warfare against invisible enemies and the evil desires of the flesh, who shall count the martyrs of Christ? We know that that "remnant" and "strong nation" owe wholly to grace all which they are, as they themselves in the Revelations give thanks; "Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy Blood, out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth" Rev 5:9-10; that same Lord, of whom it is here said,
The Lord shall reign over them in Zion from henceforth even forever - The visible kingdom of God in Judah was often obscured, kings, princes, priests, and false prophets combining to encourage one another in rebellion against God. In the captivity it even underwent an almost total eclipse by the over-shadowing of earthly power, save when the divine light flashed forth for an instant in the deeds or words of power and wisdom, related by Daniel. "Henceforth," that is, from the time, when the law should go forth out of Zion, God should indeed reign, and that kingdom should have no end.
Micah 4:8
mic 4:8
And thou, O tower of the flock - "'Tower of Ader,' which is interpreted 'tower of the flock,' about 1000 paces (a mile) from Bethlehem," says Jerome who lived there, "and foresignifying (in its very name) by a sort of prophecy the shepherds at the Birth of the Lord." There Jacob fed his sheep Gen 35:21, and there (since it was hard by Bethlehem) the shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night, saw and heard the Angels singing, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." The Jews inferred from this place that the Messiah should be revealed there .
Stronghold - (Ophel ) of the daughter of Zion Ophel was a strong place in the South of Jerusalem, the last which the wall, enclosing Zion, reached, before, or as, it touched on the Eastern porch of the temple , with whose service it was connected.
We know that, after the captivity, the Nethinim, who did the laborious service of the temple, dwelt there Neh 3:26; Neh 11:21. It lay very near to the priests' district Neh 3:28. It was probably, a lower acclivity, "swelling out," (as its name seems to mean ,) from the mountain of the temple. In the last war, it was held together with "the temple, and the adjoining parts to no slight extent, and the valley of Kedron." It was burnt before the upper city was taken. It had been encircled by a wall of old; for Jotham "built greatly upon its wall" Ch2 27:3, Manasseh "encircled it" Ch2 33:14, (probably with an outer wall) "and raised it exceedingly," that is, apparently raised artificially the whole level.
Yet, as a symbol of all Jerusalem, Ophel is as remarkable, as the "tower of the flock" is as to Bethlehem. For Ophel, although fortified, is no where spoken of, as of any account . It is not even mentioned in the circuit of the walls, at their dedication, under Nehemiah Neh 12:31-40, probably as an outlying, spot. It was probably of moment chiefly, as giving, an advantage to an enemy who might occupy it.
Both then are images of lowliness. The lonely Shepherd tower, for Bethlehem, the birthplace of David; Ophel for Jerusalem, of which it was yet but an outlying part, and deriving its value probably as an outwork of the temple. Both symbols anticipate the fuller prophecy of the littleness, which shall become great in God. Before the mention of the greatness of the "dominion to come," is set forth the future poverty to which it should come. In lowliness Christ came, yet is indeed a Tower protecting and defending the sheep of His pasture, founded on earth in His Human Nature, reaching to Heaven in His divine; "a strong Tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is safe" Pro 18:10.
Unto thee shall it come - (Literally, "unto thee shall it come , and there shall arrive etc.") He saith not at first what shall come, and so raises the soul to think of the greatness of that which should come. The soul is left to fill up what is more than thought can utter. "Unto thee," (literally, quite up to thee) No hindrances should withhold it from coming. Seemingly it was a great way off, and they in a very hopeless state. He suggests the difficulty even by his strength of assurance. One could not say, "it shall come quite up to thee," of that which in the way of nature would readily come to any one. But amid all hindrances God's Might makes its way, and brings His gifts and promises to their end. "And there shall arrive." He twice repeats the assurance, in equivalent words, for their fuller assurance , "to make the good tidings the gladder by repeating and enforcing them."
The "first or former, dominion." The word often stands, as our "former" , in contrast with the "later." It is not necessarily "the first," strictly; and so here, not the "dominion" of David and Solomon exclusively. Rather the prophet is placed in spirit in the later times when the kingdom should be suspended, and foretells that "the former dominion," that is, that of the line of David, should come to her, not in its temporal greatness, but the line itself. So the Angel said, "He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever" Luk 1:32-33.
The (A) kingdom to the daughter of Jerusalem - that is, a kingdom, which should not be of her, but which should come to her; not her's by right, but by His right, who should merit it for her, and, being King of kings, makes His own, "kings and priests unto God and His Father" Rev 1:6.
The Jews themselves seem to have taken these words into their own mouths, just before they rejected Him, when they hoped that He would be a king, such as they wished for. "Blessed be the kingdom of our father David that cometh in the Name of the Lord" Mar 11:10. And in a distorted form, they held it even afterward .
Micah 4:9
mic 4:9
Now - The prophet places himself in the midst of their deepest sorrows, and out of them he promises comfort. "Why dost thou cry out aloud? is there no King in thee? is thy Counsellor perished?" . Is then all lost, because thou hast no visible king, none to counsel thee or consult for thee? . Very remarkably he speaks of their "King and Counsellor" as one, as if to say, "When all beside is gone, there is One who abides. Though thou be a captive, God will not forsake thee. When thou hadst no earthly king, "the Lord thy God was thy King" Sa1 12:12. He is the First, and He is the Last. When thou shalt have no other, He, thy King, ceaseth not to be." Montanus: "Thou shouldest not fear, so long as He, who counselleth for thee, liveth; but He liveth forever." Thy "Counsellor," He, who is called "Counsellor" Isa 9:6, who counselleth for thee, who counselleth thee, will, if thou obey His counsel, make birth-pangs to end in joy.
For pangs have taken thee, as a woman in travail - Resistless, remediless, doubling the whole frame, redoubled until the end, for which God sends them, is accomplished, and then ceasing in joy. The truest comfort, amid all sorrow, is in owning that the travail-pains must be, but that the reward shall be afterward. Montanus: "It is meet to look for deliverance from God's mercy, as certainly as for punishment from our guilt; and that the more, since He who foretold both, willingly saves, punishes unwillingly." So the prophets adds.
Micah 4:10
mic 4:10
Be in pain, and labor to bring forth - (Literally, Writhe and burst forth,) as if to say, "thou must suffer, but thy suffering and thy joy shall be one. Thou canst not have the joy without the suffering. As surely as thou sufferest, thou shalt have joy. In all sorrow, lose not faith and hope, and "thou shalt be sorrowful, but thy sorrow shall be turned into joy" Joh 16:20. Cyril: "Good daughter, be very patient in the pangs, bear up against your sorrows," so shall the birth be nigh. Yet for the time she must "go forth out of the city" into captivity. "And thou shalt dwell in the field," houseless, under tents, as captives were accustomed to be kept, until all were gathered together to be led away; a sore exchange for her former luxury, and in requital of their oppression Amo 6:1-14; Mic 2:8-9.
And thou shalt go even to Babylon - Not Babylon, but Assyria was the scourge of God in Micah's time. Babylon was scarcely known, a far country Kg2 20:14. Yet Micah is taught of God to declare that thither shall the two tribes be carried captive, although the ten were carried captive by Assyria. "There (see the note at Hos 2:15) shalt thou be delivered, there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies." God's judgments, or purifying trials, or visitation of His saints, hold their way, until their end be reached. They who suffer them cannot turn them aside; they who inflict them cannot add to them or detain them. The prison house is the place of deliverance to Joseph and Peter; the Red Sea to Israel; the judges were raised up, when Israel was mightily oppressed; Jabesh-Gilead was delivered when the seventh day was come Sa1 11:3, Sa1 11:10-11; the walls of Jerusalem were the end of Sennacherib; Judah should have long been in the very hand and grasp of Babylon, yet must its clenched hand be opened.
Micah 4:11
mic 4:11
Now also - (And now.) The prophet had already spoken of the future before them, with this word Now. Then, he distinctly prophesied the captivity to Babylon. Twice more he begins anew; as Holy Scripture, so often, in a mystery, whether speaking of evil or of good, of deliverance or of punishment, uses a threefold form. In these two, no mention is made of the enemy, and so there is some uncertainty. But the course must apparently be either backward or forward. They must either be two nearer futures before the Captivity, or two more distant after it. This second gathering might, in itself, either be that of the Assyrian hosts under Sennacherib out of all the nations subject to him; or that of the many petty nations in the time of the Maccabees, who took advantage of the Syrians' oppression, to combine to eradicate the Jews (1 Macc. 5:1, 2). If understood of Sennacherib, the prophet, having foretold the entire captivity of the whole people to Babylon, would have prophesied the sudden destruction of a nearer enemy, whose miraculous and instantaneous overthrow should be the earnest of the destruction of Babylon and of their deliverance from it. This would suit well with the description, "He shall gather them as sheaves to the floor," and would correspond well with the descriptions in Isaiah. On the other hand, whereas this description would suit any other event, in which man gathered his strength against God and was overthrown, the following words, "Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion," etc., fit better with the victories of the Maccabees, in which Israel was active, than with the overthrow of Sennacherib, in which they were wholly passive, and God did all for them, as Isaiah and Nahum foretell the same overthrow Isa 10:24-34; Isa 14:24, Isa 14:5; Isa 17:12-14; Isa 29:7-8; Nah 1:10-13. Then also, if the course of the description was backward:
1) the captivity in Babylon
2) the destruction of Sennacherib
There is no earlier event to correspond with "the smiting of the judge of Israel on the cheek" (Mic 5:1-4 in Hebrew). The malice also of the nations gathered against Zion suits better with the abiding character of the petty nations, and of their hereditary envy against Israel and its high claims. To Nineveh and Babylon, Israel was but one little corner of ground, which rounded their territory and connected them with Egypt. They disdained them, even while they sought to subdue them. Micah describes the exultation of petty gratified rivalry.
That say, let her be defiled - The bad have a keen eye for the haltings and inconsistencies and falls of God's people, for which they are ever on the watch. Like Satan, they are first tempters, then the accusers; first desecrators, then sanctimonious justiciaries. God, in His judgment, leaves what has been inwardly defiled to be outwardly profaned. "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple are ye" Co1 3:17. "The faithful city had become a harlot" Isa 1:21. "The land had become polluted by its inhabitants" Jer 3:9; Psa 106:38; Isa 24:5. Now it was to be polluted by the enemy. Its seducers ask for the judgment of God. "It has become like us in its deeds; let it no more be distinguished from us by the name of the people of God."
And let our eye look upon Zion - With pleasure upon its desolation, and feed itself with its misery. : "Where the eye, there love; where the hand, there pain." "They opened their mouth wide against me: they said, Aha, Aha, our eye hath seen" Psa 35:21. The world hates the Church; Edom, Israel; it cannot be satisfied with beholding its chastisements Mic 7:10; Oba 1:12. The sufferings of the Martyrs were the choice spectacle of the pagan.
Micah 4:12
mic 4:12
But they know not the thoughts of the Lord, neither understand they His counsel - The pagan did, for their own ends, what God willed for His. The first step was the same; God willed that His people should be punished; they willed to punish them. But all which lay beyond, they saw not; that God willed (on their repentance) to pardon His own people, but to punish themselves for their pride Isa 10:7, Isa 10:12 and cruelty Zac 1:15, Zac 1:19. : "Almighty God corrects the elect through the reprobate, as with a rod; after which He condemns the reprobate eternally, as when the son has been disciplined, the rod is cast into the fire."
For He shall gather them as the sheaves into the floor - The multitude of the sheaves hinders not the threshing; the multitude of God's enemies hinders not their destruction. They think that they strengthen themselves, as they gather together; God sees them but as ripened and fitted for destruction, gathered into one bundle together, to perish together. God gathers them, not by constraint or force, but by giving free scope to their own wayward wills, and overruling these to His ends.
Micah 4:13
mic 4:13
Arise - (It may be,) from the dust in which they were lying, "I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass." Threshing in the East is partly with oxen, partly with wheels of iron, or with planks set with sharp flints on an open place made hard to this end. The prophet joins another image, with this and represents Judah as being by God endued with strength, first as with a "horn of iron" Kg1 22:11 to cast the enemy to the ground, and then with "hoofs of brass," wherewith to trample them to dust, as the stubble and chaff. "And I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord," that is, to Myself; the Lord gathered them into the floor by His Providence; the Lord gave His people strength to subdue them; and now, in His own Person, He says, I will complete My own work.
The very image of the "threshing" implies that this is no mere destruction. While the stubble is "beaten" or bruised to small pieces, and the chaff is far more than the wheat, and is carried out of the floor, there yet remains the seed-corn. So in the great judgments of God, while most is refuse, there yet remains over, what is severed from the lost heap and wholly "consecrated" to Him. Whatever things were the object of the חרם chêrem Lev 27:28 or "thing devoted to the Lord," could not be redeemed, but must remain wholly the Lord's. If it had life, it was to be put to death Lev. 29. And so the use of the word here may the rather shew, how those converted to God, and who became gain, hallowed to Him, were to pass through death to life, to die to themselves that they might live to Him: what was evil was to be slain in them, that they themselves might live.
The Israelites and God's dealings with them are "ensamples of us upon whom the ends of the world are come" Co1 10:11. And so the whole section fits wonderfully with the condition of the single soul. "She who halteth" (Rib.) "the soul, who would serve God, yet not so as wholly to give up the service of the world, which it had in Baptism renounced, who, after it had gone astray like a lost sheep, and been scattered amid the manifoldness of earthly things, was gathered again into the fold, to love One only, long for One only, give itself to One," its Good Shepherd, and over it the Lord reigneth forever, if, taught by experience the deceitfulness of Satan's promises, and stung by the sense of its own thanklessness and vileness, and conscious of the peril of self confidence, it abideth more closely than others with God. He shall gather her that is driven out, that is, , "He shall restore her, from whom He had, for the time, withdrawn His grace," and her that was afflicted, trouble being God's most effectual instrument, in recalling the soul to Himself. "For the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down" Psa 146:8.
And will make her that halteth, a remnant, placing her among the elect and holy, and her that was cast off strong; for Christ giveth oft to such souls great richness of divine graces, so that "where sin abounded, grace" should "much more abound" Rom 5:20. Rib.: "To it, when enlightened and purified by affliction and by repentance, it is promised, that its Lord, the Great King, shall come to it, and again reign in it, which is the great bliss of souls in grace. For then doth the soul really reign, when it submits wholly to Christ, whom to serve is to reign, and so, under Him, receives power to command its wrong desires, and rule itself;" that great and wonderful power which the Evangelist expresses in words so brief, "To them gave He power to become the sons of God" Joh 1:12. Thus He maketh it strong, so that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, can separate it from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" Rom 8:38-39.
Then, "he describes the condition of the soul fluctuating between good and evil, called one way by God through inward inspirations, and another way by the enticements and habits of sin. And, wishing to follow God, yet not to be without its sinful pleasures, and knowing this to be impossible, it is in anguish and hesitates. Her the prophet justly rebukes, 'why thus cry aloud, as though thou must be led captive by the Devil, not knowing or unable to extricate thyself? Hast thou no King, aided by whose power, thou mayest fight against all enticements, habit, the flesh?' Paul felt this and cried aloud, "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Rom 7:23-24. You see his grief. But he despairs not. He knows that he has a King. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Or why grievest thou, as if thou hadst no "counsellor," by whose counsels to free thee from these snares? "Thy Counsellor" indeed "perished" on the Cross, but for thy sake, that thou mayest live.
He died, to destroy him who hath the power of death. But He rose the third day and is still with thee; at the Right Hand of the Father He still reigns Immortal forever. See how many counsels He has left thee in the Gospel, how many admonitions, whereby thou mayest lead a happy and tranquil life. Now "pain seizes thee like a woman in travail." For such a soul travails, having conceived inspirations from God, which it wishes to obey, but that the flesh, overcome by concupiscence, resists, and so it never brings forth, nor experiences that joy, whereof the Lord speaketh, "When she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world" Joh 16:21. Wherefore he adds; be in pain, for thou art indeed in travail; thou wilt not cease to be in pain, until thou bring forth. Thou wilt go forth, etc. "God, by a provision of His great mercy, allows lukewarm souls, who will be at no pains to gain grace, to fall into foulest sins, in order that, owning at last their misery, they may cease to be lukewarm, and with great ardor of soul may embrace virtue. For, warned by the result, they understand that they themselves emboldened the tempter, (for he chiefly attacks the lukewarm and remiss,) and they become ardent in the conflict and in well-doing."
Wherefore he says, thou shalt go forth out of the city, that City of God, whereof He is the Builder and Maker Heb 11:10, which is gladdened by the river of His spirit; "and it dwells in the open field, unprotected, ready to be a prey, in the broad way of its own concupiscences, out of the narrow road which leadeth to life, and goeth even to Babylon, the city of 'confusion,' in tumult and din and unrest, and the distractions of this life." Yet even there shall it be delivered, like the poor Prodigal, who came to himself in a far country, when worn out by its hard service. Even there it must not despair, but remember, with him, its Father's house, its former home, the Heavenly Jerusalem. Its pains within or without, whereby it is brought back, are travail-pains. Though all is dark, it must not say, I have no Counsellor. For its Redeemer's Name is "Counsellor" Isa 9:6, "one Counsellor of a thousand" (Ecclesiasticus 6:6). : "Thine Intercessor never dies."
Out of the very depth of misery will the Divine Mercy draw thee. Though thou seem held by the strong hand of the enemy, and he seems to triumph over thee and to jeer thee, "There, there so would we have it, we have devoured him" Psa 35:25, and hosts of devils seek thy utter destruction, and thou seem to be "delivered over" Co1 5:5 to them to the destruction of the flesh; yet is it only that the spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord. Even Satan, when he is tormenting souls, knows not the thoughts of the Lord, nor understands His counsels, how, by the very pain which he inflicts, God is bidding: them, Rise and (Rib.) "look up to heaven and long for heavenly things and trample on all which they had hitherto foully served, honor or vain glory or covetousness or lust;" how He will exalt their horn in the Lord, make it strong as iron that they should do all things through Christ in strengthening them, and conquer all through the might of Christ; how He should bruise Satan under their feet shortly, and they consecrate wholly to God their whole strength, every power of soul and body which hitherto had been the adversary's.
Bible
Micah Chapter 5
Micah 5:1
mic 5:1
Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops - The "daughter of troops" is still the same who was before addressed, Judah. The word is almost always . used of "bands of men employed in irregular, marauding, in-roads." Judah is entitled "daughter of troops," on account of her violence, the robbery and bloodshed within her (Mic 2:8; Mic 3:2; etc. Hos 5:10), as Jeremiah says, "Is this house which is called by My Name become a den of robbers in your eyes?" (Jer 7:11, compare Mat 21:13). She then who had spoiled Isa 33:1 should now be spoiled; she who had formed herself in bands to lay waste, shall now be gathered thick together, in small bands, unable to resist in the open field; yet in vain should she so gather herself; for the enemy was upon her, in her last retreat.
This description has obviously no fulfillment, except in the infliction by the Romans. For there was no event, before the invasion by Sennacherib and accordingly in the prophet's own time, in which there is any seeming fulfillment of it. But then, the second deliverance must be that by the Maccabees; and this siege, which lies, in order of time, beyond it, must be a siege by the Romans. With this it agrees, that whereas, in the two former visitations, God promised, in the first, deliverance, in the second, victory, here the prophet dwells on the Person of the Redeemer, and foretells that the strength of the Church should not lie in any human means Mic 5:8-15. Here too Israel had no king, but a judge only. Then the "gathering in robber-bands" strikingly describes their internal state in the siege of Jerusalem; and although this was subsequent to and consequent upon the rejection of our Lord, yet there is no reason why the end should be separated from the beginning since the capture by Titus was but the sequel of the capture by Pompey, the result of that same temper, in which they crucified Jesus, because He would not be their earthly king. It was the close of the organic existence of the former people; after which the remnant from among them with the Gentiles, not Israel after the flesh, were the true people of God.
He hath laid siege against us - The prophet, being born of them, and for the great love he bore them, counts himself among them, as Paul mourns over his brethren after the flesh. "They shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek." So Paul said to him who had made himself high priest, "God shall smite thee, thou whited wall; for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law" Act 23:3. It is no longer "the king" (for they had said, "We have no King but Caesar Joh 19:15) but the "judge of Israel," they who against Christ and His Apostles gave wrong judgment. As they had smitten contrary to the law, so were the chief men smitten by Titus, when the city was taken. As they had done it, was done unto them. To be smitten on the thee, betokens shame; to smite with the red, betokens destruction. Now both shall meet in one; as, in the Great Day, the wicked "shall awake to shame and everlasting contempt, and shall perish forever" Dan 12:2.
Micah 5:2
mic 5:2
But - (And) thou, Bethlehem Ephratah With us, the chequered events of time stand in strong contrast, painful or gladdening. Good seems to efface evil, or evil blots out the memory of the good. God orders all in the continuous course of His Wisdom. All lies in perfect harmony in the Divine Mind. Each event is the sequel of what went before. So here the prophet joins on, what to us stands in such contrast, with that simple, And. Yet he describes the two conditions bearing on one another. He had just spoken of the "judge of Israel" smitten on the cheek, and, before Mic 4:9, that Israel had neither king nor "counsellor;" he now speaks of the Ruler in Israel, the Everlasting. He had said, how Judah was to become mere bands of men; he now says, how the "little Bethlehem" was to be exalted. He had said before, that the rule of old was to come to "the tower of the flock, the daughter of Jerusalem;" now, retaining the word, he speaks of the Ruler, in whom it was to be established.
Before he had addressed "the tower of the flock;" now, Bethlehem. But he has greater things to say now, so he pauses , And thou! People have admired the brief appeal of the murdered Caesar, "Thou too, Brutus." The like energetic conciseness lies in the words, "And thou! Bethlehem Ephratah." The name Ephratah is not seemingly added, in order to distinguish Bethlehem from the Bethlehem of Zabulon, since that is only named once Jos 19:15, and Bethlehem here is marked to be "the Bethlehem Judah" , by the addition, "too little to be among the thousands of Judah." He joins apparently the usual name, "Bethlehem," with the old Patriarchal, and perhaps poetic Psa 132:6 name "Ephratah," either in reference and contrast to that former birth of sorrow near Ephratah Gen 35:19; Gen 48:7, or, (as is Micah's custom) regarding the meaning of both names.
Both its names were derived from "fruitfulness;" "House of Bread" and "fruitfulness;" and, despite of centuries of Mohammedan oppression, it is fertile still. .
It had been rich in the fruitfulness of this world; rich, thrice rich, should it be in spiritual fruitfulness. : "Truly is Bethlehem, 'house of bread,' where was born "the Bread of life, which came down from heaven" Joh 6:48, Joh 6:51. : "who with inward sweetness refreshes the minds of the elect," "Angel's Bread" Psa 78:25, and "Ephratah, fruitfulness, whose fruitfulness is God," the Seed-corn, stored wherein, died and brought forth much fruit, all which ever was brought forth to God in the whole world.
Though thou be little among the thousands of Judah - Literally, "small to be," that is, "too small to be among" etc. Each tribe was divided into its thousands, probably of fighting men, each thousand having its own separate head Num 1:16; Num 10:4. But the thousand continued to be a division of the tribe, after Israel was settled in Canaan Jos 22:21, Jos 22:30; Sa1 10:19; Sa1 23:23. The "thousand" of Gideon was the meanest in Manasseh. Jdg 6:15. Places too small to form a thousand by themselves were united with others, to make up the number . So lowly was Bethlehem that it was not counted among the possessions of Judah. In the division under Joshua, it was wholly omitted . From its situation, Bethlehem can never have been a considerable place.
It lay and lies, East of the road from Jerusalem to Hebron, at six miles from the capital. "6 miles," Arculf, (Early Travels in Palestine, p. 6) Bernard (Ibid. 29) Sae, wulf, (Ibid. 44) "2 hours." Maundrell, (Ibid. 455) Robinson (i. 470)). It was "seated on the summit-level of the hill country of Judaea with deep gorges descending East to the Dead Sea and West to the plains of Philistia," "2704 feet above the sea" . It lay "on a narrow ridge" , whose whole length was not above a mile , swelling at each extremity into a somewhat higher eminence, with a slight depression between . : "The ridge projects Eastward from the central mountain range, and breaks down in abrupt terraced slopes to deep valleys on the N. E. and S." The West end too "shelves gradually down to the valley" . It was then rather calculated to be an outlying fortress, guarding the approach to Jerusalem, than for a considerable city.
As a garrison, it was fortified and held by the Philistines Sa2 23:14 in the time of Saul, recovered from them by David, and was one of the 15 cities fortified by Rehoboam. Yet it remained an unimportant place. Its inhabitants are counted with those of the neighboring Netophah, both before Ch1 2:54 and after Neh 7:26 the captivity, but both together amounted after the captivity to 179 Ezr 2:21, Ezr 2:2, or 188 Neh 7:26 only. It still does not appear among the possessions of Judah Neh 11:25-30. It was called a city (Rut 1:19; Ezr 2:1, with 21; Neh 7:6, with 26), but the name included even places which had only 100 fighting men Amo 5:3. In our Lord's time it is called a village Joh 7:42, a city, Luk 2:4, or a strong . The royal city would become a den of thieves. Christ should be born in a lowly village. : "He who had taken the form of a servant, chose Bethlehem for His Birth, Jerusalem for His Passion."
Matthew relates how the Chief Priest and Scribes in their answer to Herod's enquiries, where Christ should be born, Mat 2:4-6, alleged this prophecy. They gave the substance rather than the exact words, and with one remarkable variation, art not the least among the princes of Judah. Matthew did not correct their paraphrase, because it does not affect the object for which they alleged the prophecy, the birth of the Redeemer in Bethlehem. The sacred writers often do not correct the translations, existing in their time, when the variations do not affect the truth .
Both words are true here. Micah speaks of Bethlehem, as it was in the sight of men; the chief priests, whose words Matthew approves, speak of it as it was in the sight of God, and as, by the Birth of Christ, it should become. : "Nothing hindered that Bethlehem should be at once a small village and the Mother-city of the whole earth, as being the mother and nurse of Christ who made the world and conquered it." : "That is not the least, which is the house of blessing, and the receptacle of divine grace." : "He saith that the spot, although mean and small, shall be glorious. And in truth," adds Chrysostom, "the whole world came together to see Bethlehem, where, being born, He was laid, on no other ground than this only." : "O Bethlehem, little, but now made great by the Lord, He hath made thee great, who, being great, was in thee made little. What city, if it heard thereof, would not envy thee that most precious Stable and the glory of that Crib? Thy name is great in all the earth, and all generations call thee blessed. "Glorious things are everywhere spoken of thee, thou city of God" Psa 87:3. Everywhere it is sung, that this Man is born in her, and the Most High Himself shall establish her.
Out of thee shall He come forth to Me that is to be Ruler in Israel - (Literally, shall (one) come forth to Me "to be Ruler.") Bethlehem was too small to be any part of the polity of Judah; out of her was to come forth One, who, in God's Will, was to be its Ruler. The words to Me include both of Me and to Me. Of Me, that is, , by My Power and Spirit," as Gabriel said, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God" Luk 1:35. To Me, as God said to Samuel, "I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided Me a king among his sons" Sa1 16:1. So now, "one shall go forth thence to Me," to do My Will, to My praise and glory, to reconcile the world unto Me, to rule and be Head over the true Israel, the Church. He was to "go forth out of Bethlehem," as his native-place; as Jeremiah says, "His noble shall be from him, and his ruler shall go forth out of the midst of him" Jer 30:21; and Zechariah, "Out of him shall come forth the cornerstone; out of him the nail, out of him the battle-bow, out of him every ruler together" Zac 10:4. Before, Micah had said "to the tower of Edar, Ophel of the daughter of Zion, the first rule shall come to thee;" now, retaining the word, he says to Bethlehem, "out of thee shall come one to be a ruler." "The judge of Israel had been smitten;" now there should "go forth out of" the little Bethlehem, One, not to be a judge only, but a Ruler.
Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting - Literally, "from the days of eternity." "Going forth" is opposed to "going forth;" a "going forth" out of Bethlehem, to a "going forth from eternity;" a "going forth," which then was still to come, (the prophet says, "shall go forth,") to a "going forth" which had been long ago (Rup.), "not from the world but from the beginning, not in the days of time, but "from the days of eternity." For "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Same was in the beginning with God." Joh 1:1-2. In the end of the days, He was to go forth from Bethlehem; but, lest he should be thought then to have had His Being, the prophet adds, His 'goings forth are from everlasting.'" Here words, denoting eternity and used of the eternity of God, are united together to impress the belief of the Eternity of God the Son. We have neither thought nor words to conceive eternity; we can only conceive of time lengthened out without end. : "True eternity is boundless life, all existing at once," or , "to duration without beginning and without end and without change."
The Hebrew names, here used, express as much as our thoughts can conceive or our words utter. They mean literally, from afore, (that is, look back as far as we can, that from which we begin is still "before,") "from the days of that which is hidden." True, that in eternity there are no divisions, no succession, but one everlasting "now;" one, as God, in whom it is, is One. But man can only conceive of Infinity of space as space without bounds, although God contains space, and is not contained by it; nor can we conceive of Eternity, save as filled out by time. And so God speaks after the manner of men, and calls Himself "the Ancient of Days" Dan 7:9, , "being Himself the age and time of all things; before days and age and time," "the Beginning and measure of ages and of time." The word, translated "from of old," is used elsewhere of the eternity of God Hab 1:12. "The God of before" is a title chosen to express, that He is before all things which He made. "Dweller of afore" Psa 55:20 is a title, formed to shadow out His ever-present existence.
Conceive any existence afore all which else you can conceive, go back afore and afore that; stretch out backward yet before and before all which you have conceived, ages afore ages, and yet afore, without end, - then and there God was. That afore was the property of God. Eternity belongs to God, not God to eternity. Any words must be inadequate to convey the idea of the Infinite to our finite minds. Probably the sight of God, as He is, will give us the only possible conception of eternity. Still the idea of time prolonged infinitely, although we cannot follow it to infinity, shadows our eternal being. And as we look along that long vista, our sight is prolonged and stretched out by those millions upon millions of years, along which we can look, although even if each grain of sand or dust on this earth, which are countless, represented countless millions, we should be, at the end, as far from reaching to eternity as at the beginning. "The days of eternity" are only an inadequate expression, because every conception of the human mind must be so.
Equally so is every other, "From everlasting to everlasting" Psa 90:2; Psa 103:17; "from everlasting" (Psa 93:2, and of Divine Wisdom, or God the Son, Pro 8:23); "to everlasting" Psa 9:8; Psa 29:10; "from the day" Isa 43:13, that is, since the day was. For the word, from, to our minds implies time, and time is no measure of eternity. Only it expresses pre-existence, an eternal Existence backward as well as forward, the incommunicable attribute of God. But words of Holy Scripture have their full meaning, unless it appear from the passage itself that they have not. In the passages where the words, forever, from afore, do not mean eternity, the subject itself restrains them. Thus forever, looking onward, is used of time, equal in duration with the being of whom it is written, as, "he shall be thy servant forever" Exo 21:6, that is, so long as he lives in the body. So when it is said to the Son, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever" Psa 45:6, it speaks of a kingdom which shall have no end. In like way, looking backward, "I will remember Thy wonders from old" Psa 77:12, must needs relate to time, because they are marvelous dealings of God in time. So again, "the heavens of old, stand simply contrasted with the changes of man" Psa 68:34. But "God of old is the Eternal God" Deu 33:27. "He that abideth of old" Psa 55:20 is God enthroned from everlasting In like manner the "goings forth" here, opposed to a "going forth" in time, (emphatic words being moreover united together,) are a going forth in eternity.
The word, "from of old," as used of being, is only used as to the Being of God. Here too then there is no ground to stop short of that meaning; and so it declares the eternal "going-forth," or Generation of the Son. The plural, "goings forth," may here be used, either as words of great majesty, "God," "Lord," "Wisdom," (that is, divine Pro 1:20; Pro 9:1) are plural; or because the Generation of the Son from the Father is an Eternal Generation, before all time, and now, though not in time, yet in eternity still. As then the prophet saith, "from the days of eternity," although eternity has no parts, nor beginning, nor "from," so he may say "goings forth," to convey, as we can receive it, a continual going-forth. We think of Eternity as unending, continual, time; and so he may have set forth to us the Eternal Act of the "Going Forth" of the Son, as continual acts.
The Jews understood, as we do now, that Micah foretold that the Christ was to be born at Bethlehem, until they rejected Him, and were pressed by the argument. Not only did the chief priests formally give the answer, but, supposing our Lord to be of Nazareth, some who rejected Him, employed the argument against Him. "Some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the Scripture said, that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?" Joh 7:41-42. They knew of two distinct things: that Christ was:
(1) to be of the seed of David; and
(2) out of the town of Bethlehem.
Christians urged them with the fact, that the prophecy could be fulfilled in no other than in Christ. : "If He is not yet born, who is to go forth as a Ruler out of the tribe of Judah, from Bethlehem, (for He must needs come forth out of the tribe of Judah, and from Bethlehem, but we see that now no one of the race of Israel has remained in the city of of Bethlehem, and thenceforth it has been interdicted that any Jew should remain in the confines of that country) - how then shall a Ruler be born from Judaea, and how shall he come forth out of Bethlehem, as the divine volumes of the prophets announce, when to this day there is no one whatever left there of Israel, from whose race Christ could be born?"
The Jews at first met the argument, by affirming that the Messiah was born at Bethlehem on the day of the destruction of the temple ; but was hidden for the sins of the people. This being a transparent fable, the Jews had either to receive Christ, or to give up the belief that He was to be born at Bethlehem. So they explained it, "The Messiah shall go forth thence, because he shall be of the seed of David who was out of Bethlehem." But this would have been misleading language. Never did man so speak, that one should be born in a place, when only a remote ancestor had been born there. Micah does not say merely, that His family came out of Bethlehem, but that He Himself should thereafter come forth thence. No one could have said of Solomon or of any of the subsequent kings of Judah, that they should thereafter come forth from Bethlehem, any more than they could now say, 'one shall come forth from Corsic,' of any future sovereign of the line of Napoleon III., because the first Napoleon was a Corsican; or to us, 'one shall come out of Hanover,' of a successor to the present dynasty, born in England, because George I. came from Hanover in 1714.
Micah 5:3
mic 5:3
Therefore - Since God has so appointed both to punish and to redeem, He, God, or the Ruler "whose goings forth have been from of old from everlasting," who is God with God, "shall give them up, that is, withdraw His protection and the nearness of His Presence, "giving them up:"
(1) into the hands of their enemies. And indeed the far greater part never returned from the captivity, but remained, although willingly, in the enemy's land, outwardly shut out from the land of the promise and the hope of their fathers (as in Ch2 36:17).
(2) But also, all were, more than before, "given up" Act 7:42; Rom 1:24, Rom 1:26, Rom 1:28, to follow their own ways.
God was less visibly present among them. Prophecy ceased soon after the return from the captivity, and many tokens of the nearness of God and means of His communications with them, the Ark and the Urim and Thummim were gone. It was a time of pause and waiting, wherein the fullness of God's gifts was withdrawn, that they might look on to Him who was to come. "Until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth," that is, until the Virgin who should conceive and bear a Son and call His Name Emmanuel, God with us, shall give birth to Him who shall save them. And then shall be redemption and joy and assured peace. God provides against the fainting of hearts in the long time before our Lord should come.
Then - (And). There is no precise mark of time such as our word then expresses. He speaks generally of what should be after the Birth of the Redeemer. "The remnant of His brethren shall return unto the children of Israel." "The children of Israel" are the true Israel, "Israelites indeed" Joh 1:47; they who are such, not in name (Rom 9:6, etc.) only, but indeed and in truth. His brethren are plainly the brethren of the Christ; either because Jesus vouchsafed to be born "of the seed of David according to the flesh" Rom 1:3, and of them "as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever" Rom 9:5; or as such as He makes and accounts and "is not ashamed to call, brethren" Heb 2:11, being sons of God by grace, as He is the Son of God by nature. As He says, "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in Heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother" Mat 12:50; and, "My brethren are these who hear the word of God and do it" Luk 8:21.
The residue of these, the prophet says, shall return to, so as to be joined with , the children of Israel; as Malachi prophesies, "He shall bring back the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers" (Mal. 3:24, Hebrew). In the first sense, Micah foretells the continual inflow of the Jews to that true Israel who should first be called. All in each generation, who are the true Israel, shall be converted, made one in Christ, saved. So, whereas, since Solomon, all had been discord, and, at last, the Jews were scattered abroad everywhere, all, in the true Prince of Peace, shall be one (see Hos 1:11; Isa 11:10, etc.). This has been fulfilled in each generation since our Lord came, and shall be yet further in the end, when they shall haste and pour into the Church, and so "all Israel shall be saved" Rom 11:26.
But "the promise of God was not only to Israel after the flesh, but to all" also that were afar off, even as many as the Lord our God should call Act 2:39. All these may be called the remnant of His brethren, even those that were, before, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and afar off Eph 2:12-14, but now, in Christ Jesus, made one with them; all, brethren among themselves and to Christ their ruler. : "Having taken on Him their nature in the flesh, He is not ashamed to call them so, as the Apostle speaketh, confirming it out of the Psalm, where in the Person of Christ he saith, "I will declare Thy name unto My brethren" Psa 22:22. There is no reason to take the name, brethren, here in a narrower sense than so to comprehend all "the remnant whom the Lord shall call" Joe 2:32, whether Jews or Gentiles. The word "brethren" in its literal sense includes both, and, as to both, the words were fulfilled.
Micah 5:4
mic 5:4
And He shall stand - The prophet continues to speak of personal acts of this Ruler who was to be born. He was not to pass away, not to rule only by others, but by Himself. To stand is the attitude of a servant, as Jesus, although God and Lord of all, said of Himself, "He shall come forth and serve them" Luk 12:37; "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" Mat 20:28. "He shall stand" as a Shepherd Isa 61:5, to watch, feed, guard them, day and night; "He shall stand," as Stephen saw Christ "standing on the Right Hand of God" Act 7:55, "to succor all those who suffer for Him." : "For to sit belongs to one judging; to stand, to one fighting or helping." "He shall stand," as abiding, not to pass from them, as Himself saith, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" Mat 28:20 : and He shall feed His flock by His Spirit, His Word, His Wisdom and doctrine, His example and life; yea, by His own Body and Blood John 6. They whom He feedeth "lack nothing" Psa 23:1.
In the strength of the Lord - He, who feedeth them with divine tenderness, shall also have divine might, His Father's and His own, to protect them; as He saith, "My sheep hear My Voice, and I know them and they follow Me, neither shall any man pluck them out of My Hand. My Father Which gave them Me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's Hand. I and My Father are One" Joh 10:27-30. With authority, it is said, "He commandeth even the unclean spirits and they come out" Luk 4:36. His feeding or teaching also was "with authority, and not as the scribes" Mat 7:29.
In the majesty of the name of the Lord His God - As John says, "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of His Father" Joh 1:14; and He saith, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth" Mat 28:18; so that the divine glory should shine through the majesty of His teaching, the power of His Grace, upholding His own, and the splendor of the miracles wrought by Him and in His Name. "Of the Name of the Lord;" as He saith again, "Holy Father, keep through Thine own Name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one as We are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy Name" Joh 17:11-12. : "Whoever then is sent to feed His flock must stand, that is, be firm and unshaken; feed, not sell, nor slay; and feed in might, that is, in Christ." His God, as our Lord Himself, as Man, saith, "Unto My Father, and your Father, and to My God and your God" .
But that Majesty He Himself wields, as no mere man can; He Himself is invested with it. : "To ordinary kings God is strength Psa 28:7; Psa 140:7, or gives strength Sa1 2:10; men have strength in God; this Ruler is clad in the strength of the Lord, that same strength, which the Lord hath, whose is strength. Of Him, as Israel's King, the same is said as of the Lord, as King of the whole earth Psa 93:1; only that the strength of the Messiah is not His own, but the Lord's. He is invested with the strength of the Lord, because He is Man; as Man, He can be invested with the whole strength of the Lord, only because He is also God."
And they shall abide - (Literally, sit, dwell) in rest and security and unbroken peace under Christ their Shepherd and their King; they shall not wander to and fro as heretofore "He, their Shepherd, shall stand; they shall sit." "The word is the more emphatic, because it stands so absolutely. This will be a sitting or dwelling, which will indeed deserve the name. The original promise, so often forfeited by their disobedience should be perfectly fulfilled; "and ye shall dwell in your land safely, and I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid" . So Amos and Micah had before promised . And this is the result of the greatness of the promised Ruler, as the like promise of the Psalm is rested on the immutability of God; "Thou art the Same, and Thy years shall have no end. The children of Thy servants shall dwell, and their seed shall be established before Thee." Psa 102:27-28. For it follows,"
For now - (In the time which Micah saw as did Abraham with the eye of faith,) "now," in contrast to that former time of lowliness. His life shall be divided between a life of obscurity, and a life of never-ending greatness.
Shall He be great unto the (very) ends of the earth - embracing them in His rule, (as David and Solomon had foretold ,) and so none shall harm those whom He, the King of all the earth, shall protect. The universality of protection is derived from an universality of power. To David God says, "I have made thee a great name, like the name of the great that are in the earth" Sa2 7:9. Of Uzziah it is said, "His name went forth far; for he was marvelously helped, until he was strong" (Ch2 26:15, add Ch2 26:8); but of the Messiah alone it is said, that His power should reach to the ends of the earth; as God prophesies of Himself, that His "Name should be great among the pagan" Mal 1:11, Mal 1:14. So Gabriel said to His Mother, "This," whom she should bear, "shall be great" .
Micah 5:5
mic 5:5
And this Man shall be the Peace - This, emphatically, that is, "This Same," as is said of Noah, "This same shall comfort us" Gen 5:29, or, in the song of Moses, of the Lord, "This Same is my God" Exo 15:2. Of Him he saith, not only that He brings peace, but that He Himself is that Peace; as Paul saith, "He is our Peace" Eph 2:14, and Isaiah calls Him "the Prince of peace" Isa 9:6, and at His Birth the heavenly host proclaimed "peace on earth" Luk 2:14; and He "preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh" Eph 2:17; and on leaving the world He saith, "Peace I leave with you, My Peace I give unto you" Joh 14:27. "He shall be our Peace," within by His Grace, without by His Protection. Lap.: "Wouldest thou have peace with God, thine own soul, thy neighbor? Go to Christ who is our Peace," and follow the footsteps of Christ. "Ask peace of Him who is Peace. Place Christ in thy heart and thou hast placed Peace there."
When the Assyrian shall come into our land, and when he shall tread in our palaces - Assur stands for the most powerful and deadliest foe, "ghostly and bodily," as the Assyrian then was of the people of God. For since this plainly relates to the time after Christ's coming, and, (to say the least,) after the captivity in Babylon and deliverance Mic 4:10 from it, which itself followed the dissolution of the Assyrian Empire, the Assyrians cannot be the literal people, who had long since ceased to be In Isaiah too the Assyrian is the type of antichrist and of Satan .
As Christ is our Peace, so one enemy is chosen to represent all enemies who Act 12:1 vex the Church, whether the human agents or Satan who stirs them up and uses them. "By the Assyrian," says Cyril, "he here means no longer a man out of Babylon, but rather marks out the inventor of sin, Satan. Or rather, to speak fully, the implacable multitude of devils, which spiritually ariseth against all which is holy, and fights against the holy city, the spiritual Zion, whereof the divine Psalmist saith, "Glorious things are spoken of thee, thou city of God." For Christ dwelleth in the Church, and maketh it, as it were, His own city, although by His Godhead filling all things. This city of God then is a sort of land and country of the sanctified and of those enriched in spirit, in unity with God. When then the Assyrian shall come against our city, that is, when barbarous and hostile powers fight against the saints, they shall not find it unguarded."
The enemy may tread on the land and on its palaces, that is, lay low outward glory, vex the body which is of earth and the visible temple of the Holy Spirit, as he did Paul by the thorn in the flesh, the minister of Satan to buffet him, or Job in mind body or estate, but Luk 12:4 after that he has no more than he can do; he cannot hurt the soul, because nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, and (Rup.) Christ who is our Peace is in us; and of the saint too it may be said, "The enemy cannot hurt him" Psa 89:22. Rib.: Much as the Church has been vexed at all times by persecutions of devils and of tyrants, Christ has ever consoled her and given her peace in the persecutions themselves: "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ" Co2 1:4-5. The Apostles Act 5:41 departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name. And Paul writeth to the Hebrews, "ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing that ye have in heaven a better and more enduring substance" Heb 10:34.
Then shall we raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal men - (Literally, anointed, although elsewhere used of pagan princes.)
The "shepherds" are manifestly inferior, spiritual, shepherds, acting under the One Shepherd, by His authority, and He in them. The princes of men are most naturally a civil power, according to its usage elsewhere Jos 13:21; Psa 83:12; Eze 32:30. The "seven" is throughout the Old Testament a symbol of a sacred whole, probably of the union of God with the world , reconciled with it; eight, when united with it, is something beyond it . Since then "seven" denotes a great, complete, and sacred multitude, by the eight he would designate "an incredible and almost countless multitude." Rib.: "So in defense of the Church, there shall be raised up very many shepherds and teachers (for at no time will it be forsaken by Christ;) yea by more and more, countlessly, so that, however persecutions may increase, there shall never be lacking more to teach, and exhort to, the faith."
Micah 5:6
mic 5:6
And they shall waste - Literally, feed on, and so eat up. They who were shepherds of their own people, should consume their enemies. Jeremiah uses the same image. "The shepherds with their flocks shall come unto her; they shall pitch tents against her round about; they shall feed, each his space" Jer 6:3. So Joshua and Caleb say, "They, (the inhabitants of Canaan,) are bread for us" Num 14:9. So it was said to Peter, "arise, Peter, kill and eat" Act 10:13; and what once was common, defiled and unclean, shall turn to the nourishment and growth of the Church, and be incorporated into Christ, being made part of His Body.
And the land of Nimrod - Babylon, which should displace Assyria, but should carry on its work of chastising God's people, is joined by Micah, as by Isaiah Isa. 10:5-34; 13-14:27, as an object of His judgment. In Isaiah, they are the actual Assyria Isa 10:12-15 and Babylon Isa 14:13-15 whose destruction is foretold, yet so as to shadow out rebellion against God in its intensest form, making itself independent of, or measuring itself against, God. Hence, probably, here alone in holy Scripture, Babylon is called "the land of Nimrod," as indeed he founded it Gen 10:10, but therewith was the author of the tower of Babel also, which was built in rebellion against God, whence his own name was derived . Assyria then, and the world-empire which should succeed it, stand as representing the God-opposed world.
In the entrances thereof - (Literally, in the gates thereof.) The shepherds of Israel shall not act on the defensive only, but shall have victory over the world and Satan, carrying back the battle into his own dominions, and overthrowing him there. Satan's malice, so far from hurting the Church, shall turn to its good. Wherein he hoped to waste it, he shall be wasted; wherein he seemed to triumph, he shall be foiled. So it has been ever seen, how, under every persecution, the Church grew. : "The more it was pressed down, the more it rose up and flourished;" , "Shivering the assault of the Pagans, and strengthened more and more, not by resisting, but by enduring." Yet all, by whomsoever done, shall be the work of Christ alone, enduring in martyrs, teaching in pastors, converting through the Apostles of pagan nations. Wherefore he adds:
Thus (And) He shall deliver us from the Assyrian - Not they, the subordinate shepherds, but He, the Chief Shepherd until the last enemy shall be destroyed and death shall be swallowed up in victory, shall deliver, whether by them or by Himself as He often so doth, - not us only (the saying is the larger because unlimited) but - He shall deliver, absolutely. Whosoever shall be delivered, He shall be their deliverer; all, whom He alone knoweth, who alone "knoweth them that are His" Ti2 2:19. "Neither is there salvation in any other" Act 4:12. "Whoso glorieth, let him glory in the Lord" Co2 10:17. Every member of Christ has part in this, who, through the grace of God, "has power and strength to have victory and to triumph against the devil, the world, and the flesh" - not he, but the grace of God which is with him; and much more, all, whether Apostles or Apostolic men, or Pastors, or Bishops and Overseers, who, by preaching or teaching or prayer, bring those to the knowledge of the truth, who "sat in darkness and the shadow of death" Psa 107:10, and by whom "God translates us into the kingdom of His dear Son" Col 1:13.
Micah 5:7
mic 5:7
And the remnant of Jacob - Micah (Mic 4:7), as well as Isaiah (Isa 10:21), had prophesied, that a remnant only should return unto the Mighty God. These, though very many in themselves, are yet but a remnant only of the unconverted mass; yet this, "the remnant, who shall be saved" Rom 9:27, who believe in Christ, "the little flock" Luk 12:32, of whom were the Apostles and their disciples, "shall be, in the midst of many people," whom they won to the faith, as John in Asia, Thomas in India, Peter in Babylon and Rome, Paul well-nigh in the whole world, what? something to be readily swallowed up by their multitude? No, but "as a dew from the Lord, as the showers from the grass, which tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men," quickening to life that, which, like soon-withered (see Psa 102:5, Psa 102:12; Kg2 19:26; Isa 37:27) grass, no human cultivation, no human help, could reach.
In the Gospel and the grace of Christ there are both, gentleness and might; softness, as the dew, might as of a lion. For "Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily; and sweetly doth she order all things" . The dew is, in Holy Scripture, a symbol of divine doctrine. "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass" Deu 32:2. The dew comes down from heaven, is of heavenly not of earthly birth, transparent, glistening with light, reflecting the hues of heaven, gentle, slight, weak in itself, refreshing, cooling the strong heats of the day (Ecclesiasticus 18:16; 43:22), consumed itself, yet thereby preserving life, falling on the dry and withered grass wherein all nature droops, and recalling it to freshness of life. And still more in those lands, where from the beginning of April to the end of October, the close of the latter and the beginning of the early rain, during all the hot months of summer, the life of all herbage depends upon the dew alone . "Showers" are so called from the "multitude" of drops, slight and of no account in themselves, descending noiselessly yet penetrating the more deeply.
So did the Apostles "bedew the souls of believers with the word of godliness and enrich them abundantly with the words of the Gospel," themselves dying, and the Church living the more through their death Co2 4:12, quenching the fiery heat of passions, and watering the dry and barren soil, that it might bring forth fruits unto Christ. Yet, they say, "the excellency of the power was of God and not of us" Co2 4:7. and "God gave the increase" Co1 3:6-7. For neither was their doctrine "of man nor by man" Gal 1:12; but it came from heaven, the Holy Spirit teaching them invisibly and making unlearned and ignorant men mighty inward and deed. Rup.: "Whence these and these alone the Church of Christ looks up to, as furnishing the rule of truth." Rib.: "The herb, upon which this dew falleth, groweth to God without any aid of man, and flourisheth, and needeth neither doctrines of philosophers, nor the rewards or praises of men."
Micah 5:8
mic 5:8
And the remnant of Jacob shall be as a young lion - o: "What more unlike than the sweetness of the dew and the fierceness of the lion? What so different as the gentle shower distilling on the herb, and the savageness or vehemence of a lion roaring among "the flocks of sheeps?" Yet both are ascribed to "the remnant of Jacob." Why? Because the Apostles of Christ are both tender and severe, tender in teaching and exhorting, severe in rebuking and avenging. How does Paul teach, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation; now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God!" 2 Cor. 5:19-6:11. What sweeter than the dew of love, the shower of true affection? And so, on to that, "our heart is enlarged." They are such drops of dew as no one could doubt came from "the Lord, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort" Co2 1:3.
Yet the same Apostle after a little writes, "This is the third time I am coming to you. I told you before and foretell you, and being absent now I write to them which heretofore have sinned and to all others, that if I come again, I will not spare, since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me" Co2 13:1-3. See the severity of a master, like the roaring of "a lion among the beasts of the forest." For such surely are they whom he rebukes for the Co2 12:21 uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they had committed. Was he not to such as a lion? Co1 5:2-5? Was not Peter such, when he rebuked Ananias first and then Sapphira his wife, and they fell down and gave up the ghost? They tread down or "cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God" Co2 10:5; as Christ Himself, who spake in them, is both a lamb and the "Lion of the tribe of Judah" Rev 5:5, and nothing is so terrible as "the wrath of the Lamb" Rev 6:16.
And none can deliver - Dionysius: "For as the Apostles past from nation to nation, and trod down paganism, subduing it to Christ, and taking within their net the many converted nations, none could withdraw from the Apostles' doctrine those whom they had converted." The pagan world "cried out that the state is beset, that the Christians are in their fields, their forts, their islands." : "We are a people of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to you, cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum! We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies, our numbers in a single province will be greater."
Micah 5:9
mic 5:9
Their hand shall be lifted up upon their adversaries - The might of the Church is the Might of Christ in her, and the glory of the Church is His from whom it comes and to whom it returns. It is all one, whether this be said to Christ or to the "remnant of Jacob, that is, His Church. Her "enemies" are His, and her's only because they are His, and hate her as belonging to Him. They "shall be cut off," either ceasing to be His enemies, or ceasing to be, as Julian or Arius or antichrist, "whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His Mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His Coming" Th2 2:8. And in the end, Satan also, over whom Christ gave the Apostles "power to tread on all the power of the Enemy" Luk 10:19, shall be "bruised under our feet" Rom 16:20.
Micah 5:10
mic 5:10
And it shall come to pass in that day - Of grace in the kingdom of Christ and of His Presence in the Apostles and with the Church; "I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee." The greater the glory and purity of the church, the less it needs or hangs upon human aid. The more it is reft of human aid, the more it hangs upon God. So God promises, as a blessing, that He will remove from her all mere human resources, both what was in itself evil, and what, although good, had been abused. Most of these things, whose removal is here promised, are spoken of at the same time by Isaiah, as sin, or the occasion of sin, and of God's judgments to Judah. "Soothsayers," (the same word) "horses, chariots, idols the work of their hands; high towers, fenced walls" Isa 2:6-8, Isa 2:15. Rib. Lap.: "I will take, from thee all arms wherewith, while unconverted, thou opposedst the faith," all which thou settest up as idols in place of God. (Such are witchcrafts, soothsayers, graven images, images of Ashtaroth.) "I will take from thee all outward means and instruments of defense which aforetime were turned into pride and sin;" as horses and chariots. Not such shall be the arms of the Church, not such her strongholds. A horse is a vain thing to save a man. Her arms shall be the despised Cross of shame; her warriors, they who bear it; their courage, to endure in holy patience and meekness; their might, the Holy Spirit within them; their victories, through death, not of others, but their Master's and, in His, their own. They shall overcome the world, as He overcame it, and through Him alone and His Merits who overcame it by suffering.
Micah 5:11
mic 5:11
I will cut off the cities of thy land - So God promised by Zechariah, "Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls; for I will be unto her a wall of fire round about" Zac 2:4-5. The Church shall not need the temptation of human defense; for God shall fence her in on every side. Great cities too, as the abode of luxury and sin, of power and pride, and, mostly, of cruelty, are chiefly denounced as the objects of God's anger. Babylon stands as the emblem of the whole city of the world or of the devil, as opposed to God. Rup.: "The first city was built by Cain; Abel and the other saints heed no continuing city" Heb 13:14 here. Cities then will include (Rup.) "all the tumults and evil passions and ambition and strife and bloodshed, which Cain brought in among men. Cities are collectively called and are Babylon, with whom, (as in the Revelations we hear a voice from heaven saying), "the kings of the earth committed fornication and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies" Rev 18:3; and of which it is written, "And a mighty Angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city, Babylon, be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all." Rev 18:21. "Great rest then is promised to holy Zion that is, the Church, when the cities or strongholds of the land (strongholds, as they are, of earthliness) shall be destroyed. For together with them are included all objects of desire in them, with the sight whereof the citizens of the kingdom of God, while pilgrims here, are tempted; whereof the wise man saith, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
The fulfillment reaches on to the Day of Judgment, when the Church shall finally receive glory from the Lord, and be "without spot and wrinkle" Eph 5:27. All looks on to that Day. The very largeness of the promise, which speaks, in its fullest sense, of the destruction of things, without which we can hardly do in this life, (as cities or things very useful to the needs of man, (as horses,) carries us on yet more to that Day when there will be no more need of any outward things; Rup.: "when the heavy body shall be changed, and shall have the swiftness of angels, and shall be transported whither it willeth, without chariots and horses; and all things which tempt the eye shall cease; and no evil shall enter; and there shall be no need of divining, amid the presence and full knowledge of God, and where the ever-present Face of God, who is Truth, shall shine on all, and nothing be uncertain or unknown; nor shall they need to form in their souls images of Him whom His own shall see as He Is; nor shall they esteem anything of self, or the work of their own hands; but God shall be All in all." In like way, the woe on those who obey not the truth, also looks on to the end. It too is final. There is nothing to soften it. Punishments in the course of life are medicinal. Here no mention is made of Mercy, but only of executing vengeance; and that, with wrath and fury; and that, such as they have not heard. For as eye hath not seen, nor heart conceived the good things laid up in store for those who love God, so neither the evil things prepared for those who, in act, shew that they hate Him.
Bible
Micah Chapter 6
Micah
mic 6:0
The foregoing prophecy closed with the final cleansing of the Church and the wrath of God resting on the wicked, when, as Paul saith, "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power; when He shall come to be glorified in His Saints, and to be admired in all them that believe" Th2 1:7-10. The prophet here begins his third and last summons to judgment, in the Name, as it were, of the All-Holy Trinity, against whom they had sinned.
Micah 6:1
mic 6:1
Hear ye now what the Lord saith - If ye will not hear the rebuke of man, hear now at last the word of God. "Arise thou, Micah." The prophet was not willing to be the herald of woe to his people; but had to arise at the bidding of God, that he might not "be rebellious like that rebellious house" Eze 2:8. Stand up; as one having all authority to rebuke, and daunted by none. He muses the hearer, as shewing it to be a very grave urgent matter, to be done promptly, urgently, without delay. "Contend thou before (better, as in the English margin with) the mountains." Since man, who had reason, would not use his reason, God calls the mountains and hills, who Rom 8:20 unwillingly, as it were, had been the scenes of their idolatry, as if he would say (Lap.), "Insensate though ye be, ye are more sensible than Israel, whom I endowed with sense; for ye feel the voice and command of God your Creator and obey Him; they do not. I cite you, to represent your guilty inhabitants, that, through you, they may hear My complaint to be just, and own themselves guilty, repent, and ask forgiveness." "The altars and idols, the blood of the sacrifices, the bones and ashes upon them, with unuttered yet clear voice, spoke of the idolatry and guilt of the Jews, and so pronounced God's charge and expostulation to be just. Ezekiel is bidden, in like way, to prophesy against "the mountains of Israel Eze 6:2-5, "I will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places, and your altars shall be desolate." : "Lifeless nature without voice tells the glory of God; without ears it hears what the Lord speaks." Psa 19:3; Luk 19:40.
Micah 6:2
mic 6:2
Hear, ye strong (or, it may be, ye enduring,) foundations of the earth - Mountains and rocks carry the soul to times far away, before and after. They change net, like the habitable, cultivated, surface of the earth. There they were, before the existence of our short-lived generations; there they will be, until time shall cease to be. They have witnessed so many vicissitudes of human things, themselves unchanging. The prophet is directed to seize this feeling of simple nature. "They have seen so much before me," Yes! "then they have seen all which befell my forefathers; all God's benefits, all along, to them and to us, all their and our unthankfulness."
He will plead with Israel - God hath a strict severe judgment with His people, and yet vouchsafes to clear Himself before His creatures, to come down from His throne of glory and place Himself on equal terms with them. He does not plead only, but mutually (such is the force of the word) impleads with His people, hears if they would say aught against Himself, and then gives His own judgment . But this willingness to hear, only makes us condemn ourselves, so that we should be without excuse before Him. We do owe ourselves wholly to Him who made us and hath given us all things richly to enjoy.
If we have withdrawn ourselves from His Service, unless He dealt hardly with us, we dealt rebelliously and ungratefully with Him. God brings all pleas into a narrow space. The fault is with Him or with us. He offers to clear Himself. He sets before us His good deeds, His Loving kindness, Providence, Grace, Long-suffering, Bounty, Truth, and contrasts with them our evil deeds, our unthankfulness, despitefulness, our breach of His laws, and disorderings of His creation. And then, in the face of His Goodness, He asks, "What evil have I done, what good have I left undone?" so that our evil and negligences should be but a requital of His. For if it is evil to return evil for evil, or not to return good for good, what evil is it to return evil for His exceeding good! As He says by Isaiah, "What could have been done more to My vineyard and I have not done in it. Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?" Isa 5:4.
And our Blessed Lord asks; "Many good works have I shewed you from My Father. For which of those works do ye stone Me?" Joh 10:32. "Which of you convinceth Me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe Me?" Joh 8:46. Away from the light of God, we may plead excuses, and cast the blame of our sins upon our temptations, or passions, or nature, that is, on Almighty God Himself, who made us. When His light streams in upon our conscience, we are silent. Blessed if we be silenced and confess to Him then, that we be not first silenced in the Day of Judgment Job 1:8; Job 2:3; Eze 14:20. Righteous Job said, "I desire to reason with God" Job 13:3; but when his eye saw Him, he said, "wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" Job 42:5-6.
Micah 6:3
mic 6:3
O My people - This one tender word, twice repeated , contains in one a whole volume of reproof. It sets before the eyes God's choice of them of His free grace, and the whole history of His loving-kindness, if so they could be ashamed of their thanklessness and turn to Him. "Mine," He says, "ye are by creation, by Providence, by great deliverances and by hourly love and guardianship, by gifts of nature, the world, and grace; such things have I done for thee; what against thee? 'what evil have I done unto thee?'" "Thy foot did not swell these forty years" Deu 8:4, for He upbears in all ways where He leads. Wherein have I wearied thee? for "His commandments are not grievious" Jo1 5:3. Thou hast been weary of Me, O Israel, God says by Isaiah, "I have not wearied thee with incense; thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities" Isa 43:22-24.
Micah 6:4
mic 6:4
For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the hoarse of servants - What wert thou? What art thou? Who made thee what thou art? God reminds them. They were slaves; they are His people in the heritage of the pagan, and that by His outstretched arm. God mentions some heads of the mercies which tie had shown them, when He had made them His people, His redemption of them from Egypt, His guidance through the wilderness, His leading them over the last difficulty to the proraised land. The use of the familiar language of the Pentateuch is like the touching of so many key-notes, recalling the whole harmony of His love. Moses, Aaron, and Miriam together, are Lawgiver, to deliver and instruct; Priest, to atone; and prophetess Exo 15:20 to praise God; and the name of Miriam at once recalled the mighty works at the Red Sea and how they then thanked God.
Micah 6:5
mic 6:5
Remember now - The word translated now is a very tender one, like our "do now remember" or "do remember," beseeching instead of commanding. Dionysius: "I might command, but I speak tenderly, that I may lead thee to own the truth." "What Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him." God did not only raise up Moses, Aaron, Miriam, out of their brethren, but He turned the curse of the alien Balaam into a blessing; and that, not for their righteousness, (for even then they were rebellious,) but against their deserts, out of His own truth and righteousness. Not that the curse of Balaam could in itself have hurt them; but, in proportion to his reputation, it would have infused great energy into their enemies: and its reversal must have struck a great panic into them and into others. Human might having failed in Sihon and Og, Balak sought superhuman. God showed them by their own diviner, that it was against them. Even after they had seduced Israel, through Balaam's devilish counsel, Midian seems to have been stricken by God with panic, and not to have struck a blow Num 31:49.
From Shittim unto Gilgal - The words are separated by the Hebrew accent from what went before. It is then probably said in concise energy for, "Remember too front Shittim to Gilgal," that is, all the great works of God "from Shittim" , the last encampment of Israel out of the promised land, where they so sinned in Baal-peor, "unto Gilgal," the first in the promised land, which they entered by miracle, where the Ark rested amid the victories given them, where the Covenant was renewed, and "the reproach of Egypt was rolled away" Jos 5:9. Remember all, from your own deep sin and rebellion to the deep mercy of God.
That ye may know the righteousness - (righteousnesses) of the Lord His Faithfulness in performing His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God speaketh of His promises, not as what they were in themselves, mere mercy, but as what they became, through that gracious and free promise, righteousness, in that He had bound Himself to fulfill what He had, out of mere grace, promised. So in the New Testament He saith, "God is not unrighteous that He should forget your works and labor which proeeedeth of love" Heb 6:10; and, "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" Jo1 1:9. Micah speaks, by a rare idiom, of the righteousnesses of the Lord, each act of mercy being a separate effluence of His Righteousness. The very names of the places suggest the righteous acts of God, the unrighteous of Israel. : "But we too, who desire with unveiled face to behold the glory of the Lord, and have Abraham really for our father, let us, when we have sinned, hear God pleading against us, and reproving us for the multitude of His benefits. For we too once served Pharaoh and the people of Egypt, laboring in works of mire and clay; and He redeemed us who gave Himself a Redemption for all; that we, the redeemed of the Lord, "whom He redeemed out of the hand of the enemy and gathered from the lands, might say, His mercy endureth forever" Psa 107:1-3. He sent also before our face Moses, the spiritual Law, and Aaron the High Priest, not bearing the typical Ephod and Urim, but having in His Forehead the seal of holiness which God the Father sealed; and Miriam, the foreshewing of prophets. Recollect we too what he thought against us who willed to devour us, the true Balak, Satan, who laid snares for us through Balaam, the destroyer of the people, fearing lest we should cover his land and occupy it, withdrawing the earthly-minded from his empire."
Micah 6:6
mic 6:6
Wherewith shall I come before the Lord? - The people, thus arraigned, bursts in, as men do, with professions that they would be no more ungrateful; that they will do anything, everything - but what they ought. With them it shall be but "Ask and have." They wish only to know, with what they shall come? They would be beforehand with Him, anticipating His wishes; they would, with all the submission of a creature, bow, prostrate themselves before God; they acknowledge His High Majesty, who dwelleth on high, the most High God, and would abase themselves before His lofty greatness, if they but knew, "how" or "wherewith."
They would give of their best; sacrifices the choicest of their kind, which should be wholly His, whole-burnt-offerings, offered exactly according to the law, "bullocks of a year old" Lev 9:2-3; then too, the next choice offering, the rams; and these, as they were offered for the whole people on very solemn occasions, in vast multitudes, thousands or ten thousands ; the oil which accompanied the burnt sacrifice, should flow in rivers ; nay, more still; they would not withhold their sons, their first born sons, from God, part, as they were, of themselves, or any fruit of their own body.
They enhance the offering by naming the tender relation to themselves Deu 28:53. They would offer everything, (even what God forbade) excepting only what alone He asked for, their heart, its love and its obedience . The form of their offer contains this; they ask zealously, "with what shall I come." It is an outward offering only, a thing which they would bring. Hypocritical eagerness! a sin against light. For to enquire further, when God has already revealed anything, is to deny that He has revealed it. It comes from the wish that He had not revealed what lie has revealed. : "whose, after he hath found the truth, discusseth anything further, seeketh a lie." God had told them, long before, from the time that He made them His people, what he desired of them; So Micah answers,
Micah 6:8
mic 6:8
He hath shewed thee - Micah does not tell them now, as for the first time; which would have excused them. He says, "He hath shewed thee;" He, about whose mind and will and pleasure they were pretending to enquire, the Lord their God. He had shewn it to them. The law was full of it. He shewed it to them, when He said, "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him and to serve the Lord, thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command thee this day for thy good?" Deu 10:12-13. They had asked, "with what outward thing shall I come before the Lord;" the prophet tells them, "what thing is good," the inward man of the heart, righteousness, love, humility.
And what doth the Lord require (search, seek) of thee? - The very word implies an earnest search within. He would say (Rup.), "Trouble not thyself as to any of these things, burnt-offerings, rams, calves, without thee. For God seeketh not thine, but thee; not thy substance, but thy spirit; not ram or goat, but thy heart." : "Thou askest, what thou shouldest offer for thee? Other thyself. For what else doth the Lord seek of thee, but thee? Because, of all earthly creatures, He hath made nothing better than thee, He seeketh thyself from thyself, because thou hadst lost thyself."
To do judgment - are chiefly all acts of equity; "to love mercy," all deeds of love. Judgment, is what right requires; mercy, what love. Yet, secondarily, "to do judgment" is to pass righteous judgments in all cases; and so, as to others, "judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment" Joh 7:24; and as to one's self also. Judge equitably and kindly of others, humbly of thyself. : "Judge of thyself in thyself without acceptance of thine own person, so as not to spare thy sins, nor take pleasure in them, because thou hast done them. Neither praise thyself in what is good in thee, nor accuse God in what is evil in thee. For this is wrong judgment, and so, not judgment at all. This thou didst, being evil; reverse it, and it will be right. Praise God in what is good in thee; accuse thyself in what is evil. So shalt thou anticipate the judgment of God, as He saith, "If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged of the Lord" Co1 11:31. He addeth, love mercy; being merciful, out of love, "not of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver" Co2 9:7. These acts together contain the whole duty to man, corresponding with and formed upon the mercy and justice of God Psa 101:1; Psa 61:7. All which is due, anyhow or in any way, is of judgment; all which is free toward man, although not free toward God, is of mercy. There remains, walk humbly with thy God; not, bow thyself only before Him, as they had offered Mic 6:6, nor again walk with Him only, as did Enoch, Noah Abraham, Job; but walk humbly (literally, bow down the going) yet still with thy God; never lifting up thyself, never sleeping, never standing still, but ever walking on, yet ever casting thyself down; and the more thou goest on in grace, the more cast thyself down; as our Lord saith, "When ye have done all these things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do" Luk 17:10.
It is not a "crouching before God" displeased, (such as they had thought of,) but the humble love of the forgiven; "walk humbly," as the creature with the Creator, but in love, with thine own God. Humble thyself with God, who humbled himself in the flesh: walk on with Him, who is thy Way. Neither humility nor obedience alone would be true graces; but to cleave fast to God, because He is thine All, and to bow thyself down, because thou art nothing, and thine All is He and of Him. It is altogether a Gospel-precept; bidding us, "Be ye perfect, as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect" Mat 5:48; "Be merciful, as your Father also is merciful;" Luk 6:36; and yet, in the end, have "that same mind which was also in Christ Jesus, who made Himself of no reputation" Phi 2:5, Phi 2:7, Phi 2:9.
The offers of the people, stated in the bare nakedness in which Micah exhibits them, have a character of irony. But it is the irony of the truth and of the fact itself. The creature has nothing of its own to offer; "the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin" Heb 10:4; and the offerings, as they rise in value, become, not useless only but, sinful. Such offerings would bring down anger, not mercy. Micah's words then are, for their vividness, an almost proverbial expression of the nothingness of all which we sinners could offer to God. : "We, who are of the people of God, knowing that "in His sight shall no man living be justified" Psa 143:2, and saying, "I am a beast with Thee" Psa 73:22, trust in no pleas before His judgment-seat, but pray; yet we put no trust in our very prayers. For there is nothing worthy to be offered to God for sin, anal no humility can wash away the stains of offences.
In penitence for our sins, we hesitate and say, Wherewith shall I come before the Lord? how shall I come, so as to be admitted into familiar intercourse with my God? One and the same spirit revolveth these things in each of us or of those before us, who have been pricked to repentance, 'what worthy offering can I make to the Lord?' This and the like we revolve, as the Apostle saith; "We know not what to pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" Rom 8:20. "Should I offer myself wholly as a burnt-offering to Him?' If, understanding spiritually all the Levitical sacrifices, I should present them in myself, and offer my first-born, that is, what is chief in me, my soul, I should find nothing worthy of His greatness. Neither in ourselves, nor in ought earthtly, can we find anything worthy to be offered to reconcile us with God. For the sin of the soul, blood alone is worthy to be offered; not the blood of calves, or rams, or goats, but our own; yet our own too is not offered, but given back, being due already Psa 116:8. The Blood of Christ alone sufficeth to do away all sin." Dionysius: "The whole is said, in order to instruct us, that, without the shedding of the Blood of Christ and its Virtue and Merits, we cannot please God, though we offered ourselves and all that we have, within and without; and also, that so great are the benefits bestowed upon us by the love of Christ, that we can repay nothing of them."
But then it is clear that there is no teaching in this passage in Micah which there is not in the law . The developments in the prophets relate to the Person and character of the Redeemer. The law too contained both elements:
(1) the ritual of sacrifice, impressing on the Jew the need of an Atoner;
(2) the moral law, and the graces inculcated in it, obedience, love of God and man, justice, mercy, humility, and the rest.
There was no hint in the law, that half was acceptable to God instead of the whole; that sacrifice of animals would supersede self-sacrifice or obedience. There was nothing on which the Pharisee could base his heresy. What Micah said, Moses had said. The corrupt of the people offered a half-service, what cost them least, as faith without love always does. Micah, in this, reveals to them nothing new; but tells them that this half-service is contrary to the first principles of their law. "He bath shewed thee, O man, what is good." Sacrifice, without love of God and man, was not even so much as the body without the soul. It was an abortion, a monster. For one end of sacrifice was to inculcate the insufficiency of all our good, apart from the Blood of Christ; that, do what we would, "all came short of the glory of God" Rom 3:23. But to substitute sacrifice, which was a confession that at best we were miserable sinners, unable, of ourselves, to please God, for any efforts to please Him or to avoid displeasing Him, would be a direct contradiction of the law, antinomianism under the dispensation of the law itself.
Micah changes the words of Moses, in order to adapt them to the crying sins of Israel at that time. He then upbraids them in detail, and that, with those sins which were patent, which, when brought home to them, they could not deny, the sins against their neighbor.
Micah 6:9
mic 6:9
The voice of the Lord crieth unto the city - that is, Jerusalem, as the metropolis of their wealth and their sin, the head and heart of their offending. "Crieth," aloud, earnestly, intently, so that all might hear. So God says, "Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding pat forth her voice? She crieth at the gates, - unto you, O men, I cry, and my voice is to the sons of men" Pro 8:1, Pro 8:3-4; and Isaiah prophesied of John the Immerser, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness" Isa 40:3; Mat 3:3; and our Lord saith, "He that heareth you, heareth Me. And the man of wisdom shall see Thy Name" Luk 10:16. The voice of God is in the hearing of all, but the wise only seeth the Name of God. The word rendered "wisdom" means, "that which is," "See ye the word of the Lord.") They shall see His power and majesty and all which His Name expresses, as they are displayed severally in each work of His: He shall speak to them by all things wherein He is; and so seeing Him now in a glass darkly, they shall hereafter see all, His Glory, His Goodness, His Love, Himself, "face to face."
Hear ye the rod - that is, the scourge of the wrath of God. The name and the image recall the like propecies of Isaiah, so that Micah in one word epitomises the prophecies of Isaiah, or Isaiah expands the word of Micah. "The rod in thine hand is My indignation" Isa 10:5; "As if the rod lifted up Him, who is not wood" Isa 10:15; "He lifteth up his rod against thee" Isa 10:24; "Thou hast broken the rod (which is) on his shoulder" (Isa 9:3, Hebrew); "The Lord hath broken the rod of the wicked" Isa 14:5; "wheron the grounded (that is, fixed by the decree of God) staff shall pass" Isa 30:32.
And who hath appointed it - that is, beforehand, fixing the time and place, when and where it should come. So Jeremiah says, "How canst thou (sword of the Lord) be quiet, and the Lord hath given it a charge to Ashkelon and to the seashore? there hath He appointed it" Jer 47:7. He who has "appointed it," changeth not His decree, unless man changeth; nor is He lacking in power to fulfill it. He will surely bring it to pass. All which can be thought of, of fear, terror, motives to repentance, awe, hope, trust, is in that word "who." It is God; hopes and fears may be infinite.
Micah 6:10
mic 6:10
Are there yet - Still after all the warnings and long-suffering of God, "the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked?" "Treasures of wickedness" are treasures gotten by wickedness; yet it means too that he wicked shall have no treasure, no fruit, but his wickedness. He treasureth up treasures, but of wickedness; as James saith, "Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days" Jam 5:3, that is, of the miseries that shall come upon them James 1. The words stand over against one another; "house of the wicked, treasures of wickedness;" as though the whole house of the wicked was but a "treasure-house of wickedness." Therein it began; therein and in its rewards it shall end. "Are there yet?" the prophet asks. There shall soon cease to be. The treasure shall be spoiled; the iniquity alone shall remain.
And the scant ephah - (Literally, "ephah of leanness" the English margin) which is abominable? Scant itself, and, by the just judgment of God, producing scantness, emaciated and emaciating (See Mic 6:14); as He says, "He gave them their desire, and sent leanness withal into their soul" Psa 106:15; and James, "it shall eat your flesh as it were fire" Jam 5:3. Even a pagan said, , "Gain gotten by wickedness is loss;" and that, as being "abominable" or "accursed" or, one might say, "bewrathed," lying under the wrath and curse of God. Rib.: "What they minish from the measure, that they add to the wrath of God and the vengeance which shall come upon them; what is lacking to the measure shall be supplied out of the wrath of God." The Ephah was a corn-measure Amo 8:5, containing about six bushels; the rich, in whose house it was, were the sellers; they were the necessaries of life then, which the rich retailers of corn were selling dishonestly, at the price of the lives of the poor . Our subtler ways of sin cheat ourselves, not God. In what ways do not competitive employers use the scant measure which is accursed? What else is all our competitive trade, our cheapness, our wealth, but scant measure to the poor, making their wages lean, full and overflowing with the wrath of God?
Micah 6:11
mic 6:11
Shall I count them pure? - Rather, (as the English margin) "Shall I be pure?" The prophet takes for the time their person and bids them judge themselves in him. If it would defile me, how are ye, with all your other sins, not defiled? All these things were expressly forbidden in the law. "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in mete-yard, in weight or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just ephah and a just him, shall ye have" Lev 19:35-36; and, "Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteousness are an abomination unto the Lord thy God" (Deu 25:13, Deu 25:15-16, add Pro 11:1; Pro 16:11; Pro 20:10). Yet are not these things common even now?
Micah 6:12
mic 6:12
For the rich men thereof - that is, "of the city, Mic 6:9 are full of violence." It bad been little, had thieves and robbers lived by violence, but now, (as Isaiah at the same time upbraids them,) "her princes were become companions of thieves" Isa 1:23. Not the poor out of distress, but the rich, out of wantonness and exceeding covetousness and love of luxury, not only did wrong but were filled, not so much with riches, as with violence. Violence is the very meat and drink wherewith they are filled, yea, and wherewith they shall be filled, when it is returned upon their heads.
And the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies - Fraud is itself lying, and lying is its inseparable companion. Jerome: "Lying followeth the gathering together of riches, and the hard custom to lay up riches hath a deceitful tongue." The sin, he saith, is spread throughout all her inhabitants; that is, all of them, as their custom, have spoken lies, and, even when they speak not, the lie is ready; "their tongue is deceitful (literally, deceit) in their mouth." It is deceit, nothing but deceit, and that, deceit which should "overthrow" and ruin others. One intent on gain has the lie ever ready to be uttered, even when he speaks not. It lurks concealed, until it is needed.
Micah 6:13
mic 6:13
Therefore also will I - (Literally, And I too,) that is, this dost thou, and thus will I too do. Pococke: "As thou madest sick the heart of the poor oppressed, so will I, by My grievous and severe punishments, make thee sick," or make thy wound incurable, as in Nahum, "thy wound is grievous," (Nah 3:19 literally, made sick. In making thee desolate because of thy sins. The heaping up riches shall itself be the cause of thy being waste, deserted, desolate.
Micah 6:14
mic 6:14
Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied - The correspondence of the punishment with the sin shall shew that it is not by chance, but from the just judgment of God. The curse of God shall go with what they eat, and it shall not nourish them. The word, thou, is thrice repeated . As God had just said, I too, so here, Thou. Thou, the same who hast plundered others, shalt thyself eat, and not be satisfied; "thou shalt sow, and not reap; thou shalt tread the olive, and thou shalt not anoint thee with oil." "Upon extreme but ill-gotten abundance, there followeth extreme want. And whose," adds one, , "seeth not this in our ways and our times is absolutely blind. For in no period have we ever read that there was so much gold and silver, or so much discomfort and indigence, so that those most true words of Christ Jesus seem to have been especially spoken of us, "Take heed, for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" Luk 12:15. And is not this true of us now?
Thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee - Where thou hast laid up thy treasures, or rather thy wickedness, there thou shalt sink down, or give way, from inward decay, in the very center of thy wealth and thy sin. They had said, "Is not the Lord in the midst of us? None evil can come upon us" Mic 3:11. Micah tells them of a different indweller. God had departed from them, and left them to their inherent nothingness. God had been their stay; without God, human strength collapses. Scarcely any destruction is altogether hopeless save that which cometh from within. Most storms pass over, tear off boughs and leaves, but the stem remains. inward decay or excision alone are humanly irrecoverable. The political death of the people was, in God's hands, to be the instrument of their regeneration.
Morally too, and at all times, inward emptiness is the fruit of unrighteous fullness. It is disease, not strength; as even pagan proverbs said; "the love of money is a dropsy; to drink increaseth the thirst," and "amid mighty wealth, poor;" and Holy Scripture, "The rich He sendeth empty away" (Luk 1:53, compare Sa1 2:5). "And truly they must be empty. For what can fill the soul, save God?" Rib.: "This is true too of such as, like the Bishop of Sardis, 'have a name that they live and are dead' Rev 3:1," Dionysius, "such as do some things good, feed on the word of God, but attain to no fruit of righteousness;" "who corrupt natural and seeming good by inward decay; who appear righteous before men, are active and zealous for good ends, but spoil all by some secret sin or wrong end, as vain-glory or praise of men, whereby they lose the praise of God. Their casting down shall be in the midst of them. The meaning of the whole is the same, whether the word be rendered casting down, that is, downfall (literally, sinking down) or emptiness, especially of the stomach, perhaps from the feeling of "sinking."
Thou shalt take hold - To rescue or remove to a safe place from the enemy, those whom he would take from thee, "but shalt not" wholly deliver; "and that which thou deliverest for a time, will I give up to the sword," that is, the children for whose sake they pleaded that they got together this wealth; as, now too, the idols, for whose sake men toil wrongly all their life, are often suddenly taken away. Their goods too may be said to be given to the sword, that is, to the enemy.
Micah 6:15
mic 6:15
Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap - Micah renews the threatenings of the law Lev 26:16; Deu 28:30, Deu 28:38-41, which they had been habitually breaking. Those prophecies had been fulfilled before, throughout their history; they have been fulfilled lately in Israel for the like oppression of the poor Amo 5:11. Their frequent fulfillment spoke as much of a law of God's righteousness, punishing sin, as the yearly supply in the ordinary course of nature spoke of His loving Providence. It is the bitterest punishment to the covetous to have the things which they coveted, taken away before their eyes; it was a token of God's Hand, that He took them away, when just within their grasp. The prophet brings it before their eyes, that they might feel beforehand the bitterness of forgetting them. Montanus: "They should lose, not only what they gained unjustly, but the produce of their labor, care, industry, as, in agriculture, it is said that there is mostly much labor, little fraud, much benefit."
Harvest is a proverb for joy; "they joy before Thee according to the joy in, harvest" Isa 9:3; "wine maketh glad the heart of man, and oil is to make him a cheerful countenance" Psa 104:15. But the harvest shall be turned into sorrow, the oil and wine shall be taken away, when all the labor had been employed (Compare Isa 16:9-10; Jer 5:17; Jer 48:37). Yet, since all these operations in nature are adapted to be, and are used as, symbols of things spiritual, then the words which describe them are adapted to be spiritual proverbs. Spiritually, , "he soweth and reapeth not, who soweth to the flesh, and of the flesh reapeth corruption" Gal 6:8, things corruptible, and inward decay and condemnation. He treadeth the olive, who, by shameful deeds contrary to the law, "grieveth the Holy Spirit of God" Eph 4:30, and therefore obtaineth not gladness of spirit; "he maketh wine, yet drinketh not wine, who teacheth others, not himself." They too take hold but do not deliver, who for awhile believe and in time of temptation fall away, who repent for a while and then fall back into old sins, or in other ways bring no fruit to perfection; taking up the Cross for awhile and then wearying; using religious practices, as, more frequent prayer or fasting, and then tiring; cultivating some graces and then despairing because they see not the fruits. These tread the olive, but are not anointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit of grace, who (Rib.), "end by doing for the sake of man, what they had thought to do out of the love for God, and abandon, for some fear of man, the good which they had begun."
Micah 6:16
mic 6:16
For the statutes of Omri are kept - Rather, (like the English margin he doth much keep,) And he doth keep diligently for himself. Both ways express much diligence in evil . To "keep God's commandments" was the familiar phrase, in which Israel was exhorted, by every motive of hope and fear, to obedience to God. "I know him," God says of Abraham, "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do judgment and justice" Gen 18:19. This was the fundamental commandment immediately after the deliverance from Eyypt upon their first murmuring. "The Lord made there" (at Marah) "for them a statute and ordinance, and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians" Exo 15:25-26.
In this character Ha revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, as "shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments" Exo 20:6. This was their covenant, "Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God and to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes and His commandments and His judgments and to hearken unto His voice" Deu 26:17. This was so often enforced upon them in the law, as the condition upon which they should hold their land, if they kept the covenant (Exo 19:5; the words of this covenant, Deu 29:9), the commmandments Lev 22:31; Lev 26:3; Deu 4:2; Deu 6:17; Deu 7:11; Deu 8:6, Deu 8:11; Deu 10:13; Deu 11:1, Deu 11:8, Deu 11:22; Deu 13:5; Deu 15:5; Deu 19:9; Deu 27:1; Deu 28:9; Deu 30:10, the judgments Lev 18:5, Lev 18:26; Lev 20:22; Deu 7:11; Deu 8:11; Deu 11:1, the statutes (Lev 18:5, Lev 18:26; Lev 20:8, Lev 20:22; Deu 4:40; Deu 6:17; Deu 7:11; Deu 10:13; Deu 11:1; Deu 30:10), the testimonies Deu 6:17, the charge Lev 18:30; Deu 11:1 of the Lord. Under this term all the curses of the law were threatened, if they "hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord their God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded them" Deu 28:15.
Under this again the future of good and evil was, in Solomon, set before the house of David; of unbroken succession on his throne, if "thou wilt keep My commandments; but contrariwise, if ye or your children will not keep My commandments and My statutes" Kg1 9:4-6, banishment, destruction of the temple, and themselves to be "a proverb and a byword among all people" This was the object of their existence, Kg1 9:7. "that they might keep His statutes and observe His laws" Psa 105:45. This was the summary of their disobedience, "they kept not the covenant of God" Psa 78:11. And now was come the contrary to all this. They had not kept the commandments of God; and those commandments of man which were the most contrary to the commandments of God, they had kept and did keep diligently. Alas! that the Christian world should be so like them! What iron habit or custom of man, what fashion, is not kept, if it is against the law of God? How few are not more afraid of man than God? Had God's command run, Speak evil one of another, brethren, would it not have been the best kept of all His commandments? God says, speak not evil; custom, the conversation around, fear of man, say, speak evil; man's commandment is kept; God's is not kept. And no one repents or makes restitution; few even cease from the sin.
Scripture does not record, what was the special aggravation of the sin of Omri, since the accursed worship of Baal was brought in by Ahab , his son. But, as usual, "like father, like son." The son developed the sins of the father. Some special sinfulness of Omri is implied, in that Athaliah, the murderess of her children, is called after her grandfather, Omri, not after her father, Ahab Kg2 8:26; Ch2 22:2. Heresiarchs have a deeper guilt than their followers, although the heresy itself is commonly developed later. Omri settled for a while the kingdom of Israel, after the anarchy which followed on the murder of Elah, and slew Zimri, his murderer.
Yet before God, he did worse than all before him, and be walked in all the way of Jeroboam Kg1 16:25-26. Yet this too did not suffice Judah; for it follows, And all the doings of the house of Ahab, who again "did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him and served Baal" 1 Kings 30-33; Ahab, to whom none "was like in sin, who did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord" Kg1 21:25. These were they, whose statutes Judah now kept, as diligently and accurately as if it had been a religious act. They kept, not the statutes of the Lord, "but the statutes of Omri;" they kept, as their pattern before their eyes, all the doings of the house of Ahab, his luxury, oppression, the bloodshedding of Naboth; and they walked onward, not, as God bade them, humbly with Him, but in their counsels. And what must be the end of all this? that I should make thee a desolation. They acted, as though the very end and object of all their acts were that, wherein they ended, their own destruction and reproach .
Therefore ye shall bear the reproach of My people - The title of the people of God must be a glory or a reproach. Judah had gloried in being God's people, outwardly, by His covenant and protection; they Were envied for the outward distinction. They refused to be so inwardly, and gave themselves to the hideous, desecrating, worship of Baal. Now then what had been their pride, should be the aggravation of their punishment. Now too we hear of people everywhere zealous for a system, which their deeds belie. Faith, without love, (such as their character had been,) feels any insult to the relation to God, which by its deeds it disgraces. Though they had themselves neglected God, yet it was a heavy burden to them to bear the triumph of the pagan over them, that God was unable to help them, or had cast them off "These are the people of the Lord and are gone forth, out of His land" Eze 36:20. "Wherefore should they say among the pagan, where is their God?" (see the notes at Joe 2:17). "We are confounded, because we have heard reproach, shame hath covered our faces, for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the Lord's house" Jer 51:51. "We are become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us" Psa 79:4. "Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. Thou makest us a byword among the pagan, a shaking of the head among the people. My confusion is daily before me, and the shame of my face hath covered me, for the voice of him that slandereth and blasphemeth, by reason of the enemy and the avenger" Psa 44:13-16.
The words, "the reproach of My people," may also include "the reproach wherewith God in the law Deu 28:36 threatened His people if they should forsake Him," which indeed comes to the same thing, the one being the prophecy, the other the fulfillment. The word hissing in itself recalled the threat to David's house in Solomon; "At this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished and hiss" Kg1 9:8. Micah's phrase became a favorite expression of Jeremiah . So only do God's prophets denounce. It is a marvelous glimpse into man's religious history, that faith, although it had been inoperative and was trampled upon without, should still survive; nay, that God, whom in prosperity they had forsaken and forgotten, should be remembered, when He seemed to forget and to forsake them. Had the captive Jews abandoned their faith, the reproach would have ceased. The words, "ye shall bear the reproach" of My people are," at once, a prediction of their deserved suffering for the profanation of God's Name by their misdeeds, and of their persverance in that faith which, up to that Time, they had mostly neglected.
Bible
Micah Chapter 7
Micah
mic 7:0
The prophet's office of threatening woe is now over. Here, out of love, he himself crieth woe unto himself. He hath "continual sorrow in heart" Rom 9:2 for his people. He bewails what he cannot amend, and, by bewailing, shews them how much more they should bewail it, over whose sins he sorrows; how certain the destruction is, since there is none to stand in the gap and turn away the wrath of God, no "ten righteous," for whose sake the city may be spared. Rup.: "These words flow out of the fount of pity, because the good zeal, wherewith the Holy seem to speak severely, is never without pity. They are wroth with the sins, they sympathize with the sinner." So Isaiah mourned for the judgment, which he prophesied against the world, "Woe is me!" Isa 24:16 he sorrowed even for Moab Isa 15:5; Isa 16:11; and Joel, "Alas for the day!" Joe 1:15. and Jeremiah in that exclamation of impassioned sorrow; "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole world!" Jer 15:10.
Micah 7:1
mic 7:1
Woe - o is me! for I am, as when they have gathered the summer fruits , as the grape-gleanings of the vintage "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts," Isaiah said at the same time, "is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah His pleasant plants" Isa 5:7. Isaiah said, brought forth wild grapes; Micah, that there are but gleanings, few and poor.
It is as though Satan pressed the vineyard of the Lord, and made the most his prey, and few were left to those who glean for Christ; "the foxes have eaten the grapes" Sol 2:15. Some few remain too high out of their reach, or hidden behind the leaves, or, it may be , falling in the time of gathering, fouled, sullied, marred and stained, yet left." So in the gleaning there may be three sorts of souls; "two or three in the top of the uppermost bough" Isa 17:6, which were not touched; or those unripe, which are but imperfect and poor; or those who had fallen, yet were not wholly carried away. These too are all sought with difficulty; they had escaped the gatherer's eye, they are few and rare; it might seem at first sight, us though there were none. There is no cluster to eat; for the vintage is past, the best is but as a sour grape which sets the teeth on edge.
My soul desired the first-ripe fig. These are they which, having survived the sharpness of winter, ripen early, about the end of June; they are the sweetest ; but he longed for them in vain. He addressed a carnal people, who could understand only carnal things, on the side which they could understand. Our longings, though we pervert them, are God's gift. As they desired those things which refresh or recruit the thirsty body, as their whole self was gathered into the craving for that which was to restore them, so was it with him. Such is the longing of God for man's conversion and salvation; such is the thirst of His ministers; such their pains in seeking, their sorrow in not finding. Dionysius: "There were none, through whose goodness the soul of the prophet might spiritually be refreshed, in joy at his growth in grace, as Paul saith to Philemon, "refresh my bowels in the Lord" Plm 1:20. So our Lord saith in Isaiah, "I said, I have labored in vain, I hate spent my strength for nought and in vain" Isa 49:4. "Jesus was grieved at the hardness of their hearts" Mar 3:5.
Rib.: "The first-ripe fig may be the image of the righteous of old, as the Patriarchs or the Fathers, such as in the later days we fain would see."
Micah 7:2
mic 7:2
The, good - or godly, or merciful, the English margin
Man - The Hebrew word contains all. It is "he who loveth tenderly and piously" God, for His own sake, and man, for the sake of God. Mercy was probably chiefly intended, since it wits to this that the prophet had exhorted, and the sins which he proceeds to speak of, are against this. But imaginary love of God without love of man, or love of man without the love of God, is mere self-deceit. "Is perished out of the earth," that is, by an untimely death. The good had either been withdrawn by God from the evil to come Isa 57:1, or had Leon cut off by those who laid wait for blood; in which case their death brought a double evil, through the guilt which such sin contracted, and then, through the loss of those who might be an example to others, and whose prayers God would hear. The loving and upright, all, who were men of mercy and truth, had ceased. They who were left, "all lie in wait for blood," literally, bloods , that is, bloodshedding; all, as far as man can see; as Elijah complains that he was left alone.
Amid the vast number of the wicked, the righteous were as though they were not. Isaiah, at the same time, complains of the like sins, and that it was as though there were none righteous; "Your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips hate spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth" Isa 59:2-3. Indirectly, or directly, they destroyed life . To violence they add treachery. The good and loving had perished, and all is now violence; the upright had ceased, and all now is deceit. "They hunt every man his brother with a net." Every man is the brother of every man, because he is man, born of the same first parent, children of the same Father: yet they lay wait for one another, as hunters for wild beasts (Compare Psa 35:7; Psa 57:7; Psa 140:6; Jer 5:26).
Micah 7:3
mic 7:3
That they may do evil with both hands earnestly - (Literally, upon evil both hands to do well,) that is, "both their hands are upon evil to do it well," or "earnestly" , as our translation gives the meaning; only the Hebrew expresses more, that evil is their good, and their good or excellence is in evil. Bad men gain a dreadful skill and wisdom in evil, as Satan has; and cleverness in evil is their delight. Jerome: "They call the evil of their hands good." "The prince asketh, and the judge asketh (or, it may more readily be supplied, judgeth, doth that which is his office,) against right "for a reward", (which was strictly forbidden,) "and the great man he uttereth his mischievos desire" (Deu 16:19. See above Mic 3:11), (or the "desire of his soul".) Even the shew of good is laid aside; whatever the heart conceives and covets, it utters; - mischief to others and in the end to itself.
The mischief comes forth from the soul, and returns upon it. "The elders and nobles in the city" Kg1 21:8, Kg1 21:11, as well as Ahab, took part, (as one instance,) in the murder of Naboth. The great man, however, here, is rather the source of the evil, which he induces others to effect; so that as many as there were great, so many sources were there of oppression. All, prince, judges, the great, unite in the ill, and this not once only, but they are ever doing it and "so they wrap it up", (literally, twist, intertwine it.) Things are twisted, either to strengthen, or to pervert or intricate them. It might mean, they "strengthen" it, that which their soul covets against; the poor, or they "pervert" it, the cause of the poor.
Micah 7:4
mic 7:4
The best of them is as a brier - The gentlest of them is a thorn , strong, hard, piercing, which letteth nothing unresisting pass by but it taketh from it, "robbing the fleece, and wounding the sheep." "The most upright", those who, in comparison of others still worse, seem so, "is sharper than a thorn hedge", (literally, the upright, them a thorn hedge.) They are not like it only, but worse, and that in all ways; none is specified, and so none excepted; they were more crooked, more tangled, sharper. Both, as hedges, were set for protection; both, turned to injury. Jerome: "So that, where you would look for help, thence comes suffering." And if such be the best, what the rest?
The day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh - When all, even the good, are thus corrupted, the iniquity is full. Nothing now hinders the "visitation", which "the watchmen", or prophets, had so long foreseen and forewarned of. "Now shall be their perplexity" ; "now", without delay; for the day of destruction ever breakcth suddenly upon the sinner. "When they say, peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them" Th1 5:3. : "whose destruction cometh suddenly at an instant". They had perplexed the cause of the oppressed; they themselves were tangled together, intertwined in mischief, as a thorn-hedge. They should be caught in their own snare; they had perplexed their paths and should find no outlet.
Micah 7:5
mic 7:5
Trust ye not in a friend - It is part of the perplexity of crooked ways, that all relationships are put out of joint. Selfishness rends each from the other, and disjoints the whole frame of society. Passions and sin break every band of friendship, kindred, gratitude, nature. "Everyone 'seeketh his own'." Times of trial and of outward harass increase this; so that God's visitations are seasons of the most frightful recklessness as to everything but sell: So had God foretold Deu 28:53; so it was in the siege of Samaria Kg2 6:28, and in that of Jerusalem both by the Chaldeans Lam 4:3-16 and by the Romans . When the soul has lost the love of God, all other is but sceming love, since "natural affection" is from Him, and it too dies out, as God gives the soul over to itself Rom 1:28. The words describe partly the inward corruption, partly the outward causes which shall call it forth.
There is no real trust in any, where all are eorrupt. The outward straitness and perplexity, in which they shall be, makes that to crumble and fall to pieces, which was inwardly decayed and severed before. The words deepen, as they go on. First, "the friend", or neighbor, the common band of man and man; then "the guide", (or, as the word also means, one "familiar", united by intimacy, to whom, by continual intercourse, the soul was "used";) then the wife who lay in the bosom, nearest to the secrets of the heart; then those to whom all reverence is due, "father" and "mother". Our Lord said that this should be fulfilled in the hatred of His Gospel. He begins His warning as to it, with a caution like that of the prophet; "Be ye wise as serpents" Mat 10:16-17, and "beware of men". Then He says, how these words should still be true Mat 10:21, Mat 10:35-36. There never were wanting pleas of earthly interest against the truth.
He Himself was "cut off" lest "the Romans should take away their place and nation" Joh 11:48. The Apostles were accused, that they meant to "bring this Man's Blood upon" the chief priests Act 5:28; or as "ringleaders of the sect of the Nazarenes, pestilant fallows and movers of sedition, turning the world upside down, setters up of another king; troublers of the city; comanding things unlawful for Romans to practice; setters forth of strange gods; turning away much people" Act 24:5; Act 16:20-21; Act 17:6-7, Act 17:18; Pe1 2:12; endangering not men's craft only, but the honor of their gods; "evil doers". Truth is against the world's ways, so the world is against it. Holy zeal hates sin, so sinners hate it. It troubles them, so they count it, "one which troubleth Israel" Kg1 18:17. Tertullian, in a public defense of Christians in the second century, writes, , "Truth set out with being herself hated; as soon as she appeared, she is an enemy. As many as are strangers to it, so many are its foes; and the Jews indeed appropriately from their rivalry, the soldiers from their violence, even they of our own household from nature. Each flay are we beset, each day betrayed; in our very meetings and assemblies are we mostly surprised."
There was no lack of pleas. : "A Christian thou deemest a man guilty of every crime, an encmy of the goals, of the Emperors, of law, of morals, of all nature;" "factious," "authors of all public calamities through the anger of the pagan gods," "impious," "atheists," "disloyal," "public enemies." The Jews, in the largest sense of the word "they of their own household", were ever the deadliest enemies of Christians, the inventors of calumnies, the authors of persecutions. "What other race," says , Tertullian, "is the seed-plot of our calumnies?"
Then the Acts of the Martyrs tell, how Christians were betrayed by near kinsfolk for private interest, or for revenge, because they would not join in things unlawful. Jerome: "So many are the instances in daily life, (of the daughter rising against the mother) that we should rather mourn that they are so many, than seek them out." - "I seek no examples, (of those of a man's own househould being his foes) they are too many, that we should have any need of witness." Dionysius: "Yet ought we not, on account of these and like words of Holy Scripture, to be mistrustful or suspicious, or always to presume the worst, but to be cautious and prudent. For Holy Scripture speaketh with reference to times, causes, persons, places." So John saith, "Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God" Jo1 4:1.
Micah 7:7
mic 7:7
Therefore - (And,) when all these things come to pass and all human help fails, "I", for my part, "will look unto", (literally, "on") "the Lord" God, the Unchangeable. The prophet sets himself, I, with emphasis, against the multitude of the ungodly. When all forsake, betray, fail, when "love is waxed cold" Mat 24:12, and men, in the last days, shall be "lovers of their ownselves" Ti2 3:2, Ti2 3:4, "not lovers of God", I, - he does not say, "will trust," but - , "will" (Jerome), "with the eye of the heart contemplating, loving, venerating God most High, and weighing His mercy and justice," "gaze intently" with the devotion of faith toward Him, though I see Him not: yet so too I will rest "in" Him (compare Psa 25:15; Psa 123:1; Psa 141:8) and "on" Him, as the eyes are accustomed to rest in trust and love and dependence, and as, on the other hand, the eyes of God "espy into" Psa 66:7 man and dwell on him, never leaving him unbeheld.
I will "espy" Him, although from afar, with the eyes of the soul, as a watchman, (the word is the same,) looking for His coming and announcing it to others; and until He comes, "I will wait (I would wait") with trust unbroken by any troubles or delay, as Job saith, "Though He slay me, yet will I put my trust in Him" Job 13:15. The word is almost appropriated to a longing waiting for God. "For the God of my salvation". This too became a customary title of God , a title, speaking of past deliverances, as well as of confidence and of hope. Deliverance and salvation are bound up with God, and that, in man's personal experience. It is not only, "Saviour God," but "God, my Saviour," Thou who hast been, art, and wilt be, my God, my saving God. It is a prelude to the name of Jesus, our Redeeming God. "The Lord will hear me".
His purpose of waiting on God he had expressed wistfully. "I would wait;" for man's longing trust must be upheld by God. Of God's mercy he speaks confidently, "the Lord will hear me", He, who is ever "more ready to hear than we to pray." He has no doubts, but, as Abraham said, "the Lord will provide" Gen 22:8, Gen 22:14, so he, "The Lord will hear me". So, when Jehoshaphat prayed, "We have no might against this great company that cometh, against us, neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee" Ch2 20:12, Ch2 20:15; God answered by the prophet, "Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's". Micah unites with himself all the faithful as one, "in the unity of the spirit," where in all are one band, looking, waiting, praying for His Coming in His kingdom. Lap.: "God is our only refuge and asylum in things desperate, and rejoices to help in them, in order to shew His supreme Power and Goodness especially to those who believe, hope, and ask it. Therefore all mistrust and despondency is then to be supremely avoided, and a certain hope and confidence in God is to be elicited. This will call forth the help of God assuredly, yea though it were by miracle, as to Lot in Sodom, to Moses and the people from Pharaoh, to David from Saul, to Hezekiah from Sennacherib, to the Maccabees from Antiochus. This our proverbs express , how God aids, when there is least sign of it."
Micah 7:8
mic 7:8
Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy - The prophet still more makes himself one with the people, not only as looking for God, but in penitence, as Daniel bewails "his own sins and the sins of his people" Dan 9:10. The "enemy" is Babylon and "Edom" Oba 1:10, Oba 1:12; Psa 137:7; and then, in all times, (since this was written for all times, and the relations of the people of God and of its enemies are the same,) whosoever, whether devils or evil men, rejoice over the falls of God's people. "Rejoice not"; for thou hast no real cause; "the triumphing of the ungodly", and the fall of the godly, "is but for a moment. When I fall, I shall arise" Psa 30:5; (literally, "when I have fallen, I have arisen";) expressing both the certainty and speed of the recovery. To fall and to arise is one. : "The fall of infirmity is not grave, if free from the desire of the will. Have the will to rise, He is at hand who will cause thee to rise." (Ibid. 5:47): "Though I have sinned, Thou forgivest the sin; though I have fallen, thou raisest up; lest they, who rejoice in the sins of others, should have occasion to exult. For we who have sinned more, have gained more; for Thy grace maketh more blessed than our own innocence."
When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me - Montanus: "He does not say 'lie,' but sit; she was not as one dead, without hope of life, but she sat solitary as a widow, helpless, unable to restore herself, yet waiting for God's time. The darkness of the captivity was lightened by the light of the prophetic grace which shone through Daniel and Ezekiel, and by the faithfulness of the three children, and the brightness of divine glory shed abroad through them, when Nebuchadnezzar proclaimed to all people that their God was "God of gods and Lord of kings" Dan 2:47, and that none should "speak anything amiss against Him" Dan 3:29. Still more when, at the close of the captivity, they were delivered from sorrow, trouble, bondage, death, to joy, rest, freedom, life. Yet how much more in Christ, (for whom this deliverance prepared,) when "the people that walked in darkness have seern a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined" Isa 9:2. "God is not only our light", as (Lap.) "restoring us" outwardly "to gladness, freedom, happiness, whereof light is a symbol, as darkness is of sorrow, captivity, adversity, death." Scripture speaks of God, in a directer way, as being Himself our light. "The Lord is my light" Psa 27:1. "The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light" Isa 60:19. He calls Himself, "The light of Israel" Isa 10:17. He is our light, by infusing knowledge, joy, heavenly brightness, in any outward lot. He does not say, "after darkness, comes light," but "when I shall sit in darkness", then, "the Lord is light unto me". The "sitting in darkness" is the occasion of the light, in that the soul or the people in sorrow turns to Him who is their light. in their sin, which was so punished, they were turned away from the light.
Micah 7:9
mic 7:9
I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him - This is the temper of all penitents, when stricken by God, or under chastisement from Him. "It is the Lord, let Him, do what seemeth Him good" Sa1 3:18. "So let him curse, because the Lord hath said unto him, curse David. Who shall then say, Wherefore hast thou done so?" Sa2 16:10. "He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope" Lam 3:29. The penitent owns the just sentence of God, and, knowing that he deserves far more than God inflicts, is thankful to endure it, "until He remove it, until He plead my cause rend execute judgment for me", that is, until God Himself think the punishments inflicted, enough, and judge between me and those through whose hands they come. The judgments which God righteously sends, and which man suffers righteously from Him, are unrighteously inflicted by those whose malice He overrules, whether it be that of evil men (as the Assyrian or the Chaldaean or the Edomite) or of Satan. The close of the chastisements of His people is the beginning of the visible punishment of their misdecds, who used amiss the power which God gave them over it.
Whence it is said, "Daughter of Babylon, the wasted! blessed he that rewardth thee as thou hast served us" Psa 137:8. But all is of the mercy of God. So He saith, "He shall bring me forth to the light" of His Countenance and His favor and His truth. Micah speaks in the name of those who were penitent, and so were forgiven, and yet, in that they were under punishment, seemed to lie under the wrath of God. For, although God remits at once the eternal penalty of sin, yet we see daily, how punishment pursues the for given sinner, even to the end of life. The light of God's love may not, on grounds which He knoweth, shine unchequered upon him. We should not know the blackness of the offence of sin, and should never know the depth of God's mercy, but for our punishment. The indignation of God toward the penitcnt is an austere form of His love. So then penitents may well say, in every grief or sickness or visitation or disappointment, I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him. He says, "I shall behold His righteousness", because they had a righteous cause against man, although not toward God, and God in His just judgment on their enemies shewed Himself as the righteous Judge of the world.
Micah 7:10
mic 7:10
Then - (And) she that is mine enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover her which said unto me, Where is He, He of whom thou boastest, the Lord thy God? The cause of her gladness then is, that the blasphemies of the enemy of God were to cease. This was the bitterest portion of her cup, that they said daily, "Where is now thy God? let Him come and save thee;" as though He could not, or as though He loved her not, and she vainly presumed on His help. Even when fallen, it was for His sake that she was hated, who seemed to be overcome in her: as He was hated in His Martyrs, and they asked, , "Where is the God of the Christians?" Now the taunt was closed, and turned back on those who used it. The wheel, which they had turned against her, rolled round on themselves. They who had said, Let our eye look on Zion, now were ashamed that their hope had failed. They had longed to feed their sight on her miseries; Zion had her reverent gladness in gazing on the righteous hess of God. Babylon was trodden down by the Medes and Persians, and they whom she had let captive beheld it. Daniel was in the palace, when Belshazzar was slain.
The soul of one, who has known the chastening of God, cannot but read its own history here. The sinful soul is at once the object of the love of God and hath that about it which God hates. God hates the evil in us, even while lie loves us, being, or having been, evil. He forgives, but chastens. His displeasure is the channel of His goodpleasure. Nathan said to David, "The Lord hath put away thy sin" Sa2 12:10, Sa2 12:13, but also, "the sword shall never depart from thy house". It is part of His forgiveness to cleanse the soul with a "spirit of burning" Isa 4:4. "It seemeth to me," says Jerome, "that Jerusalem is every soul, which had been the temple of the Lord, and had had the vision of peace and the knowledge of Scripture, and which afterward, overcome by sins, hath fallen captive by its own consent, parting from that which is right in the sight of God, and allowing itself' to sink among the pleasures of the world."
So then "captive, and tortured, she saith to Babylon, that is, the confusion of this world and the power of the enemy which ruleth over the world, and sin who lordeth it over her, Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; when I fall, I shall arise;" Dionysius: "from sin by repentance, and from tribulation by the consolation of the Holy Spirit, who, after weeping, poureth in joy. "For the Lord helpeth them that are fallen" Psa 146:8, and saith by the prophet, "Shall they fall and not arise"? Jer 8:4. and, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live. If I walk in darkness, the Lord is my light"! Eze 33:11. For although "the rulers of the darkness of this world" Eph 6:12 have deceived me, and I "sit in darkness and in the shadow of death" Psa 107:10, and "my feet stumble upon the dark mountains" Jer 13:16, yet "to them who sit in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up" Isa 9:2, and "light shineth in darkness" Joh 1:5, and "the Lord is my light, and my salvation; whom then shall I fear"? Psa 27:1. and I will speak to Him and will say, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path" Psa 119:105 "He draweth me from the darkness of ignorance and from the black night of sin, and giveth a clear view of future bliss, and brighteneth the very inmost soul within."
Dionysius: "Even if a mist have come upon me and I have been in darkness, I too shall find the light, that is, Christ; and the Sun of Righteousness arising on my mind shall make it white." I will betty patiently, yet gladly, the indignation of the Lord, (Dionysius): "all adversity, trial, tribulation, persecution, which can happen in this life;" because I have sinned against Him, "and such is the enormity of sin, offered to the Majesty and dishonoring the Holiness of God, and such punishment doth it deserve in the world to come, that if we weigh it well, we shall bear with joy whatever adversity can befall us." Cyril: "For although for a short time I be out of His Presence, and be; "given to an undistinguishing mind" Rom 1:28, yet, seeing I suffer this rejection justly, I will bear the judgment, for I am not chastened in vain." "All chastening for the present seemeth not to be joyous but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousncss unto them who are exercised thereby" Heb 12:11.
Jerome: "The soul, feeling that it hath sinned, and hath the wounds of sins and is living in dead flesh and needs the cautery, says firmly to the Physician, 'Burn my flesh, cut open my wounds, all my imposthumes. It was my fault, that I was wounded; be it my pain, to endure such sufferings and to regain health.' And the true Physician shews to her, when whole, the cause of His treatment, and that He did rightly what He did. Then after these sufferings, the soul, being brought out of outer darkness, saith, I shall behold His Righteousness, and say, "Thou, O Lord, art upright; Rightous are Thy judgments, O God" Psa 119:137. But if Christ is "made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" Co1 1:30, he who, after the indignation of God, saith that He shall see His Righteousness, promiseth to himself the sight of Christ." Cyril: "Then, having considered in her mind the grace of the righteousness in Christ and the overthrow of sin, the soul, in full possession of herself, crieth out, Mine enemy shall see it, etc. For, after that Christ came unto us, justifying sinners through faith, the mouth of the ungodly One is stopped, and the Author of sin is put to shame. He hath lost his rule over us, and sin is trodden down, "like mire in the streets", being subjected to the feet of the saints. But the blotting-out of sin is the Day of Christ." Jerome: "And, because the end of all punishment is the beginning of good," God saith to the poor, penitent, tossed, soul, "the walls of virtues shall be built up in thee, and thou shalt be guarded on all sides, and the rule of thine oppressors shall be far removed, and thy King and God shall come unto thee, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God." Dionysius: "All this shall be most fully seen in the Day of Judgment."
Micah 7:11
mic 7:11
On this confession of unworthiness and trust the message of joy bursts in, with the abruptness and conciseness of Hosea or Nahum:
A day to build thy fences; (that is, cometh;)
That day, far shall be the degree;
That day, and he shall come quite to thee;
And there follows, in a longer but still remarkably measured and interrupted cadence,
the statement of the length and breadth from which the people shall come to her;
Up to and from Assyria and the cities of strong-land (Egypt;)
Up to and from strong-land and even to river (the Euphrates;)
And sea from sea, and mountain to mountain.
It is not human might or strength which God promises to restore. He had before predicted, that the kingdom of the Messiah should stand, not through earthly strength Mic 5:9-13. He promises the restoration, not of city walls, but of the fence of the vineyard of God, which God foretold by Isaiah that He would "break down" Isa 5:5. It is a peaceful renewal of her estate under God's protection, like that, with the promise whereof Amos closed his prophecy; "In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof" Amo 9:11. This decree, which he says shall be far away, might in itself be the decree either of God or of the enemy. The sense is the same, since the enemy was but the instrument of God. Yet it seems more in accordance with the language of the prophets, that it should be the decree of man. For the decree of God for the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of His people was accomplished, held its course, was fulfilled.
The destruction, captivity, restoration, were parts of one and the same decree of God, of which the restoration was the last accomplished in time. The restoration was not the removal, but the complete fulfillment, of the decree. He means then probably, that the decree of the enemy, whereby he held her captive, was to remove and be far off, not by any agency of her's . The people were to stream to her of themselves. One by one, shall all thy banished, captive, scattered, children be brought quite home unto thee from all parts of the earth, whither they have been driven, "from Assyria, and from strong-land". The name Matsor, which he gives to Egypt, modifying its ordinary dual name Mitsraim, is meant, at once to signify "Egypt" , and to mark the strength of the country; as, in fact, , "Egypt was on all sides by nature strongly guarded."
A country, which was still strong relatively to Judah, would not, of itself, yield up its prey, but held it straitly; yet it should have to disgorge it. Isaiah and Hosea prophesied, in like way, the return of Israel and Judah from Assyria and from Egypt. "And from strong-land even to the river" Isa 11:11; Isa 27:13; Hos 11:11 (Euphrates); the ancient, widest, boundary of the promised land; "and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain" Gen 15:18; Exo 23:31; Deu 1:7; Deu 11:24, Jos 1:4; Kg1 4:21, Kg1 4:24. These last are too large to be the real boundaries of the land. If understood geographically, it would by narrowig those which had just been spoken of, from Egypt to the Euphratcs. Joel likens the destruction of the Northern army to the perishing of locusts in the two opposite seas, the Dead sea and the Mediterranean Joe 2:20; but the Dead sea was not the entire Eastern boundary of all Israel. Nor are there any mountains on the South, answering to Mount Libanus on the North. Not the mountains of Edom which lay to the South-East, but the desert Exo 23:31; Num 34:3; Deu 11:24 was the Southern boundary of Judah. In the times too of their greatest prosperity, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Syria, had been subject to them.
The rule of the Messiah "from sea to sea" had already been predicted by Solomon , enlarging the boundaries of the promised land to the whole compass of the world, from the sea, their bound westward, to the further encircling sea beyond all habitable land, in which, in fact, our continents are large islands . To this, Micah adds a new description, "from mountain to mountain", including, probably, all subdivisions in our habitable earth, as the words, "sea to sea", had embraced it as a whole. For, physically and to sight, mountains are the great natural divisions of our earth. Rivers are but a means of transit. The Euphrates and the Nile were the centers of the kingdoms which lay upon them. Each range of mountains, as it rises on the horizon, seems to present an insuperable barrier. No barrier should avail to hinder the inflow to the Gospel. As Isaiah foretold that all obstacles should be removed, "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low" Isa 40:4, so Micah prophesies, "from mountain to mountain they shall come".
The words are addressed as a promise and consolation to the Jews, and so, doubtless, the restoration of the Jews to their own land after the captivity is foretold here, as Micah had already foretold it Mic 4:10. But is the whole limited to this? He says, with remarkable indefiniteness, there shall come . He does not say, who "shall come." But he twice sets two opposite boundaries, from which men should come; and, since these boundaries, not being coincident, cannot be predicted of one and the same subject, there must be two distinct incomings. The Jews were to come from those two countries, whither its people were then to be carried captive or would flee. From the boundaries of the world, the world was to come.
Thus, Micah embraces in one the prophecies, which are distinct in Isaiah, that not only God's former people should come from Egypt and A ssyria, but that Egypt and Assyria themselves should be counted as one with Israel Isa 19:23-25; and while, in the first place, the restoration of Israel itself is foretold, there follows that conversion of the world, which Micah had before promised Mic 4:1-3, and which was the object of the restoration of Israel. This was fulfilled to Jews and pagan together, when the dispersed of the Jews were gathered into one in Christ, the Son of David according to the flesh, and the Gospel, beginning at Jerusalem, was spread abroad among all nations. The promise is thrice repeated, It is the day, assuring the truth thereof, as it were, in the Name of the All-Holy Trinity.
Micah 7:13
mic 7:13
Notwithstanding - (And) the land (that is that spoken of, the land of Judah) shall be desolate not through any arbitrary law or the might of her enemies, but through the sins of the people, because of them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings Truly "the fruit of their doings," what they did to please themselves, of their own minds against God. As they sow, so shall they reap. This sounds almost as a riddle and contradiction beforehand; "the walls built up," "the people gathered in," and "the land desolate." Yet it was all fulfilled in the letter as well as in spirit. Jerusalem was restored; the people was gathered, first from the captivity, then to Christ; and yet the land was again desolate through the fruit of their doings who rejected Christ, and is so until this day.
The prophet now closes with one earnest prayer Mic 7:14; to which he receives a brief answer, that God would shew forth His power anew, as when He first made them His people Mic 7:15. On this, he describes vividly the awed submission of the world to their God Mic 7:16-17, and closes with a thanksgiving of marveling amazement at the greatness and completeness of the forgiving mercy of God Mic 7:18-19, ascribing all to His free goodness Mic 7:5 :20.
Micah 7:14
mic 7:14
Feed Thy people with Thy rod - The day of final deliverance was still a great way off. There was a weary interval before them of chastisement, suffering, captivity. So Micah lays down his pastoral office by committing his people to Him who was their true and abiding Shepherd. who that has had the pastoral office, has not thought, as the night drew near in which no man can work, "what will be after him?" Micah knew and foretold the outline. It was for his people a passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Micah then commits them to Him, who had Himself committed them to him, who alone could guide them through it. It is a touching parting with his people; a last guidance of those whom he had taught, reproved, rebuked, in vain, to Him the Good Shepherd who led Israel like a flock. The rod is at times the shepherd's staff Lev 27:32; Psa 23:4, although more frequently the symbol of chastisement. God's chastisement of His people is an austere form of His love. So He says, "If his children forsake My law, I will visit their offences with a rod and their sin with scourges: nevertheless My loving-kindness will I not utterly take from them" Psa 89:31, Psa 89:33.
The flock of Thine inheritance - So Moses had appealed to God, "Destroy not Thy people and Thine inheritance which Thou hast redeemed through Thy greatness - They are Thy people and Thine inheritance" Deu 9:26, Deu 9:29; and Solomon, in his dedication-prayer, that, on their repentance in their captivity, God would forgive His people, "for they be Thy people and Thine inheritance which Thou broughtest forth out of Egypt" Kg1 8:51; and Asaph, "O Lord, the pagan are come into Thine inheritance" Psa 79:1; and again, "Why doth Thine anger smoke against the sheep of Thy pasture? Remember the tribe of Thine inheritance which Thou hast redeemed" Psa 74:1-2; and Joel, "Spare Thy people and give not Thine heritage to reproach" Joe 2:17; and a Psalmist, "They break in pieces Thy people, O Lord, and afflict Thine heritage" Psa 94:5; and Isaiah, "Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of Thine inheritance" Isa 63:17.
The appeal excludes all merits. Not for any deserts of their's, (for these were but evil,) did the prophets teach them to pray; but because they were God's property. It was His Name, which would be dishonored in them; it was His work, which would seemingly come to nothing; it was He, who would be thought powerless to save. Again, it is not God's way, to leave half-done what He has begun. "Jesus, having loved His own which were in the world, loved them unto the end" Joh 13:1. God's love in creating us and making us His, is the earnest, if we will, of His everlasting love. We have been the objects of His everlasting thought, of His everlasting love. Though we have forfeited all claim to Ills love, He has not forfeited the work of His Hands; Jesus has nor forfeited the price of His Blood. So holy men have prayed; , "I believe that Thou hast redeemed me by Thy Blood: permit not the price of the Ransom to perish." "O Jesus Christ, my only Saviour, let not Thy most bitter Passion and Death be lost or wasted in me, miserable sinner!" .
Which dwell solitarily, or alone - Micah uses the words of Balaam, when he had been constrained by God to bless Israel. "The people shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations" Num 23:9. Moses had repeated them, "Israel shall dwell in safety alone" Deu 33:28. This aloneness among other nations, then, was a blessing, springing from God's being in the midst of them Exo 33:16, Deu 4:7, the deeds which He did for them Exo 34:10; Deu 4:3, the law which He gave Deu 4:8, Deu 4:33. So Moses prayed, "Wherein shall it be known here, that I and Thy people have found grace in Thy sight?" Exo 33:16, is it "not in that Thou goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and Thy people, from all the people that are on the face of the earth". It was, then, a separate appeal to God by all His former loving-kindness, whereby He had severed and elected His people for Himself.
In the wood, in the midst of Carmel - God "turneth a fruitful land into barrenness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. He turneth the wilderness into a standing water and dry ground into watersprings" Psa 107:34, Psa 107:5. Isaiah at the same time used the like image, that "Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field (Carmel), and the fruitful field (Carmel) shall be esteemed as a forest" Isa 29:17. The wild forest was to be like the rich domestic exuberance of Carmel (see the note at Amo 1:2). He would say, "Feed Thy people in Babylon, which is to them a wild homeless tract, that it may be to them as their own peaceful Carmel." Without God, all the world is a wilderness; with God, the wilderness is Paradise.
Let them feed in Basha and Gilead - The former words were a prayer for their restoration. Gilead and Bashan were the great pasture-countries of Palestine (see the note at Amo 1:3, vol. i. p. 234; iv. L p 280), , "a wide tableland, with undulating downs clothed with rich grass throughout," where the cattle ranged freely.
They were the first possessions, which God had bestowed upon Israel; the first, which they forfeited. Micah prays that God, who protected them in their desolation, would restore and protect them in the green pasture where He placed them. They are a prayer still to the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep Joh 10:11, Joh 10:15, our Lord Jesus Christ, that He would feed His flock whom He has redeemed, who have been given to Him as an inheritance Psa 2:8, the little flock Luk 12:32, to which it is the Fathers good pleasure to give the kingdom, which cleaveth to Him and shall be heirs with Him Rom 8:17. Cyril: "Christ feedeth His own with a rod, guiding them gently, and repressing by gentle fears the tendency of believers to listlessness. He bruiseth as with a rod of Iron, not them, but the rebellious disobedient and proud, who receive not the faith; believers He instructs and forms tenderly, feeds them among the lilies Sol 6:3, and leads them into good pastures and rich places, namely the divinely-inspired Scriptures, making the hidden things thereof clear through the Spirit to those of understanding, that they "may grow up unto Him in all things which is the Head, even Christ" Eph 4:15, with minds well-fed and nourished and gladdened with all spiritual delights.
But the chosen and elect dwell solitarily, being apart from the rest who think only of the things of earth, and give themselves to the pleasures of sense. So then these, having the mind at rest, freed from the vain and abominable tumults, are placed apart as in a wood and in a mountain. By the wood you may understand, the rich and varied and solid instruction (as it were trees and flowers) both in doctrine and life; by the mountain, what is high and lofty. For none of the wisdom, accounted of in the Church, is low. They are "fed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old", rich pastures; for the mind of the holy is beautified, delighting itself in the contemplation of the inspired Scriptures, and filled, as it were, with a certain richness, and shares without stint all excellence in though or in deed; and that, not for a brief and narrow season, but forever. For what gladdeneth the flesh falleth therewith and fadeth and hasteth away like a shadow; but the participation of the good things from above and of the Spirit, stretcheth out along endless ages."
Micah 7:15
mic 7:15
According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt - God answers the prayer, beginning with its closing words . Micah had prayed, "Turn Thy people like the days of old; "God answers, "like the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt." Micah had said, in the name of his people, "I shall behold His Righteousness; God answers, I will make him to behold marvelous things" . The word marvelous things was used of God's great marvels in the physical world Job 5:9; Job 37:5, Job 37:14, or the marvelous mercies of His Providence toward individuals or nations (Psa 9:2; Psa 26:7; Psa 71:17; Psa 72:18, etc.), and especially of those great miracles, which were accumulated at the deliverance from Egypt Exo 3:20; Jdg 6:13; Neh 9:17; Psa 78:4, Psa 78:11, Psa 78:32; Psa 105:2, Psa 105:5; Psa 106:7, Psa 106:22, and the entrance of the promised land which was its completion.
The reference to the Exodus must have led them to think of actual miracles; since, in regard to the Exodus, it is used of nothing else. But there were no miracles at the return from the captivity. "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion" Psa 126:1, Psa 126:3, said a Psalmist of the returned people, we were like them that dream. The Lord hath done great things for us; we are glad. Great things, but not miraculous. The promise then kept the people looking onward, until He came, "a prophet mighty in word and deed" Luk 24:19, as to whom Peter appealed to the people, that He was "approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know" Act 2:22; who gave also to them who believed on Him power to do "greater works than He did" Joh 14:12, through His own power, because He went to His Father; and when they believed, He shewed to him, namely, to the whole people gathered into the One Church, Jew and Gentile, yet more marvelous things, things, every way more marvelous and beyond nature than those of old, "the unsearchable riches of Christ, the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God" Eph 3:8-9.
Micah 7:16
mic 7:16
The nations shall see - God had answered, what He would give to His own people, to see. Micah takes up the word, and says, what effect this sight should have upon the enemies of God and of His people. The world should still continue to be divided between the people of God and their adversaries. Those who are converted pass from the one to the other; but the contrast remains. Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, pass away or become subject to other powers; but the antagonism continues. The nations are they, who, at each time, waste, oppress, are arrayed against, the people of God. When the Gospel came into the world, the whole world was arrayed against it. These then, he says, "shall see", that is, the marvelous works of God, which God should shew His people, and be ashamed at, that is, "because of all their might", their own might. They put forth their whole might, and it failed them against the marvelous might of God. They should array might against might, and be ashamed at the failure of "all their might".
The word all is very emphatic; it implies that they had put forth all, and that all had failed them, and proved to be weakness. So the pagan might was often put to shame and gnashed its teeth, when it could avail nothing against the strength to endure which God gave to His martyrs. Its strength to inflict and to crush was baffled before the hidden might of God's Spirit. "They shall lay their hand upon their mouth", in token that they were reduced to silence, having no more to say ; for He promised, "I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist" (Luk 21:15, compare Act 5:29); and they had to own, "indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them, and we cannot deny it. Their ears shall be deaf" Act 4:16; they shall be silent, as though they had heard nothing, as if they were both dumb and deaf .
Yet it seems too that they are willfully deaf, shutting their ears out of envy and hatred, that they might not hear what great things God had done for His people, nor hear the voice of truth and be converted and healed. Rup.: "The nations and the Emperors of the nations saw, Jews and Gentiles saw, and were ashamed at all their might, because their might, great as it was accounted, upheld by laws and arms, could not overcome the mighty works, which the Good Shepherd did among His people or flock by His rod, that is, by His power, through weak and despised persons, the aged, or oftentimes even by boys and girls. They were then ashamed at all their might which could only touch the "earthen vessels" Co2 4:7, but could not take away the treasure which was in them. What shall I say of the wisdom of those same nations? Of this too they were ashamed, as he adds, "They shall put their hands upon their mouths". For, in comparison with the heavenly wisdom, which spake by them and made their tongues eloquent, dumb was all secular eloquence, owning by its silence that it was convicted and confounded."
Micah 7:17
mic 7:17
They shall lick the dust like a (the) serpent - To lick the dust, by itself, pictures the extreme humility of persons who east themselves down to the very earth (as in Psa 72:9; Isa 49:23). To lick it "like the serpent" seems rather to represent the condition of those who share the serpent's doom Gen 3:14; Isa 65:25, whose lot, viz. earth and things of earth, they had chosen (Rup.): "They shall move out of their holes", or, better, shall tremble, (that is, "come tremblingly,") out of their close places , whether these be strong places or prisons, as the word, varied in one vowel means. If it be strong places, it means, that "the enemies of God's people should, in confusion and tumltuously with fear, leave their strongholds, wherein they thought to be secure, not able to lift themselves up against God and those by Him sent against them." "Like worms of the earth", literally, creeping things, or, as we say, reptiles, contemptuously. "They shall be afraid of", or rather come trembling to, the Lord our God; it is uot said their, but our God, who hath done so great things for us. And shall fear because of (literally, from) Thee, O Lord, of whom they had before said, Where is the Lord thy God?
It is doubtful, whether these last words express a "servile tear," whereby a man turns away and flees from the person or thing which he fears, or whether they simply describe fear of God, the first step toward repentance. In Hosea's words, "they shall fear toward the Lord and His goodness" Hos 3:5, the addition, and His goodness, determines the character of the fear. In Micah, it is not said that the fear brings them into any relation to God. lie is not spoken of; as becoming, any how, their God, and Micah closes by a thanksgiving, for God's pardoning mercy, not to them but to His people.
And so the prophet ends, as he began, with the judgments of God; to those who would repent, chastisement, to the impenitent, punishment: "sentencing Samaria, guilty and not repenting" (Rup.), to perpetual captivity; to Jerusalem, guilty but repenting, promising restoration. So from the beginning of the world did God; so doth He; so shall He unto the end. So did He show Himself to Cain and Abel, who both, as we all, sinned in Adam. Cain, being impenitent, lie wholly cast away; Abel, being penitent," and through faith offering a better sacrifice than Cain, and "bringing forth fruits worthy of repentance, He accepted." So He hath foreshown as to the end Matt. 25. Rup.: "And that we may know how uniformly our Judge so distinguisheth, at the very moment of His own death while hanging between the two thieves, the one, impenitent and blaspheming, He left; to the other, penitent and confessing, He opened the gate of paradise; and, soon after, leaving the Jewish people unrepentant, He received the repentance of the Gentiles." Thus the prophet parts with both out of sight; the people of God, feeding on the rich. bounty and abundance of God, and His marvelous gifts of grace above and beyond nature, multiplied to them above all the wonders of old time; the enemies of God's people looking on, not to, admire, but to be ashamed, not to be healthfully ashamed, but to be willfully deaf to the voice of God. For, however to lay the hand on the mouth might be a token of reverent silence, the deafness of the ears can hardly be other than the emblem of hardened obstinacy.
What follows, then, seems more like the unwilling creeping-forth into the Presence of God, when they cannot keep away, than conversion. It seems to picture the reprobate, who would not "hear the Voice of the Son of God and live" Joh 5:25, but who, in the end, shall be forced to hear it out of their close places or prisons, that is, the grave, and come forth in fear, when they shall "say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us" Luk 23:30; Rev 6:16. Thus the prophet brings us to the close of all things, the gladness and joy of God's people, the terror of His enemies, and adds only the song of thanksgiving of all the redeemed.
Micah 7:18
mic 7:18
Who is a God - (and, as the word means, A Mighty God,) like unto Thee? He saith not, "Who hast made heaven and earth, the sea and all that therein is" Exo 20:11; nor, "Who telleth the number of the stars; and calleth them all by their names" Psa 147:4; nor, "Who by His strength setteth fast the mountains and is girded about with power" Psa 65:6; but who forgivest! For greater is the work of Redemption than the work of Creation. "That pardoneth", and beareth and taketh away also, "and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage", that is, His heritage, which is a remnant still when "the rest are blinded" Rom 11:7; and this, not of its merits but of His mercy; since it is not His nature to "retain His anger forever"; not for anything in them, but "because He delighteth in mercy", as He saith, "I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever" Jer 3:12. "I am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine oum sake, and will not remember thy sins" Isa 43:25. : "For although God for a time is angry with His elect, chastening them mercifully in this life, yet in the end He hath compassion on them, giving them everlasting consolations."
Moses, after the completion of his people's deliverance at the Red Sea, used the like appeal to God, in unmingled joy. Then the thanksgiving ran, "glorious in holiness, awful in praises, doing wonders" Exo 15:11. Now, it ran in a more subdued, yet even deeper, tone, taken from God's revelation of Himself after that great transgression on Mount Sinai "forgiving iniquity and trasgression and sin". With this, Micah identified his own name . This was the one message which he loved above all to proclaim; of this, his own name was the herald to his people in his day. who is like the Lord, the Pardoner of sin, the Redeemer from its guilt, the Subduer of its power? For no false god was ever such a claim made. The pagan gods were symbols of God's workings in nature; they were, at best, representatives of His government and of His displeasure at sin. But, being the creatures of man's mind, they could hot freely pardon, for man dared not ascribe to them the attribute of a freely-pardoning mercy, for which be dared not hope. Who is a God like to Thee, mighty, not only to destroy but to pardon? is the wondering thanksgiving of time, the yet greater amazement of eternity, as eternity shall unveil the deep blackness of sin over-against the light of God, and we, seeing God, as He Is, shall see what that Holiness is, against Which we sinners sinned, The soul, which is truly penitent, never wearies of the wondering love, who is a God like unto Thee?
Micah 7:19
mic 7:19
He will turn again - who seemed to be turned away from us when we were turned away from Him. "He will subdue, or trample under foot" Joe 2:14, our worst enemy, "our iniquities", as He saith, "He shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly" Rom 16:20. Hitherto, sinful passions had not rebelled only, but had had the mastery over us. Sin subdued man; it was his lord, a fierce tyrant over him; he could not subdue it. Holy Scripture says emphatically of man under the law, that he was sold under sin Rom 7:14, a slave under a hard master, oppressed, weighed down, and unable to throw off the bondage. "We have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin" Rom 3:9; "the Scripture hath concluded all under sin" Gal 3:22. Under the Gospel, God, he says, would subdue sin "under us," and make it, as it were, our "footstool ." It is a Gospel before the Gospel. God would pardon; and He, not we, would subdue sin to us. He would bestow, "of sin the double cure, Save us from its guilt and power" . "Not I, but the grace of God, which was with me" Co1 15:10.
And Thou wilt cast - - Not, some ( "for it is impious to look for a half-pardon from God") but - "all their sins into the depths of the sea", so that as in the passage of the Red Sea there was not one Egyptian left of those who pursued His people, so neither shall there be one sin, which, through Baptism and on Repentance, shall not through His free mercy be pardoned. As they, which "sank as lead in the mighty waters" Exo 15:10, never again rose, so shall the sins, unless revived by us, not rise against us to condemnation, but shall in the Day of Judgment be sunk in the abyss of hell, as if they had never been.
Micah 7:20
mic 7:20
Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham - What was free mercy to Abraham, became, when God had once promised it, His truth. Abraham also stands for all those, who in him and his Seed should be blessed, those who were "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world" Eph 2:12, in no covenant or relation with God, as well as those who were the children of the faith; pagan, as well as Jews. Jacob represents these who were immediately his children, such of the children of Israel, as were also the true Israel and children of faithful Abraham. In both ways the gift to Abraham was mercy, to Jacob, truth. So also Paul saith, "Jesus Christ was a Minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy." Rom 15:8-9 yet mercy and truth Psa 25:10, together, are all the paths of the Lord; they "met together" Psa 85:10 in Christ; yea Christ Himself is full of Mercy as well as "Truth" Joh 1:14 : and woe were it to that soul to whom He were Truth without mercy. Rup.: "For to be saved, we look not so much to the truth of the Judge as to the mercy of the Redeemer." And mercy, in the counsel of God, reacheth wider than truth; for truth is given to Jacob, the father of one nation, Israel; but mercy to Abraham, "the father of many nations" Gen 17:5; Rom 4:17. Isaac, it may be, is not here mentioned, because all to whom the blessing should come are already spoken of in Jacob and Abraham; in Jacob, all to whom the promise was first made; in Abraham, all nations of the world who should be blessed in his Seed, through the mercy of God overflowing the bounds of that covenant. Isaac is, in his sacrifice, chiefly a type of our Lord Himself.
Which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers - "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation" Heb 6:18.
From the days of old - Alb.: From eternity, in the counsel of God; in promise, from the foundation of the world, as is said in the hymn of Zacharias, "As He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began" Luk 1:70. Pococke: The inspired hymns of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of Zachariah take up the words of the prophet, and shew that they are already fulfilled in Christ, although they shall be more and more fulfilled unto the world's end, as Jew and Gentile are brought into His fold; "He remembering His mercy, as He spake to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever" Luk 1:54-55. "To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remnember His holy covenant, the oath which He sware to our father Abraham that He would grant unto us" Luk 1:72-74.
"I too," Jerome subjoins, "sealing the labor of my little work by calling upon the Lord, will say at the close of this tract, O God, who is like unto Thee? Take away the iniquity of Thy servant, pass by the sin of my decayed soul, and send not Thine anger upon me, nor rebuke me in Thy indignation; for Thou art full of pity and great are Thy mercies. Rcturn and have mercy upon me; drown mine iniquities, and cast them into the depth of the sea, that the bitterness of sin may perish in the bitter waters. Grant the truth which Thou didst promise to Thy servant Jacob, and the mercy which Thou didst pledge to Abraham Thy friend, and free my soul, as Thou didst sware to my fathers in the days of old; "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Then shall mine enemy see and be crowned with confusion, who now saith unto me, where is now thy God?" Eze 33:11. Amen, Amen, O Good Lord Jesus.
Nahum Introduction
Nahum
nah 0:0
Introduction to Nahum
The prophecy of Nahum is both the complement and the counterpart of the Book of Jonah. When Moses had asked God to show him His glory, and God had promised to let him see the outskirts of that glory, and to proclaim the Name of the Lord before him, "the Lord," we are told, "passed by before him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty" Exo 34:6-7. God proclaimed at once His mercy and His justice. Those wondrous words echo along the whole patch of the Old Testament. Moses himself Num 14:17-18, David Psa 86:15; Psa 103:8; Psa 145:8, other Psalmists Psa 111:4; Psa 112:4; Psa 116:5, Jeremiah Jer 32:18-19, Daniel Dan 9:4, Nehemiah Neh 9:17 all pled to God or recounted some words in thanksgiving. Joel repeated such words as a motive for repentance Joe 2:13. Upon the repentance of Nineveh, Jonah had recited to God the bright side of His declaration of Himself, "I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great goodness" Jon 4:2, repeating to God His words to Moses, and adding a change of heart concerning the harm. Nineveh, as appears from Nahum, had fallen back into the violence of which it had repented. Nahum then, in reference to that declaration of Jonah, begins by setting forth the awful side of the attributes of God. First, in a stately rhythm, which, in the original, reminds us of the gradual Psalms, he enunciates the solemn threefold declaration of the severity of God to those who will be His enemies.
A jealous God and Avenger is the Lord:
An Avenger is the Lord, and lord of wrath;
An Avenger is the Lord to His adversaries:
And a Reserver of wrath to His enemies.
Nah 1:2
Then, Naham too recites that character of mercy recorded by Moses, "The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power" Nah 1:3. But anger, although slow, comes, he adds, not the less certainly on the guilty; "and will not at all clear the guilty" Nah 1:3. The iniquity is full. As a whole, there is no more room for repentance. Nineveh had had its prophet, and had been spared, and had sunk back into its old sins. The office of Nahum is to pronounce its sentence. That sentence is fixed. "There is no healing of thy bruise" Nah 3:19. Nothing is said of its ulterior conversion or restoration. On the contrary, Nahum says, "He will make the place thereof an utter desolation" Nah 1:8.
The sins of Nineveh spoken of by Nahum are the same as those from which they had turned at the preaching of Jonah. In Jonah, it is, "the violence of their hands" Jon 3:8. Nahum describes Nineveh as "a dwelling of lions, filled with prey and with ravin, the feeding-place of young lions, where the lion tore enough for his whelps" Nah 2:11-12; "a city of bloods, full of lies and robbery, from which the prey departeth not" Nah 3:1.
But, amid this mass of evil, one thing was eminent, in direct antagonism to God. The character is very special. It is not simply of rebellion against God, or neglect of Him. It is a direct disputation of His Sovereignty. Twice the prophet repeats the characteristic expression, "What will ye devise against the Lord?" "devising evil against the Lord;" and adds, "counselor of evil" Nah 1:11. This was exactly the character of Sennacherib, whose wars, like those of his forefathers, (as appears from the cuneiform inscriptions . There were religious wars, and Sennacherib blasphemously compared God to the local deities of the countries, which his forefathers or himself had destroyed Isa 36:18-20; Isa 37:10-13. Of this enemy Nahum speaks, as having "gone forth;" out of thee (Nineveh) hath gone forth Nah 1:11 one, devising evil against the Lord, a counselor of Belial. This was past.
Their purpose was inchoate, yet incomplete. God challenges them, "What will ye devise so vehemently against the Lord?" Nah 1:9. The destruction too is proximate. The prophet answers for God, "He Himself, by Himself is already making an utter end" Nah 1:9. To Jerusalem he turns, "And now I will break his yoke from off thee, and will break his bonds asunder" Nah 1:13. Twice the prophet mentions the device against God; each time he answers it by the prediction of the sudden utter destruction of the enemy, while in the most perfect security. "While they are intertwined as thorns, and swallowed up as their drink, they are devoured as stubble fully dry" Nah 1:10; and, "If they are perfect" Nah 1:12, unimpaired in their strength, "and thus many, even thus shall they be mown down." Their destruction was to be, their numbers, complete. With no previous loss, secure and at ease, a mighty host, in consequence of their prosperity, all were, at one blow, mown down; "and he (their king, who counseled against the Lord) shall pass away and perish."
"The abundance of the wool in the fleece is no hindrance to the shears," nor of the grass to the sythe, nor of the Assyrian host to the will of the Lord, After he, the chief, had thus passed away, Nahum foretells that remarkable death, in connection with the house of his gods; "Out of the house of thy gods I will cut off the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave" Nah 1:14. There is no natural construction of these words, except, "I will make it thy grave" . Judah too was, by the presence of the Assyrian, hindered from going up to worship at Jerusalem. The prophet bids to proclaim peace to Jerusalem; "keep thy feasts - for the wicked shall no more pass through thee." It was then by the presence of the wicked, that they were now hindered from keeping their feasts, which could be kept only at Jerusalem.
The prophecy of Nahum coincides then with that of Isaiah, when Hezekiah prayed against Sennacherib. In the history Kg2 19:4, Kg2 19:22-28, and in the prophecy of Isaiah, the reproach and blasphemy and rage against God are prominent, as an evil design against God is in Nahum. In Isaiah we have the messengers sent to blaspheme Isa 37:4, Isa 37:23-29; in Nahum, the promise, that "the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard." Isaiah prophesies the fruitlessness of his attempt against Jerusalem Isa 37:33-34; his disgraced return; his violent death in his own land Isa 37:7; Nahum prophesies the entire destruction of his army, his own passing away, his grave. Isaiah, in Jerusalem, foretells how the spontaneous fruits of the earth shall be restored to them Kg2 19:29; Isa 37:30, and so, that they shall have possession of the open corn-country; Nahum, living probably in the country, foretells the free access to Jerusalem, and bids them to (Nah 1:15; Nah 2:1 (Nah 2:2 in Hebrew)) keep their feasts, and perform the vows, which, in their trouble, they had promised to God. He does not only foretell that they may, but he enjoins them to do it.
The words (Nah 2:2 (verse 3 in Hebrew)), "the emptiers have emptied them out and marred their vine branches," may relate to the first expedition of Sennacherib, when, Holy Scripture says, he "came up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them," and Hezekiah gave him "thirty talents of gold and 300 talents of silver" Kg2 18:13-14; Isa 36:1. Sennacherib himself says , "Hezekiah, king of Judah, who had not submitted to my authority, forty-six of his principal cities, and fortresses and villages depending upon them of which I took no account, I captured, and carried away their spoil. And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200, 150 people," etc. This must relate to the first expedition, on account of the exact correspondence of the tribute in gold, with a variation in the number of the talents of silver, easily accounted for .
In the first invasion Sennacherib relates that he besieged Jerusalem. : "Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to fence him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape." It is perhaps in reference to this, that, in the second invasion, God promises by Isaiah; "He shall not come into this city, and shall not shoot an arrow there; and shall not present shield before it, and shall not cast up bank against it" Isa 37:33. Still, in this second invasion also, Holy Scripture relates, that "the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army" Isa 36:2; Kg2 18:17. Perhaps it is in regard to this second expedition, that God says, "Though I have afflicted thee, I will affict thee no more" Nah 1:12; i. e., this second invasion should not desolate her, like that first. Not that God absolutely would not again afflict her, but not now. The yoke of the Assyrian was then broken, until the fresh sins of Manasseh drew down their own punishment.
Nahum then was a prophet for Judah, or for that remnant of Israel, which, after the ten tribes were carried captive, became one with Judah, not in temporal sovereignty, but in the one worship of God. His mention of Basan, Carmel and Lebanon alone, as places lying under the rebuke of God, perhaps implies a special interest in Northern Palestine. Judah may have already become the name for the whole people of God who were left in their own land, since those of the ten tribes who remained had now no separate religious or political existence. The idol-center of their worship was gone into captivity.
The old tradition agrees with this as to the name of the birthplace of Nahum, "the Elkoshite." "Some think," says Jerome , "that Elcesaeus was the father of Nahum, and, according to the Hebrew tradition, was also a prophet; whereas Elcesi is even to this day a little village in Galilee, small indeed, and scarcely indicating by its ruins the traces of ancient buildings, yet known to the Jews, and pointed out to me too by my guide." The name is a genuine Hebrew name, the "El," with which it begins, being the name of God, which appears in the names of other towns also as El'ale, Eltolad, Elteke Eltolem. The author of the short-lived Gnostic heresy of the Elcesaites, called Elkesai, elkasai, elxai, elxaios, Elkasaios , probably had his name from that same village. Eusebius mentions Elkese, as the place "whence was Nahum the Elkesaean." Cyril of Alexandria says, that Elkese was a village somewhere in Judaea.
On the other hand "Alcush," a town in Mosul, is probably a name of Arabic origin, and is not connected with Nahum by any extant or known writer, earlier than Masius toward the end of the 16th century , and an Arabic scribe in 1713 . Neither of these mention the tomb. "The tomb," says Layard , "is a simple plaster box, covered with green cloth, and standing at the upper end of a large chamber. The house containing the tomb is a modern building. There are no inscriptions, nor fragments of any antiquity near the place." The place is now reverenced by the Jews, but in the 12th century Benjamin of Tudela supposed his tomb to be at Ain Japhata, South of Babylon. Were anything needed to invalidate statements more than 2000 years after the time of Nahum, it might suffice that the Jews, who are the authors of this story, maintain that not Jonah only but Obadiah and Jephthah the Gileadite are also buried at Mosul .
Nor were the ten tribes placed there, but "in the cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6. The name Capernaum, "the village of Nahum," is probably an indication of his residence in Galilee. There is nothing in his language unique to the Northern tribes. One very poetic word Nah 3:2; Jdg 5:22, common to him with the song of Deborah, is not therefore a "provincialism," because it only happens to occur in the rich, varied, language of two prophets of North Palestine. Nor does the occurrence of a foreign title interfere with "purity of diction" . It rather belongs to the vividness of his description.
The conquest of No-Ammon or Thebes and the captivity of its inhabitants, of which Nahum speaks, must have been by Assyria itself. Certainly it was not from domestic disturbances ; for Nahum says, that the people were carried away captive Nah 3:10. Nor was it from the Ethiopians ; for Nahum speaks of them, as her allies Nah 3:9. Nor from the Carthaginians ; for the account of Ammianus , that "when first Carthage was beginning to expand itself far and wide, the Punic generals, by an unexpected inroad, subdued the hundred-gated Thebes," is merely a mistaken gloss on a statement of Diodorus, that "Hanno took Hekatompylos by siege;" a city, according to Diodorus himself , "in the desert of Libya." Nor was it from the Scythians ; for Herodotus, who alone speaks of their maraudings and who manifestly exaggerates them, expressly says, that Psammetichus induced the Scythians by presents not to enter Egypt ; and a wandering predatory horde does not besiege or take strongly-fortified towns.
There remain then only the Assyrians. Four successive Assyrian Monarchs Sargon, his son, grandson and great grandson, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Asshur-bani-pal, from 718 b.c. to about 657 b.c., conquered in Egypt . The hostility was first provoked by the encouragement given by Sabacho the Ethiopian (Sab'e in the cuneiform inscriptions, S b k, in Egyptian), the So of Holy Scripture , to Hoshea to rebel against Shalmaneser Kg2 17:4. Sargon, who, according to his own statement, was the king who actually took Samaria , led three expeditions of his own against Egypt. In the first, Sargon defeated the Egyptian king in the battle of Raphia ; in the second, in his seventh year, he boasts that Pharaoh became his tributary ; in a third, which is placed three years later, Ethiopia submitted to him .
A seal of Sabaco has been found at Koyunjik, which, as has been conjectured , was probably annexed to a treaty. The capture of Ashdod by the Tartan of Sargon, recorded by Isaiah Isa 20:1, was probably in the second expedition, when Sargon deposed its king Azuri, substituting his brother Akhimit : the rebellion of Ashdod probably occasioned the third expedition, in which as it seems, Isaiah's prophecy was fulfilled, that Egyptians and Ethiopians, young and old, should be carried captive by the king of Assyria. The king of Ashdod, Yaman, is related to have fled to Egypt, which was subject to Merukha or Meroe; and to have been delivered up by the king of Meroe who himself fled to some unnamed desert afar, a march of (it is conjectured) months . The king of Meroe, first, from times the most distant, became tributary. : "His forefathers had not" in all that period "sent to the kings my ancestors to ask for peace and to acknowledge the power of Merodach." The fact, that his magnificent palace, "one of the few remains of external decoration," Layard says , "with which we are acquainted in Assyrian architecture," "seems" according to Mr. Fergusson, , "at first sight almost purely Egyptian," implies some lengthened residence in Egypt or some capture of Egyptian artists.
Of Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, Josephus writes , "Berosus, the historian of the Chaldee affairs, mentions the king Sennacherib, and that he reigned over the Assyrians, and that he warred against all Asia and Egypt, saying as follows." The passage of Berosus itself is missing, witether Josephus neglected to fill it in, or whether it has been subsequently lost; but neither Chaldee nor Egyptian writers record expeditions which were reverses; and although Beresus was a Babylonian, not an Assyrian, yet the document, which he used, must have been Assyrian. In the second expedition of Sennacherib, Rabshakeh, in his message to Hezekiah, says, "Behold thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, upon Egypt" Kg2 18:21. The expression is remarkable. He does not speak of Egypt, as a power, weak, frail, failing, but, passively, as crushed by another. It is the same word and image which he uses in his prophecy of our Lord, "a bruised reed (רצץ קנה qâneh râtsats) shall He not break," i. e., He shall not break that which is already bruised. The word implies, then, that the king of Egypt had already received some decided blow before the second expedition of Sennacherib. The annals of Sennacherib's reign, still preserved in his inscriptions, break off in the eighth of his twenty-two years , and do not extend to the time of this second expedition against Hezekiah . Nor does Holy Scripture say, in what year this second expedition took place. In this he defeated "the kings of Egypt and the king of Meroe at Altakou (Elteke) and Tamna (Timnatha)."
Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon appears for the time to have subdued Egypt and Ethiopia, and to have held them as kingdoms dependent on himself. "He acquired Egypt and the inner parts of Asia," is the brief statement of Abydenus (i. e., of Berosus): "He established" (his son relates) "twenty kings, satraps, governors in Egypt" , among which can be recognized Necho, (the father of Psammetichus) king of Memphis and Sais; a king of Tanis, or Zoan (now San); Natho (or, according to another copy, Sept), Hanes, Sebennytus, Mendes, Bubastis, Siyout or Lycopolis, Chemmis, Tinis, and No. These were all subordinate kings, for so he entitles each separately in the list, although he sums up the whole , "These are the names of the Kings, Pechahs, Satraps who in Egypt obeyed my father who begat me." Tearcho or Taracho himself, "king of Egypt and Ethiopia" , was in like way subject to Esarhaddon. The account of the revolt, which his son Asshur-bani-pal quelled, implies also a fixed settlement in Egypt. The 20 kings were involved in the rebellion through fear of Taracho, but there is notice of other servants of Esarhaddon who remained faithful and were maltreated by Taraoho .
Asshur-bani-pal says also, that he strengthened his former garrisons . One expedition of Esarhaddon (probably toward the close of his reign, since he does not mention it in his own annals which extend over eight years) is related by his son Asshur-bani-pal . "He defeated Tirhakah in the lower country, after which, proceeding Southward, he took the city, where the Ethiopian held his court," and assumed the title , "king of the kings of Egypt and conqueror of Ethiopia." On another inscription in a palace built for his son, at Tarbisi, now Sherif-khan, he entitles himself "king of the kings of Egypt, Pathros, Ethiopia." We do not, however, find the addition, which appears to recur upon every conquest of a people not before conquered by Assyria, "which the kings, my fathers, had not subdued." This addition is so regular, that the absence of it, in itself, involves a strong probability of a previous conquest of the country.
The subdual apparently was complete. They revolted at the close of the reign of Esarhaddon (as his son Asshur-bani-pal relates) from fear of Taracho rather than from any wish of their own to regain independence. Asshur-bani-pal accordingly, after the defeat of Taracho, forgave and restored them . Even the second treacherous revolt was out of fear, lest Taracho shall return , upon the withdrawal of the Assyrian armies. This second revolt and perhaps a subsequent revolt of Urdamanie a stepson of Taracho, who succeeded him, Asshur-bani-pal seems to have subdued by his lieutenants , without any necessity of marching in person against them. Thebes was taken and retaken; but does not appear to have offered any resistance. Taracho, upon his defeat at Memphis, fled to it, and again abandoned it as he had Memphis, and the army of Asshur-bani-pal made a massacre in it . Once more it was taken, when it had been recovered by Urdamanie , and then, if the inscriptions are rightly deciphered, strange as it is, the carrying off of men and women from it is mentioned in the midst of that of "great horses and apes." "Silver, gold, metals, stones, treasures of his palace, dyed garments, berom and linen, great horses, men, male and female, immense apes - they drew from the midst of the city, and brought as spoils to Nineveh the city of my dominion, and kissed my feet."
All of those kings having been conquerors of Egypt, the captivity of No might equally hav, e taken place under any of them. All of them employed the policy, which Sargon apparently began, of transporting to a distance those whom they had conquered . Yet it is, in itself, more probable, that it was at the earlier than at the later date. It is most in harmony with the relation of Nahum to Isaiah that, in regard to the conquest of Thebes also, Nahum refers to the victory over Egypt and Ethiopia foretold by Isaiah, when Sargon's general, the Tartan, was besieging Ashdod. The object of Isaiah's prophecy was to undeceive Judah in regard to its reliance on Egypt and Ethiopia against Assyria, which was their continual bane, morally, religiously, nationally. But the prophecy goes beyond any mere defeat in battle, or capture of prisoners. It relates to conquest within Egypt itself. For Isaiah says, "the king of Assyria shall lead into captivity Egyptians and Ethiopians, young and old" Isa 20:4. They are not their choice young men, the flower of their army, but those of advanced age and those in their first youth, such as are taken captive, only when a population itself is taken captive, either in a marauding expedition, or in the capture of a city. The account of the captivity of No exactly corresponds with this. Nahum says nothing of its permanent subdual, only of the captivity of its inhabitants. But Esarhaddon apparently did not carry the Egyptians captive at all . Every fact given in the Inscriptions looks like a permanent settlement. The establishment of the 20 subordinate kings, in the whole length and breadth of Egypt, implies the continuance of the previous state of things, with the exception of that subordination. No itself appears as one of the cities settled apparently under its native though tributary king .
In regard to the fulfillment of prophecy, they who assume as an axiom, or petitio principii, that there can be no prophecy of distant events, have overlooked, that while they think that, by assuming the later date, they bring Nahum's prophecy of the capture of Nineveh nearer to its accomplishment, they remove in the same degree Isaiah's prophecy of the captivity of Egyptians and Ethiopians, young and old, from its accomplishment. "Young and old" are not the prisoners of a field of battle; young and old of the Ethiopians would not be in a city of lower Egypt. If Isaiah's prophecy was not fulfilled under Sargon or Sennacherib, it must probably have waited for its fulfillment until this last subdual by Asshurbanipal. For the policy of Esarhaddon and also of Asshurbanipal, until repeated rebellions wore his patience, was of settlement, not of deportation. If too the prophecy of Nahum were brought down to the reign of Asshurbanipal, it would be the more stupendous.
For the empire was more consolidated. Nahum tells the conqueror, flushed with his own successes and those of his father, that he had himself no more inherent power than the city whose people he had carried captive. Thebes too, like Nineveh, dwelt securely, conquering all, unreached by any ill, sea-girt, as it were, by the mighty river on which she rested. She too was strengthened with countless hosts of her own and of allied people. Yet she fell. Nineveh, the prophet tells her, was no mightier, in herself. Her river was no stronger defense than that sea of fresh water, the Nile; her tributaries would disperse or become her enemies. The prophet holds up to her the vicissitudes of No-amon, as a mirror to herself. As each death is a renewed witness to man's mortality, so each marvelous reverse of temporal greatness is a witness to the precariousness of other human might. No then was an ensample to Nineveh, although its capture was by the armies of Nineveh. They had been, for centuries, two rivals for power. But the contrast bad far more force, when the victory over Egypt was fresh, than after 61 years of alternate conquest and rebellion.
But, anyhow, the state of Nineveh and its empire, as pictured by Nahum, is inconsistent with any times of supposed weakness in the reign of its last king: the state of Judah, with reference to Assyria, corresponds with that under Sennacherib but with none below. They are these. Assyria was in its full unimpaired strength Nah 1:12; Nah 2:12. She still blended those two characters so rarely combined, but actually united in her and subsequently in Babylon, of a great merchant and military people. She had, at once, the prosperity of peace and of war. Lying on a great line of ancient traffic, which bound together East and West, India with Phoenicia, and with Europe through Phoenicia, both East and West poured their treasures into the great capital, which lay as a center between them, and stretched out its arms, alike to the Indian sea and the Mediterranean. Nahum can compare its merchants only to that which is countless by man, the locusts or the stars of heaven Nah 3:16.
But amid this prosperity of peace, war also was enriching her. Nineveh was still sending out its messengers (such as was Rabshakeh), the leviers of its tribute, the demanders of submission. It was still one vast lion-lair, its lions still gathering in prey from the whole earth Nah 2:12-13, still desolating, continually, unceasingly, in all directions Nah 3:19, and now, especially, devising evil against God and His people Nah 1:9, Nah 1:11. Upon that people its yoke already pressed, for God promises to break it off from them Nah 1:13; the people was already afflicted, for God says to it, "Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more" Nah 1:12, namely, by this invader. The solemn feasts of Judah were hindered through the presence of ungodly invaders; Belial, the counselor of evil spoken of under that name, already passing through her. War was around her, for he promises that one should publish peace upon her mountains Nah 1:15. This was the foreground of the picture. This was the exact condition of things at Hezekiah's second invasion, just before the miraculous destruction of his army. Sennacherib's yoke was heavy, for he had exacted from Hezekiah "three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold" Kg2 18:14; Hezekiah had not "two thousand horsemen" Kg2 18:23; the "great host" Kg2 18:17 of the Assyrians encircled Jerusalem. They summoned it to surrender on the terms, that they should pay a new tribute, and that Sennacherib, whenever it pleased him, should remove them to Assyria Kg2 18:31-32.
At no subsequent period were there any events corresponding to this description. Manasseh was carried captive to Babylon by Esarhaddon; but probably this was no formidable or resisted invasion, since the book of Kings passes it over altogether, the Chronicles mention only that the Assyrian generals took Manasseh prisoner in a thicket (Ch2 33:11, accordingly not in Jerusalem, and carried him to Babylon. Probably, this took place, in the expedition of Esarhaddon to the West, when he settled in the cities of Samaria people of different nations, his captives Ezr 4:2, Ezr 4:9-10. The capture of Manasseh was then, probably, a mere incident in the history. Since he was taken among the thickets, he had probably fled, as Zedekiah did afterward, and was taken in his place of concealment. This was simply personal. No taking of towns is mentioned, no siege, no terror, no exaction of tribute, no carrying away into captivity, except of the single Manasseh. The grounds of his restoration are not mentioned.
The Chronicles mention only the religious aspect of his captivity and his restoration, his sin and his repentance. But it seems probable that he was restored by Esarhaddon, upon the same system of policy, on which he planted subjects of his own in Samaria and the country around Zidon, built a new town to take the place of Zidon, and joined in the throne of Edom one, brought up in his own palace. For, when restored, Manasseh was set at full liberty to fortify Jerusalem Ch2 33:14, as Hezekiah had done, and to put "captains of war in all the cities of Judah" Ch2 33:14. This looks as if he was sent back as a trusted tributary of Esarhaddon, and as a frontier-power against Egypt. At least, 60 years afterward, we find Josiah, in the like relation of trust to Nebuchadnezzar, resisting the passage of Pharaoh-Necho. However, the human cause of his restoration must remain uncertain. Yet clearly, in their whole history, there is nothing to correspond to the state of Judaea, as described by Nahum.
A recent critic writes , "Nahum's prophecy must have been occasioned by an expedition of mighty enemies against Nineveh. The whole prophecy is grounded on the certain danger, to which Nineveh was given over; only the way in which this visible danger is conceived of, in connection with the eternal truths, is here the properly prophetic." Ewald does not explain how the danger, to which "Nineveh was given over" was certain, when it did not happen. The explanation must come to this. Nahum described a siege of Nineveh and its issue, as certain. The description in itself might be either of an actual siege, before the prophet's eyes, or of one beheld in the prophet's mind. But obviously no mere man, endowed with mere human knowledge, would have ventured to predict so certainly the fall of such a city as Nineveh, unless it was "given over to certain danger." But according to the axiom received in Ewald's school, Nahum, equally with all other men, could have had only human prescience.
Therefore, Nahum, prophesying the issue so confidently, must have prophesied when Nineveh was so "given over." The a priori axiom of the school rules its criticism. Meanwhile the admission is incidentally made, that a prophecy so certain, had it related to distant events, was what no man, with mere human knowledge, would venture upon. Ewald accordingly thinks that the prophecy was occasioned by a siege of Phraortes; which siege Nahum expected to be successful; which however failed, so that Nahum was mistaken, although the overthrow which he foretold came to pass afterward! The siege, however, of Nineveh by Phraortes is a mere romance. Herodotus, who alone attributes to Phraortes a war with Assyria, has no hint, that he even approached to Nineveh. He simply relates that Phraortes "subdued Asia, going from one nation to another, until, leading an army against the Assyrians, he perished himself, in the second year of his reign, and the greater part of his army."
It is not necessary to consider the non-natural expositions, by which the simple descriptions of Nahum were distorted into conformity with this theory, which has no one fact to support it. Herodotus even dwells on the good condition of the Assyrian affairs, although isolated from their revolted allies, and seemingly represents the victory as an easy one. And, according to Herodotus, whose account is the only one we have, Phraortes (even if he ever fought with the Ninevites, and Herodotus' account is not merely the recasting of the history of another Median Frawartish who, according to the Behistun Inscription, claimed the throne of Media against Darius, and perished in battle with him ) had only an unorganized army. Herodotus says of Cyaxares, his son , "He is said to have been more warlike far than his forefathers, and he first distributed Asiatics into distinct bands, and separated the spearmen and archers and horsemen from one another, whereas, before, everything had alike mixed into one confused mass." Such an undisciplined horde could have been no formidable enemy for a nation, whom the monuments and their history exhibit as so warlike and so skilled in war as the Assyrians.
Another critic, , then, seeing the untenableness of this theory, ventures (as he never hesitated at any paradox) to place the prophet Nahum, as an eye-witness of the first siege of Cyaxares.
Herodotus states that Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes, twice besieged Nineveh. First, immediately after his father's death, to avenge it ; the second, after the end of the Scythian troubles, when he took it . The capture of Nineveh was in the first year of Nabopolassor 625 b.c. The accession of Cyaxares, according to Herodotus, was 633 b.c. Eight years then only elapsed between his first siege and its capture, and, if it be true, that the siege lasted two years, there was an interval of six years only. But, at this time, the destruction of Nineveh was no longer a subject of joy to Judah. Since the captivity of Manasseh, Judah had had nothing to fear from Assyria; nor do we know of any oppression from it. Holy Scripture mentions none. The Assyrian monuments speak of expeditions against Egypt; but there was no temptation to harass Judah, which stood in the relation of a faithful tributary and an outwork against Egypt, and which, when Nineveh fell, remained in the same relation to its conquerors, into whose suzerainty it passed, together with the other dependencies of Assyria. The relation of Josiah to Babylon was the continuation of that of Manasseh to Esarhaddon.
The motive of this theory is explained by the words, "With a confidence, which leaves room for no doubt, Nahum expects a siege and an ultimate destruction of Nineveh. The security of his tone, nay that he ventures at all to trope so enormous a revolution of the existing state of things, must find its explanation in the circumstances of the time, out of the then condition of the world; but not until Cyaxares reigned in Media, did things assume an aspect, corresponding to this confidence." It is well that this writer doffs the courteous language, as to the "hopes," "expectations," "inferences from God's justice," and brings the question to the issue, "there is such absolute certainty of tone," that Nahum must have had either a divine or a human knowledge. He acknowledges the untenableness of any theory width would account for the prophecy of Nahum on any human knowledge, before Cyaxares was marching against the gates of Nineveh. Would human knowledge have sufficed then? Certainly, from such accounts as we have, Nineveh might still have stood against Cyaxares and its own rebel and traitorous general, but for an unforeseen event which man could not bring about, the swelling of its river.
But, as usual, unbelief fixes itself upon that which is minutest, ignores what is greatest. There are, in Nahum, three remarkable predictions.
(1) The sudden destruction of Sennacherib's army and his own remarkable death in the house of his god.
(2) The certain, inevitable, capture of Nineveh, and that, not by capitulation or famine, not even by the siege or assault, which is painted so vividly, but the river, which was its protection, becoming the cause of its destruction.
(3) Its utter desolation, when captured. The first, people assume to have been the description of events past; the second, the siege, they assume to have been present; and that, when truman wisdom could foresee its issue; the third, they generalize. The first is beyond the reach of proof now. It was a witness of the Providence and just judgment of God, to those days, not to our's. A brief survey of the history of the Assyrian Empire will show, that the second and third predictions were beyond human knowledge.
The Assyrian Empire dated probably from the ninth century before Christ. Such, it has been pointed out, is the concurrent result of the statements of Berosus and Herodotus. Moses, according to the simplest meaning of his words, spake of the foundation of Nineveh as contemporary with that of Babylon. "The beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod," he relates, "was Babel and Erech, and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh" Gen 10:10-11. Oppressed probably and driven forth by Nimrod, Asshur and his Semitic descendants went forth from the plain of Shinar, the Babylonia of after-ages. Had Moses intended to express (what some have thought), that Nimrod "went forth out of that land to Assyria," he would doubtless have used the ordinary style of connected narrative; "And he went forth thence." He would probably also have avoided ambiguity, by expressing that Nimrod "went forth to Asshur" Gen 25:18 using a form, which he employs a little later. As it is, Moses has used a mode of speech, by which, in Hebrew, a parenthetical statement would be made, and he has not used the form, which occurs in every line of Hebrew narrative to express a continued history. No one indeed would have doubted that such was the meaning, but that they did not see, how the mention of Asshur, a son of Shem, came to be anticipated in this account of the children of Ham. This is no ground for abandoning the simple construction of the Hebrew. It is but the history, so often repeated in the changes of the world, that the kingdom of Nimrod was founded on the expulsion of the former inhabitants. Nimrod began his kingdom; "Asshur went forth."
It is most probable, from this same brief notice, that Nineveh was, from the first, that aggregate of cities, which it afterward was. Moses says, "And he builded Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calach and Resen, between Nineveh and Calach; this is that great city" Gen 10:11-12. This cannot be understood as said exclusively of Nineveh; since Nineveh was mentioned first in the list, of cities, and the mention of the three others had intervened; and, in the second place where it is named, it is only spoken of indirectly and subordinately; it is hardly likely to be said of Resen, of whose unusual size nothing is elsewhere related. It seems more probable, that it is said of the aggregate of cities, that they formed together one great city, the very characteristic of Nineveh, as spoken of in Jonah.
Nineveh itself lay on the Eastern side of the Tigris, opposite to the present Mosul. In later times, among the Syrian writers, As shur becomes the name for the country, distinct from Mesopotamia and Babylonia , front which it was separated by the Tigris, and bounded on the North by Mount Niphates.
This distinction, however, does not occur until after the extinction of the Assyrian empire. On the contrary, in Genesis, Asshur, in one place, is spoken of as West of the Hiddekel or Tigris, so that it must at that time have comprised Mesopotamia, if not all on this side of the Tigris, i. e., Babylonia. In another place, it is the great border-state of Arabia on the one side, as was Egypt on the other. The sons of Ishmael, Moses relates, Gen 25:18, dwell from Havilah unto Shur that is before Egypt, as thou goest to Assyria; i. e., they dwelt on the great caraven-route across the Arabian desert from Egypt to Babylonia. Yet Moses mentions, not Babylon, but Asshur. In Balaam's prophecy Num 24:22, Asshur stands for the great Empire, whose seat was at one time at Nineveh, at another at Babylon, which should, centuries afterward, carry Israel captive.
Without entering into the intricacies of Assyrian or Babylonian history further than is necessary for the immediate object, it seems probable, that the one or other of the sovereigns of these nations had an ascendency over the others, according to his personal character and military energy. Thus, in the time of Abraham, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, in his expedition against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, took with him, as subordinate allies, the kings of Shinar, (or Babylon) and Ellasar, as well as Tidal king of nations, a king probably of Nomadic tribes. The expedition was to avenge the rebellion of the petty kings in the valley of Siddim against Chedorlaomer, after they had been for twelve years tributary. But, although the expedition closed with the attack on the live kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar, its extent on the East side of the Jordan from Ashteroth Karnaim in Basan to Elparan (perhaps Elath on the Red Sea), and the defeat of the giant tribes, the Rephaim, Zuzim, Emim, Horites, the Amalekites and the Amorites in their several abodes, seems to imply one of those larger combinations against the aggressions of the East, which we meet with in later times .
It was no insulated conflict which spread over nearly three degrees of latitude. But it was the king of Elam, not the king of Babylon or of Asshur, who led this expedition; and those other kings, according to the analogy of the expeditions of Eastern monarchs, were probably dependent on him. It has been observed that the inscriptions of a monarch whose name partly coincides with that of Chedorlaomer, namely, Kudurmabuk, or Kudurmapula, show traces of a Persian influence on the Chaldee characters; but cuneiform decipherers having desponded of identifying those monarchs , Chedorlaomer appears as yet only so far cOnnected with Babylon, that its king was a tributary sovereign to him or a vice-king like those of later times, of whom Sennacherib boasts, "Are not my princes altogether kings?"
Assyria, at this time, is not mentioned, and so, since we know of its existence at an earlier period, it probably was independent. Lying far to the North of any of the nations here mentioned, it, from whatever cause or however it may have been engaged, took no share in the war. Subsequently also, down to a date almost contemporary with the Exodus, it has been observed that the name of Asshur does not appear on the Babylonian inscriptions, nor does it swell the titles of the king of Babylon . A little later than the Exodus, however, in the beginning of the 14th century b.c., Asshur and Egypt were already disputing the country which lay between them. The account is Egyptian, and so, of course, only relates the successes of Egypt. Thothmes III, in his fortieth year, according to Mr. Birch, received tribute from a king of Nineveh . In another monument of the same monarch, where the line, following on the name Nineveh, is lost, Thothmes says that he "erected his tablet in Naharaina (Mesopotamia) for the extension of the frontiers of Kami" (Egypt). Amenophis III, in the same century, represented Asiatic captives , with the names of Patens (Padan-Aram), Asuria, Karukamishi (Carchemish"). "On another column are Saenkar (Shiner), Naharaina, and the Khita (Hittites)." The mention of these contiguous nations strengthens the impression that the details of the interpretation are accurate. All these inscriptions imply that Assyria was independent of Babylon. In one, it is a co ordinate power; in the two others, it is a state which had measured its strength with Egypt, under one of its greatest conquerors, though, according to the Egyptian account, it had been worsted.
Another account, which has been thought to be the first instance of the extension of Babylonian authority so far northward, seems to me rather to imply the ancient self-government of Assyria. : "A record of Tiglath-pileser I. declares him to have rebuilt a temple in the city of Asshur, which had been taken down 60 years previously, after it had lasted for 641 years frp, the date of its first foundation by Shamas-Iva, son of Ismi-Dagon." Sir H. Rawlinson thinks that it is probable (although only probable) , that this Ismi-Dagon is a king, whose name occurs in the brick-legends of Lower Babylonia. Yet the Ismi-Dagon of the bricks does not bear the title of king of Babylon, but of king of Niffer only ; "his son," it is noticed, "does not take the title of king; but of governor of Hur ."
The name Shamas-Iva nowhere occurs in connection with Babylonia, but it docks recur, at a later period, as the name of an Assyrian Monarch . Since the names of the Eastern kings so often continue on in the same kingdom the recurrence of that name, at a later period, makes it even probable, that Shamas-Iva was a native king. There is absolutely nothing to connect his father Ismi-Dagon with the Ismi-Dagon king of Niffer, beyond the name itself, which, being Semitic, may just as well have belonged to a native king of Nineveh as to a king of Lower Babylonia. Nay, there is nothing to show that Ismi-Dagon was not an Assyrian Monarch who reigned at Niffer, for the name of his father is still unknown; there is no evidence that his father was ever a king, or, if a king, where he reigned. It seems to me in the last degree precarious to assume, without further evidence, the identity of the two kings. It has, further, yet to be shown that Lower Babylonia had, at that time, an empire, as distinct from its own local sovereignty. We know from Holy Scripture of Nimrod's kingdom in Shinar, a province distinct from Elymais, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and probably Chaldaea. In Abraham's time, 1900 b.c., we find again a king of Shinar. Shinar again, it is supposed, appears in Egyptian inscriptions, in the 14th century, b.c. ; and, if so, still distinct from Mesopotamia and Assyria. But all this implies a distinct kingdom, not an empire.
Again, were it ever so true, that Shamas-Iva was a son of a king in Lower Babylonia, that be built a temple in Kileh-Shergat, as being its king, and that he was king, as placed there by Ismi-Dagon, this would be no proof of the continual dependence of Assyria upon Babylonia. England did not continue a dependency of France, because conquered by William of Normandy. How was Alexander's empire broken at once! Spain under Charles the V was under one sovereignty with Austria; Spain with France had, even of late, alike Bourbon kings. A name would, at most, show an accidental, not a permanent, connection.
But there is, at present, no evidence implying a continued dependence of Assyria upon Babylon. Two facts only have been alleged;
1) that the cuneiform writing of inscriptions at Kileh-Shergat, 40 miles South of Nineveh, has a Babylonian character;
2) that, on those bricks, four names have been found of inferior Satraps.
But 1) the Babylonian character of the inscriptions would show a dependence of civilization, not of empire. Arts flourished early at Babylon, and so the graven character of the Inscriptions too may have been curried to the rougher and warlike North. The garment, worked at Babylon, was, in the 15th century b.c., exported as far as Palestine, and was, for its beauty, the object of Achan's covetousness Jos 7:21.
2) In regard to the satraps whose names are found on the bricks of Kileh-Shergat, it does not appear, that they were tributary to Babylon at all; they may, as far as it appears, have been simply inferior officers of the Assyrian empire. Anyhow, the utmost which such a relation to Babylon would evince, if ever so well established, would be a temporary dependence of Kileh-Shergat itself, not of Nineveh or the Assyrian kingdom. Further, the evidence of the duration of the dependency would, be as limited at its extent. Four satraps would be no evidence as to this period of 700 years, only a century less than has elapsed since the Norman conquest. The early existence of an Assyrian kingdom has been confirmed by recent cuneiform discoveries, which give the names of 8 Assyrian kings, the earliest of whom is supposed to have reigned about 3 12 centuries before the Commencement of the Assyrian Empire .
The "empire," Herodotus says , "Assyria held in Upper Asia for 520 years;" Berosus , "for 526 years." The Cuneiform Inscriptions give much the same result. Tiglath-pileser , who gives five years' annals of his own victories, mentions his grandfather's grandfather, the 4th king before him, as the king who "first organized the country of Assyria," who "established the troops of Assyria in authority." The expression, "established in authority," if it may be pressed, relates to foreign conquest. If this Tiglath-pileser be the same whom Sennacherib, in the 10th year of his own reign, mentions as having lost his gods to Merodach-ad-akhi, king of Mesopotamia, 418 years before , then, since Sennacherib ascended the throne about 703 b.c. , we should have 1112 b.c. for the latter part of the reign of Tiglath-pileser I, and counting tills and the six preceding reigns at 20 years each , should have about 1252 b.c. for the beginning of the Assyrian empire. It has been calculated that if the 526 years, assigned by Berosus to his 45 Assyrian kings, are (as Polyhistor states Berosus to have meant) to be dated back from the accession of Pul who took tribute from Menahem, and so from between 770 b.c. and 760 b.c., they carry back the beginning of the dynasty to about 1290 b.c. If they be counted, (as is perhaps more probable) from the end of the reign of Pul Kg2 15:19, i. e., probably 747 b.c., "the era of Nabonassar," the Empire would commence about 1273 b.c. Herodotus, it has been shown , had much the same date in his mind, when he assigned 520 years to the Assyrian empire in upper Asia, dating back from the revolt of the Medes. For he supposed this revolt to be 179 years anterior to the death of Cyrus 529 b.c. (and so, 708 b.c.) plus a period of anarchy before the accession of Deioces. Allowing 30 years for this period of anarchy, we have 738 b.c. plus 520, i. e., 1258 b.c., for the date of the commencement of Assyrian empire according to Herodotus. Thus, the three testimonies would coincide in placing the beginning of that Empire anyhow between 1258 and 1273 b.c.
But this Empire started up full-grown. It was the concentration of energy and power, which had before existed. Herodotus' expression is "rulers of Upper Asia." Tiglath-pileser attributes to his forefather, that he "organized the country," and "established the armies of Assyria in authority." The second king of that list takes the title of "ruler over the people of Bel" , i. e., Babylonia. The 4th boasts to have reduced "all the lands of the Magian world." Tiglath-pileser I claims to have conquered large parts of Cappadocia, Syria from Tsukha to Carchemish, Media and Muzr. According to the inscription at Bavian , he sustained a reverse, and lost his gods to a king of Mesopotamia, which gods were recovered by Sennacherib from Babylon. Yet this exception the more proves that conquest was the rule. For, had there been subsequent successful invasions of Assyria by Babylonia, the spoils of the 5th century backward would not have been alone recovered or recorded. If the deciphering of the Inscriptions is to be trusted, Nineveh was the capital, even in the days el Tiglath-pileser I. For Sennacherib brought the gods back, it is said, and put them in their places, i. e., probably where he himself reigned, at Nineveh. Thence then they were taken in the reign of Tiglath-pileser. Nineveh then was his capital also.
Of an earlier portion we have as yet but incidental notices; yet the might of Assyria is attested by the presence of Assyrian names in the Egyptian dynastic lists, whether the dynasties were themselves Assyrian, or whether the names came in through matrimonial alliances between two great nations .
With few exceptions, as far as appears from their own annals (and these are in the later times confirmed by Holy Scripture), the Assyrian Empire was, almost whenever we hear of it, one long series of victory and rapine. It is an exception, if any monarch is peaceful, and content to "repair the buildings" in his residence, "leaving no evidence of conquest or greatness." Tiglathi-Nin, father of the warlike Asshur-i-danipal or Sardanapalus, is mentioned only in his son's monument , "among his warlike ancestors, who had carried their arms into the Armenian mountains, and there set up stelae to commemorate their conquests."
Civil wars there were, and revolutions. Conquerors and dynasties came to an untimely end; there was parricide, fratricide; but the tide of war and conquest rolled on. The restless warriors gave no rest. Sardanapalus terms himself , "the conqueror from the upper passage of the Tigris to Lebanon and the great sea, who all countries, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, has reduced under his authority." His son, Shalmanubar or Shalmaneser, in his thirty-five years of reign led, in person twenty-three military expeditions. 20,000, 16,000, are the numbers of his enemies left dead upon a field of battle with Benhadad and Hazael . Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, Media, Babylonia, Syria, Phoenicia , 15 degrees of longitude and 10 of latitude, save where the desert or the sea gave him nothing to conquer, were the range of his repeated expeditions.
He circled round Judaea. He thrice defeated Benhadad with his allies (on several occasions, twelve kings of the Hittites). His own army exceeded on occasions 100,000 fighting men. Twice he defeated Hazael. Israel trader Jehu, Tyre, Sidon, 24 kings in Pontus, kings of the Hittites, of Chaldaea, 27 kings of Persia are among his tributaries ; "the shooting of his arrows struck terror," he says, "as far as the sea" (Indian Ocean); "he put up his arrows in their quiver at the sea of the setting sun." His son Shamesiva apparently subdued Babylonia, and in the West conquered tribes near Mount Taurus, on the North the countries bordering on Armenia to the South and East, the Medes beyond Mount Zagros, and "the Zimri Jer 25:25 in upper Luristan." His son Ivalush III or IV received undisturbed tribute from the kingdoms which his fathers conquered, and ascribes to his god Asshur the grant of "the kingdom of Babylon to his son."
Thus "Assyria with one hand grasped Babylonia; with the other Philistia and Edom; she held Media Proper, S. Armenia, possessed all Upper Syria, including Commagene and Amanus, bore sway over all the whole Syrian coast from Issus to Gaza, and from the coast to the desert." Tiglath-pileser II and Shalmaneser are known to us as conquerors from Holy Scripture . Tiglath-pileser, we are told from the inscriptions, warred and conquered in Upper Mesopotamia, Armenia, Media, Babylonia, drove into exile a Babyionian prince, destroyed Damascus, took tribute from a Hiram king of Tyre, and from a Queen of the Arabs . And so it continued, until nearly the close of the Monarchy.
The new dynasty which began with Sargon were even greater conquerors than their predecessors. Sargon, in a reign of seventeen or nineteen years, defeated the king of Elam, conquered in Iatbour beyond Elam, reigned from Ras, a dependency on Elam, over Poukoud (Pekod), Phoenicia, Syria, etc. to the river of Egypt, in the far Media to the rising sun, in Scythia, Albania, Parthia, Van, Armenia, Colchis, Tubal to the Moschi: he placed his lieutenants as governors over these countries, and imposed tribute upon them, as upon Assyrians; he, probably, placed Merodach-Baladan on the throne of Babylon, and after 12 years displaced him; he reduced all Chaldaea under his rule; he defeated "Sebech (i. e., probably, So), Sultan of Egypt, so that he was heard of no more;" he received tribute from the Pharaoh of Egypt, from a Queen of Arabia and from Himyar the Sabaean. To him first the king of Meroe paid tribute. He finally captured Samaria: he took Gaza, Kharkar, Arpad and Damascus, Ashdod (which it cost Psammetichus 29 years to reconquer), and Tyre, (which resisted Nebuchadnezzar for 13 years). He added to the Satrapy of Parthia, placed a Satrap or Lieutenant over Commagene and Sentaria, Kharkar, Tel-Garimmi, Gamgoum, Ashdod, and a king of his own choice over Albania. lie seized 55 walled cities in Armenia, 11, which were held to be "inaccessible fortresses;" and 62 great cities in Commagene; 34 in Media; he laid tribute on the "king of the country of rivers."
He removed whole populations at his will; from Samaria, he carried captive its inhabitants, 27,800, and placed them in "cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6; Kg2 18:11; he removed those of Commagene to Elam; all the great men of the Tibareni, and the inhabitants of unknown cities, to Assyria; Cammanians, whom he had conquered, to Tel-Garimmi, a capital which he rebuilt; others whom he had vanquished in the East he placed in Ashdod: again he placed "Assyrians devoted to his empire" among the Tibareni; inhabitants of cities unknown to us, in Damascus; Chaldaeans in Commagene , extracted from the Annales de Philosophie Chretienne T. vi. (5e sêrie). Oppert p. 8, gives as the meaning of his name, "actual king," "roi de fait." (שׁר־כן shar-kēn) Sargon himself, if Oppert has translated him rightly, gives as its meaning, "righteous prince," p. 38). : "The Comukha were removed from the extreme North to Susiana, and Chaldaeans were brought from the extreme South to supply their place." "Seven kings of Iatnan, seven days voyage off in the Western seas, whose names were unknown to the kings" his "fathers; hearing of" his "deeds, came before" him to Babylon with "presents:" as did the king of Asmoun, who dwelt in the midst of the Eastern sea (the Persian gulf). He placed his statue, "writing on it the glory of Asshur his master," in the capital of Van, in Kikisim (Circesium) as also in Cyprus, which he does not name, but where it has been discovered in this century . The Moschian king, with his 3000 towns, who had never submitted to the kings his predecessors, sent his submission and tribute to him.
Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, says of himself, "Assour, the great Lord, has conferred on me sovereignty over the peoples; he has extended my dominion over all those who dwell in the world. From the upper Ocean of the setting sun to the lower Ocean of the rising sun, I reduced under my power all who carried aloft their head."
He defeated Merodach Baladan and the king of Elam together ; took in one expedition , "79 great strong cities of the Chaldaeans anti 820 small towns;" he took prisoners by hundreds of thousands; 200, 150 in his first expedition against Hezekiah, from 44 great walled cities which he took and little villages innumerable ; 208,000 from the Nabathseans anti Hagarenes : he employed on his great buildings 360,000 men, gathered from Chaldea and Aramaea, from Cilicia and Armenia ; he conquered populations in the North, which "had of old not submitted to the kings my brothers ," annexed them to the prefecture of Arrapachitis and set up his image ; he received tribute from the governor of Khararat , wasted the 2 residence cities, 34 smaller cities of Ispahara king of Albania, joining a part of the territory to Assyria, and calling its city, Ilhinzas, the city of Sennacherib ;
He reduced countries of "Media, whose names the kings his brothers had not heard ; he set a king, Toubaal, over the great and little Sidon, Sarepta, Achzib, Acco, Betzitti, Mahalliba; the kings of Moab, Edom, Bet-Amman, Avvad, Ashdod, submitted to him ; he deteated an "innumerable host" of Egyptians at Altakou (Elteke); sons of the king of Egypt fell into his hands; he captured Ascalon, Bene-Barak, Joppa, Hazor ; put back at Amgarron (Migron) the expelled king Padi, who had been surrendered to Hezekiah ; gave portions of the territory of Hezekiah to the kings of Ashdod, Migron, Gaza ; he drove Merodach-baladan again to Elam, captured his brothers, wasted his cities, and placed his own oldest son, Assurnadin, on the throne of Babylon took seven impregnable cities of the Toukharri, placed like birds' nests on the mountains of Nipour ; conquered the king of Oukkou in Dayi, among mountains which none of his ancestors had penetrated; look Oukkou and 33 other cities ; attached Elam, "crossing" the Persian gulf "in Syrian vessels" ; capturing the men, and destroying the cities ; in another campaign, he garrisoned, with prisoner-warriors of his own, cities in Elam which his father had lost ; destroyed 34 large cities and others innumerable of Elam .
His account of his reign closes with a great defeat of Elam, whom the escaped Souzoub had hired with the treasures of the temples of Babylon, and of 17 rebel tribes or cities, at Khalouli, and their entire subdual . He repelled some Greeks in Cilicia, set up his image there, with a record of his deeds, and built Tarsus, on the model of Babylon . It has been noticed, what a "keen appreciation of the merits of a locality" his selection of its site evinced. The destruction of his army of 185,000 men, at the word of God, might well deter him from again challenging the Almighty; but we have seen, in the wars of Napoleon I, that such losses do not break the power of an empire. It was no vain boast of Sennacherib, that he had "gathered all the earth, and carried captive the gods of the nations." The boast was true; the application alone was impious. God owned in him the instrument which He had formed, "the rod of His anger." He condenmed him, only because "the axe boasted itself against Him Who hewed therewith." Victorious, except when he fought against God, and employed by God "to tread down the people as the mire of the streets" Isa 10:5-15; Isa 36:18-20, Sennacherib was cut off as God foretold, but left his kingdom to a victorious son.
