“Prince of Peace”
“Prince of Peace” is the concluding title of Messiah in Isaiah’s ninth chapter. The nature and scope of the description is, of course, to be sought in the context and in the revealed purpose of God in general, and is not ascertainable in the interpretations of a Christianity that has lost sight of so much concerning Christ. It is obvious from even a superficial reading of the context that the peace contemplated by the prophet is connected with the breaking of the yoke of Israel’s bondage, and p. 172 the overshadowing of all human dominion by the throne and kingdom of David in the divine hands of the bearer of the title. But in view of the prevailing dearth of knowledge concerning this great development, and the imminence of the crisis, as manifest from the movements of the times, it may be well to take a comprehensive survey of the situation with a view of preserving clear ideas concerning the “work before” the Lord Jesus at his coming.
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” So says Solomon, and among other things he instances “a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;. . . a time of war and a time of peace.” Failure to recognise this will land us in distress and confusion. There are not wanting those who point to the present warlike and evil condition of the world; and sneer at Christ’s claims to be “Prince of Peace.” Folly and shallowness could scarcely go further. They need to be reminded that children and fools should not attempt to judge unfinished work. If this were the end of the chapter, the objectors would have to be reckoned with, but it is not so; but only that initial stage, in which Christ’s own words of so opposite an import find striking fulfilment. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
The enemies of Christ take note of this, and ignorantly contrast it with the title “Prince of Peace.” The friends of Christ simply respond: “A time for everything”: “Judge nothing before the time.” Had there been no “sword” and “variance” because of Christ, there would have been a lack of harmony between history and his prophecy, though even then a wise man would have said, in view of all the past: “It will be sure to come, we can wait and see.” But “sword” and “variance” have never been lacking concerning him since he uttered the words, and he is, therefore, true. But to make this a difficulty concerning a declared time of peace in an age then far future, is a blunder indeed. p. 173 Nothing can be clearer than the fact that the Peace of Messiah’s bringing about and maintaining was defined by all the prophets as a matter far remote from their days, and always associated with his latter-day deliverance and resuscitation of the nation of Israel. “In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Psa. lxxii. 7). “Lord, thou hast been favourable unto thy land; thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob . . . His salvation is nigh them that fear him; that glory may dwell in our land. Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven” (Psa. lxxxv. 1, 9-11). “The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days” (Hosea iii. 4-5). If there were not before our eyes the nation of Israel having abode “many days” desolate as foretold, there might be some excuse for doubting the prophets; but as it is there is none; and it has simply to be replied to objectors and perverters of the word: “These are merely the last days of ‘sword’ and ‘variance’ and headless and exiled Israel. ‘His days of peace are coming.’”
What would be thought of an arithmetician who should attempt the solution of an involved and abstruse calculation by first ignoring the existence and function of the number one? He would be accounted mad. The world is in some such case in attempting the solution of so deep rooted, involved, and delicate a matter as its peace-problem without regard to its Creator and Possessor. The will of God is the very first “factor” in the case. The written expression of it is with us in the Bible, which exhibits satisfactorily the root and origin of all earth’s woes, and the divinely appointed means of reconciliation and healing. The real reason of the lack of peace on earth is found in Eden. There are those who profess admiration for Christ and smile scornfully at the childish legends p. 174 of Genesis. But they cannot consistently do this. You cannot have Christ and reject Genesis, for he endorsed Genesis; naming nearly all the details over which scepticism stumbles, as the flood, Lot’s wife, &c. We look back on Genesis in confidence under Christ’s guidance. Why should we not? What is the world but so many hundred millions of mortals, scarcely one of whom was in existence a hundred years ago? “Who art thou that thou shouldst be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; and forgettest the Lord, thy maker?” Let us not be deterred from full confidence in the word of God.
