Isaiah chapter 21

CHAPTER XXI

"WHAT OF THE NIGHT?" 

"THE BURDEN OF THE DESERT OF THE SEA." — In chapter xxi. 1-10 the prophet turns, as it were, from Egypt to the other end of the world political of his day; and looking beyond Assyrian times, foretells the fall of Babylon by the Medes and Persians. Remembering the position of the kingdom of Judah between these great powers of Egypt and Assyria, the latter of which in time gave place to the Babylonian Empire; and remembering also the purpose of God concerning them, as now unfolded in history, the structure of the book of Isaiah is better comprehended ; and order and connection appear where otherwise it would not be seen. It was natural, we might almost say, for the prophet, having recorded the downfall of Egypt before Assyria, to go on to the downfall of Babylon, which in turn gained supremacy over Nineveh. We have already looked at what Isaiah has to say here about the taking of Babylon by the Medes and Persians, a typical " threshing on God's threshing-floor" (verse 10), which has yet to find its antitype in the prowess of the " daughter of Zion " in " threshing" the hosts of " many nations" in " the last days," gathered together against Zion (Micah iv.). When this great " threshing " is performed upon the site of " the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite," where so many bloody "threshings" have already taken place, Isaiah himself will be on the scene again, having been " called out of his grave" (to use the language of the New Testament in the case of Lazarus—Jno. xii. 17) by the Lord Jesus, who comes into the Land of Israel from the South to settle "the controversy of Zion." Is this connection of thought intended by the sequence of " the burden of Dumah " (verses 11-12) after the " grievous vision " of the threshing of Babylon ? It would seem so. 

"THE BURDEN OF DUMAH." 

"He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night ? The watchman said, The morning cometh and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye; return, come." This is one of the briefest and most enigmatical of the " things written aforetime for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope" (Rom. xv. 4). The Gospel of the Kingdom directs our search concerning it. We have to enquire how, in history and prophecy, Dumah and Seir are related to God's mighty works of the past and the Kingdom that is coming ? Who is HE that so "calleth to me out of Seir"? Why is the prophet thus twice challenged as a " watchman " ? What is " the night " ? What may be the meaning of his very brief, and at the first sight tantalising, answer ? What is " the morning," and " also the night " ? Who are they who have the " will " to " enquire " ? Of whom, or where, shall they " enquire" ? And concerning what ? Why this invitation : " Return, Come " ? Return whence ? and Come whither ? DUMAH—Silence is the name of a district, and not of a city, as some suppose. The terms of the prophecy are quite inapplicable to a small city in the south of Judah. They relate to Mount Seir, through which the nation of Israel passed when, as Yahweh's son, his first-born, they came out of Egypt at the beginning. Dumah was a son of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 14), and the locality of his settlement, with Ishmael's other sons, is defined in verse 18 of the same chapter. "They dwelt from Havilah to Shur that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria." (That is, one going from Egypt to Assyria, would have to pass through the wilderness of Shur, and, therefore, through the country of Dumah and the others.) Havilah was a boundary of Amalek. Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah unto Shur; that is, south of Judah. Amalek was the first of the nations to war against Israel in the time of the Exodus. All this is plain enough indication of the locality of Dumah. SEIR is the dwelling-place of Esau or Edom. It is that hilly stretch of country that extends southward from the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea. " Meddle not with the children of Esau," said the Lord to Israel, " I will not give you of their land .. . I have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession" (Deut. ii. 5). Seir is celebrated in the Scriptures because of the manifestation of God that has already taken place in the country, and of the greater that is promised. In Moses' blessing of the tribes before his death, he says : " The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them ; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of his saints " (Deut. xxxiii. 2). Moses' blessing relates to Israel's future, although it contains historical allusions to the great manifestation on Sinai at the giving of the law. 

