The words are addressed to Jerusalem, the counterpart of Sarah, in her barrenness at first and her fruitfulness afterwards. She is barren now-not, indeed, because she had never borne children, but because in her captivity and exile she had been robbed of her children, and as a holy city had all this time given birth to none. But she is to awake and sing, because the children that shall gather around her after her long period of desolateness would be more than when in the time before her calamity came upon her she had as a married wife-yea, so great will be the increase of Zion's future population, that, instead of bewailing her lonely and desolate condition, she shall even hear her children say "in her own ears" that the place is too strait, and the call to the surrounding nations: "Give place (literally, 'give way,' or 'fall back'), that I may be able to settle down." I have elsewhere pointed out that the land which God by oath and covenant promised to the fathers is about fifty times as large as the part which hitherto the Jews actually possessed, and that it is only pitiable ignorance which made the superficial Voltaire utter the blasphemy that the God of the Jews must have been a little God, because He gave His people a land no larger than Wales, and called it "a good land and a large" (Ex. iii. 8). Surely a land which includes within its boundaries an area at least one-third more than the whole of France may with right be called "a large land"; but it is possible that even the larger land, with its desert parts transformed into fruitful fields, will not suffice to hold the whole of blessed Israel in the millennial period, so great and rapid will be the increase of the saved remnant. In the 11th verse God's wonderful works on behalf of His people in the past are again alluded to as the basis and illustration of what He will do for them in the yet greater deliverance of the future. When He brought them out of Egypt, He went before them in the pillar of cloud; and when pursued by Pharaoh and his host, and there 1 See The Jewish Problem. seemed no way of escape, He made a way in the sea, and a path in the deep waters for His redeemed to pass over.1 Now, "as in the days of thy coming forth out of the land of Egypt," He says, "will I show him marvellous things." 2 Once again He Himself will march at their head, and no obstacle shall be allowed to hinder the progress of His redeemed people on their way back to Zion. Should any hindrance present itself, even if it be as formidable as the Red Sea at the exodus from Egypt, " He shall pass through the sea of affliction (or straitness), and shall smite the waves in the sea, and all the depths of the river (or Nile) shall dry up (even as the Jordan did before the Ark of the Covenant): and the pride of Assyria (Israel's former oppressor from the north) shall be brought down, and the sceptre of Egypt (Israel's enemy from the south) shall depart." But these two empires may also represent Gentile world-power in general, which will then give way to the Kingdom of the Messiah which the God of heaven shall set up, Whose blessed rule shall extend from Mount Zion even unto the ends of the earth. And not only will the Shepherd of Israel gather them and lead them back to their own habitation, removing by His Almighty power and grace every obstacle out of the way, but there in their own land, when the Spirit shall have been poured upon them from on high, they shall be "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might," and ready to do exploits in His name. "I will strengthen them in Jehovah," we read in the last verse of our chapter, “and in His Name shall they walk up and down"--which last expression may denote first their life, or walk and conversation, which shall all be rooted in God, and be in full accord with "His Name," which stands for His revealed character, which shall then be fully and gloriously manifested in their midst in the person of their Messiah, the image of the invisible God. But the phrase i, u-bhish'mo yithallakhu, probably means also that they shall walk up and down in His Name, as His messengers and representatives, dispensing 2 Mic. vii. 15. 1 Isa. li. 10. the blessings of Messiah's gospel among the nations by whom they shall be known as the "priests of Jehovah," and be welcomed as "the ministers of our God," 1 пin D, neum Yehovah" the saying, or utterance,' of Jehovah." These are the last words of the chapter, and form, so to say, the signature which stands pledged to the fulfilment of the contents of the prophecy. And yet even evangelical writers and commentators deny that there ever will be a literal fulfilment of these plain and solemn predictions, and see in them at the most only forecasts of the gradual spread of Christianity and of the absorption of a certain number of Jews into the Church. Thus, one German scholar, after summarising the contents of the whole prophecy from chap. ix. II to the end of chap. x., says: "The principle of fulfilment is of a spiritual kind, and was effected through the gathering of the Jews into the Kingdom of Christ, which commenced in the times of the Apostles, and will continue till the remnant of Israel is converted to Christ its Saviour." 2 And another, to whose elaborate and, in some respects, useful work reference has often been made in these "notes," says: "In the remarkable position occupied by Israel in the early Christian Church-for our Lord and His apostles were Jews, and the majority of the early evangelists were men of this nation-in the wonderful fact that the Jews, though politically crushed beneath the Gentile yoke, conquered the nations of the earth by means of that religion which sprang from their midst—in such facts this prophecy, and other similar prophecies, found a most glorious and real fulfilment. The nations have been enlightened by the Jews, and books written by Jewish pens have become the laws and oracles of the world." 3 But, as I have had occasion to remark more than once, such method of interpretation turns the great prophetic utterances in the Bible into mere hyperbole, and substitutes an unnatural and shadowy meaning for what is plain and obvious, thereby throwing a vagueness and uncertainty over 3 Wright. 1 Isa. lvi. 6. 2 Keil. all Scripture. No, no; just as the scattering of Israel was literal, so the gathering also will be literal; and it is not in the absorption of a remnant of the Jewish people into the Church, and in the gradual spread of "Christianity" that "these prophecies find a most glorious and real fulfilment," but in a yet future nationally restored and converted Israel, which shall yet be the centre of the Kingdom of God and of His Christ, and the channel of blessing to all the nations of the earth. |