We look back. We see Adam and Eve, our first parents, at perfect peace with God in a fruitful garden, in unclouded innocence, delighting before God in the dominion He had given them over the creation of His hand. We see sin enter, and all is changed. Fear, shame, suffering and death are introduced, and to this day continue to be the natural portion of the race. But it is peace we are particularly contemplating. God “put enmity” in the beginning between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman; a sentence that finds illustration in the enmity existing between Jesus and the “generation of vipers” that withstood him and at last compassed his death. The earliest illustration recorded in Genesis is the murder of Abel by Cain. The acceptance of Abel’s offering by God, coupled with the rejection of his own, stirred Cain’s resentment, and he slew him. “And wherefore slew he him?” asks John, “Because his own works were evil and his brother’s righteous.” Enmity, then, between the righteous and the wicked is the express and unalterable appointment of God: (“There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked”), and will never cease from the earth until wickedness and the wicked come to an end. “Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable. . . . Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” So James speaks.
But the world, based, as John says, all of it, upon “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” thinks notwithstanding to secure peace apart from the “wisdom that p. 175 cometh from above.” But in vain; the purpose of God will stand, and the world will not know peace apart from the primary enforcement of purity at the hands of him whom God has appointed “PRINCE OF PEACE.” Nearly six thousand years of wars and fightings have elapsed since the days of Adam in Eden, and more terrible times than ever are manifestly before us. “Perilous times” have come over the world, as was testified of the last days. The picture Paul gives of the condition of Jew and Gentile is still true: “There is none righteous, no not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. . . . Their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. v. 10, 15, 18). Nevertheless, there is a “way of peace” in Christ, in whose hands “the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever” (Isa. xxxii. 17).
This great work, contemplated and designed of God from the beginning, has bearings individual and national, as appears from the unfolding of the matter by the prophets, and Christ and the apostles. Many Scriptures of the prophets look forward to Christ as Prince of Peace though he be not so named in them. Nahum, contrasting Judah’s end with that of Nineveh, said: “Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows, for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off” (ch. i. 15). And Isaiah (ch. lii. 7), speaking of the same time uses similar language. But long before the still future proclamation of peace in Judah, in day of the cutting off of the wicked and the announcement to Zion: “Thy God reigneth”; there was a bringing of good tidings and a publishing of peace in Judah by him whose “beautiful feet,” “shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace,” traversed its mountains in going about doing good in the midst of the evil generation that finally nailed him to the cross. His ministry was: “the word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ.” So Peter described it to Cornelius (Acts x. 36), reminding him of what he already knew, but concerning the p. 176 scope and bearing of which he was about to have his understanding so greatly enlarged.
When the time for the birth of Christ was come, the angels of heaven rejoiced in prospect of the peace he should bring. The song of the heavenly host over the plains of Bethlehem, in its co-ordination of God and man, is beautiful, and never to be forgotten: “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace, good-will toward men” (Luke ii. 14). This was the relation of things always maintained by Jesus in his ministry afterwards. He proclaimed peace to those who did the will of the Father, and glorified Him in believing on him whom He had sent. These, though few and obscure in the days of his weakness, will be exalted to honour and glory in his coming kingdom. He comforted them with this assurance, and in view of his withdrawal from the scene of their testimony and labours concerning him, he further promised them the comfort of the Holy Spirit, which should teach them all things, and bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever he had said to them. He said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (Jno. xiv.). When he said this, he was going forward to death, in obedience to the Father’s will; but he had before him the assurance of resurrection to everlasting life, and the overlordship of the Father’s house, abiding places in which he had been promising to his disciples. The peace which he promised them involved reconciliation to God, and brief tribulation in the world preparatory to enthronement in the coming kingdom. Paul, who afterwards attained to that peace, and the accompanying tribulation in the world, assessed the latter as unworthy of mention by comparison with the glory at last to be attained. If the end of a matter is certain to be all that can be desired, much can be endured. The end of a life of faithfulness to Christ is so certain and so good that life itself can be given up for it. Indeed, Christ gave his life for that which was to come, upon the basis of a revelation of God’s righteousness coupled with the extension of His mercy to sinners. It is of this that Isaiah said: “The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. p. 177 . . . It pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief.”
