III. The closing verses of the seventh chapter _look over past history_. In the first place the Lord says what he desires to see done by them: True judgment executed, mercy and truth shown by every man to his brother, oppress not the widow and the fatherless, the stranger nor the poor, let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart. These precepts were spoken to them by the prophets before the captivity. "Wash ye, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah i.) But they did the very opposite, and continued in an outward service without obedience of the heart. This disobedience became their ruin and brought on the disaster. The description of their waywardness fits that people in their entire history. They refused to attend and offered a rebellious shoulder. They made their ears too heavy to hear, their heart they made an adamant that they might not hear the law and the words which Jehovah of hosts sent by His Spirit. These conditions prevailed in a still intenser form when our Lord Jesus Christ appeared among them. At last God Himself put judicial blindness upon them and still their heart is like adamant, but that heart of stone will be removed at last by the Spirit of God and a heart of flesh given in its place. (Ezek. xxxvi). And now follows the manifestation of the wrath of Jehovah of hosts. He had cried and they did not hear, and now they called but He did not hear. The prayers of orthodox Judaism especially on their fast days are beyond description and pleading for mercy. Still there is no answer to the many prayers. "Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And 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 blood." (Is. i: 14, 15. ) Alas! it is worship with the lips. The believing remnant alone in the future will be heard in their pleadings, and the Lord will send at last the salvation out of Zion, and the Deliverer will come who turns away ungodliness from Jacob. The fourteenth verse puts the dispersion and the judgment before us in a nutshell. They are whirled among all the nations whom they know not. The land itself becomes desolate behind them. As soon as the people leave whose land it is, the land flowing with milk and honey becomes a wilderness, and when they return it will be again the land of blessing.