Deborah and Barak spoke of that great time in the day of victory over Jabin and Sisera. " Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marched st out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water. The mountains melted from before the Lord, even that Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel" (Judges v. 4-5). These allusions show that narrow geographical limitations are not to be considered ; but rather that, in the prophetic allusions to the coming manifestation of God in the locality of the ancient wonders, the great events of the Exodus are to be taken broadly as the illustration of the greater things to come. The prophet Habakkuk, having had a vision concerning " the end,1 ' speaks in chapter iii. of the revival of God's work "in the midst of the years," and says: " God cometh from Teman (the South), and the HOLY ONE from Mount Paran." The Holy One is the Lord Jesus (" Thou wilt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption "—Psa. xvi.). The prophet sees him with his hosts (v. 8), " threshing the nations in anger" (v. 12), preparatory to his taking possession of the land and city of his special inheritance. 

Isaiah, in another vision, sees him likewise in these parts, trampling the peoples in fury in the day of vengeance. He says : " Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?" And the divine answer is: "I, that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." " Wherefore," asks the prophet, " is thy clothing red ? And thy garments as treading in a wine-fat?" The answer is: " A wine press I have trodden by myself, And of the peoples there is no one with me, And I tread them in mine anger, And I trample them in my fury. Sprinkled is their life blood on my garments, And all my clothing I have polluted. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, And the year of my redeemed hath come. And I looked attentively, and there is none helping, And I am astonished that there is none supporting. And give salvation to me doth mine own arm, And my wrath—it hath supported me. And I tread down peoples in mine anger, And I make them drunk in my fury, And I bring down to earth their strength." (Isa. lxiii.) This is what the apostle Paul refers to when comforting the Thessalonians concerning the coming of the kingdom of God, for the hope of which they suffered. " It is a righteous thing with God," he said, "to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you ; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and* that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when lie shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that, believe" (2 Thes. ii. 5-10).

The other prophets, as Obadiah, have likewise spoken of these times and places (Obad. 21). And the Psalm (lxviii.) which prophesies of the ascension of Christ (verse 18), speaks of a future manifestation of God in Sinai when " the issues of death " shall belong to God, as the risen Christ does now (v. 20); and he " shall wound the head of his enemies " (v. 21), bring AGAIN his people from Bashan and the depths of the sea (v. 22), establish his temple at Jerusalem (v. 29), to which the subjugated nations, including Egypt and Ethiopia, shall repair. Before Isaiah sees the Saviour coming from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah, he hears this call out of Seir. This is very suggestive. When " the day of vengeance" really arrives, Isaiah will be among the Lord's "hosts'" advancing "from Edom" and Seir upon the Holy Land. But in the days of his flesh he was a watchman, and with his children, divinely named, was a man of sign representing Christ and the children whom God hath given him (ch. viii. 18, with Heb. ii. 13). When therefore, " in spirit" he heard the Lord's voice " out of Seir" and put the matter on record for Israel, and for translation into Gentile tongues in future times ; it was not unto himself (1 Pet. i. 12), but unto future generations of Christ's " children" and brethren that he ministered the Word. Thus it is not any stretch of ingenuity, so to apply words which, superficially considered, had only a present bearing in times some seven hundred years before Christ. A thousand years with the Lord being but as one day, the end is seen from the beginning, and the Spirit of God speaks of things which be not as though they were. Of this, Isaiah's words have already supplied many examples, as for instance: <; Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given." Isaiah was a watchman to the house of Israel, as were other prophets who saw the like things. Thus Habakkuk, witnessing, like Isaiah, the iniquity of Israel and the consequent prevailing of the enemy, stood, as it were, on the watch-tower (ch. ii. 1), to look to the end. He was shown the judgment of the oppressor, and the incoming of the Holy One from the South; and yearned to rest in the day of trouble (iii. 16). So Ezekiel was made a watchman to the house of Israel, to give them warning from God (ch. iii. 17). He did his part faithfully, but was only listened to out of intellectual curiosity (ch. xxxiii. 30-33). Others there were, contemporary with the prophets—namely, the priests and rulers of the nation, who were of a different character altogether. "His watchmen are blind ; they are all ignorant ; they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark " (Isa. lvi. 10). The contrast between these and the faithful watchmen was extreme. The faithful hoped against hope to see Jerusalem a praise in the earth (Isa. Ixii. 6, 7), and prayed to God accordingly. They were His true watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem. Though they went into captivity afar off, that did not alter the matter. Daniel in Babylon is an illustration of this (Dan. ix.). The others, the faithless, were blind, ignorant, and dumb, and greedy of gain, each from his quarter. In the time of Christ, the one class was exemplified in him and the circle of his disciples, and the other in the Pharisees and Sadducees, who could not discern the signs of their times, nor the Lord's " Prophet like unto Moses " in their midst. The faithful, however, discerned him, and enquired of him concerning the sign of his coming and of the end of the age. And he instructed them and warned them to watch (Mar. xiii. 35; Matt. xxiv. 42); taking heed, " lest at any time vour hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares " (Lu. xxi. 34). After he was taken from them, they remembered his words and became, like the prophets, watchmen of Zion, waiting for the consolation of Israel in the restitution of all things, and exhorting people to repent that their sins might be blotted out when the Lord Jesus should return. This is the position and function of their uninspired brethren of the latter days, and one of the last messages from heaven is in terms related to the divine challenge " out of Seir." It is where the Lord speaks of the decline of the Power that now holds the country, " that the way may be made ready for the kings that come from the Sunrising " (Rev. xvi. 12, R.V.). " Behold I come as a thief," .says the Lord. " Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame."