The purpose of God required the declaration of His righteousness in the sacrifice of a sinless representative of the human race, of His own providing; that through him, raised from the dead and glorified, believers, recognising their true estate, and God’s gracious purpose in him, might have access to the divine favour in the forgiveness of sins through his name. In this way “the chastisement of our peace was upon him,” not that God chastised the innocent instead of the guilty, or bruised him to pass over them. This would not be according to the revelation of the divine character, and would leave no room for the forgiveness of sins. It would induce boasting, and render unnecessary our participation in the sufferings of Christ.
Nothing is clearer than that we are forgiven for his sake, and must die with Christ, be buried with him by baptism into death, be crucified with Christ, suffer with him that we may hereafter reign with him. He comes upon the scene as the second Adam. It is Paul who so strongly draws the comparison in the fifth chapter of Romans: “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Peace departed from the earth in connection with Adam’s offence. It returns in connection with Christ’s obedience. The opening of this chapter (Rom. v.) presents this bearing upon those individually who believe in Jesus: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Here then is the true basis of peace: the humble and affectionate recognition of the will of God in Jesus Christ, in the obedience thereto according to divine appointment. Apart from this, professors may talk of Christ with ever so much admiration, and applaud his title, ‘Prince of Peace,” but his name will profit them nothing, and the way of peace they will not know.
There are several allusions to this phase of the “peace of God” in the apostolic writings. Paul says to the Ephesians, speaking of p. 178 their past alienation as Gentiles, and their hopeless state in being without God, which now was remedied in Christ: “He is our peace who hath made both (circumcision and uncircumcision) one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make of the twain one new man, so making peace” (Eph. ii. 14-15; compare Col. i. 20). The apostles, in their ministration of the gospel of the Kingdom to Jew and Gentile, were heaven’s ambassadors, with conditions of peace (2 Cor. v. 19-20). They ministered the word “of reconciliation,” showing men and women how the Divine Majesty had made provision for the return of the rebellious to His favour in the raising up of an Holy One who poured out his soul unto death, and rising victoriously from the grave, “made intercession for the transgressors.”
This same message of peace is sent abroad wherever the apostolic presentation of the Gospel obtains. They applied to themselves as in Rom. x. 15, the prophecy of Isa. lii.: “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things.” Being “in Christ,” who said of them, “He that heareth you, heareth me,” there was no presumption in so doing. The Spirit of God directed the usage of the prophetic word in harmony with the facts of the case. Although not “sent” like them, those who, being of the same faith, preach the same word, become, though less directly, messengers of peace, directing the attention of fellow-mortals to the true way of reconciliation and life eternal. The acceptors of this message individually make peace with God, which involves them in enmity with the world, of which, like their Master, they have to testify that the deeds thereof are evil. They pass through the appointed and inevitable tribulation, and fall asleep in Jesus until the resurrection morning, when he will arouse them to the life and peace of the Kingdom of God.
But when he comes there will not at first be peace by any means. When Joshua appeared with the hosts of Israel in the land of Canaan, there was no peace till the wicked nations who withstood him were destroyed. Or, to go back, when Moses returned from Midian to Egypt, there was no peace till Egypt was destroyed by plagues, and Pharaoh’s power finally broken in the Red Sea. Jesus p. 179 is the antitype both of Moses and Joshua, and his dealings with the nations through the instrumentality of Israel are to be “according to the days of their coming out of the land of Egypt” (Mic. vii. 15). He is the “heir of all things” and “king over all the earth,” a position that “the Powers” will be exceedingly loth to recognise.