His son, Esarhaddon, takes titles, yet more lofty titan those of Sennacherib. He calls himself , "King of Assyria, Vicar of Babylon, King of the Sumirs and Accads, King of Egypt, Meroe and Cush, who reigned from sunrising to sun-set, unequalled in the imposition of tributes." In Armenia, he killed Adrammelech , his half-brother, one of his father's murderers, who fled to Armenia, probably to dispute thence his father's crown. In every direction he carried his conquests further than his powerful father . He speaks of conquests in the far Media , "where none of the kings, our fathers," had conquered, whose kings bore well-known Persian names .
They and their subjects were carried off to Assyria. Others, who "had not conspired against the kings my fathers and the land of Assyria, and whose territories my fathers had not conquered," submitted voluntarily in terror, paid tribute and received Assyrian governors. In the West, he pursued by sea a king of Sidon who rebelled, divided the Syrians in strange countries, and placed mountaineers, whom his bow had subdued in the East, with a governor, in a castle of Esarhaddon which he built in Syria. He warred successfully in Cilicia, Khoubousna, and destroyed 10 large cities of the Tibareni and carried their people captive; trod down the country of Masnaki, transported rebels of Van; he established on the Southern shore that son of Merodach-baladan who submitted to him, removing the brother who trusted in Elam, himself reigned in Babylon , where he carried Manasseh Ch2 33:11.
He reconquered "the city of Adoumou (Edom), (the city of the power of the Arabs,) which Sennacherib had conquered, and carried off its people to Assyria;" he named as Queen of the Arabs, Tabouya, born in his palace; put the son of Hazael on his father's throne. An expedition to "a far country to the bounds of the earth beyond the desert," Bazi (Buz), reached by traversing 140 farsakhs (?) of sandy desert, then 20 farsakhs (?) of fertile land and a stony region, Khazi (Uz), looks like an expedition across Arabia, and, if so, was unparalleled except by Nushirvan. Some of the other names are Arabic. Anyhow, it was a country, where none of his predecessors had gone; he killed 8 kings, carried off their subjects and spoils. He conquered the Gomboulou in their marshes. twelve kings on the coast of Syria whom he recounts by name, (Ba'lou king of Tyre, Manasseh king of Judah, and those of Edom, Maan, Gaza, Ascalon, Amgarron, Byblos, Aradus, Ousimouroun, Bet-Ammon, Ashdod) and 10 kings of Yatnan in the sea (Cyprus) - Aegisthus (Ikistonsi), King of Idalion (Idial), Pythagoras (Pitagoura) K. of Citium (Kitthim), Ki ..., K. of Salamis (Silhimmi), Ittodagon ("Dagon is with him," Itoudagon), K. of Paphos (Pappa), Euryalus (lrieli), K. of Soil (Sillou), Damasou, K. of Curium (Kuri,) Ounagonsou, K. of Limenion (Limini), Roumizu, K. of Tamassus (Tamizzi,) Damutsi of Amti-Khadasti, Puhali of Aphrodisium (Oupridissa) , held their rule from him.
The names of the countries, from which he brought those whom he settled in Samaria, attest alike his strength and the then weakness of two of the nations, which afterward concurred to overthrow his empire. The colonists, according to their own letters to Artaxerxes Ezr 4:9, comprehended, among others, Babylonians; Archevites i. e., inhabitants of Erech, mentioned in Genesis Gen 10:10, as, together with Babel, part of the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod; Susanchites, i. e., inhabitants of Susiana or Chusistan; Dehavites, Daans in Herodotus , one of the wandering Persian tribes, whose name (Taia) still exists; Elamite's Isa 21:2; Isa 22:6 or the dwellers on the Persian gulf, bordering on Susiana; Apharsites or the Persians in their original abode in Paraca, Paraic, now Farsistan. It seems also probable that the Apharsachites are those more known to us as Sacae or Scythians, whom Esarhaddon says that he conquered ; and that the Apharsachthites (with the same word Aphar prefixed) are the Sittaceni on the Caspian. The Dinaites and the Tarphelites are as yet unidentified, unless the Tarpetes of the Palus Maeotis near the Sittaceni, or the Tapiri in Media be a corruption of the name.
The Samaritan settlers add, "And the rest of the nations, whom the great and noble Asnapper carried captive, and settled in the cities of Samaria and the rest on this side the river." Under this general term, they include the Mesopotamian settlers brought from Avvah and Sepharvaim, and those from Hamath Kg2 17:24, probably wishing to insist to the Persian Monarch on their Persian, Median, or Babylonian descent. They attest at the same time that their forefathers were not willingly removed but "transported, carried into exile" Ezr 4:10, and accordingly that Esarhaddon, in whose reign they were removed, had power in all these countries. The condensation also of settlers from twelve nations in so small a space as the cities of Samaria (analogous as it is to the dispersion of the Jews over so many provinces of their captors) illustrates the policy of these transportations, and the strength which they gave to the empire. Nations were blended together among those foreign to them, with no common bond except their relation to their conqueror. A check on those around them, and themselves held in check by them, they had no common home to which to return, no interest to serve by rebelling. Esarhaddon built 36 temples in Assyria by the labor of foreign slaves, his captives, who worshiped his gods .
This collection of people of twelve nations in the cities of Samaria represents moreover one portion only of the conquests of Esarhaddon, and, for the most part, that furthest from Judaea. For the principle of the policy was to remove them far from their own land. Ethiopian and Egyptian captives would be placed, not here from where they could easily return, but, like Israel in the cities of the Medes, from where they could find no escape.
The son of Esarhaddon, Asshurbanipal II. , yet further enlarged and consolidated the conquests of his conquering father. His expeditions into Egypt have been already dwelt upon; his victories were easy, complete. Tirhaka, himself a great conqueror, fled into unknown deserts beyond reach of pursuits. His step-son Urdaminie attempted to recover his kingdom, was defeated at once, fled and his capital was taken. In Asia, he took away tim king of Tyre, who offended him; made conquests beyond Mt. Taurus, where his fathers had never been ; received an embassy from Gyges; attached to Assyria a tract of Minni or Persarmenia, took the capital of Minni; took Shushan and Badaca; killed their kings, united Susiana to Babylonia; subdued anew Edom, Moab, Kedar, the Nabathaeans; received the submission of the king of Urarda, Ararat .
While Assyria was extended wider than before, its old enemies were more incorporated with it, or, at least, more subdued; it was more at one within itself. Egypt, the great rival Empire, had tried to shake off the yoke, but was subdued; no people in Syria or the valley of the Euphrates stirred itself; the whole tract within the Taurus, once so rife with enemies, lay hushed under his rule: hushed were the Hittites, Hamathites, the Syrians of Damascus, the Tibareni who had once held their own against his father; war was only at the very extremities, in Minni or Edom, and that, rather chastisement than war; Babylon was a tranquil portion of his empire, except during the temporary rebellion of the brother, whom he had placed over it, and whom he pardoned. His death, amid the tranquil promotion of literature , when he had no more enemies to conquer or rebels to chasten, left his empire at the zenith of its power, some 22 years before its destruction. "Culno" had become, as Sennacherib boasted Isa 10:9, "like Carehemish; Hamath like Arpad; Samaria as Damascus." He "had removed the bounds of the people and gathered all the earth, as one gathereth eggs, left" Isa 10:13-14 by the parent bird, undefended even by its impotent love. There was not a cloud on the horizon, not a token from where the whirlwind would come. The bas-reliefs attest, that neither the energy nor the cruelty of the Assyrians were diminished .
Of those twenty-two years, we have nothing reliable except their close. There was probably nothing to relate. There would not be anything, if Asshurbanipal had consolidated his empire, as he seems to have done, and if his son and successor inherited his father's later tastes, and was free from the thirst of boundless conquest, which had characterized the earlier rulers of Assyria. Anyhow, we know nothing authentic. The invasion of Assyria by Phraortes, which Herodotus relates, is held, on good grounds, to be a later history of a rebellion against Darius Hystaspes, adapted to times before the Medes became one nation . There was no reason why it should not have been recorded, had it taken place, since it is admitted to have been a total defeat, in which Phraortes lost his life . The invasion of the Scythians, which is to have stopped the siege of Nineveh under Cyaxares, was reported in a manifestly exaggerated form to Herodotus. The 28 years, during which Herodotus relates the Scythian rule to have lasted , is longer than the whole of the reign of the last king of Assyria; and yet, according to Herodotus, is to have been interposed between the two sieges of Cyaxares. And as its empire gave no sign of decay, so far as we can trace its history within 22 years before its destruction, so, with the like rapidity, did the empire rise, which was to destroy it.
The account which Herodotus received, that the Medians had thrown off the yoke of Assyria before Deioces , is in direct contradiction to the Assyrian inscriptions. This was, they state, the time, not of the revolt, but of the conquest of Media. They are confirmed by Holy Scripture, which says that the Assyrian king (Sargon) placed "in the cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6 his Israelitish captives. The utmost, which Herodotus ascribes to Deioces however, is, that he consolidated the six Median tribes and built a capital, Agbatana . It is an union of wild hordes into one people, held together for the time by the will of one man and by their weariness of mutual oppressions. Even according to their accounts, Cyaxares (about 633 b.c., i. e., 8 years before the fall of Nineveh) first organized the Median army; the Greeks, in the time of Aeschylus, believed Cvaxares to have been the first of the Median kings ; rebels in Media and Sagartia claimed the Median throne against Darius, as descended from Cyaxares, as the founder of the Monarchy .
Further, the subsequent history supports the account of Abydenus against Herodotus, that not the Medes, but the rebel general of the last Monarch of Nineveh was, with his Babylonian troops, the chief author of the destruction of Nineveh. The chief share of the spoil, where no motives of refined policy intervene, falls to the strongest, who had chief portion in the victory. "The Medes," says Herodotus, "took Nineveh, and conquered all Assyria, except the Babylonian portion" . But Babylon was no spared province, escaping with its independence as a gain. Babylonia, not Media, succeeded to the Southern and Western dominions of the Assyrian empire, and the place, where Nineveh had stood, Cyaxares retaining the North. This was a friendly arrangement, since subsequently too we find a Babylonian prince in the expedition of Cyaxares against Asia Minor, and Medians assisting Nebuchadnezzar against the king of Egypt . Abydenus represents the Babylonians and Medes, as equal , but exhibits the rebel general, as the author of the attack . "After him (Sardanapal), Sarac held the empire of Assyria, who, being informed of a horde of mingled troops which were coming against him from the sea, sent Busalossor (Nebopalassar) general of his army, to Babylon. But he, having determined to revolt, betrothed to his son, Nebucbodrossor, Amuhea, daughter of Asdahag, prince of the Medes, and soon made a rapid attack on Nineveh. King Sarac, when he knew the whole, set the palace Evorita on fire. Then Nehuchodrossor, attaining to the empire, encircled Babylon with strong walls."
The "horde of mingled troops" "from the sea" were probably those same Susians and Elymaeans, whom the Assyrians had, in successive reigns, defeated. If the account of Herodotus were true, the father of the Median Monarch had perished in conflict with Assyria. The grandfather of the Assyrian Monarch had himself reigned in Babylon. Assyria ruled Babylon by viceroys to the end. It has been noticed that Nahum mentions no one enemy who should destroy Nineveh. True, for no one enemy did destroy her.
Even now its fall is unexplained. The conquests of its Monarchs had not been the victories of talented individuals. They were a race of world-wide conquerors. In the whole history, of which we have the annals, they are always on the aggressive. They exacted tribute where they willed. The tide of time bore them on in their conquests. Their latest conquests were the most distant. Egypt, her early rival, had been subdued by her. The powers, which did destroy her, had no common bond of interest. They were united, for one reign, not by natural interests, but, as far as we see, by the ambition of two individuals. These crushed, at once and for ever, the empire which for so many centuries had been the ravager of the world. But who could have foreseen such a combination and such results, save God, in Whose hands are human wills and the fate of empires?
The fiery empire of conquerors sank like a tropic sun. Its wrath had burned, unassuaged, "from" (in their own words) "the rising to the setting sun." No gathering cloud had tempered its heat or allayed its violence. Just ere it set, in those last hours of its course, it seemed, as if in its meridian. Its bloodstained disk cast its last glowing rays on that field of carnage in Susiana; then, without a twilight, it sank beneath those stormy waves, so strangely raised, at once and for ever. All, at once, was night. It knew no morrow.
Its fall is inexplicable still. It may have accelerated its own destruction by concentrating the fierce Chaldees at Babylon. It was weakened by the revolt of its own general, and with him the defection of an army. Still, in those days, the city of 1200 towers, each 200 feet high, its ordinary wall 100 feet high and of such breadth, that three chariots could drive on it abreast , could not be taken by mounds, except by some most gigantic army with patience inexhaustible. Famine could not reduce a city, which, in its 60 miles in circumference, enclosed, like Babylon, space for much cattle, and which could, within its walls, grow enough grain for its population of 600,000 Jon 4:11. With its perennial supply of provision, it might have laughed to scorn a more formidable foe than the Medes, Elamites and Babylonians, unaccustomed to sieges, except in as far as any had fought in its armies, while the Ninevites possessed the hereditary skill of centuries.
Babylon, smaller than Nineveh , was at rest amidst the siege of the more powerful grandson of Cyaxares. Cyrus could only take it by stratagem; Darius Hystaspes, by treachery. Then, every Ninevite was a warrior. Their descendants, the Curds, are still among the fiercest and most warlike people of Asia. The bas-reliefs, which bear internal evidence of truth, exhibit a wonderful blending of indomitable strength of will, recklessness of suffering, inherent physical energy, unimpaired by self-indulgence. A German writer on art says , "You recognize a strong thick-set race, of very powerful frame, yet inclined to corpulence, a very special blending of energy and luxury. The general impression of the figures, whether men, women or eunuchs, has uniformly something earnest and imposing." An English writer says still more vividly ; "All the figures indicate great physical development, animal propensities very strongly marked, a calm, settled ferocity, a perfect nonchalance amidst the most terrible scenes; no change of feature takes place, whether the individual is inflicting or experiencing horrid sufferings. The pictures are very remarkable as indicating the entire absence of higher mental and moral qualities: and the exuberance of brutal parts of man's nature. At the same time, there is not lacking a certain consciousness of dignity and of inherent power. There is a tranquil energy and fixed determination, which will not allow the beholder to feel any contempt of those stern warriors."
How then could it fall? The prophecy of Nahum describes, with terrible vividness, a siege; the rousing of its king from a torpor of indolence; "he remembereth his nobles" (Nah 2:5 (6)); the orderly advance, the confused preparations for defense; and then, when expectation is strung, and we see besiegers and besieged prepared for the last decisive strife, there is a sudden pause. No human strength overthrows the city "The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved. And it is decreed, she shall be led away captive" (Nah 2:6-7 (7, 8)). Her captivity follows on the opening of "the gates of the rivers." The "rivers," ordinarily her strength, were also her weakness. The annals of Sennacherib relate, how he repaired a palace which had been undermined by the Tigris. : "The small palace, which was become very ruinous in every part, because the river Tigris, during 16 years, had undermined and ravaged it, (I repaired.)" Dionysius, the Jacobite patriarch, relates how in his own time, 763 a.d. : "the Tigris, overflowing, laid waste all the towns around it, and especially Mosul" (opposite to Nineveh). Barhebraeus, in four different years, mentions the destruction of houses in Bagdad through the overflow of the Tigris .
He mentions also a city-wall, overthrown by an inundation, so that 3,000 men were drowned in their houses . Ives relates : "The Bishop (of Babylon) remembers that" about 1733 "the Euphrates and Tigris were so overflown, that the whole country between them appeared as one large sea. Over all the plain between Bagdad and Hilla, people could pass only in boats. The water flowed quite up to the glacis, the ditch was full, the city also overflown, and the foundation of most of the buildings hurt; 300 houses were entirely destroyed. To prevent as much as possible" the recurrence of such a calamity, "the Turks now face the foundation-wall of their houses with a composition of charcoal, ashes, and Demar (bitumen)." "The river Khosar," also, which would be swollen by the same causes as the Tigris, "entered the city," says Ainsworth , "by an aperture in the walls on the East side, which appears to have formed part of the original plan and to have been protected by a gateway and walls, vestiges of which still remain." "The Khausser," says Mr. Rich , "is generally drawn off for irrigating the cotton-plantations in the alluvial ground of the river; when it is much overflowed, it discharges itself into the Tigris above the bridge." : "The Khausser now (Dec. 1. after "very heavy tropical rain,") discharges itself direct into the Tigris, and brings an immense body of water." : "After rain, it becomes an impetuous torrent, overflowing its banks and carrying all before it." : "The stone-bridge was carried away one night by the violence of the Khausser, on a sudden inundation." On a lesser swelling of the river - "the water-wheels were removed" in precaution "and the bridge of boats opened." Cazwini, the Arabic geographer, speaks of "the rivers of Nineveh."
Ctesias, being a writer of suspected authority, cannot safely be alleged in proof of the fulfillment of prophecy. Yet in this case his account, as it is in exact conformity with the obvious meaning of the prophecy of Nahum, so it solves a real difficulty, how Nineveh, so defended, could have fallen. It seems certain that the account of the siege taken from him by Diodorus, is that of the last siege. It bas been remarked that the only event of the siege, known from any other source, namely, that the last Assyrian king; when be had learned the combination of the Medes and Babylonians against him, set fire to his palace, is related also by Ctesias. Ctesias has also the same fact, that the Babylonian revolt was recent; the name of the revolted general in Ctesias, Belisis, is the latter half of that given to him by Abydenus, , Nebopalassar, omitting only the name of the god, Nebo. The rest of the history is in itself probable.
The success of the Assyrian monarch at first against the combined armies, and the consequent revelry, are that same blending of fierceness and sensuality which is stamped on all the Assyrian sculptures, continned to the end. The rest of his relation, which, on account of the filets of nature, which we know, but which, since they are gathered from sources so various, Ctesias probably did not know, is, in itself, probable, accounts for what is unaccounted for, and corresponds with the words of Nahum. It is , "Sardanapalus, seeing the whole kingdom in the greatest danger, sent his three sons and two daughters with much wealth to Paphlagonia to Cotta the Governor, being the best-disposed of his subjects. He himself sent by messengers to all his subjects for forces, and prepared what was needed for the siege. He had an oracle handed down from his forefathers, that no one should take Nineveh, unless the river first became an enemy to the city.
Conceiving that this never would be, he held to his hopes, purposing to abide the siege and awaited the armies to be sent by his subjects." "The rebels, elated by their successes, set themselves to the siege, but on account of the strength of the walls, could in no wise injure those in the city." "But these had great abundance of all necessaries through the foresight of the king. The siege then being prolonged for two years, they pressed upon it; assaulting the walls and cutting off those therein from any exit into the country." "In the 3rd year, the river, swollen by continuous and violent rains, inundated a part of the city and overthrew 20 stadia of the wall. Then the king, thinking that the oracle was fulfilled, and that the river was plainly an enemy to the city, despaired of safety. And, not to fall into the enemy's hands, he made an exceeding great pile in the palace, heaped up there all the gold and silver and the royal apparel, and having shut up his concubines and eunuchs in the house formed in the midst of the pile, consumed himself and all the royalties with them all. The rebels, hearing that Sardanapalus had perished, possessed themselves of the city, entering by the broken part of the wall."
Yet Nahum had also prophesied, "the fire shall devour thy bars;" "fortify thy strong holds, there shall the fire devour thee;" "I will burn her chariots in the smoke" Nah 3:13, Nah 3:15; Nah 2:13, and all the ruins of Nineveh still speak from beneath the earth where they lie interred, that, overthrown as they have been by some gigantic power, fire consumed them within. : "The palaces of Khorsabad (Dur Sarjina) and Nimrud shew equal traces of fire with those of Koyunjik." : "The recent excavations have strewn that fire was a great instrument in the destruction of the Nineveh palaces. Calcined alabaster, masses of charred wood and charcoal, colossal statues split through with the heat, are met with in parts of the Ninerite mounds, and attest the veracity of prophecy." . "It is evident from the ruins that Khorsabad and Nimroud were sacked; and set on fire."
Yet this does not exhaust the fullness of the prophecy. Nahum not only foretold the destruction of Nineveh, that it should "be empty, void, waste, there is no healing of thy bruise," but in emphatic words, that its site also should be a desolation. "With an overrunning flood He shall make the place thereof (mekomah) a desolation" Nah 1:8. This was then new in the history of the world. Cities have remained, while empires passed away. Rome, Constantinople, Athens, Damascus, Alexandria, Venice, abide, although their political might is extinct. No or Thebes itself survived its capture by Sargon and a yet later loss of its inhabitants nearly two centuries, when the more fatal conquest of Cambyses, anti perhaps the rise of Memphis perpetuated its destruction. Nahum foretells emphatically as to Nineveh, "He will make the place thereof an utter consumption." Not only would God destroy the then Nineveh; but the very place or site thereof should be an utter desolation.
There was, then, no instance of so great a city passing away. Such had not been Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian policy. It had become an established policy in Sennacherib's time to remove populations, not to destroy cities. And these two policies were incompatible. For a conqueror who would remove populations must have, whither to remove them. Nineveh itself had conquered Babylon and Shushun, and the cities of the Medes; but had placed her own lieutenants in them. The mere destruction of such a city as Nineveh was "contrary to experience." Even later than this, Babylon, notwithstanding its rebellions, was spared by its first conqueror, and survived to be the grave of its second, Alexander. Xenophon describes Nineveh under the name of Mespila (of which Mosul has been supposed to be a corruption) "a wall, void, large, lying against the city - the basement was of polished stone, full of shells, its width 50 feet, its height 50 feet. Thereon was built a wall of brick, its breadth 50 feet, the height 100; the circuit was six farsangs," i. e., 22 12 miles.
The shell remained; the tumult of life was gone. Its protecting bulwarks remained; all, which they protected, had disappeared. They had forgotten already on the spot what it had been or by whom it had perished. : "The Medes inhabited it formerly. It was said that Media, a kings wife, had fled thither, when the Medes were losing their power through the Persians. The Persian king, besieging this city, could not take it, either by time or force; but Zeus made the inhabitants senseless, and so it was taken." A little later, Alexander marched over its site to gain the world, not knowing that a world-empire, like that which he gave his life to found, was buried under his feet . Gaugamela, near which Darius lost his empire, must have been close to its site. Yet three centuries, and history, not its mere neighbors only, had forgotten when it had perished. Strabo says , "It was effaced immediately after the destruction of the Syrians." Nearly two centuries later is Lucian's saying , "Nineveh has perished, and there is no trace left where it once was." Yet before this time, in the reign of Claudius, the Romans had built a new Nineveh which they called by his name "Ninive Claudiopolis." In the 6th century, it is mentioned as a Christian see . Its episcopate was taken away, probably on account of its decline, early in the 9th century; and it was united to Mosul . It was still in being at the beginning of the 14th century . Yet, in the 12th century, as a whole, "it was desolate, but there were there many villages and castles." This was not the Nineveh of prophecy; but it too was swept away, and a few coins alone attest the existence of the Roman city. "The city, and even the ruins of the city," relates Gibbon of the last victory of Heraclius, "had long since disappeared; the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the operation of the two armies." A line of lofty mounds, on the East of Tigris, long drew but a momentary gaze from the passers-by; a few cottages surmounted the heaps, which entombed the palaces of kings, who were the terror of the East; the plow turned up, unheeded, the bricks, which recorded their deeds; the tide of war swept over it anew; the summer's sands again filled up "the stupendous mass of brick-work, occasionally laid bare by the winter rains." The eyes rested on nothing but "the stern shapeless mound, rising like a hill from the scorched plain." : "The traveler is at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps, upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have left no visible traces of their civilization or of their arts; their influence has long since passed away. The scene around him is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation; a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder, for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. Those huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Baalbee and the theaters of Ionia."
In 1827, Buckingham still wrote : "we came in about an hour to the principal mounds which are thought to mark the site of the ancient Nineveh. There are four of these mounds, disposed in the form of a square; and these, as they shew neither bricks, stones, nor other materials of building, but are in many places overgrown with grass, resemble the mounds left by entrenchments and fortifications of ancient Roman camps. The longest of these mounds runs nearly N. and S. and consists of several ridges of unequal height, the whole appearing to extend for four or five miles in length. There are three other distinct mounds, which are all near to the river, and in the direction of East and West - there are appearances of mounds and ruins extending for several miles to the southward; and still more distinctly seen to the Northward of this, though both are less marked than the mounds of the center.
The space between these is a level plain, over every part of the face of which, broken pottery, and the other usual debris of ruined cities are seen scattered about." "Mounds and smaller heaps of ruins were scattered widely over the plain, sufficient to prove, that the site of the original city occupied a vast extent." Niebuhr had ridden through Nineveh unknowingly. : "I did not learn that I was at so remarkable a spot, until near the river. Then they showed me a village on a great hill, which they call Nunia, and a mosque, in which the prophet Jonah was buried. Another hill in this district is called Kalla Nunia, or the Castle of Nineveh. On that lies a village Koindsjug. At Mosul, where I dwelt close by the Tigris, they strawed me in addition the walls of Nineveh, which in my journey through I had not observed, but supposed to be a set of hills." "It is well-known," begins an account of the recent discoveries , "that in the neighborhood of Mosul, travelers had observed some remarkable mounds, resembling small bills, and that Mr. Rich had, thirty years ago, called attention to one called Koyunjik, in which fragments of sculpture and pottery had been frequently discovered."
And yet, humanly speaking, even if destroyed, it was probable before hand, that it would not altogether perish. For a town near its site was needed for purposes of commerce. Of the two routes of commerce from the Persian gulf to the North by the Euphrates or by the Tigris, the Tigris-route was free from the perils of the arid wilderness, through which the line by the Euphrates passed. If, for the downward course, the Euphrates itself was navigable, yet the desert presented a difficulty for caravans returning upward from the Persian gulf. Arrian, who mentions the two lines of travel, says that Alexander , having crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, chose the less direct line by the Tigris, as having a better supply of all things, food for his cavalry, and a less scorching heat.
The mention of Haran (afterward Carrhae) Canneh, and Asshur in Ezekiel, (in one verse ) seems to indicate the continuation of the same line of commerce with Tyre, which must have existed from praehistoric times (i. e., from times of which we have no definite historic account), since there is no ground to question the statement of the Phoenicians themselves in Herodotus, that they had come from the Erythraean sea , i. e., the Persian gulf. The later hindrances to the navigation of the Tigris by the great dams (probably for irrigation), were of Persian date; but they could have had no great effect on the actual commerce; since for the greater part of the upward course on the Tigris line, this also must, on account of the rapidity of the river, have been by caravans.
The route was still used in the middle ages . : "The ancient road and the modern one on the upper Tigris follow, pretty nearly throughout, the same line, it being determined by the physical necessities of the soil." In the 16th century , "from the head of the Persian gulf two commercial lines existed: by one of them goods were carried some way up the Euphrates, and then by land to Bir, Aleppo, Iskonderun. By the other they followed the Tigris to Baghdad and were carried by Diyar-Bekr and Sires to Terabuzum." (But Mosul was necessarily on the way from Baghdad to Diyar Bekr). Mosul still lies on the line of commerce, from the Persian gulf, Basrah, Baghdad, Mosul, Mardin, Diyar-Bekr to Iskenderun, the port of Aleppo , or Trebizond (Tarabuzum ).
It still carries on some commerce with Kurdistan and other provinces (beside Diyar-Bekr and Baghdad). Col. Chesney, in 1850, advocated the advantages of extending the line of commerce by British stations at Diyar-Bekr and Mardin, in addition to and connection with those already existing at Baghdad and Mosul . There is, in fact, a consent as to this. Layard writes : "The only impediment between the Syrian coast and the Tigris and Euphrates in any part of their course, arises from the want of proper security. The navigation of the Persian gulf is, at all times, open and safe; and a glance at the map will shew that a line through the Mediterranean, the port of Suedia, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Busrah, and the Indian Ocean to Bombay is as direct as can well be desired.
With those prospects, and with the incalculable advantages, which a flourishing commerce and a safe and speedy transit through, perhaps, the richest portions of its dominions would confer upon the Turkish empire, it would seem that more than Eastern apathy is shown in not taking some steps, tending to restore security to the country watered by the Tigris and Euphrates." Ainsworth suggests a still wider commerce, of which Mosul might be the center. : "With a tranquil state of the surrounding country, Mosul presents mercantile advantages of no common order. There are several roads open to Persia, across the mountains; a transit from five to seven days, and by which, considering the short distance and good roads from Mosul to Iskenderun, British manufactures might be distributed into the heart of Persia, in a time and at an expense, which the line of Trebizond Erzrum and Tabriz, that of Bushire and Baghdad, or the Russian line of Astrakhan Bakhu and Mazenderan can never rival."
But although marked out by these advantages for continuance, even when its power was gone, Nineveh was to perish and it perished. Nor ought it to be alleged, that in other cases too, "if the position of the old capital was deemed, from political or commercial reasons more advantageous than any other, the population was settled in its neighborhood, as at Delhi, not amidst its ruins." For
1) there was, at the time of Nahum, no experience of the destruction of any such great city as Nineveh;
2) In the case of conquest, the capitol of the conquering empire became, ipso facto, the capital of the whole; but this did not, in itself, involve the destruction of the former.
Babylon, from having been the winter residence of Cyrus, became the chief residence of the Persian Emperor at the time of Alexander, and continued to exist for many centuries, oiler the foundation of Seleucia, although it ceased to be a great city . And this, notwithstanding its two rebellions under Darius , and that under Xerxes . There was no ground of human policy against Nineveh's continuing, such as Mosul became, anymore than Mosul itself. It existed for some time, as a Christian See.
The grandeur, energy, power, vividness of Nahum, naturally can be fully felt only in his own language. The force of his brief prophecy is much increased by its unity. Nahum had one sentence to pronounce, the judgments of God upon the power of this world, which had sought to annihilate the kingdom of God. God, in His then kingdom in Judah, and the world, were come face to face. What was to be the issue? The entire final utter overthrow of whatever opposed God. Nahum opens then with the calm majestic declaration of the majesty of God; Who God is, against whom they rebelled; the madness of their rebellion, and the extinction of its chief Nah 1:1-15; then in detail, what was to come long after that first overthrow, the siege and capture of Nineveh itself Nah 2:1-13; then, in wider compass, the overthrow of the whole power Nahum 3. It was to be the first instance, in the history of mankind, of a power so great, perishing and forever. Nahum's office was not, as Jonah's, to the people itself. There is then no call to repentance, no gleam of God's mercy toward them in this life. Nineveh was to perish wholly, as the habitable world had perished in the time of Noah. The only relief is in the cessation of so much violence. There is no human joy expressed at this destruction of the enemy of God and of His people; no sorrow, save that there can be no sorrow; "who will bemoan her? whence shall I find comforters for her?" Nah 3:7.
In conformity with this concentration of Nahum's subject, there is little in outward style or language to connect him with the other prophets. His opening (as already observed ) bears upon God's declarations of mercy and judgment; but, Nineveh having filled up the measure of its iniquites, he had to exhibit the dark side of those declarations; how much lay in those words, "that will by no means clear the guilty." : "Jonah and Nahum form connected parts of one moral history, the remission of God's judgment being illustrated in the one, the execution of it in the other: the clemency and the just severity of the divine government being contained in the mixed delineation of the two books." His evangelic character just gleams through, in the eight tender words, in which he seems to take breath, as it were; "Tob Yhvh lemaoz beyomtsarah, veyodeah chose bo," "Good is God (Yhvh), refuge in day of trouble, and knowing trusters in Him" Nah 1:7; then again, in the few words, which I think Isaiah expanded, "Lo on the mountains the feet of a good-tidings-bearer, peace-proclaimer" Nah 2:1. Else there is only the mingled tenderness and austereness of truth, which would sympathize with the human being, but that that object had, by putting off all humanity, alienated all which is man. "Who will bemoan her? Whence shall I seek comforters for thee?" Who? and Whence? None had escaped evil from her. "Upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?"
It is difficult for us, who have to gather up our knowledge of the sacred language from the fragments which remain, in which also the number of words forms and idioms, which stand out singly here and there, seem but so many specimens of lest treasure, to judge with any certainty, whether any approximation of idiom, which we may observe, implies any connection between the writers in whom it occurs. Nahum has, especially in his picture of the capture of Nineveh, so many of those hapax legomena, consisting often of slight modifications, his language is so rich and so original, that one the more doubts whether in those idioms, in which he seems to approximate to other prophets, the expressions in common do not belong to the common stock of the language; and that the more, since mostly part of the idiom only coincides, the rest is different. As for the so-called Aramaisms or other peculiarities of language which Hitzig would have to be evidences of a later date, and from some of which others would infer that Nahum lived at Nineveh itself, "the wish has been father to the thought."
One only solid ground there would be why Nahum should not have written his prophecy, when, according to all history, it could alone have any interest for Judah, long before the event itself, namely, if He to whom all, past and future, are present, could not or did not declare beforehand things to come . If there be prophecy, the siege of Nineveh might be as vividly presented to the prophet's mind, as if he saw it with his bodily eyes .
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Nahum Introduction
Nahum
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Introduction to Nahum
The prophecy of Nahum is both the complement and the counterpart of the Book of Jonah. When Moses had asked God to show him His glory, and God had promised to let him see the outskirts of that glory, and to proclaim the Name of the Lord before him, "the Lord," we are told, "passed by before him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty" Exo 34:6-7. God proclaimed at once His mercy and His justice. Those wondrous words echo along the whole patch of the Old Testament. Moses himself Num 14:17-18, David Psa 86:15; Psa 103:8; Psa 145:8, other Psalmists Psa 111:4; Psa 112:4; Psa 116:5, Jeremiah Jer 32:18-19, Daniel Dan 9:4, Nehemiah Neh 9:17 all pled to God or recounted some words in thanksgiving. Joel repeated such words as a motive for repentance Joe 2:13. Upon the repentance of Nineveh, Jonah had recited to God the bright side of His declaration of Himself, "I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great goodness" Jon 4:2, repeating to God His words to Moses, and adding a change of heart concerning the harm. Nineveh, as appears from Nahum, had fallen back into the violence of which it had repented. Nahum then, in reference to that declaration of Jonah, begins by setting forth the awful side of the attributes of God. First, in a stately rhythm, which, in the original, reminds us of the gradual Psalms, he enunciates the solemn threefold declaration of the severity of God to those who will be His enemies.
A jealous God and Avenger is the Lord:
An Avenger is the Lord, and lord of wrath;
An Avenger is the Lord to His adversaries:
And a Reserver of wrath to His enemies.
Nah 1:2
Then, Naham too recites that character of mercy recorded by Moses, "The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power" Nah 1:3. But anger, although slow, comes, he adds, not the less certainly on the guilty; "and will not at all clear the guilty" Nah 1:3. The iniquity is full. As a whole, there is no more room for repentance. Nineveh had had its prophet, and had been spared, and had sunk back into its old sins. The office of Nahum is to pronounce its sentence. That sentence is fixed. "There is no healing of thy bruise" Nah 3:19. Nothing is said of its ulterior conversion or restoration. On the contrary, Nahum says, "He will make the place thereof an utter desolation" Nah 1:8.
The sins of Nineveh spoken of by Nahum are the same as those from which they had turned at the preaching of Jonah. In Jonah, it is, "the violence of their hands" Jon 3:8. Nahum describes Nineveh as "a dwelling of lions, filled with prey and with ravin, the feeding-place of young lions, where the lion tore enough for his whelps" Nah 2:11-12; "a city of bloods, full of lies and robbery, from which the prey departeth not" Nah 3:1.
But, amid this mass of evil, one thing was eminent, in direct antagonism to God. The character is very special. It is not simply of rebellion against God, or neglect of Him. It is a direct disputation of His Sovereignty. Twice the prophet repeats the characteristic expression, "What will ye devise against the Lord?" "devising evil against the Lord;" and adds, "counselor of evil" Nah 1:11. This was exactly the character of Sennacherib, whose wars, like those of his forefathers, (as appears from the cuneiform inscriptions . There were religious wars, and Sennacherib blasphemously compared God to the local deities of the countries, which his forefathers or himself had destroyed Isa 36:18-20; Isa 37:10-13. Of this enemy Nahum speaks, as having "gone forth;" out of thee (Nineveh) hath gone forth Nah 1:11 one, devising evil against the Lord, a counselor of Belial. This was past.
Their purpose was inchoate, yet incomplete. God challenges them, "What will ye devise so vehemently against the Lord?" Nah 1:9. The destruction too is proximate. The prophet answers for God, "He Himself, by Himself is already making an utter end" Nah 1:9. To Jerusalem he turns, "And now I will break his yoke from off thee, and will break his bonds asunder" Nah 1:13. Twice the prophet mentions the device against God; each time he answers it by the prediction of the sudden utter destruction of the enemy, while in the most perfect security. "While they are intertwined as thorns, and swallowed up as their drink, they are devoured as stubble fully dry" Nah 1:10; and, "If they are perfect" Nah 1:12, unimpaired in their strength, "and thus many, even thus shall they be mown down." Their destruction was to be, their numbers, complete. With no previous loss, secure and at ease, a mighty host, in consequence of their prosperity, all were, at one blow, mown down; "and he (their king, who counseled against the Lord) shall pass away and perish."
"The abundance of the wool in the fleece is no hindrance to the shears," nor of the grass to the sythe, nor of the Assyrian host to the will of the Lord, After he, the chief, had thus passed away, Nahum foretells that remarkable death, in connection with the house of his gods; "Out of the house of thy gods I will cut off the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave" Nah 1:14. There is no natural construction of these words, except, "I will make it thy grave" . Judah too was, by the presence of the Assyrian, hindered from going up to worship at Jerusalem. The prophet bids to proclaim peace to Jerusalem; "keep thy feasts - for the wicked shall no more pass through thee." It was then by the presence of the wicked, that they were now hindered from keeping their feasts, which could be kept only at Jerusalem.
The prophecy of Nahum coincides then with that of Isaiah, when Hezekiah prayed against Sennacherib. In the history Kg2 19:4, Kg2 19:22-28, and in the prophecy of Isaiah, the reproach and blasphemy and rage against God are prominent, as an evil design against God is in Nahum. In Isaiah we have the messengers sent to blaspheme Isa 37:4, Isa 37:23-29; in Nahum, the promise, that "the voice of thy messengers shall no more be heard." Isaiah prophesies the fruitlessness of his attempt against Jerusalem Isa 37:33-34; his disgraced return; his violent death in his own land Isa 37:7; Nahum prophesies the entire destruction of his army, his own passing away, his grave. Isaiah, in Jerusalem, foretells how the spontaneous fruits of the earth shall be restored to them Kg2 19:29; Isa 37:30, and so, that they shall have possession of the open corn-country; Nahum, living probably in the country, foretells the free access to Jerusalem, and bids them to (Nah 1:15; Nah 2:1 (Nah 2:2 in Hebrew)) keep their feasts, and perform the vows, which, in their trouble, they had promised to God. He does not only foretell that they may, but he enjoins them to do it.
The words (Nah 2:2 (verse 3 in Hebrew)), "the emptiers have emptied them out and marred their vine branches," may relate to the first expedition of Sennacherib, when, Holy Scripture says, he "came up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them," and Hezekiah gave him "thirty talents of gold and 300 talents of silver" Kg2 18:13-14; Isa 36:1. Sennacherib himself says , "Hezekiah, king of Judah, who had not submitted to my authority, forty-six of his principal cities, and fortresses and villages depending upon them of which I took no account, I captured, and carried away their spoil. And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200, 150 people," etc. This must relate to the first expedition, on account of the exact correspondence of the tribute in gold, with a variation in the number of the talents of silver, easily accounted for .
In the first invasion Sennacherib relates that he besieged Jerusalem. : "Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to fence him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape." It is perhaps in reference to this, that, in the second invasion, God promises by Isaiah; "He shall not come into this city, and shall not shoot an arrow there; and shall not present shield before it, and shall not cast up bank against it" Isa 37:33. Still, in this second invasion also, Holy Scripture relates, that "the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army" Isa 36:2; Kg2 18:17. Perhaps it is in regard to this second expedition, that God says, "Though I have afflicted thee, I will affict thee no more" Nah 1:12; i. e., this second invasion should not desolate her, like that first. Not that God absolutely would not again afflict her, but not now. The yoke of the Assyrian was then broken, until the fresh sins of Manasseh drew down their own punishment.
Nahum then was a prophet for Judah, or for that remnant of Israel, which, after the ten tribes were carried captive, became one with Judah, not in temporal sovereignty, but in the one worship of God. His mention of Basan, Carmel and Lebanon alone, as places lying under the rebuke of God, perhaps implies a special interest in Northern Palestine. Judah may have already become the name for the whole people of God who were left in their own land, since those of the ten tribes who remained had now no separate religious or political existence. The idol-center of their worship was gone into captivity.
The old tradition agrees with this as to the name of the birthplace of Nahum, "the Elkoshite." "Some think," says Jerome , "that Elcesaeus was the father of Nahum, and, according to the Hebrew tradition, was also a prophet; whereas Elcesi is even to this day a little village in Galilee, small indeed, and scarcely indicating by its ruins the traces of ancient buildings, yet known to the Jews, and pointed out to me too by my guide." The name is a genuine Hebrew name, the "El," with which it begins, being the name of God, which appears in the names of other towns also as El'ale, Eltolad, Elteke Eltolem. The author of the short-lived Gnostic heresy of the Elcesaites, called Elkesai, elkasai, elxai, elxaios, Elkasaios , probably had his name from that same village. Eusebius mentions Elkese, as the place "whence was Nahum the Elkesaean." Cyril of Alexandria says, that Elkese was a village somewhere in Judaea.
On the other hand "Alcush," a town in Mosul, is probably a name of Arabic origin, and is not connected with Nahum by any extant or known writer, earlier than Masius toward the end of the 16th century , and an Arabic scribe in 1713 . Neither of these mention the tomb. "The tomb," says Layard , "is a simple plaster box, covered with green cloth, and standing at the upper end of a large chamber. The house containing the tomb is a modern building. There are no inscriptions, nor fragments of any antiquity near the place." The place is now reverenced by the Jews, but in the 12th century Benjamin of Tudela supposed his tomb to be at Ain Japhata, South of Babylon. Were anything needed to invalidate statements more than 2000 years after the time of Nahum, it might suffice that the Jews, who are the authors of this story, maintain that not Jonah only but Obadiah and Jephthah the Gileadite are also buried at Mosul .
Nor were the ten tribes placed there, but "in the cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6. The name Capernaum, "the village of Nahum," is probably an indication of his residence in Galilee. There is nothing in his language unique to the Northern tribes. One very poetic word Nah 3:2; Jdg 5:22, common to him with the song of Deborah, is not therefore a "provincialism," because it only happens to occur in the rich, varied, language of two prophets of North Palestine. Nor does the occurrence of a foreign title interfere with "purity of diction" . It rather belongs to the vividness of his description.
The conquest of No-Ammon or Thebes and the captivity of its inhabitants, of which Nahum speaks, must have been by Assyria itself. Certainly it was not from domestic disturbances ; for Nahum says, that the people were carried away captive Nah 3:10. Nor was it from the Ethiopians ; for Nahum speaks of them, as her allies Nah 3:9. Nor from the Carthaginians ; for the account of Ammianus , that "when first Carthage was beginning to expand itself far and wide, the Punic generals, by an unexpected inroad, subdued the hundred-gated Thebes," is merely a mistaken gloss on a statement of Diodorus, that "Hanno took Hekatompylos by siege;" a city, according to Diodorus himself , "in the desert of Libya." Nor was it from the Scythians ; for Herodotus, who alone speaks of their maraudings and who manifestly exaggerates them, expressly says, that Psammetichus induced the Scythians by presents not to enter Egypt ; and a wandering predatory horde does not besiege or take strongly-fortified towns.
There remain then only the Assyrians. Four successive Assyrian Monarchs Sargon, his son, grandson and great grandson, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Asshur-bani-pal, from 718 b.c. to about 657 b.c., conquered in Egypt . The hostility was first provoked by the encouragement given by Sabacho the Ethiopian (Sab'e in the cuneiform inscriptions, S b k, in Egyptian), the So of Holy Scripture , to Hoshea to rebel against Shalmaneser Kg2 17:4. Sargon, who, according to his own statement, was the king who actually took Samaria , led three expeditions of his own against Egypt. In the first, Sargon defeated the Egyptian king in the battle of Raphia ; in the second, in his seventh year, he boasts that Pharaoh became his tributary ; in a third, which is placed three years later, Ethiopia submitted to him .
A seal of Sabaco has been found at Koyunjik, which, as has been conjectured , was probably annexed to a treaty. The capture of Ashdod by the Tartan of Sargon, recorded by Isaiah Isa 20:1, was probably in the second expedition, when Sargon deposed its king Azuri, substituting his brother Akhimit : the rebellion of Ashdod probably occasioned the third expedition, in which as it seems, Isaiah's prophecy was fulfilled, that Egyptians and Ethiopians, young and old, should be carried captive by the king of Assyria. The king of Ashdod, Yaman, is related to have fled to Egypt, which was subject to Merukha or Meroe; and to have been delivered up by the king of Meroe who himself fled to some unnamed desert afar, a march of (it is conjectured) months . The king of Meroe, first, from times the most distant, became tributary. : "His forefathers had not" in all that period "sent to the kings my ancestors to ask for peace and to acknowledge the power of Merodach." The fact, that his magnificent palace, "one of the few remains of external decoration," Layard says , "with which we are acquainted in Assyrian architecture," "seems" according to Mr. Fergusson, , "at first sight almost purely Egyptian," implies some lengthened residence in Egypt or some capture of Egyptian artists.
Of Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, Josephus writes , "Berosus, the historian of the Chaldee affairs, mentions the king Sennacherib, and that he reigned over the Assyrians, and that he warred against all Asia and Egypt, saying as follows." The passage of Berosus itself is missing, witether Josephus neglected to fill it in, or whether it has been subsequently lost; but neither Chaldee nor Egyptian writers record expeditions which were reverses; and although Beresus was a Babylonian, not an Assyrian, yet the document, which he used, must have been Assyrian. In the second expedition of Sennacherib, Rabshakeh, in his message to Hezekiah, says, "Behold thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, upon Egypt" Kg2 18:21. The expression is remarkable. He does not speak of Egypt, as a power, weak, frail, failing, but, passively, as crushed by another. It is the same word and image which he uses in his prophecy of our Lord, "a bruised reed (רצץ קנה qâneh râtsats) shall He not break," i. e., He shall not break that which is already bruised. The word implies, then, that the king of Egypt had already received some decided blow before the second expedition of Sennacherib. The annals of Sennacherib's reign, still preserved in his inscriptions, break off in the eighth of his twenty-two years , and do not extend to the time of this second expedition against Hezekiah . Nor does Holy Scripture say, in what year this second expedition took place. In this he defeated "the kings of Egypt and the king of Meroe at Altakou (Elteke) and Tamna (Timnatha)."
Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon appears for the time to have subdued Egypt and Ethiopia, and to have held them as kingdoms dependent on himself. "He acquired Egypt and the inner parts of Asia," is the brief statement of Abydenus (i. e., of Berosus): "He established" (his son relates) "twenty kings, satraps, governors in Egypt" , among which can be recognized Necho, (the father of Psammetichus) king of Memphis and Sais; a king of Tanis, or Zoan (now San); Natho (or, according to another copy, Sept), Hanes, Sebennytus, Mendes, Bubastis, Siyout or Lycopolis, Chemmis, Tinis, and No. These were all subordinate kings, for so he entitles each separately in the list, although he sums up the whole , "These are the names of the Kings, Pechahs, Satraps who in Egypt obeyed my father who begat me." Tearcho or Taracho himself, "king of Egypt and Ethiopia" , was in like way subject to Esarhaddon. The account of the revolt, which his son Asshur-bani-pal quelled, implies also a fixed settlement in Egypt. The 20 kings were involved in the rebellion through fear of Taracho, but there is notice of other servants of Esarhaddon who remained faithful and were maltreated by Taraoho .
Asshur-bani-pal says also, that he strengthened his former garrisons . One expedition of Esarhaddon (probably toward the close of his reign, since he does not mention it in his own annals which extend over eight years) is related by his son Asshur-bani-pal . "He defeated Tirhakah in the lower country, after which, proceeding Southward, he took the city, where the Ethiopian held his court," and assumed the title , "king of the kings of Egypt and conqueror of Ethiopia." On another inscription in a palace built for his son, at Tarbisi, now Sherif-khan, he entitles himself "king of the kings of Egypt, Pathros, Ethiopia." We do not, however, find the addition, which appears to recur upon every conquest of a people not before conquered by Assyria, "which the kings, my fathers, had not subdued." This addition is so regular, that the absence of it, in itself, involves a strong probability of a previous conquest of the country.
The subdual apparently was complete. They revolted at the close of the reign of Esarhaddon (as his son Asshur-bani-pal relates) from fear of Taracho rather than from any wish of their own to regain independence. Asshur-bani-pal accordingly, after the defeat of Taracho, forgave and restored them . Even the second treacherous revolt was out of fear, lest Taracho shall return , upon the withdrawal of the Assyrian armies. This second revolt and perhaps a subsequent revolt of Urdamanie a stepson of Taracho, who succeeded him, Asshur-bani-pal seems to have subdued by his lieutenants , without any necessity of marching in person against them. Thebes was taken and retaken; but does not appear to have offered any resistance. Taracho, upon his defeat at Memphis, fled to it, and again abandoned it as he had Memphis, and the army of Asshur-bani-pal made a massacre in it . Once more it was taken, when it had been recovered by Urdamanie , and then, if the inscriptions are rightly deciphered, strange as it is, the carrying off of men and women from it is mentioned in the midst of that of "great horses and apes." "Silver, gold, metals, stones, treasures of his palace, dyed garments, berom and linen, great horses, men, male and female, immense apes - they drew from the midst of the city, and brought as spoils to Nineveh the city of my dominion, and kissed my feet."
All of those kings having been conquerors of Egypt, the captivity of No might equally hav, e taken place under any of them. All of them employed the policy, which Sargon apparently began, of transporting to a distance those whom they had conquered . Yet it is, in itself, more probable, that it was at the earlier than at the later date. It is most in harmony with the relation of Nahum to Isaiah that, in regard to the conquest of Thebes also, Nahum refers to the victory over Egypt and Ethiopia foretold by Isaiah, when Sargon's general, the Tartan, was besieging Ashdod. The object of Isaiah's prophecy was to undeceive Judah in regard to its reliance on Egypt and Ethiopia against Assyria, which was their continual bane, morally, religiously, nationally. But the prophecy goes beyond any mere defeat in battle, or capture of prisoners. It relates to conquest within Egypt itself. For Isaiah says, "the king of Assyria shall lead into captivity Egyptians and Ethiopians, young and old" Isa 20:4. They are not their choice young men, the flower of their army, but those of advanced age and those in their first youth, such as are taken captive, only when a population itself is taken captive, either in a marauding expedition, or in the capture of a city. The account of the captivity of No exactly corresponds with this. Nahum says nothing of its permanent subdual, only of the captivity of its inhabitants. But Esarhaddon apparently did not carry the Egyptians captive at all . Every fact given in the Inscriptions looks like a permanent settlement. The establishment of the 20 subordinate kings, in the whole length and breadth of Egypt, implies the continuance of the previous state of things, with the exception of that subordination. No itself appears as one of the cities settled apparently under its native though tributary king .
In regard to the fulfillment of prophecy, they who assume as an axiom, or petitio principii, that there can be no prophecy of distant events, have overlooked, that while they think that, by assuming the later date, they bring Nahum's prophecy of the capture of Nineveh nearer to its accomplishment, they remove in the same degree Isaiah's prophecy of the captivity of Egyptians and Ethiopians, young and old, from its accomplishment. "Young and old" are not the prisoners of a field of battle; young and old of the Ethiopians would not be in a city of lower Egypt. If Isaiah's prophecy was not fulfilled under Sargon or Sennacherib, it must probably have waited for its fulfillment until this last subdual by Asshurbanipal. For the policy of Esarhaddon and also of Asshurbanipal, until repeated rebellions wore his patience, was of settlement, not of deportation. If too the prophecy of Nahum were brought down to the reign of Asshurbanipal, it would be the more stupendous.
For the empire was more consolidated. Nahum tells the conqueror, flushed with his own successes and those of his father, that he had himself no more inherent power than the city whose people he had carried captive. Thebes too, like Nineveh, dwelt securely, conquering all, unreached by any ill, sea-girt, as it were, by the mighty river on which she rested. She too was strengthened with countless hosts of her own and of allied people. Yet she fell. Nineveh, the prophet tells her, was no mightier, in herself. Her river was no stronger defense than that sea of fresh water, the Nile; her tributaries would disperse or become her enemies. The prophet holds up to her the vicissitudes of No-amon, as a mirror to herself. As each death is a renewed witness to man's mortality, so each marvelous reverse of temporal greatness is a witness to the precariousness of other human might. No then was an ensample to Nineveh, although its capture was by the armies of Nineveh. They had been, for centuries, two rivals for power. But the contrast bad far more force, when the victory over Egypt was fresh, than after 61 years of alternate conquest and rebellion.
But, anyhow, the state of Nineveh and its empire, as pictured by Nahum, is inconsistent with any times of supposed weakness in the reign of its last king: the state of Judah, with reference to Assyria, corresponds with that under Sennacherib but with none below. They are these. Assyria was in its full unimpaired strength Nah 1:12; Nah 2:12. She still blended those two characters so rarely combined, but actually united in her and subsequently in Babylon, of a great merchant and military people. She had, at once, the prosperity of peace and of war. Lying on a great line of ancient traffic, which bound together East and West, India with Phoenicia, and with Europe through Phoenicia, both East and West poured their treasures into the great capital, which lay as a center between them, and stretched out its arms, alike to the Indian sea and the Mediterranean. Nahum can compare its merchants only to that which is countless by man, the locusts or the stars of heaven Nah 3:16.
But amid this prosperity of peace, war also was enriching her. Nineveh was still sending out its messengers (such as was Rabshakeh), the leviers of its tribute, the demanders of submission. It was still one vast lion-lair, its lions still gathering in prey from the whole earth Nah 2:12-13, still desolating, continually, unceasingly, in all directions Nah 3:19, and now, especially, devising evil against God and His people Nah 1:9, Nah 1:11. Upon that people its yoke already pressed, for God promises to break it off from them Nah 1:13; the people was already afflicted, for God says to it, "Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more" Nah 1:12, namely, by this invader. The solemn feasts of Judah were hindered through the presence of ungodly invaders; Belial, the counselor of evil spoken of under that name, already passing through her. War was around her, for he promises that one should publish peace upon her mountains Nah 1:15. This was the foreground of the picture. This was the exact condition of things at Hezekiah's second invasion, just before the miraculous destruction of his army. Sennacherib's yoke was heavy, for he had exacted from Hezekiah "three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold" Kg2 18:14; Hezekiah had not "two thousand horsemen" Kg2 18:23; the "great host" Kg2 18:17 of the Assyrians encircled Jerusalem. They summoned it to surrender on the terms, that they should pay a new tribute, and that Sennacherib, whenever it pleased him, should remove them to Assyria Kg2 18:31-32.
At no subsequent period were there any events corresponding to this description. Manasseh was carried captive to Babylon by Esarhaddon; but probably this was no formidable or resisted invasion, since the book of Kings passes it over altogether, the Chronicles mention only that the Assyrian generals took Manasseh prisoner in a thicket (Ch2 33:11, accordingly not in Jerusalem, and carried him to Babylon. Probably, this took place, in the expedition of Esarhaddon to the West, when he settled in the cities of Samaria people of different nations, his captives Ezr 4:2, Ezr 4:9-10. The capture of Manasseh was then, probably, a mere incident in the history. Since he was taken among the thickets, he had probably fled, as Zedekiah did afterward, and was taken in his place of concealment. This was simply personal. No taking of towns is mentioned, no siege, no terror, no exaction of tribute, no carrying away into captivity, except of the single Manasseh. The grounds of his restoration are not mentioned.
The Chronicles mention only the religious aspect of his captivity and his restoration, his sin and his repentance. But it seems probable that he was restored by Esarhaddon, upon the same system of policy, on which he planted subjects of his own in Samaria and the country around Zidon, built a new town to take the place of Zidon, and joined in the throne of Edom one, brought up in his own palace. For, when restored, Manasseh was set at full liberty to fortify Jerusalem Ch2 33:14, as Hezekiah had done, and to put "captains of war in all the cities of Judah" Ch2 33:14. This looks as if he was sent back as a trusted tributary of Esarhaddon, and as a frontier-power against Egypt. At least, 60 years afterward, we find Josiah, in the like relation of trust to Nebuchadnezzar, resisting the passage of Pharaoh-Necho. However, the human cause of his restoration must remain uncertain. Yet clearly, in their whole history, there is nothing to correspond to the state of Judaea, as described by Nahum.
A recent critic writes , "Nahum's prophecy must have been occasioned by an expedition of mighty enemies against Nineveh. The whole prophecy is grounded on the certain danger, to which Nineveh was given over; only the way in which this visible danger is conceived of, in connection with the eternal truths, is here the properly prophetic." Ewald does not explain how the danger, to which "Nineveh was given over" was certain, when it did not happen. The explanation must come to this. Nahum described a siege of Nineveh and its issue, as certain. The description in itself might be either of an actual siege, before the prophet's eyes, or of one beheld in the prophet's mind. But obviously no mere man, endowed with mere human knowledge, would have ventured to predict so certainly the fall of such a city as Nineveh, unless it was "given over to certain danger." But according to the axiom received in Ewald's school, Nahum, equally with all other men, could have had only human prescience.
Therefore, Nahum, prophesying the issue so confidently, must have prophesied when Nineveh was so "given over." The a priori axiom of the school rules its criticism. Meanwhile the admission is incidentally made, that a prophecy so certain, had it related to distant events, was what no man, with mere human knowledge, would venture upon. Ewald accordingly thinks that the prophecy was occasioned by a siege of Phraortes; which siege Nahum expected to be successful; which however failed, so that Nahum was mistaken, although the overthrow which he foretold came to pass afterward! The siege, however, of Nineveh by Phraortes is a mere romance. Herodotus, who alone attributes to Phraortes a war with Assyria, has no hint, that he even approached to Nineveh. He simply relates that Phraortes "subdued Asia, going from one nation to another, until, leading an army against the Assyrians, he perished himself, in the second year of his reign, and the greater part of his army."
It is not necessary to consider the non-natural expositions, by which the simple descriptions of Nahum were distorted into conformity with this theory, which has no one fact to support it. Herodotus even dwells on the good condition of the Assyrian affairs, although isolated from their revolted allies, and seemingly represents the victory as an easy one. And, according to Herodotus, whose account is the only one we have, Phraortes (even if he ever fought with the Ninevites, and Herodotus' account is not merely the recasting of the history of another Median Frawartish who, according to the Behistun Inscription, claimed the throne of Media against Darius, and perished in battle with him ) had only an unorganized army. Herodotus says of Cyaxares, his son , "He is said to have been more warlike far than his forefathers, and he first distributed Asiatics into distinct bands, and separated the spearmen and archers and horsemen from one another, whereas, before, everything had alike mixed into one confused mass." Such an undisciplined horde could have been no formidable enemy for a nation, whom the monuments and their history exhibit as so warlike and so skilled in war as the Assyrians.
Another critic, , then, seeing the untenableness of this theory, ventures (as he never hesitated at any paradox) to place the prophet Nahum, as an eye-witness of the first siege of Cyaxares.
Herodotus states that Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes, twice besieged Nineveh. First, immediately after his father's death, to avenge it ; the second, after the end of the Scythian troubles, when he took it . The capture of Nineveh was in the first year of Nabopolassor 625 b.c. The accession of Cyaxares, according to Herodotus, was 633 b.c. Eight years then only elapsed between his first siege and its capture, and, if it be true, that the siege lasted two years, there was an interval of six years only. But, at this time, the destruction of Nineveh was no longer a subject of joy to Judah. Since the captivity of Manasseh, Judah had had nothing to fear from Assyria; nor do we know of any oppression from it. Holy Scripture mentions none. The Assyrian monuments speak of expeditions against Egypt; but there was no temptation to harass Judah, which stood in the relation of a faithful tributary and an outwork against Egypt, and which, when Nineveh fell, remained in the same relation to its conquerors, into whose suzerainty it passed, together with the other dependencies of Assyria. The relation of Josiah to Babylon was the continuation of that of Manasseh to Esarhaddon.
The motive of this theory is explained by the words, "With a confidence, which leaves room for no doubt, Nahum expects a siege and an ultimate destruction of Nineveh. The security of his tone, nay that he ventures at all to trope so enormous a revolution of the existing state of things, must find its explanation in the circumstances of the time, out of the then condition of the world; but not until Cyaxares reigned in Media, did things assume an aspect, corresponding to this confidence." It is well that this writer doffs the courteous language, as to the "hopes," "expectations," "inferences from God's justice," and brings the question to the issue, "there is such absolute certainty of tone," that Nahum must have had either a divine or a human knowledge. He acknowledges the untenableness of any theory width would account for the prophecy of Nahum on any human knowledge, before Cyaxares was marching against the gates of Nineveh. Would human knowledge have sufficed then? Certainly, from such accounts as we have, Nineveh might still have stood against Cyaxares and its own rebel and traitorous general, but for an unforeseen event which man could not bring about, the swelling of its river.
But, as usual, unbelief fixes itself upon that which is minutest, ignores what is greatest. There are, in Nahum, three remarkable predictions.
(1) The sudden destruction of Sennacherib's army and his own remarkable death in the house of his god.
(2) The certain, inevitable, capture of Nineveh, and that, not by capitulation or famine, not even by the siege or assault, which is painted so vividly, but the river, which was its protection, becoming the cause of its destruction.
(3) Its utter desolation, when captured. The first, people assume to have been the description of events past; the second, the siege, they assume to have been present; and that, when truman wisdom could foresee its issue; the third, they generalize. The first is beyond the reach of proof now. It was a witness of the Providence and just judgment of God, to those days, not to our's. A brief survey of the history of the Assyrian Empire will show, that the second and third predictions were beyond human knowledge.
The Assyrian Empire dated probably from the ninth century before Christ. Such, it has been pointed out, is the concurrent result of the statements of Berosus and Herodotus. Moses, according to the simplest meaning of his words, spake of the foundation of Nineveh as contemporary with that of Babylon. "The beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod," he relates, "was Babel and Erech, and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh" Gen 10:10-11. Oppressed probably and driven forth by Nimrod, Asshur and his Semitic descendants went forth from the plain of Shinar, the Babylonia of after-ages. Had Moses intended to express (what some have thought), that Nimrod "went forth out of that land to Assyria," he would doubtless have used the ordinary style of connected narrative; "And he went forth thence." He would probably also have avoided ambiguity, by expressing that Nimrod "went forth to Asshur" Gen 25:18 using a form, which he employs a little later. As it is, Moses has used a mode of speech, by which, in Hebrew, a parenthetical statement would be made, and he has not used the form, which occurs in every line of Hebrew narrative to express a continued history. No one indeed would have doubted that such was the meaning, but that they did not see, how the mention of Asshur, a son of Shem, came to be anticipated in this account of the children of Ham. This is no ground for abandoning the simple construction of the Hebrew. It is but the history, so often repeated in the changes of the world, that the kingdom of Nimrod was founded on the expulsion of the former inhabitants. Nimrod began his kingdom; "Asshur went forth."
It is most probable, from this same brief notice, that Nineveh was, from the first, that aggregate of cities, which it afterward was. Moses says, "And he builded Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calach and Resen, between Nineveh and Calach; this is that great city" Gen 10:11-12. This cannot be understood as said exclusively of Nineveh; since Nineveh was mentioned first in the list, of cities, and the mention of the three others had intervened; and, in the second place where it is named, it is only spoken of indirectly and subordinately; it is hardly likely to be said of Resen, of whose unusual size nothing is elsewhere related. It seems more probable, that it is said of the aggregate of cities, that they formed together one great city, the very characteristic of Nineveh, as spoken of in Jonah.
Nineveh itself lay on the Eastern side of the Tigris, opposite to the present Mosul. In later times, among the Syrian writers, As shur becomes the name for the country, distinct from Mesopotamia and Babylonia , front which it was separated by the Tigris, and bounded on the North by Mount Niphates.
This distinction, however, does not occur until after the extinction of the Assyrian empire. On the contrary, in Genesis, Asshur, in one place, is spoken of as West of the Hiddekel or Tigris, so that it must at that time have comprised Mesopotamia, if not all on this side of the Tigris, i. e., Babylonia. In another place, it is the great border-state of Arabia on the one side, as was Egypt on the other. The sons of Ishmael, Moses relates, Gen 25:18, dwell from Havilah unto Shur that is before Egypt, as thou goest to Assyria; i. e., they dwelt on the great caraven-route across the Arabian desert from Egypt to Babylonia. Yet Moses mentions, not Babylon, but Asshur. In Balaam's prophecy Num 24:22, Asshur stands for the great Empire, whose seat was at one time at Nineveh, at another at Babylon, which should, centuries afterward, carry Israel captive.
Without entering into the intricacies of Assyrian or Babylonian history further than is necessary for the immediate object, it seems probable, that the one or other of the sovereigns of these nations had an ascendency over the others, according to his personal character and military energy. Thus, in the time of Abraham, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, in his expedition against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, took with him, as subordinate allies, the kings of Shinar, (or Babylon) and Ellasar, as well as Tidal king of nations, a king probably of Nomadic tribes. The expedition was to avenge the rebellion of the petty kings in the valley of Siddim against Chedorlaomer, after they had been for twelve years tributary. But, although the expedition closed with the attack on the live kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar, its extent on the East side of the Jordan from Ashteroth Karnaim in Basan to Elparan (perhaps Elath on the Red Sea), and the defeat of the giant tribes, the Rephaim, Zuzim, Emim, Horites, the Amalekites and the Amorites in their several abodes, seems to imply one of those larger combinations against the aggressions of the East, which we meet with in later times .
It was no insulated conflict which spread over nearly three degrees of latitude. But it was the king of Elam, not the king of Babylon or of Asshur, who led this expedition; and those other kings, according to the analogy of the expeditions of Eastern monarchs, were probably dependent on him. It has been observed that the inscriptions of a monarch whose name partly coincides with that of Chedorlaomer, namely, Kudurmabuk, or Kudurmapula, show traces of a Persian influence on the Chaldee characters; but cuneiform decipherers having desponded of identifying those monarchs , Chedorlaomer appears as yet only so far cOnnected with Babylon, that its king was a tributary sovereign to him or a vice-king like those of later times, of whom Sennacherib boasts, "Are not my princes altogether kings?"
Assyria, at this time, is not mentioned, and so, since we know of its existence at an earlier period, it probably was independent. Lying far to the North of any of the nations here mentioned, it, from whatever cause or however it may have been engaged, took no share in the war. Subsequently also, down to a date almost contemporary with the Exodus, it has been observed that the name of Asshur does not appear on the Babylonian inscriptions, nor does it swell the titles of the king of Babylon . A little later than the Exodus, however, in the beginning of the 14th century b.c., Asshur and Egypt were already disputing the country which lay between them. The account is Egyptian, and so, of course, only relates the successes of Egypt. Thothmes III, in his fortieth year, according to Mr. Birch, received tribute from a king of Nineveh . In another monument of the same monarch, where the line, following on the name Nineveh, is lost, Thothmes says that he "erected his tablet in Naharaina (Mesopotamia) for the extension of the frontiers of Kami" (Egypt). Amenophis III, in the same century, represented Asiatic captives , with the names of Patens (Padan-Aram), Asuria, Karukamishi (Carchemish"). "On another column are Saenkar (Shiner), Naharaina, and the Khita (Hittites)." The mention of these contiguous nations strengthens the impression that the details of the interpretation are accurate. All these inscriptions imply that Assyria was independent of Babylon. In one, it is a co ordinate power; in the two others, it is a state which had measured its strength with Egypt, under one of its greatest conquerors, though, according to the Egyptian account, it had been worsted.
Another account, which has been thought to be the first instance of the extension of Babylonian authority so far northward, seems to me rather to imply the ancient self-government of Assyria. : "A record of Tiglath-pileser I. declares him to have rebuilt a temple in the city of Asshur, which had been taken down 60 years previously, after it had lasted for 641 years frp, the date of its first foundation by Shamas-Iva, son of Ismi-Dagon." Sir H. Rawlinson thinks that it is probable (although only probable) , that this Ismi-Dagon is a king, whose name occurs in the brick-legends of Lower Babylonia. Yet the Ismi-Dagon of the bricks does not bear the title of king of Babylon, but of king of Niffer only ; "his son," it is noticed, "does not take the title of king; but of governor of Hur ."
The name Shamas-Iva nowhere occurs in connection with Babylonia, but it docks recur, at a later period, as the name of an Assyrian Monarch . Since the names of the Eastern kings so often continue on in the same kingdom the recurrence of that name, at a later period, makes it even probable, that Shamas-Iva was a native king. There is absolutely nothing to connect his father Ismi-Dagon with the Ismi-Dagon king of Niffer, beyond the name itself, which, being Semitic, may just as well have belonged to a native king of Nineveh as to a king of Lower Babylonia. Nay, there is nothing to show that Ismi-Dagon was not an Assyrian Monarch who reigned at Niffer, for the name of his father is still unknown; there is no evidence that his father was ever a king, or, if a king, where he reigned. It seems to me in the last degree precarious to assume, without further evidence, the identity of the two kings. It has, further, yet to be shown that Lower Babylonia had, at that time, an empire, as distinct from its own local sovereignty. We know from Holy Scripture of Nimrod's kingdom in Shinar, a province distinct from Elymais, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and probably Chaldaea. In Abraham's time, 1900 b.c., we find again a king of Shinar. Shinar again, it is supposed, appears in Egyptian inscriptions, in the 14th century, b.c. ; and, if so, still distinct from Mesopotamia and Assyria. But all this implies a distinct kingdom, not an empire.
Again, were it ever so true, that Shamas-Iva was a son of a king in Lower Babylonia, that be built a temple in Kileh-Shergat, as being its king, and that he was king, as placed there by Ismi-Dagon, this would be no proof of the continual dependence of Assyria upon Babylonia. England did not continue a dependency of France, because conquered by William of Normandy. How was Alexander's empire broken at once! Spain under Charles the V was under one sovereignty with Austria; Spain with France had, even of late, alike Bourbon kings. A name would, at most, show an accidental, not a permanent, connection.
But there is, at present, no evidence implying a continued dependence of Assyria upon Babylon. Two facts only have been alleged;
1) that the cuneiform writing of inscriptions at Kileh-Shergat, 40 miles South of Nineveh, has a Babylonian character;
2) that, on those bricks, four names have been found of inferior Satraps.
But 1) the Babylonian character of the inscriptions would show a dependence of civilization, not of empire. Arts flourished early at Babylon, and so the graven character of the Inscriptions too may have been curried to the rougher and warlike North. The garment, worked at Babylon, was, in the 15th century b.c., exported as far as Palestine, and was, for its beauty, the object of Achan's covetousness Jos 7:21.
2) In regard to the satraps whose names are found on the bricks of Kileh-Shergat, it does not appear, that they were tributary to Babylon at all; they may, as far as it appears, have been simply inferior officers of the Assyrian empire. Anyhow, the utmost which such a relation to Babylon would evince, if ever so well established, would be a temporary dependence of Kileh-Shergat itself, not of Nineveh or the Assyrian kingdom. Further, the evidence of the duration of the dependency would, be as limited at its extent. Four satraps would be no evidence as to this period of 700 years, only a century less than has elapsed since the Norman conquest. The early existence of an Assyrian kingdom has been confirmed by recent cuneiform discoveries, which give the names of 8 Assyrian kings, the earliest of whom is supposed to have reigned about 3 12 centuries before the Commencement of the Assyrian Empire .
The "empire," Herodotus says , "Assyria held in Upper Asia for 520 years;" Berosus , "for 526 years." The Cuneiform Inscriptions give much the same result. Tiglath-pileser , who gives five years' annals of his own victories, mentions his grandfather's grandfather, the 4th king before him, as the king who "first organized the country of Assyria," who "established the troops of Assyria in authority." The expression, "established in authority," if it may be pressed, relates to foreign conquest. If this Tiglath-pileser be the same whom Sennacherib, in the 10th year of his own reign, mentions as having lost his gods to Merodach-ad-akhi, king of Mesopotamia, 418 years before , then, since Sennacherib ascended the throne about 703 b.c. , we should have 1112 b.c. for the latter part of the reign of Tiglath-pileser I, and counting tills and the six preceding reigns at 20 years each , should have about 1252 b.c. for the beginning of the Assyrian empire. It has been calculated that if the 526 years, assigned by Berosus to his 45 Assyrian kings, are (as Polyhistor states Berosus to have meant) to be dated back from the accession of Pul who took tribute from Menahem, and so from between 770 b.c. and 760 b.c., they carry back the beginning of the dynasty to about 1290 b.c. If they be counted, (as is perhaps more probable) from the end of the reign of Pul Kg2 15:19, i. e., probably 747 b.c., "the era of Nabonassar," the Empire would commence about 1273 b.c. Herodotus, it has been shown , had much the same date in his mind, when he assigned 520 years to the Assyrian empire in upper Asia, dating back from the revolt of the Medes. For he supposed this revolt to be 179 years anterior to the death of Cyrus 529 b.c. (and so, 708 b.c.) plus a period of anarchy before the accession of Deioces. Allowing 30 years for this period of anarchy, we have 738 b.c. plus 520, i. e., 1258 b.c., for the date of the commencement of Assyrian empire according to Herodotus. Thus, the three testimonies would coincide in placing the beginning of that Empire anyhow between 1258 and 1273 b.c.
But this Empire started up full-grown. It was the concentration of energy and power, which had before existed. Herodotus' expression is "rulers of Upper Asia." Tiglath-pileser attributes to his forefather, that he "organized the country," and "established the armies of Assyria in authority." The second king of that list takes the title of "ruler over the people of Bel" , i. e., Babylonia. The 4th boasts to have reduced "all the lands of the Magian world." Tiglath-pileser I claims to have conquered large parts of Cappadocia, Syria from Tsukha to Carchemish, Media and Muzr. According to the inscription at Bavian , he sustained a reverse, and lost his gods to a king of Mesopotamia, which gods were recovered by Sennacherib from Babylon. Yet this exception the more proves that conquest was the rule. For, had there been subsequent successful invasions of Assyria by Babylonia, the spoils of the 5th century backward would not have been alone recovered or recorded. If the deciphering of the Inscriptions is to be trusted, Nineveh was the capital, even in the days el Tiglath-pileser I. For Sennacherib brought the gods back, it is said, and put them in their places, i. e., probably where he himself reigned, at Nineveh. Thence then they were taken in the reign of Tiglath-pileser. Nineveh then was his capital also.
Of an earlier portion we have as yet but incidental notices; yet the might of Assyria is attested by the presence of Assyrian names in the Egyptian dynastic lists, whether the dynasties were themselves Assyrian, or whether the names came in through matrimonial alliances between two great nations .
With few exceptions, as far as appears from their own annals (and these are in the later times confirmed by Holy Scripture), the Assyrian Empire was, almost whenever we hear of it, one long series of victory and rapine. It is an exception, if any monarch is peaceful, and content to "repair the buildings" in his residence, "leaving no evidence of conquest or greatness." Tiglathi-Nin, father of the warlike Asshur-i-danipal or Sardanapalus, is mentioned only in his son's monument , "among his warlike ancestors, who had carried their arms into the Armenian mountains, and there set up stelae to commemorate their conquests."
Civil wars there were, and revolutions. Conquerors and dynasties came to an untimely end; there was parricide, fratricide; but the tide of war and conquest rolled on. The restless warriors gave no rest. Sardanapalus terms himself , "the conqueror from the upper passage of the Tigris to Lebanon and the great sea, who all countries, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, has reduced under his authority." His son, Shalmanubar or Shalmaneser, in his thirty-five years of reign led, in person twenty-three military expeditions. 20,000, 16,000, are the numbers of his enemies left dead upon a field of battle with Benhadad and Hazael . Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, Media, Babylonia, Syria, Phoenicia , 15 degrees of longitude and 10 of latitude, save where the desert or the sea gave him nothing to conquer, were the range of his repeated expeditions.
He circled round Judaea. He thrice defeated Benhadad with his allies (on several occasions, twelve kings of the Hittites). His own army exceeded on occasions 100,000 fighting men. Twice he defeated Hazael. Israel trader Jehu, Tyre, Sidon, 24 kings in Pontus, kings of the Hittites, of Chaldaea, 27 kings of Persia are among his tributaries ; "the shooting of his arrows struck terror," he says, "as far as the sea" (Indian Ocean); "he put up his arrows in their quiver at the sea of the setting sun." His son Shamesiva apparently subdued Babylonia, and in the West conquered tribes near Mount Taurus, on the North the countries bordering on Armenia to the South and East, the Medes beyond Mount Zagros, and "the Zimri Jer 25:25 in upper Luristan." His son Ivalush III or IV received undisturbed tribute from the kingdoms which his fathers conquered, and ascribes to his god Asshur the grant of "the kingdom of Babylon to his son."
Thus "Assyria with one hand grasped Babylonia; with the other Philistia and Edom; she held Media Proper, S. Armenia, possessed all Upper Syria, including Commagene and Amanus, bore sway over all the whole Syrian coast from Issus to Gaza, and from the coast to the desert." Tiglath-pileser II and Shalmaneser are known to us as conquerors from Holy Scripture . Tiglath-pileser, we are told from the inscriptions, warred and conquered in Upper Mesopotamia, Armenia, Media, Babylonia, drove into exile a Babyionian prince, destroyed Damascus, took tribute from a Hiram king of Tyre, and from a Queen of the Arabs . And so it continued, until nearly the close of the Monarchy.
The new dynasty which began with Sargon were even greater conquerors than their predecessors. Sargon, in a reign of seventeen or nineteen years, defeated the king of Elam, conquered in Iatbour beyond Elam, reigned from Ras, a dependency on Elam, over Poukoud (Pekod), Phoenicia, Syria, etc. to the river of Egypt, in the far Media to the rising sun, in Scythia, Albania, Parthia, Van, Armenia, Colchis, Tubal to the Moschi: he placed his lieutenants as governors over these countries, and imposed tribute upon them, as upon Assyrians; he, probably, placed Merodach-Baladan on the throne of Babylon, and after 12 years displaced him; he reduced all Chaldaea under his rule; he defeated "Sebech (i. e., probably, So), Sultan of Egypt, so that he was heard of no more;" he received tribute from the Pharaoh of Egypt, from a Queen of Arabia and from Himyar the Sabaean. To him first the king of Meroe paid tribute. He finally captured Samaria: he took Gaza, Kharkar, Arpad and Damascus, Ashdod (which it cost Psammetichus 29 years to reconquer), and Tyre, (which resisted Nebuchadnezzar for 13 years). He added to the Satrapy of Parthia, placed a Satrap or Lieutenant over Commagene and Sentaria, Kharkar, Tel-Garimmi, Gamgoum, Ashdod, and a king of his own choice over Albania. lie seized 55 walled cities in Armenia, 11, which were held to be "inaccessible fortresses;" and 62 great cities in Commagene; 34 in Media; he laid tribute on the "king of the country of rivers."
He removed whole populations at his will; from Samaria, he carried captive its inhabitants, 27,800, and placed them in "cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6; Kg2 18:11; he removed those of Commagene to Elam; all the great men of the Tibareni, and the inhabitants of unknown cities, to Assyria; Cammanians, whom he had conquered, to Tel-Garimmi, a capital which he rebuilt; others whom he had vanquished in the East he placed in Ashdod: again he placed "Assyrians devoted to his empire" among the Tibareni; inhabitants of cities unknown to us, in Damascus; Chaldaeans in Commagene , extracted from the Annales de Philosophie Chretienne T. vi. (5e sêrie). Oppert p. 8, gives as the meaning of his name, "actual king," "roi de fait." (שׁר־כן shar-kēn) Sargon himself, if Oppert has translated him rightly, gives as its meaning, "righteous prince," p. 38). : "The Comukha were removed from the extreme North to Susiana, and Chaldaeans were brought from the extreme South to supply their place." "Seven kings of Iatnan, seven days voyage off in the Western seas, whose names were unknown to the kings" his "fathers; hearing of" his "deeds, came before" him to Babylon with "presents:" as did the king of Asmoun, who dwelt in the midst of the Eastern sea (the Persian gulf). He placed his statue, "writing on it the glory of Asshur his master," in the capital of Van, in Kikisim (Circesium) as also in Cyprus, which he does not name, but where it has been discovered in this century . The Moschian king, with his 3000 towns, who had never submitted to the kings his predecessors, sent his submission and tribute to him.
Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, says of himself, "Assour, the great Lord, has conferred on me sovereignty over the peoples; he has extended my dominion over all those who dwell in the world. From the upper Ocean of the setting sun to the lower Ocean of the rising sun, I reduced under my power all who carried aloft their head."
He defeated Merodach Baladan and the king of Elam together ; took in one expedition , "79 great strong cities of the Chaldaeans anti 820 small towns;" he took prisoners by hundreds of thousands; 200, 150 in his first expedition against Hezekiah, from 44 great walled cities which he took and little villages innumerable ; 208,000 from the Nabathseans anti Hagarenes : he employed on his great buildings 360,000 men, gathered from Chaldea and Aramaea, from Cilicia and Armenia ; he conquered populations in the North, which "had of old not submitted to the kings my brothers ," annexed them to the prefecture of Arrapachitis and set up his image ; he received tribute from the governor of Khararat , wasted the 2 residence cities, 34 smaller cities of Ispahara king of Albania, joining a part of the territory to Assyria, and calling its city, Ilhinzas, the city of Sennacherib ;
He reduced countries of "Media, whose names the kings his brothers had not heard ; he set a king, Toubaal, over the great and little Sidon, Sarepta, Achzib, Acco, Betzitti, Mahalliba; the kings of Moab, Edom, Bet-Amman, Avvad, Ashdod, submitted to him ; he deteated an "innumerable host" of Egyptians at Altakou (Elteke); sons of the king of Egypt fell into his hands; he captured Ascalon, Bene-Barak, Joppa, Hazor ; put back at Amgarron (Migron) the expelled king Padi, who had been surrendered to Hezekiah ; gave portions of the territory of Hezekiah to the kings of Ashdod, Migron, Gaza ; he drove Merodach-baladan again to Elam, captured his brothers, wasted his cities, and placed his own oldest son, Assurnadin, on the throne of Babylon took seven impregnable cities of the Toukharri, placed like birds' nests on the mountains of Nipour ; conquered the king of Oukkou in Dayi, among mountains which none of his ancestors had penetrated; look Oukkou and 33 other cities ; attached Elam, "crossing" the Persian gulf "in Syrian vessels" ; capturing the men, and destroying the cities ; in another campaign, he garrisoned, with prisoner-warriors of his own, cities in Elam which his father had lost ; destroyed 34 large cities and others innumerable of Elam .
His account of his reign closes with a great defeat of Elam, whom the escaped Souzoub had hired with the treasures of the temples of Babylon, and of 17 rebel tribes or cities, at Khalouli, and their entire subdual . He repelled some Greeks in Cilicia, set up his image there, with a record of his deeds, and built Tarsus, on the model of Babylon . It has been noticed, what a "keen appreciation of the merits of a locality" his selection of its site evinced. The destruction of his army of 185,000 men, at the word of God, might well deter him from again challenging the Almighty; but we have seen, in the wars of Napoleon I, that such losses do not break the power of an empire. It was no vain boast of Sennacherib, that he had "gathered all the earth, and carried captive the gods of the nations." The boast was true; the application alone was impious. God owned in him the instrument which He had formed, "the rod of His anger." He condenmed him, only because "the axe boasted itself against Him Who hewed therewith." Victorious, except when he fought against God, and employed by God "to tread down the people as the mire of the streets" Isa 10:5-15; Isa 36:18-20, Sennacherib was cut off as God foretold, but left his kingdom to a victorious son.
His son, Esarhaddon, takes titles, yet more lofty titan those of Sennacherib. He calls himself , "King of Assyria, Vicar of Babylon, King of the Sumirs and Accads, King of Egypt, Meroe and Cush, who reigned from sunrising to sun-set, unequalled in the imposition of tributes." In Armenia, he killed Adrammelech , his half-brother, one of his father's murderers, who fled to Armenia, probably to dispute thence his father's crown. In every direction he carried his conquests further than his powerful father . He speaks of conquests in the far Media , "where none of the kings, our fathers," had conquered, whose kings bore well-known Persian names .
They and their subjects were carried off to Assyria. Others, who "had not conspired against the kings my fathers and the land of Assyria, and whose territories my fathers had not conquered," submitted voluntarily in terror, paid tribute and received Assyrian governors. In the West, he pursued by sea a king of Sidon who rebelled, divided the Syrians in strange countries, and placed mountaineers, whom his bow had subdued in the East, with a governor, in a castle of Esarhaddon which he built in Syria. He warred successfully in Cilicia, Khoubousna, and destroyed 10 large cities of the Tibareni and carried their people captive; trod down the country of Masnaki, transported rebels of Van; he established on the Southern shore that son of Merodach-baladan who submitted to him, removing the brother who trusted in Elam, himself reigned in Babylon , where he carried Manasseh Ch2 33:11.
He reconquered "the city of Adoumou (Edom), (the city of the power of the Arabs,) which Sennacherib had conquered, and carried off its people to Assyria;" he named as Queen of the Arabs, Tabouya, born in his palace; put the son of Hazael on his father's throne. An expedition to "a far country to the bounds of the earth beyond the desert," Bazi (Buz), reached by traversing 140 farsakhs (?) of sandy desert, then 20 farsakhs (?) of fertile land and a stony region, Khazi (Uz), looks like an expedition across Arabia, and, if so, was unparalleled except by Nushirvan. Some of the other names are Arabic. Anyhow, it was a country, where none of his predecessors had gone; he killed 8 kings, carried off their subjects and spoils. He conquered the Gomboulou in their marshes. twelve kings on the coast of Syria whom he recounts by name, (Ba'lou king of Tyre, Manasseh king of Judah, and those of Edom, Maan, Gaza, Ascalon, Amgarron, Byblos, Aradus, Ousimouroun, Bet-Ammon, Ashdod) and 10 kings of Yatnan in the sea (Cyprus) - Aegisthus (Ikistonsi), King of Idalion (Idial), Pythagoras (Pitagoura) K. of Citium (Kitthim), Ki ..., K. of Salamis (Silhimmi), Ittodagon ("Dagon is with him," Itoudagon), K. of Paphos (Pappa), Euryalus (lrieli), K. of Soil (Sillou), Damasou, K. of Curium (Kuri,) Ounagonsou, K. of Limenion (Limini), Roumizu, K. of Tamassus (Tamizzi,) Damutsi of Amti-Khadasti, Puhali of Aphrodisium (Oupridissa) , held their rule from him.
The names of the countries, from which he brought those whom he settled in Samaria, attest alike his strength and the then weakness of two of the nations, which afterward concurred to overthrow his empire. The colonists, according to their own letters to Artaxerxes Ezr 4:9, comprehended, among others, Babylonians; Archevites i. e., inhabitants of Erech, mentioned in Genesis Gen 10:10, as, together with Babel, part of the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod; Susanchites, i. e., inhabitants of Susiana or Chusistan; Dehavites, Daans in Herodotus , one of the wandering Persian tribes, whose name (Taia) still exists; Elamite's Isa 21:2; Isa 22:6 or the dwellers on the Persian gulf, bordering on Susiana; Apharsites or the Persians in their original abode in Paraca, Paraic, now Farsistan. It seems also probable that the Apharsachites are those more known to us as Sacae or Scythians, whom Esarhaddon says that he conquered ; and that the Apharsachthites (with the same word Aphar prefixed) are the Sittaceni on the Caspian. The Dinaites and the Tarphelites are as yet unidentified, unless the Tarpetes of the Palus Maeotis near the Sittaceni, or the Tapiri in Media be a corruption of the name.
The Samaritan settlers add, "And the rest of the nations, whom the great and noble Asnapper carried captive, and settled in the cities of Samaria and the rest on this side the river." Under this general term, they include the Mesopotamian settlers brought from Avvah and Sepharvaim, and those from Hamath Kg2 17:24, probably wishing to insist to the Persian Monarch on their Persian, Median, or Babylonian descent. They attest at the same time that their forefathers were not willingly removed but "transported, carried into exile" Ezr 4:10, and accordingly that Esarhaddon, in whose reign they were removed, had power in all these countries. The condensation also of settlers from twelve nations in so small a space as the cities of Samaria (analogous as it is to the dispersion of the Jews over so many provinces of their captors) illustrates the policy of these transportations, and the strength which they gave to the empire. Nations were blended together among those foreign to them, with no common bond except their relation to their conqueror. A check on those around them, and themselves held in check by them, they had no common home to which to return, no interest to serve by rebelling. Esarhaddon built 36 temples in Assyria by the labor of foreign slaves, his captives, who worshiped his gods .
This collection of people of twelve nations in the cities of Samaria represents moreover one portion only of the conquests of Esarhaddon, and, for the most part, that furthest from Judaea. For the principle of the policy was to remove them far from their own land. Ethiopian and Egyptian captives would be placed, not here from where they could easily return, but, like Israel in the cities of the Medes, from where they could find no escape.
The son of Esarhaddon, Asshurbanipal II. , yet further enlarged and consolidated the conquests of his conquering father. His expeditions into Egypt have been already dwelt upon; his victories were easy, complete. Tirhaka, himself a great conqueror, fled into unknown deserts beyond reach of pursuits. His step-son Urdaminie attempted to recover his kingdom, was defeated at once, fled and his capital was taken. In Asia, he took away tim king of Tyre, who offended him; made conquests beyond Mt. Taurus, where his fathers had never been ; received an embassy from Gyges; attached to Assyria a tract of Minni or Persarmenia, took the capital of Minni; took Shushan and Badaca; killed their kings, united Susiana to Babylonia; subdued anew Edom, Moab, Kedar, the Nabathaeans; received the submission of the king of Urarda, Ararat .
While Assyria was extended wider than before, its old enemies were more incorporated with it, or, at least, more subdued; it was more at one within itself. Egypt, the great rival Empire, had tried to shake off the yoke, but was subdued; no people in Syria or the valley of the Euphrates stirred itself; the whole tract within the Taurus, once so rife with enemies, lay hushed under his rule: hushed were the Hittites, Hamathites, the Syrians of Damascus, the Tibareni who had once held their own against his father; war was only at the very extremities, in Minni or Edom, and that, rather chastisement than war; Babylon was a tranquil portion of his empire, except during the temporary rebellion of the brother, whom he had placed over it, and whom he pardoned. His death, amid the tranquil promotion of literature , when he had no more enemies to conquer or rebels to chasten, left his empire at the zenith of its power, some 22 years before its destruction. "Culno" had become, as Sennacherib boasted Isa 10:9, "like Carehemish; Hamath like Arpad; Samaria as Damascus." He "had removed the bounds of the people and gathered all the earth, as one gathereth eggs, left" Isa 10:13-14 by the parent bird, undefended even by its impotent love. There was not a cloud on the horizon, not a token from where the whirlwind would come. The bas-reliefs attest, that neither the energy nor the cruelty of the Assyrians were diminished .
Of those twenty-two years, we have nothing reliable except their close. There was probably nothing to relate. There would not be anything, if Asshurbanipal had consolidated his empire, as he seems to have done, and if his son and successor inherited his father's later tastes, and was free from the thirst of boundless conquest, which had characterized the earlier rulers of Assyria. Anyhow, we know nothing authentic. The invasion of Assyria by Phraortes, which Herodotus relates, is held, on good grounds, to be a later history of a rebellion against Darius Hystaspes, adapted to times before the Medes became one nation . There was no reason why it should not have been recorded, had it taken place, since it is admitted to have been a total defeat, in which Phraortes lost his life . The invasion of the Scythians, which is to have stopped the siege of Nineveh under Cyaxares, was reported in a manifestly exaggerated form to Herodotus. The 28 years, during which Herodotus relates the Scythian rule to have lasted , is longer than the whole of the reign of the last king of Assyria; and yet, according to Herodotus, is to have been interposed between the two sieges of Cyaxares. And as its empire gave no sign of decay, so far as we can trace its history within 22 years before its destruction, so, with the like rapidity, did the empire rise, which was to destroy it.
The account which Herodotus received, that the Medians had thrown off the yoke of Assyria before Deioces , is in direct contradiction to the Assyrian inscriptions. This was, they state, the time, not of the revolt, but of the conquest of Media. They are confirmed by Holy Scripture, which says that the Assyrian king (Sargon) placed "in the cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6 his Israelitish captives. The utmost, which Herodotus ascribes to Deioces however, is, that he consolidated the six Median tribes and built a capital, Agbatana . It is an union of wild hordes into one people, held together for the time by the will of one man and by their weariness of mutual oppressions. Even according to their accounts, Cyaxares (about 633 b.c., i. e., 8 years before the fall of Nineveh) first organized the Median army; the Greeks, in the time of Aeschylus, believed Cvaxares to have been the first of the Median kings ; rebels in Media and Sagartia claimed the Median throne against Darius, as descended from Cyaxares, as the founder of the Monarchy .
Further, the subsequent history supports the account of Abydenus against Herodotus, that not the Medes, but the rebel general of the last Monarch of Nineveh was, with his Babylonian troops, the chief author of the destruction of Nineveh. The chief share of the spoil, where no motives of refined policy intervene, falls to the strongest, who had chief portion in the victory. "The Medes," says Herodotus, "took Nineveh, and conquered all Assyria, except the Babylonian portion" . But Babylon was no spared province, escaping with its independence as a gain. Babylonia, not Media, succeeded to the Southern and Western dominions of the Assyrian empire, and the place, where Nineveh had stood, Cyaxares retaining the North. This was a friendly arrangement, since subsequently too we find a Babylonian prince in the expedition of Cyaxares against Asia Minor, and Medians assisting Nebuchadnezzar against the king of Egypt . Abydenus represents the Babylonians and Medes, as equal , but exhibits the rebel general, as the author of the attack . "After him (Sardanapal), Sarac held the empire of Assyria, who, being informed of a horde of mingled troops which were coming against him from the sea, sent Busalossor (Nebopalassar) general of his army, to Babylon. But he, having determined to revolt, betrothed to his son, Nebucbodrossor, Amuhea, daughter of Asdahag, prince of the Medes, and soon made a rapid attack on Nineveh. King Sarac, when he knew the whole, set the palace Evorita on fire. Then Nehuchodrossor, attaining to the empire, encircled Babylon with strong walls."
The "horde of mingled troops" "from the sea" were probably those same Susians and Elymaeans, whom the Assyrians had, in successive reigns, defeated. If the account of Herodotus were true, the father of the Median Monarch had perished in conflict with Assyria. The grandfather of the Assyrian Monarch had himself reigned in Babylon. Assyria ruled Babylon by viceroys to the end. It has been noticed that Nahum mentions no one enemy who should destroy Nineveh. True, for no one enemy did destroy her.
Even now its fall is unexplained. The conquests of its Monarchs had not been the victories of talented individuals. They were a race of world-wide conquerors. In the whole history, of which we have the annals, they are always on the aggressive. They exacted tribute where they willed. The tide of time bore them on in their conquests. Their latest conquests were the most distant. Egypt, her early rival, had been subdued by her. The powers, which did destroy her, had no common bond of interest. They were united, for one reign, not by natural interests, but, as far as we see, by the ambition of two individuals. These crushed, at once and for ever, the empire which for so many centuries had been the ravager of the world. But who could have foreseen such a combination and such results, save God, in Whose hands are human wills and the fate of empires?
The fiery empire of conquerors sank like a tropic sun. Its wrath had burned, unassuaged, "from" (in their own words) "the rising to the setting sun." No gathering cloud had tempered its heat or allayed its violence. Just ere it set, in those last hours of its course, it seemed, as if in its meridian. Its bloodstained disk cast its last glowing rays on that field of carnage in Susiana; then, without a twilight, it sank beneath those stormy waves, so strangely raised, at once and for ever. All, at once, was night. It knew no morrow.
Its fall is inexplicable still. It may have accelerated its own destruction by concentrating the fierce Chaldees at Babylon. It was weakened by the revolt of its own general, and with him the defection of an army. Still, in those days, the city of 1200 towers, each 200 feet high, its ordinary wall 100 feet high and of such breadth, that three chariots could drive on it abreast , could not be taken by mounds, except by some most gigantic army with patience inexhaustible. Famine could not reduce a city, which, in its 60 miles in circumference, enclosed, like Babylon, space for much cattle, and which could, within its walls, grow enough grain for its population of 600,000 Jon 4:11. With its perennial supply of provision, it might have laughed to scorn a more formidable foe than the Medes, Elamites and Babylonians, unaccustomed to sieges, except in as far as any had fought in its armies, while the Ninevites possessed the hereditary skill of centuries.
Babylon, smaller than Nineveh , was at rest amidst the siege of the more powerful grandson of Cyaxares. Cyrus could only take it by stratagem; Darius Hystaspes, by treachery. Then, every Ninevite was a warrior. Their descendants, the Curds, are still among the fiercest and most warlike people of Asia. The bas-reliefs, which bear internal evidence of truth, exhibit a wonderful blending of indomitable strength of will, recklessness of suffering, inherent physical energy, unimpaired by self-indulgence. A German writer on art says , "You recognize a strong thick-set race, of very powerful frame, yet inclined to corpulence, a very special blending of energy and luxury. The general impression of the figures, whether men, women or eunuchs, has uniformly something earnest and imposing." An English writer says still more vividly ; "All the figures indicate great physical development, animal propensities very strongly marked, a calm, settled ferocity, a perfect nonchalance amidst the most terrible scenes; no change of feature takes place, whether the individual is inflicting or experiencing horrid sufferings. The pictures are very remarkable as indicating the entire absence of higher mental and moral qualities: and the exuberance of brutal parts of man's nature. At the same time, there is not lacking a certain consciousness of dignity and of inherent power. There is a tranquil energy and fixed determination, which will not allow the beholder to feel any contempt of those stern warriors."
How then could it fall? The prophecy of Nahum describes, with terrible vividness, a siege; the rousing of its king from a torpor of indolence; "he remembereth his nobles" (Nah 2:5 (6)); the orderly advance, the confused preparations for defense; and then, when expectation is strung, and we see besiegers and besieged prepared for the last decisive strife, there is a sudden pause. No human strength overthrows the city "The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved. And it is decreed, she shall be led away captive" (Nah 2:6-7 (7, 8)). Her captivity follows on the opening of "the gates of the rivers." The "rivers," ordinarily her strength, were also her weakness. The annals of Sennacherib relate, how he repaired a palace which had been undermined by the Tigris. : "The small palace, which was become very ruinous in every part, because the river Tigris, during 16 years, had undermined and ravaged it, (I repaired.)" Dionysius, the Jacobite patriarch, relates how in his own time, 763 a.d. : "the Tigris, overflowing, laid waste all the towns around it, and especially Mosul" (opposite to Nineveh). Barhebraeus, in four different years, mentions the destruction of houses in Bagdad through the overflow of the Tigris .
He mentions also a city-wall, overthrown by an inundation, so that 3,000 men were drowned in their houses . Ives relates : "The Bishop (of Babylon) remembers that" about 1733 "the Euphrates and Tigris were so overflown, that the whole country between them appeared as one large sea. Over all the plain between Bagdad and Hilla, people could pass only in boats. The water flowed quite up to the glacis, the ditch was full, the city also overflown, and the foundation of most of the buildings hurt; 300 houses were entirely destroyed. To prevent as much as possible" the recurrence of such a calamity, "the Turks now face the foundation-wall of their houses with a composition of charcoal, ashes, and Demar (bitumen)." "The river Khosar," also, which would be swollen by the same causes as the Tigris, "entered the city," says Ainsworth , "by an aperture in the walls on the East side, which appears to have formed part of the original plan and to have been protected by a gateway and walls, vestiges of which still remain." "The Khausser," says Mr. Rich , "is generally drawn off for irrigating the cotton-plantations in the alluvial ground of the river; when it is much overflowed, it discharges itself into the Tigris above the bridge." : "The Khausser now (Dec. 1. after "very heavy tropical rain,") discharges itself direct into the Tigris, and brings an immense body of water." : "After rain, it becomes an impetuous torrent, overflowing its banks and carrying all before it." : "The stone-bridge was carried away one night by the violence of the Khausser, on a sudden inundation." On a lesser swelling of the river - "the water-wheels were removed" in precaution "and the bridge of boats opened." Cazwini, the Arabic geographer, speaks of "the rivers of Nineveh."
Ctesias, being a writer of suspected authority, cannot safely be alleged in proof of the fulfillment of prophecy. Yet in this case his account, as it is in exact conformity with the obvious meaning of the prophecy of Nahum, so it solves a real difficulty, how Nineveh, so defended, could have fallen. It seems certain that the account of the siege taken from him by Diodorus, is that of the last siege. It bas been remarked that the only event of the siege, known from any other source, namely, that the last Assyrian king; when be had learned the combination of the Medes and Babylonians against him, set fire to his palace, is related also by Ctesias. Ctesias has also the same fact, that the Babylonian revolt was recent; the name of the revolted general in Ctesias, Belisis, is the latter half of that given to him by Abydenus, , Nebopalassar, omitting only the name of the god, Nebo. The rest of the history is in itself probable.
The success of the Assyrian monarch at first against the combined armies, and the consequent revelry, are that same blending of fierceness and sensuality which is stamped on all the Assyrian sculptures, continned to the end. The rest of his relation, which, on account of the filets of nature, which we know, but which, since they are gathered from sources so various, Ctesias probably did not know, is, in itself, probable, accounts for what is unaccounted for, and corresponds with the words of Nahum. It is , "Sardanapalus, seeing the whole kingdom in the greatest danger, sent his three sons and two daughters with much wealth to Paphlagonia to Cotta the Governor, being the best-disposed of his subjects. He himself sent by messengers to all his subjects for forces, and prepared what was needed for the siege. He had an oracle handed down from his forefathers, that no one should take Nineveh, unless the river first became an enemy to the city.
Conceiving that this never would be, he held to his hopes, purposing to abide the siege and awaited the armies to be sent by his subjects." "The rebels, elated by their successes, set themselves to the siege, but on account of the strength of the walls, could in no wise injure those in the city." "But these had great abundance of all necessaries through the foresight of the king. The siege then being prolonged for two years, they pressed upon it; assaulting the walls and cutting off those therein from any exit into the country." "In the 3rd year, the river, swollen by continuous and violent rains, inundated a part of the city and overthrew 20 stadia of the wall. Then the king, thinking that the oracle was fulfilled, and that the river was plainly an enemy to the city, despaired of safety. And, not to fall into the enemy's hands, he made an exceeding great pile in the palace, heaped up there all the gold and silver and the royal apparel, and having shut up his concubines and eunuchs in the house formed in the midst of the pile, consumed himself and all the royalties with them all. The rebels, hearing that Sardanapalus had perished, possessed themselves of the city, entering by the broken part of the wall."
Yet Nahum had also prophesied, "the fire shall devour thy bars;" "fortify thy strong holds, there shall the fire devour thee;" "I will burn her chariots in the smoke" Nah 3:13, Nah 3:15; Nah 2:13, and all the ruins of Nineveh still speak from beneath the earth where they lie interred, that, overthrown as they have been by some gigantic power, fire consumed them within. : "The palaces of Khorsabad (Dur Sarjina) and Nimrud shew equal traces of fire with those of Koyunjik." : "The recent excavations have strewn that fire was a great instrument in the destruction of the Nineveh palaces. Calcined alabaster, masses of charred wood and charcoal, colossal statues split through with the heat, are met with in parts of the Ninerite mounds, and attest the veracity of prophecy." . "It is evident from the ruins that Khorsabad and Nimroud were sacked; and set on fire."
Yet this does not exhaust the fullness of the prophecy. Nahum not only foretold the destruction of Nineveh, that it should "be empty, void, waste, there is no healing of thy bruise," but in emphatic words, that its site also should be a desolation. "With an overrunning flood He shall make the place thereof (mekomah) a desolation" Nah 1:8. This was then new in the history of the world. Cities have remained, while empires passed away. Rome, Constantinople, Athens, Damascus, Alexandria, Venice, abide, although their political might is extinct. No or Thebes itself survived its capture by Sargon and a yet later loss of its inhabitants nearly two centuries, when the more fatal conquest of Cambyses, anti perhaps the rise of Memphis perpetuated its destruction. Nahum foretells emphatically as to Nineveh, "He will make the place thereof an utter consumption." Not only would God destroy the then Nineveh; but the very place or site thereof should be an utter desolation.
There was, then, no instance of so great a city passing away. Such had not been Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian policy. It had become an established policy in Sennacherib's time to remove populations, not to destroy cities. And these two policies were incompatible. For a conqueror who would remove populations must have, whither to remove them. Nineveh itself had conquered Babylon and Shushun, and the cities of the Medes; but had placed her own lieutenants in them. The mere destruction of such a city as Nineveh was "contrary to experience." Even later than this, Babylon, notwithstanding its rebellions, was spared by its first conqueror, and survived to be the grave of its second, Alexander. Xenophon describes Nineveh under the name of Mespila (of which Mosul has been supposed to be a corruption) "a wall, void, large, lying against the city - the basement was of polished stone, full of shells, its width 50 feet, its height 50 feet. Thereon was built a wall of brick, its breadth 50 feet, the height 100; the circuit was six farsangs," i. e., 22 12 miles.
The shell remained; the tumult of life was gone. Its protecting bulwarks remained; all, which they protected, had disappeared. They had forgotten already on the spot what it had been or by whom it had perished. : "The Medes inhabited it formerly. It was said that Media, a kings wife, had fled thither, when the Medes were losing their power through the Persians. The Persian king, besieging this city, could not take it, either by time or force; but Zeus made the inhabitants senseless, and so it was taken." A little later, Alexander marched over its site to gain the world, not knowing that a world-empire, like that which he gave his life to found, was buried under his feet . Gaugamela, near which Darius lost his empire, must have been close to its site. Yet three centuries, and history, not its mere neighbors only, had forgotten when it had perished. Strabo says , "It was effaced immediately after the destruction of the Syrians." Nearly two centuries later is Lucian's saying , "Nineveh has perished, and there is no trace left where it once was." Yet before this time, in the reign of Claudius, the Romans had built a new Nineveh which they called by his name "Ninive Claudiopolis." In the 6th century, it is mentioned as a Christian see . Its episcopate was taken away, probably on account of its decline, early in the 9th century; and it was united to Mosul . It was still in being at the beginning of the 14th century . Yet, in the 12th century, as a whole, "it was desolate, but there were there many villages and castles." This was not the Nineveh of prophecy; but it too was swept away, and a few coins alone attest the existence of the Roman city. "The city, and even the ruins of the city," relates Gibbon of the last victory of Heraclius, "had long since disappeared; the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the operation of the two armies." A line of lofty mounds, on the East of Tigris, long drew but a momentary gaze from the passers-by; a few cottages surmounted the heaps, which entombed the palaces of kings, who were the terror of the East; the plow turned up, unheeded, the bricks, which recorded their deeds; the tide of war swept over it anew; the summer's sands again filled up "the stupendous mass of brick-work, occasionally laid bare by the winter rains." The eyes rested on nothing but "the stern shapeless mound, rising like a hill from the scorched plain." : "The traveler is at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps, upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have left no visible traces of their civilization or of their arts; their influence has long since passed away. The scene around him is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation; a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder, for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. Those huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Baalbee and the theaters of Ionia."
In 1827, Buckingham still wrote : "we came in about an hour to the principal mounds which are thought to mark the site of the ancient Nineveh. There are four of these mounds, disposed in the form of a square; and these, as they shew neither bricks, stones, nor other materials of building, but are in many places overgrown with grass, resemble the mounds left by entrenchments and fortifications of ancient Roman camps. The longest of these mounds runs nearly N. and S. and consists of several ridges of unequal height, the whole appearing to extend for four or five miles in length. There are three other distinct mounds, which are all near to the river, and in the direction of East and West - there are appearances of mounds and ruins extending for several miles to the southward; and still more distinctly seen to the Northward of this, though both are less marked than the mounds of the center.
The space between these is a level plain, over every part of the face of which, broken pottery, and the other usual debris of ruined cities are seen scattered about." "Mounds and smaller heaps of ruins were scattered widely over the plain, sufficient to prove, that the site of the original city occupied a vast extent." Niebuhr had ridden through Nineveh unknowingly. : "I did not learn that I was at so remarkable a spot, until near the river. Then they showed me a village on a great hill, which they call Nunia, and a mosque, in which the prophet Jonah was buried. Another hill in this district is called Kalla Nunia, or the Castle of Nineveh. On that lies a village Koindsjug. At Mosul, where I dwelt close by the Tigris, they strawed me in addition the walls of Nineveh, which in my journey through I had not observed, but supposed to be a set of hills." "It is well-known," begins an account of the recent discoveries , "that in the neighborhood of Mosul, travelers had observed some remarkable mounds, resembling small bills, and that Mr. Rich had, thirty years ago, called attention to one called Koyunjik, in which fragments of sculpture and pottery had been frequently discovered."
And yet, humanly speaking, even if destroyed, it was probable before hand, that it would not altogether perish. For a town near its site was needed for purposes of commerce. Of the two routes of commerce from the Persian gulf to the North by the Euphrates or by the Tigris, the Tigris-route was free from the perils of the arid wilderness, through which the line by the Euphrates passed. If, for the downward course, the Euphrates itself was navigable, yet the desert presented a difficulty for caravans returning upward from the Persian gulf. Arrian, who mentions the two lines of travel, says that Alexander , having crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus, chose the less direct line by the Tigris, as having a better supply of all things, food for his cavalry, and a less scorching heat.
The mention of Haran (afterward Carrhae) Canneh, and Asshur in Ezekiel, (in one verse ) seems to indicate the continuation of the same line of commerce with Tyre, which must have existed from praehistoric times (i. e., from times of which we have no definite historic account), since there is no ground to question the statement of the Phoenicians themselves in Herodotus, that they had come from the Erythraean sea , i. e., the Persian gulf. The later hindrances to the navigation of the Tigris by the great dams (probably for irrigation), were of Persian date; but they could have had no great effect on the actual commerce; since for the greater part of the upward course on the Tigris line, this also must, on account of the rapidity of the river, have been by caravans.
The route was still used in the middle ages . : "The ancient road and the modern one on the upper Tigris follow, pretty nearly throughout, the same line, it being determined by the physical necessities of the soil." In the 16th century , "from the head of the Persian gulf two commercial lines existed: by one of them goods were carried some way up the Euphrates, and then by land to Bir, Aleppo, Iskonderun. By the other they followed the Tigris to Baghdad and were carried by Diyar-Bekr and Sires to Terabuzum." (But Mosul was necessarily on the way from Baghdad to Diyar Bekr). Mosul still lies on the line of commerce, from the Persian gulf, Basrah, Baghdad, Mosul, Mardin, Diyar-Bekr to Iskenderun, the port of Aleppo , or Trebizond (Tarabuzum ).
It still carries on some commerce with Kurdistan and other provinces (beside Diyar-Bekr and Baghdad). Col. Chesney, in 1850, advocated the advantages of extending the line of commerce by British stations at Diyar-Bekr and Mardin, in addition to and connection with those already existing at Baghdad and Mosul . There is, in fact, a consent as to this. Layard writes : "The only impediment between the Syrian coast and the Tigris and Euphrates in any part of their course, arises from the want of proper security. The navigation of the Persian gulf is, at all times, open and safe; and a glance at the map will shew that a line through the Mediterranean, the port of Suedia, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Busrah, and the Indian Ocean to Bombay is as direct as can well be desired.
With those prospects, and with the incalculable advantages, which a flourishing commerce and a safe and speedy transit through, perhaps, the richest portions of its dominions would confer upon the Turkish empire, it would seem that more than Eastern apathy is shown in not taking some steps, tending to restore security to the country watered by the Tigris and Euphrates." Ainsworth suggests a still wider commerce, of which Mosul might be the center. : "With a tranquil state of the surrounding country, Mosul presents mercantile advantages of no common order. There are several roads open to Persia, across the mountains; a transit from five to seven days, and by which, considering the short distance and good roads from Mosul to Iskenderun, British manufactures might be distributed into the heart of Persia, in a time and at an expense, which the line of Trebizond Erzrum and Tabriz, that of Bushire and Baghdad, or the Russian line of Astrakhan Bakhu and Mazenderan can never rival."
But although marked out by these advantages for continuance, even when its power was gone, Nineveh was to perish and it perished. Nor ought it to be alleged, that in other cases too, "if the position of the old capital was deemed, from political or commercial reasons more advantageous than any other, the population was settled in its neighborhood, as at Delhi, not amidst its ruins." For
1) there was, at the time of Nahum, no experience of the destruction of any such great city as Nineveh;
2) In the case of conquest, the capitol of the conquering empire became, ipso facto, the capital of the whole; but this did not, in itself, involve the destruction of the former.
Babylon, from having been the winter residence of Cyrus, became the chief residence of the Persian Emperor at the time of Alexander, and continued to exist for many centuries, oiler the foundation of Seleucia, although it ceased to be a great city . And this, notwithstanding its two rebellions under Darius , and that under Xerxes . There was no ground of human policy against Nineveh's continuing, such as Mosul became, anymore than Mosul itself. It existed for some time, as a Christian See.
The grandeur, energy, power, vividness of Nahum, naturally can be fully felt only in his own language. The force of his brief prophecy is much increased by its unity. Nahum had one sentence to pronounce, the judgments of God upon the power of this world, which had sought to annihilate the kingdom of God. God, in His then kingdom in Judah, and the world, were come face to face. What was to be the issue? The entire final utter overthrow of whatever opposed God. Nahum opens then with the calm majestic declaration of the majesty of God; Who God is, against whom they rebelled; the madness of their rebellion, and the extinction of its chief Nah 1:1-15; then in detail, what was to come long after that first overthrow, the siege and capture of Nineveh itself Nah 2:1-13; then, in wider compass, the overthrow of the whole power Nahum 3. It was to be the first instance, in the history of mankind, of a power so great, perishing and forever. Nahum's office was not, as Jonah's, to the people itself. There is then no call to repentance, no gleam of God's mercy toward them in this life. Nineveh was to perish wholly, as the habitable world had perished in the time of Noah. The only relief is in the cessation of so much violence. There is no human joy expressed at this destruction of the enemy of God and of His people; no sorrow, save that there can be no sorrow; "who will bemoan her? whence shall I find comforters for her?" Nah 3:7.
In conformity with this concentration of Nahum's subject, there is little in outward style or language to connect him with the other prophets. His opening (as already observed ) bears upon God's declarations of mercy and judgment; but, Nineveh having filled up the measure of its iniquites, he had to exhibit the dark side of those declarations; how much lay in those words, "that will by no means clear the guilty." : "Jonah and Nahum form connected parts of one moral history, the remission of God's judgment being illustrated in the one, the execution of it in the other: the clemency and the just severity of the divine government being contained in the mixed delineation of the two books." His evangelic character just gleams through, in the eight tender words, in which he seems to take breath, as it were; "Tob Yhvh lemaoz beyomtsarah, veyodeah chose bo," "Good is God (Yhvh), refuge in day of trouble, and knowing trusters in Him" Nah 1:7; then again, in the few words, which I think Isaiah expanded, "Lo on the mountains the feet of a good-tidings-bearer, peace-proclaimer" Nah 2:1. Else there is only the mingled tenderness and austereness of truth, which would sympathize with the human being, but that that object had, by putting off all humanity, alienated all which is man. "Who will bemoan her? Whence shall I seek comforters for thee?" Who? and Whence? None had escaped evil from her. "Upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?"
It is difficult for us, who have to gather up our knowledge of the sacred language from the fragments which remain, in which also the number of words forms and idioms, which stand out singly here and there, seem but so many specimens of lest treasure, to judge with any certainty, whether any approximation of idiom, which we may observe, implies any connection between the writers in whom it occurs. Nahum has, especially in his picture of the capture of Nineveh, so many of those hapax legomena, consisting often of slight modifications, his language is so rich and so original, that one the more doubts whether in those idioms, in which he seems to approximate to other prophets, the expressions in common do not belong to the common stock of the language; and that the more, since mostly part of the idiom only coincides, the rest is different. As for the so-called Aramaisms or other peculiarities of language which Hitzig would have to be evidences of a later date, and from some of which others would infer that Nahum lived at Nineveh itself, "the wish has been father to the thought."
One only solid ground there would be why Nahum should not have written his prophecy, when, according to all history, it could alone have any interest for Judah, long before the event itself, namely, if He to whom all, past and future, are present, could not or did not declare beforehand things to come . If there be prophecy, the siege of Nineveh might be as vividly presented to the prophet's mind, as if he saw it with his bodily eyes .
Bible
Nahum Chapter 1
Nahum 1:1
nah 1:1
The burden - Jerome: "The word משׂא mas's'â', 'burden' is never placed in the title, except when the vision is heavy and full of burden and toil."
Of Nineveh - The prophecy of Nahum again is very stern and awful. Nineveh, after having "repented at the preaching of Jonah," again fell back into the sins whereof it had repented, and added this, that, being employed by God to chasten Israel, it set itself, not to inflict the measure of God's displeasure, but to uproot the chosen people, in whom was promised the birth of Christ . It was then an antichrist, and a type of him yet to come. Jonah's mission was a call to repentance, a type and forerunner of all God's messages to the world, while the day of grace and the world's probation lasts. Nahum, "the full of exceeding comfort," as his name means, or "the comforter" is sent to Joh 16:6, Joh 16:8. "reprove the world of judgment." He is sent, prominently, to pronounce on Nineveh its doom when its day of grace should be over, and in it, on the world, when it and "all the works therein shall be burned up" Pe2 3:10.
With few words he directly comforts the people of God Nah 1:15; elsewhere the comfort even to her is indirect, in the destruction of her oppressor. Besides this, there is nothing of mercy or call to repentance, or sorrow for their desolation (as in Jer 3:12; Jer 8:18, Jer 8:21), but rather the pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God upon her and on the evil world, which resists to the end all God's calls and persecutes His people. The Book of Jonah proclaims God, "a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, who repents Him of the evil." Nahum speaks of the same attributes, yet closes with, "and will not at all acquit the wicked." : "The Merciful Himself, who is by Nature Merciful, the Holy Spirit, seemeth, speaking in the prophet, to laugh at their calamity." All is desolation, and death. The aggression against God is retorted upon the aggressor; one reeling strife for life or death; then the silence of the graveyard. And so, in its further meaning , "the prophecy belongs to the close of the world and the comfort of the saints therein, so that whatsoever they see in the world, they may hold cheap, as passing away and perishing and prepare themselves for the Day of Judgment, when the Lord shall he the Avenger of the true Assyrian."
So our Lord sets forth the end of the world as the comfort of the elect. "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh" Luk 21:28. This is the highest fulfillment of the prophecy, for "then will the wrath of God against the wicked be fully seen, who now patiently waiteth for them for mercy."
The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite - o "He first defines the object of the prophecy, whereto it looks; then states who spake it and whence it was;" the human instrument which God employed. The fuller title, "The book of the vision of Nahum" (which stands alone) probably expresses that it was not, like most prophecies, first delivered orally, and then collected by the prophet, but was always (as it is so remarkably) one whole. "The weight and pressure of this 'burden.' may be felt from the very commencement of the book."
Nahum 1:2
nah 1:2
God is jealous and the Lord revengeth - Rather (as the English margin) God "very jealous and avenging is the Lord." The Name of God, יהוה (YHVH), "He who Is," the Unchangeable, is thrice repeated, and thrice it is said of Him that He is an Avenger. It shows both the certainty and greatness of the vengeance, and that He who inflicts it, is the All-Holy Trinity, who have a care for the elect. God's jealousy is twofold. It is an intense love, not bearing imperfections or unfaithfulness in that which It loves, and so chastening it; or not bearing the ill-dealings of those who would injure what It loves, and so destroying them. To Israel He had revealed Himself as "a Exo 20:5-6 jealous God, visiting iniquity but shewing mercy;" here, as jealous for His people against those who were purely His enemies and the enemies of His people (see Zac 1:14), and so His jealousy burns to their destruction, in that there is in them no good to be refined, but only evil to be consumed.
The titles of God rise in awe; first, "intensely jealous" and "an Avenger;" then, "an Avenger and a Lord of wrath;" One who hath it laid up with Him, at His Command, and the more terrible, because it is so; the Master of it, (not, as man, mastered by it; having it, to withhold or to discharge; yet so discharging it, at last, the more irrevocably on the finally impenitent. And this He says at the last, "an Avenger to His adversaries," (literally, "those who hem and narrow Him in"). The word "avenged" is almost appropriated to God in the Old Testament, as to punishment which He inflicts, or at least causes to be inflicted , whether on individuals Gen 4:15, Gen 4:24; Sa1 24:12; Sa2 4:8; Kg2 9:7; Jer 11:20; Jer 15:15; Jer 20:12, or upon a people, (His own Lev 26:25; Psa 99:8; Eze 24:8 or their enemies Deu 32:41, Deu 32:43; Psa 18:48; Isa 34:8; Isa 35:4; Isa 47:3; Isa 59:17; Isa 61:2; Isa 63:4; Mic 5:14; Jer 46:10; Jer 50:15, Jer 50:28; Jer 51:6, Jer 51:11, Jer 51:36; Eze 25:14, Eze 25:17, for their misdeeds. In the main it is a defect . Personal vengeance is mentioned only in characters, directly or indirectly censured, as Samson Jdg 15:7; Jdg 16:20 or Saul . It is forbidden to man, punished in him, claimed by God as His own inalienable right. "Vengeance is Mine and requital" (Deu 32:35, compare Psa 94:1). "Thou shalt not avenge nor keep up against the children of My people" Lev 19:18. Yet it is spoken of, not as a mere act of God, but as the expression of His Being. "Shall not My soul be avenged of such a nation as this?" Jer 5:9, Jer 5:29; Jer 9:9.
And a Reserver of wrath for His enemies - The hardened and unbelieving who hate God, and at last, when they had finally rejected God and were rejected by Him, the object of His aversion. It is spoken after the manner of men, yet therefore is the more terrible. There is that in God, to which the passions of man correspond; they are a false imitation of something which in Him is good, a distortion of the true likeness of God, in which God created us and whisk man by sin defaced. : "Pride doth imitate exaltedness: whereas Thou Alone art God exalted over all. Ambition, what seeks it, but honors and glory? Whereas Thou alone art to be honored above all and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn, when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and uninjuriousness: because nothing is found more single than Thee; and what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the sinner?
Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest beside the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but Thou art the fullness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: but Thou art the most overflowing Giver of all good. Covetousness would possess many things; and Thou possessest all things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more excellent than Thou? Anger seeks revenge: who revenges more justly than Thou? Fear startles at things unaccustomed or sudden, which endanger things beloved, and takes forethought for their safety; but to Thee what unaccustomed or sudden, or who separats from Thee what Thou lovest? Or where but with Thee is unshaken safety? Grief pines away for things lost, the delight of its desires; because it would have nothing taken from it, as nothing can from Thee. Thus doth the soul seek without Thee what she finds not pure and untainted, until she returns to Thee. Thus, all pervertedly imitate Thee, who remove far from Thee, and lift themselves up against Thee. But even by thus imitating Thee, they imply Thee to be the Creator of all nature; whence there is no place, whither altogether to retire from Thee." And so, in man, the same qualities are good or bad, as they have God or self for their end. : "The joy of the world is a passion. Joy in the Holy Spirit or to joy in the Lord is a virtue. The sorrow of the world is a passion. The sorrow according to God which works salvation is a virtue. The fear of the world which hath torment, from which a man is called fearful, is a passion. The holy tear of the Lord, which abides forever, from which a man is called reverential, is a virtue. The hope of the world, when one's hope is in the world or the princes of the world, is a passion. Hope in God is a virtue, as well as faith and charity. Though these four human passions are not in God, there are four virtues, having the same names, which no one can have, save from God, from the Spirit of God." in man they are "passions," because man is so far "passive" and suffers under them, and, through original sin, cannot hinder having them, though by God's grace he may hold them in.
God, without passion and in perfect holiness, has qualities, which in man were jealousy, wrath, vengeance, unforgivingness, a "rigor of perfect justice toward the impenitent, which punishes so severely, as though God had fury;" only, in Him it is righteous to punish man's unrighteousness. Elsewhere it is said, "God keepeth not for ever" Psa 103:9, or it is asked, "will He keep forever?" Jer 3:5, and He answers, "Return, and I will not cause Mine anger to fall upon you, for I am merciful, saith the Lord, I will not keep for ever" Jer 3:12. Man's misdeeds and God's displeasure remain with God, to be effaced on man's repentance, or "by his hardness and impenitent heart man treasureth up unto himself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will reward each according to his works" Rom 2:5-6.
Nahum 1:3
nah 1:3
The Lord is slow to anger - Nahum takes up the words of Jonah Jon 4:2 as he spoke of God's attributes toward Nineveh, but only to show the opposite side of them. Jonah declares how God is "slow to anger," giving men time of repentance, and if they do repent, "repenting Him also of the evil;" Nahum, that the long-suffering of God is not "slackness," that "He is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."
And strong in power - Divine long-suffering gees along with Divine power. God can be long-suffering, because He can, whenever He sees good, punish. His long-suffering is a token, not of weakness, but of power. He can allow persons the whole extent of trial, because, when they are past cure, He can end it at once. "God is a righteous judge, strong and patient, and God wraths every day" Psa 7:11. The wrath comes only at the last, but it is ever present with God. He cannot but be displeased with the sin; and so the Psalmist describes in the manner of men the gradual approximation to its discharge. "If he (the sinner) will not return (from evil or to God), He will whet His sword; He hath trodden His bow and directed it: He hath prepared for him instruments of death; He hath made his arrows burning" Psa 7:12-13. We see the arrow with unextinguishable fire, ready to be discharged, waiting for the final decision of the wicked, whether he will repent or not, but that still "the Day of the Lord will come" Pe2 3:9-10. "He will not at all acquit."
The words occur originally in the great declaration of God's attributes of mercy by Moses, as a necessary limitation of them ; they are continued to God's people, yet with the side of mercy predominant Jer 30:11; Jer 46:28; they are pleaded to Himself Num 14:18; they are the sanction of the third commandment Exo 20:7; Deu 5:11. He "will not acquit" of His own will, apart from His justice. So He saith, "I can of Mine own self do nothing" Joh 5:30, i. e., (in part), not as unjust judges, who "call good evil and evil good," following their own will, not the merits of the case; but, "as I hear, I judge, and My judgment is just." He cannot even have mercy and spare unjustly, nor without the lowliness of penitence. Even if it is Jerusalem, over which He wept, or His "companion, His own familiar friend" Psa 55:14, He, who is no "accepter of persons," cannot of mere favor forgive the impenitent.
The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm - The vengeance of God comes at last swiftly, vehemently, fearfully, irresistibly. "When they say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them" Th1 5:3, and all creation stands at the command of the Creator against His enemies. "He shall take to Him His jealousy for complete armor, and make the creature His weapon, for the revenge of His enemies" (Wisd. 5:17).
And the clouds are the dust of His feet - Perhaps the imagery is from the light dust raised by an earthly army, of which Nahum's word is used Eze 26:10. The powers of heaven are arrayed against the might of earth. On earth a little dust, soon to subside; in heaven, the whirlwind and the storm, which sweep away what does not bow before them. The vapors, slight on outward seeming, but formed of countless multitudes of mist-drops, are yet dark and lowering, as they burst, and resistless. "The Feet of God are that power whereby He trampleth upon the ungodly." So it is said to the Son, "Sit Thou on My Right Hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." Tempests have also, without figure, been used to overthrow God's enemies (Exo 14:27; Jos 10:11; Jdg 5:20; Sa1 2:10; and Sa1 7:10; Sa2 22:15).
Nahum 1:4
nah 1:4
He rebuketh the sea and maketh it dry - Delivering His people, as He did from Pharaoh Psa 106:9, the type of all later oppressors, and of antichrist. "His word is with power; to destroy them at once with one rough word (Wisd. 12:9). The restlessness of the barren and troubled sea is an image of the wicked. "And drieth up all the rivers" Isa 57:20, as He did Jordan. His coming shall be far more terrible than when all the hearts of the inhabitants of the land did melt. "Bashan languisheth and Carmel; and the flower of Lebanon languisheth" Jos 2:11. Bashan was richest in pastures; Carmel, according to its name, in gardens and vineyards; Lebanon, in vines also and fragrant flowers Hos 14:7; Sol 4:11, but chiefly in the cedar and cypress; it had its name from the whiteness of the snow, which rests on its summit. These mountains then together are emblems of richness, lasting beauty, fruitfulness, loftiness; yet all, even that which by nature is not, in the variety of seasons, wont to fade, dries up and withers before the rebuke of God. But if these thing are "done in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" All freshness, beauty, comeliness, show of outward nature, shall fade as grass; all ornament of men's outward graces or gifts, all mere show of goodness, shall fall off like a leaf and perish. If the glory of nature perishes before God, how much more the pride of man! Bashan also was the dwelling-place of the race of giants, and near Libanus was Damascus; yet their inhabitants became as dead men and their power shrank to nothing at the word of God.
Nahum 1:5
nah 1:5
The mountains quaked at Him, and the hills melted - As of their own accord. The words are a renewal of those of Amos Amo 9:13. Inanimate nature is pictured as endowed with the terror, which guilt feels at the presence of God. All power; whether greater or less, whatsoever lifteth itself up, shall give way in that Day, which shall be "upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan, and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up" Isa 2:13-14. "And the earth is burned" (rather lifteth itself up; as an an earthquake it seems, as it were, to rise and sink down, lifting itself as if to meet its God or to flee. What is strongest, shaketh; what is hardest, melteth; yea, the whole world trembles and is removed. : "If," said even Jews of old, "when God made Himself known in mercy, to give the law to His people, the world was so moved at His presence, how much more, when He shall reveal Himself in wrath!" The words are so great that they bear the soul on to the time, when the heaven and earth shall flee away from the Face of Him "Who sitteth on the throne, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat" Rev 20:11; Pe2 3:10. And since all judgments are images of the Last, and the awe at tokens of God's presence is a shadow of the terror of that coming, he adds,
Nahum 1:6
nah 1:6
Who can stand before His indignation? - This question appeals to our own consciences, that we cannot . It anticipates the self-conviction at every day of God's visitation, the forerunners of the lust. The word rendered "indignation" is reserved almost exclusively to denote the wrath of God. : "Who can trust in his own righteousness, and, for the abundance of his works or consciousness of his virtues, not be in need of mercy? 'Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified;' and in Job it is said truly, 'Behold He put no trust in His servants, and His Angels He charged with folly. How much less in them that dwell in houses of' clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which ewe crushed before the moth?' Job 4:18-19. It were needless now to prove, that man's own deserts suffice to no one, and that we are not saved but by the grace of God, 'for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God' Rom 3:23. Wherefore he saith, 'before His indignation,' standing face to Face before Him in wrath."
Literally, "in the Face of:" guilt cannot look in the face of man, how much less, of God. The bliss of the righteous is the punishment of the wicked, to behold God face to Face. For "whoever trusts in his own works deserves His indignation. and thinking he stands, righteously does he fall."
His fury is poured out - נתך is used of the pouring out of God's wrath, Jer 7:20; Jer 42:18; Ch2 12:7 (as more commonly שׁפך here its native meaning is brought out the more, by adding כאש.
Like fire - , sweeping away, like a torrent of molten fire, him who presumes that be can stand before His Face, as He did the cities of the plain Gen. 19, the image of the everlasting fire, which shall burn up His enemies on every side. "And rocks are thrown down" Psa 97:3; Psa 50:3; Psa 68:3; Psa 18:8. The rocks are like so many towers of nature, broken down and crushed "by Him" literally, "from Him." It needs not any act of God's. He wills and it is done. Those who harden themselves, are crushed and broken to pieces, the whole fabric they had built for themselves and their defenses, crumbling and shivered. If then they, whose hearts are hard as rocks, and bold against all peril, and even Satan himself, whose "heart is as firm as a stone, yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone" Job 41:24, shall be crushed then, who shall abide?
Nahum 1:7
nah 1:7
The Lord is good: a stronghold in the day of trouble - "Good and doing good," and full of sweetness; alike good and mighty; good in giving Himself and imparting His goodness to His own; yea "none is good, save God" Luk 18:19; Himself the stronghold wherein His own amy take refuge; both in the troubles of this life, in which "He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able" Co1 10:13, and in that Day, which shall hem them in on every side, and leave no place of escape except Himself.
And He knoweth them that tuust in Him - So as to save them; as Rahab was saved when Jericho perished, and Lot out of the midst of the overthrow and Hezekiah from the host of Sennacherib. He knows them with an individual, ever-present, knowledge. He says not only, "He shall own them," but He ever "knoweth them." So it is said; "The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous" Psa 1:6; "The Lord knoweth the, days of the upright" Psa 37:18; and our Lord says, "I know My sheep" Joh 10:14, Joh 10:27; and Paul, "The Lord knoweth them that are His" Ti2 2:19. God speaks of this knowledge also in the past, of His knowledge, when things as yet were not, "I have known thee by name;" or of loving kindness in the past, "I knew thee in the wilderness" Hos 13:5, "you alone have I known of all the families of the earth" Amo 3:2, its contrariwise our Lord says, that He shall say to the wicked in the Great Day, "I never knew you" Mat 7:23. That God, being what He is, should take knowledge of us, being what we are, is such wondrous condescension, that it involves a purpose of love, yea, His love toward us, as the Psalmist says admiringly, "Lord, what is man that Thou takest knowledge of him?" Psa 144:3.
Them that trust in Him - It is a habit, which has this reward; "the trusters in Him," "the takers of refuge in Him." It is a continued unvarying trust, to which is shown this everpresent love and knowledge.
Yet this gleam of comfort only discloses the darkness of the wicked. Since those who trust God are they whom God knows, it follows that the rest He knows not. On this opening, which sets forth the attributes of God toward those who defy Him and those who trust in Him, follows the special application to Nineveh.
Nahum 1:8
nah 1:8
But with an overrunning flood He will make an utter end of the place thereof - that is, of Nineveh, although not as yet named, except in the title of the prophecy, yet present to the prophet's mind and his hearers, and that the more solemnly, as being the object of the wrath of God, so that, although unnamed, it would be known so to be. Image and reality, the first destruction and the last which it pictures, meet in the same words. Nineveh itself was overthrown through the swelling of the rivers which flowed around it and seemed to be its defense (see the note at Nah 2:6). Then also, the flood is the tide of the armies, gathered from all quarters, Babylonians , Medes, Persians, Arabians, Bactrians, which like a flood should sweep over Nineveh and leave nothing standing. It is also the flood of the wrath of God, in whose Hands they were and who, by them, should "make a full end of it," literally, "make the place thereof a thing consumed," a thing which has ceased to be. For a while, some ruins existed, whose name and history ceased to be known; soon after, the ruins themselves were effaced and buried . Such was the close of a city, almost coeval with the flood, which had now stood almost as many years as have passed since Christ came, but which now defied God. Marvelous image of the evil world itself, which shall flee away from the face of Him who sat on the throne, "and there was found no place for it" Rev 20:11.
And darkness shall pursue His enemies - Better, "He shall pursue His enemies into darkness" Darkness is, in the Old Testament, the condition, or state in which a person is, or lives; it is not an agent, which pursues. Isaiah speaks of the "inhabitants of darkness" Isa 42:7, "entering unto darkness" Isa 47:5; "those who are in darkness" Isa 49:9. "The grave is all darkness" Psa 88:12; Job 17:13, "darkness, and the shadow of death" Job 10:21. Hence, even Jews rendered , "He shall deliver them to hell." Into this darkness it is said, God shall pursue them, as other prophets speak of being "driven forth into darkness" . The darkness, the motionless drear abode, to which they are driven, anticipates the being cast into "the outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Rup.: "The vengeance of God on" these who remain "His enemies" to the last, "ends not with the death of the body; but evil spirits, who are darkness and not light, pursue their souls, and seize them." They would not hear Christ calling to them, "Walk, while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you" Joh 12:35. "They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof" Job 24:13. "They loved darkness rather than light" Joh 3:19. And so they were driven into the darkness which they chose and loved.
Nahum 1:9
nah 1:9
The prophet had in few words summed up the close of Nineveh; he now upbraids them with the sin, which should bring it upon them, and foretells the destruction of Sennacherib. Nineveh had, before this, been the instrument of chastising Israel and Judah. Now, the capture of Samaria, which had cast off God, deceived and emboldened it. Its king thought that this was the might of his own arm; and likened the Lord of heaven and earth to the idols of the pagan, and said, "Who are they among all the gods of the countries, that have delivered their country out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of mine hand?" Kg2 18:35. He sent "to reproach the living God" Kg2 19:16 and "defied the Holy One of Israel" (see 2 Kings 19:15-34). His blasphemy was his destruction. It was a war, not simply of ambition, or covetousness, but directly against the power and worship of God.
"What will ye so mightily devise" , "imagine against the Lord?" He Himself, by Himself, is already "making an utter end." It is in store; the Angel is ready to smite. Idle are man's devices, when the Lord doeth. "Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us" Isa 8:10. While the rich man was speaking comfort to his soul as to future years, God was making an utter end. "Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee."
Affliction shall not rise up the second time - Others have understood this, "affliction shall not rise up the second time," but shall destroy at once, utterly and finally (compare Sa1 26:8; Sa2 20:10): but:
(1) the idiom there, "he did not repeat to him," as we say, "he did not repeat the blow" is quite different;
(2) it is said "affliction shall not rise up," itself, as if it could not. The causative of the idiom occurs in Sa2 12:11, "lo, I will cause evil to rise up against thee;" as he says afterward, "Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more" Nah 1:12. "God," He had said, "is good for a refuge in the day of affliction;" now, personifying that affliction, he says, that it should be so utterly broken, that it should rise up no more to vex them, as when a serpent's head is, not wounded only but, crushed and trampled underfoot, so that it cannot again lift itself up. The promises of God are conditioned by our not falling back into sin. He saith to Nineveh, "God will not deliver Judah to thee, as He delivered the ten tribes and Samaria." Judah repented under Hezekiah, and He not only delivered it from Sennacherib, but never afflicted them again through Assyria. Renewal of sin brings renewal or deepening of punishment. The new and more grievous sins under Manasseh were punished, not through Assyria but through the Chaldeans.
The words have passed into a maxim, "God will not punish the same thing twice," not in this world and the world to come, i. e., not if repented of. For of the impenitent it is said, "destroy them with a double destruction" Jer 17:18. Chastisement here is a token of God's mercy; the absence of it, or prosperous sin, of perdition; but if any refuse to be corrected, the chastisement of this life is but the beginning of unending torments.
Nahum 1:10
nah 1:10
For while they be leiden together as thorns - that is, as confused, intertwined, sharp, piercing, hard to be touched, rending and tearing whosoever would interfere with its tangled ways, and seemingly compact together and strong; "and while they are drunken as their drink" , not "drinkers" only but literally, "drunken," swallowed up, as it were, by their drink which they had swallowed, mastered, overcome, powerless, "they shall be derogated as stubble fully dry" , rapidly, in an instant, with an empty crackling sound, unresisting, as having nothing in them which can resist. Historically, the great defeat of the Assyrians, before the capture of Nineveh, took place while its king, flushed with success, was giving himself to listlessness; and having distributed to his soldiers victims, and abundance of wine, and other necessaries for banqueting, the whole army was negligent and drunken."
In like way Babylon was taken amid the feasting of Belshazzar Dan. 5:1-30; Benhadad was smitten, while "drinking himself drunk in the pavilions, he and the kings, the thirty and two kings that helped him" Kg1 20:16. And so it may well be meant here too, that Sennacherib's army, secure of their prey, were sunk in revelry, already swallowed up by wine, before they were swallowed up by the pestilence, on the night when the Angel of the Lord went out to smite them, and, from the sleep of revelry, they slept the sleep from which they shall not awake until the Judgment Day. God chooses the last moment of the triumph of the wicked, when he is flushed by his success, the last of the helplessness of the righteous, when his hope can be in the Lord alone, to exchange their lots. "The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked comes in his stead" Pro 11:8. Spiritually , "the false fullness of the rich of this world, is real leanness; the greenness of such grass (for all flesh is grass) is real dryness. Marvelous words, "fully dry." For what is dryness but emptiness?" They are perfected, but in dryness, and so perfectly prepared to be burned up. "The thorns had, as far as in them lay, choked the good seed, and hated the Seed-corn, and now are found, like stubble, void of all seed, fitted only to be burned with fire. For those who feast themselves "without fear is reserved the blackness of darkness forever" Jde 1:12-13.
Nahum 1:11
nah 1:11
There is one come out of thee - that is, Nineveh, "that imagineth" deviseth, , "evil, Lord, Sennacherib, against the the rod of God's anger" Isa 10:5-7, yet who "meant not so," as God meant. "And this was his counsel," as is every counsel of Satan, "that they could not resist him, and so should withdraw themselves from the land of God, "into a land like their own" Isa 36:16-17, but whose joy and sweetness, its vines and its fig-trees, should not be from God, but from the Assyrian, i. e., from Satan.
Nahum 1:12
nah 1:12
Though they be quiet and likewise many, yet thus shall they be cut down - Literally, "If they be entire," i. e., sound unharmed, unimpaired in their numbers, unbroken in their strength, undiminished, perfect in all which belongs to war; "and thus many even thus shall they be mown down (or shorn), and he passeth away" . With might outwardly unscathed, "without hand" Dan 2:34, and "thus many," i. e., many, accordingly, as being unweakened; as many as they shall be, "so shall they be mown down, and he," their head and king, "shall pass away and perish" (compare Psa 48:4). Their numbers shall be, as their condition before, perfect; their destruction as their numbers, complete. It is wonderful how much God says in few words; and how it is here foretold that, with no previous loss, a mighty host secure and at ease, in consequence of their prosperity, all are at one blow mown down, like the dry grass before the scythe, are cut off and perish; and one, their king, "passeth away," first by flight, and then by destruction. As they had shorn the glory of others Isa 7:20, so should they be shorn and cut down themselves.
Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more - o. Unless by new guilt thou compel Me. God always relieves us from trouble, as it were with the words, "sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" Joh 5:14. In the end, afflictions shall be turned into joy, and "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be anymore paid" Rev 21:4.
Nahum 1:13
nah 1:13
For now will I break his yoke from off thee - God, lest His own should despair, does not put them off altogether to a distant day, but saith, now. Historically, the beginning of the fall is the earnest of the end. By the destruction of Sennacherib, God declared His displeasure against Assyria; the rest was matter of time only. Thus, Haman's wise men say to him, "If Mordecai be of the seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him" Est 6:13; as He saith in Isaiah, "I will break the Assyrian in My land, and upon My mountains tread him underfoot; then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders" Isa 14:25. : "In that He saith, not 'I will loose,' 'will undo,' but 'I will break,' 'will burst,' He sheweth that He will in such wise free Jerusalem, as to pour out displeasure on the enemy. The very mode of speaking shows the greatness of His displeasure against those who, when for the secret purpose of His judgments they have power given them against the servants of God, feed themselves on their punishments, and moreover dare to boast against God, as did the Assyrian, 'By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom' Isa 10:13."
Nahum 1:14
nah 1:14
And the Lord hath given a commandment concerning thee, O Assyrian - In the word "I have afflicted thee," the land of Israel is addressed, as usual in Hebrew, in the feminine; here, a change of gender in Hebrew shows the person addressed to be different. : "By His command alone, and the word of His power, He cut off the race of the Assyrian, as he says in Wisdom, of Egypt, "Thine Almighty word leaped down from heaven, out of Thy royal throne; as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of destruction, and brought Thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and standing up filled all things with death," (Wisd. 18:15, 16), or else it may be, He gave command to the Angels His Ministers. God commands beforehand, that, when it comes to pass, it may be known "that not by chance," nor by the will of man, "nor without His judgment but by the sentence of God" the blow came.
No move of thy name be sown - As Isaiah saith, "the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned" Isa 14:20. He prophesies, not the immediate but the absolute cessation of the Assyrian line. If the prophecy was uttered at the time of Sennacherib's invasion, seventeen years before his death, not Esarhaddon only, but his son Asshurbanipal also, whose career of personal conquest, the last glory of the house of the Sargonides and of the empire, began immediately upon his father's reign of thirteen years, was probably already born. Asshurbanipal in this case would only have been thirty-one, at the beginning of his energetic reign, and would have died in his fifty-second year. After him followed only an inglorious twenty-two years. The prophet says, "the Lord hath commanded." The decree as to Ahab's house was fulfilled in the person of his second son, as to Jeroboam and Baasha in their sons. It waited its appointed time, but was fulfilled in the complete excision of the doomed race.
Out of the house of thy gods will I cut off graven image and molten image - As thou hast done to others Isa 37:19, it shall be done to thee. : "And when even the common objects of worship of the Assyrian and Chaldean were not spared, what would be the ruin of the whole city!" So little shall thy gods help thee, that "there shalt thou be punished, where thou hopest for aid. 'Graven and molten image' shall be thy grave; amid altar and oblations, as thou worshipest idols," thanking them for thy deliverance, "shall thy unholy blood be shed," as it was by his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer. Isa 37:38. "I will make it thy grave" ; , what God makes remains immovable, cannot be changed. But He "maketh thy grave" in hell, where not only that rich man in the Gospel hath his grave; but all who are or have been like him, and especially thou, O Asshur, of whom it is written, "Asshur is there and all her company; his graves are about him: all of them slain, fallen by the sword. Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit and her company is round about her grave: all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living" Eze 32:22-23. "Graven and molten image," the idols which men adore, the images of their vanity, the created things which they worship instead of the true God (as they whose god is their belly), in which they busy themselves in this life, shall be their destruction in the Day of Judgment.
For thou art vile - Thou honoredst thyself and dishonoredst God, so shalt thou be dishonored , as He saith, "Them that honor Me I will honor, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed" Sa1 2:30. So when he had said to Edom, "thou art greatly despised" Oba 1:2, he adds the ground of it, "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee. For thou art vile" Oba 1:3. Great, honored, glorious as Assyria or its ruler were in the eyes of men, the prophet tells him, what he was in himself, being such in the eyes of God, light, empty, as Daniel said to Belshazzar, "Thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting" Dan 5:27, of no account, vile .
Nahum 1:15
nah 1:15
Behold upon the mountains, the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace - From mountain-top to mountain-top by beacon-fires they spread the glad tidings. Suddenly the deliverance comes, sudden its announcement. "Behold!" Judah, before hindered by armies from going up to Jerusalem, its cities taken Kg2 18:13, may now again "keep the feasts" there, and "pay the vows," which "in trouble she promised;" "for the wicked one," the ungodly Sennacherib, "is utterly cut off, he shall no more pass through thee;" "the army and king and empire of the Assyrians have perished." But the words of prophecy cannot be bound down to this. These large promises, which, as to this world, were forfeited in the next reign, when Manasseh was taken captive to Babylon, and still more in the seventy years' captivity, and more yet in that until now, look for a fulfillment, as they stand.
They sound so absolute. "I will afflict thee no more," "the wicked shall no more pass through thee," "he is utterly (literally, the whole of him) cut off." Nahum joins on this signal complete deliverance from a temporal enemy, to the final deliverance of the people of God. The invasion of Sennacherib was an avowed conflict with God Himself. It was a defiance of God. He would make God's people, his; he would "cut it off that it be no more a people, and that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance" Psa 83:4. There was a more "evil counselor" behind, whose agent was Sennacherib. He, as he is the author of all murders and strife, so has he a special hatred for the Church, whether before or since Christ's Coming. Before, that he right cut off that Line from whom "the Seed of the woman" should be born, which should destroy his empire and crush himself, and that he might devour the Child who was to be born Rev 12:4.
Since, because her members are his freed captives, and she makes inroads on his kingdom, and he hates them because he hates God and Christ who dwells in them. As the time of the birth of our Lord neared, his hate became more concentrated. God overruled the hatred of Edom or Moab, or the pride of Assyria, to His own ends, to preserve Israel by chastising it. Their hatred was from the evil one, because it was God's people, the seed of Abraham, the tribe of Judah, the line of David. If they could be cut off, they of whom Christ was to be born according to the flesh, and so, in all seeming, the hope of the world, were gone. Sennacherib then was not a picture only, he was the agent of Satan, who used his hands, feet, tongue, to blaspheme God and war against His people. As then we have respect not to the mere agent, but to the principal, and should address him through those he employed (as Elisha said of the messenger who came to slay him, "is not the sound of his master's feet behind him?" Kg2 6:32), so the prophet's words chiefly and most fully go to the instigator of Sennacherib, whose very name he names, Belial. It is the deliverance of the Church and the people of God which he foretells, and thanks God for.
To the Church he says in the Same of God, "Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more" Nah 1:12. The yoke which He will burst is the yoke of the oppressor, of which Isaiah speaks, and which the Son, to be born of a Virgin, "the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace," was to break Isa 9:4, Isa 9:6; the yoke of sin and the bands of fleshly pleasure and evil habits, wherewith we were held captive, so that henceforth we should walk upright, unbowed, look up to heaven our home, and "run the way of Thy commandments when Thou hast set my heart at liberty." Behold, then, "upon the mountains," i. e., above all the height of this world, "the feet of him that bringeth good tidings," i. e., of remission of sins and sanctification by the Spirit and the freedom and adoption as sons, and the casting out of the Prince of this world, "that publisheth peace." "O Judah," thou, the true people of God, "keep thy solemn feasts," the substance of the figures of the law. : "He who is ever engaged on the words, deeds and thoughts of Him, who is by nature Lord, the Word of God, ever lives in His days, ever keeps Lord's days. Yea he who ever prepares himself for the true life and abstains from the sweets of this life which deceive the many, and who cherishes not the mind of the flesh but chastens the body and enslaves it, is ever keeping the days of preparation. He too who thinks that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, and that we must keep festival, eating the flesh of the Word, there is no time when he keeps not the Passover, ever passing over in thought and every word and deed from the affairs of this life to God, and hasting to His city. Moreover whoso can say truthfully, we have risen together with Christ, yea and also, He hath together raised us and together seated us in the heavenly places in Christ, ever lives in the days of Pentecost; and chiefly, when, going up into the upper room as the Apostles of Jesus, he gives himself to supplication and prayer, that he may become meet for the rushing mighty wind from heaven, which mightily effaces the evil in men and its fruits, meet too for some portion of the fiery tongue froth God." : "Such an one will keep the feast excellently, having the faith in Christ fixed, hallowed by the Spirit, glorious with the grace of adoption. And he will offer to God spiritual sacrifice, consecrating himself for an odor of sweetness, cultivating also every kind of virtue, temperance, continence, fortitude, endurance, charity, hope, love of the poor, goodness, longsuffering: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Every power of the enemy, which before had dominion over him, shall pass through no more, since Christ commanded the unclean spirits to depart into the abyss and giveth to those who love Him power to resist the enemy, and subdue the passions, and destroy sin and tread on serpents and scorpions and every power of the enemy."
And these feasts were to he kept "in the spirit not in the letter. For what avails it to keep any feast wilhout, unless there be the feast of contmplation in the soul?" . Wherefore he adds, "and pay thy vows," i. e., thyself, whom in Baptism thou hast vowed: for the Wicked One shall no more pass through thee. : "For from what time, O Judah, Christ, by dying and rising again, hallowed thy feasts, he can no longer pass through thee. Thenceforth he perished wholly. Not that he has, in substance, ceased to be, but that the death of the human race, which through his envy came into this world, the two-fold death of body trod soul, wholly perisheth. Where and when did this Belial perish? When died the death which he brought in, whence himself also is called Death? When Christ died, then died the death of our souls; and when Christ rose again, then perished the death of our bodies. When then, O Judah thou keepest thy feast, remember that thy very feast is He, of whom thou savest that by dying He conquered death and by rising He restored life. Hence it is said, Belial shall no more pass through thee.
For if thou look to that alone, that Sennacherib departed, to return no more, and perished, it would not be true to say, Belial hath wholly perished! For after him many a Belial, such as he was, passed through time, and hurt thee far more. Perchance thou sayest, 'so long as Nineveh standest, how savest thou, that Belial has wholly perisited? So long as the world standeth, how shall I be comforted, that death hath perished? For lo! persecutors tamed with death have stormed, and besides them, many sons of Belial, of whom antichrist will be the worst. How then sayest thou, that Belial has wholly perished?' It follows, "the Scatterer hath gone up before thee." To Judah in the flesh, Nebuchadnezzar who went up against Nineveh, was worse than Sennacherib. Who then is He who went up before thee, and dispersed the world, that great Nineveh, that thou shouldest have full consolation? Christ who descended, Himself ascended; and as He ascended, so shall He come to disperse Nineveh, i. e., to judge the world. What any persecutor doth meanwhile, yea or the Devil himself or antichrist, takes nothing from the truth, that Belial hath "wholly perished." "The prince of this world is cast out." For nothing which they do, or can do, hinders, that both deaths of body and soul are swallowed up in His victory, who hath ascended to heaven? Belial cannot in the members kill the soul, which hath been made alive by the death of the Head, i. e., Christ; and as to the death of the body, so certain is it that it will perish, that thou mayest say fearlessly that it hath perished, since Christ the Head hath risen."
Each fall of an enemy of the Church, each recovery of a sinful soul being a part of this victory, the words may be applied to each. The Church or the soul are bidden to keep the feast and pay their vows, whatever in their trouble they promised to God. Jerome: "It is said to souls, which confess the Lord, that the devil who, before, wasted thee and bowed thee with that most heavy yoke hath, in and with the idols which thou madest for thyself, perished; keep thy feasts and pay to God thy vows, singing with the angels continually, for no more shall Belial pass through thee, of whom the apostle too saith, What concord hath Christ with Belial? The words too, Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that brings good tidings, that publishes peace" belong, in a degree, to all preachers of the Gospel. : "No one can preach peace, who is himself below and cleaves to earthly things. For warn are for the good things of earth. If thou wouldest preach peace to thyself and thy neighbor, be raised above the earth and its goods, riches and glory. Ascend to the heavenly mountains, whence David also, lifting up his eyes, hoped that his help would come."
Bible
Nahum Chapter 2
Nahum
nah 2:0
The prophet, having foretold the destruction of Sennacherib, find in him how the enemy of Judah is wholly cut off, goes on to describe the destruction of Nineveh, and with it of his whole kingdom, and, under it, of antichrist and Satan.
Nahum 2:1
nah 2:1
He that dasheth in pieces - Rather, "the Disperser," the instrument of God, whereby he should "break her in pieces like a potter's vessel, or should scatter" her in all lands, is come up against thy face, O Nineveh, i. e., either, over against thee" , confronting her as it were, face to face, or directed against thee . From the description of the peace of Judah, the prophet turns suddenly to her oppressor, to whom, not to Judah, the rest of the prophecy is directed. Jacob and Israel are spoken of, not to . The destroyer of Nineveh "went up against the face of Nineveh," not in the presence of Judah and Jacob, who were far away and knew nothing of it. "Keep the munition." While all in Judah is now peace, all in Nineveh is tumult. God whom they had defied, saying that Hezekiah could not "turn away the face of one captain of the least of his servants" Isa 36:9, now bids them prepare to meet him whom He would send against them. "Gird up thy loins now, like a man" Job 40:7. Thou who wouldest lay waste others, now, if theft canst, keep thyself. The strength of the words is the measure of the irony. They had challenged God; He in turn challenges them to put forth all their might.
Fence thy defenses - we might say. Their strong walls, high though they were, unassailable by any then known skill of besiegers, would not be secure.
The prophet uses a kindred and allusive word, that their protection needed to be itself protected; and this, by one continued watchfulness. Watch, he adds, the way: spy out (as far as thou canst), the coming of the enemy; strengthen the loins, the seat of strength. Elsewhere they are said to be girded up for any exertion. "Fortify thy strength exceedingly." The expression is rare : commonly it is said of some part of the human frame, knees, arms, or mind, or of man by God.
The same words are strong mockery to those who resist God, good counsel to those who trust in God. "Keep the munition, for He who keepeth thee will not sleep Psa 121:3; watch the way," by which the enemy may approach from afar, for Satan approacheth, sometimes suddenly, sometimes very stealthily and subtly, "transforming himself into an angel of light." Jerome: "Watch also the way by which thou art to go, as it is said, 'Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein;' Jer 6:16, so that, having stood in many ways, we may come to that Way which saith, 'I am the Way.'" Then , "make thy loins strong," as the Saviour commands His disciples, "Let your loins be girded about" Luk 12:35, and the Apostle says, "Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth" Eph 6:14; for nothing so strengthens as the Truth. For Christ being the Truth, whose with his whole heart hath belived in Christ, is strong against himself, and hath power over the loins, the seat of the passions. Then, since this warfare is hard, he adds, be strong, "fortify thy power mightily;" resist not listlessly, but vehemently; and that, in His strength who hath strengthened our nature, taking it to Himself and uniting it with the Godhead. For without Him, strong though thou be, thou wilt avail nothing.
Nahum 2:2
nah 2:2
For the Lord hath turned away - (rather restoreth) the excellency of Jacob Speaking of what should come, as already come. For Nineveh falls, because God restores His people, whom it had oppressed. The restoration of God's favor to His Church is the season of His punishment of their enemies; as, again, His displeasure against her enemies is a token of His favor to her. When Herod was smitten by God, "the word of God grew and multiplied" Act 12:24. A long captivity was still before Judah, yet the destruction of the Assyrian was the earnest that every "oppressing city should cease" Isa 33:1.
The excellency of Jacob - The word, "excellency," is used in a good or bad sense; bad, if man takes the excellency to himself; good, as given by God. This is decisive against a modern popular rendering ; "has returned to the excellency of Jacob;" for Scripture knows of no "excellency of Jacob," except God Himself or grace from God. Jacob, if separated from God or left by Him, has no excellency, to which God could return.
As the excellency of Israel - Both the ten and the two tribes had suffered by the Assyrian. The ten had been carried captive by Shalmanezer, the two had been harassed by Sennacherib. After the captivity of the ten tribes, the name Jacob is used of Judah only. It may be then, that the restoration of God's favor is promised to each separately. Or , there may be an emphasis in the names themselves. Their forefather bore the name of Jacob in his troubled days of exile; that of Israel was given him on his return Gen 32:28. It would then mean, the afflicted people (Jacob) shall be restored to its utmost glory as Israel. The sense is the same.
For the emptiers have emptied them out - Their chastisement is the channel of their restoration. Unlike the world, their emptiness is their fullness, as the fullness of the world is its emptiness. The world is cast down, not to arise, for "woe to him that is alone when he falleth: for he hath not another to help him up" Ecc 4:10. The Church falleth, but "to arise" Mic 7:8 : the people is restored, because it had borne chastening Eze 36:3, Eze 36:6-7; "for the Lord hath restored the excellency of Jacob, for the emptiers have emptied them. out and marred their vinebranches" (see Psa 80:12-13), i. e., its fruit-bearing branches, that, as far as in them lay, it should not bear fruit unto God; but to cut the vine is, by God's grace, to make it shoot forth and bear fruit more abundantly.
Nahum 2:3
nah 2:3
Army is arrayed against army; the armies, thus far, of God against the army of His enemy; all without is order; all within, confusion. The assailing army, from its compactness and unity, is spoken of, both as many and one. The might is of many; the order and singleness of purpose is as of one. The shield, collectively, not shields. "His mighty men;" He, who was last spoken of, was Almighty God, as He says in Isaiah; "I have commanded My consecrated ones; I have also called My mighty ones, them that rejoice in My highness" Isa 13:3.
Is reddened - Either with blood of the Assyrians, shed in some previous battle, before the siege began, or (which is the meaning of the word elsewhere ), an artificial color, the color of blood being chosen, as expressive of fiery fierceness. The valiant men are in scarlet, for beauty and terror, as, again being the color of blood . It was especially the color of the dress of their nobles one chief color of the Median dress, from whom the Persians adopted their's . "The chariots shall be with flaming torches," literally, "with the fire of steels , or of sharp incisive instruments. Either way the words seem to indicate that the chariots were in some way armed with steel. For steel was not an ornament, nor do the chariots appear to have been ornamented with metal. Iron would have hindered the primary object of lightness and speed. Steel, as distinct from iron, is made only for incisiveness. In either way, it is probable, that scythed chariots were already in use. Against such generals, as the younger Cyrus and Alexander , they were of no avail; but they must have been terrific instruments against undisciplined armies.
The rush and noise of the British chariots disturbed for a time even Caesar's Roman troops . They were probably in use long before . Their use among the ancient Britons , Gauls and Belgians , as also probably among the Canaanites , evinces that they existed among very rude people.
The objection that the Assyrian chariots are not represented in the monuments as armed with scythes is an oversight, since these spoken of by Nahum may have been Median, certainly were not Assyrian. "In the day of His preparation" , when He musters the hosts for the battle; "and the fir-trees shall be terribly shaken;" i. e., fir-spears (the weapon being often named from the wood of which it is made) shall be made to quiver through the force wherewith they shall be hurled.
The chariots shall rage - (Or madden , as the driving of Jehu is said to be "furiously," literally, in madness) "in the streets." The city is not yet taken; so, since this takes place "in the streets and broad ways," they are the confused preparations of the besieged. "They shall justle one against another," shall run rapidly to and fro, restlessly; "their show (English margin) is like torches," leaving streaks of fire, as they pass rapidly along. "They shall run" vehemently, "like the lightnings," swift; but vanishing.
Nahum 2:5
nah 2:5
He shall recount his worthies - The Assyrian king wakes as out of a sleep, literally, "he remembers his mighty men" (as Nah 3:18; Jdg 5:13; Neh 3:5); "they stumble in their walk," literally, paths , not through haste only and eager fear, but from want of inward might and the aid of God. These whom God leads stumble not Isa 63:13. : "Perplexed every way and not knowing what they ought to do, their mind wholly darkened and almost drunken with ills, they reel to and fro, turn from one thing to another, and in all" labor in vain.
They shall make haste to the walls thereof, and the defense - (literally, "the covering") shall be prepared The Assyrian monuments leave no doubt that a Jewish writer is right in the main, in describing this as a covered shelter, under which an enemy approached the city; "a covering of planks with skins upon them; under it those who fight against the city come to the wall and mine the wall underneath, and it is a shield over them from the stones, which are cast from off the wall."
The monuments, however, exhibit this shelter, as connected not with mining but with a battering ram, mostly with a sharp point, by which they loosened the walls . Another covert was employed to protect single miners who picked out single stones with a pick-axe . The Assyrians sculptures show, in the means employed against or in defense of their engines, how central a part of the siege they formed . Seven of them are represented in one siege . The "ram" Eze 4:2 is mentioned in Ezekiel as the well-known and ordinary instrument of a siege.
Thus, Nah 2:3 describes the attack; and Nah 2:4 describes the defense; the two first clauses of Nah 2:5 describes the defense; the two last describe clauses the attack. This quick interchange only makes the whole account more vivid.
: "But what avails it to build the house, unless the Lord build it? What helps it to shut the gates, which the Lord unbarreth?" On both sides is put forth the full strength of man; there seems a stand-still to see, what will be, and God brings to pass His own work in His own way.
Nahum 2:6
nah 2:6
The gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be disolved - All gives way in an instant at the will of God; the strife is hushed; no more is said of war and death; there is no more resistance or bloodshed; no sound except the wailing of the captives, the flight of those who can escape, while the conquerors empty it of the spoil, and then she is left a waste. The swelling of the river and the opening made by it may have given rise to the traditional account of Ctesias, although obviously exaggerated as to the destruction of the wall. The exaggerated character of that tradition is not inconsistent with, it rather implies, a basis of truth. It is inconceivable that it should have been thought, that walls, of the thickness which Ctesias had described, were overthrown by the swelling of any river, unless some such event as Ctesias relates, that the siege was ended by an entrance afforded to the enemy through some bursting in of the river, had been true.
Nahum speaks nothing of the wall, but simply of the opening of "the gates of the river," obviously the gates, by which the inhabitants could have access to the rivers , which otherwise would be useless to them except as a wall. These "rivers" correspond to the "rivers," the artificial divisions of the Nile, by which No or Thebes was defended, or "the rivers of Babylon" Psa 137:1 which yet was washed by the one stream, the Euphrates. But Nineveh was surrounded and guarded by actual rivers, the Tigris and the Khausser, and, (assuming those larger dimensions of Nineveh, which are supported by evidences so various ) the greater Zab, which was "called the frantic Zab on account of the violence of its current." "The Zab contained (says Ainsworth ), when we saw it, a larger body of water than the Tigris, whose tributaries are not supplied by so many snow-mountains as those of the Zab." Of these, if the Tigris be now on a level lower than the rains of Nineveh, it may not have been so formerly.
The Khausser, in its natural direction, ran through Nineveh where, now as of old, it turns a mill, and must, of necessity, have been fenced by gates; else any invader might enter at will: as, in modern times, Mosul has its "gate of the bridge." A break in these would obviously let in an enemy, and might the more paralyze the inhabitants, if they had any tradition, that the river alone could or would be their enemy, as Nahum himself prophesied. Subsequently inaccuracy or exaggeration might easily represent this to be an overthrow of the walls themselves. It was all one, in which way the breach was made.
The palace shall be dissolved - The prophet unites the beginning and the end. The river-gates were opened; what had been the fence against the enemy became an entrance for them: with the river, there poured in also the tide of the people of the enemy. The palace, then, the imperial abode, the center of the empire, embellished with the history of its triumphs, sank, was disolved , and ceased to be. It is not a physical loosening of the sun-dried bricks by the stream which would usually flow harmless by; but the dissolution of the empire itself. : "The temple, that is, his kingdom was destroyed." The palaces both of Khorsabad and Kouyunjik lay near the Khausser and both bear the marks of fire .
Nahum 2:7
nah 2:7
The first word should he rendered, "And it is decreed; She shall be laid bare. It is decreed." All this took place, otherwise than man would have thought, because it was the will of God. She (the people of the city, under the figure of a captive woman) "shall be laid bare," in shame, to her reproach; "she shall be brought up" , to judgment, or from Nineveh as being now sunk low and depressed; "and her maids," the lesser cities, as female attendants on the royal city, and their inhabitants represented as women, both as put to shame and for weakness. The whole empire of Nineveh was overthrown by Nabopalassar. Yet neither was the special shame wanting, that the noble matrons and virgins were so led captives in shame and sorrow. "They shall lead her, as with the voice of doves," moaning, yet, for fear, with a subdued voice.
Nahum 2:8
nah 2:8
But Nineveh is of old like a pool of water - that is, of many peoples Rev 17:1, gathered from all quarters and settled there, her multitudes being like the countless drops, full, untroubled, with no ebb or flow, fenced in, "from the days that she hath been," yet even therefore stagnant and corrupted (see Jer 48:11), not "a fountain of living waters," during 600 years of unbroken empire; even lately it had been assailed in vain ; now its hour was come, the sluices were broken; the waters poured out. It was full not of citizens only, but of other nations poured into it. An old historian says , "The chief and most powerful of those whom Ninus settled there, were the Assyrians, but also, of other nations, whoever willed." Thus, the pool was filled; but at the rebuke of the Lord they flee. "Stand, stand," the prophet speaks in the name of the widowed city; "shut the gates, go up on the walls, resist the enemy, gather yourselves together, form a band to withstand," "but none shalt look back" to the mother-city which calls them; all is forgotten, except their fear; parents, wives, children, the wealth which is plundered, home, worldly repute. So will men leave all things, for the life of this world. "All that a man hath, will he give for his life" Job 2:4. Why not for the life to come?
Nahum 2:9
nah 2:9
Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold - Nineveh had not hearkened of old to the voice of the prophet, but had turned back to sin; it cannot hearken now, for fear. He turns to the spoiler to whom God's judgments assigned her, and who is too ready to hear. The gold and silver, which the last Assyrian King had gathered into the palace which he fired, was mostly removed (the story says, treacherously) to Babylon. Arbaces is said to have borne this and to have removed the residue, to the amount of many talents, to Agbatana, the Median capital . "For there is none end of the store." Nineveh had stored up from her foundation until then, but at last for the spoiler. "When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled" Isa 33:1. Many "perish and leave their wealth to others" Psa 49:10. "The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" Pro 13:22. "And glory out of all the pleasant furniture," (literally as in the margin, "glory out of all vessels of desire") i. e., however large the spoil, it would be but a portion only; yet all their wealth, though more than enough for the enemy and for them, could not save them. Her "glory," was but a "weight" to weigh her down, that she should not rise again Zac 5:8; Exo 15:10. Their wealth brought on the day of calamity, availed not therein, although it could not be drawn dry even by the spoiler. Jerome: "They could not spoil so much as she supplied to be spoiled."
Nahum 2:10
nah 2:10
She is empty and void and waste - The completeness of her judgment is declared first under that solemn number, Three, and the three words in Hebrew are nearly the same , with the same meaning, only each word fuller than the former, as picturing a growing desolation; and then under four heads (in all seven) also a growing fear. First the heart, the seat of courage and resolve and high purpose, melteth; then the knees smite together, tremble, shake, under the frame; then, much pain is in all loins, literally, "strong pains as of a woman in travail," writhing and doubling the whole body, and making it wholly powerless and unable to stand upright, shall bow the very loins, the seat of strength Pro 31:17, and, lastly, the faces of them all gather blackness (see the note at Joe 2:6), the fruit of extreme pain, and the token of approaching dissolution.
Nahum 2:11
nah 2:11
Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions? - Great indeed must be the desolation, which should call forth the wonder of the prophet of God. He asks "where is it?" For so utterly was Nineveh to be effaced, that its place should scarcely be known, and now is known by the ruins which have been buried, and are dug up. The messengers of her king had asked, "Where are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad? of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?" Kg2 18:34. And now of her it is asked, "Where is Nineveh?" It had "destroyed utterly all lands," and now itself is utterly destroyed. The lion dwelt, fed, walked there, up and down, at will; all was spacious and secure; he terrified all, and none terrified him; he tore, strangled, laid up, as he willed, booty in store; but when he had filled it to the full, he filled up also the measure of his iniquities, and his sentence came from God. Nineveh had set at nought all human power, and destroyed it; now, therefore, God appears in His own Person.
Nahum 2:13
nah 2:13
Behold I, Myself, am against thee - (Literally, "toward thee"). God, in His long-suffering, had, as it were, looked away from him; now He looked toward (as in Psa 37:20) him, and in His sight what wicked one should stand? "Saith the Lord of hosts," whose power is infinite and He changes not, and all the armies of heaven, the truly angels and evil spirits and men are in His Hand, whereto He directs or overrules them. "And I will burn her chariots in the smoke." The Assyrian sculptures attest how greatly their pride and strength lay in their chariots. They exhibit the minute embellishment of the chariots and horses . Almost inconceivably light for speed, they are pictured as whirled onward by the two or, more often, three powerful steeds with eye of fire , the bodies of the slain (or, in peace, the lion ) under their feet, the mailed warriors, with bows stretched to the utmost, shooting at the more distant foe.
Sennacherib gives a terrific picture of the fierceness of their onslaught. "The armor, the arms, taken in my attacks, swam in the blood of my enemies as in a river; the war-chariots, which destroy man and beast, had, in their course, crushed the bloody bodies and limbs" . All this their warlike pride should be but fuel for fire, and vanish in smoke, an emblem of pride, swelling, mounting like a column toward heaven, disappearing. Not a brand shall then be saved out of the burning; nothing half-consumed; but the fire shall burn, until there be nothing left to consume, as, in Sodom and Gomorrah, "the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. And the sword of the vengeance of God shall devour the young lions" Gen 19:28, his hope for the time to come, the flower of his youth; "and I will cut off thy prey," what thou hast robbed, and so that thou shouldest rob no more, but that thy spoil should utterly cease from "the earth, and the voice of thy messengers shall be no more heard," such as Rabshakeh, whereby they insulted and terrified the nations and blasphemed God.
In the spiritual sense, Nineveh being an image of the world, the prophecy speaks of the inroad made upon it through the Gospel, its resistance, capture, desolation, destruction. First, He that "ruleth with a rod of iron," came and denounced "woe to it because of offenses;" then His mighty ones in His Name. Their shield is red, "the shield of faith," kindled and glowing with love. Their raiment too is red, because they wash it in the Blood of the Lamb, and conquer through the Blood of the Lamb, and many shed their own blood "for a witness to them." "The day of His preparation" is the whole period, until the end of the world, in which the Gospel is preached, of which the prophets and apostles speak, as the day of salvation Isa 49:8; Co2 6:2; to the believing world a day of salvation; to the unbelieving, of preparation for judgment. All which is done, judgments, mercy, preaching, miracles, patience of the saints, martyrdom, all which is spoken, done, suffered, is part of the one preparation for the final judgment. The chariots, flashing with light as they pass, are "the chariots of salvation" Hab 3:8, bearing the brightness of the doctrine of Christ and the glory of His truth throughout the world, enlightening while they wound; the "spears" are the word of God, slaying to make alive.
On the other hand, in resisting, the world clashes with itself. It would oppose the Gospel, yet knows not how; is "maddened with rage, and gnashes its teeth, that it can prevail nothing" . On the broad ways which lead to death, where "Wisdom uttereth her voice" and is not heard, it is hemmed in, and cannot find a straight path; its chariots dash one against another, and yet they breathe their ancient fury, and run to and fro like lightning, as the Lord saith, "I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven" Luk 10:18. Then shall they "remember their mighty ones," all the might of this world which they ascribed to their gods, their manifold triumphs, whereby in pagan times their empire was established; they shall gather strength against strength, but it shall be powerless and real weakness. While they prepare for a long siege, without hand their gates give way; the kingdom falls, the world is taken captive by a blessed captivity, suddenly, unawares, as one says in the second century ; "Men cry out that the state is beset, that the Christians are in their fields, in their forts, in their islands!" These mourn over their past sins, and beat their breasts, in token of their sorrow; yet sweeter shall be the plaint of their sorrow, than any past joy.
Sit they shall mourn as doves, and their mourning is as melody and the voice of praise in the ear of the Most High. One part of the inhabitants of the world being thus blessedly taken, the rest are fled. So in all nearness of God's judgments, those who are net brought nearer, flee further. "They flee, and look not back, and none heareth the Lord speaking, "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings" Jer 3:22. So then, hearing not His Voice, stand, stand, they flee away from His presence in mercy, into darkness for ever. Such is the lot of the inhabitants of the world; and what is the world itself? The prophet answers what it has been. A pool of water, into which all things, the riches and glory, and wisdom, and pleasures of this world, have flowed in on all sides, and which gave back nothing. All ended in itself. The water came from above, and became stagnant in the lowest part of the earth. "For all the wisdom of this world, apart from the sealed fountain of the Church, and of which it cannot be said, the streams thereof make glad the city of God nor are of those waters which, above the heavens, praise the Name of the Lord, however large they may seem, yet are little, and are enclosed in a narrow bound" Luk 10:18.
These either are hallowed to God, like the spoils of Egypt, as when the eloquence of Cyprian was won through the fishermen , or the gold and silver are offered to Him, or they are left to be wasted and burned up. "All which is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, all under the sun," remain here. : "If they are thine, take them with thee. When be dieth, he shall carry nothing away, his glory shall not descend after him" Psa 49:17. True riches are, not wealth, but virtues, which the conscience carries with it, that it may be rich forever." The seven-fold terrors Nah 2:10, singly, may have a good sense , that the stony heart shall be melted, and the stiff knees, which before were not bent to God, be bowed in the Name of Jesus. Yet more fully are they the deepening horrors of the wicked in the Day of Judgment, when "men's hearts shall fail them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth" Luk 21:26, closing with the everlasting confusion of face, "the shame and everlasting contempt," to which the wicked shall rise.
As the vessel over the fire is not cleansed, but blackened, so through the judgments of God, whereby the righteous are cleansed, the wicked gather but fresh defilement and hate. Lastly, the prophet asks, "Where is the dwelling of those who had made the world a den of ravin, where the lion," even the devil who is "a roaring lion," and all antichrists Jo1 2:18, destroyed at will; where Satan made his dwelling in the hearts of the worldly, and "tore in pieces for his whelps," i. e., killed souls of men and gave them over to inferior evil spirits to be tormented, and "filled his holes with prey," the pit of hell with the souls which he deceived? . The question implies that they shall not be. "They which have seen him shall say, Where is he?" Job 20:7. God Himself answers, that He Himself will come against it to judgment, and destroy all might arrayed against God; and Christ shall "smite the Wicked one with the rod of His Mouth" Isa 11:4, and the "sharp two-edged sword out of His mouth shall smite all nations" Rev 1:16; Rev 19:15, Rev 19:21, "and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever" Rev 14:11; and it should no more oppress, nor "any messenger of Satan" go forth to harass the saints of God.
Bible
Nahum Chapter 3
Nahum
nah 3:0
The prophecy of the destruction in Nineveh is resumed in a dirge over her; yet still as future. It pronounces a woe, yet to come .
Nahum 3:1
nah 3:1
Woe to the bloody city - Literally, "city of bloods" , i. e., of manifold bloodshedding, built and founded in blood Hab 2:12; Jer 22:13, as the prosperity of the world ever is. Murder, oppression, wresting of judgment, war out of covetousness, grinding or neglect of the poor, make it "a city of bloods." Nineveh, or the world, is a city of the devil, as opposed to the "city of God." : "Two sorts of love have made two sorts of cities; the earthly, love of self even to contempt of God; the heavenly, love of God even to contempt of self. The one glorieth in itself, the other in the Lord." : "Amid the manifold differences of the human race, in languages, habits, rites, arms, dress, there are but two kinds of human society, which, according to our Scriptures, we may call two cities. One is of such as wish to live according to the flesh; the other of such as will according to the Spirit." "Of these, one is predestined to live forever with God; the other, to undergo everlasting torment with the devil." Of this city, or evil world, Nineveh, the city of bloods, is the type.
It is all full of lies and robbery - Better, "it is all lie; it is full of robbery" (rapine). "Lie" includes all falsehood, in word or act, denial of God, hypocrisy; toward man, it speaks of treachery, treacherous dealing, in contrast with open violence or rapine . The whole being of the wicked is one lie, toward God and man; deceiving and deceived; leaving no place for God who is the Truth; seeking through falsehood things which fail. Man "loveth vanity and seeketh after leasing" Psa 4:2. All were gone out of the way. Alb.: "There were none in so great a multitude, for whose sake the mercy of God might spare so great a city." It is full, not so much of booty as of rapine and violence. The sin remains, when the profit is gone. Yet it ceases not, but perseveres to the end; "the prey departs not;" they will neither leave the sin, nor the sin them; they neither repent, nor are weary of sinning. Avarice especially gains vigor in old age, and grows by being fed. "The prey departeth not," but continues as a witness against it, as a lion's lair is defiled by the fragments of his prey.
Nahum 3:2
nah 3:2
The noise (literally, "voice") of the whip - There is cry against cry; the voice of the enemy, brought upon them through the voice of the oppressed. Blood hath a voice which crieth Gen 4:10 to heaven; its echo or counterpart, as it were, is the cry of the destroyer. All is urged on with terrific speed. The chariot-wheels quiver in the rapid onset; the chariots bound, like living things; the earth echoes with the whirling swiftness of the speed of the cavalry. The prophet within, with the inward ear and eye which hears "the mysteries of the Kingdom of God" Mat 13:11, Mat 13:16 and sees things to come, as they shall come upon the wicked, sees and hears the scourge coming, with The words in Hebrew are purposely chosen with rough "r" sounds: רעשׁ ra‛ash, דהר dâhar, מרקדה meraqēdâh, a great noise, impetuously; and so describes it as present. Wars and rumors of wars are among the signs of the Day of Judgment. The "scourge," though literally relating to the vehement onset of the enemy, suggests to the thoughts, the scourges of Almighty God, wherewith He chastens the penitent, punishes the impenitent; the wheel, the swift changes of man's condition in the rolling-on of time. "O God, make them like a rolling thing" Psa 83:14.
Nahum 3:3
nah 3:3
The horseman lifteth up - Rather, "leading up : the flash of the sword, and the lightning of the spear." Thus, there are, in all, seven inroads, seven signs, before the complete destruction of Nineveh or the world; as, in the Revelations, all the forerunners of the Judgment of the Great Day are summed up under the voice of seven trumpets and seven vials. Rup.: "God shall not use homes and chariots and other instruments of war, such as are here spoken of, to judge the world, yet, as is just, His terrors are foretold under the name of those things, wherewith this proud and bloody world hath sinned. For so all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Mat 26:52. They who, abusing their power, have used all these weapons of war, especially against the servants of God, shall themselves perish by them, and there shall be none end of their corpses, for they shall be corpses forever: for, dying by an everlasting death, they shall, without end, be without the true life, which is God." "And there is a multitude of slain." Death follows on death. The prophet views the vast field of carnage, and everywhere there meets him only some new form of death, slain, carcasses, corpses, and these in multitudes, an oppressive heavy number, without end, so that the yet living stumble and fall upon the carcasses of the slain. So great the multitude of those who perish, and such their foulness; but what foulness is like sin?
Nahum 3:4
nah 3:4
Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot - There are "multitudes of slain" because of the "multitude of whoredoms" and love of the creature instead of the Creator. So to Babylon Isaiah saith, "they (loss of children and widowhood) shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, for the great abundance of thine enchantments" Isa 47:9. The actual use of "enchantments," for which Babylon was so infamous, is not elsewhere attributed to the Assyrians. But neither is the word elsewhere used figuratively; nor is Assyria, in its intimate relation to Babylon, likely to have been free from the longing, universal in pagandom, to obtain knowledge as to the issue of events which would affect her. She is, by a rare idiom, entitled "mistress of enchantments," having them at her command, as instruments of power. Mostly, idolatries and estrangement from God are spoken of as "whoredoms," only in respect of those who, having been taken by God as His own, forsook Him for false gods.
But Jezebel too, of whose offences Jehu speaks under the same two titles Kg2 9:22, was a pagan. And such sins were but part of that larger all-comprehending sin, that man, being made by God for Himself, when he loves the creature instead of the Creator, divorces himself from God. Of this sin world empires, such as Nineveh, were the concentration. Their being was one vast idolatry of self and of "the god of this world." All, art, fraud, deceit, protection of the weak against the strong Kg2 16:7-9; Ch2 28:20-21, promises of good Isa 36:16-17, were employed, together with open violence, to absorb all nations into it. The one end of all was to form one great idol-temple, of which the center and end was man, a rival worship to God, which should enslave all to itself and the things of this world. Nineveh and all conquering nations used fraud as well as force, enticed and entangled others, and so sold and deprived them of freedom. (see Joe 3:3).
Nor are people less sold and enslaved, because they have no visible master. False freedom is the deepest and most abject slavery. All sinful nations or persons extend to others the infection of their own sins. But, chiefly, the "wicked world," manifoldly arrayed with fair forms, and "beautiful in the eyes of those who will not think or weigh how much more beautiful the Lord and Creator of all," spreads her enticements on all sides "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," "her pomps and vanities," worldly happiness and glory and majesty, and ease and abundance, deceives and sells mankind into the power of Satan. It is called well-favored (literally, good of grace), because the world has a real beauty, nor , "unless there were a grace and beauty in the things we love, could they draw us to them." They have their beauty, because from God; then are they deformed, when "things hold us back from God, which, unless they were in God, were not at all."
We deform them, if we love them for our own sakes, not in Him; or for the intimations they give of Him. : "Praise as to things foul has an intensity of blame. As if one would speak of a skilled thief, or a courageous robber, or a clever cheat. So though he calls Nineveh a well-favored harlot, this will not be for her praise, (far from it!) but conveys the heavier condenmation. As they, when they would attract, use dainty babblings, so was Nineveh a skilled artificer of ill-doing, well provided with means to capture cities and lands and to persuade them what pleased herself." She selleth not nations only but families, drawing mankind both as a mass, and one by one after her, so that scarce any escape.
The adultery of the soul from God is the more grieveus, the nearer God has brought any to Himself, in priests worse than in the people, in Christians than in Jews, in Jews than in pagan; yet God espoused mankind to Him when He made him. His dowry were gifts of nature. If this be adultery, how much sorer, when betrothed by the Blood of Christ, and endowed with the gift of the Spirit!
Nahum 3:5
nah 3:5
Behold I am against thee, saith the Lord of Hosts - Jerome: "I will not send an Angel, nor give thy destruction to others; I Myself will come to destroy thee." Cyril: "She has not to do with man, or war with man: He who is angered with her is the Lord of hosts. But who would meet God Almighty, who hath power over all, if He would war against him?" In the Medes and Persians it was God who was against them. "Behold I am against thee," literally, "toward thee." It is a new thing which God was about to do. "Behold!" God in His long-suffering had seemed to overlook her. Now, He says, I am toward thee, looking at her with His all-searching eye, as her Judge. Violence is punished by suffering; deeds of shame by shame. All sin is a whited sepulchre, fair without, foul within. God will strip off the outward fairness, and lay bare the inward foulness. The deepest shame is to lay bare, what the sinner or the world veiled within. "I will discover thy skirts," i. e., the long-flowing robes which were part of her pomp and dignity, but which were only the veil of her misdeeds. "Through the greatness of thine iniquity have thy skirts been discovered," says Jeremiah in answer to the heart's question, "why have these things come upon me?" Upon thy face, where shame is felt. The conscience of thy foulness shall be laid bare before thy face, thy eyes, thy memory continually, so that thou shalt be forced to read therein, whatsoever thou hast done, said, thought. "I will show the nations thy nakedness," that all may despise, avoid, take example by thee, and praise God for His righteous judgments upon thee. The Evangelist heard "much people in heaven saying Alleluia" to God that "He hath judged the whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication" Rev 19:1-2. And Isaiah saith, "They shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that hath trangsressed against Me" Isa 66:24.
Nahum 3:6
nah 3:6
And I will cast abominable filth upon thee - Alb.: "like a weight, that what thou wouldest not take heed to as sin, thou mayest feel in punishment." "Abominable things had God seen" Jer 13:27 in her doings; with abominable things would he punish her. Man would fain sin, and forget it as a thing past. "God maketh him to possess the iniquities of his youth" Job 13:26, and binds them around him, so that they make him to appear what they are, "vile" (compare Wisd. 4:18), "These things hast thou done and I kept silence; - I will reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes. And will set thee as a gazing-stock" Psa 50:21, that all, while they gaze at thee, take warning from thee (compare Ch2 7:20). "I will cast thee to the ground; before kings will I give thee, for them to gaze upon thee" Eze 28:17. : "Whoever does not amend on occasion of others, others shall be amended on occasion of him."
Nahum 3:7
nah 3:7
All they that look upon thee shall flee from thee - through terror, lest they should share her plagues, as Israel did, when the earth swallowed up Korah, Dathan and Abiram; and they who "had been made rich by Babylon, stand ajar off, for the fear of her torment. All they who look on thee" Rev 18:15. She was set as a thing to be "gazed at." He tells the effect on the gazers. "Each one who so gazed" at her should flee; one by one, they should gaze, be scared, flee (compare Psa 31:11; Psa 64:8). Not one should remain. "Who will bemoan her?" Not one should pay her the passing tribute of sympathy at human calamity, the shaking of the head at her woe (compare Job 16:4-5). Whoever had no compassion shall find none.
Nahum 3:8
nah 3:8
Art thou better - More populous or more powerful, "than the populous No?" rather than No-Ammon, so called from the idol Ammon, worshiped there. No-Ammon, (or, as it is deciphered in the Cuneiform Inscriptions, Nia), meaning probably "the portion of Ammon" , was the sacred name of the capital of Upper Egypt, which, under its common name, Thebes, was far-famed, even in the time of Homer, for its continually accruing wealth, its military power, its 20,000 chariots, its vast dimensions attested by its 100 gates .
Existing earlier, as the capital of Upper Egypt, its grandeur began in the 18th dynasty, alter the expulsion of the Hyksos, or Semitic conquerors of Egypt. Its Pharaohs were conquerors, during the 18th to 20th dynasties, 1706-1110 b.c. - about six centuries. It was then the center of a world empire. Under a disguised name , its rulers were celebrated in Geek story also, for their worldwide conquests. The Greek statements have in some main points been verified by the decipherment of the hieroglyphics. The monuments relate their victories in far Asia, and mention Nineveh itself among the people who paid tribute to them. They warred and conquered from the Soudan to Mesopotamia. A monument of Tothmosis I (1066 b.c.) still exists at Kerman, between the 20th and 19th degrees latitude, boasting, in language like that of the Assyrian conquerors; "All lands are subdued, and bring their tributes for the first time to the gracious god" . "The frontier of Egypt," they say , "extends Southward to the mountain of Apta (in Abyssinia) and Northward to the furthest dwellings of the Asiatics." The hyperbolic statements are too undefined for history , but widely-conquering monarchs could alone have used them. : "At all periods of history, the possession of the country which we call Soudan (the Black country) comprising Nubia, and which the ancients called by the collective name of Kous (Cush) or Aethiopia, has been an exhaustless source of wealth to Egypt. Whether by way of war or of commerce, barks laden with flocks, corn, hides, ivory, precious woods, stones and metals, and many other products of those regions, descended the Nile into Egypt, to fill the treasures of the temples and of the court of the Pharaohs: and of metals, especially gold, mines whereof were worked by captives and slaves, whose Egyptian name noub seems to have been the origin of the name Nubia, the first province S. of Egypt." "The conquered country of Soudan, called Kous in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, was governed by Egyptian princes of the royal family, who bore the name of 'prince royal of Kous.'"