Before "the Sunrising " it is " night," as Zion's true watchmen know only too well. But night to " blind" watchmen is all the same as day; they " cannot see it" because of their " ignorance," and know not its times, nor what is coming " in the morning." Night is used symbolically in the Scriptures for a visionless time in Israel, when " seers are ashamed, and diviners confounded, and all cover their lips, for there is no answer from God" (Mic. iii. 7). This state of things obtained from Malachi to Christ, /and then he shone in Galilee and elsewhere as " a great light" in the darkness and " region and shadow of death." In process of time he was withdrawn from the earth; the "great light" departed, and notwithstanding the promised illumination of his disciples by the spirit of God, " night" at last again settled down on the world of Jews and Gentiles ; and continues to this time. The only " light" in the situation is in the Word, and its secondary reflections from such human mirrors as are sufficiently polished to reflect it. " There is no answer from God." But the constellations of the political heavens, especially Jacob's rising star, tell us that " the night is far spent, the day is at hand." "Let us therefore," says the apostle, "cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil it in the lusts thereof " (Rom. xiii. 12-14). " For," as he says again, speaking of the resurrection, and the day of the Lord that is coming, " Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ" (1. Thes. v. 5-9). These are authoritative utterances, and illustrations of how the watchmen of Zion should watch and walk in the last hours of the night which precedes " the day of the Lord," and his thief-like entry into an unsuspecting world. The prophetic watchman, twice challenged by ONE calling out of Seir, turning to certain third parties, cries : " The morning cometh, also the night; if ye will enquire, enquire ye. Return ! Come ! " It was a strange answer. At least so it seems at first sight. But it is reasonable when we reflect on it. Its brevity almost implies reproof, as much as to say, "You know, or you ought to know.11 It reminds us of another prophet's vision (Zech. iv.) where the angelic revelator gently reproves the dulness of the prophet by the twice repeated question, " Knowest thou not what these be ? " (verses 5, 13). The golden candlestick was so prominent an object in the temple worship that the angel seems to think the prophet ought at once to have understood the vision. Jesus had a difficulty in speaking to Nicodemus (Jno. iii. 12); and Paul likewise with the Hebrews (Heb. v. 10-14). Isaiah's brief words in ch. xxi. 12 appear to be spoken in a similar spirit. " The morning cometh." All the scriptures contemplate the day of Christ as a morning after a dark night. " Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." It is the time of the dominion of the upright over the wicked (Psa. xlix.). Christ himself is said to be " as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds" (2 Sam. xxiii.). And he speaks of himself in Revelation as 44 the bright and Morning Star." His glorious appearing is the coming morning. But, "also the night." What might this be? Night in the sense of " no answer from God," failure of open vision, will have departed for ever at the return of Christ. " Thy sun (0 Zion) shall no more go down" (Isa. lx. 20). In what other sense, then, could the prophet say "Night cometh." In the same sense as Jesus said : " The night cometh when no man can work" (John ix. 4). Every man's life is his day, though it be a little span of time in the world's great night.