It does not rest on inference, but is explicitly testified beforehand; and is no more extraordinary than the history of the past, in which Pharaoh was hardened to resist the Almighty, and the power of the enemy permitted to prevail to the crucifixion of Christ. The second Psalm gives us the picture of a coalition in the last days to resist the divine enthronement of Messiah on Mount Zion; and it is worthy of note that this psalm is apostolically applied in Acts iv. 25-28 as having had an incipient fulfilment in the crucifixion. Revelation (ch. xix.) represents Christ making war in righteousness upon “the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies,” a description which, when rightly understood, explains the true nature and intent of the appalling armaments of modern times. It was never designed by God that the world should for ever be misgoverned by a race of mortal sinners without regard to His will. Human self-government is a usurpation at the start; but it is allowed of God to run its course subject to His control in the development from out of the passing generations of a people for Himself, in whose hands, under the Prince of Peace, when the time is ripe, He will bless the world with an immortal administration of righteousness and peace. The world cannot know peace apart from this. God “makes peace and creates evil” (Isa. xlv.); and evil is the rule while He is dishonoured. “Enmity” between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman is the divine appointment, and there is enmity between the various sections of the seed of the serpent itself. The lust of dominion is the motive power among the nations, and is by no means concealed from the view of people enlightened by the law and the testimony by the smooth language of diplomacy in which the great men of the earth endeavour to “conceal their thoughts.”
A notable phenomenon of modern times in this connection was the Peace Conference convened in Holland at the initiative of the p. 180 Czar of Russia. Projected first in August 1898, by the Czar’s Rescript, the matter came to fruition in May 1899, when, as all the world knows, the representatives of the Great Powers, and many others, met at the Hague, for the purpose of discussing disarmament, the modification of the rules of war to render it less disastrous in its effects, and the establishment of a Permanent Court of Arbitration to which nations could appeal upon the principle so strongly insisted on by a public writer: “Always arbitrate before you fight.” The one thing accomplished by the Conference was the agreement upon the Court of Arbitration, leaving open the very vital question of the enforcement of its awards.. Disarmament was out of the question, and the modification of the rules of war were not of a radical character.
The Prime Mover in the matter did not appear in his true character when he posed as “The Harbinger of Peace!” Without concerning ourselves with the character and intentions of the present Czar, we may discern from the Scripture the aims and intentions of the Power of which he is the reigning representative. The policy of the “King of the North,” as defined beforehand by the prophets, and in these latter days in the tradition embodied in the will of Peter the Great, is that of founding a world-empire which shall overshadow all other dominions, and have for its religious capital, the city Jerusalem, which is now the site of so many rival religious interests.
In the language of the prophet, the King of the North is “a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people” (Hab. ii. 5). It is a well recognised fact that the trend of Russian diplomacy has been continually towards the increase of her territory and influence, and that the Peace Conference is but the latest illustration of it. What is not recognised is that the gathering of nations under the King of the North is not for Peace, but for “the war of the great day of God Almighty,” that the assembled hosts may be broken upon the mountains of Israel at the presence of Israel’s God (Ezek. xxxviii.)
p. 181 It is not incongruous that the title “Prince of Peace” should be associated with these terrible developments. The connection is explicitly made in the Scriptures; for Micah, in a portion of his prophecy (ch. v.) which in part has already received literal fulfilment in the experiences of Jesus in the days of his weakness, goes on to say: “He shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they (Israel) shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. And THIS MAN SHALL BE THE PEACE when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal men.”
From this Scripture, as from Isaiah, it is very evident that Christ is Prince of Peace by reason of his procuration of peace through triumph over the latter-day Assyrian in conjunction with certain mighty ones of his “raising up.” He is the “Chief Shepherd,” and his companion “princes” are some of those who inherit the kingdom at his return. It is impossible to identify them before the time; but the divinely honoured names of Israel’s worthies of the past will doubtless be represented among them. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses and Samuel, David, Noah, Daniel, and Job, are names singled out for special honourable mention in the Scriptures: the Twelve Apostles also in the New Testament. The day will reveal them, whoever they may prove to be; the point under contemplation now is that lost sight of in Christendom, though so plainly revealed in the prophets, that peace comes by Christ as the result of his overthrow of the oppressor of Israel, and the execution of “vengeance, in anger and fury upon the heathen such as they have not heard” (Mic. v. 15).
In the land of Israel and the city Jerusalem, and not in heaven beyond the skies, is Messiah’s peace to be manifested, and those only will enjoy it as inheritors of the kingdom who have faith in what God has promised. The references to the locality of the blessing are many and quite unmistakable. By Haggai, in the restoration period after the Babylonian captivity, God said: “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, p. 182 saith the Lord of Hosts, and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of Hosts” (Hag. ii. 9). The time referred to, we learn from the apostolic quotation of the passage in Heb. xii., is at the establishment of the “kingdom that cannot be moved,” when human dominions are swept away, and “the desire of all nations shall come.”