But the prophet's appeal to Nineveh is the more striking, because No, in its situation, its commerce, the sources of its wealth, its relation to the country which lay between them, had been another and earlier Nineveh. Only, as No had formerly conquered and exacted tribute from all those nations, even to Nineveh itself, so now, under Sargon and Sennacherib, Nineveh had reversed all those successes, and displaced the Empire of Egypt by its own, and taken No itself. No had, under its Tothmoses, Amenophes, Sethos, the Ousertesens, sent its messengers Nah 2:13, the leviers of its tribute, had brought off from Asia that countless mass of human strength, the captives, who (as Israel, before its deliverance, accomplished its hard labors) completed those gigantic works, which, even after 2000 years of decay, are still the marvel of the civilized world. Tothmosis I, after subduing the Sasou, brought back countless captives from Naharina (Mesopotamia); Tothmosis III, in 19 years of conquests, (1603-1585 b.c.) "raised the Egyptian empire to the height of its greatness. Tothmosis repeatedly attacked the most powerful people of Asia, as the Routen (Assyrians?) with a number of subordinate kingdoms, such as Asshur, Babel, Nineveh, Singar; such as the Remenen or Armenians, the Zahi or Phoenicians, the Cheta or Hittites, and manymore. We learn, by the description of the objects of the booty, sent to Egypt by land and sea, counted by number and weight, many curious details as to the industry of the conquered peoples of central Asia, which do honor to the civilization of that time, and verify the tradition that the Egyptian kings set up stelae in conquered countries, in memory of their victories. Tothmosis III. set up his stele in Mesopotamia, 'for having enlarged the frontiers of Egypt.'" Amenophis too is related to have "taken the fortress of Nenii (Nineveh)." : "He returned from the country of the higher Routen, where he had beaten all his enemies to enlarge the frontiers of the land of Egypt" : "he took possession of the people of the South, and chastised the people of the North:" "at Abd-el-Kournah" he was represented as "having for his footstool the heads and backs of five peoples of the S. and four peoples of the North (Asiatics)." : "Among the names of the peoples, who submitted to Egypt, are the Nubians, the Asiatic shepherds, the inhabitants of Cyprus and Mesopotamia." : "The world in its length and its breadth" is promised by the sphinx to Tothmosis IV. He is represented as "subduer of the negroes."
Under Amenophis III, the Memnon of the Greeks , "the Egyptian empire extended Northward to Mesopotamia, Southward to the land of Karou." He enlarged and beautified No, which had from him the temple of Louksor, and his vocal statue , "all people bringing their tributes, their children, their horses, a mass of silver, of iron and ivory from countries, the roads whereto we know not." The king Horus is saluted as "the sun of the nine people; great is thy name to the country of Ethiopia" ; "the gracious god returns, having subdued the great of all people." Seti I (or Sethos) is exhibited , as reverenced by the Armenians, conquering the Sasou, the "Hittites, Naharina (Mesopotamia), the Routen (Assyrians?) the Pount, or Arabs in the South of Arabia, the Amari or Amorites, and Kedes, perhaps Edessa." Rameses II, or the great (identified with the Pharaoh of the Exodus ), conquered the Hittites in the North; in the South it is recorded , "the gracious god, who defeated the nine people, who massacred myriads in a moment, annihilated the people overthrown in their blood, yet was there no other with him."
The 20th Dynasty (1288-1110 b.c.) began again with conquests. : "Rameses III. triumphed over great confederations of Libyans and Syrians and the Isles of the Mediterranean. He is the only king who, as the monuments shew, carried on war at once by land and sea." Beside many names unknown to us, the Hittites, Amorites, Circesium, Aratus, Philistines, Phoenicia, Sasou, Pount, are again recognized. North, South East and West are declared to be tributary to him, and of the North it is said , "The people, who knew not Egypt, come to thee, bringing gold and silver, lapis-lazuli, all precious stones." He adorned Thebes with the great temple of Medinet-Abou and the Ramesseum . The brief notices of following Rameses' speak of internal prosperity and wealth: a fuller account of Rameses XII speaks of his "being in Mesopotamia to exact the annual tribute," how "the kings of all countries prostrated themselves before him, and the king of the country of Bouchten (it has been conjectured, Bagistan, or Ecbatana) presented to him tribute and his daughter." : "He is the last Pharaoh who goes to Mesopotamia, to collect the annual tributes of the petty kingdoms of that country."
On this side of the Euphrates, Egypt still retained some possessions to the time of Necho, for it is said, "the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt" Kg2 24:7. Thebes continued to be embellished alike by "the high priests of Ammon," who displaced the ancient line , and kings of the Bubastite Dynasty, Sesonchis I or Sisak , Takelothis II , and Sesonchis III . The Ethiopian dynasty of Sabakos and Tearko or Tirhaka in another way illustrates the importance of No. The Ethiopian conquerors chose it as their royal city. There, in the time of Sabakos, Syria brought it tribute ; there Tirhaka set up the records of his victories ; and great must have been the conqueror, whom Strabo put on a line with Sesostris .
Its site marked it out for a great capital; and as such the Ethiopian conqueror seized it. The hills on either side retired, encircling the plain, through the center of which the Nile brought down its wealth, connecting it with the untold riches of the south. : "They formed a vast circus, where the ancient metropolis expaneled itself On the West, the Lybian chain presents abrupt declivities which command this side of the plain, and which bend away above Bab-el-molouk, to end near Kournah at the very bank of the river. On the East, heights, softer and nearer, descend in long declivities toward Louksor and Karnak, and their crests do not approach the Nile until after Medamout, an hour or more below Karnak." The breadth of the valley, being about 10 miles , the city (of which, Strabo says , "traces are now seen of its magnitude, 80 stadia in length") must have occupied the whole. : "The city embraced the great space, which is now commonly called the plain of Thebes and which is divided by the Nile into two halves, an Eastern and a Western, the first bounded by the edge of the Arabian wilderness, the latter by the hills of the dead of the steep Libyan chain."
The capital of Egypt, which was identified of old with Egypt itself , thus lay under the natural guardianship of the encircling hills which expanded to receive it, divided into two by the river which was a wall to both. The chains of hills, on either side were themselves fenced in on East and West by the great sand-deserts unapproachable by an army. The long valley of the Nile was the only access to an enemy. It occupied apparently the victorious army of Asshurbanipal "a month and ten days" to march from Memphis to Thebes. : "At Thebes itself there are still remains of walls and fortifications, strong, skillfully constructed, and in good preservation, as there are also in other Egyptian towns above and below it. The crescent-shaped ridge of hills approaches so close to the river at each end as to admit of troops defiling past, but not spreading out or maneuvering. At each of these ends is a small old fort of the purely Egyptian, i. e., the ante-Hellenic period. Both above and below there are several similar crescent sweeps in the same chain of hills, and at each angle a similar fort."
All successive monarchs, during more centuries than have passed since our Lord came, successively beautified it. Everything is gigantic, bearing witness to the enormous mass of human strength, which its victorious kings had gathered from all nations to toil for its and their glorification. Wonderful is it now in its decay, desolation, death; one great idol-temple of its gods and an apotheosis of its kings, as sons of its gods. : "What spires are to a modern city, what the towers of a cathedral are to the nave and choir, that the statues of the Pharaohs were to the streets and temples of Thebes. The ground is strewn with their fragments; the avenues of them towered high above plain and houses. Three of gigantic size still remain. One was the granite statue of Rameses himself, who sat on the rightside of the entrance to his palace. - The only part of the temple or palace, at all in proportion to him, must have been the gateway, which rose in pyramidal towers, now broken down and rolling in a wild ruin down to the plain."
It was that self-deifying, against which Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy; "Speak and say; thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself" Eze 29:3. : "Everywhere the same colossal proportions are preserved. Everywhere the king is conquering, ruling, worshiping, worshiped. The palace is the temple. The king is priest. He and his horses are ten times the size of the rest of the army. Alike in battle and in worship, he is of the same stature as the gods themselves. Most striking is the familiar gentleness, with which, one on each side, they take him by each hand, as one of their own order, and then, in the next compartment, introduce him to Ammon, and the lion-headed goddess. Every distinction, except of degree, between divinity and royalty is entirely leveled."
Gigantic dimensions picture to the eye the ideal greatness, which is the key to the architecture of No. : "Two other statues alone remain of an avenue of eighteen similar or nearly similar statues, some of whose remnants lie in the field behind them, which led to the palace of Amenophis III, every one of the statues being Amenophis himself, thus giving in multiplication what Rameses gained in solitary elevation." : "Their statues were all of one piece." Science still cannot explain, how a mass of nearly 890 tons of granite was excavated at Syene, transported and set up at Thebes, or how destroyed .
Nozrani, In Egypt and Syria, p. 278: "The temper of the tools, which cut adamantine stone as sharply and closely as an ordinary scoop cuts an ordinary cheese, is still a mystery." Everything is in proportion. The two sitting colossi, whose "breadth across the shoulders is eighteen feet, their height forty-seven feet, fifty-three above the plain, or, with the half-buried pedestal, sixty feet, were once connected by an avenue of sphinxes of eleven hundred feet with what is now 'Kom-el-Hettan,' or 'the mound of sand-stone,' which marks the site of another palace and temple of Amenophis III.; and, to judge from the little that remains, it must have held a conspicuous rank among the finest monuments of Thebes. All that now exists of the interior are the bases of its columns, some broken statues, and Syenite sphinxes of the king, with several lionheaded figures of black granite" .
The four villages, where are the chief remaining temples, Karnak, Luksor, Medinet-Abou, Kournah, form a great quadrilateral , each of whose sides is about one and a half mile, and the whole compass accordingly six miles. The avenue of six hundred sphinxes, which joined the temple of Luksor with Karnak must have been one and a half mile long : one of its obelisks is a remarkable ornament of Paris. Mostly massiveness is the characteristic, since strength and might were their ideal. Yet the massive columns still preserved, as in the temple of Rameses II , are even of piercing beauty . And for the temple of Karnak! Its enclosure, which was some two miles in circumference , bears the names of Monarchs removed from one another, according to the Chronology, by above two thousand years . : "A stupendous colonnade, of which one pillar only remains erect, once extended across its great court, connecting the W. gate of entrance with that at its extremity. The towers of the Eastern gate are mere heaps of stones, poured down into the court on one side and the great hall on the other; giant columns have been swept away like reeds before the mighty avalanche, and one hardly misses them. And in that hall, of 170 feet by 329 feet, 134 columns of colossal proportions supported its roof; twelve of them, 62 feet high and about 35 in circumference, and on each side a forest of 66 columns, 42 feet 5 in. in height. Beyond the center avenue are seen obelisks, gateways and masses of masonry; every portion of these gigantic ruins is covered with sculpture most admirably executed, and every column has been richly painted."
Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. xli.: "Imagine a long vista of courts and doorways and colonnades and halls; here and there an obelisk shooting up out of the ruins, and interrupting the opening view of the forest of columns. - This mass of ruins, some rolled down in avalanches of stone, others perfect and painted, as when they were first built, is approached on every side by avenues of gateways. East and West, North and South, these vast approaches are found. Some are shattered, but in every approach some remain; and in some can be traced, beside, the further avenues, still in parts remaining by hundreds together, avenues of ram-headed sphinxes. Every Egyptian temple has, or ought to have, one of those grand gateways, formed of two sloping towers, with the high perpendicular front between." Then, over and above, is "their multiplied concentration. - Close before almost every gateway in this vast array were the colossal figures, usually in granite, of the great Rameses, sometimes in white and red marble, of Amenophis and of Thothmes. Close by them, were pairs of towering obelisks, which can generally be traced by pedestals on either side. - You have only to set up again the fallen obelisks which lie at your feet; to conceive the columns, as they are still seen in parts, overspreading the whole; to reproduce all the statues, like those which still remain in their august niches, to gaze on the painted wails and pillars of the immense ball, which even now can never be seen without a thrill of awe, and you have ancient Thebes before you."
And most of these paintings were records of their past might. : "There remained on the massive buildings Egyptian letters, recording their former wealthiness; and one of the elder priests, bidden to interpret his native language, related that of old 700,000 of military age dwelt there; and with that army king Rhamses gained possession of Libya, Ethiopia, the Medes and Persians, the Bactrian and Scythian; and held in his empire the countries which the Syrians and Armenians and neighboring Cappadocians inhabit, the Bithynian also and Lycian to the sea. There were read tee the tributes imposed on the natives, the weight of silver amid gold; the number of arms and horses, and the gifts to the temples, ivory and frankincense, and what supplies of corn and utensils each nation should pay, not less magnificent than are now enjoined by Parthian violence or by Roman power."
That was situate among the rivers - Literally, "the dweller, she that dwelleth." Perhaps the prophet wished to express the security and ease, in which she dwelt "among the rivers." They encircled, folded round her, as it were, so that she was a little world in herself, secluded from all who would approach to hurt her. The prophet's word, "rivers" , is especially used of the branches or canals of the Nile, which is also called the "sea" . The Nile passed through No, and doubtless its canals encircled it. Egypt is said by a pagan to be "walled by the Nile as an everlasting wall," "Whose rampart was (rampart is) the sea." Wall and rampart are, properly, the outer and inner wall of a city, the wall and forewall, so to speak. For all walls and all defenses, her enfolding walls of sea would suffice. Strong she was in herself; strong also in her helpers.
Nahum 3:9
nah 3:9
Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength - Literally, "Egypt was strength , and Ethiopia, and boundless." He sets forth first the imperial might of No; then her strength from foreign, subdued power. The capital is a sort of impersonation of the might of the state; No, of Egypt, as Nineveh, of Assyria. When the head was cut off or the heart ceased to beat, all was lost. The might of Egypt and Ethiopia was the might of No, concentrated in her. They were strength, and that strength unmeasured by any human standard. Boundless was the strength, which Nineveh had subdued: boundless, the store Nah 2:10 which she had accumulated for the spoiler; boundless Nah 3:3 the carcasses of her slain. "And it was infinite." "The people that came up with the king out of Egypt, were without number" Ch2 12:3. The Egyptians connected with Thebes are counted by a pagan author at seven million. Put or Phut is mentioned third among the sons of Ham, after Cash anal Mizraim Gen 10:6. They are mentioned with the Ethiopians in Pharaoh's army at the Euphrates , as joined with them in the visitation of Egypt Eze 30:5; with Cush in the army of Gog Eze 38:15; with Lud in that of Tyre Eze 29:10; a country and river of that name were, Josephus tells us , "frequently mentioned by Greek historians." They dwelt in the Libya, conterminous to the Canopic mouth of the Nile .
And Lubim - These came up against Judah in the army of Shishak Ch2 12:3 against Rehoboam, and with the Ethiopians, "a huge host" under Zerah the Ethiopian against Asa . The Ribou or Libou appear on the monuments as a people conquered by Menephthes and Rameses III . They were still to be united with Egypt and the Ethiopians in the times of Antiochus Epiphanes Dan 11:43; so their connection with Egypt was not broken by its fall. Those unwearied enemies had become incorporated with her; and were now her help. These were (English Margin) in thy help; set upon it, given up to it. The prophet appeals to No herself, as it were, "Thou hadst strength." Then he turns away, to speak of her, unwilling to look on the miseries which he has to portray to Nineveh, as the preludes of her own. Without God, vain is the help of man.
Nahum 3:10
nah 3:10
Yet was she - (also ) carried away, literally, "She also became an exile band," her people were carried away, with all the barbarities of pagan war. All, through whom she might recover, were destroyed or scattered abroad; "the young," the hope of another age, cruelly destroyed (see Hos 14:1-9; Isa 13:16; Kg2 8:12); "her honorable men" enslaved (see Joe 3:3), "all her great men prisoners." God's judgments are executed step by step. Assyria herself was the author of this captivity, which Isaiah prophesied in the first years of Hezekiah when Judah was leaning upon Egypt (see Isa 20:1-6). It was repeated by all of the house of Sargon. Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretold fresh desolation by Nebuchadnezzar Jer 46:25-26; Eze 30:14-16. God foretold to His people, "I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee" Isa 43:3; and the Persian monarchs, who fulfilled prophecy in the restoration of Judah, fulfilled it also in the conquest of Egypt and Ethiopia. Both perhaps out of human policy in part.
But Cambyses' wild hatred of Egyptian idolatry fulfilled God's word. Ptolemy Lathyrus carried on the work of Cambyses; the Romans, Ptolemy's. Cambyses burned its temples ; Lathyrus its four-or five-storied private houses ; the Roman Gallus leveled it to the ground . A little after it was said of her , "she is inhabited as so many scattered villages." A little after our Lord's Coming, Germanicus went to visit, not it, but "the vast traces of it." : "It lay overwhelmed with its hundred gates" and utterly impoverished. No was powerful as Nineveh, and less an enemy of the people of God. For though these often suffered from Egypt, yet in those times they even trusted too much to its help (see Isa. 30). If then the judgments of God came upon No, how much more upon Nineveh! In type, Nineveh is the image of the world as oppressing God's Church; No, rather of those who live for this life, abounding in wealth, ease, power, and forgetful of God. If, then, they were punished, who took no active part against God, fought not against God's truth, yet still were sunk in the cares and riches and pleasures of this life, what shall be the end of those who openly resist God?
Nahum 3:11
nah 3:11
Thou also - As thou hast done, so shall it be done unto thee. The cruelties on No, in the cycle of God's judgments, draw on the like upon Nineveh who inflicted them. "Thou also shalt be drunken" with the same cup of God's anger, entering within thee as wine doth, bereaving thee of reason and of counsel through the greatness of thy anguish, and bringing shame on thee , and a stupefaction like death. "Thou shalt be hid, a thing hidden" from the eyes of men, "as though thou hadst never been." Nahum had foretold her complete desolation: he had asked, where is she? Here he describes an abiding condition; strangely fulfilled, as perhaps never to that extent besides; her palaces, her monuments, her records of her glorious triumphs existed still in their place, but hidden out of sight, as in a tomb, under the hill-like mounds along the Tigris. "Thou also shalt seek strength, or a stronghold from the enemy," out of thyself, since thine own shall be weakness. Yet in vain, since God, is not such to thee Nah 1:7. "They shall seek, but not find." "For then shall it be too late to cry for mercy, when it is the time of justice." "He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy" Jam 2:13.
Nahum 3:12
nah 3:12
All thy strong-holds shall be like fig trees, with the first ripe figs - Hanging from them; eagerly sought after , to be consumed. Being ripe, they are ready to fall at once; "if they be shaken;" it needs but the tremulous motion, as when trees wave in the wind, "they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater," not costing even the slight pains of picking them from the ground . So easy is their destruction on the part of God, though it cost more pains to the Babylonians. At the end of the world it shall be yet more fulfilled Rev 6:13, for then God will use no human instrument, but put forth only His own Almightiness; and all strong-holds of man's pride, moral or spiritual, shall, of themselves, melt away.
Nahum 3:13
nah 3:13
Behold, thy people in the midst of thee are women - Fierce, fearless, hard, iron men, such as their warriors still are portrayed by themselves on their monuments, they whom no toll wearied, no peril daunted, shall be, one and all, their whole "people, women." So Jeremiah to Babylon, "they shall become, became, women" Jer 50:37; Jer 51:30. He sets it before the eyes. "Behold, thy people are women;" against nature they are such, not in tenderness but in weakness and fear. Among the signs of the Day of Judgment, it stands, "men's hearts failing them for fear" Luk 21:26. Where sin reigns, there is no strength left, no manliness or nobleness of soul, no power to resist. "In the midst of thee," where thou seemest most secure, and, if anywhere, there were hope of safety. The very inmost self of the sinner gives way.
To thine enemies - (This is, for emphasis, prefixed) not for any good to thee, but "to thine enemies shall be set wide open the gates of thy land," not, "thy gates," i. e., the gates of their cities, (which is a distinct idiom), but "the gates of the land" itself, every avenue, which might have been closed against the invader, but which was "laid open." The Easterns, as well as the Greeks and Latins . See further Liddell and Scott, loc. cit.) the πύλαι τῆς Κιλικίας καὶ τῆς Συρίας pulai tēs Kilikias kai tēs Surias, Xen. Anab. i. 4. 14, the "Amsnicae Pylae" (Q. Curt. iii. 20). Pliny speaks of the "portae Caucasiae" (H. N. vi. 11) or "Iberiae" (Albaniae Ptol. v. 12.) Ibid. 15), used the word "gate" or "doors" of the mountain passes, which gave an access to a land, but which might be held against an enemy. In the pass called "the Caucasian gates," there were, over and above, doors fastened with iron bars . At Thermopylae or, as the inhabitants called them, Pylae , "gates," the narrow pass was further guarded by a wall . Its name recalls the brilliant history, how such approaches might be held by a devoted handful of men against almost countless multitudes. Of Assyria, Pliny says , "The Tigris and pathless mountains encircle Adiabene." When those "gates of the land" gave way, the whole land was laid open to its enemies.
The fire shall devour thy bars - Probably, as elsewhere, the bars of the gates, which were mostly of wood, since it is added expressly of some, that they were of the iron Psa 107:16; Isa 14:2 or brass Kg1 4:13. : "Occasionally the efforts of the besiegers were directed against the gate, which they endeavored to break open with axes, or to set on fire by application of a torch - In the hot climate of S. Asia wood becomes so dry by exposture to the sun, that the most solid doors may readily be ignited and consumed." It is even remarked in one instance that the Assyrians "have not set fire to the gates of this city, as appeared to be their usual practice in attacking a fortified place."
So were her palaces buried as they stood, that the traces of prolonged fire are still visible, calcining the one part and leaving others which were not exposed to it, uncalcined. : "It is incontestable that, during the excavations, a considerable quantity of charcoal, and even pieces of wood, either half-burnt or in a perfect state of preservation, were found in many places. The lining of the chambers also bears certain marks of the action of fire. All these things can be explained only by supposing the fall of a burning roof, which calcined the slabs of gypsum and converted them into dust. It would be absurd to imagine that the burning of a small quantity of furniture could have left on the walls marks like these which are to be seen through all the chambers, with the exception of one, which was only an open passage. It must have been a violent and prolonged fire, to be able to calcine not only a few places, but every part of these slabs, which were ten feet high and several inches thick. So complete a decomposition can be attributed but to intense heat, such as would be occasioned by the fall of a burning roof.
"Botta found on the engraved flag-stones scoria and half-melted nails, so that there is no doubt that these appearances had been produced by the action of intense and long-sustained beat. He remembers, beside, at Khorsabad, that when he detached some bas-reliefs from the earthy substance which covered them, in order to copy the inscriptions that were behind, he found there coals and cinders, which could have entered only by the top, between the wall and the back of the bas-relief. This can be easily understood to have been caused by the burning of the roof, but is inexplicable in any other manner. What tends most positively to prove that the traces of fire must be attributed to the burning of a wooden roof is, that these traces are perceptible only in the interior of the building. The gypsum also that covers the wall inside is completely calcined, while the outside of the building is nearly everywhere untouched. But wherever the fronting appears to have at all suffered from fire, it is at the bottom; thus giving reason to suppose that the damage has been done by some burning matter falling outside. In fact, not a single bas-relief in a state to be removed was found in any of the chambers, they were all pulverized."
The soul which does not rightly close its senses against the enticements of the world, does, in fact, open them, and death is come up into our windows Jer 9:21, and then "whatever natural good there yet be, which, as bars, would hinder the enemy from bursting in, is consumed by the fire," once kindled, of its evil passions.
Nahum 3:14
nah 3:14
Draw thee waters for the siege, fortify thy strongholds - This is not mere mockery at man's weakness, when he would resist God. It foretells that they shall toil, and that, heavily. Toil is added upon toil. Nineveh did undergo a two years' siege. Water stands for all provisions within. He bids them, as before Nah 2:1, strengthen what was already strong; strongholds, which seemed to "cut off" all approach. These he bids them strengthen, not repairing decays only but making them exceeding strong Ch2 11:12. Go into clay. We seem to see all the inhabitants, like ants on their nest, all poured out, every one busy, every one making preparation for the defense. Why had there been no need of it? What needed she of towers and fortifications, whose armies were carrying war into distant lands, before whom all which was near was hushed? Now, all had to be renewed. As Isaiah in his mockery of the idol-makers begins with the forging of the axe, the planting and rearing of the trees, which were at length to become the idol (Isa 44:12, following), Nahum goes back to the beginning. The neglected brick-kiln, useless in their prosperity, was to be repaired; the clay, which abounded in the valley of the Tigris , was to be collected, mixed and kneaded by treading, as still represented in the Egyptian monuments. The conquering nation was to do the work of slaves, as Asiatic captives are represented, under their taskmasters , on the monuments of Egypt, a prelude of their future. Xenophon still saw the massive brick wall, on the stone foundation .
Yet, though stored within and fenced without, it shall not stand (see Isa 27:10-11).
Nahum 3:15
nah 3:15
There - where thou didst fence thyself, and madest such manifold and toilsome preparation,
Shall the fire devour thee. - All is toil within. The fire of God's wrath falls and consumes at once. Mankind still, with mire and clay, build themselves Babels. "They go into clay," and become themselves earthly like the mire they steep themselves in. They make themselves strong, as though they thought "that their houses shall continue forever" Psa 49:11, and say, "So, take thine ease eat, drink and be merry" Luk 12:19-20. God's wrath descends. "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. It shall eat thee up like the canker-worm." What in thee is strongest, shall be devoured with as much ease as the locust devours the tender grass. The judgments of God, not only overwhelm as a whole, but find cut each tender part, as the locust devours each single blade.
Make thyself many as the cankerworm - As though thou wouldest equal thyself in oppressive number to those instruments of the vengeance of God, gathering from all quarters armies to help thee; yea, though thou make thy whole self one oppressive multitude, yet it shall not avail thee. Nay, He saith, thou hast essayed to do it.
Nahum 3:16
nah 3:16
Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven - Not numerous only but glorious in the eyes of the world, and, as thou deemest, safe and inaccessible; yet in an instant all is gone.
The commerce of Nineveh was carried back to prehistoric times, since its rivers bound together the mountains of Armenia with the Persian gulf, and marked out the line, by which the distant members of the human family should supply each others' needs. "Semiramis" they say , "built other cities on the Euphrates and the Tigris, where she placed emporia for those who convey their goods from Media and Paraetacene. Being mighty rivers and passing through a populous country, they yield many advantages to those employed in commerce; so that the places by the river are full of wealthy emporia." The Phoenicians traced back their Assyrian commerce (and as it seems, truly) to those same prehistoric times, in which they alleged, that they themselves migrated from the Persian gulf. They commenced at once, they said , the long voyages, in which they transported the wares of Egypt and Assyria. The building of "Tadmor in the wilderness" Kg1 9:18 on the way to Tiphsach (Thapsacus) the utmost bound of Solomon's dominions (Kg1 5:4 Kg1 4:24), connected Palestine with that commerce.
The great route for couriers and for traffic, extending for 1,500 or 1,600 miles in later times, must have lain through Nineveh, since, although no mention is made of the city which had perished, the route lay across the two rivers , the greater and lesser Zab, of which the greater formed the Southern limit of Nineveh. Those two rivers led up to two mountain-passes which opened a way to Media and Agbatana; and pillars at the summit of the N. pass attest the use of this route over the Zagros chain about 700 b.c. . Yet a third and easier pass was used by Nineveh, as is evidenced by another monument, of a date as yet undetermined . Two other lines connected Nineveh with Syria and the West. Northern lines led doubtless to Lake Wan and the Black Sea . The lists of plunder or of tribute, carried off during the world-empire of Egypt, before it was displaced by Assyria, attest the extensive imports or manufactures of Nineveh ; the titles of "Assyrian nard, Assyrian amomum, Assyrian odors, myrrh, frankincense , involve its trade with the spice countries: domestic manufactures of hers apparently were purple or dark-blue cloaks, embroidery, brocades, and these conveyed in chests of cedar; her metallurgy was on principles recognized now; in one practical point of combining beauty with strength, she has even been copied .
A line of commerce, so marked out by nature in the history of nations, is not changed, unless some preferable line be discovered. Empires passed away, but, at the end of the 13th century a.d., trade and manufacture continued their accustomed course and habitation. The faith in Jesus had converted the ancient paganism; the heresy of Mohammedanism disputed with the faith for the souls of men; but the old material prosperity of the world held its way. Mankind still wanted the productions of each others' lands. The merchants of Nineveh were to be dispersed and were gone: itself and its remembrance were to be effaced from the earth, and it was so; in vain was a new Nineveh built by the Romans; that also disappeared; but so essential was its possession for the necessities of commerce, that Mosul, a large and populous town, arose over against its mounds, a city of the living over-against its buried glories; and, as our goods are known in China by the name of our great manufacturing capital, so a delicate manufacture imposed on the languages of Europe (Italian, Spanish, French, English, German) the name of Mosul .
Even early in this century, under a mild governor, an important commerce passed through Mosul, from India, Persia, Kurdistan, Syria, Natolia, Europe . And when European traffic took the line of the Isthmus ef Suez, the communication with Kurdistan still secured to it an important and exclusive commerce. The merchants of Nineveh were dispersed and gone. The commerce continued over-against its grave.
The cankerworm spoileth and fleeth away - Better, "the locust hath spread itself abroad (marauded) and is flown." The prophet gives, in three words, the whole history of Nineveh, its beginning and its end. He had before foretold its destruction, though it should be oppressive as the locust; he had spoken of its commercial wealth; he adds to this, that other source of its wealth, its despoiling warfares and their issue. The pagan conqueror rehearsed his victory, "I came, saw, conquered." The prophet goes further, as the issue of all human conquest, "I disappeared." The locust (Nineveh) spread itself abroad (the word is always used of an inroad for plunder , destroying and wasting, everywhere: it left the world a desert, and was gone. Ill-gotten wealth makes one poor, not rich. Truly they who traffic in this world, are more in number than they who, seeking treasure in heaven, shall shine as the stars forever and ever. "For many are called, but few, are chosen." And when all the stars of light "shall abide and praise God Psa 148:3, these men, though multiplied like the locust, shall, like the locust, pass away, destroying and destroyed. They abide for a while in the chillness of this world; when the Sun of righteousness ariseth, they vanish. This is the very order of God's Providence. As truly as locusts, which in the cold and dew are chilled and stiffened, and cannot spread their wings, fly away when the sun is hot and are found no longer, so shalt thou be dispersed and thy place not anymore be known . It was an earnest of this, when the Assyrians, like locusts, had spread themselves around Jerusalem in a dark day of trouble and of rebuke and of blasphemy Isa 37:3, God was entreated and they were not. Midian came up like the grasshopper for multitude Jdg 6:4-5; Jdg 7:12. In the morning they had fled Jdg 7:21. What is the height of the sons of hen? or how do they spread themselves abroad?" At the longest, after a few years it is but as the locust spreads himself and flees away, no more to return.
Nahum 3:17
nah 3:17
Thy crowned are as the locust, and thy captains as the great locusts - What he had said summarily under metaphor, the prophet expands in a likeness. "The crowned" are probably the subordinate princes, of whom Sennacherib said, "Are not my princes altogether kings?" Isa 10:8. It has been observed that the headdress of the Assyrian Vizier has the ornament which "throughout the whole series of sculptures is the distinctive mark of royal or quasi-royal authority." : "All high officers of state, 'the crowned captains,' were adorned with diadems, closely resembling the lower band of the royal mitre, separated from the cap itself. Such was that of the vizier, which was broader in front than behind, was adorned with rosettes and compartments, and terminated in two ribbons with embroidered and fringed ends, which hung down his back." "Captain" is apparently the title of some military ounce of princely rank.
One such Jeremiah Jer 51:27, in a prophecy in which he probably alludes to this, bids place over the armies of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz, to marshall them against Babylon, against which he summons the cavalry like the rough locust. The "captains" are likened to the "great caterpillars," either as chief in devastation, or as including under them the armies antler their command, who moved at their will. These and their armies now subsided into stillness for a time under the chill of calamity, like the locust "whose nature it is, that, torpid in the cold, they fly in the heat." The stiffness of the locusts through the cold, when they lie motionless, heaps upon heaps, hidden out of sight, is a striking image of the helplessness of Nineveh's mightiest in the day of her calamity; then, by a different part of their history, he pictures their entire disappearance. : "The locusts, are commonly taken in the morning when they are agglomerated one on another, in the places where they passed the night. As soon as the sun warms them, they fly away." "When the sun ariseth, they flee away," literally, "it is chased away."
One and all; all as one. As at God's command the plague of locusts, which He had sent on Egypt, was removed; "there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt" Exo 10:19; so the mighty of Nineveh were driven north, with no trace where they had been, where they were. "The wind carried them away Isa 41:16; the wind passes over him and he is not, and his place knows him no more Psa 103:16. The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the ungodly for a moment: though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds, yet he shall perish for ever; they which have seen him shall say, where is he? He shall fly away, as a dream, and shall not be formal; neither shall his place any were bebold him Job 20:5-9.
Where they are - So Zechariah asks, "Your fathers, where are they?" Zech. 1. History, experience, human knowledge can answer nothing. They can only say, where they are not. God alone can answer that much-containing word, "Where-they." They had disappeared from human sight, from their greatness, their visible being, their place on earth.
Nahum 3:18
nah 3:18
Thy shepherds - that is, they who should counsel for the people's good and feed it, and "keep watch over their flocks by night," but are now like their master, the "King of Assyria," are his shepherds not the shepherds of the people whom they care not for; these slumber, at once through listlessness and excess, and now have fallen asleep in death, as the Psalmist says, "They have slept their sleep" Psa 76:6. The prophet speaks of the future, as already past in effect, as it was in the will of God. All "the shepherds of the people" , all who could shepherd them, or hold them to together, themselves sleep "the sleep of death;" their mighty men dwelt in that abiding-place, where they shall not move or rise, the grave; and so as Micaiah, in the vision predictive of Ahab's death, "saw all Israel scattered on the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd" Kg1 22:17, so the people of the Assyrian monarch shall be "scattered on the mountains," shepherdless, and that irretrievably; no man gathers them.
Nahum 3:19
nah 3:19
There is no healing - (literally, "dulling") of thy bruise It cannot be softened or mitigated; and so thy wound is grievous (literally, sick), incurable, for when the wound ever anew inflames, it cannot be healed. The word, bruise, is the more expressive, because it denotes alike the abiding wound in the body Lev 21:19, and the shattering of a state, which God can heal Psa 60:4; Isa 30:26, or which may be great, incurable Jer 30:12. When the passions are ever anew aroused, they are at last without remedy; when the soul is ever swollen with pride, it cannot be healed; since only by submitting itself to Christ, "broken and contrite" by humility, can it be healed. Nineveh sank, and never rose; nothing soothed its fall. In the end there shall be nothing to mitigate the destruction of the world, or to soften the sufferings of the damned. The "rich man, being in torments," asked in vain that Lazarus might "dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue."
All that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee - For none can grieve at thy fall.
Nineveh sinks out of sight amid one universal, exulting, exceeding joy of all who heard the report of her. "For upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?" "In that he asketh, upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually? He affirms most strongly that his evil did pass upon all continually." His wickedness, like one continual flood. which knew no ebb or bound, had passed upon the whole world and each one in it; now at length it had passed away, and "the whole earth is at rest, is quiet; they break forth into singing" Isa 14:7.
It is not without meaning, that having throughout the prophecy addressed Nineveh (in the feminine), now, in the close Nah 3:18-19, the prophet turns to him in whom all its wickedness is, as it were, gathered into one, the soul of all its evil, and the director of it, its king. As Nineveh is the image of the world, its pomps, wealth, luxury, vanity, wickedness, oppression, destruction, so its king is the image of a worse king, the Prince of this world. : "And this is the song of triumph of those, over whom 'his wickedness has passed,' not rested, but they have escaped out of his hands. Nahum, 'the comforter,' had 'rebuked the world of sin;' now he pronounces that 'the prince of this world is judged.' 'His shepherds' are they who serve him, who 'feed the flock of the slaughter,' who guide them to evil, not to good. These, when they sleep, as all mankind, dwell there; it is their abiding-place; their sheep are 'scattered on the mountains,' in the heights of their pride, because they are not of the sheep of Christ; and since they would not be gathered of Him, they are 'scattered, where none gathereth.'" "The king of Assyria (Satan) knows that he cannot deceive the sheep, unless he have first laid the shepherds asleep. It is always the aim of the devil to lay asleep souls that watch. In the Passion of the Lord, he weighed down the eves of the Apostles with heavy sleep, whom Christ arouseth, 'Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation' Mat 26:41; and again, 'What I say unto you, I say unto all, watch!' 'And no man gathers them,' for their shepherds themselves cannot protect themselves. In the Day of God's anger, 'the kings of the earth and the great men, and the rich men and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains' Rev 6:15. Such are his shepherds, and his sheep; but what of himself?
Truly his bruise or breaking can not he healed; his wound or smiting is incurable; that namely whereby, when he came to Him in whom he found nothing Joh 14:30, yet bruised His heel, and exacted of Him a sinner's death, his own head was bruised." And hence, "all who have ears to hear," who hear not with the outward only, but with the inner ears of the heart, "clap the hands over thee," that is, give to God all their souls' thanks and praise, raise up their eyes and hands to God in heaven, praising Him who had "bruised Satan under their feet." Ever since, through the serpent, the evil and malicious one has lied, saying, "ye shall not surely die, eat and ye shall be as gods," hath his evil, continually and unceasingly, from one and through one, passed upon all men. As the apostle saith, "As by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" Rom 5:12.
Upon whom then hath not his sin paased? Who hath not been shapen in iniquity? and whom did not his mother conceive in sin? Yet, it passes only, for "the world itself also passeth away," and we pass away from it, and all the evil it can do us, unless we share in its evil, is not abiding, but passing. This then is the cause, and a great cause, why "all that hear the bruit of thee" should "clap the hands over thee;" because thee, whose wickedness passed through one upon all, One Man, who alone was without sin, contemned and bruised, while He riced and justified from wickedness them who "hearing" rejoiced, and rejoicing and believing, "clapped the hands over thee." Yet they only shall be glad, upon whom his "wickedness," although it passed, yet abode not, but in prayer and good deeds, by the grace of God, they lifted up their hands to Him Who overcame, and Who, in His own, overcomes still, to whom be praise and thanksgiving forever and ever. Amen.
Nehemiah Introduction
Nehemiah
neh 0:0
Introduction to Nehemiah
In the earliest form of the Hebrew canon known to us the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were united in one, under the name of "The Book of Ezra." After a while, a division was made, and the two books which we now recognize were distinguished as "the First Book of Ezra" and "the Second Book of Ezra" Later still - probably not until toward the close of the fourth century - the Second Book of Ezra came to be known as "the Book of Nehemiah."
The Book of Nehemiah is composed of four quite distinct sections:
(1) Neh. 1-7 containing the record of the 20th year of Artaxerxes (or 445-444 B.C.), but composed by Nehemiah at least twelve years later Neh 5:14.
(2) the second section of the work consists of Neh. 8-10, and contains a narrative of some events belonging to the autumn of 444 B.C. In this portion Nehemiah is spoken of in the third person; he is called the Tirshatha," whereas in the earlier chapters his title is always פחה pechâh ("governor"); and Ezra holds the first and most prominent position. The style of this portion of the book is markedly different from that of the earlier and later chapters; and critics are generally agreed that it is NOT from the hand of Nehemiah. Some assign it to Ezra; others conjecture Zadok (or Zidkijah), Nehemiah's scribe or secretary Neh 13:13, to have been the author.
(3) Neh. 11-12:26, which consists of six important lists.
List 1 Neh. 11:1-24 and List 2 Neh 11:25-36 are probably either the work of Nehemiah himself or documents drawn up by his orders.
Of the other lists Neh. 12:1-26 some may have been drawn up in the time (or even by the hand) of Nehemiah, and incorporated by him into his work as documents having an intrinsic value, though not connected very closely with the subject matter of his history. But the list in Neh 12:10-11 cannot, in its present shape, have proceeded from his hand, or from that of a contemporary, since it mentions Jaddua, who lived about a century LATER THAN Nehemiah. Neither can Neh 12:22-23 intruded between the 5th and 6th lists - lists closely interconnected - belong to Nehemiah's time, since they contain a mention of both Jaddua and Darius Codomannus, his contemporary. Possibly, the list in question and the intruded verses may have proceeded from the same hand.
The section may therefore be regarded as the compilation of Nehemiah himself, with the exception of Neh 12:11, Neh 12:22-23, which must have been added a century later. Or, it was first added at that period. In either case, the writer must be equally considered to have drawn the lists from contemporary state archives (see Neh 12:23).
(4) Neh 12:27 to the end. This section contains an account of the dedication of the wall, and of certain reforms which Nehemiah effected after his return from Babylon in 432-431 B.C.. It is allowed on all hands to be, in the main, the work of Nehemiah, and written soon after the events - probably in 431 B.C. or 430 B.C.
It is perhaps, on the whole, more probable that the various sections composing the "Book of Nehemiah" were collected by Nehemiah himself, who had written, at any rate, two of them Neh. 1-7:5; Neh 12:27; Neh 13:31. Having composed these two separate memoirs, and having perhaps drawn up also certain lists, he adopted from without an account of some religious transactions belonging to his first period, and, inserting this in its proper place, prefixed to the whole work the title, "The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hachaliah," as fitly designating its main contents. His work, thus formed, was subsequently added to by Jaddua, or a writer of that time, who inserted into it Neh 12:11, Neh 12:22-23. Or, possibly, this late writer may first have formed the book into a whole. The date of the compilation would, in the former case, be about 430 B.C.; in the latter, about one century later.
The authenticity of the history contained in the Book of Nehemiah is generally admitted: and the condition of the text is generally good.
Bible
Habakkuk Introduction
Habakkuk
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Introduction to Habakkuk
Habakkuk is eminently the prophet of reverential, awe-filled faith. This is the soul and center of his prophecy. One word alone he addresses directly to his people. It is of marvel at their lack of faith Hab 1:5. "Behold among the heathen and gaze attentively, and marvel, marvel; for I am working a work in your days; ye will not believe, when it is declared unto you." He bids them behold, and gaze, for God is about to work in their own days; he bids them prepare themselves to marvel, and marvel on; for it was a matter, at which political wisdom would stagger; and they, since they did not have faith, would not believe it. The counterpart to this, is that great blessing of faith, which is the key-stone of his whole book Hab 2:4 : "the just shall live by his faith."
Isaiah had foretold to Hezekiah that his treasures would be carried to Babylon, his sons would be eunuchs in the palace of its king Isa 39:6-7. He had foretold the destruction of Babylon and the restoration of the Jews Isa 12:1-6; Isa. 13; Isa 47:1-15. Prophecy in Habakkuk, full as it is, is almost subordinate. His main subject is, that which occupied Asaph in Ps. 73, the afflictions of the righteous amid the prosperity of the wicked. The answer is the same - the result of all will be one great reversal, the evil drawing upon themselves evil, God crowning the patient waiting of the righteous in still submission to His holy will. "The just shall live by his faith," occupies the same place in Habakkuk, as "I know that my Redeemer liveth," does in Job Job 19:25, or Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and after that receive me into glow, in Asaph Psa 73:24.
His first subject is, faith struggling under the oppressive sight of the sufferings of the good from the bad within God's people; the second subject is the suffering at the hands of those who are God's instruments to avenge that wickedness. The third subject , that of his great hymn, is faith, not jubilant until the end, yet victorious, praying, believing, seeing in vision what it prays for, and triumphing in that, of which it sees no tokens, whose only earnest is God's old loving-kindnesses to His people, and His Name, under which He had revealed Himself, "He Who Is," the Unchangeable.
The whole prophecy is, so to speak, a colloquy between the prophet and God. He opens it with a reverential, earnest, appeal to God, like that of the saints under the heavenly Altar in the Book of Revelation Rev 6:10, "How long?" The prophet had prayed to God to end or mitigate the violence, oppressions, strife, contention, despoiling, powerlessness, of the law, crookedness of justice, entrapping of the righteous by the wicked Hab 1:2-4. God answers Hab 1:6-11, that a terrible day of retribution was coming, that He Himself would raise up the Chaldees, as the instruments of His chastisements, terrible, self-dependent, owning no law or authority but their own will, deifying their own power, sweeping the whole breadth of the land, possessing themselves of it, taking every fenced city, and gathering captives as the sand. This answers one-half of Habakkuk's question, as to the prosperity of the wicked among his people. It leaves the other half, as to the condition of the righteous, unanswered, for such scourges of God swept away the righteous with the wicked. Habakkuk then renews the question as to them. But, just Asaph began by declaring his faith Psa 73:1, "All-good is God to Israel," the true Israel, the pure of heart, so Habakkuk: "Israel would not die, because He, their God, is Unchangeable Hab 1:12. "Art not Thou of old, O Lord, my God, my holy One? We shall not die; Thou, O Lord, hast set him (the Aramaic) for judgment, and Thou, O Rock, hast founded him to chasten." Then he appeals to God, "Why then is this? "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil - wherefore keepest Thou silence, when the wicked devoureth him who is more righteous than he?" This closes the first chapter and the first vision, in which he describes, with the vividness of one who saw it before him, the irresistible invasion of the Chaldaeans. Israel was meshed as in a net; should that net be emptied Hab 1:17?
Hab. 2 exhibits the prophet waiting in silent expectation for the answer. This answer too dwells chiefly on those retributions in this life, which are the earnest of future judgments, the witness of the sovereignty of God. But although in few words, it does answer the question as to the righteous, that he has abiding life, that he lives and shall live. God impresses the importance of the answer in the words Hab 2:2, "Write the vision" i. e., the prophecy, "and make it plain on the tables," whereon the prophet was accustomed to write , "that he may run who reads it." He says also, that it is for a time fixed in the mind of God, and that however, in man's sight, it might seem to linger, it would not be anything behind the time Hab 2:3. Then he gives the answer itself in the words Hab 2:4, "Behold his soul which is puffed up is not upright in him; and the just shall live by his faith."
The swelling pride and self-dependence of the Chaldee stands in contrast with the trustful submission of faith. Of the one God says, it has no ground of uprightness, and consequently will not stand before God; of faith, he says, the righteous shall live by it. But the life plainly is not the life of the body. For Habakkuk's ground of complaint was the world-wasting cruelty of the Chaldees. The woe on the Chaldee which follows is even chiefly for bloodshed, in which the righteous and the wicked are massacred alike. The simple word, shall live, is an entire denial of death, a denial even of any interruption of life. It stands in the same fullness as those words of our Lord Joh 14:19, "because I live, ye shall live also." The other side of the picture, the fall of the Yet it is manifestly intensive. It most resembles Chaldees, is given in greater fullness, because the fulfillment of God's word in things seen was the pledge of the fulfillment of those beyond the veil of sense and time. In a measured dirge he pronounces a five-fold woe on the five great sins of the Chaldees, their ambition Hab 2:5, Hab 2:8, covetousness Hab 2:9-11, violence Hab 2:12-14, insolence Hab 2:15-17, idolatry Hab 2:18-20. It closes with the powerlessness of the Chaldee idols against God, and bids the whole world be hushed before the presence of the One God, its Maker, awaiting His sentence.
Then follows the prayer , that God would revive His work for Israel, which now seemed dead. He describes the revival as coming, under the images of God's miraculous deliverances of old. The division of the Red Sea and the Jordan, the standing-still of the sun and moon under Joshua, are images of future deliverances; all nature shakes and quivers at the presence of its Maker. Yet not it, but the wicked were the object of His displeasure. The prophet sees his people delivered as at the Red Sea, just when the enemy seemed ready to sweep them away, as with a whirlwind. And, in sight of the unseen, he closes with that wondrous declaration of faith, that all nature should be desolate, all subsistence gone, everything, contrary to God's promises of old to His people, should be around him," and I will rejoice in the Lord, I will exult for joy in the God of my salvation."
This prophecy is not less distinct, because figurative. Rather it is the declaration of God's deliverance of His people, not from the Chaldees only, but at all times. The evil is concentrated in one Evil one, who stands over against the One anointed. "Thou art gone forth for the salvation of Thy people; for salvation with Thine anointed One. Thou crushedst the head out of the house of the wicked One, laying bare the foundation unto the neck," i. e., smiting the house at once, above and below; with an utter destruction. It belongs then the more to all times, until the closing strife between evil and good, Christ and Antichrist, the ἄνομος anomos and the Lord. It includes the Chaldee, and each great Empire which opposes itself to the kingdom of God, and declares that, as God delivered His people of old so He would unto the end.
It may be that Habakkuk chose this name to express the strong faith, whereby he embraced the promises of God. At least, it means one who "strongly enfolds."
Also, perhaps it is on account of the form in which his prophecy is cast, as being spoken (with the exception of that one verse) to God or to the Chaldaean, not to his own people, that he added the title of Prophet to his name. "The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see" (Hab 1:1, add Hab 3:1). For, however the name "prophet" includes all to whom revelations from God came, it is nowhere, in the Old Testament, added as the name of an office to any one, who did not exercise the practical office of the Prophet. Our Lord quotes David as the Prophet Mat 13:35, and God says to Abimelech of Abraham Gen 20:7, He is a Prophet, and, in reference to this, the Psalmist speaks of the Patriarchs, as Prophets Psa 105:14-15. "He reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm," and Hosea speaks of Moses as a prophet Hos 12:13, and Peter says of David, Act 2:30, "He being a prophet." But the title is nowhere in the Old Testament added to the name as it is here, Habakkuk the prophet, and as it is elsewhere Samuel the prophet Ch2 35:18, the prophet Gad, Sa1 22:5, Nathan the prophet Kg1 1:32, Ahijah the prophet Kg1 11:29, the prophet Jehu Kg1 16:7, Kg1 16:12, Elijah the prophet Kg1 18:36, Elisha the prophet Kg2 6:12, Shemaiah the prophet Ch2 12:5, the prophet Iddo, Ch2 13:22, the prophet Obed Ch2 15:8, Isaiah the prophet Kg2 19:2; Kg2 20:1, Jeremiah the prophet Jer 28:6; Jer 36:26; Ch2 36:12, Haggai the prophet Ezr 5:1; Ezr 6:14, unless any have exercised the prophetic office. The title of the Prophet is not, in the Old Testament, added to the names of Jacob or even of Moses or David or Solomon or Daniel, although they all prophesied of Christ.
Since Holy Scripture often conveys so much incidentally, it may be that a large range of ministerial office is hinted in the words "write on the tables;" for "the tables" must have been well-known tables, tables upon which prophets (as Isaiah) and probably Habakkuk himself was accustomed to write. The writing of a few emphatic unexplained words in a public place, which should arouse curiosity, or startle passers-by, would be in harmony with the symbolical actions, enjoined on the prophets and used by them. The "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," had, from their mysteriousness, an impressiveness of their own, apart from the miracle of the writing.
The words appended to the prophecy, "to the chief singer," (as we should say, "the leader of the band" ') "with or on my stringed instruments," imply, not only that the hymn became part of the devotions of the temple, but that Habakkuk too had a part in the sacred music which accompanied it. The word so rendered, neginothui, could only mean my stringed instrument's, or "my song accompanied with music," as Hezekiah says Isa 38:20, "we will sing my songs on the stringed instruments, nenaggen neginothai." But in Habakkuk's subscription, "To the chief musician binginothai," neginoth can have no other meaning than in the almost identical inscription of Psalms Psa 4:1-8; Psa 6:1-10; Psa 54:1-7; Ps. 55; Psa 61:1-8; Psa 67:1-7; Psa 76:1-12, "To the chief musician binginoth," nor this any other than with stringed instruments, "instruments struck with the hand." (Coll. Sa1 17:16, Sa1 17:23; Sa1 18:10; Sa1 19:9; Kg2 3:15). The addition, "with my stringed instruments," shows that Habakkuk himself was to accompany his hymn with instrumental music, and since the mention of the chief musician marks out that it was to form part of the temple-service, Habakkuk must have been entitled to take part in the temple-music, and so must have been a Levite. The Levitical order then had its prophet, as the sacerdotal in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The tradition in the title to Bel and the Dragon, whatever its value, agrees with this ; "from the prophecy of Ambakum, son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi."
This, however, does not give us any hint as to the time when Habakkuk prophesied. For, bad as were the times of Manasseh and Amon, their idolatry consisted in associating idols with God, setting them up in His courts, bringing one even into His temple Kg2 21:7, not in doing away His service. They set the two services, and the two opinions Kg1 18:21, side by side, adding the false, but not abolishing the true, "consenting to differ," leaving to the worshipers of God their religion, while forcing them to endure, side by side, what seemed an addition, but what was, in fact, a denial. Habakkuk then might have been allowed to present his hymn for the temple-service, while the king placed in the same temple the statue of Astarte, and required its devil's worship to be carried on there. The temple was allowed to go into some degree of decay, for Josiah had it repaired; but we read only of his removing idols, Kg2 23:6, not or his having to restore the disused service of God. Of Ahaz it is recorded, that Ch2 28:24 he shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, which Hezekiah had to open Ch2 29:3. Nothing of this sort is told of Manasseh and Amon.
Habakkuk, however, has two hints, which determine his age within a few years. He says that the invasion of the Chaldaeans was to be in the days of those to whom he speaks; "in your days" Hab 1:5. Accordingly, he must have spoken to adults, many of whom would survive that invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, in the 4th year of Jehoiakim 605 b.c. He can hardly have prophesied before 645 b.c., about the close of Manasseh's reign; for at this date, those who were 20 at the time of the prophecy, would have been 60, at the time of its commenced fulfillment at the battle of Carchemish. On the other hand, in that he speaks of that invasion as a thing incredible to those to whom he was speaking, he must have prophesied before Babylon became independent by the overthrow of Nineveh, 625 b.c. For when Babylon had displaced Nineveh, and divided the Empire of the East with Media and Egypt, it was not a thing incredible, that it would invade Judah in their own days, although it was beyond human knowledge to declare that it certainly would. The Babylonian Empire itself lasted only 89 years; and, to human sight, Judah had as much or more to fear from Egypt as from Babylon. The Median Empire also might as well have swallowed up Judah for the time, as the Babylonian.
The relation of Zephaniah to Habakkuk coincides with this. Zephaniah certainly adopted the remarkable words Then when a writer, who uses much the language of those before him, has an idiom which occurs once beside in Holy Scripture, there being many other expressions, which might equally have been used, any one unbiased would think that he adopted the language of the other. Stahelin admits the connection, but inverts the argument, contrary to the character of both prophets), literally Zep 1:7, "Hush at the presence of the Lord God," from Habakkuk's fuller form; Hab 2:20, "the Lord is in His holy temple; hush at His presence all the earth!"
But Zephaniah prophesied under Josiah, before the destruction of Nineveh b.c. 625, which he foretold Zep 2:13. Habakkuk was also, at latest, an earlier contemporary of Jeremiah who, in one place, at least, in his earlier prophecies, used his language as he does so often, of set purpose, that of the prophets before him, in order to show that the fullness of their prophecies was not yet exhausted. But Jeremiah began to prophesy in the 13th year of Josiah 629 b.c. Jer 1:2; Jer 25:3 Habakkuk, on the other hand, joins himself on with the old prophets and Psalms by the employment of language of Isaiah (Hab 2:14, is from Isa 11:9; the form of Hab 1:5 seems suggested by Isa 29:9; the standing on the watch-tower Hab 2:1, occurs in Isa 21:8; the writing on tables occurs in Isa 8:1; Isa 30:8, and Hab 2:2; the imagery, "he bath enlarged his desire as hell," Hab 2:5, was probably suggested by Isa 5:14. Havernick Symb. ad defend. authentiam vat. Ies. c. 13 - xiv. 23. p. 37ff in Delitzsch Hab. p. viii) and perhaps of Micah (Hab 2:12, and Mic 3:10), by the use of language of Deuteronomy (From Deut. 32-33. See below), and by the expansion of a Psalm of Asaph in his own Psalm (Ps. 77:17-21, in Hab 3:10-15), but does not systematically renew their prophecies like Jeremiah or Zephaniah
The ministry then of Habakkuk falls in the latter half of the reign of Manasseh or the earlier half of that of Josiah (for the reign of Amon, being of two years only, is too short to come into account), and there is no decisive evidence for either against the other. In the reign of Manasseh, we are expressly told, that there were prophets, sent to foretell a destruction of Jerusalem as complete as that of Samaria, on account of the exceeding wickedness, into which Manasseh seduced his people. "The Lord spake by His servants, the prophets, saying, Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab; and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down; and I will forsake the remnant of their inheritance, and deliver them into the baud of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and spoil to all their enemies" Kg2 21:11-14.
The sinful great men of Manasseh's and Amon's court and judicature are but too likely to have maintained their power in the early years of the reign of Josiah. For a boy of eight years old (at which age Josiah succeeded his father) Kg2 22:1; Ch2 34:1 could, amid whatsoever sense of right and piety, do little to stem the established wrong and ungodliness of the evil counsellors and judges of his father and grandfather. The sins, which Jeremiah denounces, as the cause of the future captivity of Jerusalem, are the very same, of which Habakkuk complains, "oppression, violence, spoil" Zep 1:9. Jeremiah speaks, in the concrete, of total absence of right judgment (Jer 6:19. "My law they have despised it;" Jer 5:28. "they have not judged the cause, the cause of the fatherless, and they prosper; and the judgment of the poor have they not judged.") as Habakkuk, in the abstract, of the powerlessness of the law (Hab 1:4, "the law is chilled, and judgment will never go forth; for the wicked encompasseth the just; therefore judgment goeth forth perverted.") Zephaniah gives the like picture of those earlier years under Josiah (Zep 1:9. where he too foretells the punishment of those, "which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit" and Zep 3:1-4).
But Habakkuk's description would not suit the later years of Josiah, when judgment and justice were done. "Did not thy father," Jeremiah appeals to Jehoiakim, Jer 22:15-16, "eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it was well with him; he judged the cause of the poor and needy, then it was well with him; was not this to know Me? saith the Lord." (Dr. Davidson rightly says, "the spoiling and violence, there Hab 1:2-3 depicted, refer to the internal condition of the theocracy, not to external injuries" (p. 305); but then he contradicts himself and Jeremiah when he says (p. 305) following Ewald (Proph. ii. 30), "The safest conclusion respecting the time of the prophet, is that he lived in the time of Jehoiakim (606-604 B. C), when the kingdom of Judah was in a good moral condition, justice and righteousness having entered into the life of the people after Josiah's reforms, and idolatry having almost disappeared.") But while there is nothing to preclude his having prophesied in either reign, the earliest tradition places him in the close of the reign of Manasseh .
Modern critics have assigned an earlier or later date to Habakkuk, accordingly as they believed that God did, or did not, reveal the future to man, that there was or was not, superhuman prophecy. Those who denied that God did endow His prophets with knowledge above nature, fell into two classes;
(1) Such as followed Eichhorn's unnatural hypothesis, that prophecies were only histories of the past, spoken of, as if it were still future, to which these critics gave the shameless title of "vaticinia post eventum." . These plainly involved the prophets in fraud.
(2) These who laid down that each prophet lived at a time, when he could, with human foresight, tell what would happen. Would that those who count certainty, as to even a near future, to be so easy a thing, would try their hands at predicting the events of the next few years or months, or even days and, if they fail, acknowledge God's Truth! This prejudice, that there could be no real prophecy, ruled, for a time, all German criticism. It cannot be denied, that "the unbelief was the parent of the criticism, not the criticism of the unbelief." It is simple matter of history, that the unbelief came first; and, if men, a priori, disbelieved that there could be prophecy, it must needs be a postulate of their criticism, that what seemed to be prophecy could not have belonged to a date, when human foresight did not suffice for positive prediction. I will use the words of Delitzsch rather than my own;
"The investigation into the age of Habakkuk could be easily and briefly settled, if we would start from the prejudice, which is the soul of modern criticism, that a prediction of the future, which rested, not on human inferences or on a natural gift of divination, but on supernatural illumination, is impossible. For since Habakkuk foretold the invasion of the Chaldees, he must, in such ease, have come forward at a time, at which natural acuteness could, with certainty, determine bcforehand that sad event; accordingly in or after the time of the battle of Carchemish in the 4th year of Jehoiakim Jer 46:2 606 b.c. In this decisive battle, Nebuchadnezzar defeated Pharaoh Necho, and it was more than probable that the king of Babylon would now turn against Judea, since Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, had been set on the throne by Pharaoh Necho Kg2 23:34-35, and so held with Egypt. And this is in reality the inference of modern critics.
They bring the Chaldaeans so close under the eyes of the prophet, that he could, by way of nature, foresee their invasion; and so much the closer under his eyes, the more deeply the prejudice, that there is no prophecy in the Biblical sense of the word, has taken root in them, and the more consistently they follow it out. "Habakkuk prophesied under Jehoiakim, for," so Jager expresses himself, "since Jehoiakim was on the side of the Egyptians, it was easy to foresee, that; etc." Just so Ewald; "One might readily be tempted to think, that Habakkuk wrote, while the pious king Josiah was still living; but since the first certain invasion of the Chaldaeans, of which our account speaks Kg2 24:1, falls within the reign of king Jehoiakim, somewhat between 608-604 b.c. we must abide by this date."
Hitzig defines the dates still more sharply, according to that principle of principles, to which history with its facts must adapt itself unconditionally. "The prophet announces the arrival of the Chaldaeans in Judea, as something marvelous." Well then, one would imagine, that it would follow from this, that at that time they had not yet come. But no! "Habakkuk," says Hitzig, "introduces the Chaldaeans as a new phenomenon, as yet entirely unknown; he prophesied accordingly at their first arrival into Palestine. But this beyond question falls in the reign of Jehoiakim Kg2 24:2. In Jehoiakim's fourth year, i. e., 606, they had fought the battle at Carchemish; in 605 the Chaldaean army seems to have been on its march; the writing of Habakkuk is placed most correctly in the beginning of the year 604 a.d., accordingly, at the time, when the Chaldaeans were already marching with all speed straight on Jerusalem, and (as Hitzig infers from Hab 1:9) after they had come down from the North along the coast, were now advancing from the West, when they, as Ewald too remarks (resting, like Maurer on Hab 1:2-4) , "already stood in the holy land, trampling everything under foot with irresistible might, and allowing their own right alone to count as right."
Holding fast to that naturalist a priori, we go yet further. In Hab 2:17, the judgment of God is threatened to the Chaldaean, on account of the violence practiced on Lebanon, and the destruction of its animals. Lebanon is, it is said, the holy land; the animals, its inhabitants: in Hab 3:14, Hab 3:17, the prophet sees the hostile hordes storming in: the devastation wrought through the war stands clearly before his eyes. This is not possible, unless the Chaldaean were at that time already established in Judaea. However, then, c. i. was written before their invasion, yet c. ii., iii. must have been written after it. "Wherefore," says Maurer, "since it is evident from Jer 46:2; Jer 36:9, that the Chaldaeans came in the year b.c. 605, in the 9th month of the 5th year of the reign of Jehoiakim, it follows that c. i. was written at that very time, but c. ii. iii. at the beginning of 604 b.c., the 6th of Jehoiakim."
"Turn we away from this cheap pseudo-criticism, with its ready-made results, which sacrifices all sense for historical truth to a prejudice, which it seems to have vowed not to allow to be shaken by anything. It seeks at any cost to disburden itself of any prophecy in Scripture, which can only be explained through supernatural agency; and yet it attains its end, neither elsewhere nor in our prophet. Hab. 2 contains a prediction of the overthrow of the Chaldaean empire and of the sins whereby that overthrow was effected, which has been so remarkably confirmed by history even in details, that that criticism, if it would be true to its principles, must assume that it was written while Cyrus, advancing against Babylon was employed in punishing the river Gyndes by dividing it off into 360 channels." This major premiss, "there can be no super-human prediction of the future" (in other words, "Almighty God, if He knows the future, cannot disclose it!") still lurks under the assumptions of that modern school of so-called criticism.
It seems to be held no more necessary, formally to declare it, than to enounce at full length any axiom of Euclid. Yet it may, on that very ground, escape notice, while it is the unseen mainspring of the theories, put forth in the name of criticism. "That Habakkuk falls at a later time," says Stahelin, "is clear out of his prophecy itself; for he speaks of the Chaldaeans, and the controversy is only, whether he announces their invasion, as Knobel, Umbreit, Delitzsch, Keil hold, or presupposes it, as Ewald, Hitzig, E. Meier maintain. To me the first opinion appears the right, since not only do Hab 1:5 ff plainly relate to the future, but the detailed description of the Chaldaeans points at something which has not yet taken place, at something hitherto unknown, and the terror of the prophet in announcing their coming, Hab 1:12 ff, recurs also Hab 3:1, Hab 3:16-17; and so, I think, that the time of Habakkuk's activity may be p aced very soon after the battle of Carchemish, in the first half of the reign of Jehoiakim, and so his prophecy as contemporary with Jer. 25." "Habakkuk," says DeWette, "lived and prophesied in the Chaldee period. It is, however, matter of dispute at what point of time in this period he lived. Hab 1:5. ff clearly points to its beginning, the reign of Jehoiakim. Even Hab. 3 seems to require no later point of time, since here the destruction of Judah is not yet anticipated. He was then Jeremiah's younger contemporary. Rightly do Perschke, Ranitz, Stickel, Knobel, Hitzig, Ewald, let the prophet prophesy a little before the invasion of the Chaldaeans in Judah, which the analogy of prophecy favors;" for prophecy may still be human at this date, since so far it foretells only, what any one could foresee. A prophet of God foretells, these critics admit, an invasion which all could foresee, and does not foretell, what could not humanly be foreseen, the destruction of Jerusalem. The theory then is saved, and within these limits Almighty God is permitted to send His prophet. Condescending criticism!
Mostly criticism kept itself within these limits, and used nothing more than its axiom, "there was no prophecy." The freshness and power of prophetic diction in Habakkuk deterred most from that other expedient of picking out some two or three words as indicative of a later style. Stahelin however says; "His language too, although on the whole pure and without Aramaisms," (truly so! since there is not even an alleged or imagined Aramaism in his prophecy,) "still betrays, in single cases, the later period." And then he alleges that:
(1) that one verb only occurs beside in the Books of Kings and in Ezekiel;
(2) that another word with the exception of Nahum, occurs only in Jeremiah and Malachi;
(3) that the image of the cup of destiny only occurs in prophecies subsequent to Jeremiah.
A marvelous precision of criticism, which can infer the date of a book from the facts:
(1) that a verb, formed from a noun, occurs four times only in Holy Scripture, in 2 Kings, Habakkuk, and Ezekiel, whereas the noun from which it is derived occurs in a Psalm, which fits no later time than David's; Psa 44:14,
(2) that a word, slightly varied in pronunciation from a common Hebrew word occurs only in Nahum, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, and Malachi, once in each, when that word is the basis of the name of the river Pishon, mentioned in Genesis, and Stahelin himself places Nahum in the reign of Hezekiah; or,
(3) that no prophet before Jeremiah speaks of the image of the" cup of destiny," whereas the portion given by God for good (David, Psa 11:6; Asaph, Psa 75:8) or for ill (David. Psa 16:5; Psa 23:5), occurs under that same image in Psalms of David and Asaph; and if the question is to be begged as to the date of Isa 51:17, Isa 51:22, the corresponding image of "drinking wine, of reeling," occurs in a Psalm of David (Psa 60:5 (Psa 60:3 in English)) and being drunk, but not with wine" is imagery of an earlier chapter in Isaiah; Isa 29:9, the image occurs fully in Obadiah Oba 1:16.
Such criticism is altogether childish. No one would tolerate it, except that it is adduced to support a popular and foregone conclusion. It would be laughed to scorn, were it used by believers in revelation. In the small remains of the Hebrew Scriptures and language, an induction, if it is to be of any value, must be very distinct. The largeness of Greek literature enables critics to single out Homeric, Herodotean, Eschylean, Pindaric words. In Hebrew we meet with hapax legomena (unique occurrences) in perhaps every prophet, in many Psalms; but it requires far more than the occurrence of the word in one single place, to furnish any even probable inference, that it was framed by the Prophet or Psalmist himself. Still less can it be inferred safely that because, in the scanty remains of Hebrew, a word does not occur before, for example, a certain historical book, it did not exist before the date of that book.
Rather the occurrence of any word in language so simple as that of the historical books, is an evidence that it did exist and was in common use at the time. Poets and orators coin words, in order to give full expression for their thoughts. The characteristic of the sacred historians, both of the Old and New Testament, is to relate the facts in most absolute simplicity. It would be a singular "history of the Hebrew language," which should lay down as a principle, that all those are later words, which do not happen to occur before the books of Kings, Habakkuk, or any other prophet, whom this criticism is pleased to rank among the later books. What are we to do with Habakkuk's own hapax legomena? Granted, that he framed some of them, yet it is impossible that he framed them all. As specimens of the results of such a critical principle, that words, occurring for the first time in any book, are characteristic of the date of that word, let us only take roots beginning with "s."
Had then the Hebrew no name for "nails" (as distinct from hooks, pegs,) as Ecclesiastes and Isaiah 41? Or had they none for ceiling a building before the book of Kings; although the ark had a third story, and Lot speaks of "the shadow of my roof?" Or had they none for a "decked vessel" before Jonah although the Indian names of Solomon's imports show that Ophir, whither his navy sailed, was in India, Ophir itself being Abhira in the province of Cutch? Or had they no name for "divided opinions" before Elijah? (Kg1 18:21. As "branches," first occurs in Isaiah, Isa 17:6; Isa 27:10; Isa 10:33; Eze 31:5-6, Eze 31:8) Seed shed, which sprang up in the second year, was known in the Pentateuch but that of the third year would, on that hypothesis, remain unknown until Hezekiah; nor did the Hebrews express to "drag along the ground," until Hushai , and, after him, Jeremiah. They had no name for winter, as distinct from autumn, until the Canticles Sol 2:11, and, but for the act of the Philistines in stopping up Gen 26:15, Gen 26:18. Abraham's wells, it might have been said that Hebrew had no word for this act, until the time of Jehoshaphat .
Or as to the criticism itself, קלס qâlas is to be a later word, because, except in that Psalm of the sons of Korah, it occurs first in the history of Elisha Kg2 2:23. Perhaps it is so rare (and this may illustrate the history of Elisha) because, as used, it seems to have been one of the strongest words in the language for "derision;" at least the verb is used in an intensive form only, and always of strong derision. But then, did the old Hebrews never use derision? Happy exception for one nation, if they never used it wrongly or had no occasion to use it rightly! Yet even though (by a rare exception) Ewald allows the second Psalm to be David's (Job, however, being placed about the 7th century b.c.) the evidence for לעג lâ‛ag, as strong a word, would be of the time of David . "Scorning" "scoffing," (unless Psa 1:1-6 is allowed to be David's) did not begin until Soloman's time "Mocking" was yet later As belongs to a rude people, insult was only shown in acts, of which התעלל is used and from those simple times of the Patriarchs, they had no stronger word than "to laugh at." For this is the only word used in the Pentateuch
But to what end all this? To prove that Habakkuk had no superhuman knowledge of what he foretold? Prophecy occupies, as I said, a subordinate place in Habakkuk. He renews the "burden" of former prophets, both upon his own people and upon the Chaldaeans; but he does not speak even so definitely as they. His office is rather to enforce the connection of sin and punishment: he presupposes the details, which they had declared. Apart from those chapters, which pseudo-criticism denies to Isaiah (Isa. 13; Isa. 14:1-23; Isa. 40 ff), on account of the distinctness of the temporal prophecies, Isaiah had, in plainest words, declared to Hezekiah the carrying away of all the royal treasures to Babylon, and that his off-spring should be eunuchs there; Isa 39:6-7, Micah had declared not only the complete desolation of Jerusalem Mic 3:12, but that the people should be Mic 4:10 "carried to Babylon, and there delivered, there redeemed from the hands of the enemy."
In the 13th year of Josiah, 628 b.c., and so, three years before the fall of Nineveh, while Babylon was still dependent on Nineveh and governed by a viceroy, and while Nabopolassar was still in the service of the king of Nineveh, Jeremiah foretold, that Jer 1:14-16 "evil should break forth from the North upon all the inhabitants of the land, and all the families of the kingdoms of the North shall come and set every one his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem and against all the walls thereof round about and against all the cities of Judah," to execute the judgments of God against them for their wickedness. This was his dirge over his country for 23 years (Jer 25:3, see also Jer 5:15-17; Jer 6:1, Jer 6:22-25; Jer 10:22. Also in the collection of all his prophecies from the time of Josiah, which God commanded him to make in the 4th year of Jehoiakim, Jer 36:2, Jer 36:29, he provides them also with a saving against idolatry (in Chaldee) for their use in their captivity in Chaldaea. Jer 10:11) ere yet there was a token of its fulfillment.
Babylon had succeeded to Nineveh in the West and Southwest, and Judah had fallen to the share of Babylon; but the relation of Josiah to Nabopolassar was of a tributary sovereign, which rebellion only could disturb. The greater part of Nabopolassar's 21 year's reign are almost a blank . Chastisement had come, but from the South, not from the North. Eighteen years had passed away, and Josiah had fallen, in resisting Pharaoh-Necho in discharge of his fealty to the king of Babylon. Pharaoh-Necho had taken away one king of Judah, Jehoahaz, the people's choice, whose continued fealty to Babylon represents their minds, and had set up another, Jehoiakim. For three years Judah's new allegiance was alloweth to continue. Who, but God, could tell the issue of the conflict of those two great armies at Carchemish? Egypt with her allies, the Ethiopians, Phut and Lud, were come, rising up like a flood Jer 46:8-9, covering the earth with her armies, as her rivers, when swollen, made her own land one sea.
Necho had apparently in his alliance all the kings of the countries West of the Euphrates: for to them all, in connection with Egypt and subordinate to her, does Jeremiah at that moment give to drink the cup of the wrath of God; to Jer 25:19-24. Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants and his princes and all his people, and all the mingled people (his auxiliaries) and all the kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines and Ashkelon and Azzah and Ekron and the remnant of Ashdod; Edom and Moab and the children of Ammon; and all the kings of Tyrus, and all the kings of Zidon and the kings of the isle beyond the sea (probably Caphtor Jer 47:4, or Crete, or Cyprus) Dedan and Tema and Buz, and those whose hair is shorn (Arabians) and all the kings of Arabia and all the kings of the mingled people that dwell in the desert, and all the kings of Zimri . It was a mighty gathering.
All the kings of Elam, all the kings of the Medes, all the kings of the North far and near, all was hostile to Babylon; for all were to drink of the cup beforehand, at the hands of the king of Babylon, and then the king of Sheshach (Babylon) was to drink after them. Necho was one of the most enterprising monarchs . Nabopolassar had shown no signs of enterprise. Nebuchadnezzar, the first and last conqueror of the Babylonian empire, though the alliance with Media and his father's empire had been cemented by his marriage, had, as far as we know, remained inactive during 20 years of his father's life . He was as yet untried. So little did he himself feel secure as to his inheritance of the throne, even after his success at the head of his father's army, that his rapid march across the desert, with light troops, to secure it, and its preservation for him by the chief priest, are recorded in a very concise history .
Neither Egypt nor Jehoiakim foresaw the issue. Defeat taught neither. Two voices only gave, in God's name, one unheeded warning. Pharaoh Hophra, the Apries of Herodotus, succeeded Pharaoh Necho in his self-confidence, his aggressions, his defeat. "I am against time," God says Eze 29:3, "Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own and I have made it for myself." "It is said," relates Herodotus (Herodotus ii. 16), "that Apries believed that there was not a god which could east him down from his eminence, so firmly did he think that he had established himself in his kingdom."
For a time, Nebuchadnezzar must have been hindered by Eastern wars, since, on Jehoiakim's rebellion and perjury, he sent only bands of the Chaldees, with bands of tributary nations, the Syrians, Moabites, Ammonites, against him Kg2 24:2. But not in his time only, even after the captivity under his son Jehoiachin and his men of might Kg2 24:14-16, the conviction that Nebuchadnezzar could be resisted, still remained in the time of Zedekiah both in Egypt and Judah. Judah would have continued to hold under Babylonia that same position toward Egypt which it did under Persia, only with subordinate kings instead of governors. Apart from God's general promise of averting evil on repentance, Jeremiah, too, expressly tells Israel Jer 4:1, "If thou wilt put away thine abominations out of My sight, thou shalt not remove;" (Jer 7:7, add Jer 17:25-26; Jer 22:2-5), "Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, forever and ever."
And "in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim," Jer 26:1, (Jer 26:12, add Jer 26:2-3), "The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words which ye have heard. Therefore, now amend your ways and your doings and obey the voice of the Lord your God, and the Lord will repent Him of the evil that He hath pronounced against you." Still later, to Zedekiah Jer 27:11, "The nations that bring their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, "them will I let remain still in their own land, saith the Lord; and they shall till it and dwell therein" Jer 35:15. "I have sent unto you all My servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, Return ye now every man from his evil way and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to year fathers." Even on the very verge of the capture of Jerusalem, Jeremiah promised to Zedekiah Jer 38:17, "If thou wilt go forth to the king of Babylon's princes; - this city shall not be burned with fire."
Pharaoh Hophra was still strong enough to raise the siege of Jerusalem, when invested by the Chaldaean army Jer 37:5. Jeremiah had the king, his princes, his prophets, all the people of the land against him, because he prophesied that Jerusalem should be burned with fire, that those already taken captives should not return, until the whole had been carried away, and the seventy yearn of captivity were accomplished Jer 25:11-12; Jer 29:10. The warning and the promise of Jeremiah's inaugural vision had its accomplishment (Jer 1:18-19, renewed Jer 15:20). "I have made thee a defensed city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, against the king of Judah, against the princes thereof and against the people 'of the land; and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee." Had it been matter of human foresight, how was it, that all nations, all their politicians, all their wise men, all their prophets, all Judah, kings, priests, princes, people, were blinded (as in Him of Whom Jeremiah was a shadow,) and Jeremiah alone saw? "Vaticinia post eventum" are, in one sense, easy; namely, to imagine, after an event has taken place, that one could have foreseen it.
And yet who, after the retreat to Corunna, could have foreseen the victories of the Peninsular war? Or, when that tide of 647,000 men was roiling on toward Russia, who could imagine that only a small fraction of those hosts should return, that they should capture Moscow, but find it a tomb; and hunger and cold, reaching at last to 36 degrees below Zero, should destroy more than the sword? "What was the principal adversary of this tremendous power? By whom was it checked and resisted and put down? By none and by nothing but the direct and manifest interposition of God."
The distinctness and perseverance of the prophecy are the more remarkable, because the whole of the greatness of the Chaldaean empire was that of one man. Assyria, in this one case, overreached itself in its policy of transporting conquered populations. It had, probably to check the rebellions of Babylon, settled there a wild horde, which it hoped would neither assimilate with its people, nor itself rebel. Isaiah relates the fact in simple words Isa 23:13. Behold the land of the Chaldaeans; this people was not; the Assyrian founded, not that it should cease to be, it for them that dwelt in the wilderness. This does not seem to me necessarily to imply, that the wild people, for whom Assyria founded it, were Chaldaeans or Kurds, whom the king of Assyria had brought from their Northern dwellings in the Carduchaean mountains near Armenia, where Sennacherib conquered.
Isaiah simply uses the name, the land of the Chaldaeans, as does Jeremiah (Jer 24:5; Jer 50:8, Jer 50:25; Jer 51:4; and, united with the name Babylon, Jer 25:12; Jer 50:1, Jer 50:45; Eze 12:13, as Isaiah does Chasdim alone, Isa 48:14, Isa 48:20) after him, as the name of Babylonia; the ward Babylonia, had it existed, might have been substituted for it. Of this, he says, that it was not, i. e., was of no account but that Assur founded it for wild tribes, whom he placed there. Whence he brought those tribes, Isaiah does not say. Aeschylus (although indeed in later times) as well as Isaiah and Jeremiah, speak of the population of Babylon, as mingled of various nations; and the language is too large to be confined simply to its merchant-settlers. In Aeschylus "the all-mingled crowd," which "it sends out in long array," are its military contingents. it is its whole population, of which Isaiah and Jeremiah say, it will flee, each to his own land Isa 13:14 "It (Babylon) shall be as a chased roe, and as a sheep which no man gathereth; they shall, every man, turn to his own people, and flee every man to his own land. For fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one to his people: Jer 50:16. And they shall flee, every one to his own land."
Thus, Babylonia received that solid accession of strength which ultimately made it a powerful people, 60 years before the beginning of the reign of Josiah; its ancient and new elements would take some time to blend: they did not assume importance until the capture of Nineveh; nor had Judah any reason to dread anything from them, until itself rebelled, early in the reign of Jehoiakim. But 18 years before the death of Josiah, while Judah was a trusted and faithful tributary kingdom, Jeremiah foretold that evil should come upon them from the North, i. e., as he himself explains it, from the Chaldees .
Even then if Habakkuk were brought down to be a contemporary of Jeremiah, still in the 13th year of Josiah, there was nothing to fear. Judah was not in the condition of an outlying country, which Babylonian ambition might desire to reduce into dependence on itself. It was already part of the Babylonian empire, having passed into it, in the partition with Assyria, and hall no more to fear from it, than any of the conquered nations of Europe have now from those who have annexed them, unless they rebel. God alone knew the new ambition of the kings of the smitten and subdued Egypt, their momentary success, Josiah's death, Judah's relapse into the old temptation of trusting in Egyypt - all, condilions of the fulfillment of Habakkuk's and Jeremiah's prophecies. Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, Zidon, sent embassadors to Zedekiah, to concert measures of resistance against Nebachadnezzar; Jer 27:3, they were encouraged by their Jer 27:9, diviners, dreamers, enchanters, sorcerers, which spoke to them, ye shall not serve the king of Babylon. One alone told them that resistance would but bring upon them destruction, that submission was their only safety; there was prophecy against prophecy, (Jer 5:12-14; Jer 14:14-16; Jer 23:16-17, Jer 23:21, Jer 23:25-27, Jer 23:30 ff; Jer 27:14-18; 28), among these nations, in Jerusalem, in Babylon Jer 29:8-9, Jer 29:15, Jer 29:21, Jer 29:24; the recent knowledge of the political aspect of Babylon deterred not the false prophets there; all, with one voice, declared the breaking the yoke of the king of Babylon: Jeremiah only saw, that they were framing for themselves Jer 28:13-14 yokes of iron. Had Jehoiakim or Zedekiah, their nobles, and their people possessed that human foresight which that pseudo-critical school holds to be so easy, Judah had never gone into captivity to Babylon. But He Who fashioneth the heart of man knoweth alone the issue of the working of those hearts, which He overrules.
From the necessity of its case, the pseudo-critical school lowers down the words, in which Habakkuk declares the marvelousness of the event which he foretells, and the unbelief of his people. "Look well," he bids them, "marvel ye, marvel on; for I will work a work in your days which ye will not believe, when it shall be told you." It is "something which had not hitherto been, something hitherto unknown," says Stahelin . Yet things hitherto unknown, are not therefore incredible. "It is clear from the contents," says Bleek "that the Chaldees had at that time already extended to the West their expeditions of conquest and destruction, and on the other side, that this had only lately begun and that they were not yet come to Judah and Jerusalem, so that here they were hitherto little known." "The appearance of the Chaldees as world-conquerors was, in Judah, then a quite new phenomenon," says Ewald . "The description of the Chaldees altogether is of such sort, that they appear as a people still little known to the Jews," says Knobel . "That which is incredible for the people consists therein, that God employs just the Chaldees, such as they are described in what follows, for the unexpected chastisement of Israel," says even Umbreit .
What was there incredible, that, when the king of Jerusalem had revolted from Babylon, and had sided with Egypt, its chief enemy, the Chaldaeans, should come against it? As soon might it be said to be incredible that France should invade Prussia, when its hundred thousands were on their march toward the Rhine. During the reign of Manasseh it was incredible enough, that any peril should impend from Babylon; for Babylon was still subordinate to Assyria: in the early years of Josiah it was still incredible, for his 31 years were years of peace, until Pharaoh Necho disputed the cis-Euphratensian countries with Babylon. When the then East and West came to Carehemish, to decide whether the empire should be, with the East or with the West, nothing was beyond human foresight but the result. Expectation lately hung suspended, perplexed between the forces of Europe. None, the most sagacious, could predict for a single day.
Men might surmise; God only could predict. For 23 years Jeremiah foretold, that the evil would come from the North, not from the South. The powers were well-balanced. Take Habakkuk's prophecy as a whole - not that the Chaldaeans should invade Judaea (which in Jehoiakim's time was already certain) but that Egypt should be a vain help, and that the Chaldaeans should mesh its people like the fishes of the sea, yet they should still have to disgorge them, because God's judgment would come upon them also. This too were incredible. Incredible it was to the kings, the wise, the politicians, the political prophets of Judaea, that Jerusalem itself should be taken. Incredible it was, and there was much human reason for the incredulity. Egypt and Assyria had been matched during centuries. Until the Sargonides, Egypt had, during centuries, the unbroken advantage. But the Sargonides had passed away.
Yet Chaldaea had not, alone, prevailed against Assyria. Why should the yet untried Babylonian be so certain of success, when the whole West of the Euphrates was banded together against him, and fought within their own ground? The kings of Elam add the kings of the Medes Jer 25:25 were now, as under Cyrus, enemies of Babylon. Babylon had enemies before and behind. But God had raised up Nebuchadnezzar to be the hammer of the whole earth Jer 50:23 and had given those cis-Euphratensian lands which leagued against him into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, God says Jer 27:6-7, and all nations shall serve him and his son and his son's son, until the very time of his land come; and then many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him. Whence this combination of almost superhuman but short-lived might, this certainty of wide sway down to the third generation, this certainty of its cessation afterward?
There was no time for decay. Alexander's empire was yet more short-lived, but it was divided among his successors. Alexander had, by his genius, founded his own empire, which the able generals, whom he had trained, divided among themselves. In the Chaldaean empire, we have an enterprising conspirator, who seizes an occasion, but does little beside which is recorded, nothing alone, nothing, beside that first grasp at power, for himself. He appears only as the ally of Media: (Herodotus i. 74) then a son, a world-wide conqueror, with a genius for consolidating the empire which he inherited, forming an impregnable city, which should also be a province, filling his empire with fortresses , but leaving none after him to maintain what he had so consolidated. By whom could this be foreknown save by Him, with Whom alone it is, to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant? Jer 1:10)
It has been common to praise the outside of Habakkuk's prophecy, the purity of his language, the sublimity of his imagery. Certainly it is, humanly speaking, magnicent: his measured cadence is impressive in its simplicity. He too has words and forms, which are unique to him among the remains of Hebrew. But his eminence is rather the condensed thought, expressed often in the simplest words; as when, having carried on the tide of victory of the Chaldaean to its height, everything human subdued before him, all resistance derided, he gathers up his fall and its cause in those eight words Hab 1:11, "Then sweeps-he-by, wind, and-passes, and-is-guilty; this his-strength (is) his-god." Yet more striking is the religious greatness, in which he sums up the meaning of all this oppressiveness of man Hab 1:12. "Thou, Lord, has placed him for judgment, and, O Rock, has founded him to correct." Or, take the picture, prolonged relatively to his conciseness, of the utter helplessness of God's people, meshed, hooked, dragged in their net; their captors worshiping the instrument of their success, revelling in their triumph, and then the sudden question Hab 1:17, "Shall they therefore empty their net?" He waits to hear the answer from God. Or, again, the antiphonal dirge of the materials of the blood-built city over him Hab 2:11. Or the cutting off of every stay, sustenance, hope, promise of God, and, amid this universal crash, what does he? It is not as the heathen , "fearless will the ruins strike him:" but, Hab 3:10, "And I," as if it were the continuance and consequence of the failure of all human things; "I would exult in the Lord, I would bound for joy in the God of my salvation." His faith triumphs most, when all, in human sight, is lost.
"Ill which Thou blessest is most good,
And unblest good is ill;
And all is right which seems most wrong,
So it be Thy sweet Will."
Bible
Habakkuk Chapter 1
Habakkuk 1:1
hab 1:1
The burden - On the word "burden" see the note at Nah 1:1.
Which Habakkuk the prophet did see - The prophet's name signifies "strong embrace." The word in its intensive form is used both of God's enfolding the soul within His tender supporting love , and of man clinging and holding fast to divine wisdom Pro 4:8. It fits in with the subject of his prophecy, faith, cleaving fast to God amid the perplexities of things seen. Dion.: "He who is spiritually Habakkuk, cleaving fast to God with the arms of love, or enfolding Him after the manner of one holily wrestling, until he is blessed, enlightened, and heard by Him, is the seer here." "Let him who would in such wise fervidly embrace God and plead with Him as a friend, praying earnestly for the deliverance and consolation of himself and others, but who sees not as yet, that his prayer is heard, make the same holy plaint, and appeal to the clemency of the Creator." (Jer. Abarbanel has the like: "He strengthens himself in pleading his cause with God as to the prosperity of Nebuchadnezzar as if he were joined with God for the cause of his people" Preface to Ezekiel). "He is called 'embrace' either because of his love to the Lord; or because he engages in a contest and strife and (so to speak) wrestling with God." For no one with words so bold ventured to challenge God to a discussion of His justice and to say to Him, "Why, in human affairs and the government of this world is there so great injustice?"
The prophet - The title, "the prophet," is added only to the names of Habakkuk, Haggai, Zechariah. Habakkuk may have added it to his name instead because he prominently expostulates with God, like the Psalmists, and does not speak in the name of God to the people. The title asserts that he exercised the pastoral office of the prophets, although not directly in this prophecy.
Did see - Cyril: "God multiplied visons, as is written Hos 12:10, and Himself spoke to the prophets, disclosing to them beforehand what should be, and all but exhibiting them to sight, as if already present. But that they determined not to speak from their own, but rather transmit to us the words from God, he persuades us at the outset, naming himself a prophet, and showing himself full of the grace belonging thereto."
Habakkuk 1:2
hab 1:2
O Lord, how long shall I cry - Literally, "how long have I cried so intensely to Thee?" Because it is always the cry of the creature to the One who alone can hear or help - its God. Of this cry the Prophet expresses that it had already lasted long. In that long past he had cried out to God but no change had come. There is an undefined past, and this still continues.
How long - as Asaph cries, "how long hast Thou been," and, it is implied, wilt Thou be "wroth against the prayer of Thy people?" as we should say," how long shall Thy wrath continue?" The words which the prophet uses relate to domestic strife and wrong between man and man; violence, iniquity, strife, contention Hab 1:3, nor are any of them used only of the oppression of a foreign enemy. Also, Habakkuk complains of injustice too strong for the law, and the perversion of justice Hab 1:4. And upon this, the sentence is pronounced. The enemy is to be sent for judgment and correction Hab 1:12. They are then the sins of Judah which the prophet rehearses before God, in fellow-suffering with the oppressed. God answers that they shall be removed, but by the punishment of the sinners.
Punishment does not come without sin, nor does sin endure without punishment. It is one object of the Old Testament to exhibit the connection between sin and punishment. Other prophets, as commissioned by God, first denounced the sins and then foretold the punishment of the impenitent. Habakkuk appeals to God's justice, as requiring its infliction. On this ground too this opening of the prophecy cannot be a complaint against the Chaldees, because their wrong would be no ground of the punishment which the prophet denounced, but the punishment itself, requiting wrong to man through human wrong.
Cyril: "The prophet considers the person of the oppressed, enduring the intolerable insolence and contumely of those accustomed to do wrong, and very skillfully doth he attest the unutterable lovingkindness of God, for he exhibits Him as very forbearing, though accustomed to hate wickedness, but that He doth not immediately bring judgment upon the offenders, he showed clearly, saying that so great is His silence and long-suffering, that there needeth a strong cry, in that some practice intolerable covetousness against others, and use an unbridled insolence against the weak, for his very complaints of God's endurance of evil attest the immeasurable loving kindness of God."
Cyril: "You may judge hence of the hatred of evil among the saints. For they speak of the woes of others as their own. So saith the most wise Paul Co2 11:29, who is weak and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? and bade us Rom 12:15 weep with those who weep, showing that sympathy and mutual love are especially becoming to the saints."
The prophet, through sympathy or fellow-suffering with the sufferers, is as one of them. He cries for help, as himself needing it, and being in the misery, in behalf of which he prays. He says, "How long shall I cry?" standing, as it were, in the place of all, and gathering all their cries into one, and presenting them before God. It is the cry, in one, of all which is wronged to the God of Justice, of all suffering to the God of love. "When shall this scene of sin, and confusion, and wrong be at an end, and the harmony of God's creation be restored? How long shall evil not exist only, but prevail?" It is the cry of the souls under the altar Rev 6:10, "How long, O Lord, Holy and True, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" It is the voice of the oppressed against the oppressor; of the Church against the world; weary of hearing the Lord's Name blasphemed, of seeing wrong set up on high, of holiness trampled underfoot. It is in its highest sense His Voice, who, to sanctify our longings for deliverance, said in the days of His Flesh Psa 22:2, "I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not."
Even cry out - aloud (it is the cry of anguish) Dion.: "We cry the louder, the more we cry from the heart, even without words; for not the moving of the lips, but the love of the heart sounds in the ears of God."
Even cry out unto Thee. - Whether as an exclamation or a continuance of the question, How long? The prophet gathered in one the prolonged cry of past and future. He had cried out; he should cry on, "Violence." He speaks as if the one word, jerked out, as it were, wrung forth from his inmost soul, was, "Violence," as if he said this one word to the God of justice and love.
Habakkuk 1:3
hab 1:3
Why dost Thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold - , or rather, "Why beholdest Thou grievance?" God seemed to reverse what He had said by Balaam Num 23:21, "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, and hath not seen grievousness in Israel"; and in the Psalms Psa 10:14, "Thou hast seen, for thou (emphatic) beholdest grievousness and wrong, to put it in Thy hand," i. e., Thou layest it up in Thy hand, to cast it back on the head of the evildoer. Now He seemed to behold it and leave it unpunished, which yet Habakkuk says to God below, He could not do Hab 1:13; "Thou canst not look upon iniquity." What then did this mean? What was the solution?
All forms and shapes of sin are multiplied; oppressive "violence" , such as "covered the earth" before the flood, and brought it down; which Nineveh had to put away Jon 3:8, and it was spared; "iniquity," i. e., what is unequal and contrary to truth, falsehood.
Grievance - literally, burdensome wearisome "toil"; "spoiling," or open robbery; "strife and contention," both through perversion of the law and, without it, through endless jarrings of man with man. Sin recoils on the sinner. So what he beholds is not "iniquity" only, but (in the same word) "vanity"; "grievance"; which is a burden both to him who suffers, and yet more to him who inflicts it. For nothing is so burdensome as sin, nothing so empty as wickedness. And while to him who suffers, the suffering is temporal, to him who inflicts it, it is eternal. And yet the prophet and whose prays against ungodliness, "must commiserate him who doth wrong yet more, since they hurt what is most precious, their own soul, and that eternally" . All then is full of evil. Wherever the prophet looks, some fresh violence is before him; it confronts him on every side; "strife hath arisen" , come up, exists where it was not before; "contention lifteth itself" on high, bowing down all beside.
Habakkuk 1:4
hab 1:4
Therefore - i. e., Because God seemed not to awake to avenge His own cause, people promised themselves that they might sin on with impunity. Sin produces sin, and wrong produces wrong; it spreads like an infectious disease, propagating itself, and each, to whom it reaches, adds to its poison. At last, it reached those also, who should be in God's stead to restrain it. The divine law itself is silenced, by the power of the wicked, by the sin of the judge, the hopelessness of all. When all around is evil, even those not yet lost are tempted to think; "Why should I be other than they? What evil befalls them? Why stand alone?" Even a Psalmist Psa 73:15, Psa 73:12-13 speaks as if tempted to "speak even as they. These are the ungodly who prosper in the world; they increase in riches; verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency;" and Solomon Ecc 8:11, "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil."
The law is slacked - literally "is chilled" (as we say, "is paralyzed"), through lack of the fire of love. This is what our Lord says Mat 24:12, Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. The divine law, the source of all right, being chilled in people's hearts, "judgment," i. e., the sentence of human justice, as conformed to divine justice, "doth never go forth." Human sense of right is powerless, when there is not the love of God's law. It seems always ready to act, but always falls short, like an arrow from an unstrung bow. The man seems always about to do right; he judges, sees, aright - all but does it - yet, at last, he always fails. "It goes not forth. The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth" Isa 37:3.
For the wicked doth compass about the righteous, laying snares for him, as the Jews for our Lord; evil is too strong for a weak will to do right, and overbears it. Pilate sought in many ways, how he might deliver Jesus, yet he finally did deliver Christ into their hands.
Therefore wrong judgment proceedeth - literally, "judgment proceedeth wrested." He had said, "it never goes forth;" never, that is, in its true character; for, when it does "go forth," it is distorted. Dion.: "For gifts or favor or fear or hate the guiltless are condemned trod the guilty acquitted, as saith the Psalmist Psa 82:2, 'How long will ye judge unjustly and accept the persons of the ungodly?'" Theoph.: "'Judgment goes forth perverted' in the seat of man's judgment (the soul), when, bribed by the pleasures of sense, it leans to the side of things seen, and the ungodly one, the rebel angel, besets and overpowers him who has the sense of right; for it is right that things seen should give way to things unseen Co2 4:18; 'for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.'" Why then all this? And how long? Why does God bring it before him and He who "is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, behold grievance," which His Holy Eyes could not endure? Neither the unseen presence of God nor the mission of the prophet checks. If he rebukes, no one hearkened; if he intercedes for sinners, or against sin, God made as though He would not hear. God answers that, though to man's impatience the time seems long, judgment shall come, and that, suddenly and speedily. While the righteous is enquiring, "how long?" and the wicked is saying Mat 24:48, "My Lord delayeth His coming," He is come, and seen in the midst of them.
Habakkuk 1:5
hab 1:5
Behold ye among the heathen - The whole tone of the words suddenly changes. The Jews flattered themselves that, being the people of God, He would not fulfill His threats upon them. They had become like the pagan in wickedness; God bids them look out among them for the instrument of His displeasure. It was an aggravation of their punishment, that God, who had once chosen them, would now choose these whom He had not chosen, to chasten them. So Moses had foretold; Deu 32:21, "They have moved Me to jealousy by that which is not God; they have provoked Me to anger with their vanities; and I will move them to jealousy with not-a-people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation." There were no tokens of the storm which should sweep them away, yet on the horizon. No forerunners yet. And so He bids them gaze on among the nations, to see whence it should come. They might have expected it from Egypt. It should come whence they did not expect, with a fierceness and terribleness which they imagined not.
Regard - look narrowly, weigh well what it portends.
And wonder marvelously - literally, "be amazed, amazed." The word is doubled to express how amazement should follow upon amazement; when the first was passing away, new source of amazement should come; for .
I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you. - So incredible it will be, and so against their wills! He does not say, "ye would not believe if it were told you;" much less "if it were told you of others;" in which case the chief thought would be left unexpressed. No condition is expressed. It is simply foretold, what was verified by the whole history of their resistance to the Chaldees until the capture of the city; "Ye will not believe, when it shall be told you." So it ever is. Man never believes that God is in earnest until His judgments come. So it was before the flood, and with Sodom, and with Lot's sons-in-law; so it was with Ahab and Jezebel; so with this destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans, and what is shadowed forth, by the Romans. So Jeremiah complained Jer 5:12, "They have belied the Lord, and said, it is not He; neither shall evil come upon us; neither shall we see sword nor famine," and Jer 20:7-8, "I am in derision daily; everyone mocketh me. For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the Lord was made a reproach unto me, and a derision daily;" and Isaiah Isa 53:1, "Who hath believed our report?" and John the Immerser speaks as though it were desperate Mat 3:7; "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" and our Lord tells them Mat 23:38; Luk 13:35, "Your house is left unto you desolate."
And yet they believed not, but delivered Him up to be put to death, lest that should be, which did come, because they put Him to death Joh 11:48. "If we let Him thus alone, all people will believe on Him; and the Romans shall come, and take away both our place and nation." Therefore, Paul applies these words to the Jews in his day, because the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadnezzar was an image of the destruction of the second temple (which by divine appointment, contrary to man's intention, took place on the same day ), and the Chaldaeans were images of the Romans, that second Babylon, pagan Rome; and both foreshowed the worse destruction by a fiercer enemy - the enemy of souls - the spiritual wasting and desolation which came upon the Jew first, and which shall come on all who disobey the gospel. So it shall be to the end. Even now, the Jews believe not, whose work their own dispersion is; His, who by them was crucified, but who has "all power in heaven and in earth" Mat 28:18. The Day of Judgment will come like a thief in the night to those who believe not or obey not our Lord's words.
Habakkuk 1:6
hab 1:6
For lo - So God announces a future, in which His Hand shall be greatly visible, whether more or less distant. In His sight it is present.
I raise up - God uses the free will and evil passions of people or devils to His own ends; and so He is said to "raise up" those whom He allows to be stirred up against His people, since the events which His Providence permits, favor their designs, and it rests with Him to withhold them. They lift themselves up for some end of covetousness or pride. But there is a higher order of things, in which God orders their actions to fulfill His righteousness by their iniquities.
The Chaldaeans, that bitter - מר. In Jdg 18:25; Sa2 17:8, the less concise נפשׁ מר.
And hasty nation - נמהר as Isa 32:4. Jerome: "To its might and warlike boldness almost all the Greeks who have written histories of the barbarians, witness."
Which shall march through the breadth of the land - rather, "the earth," literally "to the breadths of the earth," reaching to its whole length and breadth, all its dimensions as in the description of Gog and Magog Rev 20:8-9, "the number of whom is as the sand of the sea; and they went up on the breadth of the earth; unhindered, not pent up, but spreading abroad, where they will, over the whole earth." All before it, is one wide even plain which it overspreads and covers, like a flood, and yet is not spent nor exhausted.
To possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs - As God's people had done, so should it be done to them. Spoiling and violence within Hab 1:2-4 attract oppression from without. The overcharged atmosphere casts down the lightning upon them. They had expelled the weak from their dwelling Mic 2:9; others shall possess theirs. Yet this scourge too shall pass by, since, although the Chaldaean did God's Will, He willed it not, but His own (See Isa 10:6-7). The words, "not theirs," literally, "not to him" stand with a mysterious fullness of meaning. The dwelling places not being his by right, shall not remain his, although given to him, while God wills.
Habakkuk 1:7
hab 1:7
They are terrible - איום 'âyôm occurs here only and Sol 6:4, Sol 6:10, compared with the "bannered host," but the root is common in אימה 'ēymâh.
And dreadful - He describes them, first in themselves, then in act. They are terrible, and strike fear through their very being, their known character, before they put it forth in act.
Their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves. - Judgment had gone forth in God's people wrested Hab 1:4; now shall it go forth against them at the mere will of their master, who shall own no other rule or Lord or source of his power. His own will shall be his only law for himself and others. His elevation is too is, in his own thought, from himself. He is self-sufficing; he holds from no other, neither from God nor man. His "dignity" is self-sustained; His "judgment" is irresponsible, as if there were none Ecc 5:8 higher than he. He has, like all great world-powers, a real dignity and majesty. He infuses awe. The dignity is real but faulty, as being held independently of God. This is a character of antichrist Dan 11:36; Th2 2:4, a lawless insolence, a lifting up of himself.
Habakkuk 1:8
hab 1:8
Their horses are swifter - literally, lighter, as we say "light of foot"
Than leopards - The wild beast intended is the panther, the lightest, swiftest, fiercest, most bloodthirsty of beasts of prey "It runs most swiftly and rushes brave and straight. You would say, when you saw it, that it is borne through the air." Cyril: "It bounds exceedingly and is exceedingly light to spring down on whatever it pursues."
More fierce - o
Than the evening wolves - Compare Jer 5:6, i. e., than they are when fiercest, going forth to prey when urged to rabidness by hunger the whole day through. Such had their own judges been Zep 3:3, and by such should they be punished. The horse partakes of the fierceness of his rider in trampling down the foe .
Their horsemen shall spread themselves - literally, widespread are their horsemen
And their horsemen from far shall come - Neither distance of march shall weary them, nor diffusion weaken them. So should Moses' prophecy be again fulfilled (Deu 28:49-50, מרחוק occurs in both.) "The Lord shall raise against thee a nation from far, from the ends of the earth, as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to the young."
They shall fly as the eagle that hasteth - literally, hasting
To eat - Jerome: "not to fight, for none shall withstand; but with a course like the eagle's, to whom all fowl are subdued, hasting but to eat." Behold, Jeremiah says of Nebuchadnezzar Jer 48:40, he shall fly as an eagle and spread his wings over Moab; and, he repeats the words Jer 49:22, over Bozrah. Our pursuers, Jeremiah says Lam 4:19, are swifter than the eagles of the heavens. Ezekiel likens him to Eze 17:3 "a great eagle with great wings full of feathers;" in Daniel's vision he is Dan 7:4 "a lion with eagle's wings."
Habakkuk 1:9
hab 1:9
They shall come all for violence - "Violence" had been the sin of Judah Hab 1:3-4, and now violence shall be her punishment. It had been ever before the prophet; all were full of it. Now should violence be the very end, one by one, of all the savage horde poured out upon them; they all, each one of them come for violence.
Their faces shall sup up as the east wind - קדומה occurs else only in Eze 11:1, and Eze 11:16 times in Ezek. 40-48 of the ideal city and temple as "Eastwards." But except in the far-fetched explanation of Abarb (mentioned also by Tanchum) that they ravaged, not to settle but to return home with their booty, "Eastwards" would have no meaning. Yet "forwards" is just as insulated a rendering as that adopted by John and D. Kimchi, A. E. Rashi, Oh. Sip., Sal. B. Mel. Arab Tr. (following Jonathan) "the East-wind; קדומה standing as a metaphor instead of a simile the הbeing regarded as paragogic, as in לילה. So also Symmachus ἄνεμος καύσων anemos kausōn. Jerome: "ventus urens.") "As at the breath of the burning wind all green things dry up, so at sight of these all shall be wasted." They shall sweep over everything impetuously, like the east wind, scorching, blackening, blasting, swallowing up all, as they pass over, as the East wind, especially in the Holy Land, sucks up all moisture and freshness.
And they shall gather the captivity - i. e., the captives
As the sand - countless, as the particles which the East wind raises, sweeping over the sand-wastes, where it buries whole caravans in one death.
Habakkuk 1:10
hab 1:10
And they - literally, "he," the word stands emphatically, he, alone against all the kings of the earth
Shall scoff at the kings - and all their might taking them away or setting them up at his pleasure and caprice, subduing them as though in sport
And princes - literally, grave and majestic
Shall be a scorn unto them - i. e. him. Compare Job 41:29. So Nebuchadnezzar bound Jehoiakim Ch2 36:6; Dan 1:2 "in fetters to carry him to Babylon;" then, on his submission made him for three years a tributary king Kg2 24:1, then on his rebellion sent bands of Chaldees and other tributaries against him Kg2 24:2; and then, or when Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin, Jeremiah's prophecy was fulfilled, that he should "be buried with the burial of an ass, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem Jer 22:19, his dead body cast out in the day to the heat and in the night to the frost" Jer 36:30. On the one hand, the expression "slept with his fathers" does not necessarily imply that Jehoiakim died a peaceful death, since it is used of Ahab Kg1 22:40 and Amaziah Kg2 14:20, Kg2 14:22 (in the other, Jeremiah's prophecy was equally fulfilled, if the insult to his corpse took place when Nebuchadnezzar took away Jehoiachin three months after his father's death. See Daniel. Josephus attributes both the death and disgrace to Nebuchadnezzar: Ant. x. 6. 3), then Nebuchadnezzar took away Jehoiachin; then Zedekiah. He had also many kings captive with him in Babylon. For on his decease Evil-Merodach brought Jehoiachin out of his prison after 27 years of imprisonment, "and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon" Kg2 25:27-28. Daniel says also to Nebuchadnezzar Dan 2:37-38; Dan 4:22, "Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power and strength and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven hath He given into thine hand and hath made thee ruler over all."
They (he) shall deride every strong hold - as, aforetime, when God helped her, Jerusalem laughed the Assyrian to scorn Isa 38:22.
For they (he) shall heap dust, and take it - as Nebuchadnezzar did Tyre, whose very name (Rock) betokened its strength. Jerome: "He shall come to Tyre, and, casting a mound in the sea, shall make an island a peninsula, and, amid the waves of the sea, land shall give an entrance to the city."
The mount, or heaped-up earth, by which the besiegers fought on a level with the besieged, or planted their engines at advantage, was an old and simple form of siege, especially adapted to the great masses of the Eastern armies. It was used in David's time Sa2 20:15; and by the Assyrians Kg2 19:32, Egyptians Ezra 17:17, Babylonians (Jer 6:6; Jer 32:24; Jer 33:4; Eze 4:2; Eze 21:22 (Eze 21:27 in Hebrew), Eze 26:8), and afterward, the Persians (Herodotus i. 162). Here he describes the rapidity of the siege. To heap up dust and to capture were one and the same thing.
It needed no great means; things slight as the dust sufficed in the hands of those employed by God. Portion by portion Kg2 24:7, "the King of Babylon took; all that pertained to the king of Egypt, from the river of Egypt unto the river Euphrates."
Habakkuk 1:11
hab 1:11
Then shall his mind change - or, better, "Then he sweeps by, חלף châlaph is used of the overflowing of a river, Isa 8:8, of a wind chasing, Isa 21:1, of the invisible presence of God passing by, Job 9:11, or a spirit, Job 4:15, of the swift passing of our days, like ship or eagle, Job 10:26, of idols utterly passing away. Isa 2:18, of rain past and gone, Sol 2:11. It is, together with עבר ‛âbar, used of transgressing God's law Isa 24:5. It is always intransitive, except as piercing the temples of man Jdg 5:26, or himself Job 20:24.
A wind - רוח rûach, metaphor for simile, as Psa 11:1; Psa 22:14; (13 English) Psa 90:4; Job 24:5; Isa 51:12)
And passes - עבר ‛âbar "pass over" (with חלף châlaph, as here,), Isa 8:8; Nah 1:8; Hab 3:10; "transgress," passim; "pass away," Psa 37:6; Job 34:29; Nah 1:12)
And is guilty; this his strength is his god - The victory was completed, all resistance ended. He sweeps by, as his own Euphrates, when over-filled by the swelling Isa 8:8 of all its tributary streams, riseth up over all its banks, and overwhelms all where it passes; as a wind which sweepeth Isa 21:1 over the desert: and passes over all bounds and laws, human and divine, and is guilty and stands guilty before God, making himself as God.
This his power is his god - God had said to Israel Exo 6:7, "I will be to thee God." The Chaldaean virtually said, "this my strength is to me my god." This Nebuchadnezzars own words speak Dan 4:30; "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?" And the statue which was to be worshipped, was, very probably, of himself, as the intoxication of pride has made other pagan kings or conquerors, Alexander or Darius. Belshazzar said Isa 14:14, "I will be like the Most High," and the prince of Tyre said Eze 28:2, "I am a god, and antichrist shall "exalt himself above all that is called god, and, as God, sit in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is god" Th2 2:4. Such is all pride. It sets itself in the place of God, it ceases to think of itself as God's instrument, and so becomes a god to itself, as though its eminence and strength were its own, and its wisdom were the source of its power (See Eze 28:2-5), and its will the measure of its greatness. The words, with a divine fullness, express severally, that the king Shall sweep along, shall pass over all bounds and all hindrances, and shall pass away, shall be guilty and shall bear his guilt ; and so they comprise in one his sin and his punishment, his greatness and his fall. And so, 40 years afterward Nebuchadnezzar, Dan 5:19-20. "whom he would, he slew; and whom he would, he kept alive; and whom he would, he set up; and whom he would, he put down; but when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him;" Dan 4:31, "there fell a voice from heaven, The kingdom is departed from thee; and Belshazzar; Dan 5:23, Dan 5:30, "in the same night that he lifted up himself against the Lord of heaven, was slain."
Habakkuk 1:12
hab 1:12
The prophet, having summed up the deeds of the enemy of God in this his end, sets forth his questions anew. He had appealed against the evil of the wicked of his people; he had been told of the vengeance by the Chaldaeans (Heading of Hab. 1). But the vengeance is executed by them who are far worse. How then? The answer is: "Wait to the end, and thou shalt see." What remains are the triumphs of faith; the second chapter closes with the entire prostration of the whole world before God, and the whole prophecy with joyous trust in God amid the entire failure of all outward signs of hope. Here, like the Psalmists (Asaph, Ps. 73 Ethan Psa 76:1-12) and Jeremiah Jer 12:1, he sets down at the very beginning his entire trust in God, and so, in the name of all who at any time shall be perplexed about the order of God's judgments, asks how it shall be, teaching us that the only safe way of enquiring into God's ways is by setting out with a living conviction that they, Psa 25:10, are "mercy and truth." And so the address to God is full of awe and confidence and inward love. For "God placeth the oil of mercy in the vessel of trustfulness."
Art Thou not - (the word has always an emphasis) "Thou" and not whatsoever or whosoever it be that is opposed to Thee (be it Nebuchadnezzar or Satan).
From everlasting - literally, from before? See the note at Mic 5:2. Go back as far as man can in thought - God was still before; and so, much more before any of His creatures, such as those who rebel against Him.
O Lord - it is the proper name of God, Rev 1:8, "Which is and Which was and Which is to come" - I am, the Unchangeable; my God, i. e., whereas his own might is (he had just said) the pagan's god, the Lord is his;
Mine Holy One - one word, denoting that God is his God, sufficeth him not, but he adds (what does not elsewhere occur) "mine Holy One" in every way, as hallowing him and hallowed by him. Dion.: "Who hallowest my soul, Holy in Thine Essence, and whom as incomparably Holy I worship in holiness." All-Holy in Himself, He becometh the Holy One of him to whom He imparteth Himself, and so, by His own gift, belongeth, as it were, to him. The one word in Hebrew wonderfully fits in with the truth, that God becomes one with man by taking him to Himself. It is fall of inward trust too, that he saith, "my God, my Holy One," as Paul saith, Gal 2:9, "Who loved me, and gave Himself for me," i. e., as Augustine explains it , "O Thou God Omnipotent, who so carest for every one of us, as if Thou caredst for him only; and so for all, as if tbey were but one." The title, "my Holy One," includes his people with himself; for God was his God, primarily because he was one of the people of God; and his office was for and in behalf of his people.
It involves then that other title which had been the great support of Isaiah , by which he at once comforted his people, and impressed upon them the holiness of their God, the holiness which their relation to their God required, the Holy One of Israel. Thence, since Habakkuk lived, for his people with himself, on this relation to God, as my God, my Holy One, and that God, the Unchangeable; it follows," We shall not die." There is no need of any mark of inference, "therefore we shall not die." It is an inference, but it so lay in those titles of God, "He Is, My God, My Holy One," that it was a more loving confidence to say directly, we shall not die. The one thought involved the other. God, the Unchangeable, had made Himself their God. It was impossible, then, that lie should cast them off or that they should perish.
We shall not die, is the lightning thought of faith, which flashes on the soul like all inspirations of God, founded on His truth and word, but borne in, as it were, instinctively without inference on the soul, with the same confidence as the Psalmist says Psa 118:18, "The Lord hath chastened me sore; but He hath not given me over unto death;" and Malachi Mal 3:6, "I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." Jerome: "Thou createdst us from the beginning; by Thy mercy we are in being hitherto." Thy "gifts and calling are without repentance." Rom 11:29 "did we look to his might; none of us could withstand him. Look we to Thy mercy, Thine alone is it that we live, are not slain by him, nor led to deeds of death." O Lord, again he repeats the Name of God, whereby He had revealed Himself as their God, the Unchangeable; "Thou, whose mercies fail not, hast ordained them for judgment," not for vengeance or to make a full end, or for his own ends and pleasure, but to correct Thine own Jer 10:24; Jer 30:11 in measure, which he, exceeding, sinned (See Isa 10:5; Isa 47:6; Zac 1:15).
And O mighty God - literally, Rock. It is a bold title. "My rock" is a title much used by David , perhaps suggested by the fastnesses amid which he passed his hunted life, to express that not in them but in His God was his safety. Habakkuk purposely widens it. He appeals to God, not only as Israel's might and upholder, but as the sole Source of all strength, the Supporter of all which is upheld , and so, for the time, of the Chaldaean too. Hence, he continues the simple image: "Thou hast founded him" . "Thou hast made him to stand firm as the foundation of a building;" to reprove or set before those who have sinned against Thee, what they had done. Since then God was the Rock, who had founded them, from Him Alone had they strength; when He should withdraw it, they must fall. How then did they yet abide, who abused the power given them and counted it their own? And this the more, since ...
Habakkuk 1:13
hab 1:13
Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil - The prophet repeats his complaint (as troubling thoughts are accustomed to come back, after they have been repelled,), in order to answer it more strongly. All sin is hateful in God's sight, and in His Holy Wisdom He cannot endure to "look toward iniquity." As man turns away from sickening sights, so God's abhorrence of wrong is pictured by His not being able to "look toward it." If He looked toward them, they must perish Psa 104:32. Light cannot co-exist with darkness, fire with water, heat with cold, deformity with beauty, foulness with sweetness, nor is sin compatible with the Presence of God, except as its Judge and punisher. Thou canst not look. There is an entire contradiction between God and unholiness. And yet,
Wherefore lookest thou upon - viewest, as in Thy full sight make the contrast stronger. God cannot endure "to look toward" (אל) iniquity, and yet He does not only this, but beholdeth it, contemplateth it, and still is silent), yea, as it would seem, with favor , bestowing upon them the goods of this life, honor, glory, children, riches, as the Psalmist saith Psa 73:12; "Behold these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world, they increase in riches?" Why lookest thou upon "them that deal treacherously, holdest Thy tongue," puttest restraint , as it were, upon Thyself and Thine own attribute of Justice, "when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" Psa 143:2 "in God's sight no man living can be justified;" and, in one sense, Sodom and Gomorrah were less unrighteous than Jerusalem, and Mat 10:15; Mat 11:24; Mar 6:11; Luk 10:12 "it shall be more tolerable for them in the day of Judgment," because they sinned against less light; yet the actual sins of the Chaldee were greater than those of Jerusalem, and Satan's evil is greater than that of these who are his prey.
To say that Judah was more righteous than the Chaldaean does not imply any righteousness of the Chaldaean, as the saying that (Jer 31:11, Del.) "God ransomed Jacob from the hand of one stronger than he," does not imply any strength remaining to Israel. Then, also, in all the general judgments of God, the righteous too suffer in this world, whence Abraham intercedes for Sodom, if there were but ten righteous in it; lest Gen 18:23 "the righteous be destroyed with the wicked." Hence, God also spared Nineveh in part as having Jon 4:11 "more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand," i. e., good from evil. No times were more full of sin than those before the destruction of Jerusalem, yet the fury of the Assassins fell upon the innocent. And so the words, like the voice of the souls under the Altar Rev 6:10, become the cry of the Church at all times against the oppressing world, and of the blood of the martyrs from Abel to the end, "Lord, how long?" And in that the word "righteous" signifies both "one righteous man," and the whole class or generation of the righteous, it speaks both of Christ the Head and of all His members in whom (as by Saul) He was persecuted. The wicked also includes all persecutors, both those who executed the Lord Christ, and those who brought His servants before judgment-seats, and who blasphemed His Name Jam 2:6-7, and caused many to blaspheme, and killed those whom they could not compel. And God, all the while, seemeth to look away and not to regard.
Habakkuk 1:14
hab 1:14
And makest men as the fishes of the sea - mute, helpless, in a stormy, restless element, no cry heard, but themselves swept away in shoals, with no power to resist.
As the creeping things - whether of the land (as it is mostly used), or the sea Psa 104:25. Either way, it is a contemptuous name for the lowest of either.
That have no ruler over them - none to guide, order, protect them, and so a picture of man deprived of the care and providence of God.
Habakkuk 1:15
hab 1:15
They take up all of them - (literally "he taketh up all of it") the whole race as though it were one,
With an angle; they catch them - literally, he sweepeth it away
In their (his) net - One fisherman is singled out who partly by wiles (as by the bait of "an angle"), partly by violence (the net or drag) sweeps away and gathers as his own the whole kind. Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldaeans are herein a faint image of Satan, who casts out his baits and his nets in the stormy sea of this life, taking some by individual craft, sweeping others in whole masses, to do evil; and whoso hath no ruler, and will not have Christ to reign over him Luk 19:4, he allures, hurries, drags away as his prey. Jerome: "Adam clave to his hook, and he drew him forth out of Paradise with his net; and covered him with his drags, his varied and manifold deceits and guiles. And "by one many became sinners," and in Adam we 'all died,' and all saints afterward were with him alike cast out of Paradise. And because he deceived the first man, he ceaseth not daily to slay the whole human race."
Habakkuk 1:16
hab 1:16
Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag - literally he sacrifices unto his, etc. Whatever a man trusts in is his god. If a man relies to compass his end by his strength, or his wisdom, or his forethought, or his wealth, his armies or navies, these his forces are his God. So the Assyrian said Isa 10:13, Isa 10:15, "By the strength of my hand I did it; and by my wisdom, for I am prudent;" and God answered, "Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith?" The coarse forms of idolatry only embody outwardly the deep inward idolatry of the corrupt human mind. The idol is Eze 14:4 "set up in the heart" first. There have not indeed been lacking savage nations, who in very deed worshiped their arms ; those of old worshiped spears as immortal gods ; Even now we are told of some North American Indians "who designate their bow and arrow as the only beneficent deities whom they know."
Among the civilized Romans, the worship of the eagles, their standards to whom they did sacrifice , was no other nor better. The inward idolatry is only a more subtle form of the same sin, the evil spirit which shapes itself in the outward show. Here the idolatry of self is meant, which did not join creatures with God as objects of worship; but denying, Him in practice or misbelief, became aged to itself . So Habakkuk had said, this his strength is his God. His idol was himself.
Because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous - literally, is in the English margin, well-fed). All the choicest things of the world stood at his command, as Nebuchadnezzar boasted (Dan 4:30, compare 22), and all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, all the knowledge and wisdom and learning of the world, and the whole world itself, were Satan's lawful prey Luk 4:6; Joh 12:31; Isa 49:24 Cyril: "Nebuchadnezzar, as by a hook and meshes and line, swept into his own land both Israel himself and other nations, encompassing them. Satan, as it were, by one line and net, that of sin, enclosed all, and Israel especially, on account of his impiety to Christ. "His food was choice." For Israel was chosen above the rest, as from a holy root, that of the fathers, and having the "law as a schoolmaster," and being called to the knowledge of the one true God. Yet he, having this glory and grace, was taken with the rest. They became his prey by error; but Israel, knowing Him who is by nature God, in an ungodly manner, slaying Him who was by nature His Begotten Son and who came as Man, were taken in his nets."
Habakkuk 1:17
hab 1:17
Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually to slay the nations? - The prophet, like Isaiah Isa 18:4-5, stands at the very last point, before the fury and desire of the enemy was fulfilled. People, like fish, were gathered together for a prey; he who had taken them was rejoicing and exulting beforehand in his booty; his portion and meat were the choice of the earth; the prophet leeks on, as it were, and beholds the net full; there is but one step more; "Shall he empty it? Shall he then devour those whom he has caught? and so cast his emptied net again unceasingly, pitilessly, to slay the nations?" This question he answers in the next chapter - A Deliverer will come!
Bible
Habakkuk Chapter 2
Habakkuk 2:1
hab 2:1
I will stand - , i. e. I would stand now, as a servant awaiting his master,
Upon my watch - or, keep (Isa 21:8. משׁמר in the same sense Jer 51:12), and "set me (plant myself firmly) upon the tower" (literally, fenced place, but also one straitened and narrowly hemmed in), "and will watch" (it is a title of the prophets , as spying by God's enabling, things beyond human ken); I will spy out, to see a long way off, to see with the inward eye, what He will say unto me (literally, Jerome: in me); first revealing Himself in the prophets "within to the inner man;" then, through them. And what I shall answer when I am reproved , or, upon my complaint literally upon my reproof or arguing; which might mean, either that others argued against him, or that he had argued, pleaded in the name of others, and now listened to hear what God would answer in him (See Num 12:6, and at Zac 1:19), and so he, as taught by God should answer to his own plea. But he had so pleaded with God, repeatedly, why is this? He has given no hint, that any complained of or reproved him.
Theodotion: "By an image from those who, in war and siege, have the ward of the wall distributed to them, he says, I will stand upon my watch." Cyril: "It was the custom of the saints, when they wished to learn the things of God, and to receive the knowledge of things to come through His voice in their mind and heart, to raise it on high above distractions and anxieties and all worldly care, holding and keeping it unoccupied and peaceful, rising as to an eminence to look around and contemplate what the God of all knowledge should make clear to them. For He hateth the earth-bound and abject mind, and seeks hearts which can soar aloft, raised above earthly things and temporal desires." The prophet takes his stand, apart from people and the thoughts and cares of this world, on his lonely watch, as Moses on the rock, keeping himself and kept by God, and planted firm, so that nothing should move him, fenced around thought straitened in , as in a besieged camp committed to his ward, looking out from his lofty place what answer God would give as to times long distant, and what answer He should give first to himself, and to those to whom his office lay, God's people.
Habakkuk 2:2
hab 2:2
The answer is, that it is indeed for a long time yet. Write the vision, that it may remain for those who come after and not be forgotten, and make it plain upon the tables, whereon he was accustomed to write ; and that, in large lasting characters, that he may run that readeth it, that it may be plain to any, however occupied or in haste. So Isaiah too was commanded to write the four words, "haste-prey-speed-spoil."
Habakkuk 2:3
hab 2:3
For the vision is yet for an (the) appointed time - o Not for the present, but to develop itself in the course of time, down to a season which God only knows; as it is subsequently repeated (Dan 11:27, for it is for the appointed time, Dan 11:35), "for the end is yet for the appointed time Dan 8:19; for it is for the appointed time of the end;" and is explained Dan 10:1, Dan 10:14, "for the vision is yet for the days Dan 8:26; for it is for many days Eze 12:27; the house of Israel say, The vision that he seeth, is for many days and he prophesieth of the times far off;" yet it should haste toward the end, toward its fulfillment, so that, if it is not at once fulfilled, it should be surely waited for. Theodotion: "It shall certainly be; not in vain hath it been shewn, but as certainly to be. For whatever hath been shown to come and to be, will come and be."
But at the end it shall speak - o (or it breatheth, hasteth to the end), not simply "to its own fulfillment," but to that time of the end which should close the period assigned to it, during which it should continually be putting itself forth, it should come true in part or in shadow, gleams of it should here and then part the clouds, which, until the end, should surround and envelop it.
Being God's truth, he speaks of it as an animate living thing, not a dead letter, but running, hasting on its course, and accomplishing on its way that for which it was sent. The will and purpose of God hasteth on, though to man it seemeth to tarry; it can neither be hurried on, nor doth it linger; before "the appointed time" it cometh not; yet it hasteth toward it, and "will not be behindhand" when the time comes. It does not lie, either by failing to come, or failing, when come, of any jot or tittle. "Though it tarry or linger" , continually appearing, giving signs of itself, yet continually delaying its coming, "wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not be behindhand" , when the time comes, Rev 22:7, "He cometh quickly" also, as He saith; because, from Dion.: "though the delay of His coming and of the fulfillment of the vision seem long, yet, in comparison with eternity, it is very short. In His first coming, He taught why God permitteth these things; in the second coming, He shall teach by experience, how good it it is for the good to bear the persecution of the evil; whence Peter also has to say Pe2 3:9, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness." The words seem to belong, in the first instance, to the vision itself; but the vision had no other existence or fulfillment than in Him who was the Object of it, and who, in it, was foreshadowed to the mind. The coming of the vision was no other than His coming.
The waiting, to which he exhorts, expresses the religious act, so often spoken of Psa 33:20; Isa 8:17; Isa 30:18; Isa 64:3; Zep 3:8; Dan 12:12; Psa 106:13, of waiting for God, or His counsel, or His promised time. The sense then is wholly the same, when Paul uses the words of the coming of our Lord Himself, Heb 10:37, "Yet a little while, and He that shall come, will come and will not tarry." Paul, as well as Habakkuk, is speaking of our Lord's second coming; Paul, of His Coming in Person, Habakkuk, of the effects of that Coming ; but both alike of the redressing of all the evil and wrong in the world's history, and the reward of the faithful oppressed. At His first coming He said, Joh 12:31, "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out." He came to "put down the mighty from their seat, and to exalt the humble and meek Luk 1:52;" but much more in the second coming, when "He shall come to judge the world with righteousness and the people with His truth" Psa 46:1-11 :13, and to "reward every man according to his works" Mat 16:27. At all times He seemeth continually to linger, to give signs of His coming, yet He cometh not; when the appointed season shall come, He shall be found not to be later than His word. Yea, all time shall shrink up into a little moment in the presence of a never-ending ever-present eternity.
Cyril: "Having named no one expressly, he says, wait for him, wait for him although delaying, and halt not in thy hope, but let it be rooted and firm, even if the interval be extended. For the God of all seemeth to suggest to the mind of the prophet, that He who was foretold would surely come, yet to enjoin on him to wait for Him on account of the interval. He who believeth My word shall possess life, for this is the reward of these who honor God, and a good reward of His benevolence. He who admitteth faith and love to dwell in his heart hath as a requital, unaging life and forgiveness of sins and sanctification by the Spirit." Alb.: "He shall live; for, God is not the God of the dead but of the living Mat 22:32, "Whoso liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die" Joh 11:26.
It will not lie - God vouchsafes to speak of Himself, as we should be ashamed to speak of one whom we love, teaching us that all doubts question His truth Num 23:19 "God is not a man, that He should lie: hath He said and shall He not do it?" "The strength of Israel shall neither lie nor repent" Sa1 15:29. "God that cannot lie promised before the world began" Tit 1:2 Therefore, it follows, "wait for Him," as Jacob says, Gen 49:18, "I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord."
Habakkuk 2:4
hab 2:4
Behold, his soul which is lifted up - literally, swollen
Is not upright in him - The construction is probably that of a condition expressed absolutely. Lo, swollen is it, not upright is his soul in him. We should say, "His soul, if it be swollen , puffed up, is not upright in him." The source of all sin was and is pride. It is especially the sin of all oppressors, of the Chaldee, of antichrists, and shall be of the antichrist. It is the parent of all heresy, and of all corruption and rejection of the gospel. It stands therefore as the type of all opposed to it. Of it he says, it is in its very inmost core ("in him") lacking in uprightness. It can have no good in it, because it denies God, and God denies it His grace. And having nothing upright in it, being corrupt in its very inmost being, it cannot stand or abide. God gives it no power to stand. The words stand in contrast with the following, the one speaking of the cause of death, the other of life. The soul, being swollen with pride, shuts out faith, and with it the Presence of God. It is all crooked in its very inner self or being. Paul gives the result, Heb 10:39, "if any man draw back, my soul hath no pleasure in him." The prophet's words describe the proud man who stunts aloof from God, in himself; Paul, as he is in the Eyes of God. As that which is swollen in nature cannot be straight, it is clean contrary that the soul should be swollen with pride and yet upright. Its moral life being destroyed in its very inmost heart, it must perish.
Alb.: "Plato saith, that properly is straight, which being applied to what is straight, touches and is touched everywhere. But God is upright, whom the upright soul touches and is touched everywhere; but what is not upright is bent away from God, Psa 73:1. "God is good unto Israel, the upright in heart;" Sol 1:4, "The upright love thee;" Isa 26:7, "The way of the just is uprightness, Thou, most Upright, doth weigh the path of the just."
But the just shall live by his faith - The accents emphasize the words , "The just, by his faith he shall live." They do not point to an union of the words, "the just by his faith." Isaiah says that Christ should "justify" many by the knowledge of Himself," but the expression, "just by his faith," does not occur either in the Old or New Testament. In fact, to speak of one really righteous as being "righteous by his faith" would imply that people could be righteous in some other way. "Without faith," Paul says at the commencement of his Old Testament pictures of giant faith, Heb 11:6, "it is impossible to please God." Faith, in the creature which does not yet see God, has one and the same principle, a trustful relying belief in its Creator. This was the characteristic of Abraham their father, unshaken, unswerving, belief in God who called him, whether in leaving his own land and going whither he knew not, for an end which he was never to see; or in believing the promise of the son through whom theft Seed was to be, in whom all the nations of the world should be blessed; or in the crowning act of offering that son to God, knowing that he should receive him back, even from the dead.
In all, it was one and the same principle. According to Gen 15:6, "His belief was counted to him for righteousness," though the immediate instance of that faith was not directly spiritual. In this was the good and bad of Israel. Exo 4:31 : "the people believed." Exo 14:31 : "they believed the Lord and His servant Moses." Psa 106:12 : "then believed they His word, they sang His praise." This contrariwise was their blame Deu 1:32 : "In this ye did not believe the Lord." Deu 9:23 : "ye rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and believed Him not, nor hearkened to His voice." Psa 106:21, Psa 106:24 : "they forgat God their Saviour; they despised the pleasant land, they believed not His word." And God asks, Num 14:11, "How long will it be, ere this people belove Me, for all the signs which I have shown among them?" Psa 78:21-22 : "anger came upon Israel, because they believed not in God, and in His salvation trusted not."
Psa 78:32 : "for all this they sinned still, and believed not His wondrous works." Even of Moses and Aaron God assigns this as the ground, why they should not bring His people into the land which He gave them, Num 20:20, "Because ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel" (at Meribah). This was the watchword of Jehoshaphat's victory, Ch2 20:20, "Believe in the Lord your God and ye shall be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper." This continued to be one central saying of Isaiah. It was his own commission to his people; Isa 6:9, "Go and say to this people; hear ye on, and understand not; see ye on and perceive not." In sight of the rejection of faith, he spake prominently of the loss upon unbelief; Isa 7:9, "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established;" and, Isa 53:1, "Who hath believed our report?" he premises as the attitude of his people toward him, the Center of all faith - Jesus. Yet still, as to the blessings of faith, having spoken of Him, Isa 28:16, "Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone," he subjoins, "he that believeth in Him shall not make haste."
So it had been the keynote of Habakkuk to his people, "Ye will not believe when it is declared unto you." Here he is told to declare contrariwise the blessing on belief. "The just shall live by his faith." The faith, then, of which Habakkuk speaks, is faith, in itself, but a real, true confiding faith. It is the one relation of the creature to the Creator, unshaken trust. The faith may vary in character, according as God reveals more or less of Himself, but itself is one, a loving trust in Him, just as He reveals Himself. Lap. (in Rom 1:17): "By this faith in God, each righteous person begins to live piously, righteously, holily, peacefully and divinely, and advanceth therein, since in every tribulation and misery, by this faith and hope in God he sustains, strengthens, and increases this life of the soul. He says then, "the just lives by faith," i. e., the unbelieving and unrighteous displeases God, and consequently will not live by the true, right, peaceful and happy life of grace, present righteousness, and future glory because God is displeased with him, and He places his hopes and fears, not in God, but in human beings and man's help and in created things. But the righteous who believeth in God shall live a right, sweet, quiet, happy, holy, untroubled life, because, fixed by faith and hope in God who is the true Life, and in God's promises, he is dear to God, and the object of His care.
"This sentence, 'the just shall live by faith,' is universal, belonging at once to Jews and Christians, to sinners who are first being justified, as also to those who are already justified. For the spiritual life of each of these begins, is maintained and grows through faith. When then it is said, 'the just shall live by his faith,' this word, his, marks the cause, which both begins and preserves life. The just, believing and hoping in God, begins to live spiritually, to have a soul right within him, whereby he pleases God; and again, advancing and making progress in this his faith and hope in God, therewith advances and makes progress in the spiritual life, in rightness and righteousness of soul, in the grace and friendship of God, so as more and more to please God."
Most even of the Jewish interpreters have seen this to be the literal meaning of the words. It stands in contrast with, illustrates and is illustrated by the first words, "his soul is swollen, is not upright in him." Pride and independence of God are the center of the want of rightness; a steadfast cleaving to God, whereby "the heart" (as Abraham's) "was stayed on God," is the center and cause of the life of the righteous. But since this stayedness of faith is in everything the source of the life of the righteous, then the pride, which issues in want of rightness of the inmost soul, must be a state of death. Pride estranges the soul from God, makes it self-sufficing, that it should not need God, so that he who is proud cannot come to God, to be by Him made righteous. So contrariwise, since by his faith doth the righteous live, this must be equally true whether he be just made righteous from unrighteous, or whether that righteousness is growing, maturing, being perfected in him.
This life begins in grace, lives on in glory. It is begun, in that God freely justifies the ungodly, accounting and making him righteous for and through the blood of Christ; it is continued in faith which worketh by love; it is perfected, when faith and hope are swallowed up in love, beholding God. In the Epistles to the Romans Rom 1:17 and the Galatians Gal 3:11 Paul applies these words to the first beginning of life, when they who had before been dead in sin, began to live by faith in Christ Jesus who gave them life and made them righteous. And in this sense he is called "just," although before he comes to the faith he is unjust and unrighteous, being unjustified. For Paul uses the word not of what he was before the faith, but what be is, when he lives by faith. Before, not having faith, he had neither righteousness nor life; having faith, he at once has both; he is at once "just" and "lives by his faith." These are inseparable. The faith by which he lives, is a living faith, Gal 5:6, "faith which worketh by love." In the Epistle to the Hebrews, Heb 10:38, Paul is speaking of their endurance in the faith, once received, whose faith is not shaken by the trial of their patience. They who look on beyond things present, and fix their minds steadfastly on the Coming of Christ, will not suffer shipwreck of their faith, through any troubles of this time. Faith is the foundation of all good, the beginning of the spiritual building, whereby it rests on The Foundation, Christ. "Without faith it is impossible to please God," and so the proud cannot please Him. Through it, is union with Christ and thereby a divine life in the soul, even a life, Gal 2:20, "through faith in the Son of God," holy, peaceful, self-posessed Luk 21:19, enduring to the end, being "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" Pe1 1:5.
Habakkuk 2:5
hab 2:5
This general rule the prophet goes on to apply in words which belong in part to all oppressors and in the first instance to the Chaldaean, in part yet more fully to the end and to antichrist. "Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine" (or better, "Yea, how much more, since wine is a deceiver , as Solomon says, Pro 20:1, "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever erreth thereby shall not be wise;" and Pro 23:32, "In the end it biteth like a serpent and pierceth like an adder;" and Hosea Hos 4:11, "Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart." As wine at first gladdens, then deprives of all reason, and lays a man open to any deceit, so also pride. And whereas all pride deceives, how much more , when people are either heated and excited by the abuse of God's natural gifts, or drunken with prosperity and hurried away, as conquerors are, to all excess of cruelty or lust to fulfill their own will, and neglect the laws of God and man.
Literal drunkenness was a sin of the Babylonians under the Persian rule, so that even a pagan says of Babylon, "Nothing can be more corrupt than the manners of that city, and more provided with all to rouse and entice immoderate pleasures;" and "the Babylonians give themselves wholly to wine, and the things which follow upon drunkenness." It was when flushed with wine, that Belshazzar, with his princes his wives and his concubines, desecrated the sacred vessels, insulted God in honor of his idols, and in the night of his excess "was slain." Pride blinded, deceived, destroyed him. It was the general drunkenness of the inhabitants, at that same feast, which enabled Cyrus, with a handful of men, to penetrate, by means of its river, the city which, with its provisions for many years and its impregnable walls, mocked at his siege. He calculated beforehand on its feast and the consequent dissolution of its inhabitants; but for this, in the language of the pagan historian, he would have been caught "as in a trap," his soldiery drowned.
He is a proud man, neither keepeth at home. - It is difficult to limit the force of the rare Hebrew word rendered "keep at home;" for one may cease to dwell or abide at home either with his will or without it; and, as in the case of invaders, the one may he the result of the other. He who would take away the home of others becomes, by God's Providence, himself homeless. The context implies that the primary meaning is the restlessness of ambition; which abides not at home, for his whole pleasure is to go forth to destroy. Yet there sounds, as it were, an undertone, "he would not abide in his home and he shall not." We could scarcely avoid the further thought, could we translate by a word which does not determine the sense, "he will not home," "he will not continue at home." The words have seemed to different minds to mean either; as they may . Such fullness of meaning is the contrary of the ambiguity of pagan oracles; they are not alternative meanings, which might be justified in either case, but cumlative, the one on the other. The ambitious part with present rest for future loss. Nebuchadnezzar lost his kingdom and his reason through pride, received them back when he humbled himself; Belshazzar, being proud and impenitent, lost both his kingdom and life.
Who enlargeth his desire - literally, his soul. The soul becomes like what it loves. The ambitious man is, as we say, "all ambition;" the greedy man, "all appetite;" the cruel man, "all savagery;" the vain-glorious, "all vain glory." The ruling passion absorbs the whole being. It is his end, the one object of his thoughts, hopes, fears. So, as we speak of "largeness of heart," which can embrace in its affections all varieties of human interests, whatever affects man, and "largeness of mind" uncramped by narrowing prejudices, the prophet speaks of this "ambitious man widening his soul," or, as we should speak, "appetite," so that the whole world is not too large for him to long to grasp or to devour. So the Psalmist prays not to be delivered into the murderous desire of his enemies (Psa 27:12; Compare Psa 41:3 (Psa 41:2 in English); Ezek. 26:27) (literally their soul,) and Isaiah, with a metaphor almost too bold for our language Isa 5:14, "Hell hath enlarged her soul, and opened her mouth beyond measure." It devours, as it were, first in its cravings, then in act.
As hell - which is insatiable Pro 30:15. He saith, "enlargeth"; for as hell and the grave are year by year fuller, yet there is no end, the desire "enlargeth" and becometh wider, the more is given to it to satisfy it.
And (he) is (himself) as death - o, sparing none. Our poetry would speak of a destroyer as being "like the angel of death;" his presence, as the presence of death itself. Where he is, there is death. He is as terrible and as destroying as the death which follows him.
And cannot be satisfied - Even human proverbs say (Juv. Sat. xiv. 139): "The love of money groweth as much as the money itself groweth." "The avaricious is ever needy." Ecc 5:10 : "he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver." For these fleeting things cannot satisfy the undying soul. It must hunger still; for it has not found what will allay its cravings .
But gathereth - literally, "And hath gathered" - He describes it, for the rapidity with which he completes what he longs for, as though it were already done.
Unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people - One is still the subject of the prophecy, rising up at successive times, fulfilling it and passing away, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Attila, Timur, Genghizchan, Hunneric, scourges of God, all deceived by pride, all sweeping the earth, all in their ambition and wickedness the unknowing agents and images of the evil One, who seeks to bring the whole world under his rule. But shall it prosper?
Habakkuk 2:6
hab 2:6
Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him? - Nebuchadnezzar gathered, Dan 3:4-5, "all people, nations, and languages, to worship the golden image which he had set up." The second Babylon, pagan Rome, sought to blot out the very Christian Name; but mightier were the three children than the King of Babylon; mightier, virgins, martyrs, and children than Nero or Decius. These shall rejoice over Babylon, that, Rev 18:20, "God hath avenged them on her."
Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! - Truly wealth ill-gotten by fraud or oppression, "is not his," who winneth it, before he had it, nor when he hath it, but a woe. It is not his; the woe is his. "Woe unto him." He shall have no joy in what he gaineth, and what he hath he shall lose.
How long? - What is the measure of thine impiety and greediness and cruelty? Yet if these are like hell, without measure, there remains another "How long?" How long will the forbearance of God endure thee, which thou art daily exhausting?
This is then the end of all. The conqueror sweeps to him "all nations" and gathereth to him "all peoples." To what end? As one vast choir in one terrible varied chant of all those thousand thousand voices, to sing a dirge over him of the judgments of God which his ill-doings to them should bring upon him, a fivefold Woe, woe, woe, woe, woe! Woe for its rapacity! Woe for its covetousness! Woe for its oppression! Woe for its insolence to the conquered! Woe to it in its rebellion against God! It is a more measured rhythm than any besides in Holy Scripture; each of the fivefold woes comprised in three verses, four of them closing with the ground, because, for. The opening words carry the mind back to the fuller picture of Isaiah. But Isaiah sees Babylon as already overthrown; Habakkuk pronounces the words upon it, not by name, but as certainly to come, upon it and every like enemy of God's kingdom. With each such fall, unto the end of all things, the glory of God is increased and made known. Having, for their own ends, been unconscious and even unwilling promoters of God's end, they, when they had accomplished it, are themselves flung away. The pride of human ambition, when successful, boasts "woe to the conquered." Since "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth," the ungodly saying of the pagan is reversed, and it stands, "Man sympathizes with the conquering side, God with the conquered." It is a terrible thought that people should have been the instruments of God, that they should, through ambition or other ends short of God, have promoted His ends which they thought not of, and then should be "weighed in the balance and found wanting," and themselves be flung away.
Cyr: "Gentiles also departed from their worship under Satan, and having deserted him who aforetime called them, ran unto Christ. For Satan gathered what was not his; but Christ received what was His. For, as God, He is Lord of all."
And to him that ladeth himself with thick clay - It is the character of these proverbs to say much in few words, sometimes in one, and more than appears. So the word translated "thick-clay," as if it were two words, in another way means in an intensive sense, "a strong deep pledge." At best gold and silver are, as they have been called, red and white earth. Bern. Serm. 4. in Adv: "What are gold and silver but red and white earth, which the error of man alone maketh, or accounteth precious? What are gems, but stones of the earth? What silk, but webs of worms?" These he "maketh heavy upon" or "against himself" (so the words strictly mean). "For He weigheth himself down with thick clay, who, by avarice multiplying earthly things, hems himself in by the oppressiveness of his own sin, imprisons and, as it were, buries the soul, and heaps up sin as he heaps up wealth." With toil they gather what is not worthless only, but is a burden upon the soul, weighing it down that it should not rise Heavenwards, but should be bowed down to Hell. And so in that other sense while, as a hard usurer, he heaps up the pledges of these whom he oppresses and impoverishes, and seems to increase his wealth, he does in truth "increase against himself a strong pledge," whereby not others are debtors to him, but he is a debtor to Almighty God who careth for the oppressed Jer 17:11 "He that gathereth riches had not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days and at his end shall be a fool."
Habakkuk 2:7
hab 2:7
Shall not they rise up suddenly that shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee? - The destruction of the wicked is ever sudden at last. Such was the flood Luk 17:26-27, the destruction of Sodom, of Pharaoh, of the enemies of God's people through the Judges, of Sennacherib, Nineveh, Babylon by the Medes and Persians. Such shall the end be Mat 24:43-44; Mat 25:13; Luk 17:26-30; Luk 21:34-35; Th1 5:3; Pe2 3:10; Rev 16:15. As he by his oppressions had pierced others (it is the word used of the oppression of usury), so should it be done to him. "The Medes and Persians who were before subject to the Babylonian empire, and whose kings were subject to Nebuchudnezzar and his successors, rose up and awaked, i. e., stirred themselves up in the days of Belshazzar to rebel against the successors of Nebuchadnezzar which sat on his throne, like a man who awaketh from sleep." The words "awake," "arise," are used also of the resurrection, when the worm of the wicked gnaweth and dieth not (See Isa 14:11; Isa 66:24).
And thou shall be for booties unto them? - The common phrase is modified to explain the manifoldness of the plunder which he should yield. So Jeremiah Jer 50:10, "Chaldaea shall be a spoil; all that spoil her shall be satisfied, saith the Lord." See Cyr: "We may hear Him who saith Mat 12:29, 'How can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house.' For, as soon as He was born of the holy Virgin, He began to 'spoil his goods.' For the Magi came from the East - and worshiped Him and honored Him with gifts and became a first-fruits of the Church of the Gentiles. And being vessels of Satan, and the most honored of all his members, they hastened to Christ."
Habakkuk 2:8
hab 2:8
Because (or For). The prophet assigns the reason of the woes he had just pronounced. "Thou (emphatic), thou hast spoiled many nations, all the resonant of the people shall spoil thee." So Isaiah Isa 33:1, "When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee." Boundless as his conquests were, each remaining people, tribe, or family shall be his foe. Theodotion: "Having subdued very many, thou shalt be destroyed by few, and they who long endured thy tyranny, arising as from sleep, shall compass thy destruction; and thou shalt pay the penalty of thy countless slaughters and thy great ungodliness and thy lawless violence to cities which thou modest desolate of inhabitants." Nothing was too great or too little to escape this violence.
All the remnant - Theodotion: "As thou, invading, didst take away the things of others, in like way shall what appertaineth to thee be taken away by those who are left for vengeance." Jeremiah foretold of Elam "in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah" Jer 49:34-39 (in expansion of the prophecy in the reign of Jehoiakim) ; "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might. And upon Elam I will bring the four winds from the four quarters of the heavens, and will scatter them toward all these winds, and there shall be no nation where the outcasts of Elam shall not come. For I will cause Elam to be dismayed before her enemies; but it shall come to pass in the latter days, that I will bring again the captivity of Elam, saith the Lord." Elam is also counted by Ezekiel Ezek. 32:17-32 among those who, together with Pharaoh, should be brought down to the grave, with Asshur, Meshech, Tabal, Edom and all the Zidonians, by the king of Babylon. They were then all which remained, Jer 39:9) of the nations which he had conquered, who should be gathered against his house.
"Because of men's blood and of the violence of" i. e., "to the land, as the violence of," i. e., "to , Lebanon," and "men's blood" is their blood which was shed. "To land, city, and all dwellers therein." Land or earth, city, are left purposely undefined, so that while that in which the offence culminated should be, by the singular, specially suggested, the violence to Judah and Jerusalem, the cruelty condemned should not be limited, to these. The violence was dealt out to the whole land or earth, and in it, to cities, and in each, one by one, to all its inhabitants. Babylon is called Jer 50:23, "the hammer of the whole earth Jer 51:7; a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken; Jer. 25 a destroying mountain, which destroyeth the whole earth; the whole earth is at rest and is quiet" Isa 14:7, after Babylon, "which made it to tremble" Isa 14:16, is overthrown.
So Satan had by violence and deceit subdued the whole earth, yet Christ made him a spoil to those whom he had spoiled, and the strong man was bound and his goods Spoiled and himself trampled underfoot. Yet here as throughout the prophets, it is a "remnant" only which is saved Cyril: "Satan too was spoiled by the remnant of the people, i. e., by those justified by Christ and sanctified in the Spirit. For the remnant of Israel was saved."
Habakkuk 2:9
hab 2:9
Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house - (or, with accents, "that coveteth covetousness or unjust gain, an evil to his house.") What man coveteth seems gain, but is evil "to his house" after him, destroying both himself and his whole family or race with him . "That he may set his nest on high," as an eagle, to which he had likened the Chaldee (Hab 1:8. Compare Jer 20:16). A pagan called "strongholds, the nests of tyrants." The nest was placed "on high" which means also "heaven," as it is said, Oba 1:4, "though thou set thy nest among the stars;" and the tower of Babel was to "reach unto heaven" Gen 11:4; and the antichrist, whose symbol the King of Babylon is, Isa 14:13 says, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God." Babylon lying in a large plain, on the sides of the Euphrates, the image of its eagle's-nest on high must be taken, not from any natural eminence, but wholly from the works of man.
Its walls, and its hanging gardens were among "the seven wonders of the world." Eye-witnesses speak of its walls, encompassing at least 100 square miles , "and as large as the land-graviat of Hesse Homberg;" those walls, 335, or 330 feet high, and 85 feet broad ; a fortified palace, nearly 7 miles in circumference; gardens, 400 Greek feet square, supporting at an artificial height arch upon arch, of "at least 75 feet," forest trees; a temple to its god, said to have been at least 600 feet high.
If we, creatures of a day, had no one above us, Nebuchadnezzars boast had been true Dan 4:30, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the Kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty?" He had built an eagle's nest, which no human arm could reach, encircled by walls which laughed its invaders to scorn, which, at that time, no skill could scale or shatter or mine. Even as one sees in a picture the vast mounds which still remain , one can hardly imagine that they were, brick upon brick, wholly the work of man.
To be delivered from the hand (grasp) of evil - that it should not be able to reach him. Evil is spoken of as a living power , which would seize him, whose grasp he would defy. It was indeed a living power, since it was the will of Almighty God, whose servant and instrument Cyrus was, to chasten Babylon, when its sins were full. Such was the counsel, what the result? The evil covetousness which he worked, brought upon him the evil, from which, in that nest built by the hard toil of his captives, he thought to deliver himself.
Habakkuk 2:10
hab 2:10
Thou hast consulted shame to thy house, the cutting off many people, and sinning against thy soul - The wicked, whether out of passion or with his whole mind and deliberate choice and will, takes that counsel, which certainly brings shame to himself and his house, according to the law of God, whereby, according to Exo 20:5, He "visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him," i. e., until by righteousness and restitution the curse is cut off. Pro 15:27 : "he that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house." So Jeremiah says Jer 7:19 : "Thus saith the Lord, Is it Me they are vexing? Is it not themselves, for the confusion of their faces?" i. e., with that end and object. Holy Scripture overlooks the means, and places us at the end of all. Whatever the wicked had in view, to satisfy ambition, avarice, passion, love of pleasure, or the rest of man's immediate ends, all he was doing was leading on to a further end - shame and death. He was bringing about, not only these short-lived, but the lasting ends beyond, and these far more than the others, since that is the real end of a thing which abides, in which it at last ends. He consulted to cut off many people and was thereby (though he did not know it) by one and the same act, "guilty of and forfeiting his OWN soul" Pro 8:36. The contemporaneousness of the act is expressed by the participle; the pronoun is omitted as in Hab 1:5).
Habakkuk 2:11
hab 2:11
For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it - All things have a voice, in that they are . God's works speak that, for which He made them Psa 19:1 : "The heavens declare the glory of God." Psa 65:13 : "the valleys are clad with corn, they laugh, yea, they sing;" their very look speaks gladness. Cyril: "For the creation itself proclaims the glory of the Maker, in that it is admired as well made. Wherefore there are voices in things, although there are not words." Man's works speak of that in him, out of which and for which he made them. Works of mercy go up for a memorial before God, and plead there; great works, performed amid wrong and cruelty and for man's ambition and pride, have a voice too, and cry out to God, calling down His vengeance on the oppressor. Here the stones of the wall, whereby the building is raised, and the beam, the tye-beam, out of the timber-work wherewith it is finished, and which, as it were, crowns the work, join, as in a chorus, answering one another, and in a deep solemn wailing, before God and the whole world, together chant "Woe, Woe." Did not the blood and groans of men cry out to God, speechless things have a voice to appeal to Him (See Luk 19:40). Against Belshazzar the wall had, to the letter, words to speak.
Each three verses forming one stanza, as it were, of the dirge, the following words are probably not directly connected with the former, as if the woe, which follows, were, so to speak, the chant of these inanimate witnesses against the Chaldaeans; yet they stand connected with it. The dirge began with woe on the wrongful accumulation of wealth from the conquered and oppressed people: it continues with the selfish use of the wealth so won.
Habakkuk 2:12
hab 2:12
Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity! - Nebuchadnezzar "encircled the inner city with three walls and the outer city also with three, all of burnt brick. And having fortified the city with wondrous works, and adorned the gates like temples, he built another palace near the palace of his fathers, surpassing it in height and its great magnificence." He seemed to strengthen the city, and to establish it by outward defenses. But it was built through cruelty to conquered nations, and especially God's people, and by oppression, against His holy Will. So there was an inward rottenness and decay in what seemed strong and majestic, and which imposed on the outward eye; it would not stand, but fell. Babylon, which had stood since the flood, being enlarged contrary to the eternal laws of God, fell in the reign of his son. Such is all empire and greatness, raised on the neglect of God's laws, by unlawful conquests, and by the toil and sweat and hard service of the poor. Its aggrandizement and seeming strength is its fall. Daniel's exhortation to Nebuchadnezzar Dan 4:27, "Redeem thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy on the poor," implies that oppressiveness had been one of his chief sins.
Habakkuk 2:13
hab 2:13
Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that (the) people (nations) shall labor - o
In (for) the very fire - literally, to suffice the fire? By God's appointment, the end of all their labor is for the fire, what may suffice it to consume. This is the whole result of their labor; and so it is as if they had toiled for this; they built ceiled palaces and gorgeous buildings, only for the fire to consume them.
And the peoples shall weary themselves for very vanity - They wearied themselves, and what was their reward? What had they to suffice and fill them? "Emptiness." This is "from the Lord of hosts," whom all the armies of heaven obey and all creatures stand at His command against the ungodly, and in whose Hand are all the hosts of earth, and so the oppressor's also, to turn as He wills.
Near upon the first stage of the fulfillment, Jeremiah reinforces the words with the name of Babylon; Jer 51:58 : "Thus saith the Lord of hosts! The broad walls of Babylon, shall be utterly destroyed, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labor in vain (for vanity), and the folk in (for) the fire, and they shall be weary."
Habakkuk 2:14
hab 2:14
For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord - Habakkuk modifies in a degree the words of Isaiah which he embodies, marking that the destruction of Babylon was a stage only toward the coming of those good things which God taught His people to long for, not their very coming. All the world should be then full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, not, as yet, wholly of Himself Jerome: "When Babylon shall be overthrown, then shall the power of the might of the Lord be known unto all. So shall the whole earth be filled with the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the bottom of the sea. This as to the letter. But it is plain, that the Devil also and antichrist, and the perverse teaching of heretics, built a city in blood; i. e, their own Church, with the destruction of those whom they deceive ... But when they fail in the fire (either this fire which is felt, or consumed in the fire of the devil their prince, or burned up with the fire whereof the Lord says, 'I came to send a fire upon the earth,' and so brought back from their former course, and doing penitence), the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, when, at the preaching of the apostles, their 'sound shall go out into all the world,' as waters covering the sea, i. e., all the saltness and bitterness of the world which Satan had rained down and the earth had drunk, the waters of the Lord shall cover, and cause the place of their ancient bitterness not to appear."
Rup.: "'For the Spirit of the Lord filled the earth,' and when He filled it, 'the earth was filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,' so that unlearned and ignorant men became wise and eloquent, and earthly became heavenly, yea, they who were earth became heaven, knowing the glory of the Lord, declaring the glory of God, not any how, but as waters cover the sea. Great as must be waters, which would cover the sea, or compared to which the sea were nothing, far greater is the miracle, when the abundance of heavenly wisdom, given to the simple, surpassed the sea, i. e., the wisdom of all mankind." This verse being already a received image of the spread of the gospel Isa 11:9, it would of itself be understood to include this also; but more generally, it declares how upon all the judgments of God, a larger knowledge of Him would follow Cyril: "All things are full of Christ, who is the Glory of the Father; wherefore also He said Joh 17:4, I have glorified Thee on earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do."
Habakkuk 2:15
hab 2:15
From cruelty the prophet goes on to denounce the woe on insolence. "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor" (to whom he owes love) drink (literally, that maketh him drink); that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also , that thou mayest look (gaze with devilish pleasure) on their nakedness." This may either be of actual insults (as in the history of Noah), in keeping certainly with the character of the later Babylonians, the last wantonness of unbridled power, making vile sport of those like himself (his neighbor), or it may be drunkenness through misery Isa 29:9 wherein they are bared of all their glory and brought to the lowest shame. The woe also falls on all, who in any way intoxicate others with flattering words or reigned affection, mixing poison under things pleasant, to bring them to shame.
Habakkuk 2:16
hab 2:16
Thou art filled with shame for glory - Oppressors think to make themselves great by bringing others down, to fill themselves with riches, by spoiling others. They loved shame Hos 4:8, because they loved that, which brought shame; they were filled with shame, in that they sated themselves with shamefulness, which was their shame within, before, in the just judgment of God, shame came on them from without Phi 3:19. "Their glory was in their shame." They shall be filled, yea, he says, they are already filled; they would satisfy, gorge themselves, with all their hearts' desires; they are "filled to the full," but with shame instead of glory which they sought, or which they already had. "From" and "for" a state of "glory," they were filled with contempt.
Drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered - thy shame like those whom thou puttest to shame, only the greater in being uncircumcised. "The cup of the Lord's Right Hand shall be turned (round) unto thee (or against thee)." It had gone round the circuit of the nations whom God had employed him to chasten, and now, the circle completed, it should be brought round to himself, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again" Mat 7:2. So Jeremiah says, Jer 25:26, "And the king of Shesbach shall drink after them;" and of Edom, Lam 4:21, "To thee also shall the cup be brought round." Thou, a man, madest man to drink of the cup of thine anger: the cup shall be brought round to thee, but not by man; to thee it shall be given by "the Right Hand of the Lord," which thou canst not escape; it shall be "the cup of the wine of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God" Rev 16:19; as Asaph had said, Psa 76:8, "There is a cup in the Lord's hand; it is full of mixture, and He poureth out therefrom; but the dregs thereof all the ungodly of the earth shall suck them out, shall drink them."
And shameful spewing shall be on thy glory - Jerome: "With the shame of thy spewing shalt thou bring up all thou hast swallowed down, and from the height of glory shalt thou be brought to the utmost ills." The shame of the ungodly cometh forth from himself; the shame he put others to is doubled upon himself; and the very means which he had used to fill himself with glory and greatness, cover the glory which by nature he had, with the deeper disgrace, so that he should be a loathsome and revolting sight to all. Man veils foul deeds under fair words; God, in His word, unveils the foulness.
Habakkuk 2:17
hab 2:17
For the violence of Lebanon - i. e., done to Lebanon, whether the land of Israel of which it was the entrance and the beauty (See Isa 37:24, and, as a symbol, Jer 22:6, Jer 22:23; Eze 17:3; but it is used as a symbol of Sennacherib's army, Isa 10:34, and the king of Asshur is not indeed spoken of under the name as a symbol (in Eze 21:3,) but is compared to it), or the temple (See the note at Zac 12:1), both of which Nebuchadnezzar laid waste; or, more widely, it may be a symbol of all the majesty of the world and its empires, which he subdues, as Isaiah uses it, when speaking of the judgment on the world, Isa 2:13, "It shall cover thee, and the spoil (i. e., spoiling, destruction) of beasts (the inhabitants of Lebanon) which made them afraid," or more simply, "the wasting of wild beasts shall crush , Pro 10:14; Pro 13:3; Pro 14:14; Pro 18:7) them (selves)," i. e., as it is in irrational nature, that "the frequency of the incursions of very mischievous animals becomes the cause that people assemble against them and kill them, so their (the Chaldaeans') frequent injustice is the cause that they haste to be avenged on thee" .
Having become beasts, they shared their history. They spoiled, scared, laid waste, were destroyed. "Whoso seeketh to hurt another, hurteth himself." The Chaldaeans laid waste Judea, scared and wasted its inhabitants; the end of its plunder should be, not to adorn, but to cover them, overwhelm them as in ruins, so that they should not lift up their heads again. Violence returns upon the head of him who did it; they seem to raise a lofty fabric, but are buried under it. He sums up their past experience, what God had warned them beforehand, what they had found.
Habakkuk 2:18
hab 2:18
What profiteth - (Hath profited) הועיל מה. Samuel warned them, "Serve the Lord with all your heart, and turn ye not aside; for (it would be) after vanities which will not profit nor deliver for they are vain:" and Jeremiah tells their past; "their prophets prophesied by Baal; and after things יועילי לא which profit not, have they gone." Elsewhere the idol is spoken of as a thing "which will not profit" (future) "My people hath changed its glory יועיל בלא for that which profiteth not," Jer 2:8, Jer 2:11. So Isaiah, "Who hath formed a god, הועיל לבלתי not to profit." Isa 44:9.10. "The makers of a graven image are all of them vanity, and their desirable things יועילו בל will not profit."
The graven image, that the maker therefore hath graven it? - What did Baal and Ashtaroth profit you? What availed it ever but to draw down the wrath of God? Even so neither shall it profit the Chaldaean. As their idols availed them not, so neither need they fear them. Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar were propagandists of their own belief and would destroy, if they could, all other worship, false or true : Nebuchadnezzar is thought to have set up his own image Dan. 3. Antichrist will set himself up as God Th2 2:4; Rev 13:15-17. We may take warning at least by our own sins. If we had no profit at all from them, neither will the like profit others. the Jews did, in the main, learn this in their captivity.
The molten image and teacher of lies - It is all one whether by "teacher of lies" we understand the idol , or its priest . For its priest gave it its voice, as its maker created its form. It could only seem to teach through the idol-priest. Isaiah used the title "teacher of lies," of the false prophet Isa 9:14. It is all one. Zechariah combines them Zac 10:2; "The teraphim have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have had false dreams."
That the maker of his work trusteth therein - This was the special folly of idolatry. The thing made must needs he inferior to its maker. It was one of the corruptions of idolatry that the maker of his own work should trust in what was wholly his own creation, what, not God, but himself created, what had nothing but what it had from himself . He uses the very words which express the relation of man to God, "the Framer" and "the thing framed." Isa 29:16, "O your perverseness! Shall the framer be accounted as clay, theft the thing made should say of its Maker, He made me not, and the thing framed say of its Framer, He hath no hands?" The idol-maker is "the creator of his creature," of his god whom he worships. Again the idol-maker makes "dumb idols" (literally, "dumb nothings") in themselves nothings, and having no power out of themselves; and what is uttered in their name, are but lies. And what else are man's idols of wealth, honor, fame, which he makes to himself, the creatures of his own hands or mind, their greatness existing chiefly in his own imagination before which he bows down himself, who is the image of God?
Habakkuk 2:19
hab 2:19
But then the greater is the "Woe" to him who deceiveth by them. The prophet passes away from the idols as "nothings" and pronounces "woe" on those who deceive by them. He . first expostulates with them on their folly, and would awaken them. "What hath it profited?" (As in Psa 115:5; Co1 12:2) Then on the obstinate he denounces "woe." "Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise." Self-made blindness alone could, in the light of truth, so speak; but yet more lies in the emphatic word, "It." The personal pronoun stands emphatically in Hebrew; He shall teach, lo, He (this same of whom he speaks) this is It which shall teach: It, and not the living God. And yet this same It (the word is again emphatic) he points, as with the finger, to it, "behold, It is laid over with, held fast by , gold and silver," so that no voice could escape, if it had any. "And there is no breath at all in the midst of it" (Compare Jer 10:14 repeated Jer 51:17), literally "All breath, all which is breath, there is none within it;" he first suggests the thought, breath of every sort, and then energetically denies it all ; no life of any sort, of man, or bird, or beast, or creeping thing Isa 41:23; Jer 10:5; none, good or bad; from God or from Satan; none whereby it can do good or do evil; for which it should be loved or feared. Evil spirits may have made use of idols: they could not give them life, nor dwell in them.
The words addressed to it are the language of the soul in the seeming absence or silence of God (Psa 7:7; Psa 35:23; Psa 44:24; Psa 59:6; Isa 51:9; Delitszch), but mockery as spoken to the senseless stone, as Ehijah had mocked the Baal-priests, "peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked" Kg1 18:26-27.
Habakkuk 2:20
hab 2:20
And now having declared the nothingness of all which is not God, the power of man or his gods, he answers again his own question, by summoning all before the presence of the majesty of God.
But the Lord - He had, in condemning them, pictured the tumult of the world, the oppressions, the violence, bloodsheddings, covetousness, insolence, self-aggrandizement of the then world-empire, and had denounced woe upon it; we see man framing his idols, praying to the lifeless stones; and God, of whom none thought, where was He? These were people's ways. "But the Lord," he joins it on, as the complement and corrective of all this confusion.
The Lord is in His holy temple - awaiting, in His long-suffering, to judge. "The temple of God" is where God enshrines Himself, or allows Himself to be seen and adored. "God is wholly everywhere, the whole of Him no where." There is no contrast between His temple on earth, and His temple in heaven. He is not more locally present in heaven than in earth. It were as anthropomorphic but less pious to think of God, as confined, localized, in heaven as on earth; because it would be simply removing God away from man. Solomon knew, when he built the temple, that "the heaven and heaven of heavens could not contain Kg1 8:27 God." The "holy temple," which could be destroyed Psa 79:1, toward which people were to pray Psa 5:7; Psa 138:2; Jon 2:4, was the visible temple Kg1 8:29-30, Kg1 8:35, Kg1 8:38, Kg1 8:42, Kg1 8:44, Kg1 8:48, where were the symbols of God's Presence, and of the stoning Sacrifice; but lest His presence should be localized, Solomon's repeated prayer is Kg1 8:30, Kg1 8:39, Kg1 8:43, Kg1 8:49, "hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place" Kg1 8:32, Kg1 8:34, Kg1 8:36, Kg1 8:45; "hear Thou in heaven." There is then no difference, as though in earlier books the "holy temple" meant that at Jerusalem, in the later, "the heavens?" In the confession at the offering of the "third year's tithes," the prayer is, Deu 27:15, "look down from Thy holy habitation, from heaven;" and David says, "the Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven" Psa 11:4; and, Psa 18:6, Psa 18:9 : "He heard my voice out of His temple - He bowed the heavens also and came down;" and, Psa 29:9, "In His temple doth everyone say, Glory." The simple words are identical though not in the same order as those, in which David, in the same contrast with the oppression of man, ushers in the judgment and final retribution to good and bad, by declaring the unseen presence of God upon His Throne in heaven, beholding and testing the sons of men.
In His Presence, all the mysteries of our being are solved.
The Lord is in His holy Temple - not, as the idols in temples made with hands, but revealing Himself in the visible temple (Jerome), "dwelling in the Son, by Nature and Union, as He saith Joh 14:10, "The Father who dwelleth in Me doeth the works;" in each one of the bodies and souls of the saints by His Spirit Co1 6:19, in the Blessed, in glory; in the Heavens, by the more evident appearance of His Majesty and the workings of His Power ; "everywhere by Essence, Presence, and Power, 'for in Him we live, and move, and have our being;' nowhere as confined or inclosed." Since then God is in Heaven, beholding the deeds of people, Himself Unchangeable, Almighty, All-holy, "let all the earth keep silence before Him," literally, "hush before Him all the earth," waiting from Him in hushed stillness the issue of this tangled state of being. And to the hashed soul, hushed to itself and its own thought, hushed in awe of His Majesty and "His Presence, before His face," God speaks .
Bible
Habakkuk Chapter 3
Habakkuk 3:1
hab 3:1
A prayer of Habakkuk - o. The "prayer" of the prophet, in the strictest sense of the word, is contained in the words of Hab 3:2. The rest is, in its form, praise and thanksgiving, chiefly for God's past mercies in the deliverance from Egypt and the entering into the promised land. But thanksgiving is an essential part of prayer, and Hannah is said to have "prayed," whereas the hymn which followed is throughout one thanksgiving . In that also these former deliverances were images of things to come, of every deliverance afterward, and, especially, of that complete divine deliverance which our Lord Jesus Christ performed for us from the power of Satan Co1 10:11, the whole is one prayer: "Do, O Lord, as Thou hast done of old; forsake not Thine own works. Such were Thy deeds once; fulfill them now, all which they shadowed forth." It is then a prayer for the manifestation of God's power, and therewith the destruction of His enemies, thenceforth to the Day of Judgment. Cyril: "Having completed the discourse about Babylon, and having fore-announced most clearly, that those who destroyed the holy city and carried Israel captive shall be severely punished, he passes suitably to the mystery of Christ, and from the redemption which took place partially in one nation, he carries on the discourse to that universal redemption, whereby the remnant of Israel, and no less the whole world has been saved."
Upon Shigionoth - The title, "Shiggaion," occurs only once besides Ps. 7. Upon, in the titles of the Psalms, is used with the instrument , the melody , or the first words of the hymn, whose melody has been adopted The two first are mentioned by a Jewish Commentator (Tanchum) with others, "in his delight," or "his errors," in the sense, that God will forgive them. This, which the versions and Jewish commentators mostly adopt, would be a good sense, but is hardly consistent with the Hebrew usage. "Shiggaion of David," as a title of a Psalm, must necessarily describe the Psalm itself, as "Mismor of David," "Michtam of David," "Tephillah of David," "Maschil of David." But "Shiggaion," as a "great error," is not a title: nor does it suit the character of the Psalm, which relates to calumny not to error.
It probably, then, means a psalm with music expressive of strong emotion, "erratic" or "dithyrambic." Habakkuk's title, on Shigionoth (plural) then would mean upon, or (as we should say,) "set to" music of psalms of this sort The number "three" remarkably predominates in this psalm (Hab 3:6 has 15 words, in five combinations of three words; Hab 3:3, Hab 3:10 have 12 words, in four 3's: Hab 3:4, Hab 3:9, Hab 3:19 have 9 words in three 3's: Hab 3:5, Hab 3:12, Hab 3:15, Hab 3:18 have 6 words in two 3's: Hab 3:17 is divided into 4-3-3-4-3-3; Hab 3:8 is 3-3-3-3-2; Hab 3:11 is 4-3-3; Hab 3:16 is 3-3-3-2-2-2-3. This forces itself on every reader. Delitzsch quotes the Meor. Enaim, i. 60, "The prayer of Habakkuk goeth on three's") yet so that long measures are succeeded by very short.
Habakkuk 3:2
hab 3:2
O Lord, I have heard - i. e., with the inward ear of the heart, "Thy speech," (rather as English margin, Thy report, i. e., the report of Thee) i. e., what may he heard and known of God, or, what he had himself heard . The word contains in one both what God had lately declared to the prophet, the judgments of God upon the wicked of the people, and upon those who, with their own injustice, done upon them the righteous judgments of God, and that the work of the Lord would be performed in His time for those who in patience wait for it; and also still more largely, what might be heard of God, although, as it were, but a little whisper of His greatness and of the majesty of His workings.
And was afraid - not "fearful" but "afraid in awe," as a creature, and amazed at the surpassing wonderfulness of the work of God. Well may man stand in awe "at the incarnation of the only-begotten Son, how earth should contain Him uncontained by space, how a body was prepared for Him of the virgin by the Holy Spirit, and all the works whereby He shall work the salvation of mankind, the cross, the death, resurrection and ascension, uniting things opposite, a body with one incorporeal, death with life, resurrection with death, a body in heaven. All is full of wonder and awe." Rup.: "This is not a servile fear, but a holy fear which endureth forever, not one which 'love casteth out,' but which it bringeth in, wherein angels praise, dominions adore, powers stand in awe at the majesty of the Eternal God."
O Lord, revive Thy work - God's Word seems, often, as it were, dead and "come utterly to an end for evermore" Psa 77:8, while it is holding on its own course, as all nature seems dead for a while, but all is laid up in store, and ready to shoot forth, as by a sort of resurrection Rup.: "The prophet prophesying prayeth, that it should come quickly, and praying prophesieth that it shall so come." All God's dealings with His people, His Church, each single soul, are part of one great work, perfect in itself Deu 32:4; glory and majesty Psa 140:3; all which the godly meditateth on Psa 77:3; Psa 143:5; which those busied with their own plans, do not look to Isa 5:12; it is manifested in great doings for them or with them, as in the Exodus the Psalmist says, "We have heard with our ears, yea, our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in the times of old" Psa 44:2; "They proved Me and saw My work" Psa 95:9; with it He makes His own glad Psa 92:3; after it has been withdrawn for a while, "He sheweth it to His servants" Psa 90:6; it issues in judgments on the ungodly, which people consider and declare .
The great work of God on earth, which includes all His works and is the end of all, is the salvation of man through Jesus Christ. This great work seemed, as it were, asleep, or dead, as trees in winter, all through those 4,000 years, which gave no token of His coming. Included in this great work is the special work of the Hand of God, of which alone it is said, "God said, Let Us make man in Our image after Our Likeness" Gen 1:26; and, "we are the clay and Thou our Potter, and we are all the work of Thy Hands" Isa 64:8; and "Thy Hands have made me and fashioned me together round about" Job 10:8, man; whom, being dead as to the life of the soul through the malice of Satan, Christ revived by dying and rising again. He was "dead in trespasses and sins," and like a carcass putrefying in them, and this whole world one great charnel-house, through man's manifold corruptions, when Christ came to awaken the dead, and they who heard lived Joh 5:25.
Again, the Center of this work, the special Work of God, that wherein He made all things new, is the Human Body of our Lord, the Temple which was destroyed by death, and within three days was raised up.
The answer to Habakkuk's enquiry, "How long?" had two sides: It had given assurance as to the end. The trial-time would not be prolonged for one moment longer than the counsel of God had fore-determined. The relief would "come, come; it would not be behind-hand." But meantime? There was no comfort to be given. For God knew that deepening sin was drawing on deepening chastisement. But in that He was silent as to the intervening time and pointed to patient expectation of a lingering future, as their only comfort, He implies that the immediate future was heavy. Habakkuk then renews his prayer for the years which had to intervene and to pass away. "In the midst of the years," before that "time appointed" , when His promise should have its full fulfillment, before those years should come to their close, he prays; "revive Thy work." The years include all the long period of waiting for our Lord's first coming before He came in the Flesh; and now for His second coming and the "restitution of all things." in this long period, at times God seems to be absent, as when our Lord was asleep in the boat, while the tempest was raging; at times He bids "the storm to cease and there is a great calm."
This, in those long intervals, when God seems to be absent, and to leave all things to time and chance, and love waxes cold, and graces seem rare, is the prayer of Habakkuk, of prophets and Psalmists, of the Church Psa 80:14, "Return, we beseech Thee, O God of hosts, look down from heaven, behold and visit this vine Psa 74:1, Psa 74:11-12. O God, why hast Thou cast us off forever? Why withdrawest Thou Thy hand, Thy right hand? For God is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Isa 51:9-10 awake, awake, put on strength, Thou Arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not It which did smite Rahab, didst wound the dragon? Art thou not It which didst dry the sea, the waters of the great deep, which didst make the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over? Psa 80:3. Stir up Thy might and come, save us Lam 5:21. Renew our days, as of old." So our Lord taught His Church to pray continually, whenever she prayed, "Thy kingdom come," longing not for His final coming only, but for the increase of His glory, and the greater dominion of His grace, and His enthronement in the hearts of people, even before its complete and final coming. "In the midst of the years revive Thy work," is the Church's continual cry.
In the midst of the years make known - literally, "Thou wilt make known: in wrath Thou wilt remember mercy;" and so (as we use the word "wilt") the prophet, at once, foretelleth, expresseth his faith, prayeth. God had made known His work and His power in the days of old. In times of trouble He seems "like a God who hideth Himself." Now, he prays Him to shine forth and help; make known Thy work, before Thou fulfill it, to revive the drooping hopes of man, and that all may see that "Thy word is truth." Make Thyself known in Thy work, that, when the time cometh to Dan 9:24 "make an end of sin" by the Death of Thy Son, Thy Awful Holiness, and the love wherewith Thou hast Joh 3:16 "so loved the world," may be the more known and adored.
In wrath Thou wilt remember mercy - So David prayed Psa 25:6, "Remember Thy tender-mercies and Thy loving-kindnesses; for they are from old." "Thou wilt remember" that counsel for man's redemption which has been from the foundation of the world: for we seem in our own minds to be forgotten of God, when He delayeth to help us. God remembereth mercy Luk 1:54, Luk 1:72 in anger, in that in this life He never chastens without purposes of mercy, and His Mercy ever softeneth His judgments. His Promise of mercy, that the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, went before the sentence of displeasure Gen 3:19, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Jerome: "He reveals His wrath that He may scare us from sin and so may not inflict it;" and when at last He inflicteth it, He hath mercy on the remnant who flee to His Mercy, that we be not like Sodom and Gomorrah. Rom 5:8, "while we were yet sinners," and God was angry, "Christ died for us," and, Tit 3:5, "He saved us, not for works which we had done, but out of His great Mercy," and took away sin, and restored us to life and interruption.
God had already promised by Micah Mic 7:15, "According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt, I will show him marvelous things." Isaiah had often used the great events of that deliverance as the symbols of the future. So now Habakkuk, in one vast panorama, as it were, without distinction of time or series of events, exhibits the future in pictures of the past. In the description itself which follows, he now speaks in the past, now in the future; of which times the future might be a vivid present; and the past a prophetic past. As a key to the whole, he says, "God shall come," indicating that all which follows, however spoken, was a part of that future. In no other way was it an answer to that prayer, "Revive Thy work." To foretell future deliverances in plain words, had been a comfort; it would have promised a continuance of that work. The unity and revival of the work is expressed, in that the past is made, as it was, the image of the future. That future was to be wondrous, superhuman; elsewhere the past miracles had been no image of it. It was to be no mere repetition of the future; and to mark this, the images are exhibited out of their historical order.
Habakkuk 3:3
hab 3:3
God came - literally, shall come
From Teman - "God shall come," as He came of old, clothed with majesty and power; but it was not mere power. The center of the whole picture is, as Micah and Isaiah had prophesied that it was to be, a new revelation Isa 2:3; Mic 4:2 : "The law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." Isa 44:5, "I will give Thee for a covenant to the people (Israel), for a light of the Gentiles." So now, speaking of the new work in store, Habakkuk renews the imagery in the Song of Moses Deu 33:2, in Deborah's Song Jdg 5:5, and in David; Psa 68:7 but there the manifestation of His glory is spoken of wholly in time past, and Mount Sinai is named. Habakkuk speaks of that coming as yet to be, and omits the express mention of Mount Sinai, which was the emblem of the law . And so he directs us to another Lawgiver, whom God should raise up like unto Moses Deu 18:15-18, yet with a law of life, and tells how He who spake the law, God, shall come in likeness of our flesh. And the Holy One from Mount Paran In the earliest passage three places are mentioned, in which or from which the glory of God was manifested; with this difference however, that it is said Deu 33:2, The Lord came from Sinai, but His glory arose, as we should say "dawned" unto them from Seir, and flashed forth from Mount Paran Seir and Mount Paran are joined together by the symbol of the light which dawned or shone forth from them. In the second passage, the Song of Deborah, Seir and the field of Edom are the place whence God came forth; Sinai melted Jdg 5:4-5 at His presence.
In Ps. 68 the mention of Edom is dropped; and the march through the wilderness under the leading of God, is alone mentioned, together with the shaking of Sinai. In Habakkuk, the contrast is the same as in Moses; only Tehran stands in place of Seir . Theman and Mount Paran are named probably, as the two opposed boundaries of the journeyings of Israel through the desert. They came to Mount Sinai through the valley, now called Wady Feiran or Paran; Edom was the bound of their wanderings to their promised land Num 20:14-20; Deut. 2. God who guided, fed, protected them from the beginning, led them to the end. Between Paran also and Edom or Teman was the gift of the Spirit to the seventy, which was the shadow of the day of Pentecost; there, was the brass serpent lifted up, the picture of the healing of the Cross . If Mount Paran is near Kadesh, then Moses in the opening of his song describes the glory of God as manifested from that first revelation of His Law on Mount Sinai; then in that long period of Israel's waiting there to its final departure for the promised land, when Mount Hor was consecrated and God's awful Holiness declared in the death of Aaron.
He who "shall come," is God , "the Holy One" (a proper name of gods) . Perfect in Holiness, as God, the Son of God, and as Man also all-holy, with a human will, always exactly accompanying the Divine Will, which was:
"The passion of His Heart
Those Three-and-thirty years."
On this there follows a pause denoted by "Selah" (which occurs thrice according to the mystery of that number,) that the soul may dwell on the greatness of the majesty and mercy of God.
Selah - There is no doubt as to the general purport of the word, that it is a musical direction, that there should be a pause, the music probably continuing alone, while the mind rested upon the thought, which had just been presented to it; our "interlude" . It is always placed at some pause of thought, even when not at the end of a strophe, or, as twice in this hymn , at the end of the verse.
Gregory of Nyssa modifies this thought, supposing "Selah" to express a pause made by the writer, that "while the psalmody, with which David's prophesying was accompanied, went on in its course, another illumining of the Holy Spirit, and an addition to the gift according to knowledge, came for the benefit of those who received the prophecy, he, holding in his verse, gave time for his mind to receive the knowledge of the thought, which took place in him from the divine illumining. He defines it to be "a sudden silence in the midst of the Psalmody for the reception of the illumining."
His Glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise - This is plainly no created glory, but anticipates the Angelic Hymn Luk 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men," or, as the Seraphim sing first glory to God in Heaven Isa 6:3, "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God of Sabaoth," and then, the whole earth is full of His glory; and Uncreated Wisdom saith (Ecclesiasticus 24:5), "I alone compassed the circuit of Heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep." Nor are they our material heavens, much less this lowest heaven over our earth nor is "His glory" any of God, which rules, encompasses, fills, penetrates the orbs of heaven and all its inhabitants, and yet is not enclosed nor bounded thereby. Those who are made as the heavens by the indwelling of God He spiritually "covers," filling them with the light of glory and splendor of grace and brightness of wisdom, as it saith, "Is there any number of His armies, and upon whom doth not His light arise? Job 25:3 and so the earth was full of His praise," i. e., the Church militant spread throughout the world, as in the Psalm Psa 112:3, "The Lord's name is praised from the rising up of the sun unto the going down of the same, and, Psa 8:1, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth, who hast set Thy glory above the heavens."
Habakkuk 3:4
hab 3:4
and His brightness - that wherein God dwelleth Eze 10:4, "the brightness of the Lord's glory," before which darkness fleeth Psa 18:12, "was as the light," or as the sun. Out of the midst of the darkness, wherewith God, as it were Exo 19:9, Exo 19:16; Exo 20:21, hid Himself, the brightness of the "inapproachable Light" wherein "He dwelleth," gleams forth Exo 24:10, bright as the brightest "light" gathered into one, which man knows of and whereon he cannot gaze. So amid the darkness of the humiliation of His presence in the flesh, Joh 1:14 : "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father;" and, Isa 9:2, "the people that walked in darkness see a great light," not dim. Theoph.: "nor weak, nor shadowed, like that of Moses, but pure unimaginable light of the knowledge of God." The brightness too of His flesh was like the light of the Godhead on Mount Tabor; for the Godhead flashed through. Rup.: "As often as He did His marvelous works, He put forth His "brightness" (tempered for His creatures, since they could not approach the depth of His light, yet) as "light" to enlighten people to know Him. Yet the brightness issues from the Light, co-existing with it, and in it, while issuing from it. And so the words aptly express, how He who is the, Heb 1:3, "brightness of the Father's Glory and the express Image of His Person." Wisdom Heb 7:25, "brightness of the eternal light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of His goodness," is as the Light from whom He is. Nicene Creed: "Light of Light," Equal to the Father by whom He was begotten. As John says in Joh 1:9 : "That was the true Light, which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world." As He prayeth in Joh 17:5, "Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was."
He had horns coming out of His Hand - Jerome Dion: "Horns are everywhere in Holy Scripture the emblem of strength." It may be, that here "rays" are likened to horns, as the face of Moses is said, with the same image, to have "sent forth rays" after he had long been in the presence of God. So it may be a mingled image of the Glory and might; Light, which was also might. But "horns," though they may be a symbol of "light," are not of "lightning;" and the Hand of God is used as an emblem of His power, His protection, His bounty, His constraining force on His prophets. It is nowhere used of the side or sides. We have two images combined here; "horns" which in every other place in which they are used as a metaphor, is an emblem of power; and "from the hand of" which, wherever it is used of a person, means that the thing spoken of had been in his hand or power really or virtually. Both then combine in the meaning that the might came forth from the directing agency of God who wielded it.
When then did light or might, which lay, as it were, before in the hand of God, go forth from it? For "the hand of God" is always symbolic of His might, whether put forth, or for the time laid up in it. The form of the words remarkably corresponds to those of Moses, in the preface to the blessing on the tribes, which Habakkuk had in mind Deu 33:2, "From His right hand was a fiery law for them," and Paul says that the glory of Moses' face which he received from the Presence of God, was a symbol of the glory of the law. Co2 3:7 says, "The ministration of death written and engraven on stone was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance." The law, being given by God, had a majesty of its own. The Psalms bear witness to its power in converting, enwisening, rejoicing, enlightening the soul Psa 19:8. They in whose heart it was, none of their steps slipped Psa 37:31. The whole 119th Psalm is one varied testimony of its greatness and its power. It was a guide on the way; it was a schoolmaster unto Christ Gal 3:24, by whom it was fulfilled. But itself bare witness of the greater glory which should come forth from the Hand of God. Co2 3:11 states, "If that which is done away were glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious." Cyril: "The horn signifieth power, when it is spoken of God the Father exhibiting to us God the Son, Luke 2:69, 'He hath raised up a horn of salvation for us,' and again, Psa 111:9, 'His horn shall be exalted in honor.' For all things which were marvelously done were glorious. The only-begotten One then came in our form, and, in regard to the flesh and the manhood, enduring the appearance of our weakness, but, as God, invisible in might and easily subduing whom He willed."
And what has been the weapon of His warfare, whereby He has subdued the might of Satan and the hearts of people, but "the horns" of His cross, whereto His sacred hands were once fastened by the sharp nails, where was the "hiding of His Power," when His almightiness lay hid in His passion Isa 53:3, and He was Psa 22:6 "a worm and no man; a reproach of men and the despised of the people?" Now it is the scepter laid upon His shoulder Isa 9:6, the ensign and trophy of His rule, the rod of His strength Psa 110:2, terrible to devils, salvation to mankind. In it lay His might, although concealed, as He said, "The words, horns are in His hands, show the insignia of His kingdom, by which horns, pushing and thrusting the invisible and opposing powers, He drove them away." Eusebius Dem. Evang. vi. 15. Add Cyprian Test. ad Quirin. ii. 21. p. 57. Oxford Translation: "The horns in His hands, what are they but the trophy of the cross?"