Death is to him the coming night. " Truly the light is sweet," says Solomon, "and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: but if a man live many years and rejoice in them all : yea, let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many" (Ecc. xi. 7). A true watchman of Zion will do this. Christ did it, though in his case the days of darkness were few indeed, for he was " an Holy One." But this is not all ; just as natural death is not all. When "the morning cometh," it is related to "the night " of the " second death," which will be the portion of a multitude of " the children of the night and of darkness." When Judas betrayed Christ, being identified by the sop, he went immediately out " and it was night." Afterwards, when he realised what he had done, he hanged himself and went out into the night of death. Hereafter he will once more appear in the presence of Him whom he betrayed and sold, to encounter " sorer punishment than death" in the shame and contempt of the age to come, and will at last vanish from the scene in the eternal "night " of the "second death." "The morning cometh, also the night." There are more ways than one of betraying Christ and selling him for pieces of silver. Zion's true watchmen are " moved with fear" as well as love, and consider " the night," as well as hope for the morning. " If ye will enquire, enquire ye," said the prophet. There is a great deal in a will. " Where there's a will, there's a way," says the proverb ; and unlike many proverbs, this has the support of Scripture. " Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely," says the Lord Jeisus. How often in his discourses did be interject : " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear; " and he even formally appends that saying to each of his epistles to the seven churches of Asia (Rev. ii., iii.). Bat where are those who will not enquire? They are unconvertible and incurable on Christ's own testimony (Matt. xiii. 14-15). The leaders of Israel in his day had no ears for the truth. They "closed their eyes," and would not enquire. Therefore, their case was hopeless. Modern popular theology obscures the truth concerning this state of mind by preaching that " the soul" is incapable of believing the Gospel unless God act upon it by His Holy Spirit. This is shifting the responsibility with a vengeance. Christ's doctrine and application of Isaiah's prophecy puts it in its proper place, and honours the Father and condemns the wicked. But of whom were Israel to " enquire," and of whom mast we ? and concerning what ? In Isaiah's day, Israel could enquire of the Lord by the prophet, and could "seek out of the book of the Lord and read." We are shut up to the latter, which, thank God, is " able to save our lives." Not until " the morning cometh" will the Scriptures be appraised on earth at their true value. Zion's true watchmen value them aright, and read and meditate upon them continually. There is no other access to the word of God at present open upon earth. This cannot be too often and too powerfully insisted on. Nor can any attempt to cast doubt upon or weaken the authority of the Word be too strenuously resisted. " If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? " The enquiry of those who will enquire is to be directed towards the Kingdom of God and the conditions of inheriting it. " Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things (food and raiment) shall be added unto you." So said Jesus to his disciples. And the prayer that he taught them has the same objective: " Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." All Zion's true watchmen are " scribes instructed unto the kingdom of heaven," who " bring out of their treasuries things new and old" concerning it. When the kingdom is established they hope to see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets therein enthroned, and to be counted worthy of a place under them. " Return! Come!" said Isaiah in the concluding words of " the burden of Dumah." With reference to " enquirers" of his day, we may understand the words as an exhortation to "" turn to God from idols, to serve the living and the true God ; " and the like will hold good for subsequent generations, as Paul's words to the Thessalonians show. Paul's gospel had the effect of turning many idolaters to God, " to serve the living and the true God and to wait for his son from heaven" (1 Thess. i. 9-10). Isaiah had spoken so in the word of the Lord to Israel : " Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon" (Isa. lv. 7). Even the sons of the stranger (lvi. 3) were encouraged to join themselves to the Lord, keep his sabbaths, choose the things that please him, and take hold ο Γ his covenant. They were promised a place and a name better than that of (natural) sons and daughters, and that they should be made joyful in Yahweh's house of prayer. "Come," said Isaiah. But whither? "Come ye to the waters" ("every one that thirsteth"). "Come ye, buy and eat ; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price." And the context explains these beautiful figures in an exhortation to forsake the unsatisfactory things of current apostacy, and incline the ear to the terms of the everlasting covenant—" the sure mercies of David." When the Heir to David's throne appeared, he took up the gracious divine invitation: "Gome unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. xi. 28). What the coming unto Christ literally involved, we learn clearly upon determined enquiry of the Word of Christ and the apostles. The taking of Christ's yoke involved the putting off of another yoke. The coming unto Christ involved the " coming out from among" the unbelievers, as Paul told the Corinthians (2 Cor. vi. 14-18). He was a faithful watchman, who cried aloud regardless of consequences, and was consequently " pure from the blood of all" (Acts xx. 26). He went his way into the sleep of death along with Isaiah and all the prophets, and generation after generation of faithful watchmen have followed in his footsteps. And still the Spirit's invitation sounds abroad, wherever the word penetrates in the darkness of the passing night. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come.. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come^ And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely" 

" THE BURDEN UPON ARABIA." 