An exhortation of Psa. cxxii. says, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.” The world’s speculators concerning peace do not concern themselves with the affairs of the brethren and companions of the King of Israel. But the Psalm reveals them to be a ruling factor in the situation, as appears also from many other portions of the word.
Psa. cx., in its application by Paul in Hebrews, shows the Lord Jesus enthroned in Zion as Melchizedek High Priest: first, King of Righteousness; and then, King of Salem, which is King of Peace. In view of this, mourners for Zion are exhorted to rejoice: “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her all ye that mourn for her: that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith the Lord, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream; then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Isa. lxvi. 10-13).
A more literal description of the blessedness that underlies this description is obtained from the prophet Ezekiel in the temple vision (chaps. xl.-xlviii.) which introduces “the Prince,” of whom the other prophets have spoken, and reveals him as the manifestation of the glory of the God of Israel (Christ personal and multitudinous), then enthroned in glory in the city which once rejected and slew him. There are ordinances for his eating bread before the Lord in the East Gate, to which, before his crucifixion, p. 183 he referred in promise to his disciples: “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom as my Father hath appointed unto me: that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke xxii. 28-30). These are some of his “children whom he makes princes in all the earth” (Psa. xlv.). They are then enthroned with him as “kings and priests for God” (Rev. v.) after the order of Melchizedek. He then has fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah which says: “He shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a priest upon his throne; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both” (Zech. vi. 13).
Here then is the true hope of peace for the world: the advent, in a time of trouble such as never was, of the “Prince of Peace” from heaven. He will raise from the dust of death those of all ages who, through faith in his name, either in prospect or retrospect, have attained unto reconciliation and peace with God. Dismissing the wicked to shame and death, he will beautify these with salvation, and they will enter upon a reign of life and peace everlasting. With them he will break the yoke of Israel “as in the day of Midian,” and establish the throne of David “with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.” From Zion he will demand the surrender of all the Powers of the world to the throne and sceptre of David. Upon refusal he will subjugate them all by conquest in the “war of the great day of God Almighty,” in which the slain of the Lord shall be many from one end of the earth to the other. The remnant, with loftiness bowed down and all haughtiness laid low, will be only too glad to submit to the will of God as expressed in the commands of Jesus, and the “terribly shaken” earth will pass into the peace of the Millennium so little believed in, so ardently desired, and so hopeless of attainment apart from the strong arm of him who once was crucified through weakness, but whom God has constituted “WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, MIGHTY GOD, FATHER OF ETERNITY, PRINCE OF PEACE.”
p. 184Woe to Ephraim
Assurance of the everlasting continuance of the throne and kingdom of David having been given, and emphasised by the declaration: “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this”; the word of God returns to further denunciation of Ephraim and his Syrian confederate. Ephraim had been founded in idolatry, and sustained in wickedness by his kings, notwithstanding the expostulations of God by the prophets, and in miracles, signs and wonders, as in the terrible vindication of His name over the prophets of Baal by Elijah on Mount Carmel. The time for the subversion of the kingdom drew near; but first was to come the fall of Syria.
Verse eleven of this ninth chapter says: “The Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together.” Bible history shows us the fate of the Gentile prince, who with an Ephraimite conspirator and usurper (2 Kings xv. 25), sought to subvert the Kingdom of David, and by the erection of a new dynasty (Isa. vii. 6) annul the covenant that God had made with David. But there is no counsel against the Lord. He said by His servant Isaiah: “It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass,” and denounced the overthrow of both the hostile powers. With regard to Rezin, “the word” appointed the King of Assyria to despoil his capital (Isa. viii. 4); and so it came to pass, for: “The King of Assyria (Tiglath-Pileser) went up against Damascus and took it, and carried the people thereof captive to Kir, and slew Rezin” (2 Kings xvi. 9).