Augustine, de Civ. Dei xviii. 32), "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me" Joh 12:32. His Might was lodged there, although hidden. It was "the hiding-place of His power." The cross was, Co1 1:23-24, "to the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ crucified was the Power of God and the Wisdom of God." Through the Cross was, Mat 28:18, "all power given to Him both in Heaven and earth." Dan 7:14 : "there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him." From Him shall go forth all power in earth; by His hands shall be given the vacant thrones in Heaven, as He says in Rev 3:21, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with My Father in His Throne." There too was the hiding of His Power, in that there, in His Cross, is our shelter , and in His pierced Side our hiding place, where we may take refuge from Satan and our sins; for therein is power.
Consider Joh 10:28, "Neither shall any pluck them out of My Hand." Light and darkness always meet in God. His inapproachable light is darkness to eyes which would gaze on it. Psa 104:2, "he covereth Himself with Light as with a garmemt." His light is the very veil which hideth Him. His Light is darkness to those who pry into Him and His Nature; His darkness is light to those who by faith behold Him. He "emptied Himself" Phi 2:8 and hid Himself; He hid the power of His Godhead in the weakness of the Manhood, and so, Co2 4:6, "He who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the Face of Jesus Christ." Jerome: "In the Cross was for a while His might hidden, when He said to His Father, Mat 26:38-39, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death, and, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me,' and on the Cross itself, Luk 23:13, 'Father, into Thy Hands I commend My Spirit. '"
Habakkuk 3:5
hab 3:5
Before Him went (goeth) the pestilence - then to consume His enemies. Exo 23:27 : "I will send My fear before thee, and will destroy all the people, to whom thou shalt come," and the lightnings are a token that, Psa 68:1-2, "they which hate Him, flee before Him, and the wicked perish at the Presence of God." So, on His Ascension, Herod and Pilate were smitten by Him, and Elymas and Simon Magus before His apostles, and whatsoever hath lifted itself up against Him hath perished, and antichrist shall perish, Psa 11:4, "at the breath of His mouth," and all the ungodly on the Day of Judgment.
And burning coals - rather, as English, "burning fever", Deu 32:2. (where also it is singular, as only beside in רשׁף בני benēy resheph Job 5:7.) So A. E., "burning coals" is from Kimchi, Tanchum gives as different opinions "sparks" or "arrows" or "pestilence;" but the meanings "sparks, arrows," are ascribed only to the plural. Psa 76:4; 88:48; Sol 8:6. The central meaning is probably "burning heat."
Went forth at his feet - i. e., followed Him. Messengers of death went as it were before Him, as the front of His army, and the rear thereof was other forms of death Death and destruction of all sorts are a great army at His command, going before Him as heralds of His Coming (such as are judgments in this world) or attendants upon Him, at the judgment when He appeareth 2 Tim. 6:1. in His kingdom, when, Mat 13:51, Mat 13:42, "they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire."
Habakkuk 3:6
hab 3:6
He stood - It is "a metaphor of his giving victory to Israel" Tanchum.
And measured - So Kimchi, A. E., Rashi, Tanchum, Vulgate. It is borne out by Hithpolel. "extended himself," Kg1 17:21. By an interchange of dentals; מוד might be = מוט, and so the Aramaic and the Septuagint but in no other case do the two forms co-exist in Hebrew.
The earth - Joshua, after he had conquered the land, meted it out and divided it among the people. He who should come, should measure out the earth in its length and breadth, that earth which His glory filleth. "He stood," as Stephen saw Him, Act 7:56, "standing at the right hand of God." Isaiah saith, Isa 3:13 : "The Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people." He had not need to go forth, but, in the abode of His glory, "He stood" and beheld and with His eye "measured the earth," as His own, whereas, before the cross, it lay under Co1 2:5, "the Prince of this world," and he had said, Luk 4:6, "it is delivered unto me, and unto whomsoever I will, I give it." "He measureth it," and gave it to His apostles. Mat 28:18; Mar 16:15 : "all power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," and, Psa 19:4, "their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words into the ends of the world." He measureth it also, surveying and weighing all who dwell therein, their persons, qualities, deeds, good or bad, to requite them, as "Judge of quick and dead;" as David cast down Moab and measured them with a line, Sa2 8:2, "to put to death and to keep alive."
He beheld, and drove asunder the nations - or, "made the nations to tremble." When Israel came out of Egypt and God divided the Red Sea before them, they sang: Exo 15:15-16 "The people shall hear and be afraid; terror shall take hold of the inhabitants of Palestine; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold of them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away; fear and dread shall fall on them; by the greatness of Thy power they shall be still as a stone." Fear and awe were to be renewed. All nearness of God brings terror to sinful man. When the news came through the wise men, that they had, Mat 2:1-3, "seen in the East the star of Him who was born, King of the Jews," not only was Herod the King troubled, but "all Jerusalem with him." Pilate Joh 19:8 "was afraid" when he condemned Jesus; the high priests wondered "whereunto this should grow," and expostulated, Act 5:24, Act 5:28, "ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man's blood upon us." Pagandom was as a beleaguered city, mastered by an ubiquitous Presence, which they knew not how to meet . "The state is beset: the Christians are in their fields. in their forts, in their islands. Every sex, age, condition, and now even rank is going over to this sect." The fierceness of the persecutions was the measure of their fear. They put forth all human might to stamp out the spark, lest their gods, and the greatness of the empire which they ascribed to their gods, should fall before this unknown Power.
And the everlasting mountains were scattered; the perpetual hills did bow - all power, great or small, gave way before Him. All which withstood was scattered asunder, all which in pride lifted itself up was brought low, although before the coming of the Saviour it had ever gone with neck erect, and none could humble its pride. There is something so marvelous about those ancient mountains. There they stood before man was on the earth; they are so solid, man so slight; they have survived so many generations of man; they will long survive us; they seem as if they would stand forever; nothing could stand before the might of God. What symbol could be more apt? To the greater pride the heavier lot is assigned; the mountains lifted on high above the earth and, as it were, looking down upon it, are scattered or dispersed, as when a stone flieth in pieces under the stroke of the hammer. The "hills" are bowed down only; and this may be the pride of man humbled under the yoke of Christ.
His ways are everlasting - "Everlasting" is set over against "everlasting." The "everlasting" of the creature, that which had been as long as creation had been, co-existing with its whole duration, its most enduring parts, are as things past and gone; "the everlasting mountains, the hills of eternity," have been scattered in pieces and bowed, and are no more. Over against these stands the everpresent eternity of God. "His ways are everlasting," ordered everlastingly, existing everlastingly in the Divine Mind, and, when in act among us, without change in Him. The prophet blends in these great words, things seemingly contrary, ways which imply progress, eternity which is unchangeable "God ever worketh, and ever resteth; unchangeable, yet changing all; He changeth His works, His purpose unchanged" . "For Thou art Most High, and art not changed, neither in Thee doth today come to a close; yet in Thee it doth come to a close; because all such things also are in Thee. For they had no way to pass away, unless Thou heldest them together. 'And since Thy years fail not,' Thy years are one Today. How many of our's and our fathers' years have flowed away through Thy today; and from it received the measure and the mould of such being as they had; and still others shall flow away, and so receive the mould of their degree of being. But Thou art still the Same; and all things of tomorrow, and all beyond, and all of yesterday, and all behind it, Thou wilt do in this today, Thou hast done in this today"
To these His goings, a highway is made by the breaking down of all which exalted itself, as Isaiah had said, "The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low and the Lord Alone shall be exalted in that day" Isa 2:17; and "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low" Isa 40:3.
Bernard in Ps. Qui habitat. Serra. xi. 8: "The Everlasting ways of the Everlasting God are Mercy and Truth, by these Ways are the hills of the world and the proud demons, the princes of the darkness of this world, bowed down, who knew not the way of mercy and truth nor remembered its paths. What hath he to do with truth, who is a liar and the father of it, and of whom it is written, 'he abode not in the Truth?' But how far he is from Mercy, our misery witnesseth, inflicted on us by him. When was he ever merciful, 'who was a murderer from the beginning?' So then those swelling hills were bowed down from the Everlasting Ways, when through their own crookedness they sunk away from the straight ways of the Lord, and became not so much ways as precipices. How much more prudently and wisely are other hills bowed down and humbled by these ways to salvation! For they were not bowed from them, as parting from their straightness, but the Everlasting Ways themselves bowed down. May we not now see the hills of the world bowed down, when those who are high and mighty with devoted submission bow themselves before the Lord. and worship at His Feet? Are they not bowed down, when from their own destructive loftiness of vanity and cruelty, they are turned to the humble way of mercy and truth?"
Habakkuk 3:7
hab 3:7
I saw - in prophetic vision Kg1 22:17.
The tents of Cushan in (under) affliction - Upon the coming of the Lord there follows the visitation of those alien from Him. . Cushan-Rishathaim was the first, whose ambition God overruled to chasten His people Jdg 3:8-10.. It has been remarked that as "king of Aram-Naharaim" or North Mesopotamia, he was probably sovereign of the Aram, from which Balak king of Moab, allied with Midian, sent for Balaam to curse Israel. Midian was the last enemy who, at the very entrance of the promised land, seduced God's people into idolatry and foul sin and lusts. Midian became then the object of the wrath of God Num 25:17. They were also among the early oppressors of Israel, leaving Jdg 6:4, Jdg 6:11. "no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor ass," driving them for refuge to dwell in the "dens and the mountains, caves and fastnesses," consuming the produce of their land like locusts, so that he whom God raised up as their subduer, was threshing even in a wine-press to hide it from them.
Both the kingdom of Aram-Naharaim and Midian disappear from history after those great defeats. Midian, beside its princes Jdg 8:10. "lost," by mutual slaughter, "one hundred and twenty thousand men who drew sword." It left its name as a proverb for the utter destruction of these who sought to exterminate the people of God. Psa 83:9, Psa 83:11-12. "Do unto them as unto the Midianites; make them and their princes like Oreb and Zeeb; all their princes us Zebah and as Zalmunnah, who said, let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession." It was an exterminating warfare, which rolled back on those who waged it. So Isaiah sums up an utter breaking-off of the yoke and the rod of the oppressor, as being Isa 9:4 "as in the day of Midian." The same word, aven, is nothingness, iniquity, and the fruit of iniquity, trouble (Job 5:6; Job 26:14; Jer 4:15; Hos 9:4; not in Psa 55:4; nor (as Gesenius) in Job 4:8; Psa 22:8; Isa 59:4.) (since iniquity is emptiness and opposed to that which is, God and His Goodness, and ends in sorrow); so then Cushan is seen as lying as all sinners do, weighed down by and under what is very "emptiness."
Tents and curtains are emblems of what shall pass away, under which the wicked shelter themselves from the troubles of this present life, as from heat and rain, "but which in themselves decay, and are consumed by fire." "The curtains of Midian tremble." The prophet uses the present to shew that he was not speaking of any mere past terror, but of that terror, which should still seize those opposed to God. The word "wrath" (רגז rôgez) echoes through the hymns; Hab 3:2. here the wicked tremble, רגז râgaz, under it, to perish; afterward the prophet Hab 3:16. to live.
Habakkuk 3:8
hab 3:8
Was the Lord displeased against the rivers? - The prophet asks the question thrice, as to the two miracles of the dividing of the Red Sea and the Jordan River, thereby the more earnestly declaring, that God meant somewhat by these acts and beyond them. He asks, as Daniel Dan 7:16. and Zechariah asked, what was the truth of the things which they saw. God's defilings with His former people were as much ensamples of what should be with us Co1 10:11. as the visions shown to the prophets. Hereafter too, there shall be Luk 21:25; Rev 8:6 "signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring;" there shall be deepening plagues upon the sea and the rivers and fountains of waters; and every living soul in the sea shall die Rev 16:3. But God's purpose therein aforetime was not as to the sea or the rivers, but for the salvation of His elect; so shall it be to the end. Mighty as may be the "mighty waves of the sea" which lift themselves up against the Lord, "mightier on high is the Lord" Psa 93:4. Jerome: "As Thou didst dry up the Jordan and the Red Sea, fighting for us; for Thou wert not wroth with the rivers or the sea, nor could things without sense offend Thee; so now mounting Thy chariots, and taking Thy bow, Thou wilt give salvation to Thy people; and the oaths which Thou swarest to our fathers and the tribes, Thou wilt fulfill forever."
Thou didst ride upon Thy horses - as though God set His army Psa 103:12. "the Hosts which do His pleasure," against the armies of earth, as the prophet's servant had his eyes opened to see Kg2 6:15. "the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." Jerome: "Yet amidst so many thousands of horses and chariots, there was no rider; He was the Rider and Ruler of those horses, of whom the Psalmist says Psa 80:1. 'Thou that sittest above the Cherubim, shew Thyself.' With such horses and such chariots was Elijah also taken up into Heaven."
And Thy chariots of salvation - literally "Thy chariots are salvation." Not, as in human armies, except as far as they are the armies of God, to destruction. The end of God's armies, His visitations and judgments, is the salvation of His elect, even while they who are inwardly dead, perish outwardly also. Nor, again, do they prepare for the deliverance for which He intends them. With God, to will is to do. His chariots are salvation. His help is present help. His chariots are the tokens and channels of His Presence to aid. And so, they who bore His "Name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel, chosen vessels" to bear it, are, in a yet fuller sense, His chariots, which are salvation. Jerome said that they "are holy souls, upon which the word of God cometh, to save them and others by them Sol 1:9.. 'I have compared thee,' saith the Spouse, 'to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.' However holy the soul, yet compared to God, it is like the chariot of Pharaoh; and a beast, yet still a beast, before Thee." Psa 73:23.. Yet such an one, as endowed with might and ready obedience, and swiftness and nobleness to bear the Word of God, and through His might whom they bore, not their own, nor making it their own, bearing down everything which opposed itself.
Cyril: "The object of the prophet, is to show that the second dispensation is better and more glorious, and of incomparably better things than the old. For of old He led Israel forth, through the bodily service of Moses, changing into blood the rivers of Egypt, and doing signs and wonders; then dividing the Red Sea, and carrying over the redeemed, and choking in the waters the most warlike of the Egyptians. But when the only-begotten Word of God became Man, He withdrew the whole human race under heaven from the tyranny of Satan, not changing rivers into blood, nor pouring forth His anger upon waters, nor dividing waves of the sea, nor bringing destruction upon people, but rather destroying the murderous Serpent himself, and taking away the sin which had been invented by him and for him, and loosing the unconquered might of death, and calling all to the knowledge of God, through the holy apostles, who, running forth their course under the whole heaven and bearing about the name of Christ, were very rightly had in admiration.
He saith then, O Lord, most worthy to be heard are those things, of which Thou hast Thyself been the Doer, and what Thou hast done anew is far better than what Thou didst through Moses. For Thou wilt not inflict wrath on rivers, nor show Thy might on the sea; not in these things will Thy divine and marvelous power gleam forth, but 'Thou wilt ride upon Thy horses,' and 'Thy chariots are Salvation.' What may these horses be? The blessed disciples, apostles and evangelists, they who took on them wholly the yoke of all His divine will, they, the noble, the obedient, ready for all things, whatsoever should please Him; who had Christ to sit upon them, whereof one is the blessed Paul, of whom Himself saith, Act 9:15 : 'He is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My Name before the Gentiles.' Of fiery speed were these Horses, encompassing the whole earth; so then the chariots of God are said to be 'ten thousand times ten thousand' Psa 68:17. For countless, each in their times, and after them, became leaders of the people, and subjected the neck of the understanding to the yoke of the Saviour, and bare about His glory throughout the whole earth, and rightly divided the word of truth, and subdued the whole earth, as with the speed of horsemen."
His chariots are salvation - Cyril: "for they ran not in vain, but to save cities and countries and nations together, Christ overthrowing the empires of devils, who, so to speak, divided among themselves the whole earth, subduing its dwellers to their own will."
Habakkuk 3:9
hab 3:9
Thy bow was made quite naked - The word is repeated for emphasis. Literally, (In) "nakedness, it was laid naked;" the sheath being laid aside and cast away, as Isaiah says, Isa 22:6. "Kir laid bare the shield." Gregory, Mor. xix. 9. n. 54, Compare Augustine in Ps. 59, n. 6.: The bow represents the threat of the vengeance of Almighty God, from which it is at length discharged, if not turned aside; the longer the string is drawn, the sharper issueth the arrow. So then the more the coming of the day of judgment is delayed, the stricter is the severity of the judgment then issuing. So long as judgment is delayed, the bow seems laid up in its sheath. God's judgments mostly strike suddenly. Psa 64:7, "as with a swift arrow," because men regard them not, coming from a bow at a distance which they see not. His more signal judgments He makes bare in sight of all.
According to the oath of (to) the tribes - "the oath which He swore unto our father Abraham," which oath He often renewed to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and again to David This oath, the word and promise of God, was the pledge of the deliverance of His people, that they "should be saved from their enemies, and from the hand of all that hate them." It lay, as it were, covered and hid, so long as God completed it not. Selah. A pause followeth, wherein to meditate on all which is contained in the word or promise of God, which is all time and eternity.
Thou didst cleave the earth with (into) rivers - Sea and river had become dry land for the passing through of God's people; again, the rock, struck by Moses' rod, was split, so that "rivers ran in the dry places." Until that Rock, which was Christ, was stricken, and "out of His side came blood and water" Joh 19:24, the whole world was desert and barren; then it was turned into streams of water, and "now not four but twelve streams went forth from the Paradise of Scriptures" (Jerome) For from the One Fountain which is Christ, there issue many streams, even as many as convey the waters of His teaching, to water the earth.
Habakkuk 3:10
hab 3:10
The mountains saw Thee and they trembled - literally, "they tremble." While man is insensate, inanimate nature feels and attests the presence of its Maker. "It saw it trembles." To see, feel, tremble were one. The prophet does not follow a bare order of events, or bind himself to miracles which actually took place. The mountains tremble with earthquakes, or seem to be shaken by the thunders which they re-echo. And so they are signs, how what is firmest and closes up the way to man, trembles at the Presence of God. Whatever is lifted up shall be bowed down before Him. (See Zac 4:7.). But the word "trembled" is that which is especially used of travail pangs and so it may spiritually denote that "they who conceive the fear of God shall bring forth unto salvation." "The overflowing," i. e., the impetuous, sweeping, flow, of the water (or, of waters), such as in themselves would bear all before them, pass by harmless. The more they swell, the more they expend themselves, and pass away. "The whole force of persecution, wherewith they vexed Thy people, at sight of Thee passed away," like a torrent which rages and disappears, and, by raging, the sooner wastes itself.
The deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands - רום = מרום mârôm which stands as the accusative of direction with "lifted up the eyes" Isa 37:23; Isa 40:26.
On high - The noise of the waves, when God brought the strong East wind over it and Psa 106:9. rebuked it, was as a cry to God; the waves, as they swelled, were like hands lifted up to Him, and stricken one against the other. There is no distinct ground against a slightly different rendering it: "the deep uttered his voice, the height lifted up his hands" i. e., to One yet higher, whom height and depth owned as their Lord and worshipped.
Habakkuk 3:11
hab 3:11
Sun and moon stood still (as one act retiring into) in their habitation - They withdrew, as it were, in the midst of the great tempest, wherein Jos 10:11-13. "God cast down great stones from heaven upon" His enemies and they died; and "the sun stood still, and the moon stayed." The sun too withdrew itself in the great darkness at the crucifixion, as not bearing to look upon the death of its Maker, when the majesty of the Sun of Righteousness was darkened o'er; and signs in the sun and in the moon there shall be to the end.
At the light of Thine arrows they went - A. E.: "There was no need of the sun by day, nor of the moon by night; for by the light of Thine arrows can the sons of men hold their way." Tanchum: "This is a mystical interpretation, as you see; this is like the promise of the Most High; Isa 60:19. 'the sun shall be no more for thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee, and the Lord shall be to thee an everlasting light.'" The judgments of God are a light to His people, while they are the destruction of His enemies; in them they "learn righteousness" Isa 26:9. The arrows are God's judgments, as they threaten and wound from afar;
The shining of Thy glittering spear - literally, of the lightning of Thy spear, when close at hand. When all other light is withdrawn, and the Sun, our Lord, is hardly beheld in the darkness of the last days, and the moon, the Church, shall not give her light, Christ not shining upon her as before, because "iniquity shall abound, and the love of many shall wax cold," and "stars," many who seem to shine with the light of grace, "shall fall from heaven," His own shall walk on and advance in holiness. Dion.: "from strength to strength, Psa 84:7. from good to better, from the way to their home," by the bright light of the lightning of God's Judgments, wherein His glory shall be manifested. Arrows and spears are part of the spiritual armory of God, wherewith the people are subdued unto Him. Cyril: "armory, not wherewith He is girt but which He giveth to those who are meet; bright and as it were full of lightning. For most transparent is virtue." They went then at the light of Thine arrows. Cyril: "because to those who love sin virtue has no beauty, nor, as yet, any brightness. But to those who know her she is nothing less than lightning, bright and transparent, so that whoso hath her is easily known to all around. The disciples then, first having the lightning of Thine arms, shall lead others also to its Light. Admiring and conceiving in themselves those virtues which are the arms of Christ, they shine forth to others, a gleam, as it were, of the bright flash of light inherent in those graces." Rup.: "They were enlightened and began, by preaching, to send forth shining words of truth. But those words are Thine arrows, shining arrows, showing by their light the way of life, and by their sharp point pricking the hearts of people unto repentance."
Habakkuk 3:12
hab 3:12
Thou didst march the earth in indignation - The word "tread" is used of very solemn manifestations of God, (Jdg 5:4; Psa 68:8; of the procession of the ark, Sa2 6:13. It is denied as to the idols, Jer 10:5.) of His going to give to His own victory over their enemies Not the land only, as of old, but the earth is the scene of His judgments; the earth which was "full of His praise," which He "meted out" Hab 3:3, Hab 3:6 which contained the nations whom He chastened, the whole earth.
Thou dost thresh the heathen in anger - Not then only, but at all times unto the end, distress of nations and perplexity are among the shoots of the fig tree, which betoken that the everlasting, Luk 21:25-31, "summer is nigh at hand." Jerusalem, when it had slain the Prince of Life, was given over to desolation and counted like the pagan. It became the synagogue, not the Church; and so in the destruction of Jerusalem (as it is an image of the destruction of the world) was that again fulfilled, "Thou dost march through the earth in indignation, Thou dost thresh the heathen in anger."
Habakkuk 3:13
hab 3:13
Thou wentest forth - Even a Jew says of this place, Kimchi: "The past is here used for the future; and this is frequent in the language of prophecy; for prophecy, although it be future, yet since it is, as it were, firmly fixed, they use the past concerning it." The prophet speaks again in the past, perhaps to fix the mind on that signal going-forth, when God destroyed Pharaoh, the first enemy who essayed to destroy the chosen line. This stands at the head of all those dispensations, in which God put or shall put forth His might to save His people or destroy their enemies. All is with Him one everlasting purpose; the last were, as it were, embodied in the first: were it not for the last, the first would not have been. Prophecy, in speaking of the first, has in mind all the rest, and chiefly the chiefest and the end of all, the full salvation of His people through Jesus Christ our Lord. "Thou wentest forth," i. e. Rup.: "Thou, the Unseen God, gavest signs which may be seen of Thy Presence or coming to men." "Thou wentest forth," not by change of place, for Thou art not bounded; Thou art without change; but by showing Thy power, and doing something anew openly.
For the salvation of thy people even for salvation with Thine anointed - The English Version is doubtless right. So Aquila, although a Jew rendered, and the 5th Version. The 6th, a Christian, translated, "Thou wentest forth to save Thy people through Jesus, Thy Christ." So also the Vulgate and other old Jewish authorities. Rachmon (in Martini Pug. Fid. f. 534.). notes "that the word (את 'êth) means "with," as in Gen 37:2; Gen 39:2." For although it might he used to mark the object only after a verbal noun, it is not likely that the construction would have been changed, unless the meaning were different. If (את 'êth) had been only the sign of the object there was no occasion for inserting it at all, and it would probably have been avoided, as only making the sentence ambiguous, in that it may more obviously be taken in the sense adopted by Aquila and the Vulgate and the English version.
The Septuagint and two early heretics who disbelieved the divinity of our Lord (Theodotion and Symmachus) render "to save Thy Christs." Moreover, the Septuagint is wrong in that the "anointed" is never used of the people, but of single persons only, who were shadows of the Christ. "Thine anointed" is understood of one individual - "the king of Judah," by A. E. "Saul and David," by Rashi; "Moses," by Abarb.; "Hezekiah" by Tanchum; but "Messiah Ben David," by Kimchi Sal. b. Mel. God, from the first, helped His people through single persons - Moses, Joshua, each of the Judges - accustoming them to receive deliverance by one, and to gather together all their hopes in One. To Moses He said, Exo 3:12 : "I will be with thee," and to Joshua, Jos 1:5 : "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee," and to Cyrus, Isa 45:2 : "I will go before thee," preparing His people to receive that nearer Presence with His Christ, of which our Lord says: "Believest thou not, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The Father that Dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works" Joh 14:10 Rup.: "The Son of God, God Invisible, became Man, visible; and with Him, so going forth, the Holy Spirit went forth 'to the salvation of His people,' so as to give a visible sign of His Coming. For upon His Christ Himself, Him who was anointed with the Holy Spirit Act 10:38. 'He descended in a bodily Shape, as a Dove.' So He 'went forth to the Salvation of His people,' i. e., to save His people with His Christ, our Saviour;" and again, on the Day of Pentecost, when that other Comforter came, "whom," He said, I" will send unto you from the Father," and in whose Presence His own promise was fulfilled, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." His Presence was manifested both in the remission of sins, and the parting of graces among all, and in the Heb 2:4. "signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost," wherewith "God bare witness to the apostles," when, Mar 16:20, "they went forth, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following." A going forth to judgment, at the end of the world, is foretold in the like image of warfare (Rev 17:14; Rev 19:11 ff).
Thou woundedst (crushedst) the head out of the house of the wicked - One wicked stands over against One anointed, as in Isaiah Isa 11:4. "He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked;" and David speaks of one "He shall smite the head over a great land" Psa 110:6; and Paul speaks of "that wicked, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming" Th1 4:8 Him He shall destroy at once from above and below; overthrowing his kingdom from the foundation. From above, his head was crushed in pieces; from below, the house was razed from its very foundations. So Amos said, Amo 9:1, "The Lord said, Smite the capital, and the lintel (threshold ) strike, and wound them in the head, all of them;" and with a different image Amo 2:9. "I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath." First, the head is struck off, crushed; then the house from the foundations to its neck; then as it were the headless walls. The image of the neck may be the rather used to recall, that as the house of God is built of living stones, so the kingdom of the evil one is made of living dead, who shall never cease to exist in an undying death. The bruising of Satan, the head or prince of this evil world, is the deliverance of the world. His head was bruised, when, by the Death of our Lord, "the Prince of this world was cast out;" he is "crushed out of the house of the wicked, whenever he, the strong man," is bound and cast out, and "the soul of the sinner which had been his abode, becomes the house of God, and righteousness dwelleth there and walketh in her."
Rup.: "Thou didst not leave any error or vice in the world unshaken, either what was concealed, like the foundation of a house; or that which was open, as the neck of the body is open;" to the neck, where the destruction from above ceased, so that nothing remained unsmitten. Rup.: "For they being, by the fiery tongues which Thou shewedst without, made fervent and strong, wise and eloquent, ceased not, until they made known to all, what folly was this world's wisdom, what sacrilege its sacred worship." Dion.: "His secret counsels He laid bare, as the apostle says Co2 2:11; Co1 12:10. We are not ignorant of his devices; and, to another is given the discerning of spirits."
Habakkuk 3:14
hab 3:14
Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages - The destruction comes not upon himself only, but upon the whole multitude of his subjects; and this not by any mere act of divine might, but "with his own staves," turning upon him the destruction which he prepared for others. So it often was of old. When the Midianites and Amalekites and the children of the east Jdg 6:3-4 wasted Israel in the days of Gideon "the Lord set every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host" Jdg 7:22; and when God delivered the Philistines into the hand of Jonathan Sa1 14:12, Sa1 14:16, Sa1 14:20 so it was with "Ammon Moab and the inhabitants of Mount Seir," at the prayer of Jehoshaphat and his army Ch2 20:22-23. And so it shall be, God says, at the end, of the army of God; "every man's sword shall be against his brother," Eze 38:21. and Isaiah says, Isa 9:20, "every man shall eat the flesh of his own arm," and Zechariah Zac 14:13, "a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them; and they shall lay every man hold on the hand of his neighbor, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbor."
So Pharaoh drove Israel to the shore of the sea, in which he himself perished; Daniel's accusers perished in the den of lions, from which Daniel was delivered unharmed; Dan 6:24. and so Haman was hanged on the gallows which he prepared for Mordecai Est 7:10. So it became a saying of Psalmists (Psa 7:5, add Psa 9:15; Psa 10:2; Psa 35:8; Psa 57:6; Psa 94:23; Psa 141:10; Pro 5:22; Pro 26:27; Ecc 10:8.) "He made a pit and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made; his mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate:" and this from above, sent down by God. The pagan too observed that there was "no juster law than that artificers of death by their own art should perish." This too befell him, when he seemed to have all but gained his end. "They came (out) as a whirlwind to scatter me," with whirlwind force, to drive them asunder to all the quarters of the heavens, as the wind scatters the particles of Job 37:11. cloud, or (Jer 13:24, add Jer 18:17; Isa 41:16, Delitzsch) "as the stubble which passeth away by the wind of the wilderness." Pharaoh at the Red Sea or Sennacherib, sweep all before them. Pharaoh said Exo 15:9. "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them."
Their rejoicing - It is no longer one enemy. The malice of the members was concentrated in the head; the hatred concentrated in him was diffused in them. The readiness of instruments of evil to fulfill evil is an incentive to those who conceive it; those who seem to ride the wave are but carried on upon the crest of the surge which they first roused. They cannot check themselves or it. So the ambitious conceiver of mischief has his own guilt; the willing instruments of evil have theirs. Neither could be fully evil without the other. Sennacherib had been nothing without those fierce warriors who are pictured on the monuments, with individual fierceness fulfilling his will, nor the Huns without Attila, or Attila without his hordes whose tempers he embodied. Satan would be powerless but for the willing instruments whom he uses. So then Holy Scripture sometimes passes from the mention of the evil multitude to that of the one head, on earth or in hell, who impels them; or from the one evil head who has his own special responsibility in originating it, to the evil multitude, whose responsibility and guilt lies in fomenting the evil which they execute.
Their rejoicing - He does not say simply "they rejoice to," but herein is their exceeding, exulting joy. The wise of this earth glories in his wisdom, the mighty man in his might, the rich in his riches: the truly wise, that he understandeth and knoweth God. But as for these, their exultation is concentrated in this, savagery; in this is their jubilation; this is their passion. Psalmists and pious people use the word to express their exulting joy in God: people must have an object for their empassioned souls; and these, in cruelty.
As it were to devour the poor secretly - From the general he descends again to the individual, but so as now to set forth the guilt of each individual in that stormy multitude which is, as it were, one in its evil unity, when each merges his responsibility, as it were, in that of the body, the horde or the mob, in which he acts. Their exultation, he says, is that of the individual robber trod murderer, who lies wait secretly in his ambush, to spring on the defenseless wanderer, to slay him and devour his substance. Premeditation, passion, lust of cruelty, cowardice, murderousness, habitual individual savagery and treachery, and that to the innocent and defenseless, are all concentrated in the words, "their exultation is, as it were, to devour the poor secretly," i. e. "in their secret haunt."
Pharaoh had triumphed over Israel. "They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in" Exo 14:3. He rejoiceth in having them wholly in his power, as a lion has his prey in his lair, in secret, unknown to the Eyes of God whom he regarded not, with none to behold, none to deliver. Dion.: "They gloried in oppressing the people of Israel, even as the cruel man glories in secretly rending and afflicting the needy, when without fear they do this cruelty, nor heed God beholding all as Judge. The invisible enemies too rejoice very greatly in the ruin of our souls "Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him: for if I be cast down, they that trouble me will rejoice at it Psa 13:4. "O Lord and governor of all my life, leave me not to their counsels and let me not fall by them" (Ecclesiasticus 23:1). Yet God left them not in his hands; but even "brake the head of Leviathan in pieces."
Habakkuk 3:15
hab 3:15
Thou didst walk through the sea with Thine horses - God Himself is pictured as leading them on the way, Himself at the head of their multitude, having, as Asaph said of old "His path in the sea." So Isaiah Isa 63:13. "who leddest them in the depths;" and Zechariah Zac 10:11. "And he shall pass through the sea." God was literally there; for Act 17:28. "in Him we live and move and have our being." He who "is wholly everywhere but the whole of Him nowhere" manifested His Presence there. Such anthropomorphisms have a truth, which people's favorite abstractions have not.
Through the heap - o of great waters as of old Exo 15:8; Psa 78:13. "the waters stood us a heap, and He made the waters to stand a a heap." The very hindrances to deliverance are in God's hands a way for His ends. The waves of the Red Sea rose in heaps, yet this was but a readier way for the salvation of His people and the destruction of their enemies. Dion.: "God prepareth ever a way for His elect in this present evil world, and leadeth them along the narrow way which leadeth unto life."
Habakkuk 3:16
hab 3:16
When I heard - , better, "I heard and ..." The prophet sums up, resuming that same declaration with which he had begun, "I heard, I was afraid." Only now he expresses far more strongly both his awe at God's judgments and his hopes. He had just beheld the image of the destruction of Pharaoh, the end of the brief triumphing of the wicked and of the trials of God's people. But awful as are all the judgments of God upon the enemies of His people, it was not this alone which was the object of his terror. This was deliverance. It was the whole course of God's dispensations, which he had heard; God's punishment of His people for their sins, and the excision of their oppressors, who, in His Providence, fulfilling their own evil end, executed His chastisements upon them. The deliverances, which shadowed out the future, had their dark side, in that they were deliverances. The whole course of this world is one series of man's unfaithfulnesses or sins, God's chastisements of them through their fellow-sinners, and His ultimate overt brow of the aggressors. Those first three centuries of glorious martyrdoms were, on the one side, the malice and hatred of Satan and the world against the truth; on the other side, the prophets of those days told their people that they were the chastisements of their sins. Future deliverance implies previous chastisement of those delivered. The prophet then, at the close, in view of all, for himself and all whose perplexities he represented and pleaded before God, chooses his and their portion. "Suffer here and rest forever!" "Endure here any terror, any failure of hopes, yet trust wholly in God, have rest in the day of trouble and sing the endless song!" Again he casts himself back amid all the troubles of this life.
I heard - (i. e. that speech of God uttering judgments to come) "and my belly," the whole inward self, bodily and mental, all his hidden powers, trembled , "vibrated" as it were, "Sin every fibre of his frame," at the wrath of God; "my lips quivered at the voice of God," so that they almost refused their office and could hardly fulfill the prophetic duty and utter the terrors which he had heard; his very strongest parts, the bones, which keep the whole frame of man together, that he be not a shapeless mass, and which remain unconsumed long after the rest has wasted away in the grave, "rottenness entered into them," corruption and mouldering eating into them; and "I trembled in myself" (literally under me) so that he was a burden to himself and sank unable to support himself, "that I might rest in the day of trouble."
All up to this time was weariness and terror, and now at once all is repose; the prophet is carried, as it were, over the troubles of this life and the decay of the grave to the sweetness of everlasting rest I, the same, suffer these things, terror, quivering, rottenness in the very bones themselves. "I (literally) who shall rest in the day of trouble." I who had not rest until then, shall enter into rest then in the very day of trouble to all who found their rest in the world not in God, the day of judgment Psa 94:12-13.. "Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him in Thy law, that Thou mayest give him patience in time of adversity, until the pit be digged up for the ungodly."
"O my soul; had we daily to bear tortures, had we for a long time to endure hell itself, that we might see Christ in His glory and be the companion of His saints, were it not worth enduring all sorrow, that we might be partakers of so exceeding a good, such exceeding glory?"
When he cometh up unto the people, he shall invade them with his troops - or, which is probably meant, "when he cometh up who shall invade them." It is a filling out of "the day of trouble." However, near the trouble came, he, under the protection of God and in firm trust in Him, would be at rest in Him. The troubles of God's prophets are not the outward troubles, but the sins of their people which bring those troubles, the offence against the majesty of God, the loss of souls. Jeremiah was more at rest in the court of the prison, than when all the people did curse him Jer 15:10 for telling them God's truth. He who fears God and His judgments betimes, shall rest in perfect tranquility when those judgments come. The immediate trouble was the fierce assault of the Chaldees whose terror he had described; and this, picturing, as through the prophecy, all other judgments of God even to the last, when devils shall contend about the souls of people, as Satan did about the body of Moses.
Habakkuk 3:17
hab 3:17
Although - literally, For
The fig tree shall not blossom - The prophet repeats his confidence in God, premising his knowledge that all human hopes should fail. I know, he says, all stay and support shall fail; he numbers from the least to the greatest, the fruits of trees, the fig, vine and olive, for sweetness, gladness, cheerfulness Psa 104:15. whereof the well-being of the vine and fig tree furnishes the proverbial picture of peace and rest. These shall either not shoot forth, or shall at time of fruit-gathering have no produce or having, as it were, labored to bring forth fruit shall lie and fail: yet further "the staff of life" itself shall fail; "the fields shall yield no meat;" all the fields, as though they were but one shall have one common lot, barrenness.
Yet more; the flocks shall be cut off from the fold; not those only, feeding abroad in fields and open plains, shall be driven away, but they shall be carried away by the enemy from the folds, where they seemed penned securely; and not these only, but "there shall be no herd in the stalls," even the stronger animals shall utterly fail; every help for labor, or for clothing, or for food shall cease; he speaks not of privation, partial failure, but of the entire loss of all things, no meat from the fields, no herd in the stalls; and what then?
Habakkuk 3:18
hab 3:18
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. - The words are very impressive, as they stand in the Hebrew. "For," he says, "the fig tree shall not blossom, and there is no fruit in the vines, the labor of the olive hath failed;" (the prophet does not look on, only to these things, but in his mind stands in the midst of them, they are done, and he amid them, feeling their effects) "and the field hath yielded no food; the flock hath been cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stall; and I." He relates it as the result of all which had gone before; such and such was the state of fruit-trees, vintage, harvest, flocks and herds; such was the aspect of all nature, living or inanimate; all was barren, disappointing; all had failed and was gone; and then at last he comes to himself, and I; what is he doing, when all nature and every seeming hope is dead? thus and thus it is with them; and I will rejoice.
He almost uses the expression as to the exultation of the enemy, adopting the same word only in a softer form. "Their exulting joy was" concentrated in this, "as to devour the poor secretly;" he too had "exulting joy." There is a joy against joy - a joy of theirs in the possession of all which their rapacity covets, in the possession of all things: a joy of his amid the privation of all things. He contrasts the two joys, as David had of old; Psa 17:13, Psa 17:15 : "the men of the world, whose portion is in this life, whose belly Thou fillest with Thy hid treasure; they are sated of children and leave their substance to their babes: I," he adds, "I shall behold Thy Presenee in righteousness, I shall be sated, in the awakening, with Thine image." So Habakkuk, "I will not rejoice only, but shout for joy;" and not so only, but "I will bound for joy;" and this not for a time only; both words express a drawing, yearning of the soul, and this yet more and more, "I will shout for joy and would shout on; I will bound for joy and would bound on."
But whence the source of this measureless unutterable joy? In the Lord, the Unchangeable God, "who is and was and is to come," I am (it is the incommunicable Name); in the God of my salvation: it is almost the Name of Jesus; for jesus is salvation, and the Name means "the Lord is Salvation;" whence the words are here rendered even by a Jew "in God the Author of my redemption," and yet more sweetly by a father. Augustine, de Civ. D. xviii. 32: "To me what some manuscripts have; 'I will rejoice in God my Jesus,' seems better than what they have, who have not set the Name itself (but saving) which to us it is more loving and sweeter to name.") "in God my Jesus." In Him his joy begins, to Him and in Him it flows back and on; before he ventures, amid all the desolation, to speak of joy, he names the Name of God, and, as it were, stays himself in God, is enveloped and wrapped round in God; sad I (the words stand in this order) "and I in the Lord would shout for joy."
He comes, as it were, and places himself quite close to God, so that nothing, not even his joy should be between himself and God; "and I in the Lord." All creation, as it had failed, ceases to be; all out of God: he speaks of nothing but himself and God, or rather himself in God; and as He, God, comes before his joy, as its source, so in Him does he lose himself, with joy which cannot be contained, nor expressed, nor rest, but utters itself in the glad motions of untiring love. "I would bound for joy in my Saving God." Truly all our joy is, to be in Him in whom is all Good, who is all Goodness and all Love.
Habakkuk 3:19
hab 3:19
The Lord God is my strength - The prophet does not inwardly only exult and triumph in God, but he confesses also in words of praise, that in Him he hath all things, that He is All things in him. And as he had confessed the Father, under the Name whereby He revealed Himself to Moses, and the Son, "the Lord God of my salvation," so he confesses God the Holy Ghost, who, in us, is our strength. "He is our strength," so that through Him, we can do all things; "He is our strength," so that without Him, we can do nothing; "He is our strength," so that when we put forth strength, we put forth nothing of our own, we add nothing of our own, we use not our own strength, of which we have none, but we do use His; and we have It ever ready to use, as if it were our own. For it is not our own and it is our own; not our own, i. e., not from or of ourselves; but our own, since It is in us, yea "He the Lord our God is our strength," not without us, for He is our strength, but in us.
And so he says further, how we can use it as our own. "He will make my feet like hinds," which bound upward through His imparted strength, trod, when scared by alarms here below, flee tearless to their native reeks, spring from height to height, and at last shew themselves on some high peak, and standing on the Rock, look down on the whole world below their feet and upward on high. Even so when at the end of the world all shall fail, and the love of many shall wax cold, and the Church, which is likened to the fig tree the vine and the (Luk 13:6; Isa 5:1; 21:33; etc. Rom 11:17.) olive, shall yield no fruits, and sweetness shall be corrupted by vanities, and the oil of mercy shall be dried up, and lamps go out, and its promises shall fail and it shall lie, having "a show of goodness, but denying the power of it; in words confessing God, and in works denying Him;" and through their own negligences, or the carelessness of pastors, the sheep of Christ shall perish from His very fold, and they who should be strong to labor Co1 9:9-10. shall cease, God's elect shall joy in Him, "beholding His goodness, and loving Him in all things, and He will give them free affections, and fervid longings of holy love, whereby they shall not walk only, but run the way of His commandments and prevail over the enemies of their salvation."
Yet though this strength is inward, and used by man, still God who gives it, Himself guides it. Not man shall "direct his own ways," but "He will make me to walk (as on a plain way) upon my high place." Steep and slippery places and crags of the reeks are but ways to the safe height above, to those whom God makes to walk on them; and since he has passed all things earthly, what are his high places, but the heavenly places, even his home, even while a pilgrim here, but now at the end, much more his home, when not in hope only, but in truth, he is "raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus?" Eph 2:6)
And now what remains then, but that this song of praise should be forever? And so it is not without meaning, nor was of old thought to be so that there stand here, at the end, words which elsewhere in the Psalms always stand at the beginning. Nor is it anywhere else, "upon my stringed instruments."
To the chief singer on my stringed instruments - To Him to whom all praise is due, through whom we praise Himself, His Spirit pleading in us, for us, "upon my stringed instruments." He Himself, providing, as it were, and teaching the prelude of the endless song, and by His spirit, breathing upon the instrument which He has attuned, and it giving back faithfully, in union with the heavenly choir with whom it is now blended, the angelic hymn, "Glory to God in the Highest."
Haggai Introduction
Haggai
hag 0:0
Introduction to Haggai
Haggai ישׁישׁי yeshı̂yshây, the termination "-ai" is more frequently an abbreviation of the name of God which enters so largely into Hebrew names, as indeed we have חגיה chaggı̂yâh, Ch1 6:30. And this occurs not only, when the first part of the word is a verb, אחסבי 'ăchassebay, יהדי yehedday, יהמי yı̂hemay, יעני ya‛enay, יעשׂי ya‛ăs'ay, אחזי 'achezay, ישׁמרי yı̂shemeray, יריבי yerı̂ybay, יאתרי ye'ateray (as Kohler observes p. 2.), but when it is a noun, as מתני matenay, הדי hı̂dday, אמתי 'ămı̂tay, שׁלמי shalemay, צלתי tsı̂lletay (coll. מתניה mattaneyâh, and מתניהוּ mattaneyâhû), שׁמשׁי shı̂meshay, Ezra 4. פעלתי pe‛ulletay Ch1 26:5 perhaps שׁבתי shabbetay, שׁטרי shı̂ṭeray or again אתי 'ı̂ttay.) is the oldest of the three-fold band, to whom, after the captivity, the Word of God came, and by whom He consecrated the beginnings of this new condition of the chosen people.
He gave them these prophets, connecting their spiritual state after their return with that before the captivity, not leaving them wholly desolate, nor Himself without witness. He withdrew them about 100 years after, but some 420 years before Christ came, leaving His people to yearn the more for Him, of whom all the prophets spoke. Haggai himself seems to have almost finished his earthly course, before he was called to be a prophet; and in four months his office was closed. He speaks as one who had seen the first house in its glory Hag 2:3, and so was probably among the very aged men, who were the links between the first and the last, and who laid the foundation of the house in tears Ezr 3:12. After the first two months Zechariah first prophesies in the 8th month Zac 1:1.
Haggai resumes at the close of the 9th month and there ends Hag 2:10, Hag 2:20. On the same day in the 11th month, the series of visions were given to Zechariah Zac 1:7.) of his office, Zechariah, in early youth, was raised up to carry on his message; yet after one brief prophecy was again silent, until the aged prophet had ended the words which God gave him. Yet in this brief space he first stirred up the people in one month to rebuild the temple , prophesied of its glory through the presence of Christ Hag 2:1-9, yet taught that the presence of what was holy sanctified not the unholy, Hag 2:12. and closes in Him who, when heaven and earth shall be shaken, shall abide, and they whom God hath chosen in Him. Hag 2:20-23.)
It has been the custom of critics, in whose eyes the prophets were only poets , to speak of the style of Haggai as "tame, destitute of life and power," showing "a marked decline in" what they call "prophetic inspiration." The style of the sacred writers is, of course, conformed to their mission. prophetic descriptions of the future are but incidental to the mission of Haggai. Preachers do not speak in poetry, but set before the people their faults or their duties in vivid earnest language. Haggai sets before the people vividly their negligence and its consequences; he arrests their attention by his concise questions; at one time retorting their excuses Hag 1:4; at another asking them abruptly, in God's name, to say why their troubles came Hag 1:9.
Or he puts a matter of the law to the priests, that they may draw the inference, before he does it himself Hag 2:12-13. Or he asks them, what human hope had they Hag 2:19, before he tells them of the divine. Or he asks them (what was in their heart), "Is not this house poor?" Hag 2:3 before he tells them of the glory in store for it. At one time he uses heaped and condensed antitheses Hag 1:6, to set before them one thought; at another he enumerates, one by one, how the visitation of God fell upon all they had Hag 1:11, so that there seemed to be no end to it. At another, he uses a conciseness, like John Baptist's cry, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," in his repeated Hag 1:5-7. "Set your heart to your ways;" and then, with the same idiom, "set your heart" Hag 2:15-18 namely, to God's ways, what He had done upon disobedience, what He would do upon obedience. He bids them work for God, and then he expresses the acceptableness of that work to God, in the three words Hag 1:8, "And-I-will-take-pleasure in-it and-will-be-glorified." When they set themselves to obey, he encouraged them with the four words Hag 1:13, "I with-you saith the-Lord." This conciseness must have been still more impressive in his words, as delivered . We use many words, because our words are weak. Many of us can remember how the house of lords was hushed, so hear the few low, but sententious words of the aged general and statesman. But conceive the suggestive eloquence of those words, as a whole sermon, "Set your-heart on-your-ways."
Of distant prophecies there are only two Hag 2:6-9, Hag 2:21-23, so that the portion to be compared with the former prophets consists but of at most 7 verses. In these the language used is of the utmost simplicity. Haggai had only one message as to the future to convey, and he enforced it by the repeated use of the same word , that temporal things should be shaken, the eternal should remain, as Paul sums it up Heb 12:26. He, the long-yearned for, the chosen of God, the signet on His hand, should come; God would fill that house, so poor in their eyes, with glory, and there would He give peace. Haggai had an all-containing but very simple message to give from God. Any ornament of diction would but have impaired and obscured its meaning. The two or three slight idioms, noticed by one after another, are, though slight, forcible.
The office of Haggai was mainly to bring about one definite end, which God, who raised him up and inspired him, accomplished by him. It is in the light of this great accomplishment of the work entrusted to him on the verge of man's earthly course, that his power and energy are to be estimated. The words which are preserved in his book are doubtless (as indeed was the case as to most of the prophets) the representatives and embodiment of many like words, by which, during his short office, he roused the people from their dejection indifference and irreligious apathy, to the restoration of the public worship of God in the essentials of the preparatory dispensation.
Great lukewarmness had been shown in the return. The few looked mournfully to the religious center of Israel, the ruined temple, the cessation of the daily sacrifice, and, like Daniel Dan 9:20, "confessed" their "sin and the sin of their people Israel, and presented their supplication before the Lord their God for the holy mountain of their God." The most part appear, as now, to have been taken up with their material prosperity, and, at best, to have become injured to the cessation of their symbolic worship, connected, as it was, with the declaration of the forgiveness of their sins. Then too, God connected His declaration of pardon with certain outward acts: they became indifferent to the cessation of those acts, because few returned. The indifference was even remarkable among those, most connected with the altar. Of the 24 1 Chr. 24:3-19. orders of priests, only 16, 4 orders Ezr 2:36-39. returned; of the Levites, only 74 individuals Ezr 2:40; while of those assigned to help them, the Nethinim and the children of Solomon's servants, there were 392 Ezr 2:58.
This coldness continued at the return of Ezra. The edict of Artaxerxes Ezr 7:13-14, as suggested by Ezra, was more pious than those appointed to the service of God. In the first instance, no Levite answered to the invitation Ezr 8:15; on the special urgency and message of Ezra Ezr 8:18-19, "by the good hand of God upon us they brought us a man of understanding," of the sons of Levi; some 3 or 4 chief Levites; their sons and brethren; in all, 38; but of the Nethinim, nearly six times as many, 220 Ezr 8:20. These who thought more of temporal prosperity than of their high spiritual nobility and destination, had flourished doubtless in that exile as they have in their present homelessness, as "wanderers among the nations." Haman calculated apparently on being able to "pay out" of their spoils "ten thousand talents of silver (Est 3:9. Ahasuerus apparently, in acceding to Haman's proposal, made over to him the lives and property of the Jews. The silver is given unto thee the people also, to do with them as it seemeth good to thee. Est 3:11). The Jew's property, was confiscated with their lives. On the contrary, it was noticed, that the Jews, when permitted to defend their lives, did not lay their hands on the prey, which, by the king's decree, was granted to them, with authority to take the lives of those who should assault them. Est 8:11; Est 9:10, Est 9:15-16.) some 300,000,000 British pounds, two-thirds of the annual revenue of the Persian Empire "into the king's treasuries."
The numbers who had returned with Zerubbabel had been (as had been foretold of all restorations) only "a remnant." There were 42,360 free men, with 7,337 male or female slaves Ezr 2:64-65; Neh 7:66-67. In the time of Augustus, it was no uncommon thing for a person to have 200 slaves (Hor. Sat. i. 9. 11) it is said that very many Romans possessed 10,000 or 20,000 slaves. Athenaeus vi. p. 272). The whole population which returned was not more than 212,000, free men and women and children. The proportion of slaves is about 112, since in their case adults of both sexes were counted. The enumeration is minute, giving the number of their horses, mules, camels, asses. . The chief of the fathers however were not poor, since (though unspeakably short of the wealth, won by David and consecrated to the future temple) they Ezr 2:68-69 offered freely for the house of God, to set it up in its place, a sum about 117,100 British pounds of our money. They had, beside, a grant from Cyrus, which he intended to cover the expenses of the building, the height and breadth whereof were determined by royal edict Ezr 4:3.
The monarch, however, of an eastern empire had, in proportion to its size, little power over his subordinates or the governors of the provinces, except by their recall or execution, when their oppressions or peculations notably exceeded bounds. The returned colony, from the first, were in fear of the nations, "the peoples of those countries" Ezr 3:3, their old enemies probably; and the first service," the altar to offer burnt-offerings thereon," was probably a service of fear rather than of love, as it is said Ezr 3:3, "they set up the altar upon its bases, for it was in fear upon them from the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt-offerings thereon unto the Lord." They hoped apparently to win the favor of God, that He might, as of old, protect them against their enemies. However, the work was carried on Ezr 3:7 "according to the grant that they had of Cyrus king of Persia" and the foundations of the temple were laid amidst mixed joy at the carrying on of the work thus far, and sorrow at its poverty, compared to the first temple Ezr 3:11-13.
The hostility of the Samaritans discouraged them. Mixed as the religion of the Samaritans was - its better element being the corrupt religion of the ten tribes, its worse the idolatries of the various nations, brought there in the reign of Esarhaddon - the returned Jews could not accept their offer to join in their worship, without the certainty of admitting, with them, the idolatries, for which they had been punished so severely. For the Samaritans pleaded the identity of the two religions Ezr 4:2, "Let us build with you, for we serve your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto Him since the days of Esarhaddon which brought us up hither." But in fact this mixed worship, in which Kg2 17:33 they feared the Lord and served their own gods, came to this, that Kg2 17:34 "they feared not the Lord, neither did they after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob." For God claims the undivided allegiance of His creatures "these Kg2 17:41, feared the Lord and served their graven images, both their children and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they to this day." But this worship included some of the most cruel abominations of pagandom, the sacrifice of their children to their gods Kg2 17:31.
The Samaritans, thus rejected, first themselves harassed the Jews in building, apparently by petty violence, as they did afterward in the rebuilding of the walls by Nehemiah "The people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and wore them out in building." This failing, they Ezr 4:5 "hired counselors" (doubtless at the Persian court), to "frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, until the reign of Darius king of Persia." The object of the intrigues was probably to intercept the supplies, which Cyrus had engaged to bestow, which could readily be effected in an eastern court without any change of purpose or any cognizance of Cyrus.
In the next reign of Ahashverosh (i. e., Khshwershe, a title of honor of Cambyses) Ezr 4:6 they wrote accusations against the Jews, seemingly without any further effect, since none is mentioned. Perhaps Cambyses, in his expedition to Egypt, knew more of the Jews, than the Samaritans thought, or he may have shrunk from changing his father's decree, contrary to the fundamental principles of Persism, not to alter any decree, which the sovereign (acting, as he was assumed to do, under the influence of Ormuzd) had written. Pseudo-Smerdis (who doubtless took the title of honor, Artachshatr) may, as an impostor, have well been ignorant of Cyrus' decree, to which no allusion is made Ezr 4:7. From him the Samaritans, through Rehum the chancellor, obtained a decree prohibiting, until further notice, the rebuilding of the city. The accusers had overreached themselves, for the ground of their accusation was, the former rebellions of the city Ezr 4:12-13, Ezr 4:15-16; the prohibition accordingly extended only to the city Ezr 4:19, Ezr 4:21, not to the temple.
However, having obtained the decree, they were not scrupulous about its application, and "made" the Jews "to cease Ezr 4:23 by arm and power," the governor of the Jews being apparently unable, the governor of the cis-Euphratensian provinces being unwilling, to help. As this, however, was, in fact, a perversion of the decree, the Jews were left free to build, and in the second year of Darius Hystaspis Ezr 5:1-2, "Haggai, and then Zechariah, prophesied in the name of the God of Israel" to Zerubbabel, the native governor, and Joshua the high priest, "and the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem; and they began to build the house of God in Jerusalem." Force was no longer used. Those engaged in building appealed to the edict of Cyrus; the edict was found at Ecbatana Ezr 6:2, and the supplies which Cyrus had promised, were again ordered. The difficulty was at the commencement. The people had been cowed perhaps at first by the violence of Rehum and his companions; but they had acquiesced readily in the illegal prohibition, and had Hag 1:9 run each to his own house, some of them to their Hag 1:4 "ceiled houses."
All, employers or employed, were busy on their husbandry. But nothing flourished. The laborers' wages disappeared, as soon as gained Hag 1:6. East and west wind alike brought disease to their grain; both, as threatened upon disobedience in the law Deu 28:22. The east wind scorched and dried it up ; the warm west wind turned the ears yellow and barren; the hail smote the vines, so that when the unfilled and mutilated clusters were pressed out, only two-fifths of the hoped-for produce was yielded; and of the grain, only one half Hag 2:16.
In the midst of this, God raised up an earnest preacher of repentance. Haggai was taught, not to promise anything at the first, but to set before them, what they had been doing, and what was its result Hag 2:5-11. He sets it before them in detail; tells them that God had so ordered it for their neglect of His service, and bids them to amend. He bids them quit their accustomed ways; "go up into the mountain; bring wood; build the house." Conceive in Christian England, after some potato disease, or foot-and-mouth-disease (in Scriptural language "a murrain among the cattle"), a preacher arising and bidding them, consider your ways, and as the remedy, not to look to any human means, but to do something, which would please Almighty God; and not preaching only but effecting what he preached. Yet such was Haggai. He stood among his people, his existence a witness of the truth of what he said; himself one, who had lived among the outward splendors of the former temple; a contemporary of those, who said Jer 7:4, "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these;" who had held it to be impossible that Judah should be carried captive; who had prophesied the restoration of the vessels of God Jer 27:16; Jer 28:3, which had been carried away, not, as God foretold, after the captivity, but as an earnest that the fuller captivity should not be Jer 28:2; yet who had himself, according to the prophecies of the prophets of those days, been carried into captivity, and was now a part of that restoration which God had promised.
He stood among them "in gray-haired might," bade them do, what he bade them, in the name of God, to do; and they did it. When they had set about the work, he assured them of the presence of God with them Hag 1:13. A month later, when they were seemingly discouraged at its poorness, he promised them in God's name, that its glory would be greater than that of Solomon's Hag 2:3-9. Three days after, in contrast with the visitations up to that time, while there was as yet no token of any change, he promised them in the name of God Hag 2:19, "From this day will I bless you."
He himself apparently saw only the commencement of the work, for his prophecies lay within the second year of Darius and the temple was not completed until the sixth Ezr 6:15. Even the favorable rescript of Darius must have arrived after his last prophecy, since it was elicited by the inquiry of the governor, consequent upon the commenced rebuilding Ezr 5:3, only three months before his office closed Hag 1:15; Hag 2:10, Hag 2:20.
While this restoration of the public worship of God in its intregrity was his main office, yet he also taught by parable Hag 2:10-15 that the presence of what was outwardly holy did not, in itself, hallow those, among whom it was; but was itself unhallowed by inward unholiness.
Standing, too, amid the small handful of returned exiles, not, altogether, more than the inhabitants of Sheffield, he foretold, in simple all-comprehending words, that central gift of the Gospel Hag 2:9, "In this place will I give peace, saith the Lord." So had David, the sons of Korah, Micah, Isaiah, Ezekiel prophesied Psa 72:3-7; Psa 85:8, Psa 85:10; Mic 5:5; Isa 9:6-7; Isa 26:12; Isa 32:17; Isa 52:7; Isa 53:5; Isa 54:10, Isa 54:13; Isa 57:19; Isa 60:17; Isa 66:12; Eze 34:25; Eze 37:26, but the peace was to come, not then, but in the days of the Messiah. Other times had come, in which the false prophets had said Jer 6:14; Jer 8:11; Jer 14:13, "Peace, peace, when there was no peace;" when God had taken away His peace from Jer 16:5; "this people." And now, when the chastisements were fulfilled, when the land lay desolate, when every house of Jerusalem lay burned with fire Ch2 36:19 and the "blackness of ashes" alone "marked where they stood;" when the walls were broken down so that, even when leave was given to rebuild them, it seemed to their enemies a vain labor to Neh 4:2; "revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish which were burned;" when Neh 2:3 "the place of their fathers' sepulchres lay waste, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire;" when, for their sakes, Zion was Mic 3:12 "plowed as a field" and "Jerusalem was become heaps" - let any one picture to himself the silver-haired prophet standing, at first, alone, rebuking the people, first through their governor and the high priest, then the collected multitude, in words, forceful from their simplicity, and obeyed! And then let them think whether anything of human or even divine eloquence was lacking, when the words flew straight like arrows to the heart, and roused the people to do at once, amid every obstacle, amid every down-heartedness or outward poverty, that for which God sent them. The outward ornament of words would have been misplaced, when the object was to bid a downhearted people, in the name of God, to do a definite work. Haggai sets before his people cause and effect; that they denied to God what was His, and that God denied to them what was His to give or to withhold. His sermon was, in His words whom he foretold; "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." He spoke in the name of God, and was obeyed.
"The Holy Spirit, who spake by the mouth of the prophets, willed that he by a foreboding name should be called Haggai, i. e., 'festive,' according to the subject whereof He should speak by his mouth. Yet was there not another festiveness in the prophet's heart, than the joy which he had or could have with the people, from the rebuilding of that temple made with hands, again to be defiled and burned with fire irrecoverably? Be it that the rebuilding of that temple, which he saw before him, was a matter of great festive joy; yet not in or for itself, but for Him, the festive joy of saints and angels and men, Christ; because when the temple should be rebuilt, the walls also of the city should be rebuilt and the city again inhabited and the people be united in one, of whom Christ should be born, fulfilling the truth of the promise made to Abraham and David and confirmed by an oath. So then we, by aid of the Holy Spirit, so enter upon what Haggai here speaketh, as not doubting that he altogether aimeth at Christ. And so may we in some sort be called or be Haggais, i. e., 'festive,' by contemplating that same, which because he should contemplate, he was, by a divine foreboding, called Haggai."
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Zephaniah Introduction
Zephaniah
zep 0:0
Introduction to Zephaniah
Zephaniah was called to his role not long after Habakkuk. Since his time was near to that of Habakkuk, so his subject was also related. Both lived when, for the sins of the reign of Manasseh, God had pronounced an irreversible sentence of destruction upon Jerusalem. The mission of both was not to the whole people whose sentence was fixed, but to the individuals who would flee from the wrath to come. The form of Habakkuk's prophecy was (as we might say) more subjective; that of Zephaniah was more objective. Habakkuk exhibits the victory of faith in the oppressed faithful - how it would hold to God amid the domestic oppressions, amid the oppressions of the Chaldees by whom those oppressions were to be punished, and, when all shall seem to fail, should, in the certainty of its unseen life, rejoice in its God. The characteristic of Zephaniah is the declaration of the tenderness of the love of God for that remnant of Israel, "the afflicted and poor people," whom God would "leave in the midst of them" Zep 3:12.
Zephaniah has, like Habakkuk, to declare the judgment on the world. He renews the language of Joel as to "the day of the Lord," and points to nations and individuals. He opens with the prophecy of one wide destruction of the land and all the sinners in it, its idolaters and its oppressors, its princes, its royal family, its merchants, its petty plunderers, who used rapine under color of their masters' name, and brought guilt upon themselves and them. Nothing is either too high or too low to escape the judgments of God. But the visitation upon Judah was only partially of a more comprehensive judgment. Zephaniah foretells the wider destruction of enemies of God's people on all sides - of Philistia, Moab, Ammon, on each side of them, and the distant nations on either side, Ethiopia (which then included Egypt) and Assyria. All these particular judgments contain principles of God's judgments at all times. But in Zephaniah they seem all to converge in the love of God for the remnant of His people. The nation he calls "a nation not desired" Zep 2:1. He calls to God individuals: "It may be, ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger" Zep 2:3. He foretells a sifting time, wherein God would "take away the proud among her" Zep 3:11-12; yet there follows a largeness of Gospel promise and of love Zep 3:12-17, the grounds of which are explained in the Gospel, but whose tenderness of language is hardly surpassed even by the overwhelming tenderness of "the love of Christ which passeth knowledge" Eph 3:19.
The prophet's own name "the Lord hath hid" corresponds with this. The Psalmist had said, using this same word, "He shall hide me in His tabernacle in the day of evil: in the secret of His tabernacle He shall hide me" Psa 27:5; and, "O how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast "laid up" for them that fear Thee. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man. Thou shalt "keep them secretly" Psa 31:19-20 in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." "They take counsel against Thy "hidden" ones" Psa 83:4.
The date which Zephaniah prefixed to his prophecy, has not been disputed; for no one felt any interest in denying it. Those who disbelieve definite prophecy invented for themselves a solution, whereby they thought that Zephaniah's prophecy need not be definite, even though uttered in the time of Josiah; so the fact remained unquestioned.
The unaccustomed fullness with which his descent is given implies so much of that personal knowledge which soon fades away, that those who speak of other titles, as having been prefixed to the books, or portions of books of the prophets, by later hands, have not questioned this. The only question is, whether he lived before or in the middle of the reformation by Josiah. Josiah, who came to the throne when eight years old 641 b.c., began the reformation in the 12th year of his reign, Ch2 34:3-7, when almost twenty; 630 b.c. The extirpation of idolatry could not, it appears, be accomplished at once. The finding of the ancient copy of the law, during the repairs of the temple in the 18th year of his reign, 2 Kings 22; 2 Chr. 34:8-28, 624 b.c., gave a fresh impulse to the king's efforts. He then united the people with himself, bound all the people present to the covenant Kg2 23:3; Ch2 34:31 to keep the law, and made a further destruction of idols 2 Kings 23:4-20; Ch2 34:33 before the solemn passover in that year. Even after that passover some abominations had to be removed Kg2 23:24. It has been thought that the words, "I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place" Zep 1:4, imply that the worship of Baal had already in some degree been removed, and that God said, that He would complete what had been begun. But the emphasis seems to be rather on the completeness of the destruction, as we should say, that He would efface every remnant of Baal, than to refer to any effort which had been made by human authority to destroy it.
The prophet joins together, "I will cut off the remnant of Baal, the name of the Chemarim." The cutting off "the name of the Chemarim," or idolatrous priests, is like that of Hosea, "I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name" Hos 2:17. As the cutting off of "the name of the Chemarim" means their being utterly obliterated, so, probably, does "the cutting off the remnant of Baal." The worship of Baal was cut off, not through Josiah, but (as Zephaniah prophesied) through the captivity. Jeremiah asserts its continuance during his long prophetic office Jer 2:8; Jer 7:9; Jer 11:13; Jer 19:5; Jer 32:29.
In the absence of any direct authority to the contrary, the description of idolatry by Zephaniah would seem to belong to the period, before the measures to abolish it were begun. He speaks as if everything were full of idolatry Zep 1:4-5, the worship of Baal, the worship of the host of heaven upon the housetops, swearing by Maleham, and probably the clothing with strange apparel.
The state also was as corrupt Zep 3:3-4 as the worship. Princes and judges, priests and prophets were all alike in sin; the judges distorted the law between man and man, as the priests profaned all which related to God. The princes were roaring lions; the judges, evening wolves, ever famished, hungering for new prey. This too would scarcely have been, when Josiah was old enough to govern in his own person. Both idolatry and perversion of justice were continued on from the reign of his father Amon. Both, when old enough, he removed. God Himself gives him the praise, that he "did judgment and justice, then it was well with him; he judged the cause of the poor and needy, then it was well with him; was not this to know Me? saith the Lord" Jer 22:15-16. His conversion was in the eighth year of his reign. Then, while he was yet young, he began to "seek after the God of David his father."
The mention of the "king's children" (see the note at Zep 1:8), whom, God says, He would punish in the great day of His visitation, does not involve any later date. They might, anyhow have been brothers or uncles of the king Josiah. But, more probably, God declares that no rank should be exempt from the judgments of that day. He knew, too, that the sons of Josiah would be then punished for their great sins. The sun of the temporal rule of the house of David set in unmitigated wickedness and sorrow. Of all its kings after Josiah, it is said, they did "evil in the sight of the Lord;" some were distinguished by guilt; all had miserable ends; some of them with aggravated misery.
Zephaniah then probably finished his course before that 12th year of Josiah, (for this prophecy is one whole) and so just before Jeremiah was, in Josiah's 13th year, called to his office, which he fulfilled for half a century, perhaps for the whole age of man.
The foreground of the prophecy of Zephaniah remarkably coincides with that of Habakkuk. Zephaniah presupposes that prophecy and fills it up. Habakkuk had prophesied the great wasting and destruction through the Chaldaeans, and then their destruction. That invasion was to extend beyond Judah (for it was said "he shall scoff at kings" Hab 1:10), but was to include it. The instrument of God having been named by Habakkuk, Zephaniah does not even allude to him. Rather, he brings before Judah the other side, the agency of God Himself. God would not have them forget Himself in His instruments. Hence, all is attributed to God. "I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked, and I will cut off man from the land, saith the Lord. I will also stretch out Mine hand upon Judah; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal. In the day of the Lord's sacrifice, I will punish the princes, etc. In the same day also I will punish all those etc. I will search Jerusalem with candles. The great day of the Lord is near, and I will bring distress upon, etc. O Canaan, land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee. The Lord will be terrible upon them. Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by My sword. And He will destroy Nineveh" Zep 1:2, Zep 1:4, Zep 1:8-9, Zep 1:13-14, Zep 1:17; Zep 2:5, Zep 2:11-13. The wicked of the people had "said in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil" Zep 1:12. Zephaniah inculcates, throughout his brief prophecy, that there is nothing, good or evil, of which He is not the doer or overruler.
But the extent of that visitation is co-extensive with that prophesied by Habakkuk. Zephaniah indeed speaks rather of the effects, the desolation. But the countries, whose desolation or defeat he foretells, are the lands of those, whom the Chaldaeans invaded, worsted, in part desolated. Beside Judah, Zephaniah's subjects are Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Ethiopia (which included Egypt), Nineveh. And here he makes a remarkable distinction corresponding with the events. Of the Ethiopians or Egyptians, he says only, "ye shall be slain by My sword" Zep 2:12. Of Assyria he foretells Zep 2:13-15 the entire and lasting desolation; the capitals of her palaces in the dust; her cedar-work bare; flocks, wild-beasts, pelican and hedgehog, taking up their abode in her. Moab and Ammon and Philistia have at first sight the two-fold, apparently contradictory, lot; "the remnant of My people," God says, "shall possess them; the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah" Zep 2:9; and, that they should be a perpetual desolation.
This also was to take place, after God had brought back His people out of captivity. Now all these countries were conquered by the Chaldaeans, of which at the time there was no human likelihood. But they were not swept away by one torrent of conquest. Moab and Ammon were, at first, allies of Nebuchadnezzar, and rejoiced at the miseries of the people, whose prophets had foretold their destruction. But, beyond this, Nineveh was at that time more powerful than Egypt. Human knowledge could not have discerned, that Egypt should suffer defeat only, Nineveh should be utterly destroyed. It was the custom of the great conquerors of the East, not to destroy capitals, but to re-people them with subjects obedient to themselves. Nineveh had held Babylon by viceroys; in part she had held it under her own immediate rule. Why should not Babylon, if she conquered Nineveh, use the same policy? Humanly speaking, it was a mistake that she did not.
It would have been a strong place against the inroads of the Medo-Persian empire. The Persians saw its value so far for military purposes, as to build some fort there ; and the Emperor Claudius, when he made it a colony, felt the importance of the well-chosen situation . It is replaced by Mosul, a city of some "20,000 to 40,000" inhabitants. Even after its destruction, it was easier to rebuild it than to build a city on the opposite bank of the Tigris. God declared that it should be desolate. The prediction implied destruction the most absolute. It and its palaces were to be the abode of animals which flee the presence of man; and it perished.
Again, what was less likely than that Philistia, which had had the rule over Israel, strong in its almost impregnable towns, three of whose five cities were named for their strength, Gaza, "strong;" Ashdod, "mighty;" Ekron, "deep-rooting;" one of which, Ashdod, about this very time, resisted for 29 years the whole power of Egypt, and endured the longest siege of any city of ancient or modern times - what, to human foresight, less was likely, than that Philistia should come under the power of the "remnant of the house of Judah," when returned from their captivity? Yet, it is absolutely foretold. "The seacoast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down in the evening. For the Lord their God shall visit them, and restore their captivity" Zep 2:7. As unlikely was it, that Moab and Ammon, who now had entered upon the territory of the two and a half tribes beyond Jordan, should themselves become the possession of the remnant of Judah. Yet, so it was!
It is then lost labor, even for their own ends, when moderns, who do not believe definite prophecy, would find out some enemy whom Zephaniah may have had in mind in foretelling this wide destruction. It still remains that all that Zephaniah says beforehand was fulfilled. It is allowed that he could not foretell this through any human foresight. The avowed object in looking out for some power, formidable in Zephaniah's time, is, that he could not, by any human knowledge, be speaking of the Chaldaeans. But the words stand there. They were written by Zephaniah, at a time when confessedly no human knowledge could have enabled man to predict this of the Chaldaeans; nay, no human knowledge would have enabled anyone to predict so absolutely a desolation so wide and so circumstantially delineated.
That school, however, has not been willing to acquiesce in this, that Zephaniah does "not" speak of the instrument, through whom this desolation was effected. They will have it, that they know, that Zephaniah had in his mind one, who was "not" the enemy of the Jews or of Nineveh or of Moab and Ammon, and through whom no even transient desolation of these countries was effected. The whole argument is a simple begging of the question. : "The Egyptians cannot be meant, for the Cushites, who are threatened Zep 2:12, themselves belong to the Egyptian army Jer 46:9, and Psammetichus only besieged Ashdod which he also took, without emblazoning ought greater on his shield (Herodotus ii. 157). The Chaldaeans come still less into account, because they did not found an independent kingdom until 625 b.c., nor threaten Judaea until after Josiah's death. On the other hand, an unsuspicious and well-accredited account has been preserved to us, that somewhere about this time the Scythians overflowed Palestine too with their hosts. Herodotus relates , that the Scythians, after they had disturbed Cyaxares at the siege of Nineveh, turned toward Egypt; and when they had already arrived in Palestine, were persuaded by Psammetichus to return, and in their return plundered a temple in Ascalon."
It is true that Herodotus says that "a large Scythian army did, under their king Madyes, burst into Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians and entered Media - keeping Mount Caucasus on the right," and that "the Medes opposed and fought them and, being defeated, lost their rule" .
It is true also that Herodotus relates, that "they went thence toward Egypt, and when they were in Palestine-Syria, Psammetichus king of Egypt, meeting them, turned them by gifts and entreaties from going further; that when in their return they were in Ascalon, a city of Syria, whereas most of the Scythians passed by without harming ought, some few of them, being left behind, plundered the temple of Venus Ourania." In this place also, it is true, Herodotus uses a vague expression, that "for 28 years the Scythians ruled over Asia, and that all things were turned upside down by their violence and contempt. For beside the tributes, they exacted from each what they laid upon each, and beside the tribute, they drove together and took what each had. And most of them Cyaxares and the Medes entertaining as guests, intoxicated and killed. And then the Medes recovered their empire and "became masters of what they held before."
But, apart from the inconsistency of the period here assigned to their power, with other history, it appears from the account itself, that by "all Asia" Herodotus means "all upper Asia," as he expresses himself more accurately, when relating the expedition of Darius against them. : "Darius wished to take revenge on the Scythians, because they first, making an inroad into Media and defeating in battle those who went against them, began the wrong. For the Scythians, as I have before said, "ruled upper Asia" for 28 years. For, pursuing the Cimmerians, they made an inroad into Asia, putting down the Medes from their rule, for these, before the Scythians came, ruled Asia." The Asia then, which Herodotus supposes the Scythians to have ruled, is co-extensive with the Asia which he supposes the Medes to have ruled previously. But this was all in the north, for having said that , "Phraortes subdued Asia, going from one nation to another," he adds that, having brought Persia under his yoke, "he led an army against those Assyrians who had Nineveh, and there lost most of his army and his own life."
Apart then from the fabulousness of this supposed empire, established by Phraortes , (Cyaxares having been the real thunder of the Median empire,) it is plain that, according to Herodotus himself, the Asia, in which the Scythians plundered and received tribute, were the lands north of Assyria. The expedition against Egypt stands as an insulated predatory excursion, the object of which having been mere plunder, they were bought off by Psammetichus and returned (he tells us) doing no mischief in their way, except that a few lingerers plundered a temple at Ascalon. It was to Media that they first came; the Medes, whom they defeated; the Median empire to which they succeeded; Cyaxares and the Medes, who treacherously destroyed most of them; the Medes, whose empire was restored by the destruction of some, and the return of the rest to their own land.
With this agrees the more detailed account of the Scythians by Strabo, who impeaches the accuracy of the accounts of Herodotus . Having spoken of the migrations of leaders, and by name, of "Madyes the Scythian" (under whom Herodotus states the irruption to have taken place), he says , "the Sacae made the like inroad as the Cimmerians and the Trerians, some longer, some nigh at hand, for they took possession of Bactriana, and acquired the best land of Armenia, which they also left, named after them Sacasene, and advanced as far as to the Cappadocians and especially those on the Euxine, whom they now call of Pontus (Pontians). But the generals of the Persians who were at the time there, attacking them by night, while they were making a feast upon the spoils, utterly extirpated them."
The direction which he says they took, is the same as that of the Cimmerians, whom Herodotus says that they followed. : "The Cimmerians, whom they also call Trerians, or some tribe of them, often overrun the right side of the Pontus, sometimes making inroads on the Paphlagonians, at others, on the Phrygians. Often also the Cimmerians and Trerians made the like attacks, and they say that the Trerians and Cobus (their king) were, at last expelled by Madyes king of the (Scythians)." Strabo also explains, what is meant by the tributes, of which Herodotus speaks. He is speaking of the Nomadic tribes of the Scythians generally : "Tribute was, to allow them at certain stated times, to overrun the country (for pasturage) and carry off booty. But when they roamed beyond the agreement, there arose war, and again reconciliations and renewed war. Such was the life of the nomads, always setting on their neighbors and then being reconciled again."
The Scythians then were no object of fear to the Jews, whom they passed wholly unnoticed and probably unconscious of their existence in their mountain country, while they once and once only swept unharming along the fertile tracks on the sea-shore, then occupied by the old enemies and masters of the Jews, the Philistines. But Herodotus must also have been misinformed as to the length of time, during which they settled in Media, or at least as to the period during which their presence had any sensible effects. For Cyaxares, whom he represents as having raised the siege of Nineveh, in consequence of the inroad of the Scythians into Media, came to the throne, according to the numbers of Herodotus, 633 b.c. For the reign of Cyaxares having lasted according to him 40 years , that of Astyages 35 , and that of Cyrus 29 , these 104 years, counted back from the known date of the death of Cyrus, 529 or 530 b.c., bring us to 633 or 636 b.c. as the beginning of the reign of Cyaxares. But the invasion of the Scythians could not have taken place at the first accession of Cyaxares, since, according to Herodotus, he had already defeated the Assyrians, and was besieging Nineveh, when the Scythians burst into Media. According to Herodotus, moreover, Cyaxares "first distributed Asiatics into troops, and first ordered that each should be apart, spearmen, and archers and cavalry, for before, all were mixed pele-mele together."
Yet, it would not be in a very short time, that those who had been wont to fight in a confused mass, could be formed into an orderly and disciplined army. We could not then, anyhow, date the Scythian inroad, earlier than the second or third year of Cyaxares. On the other hand the date of the capture of Nineveh is fixed by the commencement of the Babylonian Empire, Babylon falling to Nabopolassar. The duration of that empire is measured by the reigns of its kings , of whom, according to Ptolemy's Canon, Nabopolassar reigned 21 years; Nebuchadnezzar, (there called Nabocollasar) 43; Evil-Merodach (Iluaroadam) 2; Neriglissar (Niricassolassar) 4; Nabunahit (Nabonadius with whom his son Belshazzar was co-regent) 17; in all 87 years; and it ends in an event of known date, the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, 538 b.c. The addition of the 87 years of the duration of the empire to that date carries us back to the date assigned to the capture of Nineveh by Nabopolassar in conjunctitan with Cyaxares, 625 b.c. The capture then of Nineveh was removed by 8 or 9 years only from that, which Herodotus gives as the time of the accession of Cyaxares, and since the attack upon Nineveh can hardly have been in his first year, and the last siege probably occupied two, the 28 years of Scythian dominion would dwindle down into something too inconsiderable for history. Probably, they represent some period from their first incursion into Media, to the final return of the survivors, during which they marauded in Media and Upper Asia. The mode, by which "the greater part" (Herodotus tells us) were destroyed, intoxication and subsequent murder at a banquet, implies that their numbers were no longer considerable.
History, with the exception of that one marauding expedition toward Egypt, is entirely silent as to any excursions of the Scythians, except in the north. No extant document hints at any approach of theirs to any country mentioned by Zephaniah. There was no reason to expect any inroad from them. With the exception of Bactriana, which lies some 18 degrees east of Media and itself extended over some 7 degrees of longitude, the countries mentioned by Strabo lie, to what the kings of Assyria mention as the far north, Armenia, and thence, they stretched out to the west, yet keeping mostly to the neighborhood of the Euxine. Considering the occasion of the mention of the invasion of the Scythians, the relief which their invasion of Media gave to Nineveh, it is even remarkable that there is no mention of any ravages of theirs throughout Mesopotamia or Babylonia. Zephaniah speaks, not of marauding, but of permanent desolation of Assyria, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, and of destructive war also on Ethiopia. There is no reason to think that the Scythians approached any of these lands, except Philistia, which they passed through unharming. The sacred writers mention even smaller nations, by whom God chastised Judah in their times, "bands of the Syrians, of Moab, of the children of Ammon," as well as Assyria and Babylon. Ezekiel Ezek. 38; 39, when he prophesies of the inroad of Northern nations, Meshech and Tubal, Gomer and Togormah, speaks of it as far removed in the future, prophesies not their destroying but their own destruction.
It does not affect the argument from prophecy, whether Zephaniah did or did not know, through whom the events, which he predicted, should be brought to pass. But, setting aside the question whether he had from the prophecies of Habakkuk and Isaiah, a human knowledge of the Chaldees or whether God instructed him, how what he foretold should be accomplished, or whether God spread out before his mind that which was to be, apart from time, in prophetic vision, Zephaniah did picture what came to pass. But it is an intense paradox, when men, 2500 years after his date, assert, not only that Zephaniah's prophecies had no relation to the Chaldees, in whom his words were fulfilled, and who are the objects of the prophecies of Habakkuk and Jeremiah, but that they know, what must have been, and (as they assert) what was in the prophet's mind; and that he had in his mind, not those in whom his words were fulfilled, but others in whom they were "not" fulfilled, to whom he does not allude in one single trait, who left no trace behind them, and whose march along an enemy's tract on the seacoast was of so little account, that no contemporary historian, nor Josephus, even alludes to it . But there is to this day a city beyond Jordan into which this name enters in part, Scythopolis." Quaestt. Hebr. ad Gen. (Opp. iii. 358. ed. Vall.) quoted by Reland, p. 992).
It has been already observed, that each prophet connects himself with one or more of those before them. They use the language of their predecessors in some one or more sentences, apparently with this precise object. They had overflowing fullness of words; yet, they chose some saying of the former prophet, as a link to those before them. We have seen this in Amos , then in Obadiah, , who uses the language of Balaam, David, Joel, Amos; of Jeremiah, in regard to Obadiah ; of Micah to his great predecessor, Micaiah, and Amos ; of Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ezekiel to Micah ; of Nahum to Jonah ; and of Isaiah (I think), to Nahum ; of Habakkuk, to Isaiah and Micah , It is in conformity with this, that Zephaniah, even more than those before him, uses language of earlier prophets.
It arises, not (as people have been pleased to say) from any declension in the originality of prophets at his date, but from his subject. It has been said, "if anyone desire to see the utterances of the prophets in brief space, let him read through this brief Zephaniah." The office of Zephaniah was not to forewarn of any instrument of God's judgments. The destruction is prophesied, not the destroyer. His prophecy is, more than those of most other prophets, apart from time, to the end of time. He prophesies of what shall be, not when it shall be, nor by whom. He does not "expect" or "anticipate" or "forebode!" He absolutely declares the future condition of certain nations; but not the "how" of its coming to pass. If Nineveh, Edom and Ammon had not been desolated, his prophecy would have been falsified; each fulfillment became the earnest of a larger fulfillment; but all shall not be completed until "the earth and all that is therein shall be burned up."
It belongs to this character of Zephaniah, that he gathers from other prophets before him, especially Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Habakkuk, expressions relating to, or bearing on, judgment to come, or again to that his other great subject, God's love for the remnant of His people; yet mostly in fragments only and allusively. They were key-notes for those who knew the prophets. Thus, in calling on man to hushed submission before God, because a day of judgment was coming, he blends into one verse Hab 1:7 Habakkuk's call, "hush before the Lord" Hab 2:20, and the warning words of Isaiah, Joel, Obadiah Isa 13:6; Joe 1:15; Joe 3:15; Oba 1:15, "nigh is the day of the Lord;" the image of the "sacrifice," which God had commanded, and the remarkable word, "consecrated," of God's instruments. The allusion is contained in single words, "sacrifice, consecrated;" the context in which they are embodied is different.
The idea only is the same, that Almighty God maketh, as it were, a sacrifice to Himself of those who incorrigibly rebel against Him. Elsewhere, Isaiah draws out the image at much length; "A sword of the Lord is full of bloods; it is smeared with fat, with the blood of lambs and of goats; with the fat of kidneys of rams: for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom" Isa 34:6. Jeremiah uses the image in equal fullness of the overthrow of Pharaoh-Necho at the Euphrates; "This is a day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries: and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with blood, for the Lord God hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates" Jer 46:10. Ezekiel expands it yet more boldly Eze 39:17. Zephaniah drops everything local, and condenses the image into the words, "The Lord hath prepared a sacrifice; He hath consecrated His guests," adding the new bold image, that they whom God employed were, as it were, His invited guests whom He consecrated thereto.
In like way, as to the day of the Lord itself, he accumulates all words of terror from different prophets; from Joel the words, "a day of darkness and of gloominess; a day of clouds and of thick darkness" Joe 2:2; Zep 1:15 : to these he adds "of shouting and the sound of the trumpet" Zep 1:16; Amo 2:2, used by Amos in relation to the destruction of Moab; the two combinations, which precede, occur, the one in a different sense, the other with a slightly different grammatical inflection, in Job.
From Isaiah, Zephaniah adopts that characteristic picture of self-idolizing, which brings down God's judgments on its pride; (the city) "that dwelleth securely, that said in her heart, I and no I beside" Isa 47:8; Zep 2:15.
Even where Isaiah says, "For a consumption and that decreed, the Lord God of hosts makes in the midst of all the earth" Isa 10:23, and, slightly varying it, "For a consumption and that decreed, I have heard from the Lord God of hosts upon all the earth" Isa 28:22, Zephaniah, retaining the two first words, which occur in both places, says more concisely, "For a consumption, nought but terror, will He make all the inhabitants of the earth." Yet, simple as the words are, he pronounced, that God would not only "bring a desolation upon the earth," or "in the midst of the earth," but would make its inhabitants one consumption. Nahum had said of Nineveh, "with an overflowing flood He will make the place thereof an utter consumption" Nah 1:8. The most forceful words are the simplest.
He uses the exact words of Isaiah, "From beyond the rivers of Cush" Zep 3:10; Isa 18:1, than which none can be simpler, and employs the word of festive procession, though in a different form, and having thus connected his prophecy with Isaiah's, all the rest, upon which the prophecy turns, is varied.
In like way he adopts from Micah the three words, "her-that-halteth, and-will-gather her-that-is-driven-out" Mic 4:6; Zep 3:19. The context in which he resets them is quite different.
It has been thought, that the words, "I have heard the reproach of Moab," may have been suggested by those of Isaiah, who begins his lament over Moab, "We have heard of the pride of Moab;" but the force and bearing of the words is altogether different, since it is God Who says, "I have heard," and so He will punish.
The combination, "the exulters of pride" Isa 13:3; Zep 3:11, is common to him with Isaiah: its meaning is uncertain; but it is manifestly different in the two places, since the one relates to God, the other to man.
The words, "They shall build houses and shall not dwell therein; they shall plant vineyards and not drink the wine thereof" , are from the original threat in Deuteronomy, from which also the two words, "They-shall-walk as-the-blind Zep 1:17, may be a reminiscence, but with a conciseness of its own and without the characteristic expressions of Deuteronomy, adopted by other sacred writers: "They shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness" Deu 28:29.
Altogether these passages are evidence that Zephaniah is of later date than the prophecies in which the like language occurs; and the fact that he does employ so much language of his predecessors furnishes a strong presumption in any single case, that he in that case also adopted from the other sacred writer the language which they have in common.
It is chiefly on this ground, that a train of modern critics have spoken disparagingly of the outward form and style of Zephaniah. It has, however, a remarkable combination of fullness with conciseness and force. Thus, he begins the enumeration of those upon whom the destruction should fall, with the words, "consuming I will consume all" Zep 1:2 : to an enumeration co-extensive with the creation, he adds unexpectedly, "and the stumblingblocks with the wicked" Zep 1:3, anticipating our Lord's words of the Day of Judgment, "they shall gather the stumblingblocks and them that do iniquity" Mat 13:41 : to the different idolatries he adds those of a divided faith, "swearers to the Lord and swearers by Malcham" Zep 1:5; to those who turned away from God he adds those who were unearnest in seeking Him Zep 1:6.
Again, after the full announcement of the destruction in the day of the Lord, the burst, in those five words, "sift-yourselves and-sift (on) nation unlonged for" Zep 2:1, is, in suddenness and condensation, like Hosea; and so again, in five words, after the picture of the future desolation of Nineveh, the abrupt turn to Jerusalem, "Woe rebellious and-defiled (thou) oppressive city" Zep 2:1, and then follow the several counts of her indictment, in brief disjointed sentences, first negatively, as a whole; each in three or four words, "she-listened not to-voice; she-received not correction; in-the-Lord she-trusted not; to-her-God she-approached not" Zep 3:2; then, in equally broken words, each class is characterized by its sins; "her-princes in-her-midst are roaring lions; her-judges evening wolves; not gnawed-they-bones on-the-morrow; her-prophets empty-babblers, men of-deceits; her-priests profaned holiness, violated law" Zep 3:3-4 Then in sudden contrast to all this contumacy, neglect, despite of God, He Himself is exhibited as in the midst of her; the witness and judge of all; there, where they sinned. "The-Lord righteous in-her-midst; He-doth not iniquity; by-morning by-morning His-judgment He-giveth to-light; He-faileth not" Zep 3:5; and then in contrast to the holiness and the judgments of God, follows in four words, the perseverance of man in his shamelessness, and - the fruit of all this presence and doings of the holy and righteous God and judge is, "and-not knoweth the wrong-doer shame."
Zephaniah uses the same disjoining of the clauses in the description of God's future manifestation of His love toward them. Again, it is the same thought, "The-Lord thy-God- (is) in-thy-midst" Zep 3:17; but now in love; "mighty, shall-save; He-shall-rejoice over-thee with-joy; He-shall-keep-silence in-His-love; He-shall-rejoice over-thee with-jubilee." The single expressions are alike condensed; "she-hearkened not to-voice" Zep 3:2, stands for what Jeremiah says at such much greater length, how God had sent all His servants "the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them, but they hearkened not unto Me nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck" Jer 7:24-28. The words "shall-be-silent in-His-love, in their primary meaning, express the deepest human love, but without the accustomed image of betrothal.
"The whole people of Canaan" (Zep 1:11, compare Hos 12:7) reminds one of Hosea; "the-men-coagulated on-their-lees" Zep 1:12 is much expanded by Jeremiah Jer 48:11, his word occurs before him in Job only and the song of Moses Job 10:10; Exo 15:8. Single poetic expressions are, that Moab should become "the possession of briars" Zep 2:9, the word itself being framed by Zephaniah; in the description of the desolation of Nineveh, "a voice singeth in the window; desolation is on the threshold" Zep 2:14, the imagery is so bold, that modern criticism has thought that the word "voice" which occurs in the Old Testament 328 times and with pronouns 157 times more, must signify "an owl," and "desolation" must stand for "a crow." Very characteristic is the word, ""He (see below the note at Zep 2:11) shall famish" all the gods of the earth," expressing with wonderful irony, the privation of their sacrifices, which was the occasion of the first pagan persecutions of the Christians.
When then a writer, at times so concise and poetic as Zephaniah is in these places, is, at others, so full in his descriptions, this is not prolixity, but rather vivid picturing; at one time going through all the orders of creation Zep 1:3; at another, different classes of the ungodly Zep 1:4-9 : at yet another, the different parts of the scared woe-stricken city Zep 1:10-11, to set before our eyes the universality of the desolation. Those who are familiar with our own great northern poet of nature, will remember how the accumulation of names adds to the vividness of his descriptions. Yet, here too, there is great force in the individual descriptions, as when he pictures the petty plunderers for their master, and "fill their masters' houses" - not with wealth but - "with violence and fraud" , all which remains of wealth gained by fraud and extortion being the sins themselves, which dwell in the house of the fraudulent to his destruction.
In the strictly prophetic part of his office, Jerusalem having been marked out by Micah and Isaiah before him, as the place where God would make the new revelation of Himself, Zephaniah adds, what our Lord revealed to the Samaritan woman Joh 4:21, that Jerusalem should no longer be the abiding center of worship. "They shall worship Him, every man from his place, all the isles of the nations" Zep 2:11, is a prophecy which, to this day, is receiving an increasing accomplishment. It is a prophecy, not of the spread of Monotheism, but of the worship of Him, to whose worship at that time a handful of Jews could with difficulty be brought to adhere, the desertion or corruption or association of whose worship with idolatry Zephaniah had to denounce and to foretell its punishment. The love which God should then show to His own is expressed in words, unequaled for tenderness and in conformity to that love is the increasing growth of holiness, and the stricter requirements of God's holy justice.
Again, Zephaniah has a prelude to our blessed Lord's words, "to whom much is given, of him shall much be required" Luk 12:48, or His Apostle's, of the great awe in working out our salvation Phi 2:12. Progress is a characteristic and condition of the Christian life; "We beseech you, that as ye have received of us, how ye ought to walk and to please God, ye would abound more and more" Th1 4:1. Even so Zephaniah bids "all the meek of the earth, who have wrought His judgments or law to seek diligently that meekness" Zep 2:3, which had already characterized them, and that, not in view of great things, but, if so be they might be saved; it may be that ye may be hid in the day of the Lord's anger, as Peter saith, "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" Pe1 4:18. It is again remarkable, how he selects meekness, as the characteristic of the new state of things, which he promises. He anticipates the contrast in the Magnificat, in which the lowest lowliness was rewarded by the highest exaltation. As it is said there, "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek" Luk 2:52, so the removal of the proud "from within thee," and the "leaving of an afflicted and poor people within thee" Zep 3:12, is the special promise by Zephaniah.
Little is said of the captivity. It is a future, variously assumed subject Zep 3:13. Judah in the farthest lands, "beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, is the daughter of My dispersed" Zep 3:10; the whole earth is the scene of their shame Zep 3:19; their praises should be commensurate with their shame, "when I turn back your captivity before your eyes" Zep 3:20; Zep 2:7. But this turning away of their captivity is the only notice, that their punishment should be the going into captivity. The captivity itself is pre-supposed, as certain and as known. So neither are there any images from temporal exaltation. All pride should be removed, as utterly unbefitting God's holy presence: "thou shalt no more be haughty in My holy mountain" Zep 2:11. The words expressive of the abasement of those within her are proportionably strong, "My afflicted and poor" Zep 2:12. Some are accustomed, in these days, to talk of God's prophets as patriots. They were such truly, since they loved the land of the Lord with a divine love. But what mere "patriot" would limit his promises to the presence of "a poor people in a low estate," with an unseen presence of God? The description belongs to His kingdom, which was "not of this world" Joh 18:36 : the only king whom Zephaniah speaks of, "the king of Israel" Zep 3:15, is Almighty God. The blessing which he promises, is the corresponding, blessing of peace, "Fear thou not; thou shalt not see evil anymore, none shall make them afraid" Zep 3:16. But the words "Let not thy hands be slack" (Zep 3:2, (Zeph. 4:2 in Hebrew)), imply that they shall be aggressive on the world; that they were not to relax from the work which God assigned to them, the conversion of the world.
An allusion to the prophet Joel makes it uncertain whether words of Zephaniah relate to the first coming of our Lord, or the times which should usher in the second coming, or to both in one; and so, whether, in accordance with his general character of gathering into one all God's judgments to His end, he is speaking of the first restoration of the one purified language of faith and hope, when "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul" Act 4:32, or whether he had his mind fixed rather on the end, "when the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in" Rom 11:25. The words also (since they may be taken either way) (see the note at Zep 3:10) leave it uncertain whether the Gentiles are spoken of as bringing in the people of God, (as they shall at the end) or whether the first conversion of the Jews, even in the most distant countries, is his subject.
In any case, Zephaniah had a remarkable function - to declare the mercy and judgment of God, judgments both temporal and final, mercies, not of this world, promised to a temper not of this world, "the wisdom which is from above, pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy" Jam 3:7.
Bible
Zephaniah Chapter 1
Zephaniah 1:1
zep 1:1
The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah - It seems likely that more forefathers of the prophet are named than is the wont of Holy Scripture, because the last so named was some one remarkable. Nor is it impossible that Zephaniah should have been the great grandson of the King Hezekiah, for although Holy Scripture commonly names the one son only who is in the sacred line, and although there is one generation more than to Josiah, yet if each had a son early, Zephaniah might have been contemporary with Josiah. The names seem also mentioned for the sake of their meaning; at least it is remarkable how the name of God appears in most. Zephaniah, "whom the Lord hid;" Gedaliah, "whom the Lord made great;" Amariah, "whom the Lord promised;" Hezekiah, "whom the Lord strengthened."
Zephaniah 1:2
zep 1:2
I will utterly consume all things - Better "all." The word is not limited to "things" "animate" or "inanimate" or "men;" it is used severally of each, according to the context; here, without limitation, of "all." God and all stand over against one another; God and all which is not of God or in God. God, he says, will utterly consume all from off the land (earth). The prophet sums up in few words the subject of the whole chapter, the judgments of God from his own times to the day of Judgment itself. And this Day Itself he brings the more strongly before the mind, in that, with wonderful briefness, in two words which he conforms, in sound also, the one to the other, he expresses the utter final consumption of all things. He expresses at once the intensity of action and blends their separate meanings, "Taking away I will make an end of all;" and with this he unites the words used of the flood, "from off the face of the earth."
Then he goes through the whole creation as it was made, pairing "man and beast," which Moses speaks of as created on the sixth day, and the creation of the fifth day, "the fowls of the heaven and the fishes of the sea;" and before each he sets the solemn word of God, "I will end," as the act of God Himself. The words can have no complete fulfillment, until "the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up" Pe2 3:10, as the Psalmist too, having gone through the creation, sums up, "Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust" Psa 104:29; and then speaks of the re-creation, "Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth" Ps. 104:36, and, "Of old Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands; they shall perish, but Thou shalt endure, yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed" Ps. 103:25.
Local fulfillments there may, in their degree, be. Jerome speaks as if he knew this to have been. Jerome: "Even the brute animals feel the wrath of the Lord, and when cities have been wasted and men slain, there cometh a desolation and scarceness of beasts also and birds and fishes; witness Illyricum, witness Thrace, witness my native soil," (Stridon, a city on the confines of Dalmatia and Pannonia) "where, beside sky and earth and rampant brambles and deep thickets, all has perished." But although this fact, which he alleges, is borne out by natural history, it is distinct from the words of the prophet, who speaks of the fish, not of rivers (as Jerome) but of the sea, which can in no way be influenced by the absence of man, who is only their destroyer. The use of the language of the histories of the creation and of the deluge implies that the prophet has in mind a destruction commensurate with that creation. Then he foretells the final removal of offences, in the same words which our Lord uses of the general Judgment. "The Son of Man shall send forth His Angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity" Mat 13:41.
Zephaniah 1:3
zep 1:3
The stumbling-blocks with the wicked - Not only shall the wicked be utterly brought to an end, or, in the other meaning of the word, "gathered into bundles to be taken away," but all causes of stumbling too; everything, through which others can fall, which will not be until the end of all things. Then, he repeats, yet more emphatically, "I will cut off the whole race of man from the face of the earth," and then he closes the verse, like the foregoing, with the solemn words, "saith the Lord." All this shall be fulfilled in the Day of Judgment, and all other fulfillments are earnests of the final Judgment. They are witnesses of the ever-living presence of the Judge of all, that God does take account of man's deeds. They speak to men's conscience, they attest the existence of a divine law, and therewith of the future complete manifestation of that law, of which they are individual sentences. Not until the prophet has brought this circle of judgments to their close, does he pass on to the particular judgments on Judah and Jerusalem.
Zephaniah 1:4
zep 1:4
I will also stretch out Mine Hand - As before on Egypt . Judah had gone in the ways of Egypt and learned her sins, and sinned worse than Egypt. "The mighty Hand and stretched-out Arm" Jer 2:10-11, with which she had been delivered, shall be again "stretched out," yet, not for her but "upon" her, "upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem." In this threatened destruction of all, Judah and Jerusalem are singled out, because "judgment" shall "begin at the house of God" Pe1 4:17; Jer 25:29. They who have sinned against the greater grace shall be most signally punished. Yet, the punishment of those whom God had so chosen and loved is an earnest of the general judgment. This too is not a partial but a general judgment "upon "all" the inhabitants of Jerusalem."
And I will cut off the remnant of Baal - that is, to the very last vestige of it. Isaiah unites "name and residue" Isa 14:22, as equivalents, together with the proverbial, posterity and descendant. Zephaniah distributes them in parallel clauses, "the "residue" of Baal and the "name" of the Chemarim." Good and evil have each a root, which remains in the ground, when the trunk has been hewn down. There is "a remnant according to the election of grace," when "the rest have been blinded" Rom 11:5, Rom 11:7; and this is a "holy seed" Isa 6:13 to carry on the line of God. Evil too has its remnant, which, unless diligently kept down, shoots up again, after the conversion of peoples or individuals. The "mind of the flesh" remains in the regenerate also. The prophet foretells the complete excision of the whole "remnant of Baal," which was fulfilled in it after the captivity, and shall be fulfilled as to all which it shadows forth, in the Day of Judgment. "From this place;" for in their phrensy, they dared to bring the worship of Baal into the very temple of the Lord Kg2 23:4. Ribera: "Who would ever believe that in Jerusalem, the holy city, and in the very temple idols should be consecrated? Whoso seeth the ways of our times will readily believe it. For among Christians and in the very temple of God, the abominations of the pagan are worshiped. Riches, pleasures, honors, are they not idols which Christians prefer to God Himself?"
And the name of the Chemarim with the priests - Of the "idolatrous priests" the very name shall be cut off, as God promises by Hosea, that He will "take away the names of Baalim" Hos 2:17, and by Zechariah, that He "will cut off the names of the idols out of the land" Zac 13:2. Yet this is more. Not the "name" only "of the Chemarim," but themselves with their name, their posterity, shall be blotted out; still more, it is God who cuts off all memory of them, blotting them out of the book of the living and out of His own.
They had but a name before, "that they were living, but were dead" Rev 3:1. Jerome: "The Lord shall take away names of vain glory, wrongly admired, out of the Church yea, the very names of the priests with the priests who vainly flatter themselves with the name of Bishops and the dignity of Presbyters without their deeds. Whence he markedly says, not, "and the deeds of priests with the priests," but the "names;" who only bear the false name, of dignities, and with evil works destroy their own names." The "priests are priests of the Lord," who live not like priests, corrupt in life and doctrine and corrupters of God's people (see Jer 2:8;Jer 5:31). The judgment is pronounced alike on what was intrinsically evil, and on good which had corrupted itself into evil. The title of priest is no where given to the priest of a false God, without some mention in the context, implying that they were idolatrous priests; as the priests of Dagon Sa1 5:5, of the high places as ordained by Jeroboam Kg1 13:2, Kg1 13:33; Kg2 23:20; Ch2 11:15, of Baal Kg2 10:19; Kg2 11:18; Ch2 23:17, of Bethel Amo 7:10, of Ahab Kg2 10:11, of those who were not gods Ch2 13:9, of On, where the sun was worshiped . "The priests" then were God's priests, who in the evil days of Manasseh had manifoldly corrupted their life or their faith, and who were still evil.
The "priests" of Judah, with its kings its princes and the people of the land, were in Jeremiah's inaugural vision enumerated as those, who "shall," God says, "fight against thee, but shall not prevail against thee" Jer 1:18-19. "The priests said not, Where is the Lord? and they that handle the law knew Me not" Jer 2:7-8. In the general corruption, "A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land, the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule at their hands" Jer 5:30-31 : "the children of Israel and the children of Judah, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, have turned unto Me the back, and not the face" Jer 32:32-33. Jeremiah speaks specifically of heavy moral sins. "From the prophet even unto the priest everyone dealeth falsely" Jer 6:13; Jer 8:10; "both prophet and priest are profane" Jer 23:11; "for the sins of her prophets, the iniquities of her" Lam 4:13. And Isaiah says of her sensuality; "the priests and the prophets have erred through strong drink; they are swallowed up of wine; they are out of the way through strong drink" Isa 28:7.
Zephaniah 1:5
zep 1:5
And them that worship the best of heaven upon the - (flat) housetops This was fulfilled by Josiah who destroyed "the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz" Kg2 23:12. Jeremiah speaks as if this worship was almost universal, as though well-near every roof had been profaned by this idolatry. "The houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink-offerings unto other gods" Jer 19:13. "The Chaldaeans that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink-offerings to other gods, to provoke Me to anger" Jer 32:29. They worshiped on the house-tops, probably to have a clearer view of that magnificent expanse of sky, "the moon and stars which" God had "ordained" Psa 8:3; the "queen of heaven," which they worshiped instead of Himself. There is something so mysterious in that calm face of the moon, as it "walketh in beauty" Job 31:26; God seems to have invested it with such delegated influence over the seasons and the produce of the earth, that they stopped short in it, and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. Much as men now talk of "Nature," admire "Nature," speak of its "laws," not as laws imposed upon it, but inherent in it, laws affecting us and our well-being; only not in their ever-varying vicissitudes, "doing whatsoever God commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth, whether for correction, or for His land or for mercy!" Job 37:12-13. The idolaters "worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, Who is blessed forever" Rom 1:25; moderns equally make this world their object, only they idolize themselves and their discoveries, and worship their own intellect.
This worship on the house-tops individualized the public idolatry; it was a rebellion against God, family by family; a sort of family-prayer of idolatry. "Did we," say the mingled multitude to Jeremiah, "make our cakes to worship her, and pour out our drink-offerings unto her, without our men?" Jer 44:19. Its family character is described in Jeremiah. "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto other gods" Jer 7:18. The idolatry spread to other cities. "We will certainly do," they say, "as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem" Jer 44:17. The incense went up continually "as a memorial to God" from the altar of incense in the temple: the "roofs of the houses" were so many altars, from which, street by street and house by house the incense went up to her, for whom they dethroned God, "the queen of heaven." It was an idolatry, with which Judah was especially besotted, believing that they received all goods of this world from them and not from God. When punished for their sin, they repented of their partial repentance and maintained to Jeremiah that they were punished for "leaving off to burn incense to the queen of heaven" Jer 44:2, Jer 44:15, Jer 44:18.
And them that worship ... the Lord - but with a divided heart and service; "that swear by (rather to) the Lord," swear fealty and loyal allegiance to Him, while they do acts which deny it, in that "they swear by Malcham," better (it is no appellative although allied to one) "their king" , most probably, I think, "Moloch."
This idolatry had been their enduring idolatry in the wilderness, after the calves had been annihilated; it is "the" worship, against which Israel is warned by name in the law Lev 18:21; Lev 20:2-4; then, throughout the history of the Judges, we hear of the kindred idolatry of Baal , "the" Lord (who was called also "eternal king" and from whom individuals named themselves "son of (the) king," "servant of (the) king" ), or the manifold Baals and Ashtaroth or Astarte. But after these had been removed on the preaching of Samuel Sa1 7:6; Sa1 12:10, this idolatry does not reappear in Judah until the intermarriage of Jehoram with the house of Ahab Kg2 8:16-18, Kg2 8:26-27; Ch2 21:6, Ch2 21:12-13; Ch2 22:2-4.
The kindred and equally horrible worship of "Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon" Kg1 11:7, was brought in by Solomon in his decay, and endured until his high place was defiled by Josiah Kg2 23:13-14. It is probable then that this was "their king" , of whom Zephaniah speaks, whom Amos and after him Jeremiah, called "their king;" but speaking of Ammon. Him, the king of Ammon, Judah adopted as "their king." They owned God as their king in words; Molech they owned by their deeds; "they worshiped and sware fealty to the Lord" and they "sware by their king;" his name was familiarly in their mouths; to him they appealed as the Judge and witness of the truth of their words, his displeasure they invoked on themselves, if they swore falsely. Cyril: "Those in error were wont to swear by heaven, and, as matter of reverence to call out, 'By the king and lord Sun.' Those who do so must of set purpose and willfully depart from the love of God, since the law expressly says, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and serve Him alone, and swear by His Name" Deu 6:13.
The former class who "worshipped on the roofs" were mere idolaters. These "worshiped," as they thought, "the Lord," bound themselves solemnly by oath to Him, but with a reserve, joining a hateful idol to Him, in that they, by a religious act, owned it too as god. The act which they did was in direct words, or by implication, forbidden by God. The command to "swear by the Lord" implied that they were to swear by none else. It was followed by the prohibition to go after other gods. (Deu 6:13-14; 10:30, compare Isa 65:16; Jer 4:2). Contrariwise, to swear by other gods was forbidden as a part of their service. "Be very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the Law of Moses, neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, but cleave unto the Lord your God" (Jos 23:6-8; compare Amo 8:14). "How shall I pardon thee for this? Thy children have forsaken Me, and have sworn by those who are no gods" Jer 5:7. "They taught My people to swear by Baal" Jer 12:16. They thought perhaps that in that they professed to serve God, did the greater homage to Him, professed and bound themselves to be His, (such is the meaning of "swear to the Lord") they might, without renouncing His service, do certain things, "swear by their king," although in effect they thereby owned hint also as god. To such Elijah said, "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him" Kg1 18:21; and God by Jeremiah rejects with abhorrence such divided service. "Ye trust in lying words, which will not profit. Will ye steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods, and come and stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, saying, We are delivered to do all these abominations" Jer 7:8-10. And Hosea, "Neither go ye to Beth-aven, and swear there, The Lord liveth" Hos 4:15.
Such are Christians, Jerome: "who think that they can serve together the world and the Lord, and please two masters, God and Mammom; who, "being soldiers of Jesus Christ" and having sworn fealty to Him, "entangle themselves with the affairs of this life and offer the same image to God and to Caesar" Ti2 2:3-4. To such, God, whom with their lips they own, is not their God; their idol is, as the very name says, "their king," whom alone they please, displeasing and dishonoring God. We must not only fear, love, honor God, but love, fear, honor all beside for Him Alone.
Zephaniah 1:6
zep 1:6
And them that are turned back from - (Literally, have turned themselves back from following after) the Lord From this half-service, the prophet goes on to the avowed neglect of God, by such as wholly fall away from Him, not setting His will or law before them, "but turning away from" Him. It is their misery that they were set in the right way once, but themselves "turned themselves back," now no longer "following" God, but "their own lusts, drawn away and enticed" Jam 1:14 by them. How much more Christians, before whose eyes Christ Jesus is set forth, not as a Redeemer only but as an Example that they should "follow His steps!" Pe1 2:21.
And those that have not sought the Lord, nor inquired for Him - This is marked to be a distinct class. "And those who." These did not openly break with God, or turn away overtly from Him; they kept (as men think) on good terms with Him, but, like "the slothful servant," rendered Him a listless heartless service. Both words express diligent search. God is not found then in a careless way. They who "seek" Him not "diligently" Mat 2:8, do not find Him. "Strive," our Lord says, "to enter in at the strait gate, for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able" Luk 13:24. She who had lost the one piece of silver, "sought" "diligently" Luk 15:8, until she had found it.
Thus, he has gone through the whole cycle. First, that most horrible and cruel worship of Baal, the idolatrous priests and those who had the name of priests only, mingled with them, yet not openly apostatizing; then the milder form of idolatry, the star-worshipers; then those who would unite the worship of God with idols, who held themselves to be worshipers of God, but whose real king was their idol; then those who openly abandoned God; and lastly those who held with Him, just to satisfy their conscience-qualms, but with no heart-service. And so, in words of Habakkuk and in reminiscence of his awful summons of the whole world before God, he sums up;
Zephaniah 1:7
zep 1:7
Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God - (Literally, "Hush," in awe "from the face of God.") In the presence of God, even the righteous say from their inmost heart, "I am vile, what shall I answer Thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth" Job 40:4. "Now mine eye seeth Thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" Job 42:5-6. "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified" Psa 143:2. How much more must the "man without the wedding garment be speechless" Mat 22:11-12, and every false plea, with which he deceived himself, melt away before the Face of God! The voice of God's Judgment echoes in every heart, "we indeed justly" Luk 23:41.
For the Day of the Lord is at hand - Zephaniah, as is his custom, grounds this summons, which he had renewed from Habakkuk, to hushed silence before God, on Joel's prophetic warning , to show that it was not yet exhausted. A day of the Lord, of which Joel warned, had come and was gone; but it was only the herald of many such days; judgments in time, heralds and earnests, and, in their degree, pictures of the last which shall end time.
Dionysius: "All time is God's, since He Alone is the Lord of time; yet that is specially said to be His time when He doth anything special. Whence He saith, "My time is not yet come" Joh 7:6; whereas all time is His." The Day of the Lord is, in the first instance, Jerome: "the day of captivity and vengeance on the sinful people," as a forerunner of the Day of Judgment, or the day of death to each, for this too is near, since, compared to eternity, all the time of this world is brief.
For the Lord hath prepared a sacrifice - God had rejected sacrifices, offered amid unrepented sin; they were "an abomination to Him" Isa 1:11-15. When man will not repent and offer himself as "a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God" Rom 12:1, God, at last, rejects all other outward oblations, and the sinner himself is the sacrifice and victim of his own sins. The image was probably suggested by Isaiah's words, "The Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea" Isa 34:6; and Jeremiah subsequently uses it of the overthrow of Pharaoh at the Euphrates, "This is the day of the Lord of Hosts; that He may avenge Him of His adversaries, for the Lord God hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates" Jer 46:10. "The Lord hath made all things for Himself, yea even the wicked for the day of evil" Pro 16:4. All must honor God, either fulfilling the will of God and the end of their own being and of His love for them, by obeying that loving will with their own freewill, or, if they repudiate it to the end, by suffering it.
He hath bid His guests - (Literally, sanctified) God had before, by Isaiah, called the pagan whom He employed to punish Babylon, "My sanctified ones" Isa 13:3. Zephaniah, by giving the title to God's instruments against Judah, declares that themselves, having become in deeds like the pagan, were as pagan to Him. The instruments of His displeasure, not they, were so far his chosen, His called. Jeremiah repeats the saying, "Thus saith the Lord against the house of the king of Judah;...I have sanctified against thee destroyers, a man and his weapons" Jer 22:6-7. That is, so far, a holy war in the purpose of God, which fulfills His will; from where Nebuchadnezzar was "His servant" Jer 25:9, avenging His wrongs . Cyril: "To be sanctified, here denotes not the laying aside of iniquity, nor the participation of the Holy Spirit, but, as it were, to be foreordained and chosen to the fulfillment of this end." That is in a manner hallowed, which is employed by God for a holy end, though the instrument, its purposes, its aims, its passions, be in themselves unholy. There is an awe about "the scourges of God." As with the lightning and the tornado, there is a certain presence of God with them, in that through them His Righteousness is seen; although they themselves have as little of God as the "wind and storm" which "fulfill His word." Those who were once admitted to make offerings to God make themselves sacrifices to His wrath; these, still pagan and ungodly and in all besides reprobate, are His priests, because in this, although without their will, they do His will.
Zephaniah 1:8
zep 1:8
I will punish - (Literally, visit upon). God seems oftentimes to be away from His own world. People plot, design, say, in word or in deed, "who is Lord over us?" God is, as it were, a stranger in it, or as a man, who hath "taken a journey into afar country." God uses our own language to us. "I will visit," inspecting (so to say), examining, sifting, reviewing, and when man's sins require it, allowing the weight of His displeasure to fall upon them.
The princes - The prophet again, in vivid detail (as his characteristic is), sets forth together sin and punishment. Amid the general chastisement of all, when all should become one sacrifice, they who sinned most should be punished most. The evil priests had received their doom. Here he begins anew with the mighty of the people and so goes down, first to special spots of the city, then to the whole, man by man. Josiah being a godly king, no mention is made of him. Thirteen years before his death, he received the promise of God, "because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord - I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered unto thy grave in peace, and thou shalt not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place" Kg2 22:19-20. In remarkable contrast to Jeremiah, who had to be, in detail and continual pleading with his people, a prophet of judgment to come, until these judgments broke upon them, and so was the reprover of the evil sovereigns who succeeded Josiah, Zephaniah has to pronounce God's judgments only on the "princes" and "the king's children."
Jeremiah, in his inaugural vision, was forewarned, that "the kings Judah, its princes, priests, and the people of the land" Jer 1:18 should war against him, because he should speak unto them all which God should command him. And thenceforth, Jeremiah impleads or threatens kings and the princes together Jer 2:26; Jer 4:9; Jer 8:1; Jer 24:8; Jer 32:37; Jer 34:21. Zephaniah contrariwise, his office lying wholly within the reign of Josiah, describes the princes again as "roaring lions" Zep 3:3, but says nothing of the king, as neither does Micah Mic 3:1, Mic 3:9, in the reign, it may be, of Jotham or Hezekiah. Isaiah speaks of princes, as "rebellious and companions of thieves" Isa 1:23. Jeremiah speaks of them as idolaters Jer 31:32-34; Jer 44:21. They appear to have had considerable influence, which on one occasion they employed in defense of Jeremiah Jer 26:16, but mostly for evil Jer 37:15; Jer 38:4, Jer 38:16. Zedekiah inquired of Jeremiah secretly for fear of them Jer 37:17; Jer 38:14-27. They brought destruction upon themselves by what men praise, their resistance to Nebuchadnezzar, but against the declared mind of God. Nebuchadnezzar unwittingly fulfilled the prophets' word, when he "slew all the nobles of Judah, the eunuch who was over the war, and seven men of them that were near the king's person, and the principal scribe of the host" Jer 39:6; Jer 52:25-27.
And the king's children - Holy Scripture mentions chief persons only by name. Isaiah had prophesied the isolated lonely loveless lot of descendants of Hezekiah who should be "eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon" Isa 39:7, associated only with those intriguing pests of Eastern courts, a lot in itself worse than the sword (although to Daniel God overruled it to good) and Zedekiah's sons were slain before his eyes and his race extinct. Jehoiakim died a disgraced death, and Jehoiachin was imprisoned more than half the life of man.
And all such as are clothed with strange apparel - Israel was reminded by its dress, that it belonged to God. It was no great thing in itself; "a band of dark blue Num 15:38; Deu 22:12 upon the fringes at the four corners of their garments." But "the band of dark blue" was upon the high priest's mitre, with the plate engraved, "Holiness to the Lord" Exo 28:36, fastened upon it; "with a band of dark blue" also was the breastplate Exo 39:21 bound to the ephod of the high priest. So then, simple as it was, it seems to have designated the whole nation, as "a kingdom of priests, an holy nation" Exo 19:6. It was appointed to them, "that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring; that ye may remember and do all My commandments, and be holy unto your God" Num 15:39-40. They might say, "it is but "a band of blue;"" but the "band of blue" was the soldier's badge, which marked them as devoted to the service of their God; indifference to or shame of it involved indifference to or shame of the charge given them therewith, and to their calling as a peculiar people. The choice of the strange apparel involved the choice to be as the nations of the world; "we will be as the pagan, as the families of the countries" Eze 20:33.
All luxurious times copy foreign dress, and with it, foreign manners and luxuries; from where even the pagan Romans were zealous against its use. It is very probable that with the foreign dress foreign idolatry was imported . The Babylonian dress was very gorgeous, such as was the admiration of the simpler Jews. "Her captains and rulers clothed in perfection, girded with girdles upon their loins, with flowing dyed attire upon their heads" Eze 23:12, Eze 23:15. Ezekiel had to frame words to express the Hebrew idea of their beauty. Jehoiakim is reproved among other things for his luxury Jer 22:14-15. Outward dress always betokens the inward mind, and in its turn acts upon it. An estranged dress betokened an estranged heart, from where it is used as an image of the whole spiritual mind Rom 13:14; Col 3:12; Eph 4:24. Jerome: "The garment of the sons of the king and the apparel of princes which we receive in Baptism, is Christ, according to that, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ," and "Put ye on bowels of mercy, goodness, humililty, patience," and the rest. Wherein, we are commanded to be clothed with the new man from heaven according to our Creator, and to "lay aside" the clothing of "the old man with his deeds" Eph 4:22. Whereas, then we ought to be clothed in such raiment, for mercy we put on cruelty, for patience, impatience, for righteousness, iniquity; in a word, for virtues, vices, for Christ, antichrist. Whence it is said of such an one, "He is clothed with cursing as with a garment" Psa 109:17. These the Lord will visit most manifestly at His Coming." Rup.: "Thinkest thou that hypocrisy is "strange apparel?" Of a truth. For what stranger apparel than sheeps' clothing to ravening wolves? What stranger than for him who "within is full of iniquity, to appear outwardly righteous before men?" Mat 23:28.
Zephaniah 1:9
zep 1:9
I will punish all those that leap on the threshold - Neither language nor history nor context allow this to be understood of the idolatrous custom of Ashdod, not to tread on the threshold of the temple of Dagon. It had indeed been a strange infatuation of idolatry, that God's people should adopt an act of superstitious reverence for an idol in the very instance in which its nothingness and the power of the true God had been shown. Nothing is indeed too brutish for one who chooses an idol for the true God, preferring Satan to the good God. Yet, the superstition belonged apparently to Ashdod alone; the worship of Dagon, although another form of untrue worship, does not appear, like that of Baal, to have fascinated the Jews; nor would Zephaniah, to express a rare superstition, have chosen an idiom, which might more readily express the contrary, that they "leapt "on" the threshold," not over it.
They are also the same persons, who "leap on the threshold," and who "fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit." Yet, this relates, not to superstition, but to plunder and goods unjustly gotten. As then, before, he had declared God's judgments upon idolatry, so does he here upon sins against the second table, whether by open violence, or secret fraud, as do also Habakkuk Hab 1:2-3, and Jeremiah Jer 5:27. All, whether open or hidden from man, every wrongful dealing, (for every sin as to a neighbor's goods falls under these two, violence or fraud) shall be avenged in that day. Here again all which remains is the sin. They enriched, as they thought, their masters by art or by force; they schemed, plotted, robbed; they succeeded to their heart's wish; but, "ill-gotten, ill-spent!" They "filled their masters' houses" quite full; but wherewith? with violence and deceit, which witnessed against them, and brought down the judgments of God upon them.
Zephaniah 1:10
zep 1:10
A cry from the fish-gate - "The fish-gate" was probably in the north of the wall of "the second city." For in Nehemiah's rebuilding, the restoration began at the sheep-gate Neh 3:1 (so called doubtless, because the sheep for the sacrifices were brought in by it), which, as being near the temple, was repaired by the priests; then it ascended northward, by two towers, the towers of Meah and Hananeel; then two companies repaired some undescribed part of the wall Neh 3:2, and then another company built the fish-gate Neh 3:3. Four companies are then mentioned, who repaired, in order, to the old gate, which was repaired by another company Neh 3:4-6. Three more companies repaired beyond these; and they left Jerusalem unto the broad wall Neh 3:7-8. After three more sections repaired by individuals, two others repaired a second measured portion, and the tower of the furnaces Neh 3:9-11.
This order is reversed in the account of the dedication of the walls. The people being divided "into two great companies of them that give thanks" Neh 12:31-38, some place near "the tower of the furnaces" was the central point, from which both parted to encompass the city in opposite directions. In this account, we have two additional gates mentioned, "the gate of Ephraim" Neh 12:39, between the "broad wall" and the "old gate," and "the prison-gate," beyond "the sheep-gate," from which the repairs had begun. "The gate of Ephraim" had obviously not been repaired, because, for some reason, it had not been destroyed. Elsewhere, Nehemiah, who describes the rebuilding of the wall so minutely, must have mentioned its rebuilding. It was obviously to the north, as leading to Ephraim. But the tower of Hananeel must have been a very marked tower. In Zechariah Jerusalem is measured from north to south, "from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's winepresses" Zac 14:10.
It was then itself at the northeast corner of Jerusalem, where towers were of most importance to strengthen the wall, and to command the approach to the wall either way. "The fish-gate" then, lying between it and "the gate of Ephraim," must have been on the north side of the city, and so on the side where the Chaldaean invasions came; yet it must have been much inside the present city, because the city itself was enlarged by Herod Agrippa on the north, as it was unaccountably contracted on the south. The then limits of Jerusalem are defined. For Josephus thus describes "the second wall." (B. J. v. 42): "It took its beginning from that gate which they called "Gennath," which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city and reached as far as the tower of Antonia." The tower of Antonia was situated at the northwest angle of the corner of the temple. The other end of the wall, the Gennath or "garden" gate, must have opened on cultivated land; and Josephus speaks of the gardens on the north and northwest of the city which were destroyed by Titus in leveling the ground (B. J. v. 32).
But near the tower of Hippicus, the northwestern extremity of the first wall, no ancient remains have been discovered by excavation ; but they have been traced north, from "an ancient Jewish semi-circular arch, resting on piers 18 feet high, now buried in rubbish."
These old foundations have been traced at three places in a line on the east of the Holy Sepulchre (which lay consequently outside the city) up to the judgment gate, but not north of it .
The line from west to east, that is, to the tower of Antonia, is marked generally by "very large stones, evidently of Jewish work, in the walls of houses, especially in the lower parts" . They are chiefly in the line of the Via Dolorosa.
"The fish-gate" had its name probably from a fish-market (markets being in the open places near the gates (see Kg2 7:1; Neh 13:16, Neh 13:19)) the fish being brought either from the lake of Tiberius or from Joppa. Near it, the wall ended, which Manasseh, after his restoration from Babylon, "built without the city of David, on the west side of Gihon, in the valley" Ch2 33:14. This, being unprotected by its situation, was the weakest part of the city. : "The most ancient of the three walls could be considered as impregnable, as much on account of its extreme thickness, as of the height of the mountain on which it was built, and the depth of the valleys at its base, and David, Solomon and the other kings neglected nothing to place it in this state." Where they had made themselves strong, there God's judgment should find them.
And a howling from the second - city, as it is supplied in Nehemiah, who mentions the prefect set over it . It was here that Huldah the prophetess lived , who prophesied the evils to come upon Jerusalem, after Josiah should be "gathered to" his "grave in peace." It was probably the lower city, which was enclosed by the second wall. It was a second or new city, as compared to the original city of David, on Mount Moriah. On this the enemy who had penetrated by the fish-gate would first enter; then take the strongest part of the city itself. Gareb Jer 31:39 and Bezetha were outside of the then town; they would then be already occupied by the enemy before entering the city.
A great crashing from the hills - These are probably Zion, and Mount Moriah on which the temple stood, and so the capture is described as complete. Here should be not a cry or howling only, but an utter destruction . Mount Moriah was the seat of the worship of God; on Mount Zion was the state, and the abode of the wealthy. In human sight they were impregnable. The Jebusites mocked at David's siege, as thinking their city impregnable Sa2 5:6; but God was with David and he took it. He and his successors fortified it yet more, but its true defense was that the Lord was round about His people" Psa 125:2, and when lie withdrew His protection, then this natural strength was but their destruction, tempting them to resist first the Chaldaeans, then the Romans. Human strength is but a great crash, falling by its own weight and burying its owner. "This threefold cry , from three parts of the city, had a fulfillment before the destruction by the Romans. In the lower part of the city Simon tyrannized, and in the middle John raged, and "there was a great crashing from the hills," that is, from the temple and citadel where was Eleazar, who stained the very altar of the temple with blood, and in the courts of the Lord made a pool of blood of divers corpses."
Cyril: "In the assaults of an enemy the inhabitants are ever wont to flee to the tops of the hills, thinking that the difficulty of access will be a hindrance to him, and will cut off the assaults of the pursuers. But when God smiteth, and requireth of the despisers the penalties of their sin, not the most towered city nor impregnable circuits of walls, not height of hills, or rough rocks, or pathless difficulty of ground, will avail to the sufferers. Repentance alone saves, softening the Judge and allaying His wrath, and readily inviting the Creator in His inherent goodness to His appropriate gentleness. Better is it, with all our might to implore that we may not offend Him. But since human nature is prone to evil, and "in many things we all offend" Jam 3:2, let us at least by repentance invite to His wonted clemency the Lord of all, Who is by nature kind."
Zephaniah 1:11
zep 1:11
Howl, ye inhabitants of Maktesh - Literally, "Mortar" , "in which," Jerome says, "corn is pounded; a hollow vessel, and fit for the use of medical men, in which properly ptisans are wont to be beaten (or made). Striking is it, that Scripture saith not, 'who dwell in the valley or in the alley,' but who "dwell in the mortar," because as corn, when the pestle striketh, is bruised, so the army of the enemy shall rush down upon you" (Jerome). The place intended is probably so much of the valley of the Tyropoeon, which intersected Jerusalem from north to south, as was enclosed by the second wall, on the north, and the first wall on the south. The valley "extended as far as the fountain of Siloam," and united with the valley of Jehoshaphat a little below Ophel. It was "full of houses," and, from its name as well as from its situation, it was probably the scene of petty merchandise, where the occasions in which men could and did break the law and offend God, were the more continual, because they entered into their daily life, and were a part of it. The sound of the pestle was continually heard there; another sound should thereafter be heard, when they should not bruise, but be themselves bruised. The name "Maktesh" was probably chosen to express how their false hopes, grounded on the presence of God's temple among them while by their sins they profaned it, should be turned into true fears. They had been and thought themselves "Mikdash," "a holy place,. sanctuary;" they should be Maktesh , wherein all should be utterly bruised in pieces.
Jerome: "Whoso considereth the calamities of that siege, and how the city was pressed and hemmed in, will feel how aptly he calls them "the inhabitants of a mortar;" for, as grains of corn are brought together into a mortar, to the end that, when the pestle descendeth, being unable to fly off, they may be bruised, so the people flowing together, out of all the countries of Judaea, was narrowed in by a sudden siege, and through the savage cruelty of the above leaders of the sedition, was unutterably tortured from within, more than by the enemy without."
For all the merchant people are cut down - (Literally, "the people of Canaan") that is Ch.: "they who in deeds are like the people of Canaan," according to that , "Thou art of Canaan and not of Judah," and, "Thy father is an Amorite and thy mother a Hittite" . So our Lord says to the reprobate Jews, "Ye are of your father the devil" Joh 8:44.
All they that bear silver are cut off - (Literally, "all laden with"). The silver, wherewith they lade themselves, being gotten amiss, is a load upon them, weighing them down until they are destroyed.
Zephaniah 1:12
zep 1:12
I will search - (Literally, "diligently"). The word is always used of a minute diligent search, whereby places, persons, things, are searched and sifted one by one in every corner, until it be found whether a thing be there or no . Hence, also of the searching out of every thought of the heart, either by God Pro 20:27, or in repentance by the light of God Lam 3:40.
Jerusalem with candles - so that there should be no corner, no lurking-place so dark, but that the guilty should be brought to light. The same diligence, which Eternal Wisdom used, to "seek and to save that which was lost Luk 15:8, lighting a candle and searching diligently," until it find each lost piece of silver, the same shall Almighty God use that no hardened sinner shall escape. Cyril: "What the enemy would do, using unmingled phrensy against the conquered, that God fitteth to His own Person, not as being Himself the Doer of things so foreign, but rather permitting that what comes from anger should proceed in judgment against the ungodly." It was an image of this, when, at the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans, they "dragged out of common sewers and holes and caves and tombs, princes and great men and priests, who for fear of death had hid themselves."
How much more in that Day when "the secrets of all hearts shalt be revealed" by Him who "searcheth the hearts and reins, and to Whose Eyes" Psa 7:9; Psa 26:2; Jer 11:20; Jer 17:10; Jer 20:12; Rev 2:23, "which are like flashing Fire, all things are naked and open!" Rev 1:14. The candles wherewith God searcheth the heart, are men's own consciences Pro 20:27, His Own revealed word Psa 119:104; Pro 6:23; Pe2 1:19, the lives of true Christians Phi 2:15. Those, through the Holy Spirit in each, may enlighten the heart of man, or, if he takes not heed, will rise in judgment against him, and show the falsehood of all vain excuses. : "One way of escape only there is. If we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged. I will "search out my" own "ways" and my desires, that He who "shall search out Jerusalem with candles," may find nothing in me, unsought and unsifted. For He will not twice judge the same thing. Would that I might so follow and track out all my offences, that in none I need fear His piercing Eyes, in none be ashamed at the light of His candles! Now I am seen, but I see not. At hand is that Eye, to whom all things are open, although Itself is not open. Once "I shall know, even as I am known" Co1 13:12. Now "I know in part," but I am not known in part, but wholly."
The men that are settled on their lees - Stiffened and contracted . The image is from wine which becomes harsh, if allowed to remain upon the lees, unremoved. It is drawn out by Jeremiah, "Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed" Jer 48:11. So they upon whom "no changes come, fear not God (see Psa 55:19). The lees are the refuse of the wine, yet stored up (so the word means) with it, and the wine rests, as it were, upon them. So do men of ease rest in things defiled and defiling, their riches or their pleasure, which they hoard up, on which they are bent, so that they, Dionysius: "lift not their mind to things above, but, darkened with foulest desires, are hardened and stiffened in sin."
That say in their heart - Not openly scoffing, perhaps thinking that they believe; but people "do" believe as they love. Their most inward belief, the belief of their heart and affections, what they wish, and the hidden spring of their actions, is, "The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil." They act as believing so, and by acting inure themselves to believe it. They think of God as far away, "Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are! And thou sayest, How doth God know? Can He judge through the dark cloud? Thick goads are a covering to Him, that He seeth not; and He walketh in the circuit of heaven" Job 22:12-14, "The ungodly in the pride of his heart" (thinketh); "He will not inquire; all his devices" (speak), "There is no God. Strong are his ways at all times; on high are Thy judgments out of his sight" Psa 10:4-5. "They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless, and they say, The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it" Psa 94:5-6.
"Such things they did imagine and were deceived, for their own wickedness blinded them. As for the mysteries of God, they knew them not" (Wisd. 2:21-22). "Faith without works is dead" Jam 2:20. Faith which acts not dies out, and there comes in its stead this other persuasion, that God will not repay. There are more Atheists than believe themselves to be such. These act as if there were no Judge of their deeds, and at last come, themselves to believe that God will not punish Isa 5:19; Mal 2:17. What else is the thought of all worldlings, of all who make idols to themselves of any pleasure or gain or ambition, but "God will not punish?" "God cannot punish the (wrongful, selfish,) indulgence of the nature which He has made." "God will not be so precise." "God will not punish with everlasting severance from Him, the sins of this short life." And they see not that they ascribe to God, what He attributes to idols that is, not-gods. "Do good or do evil, that we may be dismayed and behold it together" . "Be not afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good" Jer 10:5. These think not that God does good, for they ascribe their success to their own diligence, wisdom, strength, and thank not God for it. They think not that He sends them evil. For they defy Him and His laws, and think that they shall go unpunished. What remains but that He should be as dumb an idol as those of the pagan?
Zephaniah 1:13
zep 1:13
Therefore their goods - Literally, "And their strength." It is the simple sequel in God's Providence. It is a continued narrative. God will visit those who say, that God does not interfere in man's affairs, and, it shall be seen Jer 44:28 whose words shall stand, God's or their's. All which God had threatened in the law shall be fulfilled. God, in the fulfillment of the punishment, which He had foretold in the law Lev 26:32-33; Deut. 28, would vindicate not only His present Providence, but His continual government of His own world. All which is strength to man, shall the rather fail, because it is strength, and they presume on it and it deceives them. Its one end is to "become a prey" of devils. Riches, learning, rule, influence, power, bodily strength, genius, eloquence, popular favor, shall all fail a man, and he, when stripped of them, shall be the more bared because he gathered them around him. "Wealth is ever a runaway and has no stability, but rather intoxicates and inclines to revolt and has unsteady feet. Exceeding folly is it to think much of it. For it will not rescue those lying under the divine displeasure, nor will it free any from guilt, when God decreeth punishment, and bringeth the judgment befitting on the transgressors. How utterly useless this eagerness after wealth is to the ungodly, he teacheth, saying, that "their strength shall be a prey" to the Chaldaean."
And their houses a desolation - Cyril: "For they are, of whom it may be said very truly, "This is the man that took not God for his strength, but trusted unto the multitude of his riches, and strengthened himself in his wickedness" Psa 52:7. But if indeed their houses are adorned in a costly manner, they shall not be theirs, for they shall be burned, and themselves go into captivity, leaving all in their house, and deprived of all which would gladden. And this God said clearly to the king of Judah by Jeremiah, "Thou hast builded thyself a large house and wide chambers, ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion. Shalt thou reign because thou closest thyself with cedar!" Jer 22:14-15. Gregory (Mor. viii. 14): "As the house of the body is the bodily dwelling, so to each mind its house is that, wherein through desire it is wont to dwell," and "desolate" shall they be, being severed forever from the things they desired, and forever deserted by God. "They shall also build houses but not inhabit them," as the rich man said to his soul, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years .... Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?" Luk 12:19-20. Before the siege by the Romans, Jerusalem and the temple had been greatly beautified, only to be destroyed. "And they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof." This is the woe, first pronounced in the law Deu 28:39, often repeated and ever found true. Wickedness makes joy its end, yet never finds it, seeking it where it is not, out of God.
Zephaniah 1:14
zep 1:14
The great Day of the Lord is near - The prophet again expands the words of Joel, accumulating words expressive of the terrors of that Day, showing that though "the great and very terrible Day of the Lord" Joe 2:31, (Joel had said) "a day of darkness and gloominess, of clouds and of thick darkness" Joe 2:2, "which was then coming and nigh at hand" Joe 2:1, had come and was gone, it was only a forerunner of others; none of them final; but each, because it "was" a judgment and an instance of the justice of God, an earnest and forerunner of other judgments to the end. Again, "a great Day of the Lord was near." This Day had itself, so to speak, many hours and divisions of the day. But each hour tolleth the same knell of approaching doom. Each calamity in the miserable reigns of the sons of Josiah was one stroke in the passing-bell, until the de struction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans, for the time closed it.
The judgment was complete. The completeness of that excision made it the more an image of every other like day until the final destruction of all which, although around or near to Christ, shall in the Great Day be found not to be His, but to have rejected Him. Jerome: "Truly was vengeance required, 'from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, whom they slew between the temple and the altar' Mat 23:35, and at last when they said of the Son of God, "His blood be upon us and upon our children" Mat 27:25, they experienced a bitter day, because they had provoked the Lord to bitterness; a Day, appointed by the Lord, in which not the weak only but the mighty shall be bowed down, and wrath shall come upon them to the end. For often before they endured the wrath of the Lord, but that wrath was not to the uttermost. What need now to describe how great calamities they endured in both captivities, and how they who rejected the light of the Lord, walked in darkness and thick darkness, and they who would not hear the trumpet of the solemn feast-days, heard the shout of the enemy.
But of the "fenced cities" and "lofty corner-towers" of Judaea, which are until now destroyed even to the ground, the eyes, I deem, can judge better than the ears. We especially, now living in that province, can see, can prove what is written. We scarcely discern slight traces of ruins of what once were great cities. At Shiloh, where was the tabernacle and ark of the testament of the Lord, scarcely the foundations of the altar are shown. Rama and Bethoron and the other noble cities built by Solomon, are shown to be little villages. Let us read Joseplius and the prophecy of Zephaniah; we shall see his history before our eyes. And this must be said not only of the captivity, but even to the present day. The treacherous farmers, having slain the servants, and, at last, the Son of God, are prevented from entering Jerusalem, except to wail, and they purchase at a price leave to weep the ruin of their city, so that they who once bought the Blood of Christ, buy their tears; not even their tears are costless.
You may see on the day that Jerusalem was taken and destroyed by the Romans, a people in mourning come, decrepit old women and old men, in aged and ragged wretchedness, showing in their bodies and in their guise the wrath of the Lord. The hapless crowd is gathered, and amid the gleaming of the Cross of Christ, and the radiant glory of His Resurrection, the standard also of the Cross shining from Mount Olivet, you may see the people, piteous but unpitied, bewail the ruins of their temple, tears still on their cheeks, their arms livid and their hair disheveled, and the soldier asketh a guerdon, that they may be allowed to weep longer. And doth any, when he seeth this, doubt of the "day of trouble and distress, the day of darkness and gloominess, the day of clouds and thick darkness, the day of the trumpet and alarm?" For they have also trumpets in their sorrow, and, according to the prophecy, the voice of "the solemn feast-day is turned into mourning." They wail over the ashes of the sanctuary and the altar destroyed, and over cities once fenced, and over the high towers of the temple, from which they once cast headlong James the brother of the Lord."
But referring the Day of the Lord to the end of the world or the close of the life of each, it too is near; near, the prophet adds to impress the more its nearness, for it is at hand to each; and when eternity shall come, all time shall seem like a moment, "A thousand years, when past, are like a watch in the night" Psa 90:4; one fourth part of one night.
And hasteth greatly - For time whirls on more rapidly to each, year by year, and when God's judgments draw near, the tokens of them thicken, and troubles sweep one over the other, events jostle against each other. The voice of the day of the Lord. That Day, when it cometh, shall leave no one in doubt what it meaneth; it shall give no uncertain sound, but shall, trumpet-tongued, proclaim the holiness and justice of Almighty God; its voice shall be the Voice of Christ, which "all that are in the graves shall hear and come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation" Joh 5:28-29.
"The mighty men shall cry there bitterly, for "bitter is the remembrance of death to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions, unto the man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things" (Ecclesiasticus 41:1); and, "There is no mighty man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death; and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it" Ecc 8:8. Rather, wrath shall come upon "the kings" of the earth, "and the great men and the rich men and the mighty men, and" they shall will to "hide" themselves "from the Face of Him that sitteth on the Throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great Day of His wrath is come: and who shall be able to stand?" Rev 6:15-17.
The mighty men shall cry there bitterly - The prophet has spoken of time, "the day of the Lord." He points out the more vividly the unseen sight and place, "there;" so David says, "There they feared a fear" Psa 14:5. He sees the place; he hears the bitter cry. So near is it in fact; so close the connection of cause and effect, of sin and punishment. There shall be a great and bitter cry, when there shall be no place for repentance. It shall be a mighty cry, but mighty in the bitterness of its distress. "Mighty men shall be mightily tormented" (Wisd. 6:6), that is, those who have been mighty against God, weak against Satan, and shall have used their might in his service.
Zephaniah 1:15
zep 1:15
A day of wrath - In which all the wrath of Almighty God, which evil angels and evil men have treasured to them for that day, shall be poured out: "the" day of wrath, because then they shall be brought face to face before the presence of God, but thenceforth they shall be cast out of it forever.
A day of trouble and distress - Both words express, how anguish shall narrow and hem them in; so that there shall be no escape; above them, God displeased; below, the flames of Hell; around, devils to drag them away, and Angels casting them forth "in bundles to burn them;" without, "the books" which shall be opened;" and within, conscience leaving them no escape.
A day of wasteness and desolation - In which all things shall return to their primeval void, before "the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters," His presence being altogether withdrawn.
A day of darkness and gloominess - For sun and moon shall lose their brightness, and no brightness from the Lamb shall shine upon the wicked, but they shall be driven into "outer darkness."
A day of clouds and thick darkness - Hiding from them the Face of the Sun of Righteousness, and covering Him, so that their "prayers should not pass through" Lam 3:44.
Zephaniah 1:16
zep 1:16
A day of the trumpet and alarm - o that is, of the loud blast of the trumpet, which sounds alarm and causes it. The word is especially the shrill loud noise of the trumpet (for sacred purposes in Israel itself, as ruling all the movements of the tabernacle and accompanying their feasts); then also of the "battle cry." They had not listened to the voice of the trumpet, as it called them to holy service; now they shall hear "the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God" Th1 4:16.
Against the high towers - Literally, "corners" , and so "corner-towers." This peculiarity describes Jerusalem, whose walls "were made artificially standing in a line curved inwards, so that the flanks of assailants might be exposed." By this same name Jdg 20:2; Sa1 14:38; Isa 19:13; Zac 10:4 are called the mighty men and chiefs of the people, who, humanly speaking, hold it together and support it; on these chiefs in rebellion against God, whether devils or evil men, shall punishment greatly fall.
Zephaniah 1:17
zep 1:17
I will bring distress upon men - I will hem them in, in anguish on all sides. God Himself shall meet them with His terrors, wherever they turn. "I will hem them in, that they may find it so" .
That they shall walk like blind men - Utterly bereft of counsel, seeing no more than the blind which way to turn, grasping blindly and franticly at anything, and going on headlong to their own destruction. So God forewarned them in the law; "Thou shalt grope at noon day, as the blind gropeth in darkness" Jer. 10:29; and Job, of the wicked generally, "They meet with the darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night" Job 5:14; and, "They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" Job 12:25; and Isaiah foretelling of those times, "We grope for the wall, as the blind; and we grope, as if we had no eyes; we stumble in the noon-day as in the night. Because they have sinned against the Lord" Isa 59:10, and so He hath turned their wisdom into foolishness, and since they have despised Him, He hath made them objects of contempt. "Their blood shall be poured out like dust" Sa1 2:30, as abundant and as valueless; utterly disregarded by Him, as Asaph complains, "their blood have they shed like water" Psa 79:3; contemptible and disgusting as what is vilest; "their flesh as the dung," refuse, decayed, putrefied, offensive, enriching by its decay the land, which had been the scene of their luxuries and oppressions. Yet, the most offensive disgusting physical corruption is but a faint image of the defilement of sin. This punishment, in which the carrion remains should be entombed only in the bowels of vultures and dogs, was especially threatened to Jehoiakim; "He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem" Jer 22:19.
Zephaniah 1:18
zep 1:18
Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath - Gain unjustly gotten was the cause of their destruction. For, as Ezekiel closes the like description; "They shall cast their silver into the streets, and their gold shall be removed; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not satisfy their souls nor fill their bowels: "because it is the stumbling-block of their iniquity" Eze 7:19. Much less shall any possession, outward or inward, be of avail in the Great Day; since in death the rich man's "pomp shall not follow him" Psa 49:17, and every gift which he has misused, whether of mind or spirit, even the knowledge of God without doing His will, shall but increase damnation. "Sinners will then have nothing but their sins."
Here the prophet uses images belonging more to the immediate destruction; at the close the words again widen, and belong, in their fullest literal sense, to the Day of Judgment. "The whole land," rather, as at the beginning, "the whole earth shall be devoured by the fire of His jelousy; for He shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land:" rather, "He shall make an utter, yea altogether a terriffic destruction of all the dwellers of the earth." What Nahum had foretold of Nineveh , "He shall make the place thereof an utter consumption," that Zephaniah foretells of all the inhabitants of the world. For what is this, "the whole earth shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy," but what Peter says, "the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up?" Pe2 3:13. And what is that he says, "He shall make all the dwellers of the earth an utter, yea altogether a hasty destruction," but a general judgment of all, who belong to the world, whose home, citizenship, whose whole mind is in the world, not as true Christians, who are strangers and pilgrims here, and their "citizenship is in heaven?" Heb 11:13; Phi 3:20.
These God shall make an utter, terrific, speedy destruction, a living death, so that they shall at once both be and not be; be, as continued in being; not be, as having no life of God, but only a continued death in misery. And this shall be through the jealousy of Almighty God, that divine quality in Him, whereby He loves and wills to be loved, and endures not those who give to others the love for which He gave so much and which is so wholly due to Himself Alone. Augustine, Conf. i. 5. p. 3, Oxford Translation: "Thou demandest my love, and if I give it not, art wroth with me, and threatenest me with grievous woes. Is it then a slight woe to love Thee not?" What will be that anger, which is Infinite Love, but which becomes, through man's sin, Hate?
Bible
Zephaniah Chapter 2
Zephaniah 2:1
zep 2:1
Having set forth the terrors of the Judgment Day, the prophet adds an earnest call to repentance; and then declares how judgments, forerunners of that Day, shall fall, one by one, on those nations around, who know not God, and shall rest upon Nineveh, the great beautiful ancient city of the world. Jerome: "See the mercy of God. It had been enough to have set before the wise the vehemence of the coming evil. But because He willeth not to punish, but to alarm only, Himself calleth to repentance, that He may not do what He threatened." Cyril: "Having set forth clearly the savageness of the war and the greatness of the suffering to come, he suitably turns his discourse to the duty of calling to repentance, when it was easy to persuade them, being terrified. For sometimes when the mind has been numbed, and exceedingly bent to evil, we do not readily admit even the will to repent, but fear often drives us to it, even against our will. He calls us then to friendship with Himself. For as they revolted, became aliens, serving idols and giving up their mind to their passions, so they would, as it were, retrace their steps, and lay hold of the friendship of God, choosing to serve Him, nay and Him Alone, and obey His commandments. Wherefore, while we have time, while the Lord, in His forbearance as God, gives way, let us enact repentance, supplicate, say weeping, "remember not the sins and offences of my youth" Psa 25:7; let us unite ourselves with Him by sanctification and sobriety. So shall we be sheltered in the day of wrath, and wash away the stain of our falls, before the Day of the Lord come upon us. For the Judge will come, He will come from heaven at the due season, and will reward each according to his work."
Gather yourselves together, yea gather together - o, rather, "Sift yourselves, yea sift" . The exact image is from gathering stubble or dry sticks, which are picked up one by one, with search and care.
So must men deal with the dry and withered leaves of a past evil life. The English rendering however, comes to the same meaning. We use, "collect oneself" for bringing oneself, all one's thoughts, together, and so, having full possession of oneself. Or "gathering ourselves" might stand in contrast with being "abroad," as it were, out of ourselves amid the manifoldness of things seen. Jerome: "Thou who, taken up with the business of the world, hurriest to and fro amid divers things, return to the Church of the saints, and join thyself to their life and assembly, whom thou seest to please God, and bring together the dislocated members of thy soul, which now are not knit together, into one frame of wisdom, and cleave to its embrace." "Gather yourselves" into one, wherein ye have been scattered; to the One God, from whom they had wandered, seeking pleasure from His many creatures; to His one fold and Church, from which they had severed themselves outwardly by joining the worship of Baal, inwardly, by serving him and his abominable rites; joining and joined to the assembly of the faithful, by oneness of faith and life.
In order to repent, a man must know himself thoroughly; and this can only be done by taking act by act, word by word, thought by thought, as far as he can, not in a confused heap or mass, as they lie in any man's conscience, but one by one, each picked up apart, and examined, and added to the sear unfruitful heap, plucking them as it were, and gathering them out of himself, that so they may, by the Spirit of burning, the fire of God's Spirit kindling repentance, be burned up, and not the sinner himself be fuel for fire with them. The word too is intensive, "Gather together all which is in you, thoroughly, piece by piece" (for the sinner's whole self becomes chaff, dry and empty). To use another image, "Sift yourselves thoroughly, so that nothing escape, as far as your diligence can reach, and then - "And gather on," that is, "glean on;" examine yourselves, "not lightly and after the manner of dissemblers before God," but repeatedly, gleaning again and again, to see if by any means anything have escaped: continuing on the search and ceasing not.
The first earnest search into the soul must be the beginning, not the end. Our search must be continued, until there be no more to be discovered, that is, when sin is no more, and we see ourselves in the full light of the presence of our Judge. For a first search, however diligent, never thoroughly reaches the whole deep disease of the whole man; the most grievous sins hide other grievous sins, though lighter. Some sins flash on the conscience, at one time, some at another; so that few, even upon a diligent search, come at once to the knowledge of all their heaviest sins. When the mist is less thick, we see more clearly what was before one dark dull mass of imperfection and misery. : "Spiritual sins are also with difficulty sifted, (as they are,) by one who is carnal. Whence it happens, that things in themselves heavier he perceives less or very little, and conscience is not grieved so much by the memory of pride or envy, as of impurities and crimes."
So having said, "Sift yourselves through and through," he says, "sift on." A diligent sifting and search into himself must be the beginning of all true repentance and pardon. : "What remains, but that we give ourselves wholly to this work, so holy, and needful? "Let us search and try our ways and our doings" , and let each think that he has made progress, not if he find not what to blame, but if he blame what he finds. Thou hast not sifted thyself in vain, if thou hast discovered that thou needest a fresh sitting; and so often has thy search not failed thee, as thou judgest that it must be renewed. But if thou ever dost this, when there is need, thou dost it ever. But ever remember that thou needest help from above and the mercy of Jesus Christ our Lord Who is over all, God blessed forever." The whole course of self-examination then lies in two words of divine Scripture. And withal he warns them, instead of gathering together riches which shall "not be able to deliver them in the day of trouble," to gather themselves into themselves, and so "judge" themselves "thoroughly , that they be not judged of the Lord" Co1 11:31-32.
O nation not desired - o, that is, having nothing in itself to be desired or loved, but rather, for its sin, hateful to God. God yearneth with pity and compassion over His creatures; He "hath a desire to the work of His Hands" . Here Israel is spoken to, as what he had made himself, hateful to God by his sins, although still an object of His tender care, in what yet remained to him of nature or grace which was from Himself.
Zephaniah 2:2
zep 2:2
Before the decree bring forth - God's word is full (as it were) of the event which it foretelleth; it contains its own fulfillment in itself, and "travaileth" until it come to pass, giving signs of its coming, yet delaying until the full time. Time is said to bring forth what is wrought in it. "Thou knowest not, what a day shall bring forth."
Before the day pass as the chaff - Or, parenthetically, "like chaff the day passeth by." God's counsels lie wrapt up, as it were, in the womb of time, wherein He hides them, until the moment which He has appointed, and they break forth suddenly to those who look not for them. The mean season is given for repentance, that is, the day of grace, the span of repentance still allowed, which is continually whirling more swiftly by; and woe, if it be fruitless as chaff! Those who profit not by it shall also be as chaff, carried away pitilessly by the whirlwind to destruction. Time, on which eternity hangs, is a slight, uncertain thing, as little to be counted upon, as the light dry particles which are the sport of the wind, driven uncertainly here and there. But when it is "passed," then "cometh," not "to" them, but "upon" them, from heaven, overwhelming them, "abiding upon" Joh 3:36 them, not to pass away, "the heat of the anger of Almighty God." This warning he twice repeats, to impress the certainty and speed of its conming Gen 41:32. It is the warning of our Lord, "Take heed, lest that day come upon you unawares" Luk 21:34.
Zephaniah 2:3
zep 2:3
Seek ye the Lord - He had exhorted sinners to penitence; he now calls the righteous to persevere and increase more and more. He bids them "seek diligently" , and that with a three-fold call, to seek Him from whom they received daily the three-fold blessing Num 6:23-26, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as he had just before threatened God's impending judgment with the same use of the mysterious number, three. They, whom he calls, were already, by the grace of God, "meek," and "had wrought His judgment." Rup.: "Submitting themselves to the word of God, they had done and were doing the judgment of God, 'judging themselves that they benot judged;' the beginning of which judgment is, as sinners and guilty of death, to give themselves to the Cross of the Lord, that is, to be 'baptized' in 'His Death and be buried with Him by Baptism into death;' but the perfection of that judgment or righteousness is, to 'walk in newness of life, as He rose from the dead through the glory of the Father' Rom 6:3-4."
Dionysius: "Since the meek already have God through grace as the Possessor and Dweller in their heart, how shall they seek Him but that they may have Him more fully and more perfectly, knowing Him more clearly, loving Him more ardently, cleaving to Him more inseparably, that so they may be heard by Him, not for themselves only, but for others?" It is then the same Voice as at the close of the Revelation, "the righteous, let him be still more righteous; the holy, let him be still more holy" Rev 22:11. They are the "meek," who are exhorted "diligently" to "seek meekness," and they who had "wrought His judgment," who are "diligently" to "seek Righteousness." And since our Lord saith, "Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart" Mat 11:29, He bids (Jerome) "those who imitated His meekness and did His judgment, to seek the Lord in their meekness." Meekness and Righteousness may be His Attributes, Who is All-gentleness and All-Righteousness, the Fountain of all, wheresoever it is, in gentleness receiving penitents, and, as "the Righteous Judge, giving the crown of righteousness" to those who "love Him and keep His commandments," yea He joineth righteousness with meekness, since without His mercy no man living could be justified in His Sight. Cyril: "God is sought by us, when, of our choice, laying aside all listlessness, we thirst after doing what pleases Him; and we shall do judgment too, when we fulfill His divine law, working out what is good unshrinkingly; and we shall gain the prize of righteousness, when crowned with glory for well-doing and running the well-reported anti blameless way of true piety to God and of love to the brethren, for 'love is the fulfilling of the law' Rom 13:10."
It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger - Rup.: "Shall these too then scarcely be 'hid in the day of the Lord's anger?' Doth not the Apostle Peter say the very same? 'If it first begin at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?' Pe1 4:17-18. So then, although any be 'meek,' although he 'have wrought the judgment' of the Lord, let him ever suspect himself, nor think that he has 'already attained,' since neither can any righteous be saved, if he be judged 'without mercy.'" Dionysius: "He saith, if 'may' be; not that there is any doubt that the meek and they who perseveringly seek God, shall then be saved, but, to convey how difficult it is to be saved, and how fearful and rigorous is the judgment of God." To be hid is to be sheltered from wrath under the protection of God; as David says, "In the time of trouble He shall hide me" Psa 27:5; and, "Thou shalt hide them (that trust in Thee) in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues" Psa 31:20. And in Isaiah, "A Man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest" Isa 32:2; and, "There shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain" Isa 5:6.
Zephaniah 2:4
zep 2:4
For - As a ground for repentance and perseverance, he goes through Pagan nations, upon whom God's wrath should come. Jerome: "As Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, after visions concerning Judah, turn to other nations round about, and according to the character of each, announce what shall come upon them, and dwell at length upon it, so doth this prophet, though more briefly" And thus under five nations, who lay west, east, south and north, he includes all mankind on all sides, and, again, according to their respective characters toward Israel, as they are alien from, or hostile to the Church; the Philistines Zep 2:4-7, as a near, malicious, infesting enemy; Moab and Ammon Isa 2:8-10, people akin to her (as heretics) yet ever rejoicing at her troubles and sufferings; Etheopians Isa 5:12, distant nations at peace with her, and which are, for the most part, spoken of as to be brought unto her; Assyria Isa. 13-15, as the great oppressive power of the world, and so upon it the full desolation rests.
In the first fulfillment, because Moab and Ammon aiding Nebuchadnezzar, (and all, in various ways wronging God's people Isa 16:4; Amo 1:13-15; Amo 2:1-3; Jer 48:27-30, Jer 48:42; Jer 49:1; Eze 20:3, Eze 20:6, Eze 20:8), trampled on His sanctuary, overthrew His temple and blasphemed the Lord, the prophecy is turned against them. So then, before the captivity came, while Josiah was yet king, and Jerusalem and the temple were, as yet, not overthrown, the prophecy is directed against those who mocked at them. "Gaza shall be forsaken." Out of the five cities of the Philistines, the prophet pronounces woe upon the same four as Amos Amo 1:6-8 before, Jeremiah Jer 25:20 soon after, and Zechariah Zac 9:5-6 later. Gath, then, the fifth had probably remained with Judah since Uzziah Ch2 26:6 and Hezekiah Kg2 18:8. In the sentence of the rest, regard is had (as is so frequent in the Old Testament) to the names of the places themselves, that, henceforth, the name of the place might suggest the thought of the doom pronounced upon it.
The names expressed boastfulness, and so, in the divine judgment, carried their own sentence with them, and this sentence is pronounced by a slight change in the word. Thus 'Azzah' (Gaza,) 'strong' shall be 'Azoobah, desolated;' "Ekron, deep-rooting" , shall "Teaker, be uprooted;" the "Cherethites" (cutters off) shall become (Cheroth) "diggings;" "Chebel, the band" of the sea coast, shall be in another sense "Chebel," an "inheritance" Zep 2:5, Zep 2:7, divided by line to the remnant of Judah; and "Ashdod" (the waster shall be taken in their might, not by craft, nor in the way of robbers, but "driven forth" violently and openly in the "noon-day."
For Gaza shall be forsaken - Some vicissitudes of these towns have been noted already . The fulfillment of the prophecy is not tied down to time; the one marked contrast is, that the old pagan enemies of Judah should be destroyed, the house of Judah should be restored, and should re-enter upon the possession of the land, promised to them of old. The Philistine towns had, it seems, nothing to fear from Babylon or Persia, to whom they remained faithful subjects. The Ashdodites (who probably, as the most important, stand for the whole ) combined with Sanballat, "the Ammonites and the Arabians" Neh 4:7, to hinder the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Even an army was gathered, headed by Samaria Neh. 2.
They gave themselves out as loyal, Jerusalem as rebellious Neh 2:19; Neh 6:6. The old sin remaining, Zechariah renewed the sentence by Zephaniah against the four cities Zech. 9; a prophecy, which an unbeliever also has recognized as picturing the march of Alexander . : "All the other cities of Palestine having submitted," Gaza alone resisted the conqueror for two or five months. It had come into the hands of the Persians in the expedition of Cambyses against Egypt . The Gazaeans having all perished fighting at their posts, Alexander sold the women and children, and re-populated the city from the neighborhood . Palestine lay between the two rival successors of Alexander, the Ptolemies and Seleucidae, and felt their wars .
Gaza fell through mischance into the hands of Ptolemy , 11 years after the death of Alexander , and soon after, was destroyed by Antiochus (198 b.c.), "preserving its faith to Ptolemy" as before to the Persians, in a way admired by a pagan historian. In the Maccabee wars, Judas Maccabaeus chiefly destroyed the idols of Ashdod, but also "spoiled their cities" (1 Macc. 5:68); Jonathan set it on fire, with its idol-temple, which was a sort of citadel to it (1 Macc. 10:84); Ascalon submitted to him (1 Macc. 10:86); Ekron with its borders were given to him by Alexander Balas (1 Macc. 10:89); he burned the suburbs of Gaza (1 Macc. 11:61); Simon took it, expelled its inhabitants, filled it with believing Jews and fortified it more strongly than before (1 Macc. 13:43-48); but, after a year's siege, it was betrayed to Alexander Jannaeus, who killed its senate of 500 and razed the city to the ground .
Gabinius restored it and Ashdod . After Herod's death, Ashdod was given to Salome ; Gaza, as being a Greek city , was detached from the realm of Archelaus and annexed to Syria. It was destroyed by the Jews in their revolt when Florus was "procurator," 55 A.D . Ascalon and Gaza must still have been strong, and were probably a distinct population in the early times of Antipater, father of Herod, when Alexander and Alexandra set him over all Idumaea, since "he is said" then "to have made friendship with the Arabs, Gazites and Ascalonites, likeminded with himself, and to have attached them by many and large presents."
Yet though the inhabitants were changed, the hereditary hatred remained. Philo in his Embassy to Caius, 40 a.d., used the strong language , "The Ascalonites have an implacable and irreconcilable enmity to the Jews, their neighbors, who inhabit the holy land." This continued toward Christians. Some horrible atrocities, of almost inconceivable savagery, by these of Gaza and Ascalon 361 a.d., are related by Theodoret and Sozomen . : "Who is ignorant of the madness of the Gazaeans?" asks Gregory of Nazianzus, of the times of Julian. This was previous to the conversion of the great Gazite temple of Marna into a Christian Church by Eudoxia . On occasion of Constantine's exemption of the Maiumas Gazae from their control, it is alleged, that they were "extreme heathen." In the time of the Crusades the Ascalonites are described by Christians as their "most savage enemies."
It may be, that a likeness of sin may have continued on a likeness of punishment. But the primary prediction was against the people, not against the walls. The sentence, "Gaza shall be forsaken," would have been fulfilled by the removal or captivity of its inhabitants, even if they had not been replaced by others. A prediction against any ancient British town would have been fulfilled, if the Britons in it had been replaced or exterminated by Danes, and these by Saxons, and these subdued by the Normans, though their displacers became wealthy and powerful in their place. Even on the same site it would not be the same Gaza, when the Philistine Gaza became Edomite, and the Edomite Greek, and the Greek Arabian . Ashdod (as well as Gaza) is spoken of as a city of the Greeks ; New Gaza is spoken of as a mixture of Turks, Arabians, Fellahs, Bedouins out of Egypt, Syria, Petraea . Felix Faber says, "there is a wonderful com-mixture of divers nations in it, Ethiopians, Arabs, Egyptians, Syrians, Indians and eastern Christians; no Latins ." Its Jewish inhabitants fled from it in the time of Napoleon: now, with few exceptions it is inhabited by Arabs .
But these, Ghuzzeh, Eskalon, Akir, Sedud, are at most successors of the Philistine cities, of which there is no trace above the surface of the earth. It is common to speak of "remnants of antiquity," as being or not being to be found in any of them; but this means, that, where these exist, there are remains of a Greek or Roman, not of a Philistine city.
Of the four cities, "Akkaron," Ekron, ("the firm-rooting") has not left a vestage. It is mentioned by name only, after the times of the Bible, by some who passed by it . There was "a large village of Jews" so called in the time of Eusebius and Jerome , "between Azotus and Jamnia." Now a village of "about 50 mud houses without a single remnant of antiquity except 2 large finely built wells" bears the name of Akir. Jerome adds, "Some think that Accaron is the tower of Strato, afterward called Caesarea." This was perhaps derived from misunderstanding his Jewish instructor . But it shows how entirely all knowledge of Ekron was then lost.
Ashdod - Or Azotus which, at the time when Zephaniah prophesied, held out a twenty-nine years' siege against Psammetichus, is replaced by "a moderate sized village of mud houses, situated on the eastern declivity of a little flattish hill," "entirely modern, not containing a vestige of antiquity." "A beautiful sculptured sarcophagus with some fragments of small marble shafts," "near the Khan on the southwest." belong of course to later times. "The whole south side of the hill appears also, as if it had been once covered with buildings, the stones of which are now thrown together in the rude fences." Its Bishops are mentioned from the Council of Nice to 536 a.d. , and so probably continued until the Muslim devastation. It is not mentioned in the Talmud . Benjamin of Tudela calls it Palmis, and says, "it is desolate, and there are no Jews in it ." : "Neither Ibn Haukal (Yacut), Edrisi, Abulfeda, nor William of Tyre mention it."
Ascalon and Gaza had each a port, Maiuma Gazae, Maiuma Ascalon; literally, "a place on the sea" (an Egyptian name ) belonging to Ascalon or Gaza. The name involves that Ascalon and Gaza themselves, the old Philistine towns, were not on the sea. They were, like Athens, built inland, perhaps (as has been conjectured) from fear of the raids of pirates, or of inroads from those who (like the Philistines themselves probably, or some tribe of them) might come from the sea. The port probably of both was built in much later times; the Egyptian name implies that they were built by Egyptians, after the time when its kings Necos and Apries, (Pharaoh-Necho and Pharaoh-Hophra, who took Gaza Jer 47:1) made Egypt a naval power . This became a characteristic of these Philistine cities. They themselves lay more or less inland, and had a city connected with them of the same name, on the shore. Thus there was an , "Azotus by the sea," and an "Azotus Ispinus." There were "two Iamniae, one inland." But Ashdod lay further from the sea than Gaza; Yamnia, (the Yabneel of Joshua Jos 15:11, in Uzziah's time, Yabneh Ch2 26:6) further than Ashdod. The port of Yamnia was burned by Judas (2 Macc. 12:9).
The "name," Maiumas, does not appear until Christian times, though "the port of Gaza" is mentioned by Strabo : to it, Alexander brought from Tyre the machines, with which he took Gaza itself . That port then must have been at some distance from Gaza. Each port became a town, large enough to have, in Christian times, a Bishop of its own. The Epistle of John of Jerusalem, inserted in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople, 536 a.d., written in the name of Palestine i., ii., and iii., is signed by a Bishop of Maiumen of Ascalon, as well as by a Bishop of Ascalon, as it is by a Bishop of Maiumas of Gaza as well as by a Bishop of Gaza. . Yabne, or Yamnia, was on a small eminence , 6 12 hours from the sea .
The Maiumas Gazae became the more known. To it, as being Christian, Constantine gave the right of citizenship, and called it Constantia from his son, making it a city independent of Gaza. Julian the Apostate gave to Gaza (which, though it had Bishops and Martyrs, had a pagan temple at the beginning of the 5th century) its former jurisdiction over it, and though about 20 furlongs off, it was called "the maritime portion of Gaza" . It had thenceforth the same municipal officers; but, "as regards the Church alone," Sozomen adds, "they still appear to be two cities; each has its own Bishop and clergy, and festivals and martyrs, and commemorations of those who had been their Bishops, and 'boundaries of the fields around,' whereby the altars which belong to each Episcopate are parted." The provincial Synod decided against the desire of a Bishop of Gaza, in Sozomen's time, who wished to bring the Clergy of the Maiumites under himself ruling that "although deprived of their civil privileges by a pagan king, they should not be deprived of those of the Church."
In 400 a.d., then, the two cities were distinct, not joined or running into one another.
Jerome mentions it as "Maiumas, the emporium of Gaza, 7 miles from the desert on the way to Egypt by the sea;" Sozomen speaks of "Gaza by the sea, which they also call Maiumas;" Evagrius , "that which they also call Maiumas, which is over against the city Gaza" , "a little city." Mark the deacon, 421 a.d., says , "We sailed to the maritime portion of Gaza, which they call Maiumas," and Antoninus Martyr, about the close of the 6th century , "we came from Ascalon to Mazomates, and came thence, after a mile, to Gaza - that magnificent and lovely city." This perhaps explains how an anonymous Geographer, enumerating the places from Egypt to Tyre, says so distinctly , "after Rinocorura lies the new Gaza, being itself also a city; then the desert Gaza," (writing, we must suppose, after some of the destructions of Gaza); and Jerome could say equally positively ; "The site of the ancient city scarce yields the traces of foundations; but the city now seen was built in another place in lieu of that which fell."
Keith, who in 1844 explored the spot, found widespread traces of some extinct city.
: "At seven furlongs from the sea the manifold but minute remains of an ancient city are yet in many places to be found - Innumerable fragments of broken pottery, pieces of glass, (some beautifully stained) and of polished marble, lie thickly spread in every level and hollow, at a considerable elevation and various distances, on a space of several square miles. In fifty different places they profusely lie, in a level space far firmer than the surrounding sands," "from small patches to more open spaces of twelve or twenty thousand square yards." "The oblong sand-hill, greatly varied in its elevation and of an undulated surface, throughout which they recur, extends to the west and west-southwest. from the sea nearly to the environs of the modern Gaza." "In attempts to cultivate the sand (in 1832) hewn stones were found, near the old port. Remains of an old wall reached to the sea. - Ten large fragments of wall were embedded in the sand. About 2 miles off are fragments of another wall. Four intermediate fountains still exist, nearly entire in a line along the coast, doubtless pertaining to the ancient port of Gaza. For a short distance inland, the debris is less frequent, as if marking the space between it and the ancient city, but it again becomes plentiful in every hollow. About half a mile from the sea we saw three pedestals of beautiful marble. Holes are still to be seen from which hewn stones had been taken."
On the other hand, since the old Ashkelon had, like Gaza, Jamnia, Ashdod, a sea-port town, belonging to it but distinct from itself, (the city itself lying distinct and inland), and since there is no space for two towns distinct from one another, within the circuit of the Ashkelon of the crusades, which is limited by the nature of the ground, there seems to be no choice but that the city of the crusades, and the present skeleton, should have been the Maiumas Ascalon, the sea-port. The change might the more readily take place, since the title "port" was often omitted. The new town obliterated the memory of the old, as Neapelis, Naples, on the shore, has taken place of the inland city (whatever its name was), or Utrecht, it is said, has displaced the old Roman town, the remains of which are three miles off at Vechten , or Sichem is called Neapolis, Nablous, which yet was 3 miles off (Jerome).
Erriha is, probably, at least the second representative of the ancient Jericho; the Jericho of the New Testament, built by Herod, not being the Jericho of the prophets. The Corcyra of Greek history gave its name to the island; it is replaced by a Corfu in a different but near locality, which equally gives its name to the island now. The name of Venetia migrated with the inhabitants of the province, who fled from Attila, some 23 miles, to a few of the islands on the coast, to become again the name of a great republic . In our own country, "old Windsor" is said to have been the residence of the Saxon monarchs; the present Windsor, was originally "new Windsor: old Sarum was the Cathedral city, until the reign of Henry iii: but, as the old towns decayed, the new towns came to be called Windsor, Sarum, though not the towns which first had the name. What is now called Shoreham, not many years ago, was called "new Shoreham," in distinction from the neighboring village .
William of Tyre describes Ashkelon as "situated on the sea-shore, in the form of a semi-circle, whose chord or diameter lies on the sea-shore; but its circumference or arc on the land, looking east. The whole city lies as in a trench, all declining toward the sea, surrounded on all sides by raised mounds, on which are walls with numerous towers of solid masonry, the cement being harder than the stone, with walls of due thickness and of height proportionate; it is surmounted also with outer walls of the same solidity." He then describes its four gates, east-north-south toward Jerusalem, Gaza, Joppa, and the west, called the sea-gate, because "by it the inhabitants have an egress to the sea."
A modern traveler, whose description of the ruins exactly agrees with this, says , "the walls are built on a ridge of rocks that winds round the town in a semicircular direction and terminates at each end in the sea; the ground falls within the walls in the same manner, that it does without, so that no part of it could be seen from the outside of the walls. There is no bay nor shelter for shipping, but a small harbor advancing a little way into the town toward its eastern extremity seems to have been formed for the accommodation of such small craft as were used in the better days of the city." The harbor, moreover, was larger during the crusades, and enabled Ascalon to receive supplies of corn from Egypt and thereby to protract its siege. Sultan Bibars filled up the port and cast stones into the sea, 1270 a.d., and destroyed the remains of the fortifications, for fear that the Franks, after their treaty with the king of Tunis, should bring back their forces against Islamism and establish themselves there . Yet Abulfeda, who wrote a few years later, calls it "one of the Syrian ports of Islam" .
This city, so placed on the sea, and in which too the sea enters, cannot be the Ashkelon, which had a port, which was a town distinct from it. The Ascalon of the Philistines, which existed down into Christian times, must have been inland.
Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century who had been on the spot, and who is an accurate eyewitness , says, "From Ashdod are two parasangs to Ashkelonah ; this is new Ashkelon which Ezra the priest built on the sea-shore, and they at first called it Benibra . Jerome has another Benamerium, north of Zoar, now N'mairah. Tristram land of Moab p. 57.
A well in Ascalon is mentioned by Eusebius. "There are many wells (named) in Scripture and are yet shewn in the country of Gerar, and at Ascalon." v. φρέαρ phrear. William of Tyre says: "It has no fountains, either within the compass of the walls, or near it; but it abounds in wells, both within and without, which supply palatable water, fit for drinking. For greater caution the inhabitants had built some cisterns within, to receive rain-water. Benj. of T. also says, "There in the midst of the city is a well which they call Beer Ibrahim-al-khalil (the well of Abraham the friend (of God)) which he dug in the days of the Philistines." Keith mentions "20 fountains of excellent water opened up anew by Ibrahim Pasha." p. 274), and it is distant from the old Ashkelon, which is desolate, four parasangs. "When the old Ashkelon perished, is unknown. If, as seems probable from some of the antiquities dug up, the Ashkelon, at which Herod was born and which he beautified, was the seaport town, commerce probably attracted to it gradually the inhabitants of the neighboring town of Ascalon, as the population of the Piraeus now exceeds that of Athens.
The present Ashkelon is a ghastly skeleton; all the frame-work of a city, but none there. "The soil is good," but the "peasants who cultivate it" prefer living outside in a small village of mud-huts, exposed to winds and sand-storms, because they think that God has abandoned it, and that evil spirits (the Jan and the Ghul) dwell there .
Even the remains of antiquity, where they exist, belong to later times. A hundred men excavated in Ashkelon for 14 days in hopes of finding treasure there. They dug 18 feet below the surface, and fouud marble shafts, a Corinthian capital, a colossal statue with a Medusa's head on its chest, a marble pavement and white-marble pedestal . The excavation reached no Philistine Ashkelon.
"Broken pottery," "pieces of glass," "fragments of polished marble," "of ancient columns, cornices etc." were the relics of a Greek Gaza.
Though then it is a superfluity of fulfillment, and what can be found belongs to a later city, still what can be seen has an impressive correspondence with the words Gaza is "forsaken;" for there are miles of fragments of some city connected with Gaza. The present Gaza occupies the southern half of a hill built with stone for the Moslem conquerors of Palestine. : "Even the traces of its former existence, its vestiges of antiquity, are very rare; occasional columns of marble or gray granite, scattered in the streets and gardens, or used as thresholds at the gates and doors of houses, or laid upon the front of watering-troughs. One fine Corinthian capital of white marble lies inverted in the middle of the street." These belong then to times later than Alexander, since whose days the very site of Gaza must have changed its aspect.
Ashkelon shall be a desolation - The site of the port of Ascalon was well chosen, strong, overhanging the sea, fenced from the land, stretching forth its arms toward the Mediterranean, as if to receive in its bosom the wealth of the sea, yet shunned by the poor hinds around it. It lies in such a living death, that it is "one of the most mournful scenes of utter desolation" which a traveler "even in this land of ruins ever beheld." But this too cannot be the Philistine city. The sands which are pressing hard upon the solid walls of the city, held back by them for the time, yet threatening to overwhelm "the spouse of Syria," and which accumulated in the plain below, must have buried the old Ashkelon, since in this land, where the old names so cling to the spot, there is no trace of it.
Ekron shall be uprooted - And at Akir and Esdud "celebrated at present, for its scorpions," the few stones, which remain, even of a later town, are but as gravestones to mark the burial place of departed greatness.
Jerome: "In like way, all who glory in bodily strength and worldly power and say, "By the strength of my hand I have done it," shall be left desolate and brought to nothing in the day of the Lord's anger." And "the waster," they who by evil words and deeds injure or destroy others and are an offence unto them, these shall be east out shamefully, into outer darkness, Rup.: "when the saints shall receive the fullest brightness" in the 'mid-day' of the Sun of Righteousness. The judgment shall not be in darkness, save to them, but in mid-day, so that the justice of God shall be clearly seen, and darkness itself shall be turned into light, as was said to David, "Thou didst this thing secretly, but I will do it before all Israel and before the sun" Sa2 12:12; and our Lord, "Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops" Luk 12:3; and Paul, "the Lord shall come, Who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart" Co1 4:5. And "they who by seducing words in life or in doctrine uprooted others, shall be themselves rooted up" Mat 15:13.
Zephaniah 2:5
zep 2:5
The "woe" having been pronounced on the five cities apart, now falls upon the whole nation of the Cherethites or Philistines. The Cherethites are only named as equivalent to the Philistines, probably as originally a distinct immigration of the same people . The name is used by the Egyptian slave of the Amalekite Sa1 30:14 for those whom the author of the first book of Samuel calls Philistines Sa1 30:16. Ezekiel uses the name parallel with that of "Philistines," with reference to the destruction which God would bring upon them .
The word of the Lord - Comes not to them, but "upon" them, overwhelming them. To them He speaketh not in good, but in evil; not in grace, but in anger; not in mercy, but in vengeance. Philistia was the first enemy of the Church. It showed its enmity to Abraham and Isaac and would fain that they should not sojourn among them Gen 21:34; Gen 26:14-15, Gen 26:28. They were the hindrance that Israel should not go straight to the promised land Exo 13:17. When Israel passed the Red Sea Exo 15:14, "sorrow" took hold of them." They were close to salvation in body, but far in mind. They are called "Canaan," as being a chief nation of it Gen 15:21, and in that name lay the original source of their destruction. They inherited the sins of Canaan and with them his curse, preferring the restless beating of the barren, bitter sea on which they dwelt, "the waves of this troublesome world," to being a part of the true Canaan. They would absorb the Church into the world, and master it, subduing it to the pagan Canaan, not subdue themselves to it, and become part of the heavenly Canaan.
Zephaniah 2:6
zep 2:6
The seacoast shall be dwellings and cottages - o, literally, cuttings or diggings. This is the central meaning of the word; the place of the Cherethites (the cutters off) shall be "cheroth" of shepherds, places which they dug up that their flocks might be enclosed therein. The tracts once full of fighting men, the scourge of Judah, should be so desolate of its former people, as to become a sheep-walk. Men of peace should take the place of its warriors.
So the shepherds of the Gospel with their flocks have entered into possession of war-like nations, turning them to the Gospel. They are shepherds, the chief of whom is that Good Shepherd, who laid down His Life for the sheep. And these are the sheep of whom He speaks, "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My Voice; and there shall be one fold and One Shepherd" Joh 10:16.
Zephaniah 2:7
zep 2:7
And the coast shall be - Or probably, "It shall be a portion for the remnant of the house of Judah." He uses the word, employed in the first assignment of the land to Israel ; and of the whole people as belonging to God, "Jacob is the 'lot' of His inheritance" Deu 32:9. "The tract of the sea," which, with the rest, was assigned to Israel, which, for its unfaithfulness, was seldom, even in part, possessed, and at this time, was wholly forfeited, should be a portion for the mere "remnant" which should be brought back. David used the word in his psalm of thanksgiving, when he had brought the ark to the city of David, how God had "confirmed the covenant to Israel, saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance" Ch1 16:18; Psa 105:11; and Asaph, "He cast out the he athen before them and divided to them an inheritance by line" Psa 78:55. It is the reversal of the doom threatened by Micah, "Thou shalt have none, that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord" Mic 2:5. The word is revived by Ezekiel in his ideal division of the land to the restored people Eze 47:13. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" Rom 11:29. The promise, which had slumbered during Israel's faithlesshess, should be renewed to its old extent. : "There is no prescription against the Church." The boat threatens to sink; it is tossed, half-submerged, by the waves; but its Lord "rebukes the wind and the sea; wind and sea obey Him, and there is a great calm" Mat 8:26-27.
For the remnant of the house of Juda - Yet, who save He in whose hand are human wills, could now foresee that Judah should, like the ten tribes, rebel, be carried captive, and yet, though like and worse than Israel in its sin Jer 3:8-11; Eze 16:48-52; Eze 23:11, should, unlike Israel, be restored? The re-building of Jerusalem was, their enemies pleaded, contrary to sound policy Ezr 4:12-16 : the plea was for the time accepted, for the rebellions of Jerusalem were recorded in the chronicles of Babylon Ezr 4:19-22. Yet the falling short of the complete restoration depended on their own wills. God turned again their captivity; but they only, "whose spirit God stirred," willed to return. The temporal restoration was the picture of the spiritual. They who returned had to give up lands and possessions in Babylonia, and a remnant only chose the land of promise at such cost. Babylonia was as attractive as Egypt formerly.
In the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in the evening - One city is named for all. "They shall lie down," he says, continuing the image from their flocks, as Isaiah, in a like passage, "The first-born of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety" Isa 4:1-6 :30.
The true Judah shall overspread the world; but it too shall only be a remnant; these shall, in safety, "go in and out and find pasture" Joh 10:9. "In the evening" of the world they shall find their rest, for then also in the time of antichrist, the Church shall be but a remnant still. "For the Lord their God shall visit them," for He is the Good Shepherd, who came to seek the one sheep which was lost and who says of Himself, "I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick" Eze 34:16; and who in the end will more completely "turn away their captivity," bring His banished to their everlasting home, the Paradise from which they have been exiled, and separate forever the sheep from the goats who now oppress and scatter them abroad Ezek. 17-19.
Zephaniah 2:8
zep 2:8
I - Dionysius: "God, Who know all things, "I heard" that is, have known within Me, in My mind, not anew but from eternity, and now I shew in effect that I know it; wherefore I say that I hear, because I act after the manner of one who perceiveth something anew." I, the just Judge, heard (see Isa 16:6; Jer 48:39; Eze 35:12-13). He was present and "heard," even when, because He avenged not, He seemed not to hear, but laid it up in store with Him to avenge in the due time Deu 32:34-35.
The reproach of Moab and the reviling of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached My people - Both words, "reproached, reviled," mean, primarily, cutting speeches; both are intensive, and are used of blaspheming God as unable to help His people, or reviling His people as forsaken by Him. If directed against man, they are directed against God through man. So David interpreted the taunt of Goliah, "reviled the armies of the living God" (Sa1 17:26, Sa1 17:36, Sa1 17:45, coll. 10. 25), and the Philistine cursed David "by his gods" Sa1 17:43. In a Psalm David complains, "the reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon me" (Psa 69:10 (9)); and a Psalm which cannot be later than David, since it declares the national innocency from idolatry, connects with their defeats, the voice of him "that reproacheth and blasphemeth" (Psa 44:16 (17), joining the two words used here). The sons of Corah say, "with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me, while they say daily unto me, where is thy God?" Psa 42:10. So Asaph, "The enemy hath reproached, the foolish people hath blasphemed Thy Name" Psa 74:10, Psa 74:18; and, "we are become a reproach to our neighbors. Wherefore should the pagan say, where is their God? render unto our neighbors - the reproach wherewith they have reproached Thee, O Lord" Psa 79:4, Psa 79:10, Psa 79:12. And Ethan, "Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servants - wherewith Thine enemies have reproached, O Lord, wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of Thine Anointed" Psa 89:50-51.
In history the repeated blasphemies of Sennacherib and his messengers are expressed by the same words. In earlier times the remarkable concession of Jephthah, "Wilt not thou possess what Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? so whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out before us, them will we possess" Jdg 11:24, implies that the Ammonites claimed their land as the gift of their god Chemosh, and that that war was, as that later by Sennacherib, waged in the name of the false god against the True.
The relations of Israel to Moab and Ammon have been so habitually misrepresented, that a review of those relations throughout their whole history may correct some wrong impressions. The first relations of Israel toward them were even tender. God reminded His people of their common relationship and forbade him even to take the straight road to his own future possessions, across their hand against their will. "Distress them not, nor contend with them," it is said of each, "for I will not give thee of their land for a possession, for I have given it unto the children of Lot for a possession" Deu 2:9, Deu 2:19. Idolaters and hostile as they were, yet, for their father's sake, their title to their land had the same sacred sanction, as Israel's to his. "I," God says, "have given it to them as a possession." Israel, to their own manifest inconvenience, "went along through the wilderness, and compassed the land of Edom, and the land of Moab, but came not within the border of Moab" Jdg 11:18. By destroying Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan, Israel removed formidable enemies, who had driven Moab and Ammon out of a portion of the land which they had conquered from the Zamzummim and Anakim Deu 2:10, Deu 2:20-21, and who threatened the remainder, "Israel dwelt in all the cities of the Amorites" Num 21:25, Num 21:31.
Heshbon, Dibon, Jahaz, Medeba, Nophah "were cities in the land of the Amorites, in" which "Israel dwelt." The exclusion of Moab and Ammon from the congregation of the Lord to the tenth generation Deu 23:3 was not, of course, from any national antipathy, but intended to prevent a debasing intercourse; a necessary precaution against the sensuousness of their idolatries. Moab was the first in adopting the satanic policy of Balaam, to seduce Israel by sensuality to their idolatries; but the punishment was appointed to the partners of their guilt, the Midianites Num 25:17; 31, not to Moab. Yet Moab was the second nation, whose ambition God overruled to chasten His people's idolatries. Eglon, king of Moab, united with himself Ammon and Amalek against Israel. The object of the invasion was, not the recovery of the country which Moab had lost to the Amorites but, Palestine proper.
The strength of Moab was apparently not sufficient to occupy the territory of Reuben. They took possession only of "the city of palm trees" Jdg 3:13; either the ruins of Jericho or a spot close by it; with the view apparently of receiving reinforcements or of securing their own retreat by the ford. This garrison enabled them to carry their forays over Israel, and to hold it enslaved for 18 years. The oppressiveness of this slavery is implied by the cry and conversion of Israel to the Lord, which was always in great distress. The memory of Eglon, as one of the oppressors of Israel, lived in the minds of the people in the days of Samuel Sa1 12:9. In the end, this precaution of Moab turned to its own destruction, for, after Eglon was slain, Ephraim, under Ehud, took the fords, and the whole garrison, 10,000 of Moab's warriors, "every strong man and every man of might" Jdg 3:29, were intercepted in their retreat and perished. For a long time after this, we hear of no fresh invasion by Moab. The trans-Jordanic tribes remained in unquestioned possession of their land for 300 years Judg. 40:26, when Ammon, not Moab, raised the claim, "Israel took away my land" Jdg 11:13, although claiming the land down to the Arnon, and already being in possession of the southernmost portion of that land, Aroer, since Israel smote him "from Aroer unto Minnith" Jdg 11:33. The land then, according to a law recognized by nations, belonged by a twofold right to Israel;
(1) that it had been won, not from Moab, but from the conquerors of Moab, the right of Moab having passed to its conquerors ;
(2) that undisputed and unbroken possession "for time immemorial" as we say, 300 years, ought not to be disputed .
