Isaiah chapter 29

CHAPTER XXIX. 

" WOE TO ARIEL ! " 

WOE to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt.'r So Isaiah's lamentation continues. And he further foretells the coming judgments upon Jerusalem, and the final redemption of the city in tLe day of Christ. The name Ariel is poetical, or symbolic of Jerusalem, and conveys a deep and beautiful doctrinal significance. It means· literally Lion of God, Art El ; and is the term applied in Ezekiel xliii. 15 to the "altar" upon the Holy Hill of Zion» in the Age to Come. In a sense, the whole nation of Israel is a Lion of God (Num. xxiii. 24: xxiv. 9), and the Lord Jesus Christ, its King, is " the Lion of the tribe of Judah" (Rev. v.). He is also " the Altar," whether of burnt offering or of incense, antitypical of that whereon Abraham offered Isaac on Mount Moriah of old, and on the site of which the Temple of Solomon afterwards stood. The Temple furniture of Solomon'smanufacture, the pattern of which he received from David by* the Spirit in writing (1 Chron. xxviii. 19), incorporated this idea of the Lion of God. On the borders of the ten bases were " lions, oxen, and cherubim" (1 Kings vii. 29-36). Alsoon the steps of Solomon's " great throne of ivory" there stood twelve lions, and the seat of it was flanked by two lions· (1 Kings x. 18-20). Again, the faces of the cherubim comprised " the face of a man and of a lion on the right side" (Ezek. i. 10), as well as the face of an ox and of an eagle. The man and lion faces, which are to be reproduced in Ariel in the future temple, memorialise God's Lion-Man of Judah who· takes away the sin of Ariel, and of the world, and causes David and the fathers to inherit the Land for ever, as God has sworn.

The language of David's day further illustrates the meaning of the term Ariel. Benaiah, one of his mighty men, slew " two Ariels of Moab," or "lions of God of Moab," i.e., " lion-like men," as the text says (2 Sam. xxiii. 20). That the term was likewise applied to the altar is evident from Mesha's record on the so-called "Moabite Stone," to which reference has been already made in chapter xv., when speaking of Isaiah xv. and xvi. He says, " I carried away the Ariel of David." . . . " I carried away the Ariels of Jehovah and dragged them on the ground before the face of Chemosh." These were evidently altars, given into Mesha's hand by God because of the iniquities of His people. In like manner now, Jerusalem, the Ariel or Lion of God, was to be made an Ariel, or altar of God—a veritable hearth of burnt offering, with the people for the sacrifice, because of the " vain oblations" which in heartless worship they offered to the Lord God of Israel. " Add ye year to year," said the Spirit of God by the prophet, " let them kill sacrifices. Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and sorrow, and it shall be unto me as Ariel," i.e., an altar or hearth of God. The idea of a people being thus offered as a bloody sacrifice is not confined to this prophecy, nor to Jerusalem. Indeed, in this very chapter Jerusalem's enemies are at last to be the sacrifice in the same place. The last words of David contemplated this: The sons of Belial, as thorns, shall be utterly burned with fire in the place where they filled God's Lion-Man of Judah with iron and the staff of a spear (2 Sam. xxiii. 7). Many of them were thus sacrificed at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70; but there is still a future consumption. Isa. xxxiv. speaks of the Lord's sacrifice in Bozrah, and Ezekiel (ch. xxxix. 17-20) and Revelation (ch. xix. 17-21) likewise tell of the Lord's " great sacrifice" of antagonistic nations in the future. Israel's turn is past, the Gentile nations at length become the sacrifice. All this came upon Israel because their service was an abomination to God. The annual feasts came round, and the sacrifices were offered; but, like the churches of our day, the whole thing was as lifeless as a fossil. The often-recurring message of the prophet Isaiah illustrates the state of the case. Even in his first words God had said : " Bring no more vain oblations, incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies I cannot endure, it is grief, even the solemn meeting.'* What, then, was lacking ? What was required ? " Wash you, 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." But despite this warning, and the touching appeal with which it was accompanied (Isa. i. 18), it was unheeded; the "faithful city" became a " harlot," and therefore it was " Woe to Ariel." God, who fought against the Jebusites when David encamped against them, now declared that because the spirit and service of David were departed, He would fight against Jerusalem and the Kingdom of David, and give it into the hand of the enemy. And the Egyptian alliance would profit them nothing : " the multitude of thy strangers shall be like the small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones as chaff that passeth away." As we have already seen, Nebuchadnezzar accomplished the fall both of Judah and of Egypt as God had threatened. But even in this threatening of divine vengeance upon Ariel, the vengeance at last upon Israel's enemies is not overlooked. " And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her munitions, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision." In a sense, this is already seen to be true of all Israel's past enemies. They are fallen, no more to rise. But the elect of Israel, the cream and kernel of the nation, are only sleeping in dust, hereafter to arise and inherit the land for ever. But the last " fighting against Ariel" has not yet come by a long way. There is to be a great premillennial fighting, in which Ariel is wrested from the paws of the Russian Bear by the true Lion of God—the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah speaks elsewhere of this crisis. And even after the Millennial reign, Ariel is once more, and for the last time, the subject of international fighting on the part of the innumerable hosts of the last " Gog and Magog" (Rev. xx. 8-9). For the last time the city and its environs become the Ariel, or hearth of