Chapter iv.—Thus continues the theme of chapters ii. and iii. ‘‘And in that day (that is, the day of Jerusalem’s downfall), seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by thy name to take away our reproach ”—a graphic method of intimating that war would make such havoc, that men would be scarce, and women glad to get husbands on any terms.
This completes the description of the desolation that should overwhelm the house of Jacob as the result of God’s forsaking them—a description which occurs as a long parenthesis in the delineation of the glory appointed for “ Judah and Jerusalem ” in “ the last days.”
Isaiah, son of Amoz, “ saw ” this “word ” concerning them—that salvation and power and honour and glory await them in the finish of things, but that for a long time, God would forsake them, for a “ therefore ” introduced and explained in chapter ii. 6.—And now (chapter iv. 2) there is a turning back upon the original picture of the last days, as shown at the commencement of the prophecy ; and a supplying of details in pleasing contrast to the tints of darkness characterising the desolation : “In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious.” The meaning of this is made certain by the description of restored Israel as, “ the branch of my planting, the work of my hands that I may be glorified (lx. 21). It means that the nation of Israel restored will be “ beautiful and glorious.” No nation is such just now. Britain may be thought so, and seems so at a distance, but go close, and see the squalid multitudes, and the broken hearts, and the debased men and women, and the pinched respectabilities, and the barren lives everywhere, and the reigning vanity and vexation of spirit.
Fat and fattening writers, writing in their upholstered seclusions in town or country, or, when they go out, driving in their shining broughams, or travelling in first-class railway carriages, waited on by obsequious porters, may see British civilization in a roseate hue ; but as a whole, it is an ornamented charnel house—not “ beautiful and glorious”; but Israel will be “beautiful and glorious " when the “ word ” is fulfilled that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, “ saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” “ And the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel ”—fruit, in the largest sense, otherwise described as "the riches of the Gentiles, and their glory,” in which, saith the Spirit of God, “ ye shall boast yourselves ” (Is. Ixi. 6). The “ abundance of the sea shall be converted (or turned) unto thee, and the forces (or wealth) of the Gentiles shall come unto thee ” (lv. 5)—“ as a flowing stream ” (lxvi. 12). This includes literal fruit of all kinds
__ everything splendid, everything plentiful, everything at its best
“ for them that are escaped of Israel ” (going back to our verse 2).
" Them that are escaped ”—a remnant—natural and spiritual. First, the natural: “ I will gather her that is driven out and her that I have afflicted, and I will make her that halted, A remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation.” There have been multitudes of natural Israel (disobedient) who have perished as the leaves of autumn—the whole generation that came out of Egypt and millions since. Multitudes also perish again in the wilderness in the process of restoration (Ezek. xx. 35-38), but a circumcised surviving remnant enter the land, and Zion personified greets them
with surprise: “ The children which thou shalt have after thou hast lost the other will say again in thine ears, the place is too strait for me, give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart: Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children and am desolate, a captive removing to and fro ? ” (xlix. 20). Then the spiritual, who will be the rulers—the immortal rulers with Christ their king. Jesus addresses them as the escaped : “ that ye may be counted worthy to escape all these things and to stand before the Son of Man ” (Luke xxi. 36). Many will not be among the escaped, but will be engulfed in “ the judgment and fiery indignation that devour the adversaries ” (Heb. x. 27).
For " them that are escaped of Israel,” everything will be good beyond the possibility of exaggeration : and the glory will not be shadowed by the absence of the rejected. Their absence will be part of the glory of the remant, and it will mean no evil to the absent such as comes with the idea of a hell of torture for the wicked. “ They shall not be ” (Psa. xxxvii. 10). Where are the 600,000 faithless adults that crossed the Red Sea ? They have no existence. They are gone as entirely as if they had never existed. In the language applied in another connection, they are “ as though they had not been ” (Job. x. 19). So it will be with all not included in the remnant escaped of Israel. The dream of them will not disturb the summer morning of Israel’s glory.—Resuming—
"And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy—even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem.” What time this relates to, and how brought about, is stated in the next verse : “ When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning.” Zechariah adds, “ Yea every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord (xiv. 21). This will be a great and notable change, both for the Jews and the world. How blessed for Israel when the words spoken by Moses will come to pass : " The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul ” (Deut. xxx. 6), and again by Ezekiel, A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will
I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them ” (Ezek. xxxvi. 26).
And how blessed for the world when the centre of the authority that rules them with iron hand in all the earth will be a centre of righteousness and holiness : so that a man coming from another land to worship, will not only experience the advantage of change and enjoy the pleasure of beholding a beautiful and well-ordered country, but taste the inexpressible luxury of seeing holiness and purity and kindness in all who stand related to the seat of government How different from the venal servants and cold officials and corrupt placeholders that one sees at the capitals of European life at the present day. “ Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty. . . . Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem (the city of our solemnities) a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down : not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed. But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. . . . And the inhabitants shall not say, I am sick : the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity ’’ (Isa. xxxiii. 17, 20).
“ And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion and upon her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime for the heat, and for a place of refuge and a covert from storm and from rain ”
Many are the beautiful thoughts suggested by this description. It is manifestly a description of literal things from the mention of “ dwelling places," and “ assemblies,” and “ Mount Zion,” and from its analogy to what occurred in connection with the first divine encampment under Moses. When Israel journeyed in the wildreness, “ The doud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day and fire was on it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys ” (Ex. xl. 38). This appears to be an indication of the physical accessories of the holy city. By day, it will be under the protection of a visible atmospheric canopy which will temper the heat of the sun, and at night this canopy will turn to a fiery radiance, giving light where otherwise darkness would settle on the scene. It will also act as a protection from all elemental disturbances— " a covert from storm and from rain.”
This is a glance at weather in the kingdom. It will not be a perpetual calm, but will be subject in measure to the irregularities of present experience—though not to the same extremes, as shown by the difference between the blessings and the curses of Deut. xxviii. 8, 12, as compared with 23, 24, 38, and 40 ; and Lev. xxvi. 4-6, compared with 19-20. But even the healthful changes of the weather will not be felt in “ the camp of the saints, the beloved city.” No heavy rain showers will ever make things wet and uncomfortable ; no storms will whirl dust into corners or shake the palaces with windy gusts. No glaring light will weary the eye by day, but the brilliant radiance of softened sunshine will soothe and charm the senses all day long. At night, there will be no inconvenient darkness, nor the blinding glitter of electric lights, but the soft brightness of diffused flame-light. By day and by night, and at all seasons, the physical conditions of life will be perfect. “ Upon all the glory shall be a defence.”
Visitors from the ends of the earth will discover a delightsomeness in the city that is the throne of the Lord that has never been found in the most splendid capitals of the age of sin. It is meet that it should be so. If “ glorious things are spoken of thee,” of the city of God, what else could we expect when God’s once averted face smiles upon His people in the bestowal of every good thing which the heart can conceive. “ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them that love him,” but God hath revealed it unto us by His Spirit—“ at sundry times and in divers manners,” and certainly nowhere more luminously than in this book of the prophet Isaiah.
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