The defeat by Jephthah stilled them for near 50 years until the beginning of Saul's reign, when they refused the offer of the "men of Jubesh-Gilead" to serve them, and, with a mixture of insolence and savagery, annexed as a condition of accepting that entire submission, "that I may thrust out all your right eyes, to lay it as a reproach to Israel" Sa1 11:1-2. The signal victory of Saul Sa1 11:11 still did not prevent Ammon, as well as Moab, from being among the enemies whom Saul "worsted" . The term "enemies" implies that "they" were the assailants. The history of Naomi shows their prosperous condition, that the famine, which desolated Judah Rut 1:1, did not reach them, and that they were a prosperous land, at peace, at that time, with Israel. If all the links of the genealogy are preserved Rut 4:21-22, Jesse, David's father, was grandson of a Moabitess, Ruth, and perhaps on this ground David entrusted his parents to the care of the king of Moab Sa1 22:3-4.
Sacred history gives no hint, what was the cause of his terrible execution upon Moab. But a Psalm of David speaks to God of some blow, under which Israel had reeled. "O God, Thou hast abhorred us, and broken us in pieces; Thou hast been wroth: Thou hast made the land to tremble and cloven it asunder; heal its breaches, for it shaketh; Thou hast showed Thy people a hard thing, Thou hast made it drink wine of reeling" Psa 60:3-5; and thereon David expresses his confidence that God would humble Moab, Edom, Philistia. While David then was engaged in the war with the Syrians of Mesopotamia and Zobah (Psa 60:1-12 title), Moab must have combined with Edom in an aggressive war against Israel. "The valley of salt" , where Joab returned and defeated them, was probably within Judah, since "the city of salt" Jos 15:62 was one of the six cities of the wilderness. Since they had defeated Judah, they must have been overtaken there on their return .
Yet this too was a religious war. "'Thou,'" David says "hast given a 'banner to them that fear Thee,' to be raised aloft because of the truth" Psa 60:4.
There is no tradition, that the kindred Psalm of the sons of Corah, Ps. 44 belongs to the same time. Yet the protestations to God of the entire absence of idolatry could not have been made at any time later than the early years of Solomon. Even were there Maccabee Psalms, the Maccabees were but a handful among apostates. They could not have pleaded the national freedom from unfaithfulness to God, nor, except in two subordinate and self-willed expeditions (1 Macc. 5:56-60, 67), were they defeated. Under the Persian rule, there were no armies nor wars; no immunity from idolatry in the later history of Judah. Judah did not in Hezekiah's time go out against Assyria; the one battle, in which Josiah was slain, ended the resistance to Egypt. Defeat was, at the date of this Psalm, new and surprising, in contrast with God's deliverances of old Psa 44:1-3; yet the inroad, by which they had suffered, was one of spoiling Psa 44:10, Psa 44:12, not of subdual. Yet this too was a religious war, from their neighbors. They were slain for the sake of God Psa 44:22, they were covered with shame on account of the reproaches and blasphemies Psa 44:13-14 of those who triumphed over God, as powerless to help; they were a scorn and derision to the petty nations around them. It is a Psalm of unshaken faith amid great prostration: it describes in detail what the lxth Psalm sums up in single heavy words of imagery; but both alike complain to God of what His people had to suffer for His sake.
The insolence of Ammon in answer to David's message of kindness to their new king, like that to the men of Jabesh Gilead, seems like a deliberate purpose to create hostilities. The relations of the previous king of Ammon to David, had been kind Sa2 10:2-3, perhaps, because David being a fugitive from Israel, they supposed him to be Saul's enemy. The enmity originated, not with the new king, but with "the princes of the children of Ammon" Sa2 10:3. David's treatment of these nations Sa2 8:2; Sa2 12:31 is so unlike his treatment of any others whom he defeated, that it implies an internecine warfare, in which the safety of Israel could only be secured by the destruction of its assailants.
Mesha king of Moab records one war, and alludes to others, not mentioned in Holy Scripture. He says, that before his own time, "Omri, king of Israel, afflicted Moab many days;" that "his son (Ahab) succeeded him, and he too said, 'I will afflict Moab.'" This affliction he explains to be that "Omri possessed himself of the land of Medeba" (expelling, it is implied, its former occupiers) "and that" (apparently, Israel) , "dwelt therein," "(in his days and in) the days of his son forty years." He was also in possession of Nebo, and "the king of Israel" (apparently Omri,) "buil(t) Jahaz and dwelt in it, when he made war with me" . Jahaz was near Dibon. In the time of Eusebius, it was still "pointed out between Dibon and Medeba" .
Mesha says, "And I took it to annex it to Dibon." It could not, according to Mesha also, have been south of the Arnon, since Aroer lay between Dibon and the Arnon, and Mesha would not have annexed to Dibon a town beyond the deep and difficult ravine of the Arnon, with Aroer lying between them. It was certainly north of the Arnon, since Israel was not permitted to come within the border of Moab, but it was at Jahaz that Sihon met them and fought the battle in which Israel defeated him and gained possession of his land, "from the Arnon to the Jabbok" Num 21:23-25. It is said also that "Israel dwelt in the land of the Amorites from Aroer which is on the edge of the river Arnon" , and the city which is in the river unto Gilead Jos 13:16, Jos 13:18. Aroer on the edge of the river Arnon, and the city which is in the river" Arnon, again occur in describing the southern border of Reuben, among whose towns Jahaz is mentioned, with Beth-Baal-Meon and Kiriathaim, which have been identified.
The afflicting then of Moab by Omri, according to Mesha, consisted in this, that he recovered to Israel a portion of the allotment of Reuben, between 9 and 10 hours in length from north to south, of which, in the time of Israel's weakness through the civil wars which followed on Jeroboam's revolt, Moab must have dispossessed Reuben. Reuben had remained in undisturbed possession of it, from the first expulsion of the Amorites to the time at least of Rehoboam, about five hundred years. : "The men of Gad" still "dwelt in Ataroth," Mesha says, "from time immemorial."
The picture, which Mesha gives, is of a desolation of the southern portion of Reuben. For, "I rebuilt," he says, "Baal-Meon, Kiriathaim, Aroer, Beth-bamoth, Bezer, Beth-Diblathaim, Beth-baal-Meon." Of Beth-Bamoth, and probably of Bezer, Mesha says, that they had previously been destroyed . But Reuben would not, of course, destroy his own cities. They must then have been destroyed either by Mesha's father, who reigned before him, when invading Reuben, or by Omri, when driving back Moab into his own land, and expelling him from these cities. "Possibly" they were dismantled only, since Mesha speaks only of Omri's occupying Medeba, Ataroth, and Jahaz. He held these three cities only, leaving the rest dismantled, or dismantling them, unable to place defenders in them, and unwilling to leave them as places of aggression for Moab. But whether they ever were fortified towns at all, or how they were desolated, is mere conjecture. Only they were desolated in these wars.
But it appears from Mesha's own statement, that neither Omri nor Ahab invaded Moab proper. For in speaking of his successful war and its results, he mentions no town south of the Arnon. He must have been a tributary king, but not a foot of his land was taken. The subsequent war was not a mere revolt, nor was it a mere refusal to pay tribute, of which Mesha makes no complaint. Nor could the tribute have been oppressive to him, since the spoils, left in the encampment of Moab and his allies shortly after his revolt, is evidence of such great wealth. The refusal to pay tribute would have involved nothing further, unless Ahaziah had attempted to enforce it, as Hezekiah refused the tribute to Assyria, but remained in his own borders. But Ahaziah, unlike his brother Jehoram who succeeded him, seems to have undertaken nothing, except the building of some ships for trade Ch2 20:35-36. Mesha's war was a renewal of the aggression on Reuben.
Heshbon is not mentioned, and therefore must, even after the war, have remained with Reuben.
Mesha's own war was an exterminating war, as far as he records it. "I fought against the city," (Ataroth), he says, "and took it, and killed all the mighty of the city for the well-pleasing of Chemosh and of Moab;" "I fought against it (Nebo) from break of day until norm and took it, and slew all of it, 7,000 men; the ladies and maidens I devoted to Ashtar Chemosh;" to be desecrated to the degradations of that sensual idolatry. The words too "Israel perished with an everlasting destruction" stand clear, whether they express Mesha's conviction of the past or his hope of the future.
The war also, on the part of Moab, was a war of his idol Chemosh against God. Chemosh, from first to last, is the agent. "Chemosh was angry with his land;" "Chemosh (was pleased) with it in my days;" "I killed the mighty for the well-pleasing of Chemosh;" "I took captive thence all ( ...)and dragged it along before Chemosh at Kiriath;" "Chemosh said to me, Go and take Nebo against Israel;" "I devoted the ladies and maidens to Ashtar-Chemosh;" "I took thence the vessels of ihvh and dragged them before Chemosh;" "Chemosh drove him (the king of Israel) out before (my face);" "Chemosh said to me, Go down against Horonaim." "Chemosh ( ...)it in my days."
Contemporary with this aggressive war against Israel must have been the invasion by "the children of Moab and the children of Ammon, the great multitude from beyond the sea, from Syria" Ch2 20:1-2, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, which brought such terror upon Judah. It preceded the invasion of Moab by Jehoshaphat in union with Jehoram and the king of Edom. For the invasion of Judah by Moab and Ammon took place, while Ahab's son, Ahaziah, was still living. For it was after this, that Jehoshaphat joined with Ahaziah in making ships to go to Tarshish . But the expedition against Moab was in union with Jehoram who succeeded Ahaziah. The abundance of wealth which the invaders of Judah brought with them, and the precious jewels with which they had adorned themselves, show that this was no mere marauding expedition, to spoil; but that its object was, to take possession of the land or at least of some portion of it.
They came by entire surprise on Jehoshaphat, who heard of them first when they were at Hazazon-Tamar or Engedi, some 36 12 miles from Jerusalem . He felt himself entirely unequal to meet them, and cast himself upon God. There was a day of public humiliation of Judah at Jerusalem. "Out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord" Ch2 20:4. Jehoshaphat, in his public prayer, owned, "we have no might against this great company which cometh against us; neither know we what to do; but our eyes are upon Thee" Ch2 20:13. He appeals to God, that He had forbidden Israel to invade Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, so that they turned away from them and destroyed them not; and now these rewarded them by "coming to cast us out of Thy possession which Thou hast given us to inherit" Ch2 20:10. One of the sons of Asaph foretold to the congregation, that they might go out fearlessly, for they should not have occasion to fight.
A Psalm, ascribed to Asaph, records a great invasion, the object of which was the extermination of Israel. "They have said; Come and let us cut them off from" being "a nation, that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance" Psa 83:4. It had been a secret confederacy. "They have taken crafty counsel against Thy people" Psa 83:3. It was directed against God Himself, that is, His worship and worshipers. "For they have taken counsel in heart together; against Thee do they make a covenant" Psa 83:5. It was a combination of the surrounding petty nations; Tyre on the north, the Philistines on the west; on the south the Amalekites, Ishmaelites, Hagarenes; eastward, Edom, Gebal, Moab, Ammon. But its most characteristic feature was, that Assur (this corresponds with no period after Jehoshaphat) occupies a subordinate place to Edom and Moab, putting them forward and helping "them." "Assur also," Asaph says, "is joined with them; they have become an arm to the children of Lot" Psa 83:8. This agrees with the description, "there is come against thee a great multitude from beyond the sea, from Syria."
Scripture does not record, on what ground the invasion of Moab by Jehoram and Jehoshaphat, with the tributary king of Edom, was directed against Moab proper; but it was the result doubtless of the double war of Moab against Reuben and against Judah. It was a war, in which the strength of Israel and Moab was put forth to the utmost. Jehoram had mustered all Israel Kg2 3:6; Moab had gathered all who had reached the age of manhood and upward, "everyone who girded on a girdle and upward" Kg2 3:21. The three armies, which had made a seven days' circuit in the wilderness, were on the point of perishing by thirst and falling into the hands of Moab, when Elisha in God's name promised them the supply of their want, and complete victory over Moab. The eager cupidity of Moab, as of many other armies, became the occasion of his complete overthrow. The counsel with which Elisha accompanied his prediction, "ye shall smite every fenced city and every choice city, and every good tree ye shall fell, and all springs of water ye shall stop up, and every good piece of land ye shall waste with stones" Kg2 3:19, was directed, apparently, to dislodge an enemy so inveterate. For water was essential to the fertility of their land and their dwelling there. We hear of no special infliction of death, like what Mesha records of himself. The war was ended by the king of Moab's sacrificing the heir-apparent of the king of Edom , which naturally created great displeasure against Israel, in whose cause Edom thus suffered, so that they departed to their own land and finally revolted.
Their departure apparently broke up the siege of Ar and the expedition. Israel apparently was not strong enough to carry on the war without Edom, or feared to remain with their armies away from their own land, as in the time of David, of which Edom might take the advantage. We know only the result.
Moab probably even extended her border to the south by the conquest of Horonaim .
After this, Moab is mentioned only on occasion of the miracle of the dead man, to whom God gave life, when cast into Elisha's sepulchre, as he came in contact with his bones. Like the Bedouin now, or the Amalekites of old, "the bands of Moab came into the land, as the year came" Kg2 13:20. Plunder, year by year, was the lot of Israel at the hands of Moab.
On the east of Jordan, Israel must have remained in part (as Mesha says of the Gadites of Arocr) in their old border. For after this, Hazael, in Jehu's reign, smote Israel "from Aroer which is by the river Arnon" Kg2 10:33; and at that time probably Amman joined with him in the exterminating war in Gilead, destroying life before it had come into the world, "that they might enlarge their border" . Jeroboam ii, 825 b.c.; restored Israel "to the sea of the plain" 2 Kings 16:25, that is, the dead sea, and, (as seems probable from the limitation of that term in Deuteronomy, 'under Ashdoth-Pisgah eastward,' Deu 3:17) to its northern extremity, lower in latitude than Heshbon, yet above Nebo and Medeba, lcaving accordingly to Moab all which it had gained by Mesha. Uzziah, a few years later, made the Ammonites tributaries Ch2 26:8 810 b.c. But 40 years later 771 b.c., Pul, and, after yet another 30 years, 740, Tiglath-pileser having carried away the trans-Jordanic tribes Ch1 5:26, Moab again possessed itself of the whole territory of Reuben. Probably before.
For 726 b.c., when Isaiah foretold that "the glory of Moab should be contemned with all that great multitude" Isa 16:14, he hears the wailing of Moab throughout all his towns, and names all those which had once been Reuben's and of whose conquest or possession Moab had boasted Isa 15:1-2, Isa 15:4, Nebo, Medeba, Dibon, Jahaz, Baiith; as also those not conquered then Isa 15:4-5, Isa 15:1, Heshbon, Elealeh; and those of Moab proper, Luhith, Horonaim, and its capitals, Ar-Moab and Kir-Moab. He hears their sorrow, sees their desolation and bewails with their weeping Isa 16:9. He had prophesied this before , and now, three years Isa 16:13-14 before its fulfillment by Tiglath-Pileser, he renews it. This tender sorrow for Moab has more the character of an elegy than of a denunciation; so that he could scarcely lament more tenderly the ruin of his own people.
He mentions also distinctly no sin there except pride. The pride of Moab seems something of common notoriety and speech. "We have heard" Isa 16:6. Isaiah accumulates words, to express the haughtiness of Moab; "the pride of Moab; exceeding proud; his pride and his haughtiness and his wrath," pride overpassing bounds, upon others. His words seem to be formed so as to keep this one bared thought before us, as if we were to say "pride, prideful, proudness, pridefulness;" and withal the unsubstantialness of it all, "the unsubstantiality of his lies." Pride is the source of all ambition; so Moab is pictured as retiring within her old bounds, "the fords of Arnon," and thence asking for aid; her petition is met by the counter-petition, that, if she would be protected in the day of trouble, the out-casts of Israel might lodge with her now: "be thou a covert to her from the face of the spoiler" Isa 16:4-5. The prophecy seems to mark itself out as belonging to a time, after the two and a half tribes had been desolated, as stragglers sought refuge in Moab, and when a severe infliction was to come on Moab: "the Isa 16:14 remnant" shall be "small, small not great."
Yet Moab recovered this too. It was a weakening of the nation, not its destruction. Some 126 years after the prophecy of Isaiah, 30 years after the prophecy of Zephaniah, Moab, in the time of Jeremiah, was in entire prosperity, as if no visitation had ever come upon her. What Zephaniah says of the luxuriousness of his people, Jeremiah says of Moab; "Moab is one at ease from his youth; he is resting on his lees; and he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity" Jer 48:11. They "say, We are mighty and strong men for the war" Jer 48:14. Moab was a "strong staff, a beautiful rod" Jer 48:17; "he magnified himself against the Lord" Jer 48:26; "Israel was a derision to him" Jer 48:27; "he skipped for joy" at his distress. Jeremiah repeats and even strengthens Isaiah's description of his pride; "his pride, proud" Jer 48:29, he repeats, "exceedingly; his loftiness," again "his pride, his arrogancy, and the haughtiness of his heart."
Its "strongholds" Jer 48:18 were unharmed; all its cities, "far and near," are counted one by one, in their prosperity Jer 48:1, Jer 48:3, Jer 48:5, Jer 48:21-24; its summer-fruits and vintage were plenteous; its vines, luxuriant; all was joy and shouting. Whence should this evil come? Yet so it was with Sodom and Gomorrah just before its overthrow. It was, for beauty, "a paradise of God; well-watered everywhere; as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt" Gen 13:10. In the morning "the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of the furnace" Gen 19:28. The destruction foretold by Jeremiah is far other than the affliction spoken of by Isaiah. Isaiah prophesies only a visitation, which should reduce her people: Jeremiah foretells, as did Zephaniah, captivity and the utter destruction of her cities. The destruction foretold is complete. Not of individual cities only, but of the whole he saith, "Moab is destroyed" Jer 48:4. "The spoiler shall come upon every city, and no city shall escape, and the valley shall perish and the high places shall be destroyed, as the Lord hath spoken" Jer 48:8.
Moab himself was to leave his land. "Flee, save your lives, and ye shall be like the heath in the wilderness. Chemosh shall go forth into captivity; his priests and his princes together. Give pinions unto Moab, that it may flee and get away, and her cities shall be a desolation, for there is none to dwell therein" Jer 17:6. It was not only to go into captivity, but its home was to be destroyed. "I will send to her those who shall upheave her, and they shall upheave her, and her vessels they shall empty, all her flagons" (all that aforetime contained her) "they shall break in pieces" Jer 48:12. Moab is destroyed and her cities" Jer 48:15; "the spoiler of Moab is come upon her; he hath destroyed the strongholds" Jer 48:18. The subsequent history of the Moabites is in the words, "Leave the cities and dwell in the rock, dwellers of Moab, and be like a dove which nesteth in the sides of the mouth of the pit" Jer 48:28. The purpose of Moab and Ammon against Israel which Asaph complains of, and which Mesha probably speaks of, is retorted upon her. "In Heshbon they have devised evil against it; come and let us cut it off from being a nation. Moab shall be destroyed from being a people, because he hath magnified himself against the Lord" Jer 48:2, Jer 48:42.
Whence should this evil come? They had, with the Ammonites, been faithful servants of Nebuchadnezzar against Judah Kg2 24:2. Their concerted conspiracy with Edom, Tyre, Zidon, to which they invited Zedekiah (Jer 27:2 following), was dissolved. Nebuchadnezzars march against Judaea did not touch them, for they "skipped with joy" Jer 48:27 at Israel's distresses. The connection of Baalis, king of the Ammonites, with Ishmael Jer 40:14; Jer 41:10 the assassin of Gedaliah, whom the king of Babylon made governor over the land Kg2 25:22-26; Jer 40:6; Jer 41:1 out of their own people, probably brought down the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar. For Chaldaeans too were included in the slaughter Jer 41:3. The blow seems to have been aimed at the existence of the people, for the murder of Gedaliah followed upon the rallying of the Jews "out of all the places whither they had been driven" Jer 40:12. It returned on Ammon itself; and on Moab who probably on this, as on former occasions, was associated with it. The two nations, who had escaped at the destruction of Jerusalem, were warred upon and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar in the 23d year of his reign , the 5th after the destruction of Jerusalem.
And then probably followed that complete destruction and disgraced end, in which Isaiah, in a distinct prophecy, sees Moab trodden down by God as "the heap of straw is trodden down in the waters (the kethib) of the dunghill, and he (Moab) stretcheth forth his hands in the midst thereof, as the swimmer stretcheth forth his hands to swim, and He, God, shall bring down his pride with the treacheries of his hands" Isa 25:10-12. It speaks much of the continued hostility of Moab, that, in prophesying the complete deliverance for which Israel waited, the one enemy whose destruction is foretold, is Moab and those pictured by Moab. "We have waited for Him and He will save us - For in this mountain (Zion) shall the hand of the Lord rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under Him" Isa 25:9-10.
After this, Moab, as a nation, disappears from history. Israel, on its return from the captivity, was again enticed into idolatry by Moabite and Anmonite wives, as well as by those of Ashdod and others Neh 13:23-26, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Egyptians, Amorites Ezr 9:1. Sanballat also, who headed the opposition to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, was a Moabite Neh 2:10; Neh 4:1-8; Tobiah, an Ammonite Neh 4:2, Neh 4:9. Yet it went no further than intrigue and the threat of war. They were but individuals, who cherished the old hostility. In the time of the Maccabees, the Ammonites, not Moab, "with a mighty power and much people" were in possession of the Reubenite cities to Jazar (1 Macc. 5:6, 8). It was again an exterminating war, in which the Jews were to be destroyed (1 Macc. 5:9, 10, 27). After repeated defeats by Judas Maccabaeus, the Ammonites "hired the Arabians" (1 Macc. 5:39) (not the Moabites) to help them, and Judas, although victorious, was obliged to remove the whole Israelite population, "all that were in the land of Gilead, from the least unto the greatest, even their wives, and their children, and their stuff, a very great host, to the end they might come into the land of Judaea" (1 Macc. 5:45). The whole population was removed, obviously lest, on the withdrawal of Judas' army, they should be again imperiled. As it was a defensive war against Ammon, there is no mention of any city, south of the Arnon, in Moab's own territory. It was probably with the view to magnify descendants of Lot, that Josephus speaks of the Moabites as being "even yet a very great nation" . Justin's account, that there is "even now a great multitude of Ammonites," does not seem to me to imply a national existence. A later writer says , "not only the Edomites but the Ammonites and Moabites too are included in the one name of Arabians."
Some chief towns of Moab became Roman towns, connected by the Roman road from Damascus to Elath. Ar and Kir-Moab in Moab proper became Areopolis and Charac-Moab, and, as well as Medeba and Heshbon in the country which had been Reuben's, preserve traces of Roman occupancy. As such, they became Christian Sees. The towns, which were not thus revived as Roman, probably perished at once, since they bear no traces of any later building.
The present condition of Moab and Ammon is remarkable in two ways;
(1) for the testimony which it gives of its former extensive population;
(2) for the extent of its present desolation.
"How fearfully," says an accurate and minute observer , "is this residence of old kings and their land wasted!" It gives a vivid idea of the desolation, that distances are marked, not by villages which he passes but by ruins . : "From these ruined places, which lay on our way, one sees how thickly inhabited the district formerly was." Yet the ground remained fruitful.
It was partly abandoned to wild plants, the wormwood and other shrubs ; partly, the artificial irrigation, essential to cultivation in this land, was destroyed ; here and there a patch was cultivated; the rest remained barren, because the crops might become the prey of the spoiler , or the thin population had had no heart to cultivate it.
A list of 33 destroyed places which still retained their names, was given to Seetzen , "of which many were cities in times of old, and beside these, a great number of other wasted villages. One sees from this, that, in the days of old, this land was extremely populated and flourishing, and that destructive wars alone could produce the present desolation." And thereon he adds the names of 40 more ruined places. Others say : "The whole of the fine plains in this quarter" (the south of Moab) "are covered with sites of towns, on every eminence or spot convenient for the construction of one; and as all the land is capable of rich cultivation, there can be no doubt that this country, now so deserted, once presented a continued picture of plenty and fertility." : "Every knoll" (in the highlands of Moab) "is covered with shapeless ruins. - The ruins consist merely of heaps of squared and well-fitting stones, which apparently were erected without mortar." : "One description might serve for all these Moabite ruins. The town seems to have been a system of concentric circles, built round a central fort, and outside the buildings the rings continue as terrace-walks, the gardens of the old city. The terraces are continuous between the twin hillocks and intersect each other at the foot" . Ruined villages and towns, broken walls that once enclosed gardens and vineyards, remains of ancient roads; everything in Moab tells of the immense wealth and population, which that country must have once enjoyed."
The like is observed of Ammon . His was direct hatred of the true religion. It was not mere exultation at the desolation of an envied people. It was hatred of the worship of God. "Thus saith the Lord God; "Because thou saidst, Aha, against My sanctuary, because it was profaned" Eze 25:3; and against the land of Israel, because it was desolated; and against the house of Judah, because they went into captivity." The like temper is shown in the boast, "Because that Moab and Seir do say; Behold the house of Judah is like unto the pagan" Eze 25:8, that is, on a level with them.
Forbearing and long-suffering as Almighty God is, in His infinite mercy, He does not, for that mercy's sake, bear the direct defiance of Himself. He allows His creatures to forget Him, not to despise or defy Him. And on this ground, perhaps, He gives to His prophecies a fulfillment beyond what the letter requires, that they may be a continued witness to Him. The Ammonites, some 1600 years ago, ceased to "be remembered among the nations." But as Nineveh and Babylon, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, by being what they are, are witnesses to His dealings, so the way in which Moab and Ammon are still kept desolate is a continued picture of that first desolation. Both remain rich, fertile; but the very abundance of their fertility is the cause of their desolation. God said to Ammon, as the retribution on his contumely: "therefore, behold, I give thee to the children of the East for a possession, and they shall set their encampments in thee, and place their dwellings in thee; "they" shall eat thy fruit and "they" shall drink thy milk; and I will make Rabbah a dwelling-place of camels, and the children of Ammon a couchingplace for flocks" Eze 25:4-5.
Of Moab He says also, "I will open the side of Moab from the cities, which are on his frontiers, the glory of the country, unto the men of the East with the Ammonites" Eze 25:8, Eze 25:10. And this is an exact description of the condition of the land at this day. All travelers describe the richness of the soil. We have seen this as to Moab. But the history is one and the same. One of the most fertile regions of the world, full of ruined towns, destitute of villages or fixed habitations, or security of property, its inhabitants ground down by those, who have succeeded the Midianites and the Amalekites, "the children of the East." "Thou canst not find a country like the Belka," says the Arabic proverb , but "the inhabitants cultivate patches only of the best soil in that territory when they have a prospect of being able to secure the harvest against the invasion of enemies." "We passed many ruined cities," said Lord Lindsay , "and the country has once been very populous, but, in 35 miles at least, we did not see a single village; the whole country is one vast pasturage, overspread by the flocks and herds of the Anezee and Beni Hassan Bedouins."
The site of Rabbath Amman was well chosen for strength. Lying "in a long valley" through which a stream passed, "the city of waters" could not easily be taken, flor its inhabitants compelled to surrender from hunger or thirst. Its site, as the eastern bound of Peraea , "the last place where water could be obtained and a frontier fortress against the wild tribes beyond" , marked it for preservation. In Greek times, the disputes for its possession attest the sense of its importance. In Roman, it was one of the chief cities of the Decapolis, though its population was said to be a mixture of Egyptians, Arabians, Phoenicians . The coins of Roman Emperors to the end of the second century contain symbols of plenty, where now reigns utter desolation .
In the 4th century, it and two other now ruined places, Bostra and Gerasa, are named as "most carefully and strongly walled." It was on a line of rich commerce filled with strong places, in sites well selected for repelling the invasions of the neighboring nations . Centuries advanced. It was greatly beautified by its Roman masters. The extent and wealth of the Roman city are attested both by the remains of noble edifices on both sides of the stream, and by pieces of pottery, which are the traces of ancient civilized dwelling, strewed on the earth two miles from the city. : "At this place, Amman, as well as Gerasa and Gamala, three colonial settlements within the compass of a day's journey from one another, there were five magnificent theaters and one ampitheater, besides temples, baths, aqueducts, naumachia, triumphal arches." : "Its theater was the largest in Syria; its colonnade had at least 50 columns." The difference of the architecture shows that its aggrandizement must have been the work of different centuries: its "castle walls are thick, and denote a remote antiquity; large blocks of stone are piled up without cement and still hold together as well as if recently placed." It is very probably the same which Joab called David to take, after the city of waters had been taken; within it are traces of a temple with Corinthian columns, the largest seen there, yet "not of the best Roman times."
Yet Amman, the growth of centuries, at the end of our 6th century was destroyed. For "it was desolate before Islam, a great ruin." : "No where else had we seen the vestiges of public magnificence and wealth in such marked contrast with the relapse into savage desolation." But the site of the old city, so well adapted either for a secure refuge for its inhabitants or for a secure depository for their plunder, was, on that very ground, when desolated of its inhabitants, suited for what God, by Ezekiel, said it would become, a place, where the men of the East should stable their flocks and herds, secure from straying. What a change, that its temples, the center of the worship of its successive idols, or its theaters, its places of luxury or of pomp, should be stables for that drudge of man, the camel, and the stream which gave it the proud title of "city of waters" their drinking trough! And yet of the cities whose destruction is prophesied, this is foretold of Rabbah alone, as in it alone is it fulfilled! "Ammon," says Lord Lindsay , "was situated on both sides of the stream; the dreariness of its present aspect is quite indescribable. It looks like the abode of death; the valley stinks with dead camels; one of them was rotting in the stream; and though we saw none among the ruins, they were absolutely "covered" in every direction with their dung." "Bones and skulls of camels were mouldering there (in the area of the ruined theater) and in the vaulted galleries of this immense structure." "It is now quite deserted, except by the Bedouins, who water their flocks at its little river, descending to it by a "wady," nearly opposite to a theater (in which Dr. Mac Lennan saw great herds and flocks) and by the "akiba."
Re-ascending it, we met sheep and goats by thousands, and camels by hundreds." Another says , "The space intervening between the river and the western hills is entirely covered with the remains of buildings, now only used for shelter for camels and sheep." Buckingham mentions incidentally, that he was prevented from sleeping at night "by the bleating of flocks and the neighing of horses, barking of dogs etc." Another speaks of "a small stone building in the Acropolis now used as a shelter for flocks." While he was "traversing the ruins of the city, the number of goats and sheep, which were driven in among them, was exceedingly annoying, however remarkable, as fulfilling the prophecies" . "Before six tents fed sheep and camels" . "Ezekiel points just to these Eze 20:5, which passage Seetzen cites. And in fact the ruins are still used for such stalls."
The prophecy is the very opposite to that upon Babylon, though both alike are prophecies of desolation. Of Babylon Isaiah prophesies, "It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it bedwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make fold there, but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and the ostriches shall dwell there, and the jackals shall cry in their desolate houses, and howling creatures in their pleasant palaces" Isa 13:20. And the ruins are full of wild beasts . Of Rabbah, Ezekiel prophesied that it should be "a possession for the men of the East, and I" Eze 25:4-5, God says, "will make Rabbah a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a couching-place for flocks;" and man's lawlessness fulfills the will and word of God.
Zephaniah 2:9
zep 2:9
Therefore as I live, saith the Lord of hosts - Life especially belongs to God, since He Alone is Underived Life. "He hath life in Himself" Joh 5:26. He is entitled "the living God," as here, in tacit contrast with the dead idols of the Philistines Sa1 17:26, Sa1 17:36, with idols generally Jer 10:10; or against the blasphemies of Sennacherib Kg2 19:4, Kg2 19:16, the mockeries of scoffers Jer 23:36, of the awe of His presence (Deu 5:25 (Deu 5:26 in Hebrew)), His might for His people Jos 3:10; as the object of the soul's longings , the nearness in the Gospel, "children of the living God" (Hos 1:10 (Hos 2:1 in Hebrew)). "Since He can swear by no greater, He sware by Himself" Heb 6:13. Since mankind are ready mostly to believe that God means well with them, but are slow to think that He is in earnest in His threats, God employs this sanction of what He says, twice only in regard to His promises or His mercy Isa 49:18; Eze 33:10; everywhere else to give solemnity to His threats Num 14:28; Deu 32:40, (adding לעולס) Jer 22:24; Eze 5:11; Eze 14:16, Eze 14:18, Eze 14:20; Eze 16:48; (as Judge) Eze 17:16, Eze 17:19; Eze 18:3; (in rebuke) Eze 20:3, Eze 20:31, Eze 20:33; Eze 33:27; Eze 34:8; Eze 35:11. In the same sense, I swear by Myself, Jer 22:5; Jer 49:13; hath sworn by Himself, Amo 6:8; by the excellency of Jacob, Amo 8:7). The appeal to the truth of His own being in support of the truth of His words is part of the grandeur el the prophet Ezekiel in whom it chiefly occurs. God says in the same meaning, by Myself have I sworn, of promises which required strong faith .
Saith the Lord of Hosts - Their blasphemies had denied the very being of God, as God, to whom they preferred or likened their idols; they had denied His power or that He could avenge, so He names His Name of power, "the Lord of the hosts" of heaven against their array against His border, I, "the Lord of hosts" who can fulfill what I threaten, and "the God of Israel" who Myself am wronged in My people, will make "Moab as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah." Sodom and Gomorrah had once been flourishing cities, on the borders of that land, which Israel had won from the Amorite, and of which Moab and Ammon at different times possessed themselves, and to secure which Ammon carried on that exterminating war. For they were to the east of the plain "between Bethel and Ai," where Lot made his choice, "in the plain or circle of Jordan" Gen 13:1, Gen 13:3, Gen 13:11, the well known title of the tract, through which the Jordan flowed into the Dead Sea. Near this, lay Zoar, (Ziara) beneath the caves whither Lot, at whose prayer it had been spared, escaped from its wickedness.
Moab and Ammon had settled and in time spread from the spot, wherein their forefathers had received their birth. Sodom, at least, must have been in that part of the plain, which is to the east of the Jordan, since Lot was bidden to flee to the mountains, with his wife and daughters, and there is no mention of the river, which would have been a hindrance Gen 19:17-23. Then it lay probably in that "broad belt of desolation" in the plain of Shittim, as Gomorrah and others of the Pentapolis may have lain in "the sulphur-sprinkled expanse" between El Riha (on the site of Jericho) and the dead sea, "covered with layers of salt and gypsum which overlie the loamy subsoil, literally, fulfilling the descriptions of Holy Writ (says an eye-witness), "Brimstone and salt and burning, that it is not sown nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein" Deu 29:23 : "a fruitful land turned into salthess" Psa 107:34. "No man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it" Jer 49:18. An elaborate system of artificial irrigation was carried through that cis-Jordanic tract, which decayed when it was desolated of man, and that desolation prevents its restoration.
The doom of Moab and Ammon is rather of entire destruction beyond all recovery, than of universal barrenness. For the imagery, that it should be the "breeding" (literally, 'possession') "of nettles" would not be literally compatible, except in different localities, with that of "saltpits," which exclude all vegetation. Yet both are united in Moab. The soil continues, as of old, of exuberant fertility; yet in part, from the utter neglect and insecurity of agriculture it is abandoned to a rank and encumbering vegetation; elsewhere, from the neglect of the former artiticial system of irrigation, it is wholly barren. The plant named is one of rank growth, since outcasts could lie concealed under it Job 30:7. The preponderating authority seems to be for "mollach," the Bedouin name of the "mallow," Prof. E. H. Palmer says , "which," he adds, "I have seen growing in rank luxuriance in Moab, especially in the sides of deserted Arab camps."
The residue of My people shall spoil them, and the remnant of My people shall possess them - Again, a remnant only, but even these shall prevail against them, as was first fulfilled in Judas Maccabaeus (1 Macc. 5:6-8).
Zephaniah 2:10
zep 2:10
This shall they have for their pride - Literally, "This to them instead of their pride." Contempt and shame shall be the residue of the proud man; the exaltation shall be gone, and all which they shall gain to themselves shall be shame. Moab and Ammon are the types of heretics . As they were akin to the people of God, but hating it; akin to Abraham through a lawless birth, but ever molesting the children of Abraham, so heretics profess to believe in Christ, to be children of Christ, and yet ever seek to overthrow the faith of Christians. As the Church says, "My mothers children are" "angry with me" Sol 1:5. They seem to have escaped the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (pagan sins), and to have found a place of refuge (Zoar); and yet they are in darkness and cannot see the light of faith; and in an unlawful manner they mingle, against all right, the falsehood of Satan with the truth of God; so that their doctrines become, in part, "doctrines of devils," in part have some stamp of the original truth.
To them, as to the Jews, our Lord says, "Ye are of your father the devil." While they profess to be children of God, they claim by their names to have God for their Father (Moab) and to be of His people (Ammon), while in hatred to His true children they forfeit both. As Moab seduced Israel, so they the children of the Church. They too enlarge themselves against the borders of the Church, rending off its children and making themselves the Church. They too utter reproaches and revilings against it. "Take away their revilings," says an early father , "against the law of Moses, and the prophets, and God the Creator, and they have not a word to utter." They too "remove the old landmarks which the fathers" (the prophets and Apostles) "have set." And so, barrenness is their portion; as, after a time, heretics ever divide, and do not multiply; they are a desert, being out of the Church of God: and at last the remnant of Judah, the Church, possesses them, and absorbs them into herself.
Zephaniah 2:11
zep 2:11
The Lord will be terrible unto - (upon) them that is, upon Moab and Ammon, and yet not in themselves only, but as instances of His just judgment. Whence it follows, "For He will famish all the gods of the earth" (Rup.). Miserable indeed, to whom the Lord is terrible! Whence is this? Is not God by Nature sweet and pleasurable and serene, and an Object of longing? For the Angels ever desire to look into Him, and, in a wonderful and unspeakable way, ever look and ever long to look. For miserable they, whose conscience makes them shrink from the face of Love. Even in this life they feel this shrinking, and, as if it were some lessening of their grief, they deny it, as though this could destroy the truth, which they 'hold down in unrighteousness.'" Rom 1:18.
For He will famish all the gods of the earth - Taking away "the fat of their sacrifices, and the wine of their drink-offerings" Deu 32:38. Within 80 years from the death of our Lord , the governor of Pontus and Bithynia wrote officially to the Roman Emperor, that "the temples had been almost left desolate, the sacred rites had been for a long time intermitted, and that the victims had very seldom found a purchaser," before the persecution of the Christians, and consulted him as to the amount of its continuance. Toward the close of the century, it was one of the Pagan complaints, which the Christian Apologist had to answer "they are daily melting away the revenues of our temples." The prophet began to speak of the subdual of Moab and Ammon; he is borne on to the triumphs of Christ over all the gods of the Pagan, when the worship of God should not be at Jerusalem only, but "they shall worship Him, every one from his place."
Even all the isles of the pagan - For this is the very note of the Gospel, that, Cyril: "each who through faith in Christ was brought to the knowledge of the truth, by Him, and with Him, "worshipeth from his place" God the Father; and God is no longer known in Judaea only, but the countries and cities of the Pagan, though they be separated by the intervening sea from Judaea, no less draw near to Christ, pray, glorify, thank Him unceasingly. For formerly "His name" was "great in Israel" Psa 76:1, but now He is well known to all everywhere; earth and sea are full of His glory, and so every one 'worshipeth Him from his place;' and this is what is said, 'As I live, saith the Lord, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord' Num 14:21." "The isles" are any distant lands on the seashore (Jer 25:22, following; Eze 26:15, following; Psa 72:10), especially the very distant Isa 66:19; but also Asia Minor Dan 11:1, Dan 11:8 and the whole coast of Europe, and even the Indian Archipelago , since the ivory and ebony came from its "many isles."
Zephaniah revives the term, by which Moses had spoken of the dispersion of the sons of Japhet: "By these were the 'isles of the Gentiles' divided in their lands, every one after his tongue" Gen 10:5. He adds the word, "all;" all, wherever they had been dispersed, every one from his place, shall worship God. One universal worship shall ascend to God from all everywhere. So Malachi prophesied afterward; "From the rising up of the sun even to the going down of the same My Name shall be great among the Gentiles, and "in every place" incense shall be offered unto God and a pure offering, for My Name shall be great among the pagan, saith the Lord of hosts" Mal 1:11. Even a Jew says here: "This, without doubt, refers to the time to come, when all the inhabitants of the world shall know that the Lord is God, and that His is the greatness and power and glory, and He shall be called the God of the whole earth." The "isles" or "coasts of the sea" are the more the emblem of the Church, in that, Cyril: "lying, as it were, in the sea of this world and encompassed by the evil events in it, as with bitter waters, and lashed by the most vehement waves of persecutions, the Churches are yet founded, so that they cannot fall, and rear themselves aloft, and are not overwhelmed by afflictions. For, for Christ's sake, the Churches cannot be shaken, and 'the gates of hell shall not prevail against them' Mat 16:18."
Zephaniah 2:12
zep 2:12
Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by My sword - Literally, "Ye Ethiopians also, the slain of My sword are they." Having summoned them to His throne, God speaks of them, not to them anymore; perhaps in compassion, as elsewhere in indignation . The Ethiopians were not in any direct antagonism to God and His people, but allied only to their old oppressor, Egypt. They may have been in Pharaoh Necho's army, in resisting which, as a subject of Assyria, Josiah was slain: they are mentioned Jer 46:9 in that army which Nebuchadnezzar smote at Carchemish in the 4th year of Jehoiakim. The prophecy of Ezekiel implies rather, that Ethiopia should be involved in the calamities of Egypt, than that it should be itself invaded. "Great terror shall be in Ethiopia, 'when the slain shall fall in Egypt' Eze 30:4." "Ethiopia and Lybia and Lydia etc. and all the men of the land that is in league, shall fall 'with these,' by the sword" Eze 30:5. "They also that 'uphold Egypt' shall fall" Eze 30:6.
Syene, the frontier-fortress over against Ethiopia, is especially mentioned as the boundary also of the destruction. "Messengers" God says, "shall go forth from Me to make the careless Ethiopians afraid" Eze 30:9, while the storm was bursting in its full desolating force upon Egypt. All the other cities, whose destruction is foretold, are cities of lower or upper Egypt .
But such a blow as that foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel must have fallen heavily upon the allies of Egypt. We have no details, for the Egyptians would not, and did not tell of the calamities and disgraces of their country. No one does. Josephus, however, briefly but distinctly says , that after Nebuchadnezzar had in the 23rd year of his reign, the 5th after the destruction of Jerusalem, "reduced into subjection Moab and Ammon, he invaded Egypt, with a view to subdue it," "killed its then king, and having set up another, captured for the second time the Jews in it and carried them to Babylon." The memory of the devastation by Nebuchadnezzar lived on apparently in Egypt, and is a recognized fact among the Muslim historians, who had no interest in the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, of which it does not appear that they even knew.
Bokht-nasar (Nebuchadnezzar), they say , "made war on the son of Nechas (Necho), slew him and ruined the city of Memphis" and many other cities of Egypt: he carried the inhabitants captive, without leaving one, so that Egypt remained waste forty years without one inhabitant." Another says , The refuge which the king of Egypt granted to the Jews who fled from Nebuchadnezzar brought this war upon it: for he took them under his protection and would not give them up to their enemy. Nebuchadnezzar, in revenge, marched against the king of Egypt and destroyed the country." "One may be certain," says a good authority , "that the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar was a tradition generally spread in Egypt and questioned by no one."
Ethiopia was then involved, as an ally, and as far as its contingent was concerned, in the war, in which Nebuchadnezzar desolated Egypt for those 40 years. But, although this fulfilled the prophecy of Ezekiel, Isaiah, some sixty years before Zephaniah, prophesied a direct conquest of Ethiopia. I "have given," God says, "Egypt as thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee" Isa 43:3. It lay in God's purpose, that Cyrus should restore His own people, and that his ambition should find its vent and compensation in the lands beyond. It may be that, contrary to all known human policy, Cyrus restored the Jews to their own land, willing to bind them to himself, and to make them a frontier territory toward Egypt, not subject only but loyal to himself. This is quite consistent with the reason which he assigns; "The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and He hath charged me to build Him an house at Jerusalem which is in Judah" Ezr 1:2-3; and with the statement of Josephus, that he was moved thereto by "reading the prophecy which Isaiah left, 210 years before."
It is, alas! nothing new to Christians to have mixed motives for their actions: the exception is to have a single motive, "for the glory of God." The advantage to himself would doubtless flash at once on the founder of a great empire, though it did not suggest the restoration of the Jews. Egypt and Assyria had always, on either side, wished to possess themselves of Palestine, which lay between them. Anyhow, one Persian monarch did restore the Jews; his successor possessed himself of "Egypt, and part, at least, of Ethiopia." Cyrus wished, it is related , "to war in person against Babylon, the Bactrians, the Sacae, and Egypt." He perished, as is known, before he had completed the third of his purposed conquests. Cambyses, although after the conquest of Egypt he planned ill his two more distant expeditions, reduced "the Ethiopians bordering upon Egypt" ( "lower Ethiopia and Nubia"), and these "brought gifts" permanently to the Persian Sovereign. Even in the time of Xerxes, the Ethiopians had to furnish their contingent of troops against the Greeks. Herodotus describes their dress and weapons, as they were reviewed at Doriscus . Cambyses, then, did not lose his hold over Ethiopia and Egypt, when forced by the rebellion of Pseudo-Smerdis to quit Egypt.
Zephaniah 2:13
zep 2:13
Zephaniah began by singling out Judah amid the general destruction, "I will also stretch out My Hand upon Judah" Zep 1:4; he sums up the judgment of the world in the same way; "He will stretch out, or, Stretch He forth, "His Hand against the north and destroy Asshur, and make Nineveh a desolation." Judah had, in Zephaniah's time, nothing to fear from Assyria. Isaiah Isa 39:6 and Micah Mic 4:10 had already foretold, that the captivity would be to Babylon. Yet of Assyria alone the prophet, in his own person, expresses his own conformity with the mind of God. Of others he had said, "the word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, and I will destroy thee; As I live, saith the Lord, Moab shall be as Sodom. Ye also, O Ethiopians, the, slain of My sword are they." Of Assyria alone, by a slight inflection of the word, he expresses that he goes along with this, which he announces.
He does not say as an imprecation, "May He stretch forth His hand;" but gently, as continuing his prophecies, "and," joining on Asshur with the rest; only instead of saying "He will stretch forth," by a form almost insulated in Hebrew, he says, "And stretch He forth His Hand." In a way not unlike, David having declared God's judgments, "The Lord trieth the righteous; and the wicked and the lover of violence doth His soul abhor, subjoineth, On the wicked rain He snares," signifying that he (as all must be in the Day of judgment), is at one with the judgment of God. This is the last sentence upon Nineveh, enforcing that of Jonah and Nahum, yet without place of repentance now. He accumulates words expressive of desolateness. It should not only be a "desolation" Zep 2:4, Zep 2:9, as he had said of Ashkelon, Moab and Amman, but a dry, parched , unfruitful Isa 53:2 land. As Isaiah, under the same words, prophesies that the dry and desolate land should, by the Gospel, be glad, so the gladness of the world should become dryness and desolation. Asshur is named, as though one individual , implying the entireness of the destruction; all shall perish as one man; or as gathered into one and dependent upon one, its evil King. "The north" is not only Assyria, in that its armies came upon Judah from the north, but it stands for the whole power of evil (see Isa 14:13), as Nineveh for the whole beautiful, evil, world. The world with "the princes of this world" shall perish together.
Zephaniah 2:14
zep 2:14
And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her - No desolation is like that of decayed luxury. It preaches the nothingness of man, the fruitlessness of his toils, the fleetingness of his hopes and enjoyments, and their baffling when at their height. Grass in a court or on a once beaten road, much more, in a town, speaks of the passing away of what has been, that man was accustomed to be there, and is not, or is there less than he was. It leaves the feeling of void and forsakenness. But in Nineveh not a few tufts of grass here and there shall betoken desolation, it shall be one wild rank pasture, where "flocks" shall not feed only, but "lie down" as in their fold and continual resting place, not in the outskirts only or suburbs, but in the very center of her life and throng and busy activity, "in the midst of her," and none shall fray them away. So Isaiah had said of the cities of Aroer, "they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down and none shall make them afraid" Isa 17:2, and of Judah until its restoration by Christ, that it should be "a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks" (Isa 32:14, compare Jer 6:2). And not only those which are wont to be found in some connection with man, but "all the beasts of a nation" , the troops of wild and savage and unclean beasts which shun the dwellings of man or are his enemies, these in troops have their lair there.
Both the cormorant and the bittern - They may be the same. The pelican retires inland to consume its food. Tristram, Houghton, in Smith's Bible Dictionary, "Pelican" note. It could be a hedgehog.
Shall lodge in the upper lintels of it. - The "chapiters" (English margin) or capitals of the pillars of the temples and palaces shall lie broken and strewn upon the ground, and among those desolate fragments of her pride shall unclean animals haunt. The pelican has its Hebrew name from vomiting. It vomits up the shells which it had swallowed whole, after they had been opened by the heat of the stomach, and so picks out the animal contained in them , the very image of greediness and uncleanness. It dwells also not in deserts only but near marshes, so that Nineveh is doubly waste.
A voice shall sing in the windows - In the midst of the desolation, the muteness of the hedgehog and the pensive loneliness of the solitary pelican, the musing spectator is even startled by the gladness of a bird, joyous in the existence which God has given it. Instead of the harmony of music and men-singers and women-singers in their palaces shall be the sweet music of some lonely bird, unconscious that it is sitting "in the windows" of those, at whose name the world grew pale, portions of the outer walls being all which remain of her palaces. "Desolation" shall be "in the thresholds," sitting, as it were, in them; everywhere to be seen in them; the more, because unseen. Desolation is something oppressive; we "feel" its presence. There, as the warder watch and ward at the empty portals, where once was the fullest throng, shall "desolation sit," that no one enter. "For He shall uncover (hath uncovered, English margin) the cedar-work:" in the roofless palaces, the carved "cedar-work" shall be laid open to wind and rain. Any one must have noticed, how piteous and dreary the decay of any house in a town looks, with the torn paper hanging uselessly on its walls. A poet of our own said niche beautiful ruins of a wasted monastery:
"For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild, but to flout the ruins gray."
But at Nineveh it is one of the mightiest cities of the world which thus lies waste, and the bared "cedar-work" had, in the days of its greatness, been carried off from the despoiled Lebanon or Hermon .
Zephaniah 2:15
zep 2:15
This utter desolation is "the rejoicing city" (so unlike is it, that there is need to point out that it is the same); this is she, who was full of joy, exulting exceedingly, but in herself, not in God; "that dwelt carelessly," literally, "securely," and so carelessly; saying "Peace and safety" Th1 5:3, as though no evil would come upon her, and so perishing more certainly and miserably (see Jdg 18:27) "That said in her heart," this was her inmost feeling, the moving cause of all her deeds; "I am and there is none beside me;" literally , "and there is no I beside," claiming the very attribute of God (as the world does) of self-existence, as if it alone were "I," and others, in respect of her, were as nothing. Pantheism, which denies the being of God, as Author of the world, and claims the life in the material world to be God, and each living being to be a part of God, is only this self-idolatry, reflected upon and carried out in words. All the pride of the world, all self-indulgence which says, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die," all covetousness which ends in this world, speaks this by its acts, "I and no I beside."
How is she become a desolation - Has passed wholly into it, exists only as a desolation, "a place for beasts to lie down in," a mere den for "the wild beasts. Every one that passeth by her shall hiss" in derision, "and wag" (or wave) "his hand" in detestation, as though putting the hand between them and it, so as not to look at it, or, as it were, motioning it away. The action is different from that of "clapping the hands in exultation" Nah 3:19.
"It is not difficult," Jerome says, "to explain this of the world, that when the Lord hath stretched forth His Hand over the north and destroyed the Assyrian, the Prince of this world, the world also perishes together with its Princes, and is brought to utter desolation, and is pitied by none, but all hiss and shake their hands at its ruin. But of the Church it seems, at first sight, blasphemous to say that it shall be a pathless desert, and wild beasts shall dwell in her, and that afterward it shall be said insultingly over her; 'This is the city given up to ill, which "dwelt carelessly and said in her heart, I and none beside."' But whoso should consider that of the Apostle, wherein he says, "in the last days perilous times shall come" Ti2 3:1-5, and what is written in the Gospel, that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" Mat 24:12, so that then shall that be fulfilled, "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith on the earth?" he will not marvel at the extreme desolation of the Church, that, in the reign of antichrist, it shall be reduced to a desolation and given over to beasts, and shall suffer whatever the prophet now describes.
For if for unbelief "God spared not the natural branches," but "brake them off," and "turned rivers into a wilderness and the water-springs into a dry ground," and "a fruitful land into barrenness, for the iniquity of them that dwell therein," why not as to those of whom He had said, "He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into water-springs, and there He maketh the hungry to dwell" Psa 107:33-36; and as to those whom "out of the wild olive He hath grafted into the good olive tree," why, if forgetful of this benefit, they depart from their Maker and worship the Assyrian, should He not undo them and bring them to the same thirst wherein they were before? Which, whereas it may be understood generally of the coming of antichrist or of the end of the world, yet it may, day by day, be understood of those who feign to be of the Church of God, and "in works deny it, are hearers of the word not doers," who in vain boast in an outward show, whereas herds that is, troops of vices dwell in them, and brute animals serving the body, and all the beasts of the field which devour their hearts (and pelicans, that is, gluttons , whose 'god is their belly') and hedgehogs, a prickly animal full of spikes which pricketh whatever it toucheth.
After which it is subjoined, that the Church shall therefore suffer this, or hath suffered it, because it lifted itself up proudly and raised its head like a cedar, given up to evil works, and yet promising itself future blessedness, and despising others in its heart, nor thinking that there is any other beside itself, and saying, "I am, and there is no other beside me," how is it become a solitude, a lair of beasts! For where before, dwelt the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and Angels presided over its ministries, there shall beasts dwell. And if we understand that, every one that passeth by shall hiss, we shall explain it thus; when Angels shall pass through her, and not remain in her, as was their wont, they shall be amazed and marvel, and shall not support and bear her up with their hand, when falling, but shall lift up the hands and shall pass by. Or they shall make a sound as those who mourn. But if we understand this of the devil and his angels, who destroyed the vine also that was brought out of Egypt, we shall say, that through the soul, which before was the temple of God and hath ceased so to be, the serpent passeth, and hisseth and spitteth forth the venom of his malice in her, and not this only, but setteth in motion his works which figuratively are called hands."
Rup.: "The earlier and partial fulfillment of prophecy does not destroy, it rather confirms, the entire fulfillment to come. For whoso heareth of the destruction of mighty cities, is constrained to believe the truth of the Gospel, that the fashion of this world passeth away, and that, after the likeness of Nineveh and Babylon, the Lord will in the end judge the whole world also."
Bible
Zephaniah Chapter 3
Zephaniah 3:1
zep 3:1
The "woe," having gone round the pagan nations, again circles round where it began, the "Jerusalem that killed the prophets and stoned those that were sent unto her" Mat 23:37. Woe upon her, and joy to the holy Jerusalem, the "new Jerusalem Rev 3:12; Rev 21:10, the Jerusalem which is from above, the mother of us all," close this prophecy; both in figure; destruction of her and the whole earth, in time, the emblem of the eternal death; and the love of God, the foretaste of endless joy in Him.
Woe - "Rebellious and polluted;" "thou oppressive city!" . The address is the more abrupt, and bursts more upon her, since the prophet does not name her. He uses as her proper name, not her own name, city of peace," but "rebellious," "polluted;" then he sums up in one, thou "oppressive city."
Jerusalem's sin is threefold, actively rebelling against God; then, inwardly defiled by sin; then cruel to man. So then, toward God, in herself, toward man, she is wholly turned to evil, not in passing acts, but in her abiding state:
(1) rebellious
(2) defiled
(3) oppressive
She is known only by what she has become, and what has been done for her in vain. She is rebellious, and so had had the law; defiled, and so had been cleansed; and therefore her state is the more hopeless.
Zephaniah 3:2
zep 3:2
She obeyed not the Voice - Of God, by the law or the prophets, teaching her His ways; and when, disobeying, He chastened her, "she received not correction," and when He increased His chastisements, she, in the declining age of the state and deepening evil, turned not unto Him, as in the time of the judges, nor ceased to do evil.
In the Lord she trusted not - But in Assyria or Egypt or her idols. Our practical relation to God is summed up in the four words, "Mis-trust self; trust God." Man reverses this, and when "self-trust" has of course failed him, then he "mistrusts God" . "Such rarely ask of God, what they hope they may obtain from man. They strain every nerve of their soul to obtain what they want; canvass, flatter, fawn, bribe, court favor; and betake themselves to God when all human help fails. They would be indebted, not to God, but to their own diligence. For the more they receive of God, the less, they see, can they exalt their own diligence, the more they are bound to thank God, and obey Him the more strictly."
To her God she drew not nigh - Even in trouble, when all draw near unto Him, who are not wholly alien from Him; she drew not near by repentance, by faith hope or love, or by works meet for repentance, but in heart remained far from Him. And yet He was "her" own "God," as He had shown Himself in times past, who changes not, while we change; is faithful to us, while we fail Him; is still our God, while we forget Him; "waits, to have mercy upon us;" shines on us while we interpose our earth-born clouds between us and Him. Dionysius: "Not in body nor in place, but spiritually and inwardly do we approach to the uncircumscribed God," owning Him as our Father, to whom we daily say "Our Father."
Zephaniah 3:3
zep 3:3
The prophet having declared the wickedness of the whole city, rehearses how each in Church and state, the ministers of God in either, who should have corrected the evil, themselves aggravated it. Not enemies, without, destroy her, but
Her princes within her - In the very midst of the flock, whom they should in God's stead "feed with a true heart," destroy her as they will, having no protection against them. "Her judges are evening wolves" (see Hab 1:8); these who should in the Name of God redress all grievances and wrongs, are themselves like wild beasts, when most driven by famine. "They gnaw not the bones until the morrow or on the morrow" (literally, in the morning). They reserve nothing until the morning light, but do in darkness the works of darkness, shrinking from the light, and, in extreme rapacity, devouring at once the whole substance of the poor. As Isaiah says, "Thy princes are rebellious and companions of thieves" Isa 1:23, and "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" Isa 3:14. And Ezekiel, "Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, ravening the prey to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain" Eze 22:27.
Zephaniah 3:4
zep 3:4
Her prophets are light - , boiling and bubbling, up, like water boiling over , empty boasters claiming the gift of prophecy, which they have not; "boldly and rashly pouring out what they willed as they willed;" promising good things which shall not be. So they are "her" prophets, to whom they "prophesy smooth things" (see Mic 2:11), "the prophets of this people" not the prophets of God; "treacherous persons" (literally, men of treacheries) wholly given to manifold treacheries against God in whose Name they spake and to the people whom they deceived. Jerome: "They spake as if from the mouth of the Lord and uttered everything against the Lord." "The leaders of the people," those who profess to lead it aright, Isaiah says, "are its misleaders" (Isa 9:15 (Isa 9:16 in English)). "Thy prophets," Jeremiah says, "have seen vain and foolish things for thee; they have seen for thee false visions and causes of banishment" Lam 2:14.
Her priests have polluted her sanctuary - Literally, "holiness," and so holy rites, persons Ezr 8:28, things, places (as the sanctuary), sacrifices. All these they polluted, being themselves polluted; they polluted first themselves, then the holy things which they handled, handling them as they ought not; carelessly and irreverently, not as ordained by God; turning them to their own use and self-indulgence, instead of the glory of God; then they polluted them in the eyes of the people, "making them to abhor the offering of the Lord" Sa1 2:17, since, living scandalously, they themselves regarded the Ministry entrusted to them by God so lightly. Their office was to "put difference between holy and unholy and between clean and unclean, and to teach the children all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by Moses" Lev 10:10-11; that they "should sanctify themselves and be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev 11:44; Lev 19:2, etc.). But they on the contrary, God says by Ezekiel, "have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no difference between holy and profane, and have taught none between clean and unclean" Eze 22:26. "Holy" and "unholy" being the contradictory of each other, these changed what God had hallowed into its exact contrary. It was not a mere short-coming, but an annihilation (so to speak), of God's purposes.
Cyril: "The priests of the Church then must keep strict watch, not to profane holy things. There is not one mode only of profaning them, but many and divers. For priests ought to be purified both in soul and body, and to cast aside every form of abominable pleasure. Rather should they be resplendent with zeal in well-doing, remembering what Paul saith, 'walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh' Gal 5:16."
They have oppressed, done violence, to the law - Openly violating it ; or straining it, or secretly wresting and using its forms to wrong and violence, as in the case of Naboth and of Him, of whom Naboth thus far bore the Image. "'We have a law, and by our law He ought to die' Joh 19:7. Law exists to restrain human violence; these reversed God's ordinances; violence and law changed places: first, they did violence to the majesty of the law, which was the very voice of God, and then, through profaning it, did violence to man. Forerunners herein of those, who, when Christ came, "transgressed the commandment of God, and made it of none effect by their traditions" Mat 15:6; omitting also the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and faith; full of extortion and excess!" Mat 23:23, Mat 23:25.
Zephaniah 3:5
zep 3:5
But, beside these "evening wolves in the midst of her," there standeth Another "in the midst of her," whom they knew not, and so, very near to them although they would not draw near to Him. But He was near, to behold all the iniquities which they did in the very city and place called by His Name and in His very presence; He was in her to protect, foster her with a father's love, but she, presuming on His mercy, had cast it off. And so He was near to punish, not to deliver; as a Judge, not as a Saviour. Dionysius: "God is everywhere, Who says by Jeremiah, 'I fill heaven and earth' Jer 23:24. But since, as Solomon attesteth, 'The Lord is far from the wicked' Pro 15:29, how is He said here to be in the midst of these most wicked men? Because the Lord is far from the wicked, as regards the presence of love and grace; still in His Essence He is everywhere, and in this way He is equally present to all."
The Lord is in the midst thereof; He will not do iniquity - Dionysius: "Since He is the primal rule and measure of all righteousness; therefore from the very fact that He doeth anything, it is just, for He cannot do amiss, being essentially holy. Therefore He will give to every man what he deserves. Therefore we chant, 'The Lord is upright, and there is no unrighteousness in Him' Psa 92:15." justice and injustice, purity and impurity, cannot be together. God's presence then must destroy the sinners, if not the sin. He was "in the midst of them," to sanctify them, giving them His judgments as a pattern of theirs; "He will not do iniquity:" but if they heeded it not, the judgment would fall upon themselves. It were for God to become "such an one as themselves" Psa 50:21, and to connive at wickedness, were He to spare at last the impenitent.
Every morning - (Literally, in the morning, in the morning) one after the other, quickly, openly, daily, continually, bringing all secret things, all works of darkness, to light, as He said to David, "Thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun" Sa2 12:12. Doth He bring His judgments to light," so that no sin should be hidden in the brightness of His Light, as He said by Hosea, "Thy judgments are a light which goeth forth." Cyril: "Morning by morning, He shall execute His judgments, that is, in bright day and visibly, not restraining His anger, but bringing it forth in the midst, and making it conspicuous, and, as it were, setting in open vision what He had foreannounced." Day by day God gives some warning of His judgments. By chastisements which are felt to be His on this side or on that or all around, He gives ensamples which speak to the sinner's heart. "He faileth not." As God said by Habakkuk, that His promises, although they seem to "linger," were not "behind" Hab 2:3 the real time, which lay in the Divine Mind, so, contrariwise, neither are His judgments. His hand is never missing at the appointed time. "But the unjust," he, whose very being and character, "iniquity," is the exact contrary to what he had said of the perfection of God, "Who doth not iniquity," or, as Moses had taught them in his song, "all His ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He" Deu 32:4. "Knoweth no shame," as God saith by Jeremiah, "Thou refusedst to be ashamed" Jer 3:3. They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush" Jer 6:15; Jer 8:12. Even thus they would not be ashamed of their sins, "that they might be converted and God might heal them" Isa 6:10.
Zephaniah 3:6
zep 3:6
I have cut off the nations - God appeals to His judgments on pagan nations, not on any particular nation, as far as we know; but to past history, whether of those, of whose destruction Israel itself had been the instrument, or others. The judgments upon the nations before them were set forth to them, when they were about to enter on their inheritance, as a warning to themselves. "Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things, for in all these have the nations defiled themselves, which I cast out before you: and the land is defiled; therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants. And ye, ye shall keep My statutes and My judgements and shall not commit any of these abominations - And the land shall not spue you out when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations which were before you" (Lev 18:24-26, Lev 18:28, add Lev 20:23). The very possession then of the land was a warning to them; the ruins, which crowned so many of its hilltops , were silent preachers to them; they lived among the memories of God's visitations; if neglected, they were an earnest of future judgments on themselves.
Yet God's judgments are not at one time only. Sennacherib appealed to their own knowledge, "Behold, thou hast heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by destroying them utterly. Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed?" Isa 37:11, Isa 37:13. Hezekiah owned it as a fact which he knew: "Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their land" Isa 37:18. And God owns him as His instrument: "Now I have brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste defensed cities into ruinous heaps" Isa 37:26 : and, "I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to tread them down as the mire of the streets," and says of him, "It is in his heart to destroy and to cut off nations not a few" . The king of Babylon too he describes as "the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms. that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof" Isa 14:16-17. Habakkuk recently described the wide wasting by the Babylonians, and the helplessness of nations before him Hab 1:14-16.
Their towers, corner towers - o, the most carefully fortified parts of their fortified cities, "are desolate; I made their streets waste." The desolation is complete, within as well as without; ruin itself is hardly so desolate as the empty habitations and forsaken streets, once full of life, where
"The echoes and the empty tread
Would sound like voices from the dead."
Zephaniah 3:7
zep 3:7
I said, surely thou wilt fear Me - God speaks of things here, as they are in their own nature. "It could not but be," that in the very presence of the Hand of God, destroying others but as yet sparing them, they must learn to fear Him; they must stand in awe of Him for His judgments on others; they must be in filial fear of Him for His loving longsuffering toward themselves. "Thou 'wilt' receive instruction," corrected and taught through God's correction of others and the lighter judgments on themselves, as Solomon says, "I looked, I set my heart: I saw, I received instruction" Pro 24:32. He saith, "receive," making it man's free act. God brings it near, commends it to him, exhorts, entreats, but leaves him the awful power to "receive" or to refuse. God speaks with a wonderful tenderness. "Surely thou 'wilt' stand in awe of Me; thou 'wilt' receive instruction; thou wilt now do what hitherto thou hast refused to do." There was (so to speak) nothing else left for them, in sight of those judgments. He pleads their own interests. The lightning was ready to fall. The prophet had, in vision, seen the enemy within the city. Yet even now God lingers, as it were, "If thou hadst known in this thy day, the things which are for thy peace" Luk 19:42.
So their - (her) dwelling should not be cut off His own holy land which He had given them. A Jew paraphrases , "And He will not cut off their dwellings from the land of the house of My Shechinah" (God's visible presence in glory). Judah, who was before addressed "thou," is now spoken of in the third person, "her;" and this also had wonderful tenderness. It is as though God were musing over her and the blessed fruits of her return to Him; "it shall not be needed to correct her further." "Howsoever I punished them:" literally, "all" (that is, 'all' the offences) "which I visited upon her," as God saith of Himself, "'visiting' the 'sins' of the fathers 'upon' the children" Exo 20:5; Exo 34:7; Num 14:18, and this is mostly the meaning of the words "visit upon." Amid and not withstanding all the offences which God had already chastised, He, in His love and compassion, still longeth, not utterly to remove them from His presence, if they would but receive instruction "now;" but they would not. "How often," our Lord says, "would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not" Mat 23:37. "But indeed," "probably, Of a truth" (it is a word strongly affirming what follows) "they rose early, they corrupted all their doings;" God gave them His warnings, awaited the result; they lost no time, they began with morning light; they hasted to rise, burdened themselves, made sure of having the whole day before them, to - seek God as He had sent His prophets, "rising early and sending them?" Jer 7:13, Jer 7:25; Jer 11:7; Jer 26:5; Jer 29:19.
No, nor even simply to do ill, but of set purpose. to do, not this or that corruptly, but "to corrupt all their doings." Jerome: "They with diligence and eagerness rose early, that, with the same haste wherewith they ought to have returned to Me, they might shew forth in deed what they had conceived amiss in their mind." There are as many aggravations of their sin as there are words. The four Hebrew words bespeak eagerness, willfulness, completeness enormity, in sin. They "rose early," themselves deliberately "corrupted," of their own mind made offensive, "all" their "doings," not slight acts, but "deeds," great works done with a high hand .
Zephaniah 3:8
zep 3:8
Therefore wait ye upon - (for) Me God so willeth not to punish, but that all should lay hold of His mercy, that He doth not here even name punishment. Judah had slighted His mercies; He was ready to forgive all they had sinned, if they would "now" receive instruction; they in return set themselves to corrupt "all" their doings. They had wholly forsaken Him. "Therefore" - we should have expected, as elsewhere, "Therefore I will visit all your iniquities upon you." But not so. The chastisement is all veiled; the prophet points only to the mercy beyond. "Therefore wait ye for Me." All the interval of chastisement is summed up in these words; that is, since neither My mercies toward you, nor My chastisement of others, lead you to obey Me, "therefore" the time shall be, when My Providence shall not seem to be over you, nor My presence among you (see Hos 3:3-5); but then, "wait ye for Me" earnestly, intensely, perseveringly, "until the day, that I rise up to the prey." "The day" is probably in the first instance, the deliverance from Babylon. But the words seem to be purposely enlarged, that they may embrace other judgments of God also.
For the words to "gather the nations, assemble the kingdoms," describe some array of nations against God and His people; gathering themselves for their own end at that time, but, in His purpose, gathering themselves for their own destruction, rather than the mere tranquil reunion of those of different nations in the city of Babylon, when the Medes and Persians came against them. Nor again are they altogether fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem, or any other event until now. For although then a vast number of the dispersed Jews were collected together, and were at that time "broken off" Rom 11:20 and out of covenant with God, they could hardly be called "nations," (which are here and before Zeph. 5:6 spoken of in contrast with Judah), much less "kingdoms." In its fullest sense the prophecy seems to belong to the same events in the last struggle of Anti-Christ, as at the close of Joel Joe 3:2, Joe 3:9-16 and Zechariah Zech. 14.
With this agrees the largeness of the destruction; "to pour out upon them," in full measure, emptying out so as to overwhelm them, "Mine indignation, even all My fierce anger, for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy" (see Psa 69:24; Psa 79:6; Jer 6:11; Jer 10:25; Jer 14:16; Eze 21:31; Rev 16:1). The outpouring of all God's wrath, the devouring of the whole earth, in the fullest sense of the words, belongs to the end of the world, when He shall say to the wicked, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." In lesser degrees, and less fully, the substance of the prophecy has again and again been fulfilled to the Jewish Church before Christ, at Babylon and under the Maccabees; and to the Christian, as when the Muslims hemmed in Christendom on all sides, and the waves of their conquests on the east and west threatened to meet, overwhelming Christendom. The Church, having sinned, had to "wait" for a while "for God" who by His Providence withdrew Himself, yet at last delivered it.
And since the whole history of the Church lies wrapt up in the Person of the Redeemer, "the day that I rise up to the prey," is especially the Day in which the foundation of His Church was laid, or that in which it shall be completed; the Day whereon He rose again, as the first-fruits, or that Day in which He shall "stand again on the earth" , to judge it; "so coming even as He went up into heaven" Act 1:11. Then, "the prey" must be, what God vouch-safes to account as His gain, "the prey" which is "taken from the mighty" Isa 49:24-25, and "the lawful captivity, the prey of the terrible one," which shall be delivered; even that spoil which the Father bestowed on Him "Who made His soul an offering for sin" Isa 53:10, Isa 53:12, the goods of the strong man Mat 12:29 whom He bound, and spoiled us, His lawful goods and captives, since we had "sold" (Rom 7:14, coll; Isa 50:1; Isa 52:3) ourselves "under sin" to him. Cyril: "Christ lived again having spoiled hell, because "it was not possible" (as it is written) "that He," being by nature Life, "should be holden of death" Act 2:24.
Here, where spoken of with relation to the Church, "the jealousy" of Almighty God is that love for His people (see the note at Nah 1:2), which will not endure their ill-treatment by those who (as all anti-Christian power does) make themselves His rivals in the government of the world.
Zephaniah 3:9
zep 3:9
For then - In the order of God's mercies. The deliverance from Babylon was the forerunner of that of the Gospel, which was its object. The spread of the Gospel then is spoken of in the connection of God's Providence and plan, and time is overlooked. Its blessings are spoken of, as "then" given when the earnest was given, and the people, from whom according to the flesh Christ was to be born, were placed anew in the land where He was to be born. Lap.: "The prophet springs, as is his wont, to Christ and the time of the new law." And in Christ, the End of the Law, the prophet ends.
I will turn - Contrary to what they had before, "to the people," literally, "peoples," the nations of the earth, "a pure language," literally, "a purified lip." It is a real conversion, as was said of Saul at the beginning Sa1 10:9; "God" (literally) "turned to him another heart." Before the dispersion of Babel the world was "of one lip," but that, impure, for it was in rebellion against God. Now it shall be again of "one lip;" and that, "purified." The purity is of faith and of life, "that they way call upon the Name of the Lord," not as heretofore on idols, but that every tongue should confess the one true God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, in Whose Name they are baptized. This is purity of faith. To "call upon the Name of the Lord Jesus" Act 22:16; Rom 10:13 is the very title of Christian worship; "all that called upon the Name" of Jesus, the very title of Christians Act 9:14, Act 9:21; Co1 1:2. "To serve Him with one consent," literally, "with one shoulder," evenly, steadfastly, "not unequally yoked," but all with united strength, bearing Christ's "easy yoke" and "one another's burdens, fulfilling the law of Christ." This is purity of life. The fruit of the lips is the "sacrifice of praise" Heb 13:15.
God gave back one pure language, when, on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, the Author of purity, came down in fiery tongues upon the Apostles, teaching them and guiding them "into the whole truth" Joh 16:13, and to "speak to every one in his own tongue, wherein he was born, the wonderful works of God" Act 2:8, Act 2:11. Thenceforth there was to be a higher unity than that of outward language. For speech is not the outer sound, but the thoughts which it conveys and embodies. The inward thought is the soul of the words. The outward confusion of Babel was to hinder oneness in evil and a worse confusion. At Pentecost, the unity restored was oneness of soul and heart, wrought by One Spirit, whose gift is the one Faith and the one Hope of our calling, in the One Lord, in whom we are one, grafted into the one body, by our baptism Eph 4:3-6. The Church, then created, is the One Holy Universal Church diffused throughout all the world, everywhere with one rule of Faith, "the Faith once for all delivered unto the saints," confessing one God, the Trinity in Unity, and serving Him in the one law of the Gospel with one consent.
Christians, as Christians, speak the same language of Faith, and from all quarters of the world, one language of praise goes up to the One God and Father of all. : "God divided the tongues at Babel, lest, understanding one another, they should form a destructive unity. Through proud men tongues were divided; through humble Apostles tongues were gathered in one. The spirit of pride dispersed tongues; the Holy Spirit gathered tongues in one. For when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, they spake with the tongues of all, were understood by all; the dispersed tongues were gathered into one. So then, if they are yet angry and Gentiles, it is better for them to have their tongues divided. If they wish for one tongue, let them come to the Church, for in diversity of the tongues of the flesh, there is one tongue in the Faith of the heart." In whatever degree the oneness is impaired within the Church, while there is yet one faith of the creeds, He alone can restore it and 'turn to her a purified language,' who first gave it to those who waited for Him. Both praise and service are perfected above, where the Blessed, with one loud voice, 'shall cry, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb; blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever' Rev 7:10, Rev 7:12. And they who 'have come out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb," shall be 'before the Throne of God and serve Him day and night in His Temple' Rev 7:14-15."
Zephaniah 3:10
zep 3:10
From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia - (See Isa 18:1.) The farthest southern people, with whom the Jews had contact, stand as the type of the whole world beyond. The utmost bound of the known inhabited land should not be the bound of the Gospel. The conversion of Abyssinia is one, but the narrowest fulfillment of the prophecy. The whole new world, though not in the mind of the prophet, was in the mind of Him who spake by the prophet.
My suppliants - He names them as what they shall be when they shall come to Him. They shall come, as needy, to the Fountain of all good, asking for mercy of the unfailing Source of all mercy. He describes the very character of all who come to God through Christ. "The daughter of My dispersed." God is, in the way of Providence, the Father of all, although, by sin, alienated from Him; from where Paul says, "we are the offspring of God" Act 17:28. They were "dispersed," severed from the oneness in Him and from His house and family; yet still, looking on them as already belonging to Him, He calls them, "My dispersed," as by Caiaphas, being high priest, He prophesied that "Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad" Joh 11:51-52.
Shall bring Mine offering - o The offering is the same as that which Malachi prophesies shall continue under the New Testament, which offering was to be offered to the Name of God, not in Jerusalem, but Mal 1:11 "in every place from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same." The dark skin of the Ethiopian is the image of ingrained sin, which man could not efface or change Jer 13:23 : their conversion then declares how those steeped in sin shall be cleansed from all their darkness of mind, and washed white from their sins in Baptism and beautified by the grace of God. Cyril: "The word of prophecy endeth in truth. For not only through the Roman empire is the Gospel preached, but it circles round the barbarous nations. And there are Churches everywhere, shepherds and teachers, guides and instructors in mysteries, and sacred altars, and the Lamb is invisibly sacrificed by holy priests among Indians too and Ethiopians. And this was said plainly by another prophet also, 'For I am a great King, saith the Lord, and My Name is great among the pagan, and in every place incense is offered to My Name and a pure sacrifice' Mal 1:11."
Zephaniah 3:11
zep 3:11
In that day shalt thou not be ashamed for all thy doings - Because God, forgiving them, will blot them out and no more remember them. This was first fulfilled in the Gospel. Cyril: "No one can doubt that when Christ came in the flesh, there was an amnesty and remission to all who believed. 'For we are justified not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His great mercy.' But we have been released from shame. For 'He' hath restored us to freedom of access to God, Who for our sakes arose from the dead, and for us ascended to heaven in the presence of the Father. 'For Christ, our Forerunner, hath ascended for us now to appear in the presence of God.' So then He took away the guilt of all and freed believers from failures and shame." Peter, even in heaven, must remember his denial of our Lord, yet not so as to be ashamed or pained anymore, since the exceeding love of God will remove all shame or pain.
Rup.: "Mighty promise, mighty consolation. Now, before that Day comes, the Day of My Resurrection, thou wilt be ashamed and not without reason, since thou ownest by a true confession, 'all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags' Isa 64:6. But at that Day it will not be so, especially when that shall be which I promise thee in the prophets and the Psalms, 'There shall be a Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness' Zac 13:1; whence David also, exulting in good hope of the Holy Spirit, saith, 'Thou shalt wash me and I shall be whiter than snow' Psa 51:7. For though he elsewhere saith, 'they looked unto Him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed' Psa 34:5, yet in this mortal life, when the Day of My Resurrection doth not fully shine upon thee, thou art after some sort ashamed; as it is written, 'What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?' Rom 6:21, but that shame will bring glory, and, when that glory cometh in its place, will wholly pass away. But when the fullness of that day shall come, the fullness of My Resurrection, when the members shall rise, as the Head hath risen, will the memory of past foulness bring any confusion? Yea the very memory of the miseries will be the richest subject of singing, according to that, 'My song shall be alway of the loving-kindness of the Lord' Psa 89:1." For how shall the redeemed forget the mercies of their redemption, or yet how feel a painful shame even of the very miseries, out of which they were redeemed by the fullness of the overstreaming Love of God?
For then will I take away out of the midst of thee them that rejoice in thy pride - (Those of thee who exult in pride.) All confusion shall (cease, because all pride shall cease, the parent of sin and confusion. The very gift of God becomes to the carnal a source of pride. Pride was to the Jew also the great hindrance to the reception of the Gospel. He made his "boast of the law," yea, in God Himself, that he "knew His will," and was a "guide of others" Rom 2:17-20, Rom 2:23, and so was the more indignant, that the pagan was made equal to him, and that he too was called to repentance and faith in Christ. So, "going about to establish his own righteousness, he did not submit himself to the righteousness of God," but shut himself out from the faith and grace and salvation of Christ, and rejected Himself. So (Rup.), "thy pride" may be the pride in being the people of God, and having Abraham for their father. "And thou shalt no more be haughty in My holy mountain," "but thou shalt stand in the great and everlasting abiding-place of humility, knowing perfectly, that thou now 'knowest in part' only, and confessest truly that no one ever could or can by his own works be justified in the sight of God. 'For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God' Rom 3:23." Pride which is ever offensive to God, is yet more hideous in a holy place or a holy office, "in" Mount Sion where the temple was or in the Christian priesthood.
Zephaniah 3:12
zep 3:12
I will also leave - (Over, as a remnant, it is still the same heavy prophecy, that a remnant only 'shall be saved') "an afflicted and poor people." priests, (except that 'great company who were obedient to the faith') Act 6:7, scribes, lawyers, Pharisees, Sadducees were taken away; and there remained "the people of the land" , the "unlearned and ignorant" Act 4:13, "the weak things of the world and the things despised" Co1 1:27-28 who bore the very title of their Master, "the poor and needy; poor in Spirit" Psa 41:1; poor also in outward things, since "they who had lands, sold them and they had all things common" Act 2:44-45; Act 4:32, Act 4:35. They were afflicted above measure outwardly in the (Act 8:1; Act 9:2, Act 9:13-14; Act 12:1-2; Act 13:50; Act 14:5, Act 14:22; 22; etc. Rom 8:17, Rom 8:35-36; Rom 12:14; Co1 9:19; Co2 1:8-9; Co2 12:10; Th2 1:4; Ti2 3:11-12; Heb 10:32-34; Jam 2:6-7; Pe1 1:6-7; Pe1 4:13; Rev 1:9; Rev 6:9 etc.) persecutions, "reproaches, spoiling of" their "goods," stripes, deaths, which they endured for Christ's sake.
They knew too their own poverty, Rup: "knowing themselves to be sinners, and that they were justified only by faith in Jesus Christ." When the rest were cast out "of the midst of her," these should be left "in the midst of her" (the words stand in contrast with one another) in the bosom of the Church. "And they shall trust in the name of the Lord." "As they looked to be justified only in the Name of Christ," and (Dionysius) "trusted in the grace and power of God alone, not in any power or wisdom or eloquence or riches of this world, they converted the world to a faith above nature." Cyril: "Conformed in this too to Christ. Who for our sakes became poor and almost neglected both His divine glory and the supereminence of His nature, to subject Himself to the condition of a servant. So then those instructed in His laws after His example, think humbly of themselves, They became most exceedingly loved of God, and chiefly the divine disciples, who were set as lights of the world."
Zephaniah 3:13
zep 3:13
The remnant of Israel - The same poor people, the "true Israel" of whom God said, "I leave over" (the word is the same) "a poor people," few, compared with the rest who were blinded; of whom the Lord said, "I know whom I have chosen" Joh 13:18. These "shall not do iniquity nor speak lies." Cyril: "This is a spiritual adorning, a most beautiful coronet of glorious virtues. For where meekness and humility are and the desire of righteousness, and the tongue unlearns vain words and sinful speech, and is the instrument of strict truth, there dawns a bright and most perfect virtue. And this beseems those who are in Christ. For the beauty of piety is not seen in the Law, but gleams forth in the power of Evangelic teachings."
Our Lord said of Nathanael, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile" Joh 1:47, and to the Apostles, "I send you forth as sheep among wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves" Mat 10:16; and of the first Christians it is said, "they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house did eat their merit with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people" Act 2:46-47. This is the character of Christians, as such, and it was at first fulfilled; "whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin" Jo1 3:9; "whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not" Jo1 5:18. An Apologist, at the close of the second century, could appeal to the Roman Emperor , that no Christian was found among their criminals, "unless it be only as a Christian, or, if he be anything else, he is immediately no longer a Christian. We alone then are innocent! What wonder if this be so, of necessity? And truly of necessity it is so. Taught innocence by God, we both know it perfectly, as being revealed by a perfect Master; and we keep it faithfully, as being committed to us by an Observer, Who may not be despised." : "Being so vast a multitude of men, almost the greater portion of every state, we live silently and modestly, known perhaps more as individuals than as a body, and to be known by no other sign than the reformation of our former sins."
Now in the Church, which "our earth dimm'd eyes behold," we can but say, as in regard to the cessation of war under the Gospel, that God's promises are sure on His part, that still "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts," that the Gospel is "a power of God unto salvation" Rom 1:16, that "the preaching of the Cross is, unto us which are saved, the power of God" Co1 1:18; "unto them that are called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God" Co1 1:24; that those who will, "are kept by God through faith unto salvation" Pe1 1:5; but that now too "they are not all Israel, which are of Israel" Rom 9:6, and that "the faithlessness of man does not make the faith of God of none effect" Rom 3:3. : "The Church of God is universally holy in respect of all, by institutions and administrations of sanctity; the same Church is really holy in this world, in relation to all godly persons contained in it, by a real infused sanctity; the same is farther yet at the same time perfectly holy in reference to the saints departed and admitted to the presence of God; and the same Church shall hereafter be most completely holy in the world to come, when all the members, actually belonging to it, shall be at once perfected in holiness and completed in happiness."
Most fully shall this be fulfilled in the Resurrection. Rup.: "O blessed day of the Resurrection, in whose fullness no one will sin in word or deed! O great and blessed reward to every soul, which, although it hath now "done iniquity" and "spoken falsehood," yet willeth not to do it further! Great and blessed reward, that he shall now receive such. immovableness, as no longer to be able to do iniquity or speak falsehood, since the blessed soul, through the Spirit of everlasting love inseparably united with God its Creator, shall now no more be capable of an evil will!"
For they shall feed - On the hidden manna, Dionysius: "nourished most delicately by the Holy Spirit with inward delights, and spiritual food, the bread of life." In the things of the body too was "distribution made unto every man according as he had need" Act 4:35. "And they shall lie down" in the green pastures where He foldeth them; "and none shall make them afraid" Pe1 1:5, "for they were ready to suffer and to die for the Name of the Lord Jesus" Act 21:13. "They departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name" Act 5:41. Before the Resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit, how great was the fearfulness, unsteadfastness, weakness of the disciples; how great, after the infusion of the Holy Spirit, was their constancy and imperturbableness, it is delightsome to estimate in their Acts," when they "bare His Name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel" Act 9:15, and he who had been afraid of a little maid, said to the high priest, "We ought to obey God rather than men" Act 5:29. Cyril: "When Christ the Good Shepherd Who laid down His life for His sheep, shone upon us, we are fed in gardens and pastured among lilies, and lie down in folds; for we are folded in Churches and holy shrines, no one scaring or spoiling us, no wolf assailing nor lion trampling on us, no robber breaking through, no one invading us, to steal and kill and destroy; but we abide in safety and participation of every good, being in charge of Christ the Saviour of all."
Zephaniah 3:14
zep 3:14
Sing, O daughter of Sion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem - Very remarkable throughout all these verses is the use of the sacred number three, secretly conveying to the thoughtful soul the thought of Him, Father Son and Holy Spirit, the Holy and Undivided Trinity by whose operation these things shall be. Threefold is the description of their being freed from sins:
(1) they shall "not do iniquity,"
(2) "nor speak lies,"
(3) "neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth."
Threefold their blessedness; They shall:
(1) "feed,"
(2) "lie down,"
(3) "none make them afraid."
Threefold the exhortation to joy here. (Rup.): "Sing to God the Father; 'shout' to God the Son; 'be glad and rejoice' in God the Holy Spirit, which Holy Trinity is One God, from whom thou hast received it that thou art:
(1) 'the daughter of Zion'
(2) 'Israel'
(3) 'the daughter of Jerusalem'
'The daughter of Zion' by faith, 'Israel' by hope, 'Jerusalem' by charity." And this hidden teaching of that holy mystery is continued; "The Lord," God the Father, "hath taken away thy judgments; He God" the Son, "hath cast out (cleared quite away) thine enemy; the king of Israel, the Lord," the Holy Spirit, "is in the midst of thee!" Zep 3:15. The promise is threefold:
(1) "thou shalt not see evil anymore"
(2) "fear thou not"
(3) "let not thine hands be slack"
The love of God is threefold:
(1) "He will rejoice over thee with joy"
(2) "He will rest in His love"
(3) "He will joy over thee with singing"
Again the words in these four verses are so framed as to be "ful"- filled in the end. All in this life are but shadows of that fullness. First, whether the Church or the faithful soul, she is summoned by all her names, "daughter of Zion" ("the thirsty" athirst for God) "Israel" ("Prince with God") "Jerusalem" ("City of Peace"). By all she is called to the fullest joy in God with every expression and every feeling. "Sing;" it is the inarticulate, thrilling, trembling burst of joy; "shout;" again the inarticulate yet louder swell of joy, a trumpet-blast; and then too, deep within, "be glad," the calm even joy of the inward soul; "exult," the triumph of the soul which cannot contain itself for joy; and this, "with the whole heart," no corner of it not pervaded with joy. The ground of this is the complete removal of every evil, and the full presence of God.
Zephaniah 3:15
zep 3:15
The Lord hath taken away thy judgments - Her own, because brought upon her by her sins. But when God takes away the chastisements in mercy, He removes and forgives the sin too. Else, to remove "the judgments" only, would be to abandon the sinner. "He hath cast out," literally, "cleared quite away" , as a man clears away all hindrances, all which stands in the way, so that there should be none whatever left - "thine enemy;" the one enemy, from whom every hindrance to our salvation comes, as He saith, "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. The King of Israel, even the Lord" Joh 12:31, Christ the Lord, "is in the midst of thee," of whom it is said, "He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them" Rev 7:15, and who Himself saith, "Lo I am with you always unto the end of the world" Mat 28:20. "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of you" Mat 18:20.
He who had removed "from the midst of her" the proud, Who had left "in the midst of her" those with whom He dwelleth, shall Himself dwell "in the midst of her" in mercy, as He had before in judgment Mat 18:11-12, Mat 18:15, Mat 18:5. He cleanseth the soul for His indwelling, and so dwelleth in the mansion which He had prepared for Himself. "Thou shalt not see evil anymore." For even the remains of evil, while we are yet in the flesh, are overruled, and "work together to good to those who love God" Rom 8:28. They cannot separate between the soul and Christ. Rather, He is nearer to her in them. We are bidden to "count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations" Jam 1:2, for all sorrows are but medicine from a father's hand. : "And truly our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with Christ, and our door to enter into eternal life is gladly to die with Christ, that we may rise again from death and dwell with Him in everlasting life."
So in the Revelation, it is first said that God should dwell with His people, and then that all pain shall cease. "Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them and be their God. And God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be anymore pain, for the former things are passed away" Rev 21:3-4. Cyril: "In the inmost meaning of the words, he could not but bid her rejoice and be exceeding glad and rejoice with her whole heart, her sins being done away through Christ. For the holy and spiritual Zion, the Church, the multitude of believers, is justified in Christ alone, and we are saved by Him and from Him, escaping the harms of our invisible enemies, and having in the midst of us the King and God of all, Who appeared in our likeness, the Word from God the Father, through whom we see not evil, that is, are freed from all who could do us evil. For He is the worker of our acceptableness, our peace, our wall, the bestower of incorruption, the dispenser of crowns, Who lighteneth the assaults of devils, Who giveth us to 'tread on serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy' Luk 10:19 - through whom we are in good hope of immortality and life, adoption and glory, through whom we shall not see evil anymore."
Zephaniah 3:16
zep 3:16
In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not - For "perfect love casteth out fear" Joh 4:18; from where he saith, "Fear not, little flock; it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" Luk 12:32. Who then and what should the Church or the faithful soul fear, since "mightier is He that is in her, than he that is in the world? And to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack," through faint-heartedness (see Heb 12:12), but work with all thy might; be ready to do or bear anything; since Christ worketh with, in, by thee, and "in due time we shall reap, if we faint not" Gal 6:9.
Zephaniah 3:17
zep 3:17
The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save - What can He then not do for thee, since He is Almighty? What will He not do for thee, since "He will save?" whom then should we fear? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" Rom 8:31. But then was He especially "in the midst of" us, when God "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth" Joh 1:14. Thenceforth He ever is in the midst of His own. He with the Father and the Holy Spirit "come unto them and make Their abode with them" Joh 14:23, so that they are "the temple of God. He will save," as He saith, "My Father is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are One" Joh 10:29-30. Of the same time of the Christ, Isaiah saith almost in the same words; "Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees, Say to them that are of a feeble heart, Be strong, fear not, behold your God will come, He will come and save you" Isa 35:3-4; and of the Holy Trinity, "He will save us" Isa 33:22.
He will rejoice, over thee with joy - Love, joy, peace in man are shadows of that which is in God, by whom they are created in man. Only in God they exist undivided, uncreated. Hence, God speaks after the manner of men, of that which truly is in God. God joyeth "with an uncreated joy" over the works of His Hands or the objects of His Love, as man joyeth over the object of "his" love. So Isaiah saith, "As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee" Isa 62:5. As with uncreated love the Father resteth in good pleasure in His well-beloved Son, so "God is well-pleased with the sacrifices of loving deeds" Heb 13:16. and, "the Lord delighteth in thee" Isa 62:4; and, "I will rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in My people" Isa 65:19; and, "the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good" Deu 30:9. And so in a two-fold way God meeteth the longing of the heart of man.
The soul, until it hath found God, is evermore seeking some love to fill it, and can find none, since the love of God Alone can content it. Then too it longeth to be loved, even as it loveth. God tells it, that every feeling and expression of human love may be found in Him, whom if any love, he only "loveth Him, because He first loved us" Jo1 4:19. Every inward and outward expression or token of love are heaped together, to express the love of Him who broodeth and as it were yearneth "over" (it is twice repeated) His own whom He loveth. Then too He loveth thee as He biddeth thee to love Him; and since the love of man cannot be like the love of the Infinite God, He here pictures His own love in the words of man's love, to convey to his soul the oneness wherewith love unites her unto God. He here echoes in a manner the joy of the Church, to which He had called her Jo1 4:14, in words the self-same or meaning the same.
We have "joy" here for "joy" there; "singing" or the unuttered unutterable jubilee of the heart, which cannot utter in words its joy and love, and joys and loves the more in its inmost depths because it cannot utter it. A shadow of the unutterable, because Infinite Love of God, and this repeated thrice; as being the eternal love of the Everblessed Trinity. This love and joy the prophet speaks of, as an exuberant joy, one which boundeth within the inmost self, and again is wholly "silent in His love," as the deepest, tenderest, most yearning love broods over the object of its love, yet is held still in silence by the very depth of its love; and then, again, breaks forth in outward motion, and leaps for joy, and uttereth what it cannot form in words, for truly the love of God in its unspeakable love and joy is past belief, past utterance, past thought. Rup.: "Truly that joy wherewith 'He will be silent in His love,' that exultation wherewith 'He will joy over thee with singing, 'Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man' Co1 2:9."
The Hebrew word also contains the meaning, "He in His love shall make no mention of past sins, He shall not bring them up against thee, shall not upbraid thee, yea, shall not remember them" Jer 31:34; Jer 33:8; Mic 7:18. It also may express the still, unvarying love of the Unchangeable God. And again trow the very silence of God, when He seemeth not to hear, as He did not seem to hear Paul, is a very fruit of His love. Yet that entire forgiveness of sins, and that seeming absence are but ways of showing His love. Hence, God speaks of His very love itself, "He will be silent in His love," as, before and after, "He will rejoice, He will joy over thee."
In the next few verses Zep 3:18-21 still continuing the number "three," the prophecy closes with the final reversal of all which, in this imperfect state of things, seems turned upside down, when those who now mourn shall be comforted, they who now bear reproach and shame shall have glory, and those who now afflict the people of God shall be undone.
Zephaniah 3:18
zep 3:18
I will gather them that are sorrowful - for the solemn assembly, in which they were to "rejoice" Lev 23:40; Deu 12:12, Deu 12:18; Deu 16:11; Deu 27:7 before God and which in their captivity God made to cease. "They were of thee" Lam 1:4; Lam 2:6, the true Israel who were "grieved for the affliction of Joseph; to whom the reproach of it was a burden" Amo 6:6 (rather , 'on whom reproach was laid'): for this "reproach of Christ is greater riches than the treasures of Egypt," and such shall inherit the blessing, "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you and east out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake; rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy, for, behold your reward is great in heaven" Luk 6:22-23.
Zephaniah 3:19
zep 3:19
Behold, at that time I will undo - (Literally, I deal with . While God punisheth not, He seemeth to sit still Isa 18:4, be silent Hab 1:13, asleep Psa 44:23. Then He shall act, He shall "deal" according to their deserts with "all," evil men or devils, "that afflict thee," His Church. The prophecy looked for a larger fulfillment than the destruction of Jerusalem, since the Romans who, in God's Hands, avenged the blood of His saints, themselves were among those who "afflicted her." "And will save her," the flock or sheep "that halteth" (see Mic 4:6-7), Dionysius: "imperfect in virtue and with trembling faith," "and gather," like a good and tender shepherd, "her that was driven out" (see Isa 40:11); scattered and dispersed through persecutions. All infirmities within shall be healed; all troubles without, removed.
And I will get them praise and fame - (Literally, I will make them a praise and a name) "in every land where they have been put to shame." . Throughout the whole world have they been "the offscourings of all things" Co1 4:13; throughout the whole world should their praise be, as it is said, "Thou shalt make them princes in all lands" Psa 45:16. One of themselves saith, "Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of this world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are" Co1 1:26-28. Rup.: "These He maketh a praise and a name there, where they were without name and dispraised, confounding by them and bringing to nought those wise and strong and mighty, in whose sight they were contemptible."
Zephaniah 3:20
zep 3:20
At that time will I bring you in - that is, into the one fold, the one Church, the one "Household of God, even in the time that I gather you." "That time" is the whole time of the Gospel; the one "day of salvation," in which all who shall ever be gathered, shall be brought into the new Jerusalem. These words were fulfilled, when, at our Lord's first Coming, the remnant, the true Israel, those "ordained to eternal life" were brought in. It shall be fulfilled again, when "the fullness of the Gentiles shall be "come in," and so all Israel shall be saved" Rom 11:25-26. It shall most perfectly be fulfilled at the end, when there shall be no going out of those once "brought" in, and those who have gathered others into the Church, shall be "a name and a praise among all people of the earth," those whom God hath "redeemed out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation" Rev 5:9, shining like stars forever and ever.
When I turn back your captivity - Rup.: "That conversion, then begun, now perfected, when the dead shall rise and they shall be placed on the right hand, soon to receive the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. O mighty spectacle of the reversed captivity of those once captives; mighty wonder at their present blessedness, as they review the misery of their past captivity!" "Before your eyes," so that we shall see what we now believe and hope for, the end of all our sufferings, chastisements, losses, achings of the heart, the fullness of our Redemption. That which our eyes have looked for, "our eyes shall behold and not another," the everliving God as He is, face to Face; "saith the Lord," Who is the Truth Itself, all Whose words will be fulfilled. "heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Words shall not pass away" Mar 13:31, saith He who is "God blessed forever." And so the prophet closes in the thought of Him, Whose Name is I am, the Unchangeable, the everlasting Rest and Center of those who, having been once captives and halting and scattered among the vanities of the world, turn to Him, to whom be glory and thanksgiving forever and ever. Amen.
Haggai Introduction
Haggai
hag 0:0
Introduction to Haggai
Haggai ישׁישׁי yeshı̂yshây, the termination "-ai" is more frequently an abbreviation of the name of God which enters so largely into Hebrew names, as indeed we have חגיה chaggı̂yâh, Ch1 6:30. And this occurs not only, when the first part of the word is a verb, אחסבי 'ăchassebay, יהדי yehedday, יהמי yı̂hemay, יעני ya‛enay, יעשׂי ya‛ăs'ay, אחזי 'achezay, ישׁמרי yı̂shemeray, יריבי yerı̂ybay, יאתרי ye'ateray (as Kohler observes p. 2.), but when it is a noun, as מתני matenay, הדי hı̂dday, אמתי 'ămı̂tay, שׁלמי shalemay, צלתי tsı̂lletay (coll. מתניה mattaneyâh, and מתניהוּ mattaneyâhû), שׁמשׁי shı̂meshay, Ezra 4. פעלתי pe‛ulletay Ch1 26:5 perhaps שׁבתי shabbetay, שׁטרי shı̂ṭeray or again אתי 'ı̂ttay.) is the oldest of the three-fold band, to whom, after the captivity, the Word of God came, and by whom He consecrated the beginnings of this new condition of the chosen people.
He gave them these prophets, connecting their spiritual state after their return with that before the captivity, not leaving them wholly desolate, nor Himself without witness. He withdrew them about 100 years after, but some 420 years before Christ came, leaving His people to yearn the more for Him, of whom all the prophets spoke. Haggai himself seems to have almost finished his earthly course, before he was called to be a prophet; and in four months his office was closed. He speaks as one who had seen the first house in its glory Hag 2:3, and so was probably among the very aged men, who were the links between the first and the last, and who laid the foundation of the house in tears Ezr 3:12. After the first two months Zechariah first prophesies in the 8th month Zac 1:1.
Haggai resumes at the close of the 9th month and there ends Hag 2:10, Hag 2:20. On the same day in the 11th month, the series of visions were given to Zechariah Zac 1:7.) of his office, Zechariah, in early youth, was raised up to carry on his message; yet after one brief prophecy was again silent, until the aged prophet had ended the words which God gave him. Yet in this brief space he first stirred up the people in one month to rebuild the temple , prophesied of its glory through the presence of Christ Hag 2:1-9, yet taught that the presence of what was holy sanctified not the unholy, Hag 2:12. and closes in Him who, when heaven and earth shall be shaken, shall abide, and they whom God hath chosen in Him. Hag 2:20-23.)
It has been the custom of critics, in whose eyes the prophets were only poets , to speak of the style of Haggai as "tame, destitute of life and power," showing "a marked decline in" what they call "prophetic inspiration." The style of the sacred writers is, of course, conformed to their mission. prophetic descriptions of the future are but incidental to the mission of Haggai. Preachers do not speak in poetry, but set before the people their faults or their duties in vivid earnest language. Haggai sets before the people vividly their negligence and its consequences; he arrests their attention by his concise questions; at one time retorting their excuses Hag 1:4; at another asking them abruptly, in God's name, to say why their troubles came Hag 1:9.
Or he puts a matter of the law to the priests, that they may draw the inference, before he does it himself Hag 2:12-13. Or he asks them, what human hope had they Hag 2:19, before he tells them of the divine. Or he asks them (what was in their heart), "Is not this house poor?" Hag 2:3 before he tells them of the glory in store for it. At one time he uses heaped and condensed antitheses Hag 1:6, to set before them one thought; at another he enumerates, one by one, how the visitation of God fell upon all they had Hag 1:11, so that there seemed to be no end to it. At another, he uses a conciseness, like John Baptist's cry, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," in his repeated Hag 1:5-7. "Set your heart to your ways;" and then, with the same idiom, "set your heart" Hag 2:15-18 namely, to God's ways, what He had done upon disobedience, what He would do upon obedience. He bids them work for God, and then he expresses the acceptableness of that work to God, in the three words Hag 1:8, "And-I-will-take-pleasure in-it and-will-be-glorified." When they set themselves to obey, he encouraged them with the four words Hag 1:13, "I with-you saith the-Lord." This conciseness must have been still more impressive in his words, as delivered . We use many words, because our words are weak. Many of us can remember how the house of lords was hushed, so hear the few low, but sententious words of the aged general and statesman. But conceive the suggestive eloquence of those words, as a whole sermon, "Set your-heart on-your-ways."
Of distant prophecies there are only two Hag 2:6-9, Hag 2:21-23, so that the portion to be compared with the former prophets consists but of at most 7 verses. In these the language used is of the utmost simplicity. Haggai had only one message as to the future to convey, and he enforced it by the repeated use of the same word , that temporal things should be shaken, the eternal should remain, as Paul sums it up Heb 12:26. He, the long-yearned for, the chosen of God, the signet on His hand, should come; God would fill that house, so poor in their eyes, with glory, and there would He give peace. Haggai had an all-containing but very simple message to give from God. Any ornament of diction would but have impaired and obscured its meaning. The two or three slight idioms, noticed by one after another, are, though slight, forcible.
The office of Haggai was mainly to bring about one definite end, which God, who raised him up and inspired him, accomplished by him. It is in the light of this great accomplishment of the work entrusted to him on the verge of man's earthly course, that his power and energy are to be estimated. The words which are preserved in his book are doubtless (as indeed was the case as to most of the prophets) the representatives and embodiment of many like words, by which, during his short office, he roused the people from their dejection indifference and irreligious apathy, to the restoration of the public worship of God in the essentials of the preparatory dispensation.
Great lukewarmness had been shown in the return. The few looked mournfully to the religious center of Israel, the ruined temple, the cessation of the daily sacrifice, and, like Daniel Dan 9:20, "confessed" their "sin and the sin of their people Israel, and presented their supplication before the Lord their God for the holy mountain of their God." The most part appear, as now, to have been taken up with their material prosperity, and, at best, to have become injured to the cessation of their symbolic worship, connected, as it was, with the declaration of the forgiveness of their sins. Then too, God connected His declaration of pardon with certain outward acts: they became indifferent to the cessation of those acts, because few returned. The indifference was even remarkable among those, most connected with the altar. Of the 24 1 Chr. 24:3-19. orders of priests, only 16, 4 orders Ezr 2:36-39. returned; of the Levites, only 74 individuals Ezr 2:40; while of those assigned to help them, the Nethinim and the children of Solomon's servants, there were 392 Ezr 2:58.
This coldness continued at the return of Ezra. The edict of Artaxerxes Ezr 7:13-14, as suggested by Ezra, was more pious than those appointed to the service of God. In the first instance, no Levite answered to the invitation Ezr 8:15; on the special urgency and message of Ezra Ezr 8:18-19, "by the good hand of God upon us they brought us a man of understanding," of the sons of Levi; some 3 or 4 chief Levites; their sons and brethren; in all, 38; but of the Nethinim, nearly six times as many, 220 Ezr 8:20. These who thought more of temporal prosperity than of their high spiritual nobility and destination, had flourished doubtless in that exile as they have in their present homelessness, as "wanderers among the nations." Haman calculated apparently on being able to "pay out" of their spoils "ten thousand talents of silver (Est 3:9. Ahasuerus apparently, in acceding to Haman's proposal, made over to him the lives and property of the Jews. The silver is given unto thee the people also, to do with them as it seemeth good to thee. Est 3:11). The Jew's property, was confiscated with their lives. On the contrary, it was noticed, that the Jews, when permitted to defend their lives, did not lay their hands on the prey, which, by the king's decree, was granted to them, with authority to take the lives of those who should assault them. Est 8:11; Est 9:10, Est 9:15-16.) some 300,000,000 British pounds, two-thirds of the annual revenue of the Persian Empire "into the king's treasuries."
The numbers who had returned with Zerubbabel had been (as had been foretold of all restorations) only "a remnant." There were 42,360 free men, with 7,337 male or female slaves Ezr 2:64-65; Neh 7:66-67. In the time of Augustus, it was no uncommon thing for a person to have 200 slaves (Hor. Sat. i. 9. 11) it is said that very many Romans possessed 10,000 or 20,000 slaves. Athenaeus vi. p. 272). The whole population which returned was not more than 212,000, free men and women and children. The proportion of slaves is about 112, since in their case adults of both sexes were counted. The enumeration is minute, giving the number of their horses, mules, camels, asses. . The chief of the fathers however were not poor, since (though unspeakably short of the wealth, won by David and consecrated to the future temple) they Ezr 2:68-69 offered freely for the house of God, to set it up in its place, a sum about 117,100 British pounds of our money. They had, beside, a grant from Cyrus, which he intended to cover the expenses of the building, the height and breadth whereof were determined by royal edict Ezr 4:3.
The monarch, however, of an eastern empire had, in proportion to its size, little power over his subordinates or the governors of the provinces, except by their recall or execution, when their oppressions or peculations notably exceeded bounds. The returned colony, from the first, were in fear of the nations, "the peoples of those countries" Ezr 3:3, their old enemies probably; and the first service," the altar to offer burnt-offerings thereon," was probably a service of fear rather than of love, as it is said Ezr 3:3, "they set up the altar upon its bases, for it was in fear upon them from the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt-offerings thereon unto the Lord." They hoped apparently to win the favor of God, that He might, as of old, protect them against their enemies. However, the work was carried on Ezr 3:7 "according to the grant that they had of Cyrus king of Persia" and the foundations of the temple were laid amidst mixed joy at the carrying on of the work thus far, and sorrow at its poverty, compared to the first temple Ezr 3:11-13.
The hostility of the Samaritans discouraged them. Mixed as the religion of the Samaritans was - its better element being the corrupt religion of the ten tribes, its worse the idolatries of the various nations, brought there in the reign of Esarhaddon - the returned Jews could not accept their offer to join in their worship, without the certainty of admitting, with them, the idolatries, for which they had been punished so severely. For the Samaritans pleaded the identity of the two religions Ezr 4:2, "Let us build with you, for we serve your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto Him since the days of Esarhaddon which brought us up hither." But in fact this mixed worship, in which Kg2 17:33 they feared the Lord and served their own gods, came to this, that Kg2 17:34 "they feared not the Lord, neither did they after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob." For God claims the undivided allegiance of His creatures "these Kg2 17:41, feared the Lord and served their graven images, both their children and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they to this day." But this worship included some of the most cruel abominations of pagandom, the sacrifice of their children to their gods Kg2 17:31.
The Samaritans, thus rejected, first themselves harassed the Jews in building, apparently by petty violence, as they did afterward in the rebuilding of the walls by Nehemiah "The people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and wore them out in building." This failing, they Ezr 4:5 "hired counselors" (doubtless at the Persian court), to "frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, until the reign of Darius king of Persia." The object of the intrigues was probably to intercept the supplies, which Cyrus had engaged to bestow, which could readily be effected in an eastern court without any change of purpose or any cognizance of Cyrus.
In the next reign of Ahashverosh (i. e., Khshwershe, a title of honor of Cambyses) Ezr 4:6 they wrote accusations against the Jews, seemingly without any further effect, since none is mentioned. Perhaps Cambyses, in his expedition to Egypt, knew more of the Jews, than the Samaritans thought, or he may have shrunk from changing his father's decree, contrary to the fundamental principles of Persism, not to alter any decree, which the sovereign (acting, as he was assumed to do, under the influence of Ormuzd) had written. Pseudo-Smerdis (who doubtless took the title of honor, Artachshatr) may, as an impostor, have well been ignorant of Cyrus' decree, to which no allusion is made Ezr 4:7. From him the Samaritans, through Rehum the chancellor, obtained a decree prohibiting, until further notice, the rebuilding of the city. The accusers had overreached themselves, for the ground of their accusation was, the former rebellions of the city Ezr 4:12-13, Ezr 4:15-16; the prohibition accordingly extended only to the city Ezr 4:19, Ezr 4:21, not to the temple.
However, having obtained the decree, they were not scrupulous about its application, and "made" the Jews "to cease Ezr 4:23 by arm and power," the governor of the Jews being apparently unable, the governor of the cis-Euphratensian provinces being unwilling, to help. As this, however, was, in fact, a perversion of the decree, the Jews were left free to build, and in the second year of Darius Hystaspis Ezr 5:1-2, "Haggai, and then Zechariah, prophesied in the name of the God of Israel" to Zerubbabel, the native governor, and Joshua the high priest, "and the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem; and they began to build the house of God in Jerusalem." Force was no longer used. Those engaged in building appealed to the edict of Cyrus; the edict was found at Ecbatana Ezr 6:2, and the supplies which Cyrus had promised, were again ordered. The difficulty was at the commencement. The people had been cowed perhaps at first by the violence of Rehum and his companions; but they had acquiesced readily in the illegal prohibition, and had Hag 1:9 run each to his own house, some of them to their Hag 1:4 "ceiled houses."
All, employers or employed, were busy on their husbandry. But nothing flourished. The laborers' wages disappeared, as soon as gained Hag 1:6. East and west wind alike brought disease to their grain; both, as threatened upon disobedience in the law Deu 28:22. The east wind scorched and dried it up ; the warm west wind turned the ears yellow and barren; the hail smote the vines, so that when the unfilled and mutilated clusters were pressed out, only two-fifths of the hoped-for produce was yielded; and of the grain, only one half Hag 2:16.
In the midst of this, God raised up an earnest preacher of repentance. Haggai was taught, not to promise anything at the first, but to set before them, what they had been doing, and what was its result Hag 2:5-11. He sets it before them in detail; tells them that God had so ordered it for their neglect of His service, and bids them to amend. He bids them quit their accustomed ways; "go up into the mountain; bring wood; build the house." Conceive in Christian England, after some potato disease, or foot-and-mouth-disease (in Scriptural language "a murrain among the cattle"), a preacher arising and bidding them, consider your ways, and as the remedy, not to look to any human means, but to do something, which would please Almighty God; and not preaching only but effecting what he preached. Yet such was Haggai. He stood among his people, his existence a witness of the truth of what he said; himself one, who had lived among the outward splendors of the former temple; a contemporary of those, who said Jer 7:4, "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these;" who had held it to be impossible that Judah should be carried captive; who had prophesied the restoration of the vessels of God Jer 27:16; Jer 28:3, which had been carried away, not, as God foretold, after the captivity, but as an earnest that the fuller captivity should not be Jer 28:2; yet who had himself, according to the prophecies of the prophets of those days, been carried into captivity, and was now a part of that restoration which God had promised.
He stood among them "in gray-haired might," bade them do, what he bade them, in the name of God, to do; and they did it. When they had set about the work, he assured them of the presence of God with them Hag 1:13. A month later, when they were seemingly discouraged at its poorness, he promised them in God's name, that its glory would be greater than that of Solomon's Hag 2:3-9. Three days after, in contrast with the visitations up to that time, while there was as yet no token of any change, he promised them in the name of God Hag 2:19, "From this day will I bless you."
He himself apparently saw only the commencement of the work, for his prophecies lay within the second year of Darius and the temple was not completed until the sixth Ezr 6:15. Even the favorable rescript of Darius must have arrived after his last prophecy, since it was elicited by the inquiry of the governor, consequent upon the commenced rebuilding Ezr 5:3, only three months before his office closed Hag 1:15; Hag 2:10, Hag 2:20.
While this restoration of the public worship of God in its intregrity was his main office, yet he also taught by parable Hag 2:10-15 that the presence of what was outwardly holy did not, in itself, hallow those, among whom it was; but was itself unhallowed by inward unholiness.
Standing, too, amid the small handful of returned exiles, not, altogether, more than the inhabitants of Sheffield, he foretold, in simple all-comprehending words, that central gift of the Gospel Hag 2:9, "In this place will I give peace, saith the Lord." So had David, the sons of Korah, Micah, Isaiah, Ezekiel prophesied Psa 72:3-7; Psa 85:8, Psa 85:10; Mic 5:5; Isa 9:6-7; Isa 26:12; Isa 32:17; Isa 52:7; Isa 53:5; Isa 54:10, Isa 54:13; Isa 57:19; Isa 60:17; Isa 66:12; Eze 34:25; Eze 37:26, but the peace was to come, not then, but in the days of the Messiah. Other times had come, in which the false prophets had said Jer 6:14; Jer 8:11; Jer 14:13, "Peace, peace, when there was no peace;" when God had taken away His peace from Jer 16:5; "this people." And now, when the chastisements were fulfilled, when the land lay desolate, when every house of Jerusalem lay burned with fire Ch2 36:19 and the "blackness of ashes" alone "marked where they stood;" when the walls were broken down so that, even when leave was given to rebuild them, it seemed to their enemies a vain labor to Neh 4:2; "revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish which were burned;" when Neh 2:3 "the place of their fathers' sepulchres lay waste, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire;" when, for their sakes, Zion was Mic 3:12 "plowed as a field" and "Jerusalem was become heaps" - let any one picture to himself the silver-haired prophet standing, at first, alone, rebuking the people, first through their governor and the high priest, then the collected multitude, in words, forceful from their simplicity, and obeyed! And then let them think whether anything of human or even divine eloquence was lacking, when the words flew straight like arrows to the heart, and roused the people to do at once, amid every obstacle, amid every down-heartedness or outward poverty, that for which God sent them. The outward ornament of words would have been misplaced, when the object was to bid a downhearted people, in the name of God, to do a definite work. Haggai sets before his people cause and effect; that they denied to God what was His, and that God denied to them what was His to give or to withhold. His sermon was, in His words whom he foretold; "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." He spoke in the name of God, and was obeyed.
"The Holy Spirit, who spake by the mouth of the prophets, willed that he by a foreboding name should be called Haggai, i. e., 'festive,' according to the subject whereof He should speak by his mouth. Yet was there not another festiveness in the prophet's heart, than the joy which he had or could have with the people, from the rebuilding of that temple made with hands, again to be defiled and burned with fire irrecoverably? Be it that the rebuilding of that temple, which he saw before him, was a matter of great festive joy; yet not in or for itself, but for Him, the festive joy of saints and angels and men, Christ; because when the temple should be rebuilt, the walls also of the city should be rebuilt and the city again inhabited and the people be united in one, of whom Christ should be born, fulfilling the truth of the promise made to Abraham and David and confirmed by an oath. So then we, by aid of the Holy Spirit, so enter upon what Haggai here speaketh, as not doubting that he altogether aimeth at Christ. And so may we in some sort be called or be Haggais, i. e., 'festive,' by contemplating that same, which because he should contemplate, he was, by a divine foreboding, called Haggai."
Bible
Haggai Chapter 1
Haggai 1:1
hag 1:1
In the second year of Darius - , i. e., Hystaspis. The very first word of prophecy after the captivity betokens that they were restored, not yet as before, yet so, as to be hereafter, more than before. The earthly type, by God's appointment, was fading away, that the heavenly truth might dawn. The earthly king was withdrawn, to make way for the heavenly. God had said of Jeconiah Jer 22:30, "No man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling anymore in Israel:" and so now prophecy begins to be dated by the years of a foreign earthly ruler, as in the Baptism of the Lord Himself Luk 3:1. Yet God gives back in mercy more than He withdraws in chastisement. The earthly rule is suspended, that people might look out more longingly for the heavenly.
In the sixth month - They counted by their own months, beginning with Nisan, the first of the ecclesiastical year (which was still used for holy purposes and in sacred history), although, having no more any kings, they dated their years by those of the empire, to which they were subject (See Zac 1:7; Zac 7:1) in the sixth month, part of our July and August, their harvest was past, and the dearth, which they, doubtless ascribed (as we do) to the seasons, and which Haggai pointed out to be a judgment from God, had set in for this year also. The months being lunar, the first day of the month was the festival of the new moon, a popular feast Pro 7:20 which their forefathers had kept Isa 1:13-14, while they neglected the weightier matters of the law, and which the religious in Israel had kept, even while separated from the worship at Jerusalem (Kg2 4:23; add Amo 8:5; Hos 2:11). In its very first day, when the grief for the barren year was yet fresh, Haggai was stirred to exhort them to consider their way; a pattern for Christian preachers, to bring home to people's souls the meaning of God's judgments. God directs the very day to be noted, in which He called the people anew to build His temple, both to show the readiness of their obedience, and a precedent to us to keep in memory days and seasons, in which He stirs our souls to build more diligently His spiritual temple in our souls .
By the hand of Haggai - God does almost everything which He does for a person through the hands of people. He commits His words and works for people into the hands of human beings as His stewards, to dispense faithfully to His household. Luk 12:42. Hence, He speaks so often of the law, which He commanded "by the hand of Moses;" but also as to other prophets, Nathan Sa2 12:25, Ahijal, Kg1 12:15; Kg1 14:16; Ch2 10:15. Jehu Kg1 16:7, Jonah Kg2 14:25, Isaiah Isa 20:2, Jeremiah Jer 37:2, and the prophets generally. Hos. 7:20; Ch2 29:25 the very prophets of God, although gifted with a Divine Spirit, still were willing and conscious instruments in speaking His words.
Unto Zerubbabel - (so called from being born in Babylon) "the son of Sheatiel." By this genealogy Zerubbabel is known in the history of the return from the captivity in Ezra and Nehemiah Ezr 3:2, Ezr 3:8; Ezr 5:2; Neh 12:1. God does not say by Jeremiah, that Jeconiah should have no children, but that he should in his lifetime be childless, as it is said of those married to the uncle's or brother's widow Lev 20:20-21, "they shall die childless." Jeremiah rather implies that he should have children, but that they should die untimely before him. For he calls Jeconiah Jer 22:30, "a man who shall not prosper in his days; for there shall not prosper a man of his seed, sitting on the throne of David, and ruling anymore in Israel." He should die (as the word means) "bared" of all, alone and desolate. The own father of Shealtiel appears to have been Neri Luk 3:27, of the line of Nathan son of David; not, of the line of the kings of Judah. Neri married, one must suppose, a daughter of Assir, son of Jeconiah Ch1 3:17-19 whose grandson Shealtiel was; and Zerubbabel was the own son of Pedaiah, the brother of Shealtiel, as whose son he was in the legal genealogy inscribed, according to the law as to those who die childless Deu 23:5-10, or as having been adopted by Shealtiel being himself childless, as Moses was called the son of the daughter of Pharaoh Exo 2:10. So broken was the line of the unhappy Jehoiachin, two thirds of whose own life was passed in the prison Jer 52:31, into which Nebuchadnezzar did cast him.
Governor of Judah - The foreign name betokens that the civil rule was now held from a foreign power, although Cyrus showed the Jews the kindness of placing one of themselves, of royal extraction also, as his deputy over them.
The lineage of David is still in authority, connecting the present with the past, but the earthly kingdom had faded away. Under the name "Sheshbazzar" Zerubbabel is spoken of both as the "prince" and the "governor" Ezr 5:14, of Judah. With him is joined "Joshuah the son of Josedech, the high priest," whose father went into captivity Ch1 6:15, when his grandfather Seraiah was slain by Nebuchadnezzar Kg2 25:18-21. The priestly line is also preserved. Haggai addresses these two, the one of the royal, the other of the priestly, line, as jointly responsible for the negligence of the people; he addresses the people only through them. Together, they are types of Him, the true King and true priest, Christ Jesus, who by the resurrection raised again the true temple, His Body, after it had been destroyed .
Haggai 1:2
hag 1:2
Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say - Not Zerubbabel or Joshua, but "this people." He says not, "My people," but reproachfully "this people," as, in acts, disowning Him, and so deserving to be disowned by Him. "The time is not come," literally "It is not time to come, time for the house of the Lord to be built" . They might yet sit still; the time for them "to come" was not yet, for not yet was the "time for the house of the Lord to be built." Why it was not time, they did not say. The government did not help them; the original grant by Cyrus Ezr 3:7 was exhausted; the Samaritans hindered them, because they would not own them, (amid their mishmash of worship, "worshiping," our Lord tells them Joh 4:22, "they know not what"), as worshipers of the same God. It was a bold excuse, if they said, that the 70 years during which the temple was to lie waste, were not yet ended.
The time had long since come, when, 16 years before, Cyrus had given command that the house of God should be built. The prohibition to build, under Artaxerxes or Pseudo-Smerdis, applied directly to the city and its walls, not to the temple, except so far as the temple itself, from its position, might be capable of being used as a fort, as it was in the last siege of, Jerusalem. Yet in itself a building of the size of the temple, apart from outer buildings, could scarcely so be used. The prohibition did not hinder the building of stately private houses, as appears from Haggai's rebuke. The hindrances also, whatever they were, had not begun with that decree. The death of Pseudo-Smerdis had now, for a year, set them free, if had they had any zeal for the glory and service of God. Otherwise, Haggai would not blamed them. God, knowing that He would bend the heart of Darius, as He had that of Cyrus, requires the house to be built without the king's decree. It was built in faith, that God would bring through what He had enjoined, although outward things were as adverse now as before. And what He commanded He prospered Ezra 5-6.
There was indeed a second fulfillment of 70 years, from the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar 586 b.c., to its consecration in the 6th year of Darius 516 b.c. But this was through the willfulness of man, prolonging the desolation decreed by God, and Jeremiah's prophecy relates to the people not to the temple.
"The prophet addresses his discourse to the chiefs (in Church and state) and yet accuses directly, not their listlessness but that of the people, in order both to honor them before the people and to teach that their sins are to be blamed privately not publicly, lest their authority should be injured, and the people incited to rebel against them; and also to shew that this fault was directly that of the people, whom he reproves before their princes, that, being openly convicted before them, it might be ashamed, repent, and obey God; but that indirectly this fault touched the chiefs themselves, whose office it was to urge the people to this work of God" . "For seldom is the prince free from the guilt of his subjects, as either assenting to, or winking at them, or not coercing them, though able."
Since also Christians are the temple of God, all this prophecy of Haggai is applicable to them . "When thou seest one who has lapsed thinking and preparing to build through chastity the temple which he had before destroyed through passion, and yet delaying day by day, say to him, 'Truly thou also art of the people of the captivity, and sayest, The time is not yet come for building the house of the Lord.' Whoso has once settled to restore the temple of God, to him every time is suited for building, and the prince, Satan, cannot hinder, nor, the enemies around. As soon as being thyself converted, thou callest upon the name of the Lord, He will say, "Behold Me" . "To him who willeth to do right, the time is always present; the good and right-minded have power to fulfill what is to the glory of God, in every time and place."
Haggai 1:3
hag 1:3
And the word of the Lord came - o "Before, he prophesied nothing, but only recited the saying of the people; now he refutes it in his prophecy, and repeats, again and again, that he says this not of himself, but from the mind and mouth of God." It is characteristic of Haggai to inculcate thus frequently, that his words are not his own, but the words of God. Yet "the prophets, both in their threats and prophecies, repeat again and again, "Thus saith the Lord," teaching us, how we should prize the word of God, hang upon it, have it ever in our mouth, reverence, ruminate on, utter, praise it, make it our continual delight."
Haggai 1:4
hag 1:4
Is it time for you - You, being what you are, the creatures of God, "to dwell in your ceiled houses," more emphatically, in your houses, and those "ceiled," probably with costly woods, such as cedar . But where then was the excuse of want of means? They imitated, in their alleged poverty, what is spoken of as magnificent in their old kings, Solomon and Shallum, but not having, as Solomon first did (Kg1 6:9, ויספן), "covered the house of God with beams and rows of cedar" . "Will ye dwell in houses artificially adorned, not so much for use as for delight, and shall My dwelling-place, wherein was the Holy of holies, and the cherubim, and the table of showbread, be bestreamed with rains, desolated in solitude, scorched by the sun?"
"With these words carnal Christians are reproved, who have no glow of zeal for God, but are full of self-love, and so make no effort to repair, build, or strengthen the material temples of Christ, and houses assigned to His worship, when aged, ruinous, decaying or destroyed, but build for themselves curious, voluptuous, superfluous dwellings. In these the love of Christ gloweth not; these Isaiah threateneth, Isa 5:8, Isa 5:12. "Woe to you who join house to house and field to field, and regard not the work of the Lord!"
To David and Solomon the building of God's temple was their heart's desire; to early Christian Emperors, to the ages of faith, the building of Churches; now mostly, owners of lands build houses for this world's profit, and leave it to the few to build in view of eternity, and for the glory of God.
Haggai 1:5
hag 1:5
And now, thus saith the Lord of hosts; "Consider," (literally "set your heart upon) your ways," what they had been doing, what they were doing, and what those doings had led to, and would lead to. This is ever present to the mind of the prophets, as speaking God's words, that our acts are not only "ways" in which we go, each day of life being a continuance of the day before; but that they are ways which lead, somewhere in God's Providence and His justice; to some end of the "way," good or bad. So God says by Jeremiah Jer 21:8. "I set before you the way of life and the way of death;" and David Psa 16:11, "Thou wilt show me the path of life," where it follows, "In Thy presence is the fullness of joy and at Thy Right Hand there are pleasures forevermore;" and Solomon Pro 6:23, "Reproofs of instruction are the way of life;" and, he is in Pro 10:17, "the way of life who keepeth instruction; and he who forsaketh rebuke, erreth;" and Pro 15:24, "The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath;" and of the adulterous woman, Pro 7:27. "Her house are the ways of hell, going down to the chambers of death" and Pro 5:5-6, "her feet go down unto death; her steps take hold on hell; lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life." Again, Pro 14:12; Pro 16:25. "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, and the end thereof are the ways of death;" and contrariwise Pro 4:18, "The path of the righteous is a shining light, shining more and more until the mid-day" Pro 2:13. "The ways of darkness" are the ways which end in darkness; and when Isaiah says Isa 59:8, "The way of peace hast thou not known," he adds, "whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace." They who choose not peace for their way, shall not find peace in and for their end.
On these your ways, Haggai says, "set your hearts," not thinking of them lightly, nor giving a passing thought to them, but fixing your minds upon them; as God says to Satan Job 1:8, "Hast thou set thy heart on My servant Job?" and God is said to set His eye or His face upon man for good Jer 24:6; or for evil Jer 21:10, He speaks also, not of setting the mind, applying the understanding, giving the thoughts, but of "setting the heart," as the seat of the affections. It is not a dry weighing of the temporal results of their ways, but a loving dwelling upon them, for repentance without love is but the gnawing of remorse.
Set your heart on your ways; - i. e., your affections, thoughts, works, so as to be circumspect in all things; as the apostle Paul says Ti1 5:21, "Do nothing without forethought," i. e., without previous judgment of reason; and Solomon Pro 4:25, "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee;" and the son of Sirach, "Son, do nothing without counsel and when thou hast done it thou wilt not repent." For since, according to a probable proposition, nothing in human acts is indifferent, i. e., involving neither good nor ill deserts, they who do not thus set their hearts upon their ways, do they not daily incur almost countless sins, in thought, word, desire, deed, yea and by omission of duties? Such are all fearless persons who heed not to fulfill what is written Pro 4:23, 'Keep your heart with all watchfulness. '"
"He "sows much" to his own heart, but "brings in little," who by reading and hearing knows much of the heavenly commands, but by negligence in deeds bears little fruit. "He eats and is not satisfied," who, hearing the words of God, coveteth the gains or glory of the world. Well is he said not to be "satisfied," who eateth one thing, hungereth after another. He drinks and is not inebriated, who inclineth his ear to the voice of preaching, but changeth not his mind. For through inebriation the mind of those who drink is changed. He then who is devoted to the knowledge of God's word, yet still desireth to gain the things of the world, drinks and is not inebriated. For were he inebriated, no doubt he would have changed his mind and no longer seek earthly things, or love the vain and passing things which he had loved. For the Psalmist says of the elect Psa 36:8, "they shall be inebriated with the richness of Thy house," because they shall be filled with such love of Almighty God, that, their mind being changed, they seem to be strangers to themselves, fulfilling what is written Mat 16:24, 'If any will come after Me, let him deny himself. '"
Haggai 1:6
hag 1:6
Ye have sown much - The prophet expresses the habitualness of these visitations by a vivid present. He marks no time and so expresses the more vividly that it was at all times. It is one continually present evil. "Ye have sown much and there is a bringing in little; there is eating and not to satisfy; there is drinking and not to exhilarate; there is clothing and not to be warm It is not for the one or the other years, as, since the first year of Darius Hystaspis; it is one continued visitation, coordinate with one continued negligence. As long as the sin lasted, so long the punishment. The visitation itself was twofold; impoverished harvests, so as to supply less sustenance; and various indisposition of the frame, so that what would, by God's appointment in nature, satisfy, gladden, warm, failed of its effect. "And he that laboreth for hire, gaineth himself hire into a bag full of holes" (literally "perforated.") The labor pictured is not only fruitless, but wearisome and vexing. There is a seeming result of all the labor, something to allure hopes; but immediately it is gone. The pagan assigned a like baffling of hope as one of the punishments of hell , "Better and wiser to seek to be blessed by God, Who bestoweth on us all things. And this will readily come to those who choose to be of the same mind with Him and prefer what is for His glory to their own. For so saith the Saviour Himself to us Mat 6:33, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."
"He loses good deeds by evil acts, who takes account of his good works, which he hits before his eyes, and forgets the faults which creep in between; or who, after what is good, returns to what is vain and evil" . "Money is seen in the pierced bag, when it is cast in, but when it is lost, it is not seen. They then who look how much they give, but do not weigh how much they gain wrongly, cast their rewards into a pierced bag. Looking to the Hope of their confidence they bring them together; not looking, they lose them."
"They lose the fruit of their labor, by not persevering to the end, or by seeking human praise, or by vain glory within, not keeping spiritual riches under the guardianship of humility. Such are vain and unprofitable men, of whom the Saviour saith, Mat 6:2. 'Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. '"
Haggai 1:8
hag 1:8
Go up into the mountain - Not Mount Lebanon, from where the cedars had been brought for the first temple; from where also Zerubbabel and Joshua had procured some out of Cyrus' grant Ezr 3:7, at the first return from the captivity. They were not required to buy, expend, but simply to give their own labor. They were themselves to "go up to the mountain," i. e., the mountainous country where the trees grew, "and bring" them. So, in order to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, Ezra made a proclamation Neh 8:15 "in all their cities and in Jerusalem, go ye up to the mountain and bring leafy branches of vines, olives, myrtles, palms." The palms, anyhow, were timber. God required not goodly stones, such as had been already used, and such as hereafter, in the temple which was built, were the admiration even of disciples of Jesus Mat 24:1, but which were, for the wickedness of those who rejected their Saviour, "not to be left, one stone upon another." He required not costly gifts, but the heart. The neglect to build the temple was neglect of Himself, who ought to be worshiped there. His worship sanctified the offering; offerings were acceptable, only if made with a free heart.
And I will have pleasure in it - God, who has declared that He has no Mic 6:7 "pleasure in thousands of rams, ten thousands of rivers of oil," had delight in Psa 147:11 "them that feared Him," that are "upright in their way," Pro 11:20 that "deal truly" Pro 12:22 in the "prayer" of the "upright" Pro 15:8, and so in the temple too, when it should be built to His glory.
And will be glorified - o God is glorified in man, when man serves Him; in Himself, when He manifests aught of His greatness; in His great doings to His people Isa 26:15; Isa 44:23; Isa 60:21; Isa 61:3, as also in the chastisement of those who disobey Him Exo 14:4; Eze 28:22. God allows that glory, which shines ineffably throughout His creation, to be obscured here through man's disobedience, to shine forth anew on his renewed obedience. The glory of God, as it is the end of the creation, so is it His creature's supreme bliss. When God is really glorified, then can He show forth His glory, by His grace and acceptance. (Augustine, Serm. 380, n. 6.) "The glory of God is our glory. The more sweetly God is glorified, the more it profits us:" yet not our profit, but the glory of God is itself our end; so the prophet closes in that which is our end, "God will be glorified."
"Good then and well-pleasing to God is zeal in fulfilling whatever may appear necessary for the good condition of the Church and its building-up, collecting the most useful materials, the spiritual principles in inspired Scripture, whereby he may secure and ground the conception of God, and may shew that the way of the Incarnation was well-ordered, and may collect what pertains to accurate knowledge of spiritual erudition and moral goodness. Nay, each of us may be thought of, as the temple and house of God. For Christ "dwelleth in us" by the Spirit, and we are "temples of the living God," according to the Scripture Co2 6:16. Let each then build up his own heart by right faith, having the Saviour as the "precious foundation." And let him add thereto other materials, obedience, readiness for anything, courage, endurance, continence. "So being framed together by that which every joint supplieth, shall we become a holy temple, a habitation of God through the Spirit" Eph 4:16; Eph 2:21-22. But those who are slow to faith, or who believe but are sluggish in shaking off passions and sins and worldly pleasure, thereby cry out in a manner, The time is not come to build the house of the Lord."
Haggai 1:9
hag 1:9
Ye looked - , literally "a looking;" as though he said, it has all been one looking, "for much," for increase, the result of all sowing, in the way of nature: "and behold it came to little," i. e., less than was sown; as Isaiah denounced to them of old by God's word, Isa 5:10. "the seed of a homer shall yield an ephah," i. e., one tenth of what was sown. "And ye brought it home, and I blew upon it," so as to disperse it, as, not the wheat, but the chaff is blown before the wind. This, in whatever way it came to pass, was a further chastisement of God. The little seed which they brought in lessened through decay or waste. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. God asks by his prophet, what He asks in the awakened conscience Psa 39:11. "God with rebukes chastens man for sin." Conscience, when alive, confesses for "what" sin; or it asks itself, if memory does not supply the special sin. Unawakened, it complains about the excess of rain, the drought, the blight, the mildew, and asks, not itself, why, in God's Providence, these inflictions came in these years? They felt doubtless the sterility in contrast with the exceeding prolificalness of Babylonia, as they contrasted the "light bread," Num 21:5. the manna, with Num 11:5. the plenteousness of Egypt. They ascribed probably their meagre crops (as we mostly do) to mere natural causes, perhaps to the long neglect of the land during the captivity. God forces the question upon their consciences, in that Haggai asks it in His Name, in whose hands all powers stand, "saith the Lord of host." They have not to talk it over among themselves, but to answer Almighty God, "why?" That "why?" strikes into the inmost depths of conscience!
Because of My house which is waste, and ye run - literally, "are running," all the while, "each to his own house" They were absorbed in their material interests, and had no time for those of God. When the question was of God's house, they stir not from the spot; when it is of their own concerns, they run. Our Lord says, Mat 6:33. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Man reverses this, seeks his own things first, and God withholds His blessing.
"This comes true of those who prefer their own conveniences to God's honor, who do not thoroughly uproot self-love, whose penitence and devotion are shewn to be unstable, for on a slight temptation they are overcome. Such are they who are bold, self-pleasing, wise and great in their own eyes, who do not ground their conversation on true and solid humility."
(Cyr.) "To those who are slow to fulfill what is for the glory of God, and the things whereby His house, the Church, is firmly stayed, neither the heavenly dew cometh, which enricheth hearts and minds, nor the fruitfulness of the earth; i. e., right action; not food nor wine nor use of oil. But they will be ever strengthless and joyless, unenriched by spiritual oil, and remain without taste or participation of the blessing through Christ."
Haggai 1:10
hag 1:10
Therefore, for you, - on your account; (As in Ps. 44:43.) for your sins, (Jon.) He points out the moral cause of the drought, whereas men think of this or that cause of the variations of the seasons, and we, e. g., take into our mouths Scriptural words, as "murrain of cattle," and the like, and think of nothing less than why it was sent, or who sent it. Haggai directs the mind to the higher Cause, that as they withheld their service from God, so, on their account and by His will, His creatures withheld their service from them.
Haggai 1:11
hag 1:11
And I called for a drought upon the land - God called to the people and they would not hear. It is His ever-repeated complaint to them. "I called unto you, and ye would not hear." He called to His inanimate creatures to punish them, and "they" obeyed. So Elisha tells the woman, whose son he had restored to life, Kg2 8:1. "The Lord hath called to the famine, and it shall also come to the land seven years."
And upon men, - in that the drought was oppressive to man. The prophet may also allude to the other meaning of the word, "waste," "desolation." They had left the house of the Lord "waste," therefore God called for waste, desolation, upon them.
Haggai 1:12
hag 1:12
Then Zerubbabel, and all the remnant of the people - , not, "the rest of people" but "the remnant," those who remained over from the captivity, the fragment of the two tribes, which returned to their own land, "hearkened unto the voice of the Lord." This was the beginning of a conversion. In this one thing they began to do, what, all along, in their history, and most in their decay before the captivity they refused to do - obey God's word. So God sums up their history, by Jeremiah, Jer 22:21. "I spake unto thee in thy prosperity, thou saidst, I will not hear. This is thy way from thy youth, that thou hearkenedst not unto My voice." Zep 3:2 still more briefly , "she hearkened not unto (any) voice." Now in reference, it seems, to that account of their disobedience, Haggai says, using the self-same formula , "they hearkened unto the voice of the Lord, "according to the words of Haggai." They obeyed, not vaguely, or partly, but exactly, "according to the words" which the messenger of God spake.
And they feared the Lord - o "Certainly the presence of the Divine Majesty is to be teared with great reverence." "The fear of punishment at times transports the mind to what is better, and the infliction of sorrows harmonizes the mind to the fear of God; and that of the Proverbs comes true, Pro 13:13. "He that feareth the Lord shall be recompensed," and Pro 19:23 "the fear of the Lord tendeth to life;" and Wisdom (Ecclesiasticus 1:11). "The fear of the Lord is honor and glory, and Pro 19:12 the fear of the Lord shall rejoice the heart, and giveth joy and gladness and a long life." See how gently and beseemingly God smites us."
"See how the lovingkindness of God immediately goes along with all changes for the better. For Almighty God changes along with those who will to repent, and promises that He will be with them; which what can equal? For when God is with us, all harm will depart from us, all good come in to us."
Haggai 1:13
hag 1:13
And Haggai, the Lord's messenger - Malachi, whose own name was framed to express that he was "the Lord's messenger," and Haggai alone use the title, as the title of a prophet; perhaps as forerunners of the great prophet whom Malachi announced. Malachi also speaks of the priest, as Mal 2:7 "the messenger of the Lord of hosts," and prophesies of John Baptist as Mal 3:1 "the messenger" of the Lord, who should go before His face. Haggai, as he throughout repeats that his words were God's words, frames a new word to express, in the language of the New Testament; Co2 5:20 that he had an embassy from God; "in the Lord's message."
I am with you - All the needs and longings of the creature are summed up in those two words, "I with you." "Who art Thou and who am I? Thou, He Who Is; I, he who am not;" nothing, yea worse than nothing. Yet "if Rom 8:31, God be for us," Paul asks, "who can be against us?" Our blessed Lord's parting promise to the Apostles, and in them to the Church, was, Mat 28:20. "Lo I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." The all-containing assurance goes beyond any particular promise of aid, as , "I will help you, and will protect you, so that your building shall have its completion." This is one fruit of it , "since I am in the midst of you, no one shall be able to hinder your building." But, more widely, the words bespeak "His" presence in love, who knows all our needs, and is Almighty to support and save us in all. So David says Psa 23:4, "when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me:" and God says by another Psa 91:15, I will be "with him in trouble," and by Isaiah Isa 43:2, "When thou passest through the waters," I will be "with thee."
Haggai 1:14
hag 1:14
And the Lord stirred up the spirit - The words are used of any strong impulse from God to fulfill His will, whether in those who execute His will unknowingly as Pul Ch1 5:26, to carry off the trans-Jordanic tribes, or the Philistines and Arabians against Jehoram, Ch2 21:16. or the Medes against Babylon Jer 51:11, or knowingly, as of Cyrus to restore God's people and rebuild the temple Ezr 1:1, or of the people themselves to return Ezr 1:5 , "The spirit of Zerubbabel and the spirit of Joshua were stirred, that the government and priesthood may build the temple of God: the spirit of the people too, which before was asleep in them; not the body, not the soul, but the spirit. which knoweth best how to build the temple of God." "The Holy Spirit is stirred up in us, that we should enter the house of the Lord, and do the works of the Lord."
"Again, observe that they did not set themselves to choose to do what should please God, before He was with them and stirred up their spirit. We shall know hence also, that although one choose zealously to do good and be in earnest therein, yet he will accomplish nothing, unless God be with him, raising him up to dare, and sharpening him to endure, and removing all torpor. For so the wondrous Paul says of those entrusted with the divine preaching Co1 15:11, I labored more abundantly than they all, yet added very wisely, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me, and the Saviour Himself saith to the holy Apostles, Joh 15:5. Without Me ye can do nothing. For He is our desire, He, our courage to any good work; He our strength, and, if He is with us, we shall do well Eph 2:21-22, building ourselves to a holy temple, a habitation of God in the Spirit; if He depart and withdraws, how should any doubt, that we should fail, overcome by sluggishness and want of courage?"
Haggai 1:15
hag 1:15
In the four and twentieth day of the month - The interval of twenty-three days must have been spent in preparation, since the message came on the first of the month, and the obedience was immediate.
Bible
Haggai Chapter 2
Haggai 2:1
hag 2:1
In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month - This was the seventh day of the feast of tabernacles, Lev 23:34, Lev 23:36, Lev 23:40-42. and its close. The eighth day was to be a sabbath, with its "holy convocation," but the commemorative feast, the dwelling in booths, in memory of God's bringing them out of Egypt, was to last seven days. The close then of this feast could not but revive their sadness at the glories of their first deliverance by God's "mighly hand and outstretched arm," and their present fewness and poverty. This depression could not but bring with it heavy thoughts about the work, in which they were, in obedience to God, engaged; and that, all the more, since Isaiah and Ezekiel had prophesied of the glories of the Christian Church under the symbol of the temple. This despondency Haggai is sent to relieve, owning plainly the reality of its present grounds, but renewing, on God's part, the pledge of the glories of this second temple, which should be thereafter.
Haggai 2:3
hag 2:3
Who is left among you? - The question implies that there were those among them, who had seen the first house in its glory, yet but few. When the foundations of the first temple were laid, there were many Ezr 3:12. "Many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundations of this house were laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice." Fifty-nine years had elapsed from the destruction of the temple in the eleventh year of Zedekiah to the first of Cyrus; so that old men of seventy years had seen the first temple, when themselves eleven years old. In this second of Darius seventy years had passed, so that those of 78 or 80 years might still well remember it. Ezra's father, Seraiah, was slain in the eleventh year of Zedekiah; so he must have been born at latest a few months later; yet he lived to the second of Artaxerxes.
Is not such as it is as nothing? - o Beside the richness of the sculptures in the former temple, everything, which admitted of it, was overlaid with gold Kg1 6:22, Kg1 6:28, Kg1 6:30, Kg1 6:32, Kg1 6:35, "Solomon overlaid the whole house with gold, until he had finished all the house, the whole altar by the oracle, the two cherubim, the floor of the house, the doors of the holy of holies" and the ornaments of it, "the cherubims thereon" and "the palm trees he covered with gold fitted upon the carved work Kg1 7:48-50, the altar of gold and the table of gold, whereupon the showbread was, the ten candlesticks of pure gold, with the flowers and the lamps and the tongs of gold, the bowls, the snuffers and the basons and the spoons and the censers of pure gold, and hinges of pure gold for all the doors of the temple Ch2 3:4-9. The porch that was in the front of the house, twenty cubits broad and 120 cubits high, was overlaid within with pure gold;" the house glistened with precious stones; and the gold (it is added) was "gold of Parvaim," a land distant of course and unknown to us. "Six hundred talents of gold" (about 4,320,000 British pounds were employed in overlaying the holy of holies. "The upper chambers were also of gold; the weight of the nails was fifty shekels of gold."
Haggai 2:4
hag 2:4
Yet now be strong ... and work - They are the words with which David exhorted Solomon his son to be earnest and to persevere in the building of the first temple Ch1 28:10. "Take heed now, for the Lord hath chosen thee to build an house for the sanctuary: be strong and do" Ch1 28:20. "Be strong and of good courage, and do." This combination of words occurs once only elsewhere Ch2 19:11, in Jehoshaphat's exhortation to "the Ch2 19:8. Levites and priests and chiefs of the fathers of Israel," whom he had set as judges in Jerusalem. Haggai seems then to have adopted the words, with the purpose of suggesting to the down-hearted people, that there was need of the like exhortation, in view of the building of the former temple, whose relative glory so depressed them. The word "be strong" (elsewhere rendered, "be of good courage") occurs commonly in exhortations to persevere and hold fast, amid whatever obstacles. .
Haggai 2:5
hag 2:5
The words which I covenanted - The words stand more forcibly, because abruptly.
It is an exclamation which cannot be forced into any grammatical relation with the preceding. The more exact idiom would have been "Remember," "take to heart." But the prophet points to it the more energetically, because he casts it, as it were, into the midst, not bound up with any one verb. This would be the rather done in speaking to the people, as David to his followers (Sa1 30:23, which Ewald compares, Lehrb. n. 329. a. p. 811, ed. 8. and in his Die Proph. iii. 183. Only he, not very intelligibly, makes it a sort of oath, By the word, By that which the Lord hath given us. But he suggests the like broken sentence Zech. vii. 7), "That which the Lord hath given us and hath preserved us and given the company against us into our hands!" i. e., "Would you deal thus with it?" The abrupt form rejects it as shocking. So here, "The word which I covenanted with you," i. e. this, "I will be with you," was the central all-containing promise, to which God pledged Himself when He brought them out of Egypt. He speaks to them as being one with those who came up out of Egypt, as if they were the very persons. The Church, ever varying in the individuals of whom it is composed, is, throughout all ages, in God's sight, one; His promises to the fathers are made to the children in them. So the Psalmist says, "There" (at the dividing of the Red Sea and the Jordan) "do we rejoice in Him," as if present there; and our Lord promises to the Apostles, Mat 28:20. "I am with you always even to the end of the world," by an ever-present presence with them and His Church founded by them in Him.
My Spirit abideth among you, - as the Psalmist says Psa 102:27, "they (the heavens) perish and Thou abidest" Psa 33:11, "The counsel of the Lord standeth forever" Psa 111:3, "His righteousness endureth forever." The Spirit of God is God the Holy Spirit, with His manifold gifts. Where He is, is all good. As the soul is in the body, so God the Holy Spirit is in the Church, Himself its life, and bestowing on all and each every good gift, as each and all have need. As Paul says of the Church of Christ Co1 12:4, Co1 12:6, Co1 12:11, "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God, who worketh all in all. All these worketh one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will." But above and beyond all gifts He is present as the Spirit of holiness and love, making the Church and those in whom He individually dwells, acceptable to God. Special applications, such as "the Spirit of wisdom and might;" a spirit such as He gave to Moses to judge His people; the spirit of prophecy; or the spirit given to Bezaleel and Aholiab for the work of the sanctuary - these recognize in detail the one great truth, that all good, all wisdom, from least to greatest, comes from God the Holy Spirit; though one by one they would exclude more truth than they each contain.
Haggai 2:6
hag 2:6
Yet once, it is a little while - This, the rendering of Paul to the Hebrews, is alone grammatical . "Yet once." By the word yet he looks back to the first great shaking of the moral world, when God's revelation by Moses and to His people broke upon the darkness of the pagan world, to be a monument against pagan error until Christ should come; once looks on, and conveys that God would again shake the world, but once only, under the one dispensation of the Gospel, which should endure to the end.
It is a little while - o "The 517 years, which were to elapse to the birth of Christ, are called a little time, because to the prophets, ascending in heart to God and the eternity of God, all times, like all things of this world, seem, as they are, only a little thing, yea a mere point;" which has neither length nor breadth. So John calls the time of the new law, "the last hour" Jo1 2:18, "Little children, it is the last hour." It was little also in respect to the time, which had elapsed from the fall of Adam, upon which God promised the Saviour Christ Gen 3:15, little also in respect to the Christian law, which has now lasted above 1,800 years, and the time of the end does not seem yet near.
I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land - It is one universal shaking of all this our world and the heavens over it, of which the prophet speaks. He does not speak only of Luk 21:25 "signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars," which might be, and yet the frame of the world itself might remain. It is a shaking, such as would involve the dissolution of this our system, as Paul draws out its meaning; Heb 12:27. "This word, once more, signifieth the removing of the things that are shaken, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." Prophecy, in its long perspective, uses a continual foreshortening, speaking of things in relation to their eternal meaning and significance, as to that which shall survive, when heaven and earth and even time shall have passed away. It blends together the beginning and the earthly end; the preparation and the result; the commencement of redemption and its completion; our Lord's coming in humility and in His Majesty. Scarcely any prophet but exhibits things in their intrinsic relation, of which time is but an accident.
It is the rule, not the exception. The Seed of the woman, who should bruise the serpent's head, was promised on the fall: to Abraham, the blessing through his seed; by Moses, the prophet like unto him; to David, an everlasting covenant Sa2 23:5. Joel unites the out-pouring of the Spirit of God on the Day of Pentecost, and the hatred of the world until the Day of Judgment Joe 2:28-32; Joel 3. Isaiah, God's judgments on the land and the Day of final judgment Isa. 24, the deliverance from Babylon, and the first coming of Christ Isa. 40-66, the glories of the Church, the new heavens and the new earth which shall remain forever, and the unquenched fire and undying worm of the lost Isa 66:22-24, Daniel, the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, of Anti-Christ, and the Resurrection; Dan. 11-12. Obadiah, the punishment of Edom and the everlasting kingdom of God; Oba 1:18-21. Zephaniah, the punishment of Judah and the final judgment of the earth . Malachi, our Lord's first and second coming Mal 3:1-5, Mal 3:17-18; Mal 4:1-6.
Nay, our Lord Himself so blends together the destruction of Jerusalem and the days of Anti-Christ and the end of the world, that it is difficult to separate them, so as to say what belongs exclusively to either The prophecy is an answer to two distinct questions of the Apostles,
(1) "When shall these things (namely, the destruction of the temple) be?"
(2) "And what shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world?" Our Lord answers the two questions in one. Some things seem to belong to the first coming, as Mat 24:15-16, "the abomination of desolation spoke of by Daniel," and the flight from Mat 24:24 "Judea into the mountains." But the exceeding deceivableness is authoritatively interpreted by Paul 2 Thes Mat 5:2-10. of a distant time; and our Lord Himself, having said that "all these things," of which the Apostles had inquired, should take place in that generation Mar 13:30 speaks of His absence as of a man taking a far journey Mar 13:3, and says that "not the angels in heaven knew that hour, neither the Son Mar 13:32, which precludes the idea, that He had just before declared that the whole would take place in that generation. For this would be to make out, that He declared that the Son knew not the hour of His Coming, which He had just (on this supposition) declared to be in that generation.
So then, here. There was a general shaking upon earth before our Lord came. Empires rose and fell. The Persian fell before Alexander's; Alexander's world-empire was ended by his sudden death in youth; of his four successors, two only continued, and they too fell before the Romans; then were the Roman civil wars, until, under Augustus, the temple of Janus was shut. "For it greatly beseemed a work ordered by God, that many kingdoms should be confederated in one empire, and that the universal preaching might find the peoples easily accessible who were held under the rule of one state." In the heavens was the star, which led the wise men, the manifestation of Angels to the shepherds; the preternatural darkness at the Passion; the Ascension into the highest heaven, and the descent of the Holy Spirit with Act 2:2, "a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind." "God had moved them (heaven and earth) before, when He delivered the people from Egypt, when there was in heaven a column of fire, dry ground amid the waves, a wall in the sea, a path in the waters, in the wilderness there was multiplied a daily harvest of heavenly food (the manna), the rock gushed into fountains of waters. But He moved it afterward also in the Passion of the Lord Jesus, when the heaven was darkened, the sun shrank back, the rocks were rent. the graves opened, the dead were raised, the dragon, conquered in his waters, saw the fishers of men, not only sailing in the sea, but also walking without peril. The dry ground also was moved, when the unfruitful people of the nations began to ripen to a harvest of devotion and faith - so that "more were the children of the forsaken, than of her which had a husband," and Isa 35:1. "the desert flourished like a lily" . "He moved earth in that great miracle of the birth from the Virgin: He moved the sea and dry land, when in the islands and in the whole world Christ is preached. So we see all nations moved to the faith."
And yet, whatever preludes of fulfillment there were at our Lord's first coming, they were as nothing to the fulfillment which we look for in the second, "when Isa 24:19-20 the earth shall be utterly broken down; the earth, clean dissolved; the earth, moved exceedingly; the earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a hanging-cot in a vineyard and the transgression thereof is heavy upon it; and it shall fall and not rise again;" whereon follows an announcement of the final judgment of men and angels, and the everlasting kingdom of the blessed in the presence of God.
Of that "day of the Lord," Peter uses our Lord's image, Mat 24:43. that it shall Pe2 3:10. come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works therein shall be burned up."
Haggai 2:7
hag 2:7
And the desire of all nations shall come - The words can only mean this, the central longing of all nations
He whom they longed for, either through the knowledge of Him spread by the Jews in their dispersion, or mutely by the aching craving of the human heart, longing for the restoration from its decay. "The earnest expectation of the creature" did not begin with the Coming of Christ, nor was it limited to those, who actually came to Him Rom 8:19-22. "The whole creation," Paul saith, "groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." It was enslaved, and the better self longed to be free; every motion of grace in the multitudinous heart of man was a longing for its Deliverer; every weariness of what it was, every fleeting vision of what was better, every sigh from out of its manifold ills, were notes of the one varied cry, "Come and help us." Man's heart, formed in the image of God, could not but ache to be reformed by and for Him, though "an unknown God," who should reform it.
This longing increased as the time drew near, when Christ should come. The Roman biographer attests the existence of this expectation, not among the Jews only, but in the East ; this was quickened doubtless among the pagan by the Jewish Sibylline book, in that, amid the expectations of one sent from heaven, who should found a kingdom of righteousness, which the writer drew from the Hebrew prophets, he inserted denunciations of temporal vengeance upon the Romans, which Easterns would share. Still, although written 170 years before our Lord came , it had not apparently much effect until the time, when, from the prophecies of Daniel it was clear, that He must shortly come . Yet the attempt of the Jewish and pagan historian to wrest it to Vespasian, shows how great must have been the influence of the expectation, which they attempted to turn aside.
The Jews, who rejected our Lord whom Haggai predicted, still were convinced that the prediction must be fulfilled before the destruction of the second temple. The impulse did not cease even after its destruction. R. Akiba, whom they accounted "the first oracle of his time, the first and greatest guardian of the tradition and old law," of whom they said, that "God revealed to him things unknown to Moses," was induced by this prophecy to acknowledge the impostor Bar-cochab, to the destruction of himself and of the most eminent of his time; fulfilling our Lord's words Joh 5:43, "I am come in My fathers name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."
Akiba, following the traditional meaning of the great prophecy which rivetted his own eyes, paraphrased the words, "Yet a little, a little of the kingdom, will I give to Israel upon the destruction of the first house, and after the kingdom, lo! I will shake heaven, and after that will come the Messiah."
Since the words can only mean "the Desire of all nations," he or that which all nations long for, the construction of the words does not affect the meaning. Herod doubtless thought to advance his own claims on the Jewish people by his material adorning of the temple; yet, although mankind do covet gold and silver, few could seriously think that, while a pagan immoral but observant poet could speak of "gold undiscovered and so better placed," or our own of the "pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man," a Hebrew prophet could recognize gold and silver as "the desire of all nations." Rabbi Akiba and Jerome's Jewish teachers, after our Lord came, felt no difficulty in understanding it of a person. We cannot in English express the delicacy of the phrase, whereby manifoldness is combined in unity, the Object of desire containing in itself many objects of desire.
To render "the desire of all nations" or "the desires of all nations" alike fail to do this. A great pagan master of language said to his wife, "fare you well, my longings," i. e., I suppose, if he had analyzed his feelings, he meant that she manifoldly met the longings of his heart; she had in herself manifold gifts to content them. So Paul sums up all the truths and gifts of the Gospel, all which God shadowed out in the law and had given us in Christ, under the name of "the good things to come." A pious modern writer speaks of "the unseen desirables of the spiritual world." A psalmist expresses at once the collective, "God's Word" and the "words" contained in it, by an idiom like Haggai's, joining the feminine singular as a collective with the plural verb; "How sweet are Thy word unto my taste," literally "palate."
It is God's word, at once collectively and individually, which was to the Psalmist so sweet. What was true of the whole, was true, one by one, of each part; what was true of each part, was true of the whole. So here, the object of this longing was manifold, but met in one, was concentrated in One, Co1 1:30. "in Christ Jesus, Who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." That which the whole world sighed and mourned for, knowingly or unknowingly, light to disperse its darkness, liberty from its spiritual slavery, restoration from its degradation, could not come to us without some one, who should impart it to us.
But if Jesus was "the longed-for of the nations" before He came, by that mute longing of need for that which it wants (as the parched ground thirsteth for the rain how much more afterward! So Micah and Isaiah describe many peoples inviting one another Mic 4:2; Isa 2:3. "Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths." And in truth He became the "desire of the nations," much more than of the Jews; as, Paul says, (Rom 10:19-20; quoting Deu 32:21. Isa 65:2.) God foretold of old; "Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are not a people: by a foolish nation I will anger you. But Esaias is very bold and saith, I was found of them that sought Me not."
So until now and in eternity, "Christ is the longing of all holy souls, who long for nothing else, than to please Him, daily to love Him more, to worship Him better. So John longed for Him; "Come, Lord Jesus Rev 22:20. So Isaiah Isa 26:8-9, "The desire of our soul is to Thy Name and to the remembrance of Thee: with my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me, will I seek Thee early." So Ignatius, "Let fire, cross, troops of wild beasts, dissections, rendings, scattering of bones, mincing of limbs, grindings of the whole body, ill tortures of the devil come upon me, only may I gain Jesus Christ. - I seek Him Who for us died; I long for Him Who for us rose."
"Hungerest thou and desirest food? Long for Jesus! He is the bread and refreshment of Angels. He is manna, "containing in Him all sweetness and pleasurable delight." Thirstest thou? Long for Jesus! He is the well of "living water," refreshing, so that thou shouldest thirst no more. Art thou sick? Go to Jesus. He is the Saviour, the physician, nay, salvation itself. Art thou dying? Sigh for Jesus! He is "the resurrection and the life." Art thou perplexed? Come to Jesus! He is "the Angel of great counsel." Art thou ignorant and erring? Ask Jesus; He is "the way, the truth and the life." Art thou a sinner? Call on Jesus! For "He shall save His people from their sins." To this end He came into the world: "This is all His fruit, to take away sin." Art thou tempted by pride, gluttony, lust, sloth? Call on Jesus! He is humility, soberness, chastity, love, fervor: "He bare our infirmities, and carried," yea still beareth and carrieth, "our griefs."
Seekest thou beauty? He is "fairer than the children of men." Seekest thou wealth? In Him are "all treasures," yea in Him "the fullness of the Godhead dwelleth." Art thou ambitious of honors? "Glory and riches are in His house." "He is the King of glory." Seekest thou a friend? He hath the greatest love for thee, who for love of thee came down from heaven, toiled, endured the Sweat of Blood, the Cross and Death; He prayed for thee by name in the garden, and poured forth tears of Blood! Seekest thou wisdom? He is the Eternal and Uncreated Wisdom of the Father! Wishest thou for consolation and joy? He is the sweetness of souls, the joy and jubilee of Angels. Wishest thou for righteousness and holiness? He is "the Holy of holies;" He "is everlasting Righteousness," justifying and sanctifying all who believe and hope in Him. Wishest thou for a blissful life? He is "life eternal," the bliss of the saints. Long then for Him, love Him, sigh for Him! In Him thou wilt find all good; out of Him, all evil, all misery. Say then with Francis, 'My Jesus, my love and my all!' O Good Jesus, burst the cataract of Thy love, that its streams, yea seas, may flow down upon us, yea, inebriate and overwhelm us."
And I will fill this house with glory - The glory then was not to be anything, which came from man, but directly from God. It was the received expression of God's manifestation of Himself in the tabernacle Exo 40:34-35. in Soloman's temple, Kg1 8:11; Ch2 5:14; Ch2 7:1-12, and of the ideal temple Eze 43:5; Eze 44:4. which Ezekiel saw, after the likeness of that of Solomon, that "the glory of the Lord filled the house." When then of this second temple God uses the self-same words, that He will "fill it with glory," with what other glory should He fill it than His own? In the history it is said, "the glory of the Lord filled the temple;" for there man relates what God did. Here it is God Himself who speaks; so He says not, "the glory of the Lord," but, "I will fill the house with glory," glory which was His to give, which came from Himself. To interpret that glory of anything material, is to do violence to language, to force on words of Scripture an unworthy sense, which they refuse to bear.
The gold upon the walls, even had the second temple been adorned like the first did not fill the temple of Solomon. However richly any building might be overlaid with gold, no one could say that it is filled with it. A building is filled with what it contains; a mint or treasure-house may be filled with gold: the temple of God was "filled," we are told, with "the glory of the Lord." His creatures bring Him such things as they can offer; they bring Isa 60:6 "gold and incense;" they Psa 72:10 "bring presents" and "offer gifts;" they do it, moved by His Spirit, as acceptable to Him. God was never said to give these offerings to Himself.
Haggai 2:8
hag 2:8
The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine - These words, which have occasioned some to think, that God, in speaking of the glory with which He should fill the house, meant our material riches, suggest the contrary. For silver was no ornament of the temple of Solomon. Everything was overlaid with gold. In the tabernacle there were bowls of silver, in Soloman's temple they and all were of gold Kg1 7:50; Ch2 4:8. Silver, we are expressly told, "was nothing accounted of Kg1 10:21 in the days of Solomon: he Kg1 10:27. made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones - for abundance." Rather, as God says by the Psalmist Psa 50:10-12, "Every beast of the forest is Mine, so are the cattle upon a thousand hills: I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is Mine and the fullness thereof:" so here He tells them, that for the glory of His house He needed not gold or silver: for all the wealth of the world is His. They had no ground "to grieve then, that they could not equal the magnificence of Solomon who had abundance of gold and silver." All was God's. He would fill it with divine glory. The Desire of all nations, Christ, should come, and be a glory, to which all created glory is nothing.
"God says really and truly, that the silver and gold is His, which in utmost bounty He created, and in His most just government administers, so that, without His will and dominion, neither can the bad have gold and silver for the punishment of avarice, nor the good for the use of mercy. Its abundance does not inflate the good, nor its want crush them: but the bad, when bestowed, it blinds: when taken away, it tortures."
"It is as if He would say, Think not the temple inglorious, because, may be, it will have no portion of gold or silver, and their splendor. I need not such things. How should I? "For Mine is the silver and Mine the gold, saith the Lord Almighty." I seek rather true worshipers: with their brightness will I guild this temple. Let him come who hath right faith, is adorned by graces, gleams with love for Me, is pure in heart, poor in spirit, compassionate and good." "These make the temple, i. e., the Church, glorious and renowned, being glorified by Christ. For they have learned to pray, Psa 90:17. "The glory of the Lord our God be upon us."
Haggai 2:9
hag 2:9
The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former - or, perhaps, more probably, "the later glory of this house shall be greater than the former;" for he had already spoken of the present temple, as identical with that before the captivity . "Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory, anti how do you see it now?" He had spoken of its "first glory." Now he says, in contrast, its later glory should be greater than that of its most glorious times. In this case the question, whether the temple of tiered was a different material building from that of Zerubbabel, falls away.
In either case, the contrast is between two things, either the temple in that its former estate, and this its latter estate after the captivity, or the two temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel. There is no room for a third temple. God holds out no vain hopes. To comfort those distressed by the poverty of the house of God which they were building, God promises a glory to this house greater than before. A temple, erected, after this had lain waste above 1800 years, even if Antichrist were to come now and to erect a temple at Jerusalem, could be no fulfillment of this prophecy.
In material magnificence the temple of Solomon, built and adorned with all the treasures accumulated by David and enlarged by Solomon, far surpassed all which Herod, amid his attempts to give a material meaning to the prophecy, could do. His attempt shows how the eyes of the Jews were fixed on this prophecy, then when it was about to be fulfilled. While taking pains, through the gradualness of his rebuilding, to preserve the identity of the fabric, he lavished his wealth, to draw off their thoughts from the king, whom the Jews looked for, to himself. The friendship of the Romans who were lords of all, was to replace the "all nations," of whom Haggai spoke; he pointed also to the length of peace, the possession of wealth, the greatness of revenues, the surpassing expenditure beyond those before. A small section of Erastians admitted these claims of the murderer of his sons.
The Jews generally were not diverted from looking on to Him who should come. Those five things, the absence whereof they felt, were connected with their atoning worhip or God's presence among them; "the ark with the mercy-seat and the cherubim, the Urim and Tummin, the fire from heaven, the Shechinah, the Holy Spirit." Material magnificence could not replace spiritual glory. The explanations of the great Jewish authorities, that the second temple was superior to the first in structure (which was untrue) or in duration, were laid aside by Jews who had any other solution wherewith to satisfy themselves. "The Shechinah and the five precious things," says one, "which, according to our wise of blessed memory, were in it, and not in the second house, raised and exalted it beyond compare." Another says, "When Haggai saith, 'greater shall be the glory of this later house than the first,' how is it; that the house which Zerubbabel built through the income which the king of Persia gave them was more glorious than the house which Solomon built? And though it is said that the building which Herod made, was exceeding beautiful and rich, we should not think that it was in its beauty like to the house which Solomon built. For what the wise of blessed memory have said of the beauty of the house of Herod is in relation to the house which Zerubbabel built. How much more, since Scripture saith not, 'Great shall be the beauty or the wealth of this latter house above the first,' but the glory: and the glory is not the wealth or the beauty, or the largeness of the dimensions of the building, as they said in their interpretations, for the 'glory' is in truth spoken of the glory of God, which filled the tabernacle, after it was set up, and of the glory of God which filled the house of God, which Solomon built, when he brought the ark into the holy of holies, which is the Divine cloud and the Light supreme, which came down thither in the eyes of all the people, and it is said, 'And it was when the priests came out of the Italy place, the cloud filled the house of God, and the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of God filled the house of God.' And this glory was not in the second house.
And how shall it be said, if so, 'great shall be the glory of this later house above the first?'" The poor unconverted Jew did not know the answer to his question: "Through the presence of God, in the substance of our flesh; through the son given to us, Whose name should be Mighty God." The glory of this temple was in Him Who Joh 1:14. was made Flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." "There Christ, the Son of God, was, as a Child, offered to God: there He sat in the midst of the Doctors; there He taught and revealed things, hidden from the foundation of the world. The glory of the temple of Solomon was, that in it the majesty of God appeared, veiling itself in a cloud: in this, that same Majesty showed itself, in very deed united with the Flesh, visible to sight: so that Jesus Himself said, Joh 14:9. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." This it was which Malachi sang with joy Mal 3:1, "The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in."
And in this place I will give peace - Temporal peace they had now, nor was there any prospect of its being disturbed. They were quiet subjects of the Persiam empire, which included also all their former enemies, greater or less. Alexander subdued all the bordering countries which did not yield, but spared themselves. Temporal peace then was nothing, to be then given them, for they had it. In later times they had it not. The temple itself was profaned by Antiochus Epiphanes (1 Macc. 1:39, 40). "Her sanctuary was laid waste like a wilderness. As had been her glory, so was her dishonor increased." Again by Pompey (Josephus, Ant. xiv. 4. 4. B. J. i. 7.) by Crassus (Josephus, Ant. xiv. 7. 1. B. J. i. 9. 8), the Parthians (Josephus, Ant. xiv. 13. 3. 4.) before it was destroyed by Titus and the Romans. Jews saw this and, knowing nothing of the peace in Jesus, argued from the absence of outward peace, that the prophecy was not fulfilled under the second temple. "What Scripture says, 'and in this place I will give peace,' is opposed to their interpretation. For all the days of the duration of the second house were "in strait of times and not in peace," as was written in Daniel, "and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again and the fosse, and in strait of time," and, as I said, in the time of Herod there was no peace whatever, for the sword did not depart from his house to the day of his death; and after his death the hatred among the Jews increased, and the Gentiles straitened them, until they were destroyed from the face of the earth."
But spiritual peace is, throughout prophecy, part of the promise of the Gospel. Christ Himself was to be Isa 9:6-7 "the Prince of peace: of the increase of His government and of His peace there was to be no end;" in His days Psa 72:3, Psa 72:7 "the mountains were to bring peace to the people; there should be abundance of peace, so long as the moon endureth; the work of righteousness was to be peace Isa 32:17, the chastisement of our peace (that which obtained it) was upon Him" Isa 53:5, "great should be the peace of her children" Isa 54:13, in the Gospel God would give peace, true peace, to the "far off and the near" Isa 57:19. He would extend Isa 66:12 "peace to her like a river:" the good things of the Gospel was "the publishing of peace" Isa 52:7. The Gospel is described as Ezra 34:25, "a covenant of peace:" the promised king Zac 9:10 "shall speak peace to the Pagan;" He himself should be "our peace" Mic 5:5. And when He was born, the angels proclaimed Luk 2:14 "on earth peace, goodwill toward men" Luk 1:79. "The Dayspring from on high visited us, to guide our feet into the way of peace." He Himself says Joh 14:27, "My peace I leave with you." He spake, that Joh 16:33 "in Me ye might have peace." Peter sums up "the word which God sent unto the children of Israel, as Act 10:36 preaching peace by Jesus Christ Rom 14:17. The kingdom of God is joy and peace Eph 2:14-15, Eph 2:17; Christ is our peace; made peace; preaches peace. God calleth us to peace" Co1 7:15 in the Gospel Rom 5:1, "being justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord Gal 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace." Spiritual peace being thus prominent in the Gospel and in prophecy, as the gift of God, it were unnatural to explain the peace which God promised here to give, as other than He promised elsewhere; peace in Him who is "our peace, Jesus Christ."
"Peace and tranquility of mind is above all glory of the house; because peace passeth all understanding. This is peace above peace, which shall be given after the third shaking of heaven sea earth, dry land, when He shall destroy all powers anti principalities (in the day of judgment). - And so shall there be peace throughout, that, no bodily passions or hindrances of unbelieving mind resisting, Christ shall be all in all, exhibiting the hearts of all subdued to the Father."
Haggai 2:11
hag 2:11
Ask now the priests concerning the law - The priests answer rightly, that, by the law, insulated unholiness spread further than insulated holiness. The flesh of the sacrifice hallowed whatever it should touch, but not further; but the human being, who was defiled by touching a dead body, defiled all he might touch Num 19:22. Haggai does not apply the first part; namely, that the worship on the altar which they reared, while they neglected the building of the temple, did not hallow. The possession of a truly tiring does not counterbalance disobedience. Contrariwise, one defilement defiled the whole man and all which he touched, according to that Jam 2:10, "whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."
In the application, the two melt into one, for the holy thing, namely, the altar which they raised out of fear on their return, so far from hallowing the land or people by the sacrifices offered thereon, was itself defiled. "This people" and "this nation" (not "My people") since they in act disowned Him. "Whatever they offer there," i. e., on that altar, instead of the temple which God commanded, is unclean, offending Him who gave all.
Haggai 2:15
hag 2:15
And now, I pray you - Observe his tenderness, in drawing their attention to it , "Consider from this day and upward." He bids them look backward, "from before a stone was laid upon a stone," i. e., from the last moment of their neglect in building the house of God; "from since those days were," or from the time backward "when those things were," (resuming, in the word, "from-their-being" , the date which he had just given, namely, the beginning of their resuming the building backward, during all those years of neglect) "one came to a heap of twenty measures." The precise measure is not mentioned: the force of the appeal lay in the proportion: the heap of grain which, usually, would yield twenty, (whether bushels or seahs or any other measure, for the heap itself being of no defined size, neither could the quantity expected from it be defined) there were ten only; "one came to the pressvat to draw out fifty" vessels out of the press, or perhaps fifty poorah, i. e., the ordinary quantity drawn out at one time from the press, there were, or it bad become twenty, two-fifths only of what they looked for and ordinarily obtained. The dried grapes yielded so little.
Haggai 2:17
hag 2:17
I smote you with blasting and mildew, - two diseases of grain, which Moses had foretold Deu 28:27. as chastisements on disobedience and God's infliction, of which Amos had spoken in these self-same words. Amo 4:9. Haggai adds the hail, as destructive of the vines. Psa 78:47. Yet (And) ye turned you not to Me literally "there were none" - your, (accusative i. e., who turned you unto Me. The words are elliptical, but express the entire absence of conversion, of any who turned to God.
Haggai 2:18
hag 2:18
From the day that the foundation of the Lord's house - Zechariah, in a passage corresponding to this, uses the same words Zac 8:9, "the day that the foundation of the house of the Lord of hosts was laid, that the temple might be built," not of the first foundation, but of the work as resumed in obedience to the words by "the mouth of the prophets," Haggai and himself, which, Ezra also says, was Ezr 4:24; Ezr 5:1. "in the second year of Darius." But that work was resumed, not now at the time of this prophecy, but three months before, on the 24th of the sixth month. Since then the word translated here, from, is in no case used of the present time, Haggai gives two dates, the resumption of the work, as marked in these words, and the, actual present. He would then say, that even in these last months, since they had begun the work, there were as yet no signs for the better. There was yet no "seed in the barn," the harvest having been blighted and the fruit-trees stripped by the hail before the close of the sixth month, when they resumed the work. Yet though there were as yet no signs of change, no earnest that the promise should be fulfilled, God pledges His word, "from this day I will bless you."
Thenceforth, from their obedience, God would give them those fruits of the earth, which in His Providence had been, during their negligence, withheld. "God," said Paul and Barnabas, Act 14:17. "left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."
All the Old and New Testament, the Law, the prophets and the Psalms, the Apostles and our Lord Himself, bear witness to the Providence of God who makes His natural laws serve to the moral discipline of His creature, man. The physical theory, which presupposes that God so fixed the laws of His creation, as to leave no room for Himself to vary them, would, if ever so true, only come to this, that Almighty God knowing absolutely (as He must know) the actions of His creatures (in what way soever this is reconcilable with our free-agency, of which we are conscious), framed the laws of His physical creation, so that plenty or famine, healthiness of our cattle or of the fruits of the earth or their sickness, should coincide with the good or evil conduct of man, with his prayers or his neglect of prayer. The reward or chastisement alike come to man, whether they be theresult of God's will, acting apart from any system which He has created, or in it and through it.
It is alike His Providential agency, whether He have established any such system with all its minute variations, or whether these variations are the immediate result of His sovereign will. If He has instituted any physical system, so that the rain, hail, and its proportions, size, destructiveness, should come in a regulated irregularity, as fixed in all eternity as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies or the courses of the comets, then we come only to a more intricate perfection of His creation, that in all eternity He framed those laws in an exact conformity to the perfectly foreseen actions of men good and evil, and to their prayers also: that He, knowing certainly whether the creature, which He has framed to have its bliss in depending on Him, would or would not cry unto Him, framed those physical laws in conformity therewith; so that the supply of what is necessary for our wants or its withholding shall be in all time inworked into the system of our probation. Only, not to keep God out of His own world, we must remember that other truth, that, whether God act in any such system or no, He Heb 1:3. "upholdeth all things by the word of His power" by an everpresent working; so that it is He who at each moment doth what is done, doth and maintains in existence all which He has created in the exact order and variations of their being. Psa 148:8. "Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy wind fulfilling His word," are as immediate results of His Divine Agency, in whatever way it pleaseth Him to act, and are the expression of His will.
Haggai 2:21
hag 2:21
I will shake - Haggai closes by resuming the words of a former prophecy to Zerubbabel and Joshua, which ended in the coming of Christ. Even thus it is plain, that the prophecy does not belong personally to Zerubbabel, but to him and his descendants, chiefly to Christ. There was in Zerubbabel's time no shaking of the heaven or of nations. Darius had indeed to put down an unusual number of rebellions in the first few years after his accession; but, although he magnified himself on occasion of their suppression, they were only so many distinct and unconcerted revolts, each under its own head. All were far away in the distant East, in Babylonia, Susiana, Media, Armenia, Assyria, Hyrcania, Parthia, Sagartia, Margiana, Arachosia. The Persian empire, spread "probably over 2,000,000 square miles, or more than half of modern Europe," was not threatened; no foreign enemy assailed it; one impostor only claimed the throne of Darius. This would, if successful, have been, like his own accession, a change of dynasty, affecting nothing externally.
But neither were lasting, some were very trifling. Two decisive battles subdued Babylonia: of Media the brief summary is given "the Medes revolted from Darius, and having revolted were brought back into subjection, defeated in battle." The Susianians killed their own pretender, on the approach of the troops of Darius. We have indeed mostly the account only of the victor. But these are only self-glorying records of victories, accomplished in succession, within a few years. Sometimes the satrap of the province put the revolt down at once. At most two battles ended in the crucifixion of the rebel. The Jews, if they heard of them, knew them to be of no account. For the destroyer of the Persian empire was to come from the West Dan 8:5, the fourth sovereign was to stir up all against the realm of Grecia Dan 11:2, and Darius was but the third. In the same second year of Darius, in which Haggai gave this prophecy, the whole earth was exhibited to Zechariah as Zac 1:11, "sitting still and at rest."
The overthrow prophesied is also universal. It is not one throne only, as of Persia, but "the throne," i. e., the sovereigns, "of kingdoms;" not a change of dynasty, but a destruction of their "strength;" not of a few powers only, but "the kingdoms of the pagan;" and that, in detail; that, in which their chief strength lay, the chariots and horsemen and their riders, and this, man by man, "every one by the sword of his brother." This mutual destruction is a feature of the judgments at the end of the world against Gog and Magog Eze 38:21; and of the yet unfulfilled prophecies of Zechariah Zac 14:17. Its stretching out so far does not hinder its partial fulfillment in earlier times. Zerubbabel stood, at the return from the captivity, as the representative of the house of David and heir of the promises to him, though in an inferior temporal condition; thereby the rather showing that the main import of the prophecy was not temporal. As then Ezekiel prophesied, Eze 34:23. "I will set up One Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, My servant David" Eze 37:24-25; "And David My servant shall be king over them; and My servant David shall be their prince forever;" and Jeremiah Jer 30:9. "They shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them; and Hosea, that Hos 3:5. after many days shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king," meaning by David, the great descendant of David, in whom the promises centered, so in his degree, the promise to Zerubbabel reaches on through his descendants to Christ; that, amid all the overthrow of empires, God would protect His sons' sons until Christ should come, the King of kings and Lord of lords, whose Dan 2:44. "kingdom shall never be destroyed, but it shall break in pieces and consume all those kingdoms, and shall stand fast forever."
Haggai 2:23
hag 2:23
I will make thee as a signet - God reverses to Zerubbabel the sentence on Jeconiah for his impiety. To Jeconiah He had said Jer 22:24, "though he were the signet upon My right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence; and I will give thee into the hand of them that seek thy life." The signet was very precious to its owner, never parted with, or only to those to whom authority was delegated (as by Pharaoh to Joseph Gen 41:42, or by Ahasuerus to Haman Est 3:10 and then to Mordecai Est 8:2.); through it his will was expressed. Hence, the spouse in the Canticles says, Sol 8:6. "Set me, as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm." The signet also was an ornament to him who wore it. "God is glorianfied in His saints;" Th2 1:10. by Zerubbabel in the building of His house. He gave him estimation with Cyrus, who entrusted him with the return of his people, and made him (who would have been the successor to the throne of Judah, had the throne been re-established) his governor over the restored people.
God promises to him and his descendants protection amid all shaking of empires. "He was a type of Christ in bringing back the people from Babylon, as Christ delivered us from sin death and hell: he built the temple, as Christ built the Church; he protected his people against the Samaritans who would hinder the building, as Christ protects His Church: he was dear and joined to God, as Christ was united to Him, and hypostatically united and joined His Humanity to the Word. The true Zerubbabel then, i. e., Christ, the son and antitype of Zerubbabel, is the signet in the hand of the Father, both passively and actively, whereby God impresses His own Majesty thoughts and words and His own Image on men angels and all creatures." "The Son is the Image of God the Father, having His entire and exact likeness, and in His own beauty beaming forth the nature of the Father. In Him too God seals us also to His own likeness, since, being conformed to Christ, we gain the image of God." "Christ, as the Apostle says, is Heb 1:3 "the Image of the invisible God, the brightness of His Glory and the express Image of His Person," who, as the Word and Seal and express Image, seals it on others. Christ is here called a signet, as Man not as God. For it was His Manhood which He took of the flesh and race of Zerubbabel. He is then, in His Manhood, the signet of God;
1) as being hypostatically united with the Son of God;
2) because the Word impressed on His Humanity the likeness of Himself, His knowledge, virtue, holiness, thoughts, words, acts and conversation;
3) because the Man Christ was the seal, i. e., the most evident sign and witness of the attributes of God, His power, justice, wisdom, and especially His exceeding love for man. For, that God might show this, He willed that His Son should be Incarnate. Christ thus Incarnate is as a seal, in which we see expressed and depicted the love power justice wisdom etc. of God;
4) because Christ as a seal, attested and certified to us the will of God, His doctrine law commands, i. e., those which He promulgated and taught in the Gospel.
"No one," John saith Joh 1:18, "hath seen God at any time: the Only-Begotten Son Who is the Image the Father, He hath declared Him." Hence, God gave to Christ the power of working miracles, that He might confirm His words as by a seal, and demonstrate that they were revealed and enjoined to Him by God, as it is in John Joh 6:27, "Him hath God the Father sealed." "Christ is also the seal of God, because by His impress, i. e., the faith grace virtue and conversation from Him and by the impress in Baptism and the other sacraments, "He willed to conform us to the Image of His Son," Rom 8:29. that Co1 15:49, "as we have borne the image of the earthly Adam, we mnay also bear the image of the heavenly." Then, Christ, like a seal, seals and guards His faithful against all temptations and enemies. The seal of Christ is the Cross, according to that of Ezekiel, "Seal a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh," and in the Revelation Rev 7:2, "I saw another Angel having the seal of the living God." For the Cross guardeth us against the temptations of the flesh, the world and the devil, and makes us followers, soldiers, and martyrs of Christ crucified. Whence the Apostle says, Gal 6:17. "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."
"This is said without doubt of the Messiah, the expected;" says even a Jewish controversialist , "who shall be of the seed of Zerubbabel; and therefore this promise was not fulfilled at all in himself: for at the time of this prophecy he had aforetime been governor of Judah, and afterward he did not rise to any higher dignity than what he was up to that day: and in like way we find that God said to Abraham our father in the covenant between the pieces, Gen 15:7, Gen 15:18. "I am the Lord who brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land to inherit it," and beyond doubt this covenant was confirmed of God to the seed of Abraham, as lie Himself explained it there afterward, when He said, "In that day God made a covenant with Abraham, saying, To thy seed have I given this land etc.," and many like these.
Abarbanel had laid down the right principles, though of necessity misapplied. "Zerubbabel did not reign in Jerusalem and did not rule in it, neither lie nor any man of his seed; but immediately after the building of the house, he returned to Babylon and died there in his captivity, and how saith he, 'In that day I will take thee?' For after the fall of the kingdom of Persia Zerubbabel is not known for any greatness, and his name is not mentioned in the world. Where then will be the meaning of 'And I will place thee as a signet, for thee have I chosen?' For the signet is as the seal-ring which a man putteth on his hand, it departeth not from it, night or day. And when was this fulfilled in Zerubbabel? But the true meaning, in my opinion, is, that God showed Zerubbabel that this very second house would not abide, for after him should come another captivity, and of this he says, 'I shake the heaven etc.,' and afterward, after a long time, will God take His vengeance of these nations 'which have devoured Jacob and laid waste his dwelling place;' and so he says 'I will overthrow the thrones, etc.,' and He sheweth him further that the king who shall rule over Israel at the time of the redemption is the Messiah of the seed of Zerubbabel and of the house of David; and God saw good to shew him all this to comfort him and to speak to his heart; and it is as if he said to him, 'It is true that thou shalt not reign in the time of the second temple, nor any of thy seed, but in that day when God shall overthrow the throne of the kingdoms of the nations, when He gathereth His people Israel and redeemeth them, then shalt thou reign over My people, for of thy seed shall he be who ruleth from Israel at that time forever, and therefore he saith, 'I will take thee, O Zerubabbel etc.,' for because the Messiah was to be of his seed he saith, that he will take him; and this is as he says, Eze 37:24. 'And David My servant shall be a prince to them forever;' for the very Messiah, he shall be David, he shall be Zerubbabel, because he shall be a scion going forth out of their hewn trunk" Isa 11:1.
For I have chosen thee - God's forecoming love is the ground of all the acceptableness of His creature Jo1 4:19. "We love Him, because He first loved us." Zerubbabel was a devoted servant of God. God acknowledges his faithfulness. Only, the beginning of all was with God. God speaks of the nearness to Himself which He had given him. But in two words He cuts off all possible boastfulhess of His creature. Zerubbabel was all this, not of himself, but "because God had chosen" him. Even the sacred manhood of our Lord (it is acknowledged as a theological truth) was not chosen for any foreseen merits, but for the great love, with which God the Father chose it, and God the Son willed to be in such wise incarnate, and God the Holy Spirit willed that that Holy Thing should be conceived of Him. So God says of Him Isa 42:1, "Behold My Servant whom I uphold, Mine elect in whom My soul delighteth;" and God bare witness to Him Mat 3:17; Mat 17:5, "This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."
Hebrews Introduction
Hebrews
heb 0:0
Introduction to Hebrews
Section 1. Preliminary Remarks
It need not be said that this Epistle has given rise to much discussion among writers on the New Testament. Indeed there is probably no part of the Bible in regard to which so many conflicting views have been entertained. The name of the author; the time and place where the Epistle was written; the character of the book; its canonical authority; the language in which it was composed; and the persons to whom it was addressed - all have given rise to great difference of opinion. Among the causes of this are the following: - The name of the author is not mentioned. The church to which it was sent, if sent to any particular church, is not designated. There are no certain marks of time in the Epistle, as there often are in the writings of Paul, by which we can determine the time when it was written.
It is not the design of these notes to go into an extended examination of these questions. Those who are disposed to pursue these inquiries, and to examine the questions which have been started in regard to the Epistle, can find ample means in the larger works that have treated of it; and especially in Lardner; in Michaelis' Introduction; in the Prolegomena of Kuinoel; in Hug's Introduction; and particularly in Professor Stuart's invaluable Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. No other work on this portion of the New Testament is so complete as his, and in the Introduction he has left nothing to be desired in regard to the literature of the Epistle.