This, to Ephraim, was an earnest of the judgment that should as certainly come upon them; but, true to the traditions of their evil history, the warning was utterly disregarded. When their turn came, however, at the hand of Shalmaneser in the ninth year of Hoshea, the word had its ample fulfilment. “The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria” (v. 9). God’s comment on these and similar fulfilled threats of judgment is given by a later prophet (Zech. i. 6), “My p. 185 words and my statutes which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? And they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.” Throughout the entire Scripture there runs this emphasising of the knowledge of God produced by judgment. The plagues of Egypt made Him “an everlasting name,” manifesting for all time that there is none like unto the Lord God of Israel. The dispersion and sufferings of Israel testify to the same great truth. The calm declaration of Christ (pronouncing judgment upon Jerusalem): “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away,” finds fulfilment round the world in scores of millions of Bibles. All the facts of history and of the current situation are such as endorse Christ’s saying that men are foolish not to believe “all that the prophets have spoken.”
The unappeasable wrath of God is the subject of four-fold emphasis in the section of the prophecy under consideration. The form of words four times repeated runs thus (verses 12, 17, 21, chap. x. 4): “For all this, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched forth still.” The history of Israel being preserved for our instruction (1 Cor. x.), it becomes an important matter to note the conditions under which national destruction was inevitable. One of these is exhibited in verse 11, thus: “The people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of Hosts.” As the proverb has it: “He that being often reproved hardeneth his heart, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”
Very elaborate counsel and warning had been given to Israel by Moses concerning the effects respectively of obedience and disobedience. The twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus is an eloquent exhortation to the point, and withal a prophecy of the punishment and preservation of Israel, and of the hope in the latter end. “If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me. And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the p. 186 land of their enemies. If then their uncircumcised heart be humbled, and they accept of the punishment of their iniquity, then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land” (v. 40). And the words go on to declare that God will not utterly destroy Israel; of the truth of which we are witnesses.
Nineveh, repenting at the preaching of Jonah, is an illustration of God’s mercy where respect is shown to His Word; and it is Christ who uses the case of Nineveh as an argument against those who refused to hearken to the words of the “greater than Jonah.” Even Ahab, when he humbled himself before God, was spared the witnessing of the evil that God would bring upon his house.
The principle upon which God acts He has clearly revealed through Jeremiah (xviii. 8), “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them.”
Israel did evil persistently in God’s sight, and the last warnings of the prophets before the final overthrow were now sounding against them. For us the lesson is that divine chastisement must not be despised or resisted. An apostle says: “Chastening . . . yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby.” “When we are judged we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.” But for them that are not “exercised thereby,” and that “turn not to Him that smiteth them,” the case is hopeless.
For the fulfilment and inspired comment on the judgment pronounced in this chapter of Isaiah, 2 Kings xvii. may be read. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, was the first “leader of the p. 187 people” that caused them to err, and was a type of all who came after him; of nearly all of whom it is said they “departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.” Even Jehu, who was anointed to cut off the house of Ahab, and who did it and declared that it was God’s work; and who, moreover, destroyed the worshippers of Baal, nevertheless in the end took the same evil course. So true was the word by the prophet: “The leaders of this people cause them to err, and they that are led of them are destroyed.” “Every one is an hypocrite and an evil doer, and every mouth speaketh folly.” They decreed unrighteousness, perverted judgment, and robbed the fatherless and the widow.
It was the same state of things that was afterwards so terribly denounced by Christ in Jerusalem in his encounters with the Scribes and Pharisees. The difference between his and the prophetic threatenings is the more direct authority with which he speaks. The prophets say, “Thus saith the Lord”; but Christ speaks in the first person: “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” It is the word of God in both cases—God spoke in times past by the prophets, and in the last days of the Mosaic economy by a Son (Heb. i.), but the voice of the “heir of all things” is the higher form of divine approach in invitation, instruction, and judgment. The sentence on Ephraim extends to the fourth verse of chapter x., concluding with the picture of a forsaken nation in the extremity of slaughter and captivity: “Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain.”