With what tenderness the prophet speaks to his countrymen, to assure them that their captivity will not last forever! Divested of poetical language and figures, the Lord says: In your lost condition in slavery ("wilderness") you shall hear the voice of the Lord to comfort you. Be prepared, for he will provide the means ("highway") for your deliverance from captivity. The words wilderness, desert, and highway are symbolical terms, representing the lost condition of the Jews and the promise made by the Lord, that he would provide means for their deliverance from their enemies. What follows, holds forth to the Jews a glorious future. "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low." That is, the down-trodden and oppressed children of Israel shall once more take the stand of an independent nation; and the proud and lofty Assyrian shall in his turn be humbled, and come under the yoke of the conqueror. The idea which underlies the language of the prophet is, that the Jews will be ultimately restored to their own country, and again become a prosperous people; and as is characteristic of all these Jewish prophecies, the expressions, "and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain," are mere expletives, to obscure the sense, and increase the ambiguity. Like the oracles of Greece, a simple idea is concealed beneath figures and metaphors, and the mind distracted by the introduction of thoughts that have no meaning, and no connection with the subject. Josephus, after giving a full account of this prophecy from Isaiah says, it was subsequently fulfilled in the captivity and restoration of the Jews, and that when he wrote, the words of the prophet had passed into history. (_Antiq_., book x. chap. 2, sec. 2.) The Lord, by the prophet, is addressing the Jews of that day about matters which directly concerned them, and what was said had no more to do with John the Baptist preaching on the Jordan, in the neighborhood of the Arabian desert, than it had with the travels of Livingstone over the sands of Africa. The John referred to in Mark is a historic character, and all we know about him we learn through Josephus. In his day he was a reformer. Shocked at the low condition of the Jews, who had reached the lowest deep in crimes and vices of all kinds, through the corruption of the priesthood, and tyranny of their civil Governors, he undertook to reform abuses, and elevate the moral standard of the nation. Standing on the banks of the Jordan, crowds from the surrounding country came to hear him denounce the sins of the people, and be baptized. He preached repentance, and those who did repent he purified with the mystic waters of the Jordan.