Early on controversies arose in the church in regard to a great variety of questions pertaining to this Epistle, which are not yet fully settled. Most of those questions, however, pertain to the literature of the Epistle, and however they may be decided, are not such as to affect the respect which a Christian ought to have for it as a part of the word of God. They pertain to the inquiries, to whom it was written; in what language, and at what time it was composed; questions which in whatever way they may be settled, do not affect its canonical authority, and should not shake the confidence of Christians in it as a part of divine revelation. The only inquiry on these points which it is proper to institute in these notes is, whether the claims of the Epistle to a place in the canon of Scripture are of such a kind as to allow Christians to read it as a part of the oracles of God? May we sit down to it feeling that we are perusing that which has been given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit as a part of revealed truth? Other questions are interesting in their places, and the solution of them is worth all which it has cost; but they need not embarrass us here, nor claim our attention as preliminary to the exposition of the Epistle. All that will be attempted, therefore, in this Introduction, will be such a "condensation" of the evidence collected by others, as shall show that this Epistle has of right a place in the volume of revealed truth, and is of authority to regulate the faith and practice of mankind.
Section 2. To Whom Was the Epistle Written?
It purports to have been written to the "Hebrews." This is not found, indeed, in the body of the Epistle, though it occurs in the subscription at the end. It differs from all the other epistles of Paul in this respect, and from most of the others in the New Testament. In all of the other epistles of Paul, the church or person to whom the letter was sent is specified in the commencement. This, however, commences in the form of an essay or homily; nor is there anywhere in the Epistle any direct intimation as to what church it was sent. The subscription at the end is of no authority, since it cannot be supposed that the author himself would affix it to the Epistle, and since it is known that many of those subscriptions are false. See the remarks at the close of the notes on Romans, and the notes 1 Corinthians. Several questions present themselves here which we may briefly investigate:
(I) "What is the evidence that it was written to the Hebrews?" In reply to this we may observe:
(1) That the inscription at the commencement, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews," though not affixed by the author, may be allowed to express the current sense of the church in ancient times in reference to a question on which they had the best means of judging. These inscriptions at the commencement of the epistles have hitherto in general escaped the suspicion of spuriousness, to which the subscriptions at the close are justly exposed. "Michaelis." They should not in any case be called in question, unless there is good reason from the Epistle itself, or from some other source. This inscription is found in all our present Greek manuscripts, and in nearly all the ancient versions. It is found in the Peshito, the Old Syriac version, which was made in the first or in the early part of the second century. It is the title given to the Epistle by the fathers of the second century, and onward - Stuart.
(2) the testimony of the fathers. Their testimony is unbroken and uniform. With one accord they declare this, and this should be regarded as testimony of great value. Unless there is some good reason to depart from such evidence, it should be regarded as decisive. In this case, there is no good reason for calling it in question, but every reason to suppose it to be correct; nor so far as I have found is there any one who has doubted it.
(3) the internal evidence is of the highest character that it was written to Hebrew converts. It treats subjects of Hebrew institutions. It explains their nature. It makes no allusion to Gentile customs or laws. It all along supposes that those to whom it was sent were familiar with the Jewish history; with the nature of the temple service; with the functions of the priestly office; and with the whole structure of their religion. No other person than those who had been Jews are addressed throughout the Epistle. There is no attempt to explain the nature or design of any customs except those with which they were familiar. At the same time, it is equally clear that they were Jewish converts - converts from Judaism to Christianity - who are addressed. The writer addresses them as Christians, not as those who were to be converted to Christianity; he explains to them the Jewish customs as one would do to those who had been converted from Judaism; he endeavors to guard them from apostasy, as if there were danger that they would relapse again into the system from which they were converted. These considerations seem to be decisive; and in the view of all who have written on the Epistle, as well as of the Christian world at large, they settle the question. It has never been held that the Epistle was directed to Gentiles; and in all the opinions and questions which have been started on the subject, it has been admitted that, wherever they resided, the persons to whom the Epistle was addressed were originally Hebrews who had never been converted to the Christian religion.
(II) "To what particular church of the Hebrews was it written?" Very different opinions have been held on this question. The celebrated Storr held that it was written to the Hebrew part of the churches in Galatia; and that the Epistle to the Galatians was addressed to the Gentile part of those churches. Semler and Noessett maintained that it was written to the churches in Macedonia, and particularly to the church of Thessalonica. Bolten maintains that it was addressed to the Jewish Christians who fled from Palestine in a time of persecution about the year 60 a.d., and who were scattered through Asia Minor. Michael Weber supposed that it was addressed to the church at Corinth. Ludwig conjectured that it was addressed to a church in Spain. Wetstein supposes that it was written to the church at Rome. Most of these opinions are mere conjectures, and all of them depend upon circumstances which furnish only slight evidence of probability. Those who are disposed to examine these, and to see them confuted, may consult Stuart's Commentary on the Hebrews, Introduction Sections 5-9.
The common, and the almost universally received opinion is that the Epistle was addressed to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine. The reasons for this opinion, briefly, are the following:
(1) The testimony of the ancient church was uniform on this point - that the Epistle was not only written to the Hebrew Christians, but to those who were in Palestine. Lardner affirms this to be the testimony of Clement of Alexandria, Jerome, Euthalius, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Theophylact; and adds that this was the general opinion of the ancients. Works, vol. iv. pp 80, 81. ed. London, 1829.
(2) The inscription at the commencement of the Epistle leads to this supposition. That inscription, though not appended by the hand of the author, was early affixed to it. It is found not only in the Greek manuscripts, but in all the early versions, as the Syriac and the Itala; and was doubtless affixed at a very early period, and by whomsoever affixed, expressed the current sense at the time. It is hardly possible that a mistake would be made on this point; and unless there is good evidence to the contrary, this ought to be allowed to determine the question. That inscription is, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews." But who are the Hebrews - the Ἑβρᾶιοι Hebraioi? Professor Stuart has endeavored to show that this was a term that was employed exclusively to denote the "Jews in Palestine," in contradistinction from foreign Jews, who were called "Hellenists." Compare my notes on Act 6:1. Bertholdt declares that there is not a single example which can be found in early times of Jewish Christians out of Palestine being called "Hebrews." See a Dissertation on the Greek Language in Palestine. and of the meaning of the word "Hellenists," by Hug, in the Bib. Repository, Vol. I, 547, 548. Compare also Robinson's Lexicon on the word Ἑβρᾶιος Hebraios. If this is so, and if the inscription is of any authority, then it goes far to settle the question. The word "Hebrews" occurs only three times in the New Testament Act 6:1; Co2 11:22; Phi 3:5 in the first of which it is certain that it is used in this sense, and in both the others of which it is probable. There can be no doubt, it seems to me, that an ancient writer acquainted with the usual sense of the word "Hebrew," would understand an inscription of this kind - "written to the Hebrews" - as designed for the inhabitants of Palestine, and not for the Jews of other countries.
(3) there are some passages in the Epistle itself which Lardner supposes indicate that this Epistle was written to the Hebrews in Palestine, or to those there who had been converted from Judaism to Christianity. As those passages are not conclusive, and as their force has been called in question, and with much propriety, by Professor Stuart (pp. 32-34). I shall merely refer to them. They can be examined at leisure by those who are disposed, and though they do not prove that the Epistle was addressed to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine, yet they can be best interpreted on that supposition, and a special significancy would be attached to them on this supposition. They are the following: Heb 1:2; Heb 4:2; Heb 2:1-4; Heb 5:12; Heb 4:4-6; Heb 10:26-29, Heb 10:32-34; Heb 13:13-14. The argument of Lardner is that these would be more applicable to their condition than to others; a position which I think cannot be doubted. Some of them are of so general character, indeed, as to be applicable to Christians elsewhere; and in regard to some of them it cannot be certainly demonstrated that the state of things referred to existed in Judea, but taken together they would be more applicable by far to them than to the circumstances of any others of which we have knowledge; and this may be allowed to have some weight at least in determining to whom the Epistle was sent.
(4) the internal evidence of the Epistle corresponds with the supposition that it was written to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine. The passages referred to in the previous remarks (3) might be adduced here as proof. But there is other proof. It might have been otherwise. There might be such strong internal proof that an epistle was not addressed to a supposed people, as completely to neutralize all the evidence derived from an inscription like that prefixed to this Epistle, and all the evidence derived from tradition. But it is not so here. All the circumstances referred to in the Epistle; the general strain of remark; the argument: the allusions, are just such as would be likely to be found in an epistle addressed to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine, and such as would not be likely to occur in an epistle addressed to any other place or people. They are such as the following:
(a) The familiar acquaintance with the Jewish institutions supposed by the writer to exist among those to whom it was sent - a familiarity hardly to be expected even of Jews who lived in other countries.
(b) The danger so frequently adverted to of their relapsing into their former state; of apostatizing from Christianity, and of embracing again the Jewish rites and ceremonies - a danger that would exist nowhere else in so great a degree as in Judea. Compare Heb 2:1-3; Heb 3:7-11, Heb 3:15; Heb 4:1; Heb 6:1-8; Heb 10:26-35.
(c) The nature of the discussion in the Epistle - not turning upon the obligation of circumcision, and the distinction of meats and drinks, which occupied so much of the attention of the apostles and early Christians in other places - but a discussion relating to the whole structure of the Mosaic economy, the pre-eminence of Moses or Christ, the meaning of the rites of the temple, etc. These great questions would be more likely to arise in Judea than elsewhere, and it was important to discuss them fully, as it is done in this Epistle. In other places they would be of less interest, and would excite less difficulty.
(d) The allusion to local places and events; to facts in their history; and to the circumstances of public worship, which would be better understood there than elsewhere. There are no allusions - or if there are they are very brief and infrequent - to pagan customs games, races, and philosophical opinions, as there are often in the other epistles of the New Testament. Those to whom the Epistle was sent, are presumed to have an intimate and minute knowledge of the Hebrew history, and such a knowledge as could be hardly supposed elsewhere. Compare Heb. 11, particularly Heb 11:32-39. Thus, it is implied that they so well understood the subjects referred to relating to the Jewish rites, that it was not necessary that the writer should specify them particularly. See Heb 9:5. Of what other persons could this be so appropriately said as of the dwellers in Palestine?
(e) The circumstances of trial and persecution so often referred to in the Epistle, agree well with the known condition of the church in Palestine. That it was subjected to great trials we know; and though this was extensively true of other churches, yet it is probable that there were more vexatious and grievous exactions; that there was more spite and malice; that there were more of the trials arising from the separation of families and the losses of property attending a profession of Christianity in Palestine than elsewhere in the early Christian church. These considerations - though not so conclusive as to furnish absolute demonstration - go far to settle the question. They seem to me so strong as to preclude any reasonable doubt, and are such as the mind can repose on with a great degree of confidence in regard to the original destination of the Epistle.
(3) "was it addressed to a particular church in Palestine, or to the Hebrew Christians there in general?" Whether it was addressed to the churches in general in Palestine, or to some particular church there, it is now impossible to determine. Prof. Stuart inclines to the opinion that it was addressed to the church in Caesarea. The ancients in general supposed it was addressed to the church in Jerusalem. There are some local references in the Epistle which look as though it was directed to some particular church. But the means of determining this question are put beyond our reach, and it is of little importance to settle the question. From the allusions to the temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices, and the whole train of special institutions there, it would seem probable that it was directed to the church in Jerusalem. As that was the capital of the nation, and the center of religious influence; and as there was a large and flourishing church there, this opinion would seem to have great probability; but it is impossible now to determine it. If we suppose that the author sent the Epistle, in the first instance, to some local church, near the central seat of the great influence which he intended to reach by it - addressing to that church the particular communications in the last verses - we shall make a supposition which, so far as can now be ascertained, will accord with the truth in the case.
Section 3. The Author of the Epistle
To those who are familiar with the investigations which have taken place in regard to this Epistle, it need not be said that the question of its authorship has given rise to much discussion. The design of these notes does not permit me to go at length into this inquiry. Those who are disposed to see the investigation pursued at length, and to see the objections to the Pauline origin examined in a most satisfactory manner, can find it done in the Introduction to the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Prof. Stuart, pp. 77-260. All that my purpose requires is to state, in a very brief manner, the evidence on which it is ascribed to the apostle Paul. That evidence is, briefly, the following:
(1) That derived from the church at Alexandria. Clement of Alexandria says, that Paul wrote to the Hebrews, and that this was the opinion of Pantaenus, who was at the head of the celebrated Christian school at Alexandria, and who flourished about 180 a.d. Pantaenus lived near Palestine. He must have been acquainted with the prevailing opinions on the subject, and his testimony must be regarded as proof that the Epistle was regarded as Paul's by the churches in that region. Origen, also of Alexandria, ascribes the Epistle to Paul; though he says that the "sentiments" are those of Paul, but that the words and phrases belong to some one relating the apostle's sentiments, and as it were commenting on the words of his master. The testimony of the church at Alexandria was uniform after the time of Origen, that it was the production of Paul. Indeed there seems never to have been any doubt in regard to it there, and from the commencement it was admitted as his production. The testimony of that church and school is particularly valuable, because:
(a) it was near to Palestine, where the Epistle was probably sent;
(b) Clement particularly had traveled much, and would be likely to understand the prevailing sentiments of the East;
(c) Alexandria was the seat of the most celebrated theological school of the early Christian ages, and those who were at the head of this school would be likely to have correct information on a point like this; and,
(d) Origen is admitted to have been the most learned of the Greek fathers, and his testimony that the "sentiments" were those of Paul may be regarded as of unique value.
(2) it was inserted in the translation into the Syriac, made very early in the second century, and in the Old Italic version, and was hence believed to be of apostolic origin, and is by the inscription ascribed to Paul. This may be allowed to express the general sense of the churches at that time, as this would not have been done unless there had been a general impression that the Epistle was written by him. The fact that it was regarded early as an inspired book is also conclusively shown by the fact that the Second Epistle of Peter, and the Second Epistle and Third Epistle of John, are not found in that version. They came later into circulation than the other epistles, and were not possessed, or regarded as genuine, by the author of that version. The Epistle to the Hebrews is found in these versions, and was, therefore, regarded as one of the inspired books. In those versions it bears the inscription, "To the Hebrews."
(3) this Epistle was received as the production of Paul by the Eastern churches. Justin Martyr, who was born at Samaria, quotes it, about the year 140 a.d. It was found, as has been already remarked, in the Peshito - the Old Syriac Version, made in the early part of the second century Jacob, bishop of Nisibis, also (about 325 a.d.) repeatedly quotes it as the production of an apostle. Ephrem Syrus, or the Syrian, abundantly ascribes this Epistle to Paul. He was the disciple of Jacob of Nisibis, and no man was better qualified to inform himself on this point than Ephrem. No man stands deservedly higher in the memory of the Eastern churches. After him, all the Syrian churches acknowledged the canonical authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But the most important testimony of the Eastern church is that of Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine. He is the well-known historian of the church, and he took pains from all quarters to collect testimony in regard to the Books of Scripture. He says, "There are fourteen epistles of Paul, manifest and well known: but yet there are some who reject that to the Hebrews, alleging in behalf of their opinion, that it was not received by the church of Rome as a writing of Paul." The testimony of Eusebius is particularly important.
He had heard of the objection to its canonical authority. He had weighed that objection. Yet in view of the testimony in the case, he regarded it as the undoubted production of Paul. As such it was received in the churches in the East; and the fact which he mentions, that its genuineness had been disputed by the church of Rome, and that he specifies no other church, proves that it had not been called in question in the East. This seems to me to be sufficient testimony to settle this inquiry. The writers here referred to lived in the very country to which the Epistle was evidently written, and their testimony is uniform. Justin Martyr was born in Samaria; Ephrem passed his life in Syria; Eusebius lived in Cesarea, and Origen passed the last twenty years of his life in Palestine. The churches there were unanimous in the opinion that this Epistle was written by Paul, and their united testimony should settle the question.
Indeed when their testimony is considered, it seems remarkable that the subject should have been regarded as doubtful by critics, or that it should have given rise to so much protracted investigation. I might add to the testimonies above referred to, the fact that the Epistle was declared to be Paul's by the following persons: Archelaus, Bishop of Mesopotamia, about 300 a.d.; Adamantius, about 330 a.d.; Cyril, of Jerusalem, about 348 a.d.; the Council of Laodicea, about 363 a.d.; Epiphanius, about 368 a.d.; Basil, 370 a.d.; Gregory Nazianzen, 370 a.d.; Chrysostom, 398 a.d., etc. etc. Why should not the testimony of such men and churches be admitted? What more clear or decided evidence could we wish in regard to any fact of ancient history? Would not such testimony be ample in regard to an anonymous oration of Cicero, or poem of Virgil or Horace? Are we not constantly acting on far feebler evidence in regard to the authorship of many productions of celebrated English writers?
(4) in regard to the Western churches, it is to be admitted that, like the Second Epistle of Peter, and the Second Epistle and Third Epistle of John, the canonical authority was for some time doubted, or was even called in question. But this may be accounted for. The Epistle had not the name of the author. All the other epistles of Paul had. As the Epistle was addressed to the Hebrews in Palestine, it may not have been soon known to the Western churches. As there were spurious epistles and gospels at an early age, much caution would be used in admitting any anonymous production to a place in the sacred canon. Yet it was not long before all these doubts were removed, and the Epistle to the Hebrews was allowed to take its place among the other acknowledged writings of Paul. It was received as the Epistle of Paul by Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, about 354 a.d.; by Lucifer, Bishop of Cagliari, 354 a.d.; by Victorinus, 360 a.d.; by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, 360 a.d.; by Rufinus, 397 a.d., etc. etc.
Jerome, the well-known Latin Father, uses in regard to it the following language: "This is to be maintained, that this Epistle, which is inscribed to the Hebrews, is not only received by the churches at the East as the apostle Paul's, but has been in past times by all ecclesiastical writers in the Greek language; although most Latins think that Barnabas or Clement was the author." Still, it was not rejected by "all" the Latins. Some received it in the time of Jerome as the production of Paul. See Stuart, pp. 114, 115, for the full testimony of Jerome. Augustine admitted that the Epistle was written by Paul. He mentions that Paul wrote fourteen epistles, and specifies particularly the Epistle to the Hebrews. He often cites it as a part of Scripture, and quotes it as the production of an apostle - Stuart, p. 115. From the time of Augustine it was undisputed. By the Council of Hippo, 393 a.d., the Third Council of Carthage, 397 a.d., and the Fifth Council of Carthage, 419 a.d., it was declared to be the Epistle of Paul, and was commended to the churches as such.
(5) as another proof that it is the writing of Paul, we may appeal to the internal evidence:
(a) The author of the Epistle was the companion and friend of Timothy. "Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty - or is sent away - ἀπολελυμένον apolelumenon - with whom if he come speedily, I will make you a visit." Heb 13:23. Sent away, perhaps, on a journey, to visit some of the churches, and expected soon to return. In Phi 2:19, Paul speaks of sending Timothy to them "so soon as he should see how it would go with him," at the same time expressing a hope that he should himself see them shortly. What is more natural than to suppose that he had now sent Timothy to Philippi; that during his absence he wrote this Epistle; that he was waiting for his return; and that he proposed, if Timothy should return soon, to visit Palestine with him? And who would more naturally say this than the apostle Paul - the companion and friend of Timothy; by whom he had been accompanied in his travels; and by whom he was regarded with special interest as a minister of the gospel?
(b) In Heb 13:18-19, he asks their prayers that he might be restored to them; and in Heb 13:23, he expresses a confident expectation of being able soon to come and see them. From this it is evident that he was then imprisoned, but had hope of speedy release - a state of things in exact accordance with what existed at Rome. Phi 2:17-24.
(c) He was in bonds when he wrote this Epistle. Heb 10:34, "ye had compassion of me in my bonds;" an expression that will exactly apply to the case of Paul. He was in "bonds" in Palestine; he was two whole years in Caesarea a prisoner Act 24:27; and what was more natural than that the Christians in Palestine should have had compassion on him, and ministered to his needs? To what other person would these circumstances so certainly be applicable?
(d) The salutation Heb 13:24, "they of Italy salute you," agrees with the supposition that it was written by Paul when a prisoner at Rome. Paul writing from Rome, and acquainted with Christians from other parts of Italy, would be likely to send such a salutation. In regard to the "objections" which may be made to this use of the passage, the reader may consult Stuart's Introduction to the Hebrews, p. 127, following.
(e) The "doctrines" of the Epistle are the same as those which are taught by Paul in his undisputed writings. It is true that this consideration is not conclusive, but the want of it would be conclusive evidence against the position that Paul wrote it. But the resemblance is not general. It is not such as any man would exhibit who held to the same general system of truth. It relates to "peculiarities" of doctrine, and is such as would be manifested by a man who bad been reared and trained as Paul had:
(1) No one can doubt that the author was formerly a Jew - and a Jew who had been familiar to an uncommon degree with the institutions of the Jewish religion. Every rite and ceremony; every form of opinion; every fact in their history, is perfectly familiar to him. And though the other apostles were Jews, yet we can hardly suppose that they had the familiarity with the minute rites and ceremonies so accurately referred to in this Epistle, and so fully illustrated. With Paul all this was perfectly natural. He had been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and had spent the early part of his life at Jerusalem in the careful study of the Old Testament, in the examination of the prevalent opinions, and in the attentive observance of the rites of religion. The other apostles had been born and trained, apparently, on the banks of Gennesareth, and certainly with few of the opportunities which Paul had had for becoming acquainted with the institutions of the temple service. This consideration is fatal, in my view, to the claim which has been set up for Clement as the author of the Epistle. It is wholly incredible that a foreigner should be so familiar with the Jewish opinions, laws, institutions, and history, as the author of this Epistle manifestly was.
(2) there is the same preference for Christianity over Judaism in this Epistle which is shown by Paul in his other epistles, and exhibited in the same form. Among these points are the following - "The gospel imparts superior light." Compare Gal 4:3, Gal 4:9; Co1 14:20; Eph 4:11-13; Co2 3:18; with Heb 1:1-2; Heb 2:2-4; Heb 8:9-11; Heb 10:1; Heb 11:39-40. "The gospel holds out superior motives and encouragements to piety." Compare Gal 3:23; Gal 4:2-3; Rom 8:15-17; Gal 4:1; Gal 5:13; Co1 7:19; Gal 6:15; with Heb 9:9, Heb 9:14; Heb 12:18-24, Heb 12:28; Heb 8:6-13. "The gospel is superior in promoting the real and permanent happiness of mankind." Compare Gal 3:13; Co2 3:7, Co2 3:9; Rom 3:20; Rom 4:24-25; Eph 1:7; Rom 5:1-2; Gal 2:16; and the same views in Heb 12:18-21; Heb 9:9; Heb 10:4, Heb 10:11; Heb 6:18-20; Heb 7:25; Heb 9:24. "The Jewish dispensation was a type and shadow of the Christian." See Col 2:16-17; Co1 10:1-6; Rom 5:14; Co1 15:45-47; Co2 3:13-18; Gal 4:22-31; Gal 4:1-5; and for the same or similar views, see Heb 9:9-14; Heb 10:1; Heb 8:1-9; Heb 9:22-24. "The Christian religion was designed to be perpetual, while the Jewish was intended to be abolished."
See Co2 3:10-11, Co2 3:13, Co2 3:18; Co2 4:14-16; Rom 7:4-6; Gal 3:21-25; Gal 4:1-7; Gal 5:1; and for similar views compare Heb 8:6-8, Heb 8:13; Heb 7:17-19; Heb 10:1-14. "The person of the Mediator is presented in the same light by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews and by Paul." See Phi 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20; Co2 8:9; Eph 3:9; Co1 8:6; Co1 15:25-27; and for the same and similar views, see Heb 1:2-3; Heb 2:9, Heb 2:14; Heb 12:2; Heb 2:8; Heb 10:13. "The death of Christ is the propitiatory sacrifice for sin." See Ti1 1:15; Co1 15:3; Rom 8:32; Rom 3:24; Gal 1:4; Gal 2:20; Co1 5:7; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14; Ti1 2:6; Co1 6:20; Co1 7:23; Rom 5:12-21; Rom 3:20, Rom 3:28; Rom 8:3; Ti1 2:5-6. For similar views see Heb 1:3; Heb 2:9; Heb 5:8-9; Heb. 7; Heb 8:1-13; Heb. 9; Heb. 10: "The general method and arrangement of this Epistle and the acknowledged epistles of Paul are the same." It particularly resembles the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, where we have first a doctrinal and then a practical part.
The same is true also to some extent of the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians. The Epistle to the Hebrews is on the same plan. As far as Heb 10:19, it is principally doctrinal; the remainder is mainly practical. "The manner of appealing to, and applying the Jewish Scriptures, is the same in this Epistle as in those of Paul." The general structure of the Epistle, and the slightest comparison between them, will show this with sufficient clearness. The general remark to be made in view of this comparison is, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is just such an one as Paul might be expected to write; that it agrees with what we know to have been his early training, his views, his manner of life, his opinions, and his habit in writing; that it accords better with his views than with those of any other known writer of antiquity; and that it falls in with the circumstances in which he was known to be placed, and the general object which he had in view. So satisfactory are these views to my mind, that they seem to have all the force of demonstration which can be had in regard to any anonymous publication, and it is a matter of wonder that so much doubt has been experienced in reference to the question who was the author.
It is difficult to account for the fact that the name of the author was omitted. It is found in every other Epistle of Paul, and in general it is appended to the epistles in the New Testament. It is omitted, however, in the three Epistles of John, for reasons which are now unknown. And there may have been similar reasons also unknown for omitting it in this case. The simple fact is, that it is anonymous; and whoever was the author, the same difficulty will exist in accounting for it. If this fact will prove that Paul was not the author, it would prove the same thing in regard to any other person, and would thus be ultimately conclusive evidence that it had no author. What were the reasons for omitting the name can be only matter of conjecture. The most probable opinion, as it seems to me, is this. The name of Paul was odious to the Jews. He was regarded by the nation as an apostate from their religion, and everywhere they showed special malignity against him.
See the Acts of the Apostles. The fact that he was so regarded by them might indirectly influence even those who had been converted from Judaism to Christianity. They lived in Palestine. They were near the temple, and were engaged in its ceremonies and sacrifices - for there is no evidence that they broke off from those observances on their conversion to Christianity. Paul was abroad. It might have been reported that he was preaching against the temple and its sacrifices, and even the Jewish Christians in Palestine might have supposed that he was carrying matters too far. In these circumstances it might have been imprudent for him to have announced his name at the outset, for it might have aroused prejudices which a wise man would wish to allay. But if he could present an argument, somewhat in the form of an essay, showing that he believed that the Jewish institutions were appointed by God, and that he was not an apostate and an infidel; if he could conduct a demonstration that would accord in the main with the prevailing views of the Christians in Palestine, and that was adapted to, strengthen them in the faith of the gospel, and explain to them the true nature of the Jewish rites, then the object could be gained without difficulty, and then they would be prepared to learn that Pant was the author, without prejudice or alarm. Accordingly he thus conducts the argument; and at the close gives them such intimations that they would understand who wrote it without much difficulty. If this was the motive, it was an instance of tact such as was certainly characteristic of Paul, and such as was not unworthy any man. I have no doubt that this was the true motive. It would be soon known who wrote it; and accordingly we have seen it was never disputed in the Eastern churches.
Section 4. The Time When Written
In regard to the time when this Epistle was written, and the place where, critics have been better agreed than on most of the questions which have been started in regard to it. Mill was of opinion that it was written by Paul in the year 63 a.d., in some part of Italy, soon after he bad been released from imprisonment at Rome. Wetstein was of the same opinion. Tillemont also places this Epistle in the year 63 a.d., and supposes that it was written while Paul was at Rome, or at least in Italy, and soon after he was released from imprisonment. Basnage supposes it was written about the year 61, and during the imprisonment of the apostle. Lardner supposes also that it was written in the beginning of the year 63 a.d., and soon after the apostle was released from his confinement. This also is the opinion of Calmet. The circumstances in the Epistle which will enable us to form an opinion on the question about the time and the place are the following:
(1) It was written while the temple was still standing, and before Jerusalem was destroyed. This is evident from the whole structure of the Epistle. There is no allusion to the destruction of the temple or the city, which there certainly would have been if they had been destroyed. Such an event would have contributed much to the object in view, and would have furnished an unbreakable argument that the institutions of the Jews were intended to be superseded by another and a more perfect system. Moreover, there are allusions in the Epistle which suppose that the temple service was then performed. See Heb 9:9; Heb 8:4-5. But the city and temple were destroyed in the year 70 a.d., and, of course, the Epistle was written before that year.
(2) it was evidently written before the civil wars and commotions in Judea, which terminated in the destruction of the city and nation. This is clear, because there are no allusions to any such disorders or troubles in Palestine, and there is no intimation that they were suffering the evils incident to a state of war. Compare Heb 12:4. But those wars commenced 66 a.d., and evidently the Epistle was written before that time.
(3) they were not suffering the evils of violent persecution. They had indeed formerly suffered (compare Heb 10:32, Heb 10:34); James and Stephen had been put to death Acts 7; Acts 12; but there was no violent and bloody persecution then raging in which they were called to defend their religion at the expense of blood and life. Heb 10:32-33. But the persecution under Nero began in the year 64 a.d., and though it began at Rome, and was confined to a considerable degree to Italy, yet it is not improbable that it extended to other places, and it is to be presumed that if such a persecution were raging at the time when the Epistle was written there would be some allusion to this fact. It may be set down, therefore, that it was written before the year 64 ad.
(4) It is equally true that the Epistle was written during the latter part of the apostolic age. The author speaks of the former days in which after they were illuminated they had endured a great fight of afflictions, and when they were made a gazing-stock, and were plundered by their oppressors Heb 10:32-34; and he speaks of them as having been so long-converted that they ought to have been qualified to teach others Heb 5:12; and, hence, it is fairly to be inferred that they were not recent converts, but that the church there had been established for a considerable period. It may be added, that it was after the writer had been imprisoned - as I suppose in Caesarea (see Section 3) - when they had ministered to him; Heb 10:34. But this was as late as the year 60 ad.
(5) At the time when Paul wrote the Epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, he had hopes of deliverance. Timothy was evidently with him. But now he was absent; Heb 13:23. In the Epistle to the Philippians Phi 2:19-23 he says, "But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I may be also of good comfort, when I know your state." He expected, therefore, that Timothy would come back to him at Rome. It is probable that Timothy was sent soon after this. The apostle had a fair prospect of being set at liberty, and sent him to them. "During his absence" at this time, it would seem probable, this Epistle was written. Thus, the writer says Heb 13:23, "Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty" - or rather, "sent away," or "sent abroad" (see the note in that place); "with whom if be come shortly, I will see you." That is, if he returns soon, as I expect him, I will pay you a visit. It is probable that the Epistle was written while Timothy was thus absent at Philippi, and when he returned, Paul and he went to Palestine, and thence to Ephesus. If so it was written somewhere about the year 63 a.d. as this was the time when Paul was set at liberty.
(6) the Epistle was written evidently in Italy. Thus, in Heb 13:24, the writer says, "They of Italy salute you." This would be the natural form of salutation on the supposition that it was written there. He mentions none by name, as he does in his other epistles, for it is probable that none of those who were at Rome would be known by name in Palestine. But there was a general salutation, showing the interest which they had in the Christians in Judea, and expressive of regard for their welfare. This expression is, to my mind, conclusive evidence that the Epistle was written in Italy; and in Italy there was no place where this would be so likely to occur as at Rome.
Section 5. The Language in which It Was Written
This is a vexed and still unsettled question, and it does not seem to be possible to determine it with any considerable degree of certainty. Critics of the ablest name have been divided on it, and what is remarkable, have appealed to the same arguments to prove exactly opposite opinions - one class arguing that the style of the Epistle is such as to prove that it was written in Hebrew, and the other appealing to the same proofs to demonstrate that it was written in Greek. Among those who have supposed that it was written in Hebrew are the following, namely: - Some of the fathers - as Clement of Alexandria, Theodoret, John Damascenus, Theophylact; and among the moderns, Michaelis has been the most strenuous defender of this opinion. This opinion was also held by the late Dr. James P. Wilson, who says, "It was probably written in the common language of the Jews;" that is, in that mixture of Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee, which was usually spoken in the time of the Saviour, and which was known as the Syro-Chaldaic.
On the other hand, the great body of critics have supposed it was written in the Greek language. This was the opinion of Fabricius, Lightfoot, Whitby, Beausobre, Capellus, Basnage, Mill, and others, and is also the opinion of Lardnet, Hug, Stuart, and perhaps of most modern critics. These opinions may be seen examined at length in Michaelis' Introduction, Hag, Stuart, and Lardner.
The arguments in support of the opinion that it was written in Hebrew are, briefly, the following:
(1) The testimony of the fathers. Thus, Clement of Alexandria says, "Paul wrote to the Hebrews in the Hebrew language, and Luke carefully translated it into Greek." Jerome says, "Paul as a Hebrew wrote to the Hebrews in Hebrew - Scripserat ut Hebraeus Hebraeis Hebraice;" and then he adds, "this Epistle was translated into Greek, so that the coloring of the style was made diverse in this way from that of Paul's."
(2) the fact that it was written for the use of the Hebrews, who spoke the Hebrew, or the "Talmudic" language, is alleged as a reason for supposing that it must have been written in that language.
(3) it is alleged by Michaelis, that the style of the Greek, as we now have it, is far more pure and Classical than Paul elsewhere employs, and that hence it is to be inferred that it was translated by some one who was master of the Greek language. On this, however, the most eminent critics disagree.
(4) it is alleged by Michaelis, that the quotations in the Epistle, as we have it, are made from the Septuagint, and that they are foreign to the purpose which the writer had in view as they are now quoted, whereas they are exactly in point as they stand in the Hebrew. Hence he infers that the original Hebrew was quoted by the author, and that the translator used the common version at hand instead of making an exact translation for himself. Of the fact alleged here, however, there may be good ground to raise a question; and if it were so, it would not prove that the writer might not have used the common and accredited translation, though less to his purpose than the original. Of the fact, moreover, to which Michaelis here refers, Prof. Stuart says, "He has not adduced a single instance of what he calls a "wrong translation" which wears the appearance of any considerable probability." The only instance urged by Michaelis which seems to me to be plausible is Heb 1:7. These are the principal arguments which have been urged in favor of the opinion that this Epistle was written in the Hebrew language. They are evidently not conclusive. The only argument of any considerable weight is the testimony of some of the fathers, and it may be doubted whether they gave this as a matter of historic fact or only as a matter of opinion. See Hug's Introduction, 144. It is morally certain that in one respect their statement cannot be true. They state that it was translated by Luke; but it is capable of the clearest proof that it was not translated by Luke, the author of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, since there is the most remarkable dissimilarity in the style.
On the other hand there are alleged in favor of the opinion that it was written in Greek the following considerations, namely:
(1) The fact that we have no Hebrew original. If it was written in Hebrew, the original was early lost. None of the fathers say that they had seen it; none quote it. All the copies that we have are in Greek. If it was written in Hebrew, and the original was destroyed, it must have been at a very early period, and it is remarkable that no one should have mentioned the fact or alluded to it. Besides, it is scarcely conceivable that the original should have so soon perished, and that the translation should have altogether taken its place. If it was addressed to the Hebrews in Palestine, the same reason which made it proper that it should have been written in Hebrew would have led them to retain it in that language, and we might have supposed that Origen, or Eusebius, or Jerome, who lived there, or Ephrem the Syrian, would have adverted to the fact that there was there a Hebrew original. The Jews were remarkable for retaining their sacred books in the language in which they were written, and if this were written in Hebrew it is difficult to account for the fact that it was so soon suffered to perish.
(2) the presumption - a presumption amounting to almost a moral certainty - is, that an apostle writing to the Christians in Palestine would write in Greek. This presumption is based on the following circumstances:
(a) The fact that all the other books of the New Testament were written in Greek, unless the Gospel by Matthew is an exception.
(b) This occurred in cases where it would seem to have been as improbable as it was that one writing to the Hebrews should use that language. For instance, Paul wrote to the church in Rome in the Greek language, though the "Latin" language was what was in universal use there.
(c) The Greek was a common language in the East. It seems to have been familiarly spoken, and to have been commonly understood.
(d) Like the other books of the New Testament, this Epistle does not appear to have been intended to be confined to the Hebrews only. The writings of the apostles were regarded as the property of the church at large. Those writings would be copied and spread abroad. The Greek language was a far better language for such a purpose than the Hebrew language. It was polished and elegant; was adapted to the purpose of discoursing on moral subjects; was fitted to express delicate shades of thought, and was the language which was best understood by the world at large.
(e) It was the language which Paul would naturally use unless there was a strong reason for his employing the Hebrew. Though he was able to speak in Hebrew Act 21:40, yet he had spent his early days in Tarsus, where the Greek was the vernacular tongue, and it was probably that which he had first learned. Besides this, when this Epistle was written he had been absent from Palestine about 25 years, and in all that time he had been there but a few days. He had been where the Greek language was universally spoken. He had been among Jews who spoke that language. It was the language used in their synagogues, and Paul had addressed them in it. After thus preaching, conversing, and writing in that language for 25 years, is it any wonder that he should prefer writing in it; that he should naturally do it; and is it not to be presumed that he would do it in this case? These presumptions are so strong that they ought to be allowed to settle a question of this kind unless there is positive proof to the contrary.
(3) there is internal proof that it was written in the Greek language. The evidence of this kind consists in the fact that the writer bases an argument on the meaning and force of Greek words, which could not have occurred had he written in Hebrew. Instances of this kind are such as these:
(a) In Heb. 2: he applies a passage from Psa 8:1-9 to prove that the Son of God must have had a human nature, which was to be exalted above the angels, and placed at the head of the creation. The passage is, "Thou hast made him a little while inferior to the angels. Heb 2:7, margin. In the Hebrew, in Psa 8:5, the word rendered "angels," is אלהים 'Elohiym - God; and the sense of "angels" attached to that word, though it may sometimes occur, is so unusual, that an argument would not have been built on the Hebrew language.
(b) In Heb 7:1, the writer has explained the name "Melchizedek," and translated it "king of Salem" - telling what it is in "Greek" - a thing which would not have been done had he written in Hebrew, where the word was well understood. It is possible, indeed, that a translator might have done this, but the explanation seems to be interwoven with the discourse itself, and to constitute a part of the argument.
(c) In Heb 9:16-17, there is an argument on the meaning of the word "covenant" - διαθήκη diathēkē - which could not have occurred had the Epistle been in Hebrew. It is founded on the double meaning of that word - denoting both a "covenant" and a "testament," or "will." The Hebrew word - בּרית beriyt - has no such double signification. It means only "covenant," and is never used in the sense of the word "will," or testament. The proper translation of that word would be συνθήκη sunthēkē - but the translators of the Septuagint uniformly used the former - διαθήκη diathēkē and on this word the argument of the apostle is based. This could not have been done by a translator; it must have been by the original author, for it is incorporated into the argument.
(d) In Heb 10:3-9, the author shows that Christ came to make an atonement for sin, and that in order to this it was necessary that he should have a human body. This he shows was not only necessary, but was predicted. In doing this, he appeals to Psa 40:6 - "A body hast thou prepared for me." But the Hebrew here is, "Mine ears hast thou opened." This passage would have been much less pertinent than the other form - "a body hast thou prepared me; " - and indeed it is not easy to see how it would bear at all on the object in view. See Heb 10:10. But in the Septuagint, the phrase stands as he quotes it - "a body hast thou prepared for me;" a fact which demonstrates, whatever difficulties there may be about the "principle" on which he makes the quotation, that the Epistle was written in Greek. It may be added, that it has nothing of the appearance of a translation. It is not stiff, forced, or constrained in style, as translations usually are. It is impassioned, free, flowing, full of animation, life, and coloring, and has all the appearance of being an original composition. So clear have these considerations appeared, that the great body of critics now concur in the opinion that the Epistle was originally written in Greek
Section 6. The Design and General Argument of the Epistle
The general purpose of this Epistle is, to preserve those to whom it was sent from the danger of apostasy. Their danger on this subject did not arise so much from persecution, as from the circumstances that were fitted to attract them again to the Jewish religion. The temple, it is supposed, and indeed it is evident, was still standing. The morning and evening sacrifice was still offered. The splendid rites of that imposing religion were still observed. The authority of the law was undisputed. Moses was a lawgiver, sent from God, and no one doubted that the Jewish form of religion had been instituted by their fathers in conformity with the direction of God. Their religion had been founded amidst remarkable manifestations of the Deity - in flames, and smoke, and thunder; it had been communicated by the ministration of angels; it had on its side and in its favor all the venerableness and sanction of a remote antiquity; and it commended itself by the pomp of its ritual, and by the splendor of its ceremonies. On the other hand, the new form of religion had little or nothing of this to commend it. It was of recent origin. It was founded by the Man of Nazareth, who had been trained up in their own land, and who had been a carpenter, and who had had no extraordinary advantages of education. Its rites were few and simple. It had no splendid temple service; none of the pomp and pageantry, the music and the magnificence of the ancient religion. It had no splendid array of priests in magnificent vestments, and it had not been imparted by the ministry of angels. Fishermen were its ministers; and by the body of the nation it was regarded as a schism, or heresy, that enlisted in its favor only the most humble and lowly of the people.
In these circumstances, how natural was it for the enemies of the gospel in Judea to contrast the two forms of religion, and how keenly would Christians there feel it! All that was said of the antiquity and the divine origin of the Jewish religion they knew and admitted; all that was said of its splendor and magnificence they saw; and all that was said of the humble origin of their own religion they were constrained to admit also. their danger was not that arising from persecution. It was that of being affected by considerations like these, and of relapsing again into the religion of their fathers, and of apostatizing from the gospel; and it was a danger which beset no other part of the Christian world.
To meet and counteract this danger was the design of this Epistle. Accordingly, the writer contrasts the two religions in all the great points on which the minds of Christians in Judea would be likely to be affected, and shows the superiority of the Christian religion over the Jewish in every respect, and especially in the points that had so much attracted their attention, and affected their hearts. He begins by showing that the author of the Christian religion was superior in rank to any and all who had ever delivered the word of God to man. He was superior to the prophets, and even to the angels. He was over all things, and all things were subject to him. There was, therefore, a special reason why they should listen to him, and obey his commands; Heb 1:1-14 and Heb. 2: He was superior to Moses, the great Jewish lawgiver, whom they venerated so much, and on whom they so much prided themselves; Heb. 3: Having shown that the Great Founder of the Christian religion was superior to the prophets, to Moses, and to the angels, the writer proceeds to show that the Christian religion was characterized by having a High Priest superior to that of the Jews, and of whom the Jewish high priest was but a type and emblem.
He shows that all the rites of the ancient religion, splendid as they were, were also but types, and were to vanish away - for they had had their fulfillment in the realities of the Christian faith He allows that the Christians High Priest derived his origin and his rank from a more venerable antiquity than the Jewish high priest did - because he went back to Melchizedek, who lived long before Aaron, and that he had far superior dignity from the fact that he had entered into the Holy of Holies in heaven. The Jewish high priest entered once a year into the most holy place in the temple; the Great High Priest of the Christian faith had entered into the Most Holy place - of which that was but the type and emblem - into heaven. In short, whatever there was of dignity and honor in the Jewish faith had more than its counterpart in the Christian religion; and while the Christian religion was permanent, that was fading.
The rites of the Jewish system, magnificent as they were, were designed to be temporary. They were mere types and shadows of things to come. They had their fulfillment in Christianity That had an Author more exalted in rank by far than the author of the Jewish system; it had a High Priest more elevated and enduring; it had rites which brought men nearer to God; it was the substance of what in the temple service was type and shadow. By considerations such as these the author of this Epistle endeavors to preserve them from apostasy. Why should they go back? Why should they return to a less perfect system? Why go back from the substance to the shadow? Why turn away from the true sacrifice to the type and emblem? Why linger around the earthly tabernacle, and contemplate the high priest there, while they had a more perfect and glorious High Priest, who had entered into the heavens? And why should they turn away from the only perfect sacrifice - the great offering made for transgression - and go back to the bloody rites which were to be renewed every day?
And why forsake the perfect system - the system that was to endure for ever - for that which was soon to vanish away? The author of this Epistle is very careful to assure them that if they thus apostatized, there could be no hope for them. If they now rejected the sacrifice of the Son of God, then was no other sacrifice for sin. That was the last great sacrifice for the sins of men. It was designed to close all bloody offerings. It was not to be repeated. If that was rejected, there was no other. The Jewish rites were soon to pass away; and even if they were not, they could not cleanse the conscience from sin. Persecuted then though they might be; reviled, ridiculed, opposed, yet they should not abandon their Christian hope, for it was their all; they should not neglect him who spake to them from heaven, for in dignity, rank, and authority, he far surpassed all who in former times had made known the will of God to men.
This Epistle, therefore, occupies a most important place in the book of revelation, and without it that book would be incomplete. It is the most full explanation which we have of the meaning of the Jewish institutions. In the Epistle to the Romans we have a system of religious doctrine, and particularly a defense of the great doctrine of justification by faith. Important doctrines are discussed in the other epistles; but there was something wanted that would show the meaning of the Jewish rites and ceremonies, and their connection with the Christian scheme; something which would show us how the one was preparatory to the other; and I may add, something that would restrain the imagination in endeavoring to show how the one was designed to introduce the other. The one was a system of "types" and "shadows." But on nothing is the human mind more prone to wander than on the subject of emblems and analogies.
This has been shown abundantly in the experience of the Christian church, from the time of Origen to the present. Systems of divinity, commentaries, and sermons, have shown everywhere how prone men of ardent imaginations have been to find types in everything pertaining to the ancient economy; to discover hidden meanings in every ceremony; and to regard every pin and hook and instrument of the tabernacle as designed to inculcate some truth, and to shadow forth some fact or doctrine of the Christian revelation. It was desirable to have one book that should tell how that is; to fetter down the imagination and bind it by severe rules, and to restrain the vagaries of honest but credulous devotion. Such a book we have in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The ancient system is there explained by one who had been brought up in the midst of it, and who understood it thoroughly; by one who had a clear insight into the relation which it bore to the Christian economy; by one who was under the influence of divine inspiration, and who could not err.
The Bible would have been incomplete without this book: and when I think of the relation between the Jewish and the Christian systems; when I look on the splendid rites of the ancient economy, and ask their meaning; when I wish a full guide to heaven, and ask for that which gives completeness to the whole, I turn instinctively to the Epistle to the Hebrews. When I wish also that which shall give me the most elevated view of the Great Author of Christianity and of his work, and the most clear conceptions of the sacrifice which he made for sin: and when I look for considerations that shall be most effectual in restraining the soul from apostasy, and for considerations to enable it to bear trials with patience and with hope, my mind recurs to this book, and I feel that the book of revelation, and the hopes of man, would be incomplete without it.
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Zechariah Introduction
Zechariah
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Introduction to Zechariah
Zechariah entered into his prophetic function two months after Haggai's first prophecy. He was still a youth, when God called him Zac 2:4, and so, since in the second year of Darius Hystaspis 18 years had elapsed from the first of Cyrus, he must have been brought in infancy from Babylon. His father Berechiah probably died young, since, in Ezra, the prophet is called after his grandfather, "Zechariah the son of Iddo" Ezr 5:1; Ezr 6:14. He succeeded his grandfather in the office of "the priests, the chief of the fathers," (of which there were twelve) in the days of Joiakim, the son of Joshua, the High priest Neh 12:10, Neh 12:12, Neh 12:16. Since then, while he prophesied together with Haggai, Joshua was still high priest, and it is Joshua whom he sees in his vision in that same year Zac 3:1, he must have entered into his prophetic function before he succeeded to that other dignity. Yet neither is there any reason to think that he ever laid it aside, since we do not hear of any prophet, called by God, who did abandon it. Rather, like Jeremiah, he exercised both; called to the priesthood by the birth given to him by God, called to the prophetic function by divine inspiration.
Like Jeremiah, Zechariah was called in early youth to the prophetic function. The same designation, by which Jeremiah at first excused himself as unfit for the office, is given to Zechariah, "youth." The term does not indeed mark any definite age; for Joseph, when he was so designated by the chief butler Gen 41:12, was 28 ; Benjamin and Absalom had sons of their own . They were probably so called as terms of affection, the one by his brother Judah Gen 43:8; Gen 44:22, Gen 44:30, Gen 44:33, the other by David his father Sa2 18:5, Sa2 18:12, Sa2 18:29, Sa2 18:32. But his grandfather Iddo was still in the discharge of his office. The length of his ministry is equally unknown. Two years after his first entrance upon it Zac 7:1, when Haggai's function was closed, he was bidden to answer from God those who enquired whether, now that they were freed from the captivity, they should keep the national fasts which they had instituted on occasion of some of the mournful events which had ushered it in. His remaining prophecies bear no date. The belief, that he lived and prophesied to old age, may have a true foundation, though unknown to us. We only know that he survived the high priest, Joshua, since his own accession to his office of head of the priests, in his division, was in the days of Joiakim, the son of Joshua.
Zechariah's book opens with a very simple, touching call to those returned from the captivity, linking himself with the former prophets, but contrasting the transitoriness of all human things, those who prophesied and those to whom they prophesied, with the abidingness of the Word of God. It consists of four parts, differing in outward character, yet with a remarkable unity of purpose and end. All begin with a foreground subsequent to the captivity; all reach on to a further end; the first two to the coming of our Lord; the third from the deliverance of the house then built, during the invasion of Alexander, and from the victories of the Maccabees, to the rejection of the true Shepherd and the curse upon the false; the last, which is connected with the third by its title, reaches from a future repentance for the death of Christ to the final conversion of the Jews and Gentiles.
The outward difference, that the first prophecy is in visions; the second prophecy is a response to an enquiry made of him; the last two visions, in free delivery, obviously did not depend upon the prophet. The occasion also of the first two bodies of prophecy involved that they were written in prose. For the imagery was borne on the prophet's mind in visions. The function of the prophet was only to record them and the explanations given to him of parts of them, which could only be done in prose. So far, he was like the apostles, who enquired of our Lord (when in the flesh) as to the meaning of His parables. There is, as in the later chapters, an abundance of imagery; and it may have pleased God to adapt the form of His revelation to the imaginative mind of the young prophet who was to receive it. But the visions are, as the name implies, pictures which the prophet sees, and which he describes.
Even a rationalist writer saw this. : "Every vision must form a picture, and the description of a vision must have the appearance of being read from a picture. It follows from the nature of the description of a vision, that for the most part it cannot be composed in any elevated language. The simplest prose is the best vehicle for a relation (and such is the description of a vision), and elaborate ornament of language were foreign to it. The beauty, greatness, elevation of a vision, as described, must lie in the conception, or in the symmetry, or wondrous boldness in the grouping of the images. Is the whole group, piece by piece, in all its parts, to the most minute shading, faithful and described with the character of truth, the exhibition of the vision in words is perfect."
The four portions were probably of different dates, since they stand in order in the prophet's book, as indeed the second portion is dated two years later than the first . For in the first part God's people are exhorted to come from Babylon Zac 2:7, which command, many in the time of Ezra, obeyed, and doubtless individuals subsequently, when a prosperous polity was restored; in the latter part, Babylon is mentioned no more; only in one place, in the imagery of earlier prophets, the future gathering of God's people is symbolized under the previous deliverance from West and East, Egypt and Assyria (Zac 10:10, compare Isa 11:11, Isa 11:16; Hos 11:11).
But they agree in this, that the foreground is no longer, as in the former prophets, deliverance from Babylon. In the first part, the reference to the vision of the four empires in Daniel removes the promise of the Deliverer to the fourth empire. For the series of visions having closed with the vision of the four chariots, there follows at once the symbolic act of placing the crown or crowns on the head of the high priest and the promise of the Messiah, Who should be king and priest Zac 6:10-13. In the later part the enemies spoken of are in one place the Greeks Zac 9:13, subsequent to the protection of the temple under Alexander ; in another, they are the final gathering of all nations against Jerusalem Zac 12:2-3, Zac 12:9; Zac 14:2-3, Zac 14:14, Zac 14:16, which Joel also places at the end of all things Joe 3:2, after the outpouring of the Spirit, as it was poured out on the day of Pentecost.
In both parts alike, there is no mention of any king or of any earthly ruler; in both, the ruler to come is the Messias. In both, the division of the two kingdoms is gone. The house of Israel and house of Judah are united, not divided ; they had been distinct wholes, now they are in interests as one. Zechariah promises a future to both collectively, as did Jeremiah Jer 23:6; Jer 50:20 long after the captivity of Israel, and Ezekiel promised that they should both again be one in the hand of God Eze 37:16-19. The "brotherhood between Judah and Israel" still existed, after they had weighed the thirty pieces of silver for the Good Shepherd. The captivity, in God's Providence, ended at once the kingdom of Israel and the religious schism, the object of which was to maintain the kingdom.
Even before the captivity, "divers of Asher and Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem" Ch2 30:11, to the Passover of Hezekiah; nay, "a great multitude of the people from Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun" Ch2 30:18, who had neglected or despised the first invitation Ch2 30:10, came subsequently. In the great passover of Josiah, we hear of "all Judah and Israel that were present" Ch2 35:18. The edict of Cyrus related to the "people of the Lord God of heaven, and was published throughout all his kingdom" Ezr 1:1-2, which included "the cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6, where Israel had been removed. The sacred history is confined to Jerusalem, whence the Gospel was to go forth; yet, even "the sons of Bethel" Ezr 2:2, Ezr 2:28, the center of the rival, idolatrous worship, which was "among the mountains of Ephraim," were among those of the people of Israel who returned with Zerubbabel. It is inconceivable that, as the material prosperity of Palestine returned, even many of the ten tribes should not have returned to their country.
But place was no condition of the unity of the Church. Those who returned recognized the religious oneness of all the twelve tribes, wherever dispersed. At the dedication of the house of God, they Ezr 6:17 "offered a sin-offering for all Israel, twelve he-goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel." At that passover were present, not only "the children of Israel which had come again out of the captivity," but, "all such as had separated themselves unto them from the defilements of the people of the land, to seek the Lord God of Israel" Ezr 6:21, i. e., Israelites, who had been defiled by the heathen idolatries. The "house of David" is mentioned; for of his seed according to the flesh Messiah was to be born, but it is his "house," not any earthly ruler in it.
In both parts alike, Zechariah connects his prophecies with the former prophets, the fulfillment of whose warnings he impressed upon his people in his opening exhortation to them Zac 1:4-6, and in his answer to the question about keeping the fasts Zac 7:7-14 which related to the destruction of the city and temple. In the first part, the title "the Branch" Zac 3:8; Zac 6:12 is used as a proper name, recalling the title of the Messiah in Isaiah and Jeremiah, "the Branch of the Lord" Isa 4:2, "a righteous Branch" Jer 23:5, "a Branch of righteousness" Jer 33:15, whom God would raise up to David. The prophecy of the mutual exhortation of peoples and cities to worship at Jerusalem (Zac 8:20-22, compare Mic 4:1-2; Isa 2:3) is an echo of those of Isaiah and Micah, prolonging them. The prophecy of the four chariots , the symbol of those world-empires, would be unintelligible without the visions in Daniel which it presupposes.
The union of the offices of priest and king in the Messiah is a renewal of the promise through David (Zac 6:13, coll. Psa 110:1-7). In the last chapters, the continuousness of the prophet's diction admits still more of this interweaving of the former prophecies, and these alike from the earlier and later prophets. The censure of Tyre for its boast of its wisdom is a renewal of that of Ezekiel (Zac 9:2, and Eze 28:3); the prophecy against the Philistine cities, of that of Zephaniah Zac 9:5; Zep 2:4; the remarkable prediction that, when the king should come to Zion, chariots and horses, not of the enemy but of Judah should be cut off, is renewed from Micah Zac 9:10; Mic 5:10; the extent of his peaceful kingdom is from a psalm of Solomon Psa 72:8; the loosing of the exile from the pit, and God's rendering double unto them, are in Isaiah Zac 9:12; Isa 51:14; Isa 61:7. The description of the sifting, in which, two parts having been cut off; even the remaining third should be anew tried and cleansed, is condensed from Ezekiel, so that, "shall be cut off, shall expire," correspond to the natural and violent deaths, by famine and by the sword, spoken of in Ezekiel . The words , "I have said, it is My people, and it will say, the Lord my God," are almost verbally from Hosea, "I say to not-my-people, thou art My people, and it will say, my God;" only omitting the allusion to the significant name of the prophet's son. : "The first part of Zac 14:10, "the whole land shall be turned as a plain from Gebah to Rimmon, and Jerusalem shall be exalted," reminds of Isaiah and Ezekiel; the latter part, "it shall be inhabited in her place from the tower of Hananeel to the king's winepresses, and men shall dwell in it and there shall be no more utter desolation, but Jerusalem shall dwell securely," reminds of Jeremiah, "The city shall be built to the Lord from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner; it shall not be plucked up nor thrown down any more" Jer 31:38, Jer 31:40.
The words, "and every one that is left of all the nations shall go up to worship the king, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles" Zac 14:16, reminds of Isaiah, "From new-moon to his newmoon, and from sabbath to his sabbath shall all flesh come to worship before Me, saith the Lord" Isa 66:23. Zac 14:17-19 are an expansion of Isa 60:12; Isa 5:20 expresses the thought of Eze 43:13 : the prophecy Zac 14:21, "there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord forever," refers back to Ezekiel" Eze 44:9. The symbolizing of the Gospel by the life-giving waters which should flow forth from Jerusalem, originally in Joe 3:18, is a miniature of the full picture in Ezekiel Zac 14:8; Eze 47:1-13. The promise, "I will cut off the names of the idols from the land and they shall be no more remembered" Zac 13:2; Hos 2:17, in part verbally agrees with that of Hosea, "And I will remove "the names of the" Baalim "from" her mouth, "and they shall be no more remembered" by their names;" only, since the Baal-worship was destroyed by the captivity, the more general name of "idols" is substituted.
Equally, in descriptions not prophetic, the symbolizing of the wicked by the title of the goats, "I punished the goats" Zac 10:3; Eze 34:17, is renewed from Ezekiel; "I judge between flock and flock, between the rams and the he-goats." The description of the shepherds who destroyed their flocks retains from Jeremiah the characteristic expression, "and hold themselves not guilty." The minuteness of the enumeration of their neglects and cruelties is the same (amid differences of the words whereby it is expressed): "the perishing shall he not visit, those astray shall he not seek, and the broken shall he not heal; the sound shall he not nurture, and the flesh of the fat shall he eat and their claws he shall split" Zac 11:16. In Ezekiel, "Ye eat the fat and clothe you with the wool; the fat ye slay; the flock ye feed not; the diseased have ye not healed; and the broken have ye not bound, and the wandering have ye not sought" Eze 34:3-4. The imagery of Obadiah, that Israel should be a flame amidst grain to consume it, is retained; the name of Edom is dropped, for the prophecy relates to a larger gathering of enemies. Zechariah has, "In that day I will make the governors of Judah like a hearth of fire among wood and like a lamp of fire in a sheaf of corn, and they shall eat on the right hand and on the left all nations round about" Zac 12:6 : Obadiah; "The house of Jacob shall be 'fire' and the house of Jacob a 'flame,' and the house of Esau stubble, and it shall kindle on them and shall eat them" Oba 1:18. Even so slight an expression as "the pride of Jordan" Zac 11:3, as designating the cane-break around it, is unique to Jeremiah Jer 12:5; Jer 49:19; Jer 50:44.
Zechariah is eminently an Evangelic prophet, as much as Isaiah, and equally in both portions.
The use of different words in unlike subjects is a necessary consequence of that unlikeness. In contrast with that pseudo-criticism, which counts up the unlike words in different chapters of a prophet, the different words used by the same modern poet have been counted . A finer perception will see the correspondence of a style, when the rhythm, subject, words, are different. No one familiar with English poetry could doubt that "the Bard," and "the Elegy in a country Churchyard," however different in subject and style and words, were by the same hand, judging alone from the labored selection of the epithets, however different. Yet, there is not one characteristic word or idiom which occurs in both. But the recurrence of the same or like words or idioms, if unusual elsewhere, is a subordinate indication of sameness of authorship.
They are thus enumerated by the writers who have answered the attacks on the authorship of Zechariah.
"Common to both parts are the idioms, from him who goeth and from him who returneth, which do not occur elsewhere ; the whole Jewish people are throughout designated as "the house of Israel and the house of Judah" Zac 8:13, or "the house of Judah and the house of Joseph" Zac 10:6, or "Judah Israel and Jerusalem" (Zac 1:19, (Zac 2:2, Hebrew)), or "Ephraim and Jerusalem" Zac 9:10, or "Judah and Ephraim" Zac 9:13, or "Judah and Israel" Zac 11:14. There is in both parts the appeal to future knowledge of God's doings to be obtained by experience Zac 2:13; Zac 11:11; in both, internal discord is directly attributed to God, whose Providence permits it Zac 8:10; Zac 11:6; in both the prophet promises God's gifts of the produce of the earth Zac 8:12; Zac 10:1; in both he bids Jerusalem burst out for joy; in the first, "for lo, God says, I come and will dwell in the midst of thee" (Zac 2:1-13 :14, (10, English)); in the second, "behold thy King cometh unto thee" Zac 9:9.
The purity of language is alike in both parts of the book. No one Syriasm occurs in the earlier chapters. The prophet, who returned as a child to Judea, formed his language upon that of the older prophets.
In both there is a certain fullness of language, produced by dwelling on the same thought or word; in both, the whole and its parts are, for emphasis, mentioned together . In both parts, as a consequence of this fullness, there occurs the division of the verse into live sections, contrary to the usual rule of Hebrew parallelism.
This rhythm will appear more vividly in instances ;
"And He shall build the temple of the Lord;
And He shall bear majesty;
And he shall sit and rule on his throne;
And he shall be a priest on his throne;
And a counsel of peace shall be between them both.
Zac 6:13
Ashkelon shall see, and shall fear;
Gaza, and shall tremble exceedingly;
And Ekron, and ashamed is her expectation;
And perished hath a king from Gaza,
And Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.
Zac 9:5
And I will take away his blood from his mouth;
And his abominations from between his teeth;
And he too shall be left to our God,
And he shall be as a govenor in Judah;
And Ekron as a Jebusite.
Zac 9:7
"In that day, saith the Lord,
I will smite every horse with astonishment,
And his rider with madness;
And upon the house of Judah I will open my eyes,
And every horse of the nations I will smite with blindness."
Zac 12:4
Koster further refers to Zac 1:4, Zac 1:17; Zac 3:5, Zac 3:9 and, on the other hand, to Zac 9:9-10, Zac 9:13, Zac 9:15; Zac 10:11; Zac 11:2, Zac 11:7, Zac 11:9, Zac 11:17; Zac 12:10; Zac 14:4, Zac 14:8.
With one considerable exception , those who would sever the six last chapters from Zechariah, are now at one in placing them before the captivity. Yet, Zechariah here too speaks of the captivity as past. Adopting the imagery of Isaiah, who foretells the delivery from the captivity as an opening of a prison, he says, in the name of God, "By the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water" Zac 9:11. Again, "The Lord of hosts hath visited His flock, the house of Judah. I will have mercy upon them (Judah and Joseph) and they shall be as though I had not cast them off" Zac 10:3-5. The mention of the mourning of all the "families that remain" Zac 12:14 implies a previous carrying away. Yet more; Zechariah took his imagery of the future restoration of Jerusalem, from its condition in his own time. "It shall be lifted up and inhabited in its place from Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner-gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's winepresses" Zac 14:10. "The gate of Benjamin" is doubtless "the gate of Ephraim," since the road to Ephraim lay through Benjamin; but the gate of Ephraim existed in Nehemiah's time Neh 8:16; Neh 12:39, yet was not then repaired, as neither was the tower of Hananeel Neh 3:1, having been left, doubtless, at the destruction of Jerusalem, being useless for defense, when the wall was broken down. So at the second invasion the Romans left the three impregnable towers, of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Mariamne, as monuments of the greatness of the city which they had destroyed. Benjamin's gate, the corner gate, the tower of Hananeel, were still standing; "the king's winepresses" were naturally uninjured, since there was no use in injuring them; but "the first gate" was destroyed, since not itself but "the place" of it is mentioned.
The prophecy of the victory over the Greeks fits in with times when Assyria or Chaldaea were no longer the instruments of God in the chastisement of His people. The notion that the prophet incited the few Hebrew slaves, sold into Greece, to rebel against their masters, is so absurd, that one wonders that any one could have ventured to forge it and put it upon a Hebrew prophet .
Since, moreover, all now, who sever the six last chapters from the preceding, also divide these six into two halves, the evidence that the six chapters are from one author is a separate ground against their theory. Yet, not only are they connected by the imagery of the people as the flock of God Zac 9:16; Zac 10:3, whom God committed to the hand of the Good Shepherd Zac 11:4-14, and on their rejecting Him, gave them over to an evil shepherd Zac 11:15-17; but the Good Shepherd is One with God Zac 11:7-12; Zac 13:7. The poor of the flock, who would hold to the Shepherd, are designated by a corresponding word.
A writer has been at pains to show that two different conditions of things are foretold in the two prophecies. Granted. The first, we believe, has its foreground in the deliverance during the conquests of Alexander, and under the Maccabees, and leads on to the rejection of the true Shepherd and God's visitation on the false. The later relates to a later repentance and later visitation of God, in part yet future. By what law is a prophet bound down to speak of one future only?
For those who criticize the prophets, resolve all prophecy into mere "anticipation" of what might, or might not be, denying to them all certain knowledge of any future, it is but speaking plainly, when they imagine the author of the three last chapters to have "anticipated" that God would interpose miraculously to deliver Jerusalem, then, when it was destroyed. It would have been in direct contradiction to Jeremiah, who for 39 years in one unbroken dirge predicted the evil which should come upon Jerusalem. The prophecy, had it preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, could not have been earlier than the reign of the wretched Jehoiakim, since the mourning for the death of Josiah is spoken of as a proverbial sorrow of the past. This invented prophet then would have been one of the false prophets, who contradicted Jeremiah, prophesying good, while Jeremiah prophesied evil; who encouraged Zedekiah in his perjury, the punishment whereof Ezekiel solemnly denounced Eze 13:10-19, prophesying his captivity in Babylon as its penalty; he would have been one of those, of whom Jeremiah said that they spake lies Jer 14:14; Jer 23:22; Jer 27:15; Jer 28:15; Jer 29:8-9 in the name of the Lord. It was not "anticipation" on either side.
It was the statement of those who spoke more certainly than we could say, "the sun will rise tomorrow." They were the direct contradictories of one another. The false prophets said, "the Lord hath said, Ye shall have peace" Jer 8:11; Jer 23:17; the true, "they have said, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace" Eze 13:2-10; the false said, "sword and famine shall not be in the land" Jer 14:15; the true "By sword and famine shall their prophets be consumed;" the false said, "ye shall not serve the king of Babylon; thus saith the Lord, even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years" Jer 27:9-14; Jer 28:11; the true, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and all nations shall serve him, and his son and his son's son" Jer 27:4, Jer 27:6-7. The false said, "I will bring again to this place Jeconiah, with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon, for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon" Jer 28:4; the true, "I will cast thee out and the mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born, and there ye shall die. But to the land, whereunto they desire to return, thither they shall not return" Jer 22:26-27. The false said; "The vessels of the Lord's house shall now shortly be brought again from Babylon" Jer 27:16; the true "the residue of the vessels that remain in this city, - they shall be carried to Babylon" Jer 27:19-22.
If the writer of the three last chapters had lived just before the destruction of Jerusalem in those last reigns, he would have been a political fanatic, one of those who, by encouraging rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, brought on the destruction of the city, and, in the name of God, told lies against God. "That which is most peculiar in this prophet," says one , "is the uncommon high and pious hope of the deliverance of Jerusalem and Judah, notwithstanding all visible greatest dangers and threatenings. At a time when Jeremiah, in the walls of the capital, already despairs of any possibility of a successful resistance to the Chaldees and exhorts to tranquility, this prophet still looks all these dangers straight in the face with swelling spirit and divine confidence, holds, with unbowed spirit, firm to the like promises of older prophets, as Isa. 29, and anticipates that, from that very moment when the blind fury of the destroyers would discharge itself on the sanctuary, a wondrous might would crush them in pieces, and that this must be the beginning of the Messianic weal within and without."
Zech. 14 is to this writer a modification of those anticipations. In other words there was a greater human probability, that Jeremiah's prophecies, not his, would be fulfilled: yet, he cannot give up his sanguineness, though his hopes had now become fanatic. This writer says on Zech. 14 , "This piece cannot have been written until somewhat later, when facts made it more and more improbable, that Jerusalem would not any how be conquered, and treated as a conquered city by coarse foes. Yet, then too, this prophet could not yet part with the anticipations of older prophets and those which he had himself at an earlier time expressed: so boldly, amid the most visible danger, he holds firm to the old anticipation, after that the great deliverance of Jerusalem in Sennacherib's time Isa. 37 appeared to justify the most fanatic hopes for the future, (compare Ps. 59). And so now the prospect moulds itself to him thus, as if Jerusalem must indeed actually endure the horrors of the conquest, but that then, when the work of the conquerors was half-completed, the great deliverance, already suggested in that former piece, would come, and so the Sanctuary would, notwithstanding, be wonderfully preserved, the better Messianic time would notwithstanding still so come."
It must be a marvelous fascination, which the old prophets exercise over the human mind, that one who can so write should trouble himself about them. It is such an intense paradox, that the writing of one convicted by the event of uttering falsehood in the name of God, incorrigible even by the thickening tokens of God's displeasure, should have been inserted among the Hebrew prophets, in times not far removed from those whose events convicted him, that one wonders that anyone should have invented it, still more that any should have believed in it. Great indeed is "the credulity of the incredulous."
And yet, this paradox is essential to the theories of the modern school which would place these chapters before the captivity. English writers, who thought themselves compelled to ascribe these chapters to Jeremiah, had an escape, because they did not bind down prophecy to immediate events. Newcome's criticism was the conjectural criticism of his day; i. e. bad, cutting knots instead of loosing them. But his faith, that God's word is true, was entire. Since the prophecy, placed at the time where he placed it, had no immediate fulfillment, he supposed it, in common with those who believe it to have been written by Zechariah, to relate to a later period. That German school, with whom it is an axiom, "that all definite prophecy relates to an immediate future," had no choice but to place it just before the destruction of the temple by the Chaldees, or its profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes; and those who placed it before the Captivity, had no choice, except to believe, that it related to events, by which it was falsified.
Nearly half a century has passed, since a leading writer of this school said , "One must own, that the division of opinions as to the real author of this section and his time, as also the attempts to appropriate single oracles of this portion to different periods, leave the result of criticism simply "negative;" whereas on the other hand, the view itself, since it is not yet carried through exegetically, lacks the completion of its proof. It is not till criticism becomes "positive," and evidences its truth in the explanation of details, that it attains its completion; which is not, in truth, always possible." Hitzig did what he could, "to help to promote the attainment of this end according to his ability." But although the more popular theory has of late been that these chapters are to be placed before the captivity, the one portion somewhere in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, or Hezekiah; the other, as marked in the chapters themselves, after the death of Josiah; there have not been wanting critics of equal repute, who place them in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Yet, criticism which reels to and fro in a period of near 500 years, from the earliest of the prophets to a period a century after Malachi, and this on historical and philological grounds, certainly has come to no definite basis, either as to history or philology.
Rather, it has enslaved both to preconceived opinions; and at last, as late a result as any has been, after this weary round, to go back to where it started from, and to suppose these chapters to have been written by the prophet whose name they bear .
It is obvious that there must be some mistake either in the tests applied, or in their application, which admits of a variation of at least 450 years from somewhere in the reign of Uzziah (say 770 b.c.) to "later than 330 b.c."
Philological and historical criticism, bearing on events (as it is assumed) of the day, which should, in its variations, oscillate between the reign of John or of Charles I, or (to bring it nearer to ourselves) the first half of the 14th century or the latter part of the 18th century, would not gain much attention. Indeed, it is instructive, that after the philological argument has figured so much in all questions about the date of books of Holy Scripture, it is virtually admitted to be absolutely worthless, except negatively. For, in regard to Zechariah, the argument is not used, except in proof that the same writer cannot have written prose and poetry, which would establish that Hosea did not write either his three first chapters or his last nine; nor did Ezekiel write his inaugural vision, the visions of Ezek. 9-10, and the simple exhortations to repentance in Ezek. 18 and Ezek. 33. Based upon the same "evidence," I do not know how, of modern writers, Scott and Southey could be supposed to have written their own prose and poetry. How easy it would be to prove that the author of Thalaba did not write the life of Wesley or the history of the peninsular war, nor did Shakespeare author Macbeth and any comedy which criticism may yet leave to him; still more that he cannot have written the deep tragic scenes of Hamlet and that of the gravediggers.
Yet, such negations have been practically considered as the domain of the philological neo-criticism. Style is to be evidence that the same prophet did not write certain prophecies; but, this being demonstrated, it is to yield no evidence, whether he wrote, when Hebrew was a dead language or in the time of its richest beauty. Individuals indeed have their opinions; but philological criticism, as a whole, or as relates to any acknowledged result, is altogether at fault. Having done its function of establishing, that, in the mind of the critic and his disciples, certain chapters are not Zechariah's, the witness is immediately dismissed as incompetent even to assist in proving anything beside. The rest is to be established by historical allusions, which are by some adapted to events in the reign of Uzziah, by others to those of the Maccabees: or rather, it being assumed that there is no prophecy, this latter class assumes that the book is to belong to the times of the Maccabees, because one part of it predicts their victories.
Those who tell us of the unity of the results of this modern criticism, must have been thinking of the agreement of its negations. As to the positive results, a table will best show their harmony. Yet, the fault is not in the lack of an ill-exercised acumen of the critics; their principle, that nothing in the prophets can relate to any distant future, even though that future exactly realized the words, is the mainspring of their confusions. Since the words of Zechariah do relate to, and find their fulfillment in, events widely separated from each other, and the theory of the critics requires that they should belong to some proximate event, either in the present or some near future, they have to wrest those words from the events to which they relate, some in this way, some in that; and the most natural interpretations are those which are least admitted.
Certainly since the descriptions in Zech. 9 suit with the wars of Alexander and the Maccabees, no one, but for some strong antecedent exigency, would assume that they related to some expected expedition of an Assyrian monarch , "which may be conjectured as very probable, but which, for want of historical data, cannot be indicated more circumstantially," or to "a plan of the Assyrians which was not then carried out," or Uzziah's war with the Philistines Ch2 26:6, and some imagined "attitude of Jeroboam II against Damascus and Hamath," or "a concealed denunciation against Persia," against which Zechariah did not wish to prophesy openly, or to have had no special meaning at all .
It is marvelous, on what slight data this modern school has satisfied itself that these chapters were written before the captivity. To take the statement of an epitomator of German pseudo-criticism: "Damascus, Tyre, and Sidon, Philistia, Javan Zac 9:1, Zac 9:6-12 Assyria and Egypt Zac 10:10 are the enemies of Judah." "The historial stand-point is different from that of Zech. 1-8." Of all these, Javan, the Greeks, alone are spoken of as enemies of Judah, who before the captivity were known only as purchasers of Hebrew captives; the only known wars are those of the Maccabees.
"The two kingdoms of Judah and Israel still exist. Surely the language, 'that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel,' implies that both kingdoms existed as part of the covenant nation."
Zechariah speaks of Judah and Israel, but not as kingdoms. Before the captivity, except during the effects of the intermarriage with Athaliah, there was not brotherhood but enmity. In the reigns of Amaziah and Ahaz there was war.
"The house of David is spoken of in Zac 13:1." The "house," not the kingdom. The house existed after the captivity. Zerubbabel, whom the Persians made governor, was its representative.
"Idols and false prophets (Zac 10:2; Zac 13:2 etc.) harmonize only with a time prior to the exile."
Idolatry certainly was not the prevailing national sin, after God had taught the people through the captivity. It is commonly taken for granted, that there was "none." But where is the proof? Malachi would hardly have laid the stress on "marrying the daughters of a strange god" Mal 2:11, had there been no danger that the marriage would lead to idolatry. Neh 13:26 Nehemiah speaks of the sin, into which Solomon was seduced by "outlandish women," as likely to recur through the heathen marriages; but idolatry was that sin. Half of the children could only speak the language of their mothers Neh 13:23-24. It were strange, if they had not imbibed their mothers' idolatry, too. In a battle in the Maccabee war, it is related "under the coats of every one that was slain they found things consecrated to the idols of the Jamnites, which is forbidden the Jews by their law" (2 Macc. 12:40).
The "Teraphim" were, moreover, an unlawful and forbidden means of attempting to know the future, not any coarse form of idolatry (see below on Zac 10:2); much as people now, who more or less earnestly have their fortunes told, would be surprised at being called idolaters. But Zechariah was probably speaking of sins which had brought on the captivity, not of his own day. The prediction repeated from an older prophet, that in the true Judah, the Church, God would cut off even the names and the memory of idols, does not imply that they existed .
False prophets continued after the captivity. Shemaiah, who "uttered a prophecy against" Nehemiah, "the prophetess Noadiah," and "the rest of the prophets," are known to us from Nehemiah's relation Neh 6:12, Neh 6:14. Such there were before our Lord came, of whom He said, that they "were thieves and robbers" Joh 10:8 : He warned against them, as "coming in sheep's clothing," but "inwardly they are ravening wolves" Mat 7:15; He foretold that "many false prophets shall arise and deceive many" Mat 24:11, Mat 24:24; Mar 13:22; the Acts tell us of the "false prophet Act 13:6, a Jew, Bar-jesus;" and "Theudas," and "Judas" of Galilee Act 5:36-37. John says, "many false prophets have gone out into the world" Jo1 4:1. False prophets aggravated the resistance to the Romans and the final destruction of Jerusalem .
"The mention of a king or kingdom, in Zac 11:6; Zac 13:7, does not suit the age of Zechariah."
Zechariah had already implied that they had no king then, for he had bidden Zion to rejoice that her king "would come" to her; accordingly she had none. In Zac 11:6, God says, "I will no more pity the land; I will deliver man, every one into the hand of his king." It is an event, not of the prophet's time, but of the future; in Zac 13:7, there is no mention of any king at all.
Such being the entire absence of proof that these chapters were written before the captivity , the proof that Zech. 11 relates to the time of Menahem is even absurd. The process with those who maintained this, has been, assuming as proved, that it was written before the captivity, and that it contained no prophecy of the future, to ask, to what period before the captivity does it relate? One verse (Zac 11:6, compare Isa 9:20; Isa 49:26; Jer 19:9.) relates to civil confusion, such as is foretold also, with the same metaphor, by Isaiah and Jeremiah. The choice was large, since the kingdom of Israel had the curse of discord and irreligion entailed upon it, and no king ventured to cut off the entail by cutting off the central sin, the worship of the calves, which were to consolidate it by a worship, the rival of that at Jerusalem. Of the 18 kings between Jeroboam and Hosea, 9, including Tibni, died violent deaths.
The choice was directed to Menahem, because of the words in Zechariah, "three shepherds also I cut off in one month," and Shallum murdered Zachariah the son of Jeroboam; and he himself, after he had "reigned a full month in Samaria," was murdered by Menahem. Here, then, were two kings cut off: But the third? Imagination is to supply it. One conjectures Menahem; but "he" reigned 10 years, and so, he invents a meaning for the word, that the prophet does not mean "cut off," but "denied" them, leaving it open whether he meant "removed" or merely "did not acknowledge them, as Menahem at first certainly found no recognition with the prophetic order" Kg2 15:16, Kg2 15:19; another imagined "some third rival of Zachariah and Shallum, of whom there is no mention in the historical books;" but there is no room for a third king, since Shallum murdered Zachariah; and Menahem, Shallum; another found in Hebrew words have signified "before the people publicly assembled together."
The Syro-Hexaplar version by Paul of Tela translates the words, and introduces "Kebdaam" with Origen's asterism, and so, as not belonging to the Septuagint The Alexandrian and two other manuscripts (one of Constantinople cent. x.) also retain the rendering. The singular "conspired," which excludes "Keblaam" from the place which it commonly occupies, occurs in 3 manuscripts, the Syro-Hex. Georg. Slav-Ostrog. Versions and the Complutensian; "and smote him" is also sing. in 3 manuscripts and Compl. The word "Keblaam" was doubtless only the Hebrew words, written by one, who did not know how to translate them, and is variously written and placed as if the scribes did not know what to do with it. Four manuscripts make it the name of a place, "in Ieblaam." They are retained in the place of the Hebrew words in the Vat. manuscript, but more commonly are added to "Shallum son of Jabis:" in some manuscripts and a note in the Syr. Hexapla, they are followed by "and Selem or Selem his father."
They are written, "Kebdaam, Kebdiam, Kebdam, Kaddaam, Kaibdaam, Keblaam, Keddaam, Kebdaan, Ieblaam, Iebaan, Iebdaam Bdaam, Beldaam." See the Septuagint ed. Parsons) which had crept into the Septuagint, an usurper Kobal-am, of whom he says truly, "we hear nothing;" another conceived of some usurper after the murder of Zachariah or of Shallum (this is left free), who about this time "may" have set himself at the head of the kingdom, but scarcely maintained himself some weeks; another says, "This refers probably to the Interregnum 784-773, in which many "may" have set themselves as kings, but none have maintained themselves." Another "An anti-king "may" at this time have set himself up in other parts of the kingdom, whom Menahem overthrew as he did that murderer." Others say of the whole, "The symbolical representation, Zac 11:3 ff, admits of no detailed explanation, but can be understood only as a whole. It describes the evil condition of Judah under Ahaz." Another , equally certain that it relates to Ahaz, says, "the three shepherds, who peished in one and the same month, were probably men who, in the long anarchy before Hosea ascended the throne, contended for the sceptre."
Yet, another is so confident in this interpretation as to the three kings, Shallum, Zechariah and Menahem, that, whereas the book of Kings says expressly that Shallum reigned "a full month" Kg2 15:13 literally, "a month of days," the commentator says, "The month cannot have been full ; Zac 11:8 evidently refers to the three Kings, Sachariah, Sallum and Menahem," while others will have it that Zechariah by "one month" means some indefinite space more than a month. This is indeed required (although not stated) by all these theories, since Shallum alone reigned "a full month," and, consequently, the other two kings (if intended at all by the term "shepherds") must have been cut off at some period, outside of that "one month."
Truly, theory is a very exacting taskmaster, though strangely fascinating. It is to be one of the triumphs of the neo-criticism to distinguish between the authorship of Zech. 9-11 and Zech. 12-14. the point alleged to prove that Zech. 11 belongs to the time of Menahem is one at variance with history. It is not that the whole is like, while in one point the likeness is imperfect. It is the point, alleged as the keystone of the whole, which fails. The words of God by the prophet are, "'Three shepherds' have I cut off in 'one month.'" It lies on the surface of the history, that Zachariah, son of Jeroboam, was murdered by Shallum, after reigning 6 months; and that Shallum, after reigning one full month, was himself murdered by Menahem Kg2 15:8-14. The succession of murders was not so rapid as when Zimri had murdered Elah, Baasha's son, and after reigning 7 days, committed suicide, lest he should fall into the hands of Omri Kg1 16:15-18. Elah and Zimri were cut off in one month; Zachariah and Shallum, in two. But in neither case was there any visible result, except a partial retribution of God's justice. The last executioner of God's justice "slept with his fathers;" his retribution was after death. He was not cut off. And this is the proof, which is to supplant the testimony to Jesus. The Apostle's words come true, as so often beside: "They shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables" Ti2 4:4.
"Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way, yet saidst thou not, there is no hope" Isa 57:10. One should have thought that some must have, at times, thought of the old days, when the prophecy was interpreted of the Good Shepherd and of the 30 pieces of silver which were the price of His Blood, and which were cast into the house of the Lord Mat 26:14-16; Mat 27:3-10. But this would have been fatal to "historical criticism," whose province was to find out events of the prophet's own day to fill up the words of prophecy.
The human authorship of any books of Holy Scripture, and so of these chapters of Zechariah is, in itself, a matter which does not concern the soul. It is an untrue imputation, that the date of books of the Bible is converted into matter of faith. In this case Jesus has not set His seal upon it; God the Holy Spirit has not declared it. But, as in other cases, what lay as the foundation of the theory was the unbelief that God, in a way above nature, when it seemed good to Him, revealed a certain future to His creature man. It is the postulate, (or axiom, as appears to these critics), that there is no superhuman prophecy, which gives rise to their eagerness, to place these and other prophetic books or portions of books where they can say to themselves that they do not involve such prophecy. To believers it has obviously no religious interest, at what time it pleased Almighty God to send any of His servants the prophets. Not the dates assigned by any of these self-devouring theories, but the grounds alleged in support of those dates, as implying unbelief in God's revelation of Himself, make the question one of religious interest, namely, to show that these theories are as unsubstantial as their assumed base is baseless.
It is an infelicity of the modern German mind, that it is acute in observing detailed differences, rather than comprehensive in grasping deeper resemblances. It has been more busied in discovering what is new than in observing the grounds of what is true. It does not, somehow, acquire the power of balancing evidence, which is habitual to the practical minds of our own countrymen. To take an instance of criticism, apart from theology, the genuineness of a work of Plato.
"The genuineness of the Laws," says their recent translator , "is sufficiently proved by more than 20 citations of them in the writings of Aristotle (whom Plato designated "the intellect of the school," and who must have been intimate with him for some 17 years) who was residing at Athens during the last years of the life of Plato, and who returned to Athens at the time when he was himself writing his Politics and Constitutions;
(2) by the allusion of Isocrates, writing 346 b.c., a year after the death of Plato, and not more than 2 or 3 years after the composition of the Laws:
(3) by the reference of the comic poet Alexis, a younger contemporary of Plato (356 b.c.);
(4) by the unanimous voice of later antiquity, and the absence of any suspicion among ancient writers worth noticing."
Yet, German acuteness has found out reasons why the treatise should not be Plato's. Those reasons are plausible, as most untrue things are. As put together carefully by one who still attaches no weight to them, they look like a parody of the arguments, produced by Germans to tear in pieces the books of Holy Scripture. Mutatis mutandis, they have such an absurdly ludicrous resemblance, that it provokes a smile. Some 50 years ago, there was a tradition at Gottingen, where Heyne had lived, that he attributed the non-reception of the theories as to Homer in England to the English Bishops, who "apprehended that the same principle would be applied to Holy Scripture." Now, for half a century more, both sets of critics have had full scope. The Classical sceptics seem to me to have the advantage. Anyone who knew only a little of the uncritical criticism applied to the sacred books could imagine what a jubilee of triumph it would have occasioned if such differences as those pointed out between "the Laws" and other treatises of Plato could have been pointed out to detach any book of Holy Scripture from its traditional writer. Yet it is held inadequate by one, of whom an admirer said, that "his pecliar mode of criticism cut the very sinews of belief." I insert the criticisms , (omitting the details of illustration) because their failure may open the eyes of some to the utter valuelessness of this sort of criticism. The accuracy of the criticisms is not questioned; the statements are not said to be exaggerated; yet, they are held invalid. The question then comes with great force to the conscience; "Why, rejecting arguments so forcible as to a treatise of Plato, do I accept arguments very inferior, as to such or such a book of the Old or New Testament, - certain chapters of Isaiah, or Ecclesiastes, or these chapters of Zechariah, or the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the Revelation of John - except on grounds of theology, not of criticism, and how am I true to myself in rejecting such arguments as to human books, and accepting them as to divine books?"
A Table of Dates, which in the 19th Century Have Been Assigned to Zechariah 9-14o After the Date of Zechariah Zech. 9-14 "At the earliest, in the first half and middle of the fifth century." Vatke "The younger poet, whose visions were added to those of Zechariah." Geiger Last years of Darius Hystaspis, or first of Xerxes . Gramberg After the battle of Issus b.c. 333 Eichhorn After 330 b.c. Bottcher Zech. 14 Antiochus Epiphanes. "many interpreters " Zech. 9 On Hyrcanus i, as the Messiah Paulus Zechariah Himself (Beckhaus 1792) Jahn , Koster , Henstenberg , Burger , De Wette (edd. 4-6). A. Theiner , Herbst , Umbreit , Havernick , Keil , Stahelin , von Hoffmann , Ebrard, Schegg, Baumgarten , Neumann , Kliefoth , Kohler , Sandrock . Dates before the Captivity Zech. 9-14 Uzziah b.c. 772 Hitzig . Rosenmuller Zech. 9-11 Under Ahaz, during war with Pekah Bertholdt Beginning of Ahaz Credner . Herzfeld Later time of Hezekiah Baur Between b.c. 771-740, i. e. between the invasion of Pul, Kg2 15:19 and the capture of Damascus by Tiglath-Pileser Kg2 16:9 i. e., between the 40th of Uzziah and the 3rd of Ahaz Knobel Zech. 9-11; Zac 13:7-9 In the first 10 years of Pekah before the war with Ahaz (i. e. between b.c. 759-749) Ewald Zech. 9-11 "Very probably Uzziah's favorite prophet in his prosperous days." Stanley Zech. 9-11 Contemporary with Isaiah under Ahaz toward 736 b.c Bunsen Zech. 9; Zac 10:1-12 Perhaps contemporary with Zephaniah (in the time of Josiah). DeWette Zech. 11 Might be put in the time of Ahaz Id. Zech. 9 Perhaps out of the time of Zephaniah. Gesenius Uzziah. Bleek . Forberg Zac 10:1-12 Ahaz, soon after war with Pekah and Rezin. Bleek Zac 11:1-3 Invasion of some Assyrian king. Zac 12:4-17 Menahem, and the end of Uzziah. Zech. 9 Between the carrying away of 2 12 tribes and the fall of Damascus Maurer Zac 10:1-12 Between 739-731 b.c., the 7 years' anarchy between Hosea's murder of Pekah and his own accession. Zech. 11 In reign of Hosea. Zech. 9 Under Uzziah and Jeroboam. Zac 10:1-12. The Anarchy after death of Jeroboam II. (b.c. v. 784-772) Ortenberg . Zac 11:1-3 716 b.c. Zac 11:4-17; Zac 13:7-9 Shortly after the war of Pekah and Rezin. Zech. 9-10 Not before Jeroboam, nor before Uzziah's accession, but before the death of Zechariah son of Jeroboam Hitzig Zech. 11 Beginning of reign of Menahem Hitzig Possibly contemporary with Hosea Bauer Zech. 9 After capture of Damascus by Tiglath-Pileser Movers Zech. 12-14 Manasseh, in view of a siege by Esarhaddon Hitzig Between 607-604 b.c. (though falsified) Knobel Soon after Josiah's death, by Uriah, Jeremiah's contemporary, 607 b.c. or 606 Bunsen Most probably, while the Chaldees were already before Jerusalem, shortly before Jerusalem was first conquered (599) Schrader Zech. 12:1-13:6 Under Joiakim or Jeconiah or Zedekiah in Nebuchadnezzars last expedition (no objection that it was falsified) Bertholdt Zac 13:7 - end Soon after Josiah's death Bertholdt Zech. 12:1-13:6 The last years of Jehoiakim, or under Jehoiachin or Zedekiah Bleek Zac 13:7 - end "Exceeding probably under Josiah or Jehoiakim." Bleek Zech. 12:1-13:6 Fourth year of Jehoiakim Maurer Zac 13:7 - end Fifth. Zech. 12:1-13:6. The latter half of 600 b.c. v. Ortenberg . Zech. 14 Later than Zech. 12:1-13:6 Zech. 12-13:6 12 years after Habakkuk (about b.c. 607, Ewald) shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem Ewald Zac 13:7-9 Same date as Zech. 9; 11 (see above) Zech. 14 A little later than Zech. 12-13 or, In the first rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar "by Chananiah, or one of the many prophets who contradicted Jeremiah." Ewald Zech. 12-13:6; 14 Zedekiah, "Beginning of revolt." Stanley Zech. 12:1-13:6-7, end "Prophecies of fanatic contents. which deny all historical explanation, but Zac 13:7 must rather be conceived as future than 'past,' as Bertholdt." DeWette ed. 2 Zech. 12:1-13:6; 14 After death of Josiah, yet relating to the repentance for the putting the Messias to death, and so independent of the times in which it is placed Kahnis
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 1
Zechariah 1:1
zac 1:1
In the eighth month - o. The date joins on Zechariah's prophecy to those of Haggai. Two months before, "in the sixth month" Hag 1:1, had Haggai, conjointly with Zechariah Ezr 5:1-2, exhorted Zerubbabel and the people to resume the intermitted building of the temple. These had used such diligence, notwithstanding the partial discouragement of the Persian Government, that God gave them "in the seventh month" Ezr 5:3-5, the magnificent promise of the later glory of the temple through the coming of Christ Hag 2:1-9. Still, as Haggai too warned them, the conversion was not complete. So Zechariah in the eighth, as Haggai in the ninth Hag 2:10-14 month, urges upon them the necessity of thorough and inward repentance, as the condition of partaking of those promises.
Osorius: "Thrice in the course of one saying, he mentions the most holy name of God; partly to instruct in the knowledge of Three Persons in one Nature, partly to confirm their minds more strongly in the hope of the salvation to come."
Zechariah 1:2
zac 1:2
Wroth was the Lord against your fathers with wrath - o, that is, a wrath which was indeed such, whose greatness he does not further express, but leaves to their memories to supply. Cyril: "Seest thou how he scares them, and, setting before the young what befell those before them, drives them to amend, threatening them with the like or more grievous ills, unless they would wisely reject their fathers' ways, esteeming the pleasing of God worthy of all thought and care. He speaks of great wrath. For it indicates no slight displeasure that He allowed the Babylonians to waste all Judah and Samaria, burn the holy places and destroy Jerusalem, remove the elect Israel to a piteous slavery in a foreign land, severed from sacrifices, entering the holy court no more nor offering the thank-offering, or tithes, or first-fruits of the law, but precluded by necessity and, fear even from the duty of celebrating his prescribed and dearest festivals. The like we might address to the Jewish people, if we would apply it to the mystery of Christ. For after they had "killed the prophets" and had "crucified the Lord of glory" Himself, they were captured and destroyed; their famed temple was levelled, and Hosea's words were fulfilled in them; "The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king and without a prince, without a sacrifice and without an image, without an ephod and without teraphim" .
Zechariah 1:3
zac 1:3
Therefore say thou - Literally, "And thou sayest," that is, this having been so, it follows that thou sayest or must say, "Turn ye unto Me." In some degree they had turned to God, for whose sake they had returned to their land; and again when, after some negligence Hag 1:2-11, they renewed the building of the temple, and God had said, "I am with you" Hag 1:13. But there needed yet a more inward, more complete turning, whereon God promises a yet nearer presence, as Malachi repeats the words Mal 3:7, and James exhorts, "Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you" Jam 4:8. Those who have turned to God need ever to turn more into the center of the narrow way. As the soul opens itself more to God, God, whose communication of Himself is ever hindered only by our closing the door of our hearts against Him, enters more into it. "If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him" Joh 14:23.
Osorius: "People are said to be converted, when leaving behind them deceitful goods, they give their whole mind to God, bestowing no less pains and zeal on divine things than before on the nothings of life."
Conc. Trid. Sess. vi. c. 5: "When it is said in Holy Scripture, "Turn unto Me and I will turn unto you," we are admonished as to our own freedom; when we answer, "Turn us, Lord, unto Thee, and we shall be turned," we confess that we are forecome by the grace of God."
Zechariah 1:4
zac 1:4
Be ye not like your fathers - Strangely infectious is the precedent of ill. Tradition of good, of truth, of faith, is decried; only tradition of ill and error are adhered to. The sin of Jeroboam was held sacred by every king of Israel: "The statutes of Omri were diligently kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab" Mic 6:16. "They turned back and were treacherous like their forefathers; they turned themselves like a deceitful bow" Psa 78:57, is God's summary of the history of Israel. Cyril: "Absurd are they who follow the ignorances of their fathers, and ever plead inherited custom as an irrefragable defense, though blamed for extremest ills. So idolaters especially, being called to the knowledge of the truth, ever bear in mind the error of their fathers and, embracing their ignorance as an hereditary lot, remain blind."
The former prophets - The prophets spake God's words, as well in their pastoral office as in predicting things to come, in enforcing God's law and in exhorting to repentance, as in announcing the judgments on disobedience. The predictive as well as the pastoral office were united in Nathan Sa2 7:4-16; Sa2 12:1-14, Gad Sa1 22:5; Sa1 24:11, Shemaiah Ch2 11:2-4; Ch2 12:5-8, Azariah 2 Chr. 15, Hanani Ch2 16:7-9, Elijah Kg1 17:1, Kg1 17:14; Kg1 18:1, Kg1 18:41; Kg1 21:19, Kg1 21:21, Kg1 21:23, Kg1 21:29; Kg2 1:4, Kg2 1:16, Elisha Kg2 3:17-18; Kg2 4:16; Kg2 5:27; Kg2 7:1-2; Kg2 8:10-13; Kg2 13:14-19, Micaiah the son of Imla, whose habitual predictions against Ahab induced Ahab to say Kg1 22:8, "I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." The specific calls to conversion here named and their fruitlessness, are summed up by Jeremiah as words of all the prophets. For ten years he says, "The word of the Lord hath come unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking, and ye have not hearkened. And the Lord hath sent unto you all His servants the prophets, rising early and sending; but ye have not hearkened nor inclined your ear to hear. They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil ways and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the Lord hath given unto you and to your fathers forever and ever; and go not after other gods to serve and worship them, and provoke Me not to anger with the works of your hands, and I will do you no hurt. But ye have not hearkened unto Me, saith the Lord; that ye might provoke Me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, Because ye have not heard My words ..." Jer 25:3-8. The prophetic author of the book of Kings sums up in like way, of "all the prophets and all the seers." "The Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by the hand of all the prophets and all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways and keep My commandments, My statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by My servants the prophets, and they did not hear, and hardened their neck, like the neck of their fathers" Kg2 17:13.
The characteristic word, "turn from your evil ways and the evil of your doings" occurring in Jeremiah, it is probable, that this summary was chiefly in the mind of Zechariah, and that he refers not to Isaiah, Joel, Amos etc., (as all the prophets were preachers of repentance), but to the whole body of teachers, whom God raised up, analogous to the Christian ministry, to recall people to Himself.
The title, "the former prophets," contrasts the office of Haggai and Zechariah, not with definite prophets before the captivity, but with the whole company of those, whom God sent as He says, so unremittingly.
And they hearkened not unto Me - Jerome: "They heard not the Lord warning through the prophets, attended not - not to the prophets who spake to them but - not to Me, saith the Lord. For I was in them who spake and was despised. Whence also the Lord in the Gospel saith, "He that receiveth you, receiveth Me" Mat 10:40.
Zechariah 1:5
zac 1:5
Your fathers, where are they? - The abrupt solemnity of the question seems to imply an unexpected close of life which cut short their hopes, plans, promises to self. "When they said, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them" Th1 5:3. Yet not they only but the prophets too, who ministered God's Word to them, these also being human beings, passed away, some of them before their time as people, by the martyr's death. Many of them saw not their own words fulfilled. But God's word which they spake, being from God, passed not away.
Zechariah 1:6
zac 1:6
Only My words and My decrees - Which God spake by them, "did not they overtake them?" (as Psa 2:7; Zep 2:2). Pagan reminiscence of God's justice acknowledged , "Rarely hath punishment with limping tread parted with the forerunning miscreant." "All these curses," Moses foretells, "shall come upon thee and overtake thee, until thou art destroyed" Deu 28:45.
And they returned to God and said - The history of the Jews in Babylon is omitted in Holy Scripture, except as to His special dealings with Daniel and his three companions. Yet Jeremiah confesses in words, what Zechariah had apparently in his mind; "The Lord hath done that which He purposed; He hath fulfilled His word, which He commanded in the days of old" Lam 2:17. The Lamentations are one long confession of deserved punishment, such as Daniel too made in the name of his people with himself Dan 9:4-16.
It was one long waiting for God and for the restoration of His visible worship. Yet repentance was a condition of their restoration.
Zechariah 1:7
zac 1:7
On the twenty-fourth day - Exactly five months after the building of the temple was resumed Hag 2:15, and two months after Haggai's last prophecy Hag 2:20. The series of visions, leading onward, from the first deliverance from the enemies who oppressed them, to the Coming of Christ, is given as a reward to their first whole-hearted endeavor to restore their worship of Him. The visions are called the "word of the Lord," because they were prophecy, made visible to the eye, conveying the revelation to the soul, and in part explained by Him.
Zechariah 1:8
zac 1:8
I saw in the night - that is, that following on "the twenty-fourth day." The darkness of the night perhaps was chosen, as agreeing with the dimness of the restored condition. Night too is, Dionysius), "through the silence of the senses and of the fancy, more suited for receiving divine revelations."
A man riding upon a red horse - The man is an angel of God, appearing in form of man, as Daniel says, "The man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, touched me" Dan 9:21. He is doubtless the same who appeared to Joshua in form of man, preparing thereby for the revelation of God manifest in the flesh - He, before whom Joshua fell on his face and in him worshiped God, through whom also God required the same tokens of reverence as He had from Moses. "Joshua lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with a sword drawn in his hand, who said, as Captain of the Lord's host am I come" (Jos 5:13-15. See the note on "the Angel of the Lord" in Dr. Pusey's Daniel the Prophet, pp. 519-525). He rides here, as Leader of the host who follow Him; to Him the others report, and He instructs the Angel who instructs the prophet. Red, being the color of blood, symbolizes doubtless "the vengeance of God to be inflicted on the enemies of the Jews for their sins committed against the Jews" (Dionysius), exceeding the measure of chastisement allowed by God. It probably was Michael Dan 10:13, who is entitled in Daniel, "your prince Dan 10:21, the great prince which standeth up for the children of thy people" .
And he was standing - Almost as we say, stationary, abiding in that one place. The description is repeated Zac 1:10 apparently as identifying this angel, and so he and the "angel of the Zac 1:11 Lord" are probably one.
The myrtle trees - from their fragrance and lowness, probably symbolize the Church, as at once yielding a sweet odor, and in a low estate, or lowly. The natural habits of the myrtle make it the fitter symbol.
And behind him - The relation of the Angel as their chief is represented by their following him. This is consistent with their appearing subsequently as giving report to him. The red and white horses are well-known symbols of war and glory, whence He who sits on "the white horse" Rev 6:2 in the revelations, "went forth conquering and to conquer." The remaining color is somewhat uncertain. If it be ashen gray, it would correspond to the pale horse of the revelations, and the union of the two colors, black and white, is calculated to be a symbol of a chequered state of things, whereas a mingled color like "chestnut" is not suggestive of any symbol.
Zechariah 1:9
zac 1:9
What are these? - He asks, not who, but what they import.
The angel that talked with me - Literally, "spake in me." The very rare expression seems meant to convey the thought of an inward speaking, whereby the words should be borne directly into the soul, without the intervention of the ordinary outward organs. God says to Moses, "If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, will make Myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak (literally) in him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so - In him will I speak mouth to mouth Num 12:6-9;" and Habakkuk says of the like inward teaching, "I will watch to see, what He will speak in me" . It is the characteristic title of one attendant-angel, who was God's expositor of the visions to Zechariah (Zac 1:13-14, Zac 1:19, (Zac 2:2 Hebrew) Zac 2:3; (7) Zac 4:1, Zac 4:4-5; Zac 5:5, Zac 5:10; Zac 6:4). Dionysius: "By his ministry God showed me things to come, in that that angel formed in the spirit and imaginative power of Zechariah phantasms or images of things which were foreshown him, and gave him to understand what those images signified."
Zechariah 1:10
zac 1:10
And the man answered - To the question addressed to the attendant-angel. He himself took the word.
These are they whom the Lord sent to walk up and down - Satan says of himself that he came "from going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it" Job 2:2. As he for evil, so these for good. Their office was not a specific or passing duty, as when God sent His angels with some special commission, such as those recorded in Holy Scripture. It was a continuous conversation with the affairs of people, a minute course of visiting, inspecting our human deeds and ways, a part of the "wonderful order" , in which God has "ordained and constituted the services of angels and men." Nor is it said that the angels were limited, each to his own special province, as we learn through Daniel, that certain great angels, princes among them, had the charge of empires or nations, even of the pagan . These angels had apparently only the office of inspecting and reporting to angels of a higher order, themselves a subordinate order in the heavenly Hierarchy. Nor are they spoken of, as executing any judgments of God, or as pacifying the earth; they may have been so employed; but they are only said to have reported the state in which they found it.
These answered the unexpressed inquiry of the angel of the Lord, as he had answered the unuttered question of the angel, attendant on Zechariah.
Zechariah 1:11
zac 1:11
Sitteth still and is at rest - At rest, as the word seems to express, from its accustomed state of tumult and war. Wars, although soon to break out again, were in the second year of Darius for the time suspended. The rest, in which the world was, suggests the contrast of the yet continuing unrest allotted to the people of God. Such rest had been promised to Israel, on its return from the captivity, but had not yet been fulfilled. Through the hostility of the Samaritans the building of the temple had been hindered and was just recommenced; the wall of Jerusalem was yet broken down Neh 1:3; its fire-burned gates not restored; itself was a waste Neh 2:3; its houses unbuilt Neh 7:4. This gives occasion to the intercession "of the Angel of the Lord."
Zechariah 1:12
zac 1:12
And the Angel of the Lord answered - the implied longing, by intercession with God. As the angel-interpreter in Job had "the office of no mere created angel, but one, anticipative of His, who came at once to redeem and justify," so the Angel of the Lord, in whom God was, exercised at once a mediatorial office with God, typical of our Lord's high priest's prayer John 17, and acted as God.
These seventy years - The seventy years of the captivity, prophesied by Jeremiah Jer 25:11-12; Jer 29:10, were on the eve of their conclusion at the time of Daniel's great prayer of intercession Dan 9:2; they ended with the capture of Babylon, and the edict of Cyrus, permitting the Jews to return Ch2 36:22-23; Ezr 1:1. Yet there seems to have been a secondary fulfillment, from the destruction of the temple and city, in Zedekiah's eleventh year Kg2 25:2, Kg2 25:8-9, 588 b.c. to the second year of Darius, 519 b.c. Such double fulfillments of prophecy are not like alternative fulfillments. They are a more intricate and fuller, not an easier fulfillment of it. Yet "these 70 years" do not necessitate such a double fulfillment. It might express only a reverent wonder, that the 70 years being accomplished, the complete restoration was not yet brought to pass. Cyril: "God having fixed the time of the captivity to the 70th year, it was necessary to be silent, so long as the time was not yet come to an end, that he might not seem to oppose the Lord's will. But, when the time was now come to a close and the fear of offending was removed, he, knowing that the Lord cannot lie, entreats and ventures to enquire whether His anger has come to an end, as had those who sinned; or whether, fresh sins having accrued, there shall be a further delay, and their forlorn estate shall be yet further extended. They then who worship God have a good and not uncertain hope, that, if they should offend from infirmity, yet have they those who should entreat for them, not people only, but the holy angels themselves, who render God gracious and propitious, soothing His anger by their purity, and in a manner winning the grieved judge. Then the Angel entreated for the synagogue to the Jews; but we, who believe and have been sanctified in the Spirit Jo1 2:1-2, "have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins," and as the inspired Paul writes, "God hath set Him forth as a propitiation through faith, freeing from sin those who come to Him" Rom 3:25.
Zechariah 1:13
zac 1:13
And the Lord answered the angel that talked with me - Either directly, at the intercession of the angel of the Lord, or mediately through an answer first given to him, and by him communicated to the subordinate angel. Neither is expressed.
Good words - As God had promised, "after seventy years shall be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word unto you, causing you to return to this place" Jer 29:10; and Joshua says, "There failed not ought of any good word which the Lord spake unto the house of Israel" (Jos 21:43 (45 English) add Jos 23:14-15).
Comfortable words - Literally, "consolations" (as Isa 57:18). Perhaps the Angel who received the message had, from their tender compassion for us, whereby they "joy over one sinner that repenteth" Luk 15:10, a part in these consolations which he conveyed.
Zechariah 1:14
zac 1:14
Cry thou - The vision was not for the prophet alone. What he saw and heard, that he was to proclaim to others. The vision, which he now saw alone, was to be the basis and substance of his subsequent preaching Jon 1:2; Isa 40:2, Isa 40:6, whereby he was to encourage his people to persevere.
I am jealous for Jerusalem - Literally, "I have been," not now only but in time past even when I did not show it, "and am jealous", with the tender love which allows not what it loves to be injured . The love of God, until finally shut out, is unchangeable, He pursues the sinner with chastisements and scourges in His love, that he may yet be converted and live . But for God's love to him and the solicitations of His grace, while yet impenitent and displeasing Him, he could not turn and please Him.
And for Zion - Which especially He had chosen to put His Name there, and there to receive the worship of His people; "the hill which God desired to dwell in" Psa 68:16, "which He loved" (Psa 78:68; add Psa 132:13-14). Dionysius: "With great and special love have I loved the people of the Jews and what pertained to them, and out of that love have I so diligently and severely corrected her excesses, that she may be more careful for the time to come, as a husband corrects most sharply a wife most dear to him, if she be unfaithful. Whence in the book of Maccabees it is written, "It is a token of His great goodness, when wicked doers are not suffered any long time, but are immediately punished. For not as with other nations, whom the Lord patiently forbeareth to punish, till they be come to the fullness of their sins, so dealeth He with us; lest, being come to the height of sin, afterward He should take vengeance of us. And therefore He never withdraweth His mercy from us, and though He punisheth with adversity, yet doth He never forsake His people" (2 Macc. 6:13-16).
Zechariah 1:15
zac 1:15
I am sore displeased - literally "with great anger am I angered against the nations which are at ease." The form of the words shows that the greatness of the displeasure of God against those who oppress His people, is proportionate to the great and tender love toward themselves. God had been angered indeed with His people; with their enemies He was "angered with a great anger;" and that the more, because they were at ease, in unfeeling self-enjoyment amid the miseries of others.
I was a little displeased - Little, in comparison with our deserts; little in comparison with the anger of the human instruments of His displeasure; little in comparison with theirs, who, in their anger, sought their own ends.
They helped forward the affliction - o "He is wroth with the nations at ease, because He delivered His people to be corrected, but they used cruelty toward those delivered; He wills them to be amended as a son by a schoolmaster; they set themselves to slay and punish them, as an enemy. Like that in Isaiah, "I gave them into thy hands; thou didst show them no mercy; upon the ancients hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke" Isa 47:6.
Or it may be, "helped for evil," in order to bring about evil, as in Jeremiah, "Behold I set My face against you for evil, and to destroy all Judah" Jer 44:11, that is, as we should say, they were the instruments of God, , "cooperated in the execution of My justice toward you, but cruelly and with perverse intention. For although the Assyrians and Chaldaeans wasted the Jewish people, God so ordaining in as far as He willed through them to punish in the present the sins of His people, yet they did it, not in view of God and out of zeal for righteousness, but out of pride covetousness and with the worst ends. Hence God says by Isaiah, "Woe to Asshur, the rod of Mine anger, and the staff in his hand is Mine indignation. Howbeit he thinketh not so, but his heart is to destroy and cut off nations not a few" Isa 10:5, Isa 10:7.
Zechariah 1:16
zac 1:16
Therefore - This being so, since God was so jealous for His people, so displeased with their persecutors, "thus saith the Lord," Dionysius, "I who "in wrath remember mercy, am returned" Hab 3:2, not by change of place, who am uncircumscribed, not existing in place, to the people of Judah and Jerusalem in mercies, manifoldly benefiting them by various effects of My love." The single benefits, the rebuilding of His House, and so the restoration of His public worship, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, are but instances of that all-containing mercy, His restored presence in tender mercies. "I am returned," God says, although the effects of His return were yet to come.
A line shall be stretched forth over Jerusalem - Before, when it stood, this had been done to destroy Kg2 21:13; Isa 34:11; now, when destroyed, to rebuild .
Osorius: "The temple was built then, when the foundations of the walls were not yet laid. In man's sight it would have seemed more provident that the walls should be first builded, that then the temple might be builded more securely. To God, in whom alone is the most firm stay of our life and salvation, it seemed otherwise. For it cannot be that he, to whom nothing is dearer fhan zeal for the most holy religion, should be forsaken of His help."
Zechariah 1:17
zac 1:17
Cry yet - A further promise; not only should Jerusalem be rebuilt, but should as we say, overflow with good ; and God, who had seemed to cast off His people, should yet comfort her, and should show in act that He had chosen her. "love." In all the cases, which Gesenius cites as meaning "love" Gen 6:2; Sa1 20:30; Sa2 15:15; Pro 1:29; Pro 3:31; Isa 1:29, the sense would be injured by rendering, "loved") Zechariah thrice repeats the promise, given through Isaiah Isa 14:1 to Jerusalem, before her wasting by the Chaldaeans, reminding the people thereby, that the restoration, in the dawn whereof they lived, had been promised two centuries before. Yet, against all appearances. My cities shall overflow with good, as being God's; yet would the Lord comfort Zion; yet would He choose Jerusalem.
Osorius: "What is the highest of all goods? what the sweetest solace in life? what the subject of joys? what the oblivion of past sorrow? That which the Son of God brought upon earth, when He illumined Jerusalem with the brightness of His light and heavenly discipline. For to that end was the city restored, that in it, by the ordinance of Christ, for calamity should abound bliss; for desolation, fullness; for sorrow, joy; for want, affluence of heavenly goods."
This first vision having predicted the entire restoration, the details of that restoration are given in subsequent visions.
Zechariah 1:18
zac 1:18
And I lifted up mine eyes - o. Cyril on Zac 2:1 : "Not those of the body (for such visions are invisible to the eyes of the flesh), but rather the inner eyes of the heart and mind." It seems as though, at the close of each vision, Zechariah sank in meditation on what had been shown him; from which he was again roused by the exhibition of another vision.
I saw four horns - The mention of the horns naturally suggests the thought of the creatures which wielded them; as in the first vision that of the horses following the chiefs, implies the presence of the riders upon them. And this the more, since the word "fray them away" implies living creatures, liable to fear. Cyril: "The horn, in inspired Scripture, is always taken as an image of strength, and mostly of pride also, as David said to some, "I said unto the fools, Deal not so foolishly, and to the ungodly, Lift not up the horns. Lift not up your horns on high and speak not with a stiff neck" Psa 75:4. The prophet then sees four horns, that is, four hard and warlike nations, who could easily uproot cities and countries."
Zechariah 1:19
zac 1:19
These are the horns which have scattered - o "The four horns which scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem, are four nations, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Romans; as the Lord, on the prophet's enquiry, explains here, and Daniel unfolds most fully Dan. 2; who in the vision of the image with golden head, silver breast, belly and thighs of brass, feet of iron and clay, explained it of these four nations, and again in another vision of four beasts Dan. 7, lion, bear, leopard and another unnamed dreadful beast, he pointed out the same nations under another figure. But that the Medes and Persians, after the victory of Cyrus, were one kingdom, no one will doubt, who reads secular and sacred literature. When this vision was beheld, the kingdom of the Babylonians had now passed away, that of the Medes and Persians was instant; that of Greeks and Macedonians and of the Romans was yet to come.
What the Babylonians, what the Medes and Persians, what the Greeks that is, the Macedonians, did to Judah, Israel and Jerusalem, a learned man acknowledgeth, especially under Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes, to which the history of the Maccabees belongs. After the Coming of our Lord and Saviour, when Jerusalem was encompassed, Josephus, a native writer, tells most fully, what the Israelites endured, and the Gospel fore-announced. These horns dispersed Judah almost individually, so that, bowed down by the heavy weight of evils, no one of them raised his head." Though these were successive in time, they are exhibited to Zechariah as one. One whole are the efforts against God's Church; one whole are the instruments of God, whether angelic or human, in doing or suffering, to repel them. Zechariah then exhibits these hostile powers as past and gone, as each would be at the end, having put forth his passing might, and perishing. They scattered, each in its day, and disappeared; for the next displaced it.
The long schism being ended, Judah and Israel are again one; and Jerusalem, the place of God's worship, belongs to Israel as well as to Judah.
The explanation of the number four, as symbolizing contemporaneous attacks from the four quarters of the heavens, fails in matter of fact, that, in these later times, the Jews suffered always from one power at a time. There was no such fourfold attack. In Zechariah's time all around was Persian.
Osorius: "Those horns, broken by the angels' ministry, portended that no guilt against the church of Christ should be unpunished. Never will there be wanting fierce enemies from east, west, north, or south, whom God will strengthen, in order by them to teach His own. But when He shall see His work finished, that is, when He shall have cleansed the stains of His own and brought back His Church to her former purity, He will punish those who so fiercely afflicted her."
Spiritually, (Jerome), "those who destroy vices, build up virtues, and all the saints who, possessing these remedies, ever build up the Church, may be called 'builders.' Whence the Apostle says, "I, as a wise builder, laid the foundation" Co1 3:10; and the Lord, when wroth, said that He would "take away from Jerusalem artificer and wise man" Isa 3:3. And the Lord Himself, Son of the Almighty God and of the Creator of all, is called "the son of the carpenter" Mat 13:55.
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 2
Zechariah 2:1
zac 2:1
A man with a measuring line in his hand - Probably the Angel of the Lord, of whom Ezekiel has a like vision. Jerome: "He who before, when he lift up his eyes, had seen in the four horns things mournful, now again lifts up his eves to see a man, of whom it is written, "Behold a man whose name is the Branch" Zac 6:12; of whom we read above, "Behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees, which were in the bottom" Zac 1:8. Of whom too the Father saith; He builded My city, "whose builder and maker is God" Heb 11:10. He too is seen by Ezekiel in a description like this, "a man whose appearance was like the appearance of brass" Eze 40:3, that is, "burnished and shining as fire, with a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed" Eze 1:7. The office also seems to be one of authority, not to measure the actual length and breadth of Jerusalem, but to lay down what it should be, (Cyril), "to mark it out broad and very long."
Zechariah 2:3
zac 2:3
The angel that talked with me went forth - Probably to receive the explanation which was given him for Zechariah; and another angel, a higher angel, since he gives him a commission, "went forth to meet him," being (it seems probable) instructed by the Angel of the Lord, who laid down the future dimensions of the city. The indefiniteness of the description, another angel, implies that he was neither the Angel of the Lord, nor (were they different) Michael, or the man with the measuring line, but an angel of intermediate rank, instructed by one higher, instructing the lower, who immediately instructed Zechariah.
Zechariah 2:4
zac 2:4
And said unto him, Run, speak unto this young man - The prophet himself, who was to report to his people what he heard. Jeremiah says, "I am a youth" Jer 1:6; and, "the young man," "the young prophet," carried the prophetic message from Elisha to Jehu. "Youth,'" common as our English term in regard to man, is inapplicable and unapplied to angels, who have not our human variations of age, but exist, as they were created.
Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls - Or as villages (see the notes at Hab 3:14), namely, an unconfined, uncramped population, spreading itself freely, without restraint of walls, and (it follows) without need of them. Clearly then it is no earthly city. To be inhabited as villages would be weakness, not strength; a peril, not a blessing. The earthly Jerusalem, so long as she remained unwalled, was in continual fear and weakness. God put it into the heart of His servant to desire to restore her; her wall was built, and then she prospered. He Himself had promised to Daniel, that "Her street shall be rebuilt, and her wall, even in strait of times" Dan 9:25. Nehemiah mourned 73 years after this, 443 b.c., when it was told him, "The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire" Neh 1:3. He said to Artaxerxes, "Why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' sepulehres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire?" Neh 2:3. When permitted by Artaxerxes to return, he addressed the rulers of the Jews, "Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire; come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach; and they said, let us rise and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work" Neh 2:17-18. When "the wall was finished and our enemies heard, and the pagan about us saw it, they were much cast down in their own eyes; for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God" Neh 6:15-16.
This prophecy then looks on directly to the time of Christ. Wonderfully does it picture the gradual expansion of the kingdom of Christ, without bound or limit, whose protection and glory God is, and the character of its defenses. It should "dwell as villages," peacefully and gently expanding itself to the right and the left, through its own inherent power of multiplying itself, as a city, to which no bounds were assigned, but which was to fill the earth. Cyril: "For us God has raised a church, that truly holy and far-famed city, which Christ fortifies, consuming opponents by invisible powers, and filling it with His own glory, and as it were, standing in the midst of those who dwell in it. For He promised; "Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world." This holy city Isaiah mentioned: "thine eyes shall see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation; a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken" Isa 33:20; and to her he saith, "enlarge the place of thy, tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitation; spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left" Isa 54:2-3. For the church of Christ is widened and extended boundlessly, ever receiving countless souls who worship Him." Rup.: "What king or emperor could make walls so ample as to include the whole world? Yet, without this, it could not encircle that Jerusalem, the church which is diffused through the whole world. This Jerusalem, the pilgrim part of the heavenly Jerusalem, is, in this present world, inhabited without walls, not being contained in vile place or one nation. But in that world, where it is daily being removed hence, much more can there not, nor ought to be, nor is, any wall around, save the Lord, who is also the glory in the midst of it."
Zechariah 2:5
zac 2:5
And I, Myself in My own Being, will be to her a wall of fire - Not protection only, an inner circle around her, however near an enemy might press in upon her, but destructive to her enemies. Isaiah says, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise in judgment against thee thou shalt condemn" Isa 54:17. Its defense, Isaiah says, shall be immaterial. "We have a strong city; salvation shall God appoint for walls and bulwarks" Isa 26:1; "thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates praise" Isa 60:18). By a different figure it is said, "I will encamp about mine house because of the army" Zac 9:8.
And glory will I be in the midst of her - As Isaiah says, "The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory" Isa 60:19; and of Christ, "In that day shall the Branch of the Lord be Beauty and Glory - to the escaped of Israel" Isa 4:2.
Zechariah 2:6
zac 2:6
Ho! ho! and flee - Such being the safety and glory in store for God's people in Jerusalem, He who had so provided it, the Angel of the Lord, bids His people everywhere to come to it, saving themselves also from the peril which was to come on Babylon. So Isaiah bade them, "Go ye forth of Babylon; flee ye from the Chaldaeans with a voice of singing; declare ye, tell this, utter it to the end of the earth; say ye, The Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob" Isa 48:20. "Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence; touch no unclean thing: go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord" Isa 52:11; and Jeremiah, "Flee ye out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul; be not cut off in her iniquity, for this is the time of the Lord's vengeance. He will render unto her a recompense" (Jer 51:6, add. Jer 50:8). "My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye, every man his soul from the fierce anger of the Lord" Jer 51:45.
The words, "flee, deliver thyself," imply an imminent peril on Babylon, such as came upon her, two years after this prophecy, in the fourth year of Darius. But the earnestness of the command, its repetition by three prophets, the context in isaiah and Jeremiah, imply something more than temporal peril, the peril of the infection of the manners of Babylon, which may have detained there many who did not return. Whence in the New Testament, the words are cited, as to the great evil city of the world; "Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you" Co2 6:17; and under the name of Babylon; "I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues" Rev 18:4.
For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of heaven - The north country, although its capital and center was Babylon, was the whole Babylonian empire, called "the North" Jer 1:13-14; Jer 3:18; Jer 4:6; Jer 6:1, Jer 6:22; Jer 23:8 because its invasions always came upon Israel from the north. But the book of Esther shows that, sixty years after this, the Jews were dispersed over the 127 provinces of the Persian empire, from India (the Punjab) to Ethiopia Est 1:1; Est 3:8, Est 3:12-14; Est 8:5, Est 8:9, whether they were purposely placed by the policy of the conquerors in detatched groups, as the ten tribes were in the "cities of the Medes" Kg2 17:6, or whether, when more trusted, they migrated of their own accord. God, in calling them to return, reminds them of the greatness of their dispersion. He had dispersed them abroad as the four winds of heaven . He, the Same, recalled them.
Zechariah 2:7
zac 2:7
Dwellest with the daughter of Babylon - The unusual idiom is perhaps chosen as expressive of God's tenderness, even to the people who were to be destroyed, from which Israel was to escape.
Zechariah 2:8
zac 2:8
After the glory - Jonathan: "Which it is promised to bring upon you." This being the usual construction, the words involve a great course of God's dealing, of first showing favor to those who will receive favor, then abandoning or punishing the rest; as, when the eight souls had been received into the ark, the flood came; when Lot and his had escaped out of Sodom, the fire came down from heaven; when Israel had passed the Red Sea, Pharaoh's hosts were drowned; the election obtained what israel sought for, the rest were blinded. "The glory" then would be the glory, of which God says, "I will be the glory in the midst of you" Rom 11:7.
But further He who speaketh is Almighty God, "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, He hath sent me; For lo I wave My hand against them - and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me; Lo I come and dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord, and many nations shall cleave unto the Lord in that day, and they shall be to Me a people and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know, that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you" Zac 2:8-10. In all which series of promises, the I, of whom Israel were to know that the Lord of hosts had sent Him, is the I, who affirms of Himself what belongs to Almighty God only, inflicting punishment on the enemies of Judah, indwelling the Church and people, receiving the pagan as His own; and it is precisely by all these acts of power and love, that Israel shall know that the Lord of hosts had sent Him.
(Jerome: "In what follows, 'Thus saith the Lord of hosts, After glory, He hath sent Me' etc., the Saviour is introduced speaking, who, being Almighty God, saith that He was sent by the Father Almighty, not according to that whereby He was Almighty, but according to that, that, after glory, He was sent, "who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and was made obedient unto the Father even unto death; and that, the death of the Cross" Phi 2:6. Nor is it marvel that Christ is called Almighty, in whose Person we read in the Apocalypse of John, "These things saith the faithful Witness - I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which was and which is and which is to come, the Almighty" Rev 1:5, Rev 1:8, "to whom all power is given in heaven and in earth" Mat 28:18; and who saith, "All things of the Father's are Mine" Joh 16:15. But if all things, that is, God from God, Lord from. Lord, Light from Light, therefore also Almighty from Almighty; for it cannot be, that diverse should be the glory of those whose Nature is One."
For he who toucheth - So as to injure , you, "toucheth the apple of His eye," that is, of Him who sent Him, Almighty God. So Jerome, Theodoret Others, as Cyril, of his own eye, turning to evil to himself; but the analogy of the other passages is against it), as in the song of Moses, "He led him about, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye" Deu 32:10; and David prays, "Keep me as the apple of the eye" Psa 17:8.
Zechariah 2:9
zac 2:9
For behold I will shake My hand against them - As God promised of old against the enemies of His people , and they shall be a spoil to those who served them habitually.
And ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent Me - Theodoret: "He was sent, not as God, but as Man. For as God He is equal to the Father. For He saith, "I am in the Father and the Father in Me, and, The Father who dwelleth in Me He doeth the works" Joh 14:10, and, "I and My Father are one" Joh 10:30, and "He who hath seen Me hath seen the Father" Joh 14:9. But He is sent, as man, fulfilling the dispensation for us, not lessening the divine nature. The prophet then intimated not the duality only, but the equality of the persons."
Zechariah 2:10
zac 2:10
Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion - It is a great jubilee of joy, to which Zion is invited. Thrice beside is she invited with this same word, and all for the restored or renewed Presence of God. "Cry aloud for joy, thou barren which bare not" Isa 54:1, as here, on the coming in of the Gentiles, "Cry aloud for joy, O daughter of Zion; jubilate, O Israel; rejoice and exult with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem; the Lord, the King of Israel, is in the midst of thee" Zep 3:14-15. "Shout and cry aloud for joy, O inhabitant of Zion; for great in the midst of thee is the Holy One of Israel" Isa 12:6. The source of joy is a fresh coming of God, a coming, whereby He should dwell abidingly among them: truly what is this, but the Incarnation? As John saith, "The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us" Joh 1:14; and, "Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and shall be their God" Rev 21:3.
Cyril: "Hence too you may learn how great a subject of contentment above is the Presence of the Saviour upon earth. He could not then but bid the spiritual Zion, "which is the Church of the Living God" Ti1 3:15, the most sacred multitude of those saved by faith, to cry aloud for joy and rejoice. But it was announced that He should come and be in the midst of her. For John saith to us, The Word "was in the world" Joh 1:10, and, being God, was not severed from His creatures, but He was Himself the Source of life to all living, and holding all things together to well-being and life; but "the world knew Him not" Joh 1:10 : for it worshiped the creature. But He came among us, when, taking our likeness, He was conceived by the holy Virgin, and "was seen upon earth and conversed with men" , and the divine David witnesseth saying, "Our God shall come manifestly, and shall not keep silence" Psa 50:3. Then also was there a haven for the Gentiles. For now no longer was the race of Israel alone taught, but the whole earth was engoldened with the evangelical preachings, and in every nation and country "great is His Name."
Jerome: "This too is to be understood of the Person of the Lord, that He exhorts His people, being restored from the captivity to their former abode, to be glad and rejoice, because the Lord Himself cometh and dwelleth in the midst of her, and many nations shall believe in Him, of whom it is said, "Ask of Me and I will give Thee nations for Thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Thy possession" Psa 2:8, and He shall dwell in the midst of them, as He saith to His disciples, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" Mat 28:20.
Zechariah 2:11
zac 2:11
And many nations shall join themselves - cleaving to Him by a close union. Isaiah had so spoken of single proselytes Isa 56:3-6; Jeremiah had used the word of Israel's self-exhortation after the return from Babylon; "going and weeping," they shall go and seek the Lord their God, saying, "Come and let us join ourselves unto the Lord, in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten" Jer 50:4-5. This Zechariah now predicts of "many nations." The Jews were scarcely half-restored themselves, a mere handful. They had wrought no conversions among the pagan, yet prophecy continues its unbroken voice, "many nations shall join themselves unto the Lord."
And shall be My people - Literally, "be to Me a people." This is exactly the history of the Christian church, unity amid diversity; many nations still retaining their national existence, yet owned by God as one people and His own. The words are those in which God adopted Israel in Egypt; "I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be your God" Exo 6:7. This was the covenant with them, "that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, that He may establish thee today for a people unto Himself, and that he may be unto thee a God" (Deu 29:12-13, add Lev 26:12; Deu 27:9; Sa1 12:22; Sa2 7:23-24; Kg2 11:17; Ch1 17:22; Ch2 23:16; Jer 7:23; Jer 11:4). The contrary was the title of the pagan, "not a people; with whom God said, I will move Israel to jealousy" Deu 32:21. The closeness of union Jeremiah expresses; "As the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave to Me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, saith the Lord, that they might be unto Me for a people and for a name and for a praise and for a glory" Jer 13:11. This was the object of the existence of Israel; to this it was to be restored Jer 24:7; Jer 30:22; Jer 31:1; Jer 32:38 by conversion Eze 11:20; Eze 14:11; Eze 36:28; Eze 37:23, Eze 37:27; Zac 8:8; to this special privilege of Israel "many nations" were to be admitted; yet not so as to be separate from Israel, for He adds, "and I will dwell in, the midst of thee," Judah. God would dwell in His Church, formed of Israel and the Gentiles, yet so that the Gentiles should be grafted into Israel, becoming one with them.
Zechariah 2:12
zac 2:12
And the Lord shall inherit Judah His portion - The inheritance of the Lord is the title which God commonly gave to Israel (Deu 4:20; Deu 9:26, Deu 9:29; Sa1 26:19; Sa2 14:16; Sa2 20:19; Sa2 21:3; Kg1 8:51; Psa 28:9; Psa 33:12; Psa 68:10; Psa 78:62, Psa 78:71; Psa 119:1; Psa 106:40, Joe 2:17; Joe 3:2, (Hebrew) Isa 19:25; Isa 47:6; Jer 12:7-9; Jer 50:11). God is said to be the portion of Israel Jer 10:16; Jer 51:19; of the pious Psa 16:5; Psa 73:26; Psa 119:57; Psa 142:6; Lam 3:24; once only beside, is Israel said to be the portion of God Deu 32:9; once only is God said to inherit Israel, "Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance" Exo 34:9. Zechariah unites the two rare idioms.
In the holy land - The land is again made holy by God, and sanctified by His Presence. So He calls the place where He revealed Himself to Moses, "holy ground" Exo 3:5. So it is said, "the holy place" Lev 10:17; Lev 14:13, "the holy house" Ch1 29:3, "the holy ark" Ch2 35:3, "the holy city" Neh 11:1, Neh 11:18; Isa 48:2; Isa 52:1, "the holy mountain" Isa 27:13; Jer 31:23; Zac 8:3, "the holy people" Isa 62:12, "the holy chambers" (Eze 42:13 all), or, with reference to their relation to God who consecrates them, "My holy mountain" Psa 2:6; Isa 11:9; Isa 56:7; Isa 57:13; Isa 65:11, Isa 65:25; Isa 66:20; Eze 20:40; Joe 2:1; Joe 3:17; Oba 1:16. Zep 3:11, "Thy holy habitation" Exo 15:13, "Thy holy dwelling-place" (Deu 26:15. "His holy hab." Psa 68:6; Jer 25:30; Zac 2:1-13 :17) "thy holy temple" (Psa 5:8; Psa 79:1; Psa 138:2; Jon 2:5, Jon 2:8, "His holy temple," Mic 1:2; Hab 2:20), "Thy holy mountain" (Psa 15:1; Psa 43:3; Dan 9:16. "His holy hill," Psa 3:5; Psa 48:2; Psa 99:9), "Thy holy oracle" Psa 28:2, "Thy holy city" Dan 9:24, "cities" Isa 64:9, "His holy place" Psa 24:1-10 :, "His holy border." Psa 78:54. It is not one technical expression, as people now by a sort of effort speak of "the holy land." Everything which has reference to God is holy. The land is holy, not for any merits of theirs, but because God was worshiped there, was specially present there. It was an anticipation and type of "Thy holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee." This land their fathers had "polluted with blood" Psa 106:38; God says, "they defiled My land" Jer 2:7; Jer 3:9; Jer 16:18; Ezekiel called her eminently, "the land that is not cleansed" Eze 22:24. Now God said, "I will remove the iniquity of the land" Zac 3:9, and she was again a holy land, as hallowed by Him.
It is not a mere conversion of the pagan, But, as Isaiah Isa 2:3 and Micah Mic 4:2 foretold; a conversion, of which Jerusalem should be the center, as our Lord explained to the Apostles after His Resurrection, "that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" Luk 24:47.
Zechariah 2:13
zac 2:13
Be silent - Literally, "hush all flesh, before the Lord" (see at Hab 2:20, p. 207); man in his weakness Gen 6:3; Ch2 32:8; Job 10:4; Psa 56:4; Psa 78:39; Isa 31:3; Jer 17:5, "flesh and blood" in the language of the New Testament Mat 16:17; Co1 15:50; Gal 1:16, before God his Maker. "All flesh," the whole human race Gen 6:12; Psa 65:3; Psa 145:21; Isa 40:5-6; Isa 49:26; Isa 66:23; Joe 3:1; Eze 21:4, Eze 21:9-10, is to be hushed before God, because His judgments, as His mercies, are over all.
For God ariseth - God seemeth to be quiescent, as it were, when He bears with us; to arise, when He puts forth His power, either for us, when we pray, "Lord, awake to help me" (Psa 59:4, add Psa 7:7; Psa 44:24); or in displeasure. His "holy habitation" is alike the tabernacle Sa1 2:29, Sa1 2:32; Psa 26:9; Psa 68:6, temple Ch2 36:15, heaven Deu 26:15; Jer 25:30; Ch2 30:27, since His presence is in all.
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 3
Zechariah 3:1
zac 3:1
And He - God, (for the office of the attendant angel was to explain, not to show the visions) "showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the Angel of the Lord;" probably to be judged by him ; as in the New Testament, "to stand before the Son of Man;" for although "standing before," whether in relation to man or God, , expresses attendance upon, yet here it appears only as a condition, contemporaneous with that of Satan's, to accuse him. Although, moreover, the Angel speaks with authority, yet God's Presence in him is not spoken of so distinctly, that the high priest would be exhibited as standing before him, as in his office before God.
And Satan - Etymologically, the enemy, as, in the New Testament, "your adversary the devil" Pe1 5:8, etymologically, the accuser. It is a proper name of the Evil one, yet its original meaning, "the enemy, was not lost. Here, as in Job, his malice is shown in accusation; "the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God, day and night" Rev 12:10. In Job Job 1:8-11; Job 2:3-5, the accusations were calumnious; here, doubtless, true. For he accused Job of what would have been plain apostacy Job 1:11; Job 2:5; Joshua and Zerubbabel had shared, or given way to, the remissness of the people, as to the rebuilding of the temple and the full restoration of the worship of God Ezr 3:1-13; 4. For this, Haggai had reproved the people, through them Hag 1:1-11. Satan had then a real charge, on which to implead them. Since also the whole series of visions relates to the restoration from the captivity, the guilt, for which Satan impleads him with Jerusalem and Jerusalem in him, includes the whole guilt, which had rested upon them, so that for a time God had seemed to have cast "away His people" Rom 11:1. Satan "stands at his right hand," the place of a protector Psa 16:8; Psa 109:31; Psa 121:5; Psa 142:4, to show that he had none to save him, and that himself was victorious.
Zechariah 3:2
zac 3:2
And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee - Jerome: "This they so explain, that the Father and the Son is Lord, as we read in the Psa 110:1-7, "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand." The Lord speaketh of another Lord; not that He, the Lord who speaketh, cannot rebuke, but that, from the unity of nature, when the Other rebuketh, He Himself who speaketh rebuketh. For "he who seeth the Son, seeth the Father also" Joh 14:9. It may be that God, by such sayings , also accustomed people, before Christ came, to believe in the Plurality of Persons in the One Godhead. The rebuke of God must be with power. "Thou hast rebuked the nations, Thou hast destroyed the ungodly" Psa 9:5. "Thou hast rebuked the proud, accursed" Psa 119:21. "They perish at the rebuke of Thy Countenance" Psa 80:16. "At Thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse are cast into a deep sleep" Psa 76:6. "God shall rebuke him, and he fleeth far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind" Isa 17:13. "He rebuked the Red Sea and it dried up" Psa 106:9. "The foundations of the world were discovered at Thy rebuke, O Lord" (Psa 18:15, add Nah 1:4). He "rebuked the seed" Mal 2:3, and it perished; the devourer" Mal 3:11, and it no longer devoured. The rebuke then of the blasted spirit involved a withering rejection of himself and his accusations, as when Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and he departed out of his victim Mar 1:25-26; Mar 9:25; Luk 4:35; Luk 9:42.
The Lord hath chosen Jerusalem - Joshua then is acquitted, not because the accusation of Satan was false, but out of the free love of God for His people and for Joshua in it and as its representative. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?" Rom 8:33-34. The high priest, being "himself also compassed with infirmity, needed daily to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins, and then for the people's" Heb 5:2-3. As Isaiah said, on the sight of God, "I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips" Isa 6:5, and, until cleansed by the typical coal, dared not offer himself for the prophetic office, so here Satan, in Joshua, aimed at the whole priestly office, and in it, at Israel's relation to God.
Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? - Cyril: "As if he should say, Israel confessedly has sinned, and is liable to these charges. Yet it has suffered no slight punishment; it has endured sufferings, and has scarce been snatched out of them, as a half-burned "brand out of the fire." For not yet had it shaken off the dust of the harms from the captivity; only just now and scarely had it escaped the flame of that most intolerable calamity. Cease then imputing sin to them, on whom God has had mercy."
Zechariah 3:3
zac 3:3
Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments - Such, it is expressed, was his habitual condition; he was one so clothed. The "filthy garment," as defilement generally, is, in Scripture, the symbol of sin. "We are all as the unclean, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" Isa 64:6. "He that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy - when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion" Isa 4:3-4. "There is a generation, pure in its own eyes, and it is not washed from its filthiness" Pro 30:12. The same is expressed by different words, signifying pollution, defilement by sin; "Woe unto her that is filthy and polluted" Zep 3:1; "The land was defiled with blood" Psa 106:38; "they were defiled with their own works". It is symbolized also by the "divers washings" Heb 9:10 of the law, representing restored purity; and the use of the word by Psalmists and prophets; "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity" Psa 51:4; "wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes" Isa 1:16; "O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from wickedness" Jer 4:14. In later times at least, the accused were clothed in black , not in defiled garments.
Zechariah 3:4
zac 3:4
And He spake to those who stood before Him - the ministering angels who had waited on the Angel of the Lord to do His bidding.
See, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee - The pardoning words of the Lord to David by Nathan, "The Lord too hath put away thy sin" Sa2 12:13. "And clothe thee with change of raiment, that is, such as were taken off and reserved for great occasions. As the filthy garments were not necessarily other than the high priest's vesture, symbolically defiled through the sins of the people, so neither need these be other than the priestly garments in their purity and freshness. The words imply the condition, not the nature of the vestment. (Cyril: "The high priest having been thus taken to represent the whole people, the filthy garments would be no unclear symbol of the wickedness of the people. For clad, as it were, with their sins, with the ill-effaceable spot of ungodliness, they abode in captivity, subject to retribution, paying the penalty of their unholy deeds. But when God had pity on them, He bade them be freed from their defilements, and in a manner re-clad with justifying grace. He indicates to them the end of their toils. For where remission of sin is, there follows of necessity freedom from the evils brought through sin." He adds that a clean mitre should be put upon his head, (Cyril), "that so we might understand that the glory of the priesthood ever, in a sort, concurs with the condition of the people. For the boast of the priesthood is the purity of those in their charge. As then when the people was in sin, the raiment of the priest also was in a manner defiled, so if it were again well-approved, pure and bright is the fashion of the priesthood, and free its access to God. So the inspired Paul having ministered to the Gentiles the Gospel of Christ, seeing them advancing in graces, writes, "By your boast, brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus" Co1 15:31, and, "my joy and crown" Phi 4:1.
Zechariah 3:5
zac 3:5
And I said, let them set a fair mitre on his head - This seems to have been purposely omitted, in order to leave something, and that, the completion of all, to be done at the intercession of the prophet. The glory and complement of the high priest's sacrificial attire was the mitre with the "holy crown upon it and the plate of prate gold, on which was graven, Holiness to the Lord" Exo 28:36-38; Exo 29:6; which was to "be upon" the high priest's "forehead, that he may bear the iniquity of the holy things which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts; which was always to be upon his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord." The renewed gift of this was reserved for the intercession of man co-working with God.
And the angel of the Lord standing by - Seeing that all was done aright, and, now that the acquittal was complete, standing to give the charge.
Zechariah 3:6
zac 3:6
And the angel of the Lord protested - Solemnly (etymologically, called God to witness) as in, "Did I not make thee swear by the Lord and protested unto thee" Kg1 2:42, laying it as an obligation upon him. The charge is given to Joshua, and in him to all successive high priests, while Israel should continue to be God's people, as the condition of their acceptance.
Zechariah 3:7
zac 3:7
If thou wilt walk in My ways and if thou wilt keep My charge - Both of these are expressions, dating from the Pentateuch, for holding on in the way of life, well-pleasing to God and keeping the charge given by God. It was the injunction of the dying David to Solomon, "Keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes ..." Kg1 2:3.
Then shalt thou also judge My house - Judgment, in the place of God, was part of the high priest's office Deu 17:9-13; Deu 19:17; Mal 2:7. Yet these judgments also were given in the house of God. The cause was directed to be brought to God, and He through His priests judged it. Both then may be comprehended in the world, the oversight of the people itself and the judgment of all causes brought to it. Jonathan: "Thou shalt judge those who minister in the house of My sanctuary."
And I will give thee place to walk among those who stand by - that is, among the ministering spirits, who were "standing before the Angel of the Lord" Zac 3:4. This can be fully only after death, when the saints shall be received among the several choirs of angels. Jonathan: "In the resurrection of the dead I will revive thee and give thee feet walking among these Seraphim." Even in this this since "our conversation is in heaven" Phi 3:20, and the life of priests should be an angel-life, it may mean, that he should have free access to God, his soul in heaven, while his body was on this earth.
Zechariah 3:8
zac 3:8
Thou and thy companions which sit before thee; yea men of marvelous signs are they - o It seems probable that the words addressed to Joshua begin here; else the "men of signs" would be the companions of Joshua, to the exclusion of Himself. His companions are probably ordinary priests, who sit as sharing his dignity as priest, but "before him," as inferiors. So Ezekiel says, "I was sitting in my house, and the elders of Israel were sitting before me" Eze 8:1. They are "images of the things to come" Heb 10:1. Isaiah's two sons, with their prophetic names, "Haste-spoil speed-prey, and a-remnant shall-return," were with his own name, "salvation-of-the-Lord, signs and portents" Isa 8:18 of the future Israel. Isaiah, walking naked and barefoot, was "a sign and portent" Isa 20:3 against Egypt. God tells Ezekiel, that in the "removal of his stuff, as stuff for the captivity, I have set thee for a portent unto the house of Israel" Eze 12:6.
I, he explains his act, "am your portent; like as I have done, so shall it be done unto you" Eze 12:11. When forbidden to mourn on the death of his wife; "Ezekiel is unto you for a portent; according to all that he hath done, shall ye do; and when this cometh, ye shall know that I am the Lord God" Eze 24:24. Wherein then were Joshua and the other priests portents of what should be? One fact alone had stood out, the forgiveness of sins. Accusation and full forgiveness, out of God's free mercy, were the substance of the whole previous vision. It was the full reinstatement of the priesthood. The priesthood so restored was the portent of what was to come. To "offer the offering of the people, and make an atonement for them; Lev 9:7; "to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year" Lev 16:34, was the object of the existence of the priesthood. Typical only it could be, because they had "but the blood of bulls and goats to offer, which could," in themselves, "never take away sins" Heb 10:4. But in this their act they were portents of what was to come. He adds here, "For, behold, I will bring My Servant the Branch."
The Branch - Had now become, or Zechariah made it, a proper name. Isaiah had prophesied, "In that day shall the Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious for the escaped of Israel" Isa 4:2; and, in reference to the low estate of him who should come, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stump of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots" Isa 11:1; and Jeremiah, "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth, and this is the name whereby He shall be called, The Lord our Righteouness" Jer 23:5-6; and, "In those days and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David, and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land" Jer 33:15. Of him Zechariah afterward spoke as, "a man whose name is the Branch" Zac 6:12.
Here Zechariah names him simply, as a proper name, "My servant, the, Branch," as Ezekiel prophesied of "My servant David." The title "My servant," which is Isaiah's chiefest title of the Messiah, occurs in connection with the same image of ills youth's lowly estate, and of His atoning Death. "He shall grow up before Him as a sucker, and as a root from a dry ground" Isa 53:2; "a scion shall grow out of his roots" Isa 11:1. . Lest then God should seem to have spoken untruly, in promising to the legal priesthood that it should ever have the oversight over His house, there was need to fore-announce the mystery of Christ, that the things of the law should cease and He Himself should judge His own house through the Scion from Himself, His Son.
Osorius: "Look ye to the Branch of the Lord; set Him as the example of life; in Him, as a most strong tower, place with most becoming faith all your hope of salvation and immortality. For He is not only a Branch, who shall fill you with the richness of divine fruit, but a stone also, to break all the essays of the enemy."
Zechariah 3:9
zac 3:9
For behold the stone, that I hare laid before Joshua - This must be an expansion of what he had said, or the ground of it, being introduced by, for. It must be something future, to be done by God Himself, since God says, "I will grave the graving thereof;" something connected with the remission of sins, which follows upon that graying. The stone, then, cannot be the stone of foundation of the material temple (Rashi). For this had long before been laid. The head-cornerstone, the completion of the building , had nothing remarkable, why God should be said to grave it. The plumbline was not a part even of the material temple. "The stone is one stone." But to interpret it by other prophecy, one stone there is, of which God says, "Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation, he that believeth shall not make haste" Isa 28:16; that stone, of which our Lord reminded the Jews, "the stone which the builders refused is become the head-stone of the corner" ; "Jesus Christ Himself, the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" Eph 2:20-21.
On this stone had Joshua, with all those typical priests, to look, in whom alone they and all have forgiveness, whose Sacrifice their sacrifices pictured and pleaded. "It," says an old mystical Jewish book , a "is the stone of foundation, on which the earth is founded, which God Himself laid, that the world might receive blessing from it" . "The Shechinah is called the stone, through which the world subsisteth; of which it is said, 'A stone of seven eyes, and, the stone which the builders refused.'" This "stone," God says, I have laid or set before Joshua, that is, for him to consider; as He speaks to Solomon and his children, of "My commandments which I have set before you" Kg1 9:6.
Rup.: "That the stone is the Lord Jesus Christ, the head cornerstone, elect, laid as a foundation; and that the seven eyes on the one stone are the sevenfold Spirit of God which rested upon Him, is or ought to be unknown to no one. For to Him "God giveth not the Spirit by measure" Joh 3:34, and "in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" Col 2:9. This stone was rejected by people, but chosen and honored by God." Osorius: "This stone then, on which the house of God and our whole salvation resteth, is placed by God before that high priest. That is, the most holy Name of Jesus, the virtue piety and largeness of Jesus is, by the Divine Spirit, showed to the priest, that he might understand the End of the law and holiness, to whom all the actions of life and the offices of the priesthood were to be referred. In which stone was foreshown to the divine man, not the invisible strength only, but also the manifold light of the Divine Intelligence. For it follows;"
Upon this one stone are seven eyes - Whether they are the eyes of God, resting in loving care upon it, or whether, as the wheels in Ezekiel's vision were "full of eyes round about" Eze 1:18; Eze 10:12, the eyes are pictured as on the stone itself, marking that it symbolized a being with manifold intelligence. Zechariah speaks of the eyes of "the Lord which run to and fro on the earth" Zac 4:10, and John, of the "Lamb, as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God, seat forth into all the earth" Rev 5:6. Either symbol harmonizes with the context, and is admissible in language. before and afterward, I have laid it, I will engrave the graving thereof; and so it corresponds to the "It shall grow up before Him as a tender plant" Isa 53:2. But the contrast, that on one stone there are seven eyes, perhaps rather suggests that the eyes are on the stone itself, and He, the "Living Stone," is pictured with an universality of sight, whereby, with a divine knowledge, He surveys and provides for the well-being of His whole Church. It has some analogy too to the sevenfold Spirit which was to rest upon Him. . "For this stone to have seven eyes is to retain in operation the whole virtue of the Spirit of seven-fold grace. For according to the distribution of the Holy Spirit, ones receives prophecy; another, knowledge; another, miracles; another, kinds of tongues; another, interpretation of words; but no one attaineth to have all the gifts of that same Spirit. But our Creator taking on Him our infirmities, because, through the power of His Divinity, He showed that He had at once in Him all the virtues of the Holy Spirit, united beyond doubt the bright gleams of the sevenfold constellation." "None among men had together all the operations of the Holy Spirit, save the Mediator of God and man alone, whose is that same Spirit, who proceeds from the Father before all worlds."
Osorius: "The stone is one. For as we have in God One Spirit, one faith, one sacrament of that most pure laver, so we worship One Christ, the one only Deliverer of the human race, and Author of our righteousness and everlasting salvation; and strengthened by His guardianship, we hope for immortality and eternal glory. Who, though He be One, governs all things with ineffable wisdom. For His wisdom is aptly described by the seven eyes. For the number seven generally describes an universality of good."
Behold I will engrave the graving thereof - As of a costly stone. What the graving is, is not explained; but manifestly it is everything which concurs to its beauty. . "This stone is of earth, and of the power and workmanship of God." . "It signifies Him who had His birth in virgin-earth, but framed skillfully by the power of the Holy Spirit." That Precious Stone was further graven, through the providence and will of God, when Jerome: "He caused it to be wounded by the nails of the Cross and the soldier's lance, and in His passion took away the iniquity of the earth in one day, of which it is written, "This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it" Psa 118:24. Beautiful were the gifts and graces which Christ received, as Man; but beautiful beyond all beauty must be those glorious scars, with which He allowed His whole Body to be riven, that , "throughout the whole frame His love might be engraven." Ribera: "What even in the Body of the Lord can be lovelier or more lightful than those five Wounds, which He willed to retain in His immortal Being, lest the blessed should be deprived of that splendor, surpassing far the light of sun had stars?"
And I will remove the iniquity of the land in one day - On "one day" in the year was the typical atonement; in one day absolutely, God Himself would make the iniquity of that land to depart. "One day" is always emphatic , that things are crowded into it, which seemed too much for one day. Year by year came the day of atonement: its yearly repetition showed that nothing lasting was effected. On "one day" that removal should be, which needed no renewal . A Jewish writer confessed the mystery, while he said, (Rashi), "One day; I know not what that day is." Ask any Christian child, "On what day was iniquity removed, not from the land only, but from all lands?" he would say, "On the day when Jesus died."
Zechariah 3:10
zac 3:10
Under the vine and under the fig tree - Micah had already made the description of the peaceful days of Solomon Kg1 4:25, a symbol Mic 4:4 of the universal fearless peace of the time of Christ. Lap.: "Christ by His passion shall not only take away iniquity, but also bring peace, delight, free communication of all things, so that all things among Christians should be common. For the law of Christ enjoineth charity, forgiveness of injuries, patience, love of enemies etc., all which bring temporal peace."
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 4
Zechariah 4:1
zac 4:1
The angel came again - The angel (as before Zac 2:3) had gone forth to receive some fresh instruction from a higher angel or from God.
And awakened me - As a man is awakened out of sleep. Zechariah, overwhelmed by the greatness of the visions, must have sunk down in a sort of stupor, as after the vision of the ram and he-goat, as Gabriel was speaking with him, Daniel says, "I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground, and he touched me and set me upright" Dan 8:18; and again at the voice of the angel, who, after his three weeks' fast Dan 10:9, came to declare to him Dan 10:21 the scripture of truth; and at the Transfiguration, "Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they were awake, they saw His glory." Luk 9:32. Osorius: "Wondrous and stupendous mysteries were they which were shown to the divine man. He saw the Branch of the Lord; he saw His invincible might; he saw His brightness of Divine Intelligence and Providence; he saw the amplitude of beauty and dignity. Nailed then and struck still with amazement, while he revolved these things in his mind, sunk in a sort of sleep, he is borne out of himself and, mantled around with darkness, understands that the secret things of Divine Wisdom cannot be perfectly comprehended by the mind of any. This then he attained that, his senses being overpowered, he should see nothing, save that wherein is the sum of wisdom, that this immensity of the divine excellence cannot be searched out. By this sleep he was seized, when he was roused by the angel to see further mysteries."
Zechariah 4:2
zac 4:2
And I said, I have looked and behold a candlestick all of gold - The candlestick is the seven-branched candlestick of the tabernacle Exo 25:31, but with variations purposely introduced to symbolize the fuller and more constant supply of the oil, itself the symbol of God's Holy Spirit, who:
"Enables with perpetual light
The dullness of our blinded sight."
The first variation is "her bowl on the top of the candlestick," containing the oil; then (as dependent on this) the pipes to derive the oil into each lamp, "seven several pipes to the seven lamps," that is, seven to each; and the two olive trees on either side of the bowl, whose extreme and fine branches poured through two golden pipes the golden oil into the bowl which supplied the lamp. The multiplied conduits imply the large and perfect supply of oil unceasingly supplied, the seven being symbolic of perfection or of the reconciling of God (symbolized by 3) unto the world (symbolized by 4, its four quarters); the spontaneous flow of the golden oil from the olive trees symbolizes the free gift of God.
Zechariah 4:4
zac 4:4
Osorius: "Awakened from his state of sleep, even thus the prophet seemed slowly to understand what was shown him. He asks then of the instructing angel. The angel, almost amazed, asks if he knowns it not, and when he plainly declares his ignorance, makes clear the enigma of the vision."
Zechariah 4:6
zac 4:6
This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel - Osorius: "As if he were to say, the meaning of the vision and scope of what has been exhibited is, 'God's doings have almost cried aloud to Zerubbabel that all these visions shall come to an end in their time, not effected by human might nor in fleshly strength, but in power of the Holy Spirit and through Divine Will.' For the Only Begotten became Man as we are, but He warred not after the flesh, to set up the Church as a candlestick to the world, nor did He, through sensible weapons and armed phalanxes, make those two people His own, or place the spiritual lights on the candlestick; but in the might of His own Spirit He appointed in the Church "first Apostles, then prophets and evangelists" Co1 12:28, and all the rest of the saintly band, filling them with divine gifts and enriching them abundantly by the influx of His Spirit."
Cyril: "Not then in great power nor in fleshly might were the things of Christ, but in power of the Spirit was Satan spoiled, and the ranks of the adverse powers fell with him; and Israel and those who aforetime served the creature rather than the Creator, were called to the knowledge of God through faith. But that He saved all under heaven, not by human arm, but by His own power as God Emmanuel, Hosea too protested, "I will have mercy upon the house of Judah and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow nor by sword nor by battle nor by chariots nor by horses nor by horsemen" Hos 1:7. But exeeeding fittingly was this said to Zerubbabel, who was of the tribe of Judah and at, that time administered the royal seat at Jerusalem. For that he might not think that, since such glorious successes were foreannounced to him, wars would in their season have to be organized, he lifts him up from these unsound and human thoughts, and bids him be thus minded, that the force was divine, the might of Christ, who should bring such things to pass, and not human."
Having given this key of the whole vision, without explaining its details, God enlarges what He had said to Zerubbabel, as He had in the preceding chapter to Joshua Zac 3:8-10.
Zechariah 4:7
zac 4:7
Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt be a plain - The words have the character of a sacred proverb; "Every one that exalteth himself shall be abased" Luk 14:11; Luk 18:14. Isaiah prophesies the victories of the Gospel in the same imagery, "Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain" Isa 40:4. And in the New Testament Paul says, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" Co2 10:4-5. As it is the character of antichrist, that he "opposeth and exalteth himself above everything that is called God" Th2 2:4, so of Satan himself it had been said in the former vision, that he stood at the right hand of Joshua "to to resist him" Jos 3:1.
So then the mountain symbolizes every resisting power; Satan and all his instruments, who, each in his turn, shall oppose himself anti be brought low. In the first instance, it was Sanballat and his companions, who opposed the rebuilding of the temple, on account of the "exclusiveness" of Zerubbabel and Joshua , because they would not make the temple the abode of a mixed worship of him whom they call your God and of their own idolatries. In all and each of his instruments, the persecuting emperors or the heretics, it was the one adversary. Cyril: "The words seem all but to rebuke the great mountain, that is, Satan, who riseth up and leadeth against Christ the power of his own stubbornness, who was figuratively spoken of before Jos 3:1. For that as far as it was allowed and in him lay, he warred fiercely against the Saviour, no one would doubt, who considered how he approached Him when fasting in the wilderness, and seeing Him saving all below, willed to make Him his own worshiper, showing Him "all the kingdoms of the world," saying that all should be His, if He "would fall down and worship him" Mat 4:8-9. Then out of the very choir of the holy Apostles he snatched the traitor disciple, persuading him to became the instrument of the Jewish perverseness. He asks him, "Who art thou?" disparaging him and making him of no account, great as the mountain was and hard to withstand, and in the way of every one who would bring about such things for Christ, of whom, as we said, Zerubbabel was a type."
And he shall bring forth the headstone - The foundation of the temple had long been laid. Humanly it still hung in the balance whether they would be permitted to complete it Ezra 5: Zechariah foretells absolutely that they would. Two images appear to be used in Holy Scripture, both of which meet in Christ: the one, in which the stone spoken of is the foundation-stone; the other, in which it is the head cornerstone binding the two walls together, which it connects. Both were cornerstones; the one at the base, the other at the summit. In Isaiah the whole emphasis is on the foundation; "Behold Me who have laid in Zion a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, well-founded" Isa 28:16. In the Psalm, the building hall been commenced; those who were building had disregarded and despised the stone, but "it became the head of the corner," crowning and binding the work in one .
Both images together express, how Christ is the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last; the Foundation of the spiritual building, the Church, and its summit and completion; the unseen Foundation which was laid deep in Calvary, and the Summit to which it grows and which holds it firm together. Whence Peter unites the two prophecies, and blends with them that other of Isaiah, that Christ would "be a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of people but chosen of God and precious, ye also are built up a spiritual house - Whence also it is contained in the Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious: unto you which believe He is precious, but unto them which be diobedient, the same stone which the builders refused is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, to them which stumble at the word being disobedient" Pe1 2:4-7.
A Jew paraphrases this of the Messiah; Jonathan: "And He shall reveal His Messiah, whose name was spoken from the beginning, and he shall rule over all nations."
With shoutings, grace, grace unto it - that is, all favor from God unto it, redoubled favors, grace upon grace. The completion of the building was but the commencement of the dispensation under it. It was the beginning not the end. They pray then for the continued and manifold grace of God, that He would carry on the work, which He had begun. Perseverance, by the grace of God, crowns the life of the Christian; our Lord's abiding presence in grace with His Church unto the end of the world, is the witness that He who founded her upholds her in being.
Zechariah 4:8
zac 4:8
And the word of the Lord - Keil: "This word of the Lord is not addressed through 'the interpreting angel,' but direct from the Lord, and that through the 'Angel of the Lord' . For though in the first instance the words, "the hands of Zerubbabel etc.," relate to the building of the material temple, and announce its completion through Zerubbabel yet the inference, "and thou shalt know theft the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you," shows that the meaning is not exhausted thereby, but that here too this building is mentioned only as a type of the building of the spiritual temple ; and the completion of the typical temple is but a pledge of the completion of the true temple. For not through the completion of the material temple, but only through the building of the kingdom of God, shadowed forth by it, can Judah know, that the Angel of the Lord was sent to him."
Zechariah 4:10
zac 4:10
The simplest rendering is marked by the accents. "For who hath despised the day of small things? and (that is, seeing that there have rejoiced and seen the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel, these seven, the Eyes of the Lord, they are running to and fro in all the earth," 1:e., since God hath with joy and good-pleasure beheld the progress of the work of Zerubbabel, who can despise the day of small things? The day of small things was not only that of the foundation of the temple, but of its continued building also. The old men indeed, "that had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes" Ezr 4:12. But while in progress too, Haggai asks, "Who is left among you that saw this house in its first glory? And how do ye see it now? is not in your eyes such as it, as nothing?" Hag 2:3. But that temple was to see the day of great things, when "the later glory of this house shall be greater than the former, and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts" Hag 2:9.
They are the eyes of the Lord which run to and fro - He uses almost the words of the prophet Hanani to Asa, "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him." Ch2 16:9 yet this assurance that God's watchful providence is over the whole earth, betokens more than the restoration of the material temple, whose only hindrance could be the will of one man, Darius.
The day of small things - is especially God's day, whose "strength is made perfect in weakness; who raised Joseph from the prison, David from the sheepfold, Daniel from slavery, and converted the world by the fishermen and the tentmaker, having Himself first become the Carpenter. "Wouldest thou be great? Become little." "Whenever," said Theresa, (Ribera, vita Ther. ap. Lap.), "I am to receive some singular grace, I first annihilate myself, sink into my own nothingness, so as to seem to myself to be nothing, be capable of nothing."
Zechariah 4:11
zac 4:11
And I answered and said - The vision, as a whole, had been explained to him. The prophet asks as to subordinate parts, which seemed perhaps inconsistent with the whole. If the whole imports that everything should be done by the Spirit of God, not by human power, what means it that there are these two olive-trees? And when the Angel returned no answer, to invite perhaps closer attention and a more definite question, he asks again;
Zechariah 4:12
zac 4:12
What are the two spikes of the olive? - Comparing the extreme branches of the olive-tree, laden with their fruit, to the ears of corn, which "were by or in the hand of the golden pipes, which empty forth the golden oil from themselves." Zechariah's expression, in the hand of or, if so be, by the hand of the two pipes, shows that these two were symbols of living agents, for it is nowhere, used except of a living agent, or of that which it personified as such.
Zechariah 4:14
zac 4:14
These are the two sons of oil - Probably not as themselves anointed, (for another word is used for this. Which stand by the Lord of the whole earth, as His servants and ministers. The candlestick is almost authoritatively interpreted for us, by the adoption of the symbol in the Revelation, where our Lord is exhibited "as walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks" Rev 1:13; Rev 2:1, and, it is said, "the seven candlesticks are the seven Churches" Rev 1:20; and our Lord says to the Apostles, on whom He founded the Church; "Ye are the light of the world: men light a candle, and put it on a candlestick, and it giveth light to them that are in the house" (Mat 5:14-15, compare Phi 2:15). Cyril: "The golden candlestick is the Church, as being honored in the world, most bright in virtues, raised on high exceedingly by the doctrines of the true knowledge of God. But there are seven lamps, having light, not of their own, but brought to them from without, and nourished by the supplies through the olive tree. These signify the holy apostles, evangelists, and those who, each in their season, were teachers of the churches, receiving, like lamps, into their mind and heart the illumination from Christ, which is nourished by the supplies of the Spirit, casting forth light to those who are in the house."
Theodoret: "The pipes of the lamps, which pour in the oil, signify the unstinted prodigality of the loving-kindness of God to man." The most difficult of explanation (as is plain from the variety of interpretations) is this last symbol of the spikes of the olive-tree, through whom flows the oil of the Holy Spirit to the candlesticks, and which yet represent created beings, ministers, and servants of God. Perhaps it represents that, in the church, grace is ministered through men, as Paul says, "Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastor's and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ - that we - may grow up into Him in all things which is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love" Eph 4:7-8, Eph 4:11-12, Eph 4:14-16.
What Paul expresses by "all the body, having nourishment ministered and being knit together by joints and bands, from the Head, and so increasing with the increase of God" Col 2:19, (as he elsewhere speaks of "the ministration of the Spirit" Co2 3:8; "he that ministereth to you the Spirit" Gal 3:5) "that" Zechariah may express by the oil being poured, through the living tubes, the bowl, the sevenfold pipes, into the lamps, which shone with the God-given light. So Paul speaks again, of "having this treasure in earthen vessels" Co2 4:7. Joshua and Zerubbabel, as representatives of the priestly and royal offices, shadowed forth what was united in Christ, and so, in their several offices, they might be included in the symbol of the olive-tree, they could not exhaust it; for people who, having served God in their generation, were to pass away, could not be alone intended in a vision, which describes the abiding being of the church.
Osorius: "Christ is both all-holy Priest and supreme eternal King. In both ways He supplies to us the light which He brought. For from Him piety and righteousness flow unceasingly to the Church, that it never lack the heavenly light. The oil is expressed into tubes; thence passed through pipes into the vessel which contains the lamps; to designate the various suppliers of light, which, the nearer they are to the effluence of the oil, the more they resemble Him by whom they are appointed to so divine an office. The seven lamps are the manifold Churches, distinct in place but most closely bound together by the consent of one faith and by the bond of charity. For although the Church is one, yet it is distinct according to the manifold variety of nations. They are said to be seven, both on account of the seven gifts of the Spirit, mentioned by Isaiah, and because in the numbers 3 and 4, is contained an emblem of piety and righteousness. There are 7 pipes to each lamp, to signify that each has need of many instruments, that the light may be maintained longer. For as there are diversities of gifts, so must there needs be the functions of many ministers, to complete one work. But the lamps are set in a circle, that the oil of one may flow more readily into others, and it, in turn, may receive from others their superabundance, to set forth the communion of love and the indissoluble community of faith."
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 5
Zechariah 5:1
zac 5:1
Hitherto all had been bright, full of the largeness of the gifts of God; of God's favor to His people ; the removal of their enemies ; the restoration and expansion and security of God's people and Church under His protection ; the acceptance of the present typical priesthood and the promise of Him, through whom there should be entire forgiveness : the abiding illumining of the Church by the Spirit of God . Yet there is a reverse side to all this, God's judgments on those who reject all His mercies. Augustine, de Civ. Del. 17:3. Ribera: "Prophecies partly appertain to those in whose times the sacred writers prophesied, partly to the mysteries of Christ. And therefore it is the custom of the prophets, at one time to chastise vices and set forth punishments, at another to predict the mysteries of Christ and the Church."
And I turned and - Or, "Again I lifted up my eyes" Gen 26:18; Kg2 1:11, Kg2 1:13; Jer 18:14, having again sunk down in meditation on what he had seen, "and behold a roll flying;" as, to Ezekiel was shown "a hand with a roll of a book therein, and he spread it before me." Ezekiel's roll also was "written within and without, and there was written, therein lamentation and mourning and woe" Eze 2:9-10. It was a wide unfolded roll, as is involved in its flying; but its "flight signified the very swift coming of punishment; its flying from heaven that the sentence came from the judgment-seat above" (Ribera).
Zechariah 5:2
zac 5:2
And he - (the interpreting angel) said unto me It cannot be without meaning, that the dimensions of the roll should be those of the tabernacle , as the last vision was that of the candlestick, after the likeness of the candlestick therein. The explanations of this correspondence do not exclude each other. It may be that "judgment shall begin at the house of God" Pe1 4:17; that the punishment on sin is proportioned to the nearness of God and the knowledge of Him; that the presence of God, which was for life, might also be to death, as Paul says; "God maketh manifest the savor of this knowledge by us in every place; for we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish; to the one we are the savor of death unto death, and to the other the savor of life unto life" Co2 2:14-16; and Simeon said, "This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel" Luk 2:34.
Zechariah 5:3
zac 5:3
Over the face of the whole earth - primarily land, since the perjured persons, upon whom the curse was to fall Zac 5:4, were those who swore falsely by the name of God: and this was in Judah only. The reference to the two tables of the law also confines it primarily to those who were under the law. Yet, since the moral law abides under the Gospel, ultimately these visions related to the Christian Church, which was to be spread over the whole earth. The roll apparently was shown, as written on both sides; the commandments of the first table, in which perjury is forbidden, on the one side; those relating to the love of our neighbor, in which stealing is forbidden, on the other. Theodoret: "He calleth curse that vengeance, which goeth through the whole world, and is brought upon the workers of iniquity. But hereby both prophets and people were taught, that the God of all is the judge of all people, and will exact meet punishment of all, bringing utter destruction not on those only who live ungodly toward Himself, but on those also who are unjust to their neighbors. For let no one think that this threat was only against thieves and false-swearers; for He gave sentence against all iniquity. For since all the law and the prophets hang on this word, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself," He comprised every sort of sin under false swearing and theft. The violation of oaths is the head of all ungodliness. One who so doeth is devoid of the love of God. But theft indicates injustice to one's neighbor; for no one who loves his neighbor will endure to be unjust to him. These heads then comprehend all the other laws."
Shall be cut off - Literally, "cleansed away" , as something defiled and defiling, which has to be cleared away as offensive: as God says, "I will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, until it be all gone" (Kg1 14:10, add Kg1 21:21), and so often in Deuteronomy, "thou shalt put the evil away from the midst of thee" (Deu 13:5 (6 Heb.); Deu 17:7; Deu 19:19; Deu 21:21; Deu 22:21, Deu 22:24; Deu 24:7), or "of Israel" Deu 17:12; Deu 23:22, and in Ezekiel, "I will disperse thee in the countries and will consume thy filthiness out of thee" Eze 22:15. Set it empty upon the coals thereof, that the brass of it may be hot and may burn, and the filthiness of it may be molten, that the scum of it may be consumed" Eze 24:11.
Zechariah 5:4
zac 5:4
I will bring it forth - Out of the treasure-house, as it were; as he says, "He bringeth forth the wind out of His treasures" Jer 10:13; Jer 51:16; and, "Is not this laid up in store with Me, sealed up among My treasures?" To Me belongeth "vengeance and recompense" Deu 32:34-35. And it shall remain, literally, "lodge for the night," until it has accomplished that for which it was sent, its utter destruction. Lap.: "So we have seen and see at this day powerful families, which attained to splendor by rapine or ill-gotten goods, destroyed by the just judgment of God, that those who see it are amazed, how such wealth perceptibly yet insensibly disappeared." Chrys. on the statues 15. n. 13. p. 259. Oxford Translation: "Why doth it overthrow the stones and the wood of the swearer's house? In order that the ruin may be a correction to all. For since the earth must hide the swearer, when dead, his house, overturned and become a heap, will by the very sight be an admonition to all who pass by and see it, not to venture on the like, lest they suffer the like, and it will be a lasting witness against the sin of the departed."
Paganism was impressed with the doom of him who consulted the oracle, whether he should foreswear himself for gain. "Swear," was the answer, "since death awaits too the man, who keeps the oath; yet Oath hath a son, nameless, handless, footless; but swift he pursueth, until he grasp together and destroy the whole race and house." "In the third generation, there was nought descended from him," who had consulted about this perjury, "nor hearthstone reputed to be his. It had been uprooted and effaced." A pagan orator relates, as well known, that "the perjurer escapes not the vengeance of the gods, and if not himself, yet the sons and whole race of the foresworn fall into great misfortunes." God left not Himself without witness.
Lap.: "The prophet speaks of the curse inflicted on the thieves and false swearers of his own day; but a fortiori he includes that which came upon them for slaying Christ. For this was the greatest of all, which utterly overthrew and consumed Jerusalem, the temple and polity, so that that ancient and glorious Jerusalem exists no longer, as Christ threatened. "They shall lay thee even with the ground, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another" Luk 19:44. This resteth upon them these" 1800 "years."
Zechariah 5:5
zac 5:5
Then the angel went forth - From the choirs of angels, among whom, in the interval, he had retired, as before (Zep 2:3 (7 Hebrew)) he had gone forth to meet another angel.
Zechariah 5:6
zac 5:6
This is the ephah that goeth forth - Theodoret: "We too are taught by this, that the Lord of all administers all things in weight and measure. So, foretelling to Abraham that his seed should be a sojourner and the cause thereof, He says, "for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" Gen 15:16, that is, they have not yet committed sins enough to merit entire destruction, wherefore I cannot yet endure to give them over to the slaughter, but will wait for the measure of their iniquity." The relation then of this vision to the seventh is, that the seventh tells of God's punishment on individual sinners; this, on the whole people, when the iniquity of the whole is full.
This is their resemblance, as we say, their look, that is, the look, appearance, of the inhabitants "in all the land." This then being the condition of the people of the land, at the time to which the vision relates, the symbolical carrying away of the full measure of sin cannot be its forgiveness, since there was no repentance, but the taking away of the sin with the sinner. Cyril: "The Lord of all is good and loving to mankind; for He is patient toward sinners and endures transgressors, waiting for the repentance of each; but if one perseveres long in iniquity, and come to the term of the endurance allowed, it remains that he should be subjected to punishment, and there is no account of this long forebarance, nor can he be exempt from judgment proportioned to what he has done. So then Christ says to the Jewish people, rushing with unbridled phrensy to all strange excess, "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers" Mat 23:32. The measure then, which was seen, pointed to the filling up of the measure of the transgression of the people against Himself." Jerome: "The angel bids him behold the sins of the people Israel, heaped together in a perfect measure, and the transgression of all fulfilled - that the sins, which escaped notice, one by one, might, when collected together, be laid open to the eyes of all, and Israel might go forth from its place, and it might be shown to all what she was in her own land." Ribera: "I think the Lord alluded to the words of the prophet, as though He would say, "Fill up the measure of sins" which your fathers began of old, as it is in Zechariah, that is, ye will soon fill it; for ye so haste to do evil, that ye will soon fill it to the utmost."
Zechariah 5:7
zac 5:7
And behold there was lifted up a talent of lead - the heaviest Hebrew weight, elsewhere of gold or silver; the golden talent weighing, 1,300,000 grains; the silver, 660,000; here, being lead, it is obviously an undefined mass, though circular , corresponding to the Ephah. The Ephah too was the largest Hebrew measure, whose compass cannot now, with certainty, be ascertained . Both probably were, in the vision, ideal. Theodoret: "Holy Scripture calleth the punishment of sin, lead, as being by nature heavy. This the divine David teacheth us, "mine iniquities are gone over my head: as an heavy burden, they are too heavy for me" Psa 38:4. The divine Zechariah seeth sin under the image of a woman; for most evils are engendered by luxury. But he seeth the punishment, like most heavy lead, lying upon the mouth of iniquity, according to a Psalm, "all iniquity shall stop her mouth" Psa 107:42. Ambr. in Ps. 35. n. 9. Opp. i. 769: "Iniquity, as with a talent of lead, weighs down the conscience."
This is a woman - Literally, "one woman," all sin being concentrated and personified in one, as he goes on to speak of her as the, personified, wickedness. The sitting may represent her abiding tranquil condition in her sins, according to the climax in Psa 1:1-6, "and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful" Psa 1:1; and, "thou sittest and speakest against thy brother" Psa 50:20; (Lap.), "not standing as by the way, but sitting, as if of set purpose, of custom and habit." "Whoso hath peace in sins is not far from lying down in them, so that, oppressed by a spirit of slumber, he neither sees light, nor feels any blow, but is kept down by the leaden talent of his obduracy."
Zechariah 5:8
zac 5:8
And cast her into the midst of the Ephah - As yet then the measure was not full. Ribera: "She had the lower part within the Ephah, but the upper, especially the head, without. Though the Jews had slain the prophets and done many grievous things, the greatest sin of all remained to be done. But when they had crucified Christ and persecuted the Apostles and the Gospel, the measure was full; she was wholly within the Ephah, no part remained without, so that the measure was filled."
And he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof - that is, doubtless of the Ephah; as in Genesis, "a great stone was on the mouth of the well" Gen 29:2, so that there should be no access to it.
Zechariah 5:9
zac 5:9
There came out two women - It may be that there may be no symbol herein, but that he names women because it was a woman who was so carried; yet their wings were the wings of an unclean bird, strong, powerful, borne by a force not their own; with their will, since they flew; beyond their will, since the wind was in their wings; rapidly, inexorably, irresistibly, they flew and bore the Ephah between heaven and earth. No earthly power could reach or rescue it. God would not. It may be that evil spirits are symbolized, as being like to this personified human wickedness, such as snatch away the souls of the damned, who, by serving them, have become as they.
Zechariah 5:11
zac 5:11
To build it an house in the land of Shinar - The name of Shinar, though strictly Babylonia, carries back to an older power than the world-empire of Babylon; which now too was destroyed. "In the land of Shinar" Gen 11:2 was that first attempt to array a world-empire against God, ere mankind was ye dispersed. And so it is the apter symbol of the antitheist or anti-Christian world, which by violence, art, falsehood, sophistry, wars against the truth. To this great world-empire it was to be removed; yet to live there, no longer cramped and confined as within an Ephah, but in pomp and splendor. A house or temple was to be built for it, for its honor and glory; as Dagon Sa1 5:2-5 or Ashtaroth Sa1 31:10, or Baal Kg2 10:23 had their houses or temples, a great idol temple, in which the god of this world should be worshiped.
And it - - "The house," "shall be established" firmly on its base, like the house of God, and it, (wickedness) shall be tranquilly rested on its base, as an idol in its temple, until the end come. In the end, the belief of those of old was, that the Jews would have great share in the antagonism to Christ and His empire. At the first, they were the great enemies of the faith, and sent forth, Justin says, , those everywhere who should circulate the calumnies against Christians, which were made a ground of early persecutions. In the end, it was believed, that antichrist should be from them, that they would receive him as their Christ, the last fulfillment of our Lord's words, "I am come in My Father's name and ye receive Me not; another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive" Joh 5:43.
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 6
Zechariah 6:1
zac 6:1
Behold, four chariots going forth - Alb.: "By the secret disposal of God into the theater of the world," "from between two mountains of brass." Both Jews and Christians have seen that the four chariots relate to the same four empires, as the visions in Daniel.
"The two mountains." It may be that the imagery is from the two mountains on either side of the valley of Jehoshaphat, which Joel had spoken of as the place of God's judgment, Joe 3:2, and Zechariah afterward Zac 14:4. It may then picture that the judgments go forth from God. Anyhow the powers, symbolized by the four chariots, are pictured as closed in on either side by these mountains, strong as brass, unsurmountable, undecaying, (Ribera), "that they should not go forth to other lands to conquer, until the time should come, fixed by the counsels of God, when the gates should be opened for their going forth." The mountains of brass may signify the height of the Divine Wisdom ordering this, and the sublimity of the power which putteth them in operation; as the Psalmist says, "Thy righteousnesses are like the mountains of God" Psa 36:6.
Zechariah 6:2
zac 6:2
The symbol is different from that in the first vision. There Zac 1:8, they were horses only, with their riders, to go to and fro to enquire; here they are war-chariots with their horses, to execute God's judgments, each in their turn. In the first vision also, there is not the characteristic fourfold division, which reminds of the four world-empires of Daniel Dan. 2; after which, in both prophets, is the mention of the kingdom of Christ. Even if the grisled horses be the same as the speckled of the first vision, the black horses are wanting there, as well as the succession, in which they go forth. The only resemblance is, that there are horses of divers colors, two of which, red and white, are the same. The symbol of the fourth empire, grizzled, strong, remarkably corresponds with the strength and mingled character of the fourth empire in Daniel.
Zechariah 6:5
zac 6:5
These are the four spirits of the heavens - They cannot be literal winds: for spirits, not winds, stand before God, as His servants, as in Job, "the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord" (Job 1:6; Job 2:1. This they did, (Jerome), "for these four kingdoms did nothing without the will of God." Zechariah sums up in one, what former prophets had said separately of the Assyrian, the Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian. "O Assyria, the rod of Mine anger - I will send him against an ungodly nation, and against the people of My wrath I will give him a charge" Isa 10:5. "I will send and take all the families of the north, and Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land" Jer 25:9. "The Lord shall hiss for the fly, that is in the uttermost part of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria, and they shall come, and shall rest, all of them, in the desolate valleys" Isa 7:18-19. "I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, saith the Lord; and they shall come, and shall set every one his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem" Jer 1:15. Whatever the human impulse or the human means, all stand before the Lord of the whole earth, ministering to His will whose are all things, the Judge of all, who withholdeth the chastisement till the iniquity is full, and then, through man's injustice, executes His own just judgment. Osorius: "He says that they went forth from where they had stood before the Lord of the whole earth, to show that their power had been obtained by the counsel of God, that they might serve His will. For no empire was ever set up on earth without the mind, counsel and power of God. He exalts the humble and obscure, He prostrates the lofty, who trust overmuch in themselves, arms one against the other, so that no fraud or pride shall be without punishment."
Zechariah 6:6
zac 6:6
The black horses which are therein go forth - Literally, "That chariot wherein the black horses are, these go forth." Jerome: "Most suitably is the first chariot, wherein the red homes were, passed over, and what the second, third, fourth did is described. For when the prophet related this, the Babylonian empire had passed, and the power of the Medes possessed all Asia." Red, as the color of blood, represented Babylon as sanguinary; as it is said in the Revelation, "There went out another horse, red, and power was given to him that sat thereon, to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another, and there was given him a sharp sword" Rev 6:4. "The black" were to go forth to the north country, the ancient title of Babylon. For Babylon, though taken, was far from being broken. They had probably been betrayed through the weakness of their king's. Their resistance, in the first carefully prepared (Herodotus, iii. 150) revolt against Darius, was more courageous than that against Cyrus: and more desperate .
Since probably more Jews remained in it, than returned to their own country, what was to befall it had a special interest for them. They had already been warned in the third vision Zac 2:7 to escape from it. The color black doubtless symbolizes the heavy lot, inflicted by the Medo-Persians; as in the Revelation it is said, "the sun became black as sackcloth of hair" Rev 6:12; and to the beast in Daniel's vision which corresponded with it, it was said, "Arise, devour much flesh" Dan 7:5; and in the Revelation, "he that sat on the black horse" Rev 6:5-6 was the angel charged with the infliction of famine. Of the Medes, Isaiah had said, "I will stir up the Medes against them (Babylon), which shall not regard silver; and gold, they shall not delight in it. Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children" Isa 13:17-18.
The white went forth after them - For the Greek empire occupied the same portion of the earth as the Persian. White is a symbol of joy, gladness Ecc 9:8, victory Rev 6:2, perhaps also, from its relation to light, of acute intelligence. It may relate too to the benevolence of Alexander to the Jewish nation. "Alexander used such clemency to the conquered, that it seemed as though he might be called rather the founder than the destroyer of the nations whom he subdued."
And the grizzled - The Romans in their mingled character, so prominent in the fourth empire of Daniel, "go forth" Dan 2:41-43 to the south country, that is, Egypt; as Daniel speaks of "the ships of Chittim" Dan 11:30 and the intervention of the Romans first in regard to the expulsion of Antiochus Epiphanes from Egypt; in Egypt also, the last enduring kingdom of any successor of Alexander, that of the Ptolemies, expired. "30 years afterward, the Son of God was to bring light to the earth. The prophet so interweaves the prediction, that from the series of the four kingdoms it is brought to the Birth of the Eternal King" .
Zechariah 6:7
zac 6:7
And the strong went forth and sought to go, that they might walk to and fro through the earth - The mention of their strength corresponds to the extent of the power and commission, for which they asked, to go to and fro, up and down, at their will, unhindered, through the whole earth. The Babylonian empire held Egypt only out of Asia; the Persian was conquered in its efforts against Europe, in Greece; Alexander's was like a meteor, gleaming but breaking into the four: the Roman combined East and West and within large limits tranquilly.
And he said go, walk to and fro in the earth - He commanded, and they, which were before withheld, went, "and they walked to and fro on the earth," ordering all things at their will, under the Providence of God, whereby He gave free access to the Gospel in all their wide empire. The Greek empire being extinguished, the Romans no longer went into any given country, but superintended and governed all human things in (it is the language of the New Testament) "all the world." Cyril: "These same, the dappled and ashen-grey horses were commanded to traverse the earth, and they did traverse it; for they mastered all under heaven, and ruled the whole earth, God consenting and arraying those who swayed the Roman might with this brilliant glory. For, as God, He knew beforehand the greatness of their future piety."
Zechariah 6:8
zac 6:8
Then God, or the Angel of the Lord - who speaks of what belonged to God alone, "called me" (probably "loudly" Jdg 4:10, Jdg 4:13; Sa2 20:4-5), so as to command his attention to this which most immediately concerned his people.
These have quieted My spirit in the north country - Or rather, "have made My anger to rest" on, that is, have carried it thither and deposited it there, made it to rest upon them, as its abode, as John saith of the unbelieving, "The wrath of God abideth on him" Joh 3:36. Babylon had been the final antagonist and subduer of the people of God. It had at the outset destroyed the temple of God, and carried off its vessels to adorn idol-temples. Its empire closed on that night when it triumphed over God , using the vessels dedicated to Him, to the glorifying of their idols. "In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldaeans slain." This final execution of God's anger upon that their destroyer was the earnest of the rest to them; and in this the visions pause.
Zechariah 6:9
zac 6:9
And the word of the Lord came to me - The visions being closed, Zechariah marks the change by adopting the usual formula, with which the prophets authenticated, that they spake not of themselves, but by the Spirit of God. The act enjoined is a symbolic act, pointing and summing up and interpreting the visions, as some of the visions had been already expanded by fresh revelations following immediately upon them.
Zechariah 6:10
zac 6:10
Take of the captivity - Of that which they had brought with them. "The captivity" was, in Jeremiah ), and Ezekiel Eze 1:2; Eze 3:11, Eze 3:15; Eze 11:24-25, the title of those who had been actually carried captive and were at that moment in captivity. Ezra continues it of those who had been in captivity, though now returned from exile. Yet not without a reference to the circumstances or causes of that captivity. It is the "captivity" Ezr 1:11 which Sheshbazzar brings from Babylon, or Ezra subsequently; the "children of the captivity" Ezr 8:35, who set themselves to build the temple of God Ezr 4:1; who dedicated it and kept the passover . The title is used apparently as an aggravation of sin, like that which had been chastened by that captivity. Here, the term seems to imply some blame, that they remained of their own accord in this state of severance from the altar, where alone special worship of God and sacrifice could be offered. They had been removed against their will; yet, as Christians often do, acquiesced in the loss, rather than forego their temporal advantages. Still they wished to take part in the work of restoring the public worship, and so sent these men, with their contribution of gold and silver, to their brethren, who had returned; as, in the first times of the Gospel, the Christians everywhere made collections for the poor saints, who dwelt in Jerusalem. And this their imperfect zeal was instantly accepted.
And go thyself - To make the act more impressive, "on that same day," as matter of urgency, "and thou shalt come to the house of Josiah son of Zephaniah, whither they have come from Babylon" . The exiles who had brought presents for the building of the temple, lodged, it seems, in the house of Josiah, whether they doubted or no that their presents would be accepted, since they chose Babylon, not Jerusalem for their abode. This acceptance of their gifts symbolized the incoming of those from afar. It is remarkable that all five names express a relation to God. "Tobiah" in Neh 2:10; Neh 6:1; 3) the Tobias here and 14; 4) Tobit and Tobias in his book), "The Lord is my good;" "Yedaiah," "God knoweth" or "careth for;" Josiah, "The Lord supporteth" ; "Zephaniah," "The Lord hideth," and perhaps "Cheldai," "The Lord's world" . They had taken religious instead of worldly names. Probably Zechariah was first to accept the offerings from the three exiles, and then to take the actual gold from the house of Josiah whither they had brought it. The pilgrims from Babylon and their host are included in one common blessing.
Zechariah 6:11
zac 6:11
And make crowns - Or a "crown" , as in Job, "I would bind it as a crown unto me," and our Lord is seen in the Revelation, "on His Head were many crowns" . The singular is used of "a royal crown" , apparently of a festive crown ; and figuratively; (Job 19:9, (plur. Job 31:36) Pro 4:9; Pro 12:4; Pro 14:24; Pro 16:31. Pro 17:6); even of Almighty God Himself as a crown ; but no where of the mitre of the high priest.