God, to consume the enemies of the Lord as the fat of lambs. " Into smoke shall they consume away" (Ps. xxxvii.). Thenceforward Ariel and her children will alone and immortally survive. All others will be a forgotten nightmare (Isa. xxix. 8). Then (verse 8) the spirit of God apostrophises the drunkards of Israel: " Stay yourselves and wonder ; cry ye out and cry. They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes; the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered." So the purpose of God became a sealed book to them, whose knowledge was equally inaccessible to learned and unlearned. It is a plainly enunciated, though for the most part a discarded and offensive doctrine of the Scriptures, that God blinds as well as opens the eyes of the blind, and that He sends to sleep those who do not care to keep " awake to righteousness." The whole world may, in a sense, be said to be an example of this, for it " lieth in wickedness," as John says. And of individual illustrations, every generation furnishes its number. Paul alludes to the matter in the first chapter of Romans in these words: " Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind." He is speaking here more particularly of the Gentiles, although in his argument he levels down reprobate Jews and Gentiles to the same plane. But the principle is the same as that set forth through Isaiah. Scorners and disobedient men who turn from the obedience of the commandments of God will be blinded, made fools of, and sent to sleep to their own destruction—a solemn thing for the brethren of the prophets to remember. In verse 13 there is a change in the divine name, which leads us at once to the most striking application of the prophecy, and furnishes the basis for its proper exposition. It is no longer Yahweh, but Adonai. "Wherefore Adonai (my Lord), saith" thus and so. It calls to mind David's prophecy of Christ (Psa. ex.), " Yahweh saith unto my Lord " (Adon). WO remember how Jesus appropriated this saying and confounded the scornful men who denied his Lordship; and it is he who applies this prophecy ο Ε Isaiah to the same scorners. He was challenged by the scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem concerning the transgression by his disciples of the traditions of the elders, in that they ate with unwashed hands. On this, he at once challenged the blind guides concerning their transgression of God's commandments by their traditions, giving an illustration of their so doing. And then he went on: " Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." And then he called the multitude, and, in opposition to Pharisaical puerilities, taught them what really defiled a man (the evil thoughts of the heart). His disciples timorously told him that he had offended the Pharisees, to which he replied: " Every plant that my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone, they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch" (Matt, xv.) Thus the Lord referred to Isaiah's prophecy, and completed the " marvellous work" of blinding disobedient Israel, while at the same time enlightening an elect remnant. God had blinded Israel before, but this was an added judgment. So verse 14 says, 44 Behold I will add to do a marvellous work" ; which He did by Christ. When he healed the blind man (John ix.), Jesus said, " For judgment am I come into this world that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind." And when the Pharisees said, " Are we blind also ?" he answered, " If ye were blind ye should have no sin; but now ye say we see, therefore your sin remaineth." What hope was there for men who could proclaim Jesus a sinner in the presence of such manifestly divine words and works ? The lesson of the " marvellous work" was unheeded by later generations of Christ's own disciples. Hence we hear him threaten to remove the light from Ephesus (Rev. ii. 5) if they did not remember whence they had fallen, and repent and do the first works. And the Laodiceans he declared to be " wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked" (Rev. iii. 17); and he counselled them to buy of him gold tried in the lire, white raiment, and eyesalve that they might see. These expostulations and exhortations were unheeded, and the " marvellous work " was again wrought in Christendom as in Jewry of old. The same figures, intensified if anything, are used of Christendom. It is represented by Christ as "drunken," "" sorcerised," "deceived"; and Paul's prophecy is fulfilled which says, " Because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved . . . God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie. That they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness " (2 Thess. ii. 10). h2 In all this what is the lesson to the latter-day possessors of the truth ? Manifestly this—that lip and mouth worship covering works of darkness is an abomination to God, and will be followed by the taking away of the truth. There is no " hiding of counsel" from God. " The Lord looketh upon the heart." Christ's epistles to the seven churches are eloquent in their assurances of this, and in their exhortations to repentance and faithfulness, and the " exceeding great and precious promises " they make " to him that overcometh." The vain endeavour of the rulers of Israel to hide their counsel from God is rebuked by the declaration that the Potter cannot be likened to the clay. Men may be deceived, but not God ; and " the deceived and the deceiver are His." Paul alludes to this when, in the epistle to the Romans, he quotes this passage from Isaiah in illustration of God's dealings with -" the children of the flesh" and " the children of the promise." He speaks of Pharaoh as the Potter's "vessel of wrath," fulfilling a necessary place for the declaration of the Creator's name in all the earth. Some are " vessels unto honour," and others " unto dishonour" ; but all have their place, some transitory, others eternal. In the days when the " scorners" antagonised Jesus in Jerusalem, they were the vessels unto dishonour, and he preeminently the Father's chosen vessel unto honour in the everlasting house of God to