And then, still further, this faithful, steadfast heart and mind, kept
by God, is a mind filled with deepest peace. There is something very
beautiful in the prophet's abandoning the attempt to find any adjective
of quality which adequately characterises the peace of which he has
been speaking. He falls back upon the expedient which is the confession
of the impotence of human speech worthily to portray its subject when
he simply says, 'Thou shalt keep in peace, peace ... because he
trusteth in Thee.' The reduplication expresses the depth, the
completeness of the tranquillity which flows into the heart, Such
continuity, wave after wave, or rather ripple after ripple, is possible
even for us. For, dear brethren, the possession of this deep, unbroken
peace does not depend on the absence of conflict, on distraction,
trouble, or sorrow, but on the presence of God. If we are in touch with
Him, then our troubled days may be calm, and beneath all the surface
tumult there may be a centre of rest. The garrison in some high
hill-fortress looks down upon the open where the enemy's ranks are
crawling like insects across the grass, and scarcely hears the noise of
the tumult, and no arrow can reach the lofty hold. So, up in God we may
dwell at rest whate'er betide. Strange that we should prefer to live
down amongst the unwalled villages, which every spoiler can harry and
burn, when we might climb, and by the might and the magic of trust in
the Lord bring round about ourselves a wall of fire which shall consume
the poison out of the evil, even whilst it permits the sorrow to do its
beneficent work upon us!
III. Note again the worthiness of the divine Name to evoke, and the
power of the divine character to reward, the trust.
We pass to the last words of _my_ text:--'In the Lord Jehovah is
everlasting strength.'
Now I suppose we all know that the words feebly rendered in the
Authorised Version 'everlasting strength' are literally 'the Rock of
Ages'; and that this verse is the source of that hallowed figure which,
by one of the greatest of our English hymns, is made familiar and
immortal to all English-speaking people.
But there is another peculiarity about the words on which I dwell for a
moment, and that is, that here we have, for one of the only two times
in which the expression occurs in Scripture, the great name of Jehovah
reduplicated. 'In Jab Jehovah is the Rock of Ages.' In the former verse
the prophet had given up in despair the attempt to characterise the
peace which God gave, and fallen back upon the expedient of naming it
twice over. In this verse, with similar eloquence of reticence, he
abandons the attempt to describe or characterise that great Name, and
in adoration, contents himself with twice taking it upon his lips, in
order to _impress_ what he cannot _express_, the majesty and the
sufficiency of that name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account