כי stands in its ordinary signification, "for." Allow not yourselves to be turned away by anything from trusting in the God of Israel; hold fast by His word alone, and by His servants,--such was the fundamental thought of the whole preceding section. It meets us last in ver. 20, in the exhortation: [Pg 71] "To the Law and to the testimony!" in so far as this is rich in consolation and promise. The Prophet, after having, in the preceding verses, described the misery which will befal those who do not follow this exhortation, supports and establishes it by referring to the _help of the Lord_ already alluded to in vers. 9 and 10, and to the _light of His grace_ which He will cause to shine into the darkness of the people,--a darkness produced by their unbelief and apostacy; and this light shall be brightest where the darkness was greatest. All the attempts at connecting this כי with the verse immediately preceding instead of referring it to the main contents of the preceding section, have proved futile. כי can neither mean "nevertheless," nor "yea;" and the strange assertion that it is almost without any meaning at all cannot derive any support from Isaiah xv. 1: "The _burden_ of Moab, _for_ in the night the city of Moab is laid waste;" for only in that case is כי without any meaning at all, if משא be falsely interpreted.--Ver. 22, where the phrase מעוף צוקה "darkness of distress" is equivalent to "darkness which consists in distress" (compare also: "behold trouble and darkness" in the same verse), shows that מועף and מוצק are substantially of the same meaning.--Our verse forms an antithesis to ver. 22; the latter verse described the darkness brought on by the guilt of the people; the verse under consideration describes, in contrast to it, the _removal_ of it called forth by the grace of the Lord.--לא may either be connected with the noun, or it may be explained: not is darkness. It cannot be objected to the latter view that, in that case, אין should rather have stood; while the analogy of the phrase: "Not didst thou increase the joy," in chap. ix. 2 (3), seems to be in favour of it. Here we have the negative, the ceasing of darkness; in chap. ix. 1 (2) the positive, the appearance of light. The suffix, in לה refers, just as the suffix, in בה in ver. 21, to the omitted ארץ.--The כ in כעת is, by many interpreters, asserted to stand in the signification of כאשר: "Just as the former time has brought disgrace," &c. But as it cannot be proved that כ has ever the meaning, "just as;" and as, on the other hand, כעת frequently occurs in the signification, "at the time" (compare my remarks on Numb. xxiii. 13 in my work on Balaam), we shall be obliged to take, here too, the כ as a temporal particle, and to supply, as the subject, Jehovah, who [Pg 72] always stands before the Prophet's mind, and is often not mentioned when the matter itself excludes another subject. Moreover, it is especially in favour of this view that, in vers. 3 (4), the Lord