The characteristic of the act is, that "the crown" or crowns (it is not in the context said, which) were placed on the head of the one high priest, Joshua; "and thou shall place" (it or them, it is not said which) "upon the head of Joshua son of Josedech the high priest, and shalt say unto him." If crowns were made of each material, there were two crowns. But this is not said, and the silver might have formed a circlet in the crown of gold, as, in modern times, the iron crown of Lombardy, was called iron, because it had "a plate of iron in its summit, being else of gold and most precious" . In any case the symbolical act was completed by the placing of a royal crown upon the head of the high priest. This, in itself, represented that He, whom he and all other priests represented, would be also our King. It is all one then, whether the word designate one single crown, so entitled for its greatness, or one united royal crown, that is, one crown uniting many crowns, symbolizing the many kingdoms of the earth, over which our High Priest and King should rule.
Either symbol, of separate crowns "the golden at Rome." Du Cang. Otto of Frisingen said that Frederic received 5 crowns; the first at Aix for the kingdom of the Franks; a second at Ratisban for that of Germany; a third at Pavia for the kingdom of Lombardy; the fourth at Rome for the Roman empire from Adrian iv; the fifth of Monza for the kingdom of Italy." In our own memory, Napoleon I. having been crowned in France, was crowned with the iron crown at Monza), or an united crown , has been used in the same meaning, to symbolize as many empires, as there were crowns.
On Zerubbabel no crown was placed. It would have been confusing; a seeming restoration of the kingdom, when it was not to be restored; an encouragement of the temporal hopes, which were the bane of Israel. God had foretold, that none of the race of Jehoiakim should prosper, "sitting on the throne of David, or ruling any more in Israel." Nehemiah rejects the imputation of Sanballat, "Thou hast also appointed prophets to preach of thee at Jerusalem," There is "a king in Judah." He answers, "There are no such things done as thou sayest; and thou feignest them out of thine own heart" Neh 6:6-8. But Isaiah had foretold much of the king who should reign: Zechariah, by placing the royal crown on the head of Joshua, foreshowed that the kingdom was not to be of this world. The royal crown had been taken away in the time of Zedekiah, "Thus saith the Lord God, Remove the diadem and take away the crown; this shall not be this; exalt the low and abase the high; an overthrow, overthrow, overthrow will I make it; this too is not; until he come whose the right is, and I will give it" (Eze 21:31-32 (Eze 21:26-27 in English)).
But the Messiah, it was foretold, was to be both priest and king; "a priest after the order of Melchizedec" Psa 110:4, and a king, set by the Lord "upon His holy hill of Zion" Psa 2:6. The act of placing the crown on the head of Joshua the high priest, pictured not only the union of the offices of priest and king in the person of Christ, but that He should be King, being first our High Priest. Joshua was already high priest; being such, the kingly crown was added to him. It says in act, what Paul says, that "Christ Jesus, being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him" Phi 2:8-9.
Zechariah 6:12
zac 6:12
The prophet is taught to explain his own symbolic act. "Behold the Man whose name is the Branch" . "Not for himself, but for Christ, whose name Joshua bare, and whose Priesthood and Princedom he represented," was the crown given him. The prophet had already foretold the Messiah, under the name of the Branch. Here he adds,
And he shall grow up out of His place - Lowly and of no seeming account, as God foretold by Jeremiah, "I will cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David" Jer 33:15; and Jesus Himself said, "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" Joh 12:24. Alone He grew up before God, as a tender plant Isa 53:2, unknown of man, known to God. It is that still, Divine Life at Nazareth, of which we see only that one bright flash in the temple, the deep saying, not understood even by Joseph and Mary, and then, "He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject unto them" (see Luk 2:49-51).
And he shall build the temple of the Lord - The material temple was soon to be finished, and that by Zerubbabel, to whom this had been promised, Zac 4:10, not by Joshua. It was then a new temple, to be built from the foundation, of which He Himself was to be "the foundation" Isa 28:16; Co1 3:11; Eph 2:20-21, as He said, "On this rock I will build My Church" Mat 16:18; and in Him "all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple to the Lord" Eph 2:21. Osorius: "He it is, who built the house; for neither Solomon nor Zerubbabel nor Joshua son of Josedech could build a house worthy of the majesty of God. For "the Most High" Act 7:48-49, Stephen says, "dwelleth not in temples made with hands, as saith the prophet; Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool; what house will ye build Me, saith the Lord?" For if they could have built a house for God, He would not have allowed His house to be burned and overthrown. What then is the house of God which Christ built? The Church, founded on faith in Him, dedicated by His Blood, stablished by the stayedness of divine virtue, adorned with divine and eternal riches, wherein the Lord ever dwelleth."
Zechariah 6:13
zac 6:13
Even He - Literally, "He Himself." The repetition shows that it is a great thing, which he affirms; "and He," again emphatic, "He," the same who shall build the temple of the Lord, "He shall bear the glory." Great must be the glory, since it is affirmed of Him as of none beside, "He shall bear glory," "He should build the temple of the Lord," as none beside ever built it; He should bear glory, as none beside ever bare it, "the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" Joh 1:14. This word glory is almost always used of the special glory of God, and then, although seldom, of the Majesty of those, on whom God confers majesty as His representatives, as Moses, or Joshua Num 27:20, or "the glory of the kingdom" given to Solomon Ch1 29:25. It is used also of Him, a likeness of whom these vicegerents of God bare, in a Psalm whose language belongs (as Jews too have seen,) to One more than man , although also of glory given by God, either of grace or nature .
So in our Lord's great High Priest's prayer lie says, "Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine ownself with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" Joh 17:5; and prays, "that they also whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me, where I am; that they may behold My glory which Thou hast given Me" Joh 17:24. So Paul, applying the words of the eighth Psalm, says of our Lord, "We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and horror" Heb 2:9; and the angels and saints round the Throne say, "Worthy is the Lamb which was slain to receive power and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing, and those on earth answer, Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb forever and ever" Rev 5:12-13. That glory Isaiah saw; in His miracles He "manifested forth His glory" Joh 12:41, "which resided in Him" Joh 2:11; in His Transfiguration, the three Apostles "saw His glory" Luk 9:32, shining out from within Him; "into this His glory" (Luk 24:26; add Pe1 1:11-12), He told the disciples at Emmaus, the prophets said, that He was to enter, having first suffered what He suffered; in this His glory He is to sit, when He judges. "And He shall sit and rule on His Throne" Mat 19:28; Luk 9:26. His rule shall be, not passing but abiding, not by human might, but in peaceful majesty, as God says, "Yet have I set My king upon My holy bill of Zion" Psa 2:6, and again, Sit Thou on My Right Hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool" Psa 110:1; and the angel said to Mary, "The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there shall be no end" Luk 1:32-33.
And He shall be a priest upon His Throne - He shall be at once king and priest, as it is said, "Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec." When the Christ should reign, He should not cease to be our Priest. He, having all power given to Him in heaven and earth, reigneth over His Church and His elect by His grace, and over the world by His power, yet ever liveth to make intercession for us. Rup.: "Not dwellings now on what is chiefest, that "by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invincible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist" Col 1:16-17, how many crowns of glory belong to Him, One and the Same, God and man, Christ Jesus! He then "will bear glory and will sit upon His throne and shall be a priest on His throne."
How just this is, it is easier to think than to express, that "He should sit and rule all things, by whom all things were wade, and He should be a Priest forever," by whose Blood all things are reconciled. "He shall rule then upon His throne, and He shall be a priest upon His throne," which cannot be said of any of the saints, because it is the right of none of them, to call the throne of his rule or of his priesthood his own, but of this Only Lord and Priest, whose majesty and throne are one and the same with the Majesty of God, as He saith, "When the Son of Man shall come in His Majesty (Glory), then shall He sit upon the throne of His Majesty (Glory)" Mat 25:31. And what meaneth that re-duplication, and He shall rule on His Throne, but that One and the Same, of whom all this is said, should be and is King and Priest. He who is King shall rule on His Throne, because kingdom and priesthood shall meet in One Person, and One shall occupy the double throne of kingdom and priesthood." He alone should be our King; He alone our Saviour: He alone the Object of our love, obedience and adoration.
And the counsel of peace shall be between them both - "The counsel of peace" is not merely peace, as Jerome seems to interpret: "He is both king and priest, and shall sit both on the royal and sacerdotal throne, and there shall be peaceful counsel between both, so that neither should the royal eminence depress the dignity of the priesthood, nor the dignity of the priesthood, the royal eminency, but both should be consistent in the glory of the One Lord Jesus." For had this been all, the simple idiom, "there shall be peace between them," would have been used here, as elsewhere (Jdg 4:17; Sa1 7:14; Kg1 5:16 (12 English)). But "counsel of peace," must, according to the like idioms, signify "a counsel devising or procuring peace" for some other than those who counsel thereon. We have the idiom itself, "counsellors of peace" Pro 12:20.
They twain - Might be said of things : but things are naturally not said to counsel, so that the meaning should be, that the thrones of the priests and of the Branch should counsel. For the throne is in each case merely subordinate. It is not as we might say, "the See of Rome," or "of Constantinople," or "of Canterbury," meaning the successive Bishops. It is simply the material throne, on which He sits. Nor is anything said of any throne of a priest, nor had a priest any throne. His office was to stand "before the Lord," his intercessorial office to "offer gifts and sacrifices for sin" Heb 5:1; Heb 9:9. To "offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins and then for the people's" Heb 7:27, was his special office and honor.
There are then not two thrones. One sits on His Throne, as King and Priest. It seems only to remain, that the counsel of peace should be between Jesus and the Father; as Jerome says, "I read in the book of some, that this, "there shall be a peaceful counsel between the two," is referred to the Father and the Son, because He "came to do not His own will, but the Will of the Father" Joh 5:30; Joh 6:38, and "the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father" Joh 14:10. In Christ all is perfect harmony. There is a counsel of peace between Him and the Father whose temple He builds. The Will of the Father and the Son is one. Both had one Will of love toward us, the salvation of the world, bringing forth peace through our redemption. God the Father "so loved the world, that He gave His Only-Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" Joh 3:16; and God the Son "is our peace, who hath made both one, that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the Cross, and came and preached peace to them which were afar off and to them that were nigh" Eph 2:14, Eph 2:16-17.
Others seem to me less naturally to interpret it of Christ in His two offices. Rup.: "There shall be the counsel of peace between them, the ruler and the priest, not that Christ is divided, but that those two princedoms, which were hitherto divided, (the priest and the king being different persons) should be united in the One Christ. Between these two princedoms, being inseparably joined in one, shall be the counsel of peace, because through that union we have peace; and through Him "it pleased the Father to reconcile all things unto Himself, and that all things should be brought to peace through the Blood of His cross, whether things in earth or things in heaven" Col 1:19-20.
Zechariah 6:14
zac 6:14
And the crowns shall be to Helem - There is no ground apparent to us, why the name "Helem" appears instead of "Holdai" , or "Hen" for "Josiah:" yet the same person must have been called both Hen and Josiah, since the father's name is the same in both places. They cannot both be intended as explanations of the former names, since Helem stands insulated in Hebrew, its meaning conjectural. Perhaps then they were the own names of the individuals, and the names compounded with the name of God, honorable names which they had taken.
For a memorial in the temple of the Lord - They brought a passing gift, but it should be for a lasting memorial in their behalf. It is a renewal of the well-known term of the law. The two stones, engraven with the names of the children of Israel, upon the shoulders of the Ephod, were to the end, that Aaron should "bear their names before the Lord upon his two shoulders for a memorial" Exo 28:12, Exo 28:22; Exo 39:7; continually, it is added of the "breastplate with its twelve precious stones Exo 28:29; the atonement money of the children of Israel was to be appointed for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, that it may be a memorial for the children of Israel before the Lord, to make atonement for their souls; "to make an atonement for their souls before the Lord" Exo 30:16. They were to "blow with the trumpets over their burnt-offerings, and over the sacrifice of their peace-offerings, that they may be to you for a memorial before your God" Num 10:10.
When Midian had been smitten before Israel, and not one of Israel had been slain, they brought all the gold which had accrued to them, and "Moses and Eleazar took the gold, and brought it into the tabernacle, a memorial for the children of Israel before the Lord" Num 31:50, Num 31:54. So the angel said to Cornelius, "thy prayers and thy alms are come up for a memorial before God" Act 10:4, Act 10:31. Rup.: "This is what we look for, that to all the saints and friends of God, whom these signify, those crowns which they made of their gold and silver for the Lord Jesus, shall be an everlasting memorial in that heavenly temple of the Lord." The tradition of the Jews, that this was literally, observed , can hardly be without foundation. Cyril: "These their offerings shall be for grace to those who dedicated them and an occasion of doxology. For the piety of princes becomes to the rest a path to the love of God. But when Christ is crowned by us, then shall also the multitude of the Gentiles haste to the knowledge of Him."
Zechariah 6:15
zac 6:15
And they who are far off shall come - They who came from Babylon with offerings to God, became types of the Gentiles, of whom the Apostle says, "Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off have become nigh through the blood of Christ" Eph 2:13; and, "He came and preached peace to you which were far off and to them that were nigh" Eph 2:17; and "the promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call" Act 2:39.
And build in - or upon, the temple of the Lord (Neh 4:4, Neh 4:11 (Neh 4:10, Neh 4:17 in English).) Not "build it" for it was to be built by "the Branch," but "build on," labor on, it. It was a building, which should continually be enlarged; of which Paul says, "I, as a wise master-builder, according to the grace given unto me, laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon; let every man take heed how, he buildeth thereupon" Co1 3:10. Cyril: "What shall they build? Themselves, compacting themselves with the saints, and joining together in faith to oneness with those of Israel, Jesus Christ Himself being the head cornerstone and uniting together in harmony through Himself, what was of old divided. For He united "the two peoples into one new man, making peace, and reconciling in His own body all things unto the Father" Eph 2:15-16, which being accomplished, we shall own the truth of the holy prophets, and know clearly that it was God who spake in them and declared to us beforehand the mystery of Christ."
And this shall be - Not as though the coming of Christ depended upon their faithfulness, but their share in it. "Ye shall know (he had said) that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you;" but whether this knowledge should reach to individuals, depends upon their obedience and their willingness to know; "it shall be, , if ye will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God. For none of the wicked," Daniel says, "shall understand" Dan 12:10; and Hosea, "Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them and the transgressors shall stumble at them" ; and the wise man, "he that keepeth the law of the Lord getteth the understanding thereof" (Ecclesiasticus 21:11). So our Lord said, "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself" Joh 7:17; "He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not because ye are not of God: Joh 8:47 : Everyone that is of the truth heareth My voice" Joh 18:37. Osorius: "Because he had said, And ye shall know that the Lord hath sent me unto you, he warns them, that the fruit of that coming will reach to those only, who should hear God and with ardent mind join themselves to His name. For as many as believed in Him were made sons of God; but the rest were cast into outer darkness. But they receive Christ, who hear His voice and do not refuse His rule. For He was made the cause of eternal salvation to tell who obey Him."
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 7
Zechariah 7:1
zac 7:1
In the fourth year of Darius - Two years after the series of visions, shown to him, and two years before the completion of the temple. Chisleu being December, it was the end of 518 b.c.
Zechariah 7:2
zac 7:2
When they held sent unto the house of God - Rather, "And Bethel sent;" that is, the inhabitants of Bethel sent. "The house of God" is nowhere in Holy Scripture called Bethel. Bethel is always the name of the place. . The "house of God" is designated by historians, Psalmists, prophets, by the name, "Beth-elohim," more commonly "Beth-Ha-elohim, the God;" or "of the Lord," YHVH. Zechariah and Haggai use these names. It is not likely that the name, Beth-el, should have first been given to the house of God, when it had been desecrated by the idolatries of Jeroboam. Bethel also is, in the Hebrew order of the words, naturally the subject . Nor is there any reason why they should have sent to Bethel, since they sought an answer from God. For it would be forced to say that they sent to Bethel, in order that those at Bethel should send to Jerusalem; which is not said.
It were unnatural also that the name of the sender should not have been mentioned, when the names of persons inferior, because sent, are recorded . Bethel, in Nehemiah's time Neh 11:31, was one of the chief places of Benjamin. "Two hundred twenty and three of the men of Bethel and Ai" Ezr 2:28 had returned with Zerubbabel. The answer being to "the people" of the land, such were doubtless the enquirers, not those still in Babylon. The answer shows that the question was not religious, though put as matter of religion. It is remarkable that, whereas in the case of those who brought presents from Babylon, the names express some relation to God, these names are singularly, the one of a parricide son of Sennacherib Isa 37:38; Kg2 19:37, and of one, chief among the King of Babylon's princes ; the other probably a secular name, "the king's friend".
Osorius: "I do not see why under the name of Bethel, the city so called is not understood. For since Jerusalem was not yet fortified, the Jews chose them sites in various places, where they should be less harassed. All hatred was concentrated on that city, which the neighbors wished not to be restored to its former greatness. Other cities they did not so molest. Bethel then, that is, the assembly of the city, sent messengers to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to God and consult the wise there."
To entreat the face of the Lord - They wished, it seems, (so to speak) to ingratiate themselves with God with an account of their past self-humiliation, on the day when the house of God was burned by Nebuchadnezzar. In regard to God, the word is always used of entreating Him by earnest prayer .
Zechariah 7:3
zac 7:3
Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself? - "In the fifth month," from the seventh to the tenth day, Jerusalem was in flames, fired by Nebuchadnezzar. "He burnt the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem and every great man's house he burnt with fire" .
Jerome: "Now since it is said that the temple is builded and we see that no cause of sorrow remaineth, answer, we pray, are we to do this or to change our sorrow into joy?"
Separating myself - This seems to be added, to intensify the fast which they had kept. The Nazarite was bound to "separate himself from wine and strong drink" Num 6:3, and so, they severed themselves to the Lord, and consecrated themselves to Him (Num. 5. See the note at Amo 2:11). These had severed themselves from food, from things pleasant, from pleasure, from sin, it may be, for the day, but not abidingly: they had not given themselves to God.
As I have done these so many years - Literally, "how many." As if, although they knew that they were seventy years, they could not count them.
Zechariah 7:5
zac 7:5
Speak unto all the people of the land - They of Bethel had spoken as one man, as Edom said to Israel, "Thou shalt not pass by me" Num 20:18; and "the men of Israel said to the Hivite; Perhaps thou dwellest in the midst of me, and how shall I make a league with thee?" Jos 9:7. God gives the answer not to them only, but to all like-minded with them, "all the people of the land," the whole population (in our language); as Jeremiah says, "ye and your fathers, your kings and your princes and all the people of the land" Jer 44:21, and, "the scribe who mustered the people of the land." Jer 52:25.
When ye fasted and that, mourning - It was no mere abstinence from food (severe as the Jewish fasts were, one unbroken abstinence from evening to evening) but with real mourning, the word being used only of mourning for the dead (Gen 23:2; Gen 50:10; Sa1 25:1; Sa1 28:3; Sa2 1:12; Sa2 3:31; Sa2 11:26; Kg1 13:29-30; Kg1 14:13, Kg1 14:18; Ecc 12:5; Jer 16:4-6; Jer 22:18; (twice); Jer 25:33; Jer 34:5; Eze 24:16, Eze 24:23; Zac 12:10, Zac 12:12), or, in a few instances, , for a very great public calamity; probably with beating on the breast.
In the seventh month - The murder of Gedaliah, "whom the king of Babylon made governor of the land," completed the calamities of Jerusalem, in the voluntary, but prohibited exile to Egypt, for fear lest the murder should be avenged on them Jer. 41-43.
Did ye at all fast unto Me, Me? - God emphatically rejects such fasting as their's had been, as something, unutterably alien from Him, "to Me, Me!" Yet the fasting and mourning had been real, but irreligious, like remorse for ill-deeds, which has self only for its ground. He prepares the way for His answer by correcting the error of the question. Osorius: "Ye fasted to yourselves, not to Me. For ye mourned your sorrows, not your misdeeds; and your public fast was undertaken, not for My glory, but out of feeling for your own grief. But nothing can be pleasing to God, which is not referred to His glory. But those things alone can be referred to His glory, which are done with righteousness and devotion."
Zechariah 7:6
zac 7:6
And when ye eat and when ye drink, is it not ye who eat and ye who drink? - Conversely now that, after your return, ye feast for joy, this is no religious act; ye have all the good of it, there is no thanksgiving to God. Contrary to the apostle's saying, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glow of God" Co1 10:31. "He eateth and drinketh to himself, who receiveth the nourishments of the body, which are the common gifts of the Creator, without the needy. And anyone fasts to himself, if he doth not give to the poor what for the time he withdraweth from himself, but keepeth it to be thereafter offered to his appetite. Hence, it is said by Joel, sanctify a fast. For to 'sanctify a fast' is to show an abstinence worthy of God through other good deeds. Let anger cease, quarrels be hushed. For in vain is the flesh worn, if the mind is not refrained from evil pleasures, since the Lord says by the prophet, "Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate ..." Isa 57:3-4.
Zechariah 7:7
zac 7:7
Should ye "not hear" the words, or, Know ye "not the words?" The verb is presupposed in the emphatic question, as in, "Shall I, the blood of these men?" Sa2 23:17. David omits the word "drink" for abhorrence.
By the former prophets - Isaiah and Jeremiah , "when Jerusalem was dwelling abidingly," at ease, as the whole world then was, except herself, "and the south and the low-country," both belonging to Judah, were inhabited. The restoration then was still very incomplete, since he contrasts their then condition with the present, as inhabited or no. The mountain, the south, and the low country, known still by its name of Sephela to Greeks , made up the territory of Judah Jos 10:40, Jdg 1:9; Jer 17:26; Jer 32:44; Jer 33:13.
Zechariah 7:8
zac 7:8
Instead of quoting the former prophets, Zechariah gives the substance of their exhortations, as renewed to himself.
Zechariah 7:9
zac 7:9
Thus spake the Lord - that is, through the former prophets, for he goes on to speak of their rejection in the past. "Execute true judgment." He retains the words of Ezekiel. The injunction itself runs throughout the prophets. "Shew mercy" (as Isa 1:17, Isa 1:23; Isa 58:6-7; Jer 7:5; Eze 18:8; Hos 12:6, etc.), that is, tender love, to all; compassion, to the unhappy. Omit no act of love, God so loves the loving. Lap.: "Like Paul to the Romans Rom 13:9, he names only the duties to the neighbor, but understands what relates to God. For the love of our neighbor presupposes the love of God, from which it springs." Jerome: "After strictness of justice, let mercy to all follow, and specially to brethren, of the same blood and of one faith. Brother and neighbor we ought to account the whole human race, since we are all born of one parent, or those who are of the household of faith, according to the parable of the Gospel, "which willeth us to understand by neighbor, nor our kin, but all men" (Luk 10:30 ff).
Zechariah 7:10
zac 7:10
And oppress not - He had commanded positive acts of love; he now forbids every sort of unlove. "He that oppresseth the poor," Solomon had said, "reproacheth his Maker. The widow, the orphan, the stranger, the afflicted" Pro 24:31, are, throughout the law, the special objects of God's care. This was the condition which God made by Jeremiah; "If ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor; if ye oppress not the stranger the fatherless and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt, then will I cause you to dwell in this, place" Jer 7:5-7. It was on the breach of the covenant to set their brethren free in the year of release, that God said; "I proclaim a liberty for you to the sword, to the pestilence and to the famine, and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth" Jer 34:17.
And let none of you imagine - that is, "devise, as, by Micah, God retorted the evil upon them. They "devised evil on their beds; therefore, behold, against this family do I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks" Mic 2:1, Mic 2:3.
Zechariah 7:11
zac 7:11
But they gave a backsliding shoulder - Like a restive animal, which would not endure the yoke, dull and stupid as the beasts: as Hosea says, "Israel slideth back like a backsliding heifer" Hos 4:16. Nehemiah confesses the same; "they gave a backsliding shoulder and hardened their neck and would not hear" Neh 9:29.
And made heavy their ears - Fulfilling in themselves what God foretold to Isaiah would be the result of his preaching, "make their ears heavy." The heart, which will not hearken, becomes duller by the outward hearing, as Paul says, "The earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God; but that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected" Heb 6:7-8.
Zechariah 7:12
zac 7:12
Harder than adamant - The stone, whatever it be, was hard enough to cut ineffaceable characters : it was harder than flint . It would cut rocks; it could not be graven itself, or receive the characters of God.
This is the last sin, obduracy, persevering impenitence, which "resisted the Holy Spirit" Act 7:51. and "did despite to the Spirit of grace" Heb 10:29. Not through infirmity, but of set purpose, they hardened themselves, lest "they should convert" Isa 6:10 and be healed. They feared to trust themselves to God's word, lest He should convert them by it.
Lest they should hear the law and the words which the Lord God sent by His Spirit by the hand of the former prophets - The Holy Spirit was the chief agent; "by His Spirit;" the inspired prophets were His instruments; by the hand of. Nehemiah confesses the same to God: "Thou didst protest to them by Thy Spirit by the hand of Thy prophets" Neh 9:30. Moses was one of the greatest prophets. The law then may be included, either as delivered by Moses, or as being continually enforced by all the prophets. Observe the gradations:
(1) The words of God are not heard.
(2) The restive shoulder is shown; people turn away, when God, by the inner motions of His Spirit or by lesser chastisements, would bring them to the yoke of obedience. Osorius: "They would not bear the burden of the law, whereas they willingly bore that most heavy weight of their sins."
(3) Obduracy. Osorius: "Their adamantine heart could be softened neither by promises nor threats." Therefore nothing remained but the great wrath, which they had treasured to themselves against the day of wrath. And so Zechariah returns to that, wherewith his message and visions of future mercy began, the great wrath which fell upon their fathers Zac 1:7.
Osorius: "'I sought not,' He says, 'for your tears; I enjoined not bitterness of sorrow; but what, had they been done, the calamity, for which those tears were meet, had never befallen you. What was it which I admonished you formerly by the former prophets to recall you from sin? What I bid you by Zechariah now. This I preach, admonish, testify, inculcate upon you. '"
Zechariah 7:13
zac 7:13
And it came to pass - that is, this which God had said, "As He cried and they heard not, so shall they cry and I will not hear, saith the Lord of hosts." God had often said this. "It shall be too late to cry for mercy, when it is the time of justice." So Wisdom had said by Solomon; "then, that is, when distress and anguish cometh upon them, they shall call upon Me, but I will not answer; they shall seek Me early, and they shall not find Me" Pro 1:27-28. So by Isaiah, "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of bloods" Isa 1:15. So by Hosea, Hos 5:6, by Micah Mic 3:4, by Jeremiah Jer 11:14; Jer 14:12. It was one message which was verilied in every day of chastisement, "there will be a 'too late;'" not a final "too late," until the end of ends comes, but a "too late" for them, a "too late" to avert that particular judgment of God, whereby the sinner's earthly trial and future were changed permanently .
Zechariah 7:14
zac 7:14
But I scattered them - Rather, "And I will scatter them." The saying continues what God had said that he had said, and which had come to pass. Among all nations whom they knew not. So God had repeatedly said by Jeremiah, "I will cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not, ye nor your fathers; where I will not show you favor" (Jer 16:13; add Jer 15:14; Jer 17:4). This was the aggravation of the original woe in the law: "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand, a nation of fierce countenance" Deu 28:49-50. There was no mitigation of suffering, when the common bond between man and man, mutual speech, was wanting.
That no man passed through nor returned - Literally, "from passer through and from returner;" as in the prophecy of Alexander's march and return, "because of him that passeth by and of him that returneth" Zac 9:8; and of Seir God saith, "I will cut off from him, passer-through and returner" . As we say, there shall be no traffic more through her.
And they made the pleasant land desolate - They were the doers of what they by their sins caused, by bringing down the judgments of God. Heretofore the land which God had given them, had been in our language "the envy" of all who knew it now they had made it into a desolation, one wide waste Joe 1:7; Isa 13:9; Jer 2:15; Jer 4:7; Jer 18:16; Jer 19:8; Jer 25:9; Jer 50:3; Jer 51:29.
Dionysius: "What is said in the beginning of the chapter against Jews who abstained indiscreetly, applies mystically to all, not inward, but rude Christians, who not being diligent enough but rather negligent about acts of piety and inward prayer and reformation of the powers of the soul, account highly of bodily exercises and outward observances, and use no slight scrupulosity as to things of less moment, and do not attend to the chief things, charity, humility, patience meekness. On these it must be inculcated, that if they wish their fasts and other outward exercises to please God, they must judge true judgment, and be compassionate, kind, liberal to their neighbors, keep their mind ever steadfast in God, cast away wholly all hardness of heart, and be soft and open to receive within them the word of God. Otherwise their land will be desolate, that is, deprived of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and they scattered amid various vices." Jerome: "That which was formerly a pleasant land, and the hospice of the Trinity, is turned into a desert and dwelling-place of dragons."
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 8
Zechariah 8:1
zac 8:1
Dionysius: "After the Lord had, in the preceding chapter, manifoldly rebuked the Jewish people, He now comforts it with renewed promises, as a good physician, who after a bitter draught employs sweet and soothing remedies; as that most loving Samaritan poured in wine and oil." The chapter falls into two portions, each marked by the words, The Word of the Lord of hosts came or came unto me, the first Zech. 8:1-17 declaring the reversal of the former judgments, and the complete, though conditional, restoration of God's favor; the 2nd Zac 8:18-23 containing the answer to the original question as to those fasts, in the declaration of the joy and the spread of the Gospel. The first portion has, again, a sevenfold, the second, a threefold subordinate division; marked by the beginning, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts."
Zechariah 8:2
zac 8:2
Thus saith the Lord of hosts - Jerome: "At each word and sentence, in which good things, for their greatness, almost incredible are promised, the prophet premises, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts," as if he would say, Think not that what I pledge you are my own, and refuse me not credence as man. What I unfold are the promises of God."
I was jealous - Literally, "I have been and am jealous for." . He repeats in words slightly varied, but in the same rhythm, the declaration of tits tender love wherewith He opened the series of visions, thereby assuring beforehand that this was, like that, an answer of peace. The form of words shows, that this was a jealousy for, not with her; yet it was one and the same strong, yea infinite love, whereby God, as He says, "clave unto their fathers to love them and chose their seed after them out of all nations" Deu 10:15. His jealousy of their sins was part of that love, whereby, (Dionysius), "without disturbance of passion or of tranquillity, He inflicted rigorous punishment, as a man fearfully reproves a wife who sins." They are two different forms of love according to two needs. Rup.: "The jealousy (Zelus) of God is good, to love people and hate the sins of people. Contrariwise the jealousy of the devil is evil, to hate people and love the sins of people." Osorius: "Since God's anger had its origin in the vehemence of His love (for this sort of jealousy arises from the greatness of love), there was hope that the anger might readily be appeased toward her."
Zechariah 8:3
zac 8:3
I am returned - Dionysius: "Without change in Myself, I am turned to that people from the effect of justice to the sweetness of mercy, "and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem," in the temple and the people, indwelling the hearts of the good by charity and grace. Christ also, Very God and Very Man, visibly conversed and was seen in Zion." Osorius: "When He says, 'I am turned,' He shows that she was turned too. He had said, "Turn unto Me and I will turn unto you;" otherwise she would not have been received into favor by Him. As the fruit of this conversion, He promises her His presence, the ornaments of truth, the hope of security, and adorns her with glorious titles."
God had symbolized to Ezekiel the departure of His special presence, in that the "glory of the God of Israel" which was over the temple, at "the very place where they placed the image of jealousy, "went up from the Cherub" Eze 8:4-5, whereupon it was, "to the threshold of the house" Eze 9:3; then "stood over the Cherubim" Eze 10:4, Eze 10:18; and then "went up from the midst of the city and stood upon the mountain, which is on the east side of the city" Eze 11:23, so removing from them. He had prophesied its return in the vision of the symbolic temple, how "the glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate looking toward the East, and the Spirit took me up and brought me into the inner court, and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house" Eze 43:4. This renewed dwelling in the midst of them, Zechariah too prophesies, in the same terms as in his third vision, "I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem" (Zac 2:1-13 :14, Hebrew (Zac 2:10 in English)).
And Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth - , being what she is called, since God would not call her untruly; so Isaiah says, "afterward thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city" Isa 1:26, and they shall call thee the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel" . So Zephaniah had prophesied, "The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies" Zep 3:13. Truth embraces everything opposite to untruth; faithfulness, as opposed to faithlessness; sincerity, as opposed to simulation; veracity, as opposed to falsehood; honesty, as opposed to untruth in act; truth of religion or faith, as opposed to untrue doctrine. Dionysius: "It shall be called the city of truth, that is, of the True God or of truth of life, doctrine, and justice. It is chiefly verified by the Coming of Christ, who often preached in Jerusalem, in whom the city afterward believed."
And the mountain of the Lord of hosts - Mount Zion, on which the temple shall be built, shall be called and be "the mountain of holiness." This had been the favorite title of the Psalmists , and Isaiah (Isa 11:9; Isa 56:7; Isa 57:13; Isa 65:11, Isa 65:25; Isa 66:20; also in Joe 2:1; Joe 3:17; Oba 1:16; Zep 3:11; Dan 9:16, Dan 9:20); and Obadiah had foretold, "upon Mount Zion there shall be holiness" Oba 1:17; and Jeremiah, "As yet they shall use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof, when I shall bring again their captivity; The Lord shall bless thee, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness" Jer 31:23. It should be called and be; it should fulfill the destination of its titles; as, in the Apostles' Creed we profess our belief of "the holy Catholic Church," and holiness is one of its characteristics.
Zechariah 8:4
zac 8:4
There shall yet dwell old men and old women - Dionysius: "Men and women shall not be slain now, as before in the time of the Babylonish destruction, but shall fulfill their natural course." It shall not be, as when "He gave His people over unto the sword; the fire consumed their young men and their maidens were not given to marriage; the priests were slain by the sword and their widows made no lamentation" Psa 78:63-64; apart from the horrible atrocities of pagan war, when the unborn children were destroyed in their mothers' womb Kg2 15:16; Hos 13:16; Amo 1:13, with their mothers. Yet (as in Zac 1:17), once more as in the days of old, and as conditionally promised in the law Deu 4:10; Deu 5:16, Deu 5:33; Deu 6:2; Deu 11:9; Deu 17:20; Deu 22:7; Deu 32:47; Eze 20:17. As death is the punishment of sin, so prolongation of life to the time which God has now made its natural term, seems the more a token of His goodness. This promise Isaiah had renewed, "There shall no more be an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days" Isa 65:20. In those fierce wars neither young nor very old were spared. It implied then a long peace, that people should live to that utmost verge of human life.
The man, whose staff is in his hand for the multitude of days - The two opposite pictures, the old men, Dionysius), "so aged that they support with a staff their failing and trembling limbs," and the young in the glad buoyancy of recent life, fresh from their Creator's hands, attest alike the goodness of the Creator, who protecteth both, the children in their yet undeveloped strength, the very old whom He hath brought through "all the changes and chances of this mortal life," in their yet sustained weakness. The tottering limbs of the very old, and the elastic perpetual motion of childhood are like far distant chords of the diapason of the Creator's love. It must have been one of the most piteous sights in that first imminent destruction of Jerusalem Jer 6:11; Jer 9:21, how "the children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of the city; how the young children fainted for hunger in the top of every street" Lam 2:11, Lam 2:19.
We have but to picture to ourselves any city in which one lives, the ground strewn with these little all-but corpses, alive only to suffer. We know not, how great the relief of the yet innocent, almost indomitable joyousness of children is, until we miss them. In the dreadful Irish famine of 1847 the absence of the children from the streets of Galway was told me by Religious as one of its dreariest features . In the dreary back-streets and alleys of London, the irrepressible joyousness of children is one of the bright sun-beams of that great Babylon, amid the oppressiveness of the anxious, hard, luxurious; thoughtless, careworn, eager, sensual, worldly, frivolous, vain, stolid, sottish, cunning, faces, which traverse it. God sanctions by His word here our joy in the joyousness of children, that He too taketh pleasure in it, He the Father of all. It is precisely their laughing, the fullness of her streets of these merry creations of His hands, that He speaks of with complacency.
Zechariah 8:6
zac 8:6
If it should be marvelous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those - (not these) days, shall it be marvelous in Mine eyes also? saith the Lord of hosts Man's anticipations, by reason of his imperfections and the chequered character of earthly things, are always disappointing. God's doings, by reason of His infinite greatness and goodness, are always beyond our anticipations, past all belief. It is their very greatness which staggers us. It is not then merely that the temporal promises seemed "too good to be true" (in our words) (Jerome), "in the eyes of the people who had come from the captivity, seeing that the city almost desolate, the ruins of the city-walls, the charred houses showed the doings of the Babylonians." It is in the day of the fulfillment, not of the anticipation, that they would seem marvelous in their eyes, as the Psalmist says, "This is the Lord's doing: and it is marvelous in our eyes" .
The temporal blessings which God would give were not so incredible. They were but the ordinary gifts of His Providence: they involved no change in their outward relations. His people were still to remain under their Persian masters, until their time too should come. It was matter of gladness and of God's Providence, that the walls of Jerusalem should be rebuilt: but not so marvelous, when it came to pass. The mysteries of the Gospel are a marvel even to the blessed angels. That fulfillment being yet future, so the people, in whose eyes that fulfillment should be marvelous, were future also. And this was to be a remnant still. It does not say, "this people which is a remnant," nor "this remnant of the people," that is, those who remained over out of the people who went into captivity, or this remnant, but "the remnant of this people," that is, those who should remain over of it, that is, of the people who were returned. It is the remnant of the larger whole, this people (see at Amo 1:8, vol. i. p. 247, n. 28, and on Hag 1:12, p. 305). It is still "the remnant according to the election of grace;" that election which obtained what all Israel sought, but, seeking wrongly, were blinded Rom 11:5-7.
Shall it be marvelous in Mine eyes also? - It is an indirect question in the way of exclamation . "It be marvelous in Mine eyes also," rejecting the thought, as alien from the nature of God, to whom "all things are possible, yea, what with men is impossible" Mat 19:26. As God says to Jeremiah, "Behold, I am, the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?" Jer 32:27. "For with God nothing shall be impossible" Luk 1:37. "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God" Luk 18:27. "For with God all things are possible." Mar 10:27 Cyril: "For He is the Lord of all powers, fulfilling by His will what exceedingly surpasseth nature, and efecting at once what seemeth Him good. The mystery of the Incarnation passeth all marvel and discourse, and no less the benefits redounding to us. For how is it not next to incredible, that the Word, Begotten of God, should be united with the flesh and be in the form of a servant, and endure the Cross and the insults and outrages of the Jews? Or how should one not admire above measure the issue of the dispensation, whereby sin was destroyed, death abolished, corruption expelled, and man, once a recreant slave, became resplendent with the grace of an adopted son?"
Zechariah 8:7
zac 8:7
I will save My people from the East country and from the West country - Dionysius: "that is, the whole world; for Israel had been scattered in every part of the world." God had said to Israel, "I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Keep not back" Isa 43:5-6. The two tribes had been carried to Babylon and had been dispersed, or had been allowed to migrate to the various provinces of the Babylonian or Persian empire. But these were in the East, though commonly called the north, because they invaded Israel from the north. Those who had migrated to Egypt were in the south. As yet none were in the West. The dispersion, as well as the gathering, was still future. When our Lord came, they had migrated westward. Greece, Italy, Asia minor, were full of them; and from all they were gathered. All Paul's Epistles written to named Churches, were written to Churches formed from converts in the West. In all these countries God would gather His one people, His Church, not of "the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles" Rom 9:24, grafted into them, as our Lord said, "I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of the kingdom (the unbelieving Jews, who were not the remnant) shall be cast out into outer darkness" Mat 8:11-12.
Zechariah 8:8
zac 8:8
They shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem - Not the literal Jerusalem; for this would not contain the Jews from all quarters of the world, whom, as they multiplied, the whole land could not contain; but the promised Jerusalem, the Jerusalem, which "should be inhabited as towns without walls," to which the Lord should be a wall of fire round about.
And they shall be My people - He promises this as to those who were already His people; "I will save My people - and will bring them, and they shall dwell - and they shall be My people." And this they were to be in a new way, by conversion of heart, as Jeremiah says, "I will give them an heart to know Me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be My people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto Me with their whole heart" (Jer 24:7; add Jer 30:22), and, "This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and will write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people" Jer 31:33.
Osorius: "The circuit of one city will not contain so great a multitude. But one confession of faith, one conspiration of sanctity, one communion of religion and righteousness, can easily enfold all born of the holy fathers, united to them in faith and piety. And God is specially called the God of all these. For He specially consults for these, loads them with benefits, fences them in with most strong protection, illumines them with His light, crowns them, when confirmed in the image of His beauty, with glory immortal and divine."
In truth and in righteousness - This too is on account of their former relation to God. Isaiah had upbraided them for a worship of God, "not in truth and righteousness" Isa 48:1. Jeremiah had said, "Thou shalt swear, the Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness" Jer 4:2. God should be their God in truth and righteousness; Ribera: "truth in fulfilling His promises; righteousness in rewarding every man according to his works."
Zechariah 8:9
zac 8:9
Let your hands be strong - The fulfillment of God's former promises are the earnest of the future; His former providences, of those to come. Having then those great promises for the time to come, they were to be earnest in whatever meantime God gave them to do. He speaks to them, "as hearing in these days," that is, that fourth year of Darius in which they apparently were, "these words from the mouth of the prophets, which were in the day when the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid, the temple, that it might be built." Haggai was now gone to his rest. His voice had been silent for two years. But his words lived on. The fulfillment of what the prophets had then spoken in God's Name, was a ground, why their hands should be strong, now and thereafter, for every work which God gave or should give them to do. Ribera: "Some things are said to Jerusalem, that is, to the Jews, which belong to them only; some relate to what is common to them and the other members of the Church, that is, these who are called from the Gentiles. Now he speaks to the Jews, but not so as to seem to forget what he had said before. He would say, Ye who hear the words, which in those days when the temple was founded, Haggai and Zechariah spake, be strong and proceed to the work which ye began of fulfilling the will of the Lord in the building of the temple, and in keeping from the sins, in which ye were before entangled. For as, before ye began to build the temple, ye were afflicted with many calamities, but after ye had begun, all things went well with you, as Haggai said, "so, if you cultivate piety and do not depart from God, ye shall enjoy great abundance of spiritual good" Hag 2:15-19. Osorius: "The memory of past calamity made the then tranquillity much sweeter, and stirred the mind to greater thanksgiving. He set forth then the grief of those times when he says;"
Zechariah 8:10
zac 8:10
There was no hire for man - Literally, "hire for man came not to pass." It was longed for, waited for and came not. So little was the produce, that neither laborer nor beast of burden were employed to gather it in.
Neither was there peace to him who went out or came in because of the affliction, better, of the adversary - In such an empire as the Persian, there was large scope for actual hostility among the petty nations subject to it, so that they did not threaten revolt against itself, or interfere with the payment of tribute, as in the Turkish Empire now, or in the weak government of Greece. At the rebuilding of the walls, after this time, the Samaritans, "Arabians, Ammonites, Ashdodites conspired to fight against Jerusalem," and to "slay them" Neh 4:7-11. They are summed up here in the general title used here, "our adversaries".
For I set - Literally, "and I set." Domestic confusions and strife were added to hostility from without. Nehemiah's reformation was, in part, to stop the grinding usury in time of dearth or to lear the king's taxes, through which men sold lands, vineyards, even their children Neh 5:1-12.
(literally) let them loose, each against his neighbor - in that He left them to their own ways and did not withhold them.
Zechariah 8:11
zac 8:11
And now - The words imply a contrast of God's dealings, rather than a contrast of time. "I am not to the remnant of this people." He had said, "I will be to them God;" so now He does not say that He will not do to them, "as in former days," but "I am not to the remnant" of this people as heretofore. He would be, as tie was in Jesus, in a new relation to them.
Zechariah 8:12
zac 8:12
For the seed shall be peace - o"Your seed shall be peace and a blessing, so that they will call it 'a seed of peace.'" The unusual construction is perhaps adopted, in order to suggest a further meaning. It is a reversal of the condition, just spoken of, when there was "no peace to him that went, or to him that returned."
The vine shall give her fruit and the ground shall give her increase - The old promise in the law on obedience Lev 26:4, as the exact contrary was threatened on disobedience Lev 26:20. It had been revived in the midst of promise of spiritual blessing and of the coming of Christ, in Ezekiel Eze 34:27. Ribera: "By the metaphor of sensible things he explains (as the prophets often do) the abundance of spiritual good in the time of the new law, as did Hosea Hos 2:21-22, Joel Joe 2:23-25; Joe 3:18, Amos Amo 9:13, and many others." "And I will cause the remnant of the people to inherit." Ribera: "As if he said, I promised these things not to you who live now, but to the future remnant of your people, that is, those who shall believe in Christ and shall be saved, while the rest perish. These shall possess these spiritual goods, which I promise now, under the image of temporal." As our Lord said, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be My son" Rev 21:7.
Zechariah 8:13
zac 8:13
As ye were a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you - The ten tribes bore the name of Israel, in contrast with the two tribes with the name of Judah, not only in the history but in the prophets; as Hosea says, "I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, and on the house of Judah I will have mercy" Hos 1:6-7. Here he unites both; both, in the time of their captivity, were a curse, were held to be a thing accursed, as it is said, "He that is hanged is the curse of God" Deu 21:23, that is, a thing accursed by Him; and God foretold of Judah, that they should be "a desolation and a curse" Kg2 22:10, and by Jeremiah, "I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for hurt, a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse in all places whither I shall drive them" ; and in deed, when it was so, "therefore is your land a desolation and an astonishment and a curse without an inhabitant, as at this day" Jer 44:22.
Now the sentence was to be reversed as to both. "As ye were a curse, among the nations, naming each, so I will save you." There would have been no proportion between the curse and the blessing, unless both had been included under the blessing, as they were under the curse. But Israel had no share in the temporal blessing, not returning from captivity, as Zechariah knew they were not returned hitherto. Therefore the blessings promised must be spiritual. Even a Jewish commentator saw this. "It is possible, that this may have been spoken of the second temple, on condition that they should keep the commandments of the Lord; or, it is still future, referring to the days of the Messiah: and this is proved by the following verse which says, 'O house of Judah and house of Israel.' During the second temple the house of Israel did not return."
And ye shall be a blessing - This is a revival and an application of the original promise to Abraham, "thou shalt be a blessing" Gen 12:2; which was continued to Jacob, "God give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee" Gen 28:4. And of the future king, of whom it is said, "Thou gavest him length of days forever and ever," David says, "Thou hast made him blessings forever" Psa 21:4, Psa 21:6, and again, "They shall be blessed in Him" Psa 72:17). So Isaiah had said of the days of Christ, "In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land;" Isa 19:24; and symbolically of the cluster of grapes, "Destroy it not: for a blessing is in it" Isa 65:8; and Ezekiel, "I will make them and the places round about My hill a blessing" Eze 34:26. They were this; for of them, "according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever" Rom 9:5; of them were the Apostles and Evangelists, of them every writer of God's word, of them those who carried the Gospel throughout the world. Osorius: "Was this fulfilled, when the Jews were under the Persians? or when they paid tribute to the Greeks? or when they trembled, hour by hour, at the mention of the Roman name? Do not all count those who rule much happier than those oppressed by the rule of others? The prediction then was fulfilled, not then, but when Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, shone on the earth, and He chose from the Hebrews lights, through whom to dissipate darkness and illumine the minds of people who were in that darkness. The Jews, when restored from the captivity, seemed born to slavery." They were reputed to be of slaves the most despised. "But when they had through Christ been put in possession of that most sure liberty, they overthrew, through their empire, the power and tyranny of the evil spirits."
Zechariah 8:14
zac 8:14
As I thought to punish you - (Literally, to do evil to you) "and repented not." In like way God says in Jeremiah, "I have purposed and will not repent." Jer 4:28.
Zechariah 8:15
zac 8:15
So have I turned and purposed in these days to do well unto Jerusalem - Dionysius: "God, to be better understood, speaketh with the feelings and after the manner of men, although, in the passionless and unchangeable God, there is no provocation to anger, nor turning, implying change in Himself." So He says by Jeremiah, "I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil" Jer 29:11. And, with the same contrast as here, "As I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to throw down, and to destroy and to afflict, so will I watch over them, to build and to plant, saith the Lord" Jer 31:28. His having done what He purposed before was an earnest the more, that He would do what He purposed now. His chastisements were the earnests of His mercies; for they too were an austere form of His love. Osorius: "When the Lord stretches out His hand to strike those who are contumacious in guilt, none can hold His hand that He exact not the due punishment. Therefore He says, that He repented not; so, when He receives to grace those who repent of their sins, no one can any way delay the course of His benevolence. "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" Rom 11:29.
And to the house of Judah - Ribera: He speaks to the two tribes, not to, or of the ten, because Christ was to come to the two tribes, and Zechariah was prophesying to them, and they were to be admonished to prepare themselves in good works, lest the coming of Christ should not profit them, on account of their depraved ways. But the ten tribes were far off in the cities of the Medes, nor was Christ to come to them; but they were to hear the Gospel through the Apostles, and so he prophesies of the conversion of all to the glory of Christ, yet he could not admonish all, but those only to whom he was sent.
Zechariah 8:16
zac 8:16
These are the things that ye shall do - He exhorts them to the same duties, to which the former prophets had exhorted their fathers, Zac 7:9-10, and, as before, first positively to truth and peace; then to avoid everything contrary to it. "Judgment of peace" must be judgment which issues in peace, as all righteous judgment righteously received, in which case each party acquiesces, must. Kimchi: "If ye judge righteousness, there will be peace between the litigants, according to that proverb, Sanhedr. f. 7. a. quoted by Me. Caul, p. 78), 'He that hath his coat taken from him by the tribunal, let him sing and go his way' ("because," says a gloss (Rashi, quoted Ibid.), "they have judged the judgment of truth, and have taken away that which would have been stolen property, if he retained it," being in fact not his). And they have quoted that, "And all this people shall go to their place in peace" Exo 18:23. : "All this people," even he that is condemned in judgment. It is also interpreted of arbitration. What sort of judgment is that, in which there is peace? It is that of arbitration."
Zechariah 8:17
zac 8:17
For all these things do I hate - Literally, emphatic, "For they are all these things which I hate." This is the sum of what I hate; for they comprise in brief the breaches of the two tables, the love of God and of man.
Zechariah 8:19
zac 8:19
The fast of the fourth month - On the ninth day "of the fourth month" of Zedekiah's eleventh year, Jerusalem, in the extremity of famine, opened to Nebuchadnezzar, and his princes sat in her gate; in the "tenth month" of his ninth year Nebuchadnezzar began the siege. Ezekiel was bidden "on its tenth day; write thee the name of the day, of this same day," Eze 24:1-2, as the beginning of God's uttermost judgments against "the bloody city" . The days of national sorrow were to be turned late exuberant joy, "joy and gladness and cheerful feasts" Est 8:17; Est 9:19, Est 9:22; Ecc 7:14, for the sorrows, which they commemorated, were but the harbingers of joy, when the chastisements were ended; only He adds, love the truth and peace; for such love whereby they would be Israelites indeed, in whose spirits is no guile, were the conditions of their participating the blessings of the Gospel, of which he goes on to speak;
Zechariah 8:20
zac 8:20
It shall yet be that - The promises are those which God had already made by Isaiah (Isa 2:2 ff) and Micah (Mic 4:1 ff). Yet where was the show of their fulfillment? The Jews themselves, a handful: the temple unfinished; its completion depending, in human sight, upon the will of their pagan masters, the rival worship at Samaria standing and inviting to coalition. Appearances and experience were against it. God says virtually, that it was, in human sight, contrary to all expectations. But "weakness is aye Heaven's might." Despite of all, of the fewness of those who were returned, their downheartedness, broken condition, hopelessness, though all had hitherto failed, though, or rather because, all human energy and strength were gone, as God had said before, "The Lord shall yet (Zac 1:17; Zac 2:1-13 :16 (12 English)) choose Jerusalem," so now, It shall "yet" be "that."
Nations and many cities shall come - He describes vividly the eagerness and mutual impulse, with which not only many but mighty nations should throng to the Gospel, and every fresh conversion should win others also, until the great tide should sweep through the world.
Zechariah 8:21
zac 8:21
The inhabitants of one city shall go to another - It is one unresting extension of the fairly, the restlessness of faith and love. Osorius: "They shall not be satisfied with their own salvation, careless about the salvation of others; they shall employ all labor and industry, with wondrous love, to provide for the salvation of others as if it were their own." It is a marvelous stirring of minds. Missionary efforts, so familiar with us as to be a household word, were unknown then. The time was not yet come. "Before the faith" in Christ came, the Jewish people were not to be the converters of mankind. They were to await for Him, the Redeemer of the world, through whom and to whom they were to be first converted, and then the world through those who were of them. This mutual conversion was absolutely unknown. The prophet (see below on Zac 9:12) predicts certainly that it would be, and in God's time it was. "From you," Paul writes to a small colony in Greece, "sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad" Th1 1:8. "Your faith" Rom 1:8, he writes to the pagan capital of the world, "is spoken of throughout the whole world."
Within eighty years after our Lord's Ascension, the Roman governor of Bithynia reported, on occasion of the then persecution, that it spread as a contagion. Pliny ad. Trajan Eph. x. 97: "The contagion of that superstition traversed not cities only but villages and scattered houses too." Before the persecution, the temples had been desolated, the solemn rites long intermitted, the sacrificed animals had very rarely found a purchaser. An impostor of the same date says, , Pontus is full of atheists and Christians." "There is no one race of people," it was said before the middle of the second century , "whether Barbarians or Greeks or by whatsoever name called, whether of those wandering houseless tribes who live in wagons or those pastoral people who dwell in tents, in which there are not prayers and Eucharists to the Father and Creator of all things, through the name of the crucified Jesus." "The word of our teacher," said another, , "abode not in Judaea alone, as philosophy in Greece; but was poured out throughout the whole world, persuading Greeks and barbarians in their several nations and villages and every city, whole houses and each hearer individually, and having brought over to the truth no few even of the very philosophers. And if any ordinary magistrate forbid the Greek philosophy, immediately it vanishes; but our teaching, immediately at its first announcement, kings and emperors and subordinate rulers and governors with all their mercenaries and countless multitudes forbid, and war against us and try to extirpate; but it the rather flourishes."
The second century had not closed, before another said, , "We are a people of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to you, cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum! We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies; our numbers in a single province will be greater." "People cry out that the state is beset; that the Christians are in their fields, in their forts, in their islands. They mourn, as for a loss, that every sex, age, condition, and now even rank is going over to this sect." : "On whom besides have all nations believed, except on Christ who hath already come?" Then having enumerated the nations mentioned in the Acts Act 2:9-11, he adds, "And now the varieties of the Getulians, and the many tracts of the Moors, all the bounds of the Spains, and the divers nations of the Gauls, and places of the Britons, unreached by the Romans but subdued to Christ; of Sarmatians, Dacians, Germans, and Scythians, and of many remote nations, and many provinces and islands, unknown to us, and which we can scarce enumerate. In all which places the name of Christ, who hath already come, reigneth, seeing that before Him the gates of all cities are opened and none are shut against Him, before whom "the bars of iron are broken in pieces and the gates of brass are opened" Isa 45:2.
In all these places dwelleth a people called by the name of Christ. For who could reign over all, save Christ the Son of God, who was foretold as about to reign over all nations forever?" Then having contrasted the limited rule of Solomon, Darius, the Pharaohs, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, "the Romans who protect their own empire by the strength of their legions and are unable to extend the might of their kingdom beyond these nations (Germans, Britons, Moors, Getulians), he sums up, "but the kingdom and the Name of Christ is extended everywhere, is believed in everywhere, is worshiped by all the nations above enumerated. Everywhere He reigns, everywhere is adored, is given everywhere equally to all. With Him no king hath greater favor; no Barbarian inferior joy; no dignities or birth enhance the merit of any; to all He is equal; to all, King; to all Judge; to all, God and Lord." A little later, a pagan owns, while calumniating, , "Those most foul rites of that impious coalition are growing throughout the whole world, as bad things come up most luxuriantly, evil ways creeping on daily." The Christian answers . "That our number increases daily, this is no imputation of error, but a testimony to praise. For in a good mode of life, its own persevere, aliens accrue to it."
Let us go on and on - Perseveringly, until we attain "to entreat the face of the Lord." It is not a Theism or Monotheism, but the God, who had revealed Himself to Israel, who, when our Lord came, was worshiped in Jerusalem, to which those invited say, "I too would go with thee." Yet not so, but the words seem to speak of that which is a special gift of the Gospel, continued progress, "forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, to press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us go on and on" Phi 3:13-14; whence it is a Christian proverb, , "not to go on is to go back." : "The whole life of a good Christian is a holy longing to make progress." "The one perfection of man is, to have found that he is not perfect." : "If thou sayest, It sufficeth, thou art lost." : "To be unwilling to increase, is to decrease."
Zechariah 8:23
zac 8:23
Ten men of all languages of the nations - Ten is the symbol of a whole, all the numbers before it meeting in it and starting again from it. The day of Pentecost was to be the reversal of the confusion of Babel; all were to have one voice, as God had said, "It (the time) shall come to gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see My glory" Isa 66:18.
They shall lay hold of the skirt of one man who is a Jew - Jerome: "That is, of the Lord and Saviour, of whom it is said, "A prince shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until He shall come, for whom it is laid up, and for Him shall the Gentiles wait" Gen 49:8-10; for "there shall be a rod of Jesse, and He who shall arise to rule over the Gentiles, to Him shall the Gentiles seek" Isa 11:10. And when they shall lay hold of Him, they shall desire to tread in His steps, since God is with Him. Or else, whosoever shall believe out of all nations, shall lay hold of a man who is a Jew, the Apostles who are from the Jews, and shall say, Let us go with you; for we have known through the prophets and from the voice of all the Scriptures, that the Son of God, Christ, God and Lord, is with you. Where there is a most manifest prophecy, and the coming of Christ and His Apostles and the faith of all nations is preached, let us seek for nothing more."
Cyril: "Christ turning our sorrow into joy and a feast and good days and gladness, and transferring lamentation into cheerfulness, the accession to the faith and union to God by sanctification in those called to salvation shall not henceforth be individually; but the cities shall exhort each other thereto, and all nations shall come in multitudes, the later ever calling out to those before them, "I too will go." For it is written, "iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a man the countenence of another" Pro 27:17. For the zeal of some is ever found to call forth others to fulfill what is good. But what is the aim proposed to the cities, that is, the Gentiles? "To entreat and to seek the face of the Lord," that is, Christ, who is the exact image of God the Father, and, as is written, "the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His Person" Heb 1:3, of whom also the divine David saith, "Shew Thy countenance to Thy servant" Psa 119:135.
For the Image and Countenance of God the Father hath shone upon us. Having Him propitious and kind, we lay aside the injury from sin, being justified through faith, "not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His great mercy" Tit 3:5. But how they shall come, he explains. By the ten men you are to understand time perfect number of those who come. For the number ten is the symbol of perfection. But that those of the Gentiles, who cleave to the holy Apostles, took in hand to go the same way with them, being justified by the faith in Christ, he sets evidently before us. For little children, if they would follow their fathers, lay hold of the hem of their dress, and, aided by the touch and hanging from their dress, walk steadily and safely. In like way, they too who "worshiped the creature rather than the Creator" Rom 1:25, choosing as their true fathers the bringers-in of the Gospel-doctrines, and joining themselves by like-mindedness to them, follow them, being still of childlike minds, and go the same way, ever showing themselves zealous followers of their life, and by continued progress advancing "to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" Eph 4:13.
But why do they follow them? Being persuaded that God is with them, that is, Emmanuel, God with us. But that this calling belongs not only to those of the blood of Israel but to all nations throughout the world, he indicated by saying, that those who laid hold of that hem should be of all languages. But when were the nations called to the knowledge of the truth, and when did they desire to seek the face of the Lord and to entreat it, and to go the same way, as it were, as the holy Apostles, except when the Only-Begotten came to us, who is "the expectations of the nations" Gen 49:10; to whom also the divine David singeth, "All the naions, whom Thou hast made, shall come and worship before Thee, O Lord?" Psa 86:9. For the multitude of the nations also is saved through Him."
The startling condescension of this passage is, that our Lord is spoken of as "a man, a Jew." Yet of His human Nature it is not only the simple truth, but essential to the truth. Pilate said to Him in scorn, "Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me" Joh 18:35. But it was essential to the fulfillment of God's promises. The Christ was to be "the Son of David" Mat 1:1; Mat 22:42. "Hath not the Scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the linen of Bethlehem, where David was?" Joh 7:42. David, "being a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, He would raise up Christ to sit on his throne Act 2:30; "Of this man's seed hath God, according to promise, raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus" Act 13:23. Whence Paul begins his great doctrinal Epistle with this contrast, "the Gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power" Rom 1:1-4. He was that "one Man among a thousand, whom Solomon says, I found; but a woman among all those have I not found" Ecc 7:28; the one in the whole human race. It was fulfilled in the very letter when "they brought to Him all that were diseased, and besought Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole" Mat 14:35-36. "The whole multitude sought to touch Him, for there went virtue out of Him and healed all" (Luk 6:19, add Luk 8:46; Mar 5:30).
Even the Jews saw the reference to the Messiah. : "All nations shall come, falling on their faces before the Messiah and the Israelites, saying, Grant, that we may be Thy servants and of Israel. For as relates to the doctrine and the knowledge of the law, the Gentiles shall be their servants, according to that, "In those days ten men etc.""
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 9
Zechariah 9:1
zac 9:1
The burden - o of the word of the Lord in (or, upon) the land of Hadrach The foreground of this prophecy is the course of the Victories of Alexander, which circled round the holy land without hurting it, and ended in the overthrow of the Persian empire. The surrender of Damascus followed first, immediately on his great victory at the Issus; then Sidon yielded itself and received its ruler from the conqueror, Tyre he utterly destroyed; Gaza, we know, perished; he passed harmless by Jerusalem. Samaria, on his return from Egypt, he chastised.
It is now certain that there was a city called Hadrach in the neighborhood of Damascus and Hamath, although its exact site is not known. "It was first found upon the geographical tablets among the Assyrian inscriptions." "In the catalogue of Syrian cities, tributary to Nineveh, (of which we have several copies in a more or less perfect state, and varying from each other, both in arrangement and extent) there are three names, which are uniformly grouped together and which we read Manatsuah, Magida (Megiddo) and Du'ar (Dor). As these names are associated with those of Samaria, Damascus, Arpad, Hamath, Carchemish, Hadrach, Zobah, there can be no doubt of the position of the cities" . In the Assyrian Canon, Hadrach is the object of three Assyrian expeditions , 9183 (b.c. 818), 9190 (811) and 9200 (801). The first of these follows upon one against Damascus, 9182 (817). In the wars of Tiglath-pileser II. (the Tiglath-pileser of Holy Scripture,) it has been twice deciphered;
(1) In the war b.c. 738, 737, after the mention of "the cities to Saua the mountain which is in Lebanon were divided, the land of Bahalzephon to Ammana" (Ammon), there follows Hadrach ; and subsequently there are mentioned as joined to the league, "19 districts of Hamath, and the cities which were round them, which are beside the sea of the setting sun."
(2) In his "War in Palestine and Arabia" , "the city of Hadrach to the land of Saua," and six other cities are enumerated, as "the cities beside the upper sea," which, he says, "I possessed, and six of my generals as governors over them I appointed." No other authority nearly approaches these times. The nearest authority is of the second century after our Lord, 116 a.d. : "R. Jose, born of a Damascene mother, said," answering R. Yehudah ben Elai, , "I call heaven and earth to witness upon me, that I am of Damascus, and that there is a place called Hadrach." Cyril of Alexandria says that "the land of Hadrach must be somewhere in the eastern parts, and near to Emath (now Epiphania of Antioch) a little further than Damascus, the metropolis of the Phoenicians and Palestine." A writer of the 10th century says that there was "a very beautiful mosque there, called the Mesjed-el-Khadra, and that the town was named from it." The conjecture that Hadrach might be the name of a king , or an idol , will now probably be abandoned, nor can the idea, (which before seemed the most probable and which was very old), that it was a symbolic name, hold any longer.
For the prophets do use symbolic names ; but then they are names which they themselves frame. Micah again selects several names of towns, now almost unknown and probably unimportant, in order to impress upon his people some meaning connected with them , but then he does himself so connect it. He does not name it (so to say), leaving it to explain itself. The name Hadrach would be a real name, used symbolically, without anything in the context to show that it is a symbol.
The cities, upon which the burden or heavy prophecy tell, possessed no interest for Israel. Damascus was no longer a hostile power; Hamath had ever been peaceable, and was far away; Tyre and Sidon did not now carry on a trade in Jewish captives. But the Jews knew from Daniel, that the empire, to which they were in subjection, would be overthrown by Greece Dan 8:20-21. When that rapid attack should come, it would be a great consolation to them to know, how they themselves would fare. It was a turning point in their history and the history of the then known world. The prophet describes (see below at Zac 9:8) the circuit, which the conqueror would take around the land which God defended; how the thunder-cloud circled round Judaea, broke irresistibly upon cities more powerful than Jerusalem, but was turned aside from the holy city "in going and returning," because God encamped around it.
"The selection of the places and of the whole line of country corresponds very exactly to the march of Alexander after the battle of Issus, when Damascus, which Darius had chosen as the strong depository of his wealth, of Persian women of rank, confidential officers and envoys, , was betrayed, but so opened its gates to his general, Parmenio. Zidon, a city renowned for its antiquity and its founders, surrendered freely; Tyre, here specially marked out, was taken after a 7 months' siege; Gaza too resisted for 5 months, was taken, and, as it was said, 'plucked up.'"
And Damascus shall be the rest thereof - God's judgment fell first upon Damascus. But the word "resting-place" is commonly used of quiet peaceful resting, especially as given by God to Israel; of the ark, the token of the Presence of God, after its manifold removals, and of the glorious dwelling-place of the Christ among people . The prophet seems then purposely to have chosen a word of large meaning, which should at once express (as he had before) Zac 6:8, that the word of God should fall heavily on Damascus and yet be its resting-place. Hence, about the time of our Lord, the Jews interpreted this of the coming of the Messiah, that "Jerusalem should reach to the gates of Damascus. Since Damascus shall be the place of His rest, but the place of His rest is only the house of the sanctuary, as it is said, "This is My rest for ever; here will I dwell." Another added, , "All the prophets and all prophesied but of the years of redemption and the days of the Messiah." Damascus, on the conversion of Paul, became the first resting-place of the word of God, the first-fruits of the Gentiles whom the Apostle of the Gentiles gathered from east to west throughout the world.
When (or For) the eyes of man - As (literally, and that is, especially beyond others) "of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord." This also implies a conversion of Gentiles, as well as Jews. For man, as contrasted with Israel, must be the pagan world, mankind . "The eyes of all must needs look in adoration to God, expecting all good from Him, because the Creator of all provided for the well-being of all, as the Apostle says, "Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Yea, of the Gentiles also" Rom 3:29. God's time of delivering His people is, when they pray to Him. So Jehoshaphat prayed, "O our God, wilt Thou not judge them? For we have no strength against this great company, which is come against us, and we know not what we shall do; but our eyes are on Thee" Ch2 20:12; and the Psalmist says, "The eyes of all wait toward Thee; and, "toward them that fear Him." Psa 33:18, or in Ezra's Chaldee, "The eye of their God was upon the elders of the Jews" Ezr 5:5., or, "the eyes of the Lord thy God are upon it" (the land), Deu 11:12; but there is no construction like "the Lord hath an eye on (obj.) man" (as 70: Jonathan, Syr.) The passages, "whose eyes are opened upon all the ways of the sons of men, to give etc." Jer 32:19, "his eyes behold the nations," are altogether different. "The eye of" must be construed as "his own eye.") "as the eyes of servants are unto the hand of their masters, add as the eyes of a maiden are unto the hand of her mistress, so our eyes are unto the Lord our God, until He have mercy upon us."
"For in those days," says a Jew, who represents the traditional interpretation, (Rashi), man shall look to his Creator, and his eyes shall look to the Blessed One, as it was said above, we will go with you, and they shall join themselves, they and their cities, to the cities of Israel." And another; (Kimchi), "In those days the eyes of all mankind shall be to the Lord, not to idols or images; therefore the land of Hadrach and Damascus, and the other places near the land of Israel - shall be included among the cities of Judah, and shall be in the faith of Israel."
Zechariah 9:2
zac 9:2
And Hamath also shall border thereby - o. Near to it in place and character, it shall share its subdual. After the betrayal of Damascus, Parmenio was set over all Syria. "The Syrians, not as yet tamed by the losses of war, despised the new empire, but, swiftly subdued, they did obediently what they were commanded."
And Zidon - Zidon, although probably older than Tyre , is here spoken of parenthetically, as subordinate. Perhaps, owing to its situation, it was a wealthy , rather than a strong place. Its name is "Fishing-town;" in Joshua, it is called "the great" Jos 11:8; Jos 19:28, perhaps the metropolis; while Tyre is named from its strength Jos 19:29. It infected Israel with its idolatry Jdg 10:6, and is mentioned among the nations who oppressed them and from whom God delivered them on their prayers Jdg 10:12, probably under Jabin. In the time of the Judges, it, not Tyre, was looked to for protection Jdg 18:7, Jdg 18:28. In the times of Ezekiel it had become subordinate, furnishing "rowers" Eze 27:8 to Tyre; but Esarhaddon, about 80 years before, boasts that he had taken it, destroyed its inhabitants, and re-populated it with people from the East, building a new city which he called by his own name . Tyre too had been taken by Nebuchadnezzar . At the restoration from the captivity, Sidon had the first place, Ezr 3:7, which it retained in the time of Xerxes . But Artaxerxes Ochus gained possession of it by treachery, when all Phoenicia revolted from Persia, and, besides those crucified, 40,000 of its inhabitants perished by their own hands , twenty years before the invasion of Alexander, to whom it submitted willingly .
The prophet having named Tyre and Zidon together, yet continues as to Tyre alone, as being alone of account in the days of which he is speaking, those of Alexander.
Although - Rather, "because she is very wise." Man's own wisdom is his foolishness and destruction, "as the foolishness of God" is his wisdom and salvation. God "taketh the wise in their own craftiness" Job 5:13. "For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" Co1 1:21. Of the Hagarenes it is said, they "seek wisdom upon earth; none of these know the way of wisdom, or remember her paths" (Baruch 3:23). The wisdom of Tyre was the source of her pride, and so of her destruction also. "Because thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man and not God, though thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God; behold thou art wiser them Daniel, there is no secret that they can hide from thee. Therefore I will bring strangers upon thee - they shall bring thee down to the pit" Eze 28:2, Eze 28:8. So of Edom Obadiah says, "The pride of thy heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock. Shall I not destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau?" Oba 1:3, Oba 1:8.
Zechariah 9:3
zac 9:3
And Tyre did build herself a stronghold - She built it for herself, not for God, and trusted to it, not to God, and so its strength brought her the greater fall. The words in Hebrew express yet more. "Tyre" (Zor) literally, "the rock," "built herself mazor, tower," a rock-like fort, as it were, a rock upon exceeding strength, binding her together. . "The walls, 150 feet high and of breadth proportionate, compacted of large stones, embedded in gypsum," seemed to defy an enemy who could only approach her by sea. "In order to make the wall twice as strong they built a second wall ten cubits broad, leaving a space between of five cubits, which they filled with stones and earth." Yet high walls do not fence in only; they also hem in. Mazor is both "a stronghold" and "a siege." Wealth and strength, without God, do but invite and embitter the spoiler and the conqueror."
And she heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets - "Though he heap up silver as the dust," Job says, "The King" Job 27:16, Solomon, "made silver in Jerusalem as stones" Ch2 9:27. Through her manifold commerce she gathered to herself wealth, as abundant as the mire and the dust, and as valueless. "Gold and silver," said a pagan, "are but red and white earth." Its strength was its destruction. Tyre determined to resist Alexander, , "trusting in the strength of the island, and the stores which they had laid up," the strength within and without, of which the prophet speaks.
Zechariah 9:4
zac 9:4
Behold - Such were the preparations of Tyre. Over against them, as it were, the prophet sets before our eyes the counsels of God. Theodoret: "Since they had severed themselves from the providence of God, they were now to experience His power." "The Lord will cast her out" , literally, deprive her of her possessions, give her an heir of what she had amassed, namely: the enemy; "and he will smite her power or wealth" , of which Ezekiel says, "With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures: by the greediness of thy wisdom and by thy traffic thou hast increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches" Eze 28:4-5. All wherein she relied, and so too the stronghold itself, God would smite in the sea. The sea was her confidence and boast. She said "I am a God; I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas" Eze 28:2.
The scene of her pride was to be that of her overthrow; the waves, which girt her round, should bury her ruins and wash over her site. Even in the sea the hand of God should find her, and smite her in it, and into it, and so that she should abide in it. "They mocked at the king, as though be thought to prevail against Neptune (the sea)." "Ye despise this land-army, through confidence in the place, that ye dwell in an island," was the message of Alexander, "but soon will I show you that ye dwell on a continent."
Every device had been put in force in its defense: the versatility by which the inhabitants of an island, some 2 12 miles in circumference, held at bay the conqueror of the battle of Issus with unlimited resources, , "engineers from Cyprus and all Phoenicia," and , "a fleet of 180 ships from Cyprus," attests the wisdom in which the prophet says, she would trust. "She had already a profusion of catapults and other machines useful in a siege, and easily prepared manifold others by the makers of war-engines and all sorts of artificers whom she had, and these invented new engines of all sorts; so that the whole circuit of the city was filled with engines." Divers who should loosen the mole; grappling hooks and nets to entangle near-assailants; melted metal or heated sand to penetrate between the joints of their armor; bags of sea-weed to deaden the blows of the battering machines; a fireship navigated so as to destroy the works of the enemy, while its sailors escaped; fiery arrows; wheels set in continual motion, to turn aside the missiles against them, , bear witness to an unwearied inventiveness of defense. The temporary failures might have shaken any mind but Alexander's (who is even said to have hesitated but that he dared not, by abandoning the enterprise, lose the prestige of victory. Yet all ended in the massacre of 6,000, 7,000, or 8,000 of her men, the crucifixion of 2,000, the sale of the rest, whether 13,000 or 30,000, into slavery . None escaped save those whom the Sidonians secreted in the vessels, , with which they had been compelled to serve against her.
And she herself - When her strength is overthrown, "shall be devoured with fire." : "Alexander, having slain all, save those who fled to the temples, ordered the houses to be set on fire."
Zechariah 9:5
zac 9:5
Ashkelon shall see and fear - The words express that to see and fear shall be as one. The mightiest and wealthiest, Tyre, having fallen, the neighbor cities of Philistia who had hoped that her might should be their stay, shall stand in fear and shame. Tyre, being a merchant-city, the mother-city of the cities of the African coast and in Spain, its desolation caused the more terror Isa 23:5-11.
And the - (a) king shall perish from Gaza - that is it shall have no more kings. It had been the policy of the world-empires to have tributary kings in the petty kingdoms which they conquered, thus providing lot their continued tranquil submission to themselves . The internal government remained as before: the people felt no difference, except as to the payment of the tribute. The policy is expressed by the title "king of kings," which they successively bore. Sennacherib speaks of the kings of Ascalon, Ekron and Gaza .
A contemperary of Alexander mentions, that the king of Gaza was brought alive to Alexander on its capture. Alexander's policy was essentially different from that of the world-monarchs before him. They desired only to hold an empire as wide as possible, leaving the native kings, if they could; and only, if these were intractable, placing their own lieutenants. Alexander's policy was to blend East and West into one. . These petty sovereignties, so many insulated centers of mutual repulsion, were essentially at variance with this plan, and so this remnant of sovereignty of 1,500 years was taken away by him, when, after a siege in which he himself was twice wounded, he took it. Alexander wholly depopulated it, and repeopled the city with strangers.
And Ashkelon shall not be inhabited - Ashkelon yielded at once to Jonathan, when he "camped against it" (1 Macc. 10:86), after he had taken and "burned Ashdod and the cities round about it." In another expedition of Jonathan its inhabitants "met him honorably," while "they of Gaza shut him out" at first (1 Macc. 11:60, 61). "Simon - passed through the country unto Ascalon, and the holds there adjoining," without resistance, whereas "he turned aside to Joppe, and won it" (1 Macc. 12:33). He placed Jews in Gaza, but of Ascalon nothing is said. The ruins of a Christian city, built on its site, "khirbet-Ascalon," have been lately discovered in the hills near Tell Zakariyeh, , and so, a little south of Timnath, a Philistine city in the days of Samson, whence Samson went to it, to gain the 30 changes of raiment Jdg 14:19. Commentators have assigned reasons, why Samson might have gone so far as the maritime Ascalon, whereas, in fact, he went to a city close by.
That city, in 536 a.d., had its Bishop . : "The site shows the remains of an early Christian Church or convent:" as a great lintel of stone , resembling somewhat the Maltese Cross, lies on the ground." It was probably destroyed by the inundation of Muslim conquest. In 1163 a.d. it was a ruin. The distance of the ruins from the Ascalon Maiumas corresponds to that assigned by Benjamin of Tudela, being twice the distance of that city from Ashdod ; but since he was at Beth Jibrin, he must have been not far from the spot where it has been recently discovered . The Ashkelon, which was Herod's birth-place and which he beautified, must have been the well-known city by the sea; since the distance from Jerusalem assigned by Josephus is too great for the old Ashkelon, and he speaks of it as on the sea .
Zechariah 9:6
zac 9:6
And a bastard shall dwell at Ashdod - o The "mamzer" was one born unlawfully, whether out of marriage, or in forbidden marriage, or in adultery . Here it is, probably, like our "spurious brood" ; whether it was so itself or in the eyes of the Ashdodites; whence he adds.
I will cut off the pride of the Philistines - Pride would survive the ruin of their country, the capture of their cities, the less of independence. It would not survive the loss of their nationality; for they themselves would not be the same people, who were proud of their long descent and their victories over Israel. The breaking down of nationalities, which was the policy of Alexander, was an instrument in God's hands in cutting off their pride.
Zechariah 9:7
zac 9:7
And I will take away his blood out of his mouth - The "abominations" being idol-sacrifices , the "bloods" will also be, the blood mingled with the wine of sacrifices, of which David says, "Their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer" Psa 16:4; and Ezekiel unites the offences, "Ye eat With the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood" Eze 33:25.
But he that remaineth - Better, "And he too" shall remain over to our God." Of the Philistines too, as of Israel, "a remnant shall be saved." After this visitation their idolatry should cease; God speaks of the Philistine nation as one man; He would wring his idol-sacrifices and idol-enjoyments from him; he should exist as a nation, but as God's.
And he shall be as a governor in Judah - Literally, "a captain of a thousand," merged in Judah as in a larger whole, as each tribe was divided into its "thousands," yet intimately blended, in no inferior position, with the people of God, as each converted nation became an integral yet unseparated whole in the people of God.
And Ekron as a Jebusite - Ekron was apparently the least important of the few remaining Philistine cities (see at Joe 1:8, vol. 1); yet he shall he, as those of the Canaanite nations who were not destroyed, nor fled, but in the very capital and center of Israel's worship, "dwelt with the children of Benjamin and Judah" Jos 15:63; Jdg 1:21, and were, as a type of the future conversion and absorption of the pagan, incorporatcd into Judah.
Zechariah 9:8
zac 9:8
And I will encamp about my house - (for my house's sake) because of the army "Because," it is added in explanation, "of him that passeth by and of him that returneth;" Alexander, who passed by with his army, on his way to Egypt, and "returned," having founded Alexandria.
It was a most eventful march; one of the most eventful in the history of mankind. The destruction of the Persian empire, for which it prepared, was in itself of little moment; Alexander's own empire was very brief. As Daniel had foretold, he came, cast down Persia "to the ground, waxed very great, and when he was strong, the great horn was broken" Dan 8:7-8. But with the marvelous perception which characterized him, he saw and impressed upon his successors the dependibleness of the Jewish people. When he came into Judaea, he sent to the high priest for aid against Tyre and for the like tribute as he used to pay to Darius, promising that he would not repent of choosing the friendship of the Macedonians . The high priest refused on the ground of the oath, by which his people were bound in fealty to the earthly king of kings, whom Alexander came to subdue.
Alexander threatened to teach all, through its fate, to whom fealty was due. This, after the conquest of Gaza, he prepared to fulfill. He came, he saw, he was conquered . Jaddua and his people prayed to God. Taught by God in a dream not to fear, he went to meet the conqueror. The gates of the city were thrown open. There marched out, not an army such as encountered the Romans, but as he had been taught, a multitude in white garments, and the priests going belove in their raiment of fine linen. The high priest, in his apparel of purple and gold, having on his head the mitre, and on it the golden plate , whereon was written the name of God, advanced alone, and the Conqueror, who was expected to give the city to be plundered, and the high priest to be insulted and slain, kissed the name of God, recognizing in the priest one whom lie had seen in the like dress in a dream, who had bidden him, when hesitating, cross to Asia; for that he would go before his army and deliver the Persian empire to him.
The result is related to have been, that Alexander promised to allow the Jews in Judea to live according to their own laws, remitted the tribute of every seventh year, acceded beforehand to the terms to be proposed by those in Babylonia and Media, and that many Jews joined his army, under condition that they might live under their own laws.
Rationalism, while it remains such, cannot admit of Daniel's prophecies which the high priest showed him, declaring that a Greek should destroy the Persian empire, which Alexander rightly interpreted of himself. But the facts remain; that the conqueror, who, above most, gave way to his anger, bestowed privileges almost incredible on a nation, which under the Medes and Persians had been "the most despised part of the enslaved;" made them equal in privileges to his own Macedonians , who could hardly brook the absorption of the Persians, although in inferior condition, among themselves .
The most despised of the enslaved became the most trusted of the trusted. They became a large portion of the second and third then known cities of the world. They became Alexandrians, Antiochenes, Ephesians , without ceasing to be Jews. The law commanded faithfulness to oaths, and they who despised their religion respected its fruits.
The immediate successors of Alexander, Ptolemy Lagi and Antiochus Nicator, followed his policy; Ptolemy especially on the ground of the fealty shown to Darius; Nicator, as having observed their faithfulness as soldiers, who had served with him ; but they were so enrolled on this visit to Jerusalem. The pagan kings multiplied, in their own purpose, faithful subjects to themselves; in God's design, they prepared in Asia and Egypt a seed-plot for the Gospel. The settlement of the Jews at Alexandria formed the language of the Gospel; that wonderful blending of the depth of the Hebrew with the clearness and precision of the Greek. Everywhere the seed of the preparatory dispensation was sown, to be fostered, grow and ripen with the harvest of the Gospel.
For now have I seen with Mine eyes - This is the counterpart of what the Psalmists and pious people so often pray, "Awake to help me and behold" Psa 59:4; "Look down from heaven, behold and visit this vine" Psa 80:14; Psa 9:13; "Look upon my trouble from them that hate me" "Look upon my affliction and my trouble; look upon my enemies, for they are many" Psa 25:18-19; "Look upon my adversity and deliver me" Psa 119:153; "O Lord, behold my affliction" (Lam 1:9, add 11; Lam 2:20); "Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress" Lam 1:20; "Look and behold my reproach" Lam 5:1; "Open Thine eyes, O Lord, and see" Isa 37:17; Dan 9:18; "Look clown from heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and glory" Isa 63:15. With God, compassion is so intrinsic an attribute, that He is pictured as looking away, when He does not put it forth. With God, to behold is to help.
Zechariah 9:9
zac 9:9
From the protection, which God promised to His people and to His House, the prophet passes on to Him who was ever in his thoughts, and for whose sake that people and temple were preserved. He had described the great conqueror of this world, sweeping along in his course of victory. In contrast with such as he, he now exhibits to his people the character and procession of their king. "Rejoice greatly." Not with this world's joy. God never exhorts man to "rejoice greatly" in this world's fleeting joys. He allows us to be glad, as children, before Him; He permits such buoyancy of heart, if innocent; but He does not command it. "Now" He commands His people to burst out into a jubilee of rejoicing: they were to dance and shout for gladness of spirit; "despising the poor exultation of this world and exulting with that exceeding" yet chaste joy, which befits the true bliss to be brought by their King and Saviour. Rup.: "This word, 'greatly,' means that there should be no measure whatever in their exultation; for the exultation of the children of the bridegroom is far unlike to the exultation of the children of this world." Cyril: "He biddeth the spiritual Zion rejoice, inasmuch as dejection was removed. For what cause of sorrow is there, when sin has been removed, death trampled under foot, and human nature called to the dignity of freedom, and crowned with the grace of adoption and illumined with the heavenly gift?"
Behold, thy king cometh unto thee - He does not say "a king," but "'thy' king;" thy king, thine own, the long-promised, the long-expected; He who, when they had kings of their own, given them by God, had been promised as "the" king ; "the righteous Ruler among men" Sa2 23:3, of the seed of David; He who, above all other kings, was "their" King and Savior; whose kingdom was to absorb in itself all kingdoms of the earth; "the King of kings, and Lord of lords." Her king was to come "to her." He was in a manner then "of her," and "not of her;" "of her," since He was to be "her king," "not of her," since He was to "come to her." As Man, He was born of her: as God, the Word made flesh, He "came to" her. "'To thee,' to be manifest unto thee; 'to be thine by communion of nature' Ti1 3:16; 'as He is thine, by the earnest of the Eternal Spirit and the gift of the Father, to procure thy good' Heb 2:14. 'Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given' Isa 9:6." Of this, His entry into Jerusalem was an image. But how should he come? "He shall come to thee," says an old Jewish writing, , "to atone thee; He shall come to thee, to upraise thee; He shall come to thee, to raise thee up to His temple, and to espouse thee with an everlasting espousal."
He is just and having salvation - Just or righteous, and the Fountain of justice or righteousness. For what He is, "that" He diffuseth. Righteousness which God "Is," and righteousness which God, made Man, imparts, are often blended in Holy Scripture. Isa 45:21; Isa 53:11; Jer 23:5-6; Jer 33:15-16; Mal 4:2. This is also the source of the exceeding joy. For the coming of their king in righteousness would be, to sinful man, a cause, not of joy but of fear. This was the source of the Angel's message of joy; "I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people; for unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour" Luk 2:10-11.
He is just - Dionysius: "Because in the Divine Nature, He is the Fountain of all holiness and justice." "As Thou art righteous Thyself, Thou orderest all things righteously. For Thy power is the beginning of righteousness" . According to the nature which He took, He was also most just; for He ever sought the glory of the Father, and "He did no sin, neither was guile found in His Mouth" Pe1 2:22. In the way also of justice He satisfied for people, delivering Himself for their faults to the pain of the most bitter death, to satisfy the honor of the Divine Majesty, so that sin should not remain unpunished. Hence, He saith of Himself; "He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him" Joh 7:18. Of whom also Stephen said to the Jews, "Your fathers slew them which showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers" Act 7:52.
Righteousness is an awful attribute of God. It is a glory and perfection of His Being, for the perfect to gaze on and adore. Mercy, issuing in our salvation, is the attribute which draws us sinners. And this lies in the promise that He should "come to them," however the one word נושׁע nôsha‛ be rendered . The meaning of such a prophecy as this is secure, independent of single words. The whole context implies, that He should come as a ruler and deliverer, whether the word נושׁע nôsha‛ signify "endued with salvation" (whereas the old versions rendered it, "Saviour"), or whether it be, "saved." For as He came, not for Himself but for us, so, in as far as He could be said to be saved, He was "saved," not for Himself but for us. Of our Lord, as Man, it is, in like way, said, "Thou shalt not leave His soul in Hell" Psa 16:10, or, "whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of it" Act 2:24.
As Man, He was raised from the dead; as God, He raised Himself from the dead, for our sakes, for whom He died. For us, He was born a Saviour; for us, He was endued with salvation; for us, He was saved from being held of death; in like way as, of His Human Nature, the Apostle says, "He was heard, in that He feared" Heb 5:7. To us, as sinners, it is happiest to hear of the Saviour; but the most literal meaning "saved" has its own proper comfort: for it implies the Sufferings, by which that salvation was procured, and so it contains a hint of the teaching by Isaiah, "He was taken from oppression and from judgment;" upon which that same wide reign follows, of which David, in his picture of the Passion Psa 22:27-28, and Isaiah Isa 53:10-12 prophesy. Osorius: "This 'saved' does not imply, that He obtained salvation for His own otherwise than from Himself. "Mine own arm," He saith in Isaiah, "brought salvation unto Me" Isa 63:5. But its Man, He obtained salvation from the indwelling Godhead. For when He destroyed the might of death, when, rising from the dead, He ascended into heaven, when He took on Him the everlasting kingdom of heaven and earth, He obtained salvation from the glory of the Father, that is, from His own Divinity, to impart it to all His. The Hebrew word then in no way diminishes the amplitude of His dignity. For we confess, that the Human Nature of Christ had that everlasting glory added to It from His Divine Nature, so that He should not only be Himself adorned with those everlasting gifts, but should became the cause of everlasting salvation to all who obey Him."
Lowly - Outward lowliness of condition, is, through the grace of God, the best fosterer of the inward. The word "lowly" wonderfully expresses the union of both; lowness of outward state with lowliness of soul. The Hebrew word expresses the condition of one, who is bowed down, brought low through oppression, affliction, desolation, poverty, persecution, bereavement; but only if at the same time, he had in him the fruit of all these, in lowliness of mind, submission to God, piety. Thus, our Lord pronounces the blessedness of "the poor" and "the poor in spirit," that is, poor in estate, who are poor in soul also. But in no case does it express lowliness of mind without lowness of condition. One lowly, who was not afflicted, would never be so called. The prophet then declares that their king should come to them in a poor condition, "stricken, smitten, and afflicted" Isa 53:4, and with the special grace of that condition, meekness, gentleness and lowliness of soul; and our Lord bids us, "Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart" Mat 11:29. Dionysius: "He saith of Himself in the Gospel, 'The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His Head' Mat 8:20. 'For though He was rich, He for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich' Co2 8:9."
Lowly and riding upon an ass - Kings of the earth ride in state. The days were long since by, when the sons of the judges rode on asses Jdg 10:4; Jdg 12:14. Even then the more distinguished rode on "white" (that is, roan) Jdg 5:10 asses. The mule, as a taller animal, was used by David Kg1 1:33, Kg1 1:38, Kg1 1:44 and his sons Sa2 13:29; Sa2 18:9, while asses were used for his household Sa2 16:2, and by Ziba, Shimei, Mephibosheth, Ahitophel, Sa2 16:1; Sa2 17:23; Sa2 19:26; Kg1 2:40, and, later, by the old prophet of Bethel Kg1 13:13, Kg1 13:23, Kg1 13:27. David had reserved horses for 100 chariots, Sa2 8:4, after the defeat of the Syrians, but he himself did not use them. Absalom employed "chariots and horses" Sa2 15:1 as part of his pomp, when preparing to displace his father; and Solomon multiplied them Kg1 4:26; Kg1 10:26; Ch2 1:14; Ch2 9:25. He speaks of it as an indignity or reverse; "I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking, as servants, upon the earth" Ecc 10:7.
The burial of an ass became a proverb for a disgraced end Jer 22:19. There is no instance in which a king rode on an ass, save He whose kingdom was not of this world. The prophecy, then, was framed to prepare the Jews to expect a prophet-king, not a king of this world. Their eyes were fixed on this passage. In the Talmud, in their traditional interpretations, and in their mystical books, they dwelt on these words. The mention of the ass, elsewhere, seemed to them typical of this ass, on which their Messiah should ride. "If a man in a dream seeth an ass," says the Talmud, "he shall see salvation." It is an instance of prophecy which, humanly speaking, a false Messiah could have fulfilled, but which, from its nature, none would fulfill, save the True. For "their" minds were set on earthly glory and worldly greatness: it would have been inconsistent with the claims of one, whose kingdom was of this world.
It belonged to the character of Him, who was buffeted, mocked, scourged, spit upon, crucified, died for us, and rose again. It was divine humiliation, which in the purpose of God, was to be compensated by divine power. In itself it would, if insulated, have been unmeaning. The Holy Spirit prophesied it, Jesus fulfilled it, to show the Jews, of what nature His kingdom was. Hence, the challenge; , "Let us look at the prophecy, that in words, and that in act. What is the prophecy? "Lo, thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and upon a colt;" not driving chariots as other kings, not in pomp nor attended by guards, but showing herein also all gentleness. Ask the Jew then, What king, riding on an ass, came to Jerusalem? He could name none, save this One alone." An ancient writer says, , "The Greeks too" (not the Jews only) "will laugh at us, saying, that 'The God of the Christians, who is called Christ, sat upon an ass.'" The same mockery was probably intended by Sapor king of Persia, which the Jews met with equal pride.
The taunt continues until now. : "It is not hid from you, O congregation of Christians, that 'rider upon an ass' indicates Christ." The Mohammedans appropriate the title "rider upon a camel" to Mohammad, as the grander animal . The taunt of worshiping "Him who sat upon an ass" was of the same class as those of the worship of the Crucified; , "one dead and crucified, who could not save himself;" "a crucified Man," "that great Man," or (if it suited them so to speak) "that great sophist who was crucified," but who now, for above 1800 years, reigns, "to all, the King; to all, the Judge; to all, Lord and God." "Christ did not only fulfill prophecies or plant the doctrines of truth, but did thereby also order our life for us, everywhere laying down for us rules of necessary use and, by all, correcting our life." Even Jews, having rejected our Lord, saw this. "Not from poverty," says one, (Kimchi), "for behold the whole world shall be in his power - but from humility he will ride upon an ass; and further to show that Israel (namely, the establishment of His kingdom or Church) shall not lack horse nor chariot: therefore it is added, "And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem." And another; , "He, that is, thy true king David, shall come to thee; and he mentions of his qualities that he shall be "righteous and נושׁע nôsha‛ , in his wars; but his salvation shall not be from strength of his wars, for he shall come "lowly" and "riding upon an ass." "And riding on an ass," this is not on account of his want, but to show that peace and truth shall be in his days; and therefore he says immediately, "And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem;" namely, that such shall be the peace and stillness in the world, that in Ephraim (that is, the tribes) and in Jerusalem (that is, the kingdom of Judah) they shall "trust" no more in horse and in rider, but "in the name of God." And because it is the way of princes and chiefs to take example from the life of their kings, and to do as they, therefore he saith, that when the king Messiah rideth upon an ass, and "has no pleasure in the strength of a horse," there will be no other in Jerusalem or the lands of the tribes, who will have pleasure in riding on a horse. And therefore he says, "And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem;" and he assigns the reason for this, when he says, "And the battlebow shall be cut off and he shall speak peace among the nations," that is, there shall be no more war in the world, because he shall "speak peace unto the nations, and by the word of his lips he shall dispose peace unto them." Isa 26:12.
And upon a colt, the foal of an ass - The word rendered "colt," as with us, signifies the young, as yet unbroken animal. In the fulfillment, our Lord directed His disciples to find "an ass tied, and a colt with her, whereon never man sat" Mat 21:2; Mar 11:2; Luk 19:30. The prophet foretold that He would ride on both animals; our Lord, by commanding both to be brought, showed that the prophet had a special meaning in naming both. Matthew relates that both were employed. "They brought the ass and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set Him thereon." The untrained colt, an appendage to its mother, was a yet humbler animal. But as the whole action was a picture of our Lord's humility and of the unearthliness of His kingdom, so, doubtless, His riding upon the two animals was a part of that picture. There was no need of two animals to bear our Lord for that short distance. John notices especially, "These things understood not His disciples at the first" Joh 12:16. The ass, an unclean stupid debased ignoble drudge, was in itself a picture of unregenerate man, a slave to his passions and to devils, toiling under the load of ever-increasing sin. But, of man, the Jew had been under the yoke and was broken; the Gentiles were the wild unbroken colt. Both were to be brought under obedience to Christ.
Zechariah 9:10
zac 9:10
And I will cut off the chariot - The horse is the symbol of worldly power, as the ass is of meekness. "Some," says the Psalmist, "put their trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God" Psa 20:7. "A horse is but a vain thing to save a man" Psa 33:17. "He delighteth not in the strength of a horse" Psa 147:10). In scarcely any place in Holy Scripture is the horse spoken of in relation to man, except as the instrument of war. It represents human might, which is either to be consecrated to the Lord, or destroyed by Him (see Mic 5:10). As the "stone, cut out without hands" Dan 2:34, broke in pieces and absorbed into itself all the kingdoms of the world, so here He, whose Kingdom should not be of this world, should supersede human might. His kingdom was to begin by doing away, among His followers, all, whereby human kingdoms are established. He first cuts off the chariot and the horse, not from His enemies, but from His own people; His people, not as a civil polity, but as the people of God. For the prophet speaks of them as Ephraim and Judah, but Ephraim had no longer a distinct existence.
And He shall speak peace unto the pagan - As the Apostle says, "He came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh" Eph 2:17. He shall speak it to them, as He who hath power to give it to them, peace with God, peace in themselves, the reconciliation of God and man, and the remission of their sins.
Osorius: "At His birth the heavenly host announced peace to men; all His doctrine has peace for its end; when His death was at hand, He especially commended peace to His disciples, that peace which the world knoweth not, which is contained in tranquility of mind, burning zeal for charity. Divine grace. This same peace He brought to all who gathered themselves to His empire and guidance, that, emerging from intestine wars and foul darkness, they might behold the light of liberty, and, in all wisdom keep the grace of God."
And His dominion shall be from sea to sea - The bounds of the promised land, in its utmost range, on the west, were the Mediterranean sea; on the east, "the great river," the Euphrates. The prophet pictures its extension, so as to embrace the whole world, taking away, first the one bound, then the other. "From sea to sea" is from the Mediterranean to the most extreme east, Where the Ocean encircles the continent of Asia; "from the river to the ends of the earth," is from the Euphrates to the most extreme west, embracing the whole of Europe; and whatever may lie beyond, to the ends of the earth, where earth ceaseth to be . It is this same lowly and afflicted king, whose entry into Jerusalem is on a despised animal, who shall, by His mere will, make war to cease, who shall, by His mere word, give peace to the pagan.
Zechariah 9:11
zac 9:11
As for thee also - The prophet turns from the deliverance of the whole world to the former people, the sorrows which they should have in the way, and the protection which God would bestow upon them for the sake of Him, who, according to the flesh, was to be born of them. "Thou too;" he had spoken of the glories of the Church, such as her king, when He should come, should extend it, embracing earth's remotest bounds: he turns to her, Israel after the flesh, and assures her of the continued protection of God, even in her lowest estate. The deliverance under the Maccabees was, as those under the judges had been, an image of the salvation of Christ and a preparation for it. They were martyrs for the One God and for the faith in the Resurrection, and, whether by doing or by suffering, preserved the sacred line, until Christ should come.
By the blood of thy covenant - Osorius: "Not by the blood of those victims of old, but by the blood of thy covenant, wilt thou be united to the empire of Christ, and so obtain salvation. As the Lord Himself says, This is the blood of covenant, which is shed for you." "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" Rom 11:29. That symbolic blood, by which, fore-signifying the New Covenant, He made them His own people, "Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words," Exo 24:8, endured still, amid all their unfaithfulness and breaches of it. By virtue of it God would send forth her imprisoned ones "out of the" deep, dry "pit," "the dungeon" wherein they could be kept securely, because life was not threatened (as in Gen 37:24). Out of any depth of hopeless misery, in which they seemed to be shut up, God would deliver them; as David says, "He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings" Psa 40:2; and Jeremiah, "They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. I called upon Thy Name, O Lord; out of the low dungeon Thou hast heard my voice" Lam 3:53, Lam 3:55-56. Augustine, de Civ. Dei. xviii. 35. 3): "The dry and barren depth of human misery, where are no streams of righteousness, but the mire of iniquity."
Zechariah 9:12
zac 9:12
Turn ye to the stronghold - that is, Almighty God; as the Psalmists so often say, "The Lord is the defense of my life" (Psa 27:1, add Psa 31:5; Psa 37:39; Psa 43:2; Psa 52:9); and Joel, "The Lord shall be a stronghold of the children, of Israel" ; and Nahum, "The Lord is a stronghold in the day of trouble" Nah 1:7; And, David said, "Thou hast been a shelter for me, a strong tower against the enemy" Psa 61:3; "the Name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe" Pro 18:10; and again, "Be Thou to me a rock of strength, a house of defense to save me - Bring me forth out of the net that they have laid privily for me; for Thou art my stronghold" . The "stronghold," "cut off" from all approach from an enemy, stands in contrast with the deep dungeon of calamity. The "return" must be a willing return, one in their own power; "return to the stronghold," which is Almighty God, must be by conversion of heart and will. Even a Jewish commentator Kimchi paraphrases, "Turn ye to God; for He is a stronghold and tower of strength."
Ye prisoners of - (the) hope Not, accordingly, any hope, or generally, "hope," but the special hope of Israel, "the hope" which sustained them in all those years of patient expectations, as Paul speaks of "the hope of Israel," for which he says, "I am bound with this chain" Act 28:20. "I stand to be judged for the hope of the promise made by God unto our fathers, unto which promise our twelve tribes, serving God instantly day and night, hope to come; for which hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews" Act 26:6-7. And in his Epistles, "the hope laid up for you in heaven" Col 1:5; "the hope of the Gospel" Col 1:23; and, "looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" Tit 2:13. He writes also of "keeping the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end" Heb 3:6; of "the full assurance of the hope unto the end" Heb 6:11; of "fleeing to lay hold on the hope set before us; which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast" Heb 6:18-19. He does not speak of hope as a grace or theological virtue, but, objectively, as the thing hoped for. So Zechariah calls to them as bound, held fast by "the hope," bound, as it were, to it and by it, so as not to let it go, amid the persecution of the world, or weariness of expectation; as Paul also says, "before faith came, we were guarded, kept in ward, under the law, shut up unto the faith which was about to be revealed" Gal 3:23.
Even to-day - Amid all contrary appearances, "do I declare, that I will render double unto thee;" as He had said by Isaiah, "For your shame ye shall have double" Isa 61:7.
Zechariah 9:13
zac 9:13
When - or For I have bent Judah for me As a mighty bow which is only drawn at full human strength, the foot being placed to steady it. It becomes a strong instrument, but only at God's Will. God Himself bends it. It cannot bend itself. "And filled the bow with Ephraim." The bow is filled, when the arrow is laid upon it. God would employ both in their different offices, as one. "And raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece." Let people place this prophecy where they will, nothing in the history of the world was more contradictory to what was in human sight possible. "Greece was, until Alexander, a colonizing, not a conquering, nation. The Hebrews had no human knowledge of the site or circumstances of Greece. There was not a little cloud, like a man's hand, when Zechariah thus absolutely foretold the conflict and its issue. Yet here we have a definite prophecy later than Daniel, fitting in with his temporal prophecy, expanding part of it, reaching on beyond the time of Antiochus, and fore-announcing the help of God in two definite ways of protection;
(1) "without war," against the army of Alexander Zac 9:1-8;
(2) "in the war" of the Maccabees; and these, two of the most critical periods in their history after the captivity Zech. 9-16.
Yet, being expansions of part of the prophecy of Daniel, the period, to which they belong, becomes clearer in the event by aid of the more comprehensive prophecies. They were two points in Daniel's larger prediction of the 3rd empire."
And I will make thee as the sword of a mighty man - The strength is still not their own. In the whole history of Israel, they had only once met in battle an army, of one of the world-empires and defeated it, at a time, when Asa's whole population which could bear arms were 580,000 (Ch2 14:8-10 ff), and he met Zerah the Ethiopian with his million of combatants, besides his 500 chariots, and defeated him. And this, in reliance on the "Lord his God, to whom he cried, Lord, it is nothing to Thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power; help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on Thee, and in Thy Name we go against this multitude" Ch2 14:11. Asa's words found an echo in Judas Maccabaeus (1 Macc. 3:16-19), when the "small company with him asked him, How shall we be able, being so few, to fight against so great a multitude and so strong?" "It is no hard matter," Judas answered, "for many to be shut up in the hands of a few, and with Heaven it is all one to deliver with a great multitude or a small company. For the victory of battle standeth not in the multitude of an host; but strength cometh from Heaven." But his armies were but a handful; 3,000, on three occasions (1 Macc. 4:6; 7:40; 9:5), on one of which they are reduced by fear to 800 (1 Macc. 9:6); 10,000 on two occasions (1 Macc. 4:29; 10:74); on another, two armies of 8,000 and 3,000, with a garrison, not trusted to fight in the open field (1 Macc. 5:17-20); on one, 20,000 (1 Macc. 16:4); once only 40,000, which Tryphon treacherously persuaded Jonathan to disperse ; these were the numbers with which, always against "great hosts," God gave the victory to the lion-hearted Judas and his brothers. But who except He, in whose hands are the hearts of people, could foresee that He, at that critical moment, would raise up that devoted family, or inspire that faith, through which they "out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens?" Heb 11:34.
Zechariah 9:14
zac 9:14
And the Lord shall be seen over them - o "He will reveal himself," protecting them. Cyril: "He says plainly, that the Lord God will be with them and will fight in serried array with them and will with them subdue those who resist them." It is as if he would say, "When they go forth and preach everywhere, the Lord shall work with them and confirm the word with signs following" Mar 16:20. "And His arrow shall go forth as the lightning." Habakkuk directly calls the lightnings the arrows of God: "at the light of Thine arrows they went" . Here it is probably of an invisible agency, and so compared to that awful symbol of His presence, the lightning.
And the Lord God shall blow with the trumpet - As their Commander, ordering their goings. The blowing of the trumpet by the priests in war was commanded, as a reminiscence of themselves before God, "If ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets, and ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies" Num 10:9. Abijah said, "God Himself is with us for our captain, and His priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you" Ch2 13:12.
And shall go with whirlwinds of the south - As being the most vehement and destructive. So Isaiah, "As whirlwinds in the south sweep by, He cometh from a desert, from a terrible land" Isa 21:1. Such smote the four corners of the house where Job's children were , and they perished.
Zechariah 9:15
zac 9:15
The Lord of hosts, shall defend them - As God says, "I will defend this city to save it, for Mine own sake and for My servant David's sake" . The word is used by Isaiah only before Zechariah, and of the protection of Almighty God. The image of the complete protection on all sides stands first in God's words to Abraham, "I am thy shield" Gen 15:1; David thence says to God, "Thou, O Lord, art a shield around me" (Psa 3:4, (Psa 3:3 in English)).
And they shall devour, and subdue - Or more probably (as in the margin), "shall tread on, the stones of the sling," as in the image of leviathan in Job, "The son of the bow will not make him flee; sling-stones are to him turned into stubble; clubs are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear" (Job 41:20-21 (28, 29 English)). Their enemies shall fall under them, as harmless and as of little account as the slingstones which have missed their aim, and lie as the road to be passed over. It is not expressed what they shall devour, and so the image is not carried out, but left indefinite, as destruction or absorption only; as in that, "thou shalt consume (literally, eat) all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee" Deu 7:16; and, "they are our bread" Num 14:9; and in that, "they shall devour (literally, eat) all the people round about" Zac 12:6, where the image is of fire, not of eating. The one thought seems to be, that their enemies should cease to be, so as to molest them any more, whether by ceasing to be their enemies or by ceasing to be. There is no comparison here, (as in Balaam) with the lion; or of eating flesh or drinking blood, which, apart from the image of the wild beast, would be intolerable to Israel, to whom the use of blood, even of animals, was so strictly forbidden. They should disappear, as completely as fuel before the fire, or food before the hungry. The fire was invigorated, not extinguished, by the multitude of the fuel: the multitude of the enemies but nerved and braced those, whom they sought to destroy.
And they shall be filled like bowls, like the corners of the altar - They shall be consecrated instruments of God; they shall not prevail for themselves, but for Him; they shall be hallowed like the bowls of the temple, from which the sacrificial blood is sprinkled on His altar, or "as the corners of the altar" which receive it.
Zechariah 9:16
zac 9:16
And the Lord their God shall save them in that day - Still all should be God's doing; they themselves were but as a flock, as sheep among wolves, ready for the slaughter; but they were "the flock, His people," as He says, "I will increase them like the flock, men, as the flock of holy things, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks, men" Eze 36:37-38. "As a man saves his flock with all his strength, so He will save His people; for they are His flock." As in, "Thou leddest Thy people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron" Psa 77:20.
They shall be as the stones of a crown - While God's enemies shall be trampled under foot, as a common thing which has failed its end, these shall be precious stones; a consecrated diadem of king or priest, "raised aloft," so that all can see. "On His land." It was laid down, as the title-deed to its whole tenure, "the land is Mine" Lev 25:23, and much more our Christian land, bought and purified by the blood of Christ.
Zechariah 9:17
zac 9:17
For how great is His goodness - For it is unutterable! As the Psalmist said, "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy Name in all the earth!" Psa 8:1, and Jacob, "How awful is this place!" Gen 28:17, and the Psalmist, "How awful are Thy doings!" The goodness and the beauty are the goodness and beauty of God, whose great doings had been his theme throughout before. Of the goodness the sacred writers often speak , since of this we have extremest need. And this He showed to Moses, "I will cause all My goodness to pass before thy face" Exo 33:19. Of this we know somewhat personally in this life; for beside the surpassing. amazingness of it in the work of our redemption, we are surrounded by it, immersed in it, as in a fathomless, shoreless ocean of infinite love, which finds entrance into our souls, whenever we bar it not out.
Goodness is that attribute of God, whereby He loveth to communicate to all, who can or will receive it, all good; yea, Himself , "who is the fullness and universality of good, Creator of all good, not in one way, not in one kind of goodness only, but absolutely, without beginning, without limit, without measure, save that whereby without measurement He possesseth and embraceth all excellence, all perfection, all blessedness, all good." This Good His Goodness bestoweth on all and each, according to the capacity of each to receive it, nor is there any limit to His giving, save His creature's capacity of receiving, which also is a good gift from Him. "From Him all things sweet derive their sweetness; all things fair, their beauty; all things bright, their splendor; all things that live, their life; all things sentient, their sense; all that move, their vigor; all intelligences, their knowledge; all things perfect, their perfection; all things in any wise good, their goodness."
The beauty of God - Belongs rather to the beatific vision. Yet David speaks of the Beauty of Christ, "Thou art exceeding fairer then the children of men" Psa 45:2; and Isaiah says, "Thine eyes shall behold the King in His beauty" Isa 33:17. But the Beauty of God "eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor can heart of man conceive." Here, on earth, created beauty can, at least when suddenly seen, hold the frame motionless, pierce the soul, glue the heart to it, entrance the affections. Light from heaven kindles into beauty our dullest material substances; the soul in grace diffuses beauty over the dullest human countenance; the soul, ere it has passed from the body, has been known to catch, through the half-opened portals, such brilliancy of light, that the eye even for some time after death has retained a brightness, beyond anything of earth . "The earth's form of beauty is a sort of voice of the dumb earth. Doth not, on considering the beauty of this universe, its very form answer thee with one voice, 'Not I made myself, but God?'" Poets have said:
"Old friends ... shall lovelier be,
As more of heaven in each we see,"
(Christian Year. Morning Hymn.)
Or,
"When he saw,
" - God within him light his face."
(Tennyson, In memoriam. T. has "The God.")
And Holy Scripture tells us that when Stephen, "full of faith and of the Holy Spirit," was about to speak of Jesus to the council which arraigned him, "all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel" Act 6:5, Act 6:15. It has been said, that if we could see a soul in grace, its beauty would so pierce us, that we should die. But the natural beauty of the soul transcends all corporeal beauty which so attracts us; the natural beauty of the last angel surpasseth all natural beauty of soul. If we could ascend from the most beautiful form, which the soul could here imagine, to the least glorious body of the beatified, on and on through the countless thousands of glorious bodies, compared wherewith heaven would be dark and the sun lose its shining; and yet more from the most beautiful deified soul, as visible here, to the beauty of the disembodied soul, whose image would scarce be recognized, because , "the bodily eyes gleamed with angelic radiancy;" yea, let the God-enlightened soul go on and on, through all those choirs of the heavenly hierarchies, clad with the raiment of Divinity, from choir to choir, from hierarchy to hierarchy, admiring the order and beauty and harmony of the house of God; yea, let it, aided by divine grace and light, ascend even higher, and reach the bound and term of all created beauty, yet it must know that the divine power and wisdom could create other creatures, far more perfect and beautiful than all which He hath hitherto created.
Nay, let the highest of all the Seraphs sum in one all the beauty by nature and grace and glory of all creatures, yet could it not be satisfied with that beauty, but must, because it was not satisfied with it, conceive some higher beauty. Were God immediately, at every moment to create that higher beauty at its wish, it could still conceive something beyond; for, not being God, its beauty could not satisfy its conception. So let him still, and in hundred thousand, hundred thousand, thousand years with swiftest flight of understanding multiply continually those degrees of beauty, so that each fresh degree should ever double that preceding, and the divine power should, with like swiftness, concur in creating that beauty, as in the beginning He said, "let there be light and there was light;" after all those millions of years, he would be again. at the beginning, and there would be no comparison between it and the divine beauty of Jesus Christ, God and Man. For it is the bliss of the finite not to reach the Infinite . That city of the blest which is lightened by the glory of God, and the Lamb is the light thereof, sees It, enabled by God, as created eye can see It, and is held fast to God in one jubilant exstacy of everlasting love.
"The prophet, borne out of himself by consideration of the divine goodness, stands amazed, while he contemplates the beauty and Deity of Christ: he bursts out with unaccustomed admiration! How great is His goodness, who, to guard His flock, shall come down on earth to lay down His life for the salvation of His sheep! How great His beauty, who is the ""brightnesss of the glory and the Image of the Father," and comprises in His Godhead the measure of all order and beauty! With what firm might does He strengthen, with what joy does He overwhelm the souls which gaze most frequently on His beauty, and gives largely and bountifully that corn, by whose strength the youths are made strong. He supplieth abundantly the wine, whereby the virgins, on fire with His love, are exhilarated and beautified. But both are necessary, that the strength of the strong should be upheld by the "bread from heaven," and that sound and uncorrupt minds, melted with the sweetness of love, should be recreated with wine, that is, the sweetness of the Holy Spirit, and be borne aloft with great joy, in the midst of extreme toils. For all who keep holily the faith of Christ, may be called "youths," for their unconquered strength, and virgins for their purity and integrity of soul. For all these that heavenly bread is prepared, that their strength be not weakened, and the wine is inpoured, that they be not only refreshed, but may live in utmost sweetness."
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 10
Zechariah 10:1
zac 10:1
Ask ye of the Lord rain - "Ask and ye shall receive" our Lord says. Zechariah had promised in God's name blessings temporal and spiritual: all was ready on God's part; only, he adds, ask them of the Lord, the Unchangeable, the Self-same not of Teraphim or of diviner, as Israel had done aforetime Isa. 2:5-22; Jer 44:15-28. He had promised, "If ye shall hearken diligently unto My coramandments, to love the Lord your God, I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, and I will send grass in thy field for thy cattle" Deu 11:13-15. God bids them ask Him to fulfill His promise. The "latter rain" alone is mentioned, as completing what God had begun by the former rain, filling the ears before the harvest. Both had been used as symbols of God's spiritual gifts, and so the words fit in with the close of the last chapter, both as to things temporal and eternal. Osorius: "He exhorts all frequently to ask for the dew of the divine grace, that what had sprung up in the heart from the seed of the word of God, might attain to full ripeness."
The Lord maketh bright clouds - (Rather) "lightnings, into rain," as Jeremiah says, "He causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; He maketh lightnings into rain" Jer 10:13; Jer 51:16; and the Psalmist, "He maketh lightnings into rain" Psa 135:7, disappearing as it were into the rain which follows on them. "And giveth them." While man is asking, God is answering. "Showers of rain" , "rain in torrents," as we should say, or "in floods," or, inverted, "floods of rain." "To every one grass," rather, "the green herb, in the field," as the Psalmist says, "He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and green herb for the service of men" (Psa 104:14, see also Gen 1:30; Gen 3:18). This He did with individual care, as each had need, or as should be best for each, as contrariwise He says in Amos, "I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city; one piece was rained upon, and the piece, whereon it rained not, withered" (Amo 4:7; see note).
The Rabbis observed these exceptions to God's general law, whereby He "sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" Matt. 5:49, though expressing it in their way hyperbolically; , "In the time when Israel doeth the will of God, He doeth their will; so that if one man alone, and not the others, wants rain, He will give rain to that one man; and if a man wants one herb alone in his field or garden, and not another, He will give rain to that one herb; as one of the saints used to say, This plot of ground wants rain, and that plot of ground wants not rain" (Cyril). Spiritually the rain is divine doctrine bedewing the mind and making it fruitful, as the rain doth the earth. So Moses saith, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb and as the showers upon the grass" Deu 32:2. Cyril: "The law of Moses and the prophets were the former rain."
Zechariah 10:2
zac 10:2
For the teraphim have spoken vanity - Rather, "spake vanity." He appeals to their former experience. Their father had sought of idols, not of God; therefore they went into captivity. The "teraphim" were used as instruments of divination. They are united with the "ephod," as forbidden, over against the allowed, means of enquiry as to the future, in Hosea, "without an ephod and without teraphim" Hos 3:4; they were united in the mingled worship of Micah Jdg 17:5; Jdg 18:14, Jdg 18:17-18, Jdg 18:20; Josiah "put" them "away" together with the "workers with familiar spirits and the wizards" Kg2 23:24, to which are added, "the idols." It was probably, a superstition of Eastern origin. Rachel brought them with her from her father's house, and Nebuchadnezzar used them for divination. Eze 21:21. Samuel speaks of them, apparently, as things which Saul himself condemned. "Rebellion is as the sin of divination, and stubbornness as iniquity or idolatry, and teraphim" Sa1 15:23. For it was probably in those his better days, that "Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits and wizards out of the land" Sa1 28:3. Samuel then seems to tell him, that the sins to which he clave were as evil as those which he had, in an outward zeal, like Jehu, condemned. Anyhow, the "teraphim" stand united with the "divination" which was expressly condemned by the law Deu 18:13-14. The use of the teraphim by Rachel Gen 31:19, Gen 31:34-35 and Michal Sa1 19:13, Sa1 19:16 (for whatever purpose) implies that it was some less offensive form of false worship, though they were probably the "strange gods" Gen 35:2, Gen 35:4 which Jacob bade his household to put away, or, anyhow, among them, since Laban calls them, "my gods" Gen 31:30, Gen 31:32.
Zechariah uses anew the words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, "Hearken ye not to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers" Jer 27:9; and, "let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams, which ye cause to be dreamed" Jer 29:8; and Ezekiel, "While they see vanity unto thee, while they divine a lie unto thee" (Eze 21:29; add Eze 22:28). The words not only joined on the prophet's warning with the past, but reminded them of the sentence which followed on their neglect. The echo of the words of the former prophets came to them, floating, as it were, over the ruins of the former temple.
Therefore they went their way as a flock - Which, having no shepherd, or only such as would mislead them, removed, but into captivity. "They were troubled." The trouble lasted on, though the captivity ended at the appointed time. Nehemiah speaks of the exactions of former governors, "The former governors which were before me, laid heavy weights upon the people, and took from them in bread and wine, after forty shekels of silver; also their servants used dominion over the people; and I did not so, because of the fear of God" Neh 5:15.
Because there was no shepherd - As Ezekiel said of those times, "They were scattered, because there is no shepherd; and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered: My flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth; and none did search or seek after them" Eze 34:5-6.
Zechariah 10:3
zac 10:3
Mine anger was kindled against the shepherds - As Ezekiel continued, "Thus saith the Lord God; Behold I am against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand" Eze 34:10.
I punished the he-goats - The evil powerful are called the "he-goats of the earth: Isa 14:9; and in Ezekiel God says, "I will judge between cattle and cattle, between rams and he-goats" Eze 34:17; and our Lord speaks of the reprobate as goats, the saved as sheep Mat 25:32. God "visited upon these in His displeasure, "because" He "visited His flock, the people of Judah," to see to their needs and to relieve them.
And hath made them as the goodly horse - As, before, He said, "I made thee as the sword of a mighty man" Zac 9:13 Judah's might was not in himself; but, in God's hands, he had might like and above the might of this world; he was fearless, resistless; as Paul says, "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds" Co2 10:4.
Zechariah 10:4
zac 10:4
Out of him came forth - Or rather, "From him is the corner," as Jeremiah, "Their nobles shall be from themselves, and their governor shall go forth from the midst of them" Jer 30:21. Her strength, though given by God, was to be inherent in her, though from her too was to come He who was to be "the head-corned-stone," the sure Foundation and Crowner of the whole building.
From thee the nail - An emblem of fixedness in itself, (as Isaiah says, "I will fasten him a nail to a sure place" Isa 22:23) and of security given to others dependent on Him, as Isaiah says further, "And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, from the vessels of cups to the vessels of flagons" Isa 22:24; all, of much or little account, the least and the greatest. Osorius: "Christ is the cornerstone; Christ is the nail fixed in the wall, whereby all vessels are supported. The word of Christ is the bow, whence the arrows rend the king's enemies."
From it every exactor shall go forth together - God had promised Zac 9:8 that no "oppressor," or "exactor Isa 14:2, shall pass through them anymore." He seems to repeat it here. "From thee shall go forth every oppressor together; go forth," not to return: as lsaiah had said, "Thy children shall make haste to return; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee" Isa 49:17. "From it, its cornerstone; from it, the sure nail; from it, the battle bow; from it," he no longer unites closely with it, that which should be from it, or of it, but - "from it shall go forth every oppressor together;" one and all, as we say; a confused pele-mele body, as Isaiah, "all that are found of thee are bound together" Isa 22:3; "together shall they all perish" Isa 31:3; or, in separate clauses, "they are all of them put to shame; together they shall go into confusion" Isa 45:16.
Zechariah 10:5
zac 10:5
And they - (the house of Judah , of whom he had said, He hath made them as the goodly horse in the battle) shall be as mighty men, trampling on the mire of the streets Micah had said, "she shall be a trampling, as the mire of the streets" Mic 7:10, and David, "I did stamp them as the mire of the street" Sa2 22:43. Zechariah, by a yet bolder image, pictures those trampled upon, as what they had become, "the mire of the streets," as worthless, as foul; as he had said, "they shall trample on the sling-stones" Zac 9:15. And they shall fight, because the Lord is with them, not in their own strength, he still reminds them; they shall have power, because God empowers them; strength, because God strengthens them : in presence of which, the goodly war-horse of God, human strength, "the riders on horses, shall be ashamed."
Zechariah 10:6
zac 10:6
I will bring them again to place them - Zechariah seems to have condensed into one word two of Jeremiah, "I will bring them again" unto this place, and "I will cause them to dwell" safely Jer 32:37. Kimchi. It is not a confusion of forms, but the blending of two words into one. So also Ibn Ezra): "The two ideas are here both implied, he will cause them to return to their land, and will cause them to dwell there in peace and security."
For I will have mercy upon them - Dionysius: "For the goodness and lovingkindness of God, not any merits of our's, is the first and principal cause of our whole salvation and grace. Therefore the Psalmist says, 'neither did their own arm save them; but Thy right hand and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favor unto them' Psa 44:3."
And they shall be, as though I had not cast them off - (Etymologically, "loathed," "cast off as a thing abhorrent" .) God is ever "the God of the present." He does not half-forgive. "Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more" Heb 8:12. God casts off the sinner, as being what he is, a thing abhorrent, as penitence confesses of itself that it is "a dead dog, a loathsome worm, a putrid corpse." God will not clothe with a righteousness, which He does not impart. He restores to the penitent all his lost graces, as though he had never forfeited them, and cumulates them with the fresh grace whereby He converts him (see vol. i. on Joe 2:25, pp. 192, 193). It is an entire re-creation. "They shall be, as though I had not cast them off." "I will settle you as in your old estates, and will do good, more than at your beginnings, and ye shall know that I am the Lord" Eze 36:11.
For I am the Lord their God, and will hear them - As He says by Malchi, "I am the Lord; I change not" Mal 3:6. His unchangeableness belongs to His Being; "I Am; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed;" and by Hosea, "The Lord of hosts, The Lord is His memorial, therefore turn thou to thy God" (Hos 12:5-6, (6, 7 Heb.) See vol. i. pp. 119, 120). Because God was "their God," and as surely as He was "their God," He would hear them. His Being was the pledge of His hearing. "I, the Lord, will hear them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them" Isa 41:17.
Zechariah 10:7
zac 10:7
And Ephraim, they shall be like a mighty man - Prophecy, through the rest of the chapter, turns to Ephraim, which had not yet been restored. With regard to them, human victory retires out of sight, though doubtless, when their wide prison was broken at the destruction of the Persian empire, many were free to return to their native country, as others spread over the West in Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, and so some may have taken part in the victories of the Maccabees. Yet not victory, but strength, gladness beyond natural g adness, as through wine, whereby the mind is exhilarated above itself; and that, lasting, transmitted to their children, large increase, holy life in God, are the outlines of the promise.
Their heart shall rejoice in the Lord - Psa 44:3 : "As the principal object, the first, highest, most worthy Giver of all good, to whom is to be referred all gladness, which is conceived from created goods, that 'whose glorieth may glory in the Lord' Co2 10:17, in whom alone the rational creature ought to take delight."
Zechariah 10:8
zac 10:8
I will hiss for them - Formerly God had so spoken of His summoning the enemies of His people to chastise them. "It shall be in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly, that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria, and they shall come, and shall rest all of them in. the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns and upon all bushes" Isa 7:18-19. "He will hiss unto them from the ends of the earth, and behold they shall come with speed swiftly; none shall be weary or stumble among them" . He would gather them, like the countless numbers of the insect creation, which, if united, would irresistibly desolate life. He would summon them, as the bee-owner, by his shrill call, summons and unites his own swarm. Now, contrariwise God would summon with the same His own people. The fulfillment of the chastisement was the earnest of the ease of the fulfillment of the mercy.
For I have redeemed them - Then they are His, being redeemed at so dear a price. Dionysius: "For Christ, as far as in Him lay, redeemed all." God had done this in purpose, as John speaks of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" Rev 13:8.
And they shall increase as they increased - Kimchi: "As they increased in Egypt, so shall they increase at that time." The marvels of God's favor in Egypt shall be repeated. The increase there had been promised beforehand. "Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation" Gen 46:3. The fulfillment is recorded, "the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them" Exo 1:7. God appointed that this should be part of their confession at their yearly prosperity, the offering of the basket of first-fruits; "A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went into Egypt and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous" Deu 26:5. The Psalmist dwelt upon it. "He increased His people greatly, and made them stronger than their enemies" Psa 105:24. It became then one of the resemblances between the first deliverance and the last. Dionysius: "For the Apostles and others converted from Judaism, had more spiritual children, all those whom they begat in Christ, than the synagogue ever had after the flesh."
Zechariah 10:9
zac 10:9
And I will sow them among the nations - Such had been the prophecy of Hosea; "I will sow her unto Me in the earth," as the prelude of spiritual mercies, "and I will have mercy on her that had not obtained mercy, and I will say to not-my-people, Thou art My people, and they shall say, my God" . Hosea's saying, "I will sow her in the earth" that is, the whole earth and that "to Me," corresponds to, and explains Zechariah's brief saying, "I will sow them among the nations." The sowing, which was future to Hosea, had begun; but the purpose of the sowing, the harvest, was wholly to come; when it should be seen, that they were indeed sown by God, that "great" should "be the day of Jezreel" (Hos 1:11. See vol. i. p. 25). And Jeremiah said, "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah, with the seed of man and with the seed of beast" Jer 31:27. The word is used of sowing to multiply, never of mere scattering .
And they shall remember Me in far countries - So Ezekiel had said, "And they that escape of you shall remember Me among the nations, whither they shall be carried captive - and they shall loath themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations, and they shall know that I am the Lord" Eze 6:9.
And shall live - As Ezekiel again says, "Ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up out of your graves, O My people, and shall put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live" Eze 37:13-14. "With their children." A continuous gift, as Ezekiel, "they and their children, and their children's children forever: and My servant David shall be their prince forever." Eze 37:25.
And turn again - To God, being converted, as Jeremiah had been bidden to exhort them; "Go and proclaim these words toward the north" Jer 3:12, the cities of the Medes whither they were carried captive, "and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, and I will not cause Mine anger to fall upon you;" "Turn, O backsliding children - and I with take you, one of a city, and two of a family, and will bring you to Zion, and I will give you pastors according to Mine heart" Jer 3:14-15. "Return, ye backsliding children; I will heal your backslidings." And they answer, "Behold, we come unto Thee; for Thou art the Lord our God" Jer 3:22. So Isaiah had said, "A remnant shall return, the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God" . Dionysius: "They shall return by recollection of mind and adunation and simplification of the affections toward God so as ultimately to intend that one thing, which alone is necessary."
Zechariah 10:10
zac 10:10
I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt - Individuals had fled to Egypt ; but here probably Egypt and Assyria stand, as of old, for the two great conflicting empires, between which Israel lay, at whose hands she had suffered, and who represent the countries which lay beyond them. Hosea unites (Hos 11:10-11; Isa 11:15-16; add Isa 19:23-25; Isa 27:13; Isa 52:4; Mic 7:12. See ab. p. 96), "the West, Assyria, Egypt," the three then known divisions of the world, Europe, Asia, Africa (see at Hos 11:11, vol. i., p. 115). Asshur, after Nineveh perished, stands clearly for the world-empire of the East at Babylon , and then in Persia Ezr 6:22. Balaam includes under Asshur, first Babylon, then the third world-empire (Num 24:22-24; coll. Dan 11:30).
Babylon, which was first subject to Nineveh, then subjected it, was at a later period known to Greek writers (who probably had their information from Persian sources) as part of Assyria .
And I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon - Their old dwellings, east and west of Jordan. "And place shall not be found for them, as Isaiah says, "The children of thy bereaved estate shall yet say in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place, that I may dwell" Isa 49:20.
Zechariah 10:11
zac 10:11
And He - that is, Almighty God, shall pass through the sea, affliction As He says, "When thou walkest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not oveflow thee. And shall smite the waves in the sea" Isa 43:2, as in Isaiah, "The Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea" Isa 11:15. The image is from the deliverance of Egypt: yet it is said, that it should not be any exact repetition of the miracles of Egypt; it would be as the Red Sea Exo 14:10, Exo 14:12, which would as effectually shut them in, and in presence of which they might again think themselves lost, through which God would again bring them. But it would not be the Red sea itself; for "the sea" through which they should be brought, would be "affliction;" as our own poet speaks of "taking arms against a sea of troubles." Cyril: "The promise of succor to those who believe in Christ is under the likeness of the things given to those of old; for as Israel was conveyed across the Red sea, braving the waves in it; "for the waters stood upright as an heap" Exo 15:8, God bringing this to pass marvelously; and as "they passed the Jordan on foot" Jos 3:17; so he says, those who are called through Moses to the knowledge of Christ, and have been saved by the ministries of the holy Apostles, they shall pass the waves of this present life, like an angrily foaming sea, and, being removed from the tumult of this life, shall, undisturbed, worship the true God. And they shall pass through temptations, like sweeping rivers, saying with great joy, in like way, "Unless the Lord had been for us, may Israel now say, the waters had drowned us, the stream had gone over our souls" Psa 124:1-5.
He shall smite the waves in the sea. There, where the strength of the powers of this world is put forth against His people, there He will bring it down. "All the deeps of the river," that is, of the Nile ,
"Shall be dried up." The Nile as a mighty river is substituted for the Jordan, symbolizing the greater putting forth of God's power in the times to come.
And the pride of Asshur shall be brought down - Ribera: "When the good receive their reward, then their enemies shall have no power over them, but shall be punished by Me, because they injured My elect. - By the Assyrians and Egyptians he understands all their enemies."
Zechariah 10:12
zac 10:12
I will strengthen them in the Lord - As our Lord said to Paul, "My strength is made perfect in weakness," and Paul said in turn, "When I am weak, then am I strong. And in His Name shall they walk up and down," have their whole conversation (Dionysius), "in Him according to His will, and diligent in all things to speak and act in ills grace and divine hope." Jerome: "Christians walk in the Name of Christ, and there is written on the new white stone given to them a "new name" Rev 2:17, and under the dignity of a name so great, they walk with God, as "Enoch walked and pleased God and was translated" Gen 5:24.
Saith the Lord - Dionysius: "Again the Lord God speaks of the Lord God, as of Another, hinting the plurality of Persons in the Godhead."
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 11
Zechariah
zac 11:0
Rup.: "'All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth,' saith the Psalmist Psa 25:11, and, 'I will sing to Thee of mercy and judgment' Psa 101:1. So is this prophecy divided. Above , almost all were promises of mercy, which are now fulfilled in deed; and from this, "Open, O Lebanon, thy doors" , all are terrible edicts of truth and tokens of just judgment. How much sweetness and softness and pleasantness is therein, "Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion: shout, O daughter of Jerusalem;" what bitterness and acerbity and calamity to those, to whom he says, "Open, O Lebanon, thy doors, that the fire may devour thy cedars; howl, O fir tree; howl, O ye oaks of Basan." As then, before, we beheld His mercy in those who believed and believe; so now let us contemplate His just judgment on those who believed not." Gilead and Lebanon Zac 10:10 had been named as the restored home of Ephraim; but there remained a dark side of the picture, which the prophet suddenly presents, with the names of those self-same lands, "Open thy doors, O Lebanon; howl, O ye oaks of Basan" Zac 11:1-2.
Zechariah 11:1
zac 11:1
Open thy doors, O Lebanon - Lebanon, whose cedars had stood, its glory, for centuries, yet could offer no resistance to him who felled them and were carried off to adorn the palaces of its conquerors (see above at Zep 2:14, and note 2. p. 276), was in Isaiah Isa 14:8; Isa 37:24 and Jeremiah Jer 22:6-7 the emblem of the glory of the Jewish state; and in Ezekiel, of Jerusalem, as the prophet himself explains it Eze 17:3, Eze 17:12; glorious, beauteous, inaccessible, so long as it was defended by God; a ready prey, when abandoned by Him. The center and source of her strength was the worship of God; and so Lebanon has of old been understood to be the temple, which was built with cedars of Lebanon, towering aloft upon a strong. summit; the spiritual glory and the eminence of Jerusalem, as Lebanon was of the whole country, and , "to strangers who came to it, it appeared from afar like a mountain full of snow; for, where it was not gilded, it was exceeding white, being built of marble." But at the time of destruction it was "a den of thieves" Mat 21:13, as Lebanon, amidst its beauty, was of wild beasts.
Rup.: "I suppose Lebanon itself, that is, "the temple," felt the command of the prophet's words, since, as its destruction approached, its doors opened without the hand of man. Josephus relates how , "at the passover, the eastern gate of the inner temple, being of brass and very firm, and with difficulty shut at eventide by twenty men; moreover with bars strengthened with iron, and having very deep bolts, which went down into the threshold, itself of one stone, was seen at six o'clock at night to open of its own accord. The guards of the temple running told it to the officer, and he, going up, with difficulty closed it. This the uninstructed thought a very favorable sign, that God opened to them the gate of all goods. But those taught in the divine words, understood that the safety of the temple was removed of itself, and that the gate opened."
A saying of this sort is still exstant. : "Our fathers have handed down, forty years before the destruction of the house, the lot of the Lord did not come up on the right hand, and the tongue of splendor did not become white, nor did the light from the evening burn, and the doors of the temple opened of their own accord, until Rabbi Johanan ben Zaccai rebuked them, and said, 'O temple, why dost thou affright thyself? I know of thee that thy end is to be destroyed, and of this Zechariah prophesied, "Open thy doors, O Lebanon, and let the fire devour thy cedars.'" The "forty years" mentioned in this tradition carry back the event exactly to the Death of Christ, the temple having been burned 73 a.d. . Josephus adds that they opened at the passover, the season of His Crucifixion. On the other hand, the shutting of the gates of the temple, when they had "seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple" Act 21:30, seems miraculous and significant, that, having thus violently refused the preaching of the Gospel, and cast Paul out, they themselves were also shut out, denoting that an entrance was afterward to be refused them.
And let afire devour thy cedars - Jerusalem, or the temple, were, after those times, burned by the Romans only. The destruction of pride, opposed to Christ, was prophesied by Isaiah in connection with His Coming Isa 10:34; Isa 11:1.
Zechariah 11:2
zac 11:2
Howl, O cypress, for the cedar is fallen - Jerusalem or the temple having been likened to Lebanon and its cedars, the prophet carries on the image, speaking of the priests princes and people, under the title of firs, cypresses and oaks, trees inferior, but magnificent. He shows that it is imagery, by ascribing to them the feelings of people. The more glorious and stately, "the cedars," were destroyed. Woe then to the rest, "the cypress;" as our Lord says, "If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done, in the dry?" Luk 23:31, and Peter, "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" Pe1 4:18.
For the defensed forest is come down - That which was closed and inaccessible to the enemy. All which was high and lifted up was brought low, "came down," even to the ground .
Zechariah 11:3
zac 11:3
A voice of the howling of the shepherds, for their glory is spoiled - It echoes on from Jeremiah before the captivity, "Howl, ye shepherds - A voice of the cry of the shepherds. and an howling of the principal of the flock; for the Lord hath spoiled their pasture" Jer 25:34, Jer 25:36. There is one chorus of desolation, the mighty and the lowly; the shepherds and the young lions; what is at other times opposed is joined in one wailing. "The pride of Jordan" are the stately oaks on its banks, which shroud it from sight, until you reach its edges, and which, after the captivity of the ten tribes, became the haunt of lions and their chief abode in Palestine, "on account of the burning heat, and the nearness of the desert, and the breadth of the vast solitude and jungles" (Jerome). See Jer 49:19; Jer 50:44; Kg2 17:25. The lion lingered there even to the close of the 12th cent. Phocas in Reland Palaest. i. 274. Cyril says in the present, "there are very many lions there, roaring horribly and striking fear into the inhabitants").
Zechariah 11:4
zac 11:4
Thus saith the Lord my God, Feed the flock of the slaughter - The fulfillment of the whole prophecy shows, that the person addressed is the prophet, not in, or for himself, but (as belongs to symbolic prophecy) as representing Another, our Lord. It is addressed, in the first instance, to Zechariah. For Zechariah is bidden, "take unto thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd" Zac 11:15, in words addressed to himself, personally; "And the Lord said unto me." But he who was to represent the foolish shepherd, had represented the True Shepherd, since it is said to him, "Take unto thee yet." But He, the Shepherd addressed, who does the acts commanded, speaks with the authority of God. He says, "I cut off three shepherds in one month" Zac 11:8; "I broke My covenant which I had made with all the peoples" Zac 11:10; "the poor of the flock waited upon Me" Zac 11:11; "I cut asunder Mine other staff, Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel" Zac 11:14. But in Zechariah's time, no three shepherds were cut off, the covenant made by God was not broken on His part, there was no such visible distinction between those who waited on God, and those who, outwardly too, rejected Him.
Feed the flock of the slaughter - Those who were, even before the end, slain by their evil shepherds whom they followed, and who in the end would be given to the slaughter, as the Psalmist says, "we are counted as sheep for the slaughter" Psa 44:22, because they would not hear the voice of the True Shepherd, and were not His sheep. They were already, by God's judgment, a prey to evil shepherds; and would be so yet more hereafter. As a whole then, they were "sheep of the slaughter." It is a last Charge given to feed them. As our Lord says, "Last of all, He sent unto them His Son, saying, They will reverence My Son" Mat 21:37. This failing, nothing remained but that the flock would be given up, as they themselves say, "He will miserably destroy those wicked people, and will let out His vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render Him the fruits in their seasons" Mat 21:41, that is, our Lord explains it, "The kingdom of heaven shall be taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. Yet a remnant should be saved" Mat 21:43, for whose sake the larger flock was still to be fed: and, as our Lord, as Man, wept over Jerusalem, whose sentence He pronounced, so He still feeds those who would not turn to Him that they might be saved, and who would in the end be "a flock of slaughter," "Death their shepherd" Psa 49:14, since they chose death rather than Life.
Zechariah 11:5
zac 11:5
Whose possessors - (buyers) slay them and hold themselves not guilty, rather, are not guilty either in their own eyes, or in the sight of God, since He gave them up and would no more avenge them. They contract no guilt. Aforetime God said; "Israel was holiness to the Lord, the first-fruits of His increase; all that devour him shall be guilty: evil shall come upon them, saith the Lord" Jer 2:3. Now God reversed this, as He said by the same prophet, "My people hath been lost sheep; their shepherds have caused them to go astray; they have turned them away on the mountains; all that found them have devoured them; and their adversaries say, We are not guilty, because they have sinned against the Lord, the habitation of justice, yea, the hope of their fathers, the Lord" Jer 50:6-7. The offence of injuring Israel was that they were God's people: when He cast them forth, they who chastened them were His servants Jer 25:9; Jer 27:6; Jer 43:10, His instruments, and offended only when through pride they knew not in whose hands they themselves were Isa 10:7; Hab 1:11, or through cruelty exceeded their office Isa 47:6; Zac 1:18, and so they became guilty.
And they that sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich - Even Sennacherib felt himself in part, or thought best to own himself, to be an instrument in God's hand Isa 36:10. But Titus when he "entered Jerusalem, marveled at the strength of the city and its towers, which 'he tyrants' in phrensy abandoned. When then he had beheld their solid strength and the greatness of each rock, and how accurately they were fitted in, and how great their length and breadth, he said 'By the help of God we have warred: and God it was who brought down the Jews from those bulwarks: for what avail the hands of man or his engines against such towers?' Much of this sort he said to his friends." The Jews also were "sold" in this war, as they had not been in former captures; and that, not by chance, but because the Roman policy was different from all, known by "experience" in the time of Zechariah. Into Babylon they had been carried captive, as a whole, because it was the will of God, after the "seventy years" to restore them. In this war, it was His will to destroy or disperse them; and so those above 17 were sent to Egypt to the works; those below 17 were sold. : "The whole number taken prisoners during the wars were 1,100,000," beside those who perished elsewhere. Jerome: "Read we the ancient histories and the traditions of the mourning Jews, that at the Tabernaculum Abrahae (where now is a very thronged mart every year) after the last destruction, which they endured from Adrian, many thousands were sold, and what could not be sold were removed into Egypt, and destroyed by shipwreck or famine and slaughter by the people. No displeasure came upon the Romans for the utter destruction, as there had upon the Assyrians and Chaldaeans."
And their own shepherds - (In contrast to those who "bought" and "sold" them, who accordingly were not their own, temporal or spiritual) they to whom God had assigned them, who should have fed them with the word of God, strengthened the diseased, healed the sick, bound up the broken, and sought the lost, "pity them not" Eze 34:4. He says what they should have done, in blaming them for what they did not do. They owed them a tender compassionate love; they laid aside all mercy, and became wolves, as Paul says; "After my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" Act 20:29-30. They who owed them all love, shall have none. Jerome: "No marvel then, he says, if enemies shall use the right of conquest, when their very shepherds and teachers spared them not, and, through their fault, the flock was given over to the wolves." All were corrupted, high priest, priests, scribes, lawyers, Pharisees, Sadducees. No one had pity on them.
Zechariah 11:6
zac 11:6
For I will no more pity - Therefore were they a "flock of the slaughter," because God would "have no pity" on those who went after shepherds "who had no Pity" upon them, but corrupted them; who "entered not in themselves, and those who were entering in, they hindered" Luk 11:52.
The inhabitants of the land - "That land, of which he had been speaking," Judaea. "And lo." God, by this word, "lo," always commands heed to His great doings with man; I, I, Myself, visibly interposing, "will deliver man," the whole race of inhabitants, "every one into his neighbor's hand," by confusion and strife and hatred within, "and into the hand of his king," him whom they chose and took as their own king, when they rejected Christ as their King, repudiating the title which Pilate gave Him, to move their pity. Whereas He, their Lord and God, was their King, they formally "denied Him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go; they denied the Holy One and the Just" Act 3:13-14, and said, "We have no king but Caesar" Joh 19:15.
And they - The king without and the wild savages within, "shall smite," bruise, crush in pieces, like a broken vessel, "the land, and out of their hand I will not deliver" them. Their captivity shall be without remedy or end. Holy Scripture often says, "there is no deliverer Jdg 18:28; Sa2 14:6; Job 5:4; Psa 7:3; Psa 50:22; Psa 71:11; Isa 5:29; Isa 42:22; Hos 5:14, Mic 5:7-8, or "none can deliver out of My hand" Deu 32:39; Job 10:7; Psa 50:22; Psa 71:11; Isa 43:13; Dan 8:4, Dan 8:7, or, since God delighteth in doing good, I Exo 6:6; Kg2 20:6; Jer 15:21; Jer 39:17; Eze 34:27, He Sa1 7:3; Psa 18:15; Psa 72:12; Kg2 17:39; Isa 19:20; Isa 31:5; Job 5:19, will deliver, or delivered Exo 18:10; Jos 24:10; Jdg 6:9; Sa1 10:18; Sa1 14:10; Sa2 22:1; Psa 34:5, Psa 34:18; 54:9; Ezr 8:31; Jer 20:13 from the hands of the enemy, or their slavery, or their own fears, or afflictions, or the like. God nowhere else says absolutely as here, "I will not deliver" . "Hear, O Jew," says Jerome, "who holdest out to thyself hopes most vain, and hearest not the Lord strongly asserting, "I will not deliver them out of their hands," that thy captivity among the Romans shall have no end." In the threatened captivity before they were carried to Babylon, the prophet foretold the restoration: here only it is said of Judah, as Hosea had said of lsrael, that there should be no deliverer out of the hand of the king whom they had chosen.
Zechariah 11:7
zac 11:7
The prophetic narrative which follows, differs in its form, in some respects, from the symbolical actions of the prophets and from Zechariah's own visions. The symbolical actions of the prophets are actions of their own: this involves acts, which it would be impossible to represent, except as a sort of drama. Such are the very central points, the feeding of the flock, which are still intelligent people who understand God's doings: the cutting off of the three shepherds; the asking for the price; the unworthy price offered; the casting it aside. It differs from Zechariah's own visions, in that they are for the most part exhibited to the eye, and Zechariah's own part is simply to enquire their meaning and to learn it, and to receive further revelation. In one case only, he himself interposes in the action of the vision Zac 3:1-10 :15; but this too, as asking that it might be done, not, as himself doing it. Here, he is himself the actor, yet as representing Another, who alone could cut off shepherds, abandon the people to mutual destruction, annulling the covenant which He had made. Maimonides, then, seems to say rightly; : "This, "I fed the flock of the slaughter," to the end of the narrative, where he is said to have asked for his hire, to have received it, and to have cast it into the temple, to the treasurer, all this Zechariah saw in prophetic vision. For the command which he received, and the act which he is said to have done, took place in prophetic vision or dream." "This," he adds, "is beyond controversy, as all know, who are able to distinguish the possible from the impossible."
Osorius: "The actions, presented to the prophets are not always to be understood as actions but as predictions. As when God commands Isaiah, to make the heart of the people dull Isa 6:10 that is, to denounce to the people their future blindness, through which they would, with obstinate mind, reject the mercies of Christ. Or when He says, that He appointed Jeremiah Jer 1:10 to destroy and to build; to root out and to plant. Or when He commanded the same prophet to cause the nations to drink the cup, whereby they should be bereft of their senses (Jer 25:15 ff), Jeremiah did nothing of all this, but asserted that it would be. So here."
And I will feed the flock of the slaughter - Rather And (our, so) "I fed." The prophet declares, in the name of our Lord, that He did what the Father commanded Him. He fed the flock, committed to His care by the Father, who, through their own obstinacy, became "the flock of slaughter." What could be done, He did for them; so that all might see that they perished by their own fault. The symbol of our Lord, as the Good Shepherd, had been made prominent by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, "Behold the Lord will come, as a Mighty One - He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom: He shall gently lead those that are with young" Isa 40:10-11. And Jeremiah, having declared God's judgments on the then shepherds Jer 23:2, "I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their fold; and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and prosper - and this is the name whereby He shall be called, the Lord our Righteousness" Jer 23:3-6. And Ezekiel with the like context Ezek. 34:1-21; "Therefore will I save My flock and they shall be no more a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle. And I will set One Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them: My servant David, He shall feed them; and He shall be their Shepherd" Eze 34:22-23; and, uniting both offices, "David, My servant, shall be king over them, and they shall all have One Shepherd" Eze 37:24. It was apparent then beforehand, who this Shepherd was to be, to whom God gave the feeding of the flock.
"Even 'you,' or 'for you, ye poor of the flock;' or, 'therefore,' being thus commanded, (fed I) the poor of the flock". The whole flock was committed to Him to feed. He had to seek out all "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" Mat 10:6; Mat 15:24. Dionysius: "He fed, for the time, the Jews destined to death, until their time should come;" the fruit of His labor was in the "little flock" Luk 12:32, "the faithful Jews who believed in Him, out of the people of the flock aforesaid, or the synagogue, who in the primitive Church despised all earthly things, leading a most pure life." So He says, "I will feed My flock and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God: I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong, I will feed them with judgment" Eze 34:15-16.
The elect are the end of all God's dispensations. He fed all; yet the fruit of His feeding, His toils, His death, the travail of His soul, was in those only who are saved. So Paul says, "Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory" Ti2 2:10. He fed all; but the "poor of the flock" alone, those who were despised of men, because they would not follow the pride of the high priests and scribes and Pharisees, believed on Him, as they themselves say, "Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on Him?" Joh 12:48, and Paul says, "Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world, and things despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are" Co1 1:26-28.
And I took unto Me two - (shepherd's) staves as David says, "Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me" Psa 23:4. "The one I called Beauty or Loveliness" , as the Psalmist longs to "behold the beauty or loveliness" of God in His temple Psa 27:4, and says; let "the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us" Psa 90:17.
And the other I called Bands - Literally, "Binders" . The one staff represents the full favor and loving-kindness of God; when this was broken, there yet remained the other, by which they were held together as a people in covenant with God. "And I fed the flock." This was the use of his staves; He tended them with both, ever putting in exercise toward them the loving beauty and grace of God, and binding them together and with Himself.
Zechariah 11:8
zac 11:8
And I cut off three shepherds in one month - Jerome: "I have read in some one's commentary, that the shepherds, cut off in the indignation of the Lord, are to be understood of priests and false prophets and kings of the Jews, who, after the passion of Christ, were all cut off in one time, of whom Jeremiah speaketh, "The priests said not, Where is the Lord? and they that handle the law knew Me not; the pastors also transgressed against Me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things which do not profit" Jer 2:8, and again, "As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests and their prophets" Jer 2:26; and "they said, Come, let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet" Jer 18:18.
Theodoret: "He speaks of the kings of the Jews, and prophets and priests; for by the three orders they were shepherded." Cyril: "The true and good Shepherd having been already pointed out, it was right and necessary that the hirelings and false shepherds should be removed, the guides of the Jews in the law. The three shepherds were, I deem, those who exercised the legal priesthood, and those appointed judges of the people, and the interpreters of Scripture, that is, the lawyers. For these too fed Israel. Those who had the glory of the priesthood were of the tribe of Levi only; and of them Malachi says, "The priest's lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth" Mal 2:7. But those who received authority to judge were also selected, yet were appointed out of every tribe. In like way the lawyers, who were ever assessors to the judges, and adduced the words of the law in proof of every matter.
But we shall find that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself expressly pronounced woe on the Pharisees and scribes and lawyers. For He said, "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees" Luk 11:44. And when one of the lawyers hereupon answered Him saying, "Master, so saying Thou reproachest us also," He said, "Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers" Luk 11:45-46. These "three Shepherds" then, priests and judges and lawyers o, who remained in their own orders and places, until the coming of Christ, were very justly taken away "in one month." For since "they killed the Prince of life" Act 3:15, thereby also are they mown down, and that in the month of the first fruits, in which Emmanuel endured to be slain for us. They remained indeed administering Israel, even after the Saviour's Cross, through the long-suffering and compassion of Almighty God calling them to repentance; but, in the sentence passed by God, they were taken away, at that time, when they delivered to the Cross the Saviour and Redeemer of all. They were taken away then in one mouth;" Nisan. a.d. 33. The three offices, King, Divine Teacher, Priest, were to be united in Christ: they might have been held under Him: those who rejected them in Him, forfeited them themselves. These then He made to disappear, effaced them from the earth.
And My soul was straightened - For them o. It is used of the divine grief at the misery of His people. "And their soul abhorred Me, nauseated Me" o. Kimchi: "When it is said, "Their soul also abhorreth Me," the meaning is, 'My soul did not loathe them first, but their soul first despised Me, therefore My Soul abhorred them.'" The soul which drives away God's good Spirit, comes at last to loathe Him and the thought and mention of Him.
Zechariah 11:9
zac 11:9
And I said, I will not feed you - God, at last, leaves the rebellious soul or people to itself, as He says by Moses, "Then My anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and will hide My Face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall find them" Deu 31:17 : and our Lord tells the captious Jews; "I go My way, and ye shall seek Me and shall die in your sins" Joh 8:21.
That which dieth, let it die - Zechariah seems to condense, but to repeat the abandonment in Jeremiah; "Cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth. And it shall be, if they shall say unto thee, Where shall we go forth? then thou shalt tell them, Thus saith the Lord, Such as are for death, to death; and such as are for the sword, to the sword; and such as are for the captivity, to the captivity" o. First, God gives over to death without violence, by famine or pestilence, those whose lot it should be; another portion to violent death by the sword; "that which is cut off shall be cut off; and the rest," the flock of slaughter, would be turned into wolves; and, as in the awful and horrible siege of Jerusalem, those who had escaped these deaths, "the left-over, shall eat every one of the flesh of his neighbor," every law of humanity and of nature broken. Osorius: "So should they understand at last, how evil and bitter a thing it is for all who lived by My help to be despoiled of that help?"
Zechariah 11:10
zac 11:10
And I took my staff Beauty, and cut it asunder - Not, as aforetime, did He chasten His people, retaining His relation to them: for such chastening is an austere form of love. By breaking the staff of His tender love, He signified that this relation was at an end.
That I might dissolve My covenant which I had made with all the people - Rather, "with all the peoples," that is, with all nations. Often as it is said of Israel, that they brake the covenant of God Lev 26:15; Deu 31:16, Deu 31:20; Isa 24:5; Jer 11:10; Jer 31:32; Eze 16:59; Eze 44:7, it is spoken of God, only to deny that He would break it (Lev 26:44; Jdg 2:1, and, strongly, Jer 33:20-21), or in prayer that He would not Jer 14:21. Here it is not absolutely the covenant with His whole people, which He brake; it is rather, so to speak, a covenant with the nations in favor of Israel, allowing thus much and forbidding more, with regard to His people. So God had said of the times of Christ; "In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with the fowls of the heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground" (Hos 2:18, (20, Hebrew)); and, "I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land" Eze 34:25; and in Job "thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of' the field shall be at peace with thee" Job 5:23. This covenant He willed to annihilate. He would no more interpose, as He had before said, "I will not deliver from their hand" Zac 11:6. whoever would might do, what they would, as the Romans first, and well nigh all nations since, have inflicted on the Jews, what they willed; and Mohammedans too have requited to them their contumely to Jesus.
Zechariah 11:11
zac 11:11
And so the poor of the flock that waited upon Me knew - The rest were blinded; those who listened to God's word, observed His prophet, waited on Him and observed His words, knew from the fulfillment of the beginning, that the whole was God's word. Every darkening cloud around the devoted city was an earnest, that the storm, which should destroy it, was gathering upon it. So our Lord warned, "When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is near. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart" Luk 21:20-21. The "little flock which waited upon" the Good Shepherd, obeyed the warning, and, fleeing to Pella, escaped the horrible judgment which fell on those who remained. Osorius: "They remembered that it had been predicted many centuries before, and that the Lord, by whose Spirit the prophet spake, foretold that in that city "one stone should not be left upon another" Mat 24:2.
Zechariah 11:12
zac 11:12
And I said unto them, If ye think good, give Me My price - God asks of us a return, not having any proportion to His gifts of nature or of grace, but such as we can render. He took the Jews out of the whole human race, made them His own, "a peculiar people," freed them from "the bondage and the iron furnace of Egypt," gave them "the land flowing with milk and honey," fed and guarded them by His Providence, taught them by His prophets. He, the Lord and Creator of all, was willing to have them alone for His inheritance, and, in return, asked them to love Him with their whole heart, and to do what He commanded them. "He sent His servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of the vineyard; and the husbandmen took His servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Last of all, He sent unto them His Son" Mat 21:34-37, to ask for those fruits, the return for all His bounteous care and His unwearied acts of power and love. o "Give Me," He would say, "some fruits of piety, and tokens of faith."
Osorius: "What? Does He speak of a price? Did the Lord of all let out His toil? Did He bargain with those, for whom he expended it for a certain price? He did. He condescended to serve day and night for our salvation and dignity; and as one hired, in view of the reward which He set before Him, to give all His care to adorn and sustain our condition. So He complains by Isaiah, that He had undergone great toil to do away our sins. But what reward did He require? Faith and the will of a faithful heart, that thereby we might attain the gift of righteousness, and might in holy works pant after everlasting glory. For He needeth not our goods; but He so bestoweth on us all things, as to esteem His labor amply paid, if He see us enjoy His gifts. But tie so asketh for this as a reward, as to leave us free, either by faith and the love due, to embrace His benefits, or faithlessly to reject it. This is His meaning, when He saith,"
And if not, forbear - God does not force our free-will, or constrain our service. He places life and death before us, and bids us choose life. By His grace alone we can choose Him; but we can refuse His grace and Himself. "Thou shalt say unto them," He says to Ezekiel, "Thus saith the Lord God, He that heareth, let him hear, and he that forbeareth, let him forbear" (Eze 3:27; add Eze 2:5, Eze 2:7; Eze 3:11). This was said to them, as a people, the last offer of grace. It gathered into one all the past. As Elijah had said, "If the Lord be God, follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him" Kg1 18:21; so He bids them, at last to choose openly, whose they would be, to whom they would give their service; and if they would refuse in heart, to refuse in act also. "Forbear," cease, leave off, abandon; and that forever.
So they weighed for My price thirty pieces of silver - The price of a slave, gored to death by an ox Exo 21:32. Whence one of themselves says, o, "you will find that a freeman is valued, more or less, at 60 shekels, but a slave at thirty." He then, whom the prophet represented, was to be valued at "thirty pieces of silver." It was but an increase of the contumely, that this contemptuous price was given, not to Him, but for Him, the Price of His Blood. It was matter of bargain. "Judas said, What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?" Mat 26:15. The high priest, knowingly or unknowingly, fixed on the price, named by Zechariah. As they took into their mouths willingly the blasphemy mentioned in the Psalm; "they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted in the Lord, that He would deliver Him; let Him deliver Him, seeing that He delighted in Him" Psa 22:7-8; so perhaps they fixed on the "thirty pieces of silver," because Zechariah had named them as a sum offered in contumely to him, who offered to be a shepherd and asked for his reward.
Zechariah 11:13
zac 11:13
And the Lord said unto me, Cast it - As a thing vile and rejected, as torn flesh was to be cast to dogs Exo 22:31, or a corpse was cast unburied Isa 14:19; Isa 34:3; Jer 14:16; Jer 22:19; Jer 26:23; Jer 36:30, or the dead body of Absalom was cast into the pit Sa2 18:17, or the dust of the idolaltars into the brook Kedron by Josiah Kg2 23:12, or the idols to the moles and the bats (Isa 2:20, add Eze 20:8); or Judah and Israel from the face of God Kg2 13:23; Kg2 17:20; 24:21; Jer 52:3 into a strange land (Deu 29:27, (28 English); Coniah and his seed, a vessel in which is no pleasure, Jer 22:28, into a land which they knew not; or the rebels against God, said, "let us cast away their cards from us" Psa 2:3; or wickedness was cast into the Ephah Zac 5:1-11 :18; once it is added, "for loathing" Eze 16:5.
Unto the potter - The words exactly correspond with the event, that the "thirty pieces of silver" were "cast" or flung away o; that their ultimate destination was the potter, whose field was bought with them; but that they were not cast directly to him, (which were a contemptuous act, such as would not be used whether for a gift or a purchase), but were cast to him "in the house of the Lord." They were "flung away" by the remorse of Judas, and, in God's Providence, came to the potter. Whether any portion of this was a direct symbolic action of the prophet, or whether it was a prophetic vision, in which Zechariah himself was an actor, and saw himself in the character which he described, doing what he relates, cannot now be said certainly, since God has not told us. It seems to me more probable, that these actions belonged to the vision, because in other symbolic actions of the prophets, no other actors take part; and it is to the last degree unlikely, that Zechariah, at whose preaching. Zerubbabel and Joshua and all the people set themselves earnestly to rebuild the temple, should have had so worthless a price offered to him; and the casting a price, which God condemned, into the house of God, at the command of God, and so implying His acceptance of it, were inconsistent. It was fulfilled, in act consistently, in Judas' remorse; in that he "flung away the pieces of silver," which had stained his soul with innocent blood, "in the temple," perhaps remembering the words of Zechariah; perhaps wishing to give to pious uses, too late, money which was the price of his soul; whereas God, even through the chief priests, rejected it, and so it came to the potter, its ultimate destination in the Providence of God. Osorius: "He saith, "cast it unto the potter," that they might understand that they would be broken as a potter's vessel."
A goodly price, that I was prized at of them - Literally, "the magnificence of the value, at which I was valued of them!" The strong irony is carried on by the, "at which I was valued of them," as in the idiom, "thou wert precious in my sight" Sa1 26:21; Psa 72:14; Kg2 1:13-14; Isa 43:4. Precious the thought of God to David Psa 139:17; precious the redemption of the soul of man Psa 49:9; and precious was the Shepherd who came to them; precious was the value, whereat He was valued by them o. And yet He, who was so valued, was Almighty God. For so it stands: "Thus saith the Lord God, Cast it unto the potter, the goodly price that I was prized at of them." The name, "the potter," connects the prophecy with that former prophecy of Jeremiah Jer 19:1-15, denouncing the judgment of God for the shedding of innocent blood, whereby they had defiled "the valley of the son of Hinnom, which was at the entry of the gate of the pottery, o, and which, through the vengeance of God there, should be called "the valley of slaughter" Jer 19:6.
The price of this innocent Blood, by the shedding of which the iniquities of their fathers were filled up, should rest on that same place, for whose sake God said, "I will break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again" Jer 19:11. So then Matthew may have quoted this prophecy as Jeremiah's, to signify how the woes, denounced on the sins committed in this same place, should be brought upon it through this last crowning sin, and "all the righteous blood which had been shed, should come upon that generation" o
None of the other cases of mixed quotation come up to this. Mark quotes two prophecies, of Malachi and of Isaiah as Isaiah's Mar 1:2-3. Matthew blends in one, words of Isaiah Isa 62:1 and Zechariah Zac 9:9 as "the prophet" Mat 21:4-5. Our Lord unites Isa 56:7, and Jer 7:11, with the words," It is written."
Of earlier fathers "Tertullian" simply quotes the prophecy as Jeremiah's (adv. Marc. iv. 40). "Origen" says, "Jeremiah is not said to have prophesied this anywhere in his books, either what are read in the Churches, or reported (referuntur) among the Jews. I suspect that it is an error of writing, or that it is some secret writing of Jeremiah wherein it is written." (in Matt. p. 916.) "Euscbius" says, "Consider since this, is not in the prophet Jeremiah, whether we must think that it was removed from it by some wickedness, or whether it was a clericai error of those who made the copies of the Gospels carelessly." Dem. Ev. x. p. 481).
Zechariah 11:14
zac 11:14
And I cut asunder mine other staff, Bands, to dissolve the brotherhood between Judah and Israel - Hitherto prophecy had spoken of the healing of the great breach between Israel and Judah, in Christ. "The Lord," Isaiah said, "shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim" Isa 11:12-13; and Hosea, "Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and shall appoint themselves one Head" Hos 1:11; and Jeremiah, "In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel." Jer 3:18. And Ezekiel, in the midst of the captivity, in a symbolic action the counterpart of this, is bidden, "Take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions; then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and all the house of Israel his companions, and join them one to another into one stick, and they shall become one in thy hand" Eze 37:16-17; and, when asked the meaning of this act, he was to say, "Thus saith the Lord God, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and will make them one stick, and they shall be one in Mine hand" Eze 37:19.
And dropping the symbol; "Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the pagan, whither they be gone - and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel: and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all - I will cleanse them, and they shall be My people and I will be their God, and David My servant shall be king over them, and they all shall have one Shepherd" Eze 37:21-24. Such should be the unity of those who would be gathered under the One Shepherd. And so it was, "The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul" Act 4:32; and long afterward it was a proverb among the pagan, o, "See how these Christians love one another." Zechariah is here speaking of those who had rejected the Good Shepherd, the Israel and Judah after the flesh, who shut themselves out from the promises of God. This had its first fulfillment in the terrible dissolution of every band of "brotherhood" and of our common nature, which made the siege of Jerusalem a proverb for horror, and precipitated its destruction. o "Having thus separated the believing from the unbelieving, He bared the rest of His care. And what we now see bears witness to the prophecy. For the Jews, being deprived, of prophets and priests and kings and temple and ark and altar and mercy-seat and candlestick and table and the rest, through which the legal worship was performed, have come to be deprived also of the guardianship from above; and, scattered, exiled, removed, serve against their will those who preach Christ: denying Him as Lord, they yield service to His servants. The prophet having foretold these things of Christ, our God and Saviour, and reproved the obstinacy of the Jews, naturally turns his prophecy straight to the God-opposed christ whom they expect, as they say. So said the Lord in the holy Gospels to them, "I am come in My Father's name, and ye receive Me not; another will come in his own name, and him ye will receive" Joh 5:43. This the blessed Paul also prophesied of them, "Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that all might be damned, who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness" Th2 2:10-12. The like does the blessed Zechariah prophesy, having received the power of the Holy Spirit."
Zechariah 11:15
zac 11:15
Take to thee yet the instrument - o
Of a foolish shepherd - Osorius: "Yet He had enacted one tragedy, in which he clearly set forth the future guilt of Judas; now another is set forth, the accumulated scoffing through antichrist. For as Paul said, because they receive not the Spirit of truth, the Allrighteous Judge shall send them a spirit of "delusion, that they should believe a lie" Th2 2:10-11. He calls him a foolish shepherd, for since the extremest folly consists in the extremest wickedness, he will be the most foolish, who reached the highest impiety, and this he will do by arrogating to himself divinity and claiming divine honors Th2 2:4.
This is the only action, which the prophet had to enact or to relate. If it was a visible act, the instrument might be a staff which should bruise, an instrument which should bear a semblance to that of the good shepherd, but which should be perncious. Cyril: "Good shepherds, who understood their business, had slight staves, that, if there should be occasion to strike, the stricken sheep might not be bruised; but one who understandeth not, beats them with thicker clubs." Or it may mean also, whatever he would use for the hurtful treatment of the sheep, such as he proceeds to speak of. He is spoken of as, in fact, foolishly sinful: for sin is the only real folly, and all real folly has sin mingled in it. The short-lived wisdom of the foolish shepherd for his own ends should also be his destruction.
Zechariah 11:16
zac 11:16
I will raise up - God supplies the strength or wisdom which people abuse to sin. He, in His Providence, disposeth the circumstances, of which the ambitious avail themselves. antichrist, whom the Jews look for, will be as much an instrument of God for the perfecting the elect, as the Chaldees Hab 1:6 or the Assyrians Amo 6:14 whom God raised up, for the chastisement of His former people, or the Medes against Babylon Isa 13:17.
Which shall not visit them that be cut off - Zechariah uses the imagery, yet not the exact words of Jeremiah Jer 23:1-2 and Ezekiel Eze 34:3-4. Neglect of every duty of a shepherd to his flock, to the sick, the broken, the sound; direct injury of them, preying upon them, make up the picture.
Which shall not visit - Or tend, "that which is cut off:" fulfilling God's judgment, "that which is to be cut off let it be cut off" Zac 11:9.
Neither shall seek the young one - Better, "the scattered , dispersed," as the Good Shepherd "came to seek and to save that which was lost" Luk 19:10; Mat 18:11. "Nor heal that which is broken; bound not," Ezekiel says Eze 34:4. : "The broken legs of sheep are healed no otherwise than those of people; rolled in wool impregnated with oil and wine, and then bound up with splinters placed round about it."
Nor feed that which standeth still - Better, "the whole" Yet Jonathan renders as English), as the word always means, "in its good estate," like our prayer, "that Thou wouldest strengthen those who do stand."
Zechariah 11:17
zac 11:17
Woe to the idol shepherd - (A shepherd of nothingness, one who hath no quality of a shepherd ;) "who leaveth the flock." The condemnation of the evil shepherd is complete in the abandonment of the sheep; as our Lord says, "He that is an hireling and not the Shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling and careth not for the sheep" Joh 10:12-13.
Or it may equally be, "Shepherd, thou idol," including the original meaning of nothingness, such as antichrist will be, (Jerome), "while he calleth himself God, and willeth to be worshiped." Jerome: "This shepherd shall therefore arise in Israel, because the true Shepherd had said, 'I will not feed you.' He is prophesied of by another name in Daniel the prophet Dan. 9, and in the Gospel Mark 13, and in the Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians 2 Thes 2, as 'the abomination of desolation,' who shall sit in the temple of the Lord, and make himself as God. He cometh not to heal but to destroy the flock of Israel. This shepherd the Jews shall receive, whom the 'Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of His mouth; and destroy with the brightness of His coming?"'
The sword shall be upon - (against) his arm and right eye His boast shall be of intelligence, and might. The punishment and destruction shall be directed against the instrument of each, the eye and the arm. Jerome: "The eye, whereby he shall boast to behold acutely the mysteries of God, and to see more than all prophets heretofore, so that he shall call himself son of God. But the word of the Lord shall be upon his arm and upon his right eye, so that his strength and all his boast of might shall be dried up, and the knowledge which he promised himself falsely, shall be obscured in everlasting darkness." (Dionysius: "Above and against the power of antichrist, shall be the virtue and vengeance and sentence of Christ, who shall 'slay' him 'with the breath of His mouth.' The right arm, the symbol of might, and the right eye which was to direct its aim, should fail together, through the judgment of God against him. He, lately boastful and persecuting shall become blind and powerless, bereit alike of wisdom and strength.
The "right" in Holy Scripture being so often a symbol of what is good, the left of what is evil, it may be also imagined, that (Osorius), "the left eye, that is, the acumen and cunning to devise deadly frauds, will remain uninjured: while the 'right eye,' that is, counsel to guard against evil, will be sunk in thick darkness. And so, the more he employs his ability to evil, the more frantically will he bring to bear destruction upon himself:"
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 12
Zechariah
zac 12:0
Jerome: "from 'I will make Jerusalem' to 'Awake, O sword,' there is a threefold exposition. For some of the Jews say that these things have already been fulfilled in part from Zerobabel to Pompey who, first of the Romans, took Judea and the temple, as Josephus relates. Others think that it is to be fulfilled at the end of the world, when Jerusalem shall be restored, which the miserable Jewish race promiseth itself with its anointed, of whom we read above as the foolish shepherd. But others, that is, we who are called by the name of Christ, say that these things are daily fulfilled, and will be fulfilled in the Church to the end of the world."
Zechariah 12:1
zac 12:1
The burden of the word of the Lord for - Rather, "upon (see at Nah 1:1, p. 129) Israel." If this prophecy is a continuation of the last, notwithstanding its fresh title, then "Israel" must be the Christian Church, formed of the true Israel which believed, and the Gentiles who were grafted into them. So Cyril; "Having spoken sufficiently of the Good Shepherd Christ, and of the foolish, most cruel shepherd who butchered the sheep, that is, antichrist, he seasonably makes mention of the persecutions which would from time to time arise against Israel; not the Israel according to the flesh, but the spiritual, that Jerusalem which is indeed holy, "the Church of the Living God" Ti1 3:15. For as we say, that "he" is spiritually a Jew, who hath the "circumcision in the heart," Rom 2:29, that through the Spirit, "and not" in the flesh "through the letter;" so also may "Israel" be conceived, not that of the blood of Israel, but rather that, which has a mind beholding God. But such are all who are called to sanctification through the faith in Christ, and who in Him and by Him, know of God the Father. For this is the one true elected way of beholding God."
Since the Good Shepherd was rejected by all, except the "poor of the flock," the "little flock" which believed in Him, and thereupon the "band" of "brotherhood" was dissolved between Israel and Judah, "Israel" in those times could not be Israel after the flesh, which then too was the deadly antagonist of the true israel, and thus early also chose antichrist, such as was Bar-Cochba, with whom so many hundreds of thousands perished. There was no war then against Jerusalem, since it had ceased to be (see the notes on Mic 3:12).
But Zechariah does not say that this prophecy, to which he has annexed a separate title, follows, in time, upon the last; rather, since he has so separated it by its title, he has marked it as a distinct prophecy from the preceding. It may be, that he began again from the time of the Maccabees and took God's deliverances of the people Israel then, as the foreground of the deliverances to the end ).
Yet in the times of Antiochus, it was one people only which was against the Jews, and Zechariah himself speaks only of the Greeks; Zac 9:13; here he repeatedly emphasizes that they were "all nations" (Zac 12:2-3, Zac 12:6, Zac 12:9). It may then rather be, that the future, the successive efforts of the world to crush the people of God, and its victory amid suffering, and its conversions of the world through the penitent looking to Jesus, are exhibited in one great perspective, according to the manner of prophecy, which mostly exhibits the prominent events, not their order or sequence. : "The penitential act of contrite sinners, especially of Jews, looking at Him "whom they pierced," dates from the Day of Pentecost, and continues to the latter days, when it will be greatly intensified and will produce blessed results, and is here concentrated into one focus. The rising up of God's enemies against Christ's Church, which commenced at the same time, and has been continued in successive persecutions from Jews, Gentiles, and other unbelievers in every age, and which will reach its climax in the great antichristian outbreak of the last times, and be confounded by the Coming of Christ to judgment, is here summed up in one panoramic picture, exhibited at once to the eye."
Which stretcheth forth the heavens - God's creative power is an ever-present working, as our Lord says, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work" Joh 5:17. His preservation of the things which He has created is a continual re-creation. All "forces" are supported by Him, who alone hath life in Himself. He doth not the less "uphold all things by the word of His power," because, until the successive generations, with or without their will, with or against His Will for them, shall have completed His Sovereign Will, He upholds them uniformly in being by His Unchanging Will. Man is ever forgetting this, and because, "since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as from the beginning of the creation" Pe2 3:4, they relegate the Creator and His creating as far as they can to some time, as far back as they can imagine, enough to fill their imaginations, and forget Him who made them, in whose bands is their eternity, who will be their Judge. So the prophets remind them and us of His continual working, which people forget in the sight of His works; "Thus saith the Lord; He that createth the heavens, and stetcheth them out; He that spreadeth forth the earth and its produce, who giveth breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein" Isa 42:5; and, "I am the Lord who maketh all things, who stretcheth out the heavens alone, who spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself" Isa 44:24; speaking at once of that, past in its beginning yet present to us in its continuance, but to Him ever-present present; and of things actually present to us, "that frustrateth the tokens of the liars" Isa 44:25; and of things to those of that day still future, "that confirmeth the word of His servant, and performeth the counsel of His messengers" Isa 44:26 : the beginning of which was not to be till the taking of Babylon. And the Psalmist unites past and present in one, "Donning light as a garment, stretching out the heavens as a curtain; who layeth the beams of His chambers on the waters, who maketh the clouds His chariot; who walketh on the wings of the wind; who maketh His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire; He founded the earth upon its base." Psa 104:2-5. And Amos, "He that formeth the mountains and createth the winds, and declareth unto man his thoughts" (Amo 4:13, add Amo 5:8); adding whatever lieth nearest to each of us.
And formeth the spirit of man, within him - Both by the unceasing creation of souls, at every moment in some spot in our globe, or by the re-creation, for which David prays, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" Psa 51:10. He who formed the hearts of people can overrule them as He wills. Cyril: "But the spirit of man is formed by God in him, not by being called to the beginnings of being, although it was made by Him, but, as it were, transformed from weakness to strength, from unmanliness to endurance, altogether being transelemented from things shameful to better things."
Cyril: "It is the custom of the holy prophets, when about to declare beforehand things of no slight moment, to endeavor to show beforehand the Almightiness of God, that their word may obtain credence, though they should declare what was beyond all hope, and (to speak of our conceptions) above all reason and credibility."
Zechariah 12:2
zac 12:2
I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling - For encouragement, He promises the victory, and at first mentions the attack incidentally. Jerusalem is as a cup or basin, which its enemies take into their hands; a stone, which they put forth their strength to lift; but they themselves reel with the draught of God's judgments which they would give to others, they are torn by the stone which they would lift to fling. The image of the "cup" is mostly of God's displeasure, which is given to His own people, and then, His judgment of chastisement being exceeded, given in turn to those who had been the instruments of giving it . Thus, Isaiah speaks of "the cup of trembling." Thou, "Jerusalem, hast drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling, hast wrung them out. Therefore hear thou this, thou afflicted and drunken but not with wine. Thus saith thy Lord, the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of His people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of My fury; thou shalt no more drink it again: but I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee" Isa 51:17, Isa 51:21-23. Jeremiah speaks of "the cup of God's anger," as given by God first to Jerusalem, then to all whom Nebuchadnezzar should subdue, then to Babylon itself Jer 25:15-26; and as "passing through" to Edom also Lam 4:21; Jer 49:12; Ezekiel, of "Aholibah" Eze 23:31-33 (Jerusalem) "drinking the cup of Samaria." In Jeremiah alone, Babylon is herself the cup. "Babylon" is "a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the nations drunken; the nations have drunken of the wine; therefore the nations are mad" Jer 51:7. Now Jerusalem is to be, not an ordinary cup, but a large "basin" or vessel, from which all nations may drink what will make them reel.
"And also upon Judah will it be in the siege against Jerusalem, that is, the burden of the word of the Lord which was on Israel" should be "upon Judah," that is, upon all, great and small.
Zechariah 12:3
zac 12:3
I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone to all nations - What is "a stone to all nations?" It is not a rock or anything in its own nature immovable, but a "stone," a thing rolled up and down, moved, lifted, displaced, piled on others, in every way at the service and command of people, to do with it what they willed. So they thought of that "stone cut out without hands" Dan 2:45; that "tried stone and sure foundation, laid in Zion" Isa 28:16; that "stone" which, God said in Zechariah, "I have laid" Zac 3:9; of which our Lord says, "the stone, which the builders rejected, is become the head of the corner" Luk 20:17; "whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder" Mat 21:44; Luk 20:18. The Church, built on the stone, seems a thing easily annihilated; ten persecutions in succession strove to efface it; Diocletian erected a monument, commemorating that the Christian name was blotted out . It survived; he perished.
The image may have been suggested by the custom, so widely prevailing in Judaea, of trying the relative strength of young men, by lifting round stones selected for that end .
Jerome: "The meaning then is, I will place, Jerusalem to all nations like a very heavy stone to be lifted up. They will lift it up, and according to their varied strength, will waste it; but it must needs be, that, while it is lifted, in the very strain of lifting the weight, that most heavy stone should leave some scission or rasure on the bodies of those who lift it. Of the Church it may be interpreted thus; that all persecutors, who fought against the house of the Lord, are inebriated with that cup, which Jeremiah gives to all nations, to drink and be inebriated and fall and vomit and be mad. Whosoever would uplift the stone shall lift it, and in the anger of the Lord, whereby He chastens sinners, will hold it in his hands; but he himself will not go unpunished, the sword of the Lord fighting against him."
All that burden themselves with it will be cut to pieces - More exactly, "scarified, lacerated;" shall bear the scars. "Though" (rather, "and") "all the people (peoples, nations) of the earth shall be gathered together against it." The prophet marshals them all against Jerusalem, only to say how they should perish before it. So in Joel God says, "I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat" , speaking of that last closing strife of antichrist against God. Wars against Israel had either been petty, though anti-theistic, wars of neighboring petty nations, pitting their false gods against the True, or one, though world-empire wielded by a single will. The more God made Himself known, the fiercer the opposition. The Gospel claiming "obedience to the faith among all nations" Rom 1:5, provoked universal rebellion. Herod and Pontius Pilate became friends through rejection of Christ; the Roman Caesar and the Persian Sapor, Goths and Vandals, at war with one another, were one in persecuting Christ and the Church. Yet in vain.
Zechariah 12:4
zac 12:4
In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with astonishment, stupefying - Zechariah revives the words concentrated by Moses, to express the stupefaction at their ills, which God would accumulate upon His people, if they perseveringly rebelled against Him. Each expresses the intensity of the visitation. "The horse and his rider" Deut. 27:28 had, through Moses' song at the Red Sea, become the emblem of worldly power, overthrown. That song opens; "I will sing unto the Lord; for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea" Exo 15:1. The scared cavalry throws into confusion the ranks, of which it was the boast and strength.
And on the house of Judah I will open My eyes - In pity and love and guidance, as the Psalmist says, "I will counsel, with Mine eye upon thee" Psa 32:8, in contrast with "the blindness" with which God would smite the powers arrayed against them.
Zechariah 12:5
zac 12:5
And the princes of Judah - He pictures the onemindedness of the Church. No one shall assume anything to himself; each shall exalt the strength which the other was to him; but all, "in the Lord. The princes of Judah" shall say "in their heart," not outwardly or politically, but in inward conviction, "strength to me" (all speak as one) "are the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the Lord of hosts their God." The highest in human estimation acknowledge that their strength is in those who are of no account in this world; as, in fact the hearts of the poor are evermore the strength of the Church; but that, "in the Lord of hosts;" in Him, in whose hands are the powers of heaven and earth, over against the petty turmoil on earth. God had chosen Jerusalem Zac 1:17; Zac 2:12; Zac 3:2; therefore she was invincible. "That most glorious prince of Judah, Paul, said, 'I can do all things in Christ who instrengtheneth me. '"
Zechariah 12:6
zac 12:6
I will make the governors of Judah like a hearth - or "cauldron" of fire large, broad, deep, and full of fire, among the wood which is prepared for burning, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf The fire could not kindle the wood or the sheaf, of itself, unless applied to it. All is of the agency of God: "I will make."
Ribera: "He foretells the increase of the Church, which by such persecutions shall not be diminished, but shall be marvelously increased. The preachers of the Church shall raise up all the peoples round about, shall destroy all unbelief, and shall kindle the hearts of hearers with the fire of the divine word." "On the right hand and on the left." Ribera: "He indicates the strength and success of the preachers, whom no one can resist nor hinder," as our Lord says, "I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist" Luk 21:15.
And Jerusalem shall again - Rather, "yet, be inhabited." "Yet" is a sort of burden in Zechariah's prophecies . Osorius: "They at once burned up by the flame all the defilement of vices, and kindled the minds of people with the torch of divine love; at once consumed the enemy and cast a heavenly fire into the human heart: 'yet;' in despite of all appearances, of all which is against her. 'She shall yet dwell in her own place in Jerusalem;' for, however the waves of this world chafe and lash themselves into foam against her, they break themselves, not her; as soon as they have reached their utmost height, they fall back; if they toss themselves, and, for a moment, hide her light, they fall down at all sides, and the ray shines out, steady as before; for she is 'founded on a rock,' against which 'the gates of hell' should not 'prevail' Mat 16:18.
Zechariah 12:7
zac 12:7
The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first - Still it is, 'the Lord shall save.' We have, on the one side, the 'siege,' the gathering of all the peoples of the earth 'against Jerusalem, the horse and his rider.' On the other, no human strength; not, as before, in the prophecy of the Maccabees, the bow, the arrow, and the sword, though in the hand of God Zac 9:13. It is thrice, 'I will make' Zac 9:2-3,; 'I will smite' (Zac 9:4 bis); and now, 'The Lord shall save.' By 'the tents,' he probably indicates their defenselessness. God would 'save' them first; that 'the glory of the house of David - 'be not great against' or 'over Judah,' may not overshadow it; but all may be as one; for all is the free gift of God, the mere grace of God, that 'he that glorieth may glory in the Lord' Jer 9:24; Co1 1:31; Co2 10:17, and both "may own that, in both, the victory is the Lord's" (Jerome).
Lap.: "In Christ Jesus is neither Jew nor Greek; neither bond nor free, neither rich nor poor" Gal 3:28; "but all are one," namely a new creation; yea in Christendom the poor are the highest, both because Christ "preached to the poor" Luk 4:18, and pronounced the "poor blessed" Luk 6:20, and He made the Apostles, being poor, nobles in His kingdom, through whom He converted kings and princes, as is written, "ye see your calling, brethren, that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the would to confound the things which fire mighty ..." Co1 1:26; and, "Hath not God called the poor in this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom, which God has promised to them that love Him?" Jam 2:5. The rich and noble have greater hindrances to humility and Christian virtues, than the poor. For honors puff up, wealth and delights weaken the mind; wherefore they need greater grace of Christ to burst their bonds than the poor. Wherefore, for the greater grace shown them, they are bound to give greater thanks unto Christ."
Zechariah 12:8
zac 12:8
In that day the Lord shall defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble, rather, he theft stumbleth among them, shall be as David - The result of the care and the defense of God is here wholly spiritual, "the strengthening of such as do stand, and the raising up of such as fall." It is not simply one feeble, but one "stumbling" and ready to fall, who becomes as David, the great instance of one who fell, yet was raised. Daniel says of a like trial-time, "And some of those of understanding shall stumble, to try them and to purge and to make them white, to the time of the end" Dan 11:35. Ribera: "Such care will God have of protecting the sons of the Church, when it shall be infested with persecutions, that he who shall have fallen through human infirmity, either deceived by heretics or overcome by fear of tortures, shall arise the more fervent and cautious, and with many tears shall make amends for his sins to God, as did David. "He who stumbled shall be as David," because the sinner returneth' to repentance. This is not said of all times, nor of all (for many have stumbled, who never rose) but chiefly of the first times of the Church and of people of great sanctity, such as were many then."
And the house of David shall be as God - They who stumbled became really like David; but he, though mighty and a great saint of God, though he once fell, was man. How then could the house of David be really like God? Only fully in Him, who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God" Phi 2:6; who said, "He who hath seen Me, hath seen My Father also" Joh 14:9; "I and the Father are one" Joh 10:30. And this the prophet brings out by adding, "as the Angel of the Lord before them," that is, that one Angel of the Lord, in whom His very Presence and His Name was; who went before them, to guide them (see "Daniel the prophet" pp. 519-523). Else, having said, "like God," it had been to lessen what he had just said, to add, "like the Angel of the Lord." Our Lord prayed for those who are truly His, "As Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they may be one in Us; that they may be one as We are one, I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfect in one" Joh 17:21-23; and Paul saith, "Christ is formed in us" Gal 4:19; "Christ dwelleth in our hearts by faith" Eph 3:17; "Christ liveth in me" Gal 2:20; "Christ is in you" Rom 8:10; "Christ is our life" Col 3:4; "Christ is all and in all" Col 3:11; "we grow into Him which is the Head, even Christ" Eph 4:15; "we are in Christ" Rom 16:7; Co2 5:17; Gal 1:22; and Peter, we are "partakers of the divine nature" Pe2 1:4; and John, "As He is, so are we in this world" Jo1 4:17. Then in a degree the glory of Christ passeth over to those who dwell in Him, and in whom He dwells by the Spirit, as Paul says; "Ye received me, as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus" Gal 4:14.
Zechariah 12:9
zac 12:9
In that day, I will seek to destroy - Woe indeed to those, whom Almighty God shall "'seek' to destroy!" Man may seek earnestly to do, what at last he cannot do. Still it is an earnest seeking. And whether it is used of human seeking which fails, or which succeeds Sa1 14:4; Sa1 23:10; Ecc 12:10, inchoate or permitted Kg1 11:22; Zac 6:7, it is always used of seeking to do, what it is a person's set purpose to do if he can. Here it is spoken of Almighty God . Ribera: "He saith not, 'I will destroy' but 'I will seek to destroy,' that is, it shall ever be My care to destroy all the enemies of the Church, that they may in no way prevail against it: this I will do alway to the end of the world."
Zechariah 12:10
zac 12:10
And I will pour - As He promised by Joel, "I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh" (Joe 2:28. See vol. i. pp. 193, 194), largely, abundantly, "upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem," all, highest and lowest, from first to last, the "Spirit of grace and supplication," that is, the "Holy Spirit" which conveyeth "grace," as "the Spirit of wisdom and understanding" Isa 11:2 is "the Spirit" infusing "wisdom and understanding," and the "Spirit of counsel and might" is that same Spirit, imparting the gift "of counsel" to see what is to be done and "of might" to do it, and the Spirit "of the knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" is that same "Spirit," infusing loving acquaintance with God, with awe at His infinite Majesty. So "the Spirit of grace and supplication," is that same Spirit, infusing grace and bringing into a state of favor with God, and a "Spirit of supplication" is that Spirit, calling out of the inmost soul the cry for a yet larger measure of the grace already given. Paul speaks of "the love of God poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" Rom 5:5; and of "insulting the Spirit of grace" , rudely repulsing the Spirit, who giveth grace. Osorius: "When God Himself says, 'I will pour out,' He sets forth the greatness of His bountifulness whereby He bestoweth all things."
