The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 1 (of 2)Smith, George Adam
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah, Volume 1 (of 2)
Smith, George Adam
Bible. Isaiah -- Commentaries
But woe to the people, whose attachment to their land is based upon its
material advantages, who have lost their sense for those spiritual
presences, from an appreciation of which springs all true love of
country, with warrior's courage in her defence and statesman's faith in
her destiny! The greatest calamity, which can befall any people, is to
forfeit their enthusiasm for the soil, on which their history has been
achieved and their hearths and altars lie, by suffering their faith in
the presence of God, of which these are but the tokens, to pass away.
With this loss Isaiah now reproaches Judah. The people are utterly
materialized; their delights have been in gold and silver, chariots and
horses, fenced cities and broad streams, and their faith has now
followed their delights. But these things to which they flee will only
prove their destruction. The great foreign river, whose waters they
covet, will overflow them: _even the king of Assyria and all his glory,
and he shall come up over all his channels and go over all his banks;
and he shall sweep onward into Judah; he shall overflow and pass
through; he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his
wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel_, thou who art
_God-with-us_. At the sound of the Name, which floats in upon the floods
of invasion like the Ark on the waters of old, Isaiah pulls together his
distraught faith in his country, and forgetting her faults, flings
defiance at her foes. _Associate yourselves, ye peoples, and ye shall be
broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far-off countries, gird
yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and
it shall be brought to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand:
for Immanu-El_--"With us is God." The challenge was made good. The
prophet's faith prevailed over the people's materialism, and Jerusalem
remained inviolable till Isaiah's death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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