" The burden upon Arabia " is the title of the last five verses of Isaiah xxi. It is difficult to say to what the prophecy may have referred in the past, and almost equally so to suggest any application to the future. Arabia, in scriptural usage, mostly denotes the North-west part of the Arabian peninsular, known as Arabia Petraea. The allusions to it are associated with Edom, Tema, Kedar, and other names connected with this locality: and Paul's reference to *' Mount Sinai in Arabia " (Gal. iv.) brings us to the same country. The allusions in the Scripture to Arabia in connection with Israel's history, are not very many; and they do not throw much light on this prophecy. We are told that the weight of gold received annually by Solomon was so much, " beside that he had of the merchantmen, and of the traffic of the spice merchants, and o£ all the Kings of Arabia, and of the governors of the country " (L Kings x. 15). This is the first mention of Arabia, though, of course, the names of families that had settled in the country figure frequently before this. Afterwards, in the days of Jehoshaphat, Clod " established the kingdom in his hand," and " the fear of the Lord fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah, so that they made no war against Jehoshaphat. Also, some of the Philistines brought Jehoshaphat presents, and tribute silver ; and the Arabians brought him flocks, seven thousand seven hundred rams, and seven thousand seven hundred he-goats " (2 Chron. xvii. 11). This was because Jehoshaphat followed the Lord and not Baalim. But afterwards, Jehoshaphat " helped the ungodly " Ahab ; and Ahaziah after him. And after Jehoshaphat's death, his son Jehoram slew his brethren ; and, taking Ahab's daughter to wife, " forsook the Lord God of his fathers." Then " the Lord stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines, and of the Arabians that were near the Ethiopians" (2 Chron. xxi. 16 : xxii. 1). Thus, from a tributary country, Arabia became an invading scourge because of the apostacy of the Kings of Judah. Once more the tide turned. In the days of Uzziah, who did well in the earlier part of his long reign of fifty-two years, " God helped him against the Philistines, and against the Arabians that dwelt in Gurbaal and the Mehunims (2 Chron. xxvi. 7). Isaiah was contemporary with Uzziah (ch. i. 1), but evidently only during the latter part of that king's reign. The vision of chapter vi. is dated "in the year that King Uzziah died." This and other considerations necessitate the conclusion stated. The words of ch. xxi. 13-17, cannot therefore well apply to anything in Uzziah's experience. And yet the phrase " within a year" (v. 16), presents a judgment to come in Isaiah's lifetime ; a judgment concerning which either history is silent, or, if it belong to Uzziah's reign, we must suppose these words to have been spoken earlier than those of chapter vi. and to have been incorporated in this place for some special reason. After Uzziah, the next overthrow that the Scriptures bring before us in relation to Arabian countries is that mentioned by Jeremiah, who foretells the subjugation of the Arabian districts by Nebuchadnezzar. " Dedan, Tema, and Buz, and all that are in the utmost corners," were to drink of the cup of the Lord's fury and submit to Nebuchadnezzar " his servant" (Jer. xxv. 23). " Kedar and the kingdoms of Hazor " were likewise to be smitten by Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. xlix. 29). Dedan also was to be visited with " the calamity of Esau" (verse 8). But for the time limit " within a year," we might think that the fall of the glory of Kedar that Isaiah thus contemplated was this that came under Nebuchadnezzar some hundred years or so afterwards. The phrase " according to the years of an hireling" has already been before us in connection with the description of Moab's fall (Isa. xvi. 14). We then saw, in chapter xvi., that the nations are reckoned by God as His " hirelings," or "servants," in contrast with Israel " his son," His "first born." Sometimes God used His " hirelings" to chastise His disobedient " son;" and sometimes to chastise each other, as when He gave all these countries into Nebuchadnezzar's hand ; or as when He gave Nebuchadnezzar the land of Egypt for " wages " for his " great service against Tyre" (Ezek. xxix.). Ultimately the " son" will return from his prodigal wanderings, and under the kindness of " the Father," will dispossess the " hired servants " who have occupied and desolated his inheritance. This national deliverance will come by the Lord Jesus, the Father's personal Son and Firstborn. And we know from the Scriptures that his operations