come. But how much otherwise it looked to merely human observers. The principle holds good to this day, when the leaders of Christendom, equally perverse, unite in declaring the truth of God " heresy" as of old. They have their place, and out of the antagonisms begotten by the truth between them and "the children of the promises " is developed a people prepared for the Lord. The coming day will reveal them, and enlighten and sober all the world: " In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel" (v. 18-19). No doubt there was a great enlightening and sobering of a remnant when God's " Holy One" shone as " a great light " in the regions of Galilee and all Israel—when one of the wonders of the times was that " to the poor the Gospel was preached," But the " terrible ones" and "scorners" were not then cut off (v. 20); but, on the contrary, prevailed against the Holy One, as they thought, to the extinction of his light for ever. But the Father raised him from the dead; and, according to His promise, gave him, subsequently to Israel's rejection, as a light to the Gentiles. But, although many were enlightened by the preaching of the apostles, darkness at length set in again among the Gentiles because of apostacy, as in Israel of old, and "the vision of all" was "sealed" again to learned and unlearned alike. But within the last century a great unsealing has been accomplished in the providence of God. The eyes of a remnant have been opened to " the things concerning the Kingdom of God and the Name of Jesus Christ"; and not a few are now able to show with certainty that they hold the hope of the fathers and of the prophets and apostles, and that Christendom is, as Christ declared it would be at the time of his coming, in a state of universal deception. It is noteworthy that sealing is affirmed of the two most difficult books of the Bible—namely, Daniel and the Revelation. To Daniel the angel said: "Shut up the words, seal the book even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" (Dan. xii. 4). The figure of Rev. v. represents the scroll of the divine programme in human affairs as "sealed with seven seals," and hopelessly inaccessible as* regards its locked-up knowledge until the Lamb-Lion of the tribe of Judah (the possessor of Ariel) prevailed to open it. And even then the contents of the scroll were only symbolically expressed by him. Now it is a fact that within the last century there has been a great unfolding in the light of the truth of what Daniel and the Lord Jesus revealed by the Spirit in these two books; and this of itself is a proof that " the time of the end" is upon us. This argument will seem childish to " the blind," but it is true all the same, and cannot successfully be gainsaid. But all the opening of the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind that has hitherto been accomplished, is as nothing to what shall be revealed " in that day." By comparison with " the day of Christ," it is Egyptian darkness now. " Terrible ones and scorners" are rife, and the generation of those who " watched for iniquity" in his days, and sought to make him "an offender for a word," is reproduced on earth still wherever his people fill up what is left of the measure of his sufferings. And this will go on till he is actually in the earth again. Then will come the true day of sobriety, enlightenment, and joy everlasting. It is of this that the prophet goes on to speak. " Therefore thus saith the Lord who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob, Jacob shall not now be ashamed, neither shall his face now wax pale. But when he seeth his children the work of my hands in the midst of him, they shall sanctify my name, and sanctify the Holy One of Israel, and shall fear the God of Jacob. They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmured shall learn doctrine." Truly Jacob's face will turn pale before Jesus and the children of the resurrection. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be there in person, and the scorners and terrible ones of Jesus' day likewise, to witness their inheritance of the kingdom of God, and to be themselves cast out for ever (Luke xiii. 28). And many from the north, south, east, and west will join in the exaltation of the fathers, as Jesus declared. Then " the city where David dwelt" will be graced with the presence of David himself in the day that he so longed to see, and his throne and kingdom will be established for ever before his face in the hands of his greater Son and Lord, as the Lord God of Israel covenanted with him. From having been a " hearth of God" for the consumption in sacrifice of the flesh of " the children of the Kingdom," and later of the flesh of the adversary, Ariel will become a real Lion of God, the invincible Metropolis of the world, and the place of the Altar where the sacrifices of Israel and of the nations will ascend gratefully to Yahweh, as He has declared. In the day of Zion's marriage after her long widowhood she will say of these " children " : " Who hath begotten me these ? seeing I have lost my children and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? And who hath brought up these? Behold I was alone: these, where had they been ? " (Isa. xlix. 21). The answer is, they had been "prisoners in the pit wherein is no water" (Zech. ix. 11), and had been liberated by "the blood of the covenant" of the rejected King, who in the days of his flesh rede into the city in lowly form as the prophets foretold. He exhibits his wounded hands and side. The spirit of grace succeeds the spirit of pride and error (Zech. xii. 10). The house of David is manifested " as God " (Zech. xii. 8), " equal unto the angels " (Luke xx. 36), and the people mourn with a great mourning the crime of their fathers, in which they have participated in hating Jesus, and "sending after him," as it were, the message: " We will not have this man to reign over us." And if Jacob be thus humbled and purified, it is not otherwise with the Gentiles. All the earth will be humbled and enlightened in that day by the judgments of the Lord that will teach its inhabitants righteousness (Isa. xxvi. 9).