And they shall look - with trustful hope and longing. Cyril: "When they had nailed the Divine Shrine to the Wood, they who had crucified Him, stood around, impiously mocking. But when He had laid down His life for us, "the centurion and they that were with him, watching Jesus, seeing the earthquake and those things which were done, feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God" Mat 27:54. As it ever is with sin, compunction did not come till the sin was over: till then, it was overlaid; else the sin could not be done. At the first conversion, the three thousand "were pricked 'in the heart.' "when told that He "whom they had taken and with wicked hands had crucified and slain, is Lord and Christ" Act 2:23, Act 2:36. This awoke the first penitence of him who became Paul. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" This has been the center of Christian devotion ever since, the security against passion, the impulse to self-denial, the parent of zeal for souls, the incentive to love; this has struck the rock, that it gushed forth in tears of penitence: this is the strength and vigor of hatred of sin, to look to Him whom our sins pierced, "who" Paul says, "loved me and gave Himself for me." Osorius: "We all lifted Him up upon the Cross; we transfixed with the nails His hands and feet; we pierced His Side with the spear. For if man had not sinned, the Son of God would have endured no torment."
And they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for an only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for a first-born - We feel most sensibly the sorrows of this life, passing as they are; and of these, the loss of an only son is a proverbial sorrow. "O daughter of My people, gird thee with sackcloth and wallow thyself in ashes," God says; "make thee the mourning of an only son, Most bitter lamentation" Jer 6:26. "I will make it as the mourning of an only son" Amo 8:10. The dead man carried out, "the only son of his mother and she was a widow," is recorded as having touched the heart of Jesus. Alb.: "And our Lord, to the letter, was the Only-Begotten of His Father and His mother." He was "the first-begotten of every creature" Col 1:15, and "we saw His glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" Joh 1:14. This mourning for Him whom our sins pierced and nailed to the tree, is continued, week by week, by the pious, on the day of the week, when He suffered for us, or in the perpetual memorial of His Precious Death in the Holy Eucharist, and especially in Passion-Tide. God sends forth anew "the Spirit of grace and supplication," and the faithful mourn, because of their share in His Death. The prophecy had a rich and copious fulfillment in that first conversion in the first Pentecost; a larger fulfillment awaits it in the end, when, after the destruction of antichrist, "all Israel shall" be converted and "be saved." Rom 11:26.
There is yet a more awful fulfillment; when "He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him" Rev 1:7. But meanwhile it is fulfilled in every solid conversion of Jew pagan or careless Christian, as well as in the devotion of the pious. Zechariah has concentrated in few words the tenderest devotion of the Gospel, "They shall look on Me whom they pierced." Lap.: "Zechariah teaches that among the various feelings which we can elicit from the meditation on the Passion of Christ, as admiration, love, gratitude, compunction, fear, penitence, imitation, patience, joy, hope, the feeling of compassion stands eminent, and that it is this, which we especially owe to Christ suffering for us. For who would not in his inmost self grieve with Christ, innocent and holy, yea the Only Begotten Son of God, when he sees Him nailed to the Cross and enduring so lovingly for him sufferings so manifold and so great? Who would not groan out commiseration, and melt into tears? Truly says Bonaventure in his 'goad of divine love:' 'What can be more fruitful, what sweeter than, with the whole heart, to suffer with that most bitter suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ? '"
Zechariah 12:11
zac 12:11
As the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon - This was the greatest sorrow, which had fallen on Judah. Josiah was the last hope of its declining kingdom. His sons probably showed already their unlikeness to their father, whereby they precipitated their country's fall. in Josiah's death the last gleam of the sunset of Judah faded into night. Of him it is recorded, that "his pious acts, according to what was written in the law of the Lord," were written in his country's history Ch2 35:26, Ch2 35:7; for him the prophet "Jeremiah wrote a dirge" Ch2 35:25; "all" the minstrels of his country "spake of him in their dirges" Ch2 35:25. The dirges were "made an ordinance" which survived the captivity; "to this day" Ch2 35:25, it is said at the close of the Chronicles. Among the gathering sorrows of Israel, this lament over Josiah was written in the national collection of "dirges" Ch2 35:25. "Hadadrimmon," as being compounded of the name of two Syrian idols, is, in its name, a witness how Syrian idolatry penetrated into the kingdom, when it was detached from the worship of God. It was (Jerome) "a city near Jezreel, now called Maximinianopolis in the plain of Megiddon, in which the righteous king Josiah was wounded by Pharaoh Necho." This "was 17 miles from Caesarea, 10 from Esdraelon." Its name still survives in a small village, south of Megiddon , and so, on the way back to Jerusalem.
Zechariah 12:12
zac 12:12
This sorrow should be universal but also individual, the whole land, and that, family by family; the royal family in the direct line of its kings, and in a branch from Nathan, a son of David and whole brother of Solomon Ch1 3:5, which was continued on in private life yet was still to be an ancestral line of Jesus Luk 3:31 : in like way the main priestly family from Levi, and a subordinate line from a grandson of Levi, "the family of Shimei" Num 3:23; and all the remaining families, each with their separate sorrow, each according to Joel's call, "let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber and the bride out of her closet" Joe 2:16, each denying himself the tenderest solaces of life.
Dionysius: "The ungrateful and ungodly, daily, as far as in them lies, crucify Christ, as Paul says, "crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame" Heb 6:6. And on these Christ, out of His boundless pity, poureth forth a spirit of grace and supplication, so that, touched with compunction, with grieving and tearful feeling, they look on Christ, suffering with His suffering, and bewailing their own impurities."
Osorius: "The likeness is in the sorrow, not in its degree. Josiah had restored religion, removed a dire superstition, bound up relaxed morals by healthful discipline, recalled to its former condition the sinking state. In their extremest needs light shone on them, when there came his unlooked-for death, Therewith the whole state seemed lost. So in the Death of Christ, they who loved Him, saw His divine works, placed their whole hope of salvation in His goodness, suddenly saw the stay of their life extinct, themselves deprived of that most sweet contact, all hope for the future cut off: But the grief in the death of Christ was the more bitter, as He awoke a greater longing for Himself, and had brought a firmer hope of salvation."
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 13
Zechariah 13:1
zac 13:1
In that day there shall be a fountain opened - Zechariah often repeats, "in that day" Zac 12:3-4, Zac 12:6, Zac 12:8-9, Zac 12:11; Zac 13:1-2, Zac 13:4; Zac 14:6, Zac 14:8, Zac 14:13, Zac 14:20, resuming his subject again and again, as a time not proximate, but fixed and known of God, of which he declared somewhat. It is "that day" which "Abraham desired to see, and saw it" Joh 8:56, whether by direct revelation, or in the typical sacrifice of Isaac, "and was glad:" it was "that day" which "many prophets and kings and righteous men desired to see" Mat 13:17; Luk 10:24, and in patience waited for it,: "the" one "day of salvation" of the Gospel. He had spoken of repentance, in contemplation of Christ crucified; he now speaks of forgiveness and cleansing, of sanctification and consequent obedience. The "fountain shall be" not simply "opened," but shall remain open. Isaiah had already prophesied of the refreshment of the Gospel. "When the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I, the Lord, will hear them, I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the valleys" Isa 41:17-18; here it is added, "for sin. and for uncleanness."
There were "divers" Heb 9:10 symbolical "washings" under the law; the Levites were "sprinkled with the water of purifying" Num 8:7, literally, "the water of taking away of sin: living waters" Num 19:17, put to the ashes of an heifer, were appointed as a "water for" (removing) "defilements" (Num 19:9, Num 19:13, Num 19:20-21 bis; Num 31:23); "a cleansing of sin" Num 19:9. Now, there should be one ever-open fountain for all "the house of David." Theodoret: "Who that fountain is, the Lord Himself teacheth through Jeremiah, 'they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters' Jer 2:13; and in the Gospel He says, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink' Joh 7:37; and 'The water which I shall give him, is a fountain of living water, gushing up to everlasting life' Joh 4:14. This was 'open to the house of David;' for of that kindred He took human nature. It was opened also 'for the dwellers of Jerusalem,' for the sprinkling of holy baptism; through which we have received remission of sins." Cyril: "That, receiving divine and holy baptism, we are sprinkled with the Blood of Christ to the remission of sins, who can doubt?" Dionysius: "Of this fountain much was foretold by Ezekiel, 'that a fountain should issue forth from the temple of the Lord, and 'go down into the desert' Eze 47:1, Eze 47:8-9, and 'every soul, to whom it shall come, shall live;' and Joel, 'A fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and water the valley of Shillim' Joe 3:18. Of this fountain Peter said to the Jews, when 'pricked in the heart' and seeking forgiveness, 'Let everyone of you be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins'" Act 2:37-38.
Zechariah 13:2
zac 13:2
I will cut off the names of the idols - This had been a fence against idolatry. To name evil is a temptation to evil. Wrong words are the parents of wrong acts. To speak of evil awakens curiosity or passion; curiosity is one of the strongest incentives to act. All public mention of terrible crimes (it has been observed) produces imitation of the specific form of crime. Hence, it was commanded, "make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth" Exo 23:13. And Joshua names it in his dying charge to Israel, "Be ye therefore very strong to keep and to are all that is written in the book of the law of Moses - either make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them" Jos 23:6-7. Hence, they "changed" the "names" of cities , which bare idol names. David speaks of it, as part of fealty to God. "I will, not take their names upon my lips" Psa 16:4.
Hosea prophesies of the times of the new covenant; "I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall be no more remembered by their name" Hos 2:17. Isaiah, "The idols he shall utterly abolish" Isa 2:18. Zechariah foretells their abolition with a turn of words, formed apparently on those of Hosea ; but slightly varied, because the worship of Baal, such a plague-spot in the time of Hosea, one, which continued until the year before the captivity , was gone, He implies nothing as to his own times, whether idolatry still existed. He predicts its entire abolition in the whole compass of the enlarged Judah, that is, of Christendom.
And also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land - False prophecy sets itself to meet a craving of human nature to know something of its future. False prophets there were, even in the time of Nehemiah , and those in some number, hired to prophesy against the word of God. Our Lord warns against them. "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves" Mat 7:15. "Many false prophets shall arise and shall deceive many" Mat 24:11. Many false prophets, John says, "are gone out into the world" Joh 4:1. False prophets attended the decline of Judaism. Such was the author of the Jewish Sibylline book, prophesying the destruction of the Romans , and fixing the mind of his people on temporal aggrandizement : false prophets were suborned by the Jewish "tyrants" and encouraged the Jews in the resistance which ruined the devoted city: , false prophets have arisen in Christianity; but, like the Phrygian women who led Tertullian astray, they "went out," were cast out "from it, as not being of it."
Cyril: "After that the Only Begotten Word of God appeared to us, the dull and childish toys of idolatry perished and were utterly destroyed, and with it were taken away the strange and impious devices of the false prophets, who were full of the evil, unclean spirit, and could be readily detected as laboring under a kindred disease to the idolaters. For both had one president of impiety, Satan." Not 50 years after the Crucifixion, a pagan wrote his work, "on the failure of oracles." The outpouring of the Holy "Spirit of grace and supplication" Zac 12:10, should sweep away "the unclean spirit" , (Zechariah alone anticipates the language of the New Testament) which became "a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets" Kg1 22:21-23 sought to them.
Zechariah 13:3
zac 13:3
His father and mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live - The prophet describes the zeal against false prophecy, with reference to the law against those who seduced to apostasy from God. Deu 13:6-10 : "the nearest relations were themselves to denounce any who had secretly tried to seduce them, and themselves, as the accusers, to cast the first stone at them. Cyril: "Such shall in those times be the reverence to Godward, so careful shall they be of perfect probity and laudable life, that parents themselves shall be stimulated against their children, if they should speak falsely anything from their own heart, as though God spoke by them - How true that word is, and how accredited the prophecy! This indicates clearly a great advance toward godliness, God transforming things or the better. What aforetime was held in great esteem, is now hated and accursed and held intolerable."
Zechariah 13:4
zac 13:4
The prophets shall be ashamed, every one of them - They who before their conversion, gave themselves to such deceits, shall be ashamed of their deeds; as, after the defeat of the seven sons of the chief priest Sceva, "fear fall on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified, and many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds: many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all, and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily," Luke subjoins, "grew the word of God and prevailed" Act 19:13-20.
Neither shall wear a rough garment to deceive Feigning themselves ascetics and mourners for their people, as the true prophets were in truth. The sackcloth, which the prophets wore Isa 20:2, was a rough garment of hair Isa 22:12; Jer 4:8; Jer 6:26, worn next to the skin Kg1 21:27; Kg2 6:30; Job 16:15, whence Elijah was known to Ahaziah, when described as "a hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins" Kg2 1:8. It was a wide garment, enveloping the whole frame, and so, afflictive to the whole body. Jerome: "This was the habit of the prophets, that when they called the people to penitence, they were clothed with sackcloth."
Zechariah 13:5
zac 13:5
And he shall say - Repudiating his former claims, "I am a husbandman:" for a man hath taught me from my youth." There was no room then for his having been a false prophet, since he had had from his youth one simple unlettered occupation, as Amos said truly of himself; "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son: but I was an herdsman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit" Amo 7:14. The prophet does not approve the lie, any more than our Lord did the injustice of the "unjust steward." Our Lord contrasted the wisdom "in their generation" of a bad man for his ends, with the unwisdom of "the children of light," who took no pains to secure their God. Zechariah pictures vividly, how people would anyhow rid themselves of all suspicion of false prophesying.
Zechariah 13:6
zac 13:6
And one shall say unto him, What are those wounds in thy hands? - The words are simple; the meaning different , according as they are united with what immediately precedes, or the main subject, Him whom they pierced, for whom they were to mourn, and, on their mourning, to be cleansed, and of whom it is said in the next verse, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd." Jerome and others explain it of the punishment inflicted by parents. "These wounds and bruises I received, condemned by the judgment of my parents, and of those who did not hate but loved me. And so will truth prevail dissipating falsehood, that he too, who was punished for his own fault, will own that he suffered rightly."
But wounds of chastisement are not inflicted on the hands, and the punishment of false prophecy was not such wounds, but death. Wounds in the hands were no punishment, which parents would inflict. They were the special punishment of the cross , after sustaining which, One only lived. The most literal interpretation, then, of the wounds in the hands harmonizes with the piercing before, and the smiting of the Good Shepherd which follows, of whom David too prophesied, "They pierced My Hands and My Feet" Psa 22:16. "What are those wounds on Thy hands? How long, think you, and how and by whom will this be said to Him? For ever and ever, unceasingly, and with unspeakable admiration it will be said, both by God the Father, "to whom He was obedient unto death, the death of the Cross" Phi 2:8 : it will be said also both by the holy "angels" who "desire to look into" Him Pe1 1:12, and by people whom He has redeemed. O great miracle, wonderful spectacle, especially in the Lord of all, to bear wounds in the midst of His Hands! And He shall say; "With these I was wounded in the house of those who loved Me." O great sacrilege, sacrilegious homicide, that such wounds were inflicted in the house of those who loved. He will not say, 'with these I was wounded by those who loved Me,' but 'in the house of those who loved Me.' For they who inflicted them, loved Him not.
But they were the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David, and the rest like them, who loved Me, and expected Me, who was promised to them. Yet so to speak is not to answer the question, 'what are these wounds?' For it is one thing to ask, what are these wounds, another to say, where they were inflicted. Having said, that they were inflicted in the house of those who loved Me. He says, what they are, 'the Cup which My Father hath given Me to drink.' For what He subjoins, is the Voice of the Father giving the Cup. 'Sword, awake, etc.' is as though he said, Ask ye, What are these wounds? I say, 'the tokens of obedience, the signs of the Father's will and command. The Lord of hosts, God the Father 'hath not spared' Me, 'His own Son, but hath given' Me 'for' you 'all.' And He said, 'Awake, o sword, against Jify Shepherd, and against the Man cohering to Me,' which is as much as, 'O Death, have thou power over My Son, My good Shepherd, the Man who cohereth to Me, that is, who is joined in unity of Person with the Word who is consubstantial with Me!' And then, as though the sword asked, how or how far shall I arise against this Thy Shepherd, he subjoins, 'Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.' Hence, the Shepherd Himself, when about to be smitten, spake, 'All ye shall be offended because of Me this night. For it is written, I will smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered' Mat 26:31. So then to those who say, 'what are those wounds in the midst of Thy hands?' is appositely subjoined the Voice of the Father, saying, 'Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd etc.' in the meaning, 'They are monuments of the Father's love, the tokens of My Obedience, because He 'spared not His own Son,' and I 'became obedient' to Him for you all, 'even unto death, and that, the death of the Cross. '"
Zechariah 13:7
zac 13:7
Awake, O sword - So Jeremiah apostrophises the sword, "O thou sword of the Lord, when wilt thou be quiet?" Jer 47:6. The prophets express what "will be," by a command that it should be; "Make the heart of this people heavy" Isa 6:10. But by this command he signifies that human malice, acting freely, could do no more than His "Hand and" His "counsel determined before to be done" Act 4:28. The envy and hatred of Satan, the blind fury of the chief priests, the contempt of Herod, the guilty cowardice of Pilate, freely accomplished that Death, which God had before decreed for the salvation of the world. The meaning then is, (Ribera), "the sword shall be aroused against My Shepherd, that is, I will allow Him to be smitten by the Jews. But by 'the sword' he designates death, persecution, wounding etc. as above, the 'sword upon his right arm' Zac 11:17, and, where the passion of Christ is spoken of, 'Deliver my soul from the sword' Psa 22:20. So also, 'All the sinners of the people shall die by the sword' Amo 9:10," (Jerome), "which cannot be taken literally; for many sinners perish by shipwreck, poison, drowning, fire." Amos then "so spake, because many died by war, yet not all by the sword, but others by pestilence and famine, all which he includes under 'the sword' Amo 9:10. This smiting began, when the Lord was taken, and His sheep began to be scattered; but the prophecy which, before, was being gradually fulfilled, was fully fulfilled in His death, and the apostles were dispersed till the day of the Resurrection at eventide."
Against the Man, My Fellow - that is, One united by community of nature. A little before, God had spoken of Himself as priced at "the thirty pieces of silver," yet as breaking the covenant which He had made with all nations for His people; as "pierced through, yet as pouring the spirit of grace and supplication" on those who pierced Him, that they should mourn their deed, and as, thereon, ever cleansing them from sin. As Man, God was sold, was pierced. : "God, in flesh, not working with aught intervening as in the prophets, but having taken to Him a Manhood connatural with Himself and made one, and through His flesh akin to us, drawing up to Him all humanity. What was the manner of the Godhead in flesh? As fire in iron, not transitively but by communication. For the fire does not dart into the iron, but remains there and communicates to it of its own virtue, not impaired by the communication, yet filling wholly its recipient."
The bold language of the Fathers only expressed the actuality of the Incarnation. Since the Manhood was taken into God, and in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and God and Man were one Christ. then was it all true language. His Body was "the Body of God" ; His flesh "the flesh of the Word" ; and it was lawful to speak of "the flesh of the Deity" , of "the Passion of the Word" , "the Passion of Christ, my God" , "the Passion of God" , "God dead and buried" , "God suffered" , "murderers of God" , "the Godhead dwelt in the flesh bodily, which is all one with saying that, being God, He had a proper body, and using this as an instrument, He became Man for our sakes, and, because of this, things proper to the flesh are said to be His, since He was in it, as hunger, thirst, suffering, fatigue and the like, of which the flesh is capable, while the works proper to the Word Himself as raising the dead and restoring the blind, He did through His own Body," is but a continuance of the language of Zechariah, since He who was sold, was priced, was Almighty God. Jesus being God and Man, the sufferings of His Humanity were the sufferings of God, although, as God, He could not suffer.
Now, conversely, God speaks of the Shepherd who was slain, as "My Fellow," united in Nature with Himself, although not the Manhood of Jesus which suffered, but the Godhead, united with It in one Person, was Consubstantial with Himself. The name might perhaps be most nearly represented by "connatural." : "When then the title is employed of the relation of an individual to God, it is clear that that individual can be no mere man, Jut must be one, united with God by unity of Being. The Akin of the Lord is no, other than He who said in the Gospel "I and My Father are One" Joh 10:30, and who is designated as "the Only-Begotten Son, who is in the Bosom of the Father" Joh 1:18. The word, it seems, was especially chosen, as being used in the Pentateuch, only in the laws against injuring a fellow-man. The prophet thereby gives prominence to the seeming contradiction between the command of the Lord, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd," and those Of His own law, whereby no one is to injure his fellow.
He thus points out the greatness of that end, for the sake of which the Lord regards not that relation, whose image among men He commanded to be kept holy. He speaks after the manner of people. He calls attention to the greatness of that sacrifice, whereby He "spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all" Rom 8:32. The word 'Man' forms a sort of contrast with "My Fellow." He whom the sword is to reach must unite the Human Nature with the divine." Jews too have seen that the words, "My Fellow," imply an equality with God; only since they own not Him, who was God and Man, they must interpret it of a false claim on the part of man , overlooking that it is given Him by God.
And I will turn My hand o upon the little ones - Doing to them as He had done to the Shepherd. So our Lord forewarned them: "If they have persecuted Me they will also persecute you" Joh 15:20 : "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me, before it hated you" Joh 15:18 : "Ye shall be hated of all men for My name's sake" Mat 10:22; Luk 21:17 : "they will deliver you up to the councils and scourge you in the synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My name's sake" (Mat 10:17-18; add Luk 21:12): "they shall deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all men for My name's sake" Mat 24:9; and to the Scribes and Pharisees, "I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth" Mat 23:34-35.
The little ones - As Jeremiah speaks of "the least of the flock" Jer 49:20, and the Lord said, "fear not, little flock" Luk 12:32, little and weak in itself but mighty in Him and in His grace. Three centuries of persecution, alike in the Roman empire and beyond it in Persia, fulfilled the prophet's words and deepened the foundation of the Church and cemented its fabric.
Zechariah 13:8
zac 13:8
In all the land, two parts therein shall be cut off and die - "In all the land of Israel," says a Jewish interpreter; (Kimchi); " - the land, in which the Good Shepherd had been slain and the sheep scattered, "that upon you." our Lord had said, "may come all the righteous blood." As David punished Moab, "with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive" Sa2 8:2; and Ezekiel prophesied, "A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee" Eze 5:12; so now, the greater part should be destroyed, but a remnant should be saved. "But the third part shall be left therein. Even so then at this present time also," Paul says, "there is a remnant according to the election of grace" Rom 11:5. Osorius: "The third part only shall be saved from the common destruction; yet not so, that they should suppose that glory was to be obtained amid ease."
Zechariah 13:9
zac 13:9
I will bring the third part through the fire - Such is always God's ways. "Thou hast proved us, O God; Thou hast tried us, like as silver is tried. Thou broughtest us into the snare, Thou laidest trouble upon our loins: we went through fire and water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place" Psa 66:9-11. "I have refined thee, but not with silver, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" Isa 48:10; and, "Through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God" Act 14:22.
Dionysius: "In adversity virtue is most tried, and it is shown what advance a person has made; for 'patience' hath 'a perfect work' Jam 1:4; and it is called the touchstone of all other virtues, as is written; 'God tried His elect as gold in the furnace and received them as a burnt offering' ; and, 'All the faithful who have pleased the Lord have passed through many tribulations' . And the angel Raphael saith to Tobias, 'Because thou wert accepted of God, need was that temptation should prove thee' ." "Adversities are granted to the elect of God, and therefore to be rejoiced in with the whole heart." "Fire, crosses, racks were prepared; swords executioners torturers were put in action; new forms of suffering were invented, and yet Christian virtue remained moveless, unconquered: the fiercer the onslaught, the more glorious was the triumph." : "The more suffered, the more believed in Christ." Osorius: "Whose virtue they adimired, these they imitated, and shared the suffering, that they might be partakers of the glory. This was that fire, whereby God willed that His own should be tried and purified, that, with Christ whom they gave themselves to imitate, they might enjoy everlasting glory."
I will bless him and will say, It is My people - Dionysius: "not only by creation as the rest, but by devotion and worship, by predestination and infusion of grace, by singular Providence, by mutual love; 'and it shall say, The Lord is my God,' whom alone above all things, I long for, love, worship."
This promise is oftentimes renewed through the prophets, oftentimes fulfilled in Christ, whenever the Church is recalled from listlessness by fiery trials, and through them her children are restored to deeper devotedness and closer union with God.
Bible
Zechariah Chapter 14
Zechariah
zac 14:0
"The Jews," Jerome says, "say that these things are to be fulfilled under Gog; others that they were accomplished in part, in the times of the Macedonians, Egyptians, and other nations. We, leaving the truth of the time to the judgment of the Lord, would explain what is written." Eusebius points out that it cannot be said to have been fulfilled under Antiochus Epiphanes; "If any think that these things are, then let him consider again and again, whether he can refer the rest of the prophecy also to the times of Antiochus; as, that 'the feet of the Lord stood on the mount of Olives' Zac 14:4, that 'the Lord in that day' Zac 14:9, became 'king over the whole earth;' and so, as to the rest of the prophecy." And although more was fulfilled in the last siege by the Romans, still those who would explain it solely of this, are obliged to mingle explanations partly literal, as that Jerusalem should be the earthly Jerusalem, which was destroyed, partly metaphorical, as to the mount of Olives, its division into two parts etc. It seems then probable that, like the kindred prophecy of Joel Joe 2:30; Joe 3:18, it relates chiefly to the time of the end, and that as our Lord unites the destruction of Jerusalem with His Coming in the Day of Judgment, so here are united that first destruction with the last rebellion of man, in the times of antichrist. Since then much or most may be yet future, it seems safer, as Jerome suggests, to explain the prophet's symbolic language, leaving the times of the fulfillment to Him, in whose hands they are.
Zechariah 14:1
zac 14:1
Behold the Day of the Lord cometh - Literally, "a day cometh, the Lord's," in which He Himself shall be Judge, and no longer leave man to fulfill his own will, and despise God's; in which His glory and holiness and the righteousness of all His ways shall be revealed.
And thy spoil shall be in the midst of thee - Jerome: "How great will the strait be, that the spoils should be divided in the midst of her. It often happens that what, by a sudden assault, is plundered in the city, is divided in the field or in solitude, lest the enemy should come upon them. But now there will be such a heavy weight of ills, such will be the security of conquest, that the spoils shall be divided in the midst of the city."
Zechariah 14:2
zac 14:2
I Will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle - This is a feature which belongs to the end. It had been dwelt upon by Joel; Joe 3:2-9, Joe 3:11; Ezekiel spoke of the "many nations" Eze 38:6, Eze 38:15, Eze 38:22 which should come under Gog. John foretells of an universal strife at the end, when "The spirits of devils, working miracles, go forth unto the king; of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty" Rev 16:14; and "Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints round about, and the beloved city" Rev 20:7-9. Since no creature can do aught but what God wills, and, in his phrensy against God's people, is but His instrument, "to try them and to purge and to make white to the time of the end" Dan 11:35; Dan 12:10; and the strength of body or intellect, which is abused against His law, He continuously in the order of nature supplies, God may be said to do what Satan does against Him. Satan, in his blind fury, crowns martyrs, fills the thrones of heaven, works, against his will, the All-wise Will of God.
And the houses rifled, and the women ... - The horrors of pagan war repeat themselves through people's ever-recurring passions. What was foretold as to Babylon is repeated in the same words as to the Church of God. Seemingly "all things" come "alike to all Ecc 9:2 : there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean and to the unclean: to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner." The outward event is the same, the hidden part is known to God alone. "And the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city," unlike the lot of the earthly Jerusalem, in the destruction both by Nebuchadnezzar (which was past) and the Romans (see at Mic 3:12, pp. 46-50). At the first, "Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, carried away the rest of the people left in the city, and the fugitives that fell away to the king of Babylon, with the remnant of the multitude" Kg2 25:11, so that Jeremiah mourned over it, "Because of the mountain of Zion which is desolate, foxes walk" (habitually) "upon it" Lam 5:18. The Romans (see at pp. 46, 47) "effaced the city." Now "a remnant is not cut off," because "for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened" Mat 24:32; for our Lord had said, that "the gates of hell should not prevail against" His Church Mat 16:18.
Zechariah 14:3
zac 14:3
The Lord shall go forth and shall fight - Jerome: "Is to be taken like that in Habakkuk, 'Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, for salvation with Thine Anointed" Hab 3:13, and in Micah, 'For behold, the Lord cometh forth out of His place, and will come down and will tread upon the high places of the earth, and the mountains shall be molten under Him, and the valleys shall be cleft" Mic 1:3-4; and Isaiah also, "The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man; He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war; He shall cry; He shall prevail over His enemies" Isa 42:13. "God is said to 'go forth,' when by some wondrous deed He declares His Presence - His Deity is, as it were, laid up, so long as He holds Himself in, and does not by any token show His power. But He 'goes forth,' and bursts forth, when He exercises some judgment, and worketh some new work, which striketh terror." God then will "go forth out of His place," when He is constrained to break through His quietness and gentleness and clemency, for the amendment of sinners. He who elsewhere speaketh through the prophet, 'I, the Lord, change not' Mal 3:6, and to whom it is said, 'Thou art the same' Psa 102:28, and in the Epistle of James, 'With whom is no change' Jam 1:17, now 'goeth forth' and fighteth 'as in the day of battle,' when He overwhelmed Pharaoh in the Red sea; and 'fought for Israel.'" "The Lord shall fight for you," became the watchword of Moses Exo 14:14; Deu 1:30; 13:22; Deu 20:4 and the warrior Joshua in his old age (Jos 23:10; compare Jos 10:14, Jos 10:42; Jos 23:3), after his life's experience Jos 10:14, Jos 10:42; Jos 23:3, and Nehemiah. "Be not afraid by reason of this great multitude" Neh 4:20, said Jahaziel, son of Zachariah, when the "Spirit of the Lord came upon" him; "for the battle is not your's, but God's" Ch2 20:15.
As He fought in the day of battle - Osorius: "All wars are so disposed by the power of God, that every victory is to be referred to His counsel and will. But this is not seen so clearly, when people, elate and confident, try to transfer to themselves all or the greater part of the glory of war. Then may the war be eminently said to be the Lord's, when no one drew sword, as it is written, "The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace" Exo 14:14. Of all God's wars, in which human insolence could claim no part of the glory, none was more wondrous than that, in which Pharaoh and his army were sunk in the deep. "The Lord," said Moses Exo 15:3, "is a man of war: the Lord is His Name." "That day of battle" was the image of one much greater. In that, Pharaoh's army was sunk in the deep; in this, the power of evil, in Hell: in that, what could in some measure be conquered by human strength, was subdued; in this, a tyranny unconquerable; in that, a short-lived liberty was set up; the liberty brought by Christ through subdual of the enemy, is eternal. As then the image yields to the truth, earthly goods to heavenly, things perishable to eternal, so the glory of that ancient victory sinks to nothing under the greatness of the latter."
Zechariah 14:4
zac 14:4
And His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives - "Over against Jerusalem to the east, wherein riseth the Sun of Righteousness." The Mount of Olives is the central eminence of a line of hills, of rather more than a mile in length, overhanging the city, from which it is separated only by the narrow bed of the valley of the brook Cedron. It rises 187 feet above Mount Zion, 295 feet above Mount Moriah, 443 feet above Gethsemane, and lies between the city and the wilderness toward the dead sea: around its northern side, wound the road to Bethany and the Jordan . There, probably, David worshiped Sa2 15:32; his son, in his decay, profaned it Kg1 11:7; Josiah desecrated his desecrations Kg2 23:13; there "upon the mountain, which is on the east side of the city, the glory of the Lord stood," when it had "gone up from the midst of the city" Eze 11:23; it united the greatest glory of the Lord on earth, His Ascension, with its deepest sorrow, in Gethsemane. Since the Angel said, "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven" Act 1:11, the old traditional opinion is not improbable, that our Lord shall come again to judge the earth, where He left the earth, near the place of His Agony and Crucifixion for us. So shall "the Feet" of God literally, "stand upon the Mount of Olives." Elsewhere it may be that "the Feet of the uncircumscribed and simple God are to be understood not materially, but that the loving and fixed assistance of His power is expressed by that name" (Dionysius).
Which is true, or whether, according to an old opinion, the last act of antichrist shall be an attempt to imitate the Ascension of Christ (as the first antichrist Simon Magus was said to have met his death in some attempt to fly) and be destroyed by His Coming there, the event must show.
And the Mount of Olives shall cleave - (be cleft) in (from) the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west that is, the cleft shall be east and west, so as to form a "very great valley" through it - from Jerusalem toward the Jordan eastward; and this shall be, in that "half of the mountain shall remove northward, and half thereof southward." If this be literal, it is to form an actual way of escape from Jerusalem; if figurative, it symbolizes how that which would be the greatest hindrance to escape, the mountain which was higher than the city, blocking, as it were, the way, should itself afford the way of escape; as Zechariah speaks, "O great mountain, before Zerubbabel" thou shalt become a "plain" Zac 4:7; and Isaiah, "Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain" Is. Isa 40:4; that is, every obstacle should be removed.
Zechariah 14:5
zac 14:5
And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains - Rather, along the valley of My mountains namely, of those mountains, which God had just formed by dividing the mount of Olives. "For the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal, that is, Azel," the same word which enters into Beth-Azel of Micah, where the allusion probably is to its firm-rootedness. It is more probable that the name of a place should have been chosen with an allusive meaning, as in Micah, than that an unusual appellative should have been chosen to express a very common meaning. Cyril had heard of it as the name of a village at the extremity of the mountain. Elsewhere it might very probably have been destroyed in the destructive Roman wars: The Roman camp in the last siege must have been very near it . The destruction of villages, after the frantic revolt under Bar-Kochba, was enormous.
Yea, ye shall flee like as ye fled from before the earthquake - An earthquake in the time of Uzziah, whose memory survived the captivity to the time of Zechariah, nearly two centuries, must have been very terrible, but no historical account remains of it, Josephus having apparently described the past earthquake in the language which Zechariah uses of the future (see the introduction to Amos). Such an earthquake is the more remarkable a visitation in Jerusalem, because it was out of the line of earthquakes. These were to the north and east of Palestine: within it, they were almost unknown (see Amo 4:11, vol. i. p. 286). Interpositions of God even in man's favor, are full of awe and terror. They are tokens of the presence of the all-holy among the unholy. Fear was an accompaniment of special miracles in the Gospel, not only among the poor Gadarenes Mar 5:15; Luk 8:25, or the people , but even the Apostles ; apart from the effect of the sight of angels on us who are in the flesh . It is then quite compatible, that the valley so formed should be the means of deliverance, and yet an occasion of terror to those delivered through it. The escape of the Christians in Jerusalem to Pella, during the break of the siege, after the withdrawal of Cestius Gallus was a slight image of this deliverance.
And the Lord thy God shall come, and all the saints with Thee, O God - The prophet, having spoken of God as "my God," turns suddenly to speak to Him, as present. Jerome on Zac 14:6-7 : "This is manifestly said of the second Coming of the Saviour, of which John too in his Apocalypse says, 'Behold He shall come with the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him' Rev 1:7. And the Lord Himself in the Gospel declareth, that 'the Son of Man shall come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory' Mat 24:30. He shall 'come with the clouds,' that is, with the angels, who are 'ministering spirits' and are sent for different offices, and with the prophets and apostles." Ribera: "Whenever Scripture says that the saints and angels come with Christ, it is always speaking of His second Coming, as in that, 'When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all His holy angels with Him' Mat 25:31, and in the Epistle of Jude, 'Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment' Jde 1:14-15."
Zechariah 14:6
zac 14:6
The light shall not be clear nor dark - Or, more probably, according to the original reading , "In that day there will be no light; the bright ones will contract themselves," as it is said, "The stars shall withdraw their shining."
This is evermore the description of the Day of Judgment, that, in the presence of God who is Light, all earthly light shall grow pale. So Joel had said, "The sun and moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining" Joe 3:15. And Isaiah, "The moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion and in Jersalem and before His ancients gloriously" Isa 24:23; and, "Behold the day of the Lord cometh, The stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine" Isa 13:9-10. All know well our Lord's words Mat 24:29. John, like Zechariah, unites the failure of the heavenly light "with a great earthquake, and the sun became as sackcloth of hair: and the moon become as blood; and the stars of heaven fell upon the earth" Rev 6:12-13.
Zechariah 14:7
zac 14:7
And it shall be one day: it shall be known unto the Lord: not day, and not night; and at the eventide it shall be light - "One" special "day; one," unlike all beside; known unto God, and to Him alone. For God alone knows the day of the consummation of all things, as He saith, "Of that day and that hour knoweth no one, neither the angels in Heaven, nor the Son, (so as to reveal it) but the Father only" Mar 13:32. Neither wholly "day," because overclouded with darkness; nor wholly "night," for the streaks of light burst through the darkness chequered of both; but in "eventide," when all seems ready to sink into the thickest night, "there shall be light." Divine light always breaks in, when all seems darkness; but then the chequered condition of our mortality comes to an end, then comes the morning, which has no evening; the light which has no setting; "perpetual light, brightness infinite;" when "the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold" Isa 30:26; and "the glory of God doth lighten" Rev 21:23 the eternal city, "and the Lamb is the light" thereof; and "in Thy light we shall see light" Psa 36:9. "Christ shall be to us eternal light, a long perpetual day."
Zechariah 14:8
zac 14:8
And it shall be, that living waters - Kimchi: "This is what is said in the prophecy of Joel, 'A fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord' Joe 3:18; and in that of Ezekiel, 'And behold there ran out waters.' Eze 47:2." Zechariah leaves to the mind to supply what the former prophets had said of the fertilizing life-giving character of those waters. He adds that they should pervade the whole land, west as well as east; "to the former," rather "the Eastern Sea" , into which they would by nature flow, and toward "the hinder," that is, the Western Sea, the Mediterranean, which natural waters could not "reach." This their flow, he adds, should be perpetual , "These streams shall not dry up and their waters shall not fail"; therefore drought shall not lessen them, nor winter-cold bind them. "From Jerusalem as from a fountain shall stream forth living waters of wisdom and grace to all nations" .
Cyril: "Again he tells us, under a figure, that exceeding great and large shall be that outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the saints, especially when they shall be removed to that holy eternal life in the world to come. For now through faith in Christ we are enriched, as with an earnest, with the firstfruits of the Holy Spirit. But after the Resurrection, sin being wholly taken away, the Holy Spirit will be in us, not as an earnest or in a measure; but richly bounteously and perfectly shall we enjoy the grace through Christ. He calleth, then, 'living water,' the Spirit which, he says, will come forth from the Jerusalem which is from above. But that the Holy Scripture is accustomed to liken the Divine Spirit to 'water,' the Giver thereof, the Son, accredits, saying, 'he that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water' Joh 7:38. This the Evangelist explains, 'This spake He of the Spirit, which they who believe in Him should receive' Joh 7:39. Since then the Spirit is life-giving, rightly does he liken it to that, which is life-giving to the frame."
Zechariah 14:9
zac 14:9
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth - Such should be the influence of the living water, that is, of the Spirit of God. God who has ever reigned and will reign, "a great King over all the earth" Psa 47:3, Psa 47:8, shall be owned by His creatures, as what He is.
There shall be one Lord - More exactly, "The Lord shall be One, and His Name One." He had before prophesied, "I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land" Zac 13:2. The Church being thus cleansed, no other lord or object of worship should be named but "Himself." This is one of those prophecies, of continued expansion and development, ever bursting out and enlarging, yet never, until the end, reaching its full fulfillment. Dionysius: "Since in this life we contemplate God in His effects, in which His whole perfection shineth not forth now we know Him obscurely and imperfectly, His perfections being in divers diversely represented. In our home we shall see Him as He is, face to Face, through His Essence. Therefore then He will be represented by one name, as He shall be beheld by one gaze."
Zechariah 14:10
zac 14:10
All the land shall be turned as a plain from Rimmon to Gebah - Kimchi: "All the land, which is round about Jerusalem, which is now mountains, as is said, "The mountains are round about Jerusalem" Psa 125:2, shall be level as a plain, but Jerusalem itself shall be exalted, and high above all the earth." The dignity of the Church, as "a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid" Mat 5:14, is symbolized here by the sinking of all around and its own uprising; as in Micah and Isaiah, "The mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills" Isa 2:2; Mic 4:1. Gebah, literally, hill," now, "Jeva," was a frontier-garrison, held once by the Philistines Sa1 14:5, and fortified by Asa Kg1 15:22, in the northern boundary of Benjamin , together with Michmash (1 Sam. loc. cit.) (now Mukhmas), commanding an important pass, by which Jerusalem was approached Isa 10:28-29. "Rimmon, south of Jerusalem" is mentioned in Joshua among the southern towns of Judah Jos 15:32, given to Simeon Jos 19:7; Ch1 4:32. Both survived the Captivity . They mark then the north and south of the kingdom of Judah, a long mountain chain, which is pictured as sinking down into a plain, that Jerusalem alone might be exalted.
From Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate - Benjamin's gate must obviously be a gate to the north, and doubtless the same as "the gate of Ephraim" , the way to Ephraim lying through Benjamin. This too has probably reference to the prophecy of Jeremiah, that "the city shall be built to the Lord from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner" Jer 31:38. "Jehoash, king of Israel, broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner-gate, four hundred cubits" Kg2 14:13; Ch2 25:23, after the war with Amaziah. Zechariah seems to speak of Jerusalem, as it existed in his time. For the tower of Hananeel Neh 3:1 still existed; the "first gate" was probably destroyed, since he speaks not of it, but of its "place;" the gate of Benjamin and the corner-gate probably still existed, since Nehemiah Neh 3:1, Neh 3:3, Neh 3:6, Neh 3:13-15 mentions the building of the sheep-gate, the fish-gate, the old gate, or gate of the old city, the valley-gate, the dung-gate, the gate of the fountain; but not these.
Zechariah 14:11
zac 14:11
And they shall dwell in it - In peace, going forth from it, neither into "captivity," nor in flight Zac 14:2, Zac 14:5; for God should exempt from curse the city which He had chosen, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, and He says of the heavenly Jerusalem, "there shall be no more curse" Rev 22:3.
Zechariah 14:12
zac 14:12
Again, upon the restoration of His people follows the destruction of His enemies. It shall, first and chiefly, be God's doing, not man's. "This shall be the plague." The word is used of direct infliction by pestilence, "wherewith the Lord shall smite all the people (peoples) that fought against Jerusalem." The awful description is of living corpses. Lap.: "The enemies of Jerusalem shall waste, not with fever or disease, but by a plague from God, so that, being sound, standing, living, in well-being, they should waste and consume away," as Isaiah speaks of the "carcasses of the men, that have transgressed against Me; for their worm shall not die - and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh" Isa 66:24.
Their flesh shall consume away - Rather, "wasting away the flesh of each one." It is the act of God, in His individual justice to each one of all those multitudes gathered against Him. One by one, "their eyes," of which they said, "let our eye look on Zion" Mic 4:11, that is, with joy at its desolation, "shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue," wherewith they blasphemed God, "shall consume away in their mouths" (compare Psa 12:3; Isa 36:15, Isa 36:18; Isa 37:3-4, Isa 37:17, Isa 37:23, Isa 37:29). Appalling, horrible, picture! "standing on their feet," yet their flesh mouldering away as in a grave-yard, their sightless balls decaying in their holes, the tongue putrefying in their mouth, a disgust to themselves and to others! Yet what, compared to the horrible inward decay of sin, whereby men "have a name that they live and are dead?" Rev 3:1. Jerome: "Let us read Ecclesiastical histories, what Valerian, Decius, Diocletian, Maximian, what the savagest of all, Maximin, and lately Julian suffered, and then we shall prove by deeds, that the truth of prophecy was fulfilled in the letter also."
Zechariah 14:13
zac 14:13
A great tumult - And panic fear, such as God said He would send upon the Canaanites before Israel Deu 7:23, or on Israel itself, if disobedient Deu 28:20; or which fell on the Philistines after Jonathan's capture of the garrison at Michmash, when every man's "sword was against his fellow" . There is no real unity, except in God; elsewhere, since each seeks his own, all must be impregnated with mutual suspicion, ready at any moment to be fanned into a flame; as when, at the blowing of Gideon's trumpets, "the Lord set every man's sword against his fellow" Jdg 7:22; or when, at Jehoshaphat's prayer, "the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy; and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another" Ch2 20:32.
And they shall lay hold, every one on the hand of his neighbor - Every one shall be every one's foe. Each shall, in this tumultuous throng, grasp the other's hand, mastering him powerfully. "And his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbor," as was prophesied of Ishmael, "his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him" Gen 16:12.
Zechariah 14:14
zac 14:14
And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem - This seems more probable than the alternative rendering of the English margin, "against." For Judah is united with Jerusalem as one, in the same context Zac 14:21; and, if it had shared with the pagan, it must also have shared their lot. It is Judah itself, not "a remnant of Judah," as it is "every one that is left of all the nations" Zac 14:16, which is thus united to Jerusalem: it is that same Judah, as a whole, of which it is said, "it shall fight." Nor is anything spoken of" conversion," which is said of those left from the pagan nations, who had fought against her. Yet for Judah to have joined an exterminating pagan war against Jerusalem, even though constrained, had, like the constrained sacrifices to pagan gods, been apostasy. But there is not even a hint that, as Jonathan apologetically paraphrases , they were "constrained."
The war is to be Judah's free act: "Judah also shall fight." Again, those gathered against Jerusalem, and their warfare against it, had been described at the outset, as "all nations" (Zac 14:2-3 : here the subject is not the gathering or fighting, but the overthrow. Nor is there any decisive contrary idiom; for, although when used of people, it always means "fight against," yet, of place, it as often, means "fight in". Probably then the prophet means, that not only should God fight for His people, but that "Judah also" should do its part, as Paul says, "We, then, as workers together with Him" Co2 6:1; and, "we are laborers together with God" Co1 3:9; and, "I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" Co1 15:10; or, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" Phi 2:12. God so doth all things in the Church, for the conversion of the pagan, and for single souls, as to wait for the cooperation of His creature. : "God made thee without thee; He doth not justify thee without thee."
And the wealth of all the pagan round about shall be gathered - Whatever the world had taken in their war against the Church shall be abundantly repaid. "All the pagan" had combined to plunder Jerusalem; "the wealth of all the pagan" Zac 14:2 shall be gathered to requite them. Lap.: "As Isaiah says, The nations, converted to Christ, brought all their wealth to the Church, whence he congratulates the Church, saying, "Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breasts of kings - For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver" Isa 60:16-17; under which he typically understands, (Dionysius), "wisdom, philosophy, eloquence, learning, and all the other arts and sciences, liberal and mechanical, wherewith the pagan shall be adorned, who are converted to the faith. So shall the gifts of nature be perfected by the gifts of grace, and 'they' shall defend the Church who erstwhile attacked it."
Zechariah 14:15
zac 14:15
And so shall be the plague of the Lord ... - Dionysius: "So, when God sendeth the plague, all the irrational animals of antichrist and his satellites shall perish as the aforesaid men, who used them, perished. For, for the sins of men, God, to their greater confusion, sometimes slays their beasts, sometimes also for their loving correction." "The imagery is from the Mosaic law of the ban. If a whole city became guilty of idolatry, not the inhabitants only, but the beasts were to be destroyed Deu 13:15, so that here, in miniature, should be repeated the relation of the irrational to the rational part of the creation, according to which, for the sins of men, 'the creature is,' against its will, 'made subject to vanity.' Analogous is it also, that on the offence of Achan Jos 7:24-25, beside him and his children, his oxen, asses and sheep were (stoned and) burned with him."
Zechariah 14:16
zac 14:16
Every one that is left of the nations - God so gives the repentance, even through His visitations, that, in proportion to the largeness of the rebellion and the visitation upon it, shall be the largeness of the conversion. "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled" Luk 21:24. And Paul, "Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles shall be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved" Rom 11:25-26. Hitherto prophets had spoken of a "remnant" of Jacob, who should "return to the mighty God" Isa 10:21, and should be saved; now, upon this universal rebellion of the pagan. He foretells the conversion of a remnant of the pagan also.
Shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts - There is a harmony between the rebellion and the repentance. The converted shall go to worship God there, where they had striven to exterminate His worshipers. The prophet could only speak of the Gospel under the image of the law. "The Feast of Tabernacles" has its counterpart, not, like the Pascha or the Pentecost, in any single feast, but in the whole life of the Gospel. It was a thanksgiving for past deliverance; it was a picture of their pilgrim-life from the passage of the Red Sea, until the parting of the Jordan opened to them the entrance to their temporary rest in Canaan (see at greater length Hos 12:9, vol. i. p. 122). Jerome: "In that vast, wide, terrible wilderness, where was no village, house, town, cave, it made itself tents, wherein to sojourn with wives and children, avoiding by day the burning sun, by night damp and cold and hurt from dew; and it was 'a statute forever in their generations; ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all, that are Israelites born, shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know, that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt' Lev 23:41-43."
Lap.: "Much more truly do Christians keep the feast of tabernacles, not once in the year only, but continually, unceasingly. This is, what Peter admonisheth, 'Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts' Pe1 2:11. And Paul often teacheth that we, like Abraham, are strangers on earth, but 'citizens' of heaven 'with the saints, and of the household of God' Eph 2:19. 'Faith,' he says, 'is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God' Heb 11:1, Heb 11:9-10." Jerome: "As long as we are in progress, in the course and militant, we dwell in tabernacles, striving with all our mind to pass from the tabernacles to the firm and lasting dwelling-place of the house of God. Whence, also holy David said, 'I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were' Psa 39:12. So speaketh he, who is still in Egypt and yet placed in the world. But he who goeth forth out of Egypt, and entereth a desert from vices, holdeth his way and says in the Psalm, 'I will pass through to the place of the tabernacle of the Wonderful unto the house of God' (Psa 41:5, Vulgate). Whence, also he says elsewhere, 'How amiable are Thy dwellings. Thou Lord of hosts; my soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord' and a little after, 'Blessed are they who dwell in thy house, they shall be alway praising Thee' Psa 41:4. 'The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous' Psa 118:15. 'One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple' Psa 27:4.
Whoso dwelleth in such tabernacles, and hastes to go from the tabernacles to the court, and from the court to the house, and from the house to the temple of the Lord, ought to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles etc." It symbolizes how, (Dionysius), "in the New Testament, Christians, being delivered through Christ from the slavery to sin and satan, and sojourning in this vale of misery, by making progress in virtues go up to the home of the heavenly paradise, the door of glory being open by the merit of the Lord's Passion, and so the faithful of Christ celebrate the feast of tabernacles; and, after the destruction of antichrist, they will celebrate it the more devoutly, as there will then be among them a fuller fervor of faith."
Zechariah 14:17
zac 14:17
Whoso will not go up - Cyril: "To those who 'go not up,'" he threatens the same punishment as persecutors would endure. For enemies, and they who will not love, shall have the same lot. This is, I think, what Christ Himself said, 'Whoso is not with Me is against Me, and whoso gathereth not with Me scattereth' Luk 11:23."
Upon them there shall be no rain - Rain was the most essential of God's temporal gifts for the temporal well-being of His people. Moses marked out this, as his people were entering on the promised land, with recent memory of Egypt's independence of rain in Egypt itself, and that this gift depended on obedience. "The land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, whence, ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs" Deu 11:10-11 : but a "land of hills and valleys, it drinketh water of the rain of heaven; a land which the Lord thy God careth for; the eyes of the Lord are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. And it shall be, if ye shall hearken diligently unto My commandments - I will give you the rain of your land in its season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn and thy wine and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full."
But the threat on disobedience corresponded therewith. "Take heed to yourselves," Moses continues, "that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside and serve other gods - and the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit, and ye perish quickly from off the good land, which the Lord giveth you" Deut. 16-17; and, "Thy heaven, that is over thee, shall be brass, and the earth, that is under thee, shall be iron; the Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust" Deu 28:23-24. Amos speaks of the withdrawal of rain as one of God's chastisements (Amo 4:7. See vol. i. p. 28): the distress in the time of Ahab is pictured in the history of the woman of Sarepta Kg1 17:9-16, and Ahab's directions to Obadiah Kg1 18:5. But it is also the symbol of spiritual blessings; both are united by Hosea Hos 6:3 and Joel Joe 2:23. as Joel and Amos also speak of spiritual blessings exclusively under the figure of temporal abundance Joe 3:18; Amo 9:13. In Isaiah it is simply a symbol, "Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together" (Isa 45:8. See also Isa 5:6, both together Isa 30:23)
Zechariah 14:18
zac 14:18
And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain - Rather, "and there shall not be." It may be that the prophet chose this elliptical form, as well knowing that the symbol did not hold as to Egypt, which, however it ultimately depended on the equatorial rains which overfilled the lakes which supply the Nile, did not need that fine arrangement of the rains of Autumn and Spring which were essential to the fruitfulness of Palestine. The omission leaves room for the somewhat prosaic supply of Jonathan, "The Nile shall not ascend to them." More probably the words are left undefined with a purposed abruptness, "there shall not be upon them," namely, whatever they need: the omission of the symbol in these two verses might the more suggest, that it is a symbol only. Egypt, the ancient oppressor of Israel, is united with Judah as one, in the same worship of God, as Isaiah had said, "In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria" Isa 19:24; and since it is united in the duty, so also in the punishment for despising it.
Osorius: "Let not Egypt be proud, that it is watered by the Nile, as if it needed no rain: that is, let no one be secure in this life. For though we stand by faith, yet may we fall. For although bedewed by the efflux of divine grace, and filled with its richness, yet if we give not thanks continually for such great gifts, God will count us as the rest, to whom such copious goodness never came. The safety of all then lies in this, that while we are in these tabernacles, we cherish the divine benefits, and unceasingly praise the Lord, who hath heaped such benefits upon us."
Cyril: "Under the one nation of the Egyptians, he understands those who are greatly deceived, and chose idolatry most unreasonably, to whom it will be a grave inevitable judgment, the pledge of destruction, that they despise the acceptable grace of salvation through Christ. For they are murderers of their own souls, if, when they could lay hold of eternal life and the divine gentleness, open to all who will choose it and put off the burden of sin, they die in their errors; the stain and pollution from transgression and error uncleansed, although the Divine Light illumined all around and called those in darkness to receive sight. Of each of these I would say, 'Better is an untimely birth than he; for he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness" Ecc 6:3-4. "Good had it been for them, if they had never been born" Mat 26:24, is the Saviour's word. That this is not said of the Egyptians only, but shall come true of all nations, who shall altogether be punished, if they are reckless of the salvation through Christ and honor not His festival, he will establish in these words;
Zechariah 14:19
zac 14:19
This shall be the sin of Egypt and the sin of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles - For before the coming of the Saviour, good perhaps had been in part the excuse of the pagan, that they had been called by none. For no one had preached unto them. Wherefore the Saviour also, pointing out this in the Gospel parables, said, 'the laborers' Mat 20:7, called 'at the eleventh hour, said, No man hath hired us.' But when Christ cast His light upon us, 'bound the strong man' Mat 12:29, removed from his perverseness those subject to him, justified by faith those who came to Him, laid down His life for the life of all, they will find no sufficient excuse who admit not so reverend a grace. It will be true of the pagan too, if Christ said of them, 'If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin' Joh 15:22."
The prophet says "sin," not punishment , for sin includes "the punishment," which is its due, and which it entails: it does not express the punishment, apart from the sin. It was "the sin" which comprised and involved all other sin, the refusal to worship God as He had revealed Himself, and to turn to Him. It was to say, "We will not have" Him "to reign over us" Luk 19:14.
Zechariah 14:20
zac 14:20
In that day there shall be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord - He does not say only, that they should be consecrated to God, as Isaiah says of Tyre, "Her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord" Isa 23:18; he says that, "the bells of the horses," things simply secular, should bear the same inscription as the plate on the high priest's forehead. Perhaps the comparison was suggested by the bells on the high priest's dress ; not the lamina only on his forehead, but bells (not as his, which were part of his sacred dress), bells, altogether secular, should be inscribed with the self-same title, whereby he himself was dedicated to God.
Holiness to the Lord - He does not bring down what is sacred to a level with common things, but he uplifts ordinary things, that they too, should be sacred, as Paul says, "whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God" Co1 10:31.
And the pots of the Lord's house shall be like bowls before the altar - The pots are mentioned, together with other vessels of the Lord's house Eze 38:3; Kg1 7:45; Kg2 25:14; Ch2 4:11, Ch2 4:16; Jer 52:18-19, but not in regard to any sacred use. They were used, with other vessels, for dressing the victims Ch2 35:13 for the partakers of the sacrifices. These were to be sacred, like those made for the most sacred use of all, "the bowls for sprinkling," whence, that sacrificial blood was taken, which was to make the typical atonement.
Zechariah 14:21
zac 14:21
And every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness to the Lord - Everything is to be advanced in holiness. All the common utensils everywhere in the people of God shall not only be holy, but "holiness," and capable of the same use as the vessels of the temple.
And there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts - The actual Canaanite had long since ceased to be; the Gibeonites, the last remnant of them, had been absorbed among the people of God. But "all Israel" were not "of Israel." Isaiah had called its princes and people, "rulers of Sodom, people of Gomorrah" Isa 1:10. Ezekiel had said, "Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite" Eze 16:3. Hosea used at least the term of two-fold meaning, "Canaan, in whose hands are the balances of deceit" Hos 12:7; and Zephaniah, "All the people of Canaan are destroyed" Zep 1:11. After the time of the Canon, Daniel is introduced saying, "O thou seed of Canaan and not of Judah" . Ezekiel had spoken of ungodly priests, not only as uncircumcised in heart (according to the language of Deuteronomy Deu 10:16; Deu 30:6), but uncircumcised in flesh also, altogether alien from the people of God Eze 44:7. The prophet then speaks, as Isaiah, "It shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it" Isa 35:8, and Joel, "then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more" Joe 3:17 This shall have its full fulfillment in the time of the end. "There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither" whatsoever "worketh abomination or a lie;" and, "without" are "dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie" Rev 21:27; Rev 22:15.
Cyril: "Although born of the blood of Israel, those of old eagerly imitated the alien Canaanites. But after that the Only-Begotten Word of God came among us, and, having justified by faith sealed with the Holy Spirit, those who came to His grace, our mind hath been steadfast, unshaken, fixed in piety. Nor will anyone persuade those who are sanctified, to honor any other god save Him who is, by nature and in truth, God, whom we have known in Christ. For in Himself He hath shown us the Father, saying, "He that hath seen Me hash seen the Father" Joh 14:9. Wherefore "in that" day, that is, at that time, he says, "there shall be no Canaanite," that is, alien and idolater, "in the house of the Lord Almighty?" Theodoret: "But may the Almighty God bring the saying true at this time also, that no Canaanite should be seen among us, but that all should live according to the Gospellaws. and await that blessed hope and the appearance of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, with whom be glory to the Father with the Holy Spirit, now and ever and to endless ages. Amen."
Zephaniah Introduction
Zephaniah
zep 0:0
Introduction to Zephaniah
Zephaniah was called to his role not long after Habakkuk. Since his time was near to that of Habakkuk, so his subject was also related. Both lived when, for the sins of the reign of Manasseh, God had pronounced an irreversible sentence of destruction upon Jerusalem. The mission of both was not to the whole people whose sentence was fixed, but to the individuals who would flee from the wrath to come. The form of Habakkuk's prophecy was (as we might say) more subjective; that of Zephaniah was more objective. Habakkuk exhibits the victory of faith in the oppressed faithful - how it would hold to God amid the domestic oppressions, amid the oppressions of the Chaldees by whom those oppressions were to be punished, and, when all shall seem to fail, should, in the certainty of its unseen life, rejoice in its God. The characteristic of Zephaniah is the declaration of the tenderness of the love of God for that remnant of Israel, "the afflicted and poor people," whom God would "leave in the midst of them" Zep 3:12.
Zephaniah has, like Habakkuk, to declare the judgment on the world. He renews the language of Joel as to "the day of the Lord," and points to nations and individuals. He opens with the prophecy of one wide destruction of the land and all the sinners in it, its idolaters and its oppressors, its princes, its royal family, its merchants, its petty plunderers, who used rapine under color of their masters' name, and brought guilt upon themselves and them. Nothing is either too high or too low to escape the judgments of God. But the visitation upon Judah was only partially of a more comprehensive judgment. Zephaniah foretells the wider destruction of enemies of God's people on all sides - of Philistia, Moab, Ammon, on each side of them, and the distant nations on either side, Ethiopia (which then included Egypt) and Assyria. All these particular judgments contain principles of God's judgments at all times. But in Zephaniah they seem all to converge in the love of God for the remnant of His people. The nation he calls "a nation not desired" Zep 2:1. He calls to God individuals: "It may be, ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger" Zep 2:3. He foretells a sifting time, wherein God would "take away the proud among her" Zep 3:11-12; yet there follows a largeness of Gospel promise and of love Zep 3:12-17, the grounds of which are explained in the Gospel, but whose tenderness of language is hardly surpassed even by the overwhelming tenderness of "the love of Christ which passeth knowledge" Eph 3:19.
The prophet's own name "the Lord hath hid" corresponds with this. The Psalmist had said, using this same word, "He shall hide me in His tabernacle in the day of evil: in the secret of His tabernacle He shall hide me" Psa 27:5; and, "O how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast "laid up" for them that fear Thee. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man. Thou shalt "keep them secretly" Psa 31:19-20 in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." "They take counsel against Thy "hidden" ones" Psa 83:4.
The date which Zephaniah prefixed to his prophecy, has not been disputed; for no one felt any interest in denying it. Those who disbelieve definite prophecy invented for themselves a solution, whereby they thought that Zephaniah's prophecy need not be definite, even though uttered in the time of Josiah; so the fact remained unquestioned.
The unaccustomed fullness with which his descent is given implies so much of that personal knowledge which soon fades away, that those who speak of other titles, as having been prefixed to the books, or portions of books of the prophets, by later hands, have not questioned this. The only question is, whether he lived before or in the middle of the reformation by Josiah. Josiah, who came to the throne when eight years old 641 b.c., began the reformation in the 12th year of his reign, Ch2 34:3-7, when almost twenty; 630 b.c. The extirpation of idolatry could not, it appears, be accomplished at once. The finding of the ancient copy of the law, during the repairs of the temple in the 18th year of his reign, 2 Kings 22; 2 Chr. 34:8-28, 624 b.c., gave a fresh impulse to the king's efforts. He then united the people with himself, bound all the people present to the covenant Kg2 23:3; Ch2 34:31 to keep the law, and made a further destruction of idols 2 Kings 23:4-20; Ch2 34:33 before the solemn passover in that year. Even after that passover some abominations had to be removed Kg2 23:24. It has been thought that the words, "I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place" Zep 1:4, imply that the worship of Baal had already in some degree been removed, and that God said, that He would complete what had been begun. But the emphasis seems to be rather on the completeness of the destruction, as we should say, that He would efface every remnant of Baal, than to refer to any effort which had been made by human authority to destroy it.
The prophet joins together, "I will cut off the remnant of Baal, the name of the Chemarim." The cutting off "the name of the Chemarim," or idolatrous priests, is like that of Hosea, "I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name" Hos 2:17. As the cutting off of "the name of the Chemarim" means their being utterly obliterated, so, probably, does "the cutting off the remnant of Baal." The worship of Baal was cut off, not through Josiah, but (as Zephaniah prophesied) through the captivity. Jeremiah asserts its continuance during his long prophetic office Jer 2:8; Jer 7:9; Jer 11:13; Jer 19:5; Jer 32:29.
In the absence of any direct authority to the contrary, the description of idolatry by Zephaniah would seem to belong to the period, before the measures to abolish it were begun. He speaks as if everything were full of idolatry Zep 1:4-5, the worship of Baal, the worship of the host of heaven upon the housetops, swearing by Maleham, and probably the clothing with strange apparel.
The state also was as corrupt Zep 3:3-4 as the worship. Princes and judges, priests and prophets were all alike in sin; the judges distorted the law between man and man, as the priests profaned all which related to God. The princes were roaring lions; the judges, evening wolves, ever famished, hungering for new prey. This too would scarcely have been, when Josiah was old enough to govern in his own person. Both idolatry and perversion of justice were continued on from the reign of his father Amon. Both, when old enough, he removed. God Himself gives him the praise, that he "did judgment and justice, then it was well with him; he judged the cause of the poor and needy, then it was well with him; was not this to know Me? saith the Lord" Jer 22:15-16. His conversion was in the eighth year of his reign. Then, while he was yet young, he began to "seek after the God of David his father."
The mention of the "king's children" (see the note at Zep 1:8), whom, God says, He would punish in the great day of His visitation, does not involve any later date. They might, anyhow have been brothers or uncles of the king Josiah. But, more probably, God declares that no rank should be exempt from the judgments of that day. He knew, too, that the sons of Josiah would be then punished for their great sins. The sun of the temporal rule of the house of David set in unmitigated wickedness and sorrow. Of all its kings after Josiah, it is said, they did "evil in the sight of the Lord;" some were distinguished by guilt; all had miserable ends; some of them with aggravated misery.
Zephaniah then probably finished his course before that 12th year of Josiah, (for this prophecy is one whole) and so just before Jeremiah was, in Josiah's 13th year, called to his office, which he fulfilled for half a century, perhaps for the whole age of man.
The foreground of the prophecy of Zephaniah remarkably coincides with that of Habakkuk. Zephaniah presupposes that prophecy and fills it up. Habakkuk had prophesied the great wasting and destruction through the Chaldaeans, and then their destruction. That invasion was to extend beyond Judah (for it was said "he shall scoff at kings" Hab 1:10), but was to include it. The instrument of God having been named by Habakkuk, Zephaniah does not even allude to him. Rather, he brings before Judah the other side, the agency of God Himself. God would not have them forget Himself in His instruments. Hence, all is attributed to God. "I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked, and I will cut off man from the land, saith the Lord. I will also stretch out Mine hand upon Judah; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal. In the day of the Lord's sacrifice, I will punish the princes, etc. In the same day also I will punish all those etc. I will search Jerusalem with candles. The great day of the Lord is near, and I will bring distress upon, etc. O Canaan, land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee. The Lord will be terrible upon them. Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by My sword. And He will destroy Nineveh" Zep 1:2, Zep 1:4, Zep 1:8-9, Zep 1:13-14, Zep 1:17; Zep 2:5, Zep 2:11-13. The wicked of the people had "said in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil" Zep 1:12. Zephaniah inculcates, throughout his brief prophecy, that there is nothing, good or evil, of which He is not the doer or overruler.
But the extent of that visitation is co-extensive with that prophesied by Habakkuk. Zephaniah indeed speaks rather of the effects, the desolation. But the countries, whose desolation or defeat he foretells, are the lands of those, whom the Chaldaeans invaded, worsted, in part desolated. Beside Judah, Zephaniah's subjects are Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Ethiopia (which included Egypt), Nineveh. And here he makes a remarkable distinction corresponding with the events. Of the Ethiopians or Egyptians, he says only, "ye shall be slain by My sword" Zep 2:12. Of Assyria he foretells Zep 2:13-15 the entire and lasting desolation; the capitals of her palaces in the dust; her cedar-work bare; flocks, wild-beasts, pelican and hedgehog, taking up their abode in her. Moab and Ammon and Philistia have at first sight the two-fold, apparently contradictory, lot; "the remnant of My people," God says, "shall possess them; the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah" Zep 2:9; and, that they should be a perpetual desolation.
This also was to take place, after God had brought back His people out of captivity. Now all these countries were conquered by the Chaldaeans, of which at the time there was no human likelihood. But they were not swept away by one torrent of conquest. Moab and Ammon were, at first, allies of Nebuchadnezzar, and rejoiced at the miseries of the people, whose prophets had foretold their destruction. But, beyond this, Nineveh was at that time more powerful than Egypt. Human knowledge could not have discerned, that Egypt should suffer defeat only, Nineveh should be utterly destroyed. It was the custom of the great conquerors of the East, not to destroy capitals, but to re-people them with subjects obedient to themselves. Nineveh had held Babylon by viceroys; in part she had held it under her own immediate rule. Why should not Babylon, if she conquered Nineveh, use the same policy? Humanly speaking, it was a mistake that she did not.
It would have been a strong place against the inroads of the Medo-Persian empire. The Persians saw its value so far for military purposes, as to build some fort there ; and the Emperor Claudius, when he made it a colony, felt the importance of the well-chosen situation . It is replaced by Mosul, a city of some "20,000 to 40,000" inhabitants. Even after its destruction, it was easier to rebuild it than to build a city on the opposite bank of the Tigris. God declared that it should be desolate. The prediction implied destruction the most absolute. It and its palaces were to be the abode of animals which flee the presence of man; and it perished.
Again, what was less likely than that Philistia, which had had the rule over Israel, strong in its almost impregnable towns, three of whose five cities were named for their strength, Gaza, "strong;" Ashdod, "mighty;" Ekron, "deep-rooting;" one of which, Ashdod, about this very time, resisted for 29 years the whole power of Egypt, and endured the longest siege of any city of ancient or modern times - what, to human foresight, less was likely, than that Philistia should come under the power of the "remnant of the house of Judah," when returned from their captivity? Yet, it is absolutely foretold. "The seacoast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down in the evening. For the Lord their God shall visit them, and restore their captivity" Zep 2:7. As unlikely was it, that Moab and Ammon, who now had entered upon the territory of the two and a half tribes beyond Jordan, should themselves become the possession of the remnant of Judah. Yet, so it was!
It is then lost labor, even for their own ends, when moderns, who do not believe definite prophecy, would find out some enemy whom Zephaniah may have had in mind in foretelling this wide destruction. It still remains that all that Zephaniah says beforehand was fulfilled. It is allowed that he could not foretell this through any human foresight. The avowed object in looking out for some power, formidable in Zephaniah's time, is, that he could not, by any human knowledge, be speaking of the Chaldaeans. But the words stand there. They were written by Zephaniah, at a time when confessedly no human knowledge could have enabled man to predict this of the Chaldaeans; nay, no human knowledge would have enabled anyone to predict so absolutely a desolation so wide and so circumstantially delineated.
That school, however, has not been willing to acquiesce in this, that Zephaniah does "not" speak of the instrument, through whom this desolation was effected. They will have it, that they know, that Zephaniah had in his mind one, who was "not" the enemy of the Jews or of Nineveh or of Moab and Ammon, and through whom no even transient desolation of these countries was effected. The whole argument is a simple begging of the question. : "The Egyptians cannot be meant, for the Cushites, who are threatened Zep 2:12, themselves belong to the Egyptian army Jer 46:9, and Psammetichus only besieged Ashdod which he also took, without emblazoning ought greater on his shield (Herodotus ii. 157). The Chaldaeans come still less into account, because they did not found an independent kingdom until 625 b.c., nor threaten Judaea until after Josiah's death. On the other hand, an unsuspicious and well-accredited account has been preserved to us, that somewhere about this time the Scythians overflowed Palestine too with their hosts. Herodotus relates , that the Scythians, after they had disturbed Cyaxares at the siege of Nineveh, turned toward Egypt; and when they had already arrived in Palestine, were persuaded by Psammetichus to return, and in their return plundered a temple in Ascalon."
It is true that Herodotus says that "a large Scythian army did, under their king Madyes, burst into Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians and entered Media - keeping Mount Caucasus on the right," and that "the Medes opposed and fought them and, being defeated, lost their rule" .
It is true also that Herodotus relates, that "they went thence toward Egypt, and when they were in Palestine-Syria, Psammetichus king of Egypt, meeting them, turned them by gifts and entreaties from going further; that when in their return they were in Ascalon, a city of Syria, whereas most of the Scythians passed by without harming ought, some few of them, being left behind, plundered the temple of Venus Ourania." In this place also, it is true, Herodotus uses a vague expression, that "for 28 years the Scythians ruled over Asia, and that all things were turned upside down by their violence and contempt. For beside the tributes, they exacted from each what they laid upon each, and beside the tribute, they drove together and took what each had. And most of them Cyaxares and the Medes entertaining as guests, intoxicated and killed. And then the Medes recovered their empire and "became masters of what they held before."
But, apart from the inconsistency of the period here assigned to their power, with other history, it appears from the account itself, that by "all Asia" Herodotus means "all upper Asia," as he expresses himself more accurately, when relating the expedition of Darius against them. : "Darius wished to take revenge on the Scythians, because they first, making an inroad into Media and defeating in battle those who went against them, began the wrong. For the Scythians, as I have before said, "ruled upper Asia" for 28 years. For, pursuing the Cimmerians, they made an inroad into Asia, putting down the Medes from their rule, for these, before the Scythians came, ruled Asia." The Asia then, which Herodotus supposes the Scythians to have ruled, is co-extensive with the Asia which he supposes the Medes to have ruled previously. But this was all in the north, for having said that , "Phraortes subdued Asia, going from one nation to another," he adds that, having brought Persia under his yoke, "he led an army against those Assyrians who had Nineveh, and there lost most of his army and his own life."
Apart then from the fabulousness of this supposed empire, established by Phraortes , (Cyaxares having been the real thunder of the Median empire,) it is plain that, according to Herodotus himself, the Asia, in which the Scythians plundered and received tribute, were the lands north of Assyria. The expedition against Egypt stands as an insulated predatory excursion, the object of which having been mere plunder, they were bought off by Psammetichus and returned (he tells us) doing no mischief in their way, except that a few lingerers plundered a temple at Ascalon. It was to Media that they first came; the Medes, whom they defeated; the Median empire to which they succeeded; Cyaxares and the Medes, who treacherously destroyed most of them; the Medes, whose empire was restored by the destruction of some, and the return of the rest to their own land.
With this agrees the more detailed account of the Scythians by Strabo, who impeaches the accuracy of the accounts of Herodotus . Having spoken of the migrations of leaders, and by name, of "Madyes the Scythian" (under whom Herodotus states the irruption to have taken place), he says , "the Sacae made the like inroad as the Cimmerians and the Trerians, some longer, some nigh at hand, for they took possession of Bactriana, and acquired the best land of Armenia, which they also left, named after them Sacasene, and advanced as far as to the Cappadocians and especially those on the Euxine, whom they now call of Pontus (Pontians). But the generals of the Persians who were at the time there, attacking them by night, while they were making a feast upon the spoils, utterly extirpated them."
The direction which he says they took, is the same as that of the Cimmerians, whom Herodotus says that they followed. : "The Cimmerians, whom they also call Trerians, or some tribe of them, often overrun the right side of the Pontus, sometimes making inroads on the Paphlagonians, at others, on the Phrygians. Often also the Cimmerians and Trerians made the like attacks, and they say that the Trerians and Cobus (their king) were, at last expelled by Madyes king of the (Scythians)." Strabo also explains, what is meant by the tributes, of which Herodotus speaks. He is speaking of the Nomadic tribes of the Scythians generally : "Tribute was, to allow them at certain stated times, to overrun the country (for pasturage) and carry off booty. But when they roamed beyond the agreement, there arose war, and again reconciliations and renewed war. Such was the life of the nomads, always setting on their neighbors and then being reconciled again."
The Scythians then were no object of fear to the Jews, whom they passed wholly unnoticed and probably unconscious of their existence in their mountain country, while they once and once only swept unharming along the fertile tracks on the sea-shore, then occupied by the old enemies and masters of the Jews, the Philistines. But Herodotus must also have been misinformed as to the length of time, during which they settled in Media, or at least as to the period during which their presence had any sensible effects. For Cyaxares, whom he represents as having raised the siege of Nineveh, in consequence of the inroad of the Scythians into Media, came to the throne, according to the numbers of Herodotus, 633 b.c. For the reign of Cyaxares having lasted according to him 40 years , that of Astyages 35 , and that of Cyrus 29 , these 104 years, counted back from the known date of the death of Cyrus, 529 or 530 b.c., bring us to 633 or 636 b.c. as the beginning of the reign of Cyaxares. But the invasion of the Scythians could not have taken place at the first accession of Cyaxares, since, according to Herodotus, he had already defeated the Assyrians, and was besieging Nineveh, when the Scythians burst into Media. According to Herodotus, moreover, Cyaxares "first distributed Asiatics into troops, and first ordered that each should be apart, spearmen, and archers and cavalry, for before, all were mixed pele-mele together."
Yet, it would not be in a very short time, that those who had been wont to fight in a confused mass, could be formed into an orderly and disciplined army. We could not then, anyhow, date the Scythian inroad, earlier than the second or third year of Cyaxares. On the other hand the date of the capture of Nineveh is fixed by the commencement of the Babylonian Empire, Babylon falling to Nabopolassar. The duration of that empire is measured by the reigns of its kings , of whom, according to Ptolemy's Canon, Nabopolassar reigned 21 years; Nebuchadnezzar, (there called Nabocollasar) 43; Evil-Merodach (Iluaroadam) 2; Neriglissar (Niricassolassar) 4; Nabunahit (Nabonadius with whom his son Belshazzar was co-regent) 17; in all 87 years; and it ends in an event of known date, the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, 538 b.c. The addition of the 87 years of the duration of the empire to that date carries us back to the date assigned to the capture of Nineveh by Nabopolassar in conjunctitan with Cyaxares, 625 b.c. The capture then of Nineveh was removed by 8 or 9 years only from that, which Herodotus gives as the time of the accession of Cyaxares, and since the attack upon Nineveh can hardly have been in his first year, and the last siege probably occupied two, the 28 years of Scythian dominion would dwindle down into something too inconsiderable for history. Probably, they represent some period from their first incursion into Media, to the final return of the survivors, during which they marauded in Media and Upper Asia. The mode, by which "the greater part" (Herodotus tells us) were destroyed, intoxication and subsequent murder at a banquet, implies that their numbers were no longer considerable.
History, with the exception of that one marauding expedition toward Egypt, is entirely silent as to any excursions of the Scythians, except in the north. No extant document hints at any approach of theirs to any country mentioned by Zephaniah. There was no reason to expect any inroad from them. With the exception of Bactriana, which lies some 18 degrees east of Media and itself extended over some 7 degrees of longitude, the countries mentioned by Strabo lie, to what the kings of Assyria mention as the far north, Armenia, and thence, they stretched out to the west, yet keeping mostly to the neighborhood of the Euxine. Considering the occasion of the mention of the invasion of the Scythians, the relief which their invasion of Media gave to Nineveh, it is even remarkable that there is no mention of any ravages of theirs throughout Mesopotamia or Babylonia. Zephaniah speaks, not of marauding, but of permanent desolation of Assyria, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, and of destructive war also on Ethiopia. There is no reason to think that the Scythians approached any of these lands, except Philistia, which they passed through unharming. The sacred writers mention even smaller nations, by whom God chastised Judah in their times, "bands of the Syrians, of Moab, of the children of Ammon," as well as Assyria and Babylon. Ezekiel Ezek. 38; 39, when he prophesies of the inroad of Northern nations, Meshech and Tubal, Gomer and Togormah, speaks of it as far removed in the future, prophesies not their destroying but their own destruction.
It does not affect the argument from prophecy, whether Zephaniah did or did not know, through whom the events, which he predicted, should be brought to pass. But, setting aside the question whether he had from the prophecies of Habakkuk and Isaiah, a human knowledge of the Chaldees or whether God instructed him, how what he foretold should be accomplished, or whether God spread out before his mind that which was to be, apart from time, in prophetic vision, Zephaniah did picture what came to pass. But it is an intense paradox, when men, 2500 years after his date, assert, not only that Zephaniah's prophecies had no relation to the Chaldees, in whom his words were fulfilled, and who are the objects of the prophecies of Habakkuk and Jeremiah, but that they know, what must have been, and (as they assert) what was in the prophet's mind; and that he had in his mind, not those in whom his words were fulfilled, but others in whom they were "not" fulfilled, to whom he does not allude in one single trait, who left no trace behind them, and whose march along an enemy's tract on the seacoast was of so little account, that no contemporary historian, nor Josephus, even alludes to it . But there is to this day a city beyond Jordan into which this name enters in part, Scythopolis." Quaestt. Hebr. ad Gen. (Opp. iii. 358. ed. Vall.) quoted by Reland, p. 992).
It has been already observed, that each prophet connects himself with one or more of those before them. They use the language of their predecessors in some one or more sentences, apparently with this precise object. They had overflowing fullness of words; yet, they chose some saying of the former prophet, as a link to those before them. We have seen this in Amos , then in Obadiah, , who uses the language of Balaam, David, Joel, Amos; of Jeremiah, in regard to Obadiah ; of Micah to his great predecessor, Micaiah, and Amos ; of Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Ezekiel to Micah ; of Nahum to Jonah ; and of Isaiah (I think), to Nahum ; of Habakkuk, to Isaiah and Micah , It is in conformity with this, that Zephaniah, even more than those before him, uses language of earlier prophets.
It arises, not (as people have been pleased to say) from any declension in the originality of prophets at his date, but from his subject. It has been said, "if anyone desire to see the utterances of the prophets in brief space, let him read through this brief Zephaniah." The office of Zephaniah was not to forewarn of any instrument of God's judgments. The destruction is prophesied, not the destroyer. His prophecy is, more than those of most other prophets, apart from time, to the end of time. He prophesies of what shall be, not when it shall be, nor by whom. He does not "expect" or "anticipate" or "forebode!" He absolutely declares the future condition of certain nations; but not the "how" of its coming to pass. If Nineveh, Edom and Ammon had not been desolated, his prophecy would have been falsified; each fulfillment became the earnest of a larger fulfillment; but all shall not be completed until "the earth and all that is therein shall be burned up."
It belongs to this character of Zephaniah, that he gathers from other prophets before him, especially Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Habakkuk, expressions relating to, or bearing on, judgment to come, or again to that his other great subject, God's love for the remnant of His people; yet mostly in fragments only and allusively. They were key-notes for those who knew the prophets. Thus, in calling on man to hushed submission before God, because a day of judgment was coming, he blends into one verse Hab 1:7 Habakkuk's call, "hush before the Lord" Hab 2:20, and the warning words of Isaiah, Joel, Obadiah Isa 13:6; Joe 1:15; Joe 3:15; Oba 1:15, "nigh is the day of the Lord;" the image of the "sacrifice," which God had commanded, and the remarkable word, "consecrated," of God's instruments. The allusion is contained in single words, "sacrifice, consecrated;" the context in which they are embodied is different.
The idea only is the same, that Almighty God maketh, as it were, a sacrifice to Himself of those who incorrigibly rebel against Him. Elsewhere, Isaiah draws out the image at much length; "A sword of the Lord is full of bloods; it is smeared with fat, with the blood of lambs and of goats; with the fat of kidneys of rams: for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom" Isa 34:6. Jeremiah uses the image in equal fullness of the overthrow of Pharaoh-Necho at the Euphrates; "This is a day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries: and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with blood, for the Lord God hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates" Jer 46:10. Ezekiel expands it yet more boldly Eze 39:17. Zephaniah drops everything local, and condenses the image into the words, "The Lord hath prepared a sacrifice; He hath consecrated His guests," adding the new bold image, that they whom God employed were, as it were, His invited guests whom He consecrated thereto.
In like way, as to the day of the Lord itself, he accumulates all words of terror from different prophets; from Joel the words, "a day of darkness and of gloominess; a day of clouds and of thick darkness" Joe 2:2; Zep 1:15 : to these he adds "of shouting and the sound of the trumpet" Zep 1:16; Amo 2:2, used by Amos in relation to the destruction of Moab; the two combinations, which precede, occur, the one in a different sense, the other with a slightly different grammatical inflection, in Job.
From Isaiah, Zephaniah adopts that characteristic picture of self-idolizing, which brings down God's judgments on its pride; (the city) "that dwelleth securely, that said in her heart, I and no I beside" Isa 47:8; Zep 2:15.
Even where Isaiah says, "For a consumption and that decreed, the Lord God of hosts makes in the midst of all the earth" Isa 10:23, and, slightly varying it, "For a consumption and that decreed, I have heard from the Lord God of hosts upon all the earth" Isa 28:22, Zephaniah, retaining the two first words, which occur in both places, says more concisely, "For a consumption, nought but terror, will He make all the inhabitants of the earth." Yet, simple as the words are, he pronounced, that God would not only "bring a desolation upon the earth," or "in the midst of the earth," but would make its inhabitants one consumption. Nahum had said of Nineveh, "with an overflowing flood He will make the place thereof an utter consumption" Nah 1:8. The most forceful words are the simplest.
He uses the exact words of Isaiah, "From beyond the rivers of Cush" Zep 3:10; Isa 18:1, than which none can be simpler, and employs the word of festive procession, though in a different form, and having thus connected his prophecy with Isaiah's, all the rest, upon which the prophecy turns, is varied.
In like way he adopts from Micah the three words, "her-that-halteth, and-will-gather her-that-is-driven-out" Mic 4:6; Zep 3:19. The context in which he resets them is quite different.
It has been thought, that the words, "I have heard the reproach of Moab," may have been suggested by those of Isaiah, who begins his lament over Moab, "We have heard of the pride of Moab;" but the force and bearing of the words is altogether different, since it is God Who says, "I have heard," and so He will punish.
The combination, "the exulters of pride" Isa 13:3; Zep 3:11, is common to him with Isaiah: its meaning is uncertain; but it is manifestly different in the two places, since the one relates to God, the other to man.
The words, "They shall build houses and shall not dwell therein; they shall plant vineyards and not drink the wine thereof" , are from the original threat in Deuteronomy, from which also the two words, "They-shall-walk as-the-blind Zep 1:17, may be a reminiscence, but with a conciseness of its own and without the characteristic expressions of Deuteronomy, adopted by other sacred writers: "They shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness" Deu 28:29.
Altogether these passages are evidence that Zephaniah is of later date than the prophecies in which the like language occurs; and the fact that he does employ so much language of his predecessors furnishes a strong presumption in any single case, that he in that case also adopted from the other sacred writer the language which they have in common.
It is chiefly on this ground, that a train of modern critics have spoken disparagingly of the outward form and style of Zephaniah. It has, however, a remarkable combination of fullness with conciseness and force. Thus, he begins the enumeration of those upon whom the destruction should fall, with the words, "consuming I will consume all" Zep 1:2 : to an enumeration co-extensive with the creation, he adds unexpectedly, "and the stumblingblocks with the wicked" Zep 1:3, anticipating our Lord's words of the Day of Judgment, "they shall gather the stumblingblocks and them that do iniquity" Mat 13:41 : to the different idolatries he adds those of a divided faith, "swearers to the Lord and swearers by Malcham" Zep 1:5; to those who turned away from God he adds those who were unearnest in seeking Him Zep 1:6.
Again, after the full announcement of the destruction in the day of the Lord, the burst, in those five words, "sift-yourselves and-sift (on) nation unlonged for" Zep 2:1, is, in suddenness and condensation, like Hosea; and so again, in five words, after the picture of the future desolation of Nineveh, the abrupt turn to Jerusalem, "Woe rebellious and-defiled (thou) oppressive city" Zep 2:1, and then follow the several counts of her indictment, in brief disjointed sentences, first negatively, as a whole; each in three or four words, "she-listened not to-voice; she-received not correction; in-the-Lord she-trusted not; to-her-God she-approached not" Zep 3:2; then, in equally broken words, each class is characterized by its sins; "her-princes in-her-midst are roaring lions; her-judges evening wolves; not gnawed-they-bones on-the-morrow; her-prophets empty-babblers, men of-deceits; her-priests profaned holiness, violated law" Zep 3:3-4 Then in sudden contrast to all this contumacy, neglect, despite of God, He Himself is exhibited as in the midst of her; the witness and judge of all; there, where they sinned. "The-Lord righteous in-her-midst; He-doth not iniquity; by-morning by-morning His-judgment He-giveth to-light; He-faileth not" Zep 3:5; and then in contrast to the holiness and the judgments of God, follows in four words, the perseverance of man in his shamelessness, and - the fruit of all this presence and doings of the holy and righteous God and judge is, "and-not knoweth the wrong-doer shame."
Zephaniah uses the same disjoining of the clauses in the description of God's future manifestation of His love toward them. Again, it is the same thought, "The-Lord thy-God- (is) in-thy-midst" Zep 3:17; but now in love; "mighty, shall-save; He-shall-rejoice over-thee with-joy; He-shall-keep-silence in-His-love; He-shall-rejoice over-thee with-jubilee." The single expressions are alike condensed; "she-hearkened not to-voice" Zep 3:2, stands for what Jeremiah says at such much greater length, how God had sent all His servants "the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them, but they hearkened not unto Me nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck" Jer 7:24-28. The words "shall-be-silent in-His-love, in their primary meaning, express the deepest human love, but without the accustomed image of betrothal.
"The whole people of Canaan" (Zep 1:11, compare Hos 12:7) reminds one of Hosea; "the-men-coagulated on-their-lees" Zep 1:12 is much expanded by Jeremiah Jer 48:11, his word occurs before him in Job only and the song of Moses Job 10:10; Exo 15:8. Single poetic expressions are, that Moab should become "the possession of briars" Zep 2:9, the word itself being framed by Zephaniah; in the description of the desolation of Nineveh, "a voice singeth in the window; desolation is on the threshold" Zep 2:14, the imagery is so bold, that modern criticism has thought that the word "voice" which occurs in the Old Testament 328 times and with pronouns 157 times more, must signify "an owl," and "desolation" must stand for "a crow." Very characteristic is the word, ""He (see below the note at Zep 2:11) shall famish" all the gods of the earth," expressing with wonderful irony, the privation of their sacrifices, which was the occasion of the first pagan persecutions of the Christians.
When then a writer, at times so concise and poetic as Zephaniah is in these places, is, at others, so full in his descriptions, this is not prolixity, but rather vivid picturing; at one time going through all the orders of creation Zep 1:3; at another, different classes of the ungodly Zep 1:4-9 : at yet another, the different parts of the scared woe-stricken city Zep 1:10-11, to set before our eyes the universality of the desolation. Those who are familiar with our own great northern poet of nature, will remember how the accumulation of names adds to the vividness of his descriptions. Yet, here too, there is great force in the individual descriptions, as when he pictures the petty plunderers for their master, and "fill their masters' houses" - not with wealth but - "with violence and fraud" , all which remains of wealth gained by fraud and extortion being the sins themselves, which dwell in the house of the fraudulent to his destruction.
In the strictly prophetic part of his office, Jerusalem having been marked out by Micah and Isaiah before him, as the place where God would make the new revelation of Himself, Zephaniah adds, what our Lord revealed to the Samaritan woman Joh 4:21, that Jerusalem should no longer be the abiding center of worship. "They shall worship Him, every man from his place, all the isles of the nations" Zep 2:11, is a prophecy which, to this day, is receiving an increasing accomplishment. It is a prophecy, not of the spread of Monotheism, but of the worship of Him, to whose worship at that time a handful of Jews could with difficulty be brought to adhere, the desertion or corruption or association of whose worship with idolatry Zephaniah had to denounce and to foretell its punishment. The love which God should then show to His own is expressed in words, unequaled for tenderness and in conformity to that love is the increasing growth of holiness, and the stricter requirements of God's holy justice.
Again, Zephaniah has a prelude to our blessed Lord's words, "to whom much is given, of him shall much be required" Luk 12:48, or His Apostle's, of the great awe in working out our salvation Phi 2:12. Progress is a characteristic and condition of the Christian life; "We beseech you, that as ye have received of us, how ye ought to walk and to please God, ye would abound more and more" Th1 4:1. Even so Zephaniah bids "all the meek of the earth, who have wrought His judgments or law to seek diligently that meekness" Zep 2:3, which had already characterized them, and that, not in view of great things, but, if so be they might be saved; it may be that ye may be hid in the day of the Lord's anger, as Peter saith, "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" Pe1 4:18. It is again remarkable, how he selects meekness, as the characteristic of the new state of things, which he promises. He anticipates the contrast in the Magnificat, in which the lowest lowliness was rewarded by the highest exaltation. As it is said there, "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek" Luk 2:52, so the removal of the proud "from within thee," and the "leaving of an afflicted and poor people within thee" Zep 3:12, is the special promise by Zephaniah.
Little is said of the captivity. It is a future, variously assumed subject Zep 3:13. Judah in the farthest lands, "beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, is the daughter of My dispersed" Zep 3:10; the whole earth is the scene of their shame Zep 3:19; their praises should be commensurate with their shame, "when I turn back your captivity before your eyes" Zep 3:20; Zep 2:7. But this turning away of their captivity is the only notice, that their punishment should be the going into captivity. The captivity itself is pre-supposed, as certain and as known. So neither are there any images from temporal exaltation. All pride should be removed, as utterly unbefitting God's holy presence: "thou shalt no more be haughty in My holy mountain" Zep 2:11. The words expressive of the abasement of those within her are proportionably strong, "My afflicted and poor" Zep 2:12. Some are accustomed, in these days, to talk of God's prophets as patriots. They were such truly, since they loved the land of the Lord with a divine love. But what mere "patriot" would limit his promises to the presence of "a poor people in a low estate," with an unseen presence of God? The description belongs to His kingdom, which was "not of this world" Joh 18:36 : the only king whom Zephaniah speaks of, "the king of Israel" Zep 3:15, is Almighty God. The blessing which he promises, is the corresponding, blessing of peace, "Fear thou not; thou shalt not see evil anymore, none shall make them afraid" Zep 3:16. But the words "Let not thy hands be slack" (Zep 3:2, (Zeph. 4:2 in Hebrew)), imply that they shall be aggressive on the world; that they were not to relax from the work which God assigned to them, the conversion of the world.
An allusion to the prophet Joel makes it uncertain whether words of Zephaniah relate to the first coming of our Lord, or the times which should usher in the second coming, or to both in one; and so, whether, in accordance with his general character of gathering into one all God's judgments to His end, he is speaking of the first restoration of the one purified language of faith and hope, when "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul" Act 4:32, or whether he had his mind fixed rather on the end, "when the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in" Rom 11:25. The words also (since they may be taken either way) (see the note at Zep 3:10) leave it uncertain whether the Gentiles are spoken of as bringing in the people of God, (as they shall at the end) or whether the first conversion of the Jews, even in the most distant countries, is his subject.
In any case, Zephaniah had a remarkable function - to declare the mercy and judgment of God, judgments both temporal and final, mercies, not of this world, promised to a temper not of this world, "the wisdom which is from above, pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy" Jam 3:7.
Bible
Malachi Introduction
Malachi
mal 0:0
Introduction to Malachi
The last prophet of the Old Testament, like the forerunner of our Lord, whom he foreannounced under his own name . "The messenger of the Lord," willed to be but "the voice of one crying in the wilderness;" as his great successor, who took up his message, when asked, "Who art thou? What sayest thou of thyself?" said Joh 1:23, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord." He mentions neither his parentage, nor birthplace, nor date; nor did he add the name of his office , and he has left it to be guessed, whether the name under which he is known, was the name which he bore among men; so wholly did he will to be hidden. No one before him is recorded to have carried his name. It may be that he framed it for himself, and willed to be known only as what it designated, "the messenger of the Lord." This was a favorite title with him, since, in this brief prophecy, he uses it, as describing the priest's office, and that of the forerunner Mal 2:7; Mal 3:1; whereas, before him, except once by Haggai and once by Isaiah Hag 1:13; Isa 42:19, it had been used only of the blessed angels.
There is, however, no ground to think that it was not his name. Even the Septuagint, which paraphrases it, "His messenger," prefix to the book the name Malachi; and the title, "my messenger," would not have described that he was "the messenger of God," since the name of God had not preceded. "If names are to be interpreted," Jerome says , "and history is to be framed from them, not a spiritual meaning to be derived, then Hosea who is called Saviour, and Joel whose name means, 'Lord God,' and the other prophets will not be men, but rather angels or the Lord and Saviour, according to the meaning of their name." No special stress was laid upon the name, even by the Origenists, who supposed Haggai, Malachi and John the Immerser to have been angels . Origen himself supposed John the Immerser to have been an angel in human form , and Melchizedek , as well as Malachi. More widely, that , "they became the words in the prophets."
At the time of our Lord, some accounted him to have been Ezra, perhaps for his zeal for the Law. His date must, however, have been later, since there is no mention of the building of the temple, whose service was in its regular order. In the New Testament, like others of the twelve, he is cited without his name , or the substance of his prophecy, is spoken of or alluded to, without any reference to any human author Luk 1:17, Luk 1:76; Mat 17:10; Joh 1:21; so entirely was his wish to remain hidden fulfilled.
Yet he probably bore a great part in the reformation, in which Nehemiah cooperated outwardly, and to effect which, after he had, on the expiring of his 12 years of office Neh 5:14, returned to Persia, he obtained leave to visit his own land again Neh 13:6, apparently for a short time. For he mentions his obtaining that leave, in connection with abuses at Jerusalem, which had taken place in his absence, and which he began reforming, immediately on his arrival. But three chief abuses, the neglect of God's service, the defilement of the priesthood and of their covenant, and the cruelty to their own Jewish wives, divorcing them to make way for idolatresses, are subjects of Malachi's reproofs. Nehemiah found these practices apparently rampant. It is not then probable that they had been, before, the subjects of Malachi's denunciation, nor were his own energetic measures probably fruitless, so that there should be occasion for these denunciations afterward. It remains, then, as the most probable, that Malachi, as the prophet, cooperated with Nehemiah, as the civil authority, as Haggai and Zechariah had with Zerubbabel , "So Isaiah cooperated with Hezekiah; Jeremiah with Josiah. Of a mere external reformation there is no instance" in Jewish history.
It does not appear, whether Nehemiah, on his return, was invested by the king of Persia with extraordinary authority for these reforms, or whether he was appointed as their governor. The brief account affords no scope for the mention of it. It is not then any objection to the contemporaneousness of Malachi and Nehemiah, that, whereas Nehemiah, while governor, "required not the bread of the governor," i. e., the allowance granted him by the Persian government, as an impost upon the people, Malachi upbraids the people that they would not offer to their governor the poor things which they offered to Almighty God, or that the governor would not accept it, in that it would be an insult rather than an act of respect. For:
(1) the question in Malachi is of a free-offering, not of an impost;
(2) Nehemiah says that he did not "require it," not that he would not accept it;
(3) there is no evidence that he was now governor, nor
(4) any reason why he should not accept in their improved condition, what he did not "require Neh 5:18, because the bondage was heavy upon this people."
Presents were, as they are still, a common act of courtesy in the East.
Like John the Immerser, though afar off, he prepared the way of the Lord by the preaching of repentance. More than other prophets, he unveils priests and people to themselves, interprets their thoughts to them, and puts those thoughts in abrupt naked language, picturing them as demurring to every charge which he brought against them. They were not, doubtless, conscious hypocrites. For conscious hypocrisy is the sin of individuals, aping the graces which others possess and which they have not, yet wish to be held in estimation for having. Here, it is the mass which is corrupt. The true Israel is the exception Mal 3:16 - "those who feared the Lord, the jewels of Almighty God." It is the hypocrisy of self-deceit, contented with poor, limited, outward service, and pluming itself upon it. Malachi unfolds to them the meaning of their acts. His thesis is themselves, whom he unfolds to them.
He interprets himself, putting into their mouths words, betokening a simple unconsciousness either of God's goodness or their own evil Mal 1:2. "Yet ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?" This was their inward thought, as it is the thought of all, ungrateful to God. But his characteristic is, that he puts these thoughts into abrupt, bold bad words, which might startle them for their hideousness, as if he would say, "This is what your acts mean." He exhibits the worm and the decay, which lay under the whited exterior Mal 1:6. "Ye say, Wherein have we despised Thy Name?" Perhaps, they were already learning, not to pronounce the proper Name of God, while they caused it to be despised. Or they pronounced it with reverent pause, while they showed that they held cheap God and His service Mal 1:7. "Ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible Mal 1:7, Mal 1:12. Ye say, the table of the Lord is polluted; and the fruit thereof, his meat, is contemptible." Their acts said it. What a reading of thoughts Mal 1:13! "Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness!" It is the language of the heart in all indevotion Mal 2:14. "Ye say, Wherefore?" as if innocently unconscious of the ground of God's judgment Mal 3:8. "Wherein have we robbed Thee?" The language of those who count the earth as their own Mal 2:17. "Ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him? When ye say, Everyone that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and in them doth He delight, or, Where is the God of judgment?" The heart's speech in all envy at the prosperity of the wicked!
Yet the object of all this unfolding them to themselves, is their repentance. We already have the self-righteousness of the Pharisees, and the Sadducees' denial of God's Providence. And we already have the voice of John the Immerser, "of the wrath to come." They professed to Mal 3:1; Mal 4:1 "delight in the coming of the messenger of the covenant;" yet their deeds were such as would be burned up with the fire of His coming, not, rewarded.
Pharisees and Sadduces are but two off-shoots of the same ungodliness; Pharisees, while they hoped by outward acts to be in favor with God, they become, at least, secret Sadducees, when the hope fails. First, they justify themselves. God had said to them Mal 2:8-9, "Ye are departed out of the way: I have made you base, as ye have not kept My ways." They say Mal 3:14, "It is vain to serve God; and what profit, that we have kept His ordinance?" (affirming that they had done, what God called them to repentance for not doing) God said Mal 2:13, "Ye have covered the altar of the Lord with tears," the tears of their wronged wives; they insist on their own austerities Mal 3:14, "we have walked mournfully before the Lord our God." Then comes the Sadducee portion. God had called them to obedience and said (Mal 3:10, וּבתנוּני ûbethânûnı̂y), "Prove Me now herewith: they say, (Mal 3:15, בצנוּ bâchănû), the workers of wickedness have proved God, and are saved." God promised . "All nations shall call you blessed;" they answer , "and now we call the proud blessed. What have we spoken against Thee?" is the last self-justifying question, which Malachi records of them; and this, while reproaching God for the uselessness of serving Him, and choosing the lot of those who rejected Him.
Thereon Malachi abandons this class to their own blindness. There was hope amid any sin. However, it rebelled against God. This was a final denial of God's Providence and rejection of Himself. So Malachi closes with the same prophecy, with which John the Immerser prepared our Lord's coming, "His Luk 3:17 fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor; and will gather the wheat into His garner, but the chaff He shall burn with fire unquenchable." The unspeakable tenderness of God toward "those who fear His name," and the severity to those who finally rebel, are perhaps nowhere more vividly declared, than in these closing words of the Old Testament. Yet the love of God, as ever, predominates; and the last prophet closes with the word "Remember," and with one more effort to avert the curse which they were bringing upon themselves. Yet no prophet declares more expressly the rejection of the people, to whom he came to minister, the calling the Gentiles, the universal worship, in of the earth, of Him who was hitherto worshiped by the Jews only; and that, not at Jerusalem, but each offering, in his own place, the sacrifice which hitherto (as they had recently experienced, in their captivity at Babylon) could be offered up in Jerusalem only. To him alone it was reserved to prophesy of the unbloody sacrifice, which should be offered unto God "in every place" throughout the world "from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof." It has been said , "Malachi is like a late evening, which closes a long day, but he is at the same time the morning twilight which bears in its bosom a glorious day."
"When prophecy was to be withdrawn from the ancient Church of God, its last light was mingled with the rising beams of the Sun of Righteousness. In one view it combined a retrospect of the Law with the clearest specific signs of the Gospel advent Mal 4:4. Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded him on Mount Horeb, for all Israel, with the statutes and the judgments. Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Prophecy had been the oracle of Judaism and of Christianity, to uphold the authority of the one, and reveal the promise of the other. And now its latest admonitions were like those of a faithful departing minister, embracing and summing up his duties. Resigning its charge to the personal precursor of Christ, it expired with the Gospel upon its lips."
A school, which regards the "prophets" chiefly as "poets," says that "the language is prosaic, and manifests the decaying spirit of prophecy." The office of the prophets was, to convey in forceful words, which God gave them, His message to His people. The poetic form was but an accident. God, who knows the hearts of His creatures whom He has made, knows better than we, why He chose such an instrument. Zechariah, full of imagination, He chose some years before. But He preserved in history the account of the words which Zechariah spoke, not the words wherewith he urged the rebuilding of the temple, in his own book. If Malachi had spoken in imaginative language, like that of Ezekiel, to whom God says Eze 33:32, "thou art unto them like a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument, and they hear thy words and they do them not," it may be that they would have acted then, as they did in the time of Ezekiel. It may be, that times like those of Malachi, apathetic, self-justifying, complaining, self-complacent, needed a sterner, more abrupt, more startling voice to awaken them. "Wisdom was justified of her children."
God performed by him a reformation for the time being: He gave through him a warning to the generation, when our Lord would come, that He would come, as their Judge as well as their Saviour, and, how they would stand in the day of His coming. He gave it as a book to His whole Church, whereby to distinguish seeming from real service. Parting words are always solemn, as closing the past, and opening out a future of expectation before us. The position of Malachi, as the last of the prophets, bids us the more solemnly prepare for that dread day, our Lord's second coming, which he foretold, in one with the first coming, warning us that we do not deceive ourselves, in unconsciousness of our own evil and remembrance of our seeming good, until He professes unto us Mat 7:23, "I never knew you; depart from Me, ye that work iniquity."
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Malachi Chapter 1
Malachi 1:1
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The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel - o "The word of the Lord is heavy, because it is called a burden, yet it hath something of consolation, because it is not 'against,' but to Israel. For it is one thing when we write to this or that person; another, when we write 'against' this or that person; the one being the part of friendship, the other, the open admission of enmity."
"By the hand of Malachi;" through him, as the instrument of God, deposited with him; as Paul speaks of Co1 9:17; Tit 1:3, "the dispensation of the Gospel Co2 5:19, the Lord of reconciliation; Gal 2:7, the Gospel of the uncircumcision, being committed to him."
Malachi 1:2
mal 1:2
I have loved you, saith the Lord - What a volume of God's relations to us in two simple words, "I-have-loved you" . So would not God speak, unless He still loved. "I have loved and do love you," is the force of the words. When? And since when? In all eternity God loved; in all our past, God loved. Tokens of His love, past or present, in good or seeming ill, are but an effluence of that everlasting love. He, the Unchangeable, ever loved, as the apostle of love says Jo1 4:19, "we love Him, because He first loved us." The deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, the making them His Rom 9:4, "special people, the adoption, the covenant, the giving of the Law, the service of God and His promises," all the several mercies involved in these, the feeding with manna, the deliverance from their enemies whenever they returned to Him, their recent restoration, the gift of the prophets, were so many single pulses of God's everlasting love, uniform in itself, manifold in its manifestations. But it is more than a declaration of His everlasting love. "I have loved you;" God would say; with "a special love, a more than ordinary love, with greater tokens of love, than to others." So God brings to the penitent soul the thought of its ingratitude: I have loved "you:" I, you. And ye have said, "Wherein hast Thou loved us?" It is a characteristic of Malachi to exhibit in all its nakedness man's ingratitude. This is the one voice of all people's complaints, ignoring all God's past and present mercies, in view of the one thing which He withholds, though they dare not put it into words: "Wherein hast Thou loved us Psa 78:11? Within a while they forgot His works, and the wonders that He had showed them Psa 106:13 : they made haste, they forgot His works."
"Was not Esau Jacob's brother! saith the Lord: and I loved Jacob, and Esau have I hated." "While they were yet in their mother's womb, before any good or evil deserts of either, God said to their mother Gen 25:23, The older shall serve the younger. The hatred was not a proper and formed hatred (for God could not hate Esau before he sinned) but only a lesser love," which, in comparison to the great love for Jacob, seemed as if it were not love. "So he says Gen 29:31. The Lord saw that Leah was hated; where Jacob's neglect of Leah, and lesser love than for Rachel, is called 'hatred;' yet Jacob did not literally hate Leah, whom he loved and cared for as his wife." This greater love was shown in preferring the Jews to the Edomites, giving to the Jews His law, Church, temple, prophets, and subjecting Edom to them; and especially in the recent deliverance "He does not speak directly of predestination, but of pre-election, to temporal goods." God gave both nations alike over to the Chaldees for the punishment of their sins; but the Jews He brought back, Edom He left unrestored.
Malachi 1:3
mal 1:3
And I made his mountains a waste, and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness - o
Malachi attests the first stage of fulfillment of Joel's prophecy (Joe 3:19, vol. i. pp. 214, 215), "Edom shall be a desolate wilderness." In temporal things, Esau's blessing was identical with Jacob's; "the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven from above;" and the rich soil on the terraces of its mountain-sides, though yielding nothing now except a wild beautiful vegetation, and its deep glens, attest what they once must have been, when artificially watered and cultivated. The first desolation must have been through Nebuchadnezzar , in his expedition against Egypt, when he subdued Moab and Ammon; and Edom lay in his way, as Jeremiah had foretold Jer 25:9, Jer 25:21.
Malachi 1:4
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Whereas Edom saith - o.
We are impoverished - o, ידשׁשׁ.), or, more probably, "we were crushed." Either gives an adequate sense. Human self-confidence will admit anything, as to the past; nay, will even exaggerate past evil to itself, "Crush us how they may, we will arise and repair our losses." So Ephraim said of old Isa 9:9-10, "in the pride and stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn-stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." It is the one language of what calls itself, "indomitable;" in other words, "untameable," conquerors or every other gambler; "we will repair our losses." All is again staked and lost.
"They shall call them the border of wickedness." Formerly, it had its own proper name, "the border of Edom," as other countries Exo 10:14, Exo 10:19, "all the border of Egypt Deu 2:18, the border of Moab Sa1 11:3, Sa1 11:7; Sa1 27:1; Ch1 21:12, the whole border of Israel Ch2 11:13, the border of Israel Jdg 11:22, the whole border of the Amorite." Henceforth, it should be known no more by its own name; but as "the border of wickedness," where wickedness formerly dwelt, and, hence, the judgment of God and desolation from Him came upon it, "an accursed land." In a similar manner, Jeremiah says somewhat of Jerusalem (Jer 22:8-9. Compare Deu 29:23-28.) "Many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say, every man to his neighbor, Wherfore hath the Lord done this unto this great city? Then they shall answer, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshiped other gods and served them." Only Israel would retain its name, as it has; Edom should be blotted out wholly and forever.
Malachi 1:5
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And your eyes shall see - Malicious pleasure in looking on at the misery of Judaea and Jerusalem, had been a special sin of Edom: now God would show Judah the fruit of its reversal, and His goodness toward themselves. , "Ye have assurance of His love toward you and providence over you, when ye see that ye are returned to your own land, and can inhabit it, but they cannot do this: but "they build and I throw down," and ye, therefore, praise and magnify My name for this, and ye shall say, "The Lord shall be magnified on the border of Israel, i. e., His greatness shall be always manifest upon you;" high above and exalted over the border of Israel which shall retain its name, while Edom shall have ceased to be. Wickedness gives its name to Edom's border, as in Zechariah's vision it was removed and settled in Babylon Zac 5:8, Zac 5:11.
Malachi 1:6
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A son honoreth his father, and a slave his lord - Having spoken of the love of God, he turns to the thanklessness of man. God appeals to the first feelings of the human heart, the relation of parent and child, or, failing this, to the natural self-interest of those dependent on their fellow-men. A "son" by the instinct of nature, by the unwritten law written in the heart, "honoreth his father." If he fails to do so, he is counted to have broken the law of nature, to be an unnatural son. If he is, what by nature he ought to be, he does really honor him. He does not even speak of love, as to which they might deceive themselves. He speaks of "honor," outward reverence only; which whoso showeth not, would openly condemn himself as an unnatural son, a bad slave. "Of course," the Jews would say, "children honor parents, and slaves their masters, but what is that to us?" God turns to them their own mental admission.
"If I am a Father." "Although, before ye were born, I began to love you in Jacob as sons, yet choose by what title ye will name Me: I am either your Father or your Lord. If a Father, render me the honor due to a father, and offer the piety worthy of a parent. If a Lord, why despise ye Me? Why fear ye not your Lord?" God was their Father by creation, as He is Father of all, as Creator of all. He had come to be their Father in a nearer way, by temporal redemption and adoption as His special people, creating them to be a nation to His glory. This they were taught to confess in their psalmody Psa 100:3, "He hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture." This title God had given them in sight of the Egyptians Exo 4:22, "Israel is My son, My firstborn:" of this Hosea reminded them; Hos 11:1, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt;" and Jeremiah reassured them Jer 31:9, "I am a Father to Israel and Ephraim is My firstborn:" this, Isaiah had pleaded to God Isa 63:16, "Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not. Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer, Thy name is from everlasting Isa 64:8. And now, O Lord, Thou art our Father; we the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all, the work of Thy hands." God had impressed this His relation of Father, in Moses' prophetic warning; Deu 32:6, "Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee and established thee?" "God is the Father of the faithful:
1) by creation;
2) by preservation and governance;
3) by alimony;
4) by fatherly care and providence;
5) by faith and grace, whereby He justifies and adopts us as sons and heirs of His kingdom."
"If I am a Father." He does not throw doubt, that He is our Father; but, by disobedience, we in deeds deny it. Our life denies what we in words profess. "Where is My honor?" "Why obey ye not My precepts, nor honor Me with acts of adoration; praying, praising, giving thanks, sacrificing, and reverently fulfilling every work of God? For Jer 48:10. cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully."
"And if I am your Lord, as I certainly am, and specially by singular providence." "He is our Lord by the same titles, that He is our Father, and by others, as that He has redeemed us, and purchased us to Himself by the Blood of His Son; that He is the Supreme Majesty, whom all creation is bound to serve; that, setting before us the reward of eternal glory, He has hired us as servants and laborers into His vineyard." God Alone is Lord through universal sovereignty, underived authority, and original source of laws, precepts, rights; and all other lords are but as ministers and instruments, compared to Him, the Lord and original Doer of all. Hence, He says Isa 42:8, "I am the Lord; that is My Name, and My glory will I not give to another."
"Where is My fear?" which ought to be shown to Me. "If thou art a servant, render to the Lord the service of fear; if a son, show to thy Father the feeling of piety. But thou renderest not thanks, neither lovest nor fearest God. Thou art then either a contumacious servant or a proud son." "Fear includes reverence, adoration, sacrifice, the whole worship of God." "Whoso feareth is not over-curious, but adores; is not inquisitive, but praises, and glorifies."
"Fear is twofold; servile, whereby punishment, not fault, is dreaded; filial, by which fault is feared. In like way service is twofold. A servant with a service of fear, purely servile, does not deserve to be called a son of God, nor is in a state of salvation, not having love. Whence Christ, distinguishing such a servant from a son of God by adoption, saith Joh 8:35, "The servant abideth not in the house forever, but the son abideth ever: and again Joh 15:15, The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth." But a servant, whose service is of pure and filial love, is also a son, of whom the Saviour saith, Mat 25:21, Mat 25:23, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." But since a distinction is made here between the son and the servant, he seems to be speaking of servile fear, which, although it doth not good well and meritoriously, i. e., with a right intention and from love, yet withdraws from ill, and is the beginning of wisdom, because it disposeth to grace. Whence it is written (Ecclesiasticus 1:21), 'The fear of the Lord driveth away sins,' and again Scripture saith Pro 16:6, "By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil."
"God requireth to be feared as a Lord, honored as a Father, loved as a Husband. Which is chiefest of these? Love. Without this, fear has torment, honor has no grace. Fear, when not enfreed by love, is servile. Honor, which cometh not from love, is not honor, but adulation. Honor and glory belong to God Alone; but neither of them will God accept, unless seasoned with the honey of love."
"Saith the Lord unto you, O priests, who despise My Name," literally "despisers of My Name," habitually beyond others. The contempt of God came especially from those bound most to honor him. priests, as consecrated to God, belonged especially to God . "Malachi begins his prophecy and correction by the correction of the priests; because the reformation of the state and of the laity hangs upon the reformation of the clergy and the priest, for Hos 4:9, "as is the priest, such also is the people?" He turns, with a suddenness which must have been startling to them, to them as the center of the offending.
"And ye say, Wherein have we despised Thy Name?" Before, it was ignorance of God's love: now it is ignorance of self and of sin. They affect to themselves innocence and are unconscious of any sin. They said to themselves doubtless (as many do now) "we cannot help it; we do the best we can, under the circumstances." Without some knowledge of God's love, there can be no sense of sin; without some sense of sin, no knowledge of His love. They take the defensive, they are simply surprised, like Cain, Gen 4:9, "Am I my brother's keeper?" or many of the lost in the day of judgment Mat 7:22-23, "Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name? And in Thy Name have cast out devils? And in Thy Name done many wonderful works?" and yet were all the while "workers of iniquity," to whom He will say, "I never knew you." And Mat 25:44, Mat 25:46 says: "Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee?" And yet they "shall go away into everlasting punishment."
Malachi 1:7
mal 1:7
Offering polluted bread upon Mine altar - This, continuing on the words, "despisers of My Name," , is the answer to their question, "Wherein have we despised Thy Name?" "Bread" might stand, in itself, either for the showbread, or for the מנחה minchāh, meal-offering, which was the necessary accompaniment of sacrifices and sometimes the whole.
But here the "polluted bread" cannot be the showbread, since this was not put upon the altar, but upon its own table; and although the altar is, as here, also called "a table" , in regard to the sacrifice hereon consumed, "the table" of the showbread is nowhere called "altar." The prophet then means by "bread," either the meal-offering, as representing the sacrifice, or the offerings by fire altogether, as in Ezekiel Eze 44:7, "When ye offer My bread, the fat and the blood;" and in Leviticus "the offerings of the Lord, made by fire, the bread of their God, do they offer;" and of the "peace-offering Lev 3:11, the priest shall burn it upon the altar; the bread of the offering made by fire unto the Lord:" and specifically, of animals with blemish, as these, it is forbidden Lev 22:25, "Neither from a stranger's hand shall ye offer the bread of your God of any of these, because their corruption is in them, blemishes in them: they shall not be accepted for you." It was, as it were, a feast of God with man, and what was withdrawn from the use of man by fire, was, as it were, consumed by God, to whom it was offered.
It was "polluted," in that it was contrary to the law of God which forbade to sacrifice any animal, "lame or blind" or with "any ill blemish," as being inconsistent with the typical perfection of the sacrifice. Even the Gentiles were careful about the perfection of their sacrifices.
"Blind is the sacrifice of the soul, which is not illumined by the light of Christ. Lame is his sacrifice of prayer, who comes with a double mind to entreat the Lord." "He offereth one weak, whose heart is not established in the grace of God, nor by the anchor of hope fixed in Christ. These words are also uttered against those who, being rich, offer to the Creator the cheaper and least things, and give small alms."
"And ye say, Wherewith have we polluted Thee?" It is a bold expression. Yet a word, to which we are but too ill-accustomed, which expresses what most have done, "dishonor God," comes to the same. Though less bold in expression, they are yet like in meaning Eze 13:19. "Will ye pollute Me anymore among My people?" or Eze 20:9, Eze 20:14, Eze 20:22, "that My Name should not be polluted before the pagan Eze 43:7. My holy Name shall Israel no more defile Eze 39:7, "I will not let them pollute My Name anymore." "Much more in the new law, in which the Sacrifice is Christ Himself our God, whence the Apostle says expressly Co1 11:27, "Whoso eateth this bread and drinketh this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." "For when the sacraments are violated, Himself, whose sacraments they are, is violated." God speaks of our acts with an unveiled plainness, which we should not dare to use. "As we are said to sanctify God, when we minister to Him in holiness and righteousness, and so, as far as in us lies, show that He is holy; so we are said to pollute Him, when we conduct ourselves irreverently and viciously before Him, especially in His worship, and thereby, as far as in us lies, show that He is not holy and is to be dishonored."
"In that ye say, the table of the Lord is contemptible," literally "contemptible is it," , and so any contemptible thing might be offered on it. They said this probably, not in words, but in deeds. Or, if in words, in plausible words. "God doth not require the ornamenting of the altar, but the devotion of the offerers." "What good is it, if we offer the best? Be what we offer, what it may, it is all to be consumed by fire." "The pretext at once of avarice and gluttony!" And so they kept the best for themselves. They were poor, on their return from the captivity. Anyhow, the sacrifices were offered. What could it matter to God? And so they dispensed with God's law.
"So at this day we see some priests and prelates, splendid in their tables and feasts, sordid in the altar and temple; on the table are costly napkins and wine; on the altar torn linen and wine-mace rather than wine." "We pollute the bread, that is, the Body of Christ, when we approach the altar unworthily, and, being defiled, drink that pure Blood, and say, 'The table of the Lord is contemptible;' not that anyone dareth to say this, but the deeds of sinners pour contempt on the table of God."
Malachi 1:8
mal 1:8
And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? - Others, "it is not evil," as we should say, "there is no harm in it." Both imply, alike, an utter unconsciousness on the part of the offerer, that it was evil: the one, in irony, that this was always their answer, "there is nothing amiss;" the other is an indignant question, "is there indeed nought amiss?" And this seems the most natural.
The sacrifice of the "blind" and "lame" was expressly forbidden in the law Deu 15:21, and the sick in manifold varieties of animal disease. "Whatever hath a blemish ye shall not offer Lev 22:22, blind or with limb broken, or wounded or mangy or scabby or scurfy." Perfectness was an essential principle of sacrifice; whether, as in the daily sacrifice, or the sin or trespass-offerings, typical of the all-perfect Sacrifice, or in the whole-burnt-offering, of the entire self-oblation. But these knew better than God, what was fit for Him and them. His law was to be modified by circumstances. He would not be so particular (as people now say so often.)
Is it then fit to offer to God what under the very same circumstances man would not offer to man? Against these idle, ungrateful, covetous thoughts God saith,
"Offer it now unto thy governor." He appeals to our own instinctive thought of propriety to our fellow creature, which may so often be a test to us. No one would think of acting to a fellow-creature, as they do to Almighty God. Who would make diligent preparation to receive any great one of the earth, and turn his back upon him, when come? Yet what else is the behavior of most Christians after holy communion? If thou wouldest not do this to a mortal man, who is but dust and ashes, how much less to God Almighty, the King of kings and Lord of lords! "The words are a reproof to those most negligent persons, who go through their prayers to God without fear, attention, reverence or feeling; but if they have to speak to some great man, prelate or prince, approach him with great reverence, speak carefully and distinctly and are in awe of him. Do not thou prefer the creature to the Creator, man to God, the servant to the Lord, and that Lord, so exalted and so Infinite."
Malachi 1:9
mal 1:9
And now entreat, I pray you, God o that He will be gracious unto you - This is not a call to repentance, for he assumes that God would not accept them. It is rather irony; "go now, seek the favor of God, as ye would not that of your governor." "From your hand," not from your fathers, not from aliens, "hath this been: will He accept persons from you?" The unusual construction seems to imply a difference of meaning; as if he would say, that it consisted not with the justice of God, that He should be an "accepter of persons," (which He declares that He is not) which yet He would be, were He to accept them, while acting thus.
Malachi 1:10
mal 1:10
Who is there even among you? - This stinginess in God's service was not confined to those offices which cost something, as the sacrifices. Not even services absolutely costless, which required only a little trouble, as that of closing the folding-doors of the temple or the outer court, or bringing the fire to consume the sacrifices, would they do without some special hire. All was mercenary and hireling service. Others have rendered it as a wish, "who is there among you!" i. e., would that there were one among you, who would close the doors altogether; so shall ye not kindle fire on Mine altar for nought, i. e., fruitlessly! But apart from the difficulty of the construction, it is not God's way to "quench the smouldering flax." He who bids, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost," accepts any imperfect service rather than none. He does not break off the last link, which binds man to Himself. Then, if or when God willed His service to surcease, He would do it Himself, as He did by the destruction of the temple before the captivity, or finally by the Romans. It would have been an ungodly act (such as was only done by Ahaz, perhaps the most ungodly king of Israel) Ch2 28:24, and one which especially called down His wrath Ch2 29:8, to close the doors, and therewith to break off all sacrifice. Manasseh carried the worship of false gods into the temple itself; Ahaz, as far as in him lay, abolished the service of God. A prophet of God could not express a wish, that pious Israelites (for it is presupposed that they would do this out of zeal for God's honor) should bring the service of God to an end.
He sums up with an entire rejection of them, present and future. "I have no pleasure in you;" it is a term of repudiation , sometimes of disgust "neither will I accept an offering at your hands." He says not simply Jer 6:20, "your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto Me, but, I will not accept it." Such as they were, such they would be hereafter. God would not accept their sacrifices, but would replace them.
Malachi 1:11
mal 1:11
For - The form of words does not express whether this declaration relates to the present or the future. It is a vivid present, such as is often used to describe the future. But the things spoken of show it to be future. The Jewish sacrifices had defects, partly incidental, partly inherent. Incidental were those, with which the prophet had upbraided them; inherent (apart from their mere typical character) that they never could be the religion of the world, since they were locally fixed at Jerusalem. Malachi tells them of a new sacrifice, which should be offered throughout the then pagan world, grounded on His new revelation of Himself to them. "For great shall be My Name among the pagan." The prophet anticipates an objection which the Jews might make to him. Jos 7:9, "what then will God do unto His great Name?" Those by which He would replace them, would be more worthy of God in two ways:
1) in themselves,
2) in their universality.
"Then," whatsoever the pagan worshiped, even if some worshiped an "unknown God," His "Name" was not known to them, nor "great among them." Those who knew of Him, knew of Him, not as the Lord of heaven and earth, but as the God of the Jews only; their "offerings" were not "pure," but manifoldly defiled. A Hebrew prophet could not be an apologist for pagan idolatry amidst its abominations, or set it on a level with the worship which God had, for the time, appointed; much less could he set it forth as the true acceptable service of God. Malachi himself speaks of it, as an aggravation of cruelty in their divorcing of their wives, that they Mal 2:11 "married the daughter of a strange god."
The worship of those Jews, who remained, out of secular interests, in foreign countries, could not be represented as "the pure offering;" for they made no offerings: then as now, these being forbidden out of Jerusalem; nor would the worship of such Jews, as were scattered in the large empire of Persia, be contrasted with that at Jerusalem, as "the" pure worship; else why should the Jews have returned? It would have been an abolition of the law before its time. Malachi prophesies then, as had Micah, Isaiah, Zephaniah Zep 2:11, of a new revelation of God, when, and in which, people should "worship Him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the pagan."
Our Lord Himself explains and expands it in His words to the Samaritan woman; Joh 4:21, Joh 4:23-24, "Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth," and declared the rejection of the Jews, sealing their own sentence against themselves Mat 21:41, Mat 21:43, "I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof;" and before Mat 8:11-12, "Many shall come from the East and West, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, and the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness."
"Incense shall be offered unto My name," literally I think, "there shall be incense, oblation made unto My name" (this is a mere question of construction) , "and a pure oblation."
This sacrifice, which should be offered, is designated by the special name of "meal-offering." (Lev 2:7 (Lev 2:14 in English) and the verses following.) God would not accept it from the Jews; He would, from the Pagan. It was a special sacrifice, offered by itself as an unbloody sacrifice, or together with the bloody sacrifice. (Lev 6:17 (Lev 6:10 in Hebrew)), "It is most holy, as the sin-offering and as the trespass-offering." In the daily sacrifice it was offered morning and evening, with the lamb. Since this was typical of the precious blood-shedding of the "Lamb without spot" upon the cross, so was the meal-offering which accompanied it, of the holy eucharist.
The early Christians saw the force of the prediction, that sacrifice was contrasted with sacrifice, the bloody sacrifices which were ended by the "One full perfect and sufficient sacrifice oblation and satisfaction" made by our Lord "on the altar of the cross for the sins of the whole world," and those sacrifices which He commanded to be made on our altars, as a memorial of Him. So Justin, who was converted probably 133 a.d., within 30 years from the death of John, says "God has, therefore, beforehand declared, that all who through this name offer those sacrifices, which Jesus, who is the Christ, commanded to be offered, that is to say, in the eucharist of the bread and of the cup, which are offered in every part of the world by us Christians, are well-pleasing to Him. But those sacrifices, which are offered by you and through those priests of yours, He wholly rejects, saying, "And I will not accept your offerings at your hands. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same, My Name is glorified among the Gentiles; but ye profane it."
He points out further the failure of the Jewish explanation as to "their" sacrifices, in that the Church was everywhere, not so the Jews. "You and your teachers deceive yourselves, when you interpret this passage of Scripture of those of your nation who were in the dispersion and say that it speaks of their prayers and sacrifices made in every place, as pure and well-pleasing, and know that you speak falsely, and endeavor in every way to impose upon yourselves; first, because your people are not found, even now, from the rising to the setting of the sun, but there are nations, in which none of your race have ever dwelt: while there is not one nation of people, whether Barbarians, or Greeks, or by whatsoever name distinguished, whether of those (nomads) who live in wagons, or of those who have no houses, or those pastoral people that dwell in tents, among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered to the Father and Creator of all things, through the name of the crucified Jesus. And you know that at the time when the prophet Malachi said this, the dispersion of you through the whole world, in which you now are, had not yet taken place; as is also shown by Scripture."
Irenaeus in the same century "He took that which is part of the creation, namely, bread, and gave thanks, saying, 'This is My body.' And the cup likewise, which is of the creation which pertains unto us, He professed to be His own blood, and taught people the new oblation of the New Testament; which the Church receiving from the apostles offers unto God in the world: unto Him who giveth us nourishment, the firstfruits of His own gifts, in the New Testament; of which in the twelve prophets Malachi gave beforehand this intimation (quoting Mal 1:10-11); most evidently intimating hereby, that while the former people should cease to make offerings to God, in every place sacrifice should be offered unto Him, and that in pureness; His Name also is glorified among the Gentiles. Now what other name is there, which is glorified among the Gentiles, than that which belongs to our Lord, by whom the Father is glorified, and man is glorified?
And because man belongs to His Own Son, and is made by Him, He calls him His Own. And as if some King were himself to paint an image of his own son, he justly calls it his own image, on both accounts, first that it is his son's, next, that he himself made it: so also the Name of Jesus Christ, which is glorified in the Church throughout the whole world, the Father professes to be His own, both because it is His Son's, and because He Himself wrote and gave it for the salvation of men. Because, therefore, the Name of the Son properly belongs to the Father, and in God Almighty through Jesus Christ the Church makes her offering, well saith He on both accounts, 'And in every place incense is offered unto My Name, and a pure sacrifice.' And incense, John in the Apocalypse declares to be the prayers of the saints. Therefore, the offering of the Church, which the Lord hath taught to be offered in the whole world, is accounted with God as a pure sacrifice, and accepted of Him."
Tertullian contrasts the "sacerdotal law through Moses, in Leviticus, prescribing to the people of Israel, that sacrifices should in no other place be offered to God than in the land of promise, which the Lord God was about to give to the people Israel and to their brethren, in order that on Israel's introduction thither, there should be there celebrated sacrifices and holocausts, as well for sins as for souls, and nowhere else but in the holy land Lev 17:1-6; Deu 12:5-14, Deu 12:26-27, and this subsequent prediction of the Spirit through the prophets, that in every place and in every land there should be offered sacrifices to God. As He says through the angel Malachi, one of the twelve prophets (citing the place)."
Hippolytus, a disciple of Irenaeus, 220 a.d. martyr, in a commentary on Daniel, says that "when Anti-Christ cometh, the sacrifice and libation will be taken away, which is now in every place offered by the Gentiles to God." The terms "Sacrifice offered in every place" are terms of Malachi.
So Cyprian, in his Testimonies against the Jews, sums up the teaching of the passage under this head , "That the old sacrifice was to be made void, and a new sacrifice instituted."
In the "apostolic Constitutions," the prophecy is quoted as "said by God of His ecumenical Church."
Eusebius says , "The truth bears witness to the prophetic word, whereby God, rejecting the Mosaic sacrifices, foretells that which shall be among us. 'For from the rising of the sun' etc. We sacrifice then to the supreme God the sacrifice of praise; we sacrifice the divine, reverend and holy oblation: we sacrifice, in a new way according to the New Testament, the pure sacrifice. The broken heart is also called a sacrifice to God - We sacrifice also the memory of that great Sacrifice, performing it according to the mysteries which have been transmitted by Him."
Cyril of Jerusalem speaks of it only as prophesying the rejection of the Jews and the adoption of the Gentiles.
In the liturgy of Mark , it is naturally quoted, only, as fulfilled "in the reasonable and unbloody sacrifice, which all nations offer to Thee, O Lord, from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof," not in reference to the cessation of Jewish sacrifices.
Chrysostom dwells on its special force, coming from so late a prophet. "Hear Malachi, who came after the other prophets. For I adduce, for the time, no testimony either of Isaiah or Jeremiah or any other before the captivity, lest thou shouldest say that the terrible things which he foretold were exhausted in the captivity. But I adduce a prophet, after the return from Babylon and the restoration of your city, prophesying clearly about you. For when they had returned, and recovered their city, and rebuilt the temple and performed the sacrifices, foretelling this present desolation then future, and the taking away of the sacrifice, Malachi thus speaks in the Person of God (Mal 1:10 (end) and Mal 1:12 (beginning)). When, oh Jew, happened all this? When was incense offered to God in every place? when a pure sacrifice? Thou couldest not name any other time, than this, after the coming of Christ. If the prophet foretelleth not this time and our sacrifice, but the Jewish, the prophecy will be against the law.
For if, when Moses commandeth that sacrifice should be offered in no other place than the Lord God should choose, and shutteth up those sacrifices in one place, the prophet says that incense should be offered in every place and a pure sacrifice, he opposeth and contradicteth Moses. But there is no strife nor contention. For Moses speaketh of one sacrifice, and Malachi of another. Where doth this appear? (From the place, not Judaea only; from the mode, that it should be pure; from the offerers, not Israel, but the nations), from East to West, showing that whatever of earth the sun surveys, the preaching will embrace. He calls the former sacrifice impure, not in its own nature but in the mind of the offerers; if one compares the sacrifice itself, there is such a boundless distance, that this (that offered by Christians) might in comparison be called 'pure. '"
Even the cold, but clear, Theodoret has "Foretelling to the Jews the cessation of the legal priesthood, he announces the pure and unbloody sacrifice of the Gentiles. And first he says to the Jews, 'I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept a sacrifice at your hands.' Then he foreshows the piety of the Gentiles, 'For from the rising of the sun' etc. Mal 1:11, you then I will wholly reject, for I detest altogether what you do. Wherefore also I reject the sacrifice offered by you; but instead of you, I have the whole world to worship Me. For the dwellers in the whole earth, which the rising and setting sun illumines, will everywhere both offer to Me incense, and will sacrifice to Me the pure sacrifice, which I love. For they shall know My name and My will, and shall offer to Me reverence due. So the Lord said to the Samaritan woman, 'Woman, believe Me, that the hour cometh and now is, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father.' The blessed Paul, being instructed in this, says Ti1 2:8, 'I will that men pray everywhere' etc., and the divine Malachi clearly taught us in this place the worship now used, for the circumscribed worship of the priests is brought to an end, and every place is accounted fit for the worship of God, and the sacrifice of irrational victims is ended, and He, our spotless Lamb, Who taketh away the sin of the world, is sacrificed."
Lastly, Augustine , "Malachi, prophesying of the Church which we see propagated through Christ, says most plainly to the Jews in the person of God, 'I have no pleasure in you, and will not receive an offering at your hands. For from the rising of the sun' etc. Since we see this sacrifice through the priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchizedek, now offered to God in every place from the rising of the sun to its setting; but the sacrifice of the Jews, of which it is said, 'I have no pleasure in you, neither will I accept an offering from your hands,' they cannot deny to have ceased; why do they yet expect another Christ, since what they read as prophesied and see fulfilled, could not be fulfilled, except through Him?"
Malachi 1:12
mal 1:12
And ye have profaned - o (are habitually profaning it), in that ye say It was the daily result of their daily lives and acts. "It is probable that the priests did not use such words, but that by their very deeds, they proclaimed this aloud: as in the, 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' For in that he is seen to be a despiser, though he say it not in words, yet, by their very deeds and by the crookedness of their lives, they all but cry out, There is no God. For they who live as though God beheld not, and do all things recklessly and unholily, by their own deeds and works deny God. So they who are not earnest to preserve to the holy altar the reverence becoming to it, by the very things which they do, say,
The table of the Lord is despised - Not the "table of showbread," since it is so called in reference to the sacrifice offered thereon. Ezekiel had probably so called the altar, which he saw in his vision of the new temple. Eze 44:16. It is what was before called "the altar;" an altar, in regard to the sacrifices offered to God; a "table," in regard to the food of the sacrifice therefrom received. Both names, "altar" Mat 5:23; Heb 13:10. and "table" Co1 10:21. being received in the New Testament, both were received in the early Church. For each represented one side of the great eucharistic action, as it is a Sacrifice and a sacrament. But the title "altar" was the earliest.
It may be here a different profaneness of the priests. They connived at the sin of the people in sacrificing the maimed animals which they brought, and yet, since they had their food from the sacrifices, and such animals are likely to have been neglected and ill-conditioned, they may very probably have complained of the poverty of their lot, and despised the whole service. For the words used, "its produce, the eating thereof is contemptible" belong to their portion, not to what was consumed by fire. With this agrees their cry.
Malachi 1:13
mal 1:13
What a weariness! - What an onerous service it is! The service of God is its own reward. If not, it becomes a greater toil, with less reward from this earth, than the things of this earth. Our only choice is between love and weariness.
And ye have snuffed - (puffed) at it , i. e., at the altar; as a thing contemptible. "Ye, have brought that which was taken by violence." In despising any positive law of God, they despised the lawgiver; and so, from contempt of the ceremonial law, they went on to break the moral law. It were indeed a mockery of God, to break a law whereby He bound man to man, and therefrom to seek to appease Himself. Yet in rough times, people, even in Christianity, have made their account with their souls, by giving to the poor a portion of what they had taken from the rich. "God," it was said to such an one, "rejects the gifts obtained by violence and robbery. He loves mercy, justice and humanity, and by the lovers of these only will He be worshiped." (Ecclesiasticus 34:18-20.) "He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is ridiculous, and the gifts of unjust men are not accepted. The Most High is not pleased with the offerings of the wicked, neither is He pacified for sin by the multitude of sacrifices. Whoso bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor doeth as one that killeth the son before the father's eyes."
Malachi 1:14
mal 1:14
Cursed is the deceiver - o "The fraudulent, hypocritical, false or deceitful dealer, who makes a show of one thing, and doth or intends another, nor doth to his power what he would make a show of doing; as if he could deceive God in doing in His service otherwise than He required, and yet be accepted by Him." The whole habit of these men was not to break with God, but to keep well with Him on as easy terms as they could. They even went beyond what the law required in making vows, probably for some temporal end, and then substituted for that which had typical perfection, the less valuable animal, the ewe and that, diseased. It was probably, to prevent self-deceit, that the law commanded that the oblation for a vow should be Lev 22:19, Lev 22:21, "a male without blemish, perfect;" lest (which may be a temptation in impulsive vows) repenting of their vow, they should persuade themselves, that they had vowed less than they had. Ordinarily, then, it would not have been allowed to one, who had not the best to offer, to vow at all. But, in their alleged poverty, the prophet supposes that God would so far dispense with His own law, and accept the best which anyone had, although it did not come up to that law. Hence the clause, "which hath in his flock a male." "If thou hast not a male, that curse in no wise injureth thee. But saying this, he showeth, that they have what is best, and offer what is bad."
They sinned, not against religion only, but against justice also. "For as a merchant, who offers his goods at a certain price, if he supply them afterward adulterated and corrupted, is guilty of fraud and is unjust, so he who promised to God a sacrifice worthy of God, and, according to the law, perfect and sound, is fraudulent and sins against justice, if he afterward gives one, defective, mutilated, vitiated, and is guilty of theft in a sacred thing, and so of sacrilege."
Clergy or "all who have vowed, should learn hence, that what they have vowed should be given to God, entire, manly, perfect, the best. For, reverence for the Supreme and Divine Majesty to whom they consecrate themselves demandeth this, that they should offer Him the highest, best and most perfect, making themselves a whole-burnt-offering to God."
, "They who abandon all things of the world, and kindle their whole mind with the fire of divine love, these become a sacrifice and a whole-burnt-offering to Almighty God." , "Man himself, consecrated and devoted in the name of God, is a sacrifice." He then offers a corrupt thing who, like Ananias, keeps back "part of the price," and is the more guilty, because, while it was his own, it was in his own power.
I am a great King - o "As God is Alone Lord through His universal Providence and His intrinsic authority, so He Alone is King, and a King so great, that of His greatness or dignity and perfection there is no end."
My Name is dreadful among the pagan - Absence of any awe of God was a central defect of these Jews. They treated Him, as they would not a fellow-creature, for whom they had any respect or awe or fear. Some remaining instinct kept them from parting with Him; but they yielded a cold, wearisome, heartless service. Malachi points to the root of the evil, the ignorance, how awful God is. This is the root of so much irreverence in people's theories, thoughts, conversations, systems, acts, of the present day also. They know neither God or themselves. The relation is summed up in those words to a saint , "Knowest thou well, Who I am, and who thou art? I am He Who Is, and thou art she who is not." So Job says in the presence of God Job 42:5-6, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." To correct this, God, from the beginning, insists on the title which He gives Himself. (Deu 10:16-17; Deu 7:21. Nehemiah uses it in his prayers Neh 1:5; Neh 9:32 and Daniel Dan 9:4. It occurs also Neh 4:8 (14 English) Psa 47:3; 68:36; Psa 89:8; Psa 96:4; Psa 99:3; Psa 111:9; Zep 2:11. "Circumcise the foreskin of your hearts and be no more stiff-necked: for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty and the terrible;" and in warning Deu 28:58-59, "If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, The Lord thy God, then the Lord thy God will make thy plagues wonderful" etc.
Bible
Malachi Chapter 2
Malachi 2:1
mal 2:1
And now this is My commandment unto you - , not a commandment, which He gave them, but a commandment in regard to them. As God said of old, upon obedience , "I will command My blessing unto you," so now He would command what should reach them, but a curse. "He returns from the people to the priests, as the fountain of the evil, whose carelessness about things sacred he had rebuked before. Let the priests of the new law hear this rebuke of God, and conceive it dictated to them by the Holy Spirit to hear, from whom God rightly requires greater holiness, and so will punish them more grievously, if careless or scandalous in their office." All Christians are, in some sense Pe1 2:9, "a royal, holy priesthood," over and above the special "Christian priesthood;" as the Jews, over and above the special priesthood of Aaron, were a Exo 19:6, "kingdom of priests." What follows then belongs, in their degree, to them and their duties.
Malachi 2:2
mal 2:2
If ye will not lay to heart - , namely, the rebukes addressed to them, "to give glory to God." For the glory of God is the end and aim of the priesthood. This should be the principle and rule of their whole life, "to the greater glory of God." "I will send the curse upon you," namely, that which He had threatened in the law upon disobedience; and will "curse your blessings," will turn your blessings into a curse. He does not say, I will send you curses instead of blessings, but, I will make the blessings themselves a curse. Psa 69:23. "The things which should have been to their wealth became to them an occasion of falling;" to the proud, the things which lift them up; to the gluttonous, their abundance; to the avaricious, their wealth; which, if used to the glory of God, become blessings, do, when self not God is their end, by God's dispensation and Providence, become a curse to them. "The goods of nature, the goods of fortune, the goods of the Church allowed to you, I will turn to your greater damnation, permitting you to abuse them to pride; and your damnation shall be the more penal, the more good things ye have received from Me. Whence Christ declares in the Gospel Luk 12:48, 'Unto whomever much is given, of him shall be much required. '"
Yea, I have cursed them - (literally, it), i. e., each one of the blessings, "already." God's judgments as well as His mercies are individual with a minute care, showing that it is His doing. The curse had already gone forth, and had begun to seize upon them from the time that they began to despise His Name. His judgments do not break in at once, but little by little, with warnings of their approach, that so we may turn to Him, and "escape the wrath to come."
Malachi 2:3
mal 2:3
Lo, I will rebuke the seed for your sake - o, i. e., that it should not grow. He who worketh by His sustaining will all the operations of nature, would at His will withhold them. Neither priests nor Levites cultivated the soil; yet, since the tithes were assigned to them, the diminution of the harvest affected them. The meal-offering too was a requisite part of the sacrifice. (See also Joe 1:13; Joe 2:14.)
And spread dung upon your phaces, the dung o of your solemn feasts - , or, "of your sacrifices." It was by the law carried without the camp and burned with the animal itself. They had brought before the face of God maimed, unfitting sacrifices; they should have them cast back, with their refuse, upon them; "as a lord that rejecteth a gift, brought to him by his servant, casts it back in his time." "Of your sacrifices, not of Mine, for I am not worshiped in them: ye seek to please, not Me, but yourselves." So God said of Eli Sa1 2:30, "them that honor Me I will honor, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed."
And one shall take you away with it - , literally "to it." They should be swept away, as if they were an appendage to it, as God said Kg1 14:10, "I will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, until all be gone." As are the offerings, so shall it be with the offerers.
Malachi 2:4
mal 2:4
And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you: - this, which He had just uttered. They who believe not God when threatening, know that He is in earnest and not to be trifled with, through His punishing. "That My covenant might be with Levi." God willed to punish those who at that time rebelled against Him, that He might spare those who should come after them. He chastened the fathers, who showed their contempt toward Him, that their sons, taking warning thereby, might not be cut off. He continues to say, what the covenant was, which He willed still to be, if they would repent.
Malachi 2:5
mal 2:5
My covenant was with him life and peace; - literally "the life and the peace;" that, which alone is true "life and peace." The covenant was not with Levi himself, but with Aaron, his representative, with whom the covenant was made in the desert, as is indeed here expressed; and, in him, with all his race after him, who succeeded him in his office; as, when it is said, that Ch1 6:49, "Aaron and his sons offered upon the altar of burnt-offering," it must needs be understood, not of Aaron in person alone and his sons then living, but of any of his race that succeeded in his and their room. So our Lord promised to be with His Apostles Mat 28:20, "always to the end of the world," i. e., with them and those whom they should appoint in their stead, and these others, until He should Himself come. God promised, if they would keep the law, that they should live in peace on the earth; yea, that they should have peace of mind and a life of grace. "Life" is an indefectible being, which man does not forfeit by sin, to which death is no interruption, changing only the place of the soul's life.
And I gave them to him - , in, or as, "fear," "Fear, not servile but filial and pure, as Paul bids Christians Phi 2:12, 'work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.'" God gave them an awful gift, to be held with fear and awe, for its very preciousness, as one would hold anxiously what is very precious, yet very fragile and easily marred.
And he feared Me, and was afraid before My Name - Malachi unites two words, the second expressive of strong fear, by which a man is, as it were, crushed or broken. They are often united in Hebrew, but as expressing terror, which men are bidden not to feel before men. Toward man it is ever said Deu 1:21; Deu 31:8; Jos 1:9; Jos 10:25; Ch1 22:13; Ch1 28:20; Ch2 20:15, Ch2 20:17; Ch2 32:7; Isa 51:7; Jer 23:4; Jer 30:10; Jer 46:27; Ezr 2:6; Ezr 3:9, "fear not, neither be ye dismayed;" toward God Alone, it is a matter of praise. Man's highest fear is too little, for he knows not, who God is. So Isaiah says Isa 8:12-13, "Fear ye not their fear (the fear of this people), nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of hosts Himself, and let Him be your fear and let Him be your dread." "What can be more precious (than this fear)? For it is written Pro 13:13, 'He who feareth the Lord will be rewarded.' (Ecclesiasticus 1:11), 'The fear of the Lord is honor and glory and gladness and a crown of rejoicing.' He saith, "the fear, wherewith he feareth Me and was afraid," i. e., he received the fear of God in his whole heart and soul. For these reduplications and emphases suggest to the hearer how rooted in virtue are those thus praised."
Malachi 2:6
mal 2:6
The law of truth was in his mouth - Apart from those cases, which were brought to the priests at the tabernacle (Deu 17:9-11; Deu 19:17 (add Deu 21:5; Eze 44:23-24), hence, the use of אלהים Exo 21:6; Exo 22:7-8.), in which their voice was the voice of God through them, to teach the law was part of the office both of the priest and Levite. Of the priest God says; Lev 10:11, "that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes, which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses:" of the tribe of Levi generally Moses says Deu 33:10, "They shall teach Jacob Thy judgments and Israel Thy law." After the schism of the ten tribes, a prophet says to Asa, that "Israel" had Ch2 15:3, "for long time been without the true God and without a teaching priest and without law." They are evil times, of which Ezekiel says Eze 7:26, "the law shall perish from the priest;" and God says of corrupt priests Jer 2:8, "The priest said not, where is the Lord? And they that handle the law knew Me not. Eze 22:26; Zep 3:4 they did violence to My law." Upon their return from the captivity Ezra was known to Artaxerxes as Ezr 7:12, Ezr 7:21, "a scribe of the law of the God of heaven," and he looked upon him apparently, as one who should keep the people in good order by teaching it. Ezr 7:25-26, "thou, Ezra, after the wisdom of thy God which is in thy hand, set magistrates and judges, which may judge all the people which are beyond the river, all such as know the laws of thy God, and teach ye them that know them not: and whosoever will not do the law of thy God or the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him." Ezra says of himself, that he Ezr 7:10, "had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments."
"God's Psa 119:142 law is the truth; the true doctrine of this law did he teach the people, and instruct them in the true meaning and intent thereof, that, according to the right rule, they might frame all their actions; nothing of it did he conceal from them, nor teach any thing contrary to it or false. This was in his mouth; nothing contrary to it was found in his lips."
And iniquity was not found in his lips - He expresses the perfectness of that teaching, first positively, then negatively. The true priest taught truth without any admixture of wrong. "Not only is he a betrayer of the truth, who, transgressing the truth, openly teaches a lie for the truth; but he too, who does not freely utter the truth, which he ought to utter freely, or who does not freely defend the truth which he ought to defend freely, is a betrayer of the truth. Rom 10:10, 'For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.'" "Nothing," says Ambrose to the Emperor Theodosius, "is so perilous to the priest with God, so disgraceful with men, as not to utter freely what he thinks. For it is written Psa 119:46, 'I spake of Thy testimonies before kings, and was not ashamed.' And, therefore, a priest's silence ought to displease your Clemency; his freedom, to please you. For you are involved in the peril of my silence, art aided by the good of my free speech."
He walked with Me - To awe of God, truthfulness of teaching, he adds a devout continual contact with God. Like the patriarchs of old, Enoch and Noah, he Gen 5:24; Gen 6:9 "walked with God." He not only lived in the presence, but walked up and down with Him, through his whole life, as a Friend, "having respect in all things to Him and His glory."
In peace and equity - The inward peace with God overflowing in peace to men. The brief words comprise the duties of both tables; as that Heb 12:14; Rom 12:18, "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God; Co2 13:11. Live in peace, and the God of love and peace shall be with you; Mat 5:9. blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." "God's covenant with him was of peace Mal 2:5, so he observed it on his part." Even "equity," or real considerate justice, would alienate those, whom it found wrong, so he joins with it "peace," that even equity was not administered but with love. "To have peace with God, what is it but to will to be mended and to do what He willeth, and in nothing to offend Him?"
And turned away many from iniquity - They, the true priests of the Old Testament then, were not satisfied with their own sanctification, but were zealous for the salvation of souls. What a history of zeal for the glory of God and the conversion of sinners in those, of whom the world knows nothing; of whose working, but for the three words in the closing book of the Old Testament, we should have known nothing! The prophets upbraid the sins of the many; the Psalms are the prayers given to and used by the pious; such incidental sayings as these, record some of the fruits. "Be of the disciples of Aaron," said Hillel "who loved peace and followed peace, and who loved men and brought them near to the law." Yet even under the Gospel Gregory complains "The world is full of priests; yet in the harvest of God the laborers are few. For we undertake the priestly office, but do not fulfill its work. We receive the fruit of holy Church in daily stipend, but labor not for the everlasting Church in preaching." "There are many priests," says a writer in the 4th century, "and few priests; many in name, few in deed. See then, how ye sit on your thrones, for the throne maketh not the priest, but the priest the throne; the place sanctifieth not the man, but the man the place. Whoso sitteth well on the throne, receiveth honor from the throne; whoso ill, doth injustice to the throne. Thou sittest in judgment. If thou livest well and teachest well, thou wilt be a judge of all; if thou teachest well and livest ill, thine own only. For by teaching well and living well thou instructest the people, how it ought to live; by teaching well and living ill, thou teachest God, how He should condemn thee." "We who are called priests, above the ills which we have of our own, add also the deaths of others. For we slay as many as we, in tepidity and silence, see daily go to death. He who is placed under thee dies without thee, when in that which causes his death, thou hast withstood him. For to that death, which thou hast not withstood, thou wilt be added."
Malachi 2:7
mal 2:7
For the priest's lips should keep knowledge - o "He assigns the reason for what he had just said, the law of truth was in his mouth; they had done what it was their duty to do; as in Ecclesiasticus it is said of Aaron (Ecclesiasticus 45:17), 'God gave unto him His commandments, and authority in the statutes of judgments, that he should teach Jacob the testimonies, and inform Israel in His laws.' So Paul requires of Titus to ordain such overseers, as shall be able to Tit 1:9, 'exhort by sound doctrine and to convince gainsayers.' Wherefore Ambrose calls the Bible, which contains the law of God, 'the book of priests,' as specially belonging to them, to be specially studied by them. Jerome notes that he says keep, not 'give forth,' that they should speak seasonably, and give their fellow-servants meat in due season."
For he is the messenger (or angel) of the Lord of hosts - Malachi gives to the priest the title which belongs to the lowest order of the heavenly spirits, as having an office akin to theirs; as Haggai does to the prophet, Hag 2:11. as an extraordinary "messenger" of God; and Paul tells the Galatians Gal 4:14, "ye received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus;" and Christ, by John, speaks to the leaders of the seven congregations, good or bad, or of mixed good and bad, as "the angels Rev 1:20 of those churches."
"Since in the heavenly hierarchy the order of angels is the lowest, and in the eucharistical hierarchy the order of the priesthood is the highest" , "most truly is the priest of God called angel, i. e., messenger, because he intervenes between God and man, and announces the things of God to the people; and, therefore, were the Urim and Thummim placed on the priest's breastplate of judgment, that we might learn, that the priest ought to be learned, a herald of divine truth." Much more in the New Testament. "Who, as it were in a day, can form one of earth, to be the defender of truth, to stand with angels, to give glory with archangels, to transmit the sacrifices to the altar above, to be partaker of the priesthood of Christ, to reform the thing formed, and present the image, to re-create for the world above, to be a god and make men partakers of the divine nature?" Pe2 1:4. "The priesthood is enacted on earth, but is ranked with the heavenly ranks. Very rightly. For not man, not angel, not archangel, not any other created power, but the Paraclete Himself hath ordained this office, and persuaded them, while yet abiding in the flesh, to conceive the ministry of the angels. Wherefore, he who is consecrated as priest, ought to be pure, as if he stood among the heavenly powers." , "The throne of the priesthood is placed in the heavens, and he is entrusted with ministering things of heaven. Who saith this? The King of heaven Himself. For He saith, 'Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven.' So the priest standeth in the middle between God and human nature, bringing down to us divine benefits, and transmitting thither our supplications."
Malachi 2:8
mal 2:8
But ye - o are departed out of the way "of knowledge, truth, equity, fear of God, which I appointed to Aaron and the Levites." "Ye have caused many to stumble at the law." He does not simply say, "in the law," but "at" it. The law was what they stumbled at. They did not only misunderstand the law, through the false teaching of the priests, as though it allowed things which in truth were sins (although this too); itself was their source of stumbling. As Jesus Himself was "a rock of offence" whereon they stumbled, because through His divine holiness He was not what they expected Him to be, so contrariwise the law became an offence to them through the unholiness and inconsistency of the lives and ways of those who taught it; much as we now hear Christianity spoken against, because of the inconsistency of Christians. So Paul saith to the Jews Rom 2:24, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written;" and, for the sins of Eli's sons (Sa1 2:17, Pococke) "men abhorred the offering of the Lord."
And have corrupted the covenant of Levi - as it is said in Nehemiah, Neh 13:29, "They have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood and of Levi, that covenant which was life and peace" Mal 2:5, and, therefore, forfeited them.
Malachi 2:9
mal 2:9
Therefore have I made you contemptible - They had said in their hearts Mal 1:7, "The table of the Lord is contemptible." So God would requite them "measure for measure." Yet not only so, but in their office as judges, against the repeated protestations in the law Lev 19:15, "Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty, in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor Deu 1:17, ye shall not respect persons in judgment Deu 16:19, thou shall not wrest judgment," he says,
Ye have accepted persons in the law - You have interpreted the law differently for rich and poor, or have put it in force against the poor, not against the rich. It would include actual bribery; but there are many more direct offences against equal justice. How differently is the like offence against the eighth commandment visited upon the poor who have real temptation to it, and the rich who have none, but the lust of the eyes!
Crows he condones, vexes the simple dove - That contempt which they cast upon God and His law, by wresting it out of respect to persons, that so they might gain favor and respect from them, so honoring them more than Him, and seeking to please them more than Him, will He cast back on them making them contemptible even in the eyes of those, from whom they thought by that means to find respect.
Malachi 2:10
mal 2:10
Have we not all one Father? - o
Hath not one God created us? - Malachi turns abruptly to another offence, in which also the priests set an evil example, the capricious dismissal of their Hebrew wives and taking other women in their stead. Here, as before, he lays down, at the outset, a general moral principle, which he applies. "The one Father" (it appears from the parallel), is manifestly Almighty God, as the Jews said to our Lord Joh 8:41, "We have one Father, even God." He created them, not only as He did all mankind, but by the spiritual relationship with Himself, into which He brought them. So Isaiah speaks (Isa 43:1, Isa 43:7, Isa 43:21, add Isa 44:2, Isa 44:21, Isa 44:24), "Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel. Every one that is called by My Name; I have created Him for My glory; I have formed him; yea I have made him. This people have I formed for Myself; they shall show forth My praise."
And from the first in Moses' song Deu 32:6, "Is not He thy Father that created thee? Hath He not made thee and established thee?" This creation of them by God, as His people, gave them a new existence, a new relation to each other; so that every offence against each other was a violation of their relation to God, who had given them this unity, and was, in a nearer sense than of any other, the common Father of all. "Why then," the prophet adds, "do we deal treacherously, a man against his brother, to profane the covenant of our fathers?" He does not yet say, wherein this treacherous dealing consisted; but awakens them to the thought, that sin against a brother is sin against God, Who made him a brother; as, and much more under the Gospel, in which we are all members of one mystical body Co1 8:12, "when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ." He speaks of the sin, as affecting those who did not commit it.
Why do we deal treacherously? So Isaiah, before his lips were cleansed by the mystical coal, said Isa 6:5, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips," and the high priest Joshua was shown in the vision, clothed with defiled garments; (Zac 3:3-4. See ab. pp. 354, 355) and the sin of Achan became the "sin of the children of Israel" Jos 7:1, Jos 7:11, and David's sinful pride in numbering the people was visited upon all. 2 Sam. 24. He teaches beforehand, that Co1 12:26, "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." They "profaned" also "the covenant of their fathers," by marrying those whom God forbade, and who would seduce, as pagan wives had Solomon, from His worship. Paul in sanctioning the remarriage of widows, adds, "only Co1 7:39. in the Lord," i. e., Christian husbands. "He who treated as null the difference between the Israelites and a pagan woman, showed that the difference between the God of Israel and the God of the pagan had before become null to him, whence it follows."
Malachi 2:11
mal 2:11
Treacherously has Judah dealt; an abomination is committed in Israel - The prophet, by the order of the words, emphasizes the "treachery" and the "abomination." This have they done; the very contrary to what was required of them as the people of God. He calls the remnant of Judah by the sacred name of the whole people, of whom they were the surviving representatives. The word "abomination" is a word belonging to the Hebrew, and is used especially of things offensive to, or separating from, Almighty God; idolatry, as the central dereliction of God, and involving offences against the laws of nature, but also all other sins, as adultery, which violate His most sacred laws and alienate from Him.
Hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which He loved - , in themselves, who had been separated and set apart by God to Himself as a Exo 19:6. "holy nation. Jer 2:3. Israel was holiness to the Lord." "The Lord is holy, perfect holiness; His name, holy; all things relating to Him, holy; His law, covenant and all His ordinances and institutions holy; Israel, His special people, an holy people; the temple and all things therein consecrated to Him, holy; Jerusalem, the city of the great God, holy; yea, the whole and of His inheritance, holy; so that whosoever doth not observe those due respects which to any of these belong, may be said to have profaned the holiness which He loved."
Unlawful marriages and unlawful lusts were in themselves a special profanation of that holiness. The high priest was to Lev 21:14-15, "take a virgin of his own people to wife, and not to profane his seed among the people." The priests who "married stranqe wives, defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood" Neh 13:29. The marriage with idolatresses brought, as one consequence, the profanation by their idolatries. The prohibition is an anticipation of the fuller revelation in the Gospel, that Co1 6:15-20 the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and so, that "sins against the body" are profanations of the temple of God. "As those who acknowledge, worship and serve the true God are called His Deu 32:19; Co2 6:18 sons and daughters, so they that worshiped any strange god are, by like reason, here called the daughters of that god. Hence, the Jews say, 'He that marrieth a pagan woman is, as if he made himself son-in-law to an idol. '"
Hath married the daughter of a strange god - And so he came into closest relation with idols and with devils.
Malachi 2:12
mal 2:12
The Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar - , literally "The Lord cut off from the man that doeth this, watcher and answerer." A proverbial saying apparently, in which the two corresponding classes comprise the whole. Yet so, probably, that the one is the active agent; the other, the passive. The one as a "watcher" goes his rounds, to see that nothing stirreth against that which he is to guard; the other "answereth," when roused. Together, they express the two opposite classes, active and passive sin; those who originate the sin, and those who adopt or retain it at the instigation of the inventor or active propagator of it. It will not exempt from punishment, that he was led into the sin.
From the tabernacles of Jacob - Perhaps "he chose the word, to remind them of their unsettled condition," out of which God had brought them.
And him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of hosts - i. e., him, who, doing these things, offereth an offering to God, to bribe Him, as it were, to connivance at his sin. In the same meaning, Isaiah says, that God hateth Isa 1:13. "iniquity and the solemn meeting," and Isa 61:8, "I hate robbery with burnt-offering;" or Solomon Pro 15:8, "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord Pro 28:9; he that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, his prayer shall be an abomination." And God by Amos says , "I hate, I despise, your feast-days, and will not accept your solemn assemblies." In one sense the sacrifice was an aggravation, in that the worship of God made the offence either a sin against light, or implied that God might be bribed into connivance in the breaking of His laws. The ancient discipline of removing from communion those guilty of grievous sin was founded on this principle.
Malachi 2:13
mal 2:13
And this ye have done again - , adding the second sin of cruelty to their wives to the taking foreign women; "they covered the altar of God with tears," in that they by ill-treatment occasioned their wives to weep there to God; and God regarded this, as though they had stained the altar with their tears.
Insomuch that He regardeth not the offering anymore - God regarded the tears of the oppressed, not the sacrifices of the oppressors. He would not accept what was thus offered Him as a thing well-pleasing to Him, acceptable to win His good pleasure.
Malachi 2:14
mal 2:14
And ye say, Wherefore? - They again act the innocent, or half-ignorant. What had they to do with their wives' womanly tears? He who knows the hearts of all was Himself the witness between them and the wife of youth of each; her to whom, in the first freshness of life and their young hearts, each had plighted his troth having been entrusted by her with her earthy all. Gen 31:49-50. "The Lord," said even Laban, when parting from his daughters, "watch between me and thee, when we are absent, the one from the other; if thou shalt afflict my daughters, or if thou shalt take wives beside my daughters, no man is with us; see, God is witness between me and thee."
And he dealt treacherously against her - , violating his own faith and her trusting love, which she had given once for all, and could not now retract. "And she is thy companion;" she has been another self, the companion of thy life, sharing thy sorrows, joys, hopes, fears, interests; different in strength, yet in all, good and ill, sickness and health, thy associate and companion; the help meet for the husband and provided for him by God in Paradise; and above all, "the wife of thy covenant," to whom thou didst pledge thyself before God. These are so many aggravations of their sin. She was the wife of their youth, of their covenant, their companion; and God was the Witness and Sanctifier of their union. Marriage was instituted and consecrated by God in Paradise. Man was to leave father and mother (if so be), but to cleave to his wife indissolubly. For they were to be Mat 19:6, "no more twain, but one flesh." Hence, as a remnant of Paradise, even the pagan knew of marriage, as a religious act, guarded by religious sanctions. Among God's people, marriage was a Pro 2:17 "covenant of their God." To that original institution of marriage he seems to refer in the following:
Malachi 2:15
mal 2:15
And did not He - , God, of whom he had spoken as the witness between man and his wife, "make one," namely, Adam first, to mark the oneness of marriage and make it a law of nature, appointing "that out of man (created in His own image and similitude), woman should take her beginning, and, knitting them together, did teach that it should never be lawful to put asunder those, whom He by matrimony had made one?" "Between those two, and consequently between all other married, to be born from them, He willed that there should be one indivisible union, for Adam could be married to no other save Eve, since no other had been created by God, nor could Eve turn to any other man than Adam, since there was no other in the world. 'Infringe not then this sanction of God, and unity of marriage, and degenerate not from your first parents, Adam and Eve.'" "If divorce had been good, Jesus says, God would not have made one man and one woman, but, having made one Adam, would have made two women, had He meant that he should cast out the one, bring in the other; but now by the mode of creation, He brought in this law, that each should have, throughout, the wife which he had from the beginning. This law is older than that about divorce, as much as Adam is older than Moses."
Yet had he the residue of the spirit - Gen 2:7, "the breath of life, which He breathed into Adam, and man became a living soul." All the souls, which God would ever create, are His, and He could have called them into being at once. Yet in order to designate the unity of marriage, He willed to create but one. So our Lord argues against divorce Mat 19:4-6, "Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning, made them male and female?" They both together are called "one man" Gen 1:27, and, therefore, should be of one mind and spirit also, the unity of which they ought faithfully to preserve.
And wherefore one? - "Seeking a seed of God," i. e., worthy of God, for from religious marriage, religious offspring may most be hoped from God; and by violating that law, those before the flood brought in a spurious, unsanctified generation, so that God in His displeasure destroyed them all. "And take heed to your spirit," which ye too had from God, which was His, and which He willed in time to create. He closes, as he began, with an appeal to man's natural feeling, "let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth."
Malachi 2:16
mal 2:16
He hateth putting away - o He had allowed it "for the hardness of their hearts," yet only in the one case of some extreme bodily foulness discovered upon marriage, and which the woman, knowing the law, concealed at her own peril. Not subsequent illness or any consequences of it, however loathsome (as leprosy), were a ground of divorce, but only this concealed foulness, which the husband "found" upon marriage. The capricious tyrannical divorce, God saith, "He hateth:" a word Naturally used only as to sin, and so stamping such divorce as sin.
One covereth violence with his garment - o or, "and violence covereth his garment," or, it might be, in the same sense, "he covereth his garment with violence" , so that it cannot be hid, nor washed away, nor removed, but envelopes him and his garment; and that, to his shame and punishment.
It was, as it were, an outer garment of violence, as Asaph says Psa 73:6, "violence covereth them as a garment;" or David Psa 109:18, "he clothed himself with cursing as with a garment." It was like a garment with "fretting leprosy," unclean and making unclean, to be burned with fire. Lev 13:47-58. Contrariwise, the redeemed saints had Rev 7:14 "washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb." Having declared God's hatred of this their doing, he sums up in the same words, but more briefly; "and this being so, ye shall take heed to your spirit, and not deal treacherously."
Malachi 2:17
mal 2:17
Ye have wearied the Lord with your words - o "By your blasphemous words, full of unbelief and mistrust, you have in a manner wearied God. He speaks of God, after the manner of men, as a man afflicted by the ills of others. Whence also the Lord says in Isaiah Isa 1:14, "I am weary to bear them," and Isa 43:24, "thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins; thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities." In like way the Apostle says Eph 4:30.
With the same contumacy as before, and unconsciousness of sin, they ask, "Wherein?" It is the old temptation at the prosperity of the wicked. "Does God love the wicked? if not, why does He not punish them?" "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." "The people, when returned from Babylon, seeing all the nations around, and the Babylonians themselves, serving idols but abounding in wealth, strong in body, possessing all which is accounted good in this world, and themselves, who had the knowledge of God, overwhelmed with want, hunger, servitude, is scandalized and says, 'There is no providence in human things; all things are borne along by blind chance, and not governed by the judgment of God; nay rather, things evil please Him, things good displease Him; or if God does discriminate all things, where is His equitable and just judgment?' Questions of this sort minds, which believe not in the world to come, daily raise to God, when they see the wicked in power, the saints in low estate; such as Lazarus, whom we read of in the Gospel, who, before the gate of the rich man in his purple, desires to support his hungry soul with the crumbs which are thrown away from the remnants of the table, while the rich man is of such savagery and cruelty, that he had no pity on his fellow-man, to whom the tongues of the dogs showed pity; not understanding the time of judgment, nor that those are the true goods, which are for ever, say, He is pleased with the evil, and, Where is the God of judgment?"
Where is the God of the judgment? - o "i. e., of that judgment, the great, most certain, most exact, clearsighted, omniscient, most just, most free, wherein He regards neither powerful nor rich nor gifts, nor anything but justice? For He is the God of the judgment, to whom it belongs by nature to judge all men and things by an exact judgment: for His nature is equity itself, justice itself, providence itself, and that, most just, most wise. To Him it belongs to be the Judge of all, and to exercise strict judgment upon all; and He will exercise it fully on that decisive and last day of the world, which shall be the horizon between this life and the next, parting off time from eternity, heaven from hell, the blessed from the damned forever, through Christ, whom He constituted Judge of all, quick and dead."
Bible
Malachi Chapter 3
Malachi 3:1
mal 3:1
God answers their complaints of the absence of His judgments, that they would come, but would include those also who clamored for them. For no one who knew his own sinfulness would call for the judgment of God, as being himself, chief of sinners. Augustine pictures one saying to God, "Take away the ungodly man," and that God answers, "Which?"
Behold, I send My messenger before My face, and he shall prepare My way before Me - they, then, were not prepared for His Coming, for whom they clamored. The messenger is the same whom Isaiah had foretold, whose words Malachi uses Isa 40:3 : "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straiqht in the desert a highway for our God. Luk 1:76. Thou, child," was the prophecy on John the Immerser's birth, "shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way, to give knowledge of salvation unto His people, for the remission of their sins." Repentance was to be the preparation for the kingdom of Christ, the Messiah, for whom they looked so impatiently.
He who speaks, is He who should come, God the Son. For it was before Him Who came and dwelt among us, that the way was to be prepared. He speaks here in His divine nature, as the Lord Who should send, and Who should Himself come in our flesh. In the Gospel, when He was come in the flesh, He speaks not of His own Person but of the Father, since "indivisible are the operations of the Trinity, and what the One doth, the other Two do, since the Three are of one nature, power and operation." Whence Christ, in order to give no excuse to the Jews to speak against Him before the time, refers it, as He does His life Joh 6:57. His doctrine Joh 7:16 words Joh 3:11; Joh 5:43; Joh 8:38, Joh 8:40, Joh 8:47, Joh 8:55; Joh 12:49; Joh 14:10, Joh 14:24 and works Joh 4:34; Joh 5:19-20, Joh 5:26, Joh 5:30, Joh 5:36; Joh 6:38; Joh 8:28; Joh 9:4; Joh 10:25, Joh 10:32, Joh 10:37-38; Joh 14:10-11 to the Father.
"Those works, which do not relate to that which b uniquely belongs to each Person, being common, are ascribed now to One Person, now to Another, in order to set forth the One Substance in the Trinity of Persons." Thus, John says Joh 12:41. Isaiah spoke of the unbelief of the Jews, when he "saw" the "glory" of God the Son "and spake of Him," and Paul says Act 28:25. that the "Holy Spirit spake" then "by" him.
And he shall prepare the way before Meo - "The same is God's way here, and Christ's there, an evident proof that Christ is one God with the Father, and that, in Christ, God came and was manifest in the flesh." The prophets and all who turned men to righteousness, or who retained the knowledge of the truth or of righteousness or of God in the world, did, in their degree, prepare the way for Christ. But John was His immediate forerunner "before His Face," the herald of His immediate approach; from where he is called "the end of the law, and the beginning of the Gospel," "the lamp before the Light, the voice before the Word, the mediator between the Old and the New Testament;" "the link of the law and of grace; a new morning star; a ray, before the true Sun should burst forth," the end of night, the beginning of day.
And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple - He, Whose Coming they sought for, was Almighty God, "the God of Judgment." He who should come, was "the Lord," again Almighty God, since, in usage too, none else is called "the Lord," as none else can be. The temple also, to which He was to come, the temple of God, is His own. "The messenger, or the Angel of the covenant," plainly, even from the parallelism, is the same as "the Lord." It was "one," for whom they looked; one, of whose absence they complained; Mal 2:17, "where is the God of judgment?" one, who should come to His temple , one whose coming they sought and prepared "to have pleasure in;" one, of whom it is repeated, "lo, He cometh," one, in the day of whose coming, at whose appearing, it was asked, "who shall stand?" "All Christian interpreters are agreed that this Lord is Christ Act 2:36, whom God hath made both Lord and Christ, and Act 10:36. Who is Lord over all; by whom all things were made, are sustained and governed; Who is (as the root of the word implies) the basis and foundation, not of any private family, tribe or kingdom, but of all; Co1 8:6. by whom are all things and we by Him: and whose we are also by right of redemption; and so He is Rev 17:14; Rev 19:16. Lord of lords and King of kings, deservedly called the Lord." As then the special presence of God was often indicated in connection with "the Angel of the Lord," so, here, He who was to come was entitled the Angel or messenger of the covenant, as God also calls Him the covenant itself.
Isa 42:6, "I will give Thee for a covenant of the people, a light of the Gentiles." He it was Isa 63:9, "the Angel of His presence," who saved His former people, in whom His "Name was," and who, by the prerogative of God, would Exo 23:21, "not pardon their transgressions." He should be Heb 12:24; Heb 8:6, "the Mediator of the new and better covenant" which is promised Jer 31:32-33; Heb 8:9, "not according to the covenant, that I made with their fathers, in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt," which "My covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord; but this shall be the covenant, that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God and they shall be My people."
Whom ye seek, are seeking, whom ye delight in - , i. e., profess so to do; "He will come," but will be very different from Him whom ye look for, an Avenger on your enemies. Judgment will come, but it will begin with yourselves.
Shall suddenly come - o "unawares, when men should not think of them; whence perhaps it is that the Jews reckon the Messiah among what shall come unawares." As, it is here said of His first Coming, so it is said of His second Coming (which may be comprehended under this here spoken of) that except they diligently watch for it Luk 21:35, "it shall come upon them unawares Mar 13:36. suddenly Mat 24:44. in such an hour as they think not." "The Lord of glory always comes, like a thief in the night, to those who sleep in their sins."
Lo, He will come - : he insists again and calls their minds to that Coming, certain, swift, new, wonderful, on which all eyes should be set, but His coming would be a sifting-time.
Malachi 3:2
mal 3:2
And who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appeareth? - The implied answer is, "No one;" as in the Psalm Psa 130:3, "If Thou, Lord, wilt mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" Joel had asked the same , "The day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?" "How can the weakness of man endure such might; his blindness, such light; his frailty, such power; his uncleanness, such holiness; the chaff, such a fire? For He is like a refine's fire. Who would not fail through stupefaction, fear, horror, shrinking reverence, from such majesty?"
Malachi seems to blend, as Joel, the first and second coming of our Lord. The first coming too was a time of sifting and severance, according as those, to whom He came, did or did not receive Him. The severance was not final, because there was yet space for repentance; but it was real, an earnest of the final judgment. Joh 9:39, "for judgment," our Lord says, "I am come into this world, that they which see not may see, and they which see might be made blind;" and again Joh 12:31, "Now is the judgment of this world;" and Joh 3:18, "He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the name of the Only-Begotten Son of God; Joh 3:36. He that believeth not the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." As, on the other hand, He saith Joh 6:54. "whoso eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath eternal life;" and Joh 6:47, "he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;" "hath," He saith; not, "shall have;" "hath it," in present reality and earnest, though he may forfeit it: so the other class is "condemned already," although the one may repent and be saved, the other may Eze 33:18. "turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity;" and if he persevere in it, "shall die therein."
It is then one ever-present judgment. Every soul of man is in a state of grace or out of it; in God's favor or under His wrath; and the judgment of the Great Day, in which the secrets of men's hearts shall be revealed, will be but an outward manifestation of that now hidden judgment. But the words, in their fullest sense, imply a passing of that judgment, in which men do or do not stand, as in those of our Lord Luk 21:35-36. "As a snare shall that day come on all those that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things which shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man;" and Paul Eph 6:13. "Take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand;" and in the Revelation Rev 6:16-17. "They said to the mountains and rocks; Fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" Asaph says of a temporal, yet for this life, final destruction; Psa 76:6-7, "At Thy rebuke, O God of, Jacob, both the chariot and horse are cast into a deep sleep. Thou art to be feared, and who may stand in Thy sight, when Thou art angry?"
For He is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soup - Two sorts of materials for cleansing are mentioned, the one severe, where the baser materials are inworked with the rich ore; the other mild, where the defilement is easily separable. "He shall come like a refining fire; Psa 50:3-4, 'a fire shall burn before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him. Then He shall call the heaven from above, and the earth, that He may judge HIs people;' streams of fire shall sweep before, bearing away all sinners. For the Lord is called a fire, and a Deu 4:24. consuming fire, so as to burn our Co1 3:12. wood, hay, stubble. And not fire only, but fuller's soap. To those who sin heavily, He is a refining and consuming fire, but to those who commit light sins, fuller's soap, to restore cleanness to it, when washed."
Yet, though light in comparison, this too had its severity, for clothes which were washed (of which the word is used) were trampled on by the feet. "The nitrum and the fuller's soap is penitence." Yet the whiteness and purity so restored, is, at the last, perfected. Inspiration could find no more adequate comparison for us, for the brightness of our Lord's raiment from the glory of the Transfiguration, than Mar 9:3, "exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them."
Our Lord is, in many ways, as a fire. He says of Himself; Luk 12:49, "I am come to send a fire upon earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled?" John Baptist said of Him Luk 3:16, "He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." He kindles in the heart "a fire of love," which softens what is hard, the will.
"Wash whate'er of stain is here,
Sprinkle what is dry or sere,
Heal and bind the wounded sprite;
Bend whate'er is stubborn still,
Kindle what is cold and chill,
What hath wandered guide aright."
But as God is "a consuming fire," Who must burn out the dross, unless we be Jer 6:29-30 "reprobate silver" which "the founder melteth in vain," either He must, by His grace, consume the sin within us, or must consume us with it, in hell.
Malachi 3:3
mal 3:3
And He shall sit - o as a King and Judge on His throne, with authority, yet also to try accurately the cause of each, separating seeming virtues from real graces; hypocrites, more or less consciously, from His true servants.
He shall purify o the sons of Levi - These had been first the leaders in degeneracy, the corrupters of the people by their example and connivance. Actually Act 6:7, "a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith." Barnabas also was a Levite. Act 4:36. But more largely, as Zion and Jerusalem are the titles for the Christian Church, and Israel who believed was the true Israel, so "the sons of" Levi are the true Levites, the Apostles and their successors in the Christian priesthood.
It was through three centuries of persecutions that the Church was purified by fire.
That they may offer - , literally "and they shall be unto thy Lord offers of a meal-offering in righteousness," i. e., they shall be such, and that, habitually, abidingly. Again, here and in the next words, "and the meal-offering of Judah shall be pleasant unto the Lord," it is remarkable, that the "meal-offering," to which the holy eucharist corresponds, is alone mentioned. Of bloody offerings Malachi is silent, for they were to cease.
In righteousness - , as Zacharias prophesied, "that we might serve Him in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life."
Malachi 3:4
mal 3:4
Then (And) shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem - The "law," the new revelation of God, was to Isa 2:3. "go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." Judah and Jerusalem then are here the Christian Church. "They shall be, pleasant (literally sweet) unto the Lord." It is a reversal (using the self-same word) of what God had said of them in the time of their religious decay Hos 9:4. "they shall not offer wine-offerings to the Lord, neither shall they be sweet unto Him; Jer 6:20. your burnt-offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto Me."
As in the days of old - , before the days of degeneracy; as it stands in the ancient Liturgies "Vouchsafe to look upon them (the consecrated oblations) with a propitious and serene Countenance, and to accept them, as Thou vouchsafedst to accept the gifts of Thy righteous Abel and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham, and the holy sacrifice, the immaculate offering, which Thy high priest Melchizedec offered unto Thee." "The oblation of the sacrament of the eucharist, made by the Jews who should believe in Christ, which is known to have been first instituted by Christ in the city of Jerusalem, and afterward to have been continued by His disciples (Matt. 26 (29); Act 2:42, Act 2:46.) shall be pleasing unto the Lord, as the sacrifices of the patriarchs, Melchizedec, Abraham, and the holy priests in the law, as Aaron; yea, the truth takes precedence of the figure and shadow; the sacrifice of the new law is more excellent and acceptable to God, than all the sacrifice, of the law or before the law. With this agrees what the Lord saith to the synagogue Isa 1:25-26, Isa 1:28, "I will turn My hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin; and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors, as at the beginning: and the destruction of the transgressors, and of the sinners, shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." So now it follows.
Malachi 3:5
mal 3:5
And I will come near to you to judgment - They had clamored for the coming of "the God of judgment;" God assures them that He will come to judgment, which they had desired, but far other than they look for. The few would be purified; the great mass of them (so that He calls them "you"), the main body of those who had so clamored, would find that He came as a Judge, not for them but against them.
And I will be a swift witness - o "In judging I will bear witness, and witnessing, I, the same, will bring forth judgment, saith the Lord; therefore, the judgment shall be terrible, since the judge is an infallible witness, whom the conscience of no one will be able to contradict."
God would be a "swift witness," as He had said before, "He shall come suddenly." Our Lord calls Himself (Rev 3:14; Rev 1:5, "I, and not other witnesses, having seen with My own eyes." Theod. Jerome) "the Faithful and True witness," when He stands in the midst of the Church, as their Judge. God's judgments are always unexpected by those, on whom they fall. The sins are those especially condemned by the law; the use of magical arts as drawing men away from God, the rest as sins of special malignity. Magical arts were rife at the time of the Coming of our Lord; and adultery, as shown in the history of the woman taken in adultery, when her accusers were convicted in their own consciences. (Joh 8:9, "adulterous generation." Mat 12:39. Lightfoot on Joh 8:3 quotes Sotah f. 47. 1. "From the time that homicides were multiplied, the beheading of the heifer ceased: from the time that adulterers were multiplied, the bitter waters ceased:" and Maimonides on Sotah, c. 3. "When the adulterers multiplied under the second Temple, the Sanhedrin abolished the ordeal of the adulteresses by the bitter water; relying on its being written, 'I will not visit your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery.'" Lightfoot subjoins, "The Gemarists teach that Johanan ben Zacchai was the author of that advice, who was still alive, in the Sanhedrin, and perhaps among those who brought the adulteress before Christ. For some things make it probable, that the "scribes and Pharisees," mentioned here, were elders of the synagogue." Justin reproaches them with having fresh wives, wherever they went throughout the world. Dial. fin. p. 243. Oxford translation.)
Oppress the hireling - , literally "oppress the hire," i. e., deal oppressively in it. "Behold," says James Jam 5:4, "the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is by you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." The mere delay in the payment of the wages of the laborer brought sin unto him, against whom he cried to God Deu 24:14-15. It is no light sin, since it is united with the heaviest, and is spoken of as reaching the ears of God. The widow and the fatherless stand in a relation of special nearness to God.
And fear not Me - He closes with the central defect, which was the mainspring of all their sins, the absence of the fear of God. The commission of any of these sins, rife as they unhappily are, proves that those who did them had no fear of God. "Nothing hinders that this should be referred to the first coming of Christ. For Christ, in preaching to the Jews, exercised upon them a judgment of just rebuke, especially of the priests, Scribes and Pharisees, as the Gospels show."
Malachi 3:6
mal 3:6
I am the Lord, I change not - , better, more concisely, "I, the Lord
I change not - . The proper name of God, "He who Is," involves His unchangeableness. For change implies imperfection; it changes to that which is either more perfect or less perfect: to somewhat which that being, who changes, is not or has not. But God has everything in Himself perfectly. "Thou Alone, O Lord, Art what Thou Art, and Thou Art Who Art. For what is one thing in the whole and another in parts, and wherein is anything subject to change, is not altogether what Is. And what beginneth from not being, and can be conceived, as not being, and only subsisteth through another thing, returns to not-being; and what hath a 'has been,' which now is not, and a 'to be,' which as yet is not, that is not, properly and absolutely. But Thou Art what Thou Art. For whatever Thou Art in any time or "way," that Thou Art wholly and always; and Thou Art, Who Art properly and simply, because Thou hast neither 'to have been' or 'to be about to be;' but only to be present; and canst not be conceived, ever not to have been." "There is only one simple Good, and, therefore, One Alone Unchangeable, which is God."
"Our" life is a "becoming" rather than a simple "being;" it is a continual losing of what we had, and gaining what we had not, for "in as far as any one is not what he was, and is what he was not, so far forth he dieth and ariseth;" dieth to what he was, ariseth to be something otherwise.
"Increase evidences a beginning; decrease, death and destruction. And, therefore, Malachi says, 'I am God, and I change not,' ever retaining His own state of being; because what has no origin cannot be changed."
So the Psalmist says Psa 102:27, "As a vesture, Thou shalt change them and they shall be changed, but Thou art the Same, and Thy years shall not fail;" and Balaam, controlled by God Num 23:19. "God is not a man, that He should lie, or the son of man, that He should repent;" and Jam 1:17, "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
Of this unchangeableness of God, His holy ones partake, as far as they fix themselves on God. "The soul of man hangs upon Him, by whom it was made. And because it was made, to desire God Alone, but everything which it desires below is less than He, rightly doth not that suffice it, which is not God. Hence, is it, that the soul is scattered hither and thither, and is repelled from everything, toward which it is borne, through satiety of them. But holy men guard themselves by cautious observation, lest they should be relaxed from their intentness by change, and because they desire to be the same, wisely bind themselves to the thought, whereby they love God. For in the contemplation of the Creator, they will receive this, that they should ever enjoy one stability of mind. No changeableness then dissipates them, because their thought ever perseveres, free from unlikeness to itself. This therefore they now imitate, striving with effort, which hereafter they shall with joy receive as a gift." To which unchangeableness the prophet had bound himself by the power of love, when he said Psa 27:4, "One thing I required of the Lord, which I will require, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord." To this unity Paul clave intently, when he said, Phi 3:13-14 : "One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and stretching forth to those things which are before, I press forward toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
And ye sons of Jacob are not consumed - Man would often have become weary of man's wickedness and waywardness. We are impatient at one another, readily despair of one another. God might justly have cast off them and us; but He changes not. He abides by the covenant which He made with their fathers; He consumed them not; but with His own unchangeable love awaited their repentance. Our hope is not in ourselves, but in God.
Malachi 3:7
mal 3:7
Even from the days of your fathers - Back to those days and from them ye are gone away from My ordinances. "I am not changed from good; ye are not changed from evil. I am unchangeable in holiness; ye are unchangeable in perversity."
Return unto Me - The beginning of our return is from the preventing grace of God. Jer 31:18; Lam 5:21, "turn Thou me, and I shall be turned, for Thou art the Lord my God," is the voice of the soul to God, preparing for His grace; Psa 85:4, "turn us, O God of our salvation." For, not in its own strength, but by His grace can the soul turn to God. "Turn thou to Me and I will return unto you," is the Voice of God, acknowledging our free-will, and promising His favor, if we accept His grace in return.
And ye say, Wherein shall we return? - Strange ignorance of the blinded soul, unconscious that God has aught against it! It is the Pharisaic spirit in the Gospel. It would own itself doubtless in general terms a sinner, but when called on, wholly to turn to God, as being wholly turned from Him, it asks, "In what? What would God have of me?" as if ready to do it.
Malachi 3:8
mal 3:8
Shall a man rob or cheat - , defraud God? God answers question by question, but thereby drives it home to the sinner's soul, and appeals to his conscience. The conscience is steeled, and answers again, "In what?" God specifies two things only, obvious, patent, which, as being material things, they could not deny. "In tithes and offerings." The offerings included several classes of dues to God:
(a) the first fruits ;
(b) the annual half-shekel Exo 30:13-15;
(c) the offerings made for the tabernacle Exo 25:2-3; Exo 35:5, Exo 35:21, Exo 35:24; Exo 36:3, Exo 36:6 and the second temple Ezr 8:25 at its first erection; it is used of ordinary offerings;
(d) of the tithes of their own tithes, which the Levites paid to the priests Num 18:26, Num 18:28-29;
(e) of the portions of the sacrifice which accrued to the priests Lev 7:14.
Malachi 3:9
mal 3:9
Ye have been cursed with the curse - (not "with a curse"). The curse threatened had come upon them: but, as fore-supposed in Leviticus by the repeated burden, "If ye still walk contrary to Me," they had persevered in evil. God had already shown His displeasure. But they, so far from being amended by it, were the more hardened in their sin. Perhaps as men do, they pleaded their punishment, as a reason why they should not amend. They defrauded God, under false pretences. They were impoverished by His curse, and so they could not afford to pay the tithes; as men say, "the times are bad; so we cannot help the poor" of Christ. "And Me ye still are defrauding" Me, ye; man, God. And that not one or other, but this whole people. It was a requital as to that, in which they had offended. "Because ye have not rendered tithes and first-fruits, therefore ye are cursed in famine and penury." "Because the people did not render tithes and first-fruits to the Levites, the Lord saith, that He Himself suffered fraud, whose ministers, constrained by hunger and penury, deserted the temple. For, if He is visited by others in prison, and sick, is received and cared for, and, hungry and athirst, receives food and drink, why should He not receive tithes in His ministers, and, if they are not given, be Himself deprived of His portion?"
Malachi 3:10
mal 3:10
Notes on the Bible, part 9 of 16. 1834. Hermetic Cloud, https://hermeticcloud.com/library/barnes-notes-on-the-bible-part-9/. Public-domain text reproduced in full; markup only.