have much to do with those Arabian countries that have already seen so much of the Divine work on earth. There are reasons for thinking that a latter-day application of this " burden upon Arabia" is intended, whatever fulfilment it may have found in the past; and that its coupling with " the burden of Dumah " is not undesigned. The Revised Version tells us in the margin that "according to the ancient versions" we may read:—"In the forest at evening shall ye lodge, Ο ye travelling companies of Dedanites." Also the margin suggests that the succeeding words may be construed as an admonition instead of an historical record, thus: " Unto him that is thirsty bring ye water; ye inhabitants of the land of Tema meet the fugitives with their bread." The difference between " Arabia" and " evening," wide enough in English, is not so in Hebrew, ereb standing for both. We have only to ask: Have the prophets anything else to say about Dedanites and Temanites "a t evening" succouring fugitives who flee into their country from the grievousness of war ? The answer is, Yes. Isaiah had previously spoken of " evening-tide trouble," and of the scattering of Israel's spoilers like thistledown " before the morning " (xvii. 14). " At evening " also, that is, just before the dawn of " Zion's glad morning," Ezekiel, speaking of this crisis, says that u Sheba and Dedan, and the Merchants of Tarshish," an Arabian coalition, interpose in Israelitish affairs against Gog and his northern confederacy who overrun the land (Ezek. xxxviii.). A British confederacy of the South opposes a Russian confederacy of the North at this great crisis, and the latter prevails to the taking of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Zionist colonies then well rooted in the land. We have already drawn attention to what others have previously established, namely, that Edom and Moab of the latter days represent British power at the crisis of Christ's revelation to Israel. In Isaiah xvi. God exhorts Moab, in the time when the throne of David is to be re-established in righteousness, to let His outcasts dwell with him. Britain, the natural friend and protector of the Jews for every political reason, and the natural enemy of Russia in the same way, will do this— not for any love of Israel's God, or of Israel in the highest sense. Necessities which know no law, and which are controlled only by God Himself, will compel it. A strong enemy will drive Britain out of Egypt into the Arabian countries south of Jerusalem (Dan. xi. 40-43), and Jewish fugitives will naturally take refuge among the hosts of their protector. But Sheba and Dedan and the Merchants of Tarshish do not save Israel, or themselves. Were it not for the supernatural intervention of divine power, which is most emphatically announced in Ezekiel xxxviii., a fifth Universal Empire would arise to dominate the earth, namely the Russian—" Colossus." But Christ and the saints come into the inheritance at this crisis, and the kingdoms of men are soon " broken to pieces together," as Daniel saw in vision (ch. ii.). " The glory of Kedar" falls for the last time, and he is transformed and adopted with all other "hirelings" into an obedient member of the family of nations that shall be joined to the Lord in that day. The tribute of Arabia, as of all countries—the gold, spices, and flocks are rendered joyfully to the greater than Solomon in his capital Jerusalem, then " the joy of the whole earth." " Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea and all that is therein, the isles and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar doth inhabit : let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord, and declare his praise in the islands" (Isa. xlii. 10-12). " The multitude of camels shall cover thee (0, Zion), the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah: all they from Sheba shall come, they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory " (Isa. lx. 6, 7). Great Babylon will then have fallen before the Lord, who comes into the land of Israel from the South by the route of tbe hosts of Israel of old. Isaiah and many others who spoke of these places in their various generations, and of this great final crisis, will be there to witness the truth of the word of God, which they ministered in times of mortal humiliation. Moses, Caleb and Joshua, and many others who sojourned wearily in these parts in the days of their flesh, having " respect to the recompense of the reward," will then see the scene of their old wanderings in happier times. And the call of the gospel is to us to rejoice with them in that day on condition of walking as they walked in their day and generation.